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Disposable Cell Phones
davie writes " A patent has just been issued for what amounts to a disposable cell phone. No LCD, limited battery life, outgoing calls only. The inventor envisions these devices being sold with a limited block of air time, about 60 minutes, at a cost of about $20. Once you use up the air time, toss it. " And, hey, if it means it can be thrown in a bucket of water and you can just get a new one, that's even better!
...this could be good for the "emergency cell phone to keep in the glove compartment so if stranded in the middle of Nebraska in a snow storm you don't have to pull a Donner party" scenario.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Packard Bell already thought of this, and for years sucessfully marketed computers which were ready to be tossed in the trash as soon as you took them out of the box.
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The thing with prepaid cell phones is that they usually operate on a 'buy x minutes of time over the phone' philosophy. The problem lies in this: the lowest denomination of minutes you can buy is usually high (around 30) and are fairly expensive, and the phone requires that you buy minutes every [other] month, or it stops working and you have to get it re-activated.
So, in other words, it's still basicially a monthly fee, they just disguise it a little.
Levine
I bet you this is the way the cell phone companies plan on continuing to rake the money in from their analog networks that are being replaced by digital ones. So instead of abandoning them, they offer cheap phones/airtime and with outgoing only, they can use their phone numbers for their digital networks. So basically it's an End of Life strategy.
I'm sure that they would try to recycle them kinda like bottle redemption... you buy a phone for $25, when you are done you buy another for $25 but you get $5 off for returning the other phone.
Not a bad idea.
Peter Gogas
I'm waiting for the phones that automatically detect if they are in a car or not, and disable themselves accordingly. Either that, or require car-phone users to post their cell numbers on the outside of their cars.- ---------------
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Just think, boys and girls - a phone that can never be traced to you! Granted, it would be hard to do a drug ring with this because it won't accept calls, but big deal!
Maybe I am just being stupid, but this is worse than divx. Who in their right mind, asside from criminals and kids who want to look cool (also known as wannabes) would want one of these things? PCS service from Sprint is dirt cheap and the phones from them are like $50, and if you are really stingy you can get one from one of the other companies for one cent.
It's pure idiocy, so they will probably make a fortune off of them - just not from me.
Has the cell-phone craze and consumerism reached the point where cell phones are just too blasé?
Who is this market? People with such crappy credit they can't get approved for or afford a cell phone contract. They'll probably make them in various crazy colors a la iMac to get kids into it.
Patents like these really make me wonder if the ecology movement is completely dead. Faster, cheaper, and better should eventually equal out to reliable equipment that lasts a long time. Instead faster, cheap, better = disposable crap. Eventually you'll be able to buy a disposable version of any electronics you like. Imagine the landfill nightmare of having thowaway TV's, CDplayers, fax machines, etc. If this is the first wave of disposable electronics, I'll be the first to boycott.
Heh, I got a kick out of her reasons why this throw away idea will work:
"An engineer's mentality is to make
something last, to make it durable. A toy's life span is about an hour, then the kid throws it away. You get it, you play with it and -- boom -- it's gone."
Why if kids do it, it must be the smart thing to do. Or she's admitting her target market is really dumb adults.
"It's the ultimate in-your-face advertising," Ms. Altschul said.
That just says it all doesn't it?
I would like to point out that we're not being "buried in our own garbage". This is largely a view promoted by environmentalists that don't understand how big the planet is, and sometimes, "just throwing it away", is the best thing to do from a environmental perspective!
I don't want to start a flamewar, and I'll probably get moderated down by an eco-freak, but please concider that when you recycle something, it doesn't magically turn into another product. It requires a LOT of energy to recycle something, and contrary to what suburban SUV-drivin feel-good people thing, power doesn't come out of the wall for free. It needs to come from a coal, hydro (which ISN'T eco-friendly - flooded land produces methane, worse for the environment than coal!) or nuclear plant. Recycling is often worse than throwing it away!
Interestingly enough, a study done in England (Referenced in American Scientific, Sigma Xi Jorunal) indicates that recycling causes _more_ consumption, since people _feel good_ about using recycled products!
This doesn't mean a throw away culture is OK - but if you need the service or product, it might make sense. There is L O T S of room for L O T S of garbage on this planet - more than we will ever need, 'cause we'll do ourselves long in based on current population projections before this is an issue.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Recycling is last, because it doesn't work very well! Why does everyone forget about the first two, which work _Really_ well. Cut down, and reuse.
Just because it's disposable, doesn't mean it's bad. It might even be BETTER. It might not feel good, though. Consuming resources is something we should think about, and I think people think sucking energy is OK just because it's being recycled, which sometimes is really dumb.
Think about that when you're haulin those bottles back in your 4 ton Ford Extrusion, er, Excursion, wasting a resource we should conserve - gasoline.
Kudos!
..don't panic
And Ms. Altschul is looking to license her "interactive cereal" --cereal sculpted into monster shapes that crumple into soggy heaps when doused with milk.
And to think I've been eating "interactive cereal" my whole like and didn't know it. Make me a cereal that DOESN'T become soggy heaps and you might have something.
"I was driving in my car, and I kept losing my cell signal, and I wanted to throw my phone out the window. And -- bingo -- I came up with the idea," Ms. Altschul said.
Here I am eagerly waiting to read her solution to losing cell signals till I realize her 'idea' is actually throwing away phones.
In a shocking display of ingenuity, the United States Patent Office actually patented a non-trivial concept.
Said an anonymous inside source, "We don't know what happened. We thought the patent was for some software algorithm that had been discovered two decades ago. I thought I saw internet somewhere on the proposal, but it's just not there. We really screwed this one up and from now on it's only damage control. I just hope everyone realizes this is a one time only thing. We're working hard to make sure this won't happen again."
Film at eleven.
Not useless, in fact it satisfies the #2 reason for having a cell phone (making this up of course): for emergencies. What's #1, you ask. Tie between work and to call friends (and other means of fun). There are people who buy a cell phone, stick it in their glove compartment, and pay their bills every month even though they don't use it. This kind of phone is perfect for them. So I'm not going to bother asking if it has a cellular modem connection or if you can convert it to play Doom, because that deosn't matter. What matters is that it serves an important purpose well.
This isn't going to get moderated up, is it?
Kenneth
I wonder how law enforcement types are gonna react to something like this. A bunch of numberless, disposable phones and a pager don't sound very easy to tap, and you know how they (the same people who want to embed sattelite phones with GPS locators) are about being able to intercept and locate calls.
I just thought of something that could spur from this that just turns my stomach. If the calls are truly anonymous, what's going to stop people from making threatening and harassing calls? I mean, you pick one of these things up, and you have sixty minutes of time to spend making bomb threats and death threats and whatever else you've got in mind. Sound farfetched? Not even close. What's going to stop anyone from making a bomb threat to the establishment that has pissed them off lately? Not a thing. It can't be traced to them.
I'm interested to see what thoughts anyone has on this particular angle of these phones.
One of the main uses I can see for this is for kids. Give your kid a throwaway phone to keep in their backpack and they can use it to call for help/a ride/etc.
In Israel they have cell phones that have programmable buttons fordialing home and the police that can only be used for outgoing calls. That's an excellent idea that would be perfect for this.
Here's a particularly nasty toy you can make with some commonly available goodies, for all you Dr. Evil-in-training types (I wonderink if Mikhail makink these device when leetle boy, da?)
What You'll Need
What You DoDischarge the Capacitor. Just bridge the leads of the capacitor with some wire, a screwdriver, or any other ol' peice of metal you got on hand. Better safe than sorry... at least for the time being. >B)
(optional) Extend your Leads. Depending on the size of your capacitor and the length of the leads, you may need to add a little more metal on to the end of 'em. If you have a radial style cap (two leads at the bottom), you'll probably need to extend one lead so that it'll reach up to the top of the cap.
Tape Up the Cap. Lay down a layer of tape across the length of the capacitor. Don't leave any metal exposed except for the leads themselves. If you have a radial cap, run the long lead along the length of your cap and tape down two-thirds of it overtop of the base layer to electrically isolate it until it gets past mid-way up your cap.
Make Your Contacts. Tinfoil time! Cut out 2 strips. Make them wide enough so that they're just a bit less wide than half the length of the capacitor, and long enough so you can wrap it around a few times.
Attach the Contacts to the Cap. Tape the short end of one of your strips to the barrel at one end. Wrap it around once, then put the lead for that end on the foil and continue wrapping (with that lead embedded in the foil) until you run out of strip. Tape down the short end and long ends of the exposed foil, then repeat for the other end. Make sure the foil contacts don't touch in the middle, and only make contact with one capacitor lead each. The intent here is to make two really big foil-based leads to the capacitor.
Test the Contacts. Pull out your continuity tester and put one probe on each of the two contacts. If you did it right, the resistance should start close to 0, then steadily increase to infinity. This is because testers use a little current to see if there's a connection, and you're slightly charging the cap when you test. If the resistance stays at or near zero, you either have a dead cap, or you have a short between the two contacts.
Charge 'er Up. Set your voltage to the rating on the cap (or as close as you can get) and let it sit for a minute. Right now you're sucking billions of fun-filled electrons from one plate and depositing them on another inside the cap. Can't you just feel the tension?
Choose Your Victim Carefully. Young, relatively healthy individuals of whom you know you can run faster are best. People you really dislike are also good. Try to avoid old people, people with pacemakers, epilepsy or similar physiological/neurological disorders, people holding hot drinks (cold drinks can add to the fun ;), sharp or heavy objects. People who own lots of guns are probably not very good targets, but YYOJ. Remember the fine print.
Special Delivery! Hold your device with a glove, or carefully by only ONE contact. Approach your victim, and when about 10 feet away or so, shout "Hey , catch!" and gently toss the thing to 'em. Human nature is such that it makes us believe that small, slow moving objects should be caught in those situations, typically with both hands.
*POP!*
Laugh Your Ass Off and/or Run Like Hell. Self explanatory. Hope you had fun. Besides, you have to run home and build some more, unless your victim forgets about the thing and leaves it on the ground for some other Geek to take home and play with. Ah, the joys of simple electronics. The idea can be scaled down to smaller caps too (for little bitty jolts) if you want. Axials work MUCH better in those situations, as trying to line up the wires on one inch wide caps is a major PITA. For small caps, discard the tinfoil and just wrap the leads around the barrel as long as you can without them touching. Some hot-glue might be useful to hold things down. Make sure they're at least large enough to be easily visible to the naked eye while in the air, as they have to be seen to be caught. Have fun, and play safe!
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
While it can heat your water from the rooftop in some climates, solar isn't so friendly to the environment, either.
Commercially,you have two major choices
1) Acres and acres of panels. These raise the temperature beneath them by enough to change the ecosystem beneath them (yes, there is an ecosystem beneath the surface in the desert).
2) Solar Sattelites, beaming power down (MASER?). Just don't cross the beam . . .
At least for large American cars, CO emmissions were pretty much eliminated about 10 years ago. The last time my 89 Crown Victoria went in for a smog test, its CO emmissions were below what the machine (in Nevada) could detect. Even before connecting it, the attendant told me it would probably blow 0.0 . . .
:)
I had a client whose ex-husband-to-be tried suicide, with the old hose-from-the-exhaust-pipe trick. But he used an 89 Buick. Same problem. THough I suppose that if the garage was well enough sealed, the engine could have gone through most of the O2, causing him to pass out, leading him to starve to death if the fuel held out
I thought a friend was crazy when he referred to a cell phone in his 16 year old daughter's car. Then he explained: emergency use *only*.
:) ]
It made sense to me then. Now that I have four daughters of my own, it makes even more sense . . .
[ok, not just a cell-phone, but something lethal, too
On a good day in California, you can get enough power from your roof to heat some of your water, but not enough to run the house--at least with the solar cells in the forseeable future.
The telephone company pre-paid cash cards contain a unique 80 bit ID number. The first 46 bits are a manufacturer code and lot number. The remaining bits are programable when the chip is finally tested after being assembled on the card. Then the programming fuse is blown and the card can only be used to count down remaining units. This allows police to track all usage of the card, so if it was used to make any other calls, they have a lead.
[obSecurity sideline: most cash card chips can be reprogrammed after use, and there is a *HUGE* black market all over europe for re-programmed cards. The telcos are now all gearing up to prosecute those who use them ]
The GSM cards contain the normal GSM identifying codes, and most countries require the selling store to check the ID of the buyer. In France and England the stores must record your details for the security forces, and you have to prove you have a legal residence. Germany is the opposite, requiring no data be collected on the buyers. Sweden sounds the same.
The GSM cards can be traced to the selling store, its a requirement built into the entire GSM distributuion system. This is to guarantee security for the telcos so someone can track stolen/hijacked/cloned cards. The GSM handset also contains the IMEI number, which is sent along with the chip ID for every call setup (and is tracked from cell to cell whether you are making calls or not).
You would be surprised how easily it is for law enforcement to track down crimes and terrorist threats made over the GSM network. The french anti-terrorist squad arrested a few dozen corsican terrorists earlier this year using cell site records containing channel, power, IMEI #, time, handoffs, not the billing info.
the AC (back from 2 weeks in Mongolia)
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on