Geoff Huston has talked about the early days of the Internet in Australia, where inter-city traffic was sent through MAE-West in California, again
for reasons of expediency. I doubt that there is much of that now...
That map is highly misleading, at least for Internet traffic - it shows usage, not topology.
It used to be, in the beginning, that most Internet traffic went through the US, as links were leased lines mostly to / from the US. Now, it mostly follows the fiber. (Most of the global undersea fiber, BTW, is owned by two Indian companies, Reliance and VSNL.) Most Japan / India traffic, for example, or
Japan / Austrialia traffic, will never touch the US. Ditto Middle East / Japan or Middle East / India, or Europe / India or Europe / Middle East. Only for Europe / East Asia or
Australia / Europe is there a good chance (not a certainty) that you will be routed through the US.
Of course, all of this is based on where the fiber goes, and your milage may definitely vary - ISPs don't always do the most sensible thing. As an example, 3 days after 9/11 a major ISP lost their connection between France and Germany, as it turned out that they were routing that traffic through a New York telco hotel, which went down when the generators ran out of diesel fuel. I was told that there was no institutional memory in the ISP that this was being done, and it made no sense from a fiber topology standpoint, but there it was.
I hope you have a process to regularly rewrite those CDs and DVDs, otherwise you probably will find you have a nice
collection of coasters, should you ever need the data.
I think it's worse than that. This was in Argentina, right ? I do not think that he is a permanent resident of Argentia. He is shooting a movie there.
So, if he really lost years worth of data, he has some sort of backup device that he carries around with him as he travels.
Given the issues with international travel and shipment of goods (unless this device goes handcuffed to an aid like the nuclear football) I frankly am
astounded that it didn't occur to him that he needed offsite backups, or that it took so long to suffer a serious loss.
AT&T users may want to think twice about commenting if they value their internet service."
No, they shouldn't. There are worse things in life than loosing your Internet service, and I expect this to stand up neither in Courts of Law, nor
in the Court of Public Opinion.
The first thing is to build a space elevator. That is the only way to make any of this really cost effective, and (IMHO) where the big bucks should really be going.
Don't get the vapors, everyone. Google is buying one fiber pair. This will lower their costs, but only that. There will be, what, 200+ fiber pairs in
that cable. There will be some to go around if anyone else wants to pony up.
As for "considerably improving the affordability of Internet services across Asia Pacific,'" I don't follow that at all. Google doesn't sell
transit. The new cable might do that, but not because of Google - because real ISPs will get other fiber pairs and use them to sell transit.
Next, we'll get articles about how Google's corporate jets will revolutionize air transport in North America ! (At least, for Google execs.)
A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth.
So, objects, such as spacecraft, that are not constructed on a celestial body are free of state control. So, find a metal asteroid (not hard, as there are a bunch), take material off of it, construct another spacecraft in space (also not in principle not hard, given the low gravity on any asteroid), and that ship is free of state control, at least according to the Outer Space Treaty.
In Germany, representatives of the state do indeed walk into people's houses to check on things like this. I have seen this with my own eyes; I was at home with some friends in Germany when a functionary in uniform knocked on the door, and proceeded to start poking around the house. They told me he was looking for unlicensed TV's and did this once a year or so.
Germany is not the USA, and the differences are not just the language and currency.
August 31 - NBC announces that it will terminate its relation with iTMS. The reason is reported by Apple to be that "Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99." NBC announces a relationship with Amazon to sell shows.
September 20 - NBC announces that they will give the shows away, with ads. Note that they could have kept their pricing with iTMS and also given the shows away if they had wanted to. This seems to me to indicate a major screw-up on NBCs part.
I wonder if anyone got fired over this - after all, the Fall season is beginning. Maybe NBC felt that they won't get any Internet audience at all. Clearly, there is something going on behind the scenes we haven't heard of yet.
The guesses I have seen are that the Comcast limit is about 145 GBytes per month. That works out to close to 500 Kbits / second, full time. So, you could watch a 1 Mbps video channel. such as the end bit rate ones from AmericaFree.TV channels, for 8 hours per day, every day, and (supposedly) not run into trouble, but you better not leave it on full time (like some bars I know).
As a data point, 100 Mbps residential fast ethernet costs $ 36 per month now Japan. Somehow I don't think that there they cap the service at 0.5 Mbps sustained use.
Does this mean that eventually there are going to be rogue groups going around and destroying government surveilance equipment? I think so. When you feel you're cornered you do what you have to.
Already happening - see, for example, these pictures of cuts in closed circuit television cables done in the UK, during a Holiday weekend.
I have gotten to the point where I just don't care about these kinds of articles. I don't believe their statistics, I don't believe their reasoning, and I don't think
that they have any particular insight into the future. This particular article strikes me as particularly un-insightful, and hardly worth the trouble.
For example, Apple now has 17.6 percent of the laptop market, according to PC World. Those are the computers that people actually use personally. As a frequent traveler, I can say I believe it, the number of Apple laptops you see at airports has grown greatly. It is not uncommon to see more Apple's than every other type in the transit lounge. This didn't fit into his pre-conceived notions, so didn't make the article. He could have talked about this, or about whether laptop use leads to increased use of office machines, or whether Apple's home entertainment solution is working or not, but he just chose to repeat some industry conventional wisdom he probably heard from some Dell sales guy. Mod him down.
Yes, and at that time I was connecting on my Mac - getting on the Internet on a Mac pre Windows 95 was pretty easy.
I mean, the whole reason that Gates jumped on the Internet was that one of his college interns or whatever they call them there reported that that was what everyone at college was using. If the Internet revolution wasn't in full swing, he wouldn't have been told that.
RMS can say what he wants, but he is a very lucky in that Linus T. decided to hook up with GNU. I have no doubt that, without that,
we would still be waiting for the GNU kernel, and he would have no soapbox at all.
Since Venus's surface temperature is about 460 C, these chips would presumably work on the surface of Venus, which
would allow for long duration landers, or even rovers, should we want to do that. I think of Venus, "Earth's evil twin," as being a very interesting planet, but there has never been very much interest in exploring it at NASA.
The only pictures we have of the surface of Venus are from the Venera landers. (These USSR Venus landers
were all inernally insulated and
weren't designed to last on the surface more than about an hour; since the data were relayed from the fly-by bus spacecraft which was only in range for about that duration, there was no point in doing more.)
First thing I would do is to subscribe to Sky and Telescope and start reading it cover to cover.
Second, you need to ask yourself, do you want to do Science, or have fun, or something more like Art ? If you want to do science, you should look into
- asteroid occultations (these always need more data) or
- variable star observing (look into the AAVSO or
- searching for or confirming new comets
Astronomy as a science requires patience and is generally unglamorous.
If you want to do Art (i.e., pretty astronomical pictures) you may want to get a an equatorial mount. With your budget, you will likely find a Dobsonian telescope
mount a better choice if you just want to look at objects with your eyes. In any case spend more time and effort selecting your mount than your telescope. This is the biggest mistake most beginners make.
Astronomical telescopes must be very steady, which means a sturdy mount, ideally mounted directly into the ground. Most department store telescopes are OK, but their mounts are hopeless. If your mount wobbles, because it is cheaply made, vibrates in the wind, etc., your telescope is not likely to see much use.
This is known as VLBI, and it's been done since the 1960's. During the mission of the Japanese VSOP satellite, we had telescopes
bigger than the Earth.
What is new here is the real time data transport, not the observations.
Slashdot Mirror
Geoff Huston has talked about the early days of the Internet in Australia, where inter-city traffic was sent through MAE-West in California, again for reasons of expediency. I doubt that there is much of that now...
That map is highly misleading, at least for Internet traffic - it shows usage, not topology.
It used to be, in the beginning, that most Internet traffic went through the US, as links were leased lines mostly to / from the US. Now, it mostly follows the fiber. (Most of the global undersea fiber, BTW, is owned by two Indian companies, Reliance and VSNL.) Most Japan / India traffic, for example, or Japan / Austrialia traffic, will never touch the US. Ditto Middle East / Japan or Middle East / India, or Europe / India or Europe / Middle East. Only for Europe / East Asia or Australia / Europe is there a good chance (not a certainty) that you will be routed through the US.
Of course, all of this is based on where the fiber goes, and your milage may definitely vary - ISPs don't always do the most sensible thing. As an example, 3 days after 9/11 a major ISP lost their connection between France and Germany, as it turned out that they were routing that traffic through a New York telco hotel, which went down when the generators ran out of diesel fuel. I was told that there was no institutional memory in the ISP that this was being done, and it made no sense from a fiber topology standpoint, but there it was.
I hope you have a process to regularly rewrite those CDs and DVDs, otherwise you probably will find you have a nice collection of coasters, should you ever need the data.
I think it's worse than that. This was in Argentina, right ? I do not think that he is a permanent resident of Argentia. He is shooting a movie there.
So, if he really lost years worth of data, he has some sort of backup device that he carries around with him as he travels.
Given the issues with international travel and shipment of goods (unless this device goes handcuffed to an aid like the nuclear football) I frankly am astounded that it didn't occur to him that he needed offsite backups, or that it took so long to suffer a serious loss.
AT&T users may want to think twice about commenting if they value their internet service."
No, they shouldn't. There are worse things in life than loosing your Internet service, and I expect this to stand up neither in Courts of Law, nor in the Court of Public Opinion.
I take the long view...
The first thing is to build a space elevator. That is the only way to make any of this really cost effective, and (IMHO) where the
big bucks should really be going.
Don't get the vapors, everyone. Google is buying one fiber pair. This will lower their costs, but only that. There will be, what, 200+ fiber pairs in that cable. There will be some to go around if anyone else wants to pony up.
As for "considerably improving the affordability of Internet services across Asia Pacific,'" I don't follow that at all. Google doesn't sell transit. The new cable might do that, but not because of Google - because real ISPs will get other fiber pairs and use them to sell transit.
Next, we'll get articles about how Google's corporate jets will revolutionize air transport in North America ! (At least, for Google execs.)
The way around this is in Article 8 :
A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth.
So, objects, such as spacecraft, that are not constructed on a celestial body are free of state control. So, find a metal asteroid (not hard, as there are a bunch), take material off of it, construct another spacecraft in space (also not in principle not hard, given the low gravity on any asteroid), and that ship is free of state control, at least according to the Outer Space Treaty.
In Germany, representatives of the state do indeed walk into people's houses to check on things like this. I have seen this with my own eyes; I was at home with some friends in Germany when a functionary in uniform knocked on the door, and proceeded to start poking around the house. They told me he was looking for unlicensed TV's and did this once a year or so.
Germany is not the USA, and the differences are not just the language and currency.
August 31 - NBC announces that it will terminate its relation with iTMS. The reason is reported by Apple to be that "Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99." NBC announces a relationship with Amazon to sell shows.
September 20 - NBC announces that they will give the shows away, with ads. Note that they could have kept their pricing with iTMS and also given the shows away if they had wanted to. This seems to me to indicate a major screw-up on NBCs part.
I wonder if anyone got fired over this - after all, the Fall season is beginning. Maybe NBC felt that they won't get any Internet audience at all. Clearly, there is something going on behind the scenes we haven't heard of yet.
The guesses I have seen are that the Comcast limit is about 145 GBytes per month. That works out to close to 500 Kbits / second, full time. So, you could watch a 1 Mbps video channel. such as the end bit rate ones from AmericaFree.TV channels, for 8 hours per day, every day, and (supposedly) not run into trouble, but you better not leave it on full time (like some bars I know).
As a data point, 100 Mbps residential fast ethernet costs $ 36 per month now Japan. Somehow I don't think that there they cap the service at 0.5 Mbps sustained use.
Does this mean that eventually there are going to be rogue groups going around and destroying government surveilance equipment? I think so. When you feel you're cornered you do what you have to.
Already happening - see, for example, these pictures of cuts in closed circuit television cables done in the UK, during a Holiday weekend.
I have gotten to the point where I just don't care about these kinds of articles. I don't believe their statistics, I don't believe their reasoning, and I don't think that they have any particular insight into the future. This particular article strikes me as particularly un-insightful, and hardly worth the trouble.
For example, Apple now has 17.6 percent of the laptop market, according to PC World. Those are the computers that people actually use personally. As a frequent traveler, I can say I believe it, the number of Apple laptops you see at airports has grown greatly. It is not uncommon to see more Apple's than every other type in the transit lounge. This didn't fit into his pre-conceived notions, so didn't make the article. He could have talked about this, or about whether laptop use leads to increased use of office machines, or whether Apple's home entertainment solution is working or not, but he just chose to repeat some industry conventional wisdom he probably heard from some Dell sales guy. Mod him down.
Yes, and at that time I was connecting on my Mac - getting on the Internet on a Mac pre Windows 95 was pretty easy.
I mean, the whole reason that Gates jumped on the Internet was that one of his college interns or whatever they call them there reported that that was what everyone at college was using. If the Internet revolution wasn't in full swing, he wouldn't have been told that.
The Evil Face on Iapetus ! (May have to squint a little to see it.) Must be angry at being disturbed.
(And, if there are any Cydonia freaks out there, no, I don't think it's a real face. It just jumped out at me when I saw this.)
Uh, maybe because it isn't true ?
(I remember GNU before Linus came on with Linux. It wasn't an OS. It wasn't close.)
RMS can say what he wants, but he is a very lucky in that Linus T. decided to hook up with GNU. I have no doubt that, without that, we would still be waiting for the GNU kernel, and he would have no soapbox at all.
Since Venus's surface temperature is about 460 C, these chips would presumably work on the surface of Venus, which would allow for long duration landers, or even rovers, should we want to do that. I think of Venus, "Earth's evil twin," as being a very interesting planet, but there has never been very much interest in exploring it at NASA.
The only pictures we have of the surface of Venus are from the Venera landers. (These USSR Venus landers were all inernally insulated and weren't designed to last on the surface more than about an hour; since the data were relayed from the fly-by bus spacecraft which was only in range for about that duration, there was no point in doing more.)
These people are liars, and I wouldn't trust them to take out the trash. Only a fool would trust anything they say about national security.
First thing I would do is to subscribe to Sky and Telescope and start reading it cover to cover.
Second, you need to ask yourself, do you want to do Science, or have fun, or something more like Art ? If you want to do science, you should look into
- asteroid occultations (these always need more data) or
- variable star observing (look into the AAVSO or
- searching for or confirming new comets
Astronomy as a science requires patience and is generally unglamorous.
If you want to do Art (i.e., pretty astronomical pictures) you may want to get a an equatorial mount. With your budget, you will likely find a Dobsonian telescope mount a better choice if you just want to look at objects with your eyes. In any case spend more time and effort selecting your mount than your telescope. This is the biggest mistake most beginners make.
Astronomical telescopes must be very steady, which means a sturdy mount, ideally mounted directly into the ground. Most department store telescopes are OK, but their mounts are hopeless. If your mount wobbles, because it is cheaply made, vibrates in the wind, etc., your telescope is not likely to see much use.
It's a freaking phone call, for goodness sake. They're lucky they didn't have to show up here in Alexandria at 9:00 AM EDT.
They probably shouldn't try doing any business with India or China or Japan.
This is known as VLBI, and it's been done since the 1960's. During the mission of the Japanese VSOP satellite, we had telescopes bigger than the Earth.
What is new here is the real time data transport, not the observations.
They work for Caltech, or are contractors. When I worked at JPL my paycheck (back when we had such) said "California Institute of Technology."
And I like it like that.
Is RP 11 when Real finally starts supporting streaming H.264 ? The article doesn't say, but inquiring minds want to know...