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Microsoft Patents Shape-Shifting Display
Stoobalou writes "In layman's terms, Microsoft's patent is for a special type of touch-screen display which includes a 'shape-memory' layer at its base. When activated by a special frequency of ultraviolet light, individual blocks — not-coincidentally the same size as a pixel on the display part — can be raised or lowered, lending the displayed image physical texture."
Odo?
Free Martian Whores!
No pictures.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
The first application I see for this is a decent touch screen keyboard, if this shape-memory effect can be triggered fast enough. I'd feel much more comfortable typing on an tablet if there was some feedback to the typing.
Sit on the display in a night club: the ambient black light projectors will turn it into a vibrating cushion.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I could this could really have great implications for the vision impaired as a dynamic braille device in some fashion.
Let's hope this actually becomes a viable product.
The obvious market I see is a display that is actually usable for the blind. A picture's worth a thousand words, and probably more than a thousand broken and disorganized automatically-read words.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
No, seriously though, I've got one already.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Proposing new tag: Imaginepornonthisthing
Both Apple and Nokia are investigating similar technologies for use for their touch screens, so chances are pretty good that at least one of these neat ideas will reach the market. That is, unless they get bogged down in a patent war over this too. (Microsoft's patent predates Apple's by nearly half a year it seems.)
So wait, a major tech company filed a patent application for a new display technology that's genuinely novel and innovative?
They still do that?
I've been posting on Slashdot for years, and elsewhere before that, about layering a memory plastic grid on a touchscreen to raise bumps defining a dynamic textures and bounded areas for touch feedback.
--
make install -not war
That way the blind can text while driving just like the rest of us!
Interesting but patentable?
Google for
haptic shape memory
haptic display
and you will see it is not a sudden invention out of nowhere. The pixels used to be electromagnetically activated metal pillars whereas they are using shape memory alloy. Perhaps the part about how they are using the alloy mechanically is new?
NHK and Tokyo U. in 2008 develop touch panel/braille display
Harvard research
It talks about shape memory alloy in pixel sized units.. So did Microsoft get this idea from the Russian and 4 Japanese below?
Reference 12 is from a well known source in 2004:
[12] I. Poupyrev, T. Nashida, S. Maruyama, J. Rekimoto, and Y. Yamaji. Lumen: interactive visual and shape display for calm computing. In Proc of SIGGRAPH ’04, page 17. ACM.
The porn implications are endless!
Your assumption that the most useful thing that may be copyrighted is a pop song is ridiculous. Other companies want to use source code, which is copyrighted not patented. Indeed, it is the GPL, which is a form of copyright known as copyleft, that allows us to have excellent software accessible to all for free.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Ultimately Rule 34 will prove true.
Keep Doing Good.
When I read the title of the post I figured they couldn't be talking about lighted pixels of even a flexible display since flexible displays are still just prototypes and they can only roll and bend, not stretch. Flexible to the point of pixel to pixel distances changing enough to be visible means the pixel connections must be stretching and that's probably 1+ decades away. I figured they must be talking about a flexible/rubber-like surface with actuators under it to give it a relief and then lighted by a projected display. Just reading the first paragraph of TFA says that it's about projected displays and not any kind of LCD or OLED type of display.
Where is the invention?
Unless they've come up with a material which is light sensitive and expands from the light and if so why is everyone here talking about LCD displays? If they do not have this light sensitive expanding material and are patenting the idea of this being a reality some day then once again it's another BS type of patent because it's obvious. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Your assumption that the most useful thing that may be copyrighted is a pop song is ridiculous. Other companies want to use source code, which is copyrighted not patented. Indeed, it is the GPL, which is a form of copyright known as copyleft, that allows us to have excellent software accessible to all for free.
Actually, the release of the author's rights is what "allows us to have excellent software accessible to all for free." If copyleft did not exist, free software still could - see, e.g. any free software prior to 2007, v1 of the GPL.
That said, copyright protects only that specific embodiment of the work. Other companies may want to use the source code to save time and expense of independent recreation, but if they do perform that independent recreation, they do not infringe copyright at all. That's why patent rights are stronger - they protect even against independent recreation.
This still doesn't help the primary argument, which was that "zomg patent rights are going to be extended for hundreds of years," to which I say, FUD is not evidence. Provide some evidence to counter the evidence to the contrary over the past 220 years, or accept that your fears are unfounded.
People have been trying to create displays with tactile feedback for a while; Microsoft and other companies are simply patenting all the combinations of possible technologies for making that happen.
The USPTO should really require a working model...
This isn't labeled porn yet? They'd obviously jump on it before anyone else.
Technology like this has the most immediate useful impact on Windows Tablet devices that are just the touchscreen and essentially no other UI. You could make a raised keyboard with the screen, which would really be best of both worlds.
The next step is a revolution in UI design. An alpha layer representing the texture of every UI feature could be part of every image displayed, and you could have an infinite number of interfaces that are customized to a particular task, but you would get the ergonomic benefits of a normal keyboard. For example, you could handle multiple languages more effectively by adding entire new keys to the on-screen keyboard instead of doubling-up and making it difficult to type common characters as is done today in many languages. Games could present a set of "keys" that are just the movement and action keys, clearly labeled as such, instead of WASD.
And of course, porn would run rampant, as always.
Since it's just a patent, presumably this technology won't exist for ages. My bets have always been on Apple putting this in a future iPad before anyone else gets to it - not a big fan of Apple, but their ownership of the entire technology stack and the premium price they can levy for their devices puts them in the best position to introduce something like this with the fewest hurdles.
You don't understand the GPL at all. It is control of the author's rights, protected by copyright, that allows the author to control how others use his work.
As to the rest of your post, just admit that you were foolish to suggest that the importance of copyright was about pop songs and move on. Anything less just makes it clear that you are afraid to admit your mistakes.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
looks like they are probably talking about some PH sensitive polymer where UV light is used to change the PH levels via ionization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH-sensitive_polymers
not really new but I can imagine anyone working in and round this field would have used or considered using a projected display to cause reaction patterns on the material. Using a projected keyboard having two projectors(1 visiable light, one UV light) projecting on a flat material such as made from the above mentioned polymers must be what they have "invented" and patented.
So now, anyone who wants to use these PH sensitive polymers combined with a computer display system is SOL without paying Microsoft. this sucks IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You don't understand the GPL at all. It is control of the author's rights, protected by copyright, that allows the author to control how others use his work.
No, I think you don't understand copyright. The GPL doesn't give you rights, it waives rights you already have in a very explicit manner - essentially a license. Hence the "L".
As to the rest of your post, just admit that you were foolish to suggest that the importance of copyright was about pop songs and move on. Anything less just makes it clear that you are afraid to admit your mistakes.
I concede that yes, pop songs are not the only thing protected by copyright. A reader debating in good faith, of course, would readily accept that and understand that the point was that the protections of copyrights and patents are different. You are a good faith debater, no?
Isn't it amazing the number of computer innovations that have been created for the porn industry?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
He wrote an entire post about the duration of patents and to contrast it with copyrights he took a random example - a pop song, and you nitpick over that? Whats wrong with you? He might as well have said: "They couldn't care less about your new movie/computer game/software/book". It was just an example to show that in patents there is industry pressure not to extend the duration of patents and in copyright there is no such pressure. He never said this was the most important thing protected under copyright laws.
Yeah, he is totally afraid to admit he is wrong...
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Patent of Dyson Sphere is already here.
A License does not waive rights, it grants rights that the Licensor must have over said product in the first place. You may be familiar with a company called Microsoft. Give their attorneys a call and explain to them how their EULA gives away their rights to their binaries. Then show up at the next lawsuit over a GPL violation and tell the judge everyone can go home, because the GPL gives away rights rather than protecting them.
An astute reader would recognize that the person doing the comparing lacked a basic understanding of one of the matters of subject, and was therefore unqualified to enter into said debate, which is what happened here. A good faith debater would not enter into a debate with someone unarmed for said debate, but would instead attempt to educate the other would be debater so that they will not enter perpetually unarmed into debate after debate and spread ignorance like a virus.
:-(
Alas, it happens all too often that the ignorant cling violently to their ignorance and shout it from the rooftops rather than taking the opportunity to learn something
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If you had paid attention to the rest of the thread, you would quickly realize that I indeed identified the fact that the poster lacks basic understanding of copyright, and specifically how it is extremely important to every high tech company on the planet. Therefore, his statement that companies don't care about copyright is, excuse the pun, patently absurd.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
For those of you who are imagination impaired, one cool use of this would be to provide a "real" gamepad via a touchscreen interface. Think being able to play oldschool NES games on an iphone where you could actually feel the buttons instead of always having to look and ensure your thumbs are in the right place.
A License does not waive rights, it grants rights that the Licensor must have over said product in the first place. You may be familiar with a company called Microsoft. Give their attorneys a call and explain to them how their EULA gives away their rights to their binaries.
I would, but they already know, and it would be insulting and condescending to try. You, apparently, have no such knowledge, so instead of Microsoft, I shall attempt to explain it to you. Copyright, like rights in all property, give the author a right to exclude others from using the subject of the copyright - specifically, to copy, distribute, prepare derivative works, etc.
A license doesn't grant another person a right to copy the work - those rights cannot be given, except as the subject of a total assignment from the copyright owner. Instead, the license is a waiver of the copyright owner's right to exclude, saying "I will not sue you for copying my work."
Incidentally, this is why licenses may not be assignable, while rights always are.
This has been "licensing intellectual property 101".
Then show up at the next lawsuit over a GPL violation and tell the judge everyone can go home, because the GPL gives away rights rather than protecting them.
So, now in light of the above explanation, do you understand how the GPL neither "gives away rights" nor "protects them", but instead is a license or waiver of the author's copyrights?
Nah. That would be too much to ask.
An astute reader would recognize that the person doing the comparing lacked a basic understanding of one of the matters of subject, and was therefore unqualified to enter into said debate, which is what happened here.
Exactly, my dear boy. Hopefully, I've advanced your knowledge somewhat.
You don't understand the GPL at all. It is control of the author's rights, protected by copyright, that allows the author to control how others use his work.
No, I think you don't understand copyright. The GPL doesn't give you rights, it waives rights you already have in a very explicit manner - essentially a license. Hence the "L".
Read that sentence again. It doesn't claim that the GPL gives you rights. It claims that copyright does, and that the control given by copyright allows the author to dictate the terms upon which licensees may use the work. You aren't saying different things at all here.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
You failed miserably. Again, licensing the work for a specific use, does not invalidate the copyright. The author still holds the copyright, and can choose to make it available under an alternative license. In other words (taken from Wikipedia):
Again, making it available under the terms of a license does not invalidate the copyright. Now off you go ...
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If you grant a right to someone else that was previously yours exclusively, you are waiving your right to exclusivity.
God, why do these all become such semantic games?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
... that somebody already filed a patent remarkably similar to this. Maybe this is just a different means to the same end. Unfortunately I can't seem to find the link to the story for the other patent. Anybody else got that buried somewhere deep in the bookmarks?
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
You failed miserably. Again, licensing the work for a specific use, does not invalidate the copyright.
Gosh, I said that?
Let's see... control-f, "invalid"...
I see.
Have you always had this hallucination problem?
Again, they do not relinquish the rights. They simply grant the right to others as well, so long as they conform to the terms of the license. They still hold said rights and can grant the rights to others under a different license. No doubt this last post from you is just the first of many times that you will try to claim you did not say the ridiculous things you said, so:
Plonk
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Probably because semantics are important. For example, you just played a semantic game. Nobody said anything remotely close to what you said. The claim was made that the GPL works by removing rights from the copyright holder, when no such removal of rights occurs.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If you grant a person a license to use your work, you formerly had a right to legal recourse if they used your work according to the terms dictated in the license, and now you don't.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Did you even read what you wrote?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
(assuming you had such a right in the first place. Plenty of asshole EULAs give the user 'permission' to do things which they were already entitled to do.)
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Yes. Did you? Try it again and you'll see it.
You create. You can sue someone who uses it improperly, and win. That is a right.
You grant a license. The licensee uses your work. You used to be able to sue them for such a use. Now you can't. Your aforementioned right no longer exists.
See? Pretty straightforward.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Yes, you said that:
Huh. I don't see "invalid" in there either. Are you sure you're thinking of something I said and not... nothing?
Heh, no, in all honesty, I think I figured out what you're getting at: you don't understand what the word "release" means, and are interpreting it variously as "invalidating" or "relinquishing". I'm pretty sure that's your difficulty.
Unless, of course, you really do think I said "invalidating", in spite of that word never appearing prior to your post.
You always have the right to sue someone. You mistakenly claim that a right is lost. In fact, licensing does not relinquish your rights. You retain the copyright, and the rights that go with it. You confusion seems to stem from a complete misunderstanding of the term exclusive rights. You are confusing it with a right to exclusivity. This is why semantics are important, BTW.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
One of us doesn't understand what the word means in a legal context. The author does not release his rights, except in specific accordance with the terms of the contract between the Licensor and the Licensee. You, perhaps mistakenly rather than in an attempt to corrupt, left that detail out. The Author continues to hold the copyright and all said exclusive rights, which your omission of aforementioned detail implied.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
and win
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
One of us doesn't understand what the word means in a legal context.
... you do know that you linked to "relinquish", not "release"? And that what you linked to is just a list of similar and related concepts?
Or maybe you don't know that, and you actually believe that the legal definition of "relinquish" is "abandon, abdicate, abjure, cast off, cease, cede, deliver, demit, desert, disclaim, discontinue, dismiss, do without, drop, eliminate, forgo, forsake, give over, give up, give up claim to, go without, hand over, jettison, lay aside, leave, let go, part with, pull out, quit, reject, release, relinquere, renounce, resign, rid, sacrifice, secede from, sign away, spare, surrender, throw away, turn one's back on, vacate, waive, withdraw, yield," since those all obviously mean the exact same thing.
The author does not release his rights, except in specific accordance with the terms of the contract between the Licensor and the Licensee. You, perhaps mistakenly rather than in an attempt to corrupt, left that detail out.
What detail? What the fark are you talking about? I never used the word "invalidate", and now you're claiming instead that I used "relinquish" and now you're on to some "detail" that I've left out of... something?
Please, do us all a favor - attempt to put a paragraph together that comprises a complete thought, without some strange copypasted link in the middle of it and reference to things being "left out".
Does this mean HatfulOfHollow is working at Microsoft then?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Zune hardware: failed, killed.
Kin hardware: failed, killed.
Shape-shifting display hardware: pending.
I'm just sayin'.
for pimply editing goodness
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
This should give Apple a run for its patent enforcement revenue on those new 3D TV screens. I wonder which Goliath will win this war over TV-you-can-touch.