4 ms·

The speed of light ought to be enough for anyone.

kevint8 14y ago
We need the ansible to head off into the final frontier.
Xcelerate 14y ago
Well, actually it poses a lot of problems. Communications that have back-and-forth transfers can be very slow. For instance, if I wanted to do a distributed computation with a server on the other side of the world, it would be limited by the speed of light. From where I am to Australia is about 48 ms. So if I want to communicate there and receive a reply, that's about 1/10 of a second right there. I can only do that 10 times a second then. Not so good. Not to mention the Mars mission has to wait anywhere from 8-19 minutes to get data between earth and the rover. We could certainly use > c if it was possible.
- martindale 14y ago
  I believe the poster of this comment was being sarcastic, in the spirit of Bill Gates' [debatably misattributed] quote: "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Zimahl 14y ago
On Earth, it's fine. Communicating with elements outside of Earth, the speed of light is way too slow. Talking with Mars is anywhere from 3 minutes to a 22 minute delay[1]. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to control a rover or talk with Mars settlers in real time? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars#Communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars#Communicat...
a_p 14y ago
It's not fast enough for high frequency traders. That's why all the major HF traders pay large sums of money to rent space for their servers at the site of the exchanges.
- mdda 14y ago
  I thought that HF traders are just paying to be faster than their competitors. If the exchange servers had a 1 mile (or 10ms, or whatever) exclusion zone around them, everyone would be huddling up against that instead.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Except HFT traders. I'm sure somewhere some poor ops guy is being harangued with "Hey I hear the Chinese have this tech that is faster than light, I want that shit on my fiber right now dammit, I don't care if its alpha quality ok? What? No I don't need to know about physics, I pay you guys to know about physics, get me that tech now."
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > I want that shit on my fiber right now dammit, I don't care if its alpha quality ok? Tell your boss you found a company with a scheme that can transmit bits over a quantum optical link, but only with a fidelity of 50%. Then get a friend to found that company and charge your boss' company $5 million for the device.
smoyer 14y ago
Our communications run at about 90% of the speed of light through copper and about 66% through glass. Even at terrestrial distances, the latency is noticeable.

We need the ansible to head off into the final frontier.

Well, actually it poses a lot of problems. Communications that have back-and-forth transfers can be very slow. For instance, if I wanted to do a distributed computation with a server on the other side of the world, it would be limited by the speed of light. From where I am to Australia is about 48 ms. So if I want to communicate there and receive a reply, that's about 1/10 of a second right there. I can only do that 10 times a second then. Not so good. Not to mention the Mars mission has to wait anywhere from 8-19 minutes to get data between earth and the rover. We could certainly use > c if it was possible.

martindale 14y ago
I believe the poster of this comment was being sarcastic, in the spirit of Bill Gates' [debatably misattributed] quote: "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

Zimahl 14y ago

On Earth, it's fine. Communicating with elements outside of Earth, the speed of light is way too slow. Talking with Mars is anywhere from 3 minutes to a 22 minute delay[1]. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to control a rover or talk with Mars settlers in real time? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars#Communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars#Communicat...

a_p 14y ago

It's not fast enough for high frequency traders. That's why all the major HF traders pay large sums of money to rent space for their servers at the site of the exchanges.

mdda 14y ago
I thought that HF traders are just paying to be faster than their competitors. If the exchange servers had a 1 mile (or 10ms, or whatever) exclusion zone around them, everyone would be huddling up against that instead.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Except HFT traders. I'm sure somewhere some poor ops guy is being harangued with "Hey I hear the Chinese have this tech that is faster than light, I want that shit on my fiber right now dammit, I don't care if its alpha quality ok? What? No I don't need to know about physics, I pay you guys to know about physics, get me that tech now."

stcredzero 14y ago
> I want that shit on my fiber right now dammit, I don't care if its alpha quality ok? Tell your boss you found a company with a scheme that can transmit bits over a quantum optical link, but only with a fidelity of 50%. Then get a friend to found that company and charge your boss' company $5 million for the device.

smoyer 14y ago

Our communications run at about 90% of the speed of light through copper and about 66% through glass. Even at terrestrial distances, the latency is noticeable.