E-Paper On Cereal Boxes

coastin writes "Wired Mag has an article about electronics maker Siemens, readying a paper-thin electronic-display technology. They say it is so cheap it could replace conventional labels on disposable packaging. Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by. From the article: 'When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it", said Axel Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement the technology.'"

Comments

The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[biocute]

When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it"

I envision the day when cereal company is selling hackable E-Paper that comes with edible cereals, or iPod that comes with a BMW.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[middlemen]

I envision the day when porn will be flashed on the cereal boxes and the kid's Dad goes "I want it!"

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[AKAImBatman]

I envision the day when cereal company is selling hackable E-Paper that comes with edible cereals

Not everything is hackable. For example, if you get software on a SmartCard, you probably can't hack it to run your own programs because the ROM is printed between the PVC along with the microprocessor. Same type of problem here. The ePaper will probably be "printed" with the desired animation, and can't be changed. It'll be the moving "holograms" of the 21st century!

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

There still has to be a digital input to the ePaper. Like an LCD, it will always be possible to hack it to display something else.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[AKAImBatman]

There still has to be a digital input to the ePaper. Like an LCD, it will always be possible to hack it to display something else.

You mean, in the same way it's possible to "hack" the FPU out of a CPU into another unit? THINK about it. If they print all the circuitry as a single device, you'd have to have fab-quality tools to directly interface with the ePaper. That is NOT my idea of a "hackable" piece of ePaper. (Especially since it would be cheaper and easier just to purchase a generic ePaper display.) And that's assuming that they don't further cut corners with tricks like not adding eInk to areas that don't change in the animation.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[suiside]

How long until e-toilet paper? Not the printed stuff [slashdot.org]

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be sure it's not a penguin in sheep's clothing. Considering how fat penguins are they couldn't really fit into much. I wonder what this says about your average Linux user.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[SenatorOrrinHatch]

If anyone mentions trying to run linux on it, I shall hunt them down and kill them. Cuz it's my idea.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[BlueSteel]

Great, someone pwn3d my Lucky Charms!

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

While I recall a recent article detailing the etching of a functional Z80 onto glass, I question the ability to integrate large amounts of storage (comparatively) onto a flexible substrate. Is that really practical for a cereal box? The profit margins involved there can tolerate devices that cost pennies, not dollars.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Ucklak]

Someone - - will hack it.

Someone will be able to get Cap'n Crunch's head to animate as goatse. I just hope they do it after they get the box home and not while it's on the shelf.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[AKAImBatman]

While I recall a recent article detailing the etching of a functional Z80 onto glass, I question the ability to integrate large amounts of storage (comparatively) onto a flexible substrate.

The largest SmartCards currently on the market have 8MBits(1MB) of flash memory on board, plus a 16 bit CPU, plus 8KB of RAM, plus 8KB of ROM, plus RSA and DES accelerators, plus tamper and malfunction sensors. All in a credit card sized device sandwiched between solid PVC, and produced for ~$10 a unit. (You could open a lot of hotel doors with that SmartCard. ;-))

The key is that it's much cheaper to print all the circuitry in one piece rather than run wires or pins. As for the flexibility, I'm guessing that the circuitry isn't actually flexible, just the display part. If you had a piece in your hand, you'd probably be able to find a "lump" where the printed controllers, memory, and CPU are housed.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Anonymous Coward]

These cereal box epaper devices will most likely be pre-printed designs that have artwork sections that can be turned on/off as a whole. Certainly not any kind of addressable matrix display that can be hacked to display anything other than the original art.

Maybe an arrow or the word "New!" flashing on and of to draw attention to the box. This sort of thing wouldn't require a CPU. As the technology progresses and costs are driven down, expect crude animation using techniques similar to the old Nintendo Game and Watch screens.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

So only the display part is flexible, but there is a seperate PCB for circuitry? What connects the PCB to the display then, if not wires?

$10 is hideously expensive compared to the cost of the product you're bundling this display with (A cereal box). Pretend that storage space is linear, and we need to get that cost down to 10 cents. That is 1/100th of the cost, and by our fake linear approximation, and that is about 10KB of storage space. Assuming one bit per pixel and no compression (Too expensive to decode), that is about one single 320x256 black and white image. If we set a limit of 50 cents for all components, the ePaper is 30 cents (according to the article), the storage is 10 cents, that leaves 10 cents for components to get the data from the memory to the display. This isn't sounding practical.

Keep in mind that ANY such display is eating in to the profit margine of the product, since it adds no value to the product in most cases. In this case, we're talking about a box of cereal.

A box of cheerios goes for $3.85, according to a random online grocer. I have no idea what the profit margin is like on Cheerios, but I highly doubt there is room for a few dollars worth of components, let alone even 50 cents worth of components.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

What you describe can already be done, probably cheaper, with said existing technologies. I seem to recall somebody mentioning an entire ultracheap game device using those static LCDs that cost something on the order of 25 cents to make. The entire point of ePaper is that you can change the image. If you're going to burn single static images into the thing, it defeats the entire purpose of ePaper.

Why don't people do this already, then? Because the concept of the article is bullshit. A box of Cheerios costs less than $4. There isn't room in the profit margin for electronic displays of any kind.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[tomhudson]

There's easily room for a buck, never mind 50 cents. The actual food in that box of Cheerios costs under a dime. Everything else (advertising, box, packaging, shipping, handling, marketing, profit) is extra.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

The cost of the food, as you point out, is only a small portion of the true cost of a product.

You have to account for that "everything else" BEFORE you can think about the extra cost of the digital display. Just because you have put ePaper on a cereal box doesn't mean you don't have to market it or ship it. The cost of that display is above and beyond everything else, and must directly eat in to the profit margin.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[AKAImBatman]

So only the display part is flexible, but there is a seperate PCB for circuitry? What connects the PCB to the display then, if not wires?

Not exactly. First off, I didn't say it was printed on PCB. I said it was printed (though it could be etched) directly into the device. The "wires" between the screen, the CPU, and the memory are printed or etched into place. Presumably, this ePaper has a method for stitching the "wires" throughout the paper (to control individual pixels) that aren't damaged by the device being flexed. However, CPUs and memory cicuits tend to be a bit more fragile, and would be printed onto a less flexible surface. If they do it right, the rigid part wouldn't be immediately obvious, but it would be there.

For example, many book retailers are now slapping electronic tags on the back of their books. If you pay attention, you'll note that these are semi-rigid. But since they're small enough, you probably won't notice them as you open the cover to a paperback book.

$10 is hideously expensive compared to the cost of the product you're bundling this display with (A cereal box).

Of course it is. My only point was that the technology for this sort of thing is highly advanced. I don't see ePaper for a cereal box needing 1MB of flash memory, DES and RSA codecs, wireless (aka contactless) support, or even 8KB of RAM. It's far more likely that the device will have a simple CPU/Controller combination with 1 or 2 kilobytes of ROM, plus 128-512 bytes of RAM. (That's more than the Atari 2600!)

Assuming one bit per pixel and no compression (Too expensive to decode), that is about one single 320x256 black and white image.

Don't assume a framebuffer. When you're looking at devices this small, a framebuffer would be a waste of valuable memory. The images will probably be procedurally computed on the fly. Also, don't assume that compression is too expensive. Decompressors can be etched directly into the hardware.

If we set a limit of 50 cents for all components, the ePaper is 30 cents (according to the article), the storage is 10 cents, that leaves 10 cents for components to get the data from the memory to the display.

You're assuming that the storage isn't already included in the ePaper. Given the level of integration necessary to keep the price down, I'd say that the $0.30 is an approximate quote for the total system, subject to minor variations based on the individual designs.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[tomhudson]

They don't care - once everyone does it, it becomes part of the "cost of doing business". And everyone will do it because they can't be seen as giving up a competitive edge to others. So you'll have pressure to raise the price some more, and cut the actual quality and quantity of the content more.

If it sells product, and results in an incremental increase in volume, they'll do it, and figure out how to make it profitable.

Besides, people already mistakenly associate higher cost with "better", in everything from cars to clothes to cereal.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[LWATCDR]

You could probably do it all with rom and a few other logic components.
The rom could contain a number of frames. A register controls where in the address space the display fetches the frame. I timer increments the register. There really is not need for a cpu at all. Another option would be to have some contacts on the bottom of the package and have all the memory and cpu power be part of the store display. It would only be active when the box was on the shelf.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[AKAImBatman]

Indeed. I called it a CPU, but a simple decoder is more than enough for many electronic products. Handheld videogames, anyone? :-)

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[onwardknave]

Great. Hacked cereal boxes. I can just see "Goatse Cereal." Hey, it even sounds like "oats," so it's got to be good. GAHHH! My eyes!

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[ickpoo]

Even more likely is the images are printed as images as in no pixels at all. To get animation they just print several images. Something like those things that switch the image based on the angle you are looking from.

Then the electronics does nothing more than provide power for each of the images in sequence.

Latter there will be pixels, but for now just images.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[emmaussmith]

But, you've also got to figure that if only one cereal company bought into this, that would make their products fly off the shelf until everyone else did it and it became the norm. People are usually suckers for flashy advertising. So, even if it did dip into the profit margins a bit, even with only twice the volume, they could make a bundle.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Kadin2048]

I'm willing to bet that the biggest cost in your box of Cheerios is transportation. The profit margin involved for everyone, from General Mills down to the local grocery store, is very small. It's only sustainable because of the quantities involved.

Although the ingredients may be cheap, and the packaging may be cheap, and the ink on the box and the toy inside may be cheap, putting everything together and delivering it to your neighborhood is not.

I'm not sure whether they do or not, but I've always thought it would be a good idea for cereal manufacturers to be more like Coca-Cola: manufacture the critical components in one place (the cheerios) and then distribute them in bulk and package them locally. I think the transportation costs for individual boxes of Cereal must be enormous. Maybe they have no other choice because of freshness/QC issues, though.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[cskrat]

There is another possible way of decreasing memory requirements and other manufacturing costs if your are content with a device that can only display a very small fixed selection of images.

Imagine the classic three circle Venn diagram with regions A,B and C. Now choose three images that you want displayed on your device. Find pixels exclusive to only one image and put them in the non overlapping areas of A,B and C respectively. Find the pixels shared by any two and put them in the appropriate overlaped areas. Find the pixels shared by all three and put them smack in the center of the Venn where all three regions meet and overlap. Run a lead to each walled in little sub-region to turn them on and off.

Doing something like this will mean that a 3 image device will need [(2^3)-1] bits per image for a total of 21 bits to hold all three.

Sadly the requirements scale exponentially as a device with n images would require [(2^n)-1] bits per image or n[(2^n)-1) bits total. But with just a handful of images you escape the need for the full fledged frame buffer that would be needed by a general purpose display.

With such a simplified method you could also escape the need for any sort of processing by having the regions controlled by a chain of transistor loops. I don't feel like drawing this out right now so I'm guessing a little here, and again n is the number of images, but it could probably be done with [n^2+3n] to [n^2+4n] individual transistors and a small amount of diodes or, if they spend a lot of time tailoring the circuit for each different design, [4n] to [5n] transistors and a something close to [n^2] diodes. Both figures are in addition to the timer circuit that only needs to tick at reasonably consistant intervals.

Sadly, if they do implement something like what I'm imagining, the end result will not be anything general purpose enough to be worth hacking. Sorry guys.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[tomhudson]

Contrary to popular belief, the markup on food at the retail level is damn sweet.

Retailers claim their "profit margin" is 4%. That's net net net. After all expenses. Gross markup is between 25% and 40%, in some cases 60%. The junkier the product, the higher the margins (breakfast cereal is junk).

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[jnelson4765]

But if you use RFID and an inductive grid in the store shelf to give the box power, you wouldn't need to worry about that. It is also the likely way to have them controllable - have a central server dump commands to individual boxes.

That would be cool - imagine hacking the store server to have "You're the man!" appear on every box in the store when you walk by... :)

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Asm-Coder]

Well bear in mind that the ePaper is "supposed" to serve advertising purposes, so the expense would come from are most likable advetising department. They have a fairly large budget, so...

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Yartrebo]

Wheat sells for about $.05 a pound. Energy is about $.02/pound of coal (a record high I might add). Water is essentially free. Cereal is extremely cheap to manufacture. The marketing budget, packaging, retail margins, etc, are what cost money.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[kabz]

Everyone seems to be getting very excited about ePaper, but all the articles so far that I've seen don't show it to be anymore advanced than those Nintendo Game and Watch type devices.

Cool, but probably nothing desparately exciting. Certainly not a general purpose deal like the development toolkits.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

And those costs don't go away. It doesn't matter what the cost breakdown is, the fact is you still have to either eat into the profit margin for fancy electronics on a cereal box, or you have to increase prices. I don't think the market would bear the increased costs (people would just buy the non-ePaper boxes), so your only remaining option is to eat into the profit margin.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

Would not that method require storing locational data for the pixels? Or would you use run-length encoding? Locational data would be a killer, considering that the location information would be several times the size of a one-bit pixel. RLE might work, because by only storing the pixels that differ from the shared regions you'd be increasing the number of zero-pixels.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

I don't think their products would fly off the shelves. I think people would tend to the much cheaper non-enhanced boxes, since the cereal inside would be the same.

Remember that supermarkets don't lose money manufacturing generic brand cereal, increasing the price of premium brand only increases the incentive to buy the generic equivalent ;)

Personally, I find the local generic Lucky Charms brand identical in every single respect to the real thing, and I don't bother buying actual Lucky Charms anymore, when I do.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

The game-and-watch type LCD screens can only display fixed images. ePaper has a grid of pixels, and can therefore display arbitrary images much like a computer screen. There are orders of magnitude more complexity there. Imagine one sheet of ePaper that could display every page in a news paper, versus a fixed LCD like the Game And Watch that could only display one page. That's the difference here.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[cskrat]

You wouldn't need to store pixel data because you'd be doing something more akin to hard wiring the images. Think along the lines of the old LCD style handheld video games where if you pressed on the screen you'd see little pictures of game objects. In those devices you'd sometimes see a situation, let's use a fighting game for example, where the neutral stance is a picture of a the character, a kick is the character plus an extended leg and a punch is the character plus an extended arm. You'd make each image by activating the correct combination of those three regions. In this case, all that you're storing is the info for what combination of regions to activate.

If you could hard wire clumps of pixels on this digital paper in a similar fashion you could save dramatically on component count compared to a raster or RLE based system. I think the only real requisite is that the circuitry involved with the display would need to have two layers to work with.

If display area desperately needs a strobing row or column system to work then an approach more akin to a raster system would be more appropriate. But from what I read of TFA, there was no mention as to how the new technology works other than that it could be produced in a non cleanroom environment. If it does need a raster system, I like your idea of RLE compression of XOR data though.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[emmaussmith]

Even though sodas use this more distributed method, their products are still not the same universally for the smaller guys. One of my favorite sodas (Sun-Drop, which happens to be owned by Dr. Pepper/Seven-Up) is produced by Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated where I live now, but has a much different taste than the Sun-Drops I got from Choice Bottling Company in my hometown. In my area the franchises are handed out roughly by county, so who I ordered it from for a business depended solely on location.

For smaller companies and brands, this variance may be tolerated in order to get their product out more, but a major brand isn't going to tolerate this.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[Guspaz]

I don't think that sort of fixed image functionality would be any cheaper than existing fixed-image LCDs like you describe. I know that fixed-image LCDs cost less than ePaper, since somebody priced the parts in such a toy and came up with 25 cents for the whole toy, not just the LCD. The ePaper would be a bit thinner, though. Not sure if that would matter all that much in practice.

Re:The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

[cskrat]

Using what I described, the contolling electronics would be similar in price to a cheap LCD system. The biggest differences will be in whether the digital paper is easier to produce or more eye catching than a similar LCD. Plus there's the safety and liability issue of gluing either a chunk of glass or a thin flexible sheet of plastic to a ceral box marketed at kids.

Then six months later the marketing guys demand color and the whole thing turns into a giant headache.

Can you think of a better way

[Anonymous Coward]

to alienate parents?

Re:Can you think of a better way

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a parent, then I would let my children play with the bad boxes as much as they want in whatever way they want. At the end of the trip, I would just hand the products back to the store, even if opened and partially consumed, and/or damaged, and without paying.

That sounds evil, but they honestly can't expect to compete against parents for the brain space of children, and expect cooperation. As it is, businesses already provide baby change tables to help parents, and they already return products back to shelves. So, why not use the services that they provide against them?

The prices would rise, and stores would think twice about making stores appealing to children.

That being said, I wouldn't let children play with the good boxes.

I'm lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't eat cereal.

Epilepsy?

[slavemowgli]

Flashing stuff on boxes all over the supermarket? That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.

Re:Epilepsy?

[Jerf]

Ah, I do believe you've identified the proper attack vector.

You know, I think I feel a bit of strobe-induced epilepsy coming on now... yes, definately.

(Apologies to real epileptics, but I can and have made the same joke about any number of other things, too. The ADA is a good thing for everybody, not just the disabled.)

Re:Epilepsy?

[dr_dank]

Flashing stuff on boxes all over the supermarket? That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.

In this age of data mining, persons afflicted with a seizure at the supermarket will quickly receive a coupon for a free shake from Baskin Robbins.

Re:Epilepsy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that was awesome.
You're going straight to hell.

Re:Epilepsy?

[|/|/|||]

Absolutely. I can't stand animated web pages -- the last thing I want is animated packaging.

There are potential benefits here, though. For one thing, if you can add some buttons to make the display interactive, you can fit a lot more information onto the label.

Re:Epilepsy?

[HTL2001]

I'd love for this to be used as a way to stop it, since they give me headaches. I bet you'll get complaints about that if this ever goes through.

besides - by that time I hope to be able to avoid actually having to go to the supermarket and have my supplies shipped to me like the milk deliveries I get now

Re:Epilepsy?

[commodoresloat]

That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.

You misspelled "everyone."

Seriously. Pop-up ads on cereal boxes? I can't fucking wait.

The epileptics have it easy; once they go into a seizure they will be able to stop paying attention to the damn ads.

Re:Epilepsy?

[deathy_epl ccs]

They won't be backlit, so this shouldn't be an issue.

Re:Epilepsy?

[vettemph]

>>> Flashing stuff on boxes all over the supermarket?

Flashing Boxes?

My girlfriend can't wrestle but you should see her box!

Re:Epilepsy?

[mph]

... and have my supplies shipped to me like the milk deliveries I get now

Wow... they have Slashdot in 1950?!

Re:Epilepsy?

[HTL2001]

judging by your UID I'd say you'd be far more likely to know than me.

Re:Epilepsy?

[Domo-Sun]

In this age of data mining, persons afflicted with a seizure at the supermarket will quickly receive a coupon for a free shake from Baskin Robbins.

Ah, but can you cut out this newfangled electric coupon? I can see it now. People will hack all their boxes into coupons and cash them in for merchandise.

Re:Epilepsy?

[La Gris]

mmm. labels with dates changing...

Re:Epilepsy?

[BluedemonX]

How convenient. You will probably get flashed a message referring you to the nearest accident/injury lawyer.

Re:Epilepsy?

[timpaton]

Flashing stuff on boxes all over the supermarket? That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.

I doubt it would have a very fast refresh time - certainly not fast enough to flash. If the display was fast enough to flash, surely we'd be seeing this technology in normal display applications (TVs, monitors, phones etc.) before on cereal boxes.

I'm imagining these cereal boxes slowly morphing from one display mode to another, over a period of a few seconds as the reversible reaction progresses.

I don't know much about epilepsy, but I'm assuming they aren't affected by hypercolour T-shirts changing colour...

Re:Epilepsy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it? :(

Re:Epilepsy?

[chrisv]

Yup. And in this age of lawsuits, supermarkets which sell products causing seizures in customers will quickly be sued by your friendly local personal injury lawyer.

Re:Epilepsy?

[typical]

Advertisers finally figured out on the Web that the best way to "get someone's attention" isn't necessarily the best way to "get someone to buy your product".

I remember strobing .GIF ads.

Actually, they might still exist, but I haven't had animated GIFs on in my browser for years, and Flash ads are blocked, so I can't say for sure -- but when I use web browsers on other computers, I don't seem to see them any more.

Re:Epilepsy?

[wildsurf]

In this age of data mining, persons afflicted with a seizure at the supermarket will quickly receive a coupon for a free shake from Baskin Robbins.

Great, so they get an ice-cream headache on top of it too...

Re:Epilepsy?

[Bush Pig]

Do you really think they'd waste such a fine marketing tool on anything as frivolous as information?

Re:Epilepsy?

[VIPERsssss]

For someone who is profoundly photosensitive it only takes one flash under the proper conditions (Like watching an explosion in a darkened movie theatre). I doubt that the number of photosensitive people that are as sensitive as my wife is very high, though. The absolute worst thing is light flashing through the trees while driving.

How utterly depressing

[Toby The Economist]

> From the article: 'When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't
> expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it", said Axel
> Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement
> the technology.'

Western culture appears to have lost its vision.

New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?

We're amusing ourselves to death.

Re:How utterly depressing

[MillenneumMan]

True. But so much of advertising is already directed to children. Grocery shopping with the kids can be excruciating. At least they get a workout constantly returning items I reject back to the shelves

Re:How utterly depressing

[time$lice]

Oh joy - Physical pop-ups!

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

>New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying >cereal?

Sounds better than: "How can we use this new technolog to kill as many people as possible".

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

Its illegal in my jurisdiction to have advertising (magazines, etc.) directed to children under 13.

This is over and above any broadcast requirements.

This could be a good thing if it gets parents more used to saying "Mo!" to their kids. After all, a pissed-off parent is already hostile to your product.

And I REALLY don't want to see the ads for Preparation H!

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

Poison the cereal.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Skreems]

Exactly. This only works on the sick individuals that buy their kids things in an effort to make them happy (or shut them up). Granted, I don't have kids myself, but I like to think that my reaction would be to not take them down that aisle anymore, or else try to teach them that you don't need shiny things to be happy, rather than cave in to this twisted capitalistic crap.

Re:How utterly depressing

[guitaristx]

This could be a good thing if it gets parents more used to saying "Mo!" to their kids.

Is that anything like saying "Ni!" to old women?

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if the product was "Totally Healthy, Perfectly Balanced, Nutritional Perfection Cereal," the parents wouldn't need to be coerced. This will most likely be used for "Chocolate Covered Sugar Balls Cereal" or the likes, so they are inadvertantly killing as many people as possible with terrible health choices.

Eat that, fatty!

Re:How utterly depressing

[LithiumX]

Vision?

Haven't a great many of the popular advances in the 19th and 20th century been driven by marketing, and the desire to draw attention for purposes of profit? The earliest visions of the phograph's uses were more oriented towards automated marketing than towards the memoranda and music they were actually used for. Color printing was exclusively for the purpose of making product packaging more appealing, and television only became possible as a mass-market item when it was married to marketing (to this day, commercials are the life blood of the networks).

Early radio broadcasts were practically commerials with a thin veil of entertainment laid over them. It took a little while for radio commercials to seperate from the actual content (when they started announcing the products during frequent breaks, rather than the programs constantly hawking a product within a poorly contrived story).

Holograms were invented simply to see it done, but the bulk of the funding came from companies who sought to apply them as the new wonder-label (which turned out to remain prohibitively expensive for some time, and just never that appealing).

Western technology has been driven by three primary needs:
* direct threats - be it war, disease, famine, etc. Death avoidance.
* misguided ambition - attempting to create something unrealistic, and ending up with something unexpected (and often unnoticed for some time)
* commerce - the inherent desire to make people give you money

Altruism is a noble thing, but it's greed that makes the world actually turn.

Re:How utterly depressing

[BobPaul]

When kids see [snip] cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it"

They already do this. They're kids.

Re:How utterly depressing

[BigZaphod]

We're amusing ourselves to death.

Didn't something like that happen to the Romans? :-)

Re:How utterly depressing

[LithiumX]

Erm... that's "phonograph". Not to be confused with "phograph", which is only a product of my diseased imagination.

Damned wireless keyboards...

Re:How utterly depressing

[SquadBoy]

All three of mine soon learned that whining was the best way *not* to get something. This remains one of the things their mother and I agree on.

Yes it takes *seriious* time and effort to do this but it is well worth it.

Re:How utterly depressing

[hackstraw]

New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?

This has nothing to do with technology. Child product based advertising has been known for promoting things like nagging and other tricks to coerce parents to buy crap for them.

Actually, its been going on for so long that parents don't even need to be coerced, they will preemptively do things like buy TVs and DVD players for their kids rooms and all over their SUVs to shut them up, instigate their acquisition of ADD (an unsupported theory by yours truly), and otherwise pacify them.

Heck, now instead of installing the LCDs in the SUVs, they can just use the cereal box. Its portable, cheap, and can do the job (soon I presume).

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, WHATEVER, troll.

Idiot.

Re:How utterly depressing

[enjo13]

What nazi regime do you live under? I mean the entire Disney store would be out under a idiot law like that.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Seumas]

I think a better idea is not to step in and have idiotic requirements. Rather - if you're a stupid parent, you get fucked and buy your kid lots of crap and they end up spoiled. If you're a reasonable human being, you say "sorry - no" and the issue is done with. I don't know what kind of shitty parents most of you had, but it was a rare day I had the balls to ask my parents for something (especially while shopping) and if I did and they said "no" it was the end of discussion and I didn't press it. Maybe most people have whiney parents with no back-bone but that's not anyone else's problem but their own.

In fact - if you're going to start passing arbitrarily intrusive laws, why not just banish children from shopping centers and grocery stores altogether? I think that would please a lot more people than worrying about whether advertising will make it hard for pussified parents to refuse things to their snot-nosed runt children.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's a bad thing? Disney has got to be the most evil corporation in the world. For all I care they should be fucking shot and all their assets incinerated

Re:How utterly depressing

[Nutria]

When you HAVE raised a child or two, we'll be interested in hearing your opinions about how to raise them.

Well, we do have 2 children, and they do have good manners.

Politeness towards your spouse (teaching by example), patience, persistince, consistency, a big heavy wooden spoon and the willingness to use it.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Ipeunipig]

Or feminine products for that matter.....

Re:How utterly depressing

[|/|/|||]

Well, since you obviously have more experience than some of us, maybe you can offer your strategy for training children not to be mindless consumers. Or perhaps you don't think that's an important thing to learn -- in which case your opinion is probably less useful to me than the original poster's.

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

Darn! I even previewed it!

No! No! No! Aggghhhh!

Re:How utterly depressing

[Newander]

Western culture appears to have lost its vision.

New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?

Exactly! I remember a day when once a new technology came out we tried to put it to the best use possible... PORN!

Re:How utterly depressing

[rolfwind]

Yeah, it seems like an utterly frivolous and unimaginative use for the product.

OTOH, I would pay decent money to have an e-Paper library, one sheet, multiple books. Sort of like the literary version of i-Tunes. I wonder when e-book downloads for this thing will become the norm?

Re:How utterly depressing

[Seumas]

On the other hand. You, also, are full of shit.

There's nothing I hate more than sanctimonious prick parents saying things like "well, you have no children so shut your mouth and keep your opinions to yourself!" or even more drug addicts who say shit like "You've never been addicted to meth, so you don't know - shut your mouth!".

Look, I've never raised a kid (I've taken care of a number including my own siblings for great lengths of time over months or years, though) and it doesn't take a fucking rocket scientist to know certain truths . . . You know, like it's not hard to have a spine and raise your children without caving into their every want. Or... you know... you shouldn't beat your children or feed them ice cream every morning for breakfast.

In fact, parents (like drug users) are often some of the stupidest people on earth. I don't mean this as a flame or troll - but honestly, squirting out a kid is something that doesn't require any intelligence or qualification or wisdom. In fact, a lot of people might suggest that it's the least intelligent and prepared and qualified people that squirt out kids the most frequently.

Seriously - your comment is shit.

Re:How utterly depressing

[smileyy]

2 words: mediatronic chopsticks

Re:How utterly depressing

[Seumas]

Yeah, I don't get it. Who's the parent and who's the child? How is it that parents suddenly (seemingly this generation and maybe the previous one) have no ability to tell their children "no". Or even better - use the fact that they are older, wiser, smarter, more clever and MAKE THE RULES to just not take the kids with them when they go shopping if they can't possibly find it in them to refuse to buy every single thing their brat wants?

These are the same kind of parents that end up with drug using, boozing, wild ass sluts that get knocked up at thirteen years old. After all, they're completely individual unique autonomous human beings and how can you possibly, you know, parent them by telling them not to do something or not letting them go somewhere or inject somethign into them or hump someone? I mean . . . have you ever BEEN a parent? It's just SO HARD what with children being fucking einsteins and having such massive mental powers and all of that enormous physical strength that a grown person five times the child's age can't possibly contend with!

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

Thee's always one parent that "doesn't get it" - their kid whines and whines and whines. Tears open stuff. Makes a mess all over. And whines some more. And the parents keep saying "stop it or we're leaving" ... and never follow through.

Be nice to see the clerks being allowed to hand out $50 tickets for disturbing the peace. Or better yet, handing out "complimentary" exlax-chip cookies to the offending brats AND their parents. You can tell when they've been through a store - opened boxes and bags with stuff eaten, then the container put back on the shelf behind other stock, etc.

What's worse is if you miss that they've had their grubby paws in your food until you get home. Nothing quite as gross as a jar of peanut butter with fingerprints inside it ...

Re:How utterly depressing

[StewartSoda]

This is why it is good for children to realize that the parent is in charge. I remember when I was a child I would get left in the car if I couldn't behave in a store. Of course, that was back when we had to walk five miles uphill bothways in the snow barefoot while freezing just to go to school, nevermind what we had to do to go to the grocery store.

Re:How utterly depressing

[StopSayingYouSir]

New technology will go wherever the marketplace demands that it should go. If the Invisible Hand thinks that this use of technology is appropriate, that's good enough for me.

That was sarcasm.

Re:How utterly depressing

[dhanes]

'zactly. Bravo.

It only took two times of dropping to one knee in the middle of the grocery aisle, upending my son onto the other knee and a couple of quick whacks on his bottom to curtail whiny outbursts over whatever pretty shiny box with on it that he wanted. Not even hard whacks, it was the embarrassment and shame of having that done in front of strangers that did it. He's 4, and now is able to have a somewhat reasonable conversation about 'why' he can't have something. He might not like it, but he knows we have the final say.

Now, all I have to do is give a little askance look at him and ask him if he needs to be spanked in front of everyone. He'll then try to reason his way into getting it, sometimes I give in, most of the time I win. The next time he see's that particular item in the store, he'll even reiterate the reasons I gave him for not wanting to buy whatever it was, couched in language like "I can't have that because it is full of those plastic oils and high fructose corn syrup? Right Daddy?" Unfortunately, 'high fructose' comes out usually as 'high fucktoes' ;)

I love the stares from the other parents as they whip through the aisles trying to get out of there before their little one has another meltdown and they overhear these conversations.

Re:How utterly depressing

[scottyokim]

Concerning your bullet points, I think you forgot one or more of the basic human needs ... ;)

Re:How utterly depressing

[Seumas]

Since stores are private property, managers should simply ask parents to remove their children. The problem is, we all know how uptight and huffy parents get if you even insinuate anything about their parenting or their children. If a child is destroying your store and disturbing other customers and employees and you politely and discreetly ask them to remove the child or control the child, you are definitely going to lose a family-worth of customers which could amount to quite a bit every month. And there's always the strong chance that the parent is going to go Jerry-Springer all over your store and cause an even bigger scene.

There's nothing worse than a fat bloated sweat-pant and tee-shirt wearing obese mother with a shopping cart full of twinkies, soda and sugared cereal going on a loud rampage with her four toddlers because you dared to ask her to control her brats.

The thing is parenting is honestly not that impossible of a job. It's a lot like training a dog. It's called repetative conditioning. You reward good behavior with small things and you punish bad behavior. You set expectations and you follow through with positive or negative consequences accordingly. There's nothing worse than a parent who says they'll do something if they child doesn't XYZ and rather than following through, just repeats the "threat" over and over. But hey - a lot of parents are just too lazy to be consistant. I mean, if you are too lazy to carry and roll on a rubber to prevent having the kids in the first place, what are the odds you won't be too lazy when it comes time to being a real parent?

Re:How utterly depressing

[ryanvm]

I remember a day when once a new technology came out we tried to put it to the best use possible... PORN!

Blech. Note to self: do *not* eat cereal at this guy's house.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be a good thing if it gets parents more used to saying "Mo!" to their kids.

I tell mine, "No." And then I make funny faces and drive away leaving them in the store. Then they cry.

Re:How utterly depressing

[LithiumX]

If you want to bring in a number of auxilliary driving forces, you might as well enumerate the seven deadly sins. When you think about it, these provide almost all the core reasons why we have advanced as fast as we have, compared to other cultures throughout history.

Many cultures have risen to heights, both technological and philosophical, some of which we ourselves can't yet lay claim to. But from a historical standpoint, Eurocentric societies have rapidly moved from being quite literally the armpit of the known world, to the absolute domination of the globe (both the US and modern Russia count as eurocentrically derrived, in the long run). Only China and the middle east can claim to have had a global impact worth comparing.

Why? Simple. Europeans, back in the dark ages, identified, enumerated, and understood human nature. They knew their sins, which made them easier to pursue.

Greed - the need to make money, and to find more ways of getting as much of it as possible.

Sloth - just plain lazyness. We want our machines to do the work for us.

Gluttony - the drive to produce more plentiful food, that tastes better, regardless of nutritional content or actual need.

Wrath - newer and better ways to kill our fellow man

Envy - one nation sees what another has, and wants it for themselves, so they have to figure it out for themselves.

Pride - the need to produce something better than what's out there, to become famous for your creations, or for national pride.

Lust - I'm not sure how to articulate why this actually drives western progress, but I'm certain it's the keystone to all our social evolution.

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

a shopping cart full of twinkies, soda and sugared cereal

... you forgot the 50 gallons of soda pop in the 3rd cart (behind the 2nd cart, which is loaded with chips, pretzels, and pizza pockets) - including a couple of diet cokes to "make up" for the twinkies :-) I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I saw that - 2 adults and 2 kids who, collectively, weighed at least 2/3 or a ton, pushing 3 shopping carts full of "fat food". The 2 diet soda pops just made it look more ludicrous. I thought about taking a picture, but there was no way that my camera-phone had a wide enough lense to capture it.

A friend of mine who works in the industry told me that they had to widen the aisles a few years ago because when 2 fatties match, 7' is not enough for them to pass each other without damaging stuff on the shelves!

I think that stores that got a reputation for kicking out parents who had noisy destructive kids would actually end up getting more customers. Just like stores that tell people with 20 items to get out of the "8 item or less" express lane.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

Early radio broadcasts were practically commerials with a thin veil of entertainment laid over them.

The more things change...

Re:How utterly depressing

[drinkypoo]

Are you kidding? Usually, they just throw the product in the cart when you're not looking, and hope you don't notice the box of chocolate frosted sugar bombs when you're putting the contents of the cart in the conveyor belt. Some of the little bastards are even smart enough to pull on your shirt and stuff to distract you, to try to get you to pick it up by feel. :)

Re:How utterly depressing

[drinkypoo]

Well, I'm not a physicist, but I think Einstein was full of shit. When you HAVE raised a child or two, we'll be interested in hearing your opinions about how to raise them.

Guess what? Einstein, too, will likely be superseded by someone else with a new theory, just as Newtoninan Physics was superseded by Einstein. Some argue that it has happened already. Regardless, I predict that it will turn out that relativity is a pretty good model, but doesn't apply when (for example) you are dealing with very very high energy states, like in the first few picoseconds after the big bang or something. Much as Newtonian physics is also an excellent model that allows you to produce reproducible results, but becomes less and less relevant as you approach C.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

Lust - I'm not sure how to articulate why this actually drives western progress, but I'm certain it's the keystone to all our social evolution.

VCRs. We wouldn't have all the complex video processing, transmission, storage, and timeshifting abilities if VCRs hadn't driven the need. VCRs were driven by lust.

Re:How utterly depressing

[mercenaryCoder]

You missed the primary driver for all three of these. Poontang!.

Money, power, and ambition (or the appearance of such) are just evolutionary adaptations to attract women with the biggest jugs.

Re:How utterly depressing

[jafuser]

Altruism is a noble thing, but it's greed that makes the world actually turn.

Actually, it's conservation of angular momentum.

Re:How utterly depressing

[LithiumX]

I believe Poon is covered under that whole Lust clause.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Kafka_Canada]

What I don't get is where they get the money to buy all that food? You never see fat people working, and they're constantly buying overpriced shit by the shopping cart. Is that the reason why my taxes are so high?

Re:How utterly depressing

[Kafka_Canada]

Holy shit, you should get your kids to be genius tested! ;)

Re:How utterly depressing

[Kafka_Canada]

That was sarcasm.

It didn't work.

Re:How utterly depressing

[rco3]

Yup. You are right. And, chances are, it will be a physicist or a mathematician who does it. Not a hairdresser.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

Mo! Mo! Mo! Aggghhhh!

Re:How utterly depressing

[vertinox]

New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?

Don't worry, just give the kid a single dollar bill with an animated George Washington crying like a baby.

Re:How utterly depressing

[RexRhino]

The disfunction is not in the companies who sell products to children, it is in parents who purchase the product for their children. Children in 1950 bugged their parents just as much for a packaged food because it had a crudely illustrated rocket ship on the box (children are imaginative enough to create exciting flashing images in thier head).

However, in the 1950s, children were less pandered to, and parents were not spineless, so it wasn't a problem.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

make a child coerce its parent

Ha, that's great. Almost as believable as common individual coercing government.

Seriously, if the child holds that much "power" over the parent, then most likely the parent isn't doing the job right.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Which is why my wife and I take turns shopping: one of us stays HOME with the kid. Lots less impulse buying that way.

Re:How utterly depressing

[rco3]

So you, a non-parent, compare me to a drug-addicted, unintelligent, sanctimonious prick because I don't value the child-rearing advice of a non-parent?

[blink]

What is this, stupid comment day on Slashdot? You win a prize for writing the least insightful comment? You appear to have first place locked up.

I must thank you, though, for that swell hint on not feeding your children ice cream for breakfast every day. That must be what got you a "+1, Insightful" mod. Nice one. Sure wish *I* had an IQ.

Re:How utterly depressing

[vertinox]

Lust - I'm not sure how to articulate why this actually drives western progress, but I'm certain it's the keystone to all our social evolution.

Well... Considering how most CEOs and MBAs have trophy wives, I would consider that many people push for better technologies so they can get better stock options in order to flash the cash to bag the babe. Of course this is a more 20th century thing but I'm sure plenty of people in the 1700's had a bit of that on their mind.

Oh and don't forget the internet...

Re:How utterly depressing

[geekoid]

"In fact, parents (like drug users) are often some of the stupidest people on earth. "
since most people have kids, and half the popuklation is below average in intellegence, I got to say 'D'uh'.

And you don't know what it's like to ahve a child, so your opinion is less then informative. Note: I didn't say void of truth, only pointing out you can't relate to someones experiece, with having experienced it. I to raised my sibling for extended periods of time. It was nothing like having kids.

Re:How utterly depressing

[StikyPad]

I don't think putting a display on the box itself could be considered advertising. (At least, not beyond the (not so?) obvious fact that the packaging is already an advertisement for the product inside). Otherwise you'd have a bunch of brown boxes at the toy store.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

We wouldn't be posting on slashdot if the internet infrastructure wasn't to some extent subsidized by pornography. And a lot of the little things that make the internet useful or at least entertaining: streaming video, secure online payments, dare I say graphical web browsers.

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

I know one who does, and he's a hard worker. But his food consumption is astronomical. I once watched him eat ... oh, forget it, you won't believe me. Heck, I saw it and *I* don't believe me. His employer bought him a van becasue he didn't fit in a car (and he didn't fit in most vans, either. They had to shop around). And another oe who kept on buying smaller steering wheels as his belly got bigger - "to save his shirts from wear and tear from the steering wheel."

That's one thing I couldn't figure out either. They "need" a minivan to haul their huge you-know-whats around town, they each eat more in one week than I do in a month ... one of life's not-so-little mysteries.

Maybe they won the lottery. Or got an inheritance and are living off the fat of the land. Or money from suing fast-food joints when the seats break. Or for making them fat. Or restaurant owners pay them to go eat at competitors "all-you-can-eat" buffets.

Re:How utterly depressing

[geekoid]

If anyone knows about seperation, it's Evel Knievel!

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

This might be the straw that gets people to vote in laws requiring less waste in packaging. Its bad enough you open a box and its already half-empty ("some settling may occur" - yeah, sure - why does the same crap cereal settle more every decade?)

I should have become a potato-chip farmer - 1 potato sliced real thin, 10 pounds of cheap grease and a sack of salt == $127.48, and you don't have to worry about being sued - by the time it gets through the courts, they're dead.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Diag]

Song: I wanna go to Mount Splashmore, take me take me take me take me now! Now now now now now! Mount Splashmore take me there right now!
Lisa: This is a rather shameless promotion
Bart: Hey, it worked on me!
Lisa: Me too!

Re:How utterly depressing

[SimReg]

"Yes it takes *seriious* time and effort to do this but it is well worth it."

In other words, parenting is hard work. Way too many people miss that and raise whiny, bratty kids.

Re:How utterly depressing

[trolleymusic]

Early radio broadcasts were practically commerials with a thin veil of entertainment laid over them. It took a little while for radio commercials to seperate from the actual content (when they started announcing the products during frequent breaks, rather than the programs constantly hawking a product within a poorly contrived story). *appropriately villanous music* Villian: now you know my plan Betty-Sue, I'm going to have to kill you with this pillow - why it's gorgeous, where did you get it? Betty-Sue: Down at Macy's, they're having a sale all week, rush in and get 50% off every manchester item! *screaming* etc...

Re:How utterly depressing

[dhanes]

yup, his hands are these knarled stumps....

Married to my ex-girlfriend from high school...

Re:How utterly depressing

[Puff Daddy]

Yes, yes he did compare you to a drug addict, in that you refuse to consider advice on its merits. The fact that you acted like a sanctimonious prick in your response validates that part of his post, although that might not have been the best way to get his point across, especially given the prickish nature of his first post. The fact is that many parents don't know anything about anything, much less parenting. Note, I didn't say this includes you and I didn't say it includes most parents. That being said, like the grandparent poster, I don't have kids, so I have no experience raising them. What I do have is parents and a sister who is raising my nephew. If I am giving advice on raising children, rest assured I have gotten it from them. That being said, my parents taught me and both of my sisters that being obnoxious was a real fast way to not only not get what we wanted, but to get what we had taken away. That might sound strict, and it was, for a little while. Then we learned that calmly asking for the things we really wanted and not every flashy piece of crap in the store would get us what we wanted. Parents happy, kids happy. I know, I haven't raised children, so what I just said isn't true and obviously makes no sense. Here's some friendly advice that has nothing to do with raising children: Consider the advice being given as well as the person giving it. Just because someone has kids doesn't mean they know anything about raising them, ask your local 15 year old mother.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Kafka_Canada]

That's one thing I couldn't figure out either. They "need" a minivan to haul their huge you-know-whats around town

Oh, fat people have huge dongs?

;)

But seriously... They can't all be rich heirs, and food ain't free. Also, and especially with respect to the guys you describe (er, with regard to the guys you describe...), doesn't there come a point when you decide to make it an extremely high priority to eat right/eat less? Like, when you can't fit in a fucking van? Or when you're buying your third steering wheel? There must be a million points before you die, when it dawns on you that your life is basically ruined because of your "lifestyle" and that a few changes that many other people have easily made could save you?

Oh well, probably better just to sue the fast-food joints....

P.S. To the fat-asses modding me Troll, a) do you think I give a shit? b) it's a good opportunity for you to think about the serious problems you're causing yourself -- and in real life won't have anyone to blame unlike the joke suit against the fast-food joint. What do you think will have a serious impact on someone's life, getting a -1 moderation on a lame website, or living an insanely unhealthy life where you're risking death, you're unappealing to potential friends and sexual interests, and limited in a massive number of activities that you would enjoy doing far more than gorging yourself on Doritos one more time....

Re:How utterly depressing

[Skreems]

Just because I'm not a parent doesn't mean I have no idea how to raise children. I once was a child. My parents didn't buy me every little piece of crap I yelled for in the store. Hell, we didn't even have a television until I was 10 years old, despite the fact that I loved playing NES when I was at friends houses. Now I'm a happy and materially-non-obsessed adult, who's not addicted to Must See Thursday, and who doesn't need the latest GBA/PSX/WTFBBQ or random gizmo to make me happy. I don't think it's a coincidence.

Re:How utterly depressing

[rco3]

Oh, no, you miss my point. My point is that blanket statements like, "I don't have any children, but I know how to raise 'em right!" are not just useless, but annoying as well. Grandparent poster says, e.g., that he would solve the problem by not taking them down that aisle any more. Which, of course, simply avoids the problem instead of solving it. Or "I'd teach them not to want stuff just because it's shiny!" as if reasoning with a 2-year-old is like coding in Basic. I mean, duh! Who DOES want to raise their kids to be mindless consumers?

But, in case you really do want parenting advice from someone on Slashdot (advice that's worth the paper it's printed on), here's my advice on trying not to raise a mindless consumer: less TV. Especially broadcast TV. So far, Noggin seems to be pretty good (commercial-free). Realize that your child will learn to want things BEFORE he or she is capable of discussing the matter rationally, and that having an unfortunate scene isn't always avoidable. Try to establish as early as possible that "No." isn't negotiable. Try to accommodate requests for books whenever possible. Also, remember that each child is different and what works on one doesn't always work on another. And that advice, my friend, is worth what you paid for it. Remember - you asked for it, I didn't push it on you.

Re:How utterly depressing

[tomhudson]

Or when you're buying your third steering wheel?

He actually did go through 3 steering wheels. Then there came a time when he came back from trying to get yet another, smaller steering wheel - with the bad news - they didn't make a smaller steering wheel for his Kenworth.

A few years later, he had a heart attack.

THEN he lost some of the weight (lying in a hospital bed with an overloaded heart does that to people).

Re:How utterly depressing

[kesuki]

Lust - I'm not sure how to articulate why this actually drives western progress, but I'm certain it's the keystone to all our social evolution.

lust is the 'pleasures of the body' sex, porn, masturbation... when the quest for these things drives you, then you will do great evil persuing them.

all things in moderation, it's the way western society has made nudity into a dirty thing, the way we associate everything with sex, and fixate on obtaining it even if we have to pay money for it. That is lust.

Re:How utterly depressing

[rco3]

Your logic leaves something to be desired.

First, the connection between drug addicts and refusing to consider advice on its merits has yet to be established. Grandparent poster compared me to a drug addict who says that you shouldn't knock his addiction before you try it; essentially, grandparent is saying, "I don't have to eat shit to know I don't like the taste." Probably true, but not relevant. You do have to have children of your own in order to understand how difficult it can be to maintain "spine," as GP put it. I, like grandparent poster, have been intimately involved in raising siblings of my own; trust me, it's different when it's *your* child. GP did NOT say, however, that I was like a drug addict because I refused to accept advice; as far as I can tell, that's an invention of your own.

Second, you make a close stab at a logical conclusion: my response to his post carried a tone which was less than pleasant, true, based on the fact that his post was damned well ugly. (OK, so was my response.) However, IF you decide that my response to Seumas smelt of sanctimonious prick, that still doesn't support his conclusion that I was a sanctimonious prick because I didn't value the advice of a non-parent. At best, it supports the conclusion (unstated by anyone so far) that I was a sanctimonious prick because he was one first. I know, I know; two wrongs don't make a right. S'OK, the kid's out with Mommy right now.

As it happens, you are spot on with your anecdotal child-rearing stories, IMHO. You haven't said anything that I would disagree with, nor would I have jumped on you for saying it. What I objected to, at the very top, was a non-parent mouthing meaningless statements of intent like "I would try to teach them that you don't need shiny things to be happy" as if he was privy to majestic truths that those of us with children can never truly know. Like, duh. He might as well say (please pardon my foulmouth here), "I would teach them not to hate niggers!" as if it were worthy of an award. What I object to are self-righteous, sanctimonious pricks (there's that phrase again) who see parents having to work to raise a child well, and treat it as if it were easy and they must be unintelligent for screwing it up. I hold my sister up as an example: she's a brilliant mathematician, but not such a good parent (hope she's not reading this!). The kid's spoiled rotten right now, and she knows it, and she's working on it - but it's not easy. Fortunately, he's only two, and she has time to straighten things out.

Point is, advice like "my reaction would be to not take them down that aisle anymore," is less than useless, because it doesn't do anything to teach a child not to be a mindless consumer - which was, IIRC, the original point. It's like avoiding the birds and the bees talk so your child won't ever have sex. All it does is relieve the parent (temporarily) of the burden of actually having to deal with the problem. It's not advice from someone with experience, or even from someone with second-hand experience, nor is it good advice; and so I feel no remorse at all for disregarding it. Should I have been more polite about pointing out my disregard? Perhaps. But it doesn't make me wrong.

Re:How utterly depressing

[mOdQuArK!]

Actually, it's interesting - in a few kids I've observed, there is so much useless advertising hitting them all the time, they've learned how to ignore all but the "coolest" ads (and they like to watch those mainly for the artistry), and the really blatant stuff seems to annoy them.

They've also become really good at figuring out when their parents or siblings are trying to manipulate them emotionally - perhaps these skills are related.

Re:How utterly depressing

[metlin]

It's spelt separation! :-)

Re:How utterly depressing

[metlin]

But of course, that does not make Newton (or Einstein) any less valuable!

And as far as the OP is considered, parenting is not like physics. The former is something humans have been doing for generations.

You can teach Paris Hilton for years, and she might even be able to understand the very basics of relativity. On the other hand, you might not even need to teach someone like Pauli or Schwinger a thing, before they come up with ground-breaking ideas and theories.

The point is, anyone can be a good parent if they applied a little common sense and prudence, however, not everyone can be a good physicist. The former is something that's within us, just that most people don't bother making the effort. You may be the hardest working person on earth, you still would not be worth a damn in physics.

Re:How utterly depressing

[ChronosWS]

Actually, it is very hard to 'have a spine.' Look at how many people cave into their own desires and fail to exert self-control (diet fads anyone?) So on one level I can sympathize with parents who have trouble 'denying' their children things that they want. On the other hand, just because something is difficult is no excuse for failing to do it. Resistance to the desires of a child are, in fact, just like resisting the requests of any other person. The only difference is the level of emotional attachment involved. That is what parents have trouble getting through, and it's why conversations like this between parents and non-parents erupt in a flurry of ad hominims. Trying to separate a parent's behavior from their emotional attachment to their children is likely a lost cause. Its also important to remember that children are still individuals, and even with good parenting there are many other, lesser influences which contribute to consumer-whorism. Again, this is no excuse for bad parenting - It's all those ads on TV, what is a parent supposed to do! - but social norms can heavily influence children.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

They're probably teenagers

Re:How utterly depressing

[metlin]

Linda Bork? Thought they were divorced after he has arrested trying to put out with an undercover cop or something?

Re:How utterly depressing

[Yartrebo]

Even if it was for healthy food, how can one pay as much as $10,000/ton for cereal whose main ingredient costs only about $100/ton and is sold in such massive volumes. With the added marketing power and expense of this paper, I expect the price to easily break the $10,000/ton barrier that has long resisted and become even pricier. $15,000/ton?

Re:How utterly depressing

[dhanes]

naw, have no idea who linda bork is. If that was his original wife, supposedly Krystal and her are good friends, or at least friendly. Krystal Kennedy is who he's been living with for the past few years over in Clearwater, FL. she n' I went to Osceola High during the mid eighties.

Freaked my world when I saw Kurt Loder on MTV news one day talk about some shit that had transpired between Krystal and Evel in California.

Re:How utterly depressing

[shadowbearer]

Ah.

  There are certain turns of phrases/events out there that can alter your spin on things.

  Yeah, I grok that.

SB
  (thinking of conservation of angular opinions)

Re:How utterly depressing

[paperclip2003]

Lust - Porn = $$

Re:How utterly depressing

[seanellis]

Congratulations, Sir, on your familiarity with the work of Mr. John Percival Hackworth.

This too crossed my mind, although unfortunately when I voiced it aloud, I was then forced to explain to my regrettably ill-informed colleagues what a "mediatron" was.

Re:How utterly depressing

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

It only took two times of dropping to one knee in the middle of the grocery aisle, upending my son onto the other knee and a couple of quick whacks on his bottom to curtail whiny outbursts over whatever pretty shiny box with on it that he wanted....

The next time he see's that particular item in the store, he'll even reiterate the reasons I gave him for not wanting to buy whatever it was

You're a Monster...

Re:How utterly depressing

[aug24]

There's a phrase in Snowcrash that has always stuck in my mind, describing a young mum with two kids "that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline".

My first arrives next year. I've got the foresight, and by god I'm going to find the energy! No way will I let him or her become a little whiny brat, talking cereal or not ;-)

J.

Re:How utterly depressing

[StopSayingYouSir]

Yes, I know. It's almost impossible to mock libertarians. Even the most ridiculous statement I can think of seems to have genuine adherents.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Dread_ed]

You're worried about kids and parents, but I'm worried about ME...

If they put full motion lesbian porn on the box of coco-pebbles I'm as good as dead from obesity!

Re:How utterly depressing

[SquadBoy]

Is there any aspect of life where Stephenson doesn't show us the way? :D

Re:How utterly depressing

[drinkypoo]

Sure, I'll agree with that. In spite of that, many people are absolutely horrible parents. I might even be inclined to say most people. In fact, you might even say that most people are worse parents than they are physicists, because they're not doing any damage to physics, but they are doing damage to their children :)

Re:How utterly depressing

[cfuse]

Look, I've never raised a kid (I've taken care of a number including my own siblings for great lengths of time over months or years, though) and it doesn't take a fucking rocket scientist to know certain truths . . . You know, like it's not hard to have a spine and raise your children without caving into their every want. Or... you know... you shouldn't beat your children or feed them ice cream every morning for breakfast.

The problem with commonsense is that is actually uncommon.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Toby The Economist]

> It only took two times of dropping to one knee in the middle of the grocery
> aisle, upending my son onto the other knee and a couple of quick whacks on his
> bottom to curtail whiny outbursts over whatever pretty shiny box with on it that
> he wanted. Not even hard whacks, it was the embarrassment and shame of having
> that done in front of strangers that did it.

I would ask you to consider the other consequences of your actions.

I agree what's been done is completely effective at stopping him from using disruptive behaviour in an attempt to coerce his parent into buying something.

However, being physically disciplined, *excruciatingly so in public*, also tells the child that his self-respect means very little or nothing to his parent (this is the natural consequence of humiliation). Parents are THE most important factors in a child's life. Children naturally perceive what their parents do as always correct and adjust their logic accordingly. If he is "told", by his parents actions ("it's okay to beat you in public if you want something you can't have"), that he is worth very little, that *is* what he will believe; and when he grows up, he will have no self-confidence and no self-respect.

One other issue is that of proportionality. The death sentance is not handed out for speeding offenses. If it were, the world would be a horrific place. Imagine being a child where such a terrible experience is given to you for what is, when all is said and done, a fairly trivial behaviour; and this in turn leads to another issue, whereby adults have to accept children are *children*, they lack the experience to be responsible in the way adults are. It is often the case that children behaviour obnoxiously - but the fact is, they're children and don't know any better. Adults, despite being irritated, annoyed and frustrated, are *adults*, and must therefore behave reasonably, no matter how they feel.

I was about 10 when my mother divorced and remarried badly. I had an appalling step-father while I was a teenager. I'm now almost 33; for the last six years I've been doing therapy to recover from the constant humiliation he inflicted.

I was lucky, because I had a normal life till my mother divorced, so deep down, in my core, I'd already come to think I was okay, and so I rejected and hated my step-father.

If humiliation begins from age zero, you've had it. Your very inner core believes you're not worth it. You don't *know* any different and you think and feel this is normal and you behave in the same way to your children.

Re:How utterly depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a 15 year old student, so my advice might not be the best but I am sure you will find my opinion interesting.

I have a 7 year old brother, he behaves like an animal - touch his pillow, sit on HIS chair (yes HIS chair, not even my father or mother have their own chairs), another family member uses from HIS plate (the plate itself, like when he is not using it) - he goes crazy, breaking items, trying to rip our shirts, it bothers me to much to talk about... This is all because my father doesn't get involved in parenting and just says "You know sitting on his chair makes him crazy, just leave him alone" (my father doesn't even bother to ask if I sat on it by acident before telling me to goto my room), my mother says "he will grow out of, someday." Well guess what my brother isn't going to grow out of it without any help, just like how he hasn't grown out of drinking from a bottle! Children don't grow up by themselves, parents help them with that.

My advice is start parenting from day one, teach the child what you say is final, no questions at ALL. If the child doesn't lesson the *father* should punish the child until (s)he learns. Punishing should never be done by the mother, as you always want the child to feel secure to tell the truth to at least one parent without getting punished - really I can't tell you how many times I have been scard to tell the truth because there was no one to tell it too without getting punished - most children hate getting punished.

The *father* should teach the child that (s)he can never demand anything from the mother, and if he ever sees or hears the child will be punished. Don't be like another family I know and use the excuse "the child only learnt howto speak a few months ago, I don't want to be to hard on him," as guess what now - 2 years later - the child is always demanding things from the mother and the father gave up trying to discipline the child "as it isn't working."

Don't get your child into bad habits, fix them up from the begining never go easy on the child because (s)he is young, it is very hard to change a bad habit that you had for a very long time, just ask any 30+ year old that is still picking their nouse and why they haven't stopped.

The post is getting very long, so I just want to add one more thing. There was a recent research on 2 mice, both were in seperate boxes. To get food they had to push a red button. For one of them each time it pushed the button it got food, and only pushed it when it was hungry. The other one only got food sometimes when it pushed it, it pushed the button all day long and would eat each time food came out even if it wasn't hungry, the mouse died very quickly because of this. This test was on mice not children, but can the same thing be applied to children? Maybe you should do your own testing, I would love to hear the results for my children in a few years. Only if there was a way of you contacting me.

You should be blessed with a healthy child and (s)he should bring you a lot of happiness.

Talking cereal boxes

[bbbaldie]

Wow! Right out of Minority Report!

"Imagine" it?

[Lisandro]

Hell, i've seen it. And it's scary.

Re:"Imagine" it?

[fishybell]

Not nearly as scary as having advertisements and a governement that track you via your peepers.

Minority Report

[non0score]

Looks awfully familiar to that cereal box in Minority Report...of course, this probably is an old idea put into a movie.

Minority Report?

[L3on]

I'm sure many of you have seen Spielberg's Minority Report, check it out if you havn't...

Soon

[voice_of_all_reason]

Let me know when it's legal to grab people on the street and inject them with chemicals to suggest irresistable urges to buying my company's project.

(you know it's coming...)

Re:Soon

[Darius Jedburgh]

Why injections?. Plenty of companies are doing fine with inhalable compounds that do exactly this.

Re:Soon

[Cheapy]

Is it legal now? Probably not.

Will it be legal later on once the various **AA figure out they can stop piracy (Oh, and terrorism too! Can't forget that!)? Of course.

Re:Soon

[voice_of_all_reason]

Because violence and in-your-face advertising has been shown to be somewhat effective, regardless of morals.

How many grannies click on the windows-error-esque popup that screams "YOUR PC IS RIDDLED WITH VIRUSES AND UNDERAGE PORN SO BUY OUR SOFTWARE BEFORE THE FBI COMES AND SHOOTS YOU!!!"

Re:Soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Damn those bakers! I don't want a Cinnabon!

Re:Soon

[hackstraw]

Let me know when it's legal to grab people on the street and inject them with chemicals to suggest irresistable urges to buying my company's project.

Been there, done that.

Smells have been used for years to inject chemicals to suggest irresistible urges. If thats not chemical injection, I don't know what is.

Of course other things like sights, sounds, and manipulation of hormones (sex) have been used, but its a little less "injectable" than smell.

I've always thought that smell was kind of an invasive sense. I can't turn it off or easily avoid it. The existence of the perception of smell is entirely from the injection of chemicals onto our nose. Taste is pretty much voluntary (painting with a roller or similar thing is an exception), but I cannot avoid somebody's body oder ("good" or "bad") or any other smell from entering my nose, and its not usually polite to comment on a "bad" smell. (Good vs bad smells are supposedly learned. Animals smell stuff all the time with no apparent judgment of good or bad, but rather just identification.)

For some strange reason, I like many "bad" smells. But there are others which I don't like. Many perfumes and hairsprays bother me. BO and other natural smells usually don't.

Re:Soon

[voice_of_all_reason]

I'm guessing most people don't mind scent advertising because a) it comes from their own property, even if the odor carries and b) it's usually pleasant.

Know where advertising works? Companies that give out stuff. Banks and tech companies that give out pens, pressure balls, and mugs. They give a little, they get a little. Same thing here. Cinnabun gives you a happy feeling (unless you hate buns, in which case you'll never be a customer anyway) and in turn you might decide to patronize them.

Re:Soon

[Darius Jedburgh]

Who needs to inhale it? Just seeing the word is enough to make me salivate like a Pavlovian dog. Luckily I don't know where to get one around here.

Harry Potter

[Deinhard]

Are we getting close to the moving photographs in the Harry Potter movies?

Seeing Nick Nolte's mug shot scowling out at me from a post office wall would be most disconcerting.

Then again, a moving poster of [insert favorite model here] would be most intriguing.

Re:Harry Potter

[fightzombies]

Nick Nolte? I think you mean Gary Oldman

Re:Harry Potter

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny... that was the first thing I thought of too....
(However, I think you meant Gary Oldman)

Re:Harry Potter

[drinkypoo]

Nick Nolte? I think you mean Gary Oldman

No, I'm pretty sure he meant Nick Nolte.

Re:Harry Potter

[KnightStalker]

ITYM "ITYM". HTH. HAND.

Re:Harry Potter

[Anonymous Coward]

Harry Potter? Minority Report had *exactly this* in it: cereal boxes with animated crap on 'em. IIRC Tom Cruise rightly chucked the box across the room in annoyance.

Grocery store?

[michaelmalak]

Forget the grocery store (especially these days with groceries ordered over the Interent). Why, with e-paper, I'd want my cereal box to be web enabled, because it would be a whole lot better than reading the cereal ingredients over and over again over breakfast.

Boy, did the prognisticators really miss that one -- everyone kept talking about web-enabled microwaves. Little did they know the web-enabled cereal box would come first.

Re:Grocery store?

[algodon]

Why don't you turn the box and do the maze on the back?

hmm...maybe a good use of this e-paper stuff would be better stuff to do on the back of the box? Imagine eating cereal while playing Doom 3 :)

Re:Grocery store?

[MegaFur]

But a mad, grafix haX0r will 0wn your ceral box and goatse it at an inopportune moment.

Re:Grocery store?

[robertjw]

Maybe he doesn't buy froot loops (but I do of course - the maze rocks).

Re:Grocery store?

[geekoid]

Imagine me spraying cereal all over the box as some zombie jumps out at me!

Re:Grocery store?

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you don't already print out goatse guy and glue it to the cereal box every time you buy a new box?

Re:Grocery store?

[DigitalReverend]

I dunno about where you live, but the grocery stores around here are awfully crowded if all these people are buying groceries online

I don't think that grocery shopping online will ever truly come to be lucrative. People might go to a restaurant and buy cooked food, but they still get to send it back if it's not done right, I highly doubt people are going to leave the choosing actual ingredients up to some idiot who just fills orders. Also , shopping is still a remnant of hunter gatherer days, and I don't think sitting at home and ordering online will ever replace it. It hasn't even replaced it for general merchandise yet.

Grocery shopping in person will be around for a long time to come.

Re:Grocery store?

[2008]

Putting a web browser on your tablecloth would be more efficient, so long as e-paper's washable.

Minority Report?

[ruxxell]

If you want to see how annoying this could get, go rent Minority Report

(which, imho, is not a bad movie at all but not hardly anything like the original PKD story)

Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new Flashing Cereal Box overlords.

Re:Well..

[dr_dank]

I sure as hell don't. If you think the pervert in the trenchcoat flashing is bad, then you're in for a world of hurt when Count Chocula starts too.

La La Laaaa Laaaaa laaaaaaaa

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone see Daria on the noggin this morning?

It's coming

[$RANDOMLUSER]

In The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson predicts chopsticks with messages in Chinese and Japanese running up and down them like movie marques. Soon we'll have advertising on every inanimate surface.

Re:It's coming

[Keyslapper]

Wait 'til your everyday biker can get tank mural of a scantily clad chick that will do more than just sit there looking cute ...

Ok, I know I'm gonna take a karma hit for that, but I couldn't resist.

Re:It's coming

[roman_mir]

Yeah, because all the living surfaces already have ads on them.

Re:It's coming

[Red Flayer]

"Soon we'll have advertising on every inanimate surface."

And it will lose most of its value, but be cheap enough that it will still be profitable. Signal-to-noise ratio and all that.

I don't want the grocery store to look like Times Square. If I did, I'd shop at the convenience store in Times Square.

Re:It's coming

[MillenneumMan]

Inanimate?? Dude, we're already to the point where advertising is tattooed to humans! See the following: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050121.gtrforehead21/BNStory/Technology/

Re:It's coming

[Gabe Garza]

> Soon we'll have advertising on every inanimate surface.

Why would we limit ourselves to inanimate surfaces? I envision a day when I go to a seafood restaurant and the oysters have a self-updating "I've been out of water DD HH.MI.SS" display attached to their shells; the lobsters have a "My claws currently weight WW ounces each, and I was harvested only HH hours ago" display on their carapaces; and the waiters have dazzling, dynamic pieces of flair attached to their uniforms that vibrantly inform me how much they love their job.

Re:It's coming

[tomhudson]

and the number one product i the future - spex that remove all advertising, so you don't see any of that crap. At that point, the "stick-your-message-on-everything" falls apart, because people won't see it. Just like a lot of people don't see popups or flash ads already.

Cap'n Crunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmmmm... gives a whole new meaning to hacking Cap'n Crunch! Toy whistle inside? Feh. I want the cardboard box!!!

Yeah, right

[GigsVT]

I work for a retail label printer.

Average prices for labels run about $3-$10 per thousand. The most expensive labels on metallic stock with lots of spot colors might be $30 per thousand.

That's still 3 cents per label for the most expensive ones. I doubt they could even sort out the power supply for these things that cheaply.

Re:Yeah, right

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Start working on your patent for the printable, flexible solar cell.

Re:Yeah, right

[prgrmr]

I work for a retail label printer.

LabelArt in Milford?

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually PSU wouldnt be needed.
Think about it their are things which can charge things just by sitting on their surface..
So the shelf is charged, the box sits on it, picks up the power, and animates, box leaves shelf and deactivates..

Sounds perfect to me.

Re:Yeah, right

[GigsVT]

LabelArt in Milford?

No, Smyth

Re:Yeah, right

[Anti_Climax]

Well, with something like a cereal box I doubt they would need to cover the entire thing, so you could have the same old box of Frosted Flakes but with an animated Tony the Tiger hawking his wares.

By leaving most of the original printing intact the application of power becomes optional and could be done through an inductive system set on the store shelf. It probably wouldn't cost the store too much to begin with and would pay for itself after a short period. Not to mention, once the box is off the shelf, an animated label would have already served it's purpose.

So much for the value added possibility of seeing something *new* on the box when it gets ready during breakfast.

Re:Yeah, right

[YrWrstNtmr]

I doubt they could even sort out the power supply for these things that cheaply.

And TV is more expensive than newprint. Guess which one is in deep sales trouble.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you fraternise with a competitor. both of you.

Get back to work!

Re:Yeah, right

[ivan256]

Why can't the shelf power the box? All you need is a small coil of wire in there and a capacitor big enough to power the display long enough for you to get to the checkout.

Re:Yeah, right

[kent_eh]

All you need is a small coil of wire in there and a capacitor big enough to power the display long enough for you to get to the checkout.

Oh, yeah. That's what we need. Cereal boxes with capacitors in them.

Can't you see lil' Johnny poking a fork/steak knife/scissors into the side of the box to cut out the cool picture, and then BZZZZORPP!! as he discharges the last bit of the capacitor into his weapon of choice!

Not to mention, Capacitors aren't exactly full of food-grade ingredients. What happens if they get damaged (box cutter anyone?)?

Re:Yeah, right

[fishfish]

That name brand cereal box is often upwards of dollars more expensive than the store brand - and the difference is largely driven by the money General Mills or Kellogg's spends marketing the brands. The cost of the two boxes are probably within cents of each other (and the actual product is probably the same).

So if they need to spend 25-50 cents for a display that will allow them to sell the product at a higher price (like they do now) -- I don't think it will slow them down.

Think how neat those non-muggles newspapers photos look ...

Re:Yeah, right

[drinkypoo]

They already have stick-on flexible solar cells, and conductive adhesives. On the other hand, it might be a better idea to use a piece of piezoelectric material, such that power is applied whenever the box is flexed. It might actually be cheaper. Put a light sensor on the box so that it knows when it's the frontmost package... but from that standpoint, of course, solar makes more sense. Of course, they will use whatever is cheapest...

Re:Yeah, right

[orasio]

I work for a retail label printer.

I feel your pain, brother. I work for a retail color laser printer. Printers are the worst bosses. This one pays me cash, the bank once said something about yellow dots in my money, and refused to accept a deposit.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem with TV is that the delivery boy can't throw it as close to my doorstep as he could a newspaper. It's a lot harder on the lawn, too, come to think of it.

Seriously, people, can NO ONE come up with a cogent analogy anymore?

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yeah. That's what we need. Cereal boxes with capacitors in them. Can't you see lil' Johnny poking a fork/steak knife/scissors into the side of the box to cut out the cool picture, and then BZZZZORPP!! as he discharges the last bit of the capacitor into his weapon of choice!

The amount of charge stored in the capacitor doesn't need to be very large, there would be no noticeable effect whatsoever when it is discharged.

Not to mention, Capacitors aren't exactly full of food-grade ingredients. What happens if they get damaged (box cutter anyone?)?

A capacitor only needs to be two flat conductors and a dielectric (insulator), I can't see it being any more harmful than any of the other components of the ePaper.

Re:Yeah, right

[geekoid]

except were to get a coupon for the next box, or an 'Amazing Game' for children.
Advertiser would love to be able to put ads in the kitchen. How many companies just make one type of ceral, and nthing else? Can you say 'synergy'? I knew you could.

Suddenly your cearal box advertises a new kithen cleaner, or talks with your internet fridge to find out what you eat so competitors can offer you custom coupon, or as you appraoch a starbucks, the ad in the bag on the way home from the store suggest a nice, relaxing, cup of coffee, becuaes you deserve it? Branted you need a voice chip, but I think you see where I am getting at.

I could go into advertising RnD. I can always think of better ways to advertise stuff.

Note, my scroupls won't let me do that....for less then 250K ;)

Re:Yeah, right

[MadEE]

Can't you see lil' Johnny poking a fork/steak knife/scissors into the side of the box to cut out the cool picture, and then BZZZZORPP!! as he discharges the last bit of the capacitor into his weapon of choice!

The charge of even a full capacitor will not approach the charge of rubbing one's socks against a rug and touching someone. Besides if the child truly is that destructive there are plenty of things in the home that can to far more harm, far easier.

Not to mention, Capacitors aren't exactly full of food-grade ingredients. What happens if they get damaged (box cutter anyone?)?

Vegetable oil/paper electrolytic capacitors do exsist.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anti_Climax]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that products wouldn't have an internal power supply, just that one is not necessarily needed to move it off the shelf if the cost of packaging is prohibitive.

Re:Yeah, right

[Electronik]

Anyone who has tried powering a single LED with a reasonable capacitor knows you need a BIG, EXPENSIVE cap on there to store any rasonable charge for very long. And they aren't cheep, upwards of $5 each! IMNSHO this whole idea is stupid hype, ePaper will be used for 1100001 more things than as disposible type on cerial boxes. Even adding a few pence onto the cost of the box isn't viable for most packaging. Stupid idea badly thought out... we'll be lucky if we see one example of this ever. hyper-gimmick.

Re:Yeah, right

[ivan256]

Anyone who has tried powering a single LED with a reasonable capacitor knows you need a BIG, EXPENSIVE cap on there to store any rasonable charge for very long.

Actually a thin foil coating on the outside and inside of the box would be signifigantly more than sufficient. Cheap and easy.

Re:Yeah, right

[kent_eh]

The charge of even a full capacitor will not approach the charge of rubbing one's socks against a rug and touching someone.

Possibly, but still, how do you think Mumsie (and her lawyer) would react to sparks coming out of the cereal box (regardless of the actions that led to it)?

Re:Yeah, right

[MadEE]

Possibly, but still, how do you think Mumsie (and her lawyer) would react to sparks coming out of the cereal box (regardless of the actions that led to it)?

Probably the same reaction "Mumsie" would take if the same kid smashing a camera and touched the much higher capacitance flash cap, punish him for destroying stuff and making a mess. Besides, Mumsie would probably be told by her lawyer that you need to actually have some actual damage to sue someone.

Re:Yeah, right

[Electronik]

Actually a thin foil coating on the outside and inside of the box would be signifigantly more than sufficient. Cheap and easy.

Nonsense mate - what value capacitor can you get from some cardboard and tin foil over that area? There is NO WAY that would fly!

Re:Yeah, right

[ivan256]

Try it for yourself. You may need to coat the cardbaord with something non conductive.. wax or plastic wrap will do the trick.

Don't hurt yourself. You can give yourself a nasty shock. You'll be surprised how much charge it will hold.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

TV is more expensive than newprint.
A lot of people assume this. A lot of people are wrong.
TV ad prices are cheaper than radio which are then cheaper than non-classified newspaper.

Paperless Office?

[squoozer]

Maybe we will finally be able to achieve the goal of making a paperless office when e-paper gets good enough. Some how I think the tansition is going to be a long slow and painful one though. I'm guessing the FDT (flattened dead tree) people will go out kicking and screaming much like the current music publishers are. In fact I foresee that it will be even worse than the current music and movie problems simply because it is so much more fundamental a shift. Should be fun to watch though :o)

But is it easier to Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google: A Patriot's Letter.

Dream of things to come

[Belseth]

Damn I just had a scary nightmare about cereal boxes demanding I buy them. I'm putting a pad and pen beside my bed. Come on lottery numbers!

Just what the environment needs

[Rhys]

Something less recyclable than paper to package all our crap with. That's flashy and annoying. And uses (and landfills) batteries.

On the bright side you'll always know if the product is fresh or not. Not fresh: no display. Of course then you won't know till you open it if you have Cheerios or Chex Mix.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[pete-classic]

I agree.

As a side comment, recycling paper is dumb. Planting (and eventually harvesting) trees is a net win for the environment. Chemically treating used paper is a net loss for the environment.

-Peter

Re:Just what the environment needs

[your_mother_sews_soc]

Yes, I agree. The first thing I thought of when I read this and similar articles was what about all the waste, especially from the betteries. I don't enjoy the occassional trip to McDonalds, and I like their Happy Meal toys with batteries burited deep inside them even less. Now this. At what point is a new technology deemed cool but "uh uh, nope!".

Re:Just what the environment needs

[r5t8i6y3]

and prior to recycling there is the impact of resource consumption.

i wonder how many more resources go into the production of e-paper over tree/hemp/etc. paper? anyone feel like doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations?

i feel very concerned when i notice so much focus on recycling and very little focus on consumption. if you are concerned about the earth/your home/"your back yard" ask yourself "how can i consume *less*?" because by consuming less we make the recycling problem smaller.

if this site http://www.weeeman.org/ is at all accurate, we geeks are using quite a bit of our share of the earth's resources with each new computer we purchase. according to this site, if we divide the earth's resources evenly amongst the current population, our individual "earthshare" is equal to ~two football fields. purchasing *one* computer uses ~4.25% of your earthshare. if you purchase six computers you consume 25% of your earthshare. and this doesn't include _any_ of the other things you are consuming (car, house, other electronic devices, etc.).

here's a couple more sites for more information about e-waste:

Basel Action Network - BAN
http://www.ban.org/

Computer TakeBack Campaign
http://www.computertakeback.com/

btw, here's where you can get the most eco-friendly paper i know of: http://www.livingtreepaper.com/products.html

peace

Re:Just what the environment needs

[drinkypoo]

How is planting and harvesting trees a net win? My understanding is that the trees used for paper leach things out of the soil. Thus, the soil is depleted by not allowing the trees to fall down and rot. Also, you take the carbon out of the atmosphere, but then when the paper is burned or otherwise destroyed, it's returned, making it a net zero change. Finally, creating more landfills (the alternative to burning or recyling) is not a positive change...

Re:Just what the environment needs

[geekoid]

You could minimize that buy requiring a deposite.

However, our problem with trash is not volume of space, it's how we manage it.
We could dig a hole in the middle of the US 3x3x3 miles in size, double the estimated amount of trash we will create in the next 1000 years, and it wouldn't be half full.

Putting tiny dumps near places where people live is not the best way to manage it anymore.
Truck it out of neighborhood, swap the trashholder with an empty one, trainf the garbage to a nation wide cetral location.

I would create 10 smaller one it different locations, depending on major train stops.
10 smaller one would be easier to create and manage.

It's abig project, but so was Golden Gate, the Empire state Building, and the Hover Dam.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[HappyEngineer]

Assuming your assertion is correct, you'd still have the same problem as nuclear waste disposal does. Nuclear power creates very little waste for the amount of power it gives us, and it does it by concentrating all waste into one spot. But even so it takes decades to get anyone anywhere on earth to allow a dump near them. No city would allow a 3 cubic mile dump near their city. No environmentalist would allow a 3 cubic mile dump in a rural place. Personally, I think a 3 cubic mile dump in the middle of a Nevada desert would be great, but I'm sure there's a town of 100 people nearby that would prevent it from happening.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[geekoid]

The items that tree take from the soild isn't that much. Point in fact, it is exatly the volume of the tree.
So you could create more.
How you say?
By recycling items so they can be used in the soil, not recreated as paper.

"Thus, the soil is depleted by not allowing the trees to fall down and rot. Also, you take the carbon out of the atmosphere, but then when the paper is burned or otherwise destroyed, it's returned, making it a net zero change."
while technically true, there is still impact.
But before the carbon is put back in the atmosphere, another tree has been planted and is removing carbon. In all likely hood, several trees have been cycled through the system before the first trees stuff is returned to carbon.
Not all of that carbon will be released into the air. Some will be trap in land fills.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[rvandervort]

Hover Dam

I bet that one doesn't work very well.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[cliffski]

this seriously needs modding up, and typically I have no points.
I'd rather have less packaging than more high tech packaging. the idiots who came up with this idea should be marooned on an island somewhere.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[Kafka_Canada]

Hey, I thought that's how Jersey was founded?

Re:Just what the environment needs

[drinkypoo]

The items that tree take from the soild isn't that much. Point in fact, it is exatly the volume of the tree.

That's not true at all. It's actually less than that; trees get carbon from respiration. (Not sure what percentage of it.) I am under the impression that they get most of their carbon from respiration, actually, and they mostly get other materials (nitrogen, phosphorus...) from the soil.

Not all of that carbon will be released into the air. Some will be trap in land fills.

Creating more landfills is itself a negative environmental impact.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[scottyokim]

I was hoping the trash problem (or at least the nuclear waste problem) would be solved by a bright guy with a space elevator. Drop it all into the sun. (The space elevator is an easier problem than the NIMBY one.)

Re:Just what the environment needs

[Belseth]

You know why we are doomed to fail as a culture? This kind of thinking. "What we need are bigger dumps". Most of our plans don't even allow for the next hundred years. No wonder everyone is obsessed with the end of the world. We're obsessed with making it happen. Primative cultures survived thousands of years you we can't hardly with all our technology keep one together for a single lifetime. We've got to start thinking longer rang. We're stuck here folks and we better learn to live with that. We can't keep doubling the population every forty or fifty years and we can't burn through resources much longer. Oil will likely run out in my life time, it'll stop supporting need in fifteen to twenty years. That ain't long folks. Shooting everything into the sun makes no sense as soon rocket scientist always suggests, is not only impractical, vast amounts of energy expended even with a functioning space elevator. People forget it's easy to put something into orbit. It's very hard to reach escape velocity. Also we need those resources. In two hundred years trust me the garbage dumps of today are the gold mines of tomorrow. When resources start to run out recycling will be a massive industry and garbage dumps will be seen as a resource.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[Jeremi]

I think you would find that the fuel and infrastructure costs for transporting all that waste so far away would be prohibitively large.

Re:Just what the environment needs

[pete-classic]

How is planting and harvesting trees a net win?

You've boggled my mind. Are you saying that planting trees is bad? Or that planting trees is of no use unless they are never touched by human hands again?

My understanding is that the trees used for paper leach things out of the soil. Thus, the soil is depleted by not allowing the trees to fall down and rot.

Leach is really the wrong verb. (Water leaches substances from the soil.) It's true that lumber isn't made of happy thoughts. If we assume that we, as a society, are going to use paper we must choose an actual option. Given the choice between the natural growth process of wood (with the side-effect of young little forests dotting the country-side) vs. dredging up caustic chemicals to treat paper so it can be used to make paper the choice seems obvious.

You'll be happy to know that all those nutrients are returned to the earth . . . in land fills. If you can come up with a plan to mulch paper to feed tree farms you'd have my support. Be aware, however, that composting gives of methane; an ozone depleting gas.

Also, you take the carbon out of the atmosphere, but then when the paper is burned or otherwise destroyed, it's returned, making it a net zero change.

Given that carbon is an element, we are bound to see zero net change in the amount hanging around the earth. It seem that we (ice -cap loving bipeds) would be better off with some of the carbon that is in the air in the form of CO2 bound to something-or-other and safely buried. (I don't advocate burning trash. I'm a big fan of the modern landfill.)

Finally, creating more landfills (the alternative to burning or recyling[sic]) is not a positive change...

You can't have it both ways . . . either you want dead trees to go into the ground or you don't.

Okay, I don't want to have more landfills for their own sake. But of all the things that go into landfills I can't think of anything better for the environment than paper. I imagine bunches more paper in landfills would help buffer the less desirable crud.

Anyway, there are no easy answers to any of these things. I think that it would be a big help if both "sides" would drop the fanaticism and try to work on the real problems.

Up with trees!

-Peter

Re:Just what the environment needs

[orasio]

But paper does have some harmful chemicals (bleach and stuff) that could filter from landfills into water supplies.
I think that using paper to feed the soil that grows trees is a good idea, but the whole process could be improved in order not to contaminate further the soil.

Even more of a reason

[ajdowntown]

I tell you, the last thing I want is getting a convulsion walking down the cereal aisle. Think of it, all those cereal boxes stacked on top of each other, all clamoring to get your attention.

I already avoid the cereal aisle, I guess this another reason to avoid it completely...

It's much worse than that...

[hackwrench]

New technology being though in terms of not how to inform consumers but how to bypass the most informed and target the least informed, depending on them to persuade the better informed. Note: the child frequently doesn't actually want the cereal itself in this particular situation, but just the pretty box.

I can't tell you how many boxes of Frosted Flakes I ate for the primary goal of getting the Disney Afternoon figurine inside. There were also numerous times I thought I wanted something, but didn't actually know what it was.

Re:It's much worse than that...

[lrucker]

That's nothing new. When I was in high school I had a job for 1 day as an annoying mall survey person - not the one who accosts you in the mall, but the one who asks the questions once you've been captured.

Had to ask a woman (mid 20's, high school drop out, and quite frankly couldn't even approach pretty without plastic surgery) if, after looking at an ad, she thought some shampoo that cost more than she made in an hour would make her "beautiful". Was totally shocked when she said yes, and decided I couldn't do a job where the point was to find people's misconceptions and exploit them.

Re:It's much worse than that...

[RexRhino]

[sarcasm]Yeah! Stupid poor and ugly people... nothing they need more than some snotty paternalistic bougouise elite to protect them from thinking they could be as attractive as us if they only had the money.

Because, of course, upper class people are naturally beautiful and attractive, because of their genetic superiority and sparkling personalities... it has nothing, absolutly nothing, to do on the fact that they spend more money on clothing, consmetics, and other consumer items![/sarcasm]

As annoying as the concept of animated consumer products are, I am much more annoyed at the people who think that we somehow need to be "protected" from the technology.

Re:It's much worse than that...

[loafswell]

If what the kids want is the box, how long is the box good for? Get one for the kids and let them play with it until it dies. Unless of course the manufacturer puts an RFID in the box that turns off the box disply when you leave the store.

Re:It's much worse than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shampoo makes your hair clean. That's it. Cosmetics don't make ugly people pretty. There are plenty of stupid ugly rich people who also think that $8 shampoo will make them beautiful, but at least they can afford to be stupid.

First things first

[mean pun]

Before we get all the useless and annoying applications of e-paper, could we please get something useful first: a comfortable e-book reader?

Pretty please?

Oh, and make it uncrippled. Yes, I'm looking at you, Sony.

Re:First things first

[Castar]

Exciting developments on that front, actually!

Two e-ink based readers are supposed to be released soon: The Hanlin V8/V2 and a device from iRex. The iRex reader is supposed to support Linux and be released in "early 2006" in Europe. The Hanlin V8 with a proprietary OS is supposed to be released "by the end of this year" in China for around $300, with the Linux-based V2 being released in May worldwide at about $320.

My money is on iRex, since they're backed by Philips and have a larger screen, but they might be more expensive than the Hanlin device. We'll see!

Re:First things first

[Darius Jedburgh]

The iRex is way too big. I might as well carry round a large format paperback book. I'd like small paperback size.

I can see it now...

[Dan Morenus]

A disgruntled cereal packaging company employee quits, and a few weeks later at 5:00pm some fine Sunday all the boxes on the supermarket shelf simultaneously and inexplicably start flashing goatse...

Re:I can see it now...

[mpfife]

Yeah, we all thought it was bad when the teenage kids would go into Radio Shack and 'hack' the backgrounds/settings/sounds/etc while resetting passwords on the windows computers they sold - imagine them wandering up and down the aisles with a jtag cable hanging out of their backpacks...

It'll be a whole new understanding for 'packet' security after that...

Curse or Blessing?

[BeBoxer]

Part of me thinks e-paper is going to be really cool and will allow us to make some neat gadgets. But at the same time, I'm terrified of what the marketing folks are going to do with it. We are already at a point where advertising pervades our environment everywhere we go. When it all starts flashing and jumping and pointing and demanding our attention at all times I think I'm going to go totally insane. I really think I might just snap and actually go crazy. And I suspect I'm not alone.

Re:Curse or Blessing?

[The Queen]

You're not alone.

There is a growing urge among intellectuals, at least the ones I talk to, to run screaming for the hills, back to gardening and raising your own livestock; at the very least, there is a wish to live in smaller towns with simpler ways. All the shiny buttons have lost their lustre; I'd like to enjoy Nature before it's all polluted and stripped. Thank the gods for telecommuting - now where's my 40 acres and a mule?

Re:Curse or Blessing?

[ljw1004]

In the US in 1997 a total of about $2000 per person per year was spent on advertising. I can only imagine it's gone up since then. Of course the costs are passed on to consumers -- it becomes like a LARGE invisible tax that we all pay for something that we detest. Advertising here in the US is seriously out of control.

Re:Curse or Blessing?

[PantsWearer]

Stephenson's Diamond Age actually talks a bit about this. There's actually a scene where characters are temporarily distracted by elves or something dancing along a pair of animated chopsticks. The characters just both realize that they'd gotten distracted and continue their conversation because it isn't unusual for something like that to occur in their lives.

Another example from the same source are billboards where animated characters "charge" at passersby since that readily gets their attention. And people thought talking on cell phones was bad for driving...

Re:Curse or Blessing?

[Prophet of Nixon]

Hey, I'm with ya, man!

Re:Curse or Blessing?

[angeles13]

E-paper has been discussed for several years in the magazine publishing industry (and probably newspaper also).

Once the power situation is figured out, I would not be surprized if technical manuals, text books and possibly news magazines and journals being converted over from paper (costs are going up bimonthly for some publishers) to E-paper.

Having magazine issues and techinical manuals to be updated via wireless spots or Internet subscriptions is going to change one of the largest industries in the U.S. Writing and design styles, not to mention the advertising/marketing styles, will need to be refocused and evaluated to best determine the most profitable course of action for both the publishers/advertisers and marketing divisions.

I expect my job (creative director) to completely change, again.

should be one E ticket ride, though!

Let me know when this matters.

[Guspaz]

They've been talking about ePaper like this for years, along with a ton of other technologies. ePaper doesn't seem to be any closer to their claims now than it was years ago.

OLED too. Considering they keep showing off larger and larger displays, and the stuff is supposed to be dirt cheap to manufacture, I sure haven't seen any OLED displays bigger than a few inches across. If they are truely as cheap as they claim they are, lifespan isn't an issue as you could buy frequent replacements. Make a 17" OLED display with a modular capability to easily swap out the display itself. If it only cost $50 for the display itself, replacing it a few times during the lifetime of the product could still be cheaper than existing technology.

This is a disaster.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool - Lets replace biodegradable*, recyclable paper boxes with a mix of paper plastic and metals that can't be recycled and will leech nasty stuff (think batteries) into the environment.

*OK, the inks involved can be fairly nasty, but there are less nasty options used by some.

Re:This is a disaster.

[parc]

Paper tends to NOT biodegrade in landfills. To degrade, it needs water and air, neither of which it ends up getting in a landfill.

That said, it is a good carbon sink. If only we released less carbon harvesting trees and making paper than they stored when under ground...

Eye scanners next

[Nom du Keyboard]

Eye scanners to personalize the displays can't be far behind.

privacy

[marsperson]

NO! MUST RESIST URGE! AAAAAAAAAARG! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!! In Soviet Russia, cereal boxes flash you! There, I've said it! Now, speaking seriously, I look forward to when "adult magazines" can magically display another cover, like, say, "wired" to give you some privacy.

Re:privacy

[AeroIllini]

I look forward to when "adult magazines" can magically display another cover, like, say, "wired" to give you some privacy.

Yes, because when you turn that copy of "Wired" on its side and three more leaves of the centerfold flip down, people will automatically assume, "Sure, he's just looking at a large wiring diagram."

Re:privacy

[EddieBurkett]

Yes, because when you turn that copy of "Wired" on its side and three more leaves of the centerfold flip down, people will automatically assume, "Sure, he's just looking at a large wiring diagram."

They will when I put my Bender costume on.

Vi4g7a

[uberjoe]

Does this mean that I will get 'organ enlargement' spam flashing on my condoms?

or was it "Ubik"?

[Thud457]

Or you could trigger a psychotic break with reality when the delivery girl's fish pedant starts talking to you. You won't even need to massively abues aphetemines to get the effect.

Medicine vials?

[mypalmike]

Miniature displays in color could appear on consumer-goods packaging, including medicine vials, in 2007, with a resolution of 80 dpi, Gerlt said.

"You say the defendant, Local Pharmacy Inc., failed to warn your late husband about possible side effects of the drug?"

"Yes, sir."

"Show me the bottle. Let's see here. 'Not to be taken with alcohol. May cause dizziness, blindness, and death.' Clearly, if he had read the bottle, he would have known about the 'death' side-effect."

"Sure, but the label didn't say 'death' until just an hour ago. It said 'headaches'."

Re:Medicine vials?

[TechnoGuyRob]

Looks like someone forgot to scroll down...

Grassroots Press Story ca. 2099

[Zordak]

Grassroots Press
For Immediate Release.

A recent conference of historians meeting in the bombed-out shell of a Hyatt hotel held a panel discussion on the cause of the downfall of human civilization as it was once known. The group uanimously traced the downfall of civilization to the following statement from the early part of this century:

Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by.

"What were they friggin' thiking!" exclaimed noted historian Dulcinea Bumkis. "I mean seriously -- wasn't there anybody who looked at this and thought, 'That's the most idiotic idea I've ever heard.'" Another historian noted that a little-known insurrectionist going by the handle "Zordak" on a popular message board advocated just such a position, but he was quickly drowned out by a chorus of six-year-olds chanting for Cocoa Puffs.

How Sad

[punxking]

It's sad that instead of thinking up ways that this technology could be used for something like medical, scientific or educational purposes, the first thought is toward marketing and consumerism. Not surprising, but still sad.

Bad Idea

[shoffsta]

So you want to port one of the more annoying features of the web to the real world? Can't wait till they start adding viruses, worms and pr0n to their cereal.

(ok, I do realize that the web = real world for some of you)

pr0n boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Cereal boxes? Can't wait to see what happens to the DVD cases at the local adult video store.

Already there

[BerntB]

Let me know when it's legal to grab people on the street and inject them with chemicals to suggest irresistable urges to buying my company's project.

Trust me, you'll notice. :-)

Or was your idea to be first, so you could preempt the market?

But consider the way molecules are taken up into the nose and influence the brain... and then how "new car smell" and faked baked bread smells are used to sell things.

We are, more or less, already there!

In Corporate America...

[LightningBolt!]

In Corporate America, the cereal box flashes YOU!

When these guys die and go to hell....

[Trailer Trash]

It'll be a large grocery store, and they'll each have 100 4-year old kids. Boys, all of them hungry boys.

Instantaneity

[bchapp]

Nobody uses the term instantaneity anymore... Good to see it back in our every-day vocabulary...

~b

Mandatory post

[Anonymous Coward]

In GNU/Soviet Russia, the Cereal Boxes are on the e-paper, everything running on the operating system Emacs. I'm really getting the hang of these regular Slashdot jokes now!

EcoHackers?

[bahwi]

Will there be a wave of EcoHackers who override the labels and put a kid getting fatter and fatter and then dying of a heart attack on those boxes of sugar-sugar-sugar-fatty-sugar-froster-sugar-flakes ? Cuz that would be cool.

Or an even better way, since telling people they'll get fat if they eat that stuff, would be to put goatse on there. Still want it? =) Nope, and didn't have to tell you anything either.

I can see Tubgirl on Count Chocula.

Re:EcoHackers?

[GigsVT]

You didn't hear? Apparently tubgirl is working for the company that makes YooHoo now, some sort of viral marketing alliance.

And that is how western civilization crumbled...

[The Famous Druid]

... in the Supermarket Riots of 2008.

Pathetic parents?

[Nutria]

When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it"

And I expect good parents to whack them upside the head until they say please.

And then whack them upside the head until they politely shut up after the parent says "No".

Re:Pathetic parents?

[DNS-and-BIND]

That's child abuse. Somehow, I don't see that as being a problem for flyover territory redstate mouthbreathers like yourself.

Re:Pathetic parents?

[geekoid]

No, it's not child abuse.
Perhaps if you had been smack up side the head once in a while you would have learned manners.

Re:Pathetic parents?

[Phae]

And I expect good parents to whack them upside the head until they say please.

And then whack them upside the head until they politely shut up after the parent says "No".

Why on earth is that modded insightful?

Re:Pathetic parents?

[geekoid]

Because more kids need to be told no.

Re:Pathetic parents?

[RexRhino]

And I expect good parents to whack them upside the head until they say please.
And then expect some busybody to call the police, and for you to be arrested.

Re:Pathetic parents?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think hitting a child will teach them manners? It is perfectly possible to do that without hitting them at all.

As far as I'm concerned, hitting a child on the head is abuse. If you must discipline a child by hitting them, do it on a part of their body that doesn't contain any major organs.

Re:Pathetic parents?

[Nutria]

If you must discipline a child by hitting them, do it on a part of their body that doesn't contain any major organs.

The brain is protected by the skull.

Unfortunately, it won't protect the brain from a full male adult strike.

Fortunately, I don't do that!!!

Give me a little credit for knowing how to not to damage children.

If Google has taught us anything...

[Trip Ericson]

...it's that in a world where all the advertisements are flashly, the plain one stands out.

Re:If Google has taught us anything...

[t_allardyce]

That is until everyone realises and starts making plain adverts, then when they are all plain a few 'cutting edge' advertisers will make flashy adverts again, etc..

Tech is Cool, Usage is Problem

[ServerIrv]

I Think that the e-paper is cool and all, but it's how it is used is my main problem. When I go to the store to buy cereal, I don't want to have to pay for a "free" toy, or any other advertising. Why should the consumer have to buffer the cost of more expensive packaging?

Re:Tech is Cool, Usage is Problem

[sesshomaru]

Hmm... actually, that reminds me of a commercial I saw a while back. In it, this guy was walking through the cereal item on his knees, so he could pick up cheap cereal that was in plastic bags on the bottom shelf. I don't know if I've seen that cereal. Hey, I have to have my Cap'n Crunch, out of respect if not for the delicious taste...

Of course, I'm sure that everyone here remembers the 'no-frills' craze in the 70's. My Dad kept buying no-frills this and no-frills that... it seems like that has gone by the wayside, how sad.

Does this mean?

[Rac3r5]

Does this mean.. the next time I see a nike product..

I'll see animations of ppl.. just doing in..

Famous Quote

[hzs202]

"I'm sure the development and release of the Flux Capacitor will preceed LCD attached cereal boxes."

                              -- Doc Brown (1985)

Way cool

[tsa]

I find this so cool! We will see the moving paintings from Harry Potter become reality even faster than we expected.

Adult?

[Sv-Manowar]

I can see there being huge money in this for the first adult publication company to make moving porn magazines, or moving porn images on paper. The hype alone would eat up the initial cost in sales, and they could build up a huge brand on being the only one to offer it.

The adult industry was the original driving force behind the internet progressing, so who knows what will happen next. If theres money in it, you can guarantee that the big adult companies will come knocking on the door after a while.

Re:Adult?

[zizzo]

Yes. Great idea. I can't seem to find any moving images of people having sex. They'll all covered by popups of people doing horrible things to farm animals.

Big difference

[DogDude]

E-Books: Negligible demand.

Advertising e-paper: High demand.

Re:Big difference

[Hal_Porter]

What about a free e-book reader financed by advertising?

We need to get a pervasive, ad financed network too, imagine WiMax on steroids. Then you could read your e-book GET A FREE IPOD streamed over the net without paying a penny. Isn't advertising DOES YOUR COMPUTER HAVE SPYWARE CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT wonderful?

Re:Big difference

[DogDude]

What about a free e-book reader financed by advertising?

That may work great, but it still doesn't address the demand issue. There's simply not many people demanding e-books, no matter how good they are. E-Books are a product looking for a need to fill. Even with useless products that have no real demand (ie: plastic balls you throw in your washing machine that "dispense" detergent), the marketing department of the company creates a demand ("You HAVE to have this product"). E-books have been thrown out there with little to no promotion with a "if we build it, they will come" mentality that doesn't work if there's no demand already there.

Re:Big difference

[Hal_Porter]

Hmm, but I kind of like the idea of essentially the Hitch Hikers guide cobbled together out of free content plus ultra cheap hardware plus something like wi max. If the $100 dollar laptop is possible, and I'm skeptical, then you could imagine making something truly ubiquitous.

And even if $100 is a bit optimistic, you'd sell ads on 5% of the screen and/or you charge for the wi max and use that to subsidise the hardware cost. So people could have a device that would surf the net, pick up webmail and browse e-books. Hell, they could use it for VOIP too, and chuck away their cellphones. You should look at it as a platform like the PC rather than an ebook reader though

Re:Big difference

[Jeremi]

E-Books: Negligible demand.

The demand for a portable mp3 player was negligible also, until Apple stepped up and did it right. Then demand skyrocketed.

When someone makes an e-book that can display any HTML or PDF document with comparable quality to paper, has reasonable size and battery life, and isn't too expensive, demand for e-books will skyrocket as well. Given that they could potentially replace books, the eventual market for e-book devices will probably dwarf that of mp3 players.

Re:Big difference

[ccp]

There's simply not many people demanding e-books, no matter how good they are.

Difficult to assess, since there isn't one that's even remotely good.

E-Books are a product looking for a need to fill.

No, is just the opposite: the need exists, namely a simple text reader, B/W screen, with 100/200 books worth of memory, DRM unencumbered.
Unfortunately, e-book company wannabes have decided not to adress this need.

Cheeers,

I just go cuckoo for cocoa puffs!!! /nt

[Anonymous Coward]

...c...c...cocoa

now all we need

[kevin.fowler]

now all we need is a moving picture of the missing kids on the milk carton to go with it

ugh

[slashdotnickname]

Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by

And imagine me walking to the nearest competitor that will not annoy me with real life pop-up adds.

Re:ugh

[geekoid]

TO make the point, you should fill your cart with all the stuff you were going to by, take it to the manager and say "This is all the stuff I am not buying because of these damn adds."

It lets them know you are leaving, it tells them why, and they will remember it bacause that will have to get someone to put the stuff back.
Try to make the time to do this every time you shop. If you can get 50 people to do that a week, they would go away.

Re:ugh

[Hans Lehmann]

And imagine me walking to the nearest competitor that will not annoy me with real life pop-up adds

Most people I know hate those video monitors that are placed above the checkout conveyer, playing nothing but advertisements. They'be been around for a while now, and every store around here has them. There is no longer a competitor to go to that doesn't have them.
Same goes for those memberhsip cards that expect you to give up personal infirmation in exchange for the store not charging you 50% more than the going rate for a loaf of bread. Every store has those now as well.
Once this type of packaging exists, it will be in all stores, everywhere, whether you like it not.

Cerealblock?

[dg13]

Grocery stores will be like the web prior to adblock, but then google will find some cool way to integrate relevant ads by scanning what is in your cart. "Hey you can make manicotti with what you have in your cart plus ricotta cheese and this box." All text, of course.

Phillip K Dick got it right

[nycroft]

It seems that Phillip K. Dick's vision of a future where no one can escape annoying advertising is coming true. If we're not careful, Orwell's prediction of government controlled speech will come true. Oh wait...it already has.

Re:Phillip K Dick got it right

[FurryFeet]

You're confusing Orwell's 1984 with Bradbury's Farenheit 451. It's a common mistake.

well

[confusedwiseman]

Imagine trying to take that from a stoner. Something that flashes and is actually edible.

Child can't "coerce" their parents

[ZSO]

New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?

How does a child "coerce" his or her parent? Yes, children can whine and scream, but a good parent asserts authority and simply says "no." It's called personal responsibility.

Stop blaming McDonalds for making your kids fat, people! You're the one who bought the food!

Re:Child can't "coerce" their parents

[ZSO]

Sorry, that should read: Children can't "coerce" their parents

Re:Child can't "coerce" their parents

[descentr]

The sad thing is, that the 'good parents' you speak of are in a sad state of shortage these days. In a society becoming increasingly focused on instant satisfaction and aquisition of material goods, even the parents are displaying this kind of attitude.

Re:Child can't "coerce" their parents

[ZSO]

The sad thing is, that the 'good parents' you speak of are in a sad state of shortage these days.

I agree, but the solution is not to stop businesses from making children want their products. The solution is to spread the right ideas (like personal responsibility) that lead to good parenting.

Re:Child can't "coerce" their parents

[dsci]

I agree with your comment 100%, but wanted to make this simple point. Children can be very obstinate and very persistent. My children cannot coerce either their mother or me into doing anything.

But, we have both commented many, many times that we can see how come many children are spoiled. It can get very difficult to stick to your guns. And that is amplified in a crowded store where there is in audience, and even the threat of some &**hole butting in like you are mistreating your child.

I just wanted to say that everyone has a breaking point. For us, that point is very distant because we see (and have to remind ourselves daily) that our most important job right now is to raise kids that will grow into responsible adults that behave properly. Whining and pitching a fit is not proper behavior. For some, the need to "just make it stop" gets overpowering.

There but for the grace of God go I.

Re:Child can't "coerce" their parents

[ZSO]

And that is amplified in a crowded store where there is in audience, and even the threat of some &**hole butting in like you are mistreating your child.

Has this really happened to you? I can understand someone intervening after seeing someone hit his own kid - I certainly would intervene - but I think I would blow a fuse if someone ordered me to buy something for my kid.

I just wanted to say that everyone has a breaking point.

I would sooner take the kid back to the car, drive him home, and go back to the store than cave in. It sets the precedent for future whining.

At any rate, my only point is that criticizing the corporations (such easy targets!) for this is simply wrong. Parents have to owe up to their responsibility.

Re:Child can't "coerce" their parents

[dsci]

Has this really happened to you? I can understand someone intervening after seeing someone hit his own kid - I certainly would intervene - but I think I would blow a fuse if someone ordered me to buy something for my kid.

I mean just responding to the commotion in general. I've not had people butt-in to me personally, but I've seen it. Some people act like a screaming/crying child is an abused child, if the parent is not "responding" to it the way they think is proper.

To sum it up

[ReverendLoki]

In other words, in order to be able to hack this e-paper, you would have to have all the tools and facilities required to make e-paper available to you. And if you have all the tools available, it will be easier and probably take less time and cost less to just make new e-paper to your own specs.

Product Demonstration in lieu of Instructions?

[jferris]

Just imaging how exciting this application would be for birth control and feminine hygeine products. Ick!

I dont think so...

[mustafap]

E-Paper or not, these displays will need power. From batteries. What an environmental nightmare.

Re:I dont think so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use batteries, necessarily? Draw on the supermarket's power, and run a microwave power grid over the shelving. Sort of like this mouse:
http://www.a4tech.com/en/media/thecrucible.htm
Then, not only are batteries less of a concern, but you won't drive the stock boys and deliverymen handling the goods nuts when they're not on display. Those folks are often under far more stress than those shopping.

Re:I dont think so...

[mustafap]

>Why use batteries, necessarily?

Because I would imagine they would also want the adverts to appear when the box is on the kitchen table, being looked at by bored kids munching away. Jeez, it sounds like a bloody good advertising space doesn't it?

Re:I dont think so...

[geekoid]

Why not just use the motion of the box to power the change to the image? You don't nede power to keep the image static, only to change it.

Who reads who?

[Bob3141592]

Let's put it all together, shall we? Not only will the electronic cereal package be advertising to you, but it will also be tracking your cereal preferences, and as you look at the box, it will be looking at you and everything else in the room, and listening in on your conversations, which will be sent over the box's internet link to a goverment data center where the recording will be studied and retained for 20 years.

Marketing people have proven themselves to be remarkably effective at minipulating our behavior even with the very limited access they've had to us in the past. Once their access becomes universal and incessant, we'll all be reduced to mindless consumer drones. Of course, the government will want their slice of mind control access in return for granting patented monopolistic intellectual property right to efficient hybridized psychocontrol methods to the advertising megacorporations. All in the name of anti-terrorism security, naturally

Just shoot me now.

Yes, but you miss a vital point

[Anonymous Coward]

Your regular retail labels are for one-time use only by one manufacturer. These new epaper labels can ostensibly be used over and over by different manufacturers, since, I'm assuming, they can be programmed with whatever you want them to display.

Look at it this way, instead of ordering 500, 1000, or 10,000 regular labels, now a wholesaler will buy epaper labels in the millions (thus possibly getting close to the 3 cents per label price), and then sell these to different manufacturers who can have them programmed, used (think trade shows etc) and "recycled" to be used again or resold to some other company.

Re:Yes, but you miss a vital point

[GigsVT]

I was responding to the asserting that they could be used as disposable product labels are used today, since that's what this article is about, not about some reusable label.

In Soviet America, technology drives YOU

[Urusai]

Progress is not for your benefit, so STFU and watch the mandatory trailers on your DVD.

Audio?

[Anonymous Coward]

What no audio?

I am kind of surprised Hollywood hasn't used this to change the way they print movie posters.

you know it's coming

[Sorce]

Slashdot story about how somebody put linux on a rice krispies box in 3..2..

The Fifth Element

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe The Fifth Element (http://imdb.com/title/tt0119116/) was the first movie to have a moving image cereal box.

greaaat..

[mottie]

I can't wait until people start complaining about their Cereal boxes have dead pixels, or bragging about how they hacked their PSP to play games on their Jumbo special K box...

Oh great more landfill fodder

[kludge99]

Wonder what kind of heavy metals etc.. go into making one of these

this is precisely why...

[design by michael]

...i choose organic foods over processed crap.

Next watch for the audio side

[dpilot]

Imagine your meal telling you, "Please select me for your dining pleasure, I've been very careful with my diet, and my hindquarters are quite tender and flavorful."

Oh wait, that's been done. Not quite correct, since in RAtEoU to food was bred to deliver that opinion, as opposed to having it tacked on by the marketing department of Sirius Cybernetics.
But then again, I got onto this thread by searching for "chopsticks" to see if that one had already been posted.

Is it just me, or was this in "Minority Report"?

[mmell]

The cereal box that the protagonist throws across his apartment, the copy of "USA Today" on the train, etc . . .

Score one for the Steven - he hit this one right on the head!

Underrated

[guaigean]

This post is underrated. The quote When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it" is absolutely disgusting. They are breeding mindless consumerism, and making the life of any parent that has to take their children shopping with them hell. It's bad enough when kids try and grab boxes as you push by, but having the boxes TELLING the children to pick them up is even worse.

Re:Underrated

[Deus Acerbus]

I'm sure glad I'm not the only one who agrees with this. This deserves a mod up as well. The advertising leeches sure like to hit 'em while they're young, as if all the commercials that rot their minds on television aren't bad enough as it is.

Re:Underrated

[mfrank]

I'm 43 years old, and when I was a kid I'd spend all morning on Saturday sitting in the living room watching a box that would occasionally tell me I'd really like to have this. My parents knew how to say "no", though, and if I made a scene I'd get spanked.

Madison Avenue isn't the problem. It's the idiots who think *every* child can grow up to be a functional adult without some of them occasionally getting their asses whipped by their parents. Or even, god forbid, by their teachers.

Re:Underrated

[aardvarkjoe]

They are breeding mindless consumerism, and making the life of any parent that has to take their children shopping with them hell. It's bad enough when kids try and grab boxes as you push by, but having the boxes TELLING the children to pick them up is even worse.

The fault there is with parents that refuse to instill discipline in their children. If your kids are grabbing products off the shelves, you're to blame for the problem, not the advertisers.

Re:Underrated

[cagle_.25]

I'm sorry; that's unbelievably simplistic. Or perhaps trollsome.

We're talking about advertisers intentionally making it *more* difficult for parents to instill discipline in their children, and you're blaming the parents?!

Reality check: being a parent of a two-year-old and a six-month-old means that you are devoting approximately 30% of your processor time already to making sure that the kids aren't (a) harming themselves, (b) harming others, (c) making a mess, (e) being properly fed and clothed, and (f) learning how to interact like reasonable human beings. That's the involved parents; the loser parents just ignore the kids until they scream.

Walking down the grocery store aisle with one kid in the seat and one kid walking means that *if* you want to actually choose a product and place it in the cart, you will have to stop holding the two-year-old's hand and focus on the products.

Your two-year-old, being smart like her daddy, might just decide that now is the optimal moment to go for something interesting, like flashing cereal boxes. Now what, Dr. Spock? I suppose you're going to "instill discipline" right there and she'll just straighten right up for you.

News flash: unless you want to make every infraction a capital [1] offense, your kid will buck your will on a regular basis. The smart parent will decide which battles are worth fighting and which ones are worth reasoning through ... and reasoning through with them takes time.

In short, getting a kid to the point where he or she has self-discipline requires ... um ... time and patience [2]. You have to have self-discipline yourself to pull it off, which means that you can't expect to press the magical "discipline" button and have them behave. Have fun raising your own kids.

[1] Nothing short of the death penalty will guarantee compliance. My daughter responds pretty well to time-outs, but I spent part of my childhood proving that my dad couldn't spank me hard enough to make me obey him.

[2] As in, I haven't had time for any hobby coding projects since my first daughter was born.

Re:Underrated

[Yartrebo]

Liberally dishing of spankings isn't without its drawbacks either. Plenty of psychological studies have shown that it can lead to serious issues (self esteem, depression, socialability) later in life.

Artificially creating conflict like marketing does should not be allowed. If it wasn't for the marketing, you (as a parent) wouldn't have to be forced to decide between spoiling the brat (which is even worse for his/her long term social and mental health, no less your pocketbook) and having to be the 'no' and punitive person (which leads to another set of problems mostly manifesting in teenagers/young adults).

Personally, I will not allow my kids to come with me food shopping if I ever have any, and cold cereals (or other crap) will not be on my list. Combined with strict commercial filtering I hope to keep the temptation to a minimum. This would mean no live TV, but my experience with kids is that recorded or P2P'ed material is far prefered by them anyway, and recorded material offers me more control over their viewing habits with far less intrusiveness than having to ban TV channels or TV altogether - and the wider selection available on P2P generally balances out the crap unavailable due to censorship. (I don't intend on buying stuff in stores as finding anything that isn't mainstream is extremely hard, and even the stuff that I can find will have to be ripped [since backups are a must for kids] and generally comes as a handful of assorted episodes instead of the full 65 episodes])

Re:Underrated

[Doomstalk]

In the immortal words of Cibo Matto: "Spare the rod and spoil the chick before you go and shit a brick".

Re:Underrated

[RailRide]

Ah, but wait till the ultimate manifestation of this technology debuts:

HypnoToad Cereal
Bzannnzozazaanoaanzonnaanzzononaano!
(slogan: "You Will Want It")

---PCJ

Another reason for E-Bombs

[Eli Gottlieb]

I predict that when this stuff hits supermarket shelves there will be a sudden upsurge in demand for portable, reusable and small blast radius Electromagnetic Bombs that can shut off all forms of obnoxious advertising for a time. We already get annoyed by televisions and store radios everywhere we go, so this would simply be the straw to break the camel's back.

interesting development....

[ChrisGilliard]

ink-printed images of today to a digital medium of flashing graphics and text that displays prices, special offers or alluring photos, all blinking on miniature flat screens.

This means that as people check out, the cash register could swipe the RFID tag on the umbrella that was just sold and tell all the other umbrellas to raise their price on this e-paper by $1.00 because it might be raining.

Re:interesting development....

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology to do that is already here if bar-code readers communicated with a central server. WTF is the difference?

Re:interesting development....

[Segway Ninja]

I went to a supermarket a while ago, and was greeted with a digital display for the price of everything on every shelf. Things that were on special had a larger, paper sign in addition to the little display.

Exactly what you're describing can be done even with technology available (and in use) right now.

Really?

[TheOrangeMan]

Do we really need more non-recyclable packaging? Think: Flashing landfills of the future.

They asked the wrong guy!

[LinuxDon]

"said Axel Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement the technology."

Maybe if they asked the guy at Siemens tasked with helping digital equiptment makers (e.g. e-paper) to implement the technology, the article would have made more sense!

Truth in Advertising

[toy4two]

Due to the new EMF seeping out of the labels into the cereal, when you eat your Wheaties, your muscles really do grow bigger!

Will it REALLY make you buy the item?

[Ipeunipig]

I know it mentions children, who are extremely impressionable, but how many of you are actually influenced by advertisment. Especially of existing items that have not and probably will not change. If you already know what the item is, what it tastes like/does, will repetitiveness really make you more suseptable(sp) to buy that item? The only point I have ever seen in any advertisement is for new products or changes to existing products. Pretty much, If I want something, I know what I want and go and get it. Flashy pictures will not persuade me to get Frosted Flakes over Capt Crunch.

not a programmable display

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments on this post are mostly off-track. This is not a programmable display. It has two settings: on and off. The image is burned in at the factory. This means that these cheap labels will be useless for any kind of hacking unless you happen to really like flashing the default image on and off.

Furthermore, the article mentions that this display technology requires that a voltage be continuously applied to maintain the image. It doesn't mention current consumption, but this probably means that it's not a zero-quiescent-power solution like eInk.

Coool!

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I have been wating to get my hands on some flexible ePaper type display. While I think this proposed technology won't be as high resolution or colourful as what we saw in Minority Report, the idea of a flexible digital display is pretty intriguing.

I do worry about the increased exposure to advertising it may imposed. Rather then walking down a grocery isle looking at static box images, now all the boxes are vying for your attention with captivating animations, and possibly even sound effects. Hey, with RFID tags, cereal boxes can be aware of their competitors nearby and start displaying smear campaigns against Captain Crunch or that silly rabit from Trix.

It could cause sensory overload, which actually might be good in a way. If an increased abundance of motion advertising causes people to start tuning them out, advertisers may have scale back tactics and reduce our exposure to advertising to make it more effective in general. I think we will be inidated with an increase in pervasive advertising for a little while before utlimately it is severly scaled back.

I would really like to combination of flexible ePaper with the ability of touch sensitive input. Buy one last sheet of paper to last you the rest of your life.

With a recent announcment of a flexible LCD screens, and the fact there isn't really any expensive materials used in these processes (plastic and some metal), I think we will be seeing thin and flexible displays sooner rather then later for both permanent and disposible displays.

Already covered...

[suitepotato]

...in Minority Report. You can still smack them off your desk, across the room, spilling cereal and they keep on going on advertising. All we need is a tiny sound system to complete this.

Dynamic labels......

[crotherm]

I don't know about you, but I think the idea of dynamic ingredients to be a bad thing. Lots of room for mischief.

Re:Child can't "coerce". Not after women's vote.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since women were handed the vote (after whining) it has become illegal for a man to hit his children (they aren't his children, they are the goddess' children).

Want to stop your little goats from being bitches? Wanna go to jail?

Women's rights must be destroyed.
Death To women's Rights.
Death To women's Liberties.
Death To women's Freedoms.

Repeal the 19th ammendment.

This technology sucks....

[ivan256]

....until it's in a form where the end user can control what it's used for. Cheap flexable displays sound like a cool technology, but until you can control what's displayed on them, what the hell good are they?

Think custom wrappings, skins, or cases

[Anonymous Coward]

This would e-paper technology allow you to have displays that change colors and display images as the as custom cases to home appliances, cell phones, Xbox faceplates or covers, televisions, clothing that changes styles and color ..maybe even displays information? household items? CAn even be used as pictures, wallpaper, items like furniture .. and even non electronic gadgets.

Forget the old style cell phone cases .. these will change color and brightness. Maybe according to the conversation or when it rings he outside "skin" of the gadget can display a certain image?

All made posible because it's flexible and can wrap around stuff.

It's like he ultimate gift wrapping too. They can also maybe combine it with (low power maybe?) wireless system to send the images to the flexible display/wrapping so that you can control the images if you like.

Somewhat tangential... reminds me of a story:

[scottblascocomposer]

This reminds me of a short story I read a few years back that I LOVED. Problem is, I've been trying unsuccessfully to remember the author's name ever since... maybe someone can help me out?

A side note in the main story involved personalized advertizing on every surface imaginable, from the walls to the bar counter, all addressing the characters by name and annoying the hell out of them. I believe the story revolved around a team of geeks installing next-gen super-duper-high-speed untrackable networks (in trees at one point) while being literally attacked by government agents for breaking some trade rules. It was great.

Related, there was another story by I think the same author about a couple of guys who were part of a government "body hacking" experiment, whereby they could control their bodies' healing and such using a PDA attached to a port installed in their neck (quasi-Matrix-style... sorta). They escaped the lab, were eventually caught, and the story ended with one of them getting off of a plane in Africa to escape the US government, stolen laptop and interfacing cables in hand. Again, fantastic short story.

Anyone know the author?

Re:Somewhat tangential... reminds me of a story:

[mfrank]

Cory Doctorow. He's got a web page. The body hacking story is called ownzored.

My Wheat Chex is...

[Slashdot Junky]

My Wheat Chex is already overpriced, so General Foods better not raise the price further by making the box packaging animated!

Later,
-Slashdot Junky

Here's a hint...

[Jameth]

> When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it"

It doesn't need to have flashing pictures to make kids say, "I want it". Kids will say "I want it" if it so much as combines three bright colors or has an anthropomorphic animal. Heck, lots of kids will say "I want it" just because it exists.

What in the name of ....

[dotdevin]

This is the LAST thing we need. Now I will have to purchase "AdSubtract - Supermarket Edition" just to buy bread and eggs without excessive cr*p. -D

Porn? Feh

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times can you watch some dude pumping his schlong into some chick before finally getting bored with it all and going out to find the real thing? The only positive thing about porn is that it's a better contraceptive than contraceptives.

Instead of a toy inside...

[no_pets]

... the box will have a controller so that the kid can play the game that is being demo'd on the outside of the box. Heck, parents buy video games to shut kids up. They will surely buy a box of cereal to do that, too.

The controller will be super cheap. About the same cost as the cheap plastic toy that usually is inside.

Sure, it won't be a high-tech game (probably at first) but is just has to be playable for a week or so until the box is empty. By then a new game will be demo'd at the supermarket.

What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pop-ups on Pop-Tarts?

Umm

[Zebra_X]

Minority report anyone?

I want mediatronic chopsticks

[FleaPlus]

From Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age:

Hackworth had been catapulted out of the rank-and-file and into Bespoke's elite ranks by his invention of the mediatronic chopstick. He'd been working in San Francisco at the time. The company was thinking hard about things Chinese, trying to one-up the Nipponese, who had already figured out a way to generate passable rice (five different varieties, yet!) direct from Feed, bypassing the whole paddy/coolie rat race, enabling two billion peasants to hang up their conical hats and get into some serious leisure time-- and don't think for one moment that the Nipponese didn't already have some suggestions for what they might do with it. Some genius at headquarters, stewing over Nippon's prohibitive lead in nanotechnological rice production, decided the only thing for it was to leapfrog them by mass-producing entire meals, from wonton all the way to digital interactive fortune cookies. Hackworth got the seemingly trivial job of programming the matter compiler to extrude chopsticks.

Now, doing this in plastic was idiotically simple-- polymers and nanotechnology went together like toothpaste and tubes. But Hackworth, who'd eaten his share of Chinese as a student, had never taken well to the plastic chopsticks, which were slick and treacherous in the blunt hands of a gwailo. Bamboo was better-- and not that much harder to program, if you just had a bit of imagination. Once he'd made that conceptual leap, it wasn't long before he came up with the idea of selling advertising space on the damn things, chopstick handles and Chinese columnar script being a perfect match. Before long he was presenting it to his superiors: eminently user-friendly bamboid chopsters with colorful advertising messages continuously scrolling up their handles in real time, like news headlines in Times Square. For that, Hackworth was kicked upstairs to Bespoke and across the Pacific to Atlantis/Shanghai. He saw these chopsticks everywhere now. To the Equity Lords, the idea had been worth billions; to Hackworth, another week's paycheck. That was the difference between the classes, right there. He wasn't doing that badly, compared to most other people in the world, but it still rankled him. He wanted more for Fiona. He wanted Fiona to grow up with some equity of her own. And not just a few pennies invested in common stocks, but a serious position in a major company.

Expiration labels

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict the release of codable labels to coincide with a break-though method for prolonging the expiration of milk.

E-paper. E-Ink. E-cheap. NOT

[Animats]

The E-Ink/E-Paper crowd is always talking about how they'll have displays that are really cheap, really big, really soon. Yet they're not trying to break into the laptop or TV markets. What's wrong with this picture?

You can buy an E-Ink Prototyping Kit for $3000. This is a sheet of "E-ink" material, with the little balls that rotate, mounted on top of an 6 inch LCD panel, attached to a little computer. Runs Linux, even. This gets you a little black and white display. Since there's an LCD panel behind it, this can't be cheaper than an LCD panel. It is sunlight-readable, though.

There are some E-Ink point of purchase displays, but they're fixed signs where sections can be turned on and off, much like the special LCD displays that are used in control panels. These are still a few hundred dollars. Along the same line are the various "E-Ink clocks".

If you want a display that holds its image with power off and is sunlight readable, try Kent Displays. It's not "E-Ink", but it actually works.

Re:E-paper. E-Ink. E-cheap. NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you get the idea that this thing has a regular LCD display in it? I saw no such evidence from the linked articles. It's strictly electronic-ink that requires no power to maintain static displays.

Re:E-paper. E-Ink. E-cheap. NOT

[Animats]

See E-Ink imaging film for how this stuff works. Basically, there's the backplane of an LCD display with the E-Ink film on the front.

The E-Ink people talk about a new generation with low-cost plastic transistors and flexible substrates, but what they're actually shipping is both expensive and rigid.

Wake me up...

[galen]

Wake me up when all of those Victoria Secret catalogues we get are printed on e-paper with full motion video.

Re:Marketing people...remarkably effective ?

[zmollusc]

'Marketing people have proven themselves to be remarkably effective at minipulating our behavior even with the very limited access they've had to us in the past'

I have been advertised at for decades but still buy the cheapest products that do the job, be it aspirin, cement, breakfast cereal or bread.
Advertising is the emperor's new clothes, where are all the fancy ad campaigns for crack and dope and other big sellers?
Why aren't marketing people able to market their own company into a monopoly?
What a crock.

Purple Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I want that purple stuff...

Possible Hardware To Hack ........

[batteryman]

Maybe they can be hacked afterwards. Make a multi display sign on your car. A flashy bookcover.

If not cereal boxes, they can use them as a cooking guide, cookbook.

Which is why there will always be two classes...

[hackwrench]

and why the proletariat will never be the ruling class or indeed revolt. The smart ones will move out of the proletariat, and it's the smart people that are disaffected in society that will rebel, both the rulers and the rebels using the proletariat as cannon fodder. It's a waste to prey on the misconceptions of the proletariat when there are more effective and economical ways to decrease their purchasing power and increase their utilizability.

Cereal Boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone dies from looking at a box of Corn Flakes - Is Kellogs guilty of being a cereal killer?

Thank you, I'll be here all week try the veal.

Blurbflys, Jeff Noon and Vert

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds alot like the future envisioned by Jeff Noon. If I end up fighting off dream snakes and stuffing feathers in my mouth, I'm going to be pissed. :)

Wrong problem

[KlaymenDK]

Luckily, it takes a bit more than walking by a flashing 1-square-foot display (or at least, that square foot has to be *really* funky) to trigger a seizure. Or so the experts tell me.

(I live by an oddly covered underpass where you get positively stroboscoped if you drive under it in sunny weather. I raised concerns, but apparently it was deemed safe.)

On the other hand, I shudder at the prospect of using advanced materials as disposable packaging (just as I did when I heard about disposable cell phones, etc) -- if anything. And this from a company that is otherwise quite environmentally conscious; using lead-free solder, they even opposed to using green plastic for the colour-coded PS2 mouse plugs (remember those?) because they can't be made without cadmium.

Re:Wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

they even opposed to using green plastic for the colour-coded PS2 mouse plugs (remember those?) because they can't be made without cadmium.

I was unable to confirm this. Cadmium is used in plastics for color (not green) and condsidered very safe since the dye isn't water (or acid) soluable and it is trapped in the plastic. Most exposure to cadmium is from fertilizer.

Re:Wrong problem

[Yartrebo]

The cadmium WILL get out. The several thousand degree temperature of an incerator or waste-to-energy plant will swiftly liberate the cadmium and put it into water-soluble fly ash or directly into the atmosphere.

And all this just to color a piece of plastic that you don't see in ordinary usage and that to colorblind people like myself looks identical to cyan (no cadmium there, every inkjet uses cyan die).

Tough Decision

[WolfZombie]

$2.50 for a box of Captain Crunch with no epileptic labelling or $50 for a box of Cookie Crisp with an animated box and lithium ion battery.... Hmmm...

Don't let the street racers here about this.

[TheNarrator]

Can you imagine all the bizarre and ugly animated racing decals that they are going to start putting on their cars? Now you're going to not only have to plug your ears to keep their thundering bass speakers from making you go deaf, but you'll also have to invest in a pair of sunglasses to protect your eyes from the blinding animated displays.

What we have here is....

[Anonymous Coward]

A "Cereal Killer"

Thank you, I'll be here all week try the veal.

This will take decades to happen....

[Slugster]

I got an assoc in compsci but due to the wonderful US tech job market conditions--still work at the grocery store where I put myself through school at.

Some time ago the corporation got a bright idea: mount several big plasma screens from the ceiling around the store, and show ads and whatever [?] on them. We being store-level peons weren't really told what the point was, the screens just showed up one day and the engineer guys came and bolted them to the ceiling.

At first they showed the local cable weather channel, which was nice--because it included a clock as well. It was actually useful that way, but that didn't last. After a few weeks of that, they switched to public-service type announcements. Not ads exactly, more like calming, soothing infomercials. One was for the Humane Society (the US pet and animal advocate group). Usually the infomercials said something and had a phone number to call, displayed near the end of the video, across the bottom of the screen.

The plasma screens were wide-screens (16:9) but the commercials obviously weren't, because at first they were stretched awkwardly across the entire width and height of the wide-screen. Well, after about two weeks, they "fixed" that problem,,, but,,,, the new problem was that they scaled the video (obviously 4:3) across the whole width of the 16:9 screen. So the bottom 30-percent of all the videos was now cut off--not visible at all. And all the phone numbers were displayed across the bottoms of the videos.

It ran like this for several months--looping the top-two-thirds of about a half-dozen commercials, over and over again. Then we came in one night and all the screens were taken down, and had been removed from the store entirely. I imagine that whoever was in charge of that whole program had no idea why they weren't getting much of any response to the ads.

Great...

[wetfeetl33t]

Since when has carboard been insufficient?

Bad analogy..

[the_rajah]

TV - Buy once, use many times..
Newspaper - buy many times, use once.

For what we spend in a year on the two daily papers, one local and the NYT, that are delivered to our house, I could buy a nice TV which I could use for several years.

Be definition, never

[geekoid]

If it is cool, we want it. So the trick is to change whats 'cool'.
I'll need 2.3 Billion Dollars and ten years. By the end of ten years, cool will be more enviromentally friendly.

Re:Be definition, never

[Jeng]

Well, cool will be more enviromentally friendly in 10 years anyway.

What exactly do you need the 2.3 Billion dollars for?

Should be interesting..

[red990033]

..in a pr0n store.

aw man

[lagerbottom]

Now I need Adblock for my eyes. :(

Oh goody.

[hkb]

Imagine items on grocer's shelves that flash commercials at you as you walk by.

Why would I want to imagine that? I'm already bombarded by ridiculous, intrusive advertisements left and right. No thanks, keep the e-paper.

What a dork

[geekoid]

Only a dork button a Hawain shirt all the way to the top.

And for crying out loud, you would think Nick Nolte could afford a Tommy Bahama!

With violence!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah!

*smack!*

*smack!*

*smack!*

(now that'll make for a stable adult...)

Where's my wallpaper?!?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

"There are potential benefits here, though."

I completely agree, but also believe it will never happen that way at all. Hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, licensing, and new factories... to give us a better nutritional label? Highly doubt it, at least for the short term (5 years after deployment). This is going 100% into selling more products. Because, if it doesn't help the product sell, its essentially worthless to a corporation, unfortunately.

On the other hand, I'm just waiting for that digital wallpaper we were promissed about a year ago so I can go to a 8'x20' screen.

inductive shelving

[Vexar]

That's just what we need, powered shelves. We gripe about consuming too much fuel/energy, yet here we go again with another way to waste another few kilowatts per year.

Enough with the press releases

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yeah. The whole electronic paper thing is going like gangbusters right now.

Maybe the paper is cheap enough, but what about the electronics to drive it? I can't see manufacturers spending an extra dollar per box on packaging for a $3 product. Come back when you can show me the tech and a solid marketing plan.

Flashing elements

[Tekoneiric]

I would imagine for the first few years the displays will be only animated focus segments on images rather than the whole thing. They'll probably print the main image on paper and epaper for what they want the viewer to focus on. As far as power, if they don't use induction to broadcast power to it on the shelf then shelf life will become a big factor with products.

I wouldn't mind having an epaper display as a secondary monitor for displaying text and low refresh graphics. Maybe an epaper terminal.

SOrry to reply twice, but better

[geekoid]

Nick Nolte then this: Smarmi!

Don't take your children to the supermarket

[raider_red]

I'm single and childless, so this isn't a real problem for me. However, a friend of mine from college will not even let her children go to the supermarket with them. She stays at home with the kids, and sends her husband to pick up the groceries. That way, the kids can't beg the parents to buy things on impulse.

Re:Don't take your children to the supermarket

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be nice in the short term, but your friend is missing a valuable opportunity to mold and influence her kids. The first few years of a child's life will impact them the most, so it's the perfect time to condition them in proper behavior.

It's all fun and games...

[StikyPad]

till someone hacks the boxes to display goatse.

DIY goodness...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind gettin' some E-Paper on a cereal box and turning it into an e-book reader....

Irrelevent

[VoightKampff]

Another reason not to take your kids to the supermarket.
Seriously, I buy 90% of my groceries from the Supermarket website and get it delivered. 'Pester Power' is a non starter in that situation.

God help us..

[nurb432]

This is getting WAY out of hand.. Add this crap to the RFID tag everyone will have soon, ( do you have your papers comrade? ) and you get targeted ads everywhere you turn..

Other applications

[raider_red]

Forget the cereal aisle. What's the magazine aisle going to look like?

With enough processing power, you could have a magazine cover that flashes samples of the articles (on those you would buy for the articles) to subliminal shots of the centerfold (for those whose articles you don't care about.)

Also, you could see magazines selling ads on the front cover, to alternate with the cover art.

What this could be useful for

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: standard packaging. If you have boxes that change their complete look when filled with new goods, this would make recycling easier. No need to wash off previous labels.

Engineer?

[WoOS]

said Axel Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement the technology

I started to wonder once I read that sentence, as it's normally not the engineers who say such things. (They would more probable say "It's sooo cool. Next thing I'll try is to have my name rotating on it in 3D even though it can only do 3 frames/sec"). And lo and behold, a german article on the same topic reveals the guy is the project leader. Uff, engineer honor saved ;-)

I think if more people

[geekoid]

said 'Curly!' it would be an even better world!

Ah, but I live in Australia

[Namarrgon]

Lucky me - we're nearly at the bottom of the population density list. I get over 71.5 football fields to live in :-)

That's enough for 858 computers, and I only have 3! Clearly I've been subsiding Singapore for far too long (only 0.03 football fields each for them, enough for a Mac Mini perhaps).

Better for Warning notes

[elpapacito]

No longer any excuse for consumer warnings, surgeon general warning etc written in Smurf sized font.
Plus warnings can now start glowing and blinking when the product is took in hand...so the consumer is always informed.

hacking

[anonimato]

The New age of "cereal hacking" is here.

can you run linux on your kornflakes?

It's not the technology that protection is needed

[hackwrench]

Lower class people are lower class mainly because they are incapable of grasping certain concepts like no matter how much you spend on shampoo or how well it is advertised, if it takes plastic surgery to make you pretty, then you are going to have to purchase plastic surgury to make your pretty. The job of preying on their inability to grasp such concepts is morally repugnant whether or not they "need" to be protected from their own stupidity. When such economic graft occurs, the upper class pays for it in decreased allocation of resources to meet their wants, and it is only natural for the upper class to want protection from it.

French and English?

[echusarcana]

In Canada we have French on one side of every product, English on the other. My French is not great, so one must flip the box this way and that to find the preparation instructions, generally in tiny type (a small sacrifice to make for the pleasure of living in a bilingual country).

Does this mean there could be a button somewhere to change languages? Perhaps it could talk to the RFIDs on the other products in my cupboard to show me recipes on the box for dinner in the language of my choice.

... more information

[kiddailey]

Yeah, like explain to us what all those wonderful chemicals in it are, tell us how awesome high fructose corn syrup is, and finally to remind us that when they say "0g TRANS FAT!!!" on the front, it ;) REALLY, truly, honestly ;) means ;) 0g ;).

Re:... more information

[Yartrebo]

In this case it probably is true. Trans-fat is not a naturally occuring substance and only exists when oil is hydrogenated. If there isn't hydrogenated oil (generally soybean) in the product, then it is very unlikely to have trans-fats. Even natural butter has no trans-fats (all natural unsaturated fats are cis-fats, and saturated fats are neither).

The lie is that they're hiding other things that have been done, like bleaching the flour, using corn syrup or other sweeteners, and using GM crops laden with pesticides (after all, what good is a patented Roundup-Ready(TM) crop without a heavy application of Monsanto-patented pesticides). Marketing 101 is to trumpet the good stuff (regardless of whether you are responsible for them) and hide the bad stuff.

Re:... more information

[kiddailey]

:) I was trying to be a little humorous in my post, but good points none-the-less.

However, trans fat *IS* a naturally occuring substance found typically in animal-based foods like dairy and meet that (supposedly) shouldn't be totally eliminated from the diet.

The problem isn't trans fat itself, but the HUGE amount of, as you mentioned, man-made hydrogenated oils that we are all are consuming on a daily basis just so crap can sit on the grocery store shelf a little longer.

Or it may say : "I'm the best product."

[DrYak]

With the price of PICs and such falling, how long until each e-Ink box has not only a RFID, but also a RFID-*antenna* and is able to detect competitor's product and say "that other product sucks !!!"

pornflakes

[EmbeddedJanitor]

RDA 100%

Very interesting. However:

[Unknown Poltroon]

I travel for my job, and i read a lot, so i rely on e-books a great deal, both on my laptop, and on my palm pilot(Yep, i have no problems reading them). However, the idiot publishers in their infinite wisdom have decided that e-books should sell at the same price as a normal book. If this dosent change, noone will buy e-books.

so, next up...

[TLouden]

wallpaper. and I'm dead serious. think how fun it would be to switch the artwork and style of your house at the press of a button.

Not an engineer...

[Anonymous Coward]

just a marketing fool!

'When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it"

Seriously, isn't this a sad commentary on kids today? (always excepting the kids that want the product to hack the display) Some fsckin' marketing genius decides that the only thing that sells is flash, NOT quality, NOT taste, NOT anything else! This is exactly what is wrong with most computer peripherals and systems today!

Toxic waste

[Yartrebo]

This is an aside, but how can anyone with a shred of moral conscience use PVC (polyvinyl chloride) for a thing like a smart card. 1 part per million of PVC mixed with other recyclable plastics can render a batch useless (PVC is nearly impossible to sort out of a plastic stream and when heated it releases chlorine compounds which destroy the steel used in the recycling machinery). Little bits of plastic like smart cards are likely to wind up in all waste streams by overeager or careless recyclers.

For a few hundred dollars per ton (a fraction of a cent per card) polycarbonate or HDPE could be used. The former is quite rigid and the latter is quite wear resistant. Both don't ruin recycling batches in small amounts and are not nearly as toxic (HDPE is completely non-toxic if no additives are used).

Recycling?

[HaMMeReD3]

Has anyone considered that all cardboard/plastic/glass boxes are recyclable, would this potentially make harder to properly recycle these materials in the future? Also, e-ink is currently monochrome, so even animated they would make for bland labels. I personally would not want to pay even 25 cents more for a disposable product just because it has a sub-par monochrome animation on it. If they wanted to market this to kids, they could put lil e-ink cards inside the box for the kids to collect, make them pokemon cards and you'll drive the children crazy.

E-Paper

[JerryLs]

I say bring it on. What a wonderful product to experiment with.

When can I have my porn with my cereal?

[Master of Transhuman]

I'll even settle for Angelina Jolie instead of Count Chocula.

Instead of reducing dead-tree useage, *this* ?

[Anonymous Coward]

R&D scientist : I developed a cheap film to replace replace ink, using very little power. Current resolution is pretty low but with funding, we can probably triple that within 2 years.

Marketing : Holy shit, do you realize what this means?Just imagine the possibilities!

R&D scientist : I know, like, within 2-3 generations of the technology might be good enough to replace the majority of day-to-day paper printout. Imagine a little tablet, or "notepad", let's say with a rechargable battery and a wireless link to your computer to upload content. Mindboggling!

Marketing : Screw that, I'm talking about more ads, we could put this stuff on CEREAL BOXES for christ sake - the film & disposable batteries would be so cheap we could AFFORD TO THROW IT AWAY. Woohoo, I'm going to be RICH!

Assholes.

If I had mod points..

[neuro.slug]

You'd get one for the Calvin and Hobbes reference. Sweet.

Re:Very interesting. However:

[Anonymous Coward]

Please!, is greed, isn't logic. Ebook price = Copyrights - paper price (wishful thinking)

Power?

[pimpsoftcom]

So where are the packages going to get the electrical power required to run the adds, sounds, and animation?

I'd buy an ebook reader

[typical]

Maybe, but I'd buy a good e-book reader.

I admit that I wouldn't pay all *that* much -- probably $300 would be about the cap -- but I wouldn't require a *huge* screen, either, and everything these days has LCD screens, so it shouldn't cost that much. It doesn't need to do arbitrary formats, either, as long as I can render any format to its format easily and Freely. It barely needs any storage capacity compared to an MP3 player -- 64MB of ebooks are going to last you a long, long time. It doesn't need a touch screen. It doesn't even need color. It just needs a good-looking screen that's bigger than a PDA, and to not cost too much.

And I agree that use of locked books is totally ridiculous. I wouldn't buy them -- a lot of what I want to read is already web pages or text. I have tons and tons of things that I'd love to read somewhere other than sitting in my computer chair.

Tablet PCs might do it, but they're pricy and have short battery life.

Make the shelf the display

[typical]

If that's all you care about, why not just stick the display on the shelf in front of the product, and avoid the whole problem?

Re:Which is why there will always be two classes..

[pureevilmatt]

It's the bread and circuses that keep the proles/plebes complacent. If you decrease their purchasing power then you decrease the amount of bread and the frequency of their circuses, and you'll soon find that they no longer wish to be a part of the society that enslaves them. That's when the rebellion/revolution happens and the ruling class changes.

The Laptop market is a better one!!

[ElectroBot]

What they should do is start selling a 800x600 (or preferably 1024x768), 14.1" or 15" display that can replace a laptop's LCD panel. Then laptop manufacturers could agree on a standard where you disable the LCD and plug in a e-ink panel.

With solid state storage already at 8GB, Speed-Step technology and an e-ink display one could use a 3-4 hour laptop for well over 8 hours and still have it be very usable.

I'd be willing to pay $100 for a B/W and $200 for a COLOR e-ink display that I could use to replace a laptop's LCD panel TEMPORARILY.

Because flashing pop-ups were such a hit...

[porcupine8]

I know, I'm writing this days after the article was posted, no one will ever read it...

But I have to point out that there seems to be some evidence that people don't LIKE annoying flashing advertising everywhere they look. Moreover, their dislike is strong enough that it has strongly influenced advertising on the web - the initial tide of seizure-inducers has given way to calmer banners and the huge popularity of text-only ads.

I have a feeling that the novelty of flashing cereal boxes - even to the marketing departments - will wear off quickly when they discover that people are going out of their way to avoid walking down the cereal aisle.

Not a chance

[Any Web Loco]

Too expensive, and they'd still not be able to compete with the net where there's an abundance of still & moving-picture porn available for free or for a minimal charge and where you don't have to buy it over a counter.

Marketing is the root of all ignorance

[MECC]

Oh well. Humans will learn even earlier to ignore things. Sadly, we also learn to re-use behaviours that avoid punishment, and probably just become more ignorant in general.

I wonder, 100 or more years ago, how many choices life presented to people on the average, compared to now? Is it possible to have too many decisions to make in a day?

The most insightful comment on this thread

[wurp]

Excellent point... will we one day find ourselves telling the cashier to wait just another minute or two to ring that up while the effects of the lawsuit we just heard about on the radio filter through to the shelf prices?

Society doesn't enslave them.

[hackwrench]

They enslave themselves. I'm talking about the proletariat, (the working class). According to WordWeb, prole is an adequate synonym for proletariat, but plebe, a military trainee (as at a military academy), is not. You only want to decrease the purchasing power of the proles when they find they have money to spend on their misconceptions. The proles will never initiate the rebellion because they're not smart enough. Once a person born to parents of that class is smart enough, he leaves that class. Remember, Lenin wasn't a prole. Neither were any of the founding fathers, or any of the presidents or members of Congress. Nor were the ruling members of the Soviet Union. Nor are the officers ofthe military. Enlisted men generally or frequently are, but that's not a hard and fast rule, nor do I have statistics.

Re:Society doesn't enslave them.

[pureevilmatt]

Your "Smart People" theory is seriously flawed. Smart people don't affect change nearly as much as hungry/angy people. Prole is the short form of proletariat. The proletariat by definition can never be the ruling class. I was using "plebes" as the short form for plebeians, the largest portion of the populace and the common people of ancient rome, the working class. The two terms are interchangable only when the lowest class is also the largest class. The phrase "give the plebes their bread and circuses so that they remain happy and ignorant" is key here, because as soon as the middle class shrinks to the point where the lower class out numbers it, or the disparity between the upperclass and the lower class grows so great that the lower class can't bear it anymore, you'll get more and more "smart people" being born into the lower class, people with very limited or no "purchasing power", people who are disadvantaged/disaffected to the point where they aren't concerned with getting to a higher class status because they're too busy starving and the already bloated military has no need to enlist them. This is historically the point where the proles riot, royal families are beheaded, parliament is burned and anarchy reigns. Or it could go the other way, a government is toppled by it's military and a new more brutal regime rules until that system impoldes for the same reasons. No doubt that once the chaos ends, a smart person will fill the power void, become powerful and in turn write themselves into the history books. But make no mistake, that is the effect of the change not the cause of it.

With the press of a button, one little shock

[TCQuad]

You're a Monster...

And you're the reason all of my children will have subdermal implants.

All of the parenting, none of the scorn.

Let's not forget...

[ClioCJS]

...that apparantly drug-users can't be intelligent or informed.

"Having never done drugs, I can conclusively say they have nothing to offer." -South Park, Mmm-kay?