Global Warming To Hinder Wi-Fi Signals, Claims UK Gov't 280
radioweather writes with news of a government report from the UK's Dept. for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which warns of global warming's harmful effect on Wi-Fi and other communication protocols. Quoting the Guardian:
"Presenting the report, the secretary of state for the environment, Caroline Spelman, said that higher temperatures can reduce the range of wireless communications, rainstorms can impact the reliability of the signal, and drier summers and wetter winters may cause greater subsidence, damaging masts and underground cables. The threat posed by climate change to internet and telephone access is a rare example of when the developed world would be hit harder than developing countries, which are in general more at risk from increased floods, droughts and rising sea levels. 'If climate change threatens the quality of your signal, or you can't get it because of extreme fluctuations in temperature, then you will be disadvantaged, which is why we must address the question,' said Spelman, 'and just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected.'"
UK Government Hinders WiFi (Score:4, Insightful)
The UK Government and it's insipid reports hinders WiFi.
E
Re:UK Government Hinders WiFi (Score:5, Funny)
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Back to you, Kate.
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It's worth noting that the twentieth century was one of the four most active centuries in the history of the holocene for Mr. Sun, too. In fact, solar cycles 21 and 22 were grand maxima, and 23 was still quite large.
Solar cycle 24, OTOH, looks like it could be the lowest one in over a century, although it has pepped up a bit in the last two months. At the moment, the global temperature anomaly is 0.1C
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There's no correlation. The sun has been getting weaker since the 1980's, while global temperature has gone up.
Compare black line here:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Sunspot_Numbers.png/800px-Sunspot_Numbers.png [wikimedia.org]
With this: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/dTs_60+132mons.gif [columbia.edu]
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Don't kill the messenger. The graphs from that website are properly referenced. If you have problems with the data shown in the graphs, explain why the source has it wrong, and show better data.
And if it's more complex, please show your complex calculations how 40 years stable cosmic rays can cause 40 years of warming.
It's not very scientific to say: "we don't know, therefore it is unlikely to be CO2". In fact, based on all the measurements and understanding, it's very likely to be CO2. Maybe there's a 5%
Re:UK Government Hinders WiFi (Score:5, Insightful)
At the moment, the global temperature anomaly is 0.1C BELOW the thirty year running mean (and has been for a couple of months.
Analysing a thirty-year running mean on the timescale of months is statistical nonsense.
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I guess you didn't read TFA so I will point out for you that they are claiming that heavy rain and high pressure affects the signal and that things like mudslides and floods can damage infrastructure.
Both of these things are true. My TV signal degrades in high pressure and rain, as does my mobile phone signal. Admittedly I have not tested wifi but others have. Some villages rely on wifi for broadband access, as do many schools and universities with multiple buildings on campus. There was a story on /. a day
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there's coal, natural gas and biofuels as well...
i'm not refuting, just expanding your model.
To say nothing of the fact that (Score:3)
global warming will disrupt the economy, and people won't be able to afford internet or phone service
Inception (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Inception (Score:4, Interesting)
Global warming will come and go, just like every other supposed crisis which is solved as soon as technology brings us to the tipping point of financial advantage.
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You speak of technology saving a world that still burns turds to heat food. The rate of change isn't pacing the technology needed to solve the problem, and if you were thinking that everyone will recognize the altrustic need to stop spending making petro-dollars to convenience an ostensible financial advantage, I have a bridge on 59th St in Brooklyn to sell you.
The pace is faster than what we can deal with. You may be living in ocean front property in the High Sierras by the time someone figures out the "th
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I love your encouraging words, but they're all your optimism, rather than the actual state of things. In every podunk town in the US and Canada, there's a filling station that fills you with petrofuels, not joules, not compressed hydrogen, not LNG.
The ecosystems are diffuse and therefore none of them is winning, and none will likely win because the leadership of both countries is coopted by the petro-suppliers. We can agree that each technology could make a lot of money, and I'll state that none of them wil
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i'm pretty sure wires will play a major part in distribution of any alternative energy source. we've got plenty of those already built :)
Mod parent funny (Score:2)
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I'm investing in temperature futures, you insensitive clod.
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It costs alot of money to recover from a horrible recession like the one Republicans caused.
When you find yourself in debt, you do not spend more money to get out of debt. You cut spending. Period. It doesn't matter if it's on a personal level or a national level. If you could spend your way to prosperity, everyone would be doing it and the world would be filled with billionaires.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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they're smoking CO2
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It's Jenkem [wikipedia.org], obviously.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel (Score:2, Insightful)
They really are getting desperate, aren't they?
BTW, wasn't Britain supposed to get drier winters with no snow because of 'global warming', not wetter ones? When did that change?
Re:Scraping the bottom of the barrel (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, wasn't Britain supposed to get drier winters with no snow because of 'global warming', not wetter ones? When did that change?
citation [independent.co.uk] needed [newscientist.com]
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That sort of stuff really depends upon how far into the warming cycle you are. You have to consider the intermediate period where average ocean temperatures are catching up to average atmosphere temperatures (the extra stormy period).
Once things have relatively stabilised (barring summer and winter), then we will be able to asses the more long term (relative to human life) weather pattern.
To cheer you up, there is still the major ice age, warm period cycle that has been occurring over the last couple o
Re:Scraping the bottom of the barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
Sea levels have risen and sea levels have fallen in the past.
Its just civilization has now cropped up and made these changes inconvenient. It used to be that man would migrate if his surroundings became inhospitable. Now they just try and control nature.
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It used to be that man would migrate if his surroundings became inhospitable. Now they just try and control nature.
They??? Are you not one of us? If not, WTF are you?
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less people means less CO2 emissions. hmmm.
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Are you even looking at the same graph? There ain't a peak there ...
Re:Scraping the bottom of the barrel (Score:4, Interesting)
I may have missed something, but are you saying manmade climate change isn't happening?
Considering that they can't even decide whether 'manmade climate change' would cause drier winters or wetter winters, I think the answer is an obvious yes.
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i don't think nature really bothers with a null hypothesis.
maybe when you have a working climate model you can make a statement and know that it is true.
until then piss off.
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Considering that they can't even decide whether 'manmade climate change' would cause drier winters or wetter winters, ...
Or maybe it's both. Adding energy to a system (turning up the heat) tends to make for wider excursions around the "norm". Some areas may have drier winters, others wetter winters.
The only problem is that there's only one way to find out - and we're all test subjects.
Actually, the mistake is believing that the climateologists "can't even decide". In fact, the climate models have long predicted such opposite changes in many parts of the world. For example, the models have been saying for some time that in the US, the southwest will be getting drier (in the winter; the summers are already very dry), while the northeast will be getting wetter. We now have a couple of decades more data saying that that's exactly what has happened.
Will it keep changing that way? The m
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Are you saying natural climate change isn't happening?
Re:Scraping the bottom of the barrel (Score:4, Insightful)
Climate is always changing. It has been warmer, it has been cooler. It has been wetter, it has been drier. The issue is how much can we blame on CO2 verses everything else, like the sun solar cycle.
Or like the one guy I heard recently talking about the tides affecting low lying areas of Japan ... trying to blame it on Global Warming and not the HUGE EARTHQUAKE the dropped the island a few feet. It is freakin religion to some of these idiots.
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Sorry, I can't hear you for all the UN-predicted climate refugees over here :)
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its for the kids (Score:2)
or wifi..... what? wifi? What are they smoking to be this desperate?
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It's very simple, and not at all alarmist.
Signal propagation depends on temperature and humidity. It is possible to design a wireless network around a minimum number of antennas by taking the current climate into account. If you do so, and if the local climate warms, the optimum network may change, and you may have problems.
The paragraph is not trying to scare people into "Saving the Climate to Save WiFi" It's trying to warn the people who employ network engineers to have the calculations rerun, so that wh
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Isn't most Wi-Fi used inside climate controlled buildings? Perhaps this is an attempt to notify wardrivers to stay in the lanes closest to buildings...
Also, the amount of signal degradation caused by passing through a wall is going to be so enormously larger than that caused by the atmosphere in any climatic conditions survivable by humans that I can't imagine that this would have any noticeable impact.
I suppose that if you were trying to cover a large open area outdoors with no trees or structures with
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From the report [defra.gov.uk]
Climate Factor: Increase in average temperatures
Potential Impact: Location / density of wireless masts may become sub-optimal since wireless transmission is dependent upon temperature (refractive index)
Impact on quality of radio-frequency propagation if vegetation type changes in response to climate
Towards the end, there's a discussion of how the wireless network on some Scottish rail lines was damaged by an Ice Storm-- which was of course, attributed to Climate Change. But the concerns over antenna density aren't specifically about 802.11.
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Both of which may change (even drastically) on an hourly basis. Where I live, we have four distinct seasons, with temperatures possibly ranging between several degrees below zero C to a few degrees above 40. Hell, in on day we can have well over 15 degrees of variation. Humidity fluctuates as well.
The point is, any wireless network where performance is based heavily on these wildly changing variables is a fragile, poorly-performing one. And thus
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Optimum: Most coverage for least cost.
Never mind (Score:3, Interesting)
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Never mind the millions displaced by rising sea levels or changed rainfall patterns effecting their crops, we might lose a few bars of wifi reception!
You had me at losing a few bars!
Greentards will say anything (Score:3, Insightful)
And so will corporate interests. Too bad we can't get anyone moderate to talk about this. Either we're all already dead, or everything is great. As long as those are the only two choices, nothing worthwhile will be accomplished. *sigh*
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"Either we're all already dead, or everything is great. "
The two are not mutually exclusive. Gaia will cleanse herself.
8-P
Re:Greentards will say anything (Score:5, Insightful)
That is an interesting statement. When we (the collective we) hear "We're all doomed," we assume if all humans die, well, everything just stops. How many global-level extinctions have there been, 4? If we are screwing up the biosphere, and we go kaput, seems like we deserve it. The earth won't really care that much. Bring on the crab people!
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IT seems hugely unlikely that global warming will cause extinction of humanity. But fairly likely that it'll cause widespread material damage and widespread human suffering.
It's perfectly true that the earth don't care, it doesn't even "care" if we extinguish all life.
But if -WE- care, about reducing suffering and maintaining a high standard of living, then it might be worth it to try to reduce the damage.
But we're talking problems like flooding, and possibly famine following changed climates here - not ext
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heh.
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A) He has proven expertise. A long history of studying climate, was the first to put together satellite temperature datasets, IPCC lead author, etc.
B) He focuses on data. A lot of people will say you should trust them because of their expertise, or other irrelevant items. John Christy will talk for hours trying to help you understand the data, so you can understand it yourself. In this way he
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>Either we're all already dead, or everything is great
how is that a dichotomy?
we're already dead, and everything is great.
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i'm a fan of "whalecunt" myself.
and with rising sea temperatures, the whales will have less habitat.
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it's the rule 34 of politics.
any issue that becomes politicized is doomed to failure.
WiFi works in: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't confuse me with things like facts!
Not quite as well - still not a problem (Score:2)
It's almost as if the a
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Unless we're talking about using WiFi for tower-to-cantenna style paths, WiFi is pretty much insensitive to absorption in air. To a point where I bet we could easily have 95% humidity at 10 atmospheres and there'd be no noticeable effect on propagation. In satellite communications, clear air (whether humid or not) absorbs a couple dB [wtec.org]. So whatever is done by air in a building can be neglected, even if it was an order of magnitude or two more intense. WiFi signals from antennas with low directionality (as is
This is just retarded (Score:4)
Subject says it all. I honestly can't comment further. The fail is strong with these morons.
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Indeed, this very near plumbs the depths at which Al Gore's dumb-assed absurdities dwell, but not quite.
In your apartment? (Score:3)
Sure, as soon as you get global warming effects in the form of floods or snow or drought in your apartment, your WiFi coverage will suffer tremendously :(
Frankly, when the roof is missing, people tend not to get too upset about bad WiFi reception.
For normal outside activities just use cell 3G/4G signal :)
Oh jeez. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes rain and snow attenuates radio waves. But not by a huge amount. The human race would likely go extinct from Heat stroke before anybody noticed any real decline in WiFi connectivity. This article smacks of "the sky is falling" fearmongering. Like this:
"On March 20, 2000, The Independent, a British newspaper, reported that the Dr. David Viner of the UK's Climate Research Unit warning within a few years snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event." Indeed, Viner opined, "Children just aren't going to know what snow is." Similarly, David Parker, at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said that eventually British children could have only "virtual" experience of snow via movies and the Internet.
"The Union of Concerned Scientists opined confidently in 2004 scientists claim winters were becoming warmer and less snowy. In 2008, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bemoaned that children would be robbed of the childhood joys of sledding and skiing in the DC area due to global warming. A year later, the area set a new seasonal snowfall record with 5 to 6 feet of snow and sleds and skis were the only way to get around." http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/apr/13apr2011a3.html [nipccreport.org]
If the models can not predict snowfall, how can they be counted-upon to predict anything else in future weather?
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That's already true, judging by the Doctor Who Christmas episodes. It's either ashes from the Sycorax space ship, or ballast from the Capricorn Cruiseliner Titanic, or artificially created by the TARDIS.
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Don't forget Xenu. He hates wi-fi.
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If you think climate models are even attempting to predict snowfall then you have no idea what they do.
... said that eventually British children could have only "virtual" experience of snow via movies and the Internet.
Note he said "eventually" which is pretty open ended. It could mean 100 years from now. Same thing applies to the DC comment. That's the problem with talking about future effects of global warming. Everyone wants to interpret it as something that happens in the next 5 or 10 years instead of something that changes over several/many decades.
One thing is for sure, the approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit in
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Those were quotes from two different people. I wasn't responding to the quote from David Viner but to the quote from David Parker. But I don't think events from the last few years necessarily put the lie to Viner's quote either. The rate of climate change is pretty slow in human terms but it's continuing with no end in sight yet.
Y2K!! (Score:2)
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exactly.
people were like "all the money and effort we spent to fix y2k, and nothing even happened? what a waste!"
Huh. Wifi has always worked fine in southern US (Score:4, Informative)
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Elephants? Global warming is bringing elephants?
No wifi signal on earth can get through an elephant.
Now I see the problem.
That's what the article is saying, but... (Score:2)
until the tornadoes hit
From TFA:
just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected
I read that as meaning that the UK is not equipped to handle weather that is more like monsoons than a persistent drizzle.
Communications is especially important during disasters, as it helps people assess damage and coordinate damage response.
But...
When a tornado hits, I expect that mobile phone towers with UPS and backup power would be more stable than wired communications. And also, as xMrFishx pointed out:
WiFi works in:
...countries that are hotter (Southern Europe), Wetter (Hong Kong), Colder (Sweden), Dryer (Greece) and more legally obtuse (USA) than the UK. I think we'll be fine. FUD off.
She also pointed out... (Score:2)
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Near the end of the hype? (Score:4, Insightful)
If this is the best "DOOM!" Climate Change story the legacy media can whip up today maybe we are near the end of the scare.
Then we who are sane can set about purging the defilers from the temples of Science! and setting it to rights.
Climate Change can't possibly be science, it fails one of the most basic tenets in that it isn't falsifiable. Try it if you doubt, ask a True Believer masquarading as a scientist what test could falsify their theory. There isn't one. IT gets warmer, Global Warming. Cooler? Climate Change. Drier? Wetter? More ice? Less ice? More clouds? Less clouds? And so on. All data lead the Warmist to the exact same conclusions and more importantly the exact same policy prescriptions. And of course a real scientist wouldn't dare propose policy on such a complex question in the knowledge of his ignorance of too many other fields.
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there is always a scare. there is always an enemy. there is always something to fix.
when all three of those rules fail then something bad really did happen.
allah the word means 'everyone'
i don't want to spoil the ending for you, but the truth is really out there. and i was able to handle it. it is a little sad but oh well.
Re:Near the end of the hype? (Score:5, Informative)
GW would be easily falsified by a statistically significant (i.e. long) period of temperatures going down that could not be explained by some other clearly observing and temporary phenomenon. So far we haven't seen such a thing.
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the earth was quite warm when it was forming.
but i wouldn't want to live there.
people need to learn the difference between skepticism and downright rejection of any view that doesn't match their own.
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Simple, a long term global temperature trend that doesn't go up despite predictions would falsify the theory.
But it doesn't look like there's much chance of that:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/dTs_60+132mons.gif [columbia.edu]
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There is someone checking the models, Lucia at the Blackboard. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/rss-april-anomaly-up-2/ [rankexploits.com]
IPCC AR4 prediction: 0.2 C/decade
Multi-model mean prediction: 0.211 C/decade
Sat. observations: 0.146 C/decade
Ground observations: 0.131 C/decade
So far the predictions are well in excess of observations, but a decade is seen as too small to be significant. We won't really know how wrong the modelling is until 2030 or so.
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Pft. You can run those same models retroactively and compare them against proxies. You know what you see? The models are busted to the point where they can't even accurately predict past knowns.
The awesome power of Global Warming (Score:3)
Not least it's ability to make seemingly educated adults believe absurd things, like this article or that the end of civilisation as we know will occur in their life time. (Who else believed that the end of days was going to occur within the span of their natural life?).
If only there was a way we could harness this awesome power... and use it to fuel our civilisation. Go beyond fossil fuel with global warming power. There is no problem it can't create.
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"Not least it's ability to make seemingly educated adults believe absurd things..."
Ahem. Scientology?
(Though does that include educated adults?)
Religious Fanatics (Score:2)
The answer is "Religious Fanatics." Your question was, "Who else believed that the end of days was going to occur within the span of their natural life?"
The Cult of Global Warming is to the early part of the 21st Century as The Church was to the Middle Ages. Zealots seeking converts, indulgences available for the right price, End Times forecast less than a generation away unless the sinners repent, a high priesthood -- the Old Time Religion's got nothing on this new one.
Global Dimming (Score:5, Insightful)
If we're so worried about global warming just counteract it by increasing global dimming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming [wikipedia.org]
what a breath of hot air... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if hot air really can interfere with WiFi, perhaps shutting these guys up would be a first good step.
Whoopsie! (Score:3)
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Operational lifetime... (Score:3)
So Global Warming is supposed to take place over centuries.
The operational lifetime of WiFi equipment is 10 years at best. (Anyone still using just 802.11b?) We wouldn't develop new standards and better equipment to deal with the environment?
which is the cart, which is the horse? (Score:2)
Now, we hear that global warming is inhibiting our ability to download our Internet pr0n?
Sounds to me like a self-regulating system with a negative feedback loop.
GW affects WiFi in UK? (Score:4, Funny)
Luckily I live in the US where the science isn't settled on Global Warming.
So... (Score:2)
They have a point... (Score:2)
"just imagine in the height of an emergency ..." (Score:4, Informative)
just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected.
Um, it's not at all difficult to imagine this, especially if you've ever been involved in disaster relief. Until very recently, the communication systems were one of the first things to fail during most disasters of any sort. Wires are fragile things when faced with the actions of Ma Nature or a military force. This is why, back when (D)ARPA started the work that led to the Internet, almost all the diagrams showed a wireless comm system. It doesn't work too well to connect ships or jet fighters via cables. And even for ground installations, cutting the wires is the first thing that any enemy will do. The commercial world has dragged their feet tremendously, blocking the development of a real, universal wireless system at every stage. Our current cell-phone system is crippled by the lockings and licensing that makes it refuse to do most things we'd like it to do. The wi-fi system is mostly locked down by a hokey "security" system that doesn't much interfere with military decoding, but does prevent most civilians from using the system in over 99% of the US.
And we've just barely made a dent in this problem. It's possible to have trucks (or boats) full of generators and wireless comm gear at the scene in a short time. But this usually takes much longer than it should, due to poor planning, plus active interference from the authorities on the scene.
Our comm system is barely functional in small-scale emergencies much larger than an auto accident. In real disasters, such as Katrina, the comm system simply collapses and takes weeks to come back online.
There's also the example that would be funny if it weren't for all the deaths involved: The collapse in New York of the World Trade Center nearly a decade ago also crippled Manhattan's communication system. The idiots who built the system's infrastructure (mostly the phone company) had run most of the cables for the southern half of the island under the WTC. And they hadn't built redundancy, so there was usually only one path between two specific points. The ARPA people back in the 1960s would have been apalled. People in 2001 who'd been working on the Internet were apalled. There was a lot of discussion of this in any number of comm forums. Reports are that the situation is nearly as bad today. The comm companies see no need to waste money on redundancy (and in fact over-subscribe most of their capacity when they can). And the government agencies are controlled by people who don't believe in "government regulation".
It's interesting to contemplate the idea that someone actually thought we had a comm system that works during major emergency or disaster situations. I wonder who wrote that line, and what their experience in emergency work is.
Higher temperature, reduced Wi-Fi range? (Score:2)
What's that supposed to be about? Reduced maximum output wattage of power amplifying semiconductors at higher ambient temperatures?
There are, like, solutions for that.
Bigger heatsinks, more efficient designs that dissipate less waste heat, liquid cooling ...
Finally, a serious issue (Score:2)
True Enough (Score:2)
As we get more and more use out of wireless computing and more and more sensors ,devices and useful software become more and more common every little glitch in the wi-fi environment will cause greater and more expensive losses.Really we are only at the entrance to a world of complex electronic devices and communications. Trying to guess at what inconvenience or losses might occur from weather shifting is beyond our ability now. What we do know is climates like the Amazon area in Brazil can make it re
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