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16 Cell Phones In Parallel Net Access 137

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-its-better-then-sneakernet dept.
Blackbox writes "This site answers the age old question: "What do you get when you run 16 mobile phones in parallel?" The answer is of course a 150 kbit/s connection to the internet for your car! Check it out at:
The megacar or Tom's Hardware"
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16 Cell Phones In Parallel Net Access More

16 Cell Phones In Parallel Net Access

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  • Michael: Listen, KITT, we've had some great times and all, but I think it's time for both of us to move on...

    KITT: It's that tramp, MegaCar, isn't it? You've been driving around on me!

    Michael: No, KITT, it's not like that! Honest!

    KITT: Fine, Michael, trade me in. But don't come crawling back when you realize you miss bullet-proof glass and 240mph turbo-jets.

  • OLD! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Haven't I seen this before? Lesse, ah, here we go. Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday March 16, @09:00AM EDT from the sign-me-up dept. peter royal writes "MegaCar is a high-class Brabus 5.8 outfitted with a 153kbit/s wireless internet connection. It is 16 9.6kbit/s GSM modems in parallel, with a Linux box acting at the router." Just when you thought you'd seen everything. the site has gotten an overhaul sice then, but this is a couple years old at least. anyone know what year this was originally posted?
  • And that's 572 reasons to go to Yemen and... -7 for Cuba.
  • Nah, you just get 16 different IP's from 16 different ISP's and run eBGP between all the links! That way you're never down!
  • If you have to ask that question, you're not a nerd.

    --

  • I mean, even the URL points out that the story is from March 15, 1999.
  • Yes sir... I do believe it was on Slashdot about a year and half or so ago.
  • I guess I don't get it. A major portion of the articles posted on Slashdot are quite a few days old if not several weeks. Stories are rejected when they are submitted at times when they are actually news and just end up rejected. Later, someone posts the same story a couple days later (or even a few weeks later) by someone else. What in the world is going on? What's the point of me coming to this website when I've already heard about most of the stuff days or weeks ago? This post about the "16 Cell Phones In Parallel Net Access" in Megacar is only about a year old. Get it together and cut this crap or change the "News for Nerds" slogan. It's getting lame.
  • Back in the days I remember going to Tom's hardware. First it was just for overclocking. Then to every bit of hardware. I could allways count on the latest intel price roadmap. This is back in the day when Tom accually did the web site. Before it had a million adds and. I have known about this "car" thing for a long time. When I saw that Tom was going to do that and let others take over Toms Hardware (Don't get me started on the book...) I knew that the day of "Toms Hardware" had come and gone. Granted they still post articles, but they do nothing more then a million other little hardware sites do. Back in the day when it was only Anon and Tom. They were allways trying to up each other. And we all got more information because of it. This is one site that did not improve with popularity.

  • Good grief... another stupid idea (Score:4)

    by Sodakar ( 205398 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:42AM (#970269)
    Am I the only one who finds these "advances" to be completely silly? By the time one can implement this cost-effectively, a newer technology with 40 times the bandwidth will be in place.

    Diamond's Shotgun technology comes to mind... "Get ISDN speed with 2 modems!" (or just get DSL for the same cost.)

    Never mind that Japan already has enough bandwidth on their mobiles to send video, and they're thinking of providing DSL-speed access to PSX 2 users via mobiles...

    Not that I ridicule them for trying... But it's really just a "cool, we did it" type of project, and unless there is a revolutionary, cost-effective way to minimize hardware, it's just going to remain as it is - a "cool project"... Oh well.

    In other news, I've found a way to stick 16 M&M's together and eat them more efficiently -- the only problem is that the labor involved to stick them together is insanely expensive....

    Sorry, I guess I'm just overly jealous of my cousin's new video-phone in Japan... drool
  • This is VERY stale info. The megacar came out ~3 or so years ago. around the time of sun's javacar.
    the damn thing uses CDPD for christ's sake
  • This is just sad... 16 cellphones can get a better connection than I do.
    I'd sure hate to be driving behind somebody using 16 cellphones at once though!
  • a slashdot post that says 16 cell phones is excessive is on the same level as a post trying to relay that the sun is hot.
  • Did anyone else look at the URL and realize how old the Tom's Hardware article is?
  • First off, the main car they use is a Brabus (a modified Mercedes) which usually costs around $200,000 without all that fancy electronics. That car will give you the smoothest ride you can imagine. Being a ~$300,000 car with all the electronics, it's made for someone who can afford to pay someone to drive them around. The electronics are all mostly in the back seat and are designed for the passengers. The driver doesn't have anything special. He's there to drive.
  • Definitely. Even scarier is there is a laptop case that can mount to the steering wheel and put the laptop in a useable position. *shudder*
    Sorry, don't remember who makes it.

    Oh my God, you're *not* serious? I haven't ever heard of or seen those.

    We should track down the inventor and crush his testicles in a garlic press, and then use genocide as a means of punishment against all those caught with such a device in their possession.

  • Man, collecting TVs? What a dumbass hobby! Get a girlfriend or a pet or something.

    Well, we could all aspire to a hobby as clearly interesting as yours: Anonymous Coward postings...

    Actually, the technology behind TV sets and radios once moved almost as fast as the computer industry did. A radio from 1920 and a radio from 1940 are as radically different from each other as a Commodore PET is from my Pentium III.

    And, of course, a TV set is just a radio with a few more tubes. And, like one is wont to say about a computer from twenty years ago compared to one now, man oh man, were they built to last. One of my favorites is a bakelite Admiral from 1959-1960. The chassis is entirely box-section copper, polished to a high gloss at the factory. They were artistic both inside and out.

    Another old TV set that I have is a 1955 RCA color TV set. One of the *very* first color TV sets ever made, the picture tube is steel with a round glass face bonded to it. Very neat. Very bad picture, but that was the technology of the day.

    There's nothing like watching I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners on a period TV set. Collecting antique radios is more popular, but I'm a more visual person, and so I like the old TV sets.

    I'm not the only one, either: here in Toronto, Moses Znaimer who owns CityTV, MuchMusic, Bravo, etc... also has the MZTV museum - the Moses Znaimer TV collection. He's got some very beautiful old sets in the collection, many of which I've seen. The curator is Ian Baird, a descendant of John Logie Baird, the inventor of television. He happily took me around the museum's private areas to show me the collection's rarer pieces.

    Check out MZTV's website [mztv.com] for more info!

  • I might be stupid on this but wouldn't the easiest way to do this be to set up a router as the machine that connects to the cells? it would allow for 16 separate connections to 16 separate files at whatever rate they connect at AND would work more efficiently than having to split the data then recombobulate it in the right order... of course, I'm no brain

  • well, if you used a set of external anteni on the trunk, and sealed the cells in some sort of metal box(to prevent those pesky EMs from escaping) you could effectively eliminate the risk. The intensity of the field drops inverse exponentially with distance so one phone at one foot is only slightly less EM field than 10 phones at 3 feet so if you put the phones in your trunk, (I'll guess 6 feet) it'll be far less EM field than one next to your ear...

    but hey, I'm just a physicist

  • no (Score:1)

    by nomadic ( 141991 )
    You know, I'm not anti-technology, but even I recognize there's a line that shouldn't really be crossed. I think this crosses it. Why on earth do you need access in your car? Access from home and work and cell phone isn't enough? Is it that bad that you might spend an hour or so a day without constant net access? OH NO I'M NOT RECEIVING TCP PACKETS IN SOME FORM, THE PAIN! gah.
  • I wish I had some useful advice on how to do this, but I have no idea. I wanted to let you know it hurts my brain to contemplate where to begin attacking this problem. Then again, I'm someone who sometimes has difficulty using windows dialup programs.

  • Re: A Beowulf cluster of TVs? (Score:3)

    by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:43AM (#970281) Homepage

    What'll be next, a Beowulf cluster of TVs?

    Too late. I've already done it.

    I collect early TV sets, mostly from the 1950s. Every year, I host Academy Awards and Emmies parties at my house. A bunch of my friends come over, and we watch the show on a collection of about 12 1950s-1960s vintage TV sets.

    Oh yeah, and in the middle of all of that is my Sony Trinitron.

    Lemme tell you, twelve early TV sets, some with as many as 44 tubes, makes a hell of a lot of heat and uses a shitload of power. Extension cords, coaxial cable, RF distribution amplifiers and splitters, crank the air conditioner...

    Sadly, I don't yet have a Philco Predicta, so it's not all it's cracked up to be. If ya got one, working or not, as long as it wasn't stored underwater or something, I'll buy it off ya.

  • I mean.. driving along, and downloading pr0n and mp3s at 150k/sec at the same time?

    I can see the news report now: "In other news, a local man was killed in a one-car accident, when he apparently lost control of his vechicle, and crashed it into a tree. Sources at the scene report that the man's body had only one hand on the steering wheel.."
  • >What'll be next, a Beowulf cluster of TVs?

    They've had that for years!
    I'm sure you've seen those big matrices of TVs,
    with each individual TV displaying a segment of
    the picture to make one large image...

    --K


    =-=-=
  • No I don't want to install shockwave, thank you very much. Bah.

    -- Greg
  • Looks like CmdrTaco has been Trolled =D. This story is megaold. Dementia perhaps? Anyway, seems like slashdot is losing it's dynamic nature and becoming an institution. Rob, if you are reading, you really should start thinking something new. World these days changes sooo quick. Don't let the dollars fool you, put those marvellous brains of yours to work again. Slashdot is crumbling...

  • Hrm? (Score:1)

    by boinger ( 4618 )
    you could do well with this to have a web server and a web cam serving up images for various purposes.

    For instance, umm, okay, I'm not sure how that's useful.

    But it's neat anyway. so there.

  • Look on the bright side: your home access is probably nowhere near as expensive, unless you've got some ridiculous ISP which charges by the minute (i.e. more than $1 per minute).
    --
  • Being a ~$300,000 car, it's made for someone who can afford to pay someone to drive them around. The electronics are all mostly in the back seat and are designed for the passengers. The driver doesn't have anything special. He's there to drive.
  • That base car (a Brabus) will give you more orgasmic bliss than a Viper will ever come close to. Believe it or not, but Brabus takes those Mercedes and, as Road and Track put it, "[Brabus doesn't] merely tweak cars, they appear to rebuild them." I doubt you'll find that sedan with any less than ~450 bhp. They build V12s with up to 599 bhp and have had three of their automobiles appointed "The Fastest Four-Door Sedan in the World," "The Fastest Saloon in the World" (more commonly known as a station wagon) and "The Fastest Off Road Car in the World" by Guinness Book of Records. Not only do they have awesome power and go upwards of 205 mph (remember, that's a four door, street legal sedan), they have all the amenities you could want and a smooth ride. I guarantee it would give you a much better orgasm driving one of these than a Viper.
  • By the time one can implement this cost-effectively, a newer technology with 40 times the bandwidth will be in place.

    Well, to be fair, whatever new technology comes along, these megacar dudes have their technology to make it 16 times faster. Their main acheivement is in the multiplexing.

    Fat cat early adoptors will always be ready to pay extra to be ahead of the crowd.

    Regards, Ralph.

  • Do a quick search Taco before posting on your OWN site!

    2 MegaCar: Wireless Linux and Internet on the Road by CmdrTaco on Tuesday March 16, @09:00AM EDT 47

    Some time ago this appeared.

    This repitition is getting tedious.
    Al.
  • Of course GMS also offers HSCSD (high speed circuit switched data), which isn't all that high speed but works with the same principle. GPRS, (which really is more part of GMS than anything else) similarly allocates different amounts of bandwidth to the user, using a weird circuit/packet oriented hybrid for radio link allocation. To the user it should look like a regular packet switched network.
    What _Stryker mentioned about the limitations of 3G (Third Generation systems, as opposed to IS-95 and GMS which are second generation) are true, and a further limitation is that the total capacity of a cell hasn't magically multiplied. As long as there are any normal users on it sharing the bandwidth with you, kiss your super-duper speeds goodbye, this goes equally for GRPS, HSCSD and UMTS. The 2Mbps also implies fairly shabby coding, as soon as you start demanding reasonable bit error rates your data rate drops as more redundancy shares the same bandwidth with the information.
  • Wouldn't want to disappoint you, but all over Europe UMTS licenses are being assigned, and deployment will begin soon.
    Those sweetums will have 1.5 Mbps bandwidth...
  • Hmmm.... 16 Simultaneous cell phones? What kind of phone bill would that produce?
    And just imagine the kind of bills it would rack up if it had been done with Iridium :).
    - After all, you wouldn't have that capacity if you weren't planning on using it. Wouldn't it just be as well to get a physical inet hookup :-).

  • This seems more useful as a high end device for hired or chauffered cars, for busy people.

    Consider a) arriving off the plane in a foreign country, and catching up with news and execs back home via. videoconferencing/etc in the car. b) being entertained with with it on medium distance business trips (

  • Re:Stale (Score:3)

    by jslag ( 21657 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:46AM (#970296)
    This is VERY stale info. . .the damn thing uses CDPD for christ's sake

    Right, where as the current standard for wireless data in the US is... oh, wait... still CDPD (or PPP over CDMA / TDMA, which is worse).

    ----------------

  • Headache (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wouldn't 16 cell phones cause a little bit of a headache if strapped to your head?
  • I read this on Tomshardware at least a year and a half ago, and I thought it was silly then, too.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • yep: http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /03/16/1227258.shtml [slashdot.org] but who cares? that guys voice on the flash is worth hearing again.
  • Is 150kbit/sec really that cool in this case? I am reminded of the dial-up modem "shotgun" technology sold by vendors such as Diamond. These shotgun modems basically allowed you to use two modems simultaneously to achieve double the bandwidth that you would with a single modem. So presumably instead of 56k you'd get 112k. I have a friend who tried these shotgun modems out and to his dismay, his latency had not decreased.
    I suspect that latency will be quite high with these Beowulf cell phones (or whatever you want to call them). And to me, low latency is nearly as important as high bandwidth (which is why I've never been intrigued by some of these satellite internet solutions).
  • If anybody cares, kimble (security guy) is the one who owns this car.
    If you don't mind the flash check out his site it has some rather funny flash animations up.
    kimble.org [kimble.org]

    nerdfarm.org [nerdfarm.org]
  • This is what Multilink PPP is for. Instead of having a mess of redundant links, with some hideously complex routing daemon to sort through the wreckage, you get a mess of redundant links all acting as one.

    This is fairly standard stuff, and is supported by any ISP who is able to provide 128k (dual-channel) ISDN access (which the includes the vast majority of all providers, whether they admit it, or not).

    Using MPPP, latency actually goes *down*. Instead of sending a 1500 byte packet, and having to wait for the entire thing to be sent in a serial fashion (one byte at a time), it gets split up into much smaller packets which are each sent in parallel. So, if you've got two active links running at the same speed, each one will transfer 750 bytes of that 1500 byte packet. With four links up, that drops to 375, and so on.

    This packet-splitting happens with anything that IP can encapsulate (or, I suppose, anything that PPP can), and so would work fine for online games.

    That said, latency would perhaps still be too high - transmission delays, telco delays, and such - but that's because of the physical medium (a cell phone and the requisite network), *not* the increasingly-efficient network stack.
  • No big deal, I actually write SMS messages (with a phone) while driving.. Here in my hometown (in Finland) a truck driver caused an accident a while ago as he was typing an SMS message while driving.. However, it's not illegal to use a cell phone here while driving.

  • I already have a cell phone that does 64Kbps by itself... I guess I would have a wireless T-1 if I had 16 of these. I also have another cell phone that does real HTML, not the fake stuff.

    Within a few years, with the next generation cell phones comming out, we should be able to get about 2.5Mbps pushed through a cell phone using W-CDMA. Using CDMA2000, it should be able to get over 512Kbps.

  • HDR looks like a far better proposition.

    Being developed by Qualcomm, just part of what HDR offers:

    • Air link provides up to 2.4 Mbps in a dedicated 1.25 MHz channel
    • Packet data design results in greatest spectral efficiency
    • Flexible, IP-based architecture enables multiple implementation methods
    • Compatible with existing CDMA Networks

    More here: http://www.qualcomm.com/hdr/about.html [qualcomm.com]

    PoC

  • Haven't tried WAP, but I'm still having a lot of fun with this [nokia.com] gizmo (also affectionately known as The Brick).

    A friend sent me a link to a VNC client [mgroeber.de] for it, which is amazingly cool for a 29k download!
    You still get HTTP, email and Telnet. There are newer models around at the moment, so there are some pretty good deals floating around at the moment (in the UK, certainly).


  • Moses Znaimer scares me. He has too much power, dealt to him by the CRTC. The CRTC also scares me. Moreso than MZ.

    With the exceptions of CBC and CTV, he controls any aspect of our television pop culture that the Americans don't. Other than these 2 'networks' (and local cable stations), you'd be hard pressed to find Canadian TV that doesn't have his name in the credits, usually as Executive Producer.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This is a repeat-- link below. (Score:4)

    by raygundan ( 16760 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:51AM (#970309) Homepage
    Here [slashdot.org] is the link to the previous (nearly identical) article on Slashdot from a long time ago.
  • I thought all these jackasses yacking away on their cell phone was bad enough, now they're gonna be using 16 phones at once...

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:52AM (#970311)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • NT server eh? (Score:3)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:53AM (#970312) Homepage Journal
    Nice car, but according to the diagram it runs NT server!
    I'd hate to see it... "crash".
  • Does not mean it's really cool.

    I have two words for you:

    eye strain

    I don't know about anyone else out there, but I have a really hard time reading a book or working on a laptop in a car while it's moving. I mean, I can do it; I just cannot do it for long. I doubt anyone else will really be that keen on actually trying to do work or whatever in their car.

    Imagine trying to code or read your favorite sites while someone is agitating your monitor. First, you get annoyed. Then you get a headache. That car better have some *serious* suspension.

    So if the passengers want to surf the web, grab mp3s or porn or whatever, that's fine. Everybody knows what they like and what they like to do.

    The driver, however, should be doing one thing. That's right: driving. Need to consult a map, listen to music? That's all cool. But don't give me this crap about driving and surfing at the same time. That's just irresponsible. Yes, just like driving and drinking, driving and talking on a cell phone, driving and applying makeup, driving and reading a book, and so on.



    Nothing can possiblai go wrong. Er...possibly go wrong.
    Strange, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong.
  • You mean I have to watch stupid people with 16 phones to their heads as they're driving down the highway?

    No. But the same idiots who think they can safely drive while dialing a telephone in freeway traffic will be the same idiots who will be trying to type while they drive. Now, that's a scary thought, but entirely within the realm of realistic thinking.

    I commute 3 hours every day, and I get to watch people doing crossword puzzles in the newspaper as they drive! (No kidding. I've seen that once.)

    More commonly, I see people reading the paper or a magazine, or putting on lipstick (guys too!), or shaving, or combing their hair or... Not to mention the thousands of cars I see every day where the driver is on the phone. Every day, I see someone trying to write down a telephone number or something with one hand as they drive.

    And ya know what? I drive a 1976 Dodge Ram. It's big, it's heavy, and it's entirely made of steel.

    The 4,500lb mass of my vehicle wins over stupidity of the driver in the opposing vehicle. Every time.

    Take that, ya silly little RAV-4. You, idiot in the CRX, I'm coming for you next...

  • As someone who works with the standardization of 3rd generation mobile systems (specifically I am a 3GPP delegate [3GPP website] [3gpp.org]), I can tell you that those speeds will only be available for indoor type connections, like inside the lobby of a hotel or the waiting area in a train station. The speeds decrease as you move to pedestrian, moving car, train, etc.
    ---
  • Kimble [kimble.org] also (apparently) posted to the previous article [slashdot.org] (at the bottom). The first MegaCar was built for him.

  • ISP's supporting this? (Score:4)

    by bgarcia ( 33222 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:55AM (#970317) Homepage Journal
    Even if you can afford this car, don't you also need an ISP who has the hardware/software to multiplex the 16 separate phone connections back into a single connection?

    I didn't see this part of the project discussed at Tom's Hardware. I would think that this would be the major stumbling block.

  • I thought I had it bad trying to look in the rear view mirror when I had someone in the back seat. Try seeing anything with a 19" monitor in the way!
    --
  • Hell, my home itself is probably less expensive than the car.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again; If I'm payin' 100k+ for a car it will have a prancing pony on it.

  • Can you imagine the EM radiation emanating from that car?

    That setup can't possibly be good for anyone - least of all the driver.

    --

  • Re:Good grief... another stupid idea (Score:3)

    by zorgon ( 66258 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @11:19AM (#970321) Homepage Journal
    ...really creative and unique, but WHY?

    Well, I hate to say it, but if you have to ask that question, you're not a hacker.
    What was itMaster Y0d4 said in TESB?

    Do. Or do not. There is no why.

    (or was that try)

  • ... MegaWeapon [geocities.com]!!!!

    Your Working Boy,
  • Hate the NT server, hate the Flash 4 garbage, hate not seeing what kind of car they put this in.

    Skip the bs and show me how to turn my pickup into an O.S.S. - Open Source Sled.
  • The mega car is the invention of a hacker turied somewhat playboy (kimble) he has alot more pictures of the car up at his main site http://www.kimble.org
  • Yes I remember this story. Isn't there something newsworthy to post today?
  • How closed minded you are for being a fellow slashdotter. Eventually we won't have to drive our cars; they'll be vessels that take us where we want to go and we can do what we wish whilst on them. When that happens we will be computing thanks to forward thinking from people like the megacar crew.
    I tend to think that you're an older person who can't do more than one thing at a time. I have been car computing safely for years now. Here's the link that demonstrates this:
    My Jetta with GPS, DVD, MP3, and Heads up Display [hgss.com]
    I think you need to be a little more open minded about things. I'm not saying everyone can drivecompute, but some of us certainly can and have with no problems.
  • I thought that most didn't support that. I thought that I mentioned an "unless," oh well, at any rate, it is time for me to change isp's.
  • I would think that the driver would have a video screen to replace the rearview mirror. Have a camera pointed to the rear of the car and have a display in drivers view. Viola!

    -CB



    Here's my attempt at a car computer: mp3 jetta [hgss.com]
  • That is because you are an idiot! Why would you do this? Go to hell!
  • Cancer kills. My grandfather died of cancer but I didn't find it funny. I wanted to kill the black bastard first. This leads to my major point. As you might know me from TRoLLaXoR's wonderful stories, I am good ol' ERRoR 808. Although, what you might not know about me is that I am a virgin. You see TRoLLaXoR's stories usually deal with gratuiutous gay sex. But they are just stories, and I have been saving myself for that special someone. But alas!! I have given up that dream. I am now auctioning off my virginity on ebay. That's right, you can have my clean, shaven, and pure body. Here is the link! Now, we gotta set some ground rules first, buddies. Most importantly, NO dirty kikes or hairy deigos are allowed to vote. Hell, even if you're clean and shaved you still can't vote. But don't get me wrong here. I'm not a racist, because I ENCOURAGE niggers to bid. I'll even give them a $50 credit. It's all about the affirmative action, kids! There's one thing I haven't told you. Well, I don't know what most people consider being a virgin is, but I consider it not ever having sex WILLINGLY. I feel this way because when I was a small boy, my favorite nun raped me with a strap-on. It might have been wet, messy, satisfying, and gratuitous but by no means was it consciously willing. OK folks, I gotta go, but remember to act fast! There's no telling when ebay might shut this gem down. If they do you can still contact me and we'll do business.

  • Hmmmmmm.....a stealth car, eh?

    OK, if I ever have that much money, I'll take it under consideration. I may stand corrected.

    But I don't want all the wiring in the back!

  • How closed minded you are for being a fellow slashdotter. Eventually we won't have to drive our cars; they'll be vessels that take us where we want to go and we can do what we wish whilst on them. When that happens we will be computing thanks to forward thinking from people like the megacar crew.

    Nah, I think people enjoy driving too much for it ever to go away.

    Further, these "vessels" better at least segregate me from all the dregs of society. Speaking as one who once got scabies from a family of dirty people on a Toronto subway, I make enough money to afford a car. If the price of cars and fuel or highway congestion are inflated too much by idiotic tree-hugger ideals, rather than take transit, I'll just move to somewhere where I don't have to share a confined space with the city's effluence. And, as I move, I'll take my skills and my disposeable income with me.

    I tend to think that you're an older person who can't do more than one thing at a time.

    Nope. I'm 26 years old; I've been on the Internet since 1988. (Remember ARPANET? This was long before Spry Mosaic came out, and a full 5 years before Yahoo registered their domain name.) And if you can judge how much I can do at once based on how many applications are currently open on my desktop, there are 10 currently going on my machine.

    I have been car computing safely for years now. Here's the link that demonstrates this: My Jetta with GPS, DVD, MP3, and Heads up Display

    Wow! That's really cool. Yeah, you can watch a DVD while you drive. I hope you've at least had enough sense to set it up so that only the passengers get to watch the movies.

    MP3s in the car are great; keep the volume low enough that you can hear the siren of the fire truck coming at you. And don't get distracted by choosing the tunes as you drive.

    Ya know, for all your apparent engineering and hacking skills, I would have thought you'd have had enough taste to do this in a real car.

    I think you need to be a little more open minded about things. I'm not saying everyone can drivecompute, but some of us certainly can and have with no problems.

    Sure. Right.

    You probably spend a lot of time driving, and I do too. I'm in a familiar place, surrounded by familiar objects. I know where all the controls are, I know the dimensions of my vehicle, and I have the seat adjusted comfortably. I am at piece. I am in a comfortable space.

    Familiarity breeds contempt. By being too comfortable, you start to forget that you're in a machine, that you're hurtling down the road at speeds sure to be deadly to your frail body. You are in mortal danger.

    Now, having said that, I'm not advocating that everyone drive really slowly in the fast lane. That's sure to cause even more accidents as people try to swerve around you.

    What people have to realize is that driving is a complex task, and it should take all your concentration. How complex is it? Well, let's keep in mind that the US Army, among other organizations, have been trying to build a vehicle that can drive on its own. And they've met with only very limited success.

    My driving record is flawless. Zero accidents, zero speeding tickets, zero other moving violations. (Parking tickets are another matter.) I've got an air brake license, which allows me to drive up to 15 tons with air brakes. I used to have to go out on the road, driving large loads of professional audio, video and TV production equipment across the country, setting it up, working the show, then driving back. I've logged over 360,000 miles in diverse cities and massively different driving conditions. And I have yet to get a speeding ticket.

    As the astute will note, my very nickname is evidence of one of my passions: "BigBlockMopar" refers to any member of the family of Chrysler-built "big-block" V8 engines. Chysler big-block engines were available from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, in displacements from 361 to 440 cubic inches. (For sake of reference, 440 cubic inches = 7.2L. Compare that to a Honda Civic's 1.5L engine.)

    I own several cars, including a CASCAR Enduro class racecar. It's not streetable; I enjoy towing it out to Mosport and doing laps at 95+ MPH. In full race conditions.

    83% of all drivers think they're better than average (source: California DMV). Both my insurance company and I agree that I am truly a skilled driver. And the reason? I concentrate on the road.

    The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration agrees with me: cellphones are dangerous when you're driving [dot.gov]. Further, check out this link [cars.com]. Talking on the cellphone while you drive increases your chances of having an accident 400 times. That's worse than being drunk to twice the legal limit (0.16% B.A.C.). I can't imagine what the risks of driving and computing must be - I'll wait until I get home, rather than try it behind the wheel... My daily driver is a 4,500lb 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID (6.6L) big-block V8. I only hope that when you hit me, my truck kills you.

  • I didn't say it was an injustice. Perhaps I shouldn't have called it a "repeat"... my apologies if the post came off like a "how dare slashdot post an old article!" post. I thought people would be curious to see the older article and the comments that people posted. Why not have twice the info?
  • Moses Znaimer scares me. He has too much power, dealt to him by the CRTC. The CRTC also scares me. Moreso than MZ.

    Nah, Moses is a cool guy. I've met him several times, both because of the fact that I used to work in the TV business, but also because of our shared interest in antique TV sets. A few years ago, he dropped in to borrow a TV set from my collection for an exhibit at the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. We sat back, cracked open a beer and had a great time together.

    Moses is a hardass, like you'd expect someone who turned an ailing TV station (Citytv in 1971) into a world-renouned media empire. And while he is out there for ratings and profit, he's also very conscious of history, of culture, of people.

    But, like most people who know Moses personally say, "I just wish he'd come out of the closet". At the very least, he'd finally get a good hairdo.

    The really scary thing is the taxpayer funded mediocrity and waste of the CBC.

  • ok. For the record, I humbly apologize.

    Yesterday was quite a stressful one, and I snapped at way too many people. Sorry about that.

  • over here [slashdot.org]. Okay, so it's a little bit old, but at least no one remembers.

  • Re:This is a repeat-- link below. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Bah, since when have the /. authors actually read their own site? Usually, someone else posts it the second time, though...

    Nice work, Rob!

  • CDPD? (Score:1)

    by gavinhall ( 33 )
    Posted by 11223:

    Is it just me, or is that roughly the same speed as CDPD technology, only a whole lot more expensive? People need to learn how to spend their money, like giving it to me if they have nothing better to do with it.
  • Thanks for reporting this grave injustice. How could anyone be so low as to post an article twice? And within 4 months of each other! If you ask me, slashdot just isn't delivering the journalistic fortitude that they advertise. I think I'm going to ask for my money back.

  • This site answers the age-old question: "What do you get when you cross someone with too much time (i.e., a Silicon Valley engineer-cum-internet-startup) with someone with too much money (i.e., a Silicon Valley engineer-cum-internet-startup)?"

    The answer of course is the aforementioned acheivement.
  • "What do you get when the same person posts the same story twice [slashdot.org] one year apart?"

    The answer's simple: A redundant website!

  • ARGH! Why the hell is it that EVERY SINGLE TIME a story accidentally gets reposted someone says Slashdot is dying. This was originally posted over a year ago. Do YOU remember every single thing you said or did last year? Do you do some type of search to make sure you don't repeat jokes or quotes before you say em? NO! Slashdot isn't dying... people just makes mistakes now and then. Sheesh.

  • Honestly, if I had the money to drop on a car like this, I'd go out and buy a Viper and not even care about the internet connection because I'll be too busy driving along in orgasmic bliss.

    Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

  • It gives a whole new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death" doesn't it?

  • Twice the speed of traditional ISDN isn't quake playing speeds?? No, your right, it's quake SERVING speeds...
  • Definitely. Even scarier is there is a laptop case that can mount to the steering wheel and put the laptop in a useable position. *shudder*

    Sorry, don't remember who makes it.

  • You're right, your body would be subject to very large doses of radiation(? like a microwave kinda thing I believe) if you used those 16 cellphones very frequently for internet purposes. So surfing the net could cut down your life expectancy ;)
    Definitely would be safer and faster (and probably cheaper in the long run after those phone bills) to just buy a laptop and pay for a wireless connection through your ISP.
  • While very interesting, this news is VERY old. q1 of 1999. course i still want 1 in my car.
  • i think he was referring to the latency, not the bandwidth
  • That has to be one of the most annoying flash sites I've seen in a long time!

    "MEGACAR!"

    :wq!

  • Wouldn't it be cheaper just to subscribe to wireless access with your local ISP? There are existing wireless systems with pretty good bandwidth that don't require line of sight, and daggon if they don't have to cost less than 16 cell phones.

    On the other hand, it is cool...

    Still, this isn't a quake playing connection, this is a, I'm downloading pictures off webpages connection.
  • sorry to nitpick, but the connection is 150kbit/sec, not 150kbyte/sec. with 150kbit/sec, you will pull about 15kbyte/sec - 18.75kbyte/sec, with some lost due to tcp/ip overhead.

    what's more interesting is how it would handle the loss of one or two cell channels due to poor coverage/signal quality.

    --

  • Kimble [kimble.org] made his first /. with his excellent personal site with a nasty flash cartoon of Bill Gates and his destruction. Over time we've seen him and his company [dataprotect.com] flashed all over /. on a number of occasions. Also (If i'm not mistaken), he used to be a /. user not too long ago. Excellent work I should say and wish him the best. Everthing seems to be going mobile nowdays, you can find almost anything that has been made mobile enabled. Take for instance ordering pizza [wlnfo.com] on a mobile phone! Cool stuff. Wap is the way to go! Enjoy.
    --
  • Nope. None of the wireless providers I've talked to support mobile use of wireless networking--most require a stationary antenna for the implementation and then small antennas on each device which can be mobile within a very small area (for driving purposes).

    Further, wireless internet tends to require LOS line of sight to a tower.
  • Just wait for 3rd generation. Of course, 150kbit/sec connections are cool, but look at the cost of running 16 cell phones simultaneously!

    Check out Nokia's 3rd Generation Site [nokia.com]. Although I can't find the link off hand, I remember reading that its net access should be able to handle about 2.5 megabits/second, which is great for a cellphone or laptop/palmtop connected to it!

    According to this site, we can expect to start seeing this around 2001/2002.
  • All you need is multilink PPP support from your ISP. Most ISPs that support ISDN will support this since its typically what's used to aggregate ISDN channels. Although you may have to whine a little to get it enabled for an analog dialup account or pay extra for the feature if its not enabled by default.

    I've done it before to the dialup server at work, although I've never had a machine with more than two modems going at once. I just wish I could get a hotel room when I'm on the road with three lines -- I'd lug along an external in my laptop case and enjoy ~60Kbps instead of the ~20 I end up getting.
  • [i]really creative and unique, but WHY? [/i]

    Are you serious, what if Robert Moog or Steve Wozniak thought like that? The only problem I see is that slashdot has too few articles for its huge readership leaving tens of thousands of cynics concentrated on a couple projects when they should be out there poo-pooing the entire world.
  • Yeah, it's a fat pipe, but not the kind that one would play games on due to the extremely high latency that such a system would entail. Each one of those lines has a nice separate address, nice separate lag. Supposing that you want to be treated as one IP, you need a server on the other side that supports that. Otherwise, you have a lot of small pipes. TCP/IP was built for systems that do this sort of stuff, but major bogging would kill this for any kind of gaming.

  • Forget a beowulf Cluster (Score:5)

    by Life Blood ( 100124 ) on Wednesday June 28, 2000 @10:38AM (#970396) Homepage

    Can it turboboost?

    I'm downloading your porn for you now, Michael

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