Especially when it comes to voting for 'Rats.
Posted on 07/08/2004 7:51:18 PM PDT by Vision Thing
Burlingame, CA, Jul. 8 (UPI) -- Application for a U.S. patent has been filed by a California man for his system that allows the dead to speak from their tombs, New Scientist reported Thursday.
Robert Barrows of Burlingame has devised a hollow headstone fitted with a flat LCD touch screen. It also houses a computer with a hard disc or microchip memory that allows the deceased to speak from the grave through a video message.
The tombstone would draw its electricity from the cemetery's lighting system, and as a civil touch, comes with wireless headphones so as not to disturb others.
If his patent is granted, Barrows says he would encourage people to leave a parting video with their lawyer when making out a will.
Gary Collison, professor of American studies at Pennsylvania State University in Pittsburgh, thinks video tombstones are a natural progression from outsize monumental stonework.
"Cemeteries are places where people try to outdo each other," he said. "This would certainly be a new way to do that."
Copyright 2004 United Press International
I might as well forget about that one...
This very day, I thought about vehicles being equipped like EZ Pass tollbooths, except able to scan a bar code when involved in an accident. This would end "Hit and Run."
Of course, it would take a law to eventually phase in the device. Maybe it could be made small enough to reside on a pedestrian's cell phone.
Then I started thinking about the film "Minority Report," where one's movements through town are constantly eye-scanned, so I put the idea on hold.
My brother and I thought of this idea about 10 years ago. Too bad we were both too lazy to do anything about it.
Especially when it comes to voting for 'Rats.
It sounds like you have ideas for inventions. I must offer some advice to you: Before you disclose an idea to the general public, such as the Free Republic, you should first document them, research their patentability, and then file a patent application for them. After you do these tasks, you can, and should, begin speaking freely about them publically. That's what the inventor in this article did.
By telling us about your idea here in public, you may have prevented yourself or anyone else from being able to get a patent on it. But something tells me this will be okay for your current idea. Although this one may be lost, you're probably going to think of several more. That's why I wanted to give you this advice now to prepare you for the future.
Have fun inventing new stuff!
Yup. It's a lot of work to invent and patent something. See my post 24 above.
So that's where Daschele's been hiding. I haven't seen much of him lately.
And I'm sure he's very disappointed, too.
I am sorry for your loss.
I think it's creepy too. I've been doing genealogy tracking a genetic flaw. It's creepy enough when you do a google search and come up with photo's of your dead relatives.
There was an episode of Max Headroom (in the late '80s) where a company had this service. Also the (disgusting) 1995 movie "Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead" had a company that interviewed dying people so they could record individualized pieces of advice to their surviving relatives facing different standard situations.
"Ah did not have sexual relations with that woman...or that woman..or that one. Wait a minute? Is Hillary dead by now? Hot Dayam! I nailed all those babes. Uh, huh. It was me and ah really enjoyed getting to know the personal side of soooo many of mah constituents..."
I remember the first time I saw an Iranian cemetery, with photos of the dead under glass. I thought it was strange, morbid, ghoulish; but I was mesmerised, looking at the pictures (many of them young). Later, I discovered that Russians sometimes memorialise their dead in the same way. For someone whose forebears are all Catholic (which religion forbids all "frivolous" decorations on monuments) or C of E (think "stuffy") it was quite an eye-opener.
In Afghanistan many are the graves marked only with a stick of wood. Without even the name of the decedent written upon it. If someone is wealthy, they might have a rude pole with a flag bearing a Koranic verse. Every nation, it seems, marks death its own way; except in the former-colonial bits of the Anglosphere we have a little of everything.
I think leaving a video is a good idea, for the family, but maybe the graveyard is not the place for it. To put a more positive spin on it, think of the picture that Harry Potter has of his parents. (if you've read the books or seen the movies). JK Rowling got the loss of a parent feeling exactly right, perhaps because she had experienced that herself.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Won't matter as soon as somebody starts offering the 3-D hologram tombstone..
I knew somebody would post a scary cemetery picture...
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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