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On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:05:59 -0400, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> 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
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>> 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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> I thought that was fibreglass...
For very low production volumes it could be, but for any car that
everyone has heard of it will be moulded plastic. Note that high
strength plastics are usually glass-filled, so in a way they are the
same as fibre-glass. It's just the glass particles are tiny so that it
doesn't affect the appearance, and more importantly the plastic can go
through the injection moulding machine. Things like your phone casing
and your monitor case/stand are likely to be glass filled plastic, it's
a very cheap way to get a lot of strength and toughness.
> 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...
Presumably you'd need a layer of protection on top of the diffraction
grating anyway to prevent damage, so I struggle to see any advantage
than just putting a UV protective coating on top of a normal
plastic/paint (like cars have for example).
> 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.
I think that 100% figure has been coming down and will continue to do
so. Once people get devices like the new Samsung Windows 8 laptop/tablet
(3200x1800 13") software vendors will be forced to comply. Anyway, even
if Windows software doesn't change people use Android and iOS which
works fine at very high ppi.
> 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...
And why is it now possible to make it so much cheaper than before?
Perhaps because there have been new manufacturing processes invented and
developed and new materials? But wait, nothing has changed since the
industrial revolution!
> 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?
I think I posted this before, but a friend from University set this up:
http://lightblueoptics.com/videos/holographic-laser-projection-technology/
Given that he appears to have won several times in the IOCCC recently
(tangental, but a full PC emulator capable of running DOS games in under
4KB of C source?!) I guess it didn't come to much :-)
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On 25/04/2014 09:42, scott wrote:
>
> http://lightblueoptics.com/videos/holographic-laser-projection-technology/
>
Is that Stephen Fry doing the voice-over?
John
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>> 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...
>
> Presumably you'd need a layer of protection on top of the diffraction
> grating anyway to prevent damage, so I struggle to see any advantage
> than just putting a UV protective coating on top of a normal
> plastic/paint (like cars have for example).
Presumably what you do is make a translucent layer which has inclusions
inside it that refract the light. So the outer surfaces are smooth, yet
you still get colour. Hard to see how you could do that cheaply though.
Has anybody invented a UV coating that actually works yet?
>> 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...
>
> And why is it now possible to make it so much cheaper than before?
> Perhaps because there have been new manufacturing processes invented and
> developed and new materials? But wait, nothing has changed since the
> industrial revolution!
I'm sure things have changed. Just perhaps not as rapidly and
dramatically as the original revolution.
> I think I posted this before, but a friend from University set this up:
>
> http://lightblueoptics.com/videos/holographic-laser-projection-technology/
>
> Given that he appears to have won several times in the IOCCC recently
> (tangental, but a full PC emulator capable of running DOS games in under
> 4KB of C source?!) I guess it didn't come to much :-)
This is very interesting. From what I can gather, the primary problem is
the absurd amount of computer power required. (Oh, and the fact that
it's currently only monochrome - again, presumably due to computer power.)
I would imagine making something like this for static images would be
comparatively easy. The hard part is doing moving images. (Aside from
computer power, data transfer rates might be problematic too...)
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>> I thought that was fibreglass...
>
> For very low production volumes it could be, but for any car that
> everyone has heard of it will be moulded plastic. Note that high
> strength plastics are usually glass-filled, so in a way they are the
> same as fibre-glass.
Both are the same.
Traditionnal fibreglass = sheets of woven glass fibre dipped in eposy resin.
Newer high strength plastics = bits of glass or carbon fibre sprinkled
in epoxy or polyacetate resin.
Also, car manufacturers (and patio furniture manufacturers, for some
reason) do not like to call them plastics because people have a tendency
to associate the word with cheap and flimsy polymers like polyethylene
or polypropylene, so they'll use words like "polymer", "DuraFlex(TM)",
or "synthetic resin".
>> 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...
>
Officer: Ma'am, what color was the car that hit you?
Woman: All of them.
Officer: WAT?
Woman: Well, you know how a CD changes color when you move them in your
hand, the car was like that!
>> 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.
Most LCD screend have had 96ppi dot pitch for over 15 years. The IBM
9513 T55A monitor I have on this desk, which was bought as part of my
personal Y2K remediation plan is running at 96ppi and I don't remember
having issues with badly designed dialox boxes. Unless 100% of the
software you use is made for Windows 3.1, this would be
Yet-Another-Bogus-Assumption-Made-By-Andy.
>> 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...
No. Because they didn't have BW issues with the copper cabling that was
already installed, so there was little justification to rewire eintire
neigborhoods (the expensive part is the two guys moving around people's
backyards with ladders, not the orange tube and the 2 or 4 fibre strands
in it). The advent of HD TV has changed that. There is now a need for
higher BW to each home - instead of just to the neighborhoods' junction
box - so telecoms are rushing to put fibre to the home.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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