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Pneumatic Tube Communication In Hospitals
blee37 sends along a writeup from the School of Medicine at Stanford University on their pneumatic tube delivery system, used for sending atoms not bits. Such systems are in use in hospitals nationwide; the 19th-century technology is enhancd by recent refinements in pneumatic braking. "Every day, 7,000 times a day, Stanford Hospital staff turn to pneumatic tubes, cutting-edge technology in the 19th century, for a transport network that the Internet and all the latest Silicon Valley wizardry can't match: A tubular system to transport a lab sample across the medical center in the blink of an eye."
The bandwidth sucks.
James-Bond those urine samples.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
... Sen. Ted Stevens.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
There has never been a more appropriate time for this response: WHOOSH! (as the parcel goes by in the tube)
Wow, I wanna go and put my junk in those!
I for one welcome our new tubular overlords.
...and I am right behind you with Tubular Bells on.
Pizza hut is now suing customers that use the pizzamaker 3000 to download unauthorized copies of their pizzas through PneumaticPizzatorrents. papa johns and domino's are considering following suite. It is being shown that only 3% of all pizzas downloaded are legal public domain or open source pizzas.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
No. The internet is a series of tubes, and this pneumatic tube communication system is like a convoy of trucks on the highway.
And yes, the convoy of trucks is now connected via Wi-Fi, so these trucks are like the internet.
at the hospital at which I worked, you could select the origin station as the destination, and the tube system would dutifully take the carrier all the way around and back. so you could send yourself something, and receive it a few minutes later. I loved sending stuff to myself in the (near) future.
The one who likes tubular bells?
You stop letting them spend all day in the basement.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So what you're saying is that mail in NYC is a truck you put things on, not a series of tubes?
I wasn't aware that Freud wore a slip. That really clarifies a lot of other questions I had about him. God, I'm glad other bits never made it into the mainstream. Just imagine the Freudian corset, stockings, etc. I guess he took his Oedipus Complex a step beyond, eh?
That's one mighty nice Freudian Chastity Belt(tm) you have there.
I'm going to have nightmares for weeks. ick.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
actually some pneumatic tube systems have procedures for a stuck cylinder, by sending a second heavier cylinder, or by increasing the pressure to higher than normal levels, either way clearing the tube.
as in Futurama: Governor lady said "I'm sending in more trains!"
Heck, the first New York City subway was pneumatic. (It was also very short, and short-lived.)
Could that be because it sucked?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
It was initially supposed to handle grocery delivery as well, but... routing problems.
I've occasionally thought it would be interesting to use this kind of technology for home plumbing. For example, when you turn on your sink and ask for hot water, instead of having a continuous flow in a pipe from the hot water heater to the sink (which wastes a lot of energy), why not use a pneumatic tube system to deliver a packet of hot water to the sink?
Note that the same tubes could be used for delivering hot water an cold water, and taking away waste water? (You'd have separate containers, of course, for fresh water and waste water).
You could do cool things with a pneumatic packet-switched water network. For instance, it would be easy to add a storage tank and route shower waster water to the tank, and then from there to the toilets for flushing.
And I bet with some clever design, you could make it so the pneumatic tube system could double as a centralized vacuum system for house cleaning.
To help alert employees to the arrival of containers, the system has more than three dozen different combinations of chiming tones.
bing bing bong bong
bing bing bong bong
"Well, Theresa, aren't you going to get that?"
"Hell no! That's Marty from accounting! He's been trying to contact me ever since he thought I was coming on to him at the Christmas party. As if!"
"No, that's not Marty. Marty is bing bing bing bong and not bing bing bong bong. That's Bill in IT."
"Are you sure? I thought Bill's was bing bong bong bing."
"Nope. You might be confusing that with Jerry which is bong bing bong bingybong."
"Okay, but only if you're sure."
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Hey, it's not the network's fault if there's a bottleneck at the customer's site.
Firing them from a cannon would be faster.
New York City does have a fascinating history of pneumatic transport projects. A particularly elaborate example is when New Yorkers were supplied with fresh burritos via pneumatic delivery.
... and then they built the supercollider.
sector 7g?
That would be 'inappropriate suction'.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Of course there is. Java's GC sucks too.
The worst thing is, most people just ask what happened to the dog.
I'm surprised it fit in the tube.
Networking 101: fragmentation