Sure, it'd be great if they could get these things to the point where you only have to put a few drops in them every couple of weeks or so (think Mr. Fusion!).
I've been wanting to get my hands on one of the cell phone chargers (FreeCharge) units from FreePlay http://www.freeplay.net/website/product/freecharge.php
When you take that sat phone with you into the Congo, who wants to be bothered with carrying litle vials of fuel cell fuel.
Pretty sure it's the OnStar unit. It's got a motorola label. If it were the main computer, I'd expect a Delco label. Also, the coaxial cable antenna cable is a dead giveway.
I suppose there's an off chance that it's *BOTH* OnStar and the main computer. When I get a chance, I'll experiment and report back...
Yeah....that's certainly an option. The problem is if I'm lost in a bad part of town, I'd have to stop the car, hop in the back seat, disconnect the car seat, toss that aside, pop the rear seat forward, lift off the cover, fumble with the connectors, hop back into the front seat THEN call Onstar. The matter gets only worse if the kid is sitting in her carseat.
I find it hard to imagine being in that situation where I'd need help out of a bad neighborhood. I mean, how many times have you been chased down the street by a gang of gun waving thugs?
I've always what would happen if I let my subscription lapse, then come back to the parking lot to find my vehicle gone. I've wondered if I could call Onstar on my cell, say "hey, I'd like to sign up for onstar", give them my credit card, then say "oh, by the way, my vehicle has been stolen...can you call the police and see if you can get it back for me". I'll have to ask my wife's cousin on that.
My new vehicle came with a free year of onstar service. I've only used it once when I called and set up the service.
I asked the dealership where the onstar equipment was, and they said it was buried deep in the dash somewhere, totally inaccessible. I had the vehicle home and 5 minutes later found it underneath the passenger rear seat. It's not labelled "ONSTAR UNIT", but it was pretty obvious. You pull the cover back and there is a nice motorola built case with two data cables going into it and a 3rd coax connection (for the antenna).
The Onstar stats say they recover 500 vehicles a month. Thieves really are idiots. All you have to do is disconnect the onstar box, or, at the very least pull out the antenna cable.
I was considering disconnecting the unit after my year was up, but then my wife's cousin who consults for onstar was telling me that they will perform 'public safety' services even if you don't have an active account. He said if you're even in a bad neighborhood, just hit the button and say "I don't feel safe", and they'll guide you out.
Interestingly, the onstar documentation doesn't come right out and say it, but it implies that they can use the onstar system (with built in gps) for reasons
other than helping you. I can envision a situation where one parent might 'kidnap' their own kid and the other parent could get a court to use the Onstar system to locate the vehicle (or something like that).
My last summer student working here had an interesting observation. Another reason why CD sales are down is because DVD sales are up.
He noticed a shift in the 'awe' factor. Used to be that you were wowed by some kid in the dorms with a 100+ album collection, then an 100+ CD collection, now you're impressed with a 100+ DVD collection.
Could it be that video really killed the radio star?
I got a friend who's company does "corporate awards" kind of stuff (you know, the trinkets your employer gives you when you reach 5/10/15/25 years of service).
He said that Mont Blanc was the absolute worst pen out there. The company turned it around by raising the price 10 fold and starting an advertising blitz in the likes of Forbes and NYT. Now when people see Mont Blanc, they think "BMW, Mercedes, etc".
I've used a lot of fountain pens in the past...I've probably got 8 or 10 of them. Some I like, some I don't, but I've never spent more that say $80 on one. My personal fav': Lammy Safari. It's charcoal gray, plastic, has got a metal clip on it that you could use to tie off a spurting artery and it's built like a tank. It's got a tungsten or Titanium nib that needs breaking in, but it's a work horse.
I've also got Waterman, Cross (too soft), a Pelikin that my Mom found in Italy and several more.
My suggestion, buy a reasonably priced one (say $30-50) and try it out for a while.
I agree. This was promising 15 years ago and has been sitting idle. It's cheap and flexible. There will be no end to the various ways to deploy these solar cells.
We went down this road a couple of years ago. The available xterminals were slow and didn't give us the flexability we wanted and they were too much $$$.
Ended up creating our own linux based X-terminals from scratch. A really bright summer student did the whole thing in about 6 weeks.
Our linux xterminals boast: local ICA clients (for citrix connectivity), full screen shadowing, access to local floppy/cd/usb key via citrix, 24 bit color, media player, plus a lot of other neat bells and whistles.
The users don't even know they're running linux...they log on to our servers just like our old NCD terminals.
The upside is that these are on Dell Gx270's, which is the same platform I use for desktop PC's (so, I have a common stock of spares). The downside is that it is a spinning disk that could go bad.
The best part is the cost. With a 19" flat panel I get each system for about $1400. Sure, I could do it for a *LOT* less, but then I wouldn't have a common hardware base. I would say that this could be done with $400-$500 PC's which beats the HP price.
What's possibly as important as effecient solar cells is cheap solar cells.
I saw something about 15 years ago where someone invented these little solder balls that could generate electricity (something about different layers with different dopings). What was unique was the method they used to mount them. They took these solder balls, and melted them to an aluminum strip. Took the strip and twisted it and put it in a plastic tube. The tub sat in a reflective half circle. They could bang these things out like chicklets. I don't think the were terribly efficent, but they were incredibly cheap!
Sadly, I never saw any references to these collectors since then.
I've been saying this for years now. Microsquash is not a technology company, it's a marketing company.
I remember hearing a story (urban legend?) about someone who went out and bought windows 95, got it home, unwrapped it and called back the store and asked "what do I do with it?", they said, you install it on your computer. "I don't have a computer."
It's not about the next greatest operating system, or the next greatest 'go faster', it's about convincing you that you really need it when you don't. It's about shame. (Oh God, the jones just got a new computer with XP and we're still running 98 on this PIII, we gotta go to best buy and upgrade!).
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I've been wanting to get my hands on one of the cell phone chargers (FreeCharge) units from FreePlay http://www.freeplay.net/website/product/freecharge .php
When you take that sat phone with you into the Congo, who wants to be bothered with carrying litle vials of fuel cell fuel.
Gives new life to the term "crank it up".
I suppose there's an off chance that it's *BOTH* OnStar and the main computer. When I get a chance, I'll experiment and report back...
I find it hard to imagine being in that situation where I'd need help out of a bad neighborhood. I mean, how many times have you been chased down the street by a gang of gun waving thugs?
I've always what would happen if I let my subscription lapse, then come back to the parking lot to find my vehicle gone. I've wondered if I could call Onstar on my cell, say "hey, I'd like to sign up for onstar", give them my credit card, then say "oh, by the way, my vehicle has been stolen...can you call the police and see if you can get it back for me". I'll have to ask my wife's cousin on that.
I asked the dealership where the onstar equipment was, and they said it was buried deep in the dash somewhere, totally inaccessible. I had the vehicle home and 5 minutes later found it underneath the passenger rear seat. It's not labelled "ONSTAR UNIT", but it was pretty obvious. You pull the cover back and there is a nice motorola built case with two data cables going into it and a 3rd coax connection (for the antenna).
The Onstar stats say they recover 500 vehicles a month. Thieves really are idiots. All you have to do is disconnect the onstar box, or, at the very least pull out the antenna cable.
I was considering disconnecting the unit after my year was up, but then my wife's cousin who consults for onstar was telling me that they will perform 'public safety' services even if you don't have an active account. He said if you're even in a bad neighborhood, just hit the button and say "I don't feel safe", and they'll guide you out.
Interestingly, the onstar documentation doesn't come right out and say it, but it implies that they can use the onstar system (with built in gps) for reasons other than helping you. I can envision a situation where one parent might 'kidnap' their own kid and the other parent could get a court to use the Onstar system to locate the vehicle (or something like that).
My last summer student working here had an interesting observation. Another reason why CD sales are down is because DVD sales are up.
He noticed a shift in the 'awe' factor. Used to be that you were wowed by some kid in the dorms with a 100+ album collection, then an 100+ CD collection, now you're impressed with a 100+ DVD collection.
Could it be that video really killed the radio star?
I got a friend who's company does "corporate awards" kind of stuff (you know, the trinkets your employer gives you when you reach 5/10/15/25 years of service).
He said that Mont Blanc was the absolute worst pen out there. The company turned it around by raising the price 10 fold and starting an advertising blitz in the likes of Forbes and NYT. Now when people see Mont Blanc, they think "BMW, Mercedes, etc".
I've used a lot of fountain pens in the past...I've probably got 8 or 10 of them. Some I like, some I don't, but I've never spent more that say $80 on one. My personal fav': Lammy Safari. It's charcoal gray, plastic, has got a metal clip on it that you could use to tie off a spurting artery and it's built like a tank. It's got a tungsten or Titanium nib that needs breaking in, but it's a work horse.
I've also got Waterman, Cross (too soft), a Pelikin that my Mom found in Italy and several more.
My suggestion, buy a reasonably priced one (say $30-50) and try it out for a while.
I agree. This was promising 15 years ago and has been sitting idle. It's cheap and flexible. There will be no end to the various ways to deploy these solar cells.
We went down this road a couple of years ago. The available xterminals were slow and didn't give us the flexability we wanted and they were too much $$$.
Ended up creating our own linux based X-terminals from scratch. A really bright summer student did the whole thing in about 6 weeks.
Our linux xterminals boast: local ICA clients (for citrix connectivity), full screen shadowing, access to local floppy/cd/usb key via citrix, 24 bit color, media player, plus a lot of other neat bells and whistles.
The users don't even know they're running linux...they log on to our servers just like our old NCD terminals.
The upside is that these are on Dell Gx270's, which is the same platform I use for desktop PC's (so, I have a common stock of spares). The downside is that it is a spinning disk that could go bad.
The best part is the cost. With a 19" flat panel I get each system for about $1400. Sure, I could do it for a *LOT* less, but then I wouldn't have a common hardware base. I would say that this could be done with $400-$500 PC's which beats the HP price.
What's possibly as important as effecient solar cells is cheap solar cells.
I saw something about 15 years ago where someone invented these little solder balls that could generate electricity (something about different layers with different dopings). What was unique was the method they used to mount them. They took these solder balls, and melted them to an aluminum strip. Took the strip and twisted it and put it in a plastic tube. The tub sat in a reflective half circle. They could bang these things out like chicklets. I don't think the were terribly efficent, but they were incredibly cheap!
Sadly, I never saw any references to these collectors since then.
I've been saying this for years now. Microsquash is not a technology company, it's a marketing company. I remember hearing a story (urban legend?) about someone who went out and bought windows 95, got it home, unwrapped it and called back the store and asked "what do I do with it?", they said, you install it on your computer. "I don't have a computer." It's not about the next greatest operating system, or the next greatest 'go faster', it's about convincing you that you really need it when you don't. It's about shame. (Oh God, the jones just got a new computer with XP and we're still running 98 on this PIII, we gotta go to best buy and upgrade!).