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The Mobile Internet You'll Be Using In 10 Years
mr sanjeev writes "After being plagued with project overruns and a scaling back of the final system, the US military's next-generation satellite communications network is another step closer to reality, with completion of the payload module for the third and final Advanced Extremely High Frequency (EHF) satellite ... If GPS and remote imaging (think Google Earth) have proven anything, it is that technology initially developed for military purposes, and extremely expensive for initial civil use, will eventually reach the point where it forms part of our daily lives without us ever being conscious of the massive investment to get to that point."
It would be much better to use a small fleet of high altitude autonomous drones with communications gear on board. It would be cheaper to startup, cheaper to maintain, easier to upgrade, lower latency, etc. For certain applications satellites will still be needed, but we are at the edge of the next generation of low cost communications brought to us by continuously flying drones flying between 10 and 20 miles up.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Dude, anyone in a plane can 'zero-in' on your house. It's essentially being broadcast. It's not a breach of privacy if someone sees your house; now, if they see something that you have a reasonable expectation of, such as your wife sunbathing in the nude... that's different, and sexy. But it probably won't happen.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
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I thought the Internet I'll be using in 10 years will be called the RIAA distribution network and that I'd be using it from a jail cell because I once hummed "Happy Birthday" at a children's birthday party sometime in the 90s without paying the piper.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
More important, how's the latency? The RTT to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit is pretty high (especially considering that when requesting data, you have to double the RTT vs. streaming). The article doesn't seem to say if this is high-, low-, or medium-earth orbit.
Low earth orbit can get you RTT to the satellite of ~13 milliseconds at 2000 km, adding ~26 ms to the average page load, whereas a geosynchronous orbit could take ~240 milliseconds, adding ~480ms to a page load - quite a difference. Of course, these are optimal times, assuming the satellite is directly overhead.
That said, it does mention a constellation of three satellites, and there's no way that this could be practical with three satellites in a low- or even medium-earth orbit that I can see. Bandwidth is great, but latency is killer.
Uh... most people don't think, when they turn on their in-car nav systems, "Gee, I'm glad my tax dollars went to pay for this system!"
True, but they should. A lot of the bitching about "wasteful government spending" would go away if people realized how much government programs (like this little thing called ARPANet that made a splash a few years ago ...) lead to dramatic improvements in their everyday lives.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Still waiting for Ludicrously High Frequency.... Seriously..