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How To Communicate Faster-Than-Light

Posted by Unknown on from the tiny-wormholes-of-course dept.

higuita writes "With faster technologies showing up everyday, people need to prepare in advance the problems of faster-than-light communication. The main problem is that packages will arrive to the destination before they are sent, forcing a huge redesign of most protocols. Read here the first draft RFC. Any network expert is free to help fine tune this draft."

17 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. April fools again? by donscarletti · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is there some tradition in some parts of the world to make an ass of oneself on the second of April too?

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    1. Re:April fools again? by mooingyak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's still 1/4 in the states.

      Well, no. In the states it's 4/1.

      All of Europe should be on 2/4 by now though.

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    2. Re: April fools again? by Nodsnarb · · Score: 5, Funny

      There's a world outside the United States? Do they have Baconaise too?

    3. Re: April fools again? by WGFCrafty · · Score: 4, Funny

      And chocolate flavored pigs. Yes, the holy grail of genetics

    4. Re:April fools again? by gagol · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Note to the editors. The fun in april fool is to make ONE silly joke and try to pass it as genuine. Becoming the onion all day is not. Also, nice try with the ROT13 stuff, did not work very well.

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    5. Re:April fools again? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Quite frankly I'm surprised Slashdot is able to get April Fools articles out at all.

      I come here every year expecting to hear about {insert Google joke of the year} on April 3rd after every other news outlet had published it, and then again a dupe on April 5th.

    6. Re:April fools again? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's still 1/4 in the states.

      Well, no. In the states it's 4/1.

      All of Europe should be on 2/4 by now though.

      See, if the US switched to metric, we wouldn't have these miscommunications...

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    7. Re:April fools again? by isorox · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's still 1/4 in the states.

      Well, no. In the states it's 4/1.

      All of Europe should be on 2/4 by now though.

      See, if the US switched to metric, we wouldn't have these miscommunications...

      I can believe FTL communication, even FTL travel, but the US moving to metric? April fools are meant to be believable.

    8. Re:April fools again? by tonywestonuk · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is *Not* an April fools!!... Slashdot is reporting on an RFC, published in draft status. No Joke. Like other RFC's published on April 1st, It probably wont have any real world usage (unless we actually find a way of sending things faster than light, at which point the universe collapses into a paradoxial soup), and is there mostly for its comedic value. BUT, that is not the point, the point is this is an attempt at working out how to send things over a FTL medium, and documenting them in an RFC.

      IP Over Avian carriers (rfc1149), another April 1st RFC, was implemented a few years later. It worked.

    9. Re:April fools again? by servognome · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't you mean 7 Gigapeople us metric?

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    10. Re:April fools again? by Noughmad · · Score: 4, Informative

      He did say Gigapeople, not Gibipeople.

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  2. Re:Might be fast but by CrashPoint · · Score: 4, Informative

    While you might contemplate that something can be sent with a nearly infinite speed, no speed will be so great that the time since transmission is a negative number.

    It's perfectly obvious that this is true. However, it actually isn't true at all.

    Relativity is a mind fuck.

  3. Use FTL to request the RFC... by tokencode · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think we should just use FTL to request the RFC in its future state.

  4. i don't get it. by milkmage · · Score: 3, Funny

    we all know you arrive in the states before you leave Japan... and we've had subspace communication since the 60's (I saw it on TV). don't skip drones pretty much make this moot anyway?

    what's the problem?

  5. Please explain ... by frootcakeuk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... how this is still an april fool's joke without having to click thru the poxy ROT-whatever 'encryption'

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  6. Re:Might be fast but by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 3, Funny

    Relativity is a mind fuck.

    I think ...

    you're holding it wrong.

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    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  7. Not to worry, I will have written the protocols by raymorris · · Score: 4, Funny

    When we have FTL communication in which packets arrive before they are sent, I will have written the needed protocols in 2010. I'll start them in 2016, complete them in 2010, and finish compatibilty testing in 2009. That'll let Microsoft implement them in 2057.