You're sitting at your computer making a webpage. The dimensions of your screen are only 140X150. Any files you use cannot exceed a total of 100k. You are in; A) Content Heaven B) Design Hell.
Well, actually you're sitting at your desk whipping something up for a . Answer the above question honestly, because they way you answer is very telling about your work as a web designer and it will become an issue over the next 5 or so years.
A few years ago nobody bothered creating content for portable devices, except for some very proprietary ways of getting stock quotes or sports scores sent to your pager. Your pager. Y'know, those little things people used to have to get phone messages on the go. Nevermind. In any case, this was dealt with using programming. Design never entered into it, it was all just text (you didn't even get to tinker with the font. Brrr!) In fact nobody got to tinker with the content. Weather, Canucks scores, and the ups and downs of the stock market were usually just drawn from standardized news feeds and parsed out to a person's pager.
That's all changed. Palm-held devices are now lighter, cheaper, have relatively large amounts of storage space, and recently, colour displays, sound, and modems have become common. But it's not like you can make people load your web page onto their Palm Pilot. The whole point of hand-held computing devices like this is that they're convenient. The whole convenience angle is lost if it takes minutes instead of seconds to load your daily dose of news, sports, and so on from your PC to your PDA.
So welcome to the future. The good news is that your potential readership is increasing or, at least, by giving them the option to pick you up off the desk and go outside they may increase the amount of time they spend at your site. But the bad news is that in order to keep load times to a minimum, images (while an option) are often left out. Not to mention tables, bullet lists, image maps, umm. And sound. And Java. In fact, anything fancier than HTML-lite is right out. A good example would be the format adopted by Suck.com for the AvantGo version of its daily dose of smarm
Count the images. Two. Tiny. Very.
It's a given that the amount of memory and flair that can be applied to these portable weblets will increase as pocket-sized devices storing them become more powerful. You'll recall how the same thing happened during the early years of the Web. To a certain degree, it's still going on. So you're thinking, "Great! By the time I get up to speed on designing for portable devices, they'll be zippy and warm and fuzzy." Well, no. It's not the machines that dictate the size of a web document -- it's the bandwidth and bandwidth is measureably finite.
When it comes to handhelds, it's back to the designer stone age (so to speak). Palm computing is not limited in its processing power (I've seen a number of units that are at least as smart as a 486). Mostly it's limited by its connection to the web (though teensy screen sizes don't help much either) which is typically a direct connection to the computer (say, through a serial port. Or an Appletalk port for the other side of the fence). Not is particularly fast, at least for convenient transfer of large files on the run. Cellular systems (analog and digital) aren't any faster. And the situation won't be improving much any time soon.
It's a good guess that over the next few years wireless data transfer will improve (I don't know if anything can speed up a serial port), increasing the convenience of handhelds, which in turn will increase their popularity. Repeat. However, how much it will improve is anyone's guess. Bandwidth will always grow slower than the hardware. Even if bandwidth improves, unless cell time becomes free like air (*snort*), Palm owners will certainly base their surf decisions on time. Essentially, the faster they can get what they're looking for and then hang up to read it offline, the better.
So what's it all mean? That's hard to say (I'm just talking here, I didn't promise you any hard answers or wise solutions). Maybe for most of web designers it will have little effect. PDAs are nowhere near as prolific as desktop units. Perhaps creating lean and mean content won't be a problem except for a select few sites whose mandate is to supply a customer with content-to-go.
You're sitting at your computer making a webpage. The dimensions of your screen are only 140X150. Any files you use cannot exceed a total of 100k. You are in; A) Content Heaven B) Design Hell.
Well, actually you're sitting at your desk whipping something up for a . Answer the above question honestly, because they way you answer is very telling about your work as a web designer and it will become an issue over the next 5 or so years.
A few years ago nobody bothered creating content for portable devices, except for some very proprietary ways of getting stock quotes or sports scores sent to your pager. Your pager. Y'know, those little things people used to have to get phone messages on the go. Nevermind. In any case, this was dealt with using programming. Design never entered into it, it was all just text (you didn't even get to tinker with the font. Brrr!) In fact nobody got to tinker with the content. Weather, Canucks scores, and the ups and downs of the stock market were usually just drawn from standardized news feeds and parsed out to a person's pager.
That's all changed. Palm-held devices are now lighter, cheaper, have relatively large amounts of storage space, and recently, colour displays, sound, and modems have become common. But it's not like you can make people load your web page onto their Palm Pilot. The whole point of hand-held computing devices like this is that they're convenient. The whole convenience angle is lost if it takes minutes instead of seconds to load your daily dose of news, sports, and so on from your PC to your PDA.
So welcome to the future. The good news is that your potential readership is increasing or, at least, by giving them the option to pick you up off the desk and go outside they may increase the amount of time they spend at your site. But the bad news is that in order to keep load times to a minimum, images (while an option) are often left out. Not to mention tables, bullet lists, image maps, umm. And sound. And Java. In fact, anything fancier than HTML-lite is right out. A good example would be the format adopted by Suck.com for the AvantGo version of its daily dose of smarm .
Count the images. Two. Tiny. Very.
that technology would progress, and previously unaffordable hardware would become cheaper and more versatile? This is not so much Linux absorbing elite technology as it is the evolution of technology in general.
For example, just a few years ago my main computer was a Intel 486 running at 100 Mhz. Just think how long it would take to compile the kernel on that system. From that I went to a Pentium 90, then a Pentium 233, a Celeron 533, a Pentium III 533, a Pentium III 800, and finally a Pentium III 933...
A good portion of my life is lived, if you'll allow me the word, on-line. It might even be said that I live a double life, part of it with family, friends, and co-workers in the immediate, material world, and another part with a different (although sometimes overlapping) circle of family, friends, and co-workers on the net. Not only am I connected to other people, but via the Internet I am also connected to a collection of tools and resources that help me in my day-to-day life. For example, I use hypertext as a thinking tool for producing and developing my ideas; I use the World Wide Web as a canvas for mapping and presenting myself and my work; and I use email not only to keep in touch, but also to manage my time and organize my projects.
I will not argue: our culture is indeed defined by our formulations of foundational concepts such as religion, family, and truth. But, with time, meaning changes. The defining aspects of a culture are not mystically immutable. On the contrary, they experience drastic changes, causing jihads and holocausts, but also rebirths and renaissances. At this turn of the century it is clear that computing and related technology is pivotal to our culture's progression, for better or for worse. And my response to the "neo-Luddites" is to ask them to pay attention to the "or." There is no evidence or sound argument that our redefinition of basic cultural terms spells out doom. Changing, evolving society-wide conceptions are a routine part of any culture's movement through time, no matter how "unnatural" the cause of the evolution might appear to be. Just as it is too soon to be heedless and inattentive to the consequences of computing and the Internet, it is also too soon to be so afraid.
In the end, the arguments of the "neo-Luddites" do not withstand deeper inquiry. Neil Postman, Clifford Stoll, and Stephen Talbott repeatedly attribute to the Internet qualities which actually describe our use of, or attitude toward, the Internet, not the Internet itself. It is clear that the technology is neither intrinsically good nor evil: it is neutral. We can have meaningful experiences with it, or waste our time. We can be lost in its flashy colors and informational floods, or we can take control. We can lose our identities, or hold on to them. There is no goodness or badness intrinsic to the Internet any more than there is goodness or badness intrinsic to a block of marble. The marble may tend toward cleaving one way rather than another, as a medium is inclined to, but its nature -- its feeling, its attitude, its content -- is left to us, not to it. With this awareness we can shape the on-line future to our best ideals. "It's all a question of what we do with it," Talbott wisely observes of the Internet. And despite the fact we differ on many points, on this point we agree. He writes:
Why is it that every console owner seems to want their console to have a monopoly?
Because companies like Square do things like market their games for only one platform. Every console owner wants developers to make the best games for their system, like with Square and the PS1. There may be room for multiple consoles, but some developers choose only a few systems to make games for. Obviously the inferior consoles will not get games made for them unless they are mass marketed, like Tony Hawk, etc.
You have a good argument, but unfortunately the U.S. constitution makes no mention of unalienable rights. It is, however, mention in the declaration of independence:
...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
Re:Interesting experiment
on
To The Pain
·
· Score: 1
Pavlov's experiments with the dogs demonstrated conditioned response through positive reinforcement. While this could be switched around to negative reinforcement, it would not necessarily lead to a converse conditioned response. Rather, it would be more likely that it would lead learned helplessness, as seen by Seligman and Maier's 1967 study in which they administered shocks to dogs that were unable to escape, finding later that the shocks had permanent psychological effects.
It's interesting to note that around the same time Seligman had a similar study in which the dogs were allowed to jump between to fenced areas which were alternatingly administered with an elecric shock, approximately 95% of the dogs would give up after realizing their attempts to avoid the pain were futile. Perhaps being forced to play Painstation long enough would lead to similar results.
Re:Yeah right!!
on
More on MPEG4
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
So are you telling me FF10 did not have pre-rendered MPEG-2 cutscenes? How about GTA3? Or MGS2? Surely they do not exclusively exist in console games. Nearly every computer game I have played has at least some movie content. The linear nature of RPG's is well suited for cutscene style presentation and MMORPG's are quite popular, although the technology is less appropriate for FPS.
Now, combine the amazing story of FF10 with the multiuser dimension of Everquest and tell me that wouldn't be an excellent application for MPEG-4.
MPEG4 will not make 3D graphics faster if used
Yes, but not every part of every game is 3D...
What would YOU use to compress video enough to enable online game play and still be high quality? Or would you prefer EVERYTHING be rendered on the fly?
absolutely ridiculous
on
More on MPEG4
·
· Score: 0, Troll
This is one of the more ridiculous things I have read about MPEG-4 and digital video in general. While I agree the licensing fees the MPEG is asking for are outrageous, they know just as well that they can get away with it. Take a look at MPEG-2, which also has substantial licensing fees from its conception, although the MPEG-4 fees outweigh them by a factor of 10. But people have and will always pay extra for an accepted standard.
Take, for example, the Betamax vs. VHS incident (yes, I know it is cliched, but bare with me). Although it isn't the best comparison, at least in the U.S. VHS became the standard while BetaMax dwindled away. This is also the problem with many of the Linux distros out there, instead of allowing users to unite over one "OS," they are divided over Debian, Mandrake, RH, YDL, etc. and it will be extremely difficult to change that.
I find it much more likely that an open source codec will not become the new standard, but will become widely adopted by home users/geeks and ignored by the rest of the world. Maybe it will become the base for MPEG-7, but that fact is the MPEG will always dictate what our standards will be.
While most of the time licensing fees rub me the wrong way, I can see in a sense why we pay extra. The fact that I can take DVD with an MPEG-2 stream and play it in EVERY DVD player and DVD-ROM drive (disregarding Region encoding, but that's the MPAA, not the MPEG) is more than just a convenience, it is a necessity for the medium to be perpetuated. In a sense the licensing fees are the cost to ensure that are hardware does not become obsoleted so quickly.
I really admire the fact that Sony decided to include support for PS1 games in the PS2, I think it's a major reason why it has been so successful (not to mention that fact that it is vastly superior to the competition). Once the Linux kit starts shipping, people will be able to port their own emulation kits for various console systems to the PS2. Then it would surely be worth the $299 plus whatevever the kit costs. I know the dreamcast took off with the Linux kit, with people writing emulators for MAME, SNES, etc. With this option the PS2 would become a virtual home entertainment center.
I bought a Nintendo as soon as I had earned enough money (paper routes, drug dealing, and all those other fun childhood fundraising activities). But, the system only lasted for a couple years before the cartridges got dirty. The playstation would allow me to play those old games that I legitatemately bought on a real console system, not on those lame PC emulation programs.
Then, around 1992, the same thing happened, I eventually saved up enough money to buy a Super Nintendo. I remember the price, it was exactly $216.25, because of the 8.25% sales tax in California those days. I bought it at Target and I had about $50 in nickels and the rest in ones and fives. I've never seen a cashier so unhappy about their job! It took about 20 minutes for her to count it all, but soon after I was on my way toward bliss..until the cartridges died that is.
That's one thing that makes me skeptical of this whole CD based console system trend. I know CD's have become the standard, there's no denying that, but I believe they are a lot more fragile than carts. Yeah, I know carts don't like magnets (what electronics do?), but CD's are scratched so damn easily, not to mention the fact that they fly so far when I throw them in anger because of my latest loss. I'd rather see the console systems move toward a more proprietary standard like magneto-optical disks with protective caddies.
The first thing I sold on ebay was a magneto-optical drive, if my memory serves me correctly it had 250 MB disks and sold for a little over $150. Look at the progress we've made! Of course, m.o. has become quite out of fashion what with the increasing speed of CD-R drives and cheapness of media. Soon, at least if Sony has their way, we'll have DVD+RW drives in every machine, enabling us to store up to 4.7 GB of pure pleasure per disk at a cost of only $3.99. Oh joy, imagine running RedHat 7.2 with all packages installed from CD (assuming you have enough memory)!
Erm... I think that you are mistaken as to exactly what capitalism is. In a true capitalist society, the ONLY job of the government is to protect property. Subsidies are definately NOT a capitalist thing.
Note that it is to protect the citizens from force or fraud, not property.
While subsidies of individuals is a far cry from try capitalism, I approve that more than how the government is effectively subsidizing large corporations now.
The problem with copyright is that it is meant to allow the creators of works to make a reasonable profit off of what they have created before it is drawn into the pbulic domain, this allowing them to make a tudy sum and thus motivating more people to create their own private creations.
But, copyright law was created before the U.S. reached the Industrial age, which in turn led to large corporate style think-tanks. These laws were aimed at private inventors rather than large corporations, so when you bring a company like Disney into the equation there is sure to be some abuse.
The general attitude for copyrights has shifted dramatically during the past 200 years. Originally the sole purpose (whether you agree or not) was to motivate further technological and intellectual progress. In the 19th century this shifted to protecting the property of corporations (although not so much until the the 20th century when the industrial age evolved into the information age).
The solution is definitely not to eliminate copyright law outright, simply widespread reform. Being a capitalist country should not rely on government protection of property, seeing as how that is contrary to the concept of capitalism in general. But we do need government intervention to aid private inventors, perhaps in the form of government subsidies. As an added fact, we need to keep at least some copyright laws to keep all those copyright lawyers employed.
Why does the adult swim have to be so highly rated if they censor it? I watch anime to see lots of action (with blood of course) and at least some partial nudity. They might as well censor it down completely if they cut that stuff out.
Well, it may have been an ATM card, now that I think about it I don't think MacDonald's takes credit but I do know they take ATM.
As for the register being in use, I mean that the transaction had not been completed and the cashier refused to void out the items (generally speaking the amount of voided items is kept to a minimum). So it could not be used for anything except the current transaction, which could not occur until the woman went the ATM, figured out how to get her money, and came back and payed.
It's about time they start incorporating this technology into our lives. I'm sick and tired of standing in line behind people who can't figure out what they want to order or how to pay. The other day I was in McDonald's stuck behind a woman who couldn't get her credit card to work, and the cashier told her to go try the ATM. Meanwhile, the register was "in use" so I couldn't order. I was tempted to just throw my money down on the counter and ask them to start making my food and telling the cashier to keep the change, but instead I just left.
IMO, the "flash pass" wouldn't be the killer app, it would be combined with submitting your order over wireless to enable you to avoid the whole line trauma entirely. That way the lady with $5 in pennies could count them out and not bother anybody (except maybe the cashier).
Now color me crazy, but since when has attaining similar aesthetic content to Windows been considered a good thing? It hurts my eyes just to look at it. I long for the good old days without those fancy anti-aliased fonts, although Mac OS X is quite pleasurable to use.
Slashdot Mirror
So what's it all mean? That's hard to say (I'm just talking here, I didn't promise you any hard answers or wise solutions). Maybe for most of web designers it will have little effect. PDAs are nowhere near as prolific as desktop units. Perhaps creating lean and mean content won't be a problem except for a select few sites whose mandate is to supply a customer with content-to-go.
You're sitting at your computer making a webpage. The dimensions of your screen are only 140X150. Any files you use cannot exceed a total of 100k. You are in; A) Content Heaven B) Design Hell. Well, actually you're sitting at your desk whipping something up for a . Answer the above question honestly, because they way you answer is very telling about your work as a web designer and it will become an issue over the next 5 or so years. A few years ago nobody bothered creating content for portable devices, except for some very proprietary ways of getting stock quotes or sports scores sent to your pager. Your pager. Y'know, those little things people used to have to get phone messages on the go. Nevermind. In any case, this was dealt with using programming. Design never entered into it, it was all just text (you didn't even get to tinker with the font. Brrr!) In fact nobody got to tinker with the content. Weather, Canucks scores, and the ups and downs of the stock market were usually just drawn from standardized news feeds and parsed out to a person's pager. That's all changed. Palm-held devices are now lighter, cheaper, have relatively large amounts of storage space, and recently, colour displays, sound, and modems have become common. But it's not like you can make people load your web page onto their Palm Pilot. The whole point of hand-held computing devices like this is that they're convenient. The whole convenience angle is lost if it takes minutes instead of seconds to load your daily dose of news, sports, and so on from your PC to your PDA. So welcome to the future. The good news is that your potential readership is increasing or, at least, by giving them the option to pick you up off the desk and go outside they may increase the amount of time they spend at your site. But the bad news is that in order to keep load times to a minimum, images (while an option) are often left out. Not to mention tables, bullet lists, image maps, umm. And sound. And Java. In fact, anything fancier than HTML-lite is right out. A good example would be the format adopted by Suck.com for the AvantGo version of its daily dose of smarm . Count the images. Two. Tiny. Very.
Or about pulling an "Al Sharpton"?
For example, just a few years ago my main computer was a Intel 486 running at 100 Mhz. Just think how long it would take to compile the kernel on that system. From that I went to a Pentium 90, then a Pentium 233, a Celeron 533, a Pentium III 533, a Pentium III 800, and finally a Pentium III 933...
A good portion of my life is lived, if you'll allow me the word, on-line. It might even be said that I live a double life, part of it with family, friends, and co-workers in the immediate, material world, and another part with a different (although sometimes overlapping) circle of family, friends, and co-workers on the net. Not only am I connected to other people, but via the Internet I am also connected to a collection of tools and resources that help me in my day-to-day life. For example, I use hypertext as a thinking tool for producing and developing my ideas; I use the World Wide Web as a canvas for mapping and presenting myself and my work; and I use email not only to keep in touch, but also to manage my time and organize my projects.
I will not argue: our culture is indeed defined by our formulations of foundational concepts such as religion, family, and truth. But, with time, meaning changes. The defining aspects of a culture are not mystically immutable. On the contrary, they experience drastic changes, causing jihads and holocausts, but also rebirths and renaissances. At this turn of the century it is clear that computing and related technology is pivotal to our culture's progression, for better or for worse. And my response to the "neo-Luddites" is to ask them to pay attention to the "or." There is no evidence or sound argument that our redefinition of basic cultural terms spells out doom. Changing, evolving society-wide conceptions are a routine part of any culture's movement through time, no matter how "unnatural" the cause of the evolution might appear to be. Just as it is too soon to be heedless and inattentive to the consequences of computing and the Internet, it is also too soon to be so afraid.
In the end, the arguments of the "neo-Luddites" do not withstand deeper inquiry. Neil Postman, Clifford Stoll, and Stephen Talbott repeatedly attribute to the Internet qualities which actually describe our use of, or attitude toward, the Internet, not the Internet itself. It is clear that the technology is neither intrinsically good nor evil: it is neutral. We can have meaningful experiences with it, or waste our time. We can be lost in its flashy colors and informational floods, or we can take control. We can lose our identities, or hold on to them. There is no goodness or badness intrinsic to the Internet any more than there is goodness or badness intrinsic to a block of marble. The marble may tend toward cleaving one way rather than another, as a medium is inclined to, but its nature -- its feeling, its attitude, its content -- is left to us, not to it. With this awareness we can shape the on-line future to our best ideals. "It's all a question of what we do with it," Talbott wisely observes of the Internet. And despite the fact we differ on many points, on this point we agree. He writes:
North Vietnam? I'm sorry, but please tell me you're joking.
Because companies like Square do things like market their games for only one platform. Every console owner wants developers to make the best games for their system, like with Square and the PS1. There may be room for multiple consoles, but some developers choose only a few systems to make games for. Obviously the inferior consoles will not get games made for them unless they are mass marketed, like Tony Hawk, etc.
It's interesting to note that around the same time Seligman had a similar study in which the dogs were allowed to jump between to fenced areas which were alternatingly administered with an elecric shock, approximately 95% of the dogs would give up after realizing their attempts to avoid the pain were futile. Perhaps being forced to play Painstation long enough would lead to similar results.
Now, combine the amazing story of FF10 with the multiuser dimension of Everquest and tell me that wouldn't be an excellent application for MPEG-4.
MPEG4 will not make 3D graphics faster if used
Yes, but not every part of every game is 3D...
What would YOU use to compress video enough to enable online game play and still be high quality? Or would you prefer EVERYTHING be rendered on the fly?
Take, for example, the Betamax vs. VHS incident (yes, I know it is cliched, but bare with me). Although it isn't the best comparison, at least in the U.S. VHS became the standard while BetaMax dwindled away. This is also the problem with many of the Linux distros out there, instead of allowing users to unite over one "OS," they are divided over Debian, Mandrake, RH, YDL, etc. and it will be extremely difficult to change that.
I find it much more likely that an open source codec will not become the new standard, but will become widely adopted by home users/geeks and ignored by the rest of the world. Maybe it will become the base for MPEG-7, but that fact is the MPEG will always dictate what our standards will be.
While most of the time licensing fees rub me the wrong way, I can see in a sense why we pay extra. The fact that I can take DVD with an MPEG-2 stream and play it in EVERY DVD player and DVD-ROM drive (disregarding Region encoding, but that's the MPAA, not the MPEG) is more than just a convenience, it is a necessity for the medium to be perpetuated. In a sense the licensing fees are the cost to ensure that are hardware does not become obsoleted so quickly.
I bought a Nintendo as soon as I had earned enough money (paper routes, drug dealing, and all those other fun childhood fundraising activities). But, the system only lasted for a couple years before the cartridges got dirty. The playstation would allow me to play those old games that I legitatemately bought on a real console system, not on those lame PC emulation programs.
Then, around 1992, the same thing happened, I eventually saved up enough money to buy a Super Nintendo. I remember the price, it was exactly $216.25, because of the 8.25% sales tax in California those days. I bought it at Target and I had about $50 in nickels and the rest in ones and fives. I've never seen a cashier so unhappy about their job! It took about 20 minutes for her to count it all, but soon after I was on my way toward bliss..until the cartridges died that is.
That's one thing that makes me skeptical of this whole CD based console system trend. I know CD's have become the standard, there's no denying that, but I believe they are a lot more fragile than carts. Yeah, I know carts don't like magnets (what electronics do?), but CD's are scratched so damn easily, not to mention the fact that they fly so far when I throw them in anger because of my latest loss. I'd rather see the console systems move toward a more proprietary standard like magneto-optical disks with protective caddies.
The first thing I sold on ebay was a magneto-optical drive, if my memory serves me correctly it had 250 MB disks and sold for a little over $150. Look at the progress we've made! Of course, m.o. has become quite out of fashion what with the increasing speed of CD-R drives and cheapness of media. Soon, at least if Sony has their way, we'll have DVD+RW drives in every machine, enabling us to store up to 4.7 GB of pure pleasure per disk at a cost of only $3.99. Oh joy, imagine running RedHat 7.2 with all packages installed from CD (assuming you have enough memory)!
thats what trolls are for! look at the name ;-p
What is the role of government in a capitalist society?
The only purpose of government would be to protect its citizens from force or fraud.
Note that it is to protect the citizens from force or fraud, not property.
While subsidies of individuals is a far cry from try capitalism, I approve that more than how the government is effectively subsidizing large corporations now.
But, copyright law was created before the U.S. reached the Industrial age, which in turn led to large corporate style think-tanks. These laws were aimed at private inventors rather than large corporations, so when you bring a company like Disney into the equation there is sure to be some abuse.
The general attitude for copyrights has shifted dramatically during the past 200 years. Originally the sole purpose (whether you agree or not) was to motivate further technological and intellectual progress. In the 19th century this shifted to protecting the property of corporations (although not so much until the the 20th century when the industrial age evolved into the information age).
The solution is definitely not to eliminate copyright law outright, simply widespread reform. Being a capitalist country should not rely on government protection of property, seeing as how that is contrary to the concept of capitalism in general. But we do need government intervention to aid private inventors, perhaps in the form of government subsidies. As an added fact, we need to keep at least some copyright laws to keep all those copyright lawyers employed.
Why does the adult swim have to be so highly rated if they censor it? I watch anime to see lots of action (with blood of course) and at least some partial nudity. They might as well censor it down completely if they cut that stuff out.
As for the register being in use, I mean that the transaction had not been completed and the cashier refused to void out the items (generally speaking the amount of voided items is kept to a minimum). So it could not be used for anything except the current transaction, which could not occur until the woman went the ATM, figured out how to get her money, and came back and payed.
IMO, the "flash pass" wouldn't be the killer app, it would be combined with submitting your order over wireless to enable you to avoid the whole line trauma entirely. That way the lady with $5 in pennies could count them out and not bother anybody (except maybe the cashier).
Now color me crazy, but since when has attaining similar aesthetic content to Windows been considered a good thing? It hurts my eyes just to look at it. I long for the good old days without those fancy anti-aliased fonts, although Mac OS X is quite pleasurable to use.