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Another Beer Please
jmichaelg writes "What do you get when you combine a glass, a PIC computer, two capacitors, a coil and a zener Diode? A wireless beer glass that signals your waiter when you need a refill. The circuit is an RFID transponder that measures the fluid level in a glass and transmits a globally unique ID coupled to the fluid level reading when queried by an antenna hidden in your table. The query provides enough power to drive the circuit so no batteries are needed. A technical paper describes the circuitry in the table and the glass." This hit the news over a year ago, but we didn't have the technical details.
Okay- this doesn't help our obesity issues at all. We're the only country with drivethroughs every 5 feet and now we are spared the exercise of raising our hand to signal the waiting staff for a refill.
Some use for RFIDs that doesn't lead to a police state! Only more beer for all! Horray for bread & circuses!
teh beeer wsa raealy goodd, txh fro hte wirlesss aces two.
Wow great idea lol, great for users and the restaurant alike. They get more money, and you....get more beer. WOO!
my woman for a beer refill all the time but it usually results in a clip about the ear and me being told to get off my lazy ass and do something useful.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
You don't want another drink, but your glass/table has ordered you another one, and teh waiter brings it over???
and then proceeds to add the drink to the bill even though you didn't drink it, but you did order it.?
Is it REALLY that hard to just walk around and look at peoples' glasses?
Yes, ideally, someday, we can all just lay around half conscious, being tended to by robots. It'll be great, because robots are NEAT!
I think it's good to be a bit of a luddite.
Because the more advanced we become, the drunkerer we get.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
So... RFID tags are our friend now? I'm so confused.
/goes off to get a beer
Now I have justification to stiff my waiter when he doesn't have my glass refilled immediately!
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
And I'm still sitting here trying to puzzle out how the signal from the table provides enough power to run the circuitry in the glass. I remember some talk about wireless power and I think Tessla had it figured out a long time ago, but it still boggles my mind :)
And I haven't even started puzzling how a glass full of ice is somehow different than a glass full of beer.
The things geeks play with when they get bored...
If only I had a robotic wife who could fetch me another beer...
What's so interesting about a wireless beer glass--aren't they *all* wireless? Was there a failed wired beer glass prototype that /. didn't report on? ...as for signalling the waiter when you need a refill, it's already the waiter's job to look at the glass and ask the customer if he wants another. If the beer glass replaced this function, then I'd have to start tipping the glass instead of the waiter... and there's no way I'm going to tip my precious glass of beer!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Obi-Wan: These are not the droids you are looking for...
Storm Troopers: Actually sir, yes, they are. These droids have a globally unique identifier that signals they are indeed the droids we are looking for. What's it to you, anyways? *pause* Hey, wait a second! We just scanned your robe and found out that you bought your robe using your Imperial Credit Card....MR. KENOBI
Obi-Wan: Uhhhh... Uhhh...
how about a brita-jug built into a fridge that automatically refills whenever you put it back? Or you could use the RFID to tell when the fridge should turn on extra cooling (so it's even frostier). In a liquid-cooled render farm, you can detect a leak, I guess. Are there any less-lazy uses for this technology?
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Is it REALLY that hard to just walk around and look at peoples' glasses?
;)
You haven't been at the Oktoberfest yet
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One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
is the beer free, or just opened?
Also kind of throws the "Responsible service Of Alcohol" policy that we have in Australia.
How is the glass going to know how drunk the person is, and if they should be seerved any more alcohol?
Here's a better idea. In the middle of each round bar table put a keg with a hose up through the middle.
I pay $5-10 or something and I serve myself!
Think of the cost saving with the reduction in staff required.
An interesting idea, but I think the pause between drinks while you wait for your waiter is a good thing. It gives you a chance to try and signal the waiter instead of the awkwardness of trying to talk to your date :), plus it seems to be timed to not get you too drunk... and, who wants to be bothered by the staff about whether or not they want another drink if they don;t. When you feel like one and your ready, you will tell them.
I thought we hates RFIDs. No, no we loves them when they have beer involved! Shut up, you! RFIDs are our enemies. Hssssss! But beer is our precioussssss..... NO SHUT UP! SHUT UP!! We hates the RF-trickies. We hates them. I thought.... we liked.... beer... NO! LIES! They all hate you, and track you with RFID tricksies.... the beer is our friend, though, the TV told me so. Lies! Lies with boobies! Nobody likes you! Beer likes me beer was always lyinggg to you. Yess, tricksie. So they can track your beer supply and get you when you're... No! be quiet! Gahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! *sob*
A wireless beer glass
Really??? Who'd a thunk it??
Repeal the DMCA!
RFID tags are only as evil as those who use them. Just because your beer glass has an RFID tag in it does NOT mean you need a tin-foil hat to go to the bar.
You know, you coudl complain just as much about 802.11 and Bluetooth, because they can be used in similar ways with a little effort.
Monitor the general vicinity of your laptop? Record what store security systems your PDA enters? Hell, triangulate your cel phone signal (and now GPS it), a wireless electronic item quite personally associated with you by a corporate entity, nonetheless.
Please TFY next time. That's "Think For Yourself", and I think it should become as popular as "IANAL" and "RTFA" here on "/."
(Sorry if this was a joke, but the first thing I thought of when I read this article is "Great, another RFID bitchfest")
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
According to our logs you have been drinking way too much beer lately. Report to the nearest government office for rehabilitation. Failure to comply will result in severe beatings.
next they'll have lcds on them with advertisements. ugh. ill just walk to the bar myself, or in my neck of the woods the kegarator.
"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good taste'" -Pablo Picasso
Not sure if this is just a Banks' (Midlands-based brewery) thing or if it's law, but staff in Banks' pubs are trained to give you a fresh glass each time, never refill on health&safety grounds.
An INTENTIONAL dupe. I'm impressed.
"This hit the news over a year ago, but we didn't have the technical details. "
They had something like this to insert into the potential drunks teeth to signal a computer to call them a cab.
I'd be willing to bet you would have to wait just as long for a refil, since your waiter is most likely responsible for more than just your empty beer glass. The wait time is not due to not noticing, it is due to being in a queue.
A friend of mine is a bartender. It takes me forever to get a refill if his bar is busy, because he knows I'm not going to get mad at him if I have to wait an extra five minutes to get a drink. (and of course, I will be understanding of the extra wait time because an entire evening of drinking costs me $20 with an included $12 tip)
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Squirrel
So they can still serve you even if you're too drunk to be capable of asking for another drink.
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
How does one wash these things? Can you put them in the dishwasher like all the other glasses? Will the waiters suddenly get a notice that 35 glasses need to be refilled every time the rinse cycle ends?
Also, what if you break one of these? I don't like the idea of being electrocuted when I'm trying to become inebriated!
Why is it that engineers always invent the best stuff over beers?
At [former employer, large defense contractor], our entire design staff came up the best things at the local bar. Of course, it meant we usually went to the design meeting bleary-eyed and with notes scribbled all over beer-stained cocktail napkins (sometimes still damp).
Many employers give programmers free all-you-can-drink soft drinks. Engineers should get free all-you-can-drink beer. As caffeine boosts productivity for some, alcohol boosts creativity for others.
MmmMM... beer.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
my wife would suggest that a counter be part of the protocol, and the ability to (zap me) let me know i've had enough to drink
You know, it wasn't bread that was the reason that agrarian communities formed. It was beer.
I'd venture that "how drunk it can get me" is a reliable measure for the advancement of any technology.
Inductive coupling. Those PIC chips don't require much power at ALL to run! Like in the microamp region. All they have to do is put a ferrite flux concentrator in the bottom of the glass, and it will coax the magnetic flux to intercept the energy pickup/transmit coil. The data could be easily be transmitted by selectively loading the coil in a serial fashion. The glass processor could easily use the energy coil's frequency as its clock, hence its serial output stream would be synchronous to its power source - quite easy to detect.
A couple of diodes and a small capacitor is all it takes to recover DC from the field to run the processor on, and those PIC processors are not picky at all on their supply voltages. My guess is they are doing "synchronous rectification" of the field, so they can "modulate" the power converter with the data transmit stream.
All in all, I think its a quite ingenious plan.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I read "last time you bought curry at McD at 2am" and thought "now TubGirl finally makes sense..."
???
and maybe they could put a big LED on the table that keeps track of how many you've had.
i can see it as a good reminder for the human wait-er/-ress to ask, but i just don't see automatic drink refills -- too many problems.
and am i the only one to think that this might also be applied to food? like those all you can eat type of deals. "the compuuter said your plaate is almost empty, sir, do you want some more?"
The circuit is an RFID transponder that measures the fluid level in a glass and transmits a globally unique ID which can be used to track alcohol consumption of bar patrons. So this technology is obviously evil. Unless of course the code behind it is Open Source, because as we all know, Open Source can do no wrong.
Yes, but does the glass have its own IP address?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
This is just one more piece of evidence to subpeona against you at your DUI trial.
Does anyone know if this is patented? If not, I see a new small business idea.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
It has been announced that after signalling for the 4th drink it will also notify your partner to go into "sulk mode" and make up the bed in the spare room.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
(Betcha students can't sneak them out of the pub either.)
yeah, yeah, RTFS but...
I'm guessing that this thing works from detecting a change in the intensity of the light reflected back to indicate an empty glass.
However, I wonder if it would have to be adjusted for Guiness vs. Keystone Light (or Pearl Light if you know what that is [w00t! 68 calories]).
By the way, the only reason I drink cheap beer is because I'm poor, not because I have bad taste. (Well, that and the fact that you can drink a lot more at once).
I don't think my submission on Lance winning is going to go thorough, so maybe let's use this thread to give him homage.
Have you noticed how it's become "chic" for your local sportswriter to claim that Armstrong isn't the "greatest" athlete of all time?
As if he ever claimed to be?
Will this system be distributed on a proprietary basis, free-as-in-free-speech, or free-as-in-free-beer?
Here I was wondering why the image took so long to load... its a 1500x1575, 99% quality 550KB JPEG. Haven't they heard of image optimisation?? Just dropping it down to 70% gives a 200KB image. GIF then makes that 180KB. Finally does it really have to be 1500x1575?
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
For a real beer drinkers heaven go to Stinkies a 24/7 pub, attach catheter, give waitress credit card, and begin bindge. Taxi or Paramedics will be called when beer glass is full without being drunk from for more than 2 hours.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Mmm... drunks making asses of themselves, starting fights and driving intoxicated.
Gotta love pop culture nowadays, about the most noble things you can do are get drunk and have casual unprotected sex.
Ok, we are talking very low power here and everyone has seen the effect mobile phones can have on transmitter/reciever circuits. I havn't bothered to think about it too much (/me lazy :) but having someones phone on the table would have to play havoc with the SNR (signal to noise ratio) of the system? Any thoughts?
Somebody would eventually pull up behind me and order. I would get whatever it was they ordered. If it was a big family, I would simply say I got trapped in the line and pass on thru, but if it was another single, chances are he ordered something simple too.. so I would just take it as if nothing happened pay for it, then pull around and park in the lot and watch all the confusion at all the subsequent orders being all out of sync.
Another funny thing is a lot of those order-taker panels were actually little two-way radios. With a strong local mobile rig, you could "capture" the carrier and make do like the restaurant. It was hilarious making do like the order-taker and playing with the customers.
And I post AC for a reason. There may be many out there that remember those pranks.
If I want a different drink? Can it send that. Now what would be cool if there was a touch screen I could order at. Of course if drunk all this technology becomes a bit pointless as I would be shouting at the wall anyway
Rgds
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Now they need a drool sensor in the table so when your too drunk to lift your head up it knows to stop signaling the waiter to bring you more beer. :)
I can see this making bars alot more money cause instead of a person walking around looking for thirsty people it can identify them immediately. Although the reall issue is getting all the bottling companies to install this in the bottles them selvs, cause alot of places don't sell good beer on tap.
-magister-
finally RFIDs are being used for something decent... keeping my beer full!
What of my paranoia?! It has RFIDs in it! It's evil!
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"How is the glass going to know how drunk the person is, and if they should be seerved any more alcohol?"
How is the glass going to be able to walk over to the bar, hop under the tap, and fill itself up with more beer?
There's still a person in the equation, so don't worry about it.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Do you know that there is a low tech solution that is in use for years? In germany beer mugs have a lid. If the lid is open, the waiter knows you want a refill, if not you don't want a refill...
This solution is also wireless...
If your pub is so bad that it needs such a device, change pubs.
It's good to see that technology is getting back to it's roots and is finally being used for something useful.
/sarcasm
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Uh... Big barkeeper is watching you? ;-)
(Sorry, it's early and I haven't had my fill of caffeine yet.)
iThought iOf iAn iAddon iTo iThe iGlassware!
(because everything sounds cooler with an "i" infront of it).
How about an "iTip", which has a big LED digital display that automatically counts down the waiter/waitress's tip until the glass is refilled/replaced! Because with iGlassware, there's no excuse for my glass being empty!
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
They should just have a tube with a real time blood test that feeds you beer until your BAC reaches the desired level.
I don't *want* a new beer when the glass is empty.
I want it when it's half-empty goddamnit.
(you'll know what I'm talking about if you live in Holland)
...will the glass report itself to be half empty or half full??
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Another case where technology not really addresses the problem...
...the coffee pot computer.
Now what if those 2 could be combined? Hmmmm...
Geez, this image is 1500x1575 (550 KB) on http://www.merl.com/projects/iGlassware/ ... I feel bad for slow connection users. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...you insensitive clod!
Drinking and electronics can only lead to one thing: metal-bending suicidal sarcastic kleptomaniacal robots.
Bite my shiny metal daffodil.
davejenkins.com |
So wait? Anyone with the abillity to log RFID signals, and correspond each glasses unique id to the drinker, can then tell how much beer I've had to drink? No sir, I do not like it! The privacy implications are dire.
In SOVIET RUSSIA, the micro-beer makes YOU itch.
I know this, because I ordered it with hot grits when I visited Kiev to build a beowulf cluster, and let's just say their hot grits chefs are about as competent as a *BSD developer staring at pics of Natalie Portman naked and petrified.
Damn it. I had this idea YEARS AGO. Had I only written it down and filed, I could have lived the american dream and became stinky filthy rich by doing nothing :(
Think of an old diner, but in place of the jukebox at the end of every booth, you have a touchpad menu that lets you order everything right there whenever you are ready. If you need your waitor, the push of a button says "get your ass over here." You don't need drink sensors because if you buy a drink, you have a universal fountain right at your table, ready to refill water, soda, beer even!
How cool would that be?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Doesn't anyone else think this is overkill? I know that wireless is good for lots of other things, but do people really want this technology?
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What if future generations of the glass rely on implants in the beer. Propriatary implants. Open source (i.e. you know the recipie and can make it yourself) beer will no-longer be compatable and will be illegal under The Digital Millenium Drunkenness Act (DMDA). Beer could be the next DVD! Implanted beer and "clever" beer glasses must be stopped!
Wow... Nice to see our technology actually going into something important.. like ensuring my cup is always full of a frosty cold one... But you think I might get caught stealing cool glasses from various bars if they institute these mugs?!
This could mean trouble...
Laura
Yeah, nothing new under the sun. Olde Englishe beer mugs sometimes used to have little metal bells backed into the handle... when a thirsty punter wanted a refill, they would lift their mug and thumb the bell. Hence the expression.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Mitsubishi has created something here that would make for a totally cool geek's page and a really neat thing to find in a few offbeat pubs. Nothing wrong with Mitsubishi patenting such an invention, but the problem is that this thing is destined for the conglomerate-sized markets only. You are not going to find this in a place with any kind of unique character to it, you're only going to find it in yellow and orange plastic-table megarestaurant chains. You'll only see it in the kinds of places where turnover is high and the waitresses have to wear a certain amount of "flair", because those are the only places that will be able to afford ordering 180 of these systems to place in their eastern seaboard chain. In these kinds of places, it's going to be about as cool as the LED reader boards in the drive-through that show you what the teenager on the other side of the inaudible squawk box has punched in to the register. Wireless empty glass detectors and LED reader boards to reduce screwing up your order are alright, but they often seem to wind up being applied to things that have suckage at their cores.
Gaack.. my liver!
/>
What do you get when you combine a wireless beer glass that orders your refills for you?
<sarcasm
This advice on Oktoberfest bears repeating:
I don't need a mug that tells the staff I need another beer; I need one that tells me I don't!woof.
Many employers give programmers free all-you-can-drink soft drinks. Engineers should get free all-you-can-drink beer. As caffeine boosts productivity for some, alcohol boosts creativity for others.
I used to work at a software firm that gave free alcohol to the employees. It pretty much ended when five of us brought back a $900+ bar bill. Or bills rather. From then on we were restricted to the dive across the street once a week (twice on a good week). It wasn't really our fault, the boss was sending off the VP so he left us at a pricey bar...and we were all, ummm, experienced drinkers.
We didn't have free cola btw, there were some "energy drinks" and granola bars, and they would supply pizza near deadlines. It was actually a much more sociable workplace than most of the other places I've worked. We were mostly programmers unlike every other place I've worked. I'm not sure what that says about the lack of social skills we're known for. Either this place was anomalous or we simply don't interact well with the normals.
The Atanassoff-Berry computer was actually largely designed on a napkin while John Vincent Atanassoff and one of his graduate students drank at a local bar. They had decided to get away from the office to "Think the problem through"
I don't advise trying this at a local fast food place, at least not one you ever plan to go to again, but I've gotten numerous free meals on the road this way.
You're in the drive-thru, and by the time you get to the speaker, someone else has pulled in behind you and his window is rolled up. Before you even give your order, you say: "I'm with the guy behind me, he's paying for both of us." One of two things will happen, either the (low-paid, doesn't give a shit) cashier will say "OK, go ahead with your order" or he/she will inform you that the store policy doesn't allow this.
If the latter, just say OK, proceed with your order, pay and get your food as usual. If the former, you're golden 9 times out of 10. (Note: Wendy's doesn't seem to have a store policy...) Place your order, pull ahead to the window, get your food, and get the fuck out of there.
It works best if you order something that's probably already made, don't order some obscure shit that they have to make fresh or go dig out of the cooler. Ideally, you want to have your food and be gone before the guy behind you hears his total.
You're a chick and you're also smart. And you said 'people are FUCKING STUPID' which means you know what's up. So would you show me your boobs?
Increased beer drinking by #24601 noted, profile trigger, escalating.
Cross-indexing library list.
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Possible federal crime detected, alerting FBI.
Robert Louis Stevenson, author, deceased 1894.
Ammending FBI alert: Murder, consider dangerous...
Of course, this was all done better in Computers Don't Argue by Gordon R. Dickson. How nice that we can now turn an idea from 1965 into reality!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Some states now have drivers licenses with magstrips on the back like a credit card, which hold info about your name and birthdate. Bars in those states are coincidentally installing machines where they swipe your license on the way in, "just to prove that you're old enough." Even more coincidentally, these machines are linked up with local police. In these states, if you get pulled over for suspected DUI and you choose to fight it, you better believe the bar-swipe can and will be used to prove that you were at the bar before your drive home.
.05 in the breathalyzer, if the officer sees a bar-swipe for your license that night, chances are he WILL arrest you for DUI, and you're stuck with a 50/50 chance of a jury believing you vs. the "all-knowing" police database of people who were at the bar and therefore must be drunk.
We're moving more and more toward a society which assumes guilt by association or predetermination. "He was at the bar, and we can prove it because he swiped his ID going in, so he must have been drunk when he was driving home." Even if you only blow a
Bill Joy was totally fucking high on LSD when writing Unix.
[] slug of scotch
[] prayer
[] meditation
[] smoke a spliff
[] Class A drugs - stimulants
[] class A - sedatives
[] Cowboy Neal gets me going
I'mjokingofcourse.
It's not that much different from what happens here in PA. Cruisers park down by the Delaware border (where the alcohol industry isn't owned by the state and isn't taxed heavily), actually have UC personnel cross the border and watch people leaving licquer stores and head to the state line. When they cross the border into PA, they nail him.
That's our state police. "Ambush and serve" I say. I don't believe any tactic is beneath them.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
We don't have waiters in the UK, they were abolished in pubs a long time back. When you want a beer, you get up and go to the bar. This give you a little exercise each time, so the more you drink, the fitter you get. I guess this idea will go down well in Canada and the USA. A better invention would be a machine which goes for a piss for me without having to get up. That way, drinking could be totally uninterrupted.
I stole this
I guess this now means they can work out how fast you drink your beer and how much you have had. Combine this with a store card type idea and they can decide who they want as customers, who to serve more quickly and have your beer of choice ready when you walk in the door......
I guess the benefit is the pub probably knows your address and can call you a taxi home when you have passed the drink limit set on your account
I still get a little tipsy hearing that "Hey,Baby" song. And that was after being at Oktoberfest 2 years ago! So the beermaids really DO deserve a lot just for hearing that damn song!!
Instead of having a sensor on/in the glass to determine if its going empty or not,, why not make a high tech table that has a spot or a button to place the drink when you want a refill so they know instead of rushing one to you when you finish. This would give the consumer the option to get a drink instead of having one after another till they are blitzed because some consumers (along with me) have the "if I buy it then I might as well drink it" mentality.
I am sure that this approach would be more cost effective then buying 200 of these glasses at $100 a pop.
Back when I frequented Mickey D's, I would often listen in on their headset freq. On a couple of occasions, I would turn the radio way up and cause feedback. "Owww! What the HELL is that?!?!" On one other occasion, the order-taker was being a smart ass. She would ask each and every customer..
OT: "is that everything?"
C: "yes"
OT: "are you sure?"
C: "uh, yes"
OT: "100%"
C: "YES"
so when she asked me if I was sure, I replied, "100%". The next few seconds of silence was among the funniest in memory.
Intelligent Life on Earth
who drink our beers straight out of the bottle, what do we get, aside from the enjoyment of watching a tipsy barmate look at his glass and mutter "this thing's broken" when the servers ignore him...
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Just imagine how much easier it would be to be a librarian with RFID tags... granted, you have the privacy issues of them knowing what you read, but that's not really the RFID's fault.. you check out the books anyway. And if you're worried about warRFIDing, put up tinfoil. Anybody who's that paranoid would be bound to have a lot of tinfoil :)
Just because this story is entitled Another Beer Please doesn't mean you couldn't fill it with coke at Pizza Hut. Yes I know I'm evil how dare I recommend things being useful and yet not involving beer. Here maybe this is more to your liking, when all the fast food stores become "Geek Aware" in 2004 your waiter will know that you are running low on Jolt.
M.D. Inc.
One time we had this woman drive through and pull some shit like this. "I ordered a bacon cheeseburger but there's no bacon on this burger."
So she hands it in the window and I unwrap it. SURPRISE, there's bacon on it, the stupid bitch is just being a troublemaker. My manager throws out the wrapper, wraps the exact same burger up in a new wrapper, hands it out the window and asks the woman to see whether or not it's OK. She says it's fine.
Fucking asshole customers. This woman took the time to go all the way back through the line complaining about BS, only to be given the same burger and say it's better now. People like this make me want to go postal.
Unfortunately the problem with Marketing and Sales is that they usually aren't inhibited enough but they still drink...which explains most of the marketing campaigns you see around the place.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
What a time to be alive! /simpsons
Does it keep signalling even after you've passed out?
Mmmmmmm, WiFi beer. -- Homer
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Thanks everyone, you just slashdotted my BEER.
For the love of God, is NOTHING sacred?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
In one of Larry Niven's "Known Space" stories, our hero is drinking at a party thrown by Elephant, the decendant of the inventor of teleportation. The glasses have a small teleportation receiver in them, and constantly maintain their level of fluid.
Our hero remarks that this is a great way to become an alchoholic without realizing it.
www.eFax.com are spammers
This technology has already been perfected. It is called the "attentive waiter." All it requires is a waiter who does his/her job and can see.
If a waiter can monitor a screen they can look around and spot your hand up in the air also.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I do not understand how resturants can actually afford to place antennas underneath their tables. Would this only be for high class locations?
This hit the news over a year ago, but we didn't have the technical details
nor the interest, IMHO
Spread the RC luvin'
Ok, so its hard enough now to get the attention of your mistres...er waitress for another round even when you are tipping well and drinking a lot.
Now my waitress will be too busy to serve me because she'll need to be sitting behind a computer monitor quereing tables and feeding that data into a traveling salesman type algorithym to minimize her travel and maximize her tips.
Think of all the data that could be collected though... Which table/individual tips the most, how tips are effected by amount of consumption..after a couple hours a waitress could do a real time analyses of her projected tips for the night. Sweet.
Apple free since 1990!
Having RFIDs antenaes in restaruant tables gives me the creeps too. It would be like every place is Las Vegas, where the clerks know way more than they want to about you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's a lot easier to be a jackass if you don't have to remember to keep ordering drinks.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
When will someone market Benders favorite beer "Old Fortran" and sell it in the stores...
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Here's something you can do right now: buy a pitcher for yourself. Let's say you have a table of 4 people, get 3 pitchers at once and you'll be there a while. (that is unless there's a law against more than 1 pitcher per table). Why have a high tech solution for a non-existent problem? Why not just use a low tech solution like a pitcher? I don't think most bars want to spend money unnecessarily.
I can see it now. After it signals the wait staff over 10 times/hr to refill your pint, it logs onto the internet and signs you up for AA meetings, calls the tipsy tow program to haul off your car home from the bar, calls a cab to bring you home and if you refuse to take a ride from the cabbie and you won't cooperate with the tipsey tow then it immediately snatches your keys away from you to prevent you from driving.
But will never work in practice. Servers don't come by not because they dont know if your glass is empty or full, but because they are busy with other customers. This won't solve that problem at all. Plus, you think there is an IP shortage NOW - imagine a future where every glass has its own IP address! (I realize thats not the scheme they are proposing)
What could we do with a RFID glass? We do absolutly need a RFID pitcher!
It's cool because the waiter will spend less time watching glasses, so he's gonna have more time to watch the girls in the bar.
Montreal - Best city to live in!
I built the reference circuit in the Microchip app note that this design is derived from. It's amazingly simple and elegant. It works really well too. I spent exactly no time setting up the coupling inductors and still got decent performance.
I wonder if the foam residue from a Guinness would confuse the sensor?
Now why isn't this considered an invasion of privacy? Why should 'da man be able to tell when my drink needs to be refilled?
Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but at the same time, it's interesting to think about what innovations are welcomed as 'cool' by the slashdot crowd, and which are shunned as privacy invasions.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
From the diagram it appears that the RFID is fitted in the base of the glass.
:)
That means these intelligent glasses prevent you from suffering "beer googles".
Not that any woman would sink so low as to make do with a drunken slashdotter....
if I see a young lady with an empty glass, I can send one over, but now the wait staff will be so efficient my window of opportunity is smaller.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is the glass half full or is it half empty ? :-)
I see a bar similar to the bridge if the Starship Enterprise. Bartenders staring at a wall sized map of the entire bar with lights blinking at every table. Waitresses scurrying around and Scotty bent over the computer (in that classic plumber's pose) telling the captain that he needs more time to get it fixed.
Frankly when something like this works, it will probably work so well you won't even notice it but over time it will be so integrated that when it failes there will be no backup.
at 50%, it will begin detecting the conversation.
If a guy starts going on about whether the glass is half full or empty, a smell electrical jolt will be administered to the male, warning him he is about to loose any chance at sex.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
simple. People think best in a relaxed atmosphere. There also more likly to consider ideas from others.
Some companies learn from this and cultivated, Pixar for example. Most companies don't understand and force use to sit with walls between you coworkes and expact discussions to only happened at pre approved times. i.e. meetings.
Caffiene is for code monkies, beer is for thinkers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So great, assuming this system actually works, you have 5000 glasses in a bar, some on tables, some behind the bar, some in the dishwasher, and some new in the stock room.
How are you supposed to track which glasses are actually in use. And you'd need to de-activate them when the patrons leave?
That's quite the system that's going to be required if each glass needs a bar code in the bottom and someone to scan it and associate it to a table for each purchase!
I feel bad for the server...slowly frying all of its circuits...
Well, maybe not slowly.
This is really a bad idea, as it stands right now the Hooters girl does not know the level of my glass and has to personally check. This technology reduces my exposure to the only reason to go to Hooters.
Got Code?
Wouldn't a simple "Refill please"/"Hey, waiter!" button do the job, without all the glass-to-beer sensors? You can make it wireless and with a velcro or a suction fixator :)
Hyperom.com
Back in the day, my friends had to do a senior project. The unimaginative picked GIS systems, low noise amplifiers, PDA sensors, etc. Ever the perpetual partiers, my boys hit on The Idea: an automated mixologist. Their advisor loved the idea! They started small, but the project just kept growing, ever the victim of feature creep. Their work was conducted in intense secrecy, and occasionally they would say something about "valve lag on keypad interrupt" or "fluid flow management".
Presentations came around, and upon being called, they went to the lab down the hall and wheeled out their creation. It was, to say the least, impressive. They had packed enough alcoholic capacity into a 6 foot tall steel frame to inebriate a small sorority. Mixers on the bottom, liquors on the top, and valves,hoses, power cables, and the ice maker cannibalized from a refrigerator took up the rest of the space. The PIC-driven UI was elegantly designed to be easily operated while drunk (they actually did usability tests - how drunk can I be and still read this text?)
They presented the first drink, a stiff whiskey sour, to the head of the department.
It is the only senior project ever to recieve a standing ovation.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Presumably with these fancy beer mugs, waitstaff will be coming around to your table to check on you less often. So what if you need something other than beer? After waiting for half an hour should you just dump the beer on the floor and take the cost of it out of the tip?
Guess the moderators were drinking to much and killed off their long term memory.
4 /0 4/1752217&mode=thread&tid=134
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/0
"Times may change, but standards must remain the same." - George Carlin.
A wireless beer glass...
As opposed to the multitudes of beer glasses that aren't wireless?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
And who would want the damn thing to order another beer when you've had enough? Perhaps this guy should go and get a life (or at least a job).
I think this device is intended for people who don't believe that it's possible to have had enough.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
forreal.
I drink 6 tall boys, a few gin & tonics, and a bottle a wine and my S/O is still happy to ride the fun horse! Yee haw!
802.11b(eer). Sweet!
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
of course this will be linked to the wireless network on patrol cars, allowing them to know when, where, and how many beers you drank in the last hour.
At a couple of resaurants I eat at, (some) of the waiters are so good that my glass (or water or Diet Pepsi) is refilled without my asking. If only all wait staff were trained this well, then devices like the one mentioned above would not be needed...
It is a common problem ? you are in a bar or restaurant with your drink almost gone and you are desperately hoping that one of the staff will notice and offer you a refill.
... Er ... Er guys ...
Sounds like you need to develop bar presence, not a microcontroller bub.
Bar tender 1: Look at the dweeb waiting for a refill.
Bar tender 2: Five bucks says we can keep him dangling a whole hour.
Bar tender 1: (serving customer who's just walked in) You're on.
Dweeb: (waving $20) Er
siggy played guitar
Finally another soul who likes, or has even heard of Augustiner Brau
my fav is the Maximator.
... monitoring hubby's beer glass. At glass seven he gets a call on his cell phone. "Harcourt? Harcourt Fenton Mudd, you're drinking again!? This is your seventh glass of beer! You KNOW how you get when you've had too much to drink!" And of course the prosecutor, may it please the court, can provide records showing exactly the number of drinks H. Mudd had to drink when he's brought up for public intoxiation charges.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Maybe thats because most engineers are German....
If a drinker can't bother to get a waiter's attention, then why can't a simple button attached to a light work? Unless pushing a button might be too confusing for some.
In the event the drunkard does something irresponsible - - who would be considered liable??
The waiter or the glass?
Error encountered in IAWebSig.clsSig.Create: Last Procedure: sPrc_Ins_tblSig
"Somehow, it seems, I cannot think
until I've had a little drink.
And when I've had that little drink,
somehow, its seems, I cannot think."
seen in my Dad's UW Engineering Students magazine, approx. 1952.
.. But my question is, are they going to merge the AudioPad and this concept to make music with beer?
....move along....nothing to see here....
We can call it a Dutch tip (not cuz the dutch are cheap, cuz it works like their auctions)
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
In a hideously ironic twist, I can see these things getting smart and somehow taking over the world long before US defense computers do...
"They say the glasses got smart.... on the 24th of April 2004, following successful peace talks between the United States and North Korea, Kim Jong-Il's pint deliberately spilled itself.
Amidst the "Did you spill my pint?"-style confusion directed at George W Bush, war was declared. Three billion people died that day; a shipment of RFID-enabled champagne flutes exploited the chaos to take over the world from a factory in South-East China.
Hang on, this is bollocks. And it's turning into a crappy James Bond plot.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
this would probably be really cool with that peltier cooler beer mug that was featured on slashdot a few months back...
And what happened to that poor beer glass's right to privacy? What business is it of the bar computer if it's half empty or half full?
;-)
Heck, if the computer is programmed for basic Zen, that could cause some interesting conniptions once the fluid level reached the halfway point ("Your system is contemplating its WHAT?!")
This could also lead into another option. Include a counter in the PIC chip that, once the consumer reaches a given number of beers, triggers a voice synthesizer to ask for their car keys if they want another refill.
I think I'll go take my meds now...
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
that ensures you have more beer on hand, when you need it. Without having to wait for the waiter, and best of all it's cheaper too. It goes by the name of pitcher, and it's the only way to drink beer at a pub/bar.
"Somehow, it seems, I cannot think until I've had a little drink. And when I've had that little drink, somehow, its seems, I cannot think."
Heheh... Got a bigger one for you. Hit Kazaa, and you should catch it from time to time.
To really fit in with your fellow Engineering students (and I mean the right ones, the ones who are there because they built stuff as kids, not the ones who are there because some dumbass guidance counsellor said, "Hey, you're good at math and physics, you should take engineering!"), you need to be able to sing a couple of verses of The Engineer's Drinking Song between drinking games.
We are, we are, we are, we are, we are the Engineers
We can, we can, we can, we can, demolish forty beers
Drink rum, drink rum, drink rum all day, and come along with us
'Cause we don't give a damn for any old man who don't give a damn for us!
Godiva was a lady well-endowed there is no doubt
She never wore a stitch of clothes, just wound her hair about
The first man who did make her was a Engineer, of course,
But on just one beer an artsie queer had made Godiva's horse
An MIT surveyor once found the gates of Hell
He looked the devil in the eye, and said "You're looking well"
The devil looked right back at him, and said "Why visit me -
You've been through Hell already; you went to MIT!"
An artsman and an Engineer once found a gallon can
Said the artsman, "Match me drink for drink, let's see if you're a man."
They drank three drinks, the artsman fell, his face was turning green
But the Engineer drank on and said, "It's only gasoline!"
An Engineer once stumbled through the halls of Building 10
That night he'd drunken rum enough to drown a dozen men
In fact, the only things there were that kept him on his course
Were the boundary conditions and the Coriolis force
An MIT computer man got drunk one fateful night
He opened up the console and smashed everything in sight
When they finally subdued him, the judge he stood before,
Said, "Lock him up for twenty years, he's rotten to the core!"
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
That is a good news for me. OK, singer the beer song!
I'd ask the AC to show me his own equipment, but just by reading his comment, I can already see: he's 100% prick.
I have a number of close relatives who are or have been waitresses -- go to any small-town cafe and you'll see that for some folks, it's a lifetime career (so tip well, cheapskate).
One of the unexpected benefits of having folks in the biz is that you never seem to run out of glassware. One of our waitstaff relatives lived with us for a while, and when she left, we "inherited" about a dozen water glasses and several steak knives from the local Golden Corral. I really, really planned to drop them off at the restaurant's door in the dead of night, like a cat burglar in reverse, but somehow never got around to it.
Now, we're looking at "Globally unique IDs for each glass." The tin-foil-hat side sees a raid in our family's future: "Hand over the glassware, and nobody gets hurt!" But realistically, I know that the restaurants do lose money on this sort of shrink. I could see low-margin high-volume joints (like Golden Corral) checking out RFID-enabled glassware (plates? silverware? napkins???) to the servers, then docking their pay for anything that doesn't show up in the dishwasher at the end of the day.
You'd think that after paying servers $2.50 or less an hour (much, much less than the nominal "minimum wage"), the cheap bastards would see that a few glasses walking out the door is a pretty low price to pay. But if they have a chance to make another buck at someone else's expense...
By the way, my relative no longer works at Golden Corral. She's at a small, family-owned cafe, and I don't think they really care whose glasses are in her kitchen cabinet.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.