Lost sales are impossible to measure accurately because they are a hypothetical scenario: "What if the game couldn't be pirated, what would have happened?"
If the likes of Steam, PSN, XBL etc. are anything to go by, prices for legit copies would go up. Piracy rates on these platforms must be so insignificant they don't even matter, yet the price of new titles is MSRP even when few retailers ever sell at MSRP.
So says you. Lots of people quite enjoy watching video content, or playing games or watching animations that were created with Flash. If you don't like Flash don't install it or use a blocker to selectively choose your content and quit whining.
Unless Google rewrote the Flash runtime to not suck donkey balls on anything but 32-bit Windows, and has built in Flash blocking by default, this alleged feature isn't anything I want.
Blame the NPAPI and implementations of it on other platforms.
For example all Mac plugins are windowless which is why performance goes down the toilet. On Windows, plugins are usually windowed (although they can also be windowless) which means the browser creates the plugin, puts it somewhere and can more or less forget about it since the plugin will paint itself when it needs to. On the Mac, every plugin is windowless so it must shout "paint me" at the browser and then wait for browser to call back to repaint it. Picture a couple of plugins screaming "paint me" 30 times a second and it's not hard to see why there may be a performance impact.
Linux plugins support windowed & windowless plugins, but performance probably suffers there from the lack of decent accelerated hardware support and the complexities of X, what extensions are there etc.
Let it go. If you want to help out, partner with Adobe on writing HTML5 authoring tools that make replacing Flash easy and painless for web developer. Open standard web is good web.
It would be useful for such a tool to produce HTML/JS but it would still be machine generated spew. Also HTML5 is not some magic wand to better performance. JS / DOM performance is all over the shop from one browser to the next and virtually all JS / DOM / repainting in the page is running synchronously through a single thread.
So yes a tool would be nice, but you're deluded if you think HTML5 is an adequate replacement for all but the most sedentary content. Perhaps someone needs to define proper extensions to HTML, SVG, DOM etc. that allows content to be tweened with timing critical hinting, audio etc. that Flash supplies which make it so useful for animation & video content.
Unlike others I could probably live with the ribbon and I appreciate that MS do make bold UI changes in the name of usability. My main issue with MS Office is that it is filled with functionality that is completely superfluous for most people.
I don't see why most medium or small orgs need the headache of buying MS Office, being subject to software audits, being subject to semi-annual updates for features and new functionality they don't even use. It's money down the drain. Open Office is more than adequate for individuals, businesses and government in most circumstances and it's free. If necessary slap Thunderbird + Sunbird in with it. That's not to say OO is perfect by any stretch (some aspects of the UI are woeful) but it does get the job done and has it's own useful little built-in features such as being able to print straight to PDF.
Look at any modern GPU and it's trying to shoehorn general purpose computing functionality into an architecture designed as graphics pipeline. The likes of CUDA, OpenCL, DirectCompute may be a useful way to tap extra functionality, but IMO it's still a hack. The CPU has to load up the GPU with a program and execute it almost as if its a scene using shaders that actually crunch numbers.
Aside from being a bit of a hack, there are 3 competing APIs and some of them are tied to certain combinations of operating system & hardware. I wonder why AMD or Intel haven't produced something analogous to the Cell - a mainstream multicore CPU that also contains a bunch of SPUs purpose built to blaze through data as fast as possible.
I'm not sure why this keeps coming up, since nobody that ever replies clearly has ever owned an Android phone. My HTC Hero, which supports Flash 7 out-of-the-box, has an option in its browser to disable plugins.
Besides that, it is not difficult to envisage a browser which puts placeholders where flash plugins live and allows the user to choose (or not choose) to launch then by touch on them. Such a browser could also have settings which puts same domain restrictions on plugins. Advertisers would soon get the message not to serve flash ads to mobile devices because no one would see them.
ICQ may have done some things right, but it did the most fundamental and visible thing wrong - turned people into numbers. That shit might be acceptable for the 100+ year old telephone system, but not an IM system.
The second thing it did wrong was allow itself to be bought by AOL. It may have been a lucrative move for Mirabilis but it consigned ICQ to playing second banana to AIM. Its surprising ICQ lasted so long since AOL bought and subsequently neglected Compuserve in similar circumstances but it didn't flourish either.
Keep up, it's not Flash vs h.264, it's Flash vs Javascript and HTML5. Video format is not at question here. You're looking for the h.264 vs Theora war, that's in a different article.
And HTML5 pretty much loses unless we're talking relatively sedentary content. That's not a slight on HTML5, it's just not built for timing critical stuff such as animation. I expect performance is all over the shop too from one browser to the next rather than the consistency Flash brings. Where it can hope to claw share from Flash is on the rich client side of things, but I expect games / anims are probably safe for a long time yet.
The discussion surrounding HTML5 has been about the definition of a patent-unencumbered video codec that's supported by every browser, in addition to all the proprietary solutions that are already there.
Pay some attention before you participate in discussions.
I think you need to pay attention. I've already stated how Firefox can quite easily play any kind of video without implementing any proprietary or patent encumbered codec. It could ship Theora by default if it wishes without compromising its ability to play others codec supported by the system or by some dedicated video plugin a user chooses to install. As for HTML5, it doesn't say what video codec to use. It used to, it doesn't now.
Firefox is doing itself a major disservice by promoting Theora. It's an esoteric and not especially advanced codec. Sites will simply ignore Firefox or workaround its shortcomings by using embedding Flash.
How does handing it off help? The problem with h.264 is that it's proprietary and patent encumbered; that's not fixed by handing it off to anything.
It helps because Firefox doesn't have to implement h264. It can simply ask a system service to play the video, something which the vast majority people are legally entitled since they have already paid for h264 as part of their OS licence or software patents don't apply where they live.
Secondly, if Firefox is so uptight about proprietary / patent encumbered things, I suggest it outlaw all plugins outright rather than play some silly double standards game. Ban any plugin that plays Flash, PDF, Java or anything else and see how far this gets them.
Thirdly, supporting Theora and only Theora is self defeating for Firefox. Sites and users will simply ignore the browser, or hack around the limitation by using Flash. Either way Firefox loses.
All of which can be avoided simply by opening up the APIs. If they don't, well... so long Firefox.
There's a difference between FUD and actual legal issues. Mozilla can't support H.264 in Firefox out of the box.
Yes it can. Simply by doing some basic validation of the stream and then handing actual video playback off to Quicktime, DirectShow, Gstreamer or whatever and saying "play that". Firefox is not violating any patents because its not playing anything itself.
Failing that, it can simply recognize the video tag for what it is - a specialized object and define the appropriate extensions to the NPAPI that allow plugins (such as vlc) to play the content instead.
I don't get what they want to achieve with Silverlight. If they truly make IE9 compatible with HTML5 and offer a decent Javascript engine, what will the benefits of Silverlight be? Isn't Microsoft shooting itself in the foot with this?
I think the answer is that Silverlight, Java(FX), Flash etc. are still vastly more capable than HTML5 for rich content, especially graphics intensive content. My original remark was more to highlight the hypocrisy of espousing HTML5 when MS would like nothing better than to kill Flash and replace it with something just as proprietary.
Of course not. I expect it suits them to promote HTML 5 with one hand while still trying to snare people with Silverlight on the other.
I just hope that when they talk HTML5 they actually mean it this time rather than supplying some half arsed implementation which deviates from the spec in significant ways.
I've got a Nokia N800, and the Flash experience is *terrible*. Let me tell you what great fun it is to wait for a page to render because some advertiser has a tiny little flash ad in the corner of a page. On an iPhone, the page loads instantly. On my N800? Forget it. It'll sit there and churn on that on poorly written/designed Flash app until *finally*, it appears.
Blame the browser in your phone for launching flash without asking first. It would be straightforward for a browser to put a placeholder where a flash object lives and leave it up to the user if they want to click on it or not.
You'll probably turn flash blockers on again after a few minutes of browsing. Now imagine that on your phone, except you've got a processor that's a third as fast (since the Nexus 1 and iPad have Ghz CPUs), and which is probably spending more time rendering the flash than rendering the page.
Not a compelling argument at all. Just because a page contains a flash object doesn't mean the browser is forced to launch it. The browser could well put placeholders where the flash object lives and leave it up to the user to touch it if they want to run it.
So the user taps on the game they want to play and ignores all the ads. Advertisers would learn in short order not to bother serving flash to mobile devices because no one will bother activating them.
It's also noteworthy that many phones already support Flash lite and Android 2.2 is confirmed to have flash support as well. So clearly it is technically possible to implement flash and soon it will be a widespread reality.
I wonder if an ISP would opening them up to all kinds of legal issues if they stop being a neutral carrier of information. After all if they can redirect a search, then what's stopping them from blocking kiddie porn, or monitoring users who are filesharing?
Reporting trade secrets are one thing. Reporting property you know or suspect to be stolen and which you have paid $5000 for is another. Gizmodo really fucked up on this and it was obvious a mile off.
For my two cents i can never understand why normal people do not want to be able to carry a spare battery. This will always be the deal braker for me with an iPhone. Why do I have to send the whole unit back to apple for this? My Sony Walkman I had in the 1980's let me change the batteries when the old ones ran out, why can Apple not master it now?
They could master it, they just choose not to. The HTC Desire packs a lot more functionality into about the same volume and weight as a 3GS yet manages to include a replaceable battery. Apple deliberately makes it difficult for users to change the battery (including odious terms & cost of their replacement service) to put people off doing it at all. Apple would prefer users toss their otherwise functional old device away and buy another one.
Obviously theres the danger of fraud single they're still developing countries, but it's better to think long term. We can use the aid to cover the cost from frauds, and maybe in a few years we can stop spending so much money to help them. It will save us a lot more, especially in the long run.
Well there's the rub. Credit card companies are not charities. If a large enough % of purchases originating from poor countries are fraudulent, they're going to implement measures to prevent such purchases happening in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of overseas purchases by $ value originating from Uganda and similar countries were fraudulent
There's some uncertainty over [bloomberg.com] the level of ash that poses a significant threat, though. What's known is that zero ash is fine, and a lot of ash causes significant damage, but not too much seems to be known about the concentration/response curve beyond that.
I'm all in favour of scientific tests to determine the minimum levels that commercial flights should be allowed in. However when a volcanic ash cloud suddenly (as in overnight) descends on one of the busiest airspaces in the world, I think it sensible to err on the side of caution.
That's tough shit for the airlines but really the alternatives are unthinkable. If flights had been permitted and if even one plane went down, the whole european fleet would have been grounded for weeks while all their engines and other vital systems were being inspected.
Right. Making a schedule removes all inconvenience. Making a schedule removes the need to modify hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of automated cash handling systems. Making a schedule removes the need to modify hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of cash tray and drawers. Etc... Etc...
You're an idiot. The inconvenience lies in the doing, not the schedule.
Ridiculous. All change is "inconvenient", doesn't mean it isn't necessary. And properly enforcing that change sure beats the half assed dollar note / coin debacle that's being going on for decades in the US. Your rationalizations are getting more absurd by the minute.
No, it shows that inconvenience was worth it - to them, for their goals. That doesn't make the same true of the US.
No, because seemingly the US likes the inconvenience, expense and confusion of decades of printing low denomination notes AND decades of coinage wondering why no one wants to transition between the two.
As far as the Europeans being more 'adept', get back to me when they've done it more than once. You can't draw a curve through a single data point.
It's been done numerous times. e.g. The UK & Ireland switching to decimalisation being two examples and of course the constant introduction of new coins and notes throughout most of the world. The key to making a changing work is strong legislation and a clear schedule for introduction.
I don't accept you have to sign on just to counter game sharing. There are several PSN games that only install on one PS3 to start with. I think WipeoutHD is one example. If that their fear was game sharing then they could have added the restriction to their own game.
Besides, who says you have to sign on with the same PSN id as the one that purchased the game? If you don't then that puts paid to that argument. Still, it's a highly annoying "feature" and unless the game has stuck this requirement in to ensure game updates, or some multiplayer feature it really should be disabled.
And in the meantime, there is enormous amounts of inconvenience for virtually everyone in the country while bill changers, vending machines, cash trays, coin counters, etc..., etc..., are upgraded. It's nowhere near as simple as just replacing the printing/distribution of one with the minting/distribution of another.
Hardly an enormous inconvenience if it's planned to a sensible schedule. The fact that European businesses and banks managed to swap currency in a two month handover show how utterly absurd such objections are. Phasing out could easily be done in under 5 years and probably less with proper legislation.
Europe didn't switch to an entirely new currency 'in a matter of a few months'.
Don't be silly. It's quite obvious what I meant from "European countries are far more adept at switching notes than the US, so adept in fact that most of Europe switched entirely from one entire currency to another in the space of a few months". I was quite clearly talking about the physical switchover.
I'm not talking about vanilla Wine. I'm talking about versions that have been specifically designed to support gaming such as Cedega or Crossover. Steam could licence one of those and bundle it in with the Steam version of the client. When the game launches it does so through the compatibility layer. To the Mac / Linux user it would be completely transparent but would allow them to benefit from a huge number of Windows games.
On the currency side, think about the difference in the volume of bills between the US dollar and the EU. We have a lot more bills and we have a lot more ATMs/vending machines.
Vending machines are a not a compelling reason. Most modern vending machines are programmable. If coin == some weight and coin == some dimensions then amount = 1.0. I actually arrived in long term parking of Dublin Airport on 1am 1st January 2002 (the first day of the switchover) and I had to pay by credit card because my old coins no longer worked.
Besides, I do not expect vending providers actually like fitting their machines with bill readers given the extra expense and how apt they are to frustrate & annoy customers by rejecting / ripping / swallowing bills.
It isn't feasible to change that quickly.
So change over the course of a couple of years. Britain manages to introduce notes in a new series every so often. They coexist with the old ones for a few years and then they takeover. The reason being that banks withold the old notes and burn them so the old currency naturally dwindles until they cease to be legal tender. After that time if you hold old notes you must exchange them.
Furthermore, they have not switched entirely in the space of a few months. Its taken years to phase over to the Euro (which many over there don't want) and it still isn't universally accepted (at least it wasn't last time I visited. I would be very surprised if that had changed).
The Euro switchover was planned for years but the execution from pre-Euro currency was extremely rapid. The changeover schedule was up to two months starting from 1st January 2002 after which the old currency was no longer legal tender. Some countries did it in a single day such as Germany. So people changed their loose change in the bank and went on paying for stuff in a new currency. It didn't take years and whether people want it or not is irrelevant - the changeover was efficiently handled and universal.
It demonstrates that if the legislation and political will is strong you can switch an entire currency over multiple countries representing hundreds of millions of people in 8 weeks. Or if the legislation is watered down and pathetic you can't even introduce a single lousy coin despite multiple attempts over the course of decades.
Slashdot Mirror
If the likes of Steam, PSN, XBL etc. are anything to go by, prices for legit copies would go up. Piracy rates on these platforms must be so insignificant they don't even matter, yet the price of new titles is MSRP even when few retailers ever sell at MSRP.
So says you. Lots of people quite enjoy watching video content, or playing games or watching animations that were created with Flash. If you don't like Flash don't install it or use a blocker to selectively choose your content and quit whining.
Blame the NPAPI and implementations of it on other platforms.
For example all Mac plugins are windowless which is why performance goes down the toilet. On Windows, plugins are usually windowed (although they can also be windowless) which means the browser creates the plugin, puts it somewhere and can more or less forget about it since the plugin will paint itself when it needs to. On the Mac, every plugin is windowless so it must shout "paint me" at the browser and then wait for browser to call back to repaint it. Picture a couple of plugins screaming "paint me" 30 times a second and it's not hard to see why there may be a performance impact.
Linux plugins support windowed & windowless plugins, but performance probably suffers there from the lack of decent accelerated hardware support and the complexities of X, what extensions are there etc.
Let it go. If you want to help out, partner with Adobe on writing HTML5 authoring tools that make replacing Flash easy and painless for web developer. Open standard web is good web.
It would be useful for such a tool to produce HTML/JS but it would still be machine generated spew. Also HTML5 is not some magic wand to better performance. JS / DOM performance is all over the shop from one browser to the next and virtually all JS / DOM / repainting in the page is running synchronously through a single thread.
So yes a tool would be nice, but you're deluded if you think HTML5 is an adequate replacement for all but the most sedentary content. Perhaps someone needs to define proper extensions to HTML, SVG, DOM etc. that allows content to be tweened with timing critical hinting, audio etc. that Flash supplies which make it so useful for animation & video content.
I don't see why most medium or small orgs need the headache of buying MS Office, being subject to software audits, being subject to semi-annual updates for features and new functionality they don't even use. It's money down the drain. Open Office is more than adequate for individuals, businesses and government in most circumstances and it's free. If necessary slap Thunderbird + Sunbird in with it. That's not to say OO is perfect by any stretch (some aspects of the UI are woeful) but it does get the job done and has it's own useful little built-in features such as being able to print straight to PDF.
Aside from being a bit of a hack, there are 3 competing APIs and some of them are tied to certain combinations of operating system & hardware. I wonder why AMD or Intel haven't produced something analogous to the Cell - a mainstream multicore CPU that also contains a bunch of SPUs purpose built to blaze through data as fast as possible.
Besides that, it is not difficult to envisage a browser which puts placeholders where flash plugins live and allows the user to choose (or not choose) to launch then by touch on them. Such a browser could also have settings which puts same domain restrictions on plugins. Advertisers would soon get the message not to serve flash ads to mobile devices because no one would see them.
The second thing it did wrong was allow itself to be bought by AOL. It may have been a lucrative move for Mirabilis but it consigned ICQ to playing second banana to AIM. Its surprising ICQ lasted so long since AOL bought and subsequently neglected Compuserve in similar circumstances but it didn't flourish either.
And HTML5 pretty much loses unless we're talking relatively sedentary content. That's not a slight on HTML5, it's just not built for timing critical stuff such as animation. I expect performance is all over the shop too from one browser to the next rather than the consistency Flash brings. Where it can hope to claw share from Flash is on the rich client side of things, but I expect games / anims are probably safe for a long time yet.
I think you need to pay attention. I've already stated how Firefox can quite easily play any kind of video without implementing any proprietary or patent encumbered codec. It could ship Theora by default if it wishes without compromising its ability to play others codec supported by the system or by some dedicated video plugin a user chooses to install. As for HTML5, it doesn't say what video codec to use. It used to, it doesn't now.
Firefox is doing itself a major disservice by promoting Theora. It's an esoteric and not especially advanced codec. Sites will simply ignore Firefox or workaround its shortcomings by using embedding Flash.
It helps because Firefox doesn't have to implement h264. It can simply ask a system service to play the video, something which the vast majority people are legally entitled since they have already paid for h264 as part of their OS licence or software patents don't apply where they live.
Secondly, if Firefox is so uptight about proprietary / patent encumbered things, I suggest it outlaw all plugins outright rather than play some silly double standards game. Ban any plugin that plays Flash, PDF, Java or anything else and see how far this gets them.
Thirdly, supporting Theora and only Theora is self defeating for Firefox. Sites and users will simply ignore the browser, or hack around the limitation by using Flash. Either way Firefox loses.
All of which can be avoided simply by opening up the APIs. If they don't, well... so long Firefox.
Yes it can. Simply by doing some basic validation of the stream and then handing actual video playback off to Quicktime, DirectShow, Gstreamer or whatever and saying "play that". Firefox is not violating any patents because its not playing anything itself.
Failing that, it can simply recognize the video tag for what it is - a specialized object and define the appropriate extensions to the NPAPI that allow plugins (such as vlc) to play the content instead.
I think the answer is that Silverlight, Java(FX), Flash etc. are still vastly more capable than HTML5 for rich content, especially graphics intensive content. My original remark was more to highlight the hypocrisy of espousing HTML5 when MS would like nothing better than to kill Flash and replace it with something just as proprietary.
Of course not. I expect it suits them to promote HTML 5 with one hand while still trying to snare people with Silverlight on the other.
I just hope that when they talk HTML5 they actually mean it this time rather than supplying some half arsed implementation which deviates from the spec in significant ways.
Blame the browser in your phone for launching flash without asking first. It would be straightforward for a browser to put a placeholder where a flash object lives and leave it up to the user if they want to click on it or not.
Not a compelling argument at all. Just because a page contains a flash object doesn't mean the browser is forced to launch it. The browser could well put placeholders where the flash object lives and leave it up to the user to touch it if they want to run it.
So the user taps on the game they want to play and ignores all the ads. Advertisers would learn in short order not to bother serving flash to mobile devices because no one will bother activating them.
It's also noteworthy that many phones already support Flash lite and Android 2.2 is confirmed to have flash support as well. So clearly it is technically possible to implement flash and soon it will be a widespread reality.
I wonder if an ISP would opening them up to all kinds of legal issues if they stop being a neutral carrier of information. After all if they can redirect a search, then what's stopping them from blocking kiddie porn, or monitoring users who are filesharing?
Reporting trade secrets are one thing. Reporting property you know or suspect to be stolen and which you have paid $5000 for is another. Gizmodo really fucked up on this and it was obvious a mile off.
They could master it, they just choose not to. The HTC Desire packs a lot more functionality into about the same volume and weight as a 3GS yet manages to include a replaceable battery. Apple deliberately makes it difficult for users to change the battery (including odious terms & cost of their replacement service) to put people off doing it at all. Apple would prefer users toss their otherwise functional old device away and buy another one.
Well there's the rub. Credit card companies are not charities. If a large enough % of purchases originating from poor countries are fraudulent, they're going to implement measures to prevent such purchases happening in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of overseas purchases by $ value originating from Uganda and similar countries were fraudulent
I'm all in favour of scientific tests to determine the minimum levels that commercial flights should be allowed in. However when a volcanic ash cloud suddenly (as in overnight) descends on one of the busiest airspaces in the world, I think it sensible to err on the side of caution.
That's tough shit for the airlines but really the alternatives are unthinkable. If flights had been permitted and if even one plane went down, the whole european fleet would have been grounded for weeks while all their engines and other vital systems were being inspected.
Ridiculous. All change is "inconvenient", doesn't mean it isn't necessary. And properly enforcing that change sure beats the half assed dollar note / coin debacle that's being going on for decades in the US. Your rationalizations are getting more absurd by the minute.
No, it shows that inconvenience was worth it - to them, for their goals. That doesn't make the same true of the US.
No, because seemingly the US likes the inconvenience, expense and confusion of decades of printing low denomination notes AND decades of coinage wondering why no one wants to transition between the two.
As far as the Europeans being more 'adept', get back to me when they've done it more than once. You can't draw a curve through a single data point.
It's been done numerous times. e.g. The UK & Ireland switching to decimalisation being two examples and of course the constant introduction of new coins and notes throughout most of the world. The key to making a changing work is strong legislation and a clear schedule for introduction.
Besides, who says you have to sign on with the same PSN id as the one that purchased the game? If you don't then that puts paid to that argument. Still, it's a highly annoying "feature" and unless the game has stuck this requirement in to ensure game updates, or some multiplayer feature it really should be disabled.
Hardly an enormous inconvenience if it's planned to a sensible schedule. The fact that European businesses and banks managed to swap currency in a two month handover show how utterly absurd such objections are. Phasing out could easily be done in under 5 years and probably less with proper legislation.
Europe didn't switch to an entirely new currency 'in a matter of a few months'.
Don't be silly. It's quite obvious what I meant from "European countries are far more adept at switching notes than the US, so adept in fact that most of Europe switched entirely from one entire currency to another in the space of a few months". I was quite clearly talking about the physical switchover.
I'm not talking about vanilla Wine. I'm talking about versions that have been specifically designed to support gaming such as Cedega or Crossover. Steam could licence one of those and bundle it in with the Steam version of the client. When the game launches it does so through the compatibility layer. To the Mac / Linux user it would be completely transparent but would allow them to benefit from a huge number of Windows games.
Vending machines are a not a compelling reason. Most modern vending machines are programmable. If coin == some weight and coin == some dimensions then amount = 1.0. I actually arrived in long term parking of Dublin Airport on 1am 1st January 2002 (the first day of the switchover) and I had to pay by credit card because my old coins no longer worked.
Besides, I do not expect vending providers actually like fitting their machines with bill readers given the extra expense and how apt they are to frustrate & annoy customers by rejecting / ripping / swallowing bills.
It isn't feasible to change that quickly.
So change over the course of a couple of years. Britain manages to introduce notes in a new series every so often. They coexist with the old ones for a few years and then they takeover. The reason being that banks withold the old notes and burn them so the old currency naturally dwindles until they cease to be legal tender. After that time if you hold old notes you must exchange them.
Furthermore, they have not switched entirely in the space of a few months. Its taken years to phase over to the Euro (which many over there don't want) and it still isn't universally accepted (at least it wasn't last time I visited. I would be very surprised if that had changed).
The Euro switchover was planned for years but the execution from pre-Euro currency was extremely rapid. The changeover schedule was up to two months starting from 1st January 2002 after which the old currency was no longer legal tender. Some countries did it in a single day such as Germany. So people changed their loose change in the bank and went on paying for stuff in a new currency. It didn't take years and whether people want it or not is irrelevant - the changeover was efficiently handled and universal.
It demonstrates that if the legislation and political will is strong you can switch an entire currency over multiple countries representing hundreds of millions of people in 8 weeks. Or if the legislation is watered down and pathetic you can't even introduce a single lousy coin despite multiple attempts over the course of decades.