There are lots of low-bandwidth applications
on
R.I.P. Iridium
·
· Score: 1
The receiver will sell the satellites to somebody. There are too many useful applications for them, not just continuing to run them as a cheaper satellite phone service.
They could probably do satellite radio, for example. National (or regional as you wish, or global) stations that don't fade as you move from town to town. Plus updates on road conditions, weather etc. for your car or marine computer.
Great for lojack GPS location transmission for trucks, marine, aircraft.
Useful for voice and data on planes going over the ocean.
Voice and low-rate data for truly remote locations.
"Stop the Atrocity" -- build digital cameras combined with Iridium phones. Airdrop them on war zones. Tell the victims of atrocities to snap digital snapshots of anybody who attacks them or any atrocity they see for instant upload. The mere existence of these cameras and their link to the press might be enough to stop some war crimes. Isn't that worth it? Imagine having them in Kosovo, Sarajevo, Tibet?
Low-volume remote transmissions from things like scientific sensors of climate, air pollution data.
None of the state laws on spam have done anything. We have two, count 'em, two in California. No decrease in spam, no stories of spammers hauled to court.
It would be worse if we did let states regulate E-mail anyway. Can you imagine 50 different sets of E-mail laws that you have to know and follow every time you send an E-mail without knowing what state the recipient is in? I don't know the geographical location of a good number of my E-mail recipients.
Forget about spam. I wouldn't even want states empowered to pass a law approving motherhood and apple pipe on any kind of interstate internet traffic. The internet is not configured for people to know, or care about, the geography of things. New Mexico tried to pass a law like the Communications Decency Act. Would you want to have to worry that any E-mail you sent without knowing the current location of the recipient might not meet the decency standards of New Mexico?
Back around 1989, I wrote a short history of USENET and made fun of all the people who kept predicting for years that it would soon die. I ended up coining the phrase "imminent death of the net predicted" in the history.
But today I've joined the doomsayers. The net won't die, but it's already in decline, finally for real, but for a long time simply compared to the web. You see USENET was growing, but it wasn't growing nearly as the net itself. During the 80s it grew faster. Now all the mindshare belongs to the web, and more and more people think of web boards like/. and others as the place to go for online conferences.
Too bad because frankly they suck in most ways, including/., compared to a good newsreader. I rarely read the boards here. It's too slow, too cumbersome, even over a fast link. My newsreader is an order of magnitude faster.
So much better yet it manages to die, while Andover gets valued at 800 million dollars (or whatever) of VA Linux Stock. Why?
Many reasons, but prime among them resistance to change. USENET is the example of open source at its worst. To change and evolve, it needs the cooperation of *everybody*. It's hard to lead, and no matter what you do, there will be more people who will think it's a bad idea. Every new suggestion is met with "Go to the web to do that" or "Go start your own hierarchy."
Well, I did start my own hierarchy once. It's not easy, and it's stupid it should be necessary to do something new.
I helped start the usenet-format IETF working group to help improve the USENET standard. It's been going for over 2 years and gotten nowhere. There are perhaps 2 or 3 new features in it, all because I pushed for them, but frankly nothing. Because of the need for too much agreement there is no change.
USENET people fear the web and the internet as the enemy when they should embrace them. Slashdot works because doing it on USENET would be hard. USENET still lacks real support (other than robo-moderation) for the idea of short-term, moderator-created topics that are within themselves unmoderated, or retro-moderated. That's how almost every online service and BBS has worked for a long time now.
USENET people fear the web because of the things that are wrong with the web -- it's too pretty, to inefficient, requires permanent connectivity -- but in turn they reject all the good it has to offer.
The last new feature in newsreaders was MIME, which is almost 10 years ago, before the web. One new feature in 10 years? 10 Internet Centuries they would now call that.
Even though over 50% of users now read with Netscape or Outlook Express and can do full MIME and HTML, even good uses that don't involve the feared abuses of the web are shouted down if people try them. Even somebody like myself, a reasonably respected old hand and moderator, has trouble suggesting new things. If I can't do it, I don't know who can.
I've about given up on the usenet-format working group as a means to improvement. My battle cry at the end was that we bring USENET into the 90s before they were over. Start-of-Decade-debates notwithstanding, I lost.
Slashdot Mirror
The receiver will sell the satellites to somebody. There are too many useful applications for them, not just continuing to run them as a cheaper satellite phone service.
They could probably do satellite radio, for example. National (or regional as you wish, or global) stations that don't fade as you move from town to town. Plus updates on road conditions, weather etc. for your car or marine computer.
Great for lojack GPS location transmission for trucks, marine, aircraft.
Useful for voice and data on planes going over the ocean.
Voice and low-rate data for truly remote locations.
"Stop the Atrocity" -- build digital cameras combined with Iridium phones. Airdrop them on war zones. Tell the victims of atrocities to snap digital snapshots of anybody who attacks them or any atrocity they see for instant upload. The mere existence of these cameras and their link to the press might be enough to stop some war crimes. Isn't that worth it? Imagine having them in Kosovo, Sarajevo, Tibet?
Low-volume remote transmissions from things like scientific sensors of climate, air pollution data.
None of the state laws on spam have done anything. We have two, count 'em, two in California. No decrease in spam, no stories of spammers hauled to court.
It would be worse if we did let states regulate E-mail anyway. Can you imagine 50 different sets of E-mail laws that you have to know and follow every time you send an E-mail without knowing what state the recipient is in? I don't know the geographical location of a good number of my E-mail recipients.
Forget about spam. I wouldn't even want states empowered to pass a law approving motherhood and apple pipe on any kind of interstate internet traffic. The internet is not configured for people to know, or care about, the geography of things. New Mexico tried to pass a law like the Communications Decency Act. Would you want to have to worry that any E-mail you sent without knowing the current location of the recipient might not meet the decency standards of New Mexico?
Back around 1989, I wrote a short history of USENET and made fun of all the people who kept predicting for years that it would soon die. I ended up coining the phrase "imminent death of the net predicted" in the history.
/. and others as the place to go for online conferences.
/., compared to a good newsreader. I rarely read the boards here. It's too slow, too cumbersome, even over a fast link. My newsreader is an order of magnitude faster.
But today I've joined the doomsayers. The net won't die, but it's already in decline, finally for real, but for a long time simply compared to the web. You see USENET was growing, but it wasn't growing nearly as the net itself. During the 80s it grew faster. Now all the mindshare belongs to the web, and more and more people think of web boards like
Too bad because frankly they suck in most ways, including
So much better yet it manages to die, while Andover gets valued at 800 million dollars (or whatever) of VA Linux Stock. Why?
Many reasons, but prime among them resistance to change. USENET is the example of open source at its worst. To change and evolve, it needs the cooperation of *everybody*. It's hard to lead, and no matter what you do, there will be more people who will think it's a bad idea. Every new suggestion is met with "Go to the web to do that" or "Go start your own hierarchy."
Well, I did start my own hierarchy once. It's not easy, and it's stupid it should be necessary to do something new.
I helped start the usenet-format IETF working group to help improve the USENET standard. It's been going for over 2 years and gotten nowhere. There are perhaps 2 or 3 new features in it, all because I pushed for them, but frankly nothing. Because of the need for too much agreement there is no change.
USENET people fear the web and the internet as the enemy when they should embrace them. Slashdot works because doing it on USENET would be hard. USENET still lacks real support (other than robo-moderation) for the idea of short-term, moderator-created topics that are within themselves unmoderated, or retro-moderated. That's how almost every online service and BBS has worked for a long time now.
USENET people fear the web because of the things that are wrong with the web -- it's too pretty, to inefficient, requires permanent connectivity -- but in turn they reject all the good it has to offer.
The last new feature in newsreaders was MIME, which is almost 10 years ago, before the web. One new feature in 10 years? 10 Internet Centuries they would now call that.
Even though over 50% of users now read with Netscape or Outlook Express and can do full MIME and HTML, even good uses that don't involve the feared abuses of the web are shouted down if people try them. Even somebody like myself, a reasonably respected old hand and moderator, has trouble suggesting new things. If I can't do it, I don't know who can.
I've about given up on the usenet-format working group as a means to improvement. My battle cry at the end was that we bring USENET into the 90s before they were over. Start-of-Decade-debates notwithstanding, I lost.