
Tesla: The greatest hacker of all time - iamelgringo
http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/tesla/tesla5.html
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Hexstream
"Tesla generates a powerful pulse of electricity, and drains it into the
ground. Because the ground is conductive, it doesn't stop. Rather, it spreads
out like a radio wave, traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per
second."

And all this time I thought only light travelled at the speed of light :/

While I read that article, I was thinking, what if we found a way to 1. direct
the current through the earth to a specific location reliably and 2. managed
to represent bits accurately within that current? Free international
communication, without networks of cables ;P

~~~
kirubakaran
Radio wave is electromagnetic wave (aka 'light' in a range of frequency). But
"speed of light" in non-vacuum is lower.

"direct the current through the earth to a specific location reliably" Earth
is not homogenous. I wonder if pointing a low frequency laser into the ground
will accomplish anything. It most likely will be refracted in an unpredictable
inconsistent way.

~~~
Hexstream
Well, what if we transmit known data in a strong signal from one end to the
other and then compare what was received to what was sent... (insert big hand
waving) if we replicate those steps x times, we might be able to map the
"interference structure" of the Earth and compensate for that somehow...

This is admittedly almost impossibly complicated.

~~~
kirubakaran
Sure but the insides of the earth keep changing right...

~~~
Hexstream
We could recalculate the "interference infrastructure" every couple seconds...
Remember that we don't need 100% accuracy also; TCP/IP layers reliability on
top of unreliability.

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mhartl
Check out the movie "The Prestige" (<http://imdb.com/title/tt0482571/>), which
(among other things) features David Bowie as Tesla during his time in Colorado
Springs.

~~~
msteigerwalt
I was a little worried about Bowie's performance of Tesla before I saw the
movie. In the end, however, I was very pleased.

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dmoney
This gives new meaning to "hack the planet".

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dhimes
If we're going this way on hackers, I'd go for Galileo as #1 (although a great
case could be made for Archimedes).

