Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Faux progress odometer

A reassuring show of progress when caught in traffic
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When your vehicle is, for a temporary period of time, of unknown duration, stationary on the road, which it is originally intended to traverse in an extremely short period of time, due to there being reasons beyond your control, due to the prolific number of persons in similiar vehicles, intending to go their diverse ways, being in close geographical proximity and therefore unable to move their said vehicles in the manner in which the vehicle, provided with an internal combustion engine of sufficient power able to accelerate the said vehicle and occupants thereof to insanely high speeds in ridiculously small interval of time, but unable to move other than in small increments of space in long intervals of time, and the occupants and the driver of the said vehicle experiencing extreme unhappiness due to the very slow progress of the said vehicle and occupants over the terrain on which they are for the time confined, this device alleviates their frustration, by rotating, by clandestine means, the numbers on the dial of the instrument which registers the progress of the said vehicle over the road, the odometer, so that the said instrument registers a false amount of progress regarding the distance traversed mainly in order to reassure the occupants of the said almost stationary vehicle that some progress is being made, when in reality it is not.

The resulting inaccuracy is made up when the traffic jam dissolves and the vehicle goes at its normal speed, by the odometer revolving at a reduced rate.

The speedometer always remains accurate.

***

The following is an explanation of the above idea, but does not form a part of it:

While using a browser integrated with the operating system sold by a famous software company I saw a black bar at the bottom, showing progress in loading the page, progressing regularly, although the lights on the modem showed that the activity on the line was naught. This idea extends the idea of that faux progress bar to another item of common use.

neelandan, Oct 17 2008

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       So, when unable to move with sufficient of power speeds for the time registering the project of the vehicle by clandestine distance instruments, the confined device dissolves the unhappiness of the occupants and their small combustions? When in reality the odometer alleviates the rotating dial?
mylodon, Oct 17 2008
  

       The verbosity of the primary paragraph construction block or segment being known as a sentence, has surprised the audience comprising myself and various other geographically disparate individuals who are members or at least casual readers of the website situated at www.halfbakery.com, to such an extent that whilst we will of course attempt to ape, honour, pay tribute to or otherwise pastiche your style of concept communication, we will I fear be unable to match the sheer volume of text and information contained between the first capital and the final period.   

       The idea is both interesting and halfbaked.
wagster, Oct 17 2008
  

       I have been sitting here, refreshing the "recent" page every so often, and I see this idea drop down from the head of the list as other ideas get annotated and so jump to the head of the list, and so presume that maybe the need to think up a sufficiently long sentence is perhaps putting off the halfbakers from annotating on this idea, or maybe they all have text boxes open and are typing away like mad, putting in lots and lots of words with no full stops in between and then probably getting stuck as I almost did, back there just before where I saved the situation by continuing the sentence with an "or maybe" because that is always a good ploy, to join two sentences which are better kept separate but which can be joined together provided the long train of thought does not get broken by taking off on a tangent, but this annotation is just to nudge the idea to the top of the recent list once again.   

       Thanks for reading.
neelandan, Oct 17 2008
  

       //moi gratory salmon//   

       A species of salmon extant in the downunder?   

       //IR will help//   

       I prefer bluetooth.
neelandan, Oct 17 2008
  

       A sentence of such length, with the purpose of obfuscating the fact that the intent is to create something which will lie to you to make you feel good, brings only one possible conclusion...   

       [neelandan]'s a lawyer.
lurch, Oct 17 2008
  

       No, but I had to plough through some legalese recently.
neelandan, Oct 18 2008
  

       Right!
theGem, Oct 18 2008
  

       // I had to plough through some legalese //   

       Eeeewww... you don't want to get that stuff on your hands .....
8th of 7, Oct 18 2008
  

       This would also be useful for a faux hunt. Sometimes it's hard to keep track.
bungston, Oct 20 2008
  
      
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