Category Archives: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Links to stories like the New Zealand Herald's $10 wok keeps TV station on air are a big part of why I love slashdot.org. It seems that rather than by a satellite dish, this TV station just rigged up a reflector using a NZ$10 wok. And, yes, it seems to be wokking perfectly well.

And then there are the Slashdotters' comments. The first three that happened to come up on my screen, for example say:

• “Is a wok parabolic in cross section or is it circular?”
• “The reflector does a couple of thing. The most obvious is that it catches the signal and focuses it on the antenna. The bigger the dish and the closer it is to a parabola, the more signal to the antenna. The other thing it does is to shield the antenna from noise. The antenna in the article seemed to be nested right inside the wok. So, the wok probably improves the signal to noise ratio (SNR) by at least double and maybe by a factor of three or four (or more if it's done right). That's very important. If your signal to noise ratio is good enough, you can use amplification to get the signal you need. If the SNR isn't good enough, then almost nothing helps.

  “The wok will give a useful increase in signal strength but a more significant improvement in signal to noise ratio.”

• “More to the point, why pay to watch “45 South” when I can, more cheaply, scoop my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon from Honest Al's Hardware store.”

All very much in the spirit of the place.

The Inq can be educational: There is no such thing as “SATA II drives”, stupid. Once in a while.

P.S. As far as I know UK tech webjournal “The Inquirer” has no relation to the US tabloid journal of that name — other than a bad attitude.

Genuine user review of a wireless repeater:

Experience with product: 1 Weeks
Strengths: THE COLOR IS SILVER
Weaknesses: EVERYTHING ELSE

Full User Summary
THIS PRODUCT SIMPLY DOESN’T WORK. SAYING THIS PRODUCT SETS UP WITH SIMPLY A PUSH OF A BUTTON IS LIKE SAYING YOU CAN BUILD CITY IN 30 SECONDS. IT’S JUST NOT TRUE. THIS PRODUCT MAY WORK FOR A FEW MINUTES, BUT THEN YOU MUST RESTART EVERYTHING IN YOUR ENTIRE HOUSE, INCLUDING YOUR LIGHTS AND WATER, IN ORDER FOR IT TO PICK UP A SIGNAL AGAIN. IF YOU BUY THIS PRODUCT YOU WILL KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. I TRIED TO SET UP FOR DAYS, TALKED TO TECH SUPPORT (DUMBER THEN A RAT) AND STILL DIDN’T WORK. I AM VERY COMPUTER LITERATE AND HAVE SET UP MANY ROUTERS AND EXTENDERS BEFORE–THEY ACTUALLY WORKED THOUGH. SAVE YOUR MONEY, INSTEAD OF BUYING THIS, OR ANY OTHER LINKSYS PRODUCT FOR THAT MATTER, JUST GO OUTSIDE, FIND A STICK, AND PLACE IT IN A POTATO-bc that wil extend your range of your network much more than this silver box of nothing.

Good thing I was shopping for an access point, not a repeater.

Speedtest.net is a snazzy graphical Internet connect speed test service.

Here are my results from home:

My results from work look as if they are much faster:

But in fact the delay before anything happens (latency?) feels much larger at work, so the office computer feels slower. I don’t know if that’s a DNS issue or what, but it’s very noticable.