Ok, I would definately look into Iridium. But as a note to Exstatica, I can tell you aren't from the Washington Area. When I go from Seattle to Pullman to go back to school I usually spend 3/4 of that 5 hour drive out of cell range. When I go backpacking up in the cascades, usually you're out of cell range. I could do a speil on radio theory and talk about what the terrian is like in the Cascades, but it is more easily said that Cell coverage will never be 100%.
As for not being able to do anything, if he gets a page though he can alter whatever he's doing to start getting the problem fixed. Such as if he's in the back country, he can find the quickest route out. If he's on Hwy 26 in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington, he can turn around, and he'll be back in Seattle in 5 hours max. I have done it in 4, but I was driving at night with no traffic. Bottom line though, if you have no clue somethings wrong, how can you react to fix it. If you know somethings wrong and that you will be needed you can get to a place to help. If you dont know that your presence is need, and you keep taking your time in the mountains, it compounds the problem. It isn't as much as he wouldn't be able to call anyone, as it is, he can immeadiately move and react so he can be in contact.
And I hear ya man, it drives me nuts going through eastern Washington without reception. I was just lucky my accident occured where there was cell reception. And that was cause I was passing through a town on the highway. Been another 2 miles earlier, I would have had to wait even longer, and most likely I wouldn't be able to kiss my girlfriend goodnight anymore. So believe me, there is no such thing as 100% cell coverage. For an idea of where this was, it was about 30 minutes south of Spokane. So not overly far from a "urban" area. So I wouldn't say, well I've never been out of communication for that long, so how can you be? If you live in a highly urban area you wont be, you go someplace for a small vacation, you can easily be out of coverage.
My 2 cents on the reason for a Sat. pager or phone.
A friend of my mothers about 3 years ago had this same type of surgery done. She had type-II diabetes since she was a teenager and had required shots. She no longer has to take insulin shots twice daily which has now been replaced by the pill.
I saw someone post something about whether this would actually change quality of life, and I can say from seeing those close to me, yes. My father died of pancratic cancer, and the cancer caused type-II diabeties, and the ammount of effort that had to be put into regulating insulin levels, taking your shots, checking your blood, it all adds up. To just take a pill in the morning instead is considerably easier.
Personally, I wouldn't like having to check my blood 3 times a day, and give myself injections on top of that. I'm sure most other people wouldn't like that either, to have that replaced by a pill would be a god send.
It is something that hits close to home, and I'm sure that many of you/.ers out there probably have friends with type-II diabeties and don't even know it.
Cant forget good old Adventure. I guess I may be an odd ball, but I'm only 21 but I remember Zork, and Adventure. "You are in a maze of twisty passages all different" >leave slashdot "I do not know how to do that" "You are in a maze of twisty passages all different" > The easter eggs that revolve around these games are ususally the most humours and obsure. Such that it changes one pixel to tell you if danger is lurking.
This is actually a very good question. One worthy of me to actually say something. My boss and I were talking about this last summer. Electrons travel at roughly the speed of light, and your average chip is about 1cm x 1cm. So at about 10 GHz the period is 200 pico seconds. Now I dont remember the exact speed of light, but its something like 300,000,000 m/s so in 200 pico seconds is goes 3cm. So in one clock cycle the signal can easily get from one side of the chip to the other. If you take into accound routing issues and delays, vias slow things down, and that electrons dont actually travel at the speed of light, you soon realize this is just about long enough for the signal to go from one side of the chip to the other. If you start to exceded this speed signals don't actually have enough time to get to their locations. You could certainly run one transistor as fast as you want, there's no propogation to signal time. But if you're actually performing logical functions, and sending the data to another location, eventually physics gives us an upper bounds to clock speed. Certainly new technologies will provide greater speeds, and this transistor technology will decrease delays some, and as we continue making chips smaller and smaller will also assist, eventually though a barrier will be found, and I think thats gonna be well before the 600 GHz mark for useful devices.
The best improvements for processors now wont be in increasing clock speed, but increasing the throughput per clock cycle, such as decreasing the ammount of time to perform a MUL. I use the MUL function as an example cause anyone who has worked in assembly on old processors knows that function takes an extrodanary number of clocks to execute.
This is just my two cents though. I was also recently in a car wreck so my mind may be still high from the morphine, so if I have something incorrect please feel free to correct me.
Personally I would have opted for the.44 Magnum revolver. Its amazing the ping sound that comes from those platers. Besides after, they're so warped they wont spin anymore. And lets not foget about the holes. And if the RMA operator asks, "Dude what the hell happened?" Just say Dirty Harry got pissed at your computer. Framing hammer, that requires multiple hits, 44 mag, one 4 pound trigger pull. I'm just lazy, but I also like shooting things.:D
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I would definately look into Iridium. But as a note to Exstatica, I can tell you aren't from the Washington Area. When I go from Seattle to Pullman to go back to school I usually spend 3/4 of that 5 hour drive out of cell range. When I go backpacking up in the cascades, usually you're out of cell range. I could do a speil on radio theory and talk about what the terrian is like in the Cascades, but it is more easily said that Cell coverage will never be 100%.
As for not being able to do anything, if he gets a page though he can alter whatever he's doing to start getting the problem fixed. Such as if he's in the back country, he can find the quickest route out. If he's on Hwy 26 in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington, he can turn around, and he'll be back in Seattle in 5 hours max. I have done it in 4, but I was driving at night with no traffic. Bottom line though, if you have no clue somethings wrong, how can you react to fix it. If you know somethings wrong and that you will be needed you can get to a place to help. If you dont know that your presence is need, and you keep taking your time in the mountains, it compounds the problem. It isn't as much as he wouldn't be able to call anyone, as it is, he can immeadiately move and react so he can be in contact.
And I hear ya man, it drives me nuts going through eastern Washington without reception. I was just lucky my accident occured where there was cell reception. And that was cause I was passing through a town on the highway. Been another 2 miles earlier, I would have had to wait even longer, and most likely I wouldn't be able to kiss my girlfriend goodnight anymore. So believe me, there is no such thing as 100% cell coverage. For an idea of where this was, it was about 30 minutes south of Spokane. So not overly far from a "urban" area.
So I wouldn't say, well I've never been out of communication for that long, so how can you be? If you live in a highly urban area you wont be, you go someplace for a small vacation, you can easily be out of coverage.
My 2 cents on the reason for a Sat. pager or phone.
A friend of my mothers about 3 years ago had this same type of surgery done. She had type-II diabetes since she was a teenager and had required shots. She no longer has to take insulin shots twice daily which has now been replaced by the pill.
/.ers out there probably have friends with type-II diabeties and don't even know it.
I saw someone post something about whether this would actually change quality of life, and I can say from seeing those close to me, yes. My father died of pancratic cancer, and the cancer caused type-II diabeties, and the ammount of effort that had to be put into regulating insulin levels, taking your shots, checking your blood, it all adds up. To just take a pill in the morning instead is considerably easier.
Personally, I wouldn't like having to check my blood 3 times a day, and give myself injections on top of that. I'm sure most other people wouldn't like that either, to have that replaced by a pill would be a god send.
It is something that hits close to home, and I'm sure that many of you
Cant forget good old Adventure. I guess I may be an odd ball, but I'm only 21 but I remember Zork, and Adventure.
"You are in a maze of twisty passages all different"
>leave slashdot
"I do not know how to do that"
"You are in a maze of twisty passages all different"
>
The easter eggs that revolve around these games are ususally the most humours and obsure. Such that it changes one pixel to tell you if danger is lurking.
This is actually a very good question. One worthy of me to actually say something. My boss and I were talking about this last summer. Electrons travel at roughly the speed of light, and your average chip is about 1cm x 1cm. So at about 10 GHz the period is 200 pico seconds. Now I dont remember the exact speed of light, but its something like 300,000,000 m/s so in 200 pico seconds is goes 3cm. So in one clock cycle the signal can easily get from one side of the chip to the other. If you take into accound routing issues and delays, vias slow things down, and that electrons dont actually travel at the speed of light, you soon realize this is just about long enough for the signal to go from one side of the chip to the other. If you start to exceded this speed signals don't actually have enough time to get to their locations. You could certainly run one transistor as fast as you want, there's no propogation to signal time. But if you're actually performing logical functions, and sending the data to another location, eventually physics gives us an upper bounds to clock speed. Certainly new technologies will provide greater speeds, and this transistor technology will decrease delays some, and as we continue making chips smaller and smaller will also assist, eventually though a barrier will be found, and I think thats gonna be well before the 600 GHz mark for useful devices.
The best improvements for processors now wont be in increasing clock speed, but increasing the throughput per clock cycle, such as decreasing the ammount of time to perform a MUL. I use the MUL function as an example cause anyone who has worked in assembly on old processors knows that function takes an extrodanary number of clocks to execute.
This is just my two cents though. I was also recently in a car wreck so my mind may be still high from the morphine, so if I have something incorrect please feel free to correct me.
Personally I would have opted for the .44 Magnum revolver. Its amazing the ping sound that comes from those platers. Besides after, they're so warped they wont spin anymore. And lets not foget about the holes. And if the RMA operator asks, "Dude what the hell happened?" Just say Dirty Harry got pissed at your computer. Framing hammer, that requires multiple hits, 44 mag, one 4 pound trigger pull. I'm just lazy, but I also like shooting things. :D