Because you can't make a touch sensor without glass, so either you use a cheaper glass which is thick and heavy (bad for laptops), not to mention easier to break, or you use Gorilla Glass which is lighter and thinner (but not thinner or lighter than plastic) and expensive.
Basically, this whole idea is dumb. It's like suddenly requiring all cars to have big, giant winches added onto the front bumper. It might make some sense for an off-road vehicle that's frequently taken to remote destinations where it might need to be winched out (or used to winch another vehicle out) of a ravine or whatever, but it doesn't make any sense at all on 99.9% of passenger cars which never go off-road. So all it does is add a lot of cost, weight, complexity, and makes the front of the car look ugly (imagine a Ferarri with a winch on the front), for something that will never be used.
Well to be fair, I don't see how this is different from current laptop screens: they all (I think) just use plastic, and are pretty easily scratched. It's not like current laptop screens are scratch-resistant.
The problems with adding touchscreens, whether they're Gorilla Glass or a cheaper glass, are that they add cost and weight. The additional scratch resistance they'll have (over current plastic screens) will be an advantage, but at a high cost, and of dubious benefit as people normally keep hands and sharp objects away from their screens anyway, so scratched screens usually aren't seen as a big weakness in laptop durability.
They won't? If you use a thicker(/cheaper) glass instead, it's going to really weigh down your laptop. People are already complaining about laptop weight, and their weight is a selling point (i.e., people will choose certain models or smaller models because they don't want ones that are too heavy), and a big sheet of double-pane glass (touch sensors are two sheets of glass with a grid of ultra-thin wires sandwiched in-between) is going to add a significant amount of weight to any laptop, which currently just has an ultra-light weight sheet of plastic protecting the screen. This is not going to be popular with customers. And it's unlikely all laptops are suddenly going to switch (forcing customers to adopt it whether they like it or not); this dumb requirement seems to be only with certain Intel chips. If AMD avoids this, laptops with their CPUs are going to suddenly look far more attractive, because not only will they be much cheaper (not needing a pricey touchscreen), but significantly lighter too. Windows 8 is not being strongly adopted by consumers (for good reason), so it's not like people are going to steer clear of the "low end" non-touchscreen models just because of Win8.
There was a recent article about this: Gorilla Glass is made by Corning, in the USA, and is then shipped to China/Taiwan to be used in cellphones and other devices. For some reason, they don't make it themselves over there. Corning probably has patents and/or trade secrets related to the manufacture of the glass. The formula of the glass may be public domain (though they may have kept it as a trade secret), but having the formula to something is different from knowint the best way to manufacture it in huge quantities.
Some kind of glass will be needed, because you can't make a capacitive touchscreen without one. Without Gorilla Glass, you're looking at a screen that's easily broken; laptops aren't dropped that much, but it does happen sometimes, and with crappy glass a single drop will likely result in breakage and costly repairs. So take your pick: expensive Gorilla Glass, or a crappy super-delicate laptop. And in both cases, you're also getting a laptop that now weighs significantly more than earlier laptops.
This is obviously idiotic Apple fanboyism, but what's really bad is that adding Gorilla Glass to laptops (which have comparatively huge screens, compared to phones and tablets) is going to add a LOT of cost to them. So we may actually find soon that Apple laptops are cost-competitive with PCs, if not actually cheaper.
Gorilla glass and touchscreen hardware (the glass and sensor part, not the electronics part on the motherboard) are probably one of the highest-cost items in a modern mobile device. Other electronic parts are generally dirt-cheap in comparison, especially anything that's on silicon.
Now, consider that if gorilla glass for a cellphone or tablet is expensive, imagine how much it's going to cost for a 17" laptop screen. It won't be cheap. I predict a bunch of AMD laptops without touchscreens taking over the low-end laptop market. Intel is shooting itself in the foot here, just so they can be buddy-buddy with Microsoft like in the old days.
They might've been watchable if they weren't totally ruined by the horrible dialog. That's easily the worst part about them. A middle-school kid could write better dialog than that.
Yep; the only reason to pay any attention at that point might be for the amusement factor. But personally, I stopped paying much attention to anything Star Wars-related after seeing Ep.2.
Well to be fair, I'm not comparing the SW prequels (or any other possible spin-offs, even if they're specifically written to have dialog just as "high quality" as Lucas's best) to the absolute worst imaginable dreck coming out of Hollywood, I'm just looking at it on its own merits. At some point, stuff gets so bad that it's kinda pointless to compare how bad it is. Is the Twi-hard-courting-crap better or worse than Gigli, for instance? Or how about Battlefield: Earth? Who cares? There's a lower cut-off point at which it ceases to matter, because you're just not going to bother going to watch it, unless perhaps you're planning to make a MST3K-like episode.
There's nothing he can do to hurt Star Wars: the prequels have already ruined it forever. You think the BSG finale ruined the whole show? Lucas's prequels were 10x worse than that. Why anyone over the age of 12 would want to watch anything else related to Star Wars again (except the original 3 movies, after meditating to mentally block the prequels from their consciousness) I have no idea.
Oh please. This geek culture icon has already been thoroughly ruined by the Prequel movies. There's nothing more they can do to hurt it at this point, it'd be beating a dead horse.
I'm really disappointed that Ron Moore wasted his time writing scripts for this turkey, instead of devoting his talents to something more productive and worthwhile. Can the guy not come up with a unique new sci-fi show on his own? Or is he only able to write episodes for someone else's show, or come up with shows that are rehashes of old shows? Don't get me wrong, the new BSG was pretty good and the the writing in the episodes (particularly the earlier ones and pilot; it seemed to kinda fall apart later on) was excellent, but it was still not a unique concept, it was a remake of someone else's older show. But Star Wars of all things? SW has been crap ever since Ep.1. Surely he could come up with a unique new concept for a good sci-fi TV show.
How about you provide some real examples before I go buy the book? You seem to be a plant, trying to get people to buy a book so you can profit from it.
The problem with statistics is that they assume everyone is identical, and they aren't. For instance, the bit about your children finding your gun doesn't apply if you don't have kids (or your kids are adults), which is true for a very large number of adults these days. And not that many people have such severe problems with depression; moreover, I'm pretty sure the number of women that use guns in suicide attempts is quite small compared to men. And sleepwalkers? Seriously? How many people actually do that? And how many people have actually shot someone while sleepwalking, according to your statistics?
This is a good point. Pouring lead bullets is pretty trivial and people have been doing that for centuries. But modern cartridges need brass shells which aren't that trivial to manufacture (which is why reloaders are called "reloaders" and not "people who make cartridges from scratch"), and neither are the primers, which use small charges of high explosive.
Making your own ammunition isn't that hard if you're making ammo for a black powder rifle, but for a modern rifle or handgun it's not.
An unreleased product is only valuable if you have some sort of connections that would recognize that value and be able to pay you handsomely for it. No pawn shop or secondhand seller is going to care about some unreleased tablet or other product; it's not something consumers can use. A typical thief, looking for something they can turn over for a quick buck, isn't likely to have the connections necessary to make stealing an unreleased product profitable.
But how prevalent is this really? I've actually never heard of such a ridiculous policy until I read it right here on Slashdot yesterday, and it's only one level down with one commenter saying their current employer has actually done this (the main article isn't even an article, it's an "ask slashdot" with someone proposing it).
But I agree, I'm surprised that employer manages to keep any employees around. There must be more to the story: maybe they're in some rural-ish area where the employees are older and don't want to change jobs because it'll mean having to sell the house and move. This would never fly in a major metro area like Silicon Valley.
No, they'll find another job. Tech jobs are plentiful these days; I have recruiters bugging me all the time for them. Sure, in retail jobs, employers are more likely to wear what they're told to wear, because there aren't that many openings for non-skilled workers, but we're on Slashdot where most readers are in IT or engineering. People here are not stuck with the job they have; they can (relatively) easily move to another one.
Except that you can't do that and get any decent employees. Anyone under 35 (and probably older now, maybe 40-45) who's any good is going to have a smartphone, and that's going to be their only phone. Try telling them they need to buy an additional dumbphone for use at work, or leave the smartphone at home, and they'll just go find a new job. That's like telling people they need to get a special, separate internet service for their house so they can do work at home, only even more asinine.
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Because you can't make a touch sensor without glass, so either you use a cheaper glass which is thick and heavy (bad for laptops), not to mention easier to break, or you use Gorilla Glass which is lighter and thinner (but not thinner or lighter than plastic) and expensive.
Basically, this whole idea is dumb. It's like suddenly requiring all cars to have big, giant winches added onto the front bumper. It might make some sense for an off-road vehicle that's frequently taken to remote destinations where it might need to be winched out (or used to winch another vehicle out) of a ravine or whatever, but it doesn't make any sense at all on 99.9% of passenger cars which never go off-road. So all it does is add a lot of cost, weight, complexity, and makes the front of the car look ugly (imagine a Ferarri with a winch on the front), for something that will never be used.
Well to be fair, I don't see how this is different from current laptop screens: they all (I think) just use plastic, and are pretty easily scratched. It's not like current laptop screens are scratch-resistant.
The problems with adding touchscreens, whether they're Gorilla Glass or a cheaper glass, are that they add cost and weight. The additional scratch resistance they'll have (over current plastic screens) will be an advantage, but at a high cost, and of dubious benefit as people normally keep hands and sharp objects away from their screens anyway, so scratched screens usually aren't seen as a big weakness in laptop durability.
They won't? If you use a thicker(/cheaper) glass instead, it's going to really weigh down your laptop. People are already complaining about laptop weight, and their weight is a selling point (i.e., people will choose certain models or smaller models because they don't want ones that are too heavy), and a big sheet of double-pane glass (touch sensors are two sheets of glass with a grid of ultra-thin wires sandwiched in-between) is going to add a significant amount of weight to any laptop, which currently just has an ultra-light weight sheet of plastic protecting the screen. This is not going to be popular with customers. And it's unlikely all laptops are suddenly going to switch (forcing customers to adopt it whether they like it or not); this dumb requirement seems to be only with certain Intel chips. If AMD avoids this, laptops with their CPUs are going to suddenly look far more attractive, because not only will they be much cheaper (not needing a pricey touchscreen), but significantly lighter too. Windows 8 is not being strongly adopted by consumers (for good reason), so it's not like people are going to steer clear of the "low end" non-touchscreen models just because of Win8.
There was a recent article about this: Gorilla Glass is made by Corning, in the USA, and is then shipped to China/Taiwan to be used in cellphones and other devices. For some reason, they don't make it themselves over there. Corning probably has patents and/or trade secrets related to the manufacture of the glass. The formula of the glass may be public domain (though they may have kept it as a trade secret), but having the formula to something is different from knowint the best way to manufacture it in huge quantities.
Because cheaper glass is easily broken when it's dropped (even with the lid shut).
Some kind of glass will be needed, because you can't make a capacitive touchscreen without one. Without Gorilla Glass, you're looking at a screen that's easily broken; laptops aren't dropped that much, but it does happen sometimes, and with crappy glass a single drop will likely result in breakage and costly repairs. So take your pick: expensive Gorilla Glass, or a crappy super-delicate laptop. And in both cases, you're also getting a laptop that now weighs significantly more than earlier laptops.
This is obviously idiotic Apple fanboyism, but what's really bad is that adding Gorilla Glass to laptops (which have comparatively huge screens, compared to phones and tablets) is going to add a LOT of cost to them. So we may actually find soon that Apple laptops are cost-competitive with PCs, if not actually cheaper.
Gorilla glass and touchscreen hardware (the glass and sensor part, not the electronics part on the motherboard) are probably one of the highest-cost items in a modern mobile device. Other electronic parts are generally dirt-cheap in comparison, especially anything that's on silicon.
Now, consider that if gorilla glass for a cellphone or tablet is expensive, imagine how much it's going to cost for a 17" laptop screen. It won't be cheap. I predict a bunch of AMD laptops without touchscreens taking over the low-end laptop market. Intel is shooting itself in the foot here, just so they can be buddy-buddy with Microsoft like in the old days.
They might've been watchable if they weren't totally ruined by the horrible dialog. That's easily the worst part about them. A middle-school kid could write better dialog than that.
Yep; the only reason to pay any attention at that point might be for the amusement factor. But personally, I stopped paying much attention to anything Star Wars-related after seeing Ep.2.
Well to be fair, I'm not comparing the SW prequels (or any other possible spin-offs, even if they're specifically written to have dialog just as "high quality" as Lucas's best) to the absolute worst imaginable dreck coming out of Hollywood, I'm just looking at it on its own merits. At some point, stuff gets so bad that it's kinda pointless to compare how bad it is. Is the Twi-hard-courting-crap better or worse than Gigli, for instance? Or how about Battlefield: Earth? Who cares? There's a lower cut-off point at which it ceases to matter, because you're just not going to bother going to watch it, unless perhaps you're planning to make a MST3K-like episode.
Exactly, that's why we wind up with tons of shitty sequels. It's a safer investment than something new and different.
You just answered your own question.
There's nothing he can do to hurt Star Wars: the prequels have already ruined it forever. You think the BSG finale ruined the whole show? Lucas's prequels were 10x worse than that. Why anyone over the age of 12 would want to watch anything else related to Star Wars again (except the original 3 movies, after meditating to mentally block the prequels from their consciousness) I have no idea.
Oh please. This geek culture icon has already been thoroughly ruined by the Prequel movies. There's nothing more they can do to hurt it at this point, it'd be beating a dead horse.
I'm really disappointed that Ron Moore wasted his time writing scripts for this turkey, instead of devoting his talents to something more productive and worthwhile. Can the guy not come up with a unique new sci-fi show on his own? Or is he only able to write episodes for someone else's show, or come up with shows that are rehashes of old shows? Don't get me wrong, the new BSG was pretty good and the the writing in the episodes (particularly the earlier ones and pilot; it seemed to kinda fall apart later on) was excellent, but it was still not a unique concept, it was a remake of someone else's older show. But Star Wars of all things? SW has been crap ever since Ep.1. Surely he could come up with a unique new concept for a good sci-fi TV show.
You're the one who seems to be trying to advertise here, not me.
Is it really that hard to write a few lines with everyday examples, rather than asking me to spend 15 minutes watching some advertising video?
How about you provide some real examples before I go buy the book? You seem to be a plant, trying to get people to buy a book so you can profit from it.
The problem with statistics is that they assume everyone is identical, and they aren't. For instance, the bit about your children finding your gun doesn't apply if you don't have kids (or your kids are adults), which is true for a very large number of adults these days. And not that many people have such severe problems with depression; moreover, I'm pretty sure the number of women that use guns in suicide attempts is quite small compared to men. And sleepwalkers? Seriously? How many people actually do that? And how many people have actually shot someone while sleepwalking, according to your statistics?
This is a good point. Pouring lead bullets is pretty trivial and people have been doing that for centuries. But modern cartridges need brass shells which aren't that trivial to manufacture (which is why reloaders are called "reloaders" and not "people who make cartridges from scratch"), and neither are the primers, which use small charges of high explosive.
Making your own ammunition isn't that hard if you're making ammo for a black powder rifle, but for a modern rifle or handgun it's not.
An unreleased product is only valuable if you have some sort of connections that would recognize that value and be able to pay you handsomely for it. No pawn shop or secondhand seller is going to care about some unreleased tablet or other product; it's not something consumers can use. A typical thief, looking for something they can turn over for a quick buck, isn't likely to have the connections necessary to make stealing an unreleased product profitable.
But how prevalent is this really? I've actually never heard of such a ridiculous policy until I read it right here on Slashdot yesterday, and it's only one level down with one commenter saying their current employer has actually done this (the main article isn't even an article, it's an "ask slashdot" with someone proposing it).
But I agree, I'm surprised that employer manages to keep any employees around. There must be more to the story: maybe they're in some rural-ish area where the employees are older and don't want to change jobs because it'll mean having to sell the house and move. This would never fly in a major metro area like Silicon Valley.
No, they'll find another job. Tech jobs are plentiful these days; I have recruiters bugging me all the time for them. Sure, in retail jobs, employers are more likely to wear what they're told to wear, because there aren't that many openings for non-skilled workers, but we're on Slashdot where most readers are in IT or engineering. People here are not stuck with the job they have; they can (relatively) easily move to another one.
I guess it was worse then too, because back then they probably didn't have common and cheap pocket calculators the way they did in the 80s and 90s.
Except that you can't do that and get any decent employees. Anyone under 35 (and probably older now, maybe 40-45) who's any good is going to have a smartphone, and that's going to be their only phone. Try telling them they need to buy an additional dumbphone for use at work, or leave the smartphone at home, and they'll just go find a new job. That's like telling people they need to get a special, separate internet service for their house so they can do work at home, only even more asinine.