Slashdot Mirror
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.
teh beeer wsa raealy goodd, txh fro hte wirlesss aces two.
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
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...
And I keep puzzling over your idea of putting ice in a glass of beer.
I.O.U One Sig.
Is it REALLY that hard to just walk around and look at peoples' glasses?
;)
You haven't been at the Oktoberfest yet
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
Well, usually I pay for what I have ordered. In that case the glass placed the order without my approval, so I pay only the first one and all refills have to be charged to the glass. :-)
Dude; this is slashdot, haven't you heard all that talk about Free Beer?
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
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*
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.
Obviously it looks at your credit card's RFID and cross matches it with the last time you bought curry or McD's at 2am, comparing with how many you had that night!
What you really should be asking, is does your SO get access to the logs to see how much you REALLY had to drink and where?
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
So they can still serve you even if you're too drunk to be capable of asking for another drink.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
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.)
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!
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.
WOW! I'm amazed at this technology, waiters simply looking at the glass and checking on their tables regularly would never work. I hope they come out with plates that somehow tell you when you're done chewing your food so people know when to swallow too.
What of my paranoia?! It has RFIDs in it! It's evil!
--
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.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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
They should just have a tube with a real time blood test that feeds you beer until your BAC reaches the desired level.
...will the glass report itself to be half empty or half full??
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
...the coffee pot computer.
Now what if those 2 could be combined? Hmmmm...
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.
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!
well it's just the same thing that happens always..
you end up home absolutely smashed.
and what you gotta complain when you don't have the beer prices of finland(or norway/sweden).
now what i would be worried would be when they include this in shot glasses.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In America the Sun rising in the morning is considered grounds for a lawsuit.
The rising sun has been patented by the Japanese. Try something else, such as breathing.
Laura
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks everyone, you just slashdotted my BEER.
For the love of God, is NOTHING sacred?
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Warning: when discussing beer mugs that can automatically communicate with another computer in order to pass along a request to the waitstaff, the term "server" will strongly resist contextual disambiguation.
Use caution & precision :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
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.
No the British patented the sun 'never setting'
as in 'The sun never sets on the British Empire" (Because there were colonies all the way around the world.)
... 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!
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