Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

The Real Hitchhiker's Guide?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Jul 31, 2005 09:05 AM
from the glimpses-of-what's-to-come dept.
Portables Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "The UK's biggest selling newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, has a news story about a UK company that has developed the real version of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the galaxy. It is a kind of portable media player that allows you to travel the world's surface and receive media tailored to who you are, where you are and what you are looking at."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

The Real Hitchhiker's Guide? 25 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Wifi wiki? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:08AM (#13207448)
    What, you mean wikipedia?
    • That's what I was thinking...

      Simply a handheld device (in the formfactor of the old Sharp Wizard PDAs) with a GPRS connection (remember, the real guide took a little while to DL over the subetha), linked to Wikipedia or that version of the guide on the BBC site (although, Wikipedia makes more sense)...

      Of course, even if they made such a thing, they certainly wouldn't get it here to the US.

      However, any smartphone'll be able to read Wikipedia, so it's all a moot point...

      • Re:Wifi wiki? (Score:5, Funny)

        by stoborrobots (577882) on Sunday July 31 2005, @10:57AM (#13207942)
        Simply a handheld device (in the formfactor of the old Sharp Wizard PDAs) with a GPRS connection (remember, the real guide took a little while to DL over the subetha), linked to Wikipedia or that version of the guide on the BBC site (although, Wikipedia makes more sense)...

        Yeah, but could you do it with only two weeks and a $100 budget? [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Wifi wiki? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anthony_dipierro (543308) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:48AM (#13208209) Journal
      That'd be "the hitchiker's guide to things we consider important enough". The actual galaxy contains things such as hotels, bars, pubs, cafes, elementary schools, malls, shops, streets, and bus stops.

  • The hardware is not important (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Realistic_Dragon (655151) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:09AM (#13207451) Homepage
    We have had GPS, PDAs and satellite phones for years, they just need to be tied together to make a 'guide'. More important is the *data* and no one company could possibly generate or manage the quantity required.

    The closest things to the guide we will ever see have been around for a while already - h2g2, wikipedia and the internet as a whole.
    • Yeah, the most important thing is that is has the words "DON'T PANIC" written on the cover.
    • Seriously, I've been waiting for something like this ever since I first picked up a PDA and then learned that wireless networking was possible.

      Sure, we don't have a "Sub-etha-net" yet, but if the world ever gets to the point where some kind of wireless is possible no matter where you are, then this kind of device coupled with something like Wikipedia could easily lead to at least a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Earth".

      It seems to me that, a good chunk of this for the part most could be done today given enoug

  • Yes, but ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ggvaidya (747058) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:12AM (#13207463) Homepage Journal
    ... can it collapse possibilities in alternate universes, destroying the world in every parallel universe simulatenously and preventing the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything from being discovered?

    What do you mean, it's just a portable media player? Pish. I'm waiting for version 2.0.

  • Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)

    by TheHarker (841979) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:14AM (#13207476) Homepage
    ...First off, I don't think the Telegraph is even the biggest selling conservative/rightwing paper in the UK (never mind the UK as a whole). I think someone's PR machine is trying to be resourceful.
    Secondly, Mr Adams and the BBC had already started an earth version of h2g2 [bbc.co.uk] quite a while back.
    • The sun majorly outsells it and guides the average "white van drivers" opinion more then anything else in history. It's porn and news (with a racist-pro Britian-anti Europe biast) in 1.

      • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Zwack (27039)
        Stop Redefining the question... The Daily Telegraph has 900,000 subscribers (roughly, but the Sun claims to have nearer 3,000,000. The original comment was that the Telegraph was not the highest selling newspaper. If you don't count the tabloids then you might be right, but the original comment is quite cleearly wrong.

        Z.

  • And in related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HugePedlar (900427) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:18AM (#13207491) Homepage
    Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6, is filing for bankruptcy after facing a tax audit for 25% of her last financial year's earnings.

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:19AM (#13207496)
    who you are, where you are and what you are looking at.

    Sounds like a less annoying replacement for my social worker.

  • Don't Panic (Score:4, Funny)

    by DigitalDwarf (902246) <Wulfdar.yahoo@com> on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:20AM (#13207500)
    Does it say "Don't Panic" In Bright Friendly Letters on the back?

  • Amusing... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ender_Stonebender (60900) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:22AM (#13207509) Homepage Journal
    I find this amusing, seeing as Douglas Adams had the idea for "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as he was hitchiking through Europe - accompanied by a book called "The Hitchiker's Guide to Europe." [wikipedia.org]

    --Ender

  • Here on earth (Score:5, Funny)

    by xenoxaos (731206) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:26AM (#13207523)
    If it only works here on Earth....It would be relatively easy to make. Whereever you go, it would just repeat, "Mostly harmless."

  • LifeDrive + Wikipedia dump (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ThreeDayMonk (673466) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:27AM (#13207526) Homepage
    I'm sure that you could make a real HHGG substitute with a Palm LifeDrive (or indeed anything with a few gigabytes of storage, a screen, and input) and a dump of Wikipedia. It could even have a conduit to synchronise your offline changes with the master on the internet.

  • Kinda cute ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by threaded (89367) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:27AM (#13207528) Homepage
    Kinda cute, yet when you leave the Earth you'll be a little stuck as it uses GPS to work out where it is.

  • They got things the wrong way round (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spacejock (727523) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:33AM (#13207560) Homepage
    1) Explore the galaxy
    2) Get overwhelmed by it
    3) Write a guide to it
    4) Post a story to Slashdot publicising this amazing guide.

    How can you publicise step 4, when you've yet to cover steps 1-3? Don't these people read Slashdot?

  • Oh, bollocks. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mac Degger (576336) on Sunday July 31 2005, @09:50AM (#13207627) Journal
    I've already got a h2g2: basically my palmpilot loaded with stuff coupled with my cellphone. Hell, actually my cellphone is more of a h2g2 all by itself, seeing as I do google searches on it.

  • Repeated story (Score:3, Informative)

    by ChunKing (513714) on Sunday July 31 2005, @10:21AM (#13207749)


    Haven't we had this story two weeks ago:

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/ 18/1759259&tid=100&tid=193&tid=218 [slashdot.org]

    Or is today's story that the Daily Telegraph has run a story about this gadget?

  • Hitchhiker's Ad to the Galaxy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dachannien (617929) on Sunday July 31 2005, @10:39AM (#13207848)
    And as soon as that company gets bought out by Clear Channel:

    It is a kind of portable media player that allows you to travel the world's surface and receive advertisements tailored to who you are, where you are and what you are looking at.

  • Making this possible (Score:3, Interesting)

    by foo23 (722487) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:17AM (#13208048)
    I am asking myself the following: It would be really nice if this could be made possible by the following small changes in already existing technology:

    1) Make wikipedia entries searcheable by proximity to global coordinates. The data is probably very quickly entered by the community and the search function does not sound difficult to me.

    2) Owners of private wireless access points make them open for everyone ... but all unknown or unidentified users/MAC addresses will _only_ be able to access wikipedia. Nothing else, everything is redirected. This is naturally the more difficult point.

    Has anybody experience with configurations like this? I am interested ...

    • it gives detailed information throughout the whole milky way?

      C'mon, the fictional guide didn't even provide detailed information throughout the milky way. Quote:

      In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it

      has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.