Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
to alienate parents?
Flashing stuff on boxes all over the supermarket? That's got to be a nightmare for those suffering from epilepsy.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
> 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.
I envision the day when porn will be flashed on the cereal boxes and the kid's Dad goes "I want it!"
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.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
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.
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.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
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.
Pretty please?
Oh, and make it uncrippled. Yes, I'm looking at you, Sony.
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...
-- Conserve binary trees; recycle your email. --
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.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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'."
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
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:
"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.Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
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.
... in the Supermarket Riots of 2008.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
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".
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
...it's that in a world where all the advertisements are flashly, the plain one stands out.
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.
Business Voyeur
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.
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.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
E-Paper or not, these displays will need power. From batteries. What an environmental nightmare.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
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.
No Sigs!
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.
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.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.