Austria Converts Phone Booths To EV Chargers 161
separsons writes "Telekom Austria, a telecommunications company, aims to convert obsolete public phone booths into electric vehicle recharging stations. The company unveiled its first station yesterday in Vienna and hopes to create 29 more stations by the end of the year. The stations may not be super popular now, but they should be soon; Austria's motor vehicle association says the country will likely have 405,000 electric vehicles on the road by the year 2020."
Something is wrong here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, do you mean Corporate America isn't doing it right?
Re:Something is wrong here... (Score:5, Interesting)
But in future, payment, which is expected to cost a single-digit euro sum, will be via mobile phone, Ametsreiter said.
Ah the irony...I personally welcome new healthy ideas into any market. (Free market with healthy regulation, whatever no political arguments needed here)
Some more info:
Telekom Austria's charging stations will leverage the group’s existing infrastructure: the company currently operates 13,500 telephone booths countrywide, of which 700 are multimedia stations. In the first phase, the focus will be on multimedia stations that offer on-street parking opportunities for electric vehicles. By installing additional charging points, each telephone booth will be able to recharge more than one vehicle at a time. By year-end 2010 a total of 30 charging stations will be on stream. According to a survey by Verkehsclub Osterreich, an association promoting environmentally sustainable, socially just and economically efficient mobility, the number of electric vehicles will significantly increase in Austria over the next few years, with e-scooters exceeding 60,000 and e-cars 115,000 by 2015.
http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33006&email=html [telegeography.com]
Yes they did not go out on a limb to invest in phone booths, but using existing architecture in an economically and environmentally friendly way to address an emerging market, nice.
Re:Something is wrong here... (Score:4, Funny)
I loved the part where the submitter felt the need to clarify that Telekom Austria is a telecommunications company. Now if only he could tell us which country it's in...
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405000 electric cars on the roads in ten years time
Yes, and with such accurate soothsayers in their midst what could possibly o wrong!
Doh!!! (Score:2)
I'm an idiot. Austria != Australia.
Please excuse me, I need caffeine.
Corrected figures: .434%
Population, Austria: 8,336,926 (2008)
Percent of Vehicles compared to population: 55.8%
Number of vehicles: 4.65M
Population growth:
Pop in 2020: 8.7M, est
Cars in 2020: 4.86M, est
Estimated % electric cars, according to their estimate: 8.3%
Even reworked for Austria, that's not actually all that many electric cars.
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I think you missed their point. They were saying that it was an overinflated figure it was the fact that they were providing a figure with too much precision.
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weren't*
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Lack of caffine plus looking for an opportunity to stick the numbers in.
But yeah, 3 significant digits for a guess on the number of a specific type of car 10 years in the future?
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I'm an idiot. Austria != Australia.
Dubya [timesonline.co.uk], it's a dubyous honour to see you here on Slashdot.
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As a customer of Telekom Austria, I can assure you that nothing about that company is quick and efficient. They're the former state-run monopoly.
Re:Something is wrong here... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a customer of Telekom Austria, I can assure you that nothing about that company is quick and efficient. They're the former state-run monopoly.
People love to say this scornfully, but they seem not to realise that if "Telekom $SOME_COUNTRY" _wasn't_ a "former state-run monopoly" then if they didn't live within a hundred metres of their nearest neighbour they wouldn't even _have_ a phone service, and the mere idea of a practically free phone standing on the street would be absolutely laughable.
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True, but the deduction "formerly state-run" -> "extremely inefficient" shouldn't be as unfailing as it is.
Though it has become better, Telekom Austria no longer sends three technicians to install a cable (two watching, one working).
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My experience with Telekom Austria and UPC/iNode has not been substantially different.. and actually not all that different from AT&T/Mindspring in America. So my feeling is that this is entrenched telecoms firms and not formerly state run firms.
I'd love to get 24e (Fiber) but my property management company won't have anything to do with it.
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As a customer of Telekom Austria, I can assure you that nothing about that company is quick and efficient. They're the former state-run monopoly.
People love to say this scornfully, but they seem not to realise that if "Telekom $SOME_COUNTRY" _wasn't_ a "former state-run monopoly" then if they didn't live within a hundred metres of their nearest neighbour they wouldn't even _have_ a phone service, and the mere idea of a practically free phone standing on the street would be absolutely laughable.
While I agree that government regulation (which generally means a monopoly) to ensure cost recovery (and profits) drives universal service since companies can provide service to uneconomic areas by subsidizing the costs; that does not mean it must be a state run monopoly. ATT in the US wasn't one; it didn't even start as a regulated monopoly.
As with any regulation, the idea was to limit competition and thereby ensure profitability. Universal service was one by-product.
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Yes, I'm paying EUR9.50 per month for my all-inclusive iPhone contract :)
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Actually Telecom austria is also the biggest mobile phone provider in austria (and a big one in severeal eastern and southeastern european countries).
Btw. also Austria has more mobile phone contracts than citizense due to the fact that mobile phone services there are dirt cheap and lots of people have more than one contract.
One question (Score:2, Insightful)
What's a phone booth?
Re:One question (Score:5, Informative)
> What's a phone booth?
It's like a Police Box, but without the time travel...
Re:One question (Score:5, Funny)
> What's a phone booth?
It's like a Police Box, but without the time travel...
Whoa! Dude! That's totally bogus.
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Now get off my self-mowing lawn!
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Well, stepping into one at least feels like traveling back in time.
Also, it’s bigger on the outside. ^^
And cleaner...
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A toll booth for the PSTN.
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>What's a phone booth?
That's where I first met yo mama ($YourAge + 9 months) ago.
Re:One question (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, Yo Mama jokes with $variables just don't work.
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That's just as well. I should have said (9 * $Months) anyway. I shoulda asked yo mama how the old programming syntax worked before she fell asleep. :D
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I'm sorry, Yo Mama jokes with $variables just don't work.
That's because yo mama is so fat putting her into a $variable would cause an out of memory error.
Bazinga.
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Warning!! when using public phones in Austria first make sure you are not earthed, there is a high probability of brain damage.
This looks like a job for Superman (Score:2)
What's a phone booth?
It's where Clark Kent gets into his real work clothes.
why, at that rate... (Score:5, Funny)
Why, at that rate, they'll be able to simultaneously recharge 0.06% of the electric cars in the country!
And with the usual 30 milliamp analog phone line current, it will only take about a dozen years to recharge each car.
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....And with the usual 30 milliamp analog phone line current, it will only take about a dozen years to recharge each car.
Yeah, but think of all the roll over minutes!
Re:why, at that rate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, at that rate, they'll be able to simultaneously recharge 0.06% of the electric cars in the country!
And with the usual 30 milliamp analog phone line current, it will only take about a dozen years to recharge each car.
Phone booths in my country have lights for nighttime use so I suppose they have mains supply as well.
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Phone booths in my country have lights for nighttime ...
Ah yes, much easier to see the hookers when they are illuminated.
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The lighting benefits both parties - easier for them to count the cash, and you to count their teeth.
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Yes, I can do arithmetic too. 15 minutes charging a day * 405,000 vehicles = 101250 hours of charging a day, or 4218 charging stations. Except that number is a complete fantasy: the usage won't be spread neatly over 24 hours. There will be sharp peaks morning, mid-day and afternoon, plus concentrated demand in areas with a lot of rich ecoloons who think electricity is "clean" because the gas, oil and coal plants making it are located out in the sticks.
Even with the best charge rates and distance-per-cha
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a lot of rich ecoloons who think electricity is "clean" because the gas, oil and coal plants making it are located out in the sticks.
It is clean, from a local point of view. That's important, since pollution from petrol/diesel engines is a primary cause of respiratory illnesses.
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Welcome to 2010. It must be traumatic being unfrozen from that block of ice and all, but things have moved on a bit since 1972. Here in the future, if you're concerned about the local air quality, the best thing you can do is to suck it through a modern internal combustion engine and catalytic converter. It will literally clean the air for you.
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Then why do cars still smell? (Yes, including new ones.)
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Math, incredibly useful as it is, is no substitute for imagination. There are lots of ways to deal with the need for charging stations and I'm cheered to see that there are at least some places in the world that are moving on this, unlike the pathetic efforts of my own country.
As demand rises, I foresee parking lots, whether at work, shopping centers, wherever, installing quick-charge stations. And those gas stations will likely do it as well. I wonder if any of the auto manufacturers have electric car des
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Funny! But, you're wrong. At least in the short term,which may be a lot longer than I'd like, the #1 response will be that it can't be done.
Meanwhile, people like Shai Agassi will be busy doing it.
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Here's something from an imaginary place called Tokyo.
http://blog.betterplace.com/2010/04/better-place-launches-switchable-battery-electric-taxis-in-tokyo-today/ [betterplace.com]
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You win an Internets! Switching out the batteries is the only remotely feasible solution. Now, all that we need is for every EV manufacturer (possibly less one) to admit that their battery solution sucks ass, and switch to a common battery pack.
Sorry, you were saying something funny?
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As demand rises, I foresee parking lots, whether at work, shopping centers, wherever, installing quick-charge stations.
I keep figuring restaurants will be popular spots - Many gas stations will be the least popular. Right now gas stations are seperate due to infrastructure/safety requirements for a buried tank. But most gas stations I see don't have the space to handle the same number of cars if you go from 5 minute fill ups to even 15-30 minute 'quick charges'.
I wonder if any of the auto manufacturers have electric car designs where the battery is quick-swappable?
There's quite a few problems with this - I'd add in condition of the swapped battery. But there's another problem - EV batteries are heavy enough that you need a
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Better Place, the initiative started by former SAP exec Shai Agassi, is leaning towards leasing the batteries and have a recently launched taxi service in Tokyo that have quick-swap facilities.
But, convenient as battery swapping would be, it will be a nightmare without standardization.
http://blog.betterplace.com/2010/04/better-place-launches-switchable-battery-electric-taxis-in-tokyo-today/ [betterplace.com]
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Taxis have the advantage that they're generally standardized, and most large taxi companies already have their own service departments. So they have a garage to install the equipment.
For that matter they have the commerical incentive and miles driven in a year to justify the cost of the batteries; cost of capital doesn't add up as much when you're looking at replacing a battery within a year, not five-ten.
About emissions displacement (Score:4, Insightful)
areas with a lot of rich ecoloons who think electricity is "clean" because the gas, oil and coal plants making it are located out in the sticks.
The advantage of such "emissions displacement" is that it's a lot easier to clean the emissions from one big stationary engine than thousands of mobile engines.
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Sure, if you ignore that fossil plants will always lag 30 years behind vehicle technology because of their replacement schedules, we can all breathe unicorn farts and pixie burps.
The internal combustion engines that currently exist are so much cleaner and more efficient than the powerplants that that currently exist that electric vehicles are an environmental nightmare.
We can talk again in 30 years, m'kay?
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The internal combustion engines that currently exist are so much cleaner and more efficient than the powerplants that that currently exist that electric vehicles are an environmental nightmare.
You are completely and totally wrong. Internal combustion engines used in automobiles top out around 25% efficiency. Electric motors used in cars top out around 95% efficient, and they're even over 90% efficient when acting as a generator (during regenerative braking.)
We can talk again in 30 years, m'kay?
In thirty years, you might be right; we might be driving EVs.
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>You are completely and totally wrong. Internal combustion engines used in automobiles top out around 25% efficiency. Electric motors used in cars top out around 95% efficient, and they're even over 90% efficient when acting as a generator (during regenerative braking.)
Uh, you forgot about the other parts of the electricy-delivery cycle:: Power plants: 35%. Distribution system: 90%. Rectifiers/chargers: 90%. Battery charging: 80%. By the time you multiply those out, you're down to about 18% effic
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Uh, you forgot about the other parts of the electricy-delivery cycle:: Power plants: 35%. Distribution system: 90%. Rectifiers/chargers: 90%. Battery charging: 80%. By the time you multiply those out, you're down to about 18% efficiency, not all that different than a IC engine.
Modern power plants are over 40%. Distribution is 95% in the USA. Battery charging (including rectification) can be well over 95% for Li-Ion. Even without regenerative braking in most cases modern EVs beat the living shit out of even the best ICEs. The new generation of regenerative braking systems using flywheels and/or capacitors has the potential to drastically improve this for city driving, but we won't see those systems in EVs for another, uh, generation. And going forward with liquid fuels, probably t
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> Microturbines have the potential to easily be twice as efficient as ICEs.
Citation needed, and I don't mean the Chevy model.
Gas turbines have been under development now for 120 years. Efficiency flat-lined about 40 years ago, as the basic Carnot temperature and heat-exchange limits were hit. The only way to bump up efficiency would be to up the hot-section temperatures, and they're already running those within 25 degrees of the melting point of the very best alloys.
The efficiencies you allude to are
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The efficiencies you allude to are the pi-in-the-sky, in the laboratory, cost and maintenance are no object, open-loop, fixed-speed, optimum temp conditions.
Let's do it over and over again until we actually get there, then. The nice thing about a series hybrid is that you can run the turbine at optimum speed.
In the real world, turbines have less than optimal clearances, less than perfect balancing, temperature restrictions, temperature versus life restrictions, have to operate in closed-loop cycles, with variable and unpredictable power demands, and over bumpy roads and subject to dust, dirt, crosswinds across the intake, and abrupt accelerations, not to mention cost restrictions.
There are many examples of affordable microturbines already. None of them have these efficiencies — yet. They do have numerous benefits however, not least that several of them are multifuel-capable.
Your basic high-tech turbine has a cost in the high tens of thousands-- never practical in a vehicle that has to leave the factory costing less than $10,000 and able to go 100,000 miles.
Most vehicles have parts with a service lifetime of less than 100,000 miles, and there's plenty of market for vehicles which cost more than $10,000 to put
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>et's do it over and over again until we actually get there, then.
You just don't get it. There are basic thermodynamic limits. They've been pushing these limits hard at a cost of billions a year, and not making any progress for the last 40 years.
>There are many examples of affordable microturbines already.
Links needed. I haven't seen any for under $30,000 or under $900 / HP and none with the efficiencies you claim. A lot of the efficiency numbers quoted assume you're using the waste heat to hea
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A fleet of electrics will easily have "ten times as many" charging stations as an equivalent gas fleet would have gas stations. Of course, most charging stations cost $1k and would be located in the car's overnight parking location (garage, corporate lot, etc.) Gas stations cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require at least one staff whenever operational. There's no problem replacing one gas station with ten charging stations. Public stations like this would likely be used when an extra charge is ne
Re:why, at that rate... (Score:4, Insightful)
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(Just as the Postal Service has been forbidden to close certain Post Offices lest the density become too low: Some retirements pensions are actually still paid through the Post Offices and you don't want old people to have to travel for hours to get their money.)
So upgrading an existing infras
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Actually, that's a good point - how is using such a low-power infrastructure (even as a starting point) any easier than starting from scratch? Are they just re-purposing the pipes and sheaths from the old landlines?
For starters, they already have the land reserved. I'd imagine the paperwork required to requisition a half-square-meter of public land on a roadside in the center of a city would be overwhelming, and that's not to mention the added drama of laying new cable routes.
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Local councils have installed some electric car charging points in London. At the moment they're free to use (free electricity, free parking) once you've paid an annual fee.
They're basically a post with a socket on the top: Picture [green-car-guide.com]
I don't especially like them -- I'd like to see less traffic congestion in the city. You can fit stands to secure eight bicycles in the same space as one car, which is a much fairer use of some very useful land. Or, you can have an empty street without all the clutter.
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They're basically a post with a socket on the top: Picture
Those look familiar... Of course, I like to say that where I work is already EV ready - well, as long as you can charge off of 110V. Of course, they were installed for block heaters, not EVs.
I've actually looked into getting an EV, partially because of this*, but wasn't able to make it make financial sense even assuming my 'fuel' would be free.
*Free fuel, I like techie toys, etc...
I don't especially like them -- I'd like to see less traffic congestion in the city.
Personal thoughts: You're never going to get rid of all the vehicles, what about the handicapped, those who have to carry too
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So they're not free then. If you have to pay to use something, it's not free. Just like "free" healthcare isn't free. You, and others, have paid taxes for decades to (hopefully) get medical service when you need it. Of course if you die early, you don't get to use that which you've paid for, but that's another issue.
Short of breathing, drinking from a pond/stream/river or taking a shit, there isn'
Location Location Location (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand their desire to reuse the prime real estate they have for their phone boxes and convert it into a new profitable market.
However in this case I'm not sure it will actually be so useful. Typically you position phone boxes in pedestrian heavy areas where people can see them and use them. Normally you would want recharging stations in car parks, where cars like to hang out for extended periods of time. Do you really want to base your business model over having cars parked beside the road in busy streets for 6.5 hours at a time? Looking at the phone booth in the picture there doesn't even seem space for a single car to stop.
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This could work, so long as they surround the car parks with a high kangaroo fence...
Austria not Australia.
Though for all I know they have a few Kangaroos in Austria too.
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This could work, so long as they surround the car parks with a high kangaroo fence...
Veeery funny. We Austrians have t-shirts explaining the difference because we're sick of talking ourselves black in the face.
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We Austrians have t-shirts explaining the difference because we're sick of talking ourselves black in the face.
You actually wear those? I thought they were only for selling to amused Australian backpackers who got lost on the way to Oktoberfest.
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As to charging time, I would have thought they'll be more like battery swapping stations - take out your empty one, insert a charged one.
But who knows, I'm just guessing.
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Actually the austrian situation is different, the mobile phone usage is more than 100% since literally everyone has one contract and a lot of people have more than one.
The phone boxes over the last decade have been severely reduced, some have been dedicated to internet / telephone stations...
I think the charging is first thought as charging station for electricity powered bikes and other small vehicles.
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Actually, here in Austria you have parking cars everywhere, so that doesn't really apply. In my area the usual time spent looking for a parking space is about 20mins, and I have a phone booth right around the corner.
Of course, I wonder how a electric car should ever catch a parking space in this booth's general area. You'd probably have to wait for a few hours to get it, and then I'd advise against ever forfeiting the spot again.
That's thinking outside of the (glass) box (Score:2)
Its the only way I can think of getting some value out of zillions of mini 6 x 6 lots with booth enclosure and electrical feeds.
Not Vehicles, gadgets is more ideal (Score:2, Interesting)
I would prefer that we convert the phone booths to mobile phone, iPod, etc ie gadget charging stations.
May need to offer some lockable lockers with chargers similar to what they offer at music festivals. But not sure terror / vandal paranoid people would accept that.
I have to admit I still use phone booths, but only as a quiet place to talk on my mobile...
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I have to admit I still use phone booths, but only as a quiet place to talk on my mobile...
And to smell pee.
bikes, not cars? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems more practical to recharge bikes (either electric-assisted, or motorcycles), rather than cars.
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Well the title does say Electric Vehicle Chargers
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Seems more practical to recharge bikes (either electric-assisted, or motorcycles), rather than cars.
This would also be ideal for bike-share systems like the successful Bixi [bixisystem.com] in Montreal. You need the power to run the bike dock and pay station. Some of these systems (not Bixi) also rent out pre-charged e-bikes.
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Department of Redundancy Department (Score:2)
Telekom Austria is a telecommunications company?
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Ahnold (Score:3, Insightful)
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Apparently, Arnie has a somewhat colloquial accent in his home country, somewhat akin to the deep south in the US, or Norfolk in the UK. He sounds like a farmer.
"I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle" takes on an entirely different slant when you say it like a hick. Brokeback Terminator.
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This is Slashdot. Some people would make a serious complaint if that was left out.
Location Location Location (Score:5, Interesting)
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Does She Wait With You? (Score:2, Funny)
But wait! (Score:2)
Where will Superman change his costume?
here in big-city, usa ... (Score:2)
we've done something similar: we've converted rarely used phone booths into thriving restrooms.
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The kangaroos will hop into the phone boxes and be electrocuted. Just horrible.
Better than shooting them. Bzzzzt
Re:Terrible idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Only if Austria has phone booths in the Zoo enclosures
How else would the Kangaroos get news from home?
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However mein poster, kould be wurst.
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You're welcome.
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From the wireline.
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Call Centres, staffed by the unemployed, criminals and retired folk will be employed to call the phone boxes constantly to maintain a 50-75 volt DC ringing signal down the line.
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No, but you missed an important part of the story, I'll let you find the mistake yourself.
Hint: You're about one half of a large rotating thing wrong.