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E-Paper Moves Closer
squaretorus sent in this story about electronic paper at the BBC. Seems that everytime any of the e-paper, e-ink, e-whatever companies have a new demo unit they run out and call a press conference. But none of it matters until they have ultra-thin, durable, flexible pages that can be manufactured cheaply...
I know tons of businesses and schools (in particular) use piles upon piles of paper every year. If E-paper ever gets really good, then not only could there be substantial savings for mass-paper users (anyone from the policy debate community knows what I'm talking about), but also it could help slow the rate at which land fills grow, and also slow deforestattion (yeah, there are ton of other causes like population growth, acid rain, blah blah blah)... of course the key would be proliferating this kind of technology to less well to do nations.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
...the day when microsoft has control of all the e-paper and if the more than three words change, it self-destructs.
my sig sucks.
The paperless office is a vision that belongs in the same category as the flying car. Sure, one day it will happen, but it'll take just a little longer than anyone predicted. I suspect we'll be using paper for at least another 50 to 100 years, when electronic paper might be cheaper than the wooden version.
For some strange reason I think he used copy and paste. It's not like a bunch of trolls like to start off each new slashdot story with an ascii art masturbation or a flamebait linux sucks story or so and so has died.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Don't know about you guys, but the way they described how it works reminds me a bit of the good-ol-days with Etch-A-Sketch! =)
It better leave ink on my thumbs, and potty train my puppy!
I remember seeing an article in a technology magazine a few years ago about electronic books with electronic paper and electronic ink. Apparently, this ink, when charged, would flip from black to white (or something like that). So you could buy the electronic book, download a text from the net for a nominal fee, and have the book automatically typeset itself for the novel. They also touted its ability to do fancy things like animation, font size changes, etc. Never heard anything more about this though (not that I know of at least, but I may have missed something). Sounds like quite the concept, but the technology for some reason hasn't materialized into something mainstream yet.
http://ryan.buterbaugh.org/
Actually about 70% of Slashdot readership uses Windows/IE. Less than you thought, but still a rather high number if you look at the anti-MS mentality around here.
This is an interesting piece of text. Writing techniques rule the world.
I'll admit that its cool that they're coming up with electronic paper solutions to replace wooden paper, while they'll be a hell of a lot easier to lug around with just one sheet of electronic paper vs 500 sheets of wooden paper in a book, there's still the issue of wether it will have the same rights as the wooden version..
I for one would like to be able to share my books wooden or electronic.. We've seen the problems that come with the electronic version, for example, the E-Book.. Whats to make it so that the companies dont put more restrictive limitations on the eletronic paper version? Once htey get past those issues and it becomes as common and cheap as the wooden version then heck yeah I'll buy it, but until then, and until they get electronic paper to have the same rights as the wooden version, I'm not going to touch it with a 6 foot stick..
There are just two cases when I ever use paper these days, and I'd love to eliminate them:
1 - Somebody gives me old fashioned bills or credit card receipts on paper.
2 - I want to see something at >72dpi.
It's hard to get excited about e-paper... I want to have no-paper, not more-paper, e- or not.
This technology seems like a giant step backwards from where we're headed with lower cost, larger, and higher-res LCD displays.
why not publish your own e~"paper"? someone might even read it, if it were posted somewhere easy to find. don't forget to enter our big URL giveaway, at ScaredCity(?tm?). have you seen these guise?
"You can actually think about there being a book now because you can actually put some electronics on the back of this thing and it becomes a display..."
The speaker is quickly skipping over a very, very difficult problem: Designing cheap, flexible, fast, digital electronics that can address every one of those pixels so that they can be turned off and on.
Just getting the speed and resolution necessary costs $110 for a Matrox G-450 video card, which is not flexible and doesn't include digital output. The final signal to a monitor is analog.
Bush's education improvements were
I'll know that it has arrived when I can watch TV on my wallpaper.
...various makers of those little erasable sketch pads for kids scrambled to modify their products to mimic the "e-paper". One company released a statement saying "We're only switching from simple magnets to electromagnets, but in the end we can translate everything into digital media as a result"
With jobs in the paper industry being on the edge, and pricing being a new lows, that particular industry is in a wave of consolidation.
E paper sounds fine, unless you're affected (as in part of the paper industry).None the less, e-paper may become a reality, but as Xerox predicted a paperless office 25 years ago, the demand has doubled since then. Paper will continue to be used for a LONG time.
I for one will never replace my 50lb *nix manual with an e-paper one. Or for that matter any of my hundreds (if not more) of real paper books that I have collected. And I'm sure that most, if not all, people will agree with me.
The reason is really simple, imo. The e-paper requires a battery, circuitry, special inks, etc. In the end, it will deccay, break down or I might simply drop it into the bath tub while reading it and zap the hell out of me. I've had many electronic devices fail on me, and in all cases all the information stored on them was lost. Completely. The same is true for e-paper. Sooner or later (most likely really soon) it will break down, no matter how well you take care of it.
The same does not apply to normal, paper books. They last. And last. My oldest book is from the early 1900s, and by no means is it old. There are parchments that are thousands of years old. Granted, it's just as easy to destroy normal paper as it might be e-paper, but given proper care, normal paper has an almost endless life.
So if given the choice, I'd rather get an old-fashioned paper book that I can keep for as long as I want rather that a cool e-paper one that will BSOD in a couple of years.
I would consider it a bit of a shame if we simply replaced paper or books with e-Whatevers. Books/paper have been around for centuries and are as useful as ever, if we threw them out we would be throwing a little bit of our heritage.
Oh, that's just Theo de Raadt having his fun on a weekend.
I just hope those e-papers aren't too heavy. Think about all those paperboys carrying them around each morning. ;)
42 + 1 = 42
I was in my study room surfing the Net on my computer and I had started eating a muffin which I had placed on my computer desk when something funny (and out of the ordinary) happened. A piece of my muffin fell off, sort of jumped on the bag on which it was, then landed on my hand and started rolling on my hand and down my arm and jumped again into the basket which was quite far away from the computer desk. I just stared in awe and was completely surprised. It was rather funny. Someone from beyond (a prankster ghost!) wanted to make me laugh. It worked! (I know this sounds ridiculous, but it happened!)
The Matrox does a lot more than a video driver for an e-book would need to. 8.5"x11" at 300dpi for e-paper would be a 3300x2550 monochrome display. The G-450 already does 2048x1536 @ 32bpp, so I think Matrox could put together something that did about 2x the resolution with 1/32 fewer bits per pixel without difficulty. Throw out the d-to-a converter, the analog port connectors, most of the memory, the AGP interface, and the 3-D hardware and you'll get something that costs a lot less than $110.
http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/philosophy/right-to-read .html
This short story illustrates the evils which could be put into play if digital paper is ever realized. The technology itself is a wonderful leap forward, but, I suspect, that the companies controlling the content might get a little greedy.
Although it's doubtful things will get as bad as are described in the story, the technology certainly opens the door for some of it.
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
First off, I'll start off by saying the town's and house's history. The house was built anywhere between 1918-1922. I don't remember. That would make it about 80 years old. Nevada used to be a booming town. Stores, banks, you name it, they had it. Until the big tornado of 1924. It was an F5 and destroyed pretty much everything in the town. The only thing left was a couple of houses, the school, and the church. It killed hundred's of people and the bodies were kept in the church's basement until they could be properly buried. There are still blood stains in the basement. Anyways, that has nothing to do with it. Now, Nevada is a small farm town with the population of about 400-500. The church, the school, and only a few houses are still standing from the tornado. My house is one of them. It is on a street that used to be full of houses, but now there is only 2. Mine and the one across the street. (The lady who lives across the street used to live in my house) Back to the ghost story. My family was moving from Garland and needed a house. We came across this house and loved it. We were going to rent it from the lady whose family had built it and been passed on from generation to generation. While she was showing us the inside of the house, we came across this one room upstairs. It was so cool, I decided it had to be my room. (of course, I later found out it was used as the sick room back in the 20's or 30's; a sick room is a room where they would keep the sick people of the family so no one else would get sick) When I stated that it had to be my room, the lady said I shouldn't have. I asked why and she said that it wasn't a very pretty room and I should pick another one. I found this strange b/c it was a gorgeous room and why would she care if I wanted this room or not? Well, we decided to rent it out. The first night we were there, my mom and I kept hearing doors opening and shutting. We got freaked out, but that was nothing. It was about two weeks after we moved in and we were all asleep. Everybody's was downstairs except mine was upstairs in the sick room. I was laying there pretty much asleep when I heard this loud noise that kind of sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Then, I heard people screaming (men, women and kids). Then, I heard a women's voice yelling "Get Jordan, where's Jordan?" I thought it could have been the tornado or something. My whole family thought I was crazy. After that incident I moved my room downstairs. All my stuff was still in that room but my bed was downstairs. I remember one night in my new room I was lying there awake and I heard a horse galloping by my window. We don't have any horses but I passed it off as someone else's horse that had gotten loose. Then, I heard someone get off start walking around on the rocks, get back on and ride off. I got scared, covered up my head and went to sleep. I heard it again around 3:00am. Soon, things started to happen to the rest of the family. One night my mom was in the bathtub and she heard a man talk like he was right outside of the window. She couldn't understand him but she heard it. My dad wasn't home and us kids were in the living room. We've all heard this man now. Then, one morning my mom was cleaning the house and only me and her were home. She started hearing this lady hum some sort of song she had never heard before coming from the bathroom. It was the type of hum you sing when you clean house. If she stood by the stairs you couldn't hear it. If you took a step in front of the stairs you'd hear it. One evening I was upstairs in my room and kept hearing someone banging on my side of the house. Everyone denied it. The banging continued and finally my dad agreed to check what was outside. We all started towards the backdoor and were about to open it when some man in a white shirt casually walked right next to the door outside. (it was a screen door so we could see through) My dad furious and ready to kick the trespasser's a$$ ran outside but no one was there. The scariest incident of all happened early one morning before school. I had gotten so scared that I started to sleep on the top bunk of my brother's bunk bed. I was in a deep sleep and I heard a man's voice mumbling. I thought it was my dad b/c he woke me up in the mornings. I slowly opened my eyes and saw a man of about 20 or so just standing there. He was wearing a forest green colored suit and had reddish-brownish hair with a handle bar mustache. I screamed bloody murder and got under the blankets. My parents came in there and asked me what was wrong. I slowly raised my head out of the blankets and the man was gone. I finally talked them into moving. While we were packing, our neighbor came over. (remember she used to live there. We asked her if anything ever happened weird to her. She said the usual doors shutting, lights going on and off by themselves. But then she said one story. She said one day she was cleaning and she saw a man in white at the corner of her eye just standing at the back door. She thought it was her husband until she started talking to him and he never answered back. She looked over and he was gone. She also said that when we were on vacation she would hear children laughing and the creaks of them swinging. She would go over there to greet us thinking we were home and no one would be there. After pretty much everything was moved we decided to have a physcic over and do a seance just for fun. She told us that this house was once used to hide illegal drugs or something. She said that someone was very sick and locked up most of the time in my room. She said the head of the house was mentally unstable and everyone was scared of him. She said a women hid from him in the bathroom. She didn't say anything about the tornado so we didn't know if she was full of crap or what. But in all of the closets were little secret hidden compartments, pretty small and they could have hid things in there. They are hard to see and blend in with the wall. We never told her about that. Finally, we had moved everything and we were checking every room and every closet and we looked in those compartments. We found things that have been missing for years and things that we had just had this morning. Ever since we left that house nothing has happened. Other things have happened like lights going on and off, doors opening and shutting, and even hearing people calling our names, but these are the major incidents. Thanks for your time!
But SVDave, if you throw out the Digital to Analog converter, you must provide some way of hooking every row and every column with a separate wire. Every pixel must be separately addressable. Also, to meet the design goal, this wiring must be thin, flexible, cheap, and reliable.
Also, the hardware driver could not use a fan, as does the Matrox G-450. Yes, such a hardware driver could be simpler in some ways, but the problems are still mind-boggling. At least they boggle my mind.
Bush's education improvements were
Xerox has had this going for a while. It's been demoed at retail stores (flexible hanging banners with changing messages).
Here's a list of on-line electronic paper resources gathered less than a year ago by Shawn Hellenius.
ourpla.net is your planet
...and that can be erased cheaply. Don't forget Michael, censorship is vital.
video cards are more expensive because they output analog. if this requirement were removed, it would reduce complexity and component count.
in fact, LCD panels are more expensive and complicated because of the need for circuitry that converts analog signal back to digital for display. this constraint would apply to any form of e-paper or other digital display.
this is a legacy issue dating back to the first PCs.
Someone already address that the fact it is monochrome makes a big difference.
;-)
There is an even bigger factor, though. I could live with a refresh of, like, once per minute. Basically, as long as it can render a line of text faster than I can read it, we're good.
So, we are talking more like an original Hercules mono display at 100 times the res and 100th the refresh or something. (or whatever) Probably not hard to do that without a fan
Oh, and the conversion to analog is an EXTRA step.
-Peter
Tell that to IBM.
Totally different. Todays monitors refresh at 60 Hz or faster, and all of todays graphics technology is built around this refreshing. One would hope e-paper wouldn't need to be refreshed as long as the information displayed doesn't change. To me, e-paper would only be useful if it could display large amounts of static data in a very high-quality manner, while using no power. The ability to change what is displayed is nice, but I don't expect e-paper to show me movies! We've got other display technologies for that. It would be acceptable for e-paper to take several seconds to change the entire page. Thus, much lower-powered, less complex electronics would do the job fine.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
... my sister rubbed it on the carpet, which zapped the memory... :-)
Has there already been a slashdot conversation about what the ebook revolution will effect the DMCA or the other way around? Will epaper be useless due to fear that they would only reproduce thing thing that had been done already? Doesn't this whole media come under the same laws as do today's formats?
"That doesn't meant that you need to have a wire from the CPU to every bit of memory..."
Yes, the CPU uses binary addressing to communicate with the memory module, so few wires are needed. But, inside the memory module, every bit is connected with wires. And those wires don't have to be flexible.
You are right about the fan.
The basic point I think is valid is that a cell that can be made black or white with the application of a voltage is interesting and important, but is only a small part of the complexity necessary. Designing flexible wires to every pixel, and flexible transistors to control every pixel, if needed, is the bulk of the complexity.
Bush's education improvements were
Stephen King was found alive!
But I WON'T buy it if it only supports encrypted content.
LOL you gotta admit that shits funny hahaha
I can invision the senario, "Sorry professor, I had my term paper finished but my epaper crashed."
You are right that the refresh rate could be slower. I think people would want to change pages in about one-half second.
The last paragraph of my post above, #2269044 makes the point that there is a lot more complexity than just the pixel that turns black or white.
Bush's education improvements were
I hate reading on the Palm : the screen is too small, the contrast sucks and you have to scroll all the time, but the Palm is small and convenient enough to convince me not to load my suitcase sometimes. The Rocket Ebook was much better, but still not very exciting. The Everybook had that dual A4 color display that was big like an open window, and impressive, but I still was uneasy holding the thing to read.
So, it brought me to think about it : what do I like so much better in a book that even the near-perfect Everybook reader didn't provide ? well, of course, there is the fact that books don't need batteries, they are not nearly as fragile, they are less heavy than the majority of paperback releases (I'm not talking about Dostoyevsky). But there is more : the texture of the paper is gratifying to touch, the turning of a paper page is part of the pleasure of reading, the letters never have staircase effect, even if the printing is crappy, the white of the paper reflects different color shades with the lighting, one can see the sun dance on the pages at dawn or dusk while reading on the train, etc etc ... Even the back, with its different material (cardboard), its artwork and sometimes embossed or golden letters is part of the reading experience.
So, to convince conventional "pleasure" readers, E-paper will have to have all of that : round letters, paper-like light reflection, paper-like texture, the exact same text layout than on a regular book. All of that is part of the joy of reading, and E-paper won't provide that for a long time. I, for one, never read for pleasure on any form of computer device. I read a lot of articles, financial reports, tech manuals, online and the cold screen light doesn't bother me because the reading is only pratical, but I would never read Azimov on anything else but a book.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
All true, but each pixel must be separately connected. Those connections must be cheap, durable, and flexible. When I have tried to design something like that, I have thought that it was a very difficult problem.
My use of a video card as an example in my comment above was unfortunate, because it led readers away from my main point.
Bush's education improvements were
Marcie Edwards stood breathlessly in the darkened hallway, one hand on her tits. The large, empty house seemed to press down around her as she listened to the moans coming from behind her cousin's door. "Yesss . . . oh yes, doggie, lick me there . . . right there! ". No one seemed to be home. Aunt Mary was in Bakersfield shopping, while Uncle Jack was somewhere out in the north fields supervising some new plowing. "Ummmm . . . right there . . . ohhhh Pardner, right there . . ."
Marcie had thought something was odd about Kathy lately, something she hadn't noticed during her last vacation to her uncle's farm in Central California. Now as she tiptoed down the long corridor, her sandaled feet sinking in the thick, blue carpeting, the teenaged blonde felt she would find the answer to Kathy's mysterious, secretive behavior.
"Ohhhh, Pardner, your tongue ... your tongue! "
The door was partially open. Marcie stopped, her breathing shallow and raspy. For a second the teenager was afraid Kathy would hear it. But the girl was making far too much noise on her own part to hear anything outside the door. Tentatively stretching out her right hand, Marcie pressed her icy fingertips against the door. Kathy had been careless. The door opened. Marcie held her breath, pressing one side of her face against the molding and peering in.
"Ummmmmm . . . it's sooooo good, soooo goooood," Kathy groaned.
At first the girl saw nothing. There was the usual paraphernalia about-high school pennants on the wall, several stuffed toys scattered about the brightly painted room.
Pushing the door open a little more, Marcie caught sight of the double bed. Kathy's bare feet were shuffling back and forth frantically whil her gasping breaths were becoming increasingly loud. What was more surprising was the occasional swishing of something black and furry between those shuffling feet. The dog's tail! Marcie let out a shuddering breath, her knees growing suddenly very wobbly and weak. A dog! That's what's been going on! Kathy-her own cousin-was doing things with a dog!
Marcie wanted to turn and run. But something kept her there, standing in the doorway, clutching her tits as the moans increased in volume. She pushed the door open a few more inches and caught sight of Kathy. There, stretched prettily out on the large bed was the young brunette. Her chestnut-colored hair was fanned out behind her head. Both legs were spread widely apart, one bent at the knee and raised slightly so she could pet the animal on the back with her toes. Long streaks of saliva glittered as the animal licked up and down her slender body.
Pardner, the three-year-old German shepherd, was merrily licking the girl's pussy. "Oh yes, yessss," Kathy hissed, closing her eyes and rolling her head from side to side. Marcie thought she'd faint from the horror of the discovery. Once or twice she'd heard about women who did this kind of thing. Marcie remembered overhearing some boys talking about some club in Mexico where women fucked with animals. But her own cousin, her very own cousin was there stretched out on a bed, letting an animal touch her pussy with his tongue. And how she was enjoying it! Her face was a mask of obscene pleasure while her body rocked under the tender licking of the German shepherd.
"Your tongue's so hot, Pardner! Oh, it's so very hot and wet," Kathy moaned, raising her other leg, then letting both slip back down to the mattress.
In another moment, Marcie realized she was moved by what was happening under her horrified, widened eyes. Standing there in the doorway, the young girl felt a kind of hot, itchy tingle becoming worse and worse with each passing second. It was making her cunt shiver, tighten and get warm and moist as she watched Kathy writhe under Pardner's cuntlicking. Marcie found her knees rubbing together while her panties were growing damp around the crotch panel. Her nipples were getting very stiff and hard against her blouse. Instincitvely the teenager moved one hand up, rubbing her ringers against the itchy nubs.
Marcie closed her eyes, sucking in a ragged breath through her flaring nostrils. Why was she feeling this way? Why was she turning on watching Kathy jerk and twitch under her pet's licking tongue?
"Mmmmm, Pardner, touch me down there . . . yeah, good boy," Kathy said breathlessly, her hands now holding the dog's proud head.
"She's fucking herself!" Marcie whispered as she watched Kathy take the German shepherd's head and grip it tightly, rubbing its nose in and out, in and out of her drooling cunt.
It was awful! There was such a strange, wild look in Kathy's eyes as she did this. Her legs moved more widely apart while her brown hair flew in all directions. Marcie was holding tightly onto the molding, her fingernails sinking into the hard white enamel paint. The tips of her tits were so hard she thought they would break off as they rubbed against the smooth material of her white cotton blouse. Her cunt was moving, actually moving, the swelling cuntlips folding over one another while her clit popped out from the surrounding pink pussy flesh. Her knees were knocking together while an odd, comforting glow spread over her flesh.
"Oh God, God, it's gonna happen . . . it's . . . it's gonna . . . uhhhhhh!"
Marcie put one hand to her mouth, pressing the fingertips to her lips as she watched Kat fling her body back down onto the mattre The girl's face contorted into a wincing expression of pain. Kathy kept crying out, beating her clenched fists against the mattress while screaming out the dog's name again and again.
Kathy was making odd, jerky fucking movements, her feet now flat against the bed, her knees bent fully forward. Her thighs were tensi ng, relaxing, then tightening again as she danced her ass off the bed and fed the licking dog her pussy. She was fucking Pardner's mouth, driving her pussy up against his maw while clawing and clutching at the wrinkled coverlet.
"Fuck me, fuck me with that tongue!" Kathy cried.
Marcie suspected the girl saw nothing. She was staring straight up at the ceiling, her mouth half opened, odd guttural groans coming from deep in her chest. And over it all, there were the slick, smacking sounds of the German shepherd's tongue licking over her cunt! With a good deal of effort, Marcie turned around, leaning heavily against the wall. What she'd seen horrified as well as delighted her. She stumbled down the corridor, one of her sandals slipping from her feet.
"No, I've got to be dreaming," she whispered, one hand still against her mouth as she stumbled into the living room and leaned against the overstuffed chair. "Wrong . . . wrong!"
She moved around and sat heavily in the chair. It was only then the girl realized just how aroused she was. Watching her cousin Kathy gyrate under the dog's heavy cunt- licking had done something to her, something she couldn't quite understand fully. Kathy had looked so excited, so pleased at the touch of Pardner's tongue. There were no cries of agony or fear as the big black German shepherd mounted her and licked her pussy! Marcie sank back farther into the chair, rubbing her upper arms with both hands. How her flesh was puckered up into goose pimples! And all the while her cunt was still hot, so very wet and slippery down there between her white, shivering legs! It was a feeling she had had more often lately, and one she knew it was best not to have right now! That dog! That beautiful, wonderful dog fucking his tongue right into her cousin's pussy! There was nothing Marcie could do to shake the image from her mind.
"Ohhhh . . .", Gripping the armrests, the blonde teenager shook her head from side to side, her long blonde hair splashing over her throat. How could she feel excited over something like this? How could she?
Footsteps! Marcie did her best to compose herself, breathing more evenly, more steadily as Kathy entered the living room.
"Oh, you're here?" Marcie said, yawning an stretching her arms over her head . She prayed God Kathy wouldn't recognize the fact that she was not actually waking up from a deep sleep. The flush was still on her cheeks while the distinct smell of her aroused cunt hung around her like a heady perfume.
"Uh-huh," Kathy said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she walked around.
Her blouse and skirt were back on although her feet were still bare. And there right behind her was Pardner, his black nose still slick from the pussy juice of her cunt. Marcie looked away, her fingers tightening around the soft armrest. How her cunt burned under the steady gaze of the handsome dog!
"I was going to go into town with your mom, but I guess I just fell asleep," Marcie said, pretending to stifle another yawn.
"Yeah, it's kinda warm outside and today," Kathy said, her eyes looking a little out of focus.
She was probably still sliding down from her sexual high. That would be no surprise, considering the way she'd been acting under the dog's cunt-licking. Closing her eyes, Mar q-e could see her cousin twitching once more under Pardner's tongue. Oh, would she ever get that out of her mind?
"So warm I couldn't really sleep. I was a little tired too, Marcie," Kathy said, sliding down onto the sofa opposite the girl. Pardner followed, resting his head on Kathy's right knee. Again Marcie shuddered, lowering er eyes. "I . . . I think maybe I should make dinner or something, you know?"
"Mom's gonna be back soon enough," Kathy said airily, waving one hand in the air to dismiss the thought. "Come on back here . . . in my room. I wanna show you something."
"No! I mean," Marcie said, aware of the sharp edge in her voice, "I mean maybe I'd better do some chores around here or something. I've been here for nearly a week and I haven't done anything to help out."
"Come on, don't be silly," Kathy insisted, slipping one hand under her arm and forcing her to stand.
"Oh, all right," Marcie said.
There was nothing more she could do. Rising, the young girl glanced down at Pardner who had by this time rested his head on his front paws. Marcie stepped over the dozing animal, saying nothing as they walked down the corridor and into her cousin's room.
"You know," Kathy said, shutting the blinds that had been left wide open, "I don't think you really know about a lotta things." She flopped down on the bed, patting an area just to one side.
Marcie felt spaced, noticing that at least her cousin had straightened out the coverlet she'd been bouncing on. She wanted to run away from this horrible room. But that would only tip Kathy off as to what she'd been doing the past few minutes. The thought of admitting to spying on her cousin made her checks red with shame.
"For instance?" Marcie asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed and watching her cousin start to unbutton her blouse.
"About guys . . . you know, fucking and all that," Kathy said frankly.
"Kathy!"
It was as if she'd been slapped across the face with a wet towel. Fucking! How her mother would have screamed if she'd heard her use that kind of language!
"What's wrong about saying it?" Kathy said, shrugging while sliding her blouse off her shoulders. Her full, red-tipped tits jiggled from the movements she made.
"And . . . and what are you doing?" Marcie gasped as she watched her cousin unzip her skirt, sliding it down over her thighs.
"I'm gonna teach you a few things. Come on, take off your clothes! Come on, I think my big cousin from the city knows all that much about fucking even about her own body."
There was something behind this. Marcie could sense it, could see it in the way her cousin was eyeing her. But what could she do? Smiling nervously, she decided to go along with the game, feeling kind of spaced and high as she kicked off her sandals and began undressing. She stopped with her panties at her knees, giving her cousin a questioning look.
"Come on . . . I'll show you some things about your body that you probably don't even know about," Kathy said with a smile as she kicked off her briefs.
"What if your Mom comes back and . . . and finds us like this?" Marcie asked, slipping her panties off over her feet and noticing how damp the crotch panel was with her cunt juices!
"I'll hear the car coming, just like I can hear dad's truck. We'll be okay."
Reluctantly Marcie went along, sliding up to the head of the bed stark naked, her blonde bush covering her.simmering cuntal mound. It was the first time she'd been so naked next to another person before! Her body tingled with that thought-that thought and the remembrance of what had gone on in this bed moments ago!
"See this?" Kathy said, bending over. She probed around in the brown fur feathering around her pussy. With a sticky little sound, her outer cuntlips came open and the girl beamed up at her cousin. "That's my clit. And, oh wow, does it feel good when something's touching it."
Marcie shuddered. That was what Pardner was going after so frantically before. He was nuzzling her, his paws scratching her thighs while he probed deeper and deeper with his furry maw for that clit!
"And it gets big when you rub it."
Marcie parted her knees so her cunt opened from the resulting tension. Her cunt hairs were finer than Kathy's, and Marcie could see her own cunt slit very easily. Gingerly, the girl brushed her finger over the downy plump cuntlips between her spread thighs. She could see the pussy juice glimmering under the fine matting. How she felt like finger-fucking herself right now in front of Kathy! But that seemed bad. The girl remembered stories her mother told her about girls who did that sort of thing. They began to like doing it and finally wound up as sluts. Marcie couldn't remember the whole thing, just the resulting discomfort she had felt when she thought about finger-fucking.
"Touch it, come on," Kathy encouraged.
Mrcie did as she was told, feeling a small shock cut through her legs. She inhaled a shuddery breath, licking her bottom lip.
"Doesn't that feel wild?" Kathy asked.
"Yeah!" Marcie was surprised at the shaky quality of her own voice.
"Sometimes I put a little oil on it, you know? Then I work my fingers around in circles. Both hands when I really feel hot. Jesus, just talkin' about it makes me want to do it again."
Do it? Again? After what she'd just done with the dog? Marcie didn't know whether to laugh or simply continue to look increduously at her cousin. She sat there cross-legged, watching the brunette fingering her pussy more rhythmically now.
"Don't you feel you"re doing something wrong? I mean, it's not right, is it?"
"No, nothing's wrong with it. Nothing's wrong if the feeling's so good!"
Kathy sighed, sliding down on the bed, digging her heels into the coverlet. Marcie watched, her eyes widening as a hot flush began to radiate out from her cunt up to her tits. Oh, she was turning on! And what would be the outcome of her young lust?
Unfortunately it's not compatible with most septic operating systems yet.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
In the article, they talk about making a "book" of this stuff -- what an incredible waste! If the epaper's contents can be changed electronically, there's no reason to have a whole "book" of it -- one sheet should suffice (with some sort of input device to capture "page turn" requests) for most everything.
Furthermore, if you view the epaper as simply a medium through which to display information, you wouldn't need a seperate physical volume for each book - they could all fit into something, say, the size of a PDA (compactflash, etc for removable, expandable storage, and a hookup to the epaper to display -- or even a PDA screen made OF this stuff (thin, light, flexible (foldable?) PDA ^_^ ) - would be insanely useful.
All of this doesn't come with a price, however. If publishing of mainstream works went electronic, there would be no "ownership" of a copy of a work, only a "license". Then, by simply encrypting the contents, by any means, no matter how light, makes it CRIMINAL to build, use and/or distribute a compatible viewer, under the DMCA. So whomever is first to market, wins, and has a larger stranglehold on the publishing industry than M$ has on PC OS's - because noone will *legally* be able to compete in that arena. ("Your honor, our file format, which is used by every major publication, is encrypted, and thus protected under the DMCA. The defendants willfully broke the law when they decrypted the contents of our file format and used it to create their product...")
There are MANY more issues here than just a superthin, flexible, high-contrast display. The article doesn't really touch on the major issues at all, and instead only glosses over the technology involved.
if it worked, it was here by now.
But I still like ye olde paper.
Example:
When I buy a program online, all I get is a serial number or a username and password to download it. I always print out a copy of the page. No matter how cool the paperless office might sound, it's damd nice to have it on paper when you just can't find that email where the code was.
Boss: Johnny, we're very happy with these new e-papers that you ordered. At first, I thought they were to expensive to justify, but I know now that they worth every penny.
Johnny: Thanks boss!
Boss: You're welcome Johnny. Do you think you'd be able to get the rest of them distributed to the clerks today?
Johnny: Sure no problem.
Boss: One other thing, can you set the network up so that each time someone opens a file on an e-paper, that the Laserjet 10,000 will print it out automatically?
Johnny: I suppose so, but why? *dull look of horro*
Boss: So that they can have a printout too, of course. *silently to himself* "Why do these computer people have to be so dense?!?"
Johnny: *silently to himself* "AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHH!!! *sob* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHH!!!"
Michael sed But none of it matters until they have ultra-thin, durable, flexible pages that can be manufactured cheaply...
What an assanine comment. I happen to care about it just as I cared about computers before they were able to be manufactured cheaply. Sounds like this guy only cares about being a silly little end user who only wants to be fed little news bites to let him know when he can run over to Circuit City and get one.
Sorry, I'm easily provoked today, move along.
I have this horrible image...
... ...
...the year is something like 2012...
...the transition between paper based documention and electronic paper is on us...
...a child is preparing a project for school...
...scissors in one hand...
...glue in the other...
...
... your electronic newspaper in a zillion pieces pasted to a piece of tagboard!
8-|
My original post did not make clear that I think that digital paper is, effectively, a lie.
The electronics necessary to address the pixels is of the kind used with LCD panels used in laptop computers. This electronics has been available for several years, so it is somewhat mature. It is VERY expensive. A large part of the cost of a laptop is the cost of the LCD panel.
It is true that electronics to drive a black-and-white display would be less complex. But it is still a very expensive problem to solve, especially if it is expected to be flexible.
My guess is that the companies are trying to get funding. My guess is that they know that the electronics is very expensive, and not likely to come down in price without a HUGE amount of additional research. To me, this seems to be a cover-up of the kind we have seen so often recently in connection with the dot-coms. The companies seem to me to be taking advantage of the lack of technical knowledge on the part of the investors.
Bush's education improvements were
Could it be that they read Slashdot from work and have no choice?
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
my dog drooled on it, causing a short circuit.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
The point of paper, as I use it, besides for drawing and writing things by hand, is to back up things.
if You've got some important records, you cant just back up everything to disk. What if there's a power short? Oh, go to another computer? What if lightning hits Nearby?
I guess you could use CD, but that only works so far.
It's already been pointed out that the digital age will have nothing in it for people to find in a thousand years (or more likely, in a couple million years... damn nuclear wessels) and with E-Paper, what less will we have?
Thousands of pages of blank, near-blank, or blotchy.. meaningless pages.
Paper can survive EMP, E-paper cant. No point without regular paper.
Some people might like books with pages on them, I think these people are just avoiding the point that nobody has made a decent datapad yet. The whole "e-paper" idea will be looked at as a horrible joke in 60 years, at which time I'd hope we'd have an acceptable datapad of some sort, somewhere.
In two generations, anyone who doesnt like to read off a screen will be very old. Screen technology will also have changed drasticly, for that matter, so it is unlikely that anyone will give a damn. You want something that looks like paper? turn your monitor up to 2^256 colors, and pick it off the desk for a moment.
in the mean time though, maybe these people can make some money in their meaningless endevor
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
E-paper seems to me like the idea of someone who simply thinks it would be cool and hasn't thought past that in any real way. the things that E-paper could replace would be much better replaced with two different medium: hemp paper and a LCD similar to E-books. I'm sure that as soon as you read "hemp" some of you started giggiling uncontrollably, just look on the internet with a simple search for "hemp" and you'll see that not only is hemp the fiber of choice (twice as much per acre as cotton) it also is the second best source of nutrition (only soy is better) in every way the perfect plant, perfect too, for those hardcopy records that some companies will always want to keep (can anyone else see how much better a fully renewable resourse is for this than E-paper made from plastics (i.e oils) is?). the other side of the paper coin: quickly disposed of information media (i.e. newspapers and magazines) can be fixed by three things: solid state electronics, wireless modem, and a LCD. wrapped in a waterproof case and backed with a subscription to a national news service with custimizable/searchable article array, updated hourly. people are already getting almost this online for (nearly) free, how much would they pay for it to be portable?
Ugh. Ugh Ugh Ugh Ugh NO.
I want E-Paper. E-Paper that's almost indistinguishable from actual paper. I want to be able to fold it, write on it, store what I write, dynamically display near anything on it. Something straight out of Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Although something tells me I won't actually have anything like this until nanotechnology actually gets somewhere useful.
Interesting.
However, serializers and de-serializers require lots of transisters. I don't think they can be reliably embedded in a flexible medium, and I don't think they can be cheap. Also, there are still lots of wires.
Digital paper is not feasible at present, I think. The display cells are available, but the electronics is a huge challenge. It is the electronics that is the challenge, not the display cells.
I think the promoters of this technology know that they cannot deliver without a huge amount of expensive additional research. They seem to be hiding that fact from people who are less knowledgeable. It's like the dot-com frauds; people taking advantage of the lesser knowledge of other people.
Bush's education improvements were
I'm sure some idiot out there will be trying to sell us single page e-paper books. After all, it's all you really need...
I like the idea of my collection in one nicely bound--yes bound--256 page book. (512 pages also available.) For static text, you want to click 'next' as little as possible. The best interface for books is TURNING THE PAGE.
The book texts should be stored in the e-book; I don't need to worry about my PC trashing my library and I know that I own it. (This is more than knowing that I just have access to a text--even if it's free access.)
For any non-static text, moving images, or anything interactive, use some Trekie datapad.
But there is more : the texture of the paper is gratifying to touch, the turning of a paper page is part of the pleasure of reading, the letters never have staircase effect, even if the printing is crappy, the white of the paper reflects different color shades with the lighting, one can see the sun dance on the pages at dawn or dusk while reading on the train, etc etc ... Even the back, with its different material (cardboard), its artwork and sometimes embossed or golden letters is part of the reading experience.
Bullshit! The things i hated most about reading (and the reason I don't read paperbacks anymore) are the very things your sick, tiwsted mind treasures. The feel of the paper? Damn, I hate the texture of most paper backs. It's like...I don't know, but certainly not something I like! Turning the pages? Oh how I disdained turning the pages whist reading the crap they would make us read in high school or even something entertaining like Hunt For Read October. My favorite place to read is in bed. My postures varied, but usually meant my leaning one arm half the time. But to change the page, you need two hands (especially with newer, thicker books) or some extravagant hand motions to turn it. Wouldn't a nice arrow in the lower left and right hand corners of each page make life just a little easier? I treasure the day we all burn our books (much like we trashed our typewriters).
E-paper sounds slightly scary to me. What if you wanted to photocopy something, and when u tried the paper turned red and started making siren sounds? Or demanded to see your credit card?
In publishing there are few editions of a manuscript ever printed that contain no errors. When enough errors exist in a given edition the publisher will often times issue a reprint with errors corrected. This used to be a big problem of publishers before the advent of computers when legions of people hand take a handwritten manuscript and pre-press it all by hand. Things in the books also get changed by the author or rights holder of the manuscript. Sometimes the book you read is not the same one the author originally wrote. If you want to do a little homework to see how drastic this can be sometimes, pick up a copy of the original draft of John Locke's Treatise on Government and then read the touched up copy they give you in a US government class. There's several major editions all with several large variances because when Locke originally wrote the treatises he wrote under a pen name with little to no fear of reprisal but later editions left things out because it was figured he was the author, then later after certain revolutions took place those things were re-added. For a second project look into a comparison between old or middle English copies of the Bible and the modern King James edition. A good deal of the passages lose a bit of their meaning when you read the archaic copies. The modern language does not mesh very well contextually with the archaic language though the mechanics are similar.
Now skip ahead to the modern times when books are often times written on word processors and a single editor reviews the work accepts and suggests changes then finalizes the draft and sends it to an electronic pre-press. There's far fewer human based errors in modern print books so there's fewer editions from the same publisher printed. The only big changes are the one the author or editor decides to make in terms of actual content of the book. This is perfectly legal and fine for them to do. It is fine because most often if there was an original print of the book it ended up in some library or catalog somewhere. A hardcopy exists of the original work. Say someone actually got a copy of Catcher in the Rye printed with fewer profanities and got it out to the public at large. You'd know it was an edited work because you could go find an original print of the book if you really wanted one. As long as a group of extremists went and burned the original copies of the book you couldn't pass the profanity free copy off as the real thing. Hard copies of things can be difficult to get rid of because they are so entirely physical.
Enter e-books. Ahead fifty years from now, the printing of hard copy paper books is passe so all books are published electronically. Books are are now ethereal constructs. They can be transmitted in less than a fraction of a second to thousands of people and a library of them can be stored in a square inch of physical space. Man how revolutionary! They can also be wiped out by a single keystroke. The ethereal entities that books are can be wiped out or changed with the same whim it takes to transmit or store them in come digital medium. A scratched optical disk or pulled power plug can wipe out an entire strata of contemporary society. Was I the only one who read and understood 1984? Most of the shit you know or think you know is what you've been told. If someone is teeling you bullshit, all you know is bullshit. The books that did exist in Winston Smith's world were rewritten en masse to accord themselves with the contemporary situation at hand. You don't need to be a wild conspiracy theorist to think up some situations where the metaphysical nature of literature is abused. Shit, in computer terms, if a bug exists in code put into a CVS root the rest of the servers pulling from that root will get the same bug. Fouling the source fouls up everything. It's fairly easy to foul up the source if the only source is electronic. How many Gutenburg books have you seen with major typos in them, in fifty years literature students might discuss the poetic use of bad grammar in a work just because the only copy of the book in existance has been a fouled up copy with a typo from some text file that ran afoul of gzip. I'll stick with real paper.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
E-Papercuts. This will be followed by E-Bleeding, as well as the E-Band Aid(tm).
Ouch. That's going to hurt.
I would be very interested in this except for one thing. It almost certainly requires a constant supply of power. Unless the ink will unfailingly hold a pattern after the electronics have been used to imprint them, I'd hate this. I can just imagine that I'd be in the middle of a paragraph when my batteries died and I'd be stuck on the subway with nothing to read. I mean, this is why I bring a book along in the first place - in case the batteries on my Gameboy die. I very much doubt this system is so robust that it would hold the text even without power.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
I also like the convienice and feel of real paperbacks.
What excites me about things like e-paper is that I could have different books for different needs.
For travel or general fun reading (in the park, on the couch, etc.) I could have an e-book the size of a normal paperback (hopefully with pages that have similar weight and feel to paper) that I could dock, load with content, undock and take with me anywhere.
For harsher conditions like maps you take out hiking, I could have a more rugged version of the paper that would stand up to wear and weather.
If I wanted to prop up a table, I could have a hardback version of e-paper that I fill up with something like "War & Peace" or "The Breast" (wierd Kafka ripoff, or at least it seems that way to me!). Ok, someone out there might like the hardback form factor. It is better for tech books, hmm...
Anyway, I could have a choice of form factors and load what books I liked into whatever size and shape I like.
As for the person who said a book full of pages of e-paper was a waste, my argument against that is that spatial memory is very powerful, and there are a LOT of times when I've wanted to refer back to some exact spot in the book and the quickest way really is to turn right to the page where you remember it being - you might think some sort of search mechanism could do the same but I think it would be slower. Plus I am in agreement that turning pages is pleasant way to scroll forward through a book.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The reason why I personally would much rather have a real book full of pages for most reading needs is that I like to refer back to particular spots - sometimes to look back at an earlier plot point, sometimes to go to a particular page to look up some reference.
.50c each with no distribution or printing costs, but are too worried about the 1% of people that would hoard the content to grab the gold ring.
Spatial memory is quite powerful, and I can often turn to the exact page I'm looking for, or I can't quite remember exactly what I'm looking for textually but know where it was spatially. It might seem like you could just runa search for the same thing in a PDA style reader, but I'm dubious that could ever be made as fast as simply turning to a page when you know where it is.
The great thing about digital books is that for times when a computer-style search is called for, you could use a PDA unit to do that - but when you wanted to read a book in a traditional manner without having to worry about a battery source throughout the period of time you use a book (like while travelling) a book full of e-paper would be amazingly useful.
Even better if when you get your hotel room or other destination if you could upload a new book into your e-book from the PDA.
I'm not going to touch the issues you bring up regarding digital books and ownership - all I can say is that companies seem to be too stupid to see an opportunity for tenfold growth in profits to be able to grab on. They could be selling new books in airports for
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even if the electronics to drive a piece of e-paper were somewhat expensive, it wouldn't matter if used ina docking station senario.
Basically, you'd have a book of e-paper which you would hook to a docking station of some sort - that would render all of the e-paper for the book. It could even take a bit (a few minutes) and people wouldn't mind.
You could have a rnage of ebooks with different form factors and lengths. Seperate from that you could have a range of e-book docking stations with different capbilities - some could be more customized to render in different point sizes, have better fonts or support diagrams. You'd only have to buy one docking station but you could have a variety of e-books to write to, as long as they are made as cheaply as possible I think it would all work out well and be pretty affordable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What are you going to do when the electricity ends? Power it with a potato?
As long as people want the real thing, there will be someone to sell it. And vice-versa.
You try placing footnotes on the correct piece of paper with HTML.
You can do them at the end of a document, sure, but HTML isn't precise enough to guarantee that that matches the end of the physical page on all devices. There's a reason publishers use PDFs instead of HTML, y'know...
A wireless HTML browser on e-paper would be cool, yes, but it alone won't replace books. Actually, the other problem that screams out at me here is annotations. From what they're talking about I can't see a clean, simple way to annotate your copy, which means you instantly knock it out for academic books and quite a lot of non-academic, too. Or end up with a situation similar to the old joke about tippex on the monitor...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
It's getting closer and closer to when I'll finally be able to get one of those computer books that Penny used to help her uncle foil Dr. Claw's evil plans!!
C0MPU73R B00X R0X0R
The E-Ink/E-Paper concept works on the fact that you run a charge through the circuitry and the pages hold that state once they have been typeset. Removing the charge does not destroy the image.
The E-Paper is comprised on half white/black beads that spin from white to black.
Therefore there is no need to refresh the picture unless you are doing an animation.
E-Paper does not contantly refresh and is not LCD based. If there is no charge the image is not destroyed.
It would be infact very cheap to produce, seeing that the paper is just inpregnated with beads half black and on the other side white. They just spin from side to side. They then stay that way until a charge is used.
can I wipe my arse with it?
SURELY NOT!!!!!
"Seems that everytime[sic] any of the e-paper, e-ink, e-whatever companies have a new demo unit they run out and call a press conference."
/.
And every time that happens someone reports on it.
And every time that happens the report is posted on
/. has control over one part of this boring, repetitive, uninformative process...
Yes, but the complexity is in getting the digital information to the display cells, not in the display cells themselves.
Bush's education improvements were
I have to wonder how this e-paper is going to operate - will it work like a PDA with its own embedded OS, or will there be some sort of seperate device with an "e-paper display driver" that spits out pages to the device? If the first is true, I imagine there will be a small square on the paper where the chips are that cannot display anything. Maybe that's where the paper's logo will go (Intel Inside or something).
But I really hope it won't run on Microsoft PaperPC.
Then again, it would be really funny if the person sitting next to me had a page of e-paper that suddenly went all blue - This paper has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. How do you control-alt-delete a piece of paper?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
You don't need nearly the power of a matrox card. You're not managing 32 million colors, or 3d effects, texture loading, or any of that. Just black and white, a video card to handle epaper would be very simple , very cheap and very small.
I read an article in Scientific American a while back that made a disturbing point: all through the later half of the twentieth century, and all of the twenty-first, the trend has been towards storing data in electronic media instead of paper. The problem is that computer media become obsolete very quickly, so you end up with data stored on tape drives that don't have players made anymore, for example. The question I have is: qhat will historians of the future do when they don't have 3.5 inch floppy drives, or CD-ROM drives, because they've been replaced with newer technology? How will they access our data?
The nice thing about paper, from a historian's point of view, is that anyone can obtain data from an actual dead tree or sheepskin.
I'm the stranger...posting to
You are right. Using a Matrox card as an example was a mistake.
Bush's education improvements were
I don't buy the whole "book experience" either. Reading in bed is still possible and I'm totally willing to invest in a laptop to avoid having to buy another damned huge ass bookshelf. Can't wait to see books in museums...
But aren't hyperlinks (you know, from the 'H' in HTML) appropriate for footnotes. Just a stupid idea, I suppose.
You're right in that HTML was never intended to be a layout tool although it has been coerced into being one, but IMO, in and of itself HTML can be a very reasonable way to display information. However, footnotes are placed on the same page to allow the user to see them without flipping around the book. If you are using hyperlinks, you get the same effect.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Far worse is the level of revisionism that will be possible a la 1984 (everyone read it if you haven't). Already when I go to MS' web site, I have a helluva time finding information on anything earlier than the current product, and we won't go into how they redefine 'innovation'. (I don't theenk that word means what you theenk it does. -- Princess Bride)
At least paper books can't be changed remotely to display something different than they did last week.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Can you make a Beowulf cluster of those?
There seem to be alot of issues here that could freedom-relevant.
Thats why i would ask: Is someone else here interested in developing free-design-e-paper?
This technology is very close to the cutting edge between content&hardware. That is why we should be wary that the control over content does not get swallowed up by you-know-how.
Wouldn't it be a good protection if we'd start with the freedom on an early level?
Besides, i think developing something like that would be fun.
That's it... no clear ideas how-to....
anyway...
--- wSerPg@deAmokratMica.org (remove "SPAM")
Might it be possible to place some kind of electronic grid upon the face of the EAS, so that, by activating any given intersection (similar to a telephone "bar-type" switching network) a "dot" of iron filing might appear? Of course, the resultant picture would be fairly low-res, but it *might* be adequate for print. I think that one could achieve at least 320 * 240 pixels, perhaps similar to an old C64 screen.
I am presuming that the grid would connect out of a conventional serial or parallel port from a conventional computer. Any thoughts on the feasability of this?
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.