(no subject)

[askygoneonfire]

My attention was caught by a particularly fun headline in today's Metro: Pigeon that's quicker than broadband. The practicalities of this alternative form of file transfer have perhaps been skirted over:

"Did the files arrive?"
"No, there was a problem with the transfer, they were...corrupted en route."
"Oh dear.  Do you have a virus?"
"Not as such, no."
"What do you mean 'not as such'? Either you have a virus or you don't!"
"Well, it's not a virus, so much as a....well, as a hawk."
"A hawk? Is that some sort of super virus? Or a new Apple OS?"
"No....it's sort of....well, it's a hawk."
"A hawk?"
"Yes. It ate the pigeon."
"The pigeon?"
"Yes.  The pigeon that transfers our data."
"You're sure this isn't computer slang for something else?"
"No, it's definitely a pigeon.  He's called Steve.  Or he was *sob*"

Moreover, industrial espionage would never look the same.  It's actually even the playing field as far as successful espionage goes, it wouldn't be about having the money to invest in high-tech gadgets, a nice bowl of grain and some determined cooing - or perhaps some hot lady pigeons wiggling their arses about - would pretty much do the trick.

Comments

[rho]

There's a long and fine tradition of this sort of thing. You may wish to google "IP over avian carrier".

And of course, let's not forget doing the same thing with snails (pdf file).

[cyanidecluster]

do you have to plug the pigeon into a USB port to download the data?

Could be messy..