On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 17:13:33 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> (I'm being hyperbolic.  My Nook HD+ tablet runs at full HD, something
>> that's clearly impossible unless I spent about three trillion dollars
>> on it).
> 
> I have an iPad Mini that has a resolution of 2048x1536. And it's
> incredibly thin and light.

That's completely and physically impossible.  It must have cost you a 
quadrillion dollars.

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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>> Sure plastics have been around for ages, but
>> today we take for granted there are plastics that you can leave in
>> direct sunlight for decades without fading or going brittle.
>
> Really? Where are they?

If you buy a 10 year old BMW you don't expect the dashboard to crack if 
you lean on it or for it to have gone yellow. Or most bumpers on cars 
now are plastic that can withstand 2 tons forcing them into another car 
at a few mph without damage (IIRC that's an EU requirement now). That 
sort of performance from plastics has been developed gradually after 
they were initially invented. The first LCD displays were around the 
70's, but it's not like nothing has changed since then, the "invention" 
is only the first step, after that Engineering and development takes over.

> That's kinda my point. When the Internet first started, the limiting
> factor with surfing the web was how damned long it took to load the HTML
> and all the images. That has long since stopped being a problem. So
> until the next bandwidth-heavy thing comes along, there's no real reason
> to increase.

I remember when an mp3 took hours to download, today it's an mp4 and 
software that takes hours. Until everyone has 500ppi screens with all 
content at that resolution downloadable within seconds then I see no 
reason for the continual increase in speeds to stop.

> BTW, I just saw on the news that Peterborough is getting gigabit-speed
> Internet access. (Quite how that's physically plausible I'm not sure,
> but presumably they know what they're on about.)

Is that not just fibre to the house? The obvious next step after fibre 
to the cabinet. My village is looking forward to FTTC in a few months 
and Peterborough is just up the road!

> isn't that fast! The politician was standing there enthusing about how
> this is going to "super-charge local businesses", but I can't think of
> too many businesses where this extra speed will be of any use...

I would imagine this would benefit medium-size companies (around 50-200 
people) that currently cannot justify the cost of a really fast 
connection but due to the number of employees would make good use of 
more bandwidth.

> I guess the problem is that you're generating a lot of light, and then
> trying to selectively absorb the colours you don't want. If you could
> somehow do it the other way around - only generate the optic power you
> actually want in the first place - it could be a lot more efficient.

That's exactly the problem, and also that the light source itself is 
very efficient at converting electricity to heat :-) People have looked 
at using lasers but it doesn't look like that technology has worked out yet.

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 17:13:33 -0400, Warp wrote:

> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> >> (I'm being hyperbolic.  My Nook HD+ tablet runs at full HD, something
> >> that's clearly impossible unless I spent about three trillion dollars
> >> on it).
> > 
> > I have an iPad Mini that has a resolution of 2048x1536. And it's
> > incredibly thin and light.

> That's completely and physically impossible.  It must have cost you a 
> quadrillion dollars.

It depends on whether you are talking about American quadrillions or
European quadrillions.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Le 2014-04-22 20:43, Jim Henderson a écrit :
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2014 20:02:17 -0400, Warp wrote:
>
>> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>>> I honestly don't know where you get the crazy idea that higher
>>> resolutions aren't available.  I mean, if you're projecting on a 8-10
>>> foot 16:9 diagonal area, 1024x768 is going to look like shit.  800x600
>>> even more so.
>>
>> Well, he also is of the opinion that the screen of an iPhone is
>> postal-stamp-sized, you have to keep it an inch from your eyes to see
>> anything, it's impossible to use a web browser on one because of the
>> small size, and the screen gets so dirty in 10 seconds that it won't be
>> usable after that.
>
> True.  Wait, you mean that isn't the case? ;)
>
>> Of course the millions of people who use iPhones all day long for
>> surfing the net and play games are delusional.
>
> Naturally.  I'm sure my 9" tablet is running about 320x200 and requires a
> magnifying glass to use.

Andy has also assured me that iPads, Kindles, Nooks, and the various 
android-based thingamajigs weren't tablets at all, because tablets were 
2 inch thick laptops that weigh 20lbs and on which you write with a 
Palm-Pilot stylus.


-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:05:59 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 17:13:33 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> >> (I'm being hyperbolic.  My Nook HD+ tablet runs at full HD,
>> >> something that's clearly impossible unless I spent about three
>> >> trillion dollars on it).
>> > 
>> > I have an iPad Mini that has a resolution of 2048x1536. And it's
>> > incredibly thin and light.
> 
>> That's completely and physically impossible.  It must have cost you a
>> quadrillion dollars.
> 
> It depends on whether you are talking about American quadrillions or
> European quadrillions.

Fair point.  I'll go with the long scale - after all, we're exaggerating 
for effect here, no point in doing that by half measures. ;)

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 15:32:42 -0400, Francois Labreque wrote:

>> Naturally.  I'm sure my 9" tablet is running about 320x200 and requires
>> a magnifying glass to use.
> 
> Andy has also assured me that iPads, Kindles, Nooks, and the various
> android-based thingamajigs weren't tablets at all, because tablets were
> 2 inch thick laptops that weigh 20lbs and on which you write with a
> Palm-Pilot stylus.

Oh, right, I forgot about that.  Cell phones also weigh about 2 pounds, 
and are shaped like bricks. ;)

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

Post a reply to this message

>> I have an iPad Mini that has a resolution of 2048x1536. And it's
>> incredibly thin and light.
>
> That's completely and physically impossible.  It must have cost you a
> quadrillion dollars.

Well, it is an Apple product... ;-)

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On 24/04/2014 08:37 AM, scott wrote:
>>> Sure plastics have been around for ages, but
>>> today we take for granted there are plastics that you can leave in
>>> direct sunlight for decades without fading or going brittle.
>>
>> Really? Where are they?
>
> If you buy a 10 year old BMW you don't expect the dashboard to crack if
> you lean on it or for it to have gone yellow. Or most bumpers on cars
> now are plastic that can withstand 2 tons forcing them into another car
> at a few mph without damage (IIRC that's an EU requirement now).

I thought that was fibreglass...

What I did see, that was quite interesting, was a guy who "studies 
nature" to try to look for clever ideas that we can copy. One of his 
suggestions was to create colour by diffraction rather than using 
chemical dyes. Chemicals degrade in the Sun, but a grating doesn't 
suddenly change size just because you hit it with a ton of UV...

(Naturally, a suggestion is one thing, making a viable product is 
something else entirely.)

> I remember when an mp3 took hours to download, today it's an mp4 and
> software that takes hours. Until everyone has 500ppi screens with all
> content at that resolution downloadable within seconds then I see no
> reason for the continual increase in speeds to stop.

My understanding was that displays aren't increasing their ppi rating 
because 100% of all Windows software assumes a fixed 72ppi, and if you 
increased the dot pitch everything would become too tiny to see.

>> BTW, I just saw on the news that Peterborough is getting gigabit-speed
>> Internet access. (Quite how that's physically plausible I'm not sure,
>> but presumably they know what they're on about.)
>
> Is that not just fibre to the house? The obvious next step after fibre
> to the cabinet. My village is looking forward to FTTC in a few months
> and Peterborough is just up the road!

Fibre to the house is a simple concept. Why didn't they do this before? 
Oh, yes, that's right - because fibre is so astronomically expensive 
that nobody can afford it...

>> isn't that fast! The politician was standing there enthusing about how
>> this is going to "super-charge local businesses", but I can't think of
>> too many businesses where this extra speed will be of any use...
>
> I would imagine this would benefit medium-size companies (around 50-200
> people) that currently cannot justify the cost of a really fast
> connection but due to the number of employees would make good use of
> more bandwidth.

I guess I haven't worked in many industries, but most of them don't seem 
like they would have much need for such a thing. The only thing I can 
think of is that at my last place, they were determined to host 
absolutely *everything* using Terminal Services, so that the desktop has 
absolutely no software on it and everybody has to hammer the Internet to 
get anything done. (It also has the nice side-effect of preventing 
anybody being able to print stuff...)

>> I guess the problem is that you're generating a lot of light, and then
>> trying to selectively absorb the colours you don't want. If you could
>> somehow do it the other way around - only generate the optic power you
>> actually want in the first place - it could be a lot more efficient.
>
> That's exactly the problem, and also that the light source itself is
> very efficient at converting electricity to heat :-) People have looked
> at using lasers but it doesn't look like that technology has worked out
> yet.

Tangential, but... one of the 3D technologies I saw on Tomorrow's World 
involved scanning a laser across a corrugated screen. It also involved 
using "a supercomputer" to control the motors scanning the laser; I'm 
guessing today it would be less of a problem. But who really wants to 
look at spinning monochrome wireframes?

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On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 21:51:02 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>> Is that not just fibre to the house? The obvious next step after fibre
>> to the cabinet. My village is looking forward to FTTC in a few months
>> and Peterborough is just up the road!
> 
> Fibre to the house is a simple concept. Why didn't they do this before?
> Oh, yes, that's right - because fibre is so astronomically expensive
> that nobody can afford it...

Andy, if I break my desk from hitting my head against it so much when you 
say silly things like this, I'm going to send you the repair bill.

And it will be "astronomically expensive". ;)

(Fibre was "astronomically expensive" when it was difficult to 
manufacture.  Advances in manufacturing technology make it a lot more 
affordable now than it was even 10 years ago)

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 21:37:43 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> I have an iPad Mini that has a resolution of 2048x1536. And it's
>>> incredibly thin and light.
>>
>> That's completely and physically impossible.  It must have cost you a
>> quadrillion dollars.
> 
> Well, it is an Apple product... ;-)

Nice response! :D

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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