🚀 go-pugleaf

not-for-mail@dare.demon.nl (Pieter Krul) writes:

>I still believe quite strongly that the only medium which Linux can't
>talk through are smoke-signals.

Not true! Getting the blanket to flap properly is the easy part. You can do
Morse quite quickly, although bandwidth is limited by the need to space
the dots and dashes and the problems of high winds. The real bugbear, and the
one that the LSSP (Linux Smoke Signal Project) has yet to adequately solve,
is the fire mechanism. We're aiming at unattended fire operation. The fire needs 
to be smoky, but not *too* smoky or it goes out. So we need a smokiness sensor
which can blow more air in if needed, add fuel if it's getting low, and adds
grass and leaves if it's not smoky enough.

There's a lag problem, though. When the fire gets going, and is not smoky, you
can't send messages, but it's a UDP connection with unreliable end-to-end
connectivity, so you may lose important parts of the message and not know it.
If the fire is too smoky, the signals are obscured in the 'noise' and you have
to pump up the fire.

Anyway, at least we don't have a problem with bugs.

-- 
Mike McBain                                 Faculty of Business & Economics
mjm@silas.cc.monash.edu.au                  Monash University - Clayton
+61 3 9905 2336                             Australia    3168
*** No junk mail please - I will hunt you down