This wireless networking just gets better and better... I still have a cell modem i my laptop, and it's truly painful to use, especially sitting at my school (UU) library, which has wireless ethernet. But for many of us/.ers, the deciding factor with these new technologies is whether they become standardized. 802.11 was the greatest thing that happened to wireless ethernet; if we really want an idea like this to take off, it has to be standardized and widespread from the minute they get the first product out the door. With that said, let's start seeing those products!
I'm wondering why they're choosing windows-based machines for this task. I agree that it makes a lot of sense to hand-pick computers depending on the requirements of the job, and I understand that this job requires 24/7 connections and all. However, it seems to me that it's easier to find a *nix machine that's truly on and connected all the time than a windows machine... especially in the realm of home computers, their target audience, most windows machines will be running 9x, which simply can't be considered 24/7. Is it because they have more development time invested in / more control over the windows software? Or is it just because that's what most of the people signed up for the service have?
How much potential do these threads have? We've all been dreaming of space elevators since Clark suggested the idea. Does any of the more recent research suggest that the currently-weak threads can ever be developed to such a point that a space elevator would be possible?
> There is no way that creating extensions that only apply to a small percentage of people will work
Isn't that exactly what would work? If I type.com, I expect to be taken to a commercial site, or the site of a commercial entity. If I type.org, I expect to be taken to the site of a not-for-profit organization. The reason this is so rarely the case these days is because there AREN'T extensions which fit specific sites better, and therefore they must all be crowded into what does exist. Now, admittedly, the current batch doesn't do much to help, but as a concept I think increasing the number of MEANINGFUL TLDs is essential.
More TLDs are a GOOD thing, within reason. They prevent silly companies from blocking smaller websites entirely. And yes, you can say it'll just lead to more litigation; but if I want food.web (yes, I know there's no.web), it's going to be rather hard for someone who has food.com or food.org to block me based on pretty much anything. I'm not saying this is ideal; however, it helps the little folks more then it helps those who already have a web presence.
This seems to be a severe problem... considering that.arpa's been around since forever, even if it's recently been closed. Did the programs you refer to never work properly with arpa sites?
I know a little bit of chinese, and often find myself composing e-mails in it. Now, the Chinese IME (input method editor or some such) is very, very good, and makes entering chinese text both feasible and not particularly a hassle. However, I cannot imagine having a domain name in chinese. If the radical (part of the character) is different between two characters, and no pronunciation is changed, entering a character is much more difficult. Furthermore, typo squatting would literally become trivial. I just can't imagine a company deciding that this is a good way to reach it's target market, except for the thousand or so first-comers that get the easy-to-recognize three character names. As a general, widespread, and universal idea, it just seems destined to failure.
Unfortunately, high-bandwidth wireless (anything near this scale) is impossible. Not just hard. The sheer amount of spectrum it would take up to get 1G/s, given that you can only shove so much information over so narrow a band, is prohibitive. With small-scale wireless, it's not a big deal; the signal fades out in significantly less than a mile, and other transmitters can use the same range. To actually get worldwide wireless, without repeaters, would mean literally flooding the airwaves... ouch. Especially for future expansion; the US has enough difficulties now just splitting up the spectrum we have.
Actually, from what I understand, Australia is far from censorship-free. Indeed, they have been in the news (and on/.) recently about some of their more heinous policies.
Okay, now Australia has a broad enough pipe that they might as well be part of the US, from a network-routing point of view. Western Europe has been in that situation for a long time; there's no real difference between getting something from Britain, France, Oklahoma, and now, Australia. When is the rest of the world going to join in? The "ring of fire" around Africa seems to have dropped out of the news. I know of no major plans for eastern europe or asia. Is the rest of the world economically well off enough that soon they will be players, too?
I'm sort of split on my opinion on this. I'm a big advocate of privacy in the workplace, and I can certainly see why this would cause some concern on that ground. On the other hand, the CIA is not your standard business. The Company has, and has always had, very specific and clear concerns about information flow, and I can't help but assume that the workers involved were aware that what they were doing would be against Company policy. In other words, privacy is good, but should it have been expected in this situation?
I think it's possible that with faster, more demanding standards, more will look into SCSI...
And, if we're looking for higher data transfer speeds, we can also look at IEEE 1384 (FireWire) which, if I remember correctly, is at some point going to support transfers about 10-20x faster than SCSI.
I'm not particularly familiar with the BeOS. What are its major strengths and weaknesses (as reported by users, of course, not by the company itself). Is it worth investing in? I'm always interested in trying out new toys, and so far I've only heard good things.
It's not the question of "do you deserve or not net access", but "Is this really the best way to spend over a billion dollar in Africa".
Although I agree with the morals and principles expressed in your argument, I can't help but think that you aren't fully accounting for the economic realities of the situation. The groups pouring money into this project expect a profit; this is an undertaking ruled by traditional capitalist motives. As wonderful as the idea of feeding the poor and clothing the hungry is, it is not something which one can reasonably hope to profit on. Mind you, I feel that such work should be done; I just don't expect a telecom company to be the one to do it.
Benoit Mandelbrot, being the first mathematician to study fractals in depth, had the honor of being able to twist the definition. Thus, the Mandelbrot set is commonly considered fractal. However, it lacks many things which are normally considered necessary for a fractal. Most important in this case, it is not self-similar on all levels; indeed, it is not self-similar on any level. Because of this, I highly doubt that a Mandelbrot set would be a useful antenna. But I do like the idea of a Tetrahedral (3-D) extention of Sierpinsky's (sp?) triangle.
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This wireless networking just gets better and better... I still have a cell modem i my laptop, and it's truly painful to use, especially sitting at my school (UU) library, which has wireless ethernet. But for many of us /.ers, the deciding factor with these new technologies is whether they become standardized. 802.11 was the greatest thing that happened to wireless ethernet; if we really want an idea like this to take off, it has to be standardized and widespread from the minute they get the first product out the door. With that said, let's start seeing those products!
I'm wondering why they're choosing windows-based machines for this task. I agree that it makes a lot of sense to hand-pick computers depending on the requirements of the job, and I understand that this job requires 24/7 connections and all. However, it seems to me that it's easier to find a *nix machine that's truly on and connected all the time than a windows machine... especially in the realm of home computers, their target audience, most windows machines will be running 9x, which simply can't be considered 24/7. Is it because they have more development time invested in / more control over the windows software? Or is it just because that's what most of the people signed up for the service have?
I've got a strong nanotube for ya!
Umm.. good try at insinuating, but it really just makes you look... small.
How much potential do these threads have? We've all been dreaming of space elevators since Clark suggested the idea. Does any of the more recent research suggest that the currently-weak threads can ever be developed to such a point that a space elevator would be possible?
> There is no way that creating extensions that only apply to a small percentage of people will work
.com, I expect to be taken to a commercial site, or the site of a commercial entity. If I type .org, I expect to be taken to the site of a not-for-profit organization. The reason this is so rarely the case these days is because there AREN'T extensions which fit specific sites better, and therefore they must all be crowded into what does exist. Now, admittedly, the current batch doesn't do much to help, but as a concept I think increasing the number of MEANINGFUL TLDs is essential.
Isn't that exactly what would work? If I type
More TLDs are a GOOD thing, within reason. They prevent silly companies from blocking smaller websites entirely. And yes, you can say it'll just lead to more litigation; but if I want food.web (yes, I know there's no .web), it's going to be rather hard for someone who has food.com or food.org to block me based on pretty much anything. I'm not saying this is ideal; however, it helps the little folks more then it helps those who already have a web presence.
This seems to be a severe problem... considering that .arpa's been around since forever, even if it's recently been closed. Did the programs you refer to never work properly with arpa sites?
I know a little bit of chinese, and often find myself composing e-mails in it. Now, the Chinese IME (input method editor or some such) is very, very good, and makes entering chinese text both feasible and not particularly a hassle. However, I cannot imagine having a domain name in chinese. If the radical (part of the character) is different between two characters, and no pronunciation is changed, entering a character is much more difficult. Furthermore, typo squatting would literally become trivial. I just can't imagine a company deciding that this is a good way to reach it's target market, except for the thousand or so first-comers that get the easy-to-recognize three character names. As a general, widespread, and universal idea, it just seems destined to failure.
Unfortunately, high-bandwidth wireless (anything near this scale) is impossible. Not just hard. The sheer amount of spectrum it would take up to get 1G/s, given that you can only shove so much information over so narrow a band, is prohibitive. With small-scale wireless, it's not a big deal; the signal fades out in significantly less than a mile, and other transmitters can use the same range. To actually get worldwide wireless, without repeaters, would mean literally flooding the airwaves... ouch. Especially for future expansion; the US has enough difficulties now just splitting up the spectrum we have.
Actually, from what I understand, Australia is far from censorship-free. Indeed, they have been in the news (and on /.) recently about some of their more heinous policies.
Okay, now Australia has a broad enough pipe that they might as well be part of the US, from a network-routing point of view. Western Europe has been in that situation for a long time; there's no real difference between getting something from Britain, France, Oklahoma, and now, Australia. When is the rest of the world going to join in? The "ring of fire" around Africa seems to have dropped out of the news. I know of no major plans for eastern europe or asia. Is the rest of the world economically well off enough that soon they will be players, too?
I'm sort of split on my opinion on this. I'm a big advocate of privacy in the workplace, and I can certainly see why this would cause some concern on that ground. On the other hand, the CIA is not your standard business. The Company has, and has always had, very specific and clear concerns about information flow, and I can't help but assume that the workers involved were aware that what they were doing would be against Company policy. In other words, privacy is good, but should it have been expected in this situation?
I think an equally interesting question is whether military personel would fall over watching penguins fly by... what an image.
I think it's possible that with faster, more demanding standards, more will look into SCSI...
And, if we're looking for higher data transfer speeds, we can also look at IEEE 1384 (FireWire) which, if I remember correctly, is at some point going to support transfers about 10-20x faster than SCSI.
I'm not particularly familiar with the BeOS. What are its major strengths and weaknesses (as reported by users, of course, not by the company itself). Is it worth investing in? I'm always interested in trying out new toys, and so far I've only heard good things.
It's not the question of "do you deserve or not net access", but "Is this really the best way to spend over a billion dollar in Africa".
Although I agree with the morals and principles expressed in your argument, I can't help but think that you aren't fully accounting for the economic realities of the situation. The groups pouring money into this project expect a profit; this is an undertaking ruled by traditional capitalist motives. As wonderful as the idea of feeding the poor and clothing the hungry is, it is not something which one can reasonably hope to profit on. Mind you, I feel that such work should be done; I just don't expect a telecom company to be the one to do it.
Benoit Mandelbrot, being the first mathematician to study fractals in depth, had the honor of being able to twist the definition. Thus, the Mandelbrot set is commonly considered fractal. However, it lacks many things which are normally considered necessary for a fractal. Most important in this case, it is not self-similar on all levels; indeed, it is not self-similar on any level. Because of this, I highly doubt that a Mandelbrot set would be a useful antenna. But I do like the idea of a Tetrahedral (3-D) extention of Sierpinsky's (sp?) triangle.