Comments on: Feathered Veterans

Feathered Veterans

cenoxo — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:17:16 -0800

In France, a Mission to Return the Military's Carrier Pigeons to Active Duty — Grounded After Modern Communication Devices Soared, Birds May Offer Low-Tech Solutions; No Round Trips [WSJ]. Let us not forget Le Vaillant, Cher Ami, and the other birds that save lives.

By: BWA

BWA — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:39:30 -0800

Not foolproof

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 08:09:02 -0800

True, and low-tech warfare can also be adopted quickly by one's enemies: Closing the Pigeon Gap.

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 08:23:42 -0800

So what is the bandwidth of a pigeon carrying a 32GB micro SD card?

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 08:53:50 -0800

IPoAC (IP over Avian Carriers):

During the last 20 years, the information density of storage media and thus the bandwidth of an Avian Carrier has increased 3 times faster than the bandwidth of the Internet.[3] IPoAC may achieve bandwidth peaks of orders of magnitude more than the Internet when used with multiple Avian Carriers in rural areas. For example: If 16 homing pigeons are given 8 32GB SD cards each [16 x 8 x 32 GB = 4096 GB (~4 petabytes)], and take an hour to reach their destination, the throughput of the transfer would be 9320Mbit/s, excluding transfer to and from the SD cards.

Give each pigeon the same 32 GB message and you've got 16-fold redundancy in case of shootdowns (or warm chimneys).

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:02:34 -0800

...make that ~4 terabytes.

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:35:31 -0800

Whats the matter, cat got your server.

By: philipy

philipy — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:39:14 -0800

Songbirds would be ideal for tweeting.

By: small_ruminant

small_ruminant — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:53:13 -0800

cenexo, that WWI article is really interesting. Thanks.

By: hal9k

hal9k — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:05:25 -0800

Just to show up France, we'll be having turducken with a solidstate drive instead of stuffing.

By: MartinWisse

MartinWisse — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:36:27 -0800

Finally work for the Vulture Squadron.

By: 4ster

4ster — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:20:08 -0800

I heard something on NPR not too long ago about South Africa's Internet being so slow that a carrier pigeon with a thumb drive attached was faster than emailing a large file.

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:33:59 -0800

The movie "The Lost Battalion" depicts the story of Cher Ami (warning: gory). The entire movie is on YouTube and I consider it one of the best war movies I've seen (even though it's a low budget, made-for-TV movie).

By: philipy

philipy — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 15:06:52 -0800

The French politician is hawkish about pigeons. Surely that's a canard.