The one-night-stand, er, “Spontaneous Romance” pack. sold in bar bathroom vending machines:
A little pack w/ Condoms (obviously)
maybe a little KY tube
one of those “toothbrush” type things that’s basically a little sock that you put on your fingertip and wet (does anyone know what I’m talking about?)
some Alka seltzer morning relief tablets
Something else that I can’t remember right now.
Also the cross country trip cooler replacement ice pack vending machine located in gas stations, rest stops, etc. You could buy a frozen ice pack at the vending machine, paying a deposit on it. throw it in your cooler. Drive 300 miles. Come to the next ice pack vending machine, throw the thawed one in, get a replacement for a small fee. Repeat as required. On the last leg of the trip, get the deposit back with the return of the last pack. I’m picturing a cool machine that would wash the deposited pack and re-freeze it, waiting for the next person with a cooler.
It was to combine two existing things - Photo slide show applications and Virtual reality.
It was an application that would dynamically create a gallery through which you could travel using the typical computer game control method. On every wall would be your photos.
The gallery would also contain sculptures and things to make it seem like a real gallery/museum, and the room layout would be entirely dynamic. In other words the software would generate a workable room plan based on the number of pictures you have.
My plan addressed limitations in the size of a single texture that graphics cards of the time could show (by building an overall model of several sections joined together… so that virtually any resolution image could be rendered in the program in full resolution)
When I discussed this with my project tutor he made a point of noting how ambitious the idea was.
Ultimately he was right to. It was far far too ambitious and I never managed to complete it.
My reasons are numerous - laziness, a lack of motivation that was prevailant at the time, lack of time and manpower (your average virtual reality project is done by a sizeable team of people over many months)
eta: It’s something that, Given the amount of intellectual maturing I’ve done since, and if I could find the motivation, I could make succesful now.
That isn’t how it works:
[ul]
[li]Proprietary software is usually very insecure. Secure software is software that has been vetted by as many people as possible. Realistically, that means open-source and, in specific, that means widely-used open-source. That’s why Linux has no successful viruses or worms or trojans. (There are proof-of-concept worms, all of them ancient and all of which rely on ancient bugs.)[/li][li]Machine code isn’t hard to read. It’s merely tedious. All you need is a few reference manuals and a strong tolerance for boredom as you piece together all of the sections.[/li][li]That isn’t how systems are broken, anyway. Systems are broken due to some stupid bug like a buffer overflow, miscommunication between pieces of the system, or some really fundamental problem with the design (like how all DVD-playing software has to contain the key to decrypt DVDs, and by looking for it in memory while the software is running you’re likely to find it). Breaking it ‘head-on’, like you seem to be imagining, never happens.[/li][/ul]If the world understood this, it would be a better (or less annoying) place.
There was something similar to this in the mini-bar at the hotel I stayed at this weekend. They called it an “Intimacy Kit”:
-two condoms
-two “sanitary wipes” (basically moist towelettes)
-water based lube
-morning after pill*
After helping my buddy install a hitch on his Nitro last night, I had the idea this morning of a spring loaded “coiler”, if you will. It would be similar in operation to those extension cords mounted from the roof of wood shops, so you only bring out as much as you need, and it stays neatly tucked away (and out of sight) when not in use.
*Just kidding about that last one.
From ages past (now some companies have already done versions of these ideas):
Pre-measured peanut butter sticks, like sticks of butter, for baking.
An alarm clock that displays a random three-digit number on its face when it goes off. That number must be entered into a keypad on the top to turn the alarm off. It ensures that your eyes have to be open before you can turn off the alarm.
In the mid-eighties, I was trying to figure out how Speak’N’Spell technology worked. My idea was to combine it with a user-programmable set of instructions so people (mainly business people who had to visit lots of clients, etc.) could enter in directions for later playback. Then digital voice recorders started coming out, and I said damn. Then I started working with handheld GPS devices in college wayyyy before automotive navigation, and once again wished I’d been a bit more precocious as a teenager.
for cat lovers: a collar with a bow tie. For the aristocratic cat, and the owner who appreciates felines with good style.
Picture the classic black-and-white ‘tuxedo’ cat (black body, white chest) with a little black bow tie. Can you say “aww…cuuuuuute”?
Liquid crystal tattoo ink that can be toggled off and on. Turn it on and you can be the Illustrated Man (or Woman) if you so desire. Turn it off and you can go to work at the most uptight employer in town (or home to the parents) wearing a short sleeve shirt and no one would be the wiser.
A variation of this idea is tattoo ink that’s erasable, so that if when a few years pass by you get that “What was I thinking?” feeling or your tattoo has smudged into a mess, you can just erase it without expensive laser surgery.
I haven’t implemented this because, well, I have no idea how, or if it’s even possible.
