EdIII - Slashdot User

Submission + - Satellite Internet connections for South America (specifically Peru). Advice? 6

Submitted by EdIII on Monday November 04, 2013 @03:37AM

EdIII writes: I've been looking on the Internet for a decent contention service (4:1,10:1) in South America and I am not finding much. I have also heard that some frequency bands are a lot better at cutting through cloud cover. This is for a fairly remote ground station with reliable power generation, but also routinely cloudy. I would need at least 3/1Mbps with hopefully decent latency. What's your advice Slashdotters? Yes, I know that some of the solutions can cost 20K for deployment and 2-10K per month for service. Not looking NASA results with Home Depot parts on the budget of a 7/11 chiclet. Feel free to to tell me about a good commercial service. There is another ground station that might be deployed in north east Alaska. Thanks

Submission + - White House must answer petition to "Build Death Star" (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by EdIII on Thursday December 13, 2012 @04:24PM

EdIII writes: The White House petition to secure funding for building the Death Star has garnered 25,499 petitions, meaning the White House must officially respond.

I can't wait for the response... but my question to Slashdot readers is what modifications would you add to the proposed Death Star?

Obviously, as one journalist put it, "guardrails around any of the facility's seemingly endless number of bridges, spans, shafts and pits"

Submission + - NYPD spends 1 million dollars on typewriters (nypost.com) 1

Submitted by EdIII on Wednesday July 15, 2009 @09:30AM

EdIII writes: Despite having most, if not all, of it's arrest forms computerized, the NYPD has spent nearly $1M dollars on new typewriters for it's police officers to fill out property and evidence vouchers with carbon copies. Regardless of complaints from police officers about inefficiency, lack of common sense, and slow processing type writers are not going to be phased out anytime soon according to officials. As one cop put it, "We have to sneak around the rest of the precinct in search of a ribbon to steal". According to one study by Dr. Edith Linn outdated equipment is part of the reason for officers being averse to making arrests for less serious crimes. However, it's not all bad news. For the type writer companies at least.

Submission + - 45 year old modem used to surf the web (hackaday.com) 3

Submitted by EdIII on Thursday May 28, 2009 @06:59AM

EdIII writes: [phreakmonkey] got his hands on a great piece of old tech. It's a 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Acoustic Coupler Modem. He recieved it in 1989 and recently decided to see if it would actually work. It took some digging to find a proper D25 adapter and even then the original serial adapter wasn't working because the oscillator depends on the serial voltage. He dials in and connects at 300baud. Then logs into a remote system and fires up lynx to load Wikipedia. Lucky for [phreakmonkey] they managed to decide on a modulation standard in 1962. It's still amazing to see this machine working 45 years later.

Although impractical for surfing the Internet today, there is something truly cool about getting a 45-year old modem to work with modern technology. The question I have, is what is the oldest working piece of equipment fellow Slashdotters have out there? I'm afraid as far back as I can go is a Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 Graphics card on a server still in use at my house which only puts me at about 14 years.

Submission + - Time Warner recommends Internet for some shows (nytimes.com)

Submitted by EdIII on Wednesday December 31, 2008 @12:44AM

EdIII writes: The dispute between Time Warner and Viacom over fees seems to be without any resolution this year. Time Warner faces the possibility of being without content for almost 20 channels. Alexander Dudley, a spokesperson for Time Warner, is fighting back:
We will be telling our customers exactly where they can go to see these programs online," Mr. Dudley said. "We'll also be telling them how they can hook up their PCs to a television set.

Why pay for digital cable when many content providers and now providing it on demand via the Internet? Not to mention the widespread availability of tv shows in both standard and high definition on public and private torrent tracker sites. It is entirely possible to watch television with no commercials or advertising with only an Internet connection. So getting your content via the Internet is not exactly free, but it certainly isn't contributing to Time Warner or any other cable providers revenue stream. The real question is why Time Warner would fight back by so clearly showing how increasingly obsolete they are becoming and that cable providers are losing their monopolistic grip on media delivery.

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