Real Snail Mail 103
A few news outlets, mostly in the UK, have picked up the story of gastropod-enabled email delivery. The RealSnailMail project out of Bournemouth University uses snails with RFID tags to deliver email. The service will officially launch at SIGGRAPH on August 11, 2008. While it's still under development, the perpetrators write, "For testing purposes some messages may be forwarded sooner than expected. Sorry we can not guarantee unreliability of service at this time. We hope to have RealSnailMail working less predictably as soon as possible."
That was definitely... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That was definitely... (Score:4, Insightful)
Research? Well I don't know but some good art came from it. Siggraph is computer-generated art. From TFA:
My old art instructors would certainly approve. This approaches Dada.Re: (Score:2)
It's art. One of my instructors in college was fond of saying "I don't know what I like, but I know what art is".
Dada is an anti-art art; or rather more of an anti-art establishment art. Marcel Duchamp [wikipedia.org] once hung a urinal on an art gallery wall, and the critics (successful critics in any field are never antiestablishment) praised it for its form and beauty.
One installation in the 1920s was busted by the police. It consisted of a bare room with a woman clothed only in a hat and shoes who stood in the center o
Re:That was definitely... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That was definitely... (Score:5, Funny)
and salt is all you'd need for a firewall
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Packets would need to be routed around France.
~X~
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No change there then...
Re:That was definitely... (Score:5, Funny)
Particularly your bash shell scripts, or you might end up scraping goo for a few minutes.
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I'd prefer a perl script myself. It may be worth something.
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Besides the latency improvement, you would have the satisfaction of hearing people say, "Dude, look at that S-car go"
(shamelessly ripped from Callahans)
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Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
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I'd say it's almost a sluggish news day.
Seriously? (Score:1)
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And performance artist wonder why they get laughed at?
Cluebat: not all art is supposed to be serious.
Soo.... (Score:5, Funny)
Can lost packets be partially attributed to interference from RFC 1149 [ietf.org]?
See RFC1217... (Score:5, Funny)
Snails should be just another layer of slowness for
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1217.html [faqs.org] system!
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Then my friend had a great idea, use hawks as the transmission medium. Nothing hunts these hawks, and once trained hardly ever get lost, making a ve
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We need an RFC for snails.
In Sweden they just made a new law giving their government the right to listen to almost all communication going in to and out of the country. But the law only gives FRA the right to listen to communications if wired or over radio.
To get around the "pidgin hole", I have heard that the swedish defense forces are going to kill all birds crossing their border.
To protect the pidgins and the environment (and secondary the right of private communications for the people in Sweden) w
Enterprise technologies (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Enterprise technologies (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, in business bigger numbers are better, right?
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The CIO of a Fortune 500 company has a 7 digit UID? Man, I'm getting old.
This needs an RFC (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see it coming already: TCP/IP over snails. A follow up to RFC-1149 A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers. [ietf.org]
I'm worried... (Score:3, Insightful)
What happens if the pigeons eat the snails?
-Loyal
Re:I'm worried... (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually, I'd find it more disturbing if the snails ate the pigeons....
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I don't know that!
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Re:This needs an RFC (Score:5, Funny)
Even better: Snails on Rails.
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phew (Score:5, Funny)
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OK. Someone really needs to get a few hundred large snails (~postage stamp sized shell sides), paint USPS logos on the shell sides, and drop them in front of about a dozen popular post offices some morning.
I would love to see that on the morning news.
I wonder if Improv Everywhere could source a few hundred giant snail outfits?
Looks not quite what they say (Score:4, Funny)
Most everything seems to imply that the snails actually carry the message, but the fact that the snails carry RFID chips, and that one of the developers actually says the messages are tagged when a snail wanders nearby, makes me think that the actual message does indeed travel electronically only, and all the snail does is induce an artificial (albeit organic and biodegradeable) delay.
Re:Looks not quite what they say (Score:5, Funny)
Well, they tried to get the snails to carry the actual message, but it turns out the snails couldn't reliably copy it because not only do they lack hands, but their penmanship is atrocious.
Attempts to get the snails to carry the emails in their internal memory were likewise unsuccessful because the snails lacked the ability to reliably retrieve the message from memory or communicate it effectively at the other end. Indeed, it was never really possible to determine if the messages were actually maintained in the snail's memory at all, even after repeated attempts to store them there. The snails did, however, form an inexplicable appetite for discount v1AgR@, so further study may be warranted.
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This is an excellent example of the difference between "warranted" and "advisable".
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Really? I've had great success sending attachments to my messages.
Then again, I've only tested with sending snails as attachments...
- RG>
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They couldn't help optimizing transfer speed just a bit.
It's addictive, man.
Delayed (Score:1)
It will probably be delayed.
Cool (Score:3, Funny)
I was just looking for a new way to implement a tech support queue around here......
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" We appreciate your business, but not enough to answer your call in the order it was received, instead we're going to dick around until one of the snails in our cage manages to make a circuit between notification areas. We hope you rot in hell for being stupid and have a wonderful day."
I though it was Royal Snail Mail (Score:3, Funny)
Kinda slow... (Score:2, Funny)
I read about this a little while back on BBC, I'm pretty sure. Maybe the submitter used the service for his submission? :)
good way to deal with spam (Score:2)
if you load the message queue with spam, the packets tend to bottleneck around the spam until the spam in the queue is exhausted
on the plus side the spam tends to be consumed rather than multiply
however, the message trail only gets slimier during and after spam bottlenecking
Routers (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, it isn't much of a router as much as it is a heck of a good firewall. I can definitely see those packets dropping right at the edge there. If you do manage to perfect it, you are encouraged to present your findings at the Southern Linux User Group.
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Re:Routers (Score:4, Funny)
I certainly am. A DDOS attack would look like a bad horror movie.
Path (Score:1)
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RFC2549 Redux (Score:1)
This seems to me to be in the spirit of RFC 2549 [faqs.org], "IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service". I should suggest this as an idea for the AF09 RFC.
I wonder how the speed compares to 2549-compliant methods of delivery?
mail (Score:4, Funny)
MAILER-DAEMON-SUN-FAILURE...... (Score:1, Funny)
Please try resending mail on cloudy day
Spam problem (Score:1)
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No snails were harmed ... (Score:2)
And as a gardener I have only one word to say about that.
Darn!
Call me old fashioned (Score:1)
But there are few things as rewarding as getting a hand written letter in the mail.
Especially if delivered by a snail? Well, maybe not.
Traceroute (Score:5, Funny)
Should have called it S-Mail (Score:5, Funny)
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Security concerns (Score:1)
Head-to-head (Score:1)
Someone should set-up a head-to-head with 'slow'hosts - my money's on the snails.
Snails will DIE! (Score:1)
I hope none of these snails have any implanted medical devices - the death rate could be terrible!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/24/2152212 [slashdot.org]
I predict (Score:1)
a lot of packets lost if they route them through France...
Overhead (Score:2, Insightful)
Snails? Stupid idea. Too much overhead. They carry their homes with them. Use slugs instead.
Given the way ISPs are being strongarmed (Score:2)
But... (Score:2)
do they offer tracking?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these... (Score:2)
...Gaaaa! That's disgusting!
RealSnailMail brought to its knees... (Score:1)
More details (Score:1)
from the linked Real Snail Mail blog:
Each snail is equipped with a small glass capsule attached to its shell. The capsule contains a tiny chip and coil antenna that can be activated by a reader at a range of 3 cm.
FIRST POST!!?? (Score:2)
Tm
My new ISP (Score:1)
More horrors... (Score:1)
And I thought they couldn't make backscatter [wikipedia.org] any more horrible.
Ka-Boom! (Score:1)