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HP Making a Dick Tracy Watch For the Military
eldavojohn writes "HP announced a device like Dick Tracy's watch, with a target user base being the US military. CNN describes it as 'a flexible display that shows maps and other strategic information to soldiers in remote combat fields. The watch's screen will be made of plastic and it will run on solar energy, making it less likely to malfunction or run out of power in a tense scenario.' HP says a prototype will be done within a year. This new device hinges on recent display technology that HP says it has been developing for 10 years. The flexible displays are a mere 50 microns thick."
Well, HP just bought Palm. Use your imagination.
WebOS based flexible low-power display smart "phones" that can either be wearable, or as a small carryable.
Translate the same tech over into the WebOS based slate, and you have a revolution in computing.
iPad nothin'. WebOS is the future. HP and Palm are going to take us there.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Why don't they call it a Turanga Leela Wrist-Kejigger?
I am officially gone from
When HP took over EDS, it got the contract for the NMCI, possibly the biggest cluster-fuck in DoD history according to my Navy friends.
I wouldn't trust HP to supply soldiers with a working Timex, let alone something with telecommunications abilities.
The "Dick Tracy watch" from the comics (and movie) is a two-way video phone. This isn't a Dick Tracy watch.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Well, if you do night ops, you're generally asleep during the day or doing LPOP. You just want to be careful about leaving a glinty little solar panel out if you're trying to be tactical.
Most military comms are like what you've heard in movies, everyone's basically on one network and takes turns. It's a little more complicated than that, and I won't go into specifics on a public forum, but for 99% of communications, all you need to do is press a button and talk.
My beef is that a watch is just a fucking stupid idea: assuming a rifle, you'd have to take your non-firing hand off your weapon to bring your wrist up to your mouth, then use your firing hand to press the damned talk button. Terrible, terrible idea.
If I were doing it, I'd make it a headset that fit in to the ACH and could be activated by biting, or by a switch you could mount on a standard picatinny rail. It should also use the latest greatest DSP so you don't have to actually vocalize to talk.