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User: macdigger

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  1. Re:It's called gBook MX in Japan on Cellphones to Monitor Highway Traffic · · Score: 1

    Sorry I have no idea where all my carefully crafted line breaks gone :(

  2. It's called gBook MX in Japan on Cellphones to Monitor Highway Traffic · · Score: 1

    I have a system like that already installed on my car. It's called gBook MX ( http://g-book.com/pc/default.asp ) In Japan, we already have a system called VICS ( http://www.vics.or.jp/english/index.html ) which monitors traffic on highways and some big/medium sized roads, using sensors placed over the road to track the speed of car flow, and then this information is gathered, processed and broadcasted to cars' navigation systems (by an FM radio signal, afaik) in a form of level of traffic on roads (which then used by navigation system to lay out the most optimal route) However, I think about a year ago, Toyota have created another system called gBook MX (there also was gBook alpha variation, but honestly I don't know much about it). gBook MX (in addition to allowing you to wirelessly access information which is not on a navi's hard drive), also supports centralized traffic monitoring system similar to the one in TFA. Basically, your navigation system is connected to the W-CDMA network (provided by Japanese mobile operator AU), and sends position of the car while it's on the move, to the data center, every 5 or 10 seconds. This information is processed and broadcasted you back in the similar way as VICS above. Navigation systems which support gBook MX come in two flavors - ones with built-in transmission module (so you basically have a mobile phone-like transmitter built into your car), and the ones which allow you to pair your mobile with the navigation using Bluetooth (that's the type I have). So I just basically enter my car, start the engine, the navigation system automatically connects to my phone, and I become a GPS broadcaster of a sort (my coordinates are broadcasted to data center every 10 seconds - and it would be every 5 seconds if I had a buillt-in broadcasting module). The traffic for this broadcast is pretty low so I don't really care if my monthly bill goes up by 100-200 yen/month (after all, it's so cool to be a part of this new system ;) What's good about gBook MX is that it allows traffic monitoring for smaller roads, where there are no VICS sensors installed. Toyota said that it needs at least 100,000 cars equipped with gBook MX-compatible modules in order to get adequate coverage of the country. I don't know how many cars have this system on-board yet, though. But once the system is in place (it's already in place, but I think the number of "compatible" cars is still lacking somehow), this will be another way to escape traffic jams..

  3. Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE on Super Pathway Discovered In Southern Ocean · · Score: 1

    Oh come on! Are you on drugs or something? Just have a look at space shots of North pole ice fields they feed you every year and how these fields shank recently. Look at graphs and tables http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Ice/Ice_dat a.htm These are facts. We have one of the hottest summers here in Japan and the 35+ degrees C heat continues noticably longer than it used to be. My home city of Moscow sees absolutely unrealistic temperatures like 30C for a month with sparks to 35. It's definitely getting hotter and no, it's not about killing US economics, though I heard that US economic wastes more energy than Japanese USES, and this is absolutely crazy. It's about facts that if things will continue the way they do for last 100 years, absolutely nothing good is going to happen to humankind. Hopefully, just hopefully - the current situation is just a natural flow of things, but somehow I don't think so. You can have your head in the sand as long as you want but just don't forget to pull it out before the sand turns into glass.