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Open Source Autos Hit the Streets in Spain
markdowling writes "BBC News has a story about electrically powered tourist cars in Cordoba which provide tourist information in French, English and Spanish as landmarks are passed. The promoter, Alfredo Romeo, calls them Blobjects which he heard described in a speech by Bruce Sterling. The car's tourist guide software is open source - Romeo's quoted reason: 'With proprietary software, innovation comes from the people in marketing. But with open source, innovation comes from the guy who is really in the market. It comes from someone who knows the city.'"
Ironically, the Wikipedia Blobject article says it "needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. This article has been tagged since April 2005" - you'd think that all those "hip" Blogject'ers would have made this entry super cool and happening.
Concrete Cam is up and running.
Is there anything factual these days in topics, or is it just astroturfing for OSTG?
"The promoter, Alfredo Romeo,..."
did anybody else read this as Alfa Romeo?
The promoter, Alfredo Romeo, calls them Blobjects which he heard described in a speech by Bruce Sterling.
Here's a link to the Bruce Sterling speech, referenced by Alfredo Romeo, courtesy of
boingboing.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
These GEM's are really niche market. Great for little towns where its 20mph or less, but if you hold up traffic then they are in the wrong place. Just as golf carts in the USA, they are a pain in the ass when given the right of way.
GEMcar.com even says "build the town/neighborhood around the car"..
'With proprietary software, innovation comes from the people in marketing. But with open source, innovation comes from the guy who is really in the market. It comes from someone who knows the city.'
Is it possible to give a quoted source in an article +1 for Insightful?
It costs about US$50 (£28) for a two-hour rental
This sounds low and optimistic. I wish them luck but when you are dealing with the public you have to design for the lowest common denominator and that can be surprisingly low. Liability insurance will cost an arm and leg for this venture.
Also there is a certain sense of entitlement and disrespect of others or common property that is engrained in the public mind. This is why projects that attempt to altrustically provide free public bicycles often (always?) fail.
But the open source software sounds cool.
The computer system is based on open source software developed by a company in Seville, Spain. As with any open source software, anyone can improve and change Blobject's code, as long as those improvements and changes are shared with others.
really? what company? where is a link to the sourcecode? I love stories devoid of information and throw around the term "open source"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Link to the Alfredo Romeo website in English with some interesting details on these cars.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
"open source auto" = "a regular car with a tour guide program which is ostensibly open source".
Big difference, there, "Scuttlemonkey".
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My chauffeur is sick, anyone know where to find a driver for this peripheral?
Seriously, the car operating software is not open-source... it's the navigational system software that is. The owner of the company makes a valid point about marketing-driven vs. user-driven software, but I surmise that this is a great example of OS working in the market...
It's cheaper to use open-source in some circumstances.
However, it is very misleading to write that the car is open-source.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I find it difficult to believe that an EV manufacturer would product a series of EV's that don't include regenerative brakes. Another reader commented that this is "a modified golf cart," and I'd have to say he's right. I'd have *some* respect for these folks if they had regen brakes as an option, or had "regen + hydraulic backup." As it stands, it really is just a golf cart with a NEV rating. Meh ...
But "blobject" is a simply a horror of Lovecraftian proportions.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Neighborhood EV's for tourist spots
Well, could be worse. At least it's not a wall or something.
I wonder if the car was windows.
...I wouldn't be caught dea in one of those disasters on wheels. Here is why:
1. It's too small. I weigh about 450 Lbs due to my healthy and steady Amuricuhn diet of fast food and convenience snacks. I might be able to sit in it by myself, but I'd like to have my wife and kids with me and I don't see how that little thing is going to handle 1400 Lbs total for my family of three.
2. Is uses electricity which is inferior to petroleum for the amount of energy produced per gallon. One gallon of electricity gets you what? Ten feet mabye? Sorry, but give me an Escalade with extra gas tanks.
3. It looks wimpy. Just picture yourself going around full throttle at 20 MPH! When I get in a car, I want to go 0-80 in no more than 15 seconds. Again, give me an Escalade.
4. Where's the DVD player? My son likes to ask a lot of stupid questions about stuff we're driving past when we're on vacation. Like when we drove past the Grand Canyon, he asked if we could get out and look at it. For god sakes! If god had intended for us to actually walk around natural formations like that he would have made us donkeys or billy goats instead of people. My kid needs to have his eyes locked on a DVD or video game so he doesn't ask stupid questions. That's a MAJOR flaw in the design of this thing.
5. IF these things could hit 80-150 miles an hour, they'd also need radar detectors to keep the cops from being able to illegitimately raise revenue by ticketing me when I was well in control of the car. I guess it doesn't matter though since they TOP OUT at 20 MPH! It also doesn't matter because I won't be putting my sweet Amuricuhn ass in one of those pencil necked carts.
6. They're open to the outside. If I want a tan, I'm going to lie on the beach, not sweat like crazy in a car. Who in their right mind would ever want a car that's open? I can count the number of times that my car windows are open here in the U.S. of A. in a year on one hand. I prefer to have my AC blasting on full if it's over 65 F because it keeps me from sweating. I also like the fact that it blows the fragrance from my car air freshener around and makes the car smell like the clean outdoors just the way mother nature intended.
7. There's no stereo system. When I drive I like to avoid being distracted, so I put the stereo up on full volume to drown out any yammering my wife and kid might be sending my way. Whatever they have to say is unimportant and I like Kidd Rock and Eminem. They're much more entertaining.
8. These things are funded by a communist government. I was kind of shocked to find out that Cordoba is a communist run city. I thought the only place the red menace still existed was Cuba and China. I guess we're going to have to pre-emptively strike Cordoba before they get us. They're probably getting together some terrorists to try and take down the good old U.S. of A. Our best and safest route is to probably send some troops down to South America to take care of those uppity commies in Cordoba.
9. Open source software promotes piracy and communism. The use of open source on these "cars" probably violates IP laws in every civilized capitalist nation. If this jackass tried to start a similar business here, I can guaran-damn-tee you that he'd be face to face with CIA and FBI agents wanting to see his past affiliations.
We've got to protect Amuricuh. Our homeland security should be the first thing on everyone's mind on the entire planet because we've got the big guns. Something goes wrong here and we get taken over by the commies, you know they'll use our firepower against all the sissy nations of the world the at turn tail at the slightest sign of trouble. Give us some respect and don't drive these monstrosities anywhere but into the ground.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
First, as is noted by a few sane souls, some of the software is OSS, and who cares?
Second, it's an electric car. Someone call Ed Begley, Jr. and wake me when they design and build one that is properly competitive with my SUV and cost effective.
Third, innovation does NOT come from the marketing people, they merely put a glitzy name to the innovation. Innovation in software comes from astute programmers who "get it" as to what the customer is not only wanting, but actually needing and lacking the descriptive powers to convey. The cry programmers should live for is not, "oooh, cool, open source..." but "EXACTLY! This is EXACTLY what I was needing! Damn, this is EXACTLY IT!"
And then the common know-nothing-about-the-behind-the-scenes people chalk it up to the sales and marketing people while the programmers go on to have post orgasmic depression, their having "gotten it" gone unappreciated. Such is the life of those doing the writing. Strangely, no one ascribes Stephen King's works to the marketing department of his publisher...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
"...electrically powered tourist cars in Cordoba..."
WELL, my Cordoba is powered by good ol' gasoline. Chrysler four barrel 360 engines don't run on anything else. Besides, I know that mine's better. Chicks dig the Fine Corinthian Leather(tm).
I can't believe that Ricardo Montalban went from a Cordoba to a Reliant .
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
To answer a couple of comments above, I'll say that the company who wrote the software is Yaco S.L., a little OpenSource company based in Sevilla, in south Spain.
The code itself was wrote using several free technologies such as wxWidgets+Python, SQLObject+MySQL and GPS Drive. It is supossed to be available soon, as soon as possible.
"Res publica non dominetur"