h a l f b a k e r yIt's as much a hovercraft as a pancake is a waffle.
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Basically, this is a vending machine with a build in computer,
seat, keyboard and trackball that let's you connect to the
internet, it has usb ports so you can save and upload files via
flash drives, it accepts cash and credit cards to buy time for
using the internet.
if the time is about
the expire it well let you know via and
small alarm and a message on the scree, if the time expires
the machine would block any keyboard, trackball and usb
input, and if the user doesn't put any money in the machine
after a minute, the machine would delete all the cookies in
case if the user was logged on a website.
//vending machines hooked up to the internet//
http://www.cs.cmu.e...ke/history_long.txt
[mouseposture, Dec 12 2010]
[link]
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Airports often have these, except for the built-in seat, and I'm not sure about the flash drive. |
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Yeah, I've seen these in several places. They're becoming
less common now that more places provide their Fi by Wi. |
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I did think, fleetingly, that this was going to be a vending
machine which you could use remotely, for example to give a
cup of coffee to a random person a train station, or to pay
for a dose of polio vaccine and have it dispensed directly
into the hands of a needy child. |
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Yeah, I've seen these in a couple of airports (Heathrow was one) and in a science center in Kansas City. They didn't work well, as I recall, even at the time. They seemed old and out of date, and that was over six years ago. |
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Nowadays, folks who want to compute ususally carry a laptop with wireless. Or a smartphone. |
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If you are in a strange town in America and need internet computing, toddle on over to a public library and get it free (and the setup is much as described in this idea). Or in any country find an internet cafe and pay for it. |
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I recall reading that one of the early oddities of the internet was that there were some vending machines hooked up to the internet. Apparently there was a soft-drink machine you could access, and, if you worked fast after some poor schlub put his money in, choose the drink flavor to be dispensed. |
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Thanks, [mouseposture]. It is good to get my story straight. |
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