Why is the telegraph such a big deal? We've made do with smoke signals and passenger pigeons for years! I can't see everyone standardizing on some sort of clackety-clack based code. You know very well one device manufacturer will standardize on clack-clack-clack protocol and another will on clackety-clack-clack. Result: total incompatibility! You'll enter "The British are coming (again), the British are coming!" and out the other end will come "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet". Crops will burn because swinging lanterns and screaming horsemen weren't good enough for someone.

I think this will be a huge waste of money and never go anywhere. Waste your money on it all you like-- I'm putting mine in Charles Babbage's new difference engine!

Originally Posted by Texrat

Yeah, I should have started in this thread with a parody:

Why is the telegraph such a big deal? We've made do with smoke signals and passenger pigeons for years!

So you think your Internet connection is fast? It might be, but you'd be hard pressed to beat a carrier pigeon for transfer speeds. At least that's what a group of Israeli self proclaimed "Internet Addicts" say. They took a group of 3 homing pigeons and bundled them up with memory cards with a total memory of 4 Gigabytes. Then they set the pigeons on their track to home, resulting in a - get this - TCP (Transmission by Carrier Pigeons) rate of 2.27 Mbps (Mega bit per second)!

M-System, Israeli Company that produces tiny memory cards. They supplied 64 tiny DiskOnChips, each with 64MB (megabytes) of storage space". The availability of high density small size flash memoryi, enables the transfer of very large quantities of data in physical form. A capsule containing 20-22 chips was attached to each pigeon. In total, the 3 pigeons carried chips with a capacity of 4GB.

Originally Posted by devaler

Any opinions on this: Australian WiMAX pioneer trashes technology as "miserable failure"
?

Originally Posted by electrolind

To answer your questions Texrat and Asqwasqw allow me to tell you what happened. I was on the Boston - Fitchburg train with my N800. I accidentally deleted a file and I figured I'd try to get a copy off my home computer at one of the stations by grabbing a quick WiFi connection. I did a search as the train pulled into Belmont station. I got this NuWave network listed a being open. I got in and started getting my file when the train pulled out. I thought "Crap", but the connection didn't break, I had a connection for about a mile which was just long enough to get my file (2.54 Meg) THEN it broke. I kept the WiFi search open and the NuWave network would come on for a while and die out about a mile later. When I got home, I looked up this NuWave network. It's a WiMAX company with a tower right next to the train tracks about 5 miles from my first connection. I looked into whether there were any other WiMax networks in my area and I found Boston Free WiMAX which is currently under construction, but walking around the city, it comes and goes. Not able to get on at all, just sees the network. Also North Shore WiMAX, which I haven't tested because I don't go to the North Shore that often. I do not know how or why, but isn't the whole purpose behind this WiMAX stuff is that the connection is good for a longer distance than WiFi? Could it be that I lucked into a string of WiFi repeaters? I do not know.

Originally Posted by electrolind

I was on the Boston - Fitchburg train with my N800.
-SNIP-
I got this NuWave network listed a being open.