Like as if an average citizen knows what DMCA, DRM, software patent, FOSS, etc. are. Don't to notice that the magic words now are terrorism, social security, medicare, economy, and job market? If you are a politician, whould you concentrate your efforts to a small group of geeks with crappy voting records?
In.au, the voting record doesn't really matter - if we don't show up at a polling place on the appointed day or make other arrangements, we get fined. It's generally less hassle to show up and tick some boxes.
That said, there are some serious hot-button issues for the public here. Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, how seriously screwed some of our industries might be and the so-called "loss of national sovereignty" in the dispute resolution process will hopefully all come together with a dozen other issues (including IP, DRM and anti-circumvention provisions) to consign this particular agreement to the scrapheap. Not that there aren't some good things that might come from it - I just suspect that on balance it's not as good a deal for Australians as our government would have us believe.
Damn... now I have to find another discussion to use my modpoints in.
Since June 2003, David Kaye and his team at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, have implanted the VentrAssist in seven patients with end-stage heart failure. All of them were too frail for heart-transplant surgery and were not expected to survive longer than a year without artificial assistance.
Knew I'd seen it somewhere before. One of the.au Tabloid Television shows had a five minute human interest piece on this, what, six months ago. Good to see it's getting international recognition though. As for posters suggesting a need for tags on patients so paramedics don't fry them... don't you think the power cable coming out of the patient's abdomen and leading to the power pack will be enough of a giveaway?
And yeah, I did just get modpoints... so if you post on this topic, I guess you're safe.
Drill holes at various spots on your head. Solder hookup wire to non-pointy ends of sufficient acupuncture needles, and use heatshrink tubing to cover almost all of the needles, leaving only 1mm uncovered at the pointy end. Using the 9V battery, and a return path via somehwere convenient and moist (I suggest your anus, what's a little more humiliation if you've gotten this far?) test your response to electic stimulation at various holes and depths. This is where the observer comes in handy, as you might be in no fit state to write down your observation, or even disconnect the current. Once you've found a useful set of needle positions, wire them up to your breakout box and plug it in to your printer port. Write software to apply a signal to each needle under various conditions.
You could interface it with remote monitoring software, and a complete loss of bowel and bladder control could be used to indicate that a Windows machine on your network has crashed. Aphasia could be used to signify a loss of internet connectivity. And a throbbing erection could be used to signify yet another V1@gr@ spam in your inbox. Remember, you're limited only by your imagination and the rate at which infection sets in!
Not to be outdone, the Seychelles announced a similar project - however, it has since collapsed, in favour of eco-tourism surrounding exotic and slightly perverted headgear
Jamieson added, "The end of the sound recording copyright on the explosion of British popular music in the late '50s and '60s, not just the Beatles, but many other British artists, is only a short period away."
It's as if he believes the Beatles were thinking, "If I didn't expect the government to extend copyright terms by 2010, I'd seriously rethink my career."
It's as if Sir Paul's kids ought to be thinking around about now, "Hey, I sure hope Dad has diversified his investments!"
I seem to recall reading that one of the reasons used for acquiring the F-111 was to have something to drop nukes on Indonesia and other neighbouring countries in the event of Communism spreading into our immediate region.
Of course most commercial rock and pop music is processed and filtered in the studio before it is put on cd whereas older music (or indie records) tend to sound better when played back on equipment that adds the distortion effects.
Older material may "sound better" when played back on equipment that introduces the same kinds of distortion older amplifiers do because the guy at the mixing desk knew the kind of crap most people would have in their lounge rooms and mixed with its limitations in mind.They would also have mixed with the limitations involved in dragging a bit of sapphire through a groove in a piece of vinyl in mind, so there's a whole extra bag of potential distortions that don't need to be mixed around when mastering for CD. Try playing back P. Crappy and the 12-Gauge Enema (or whatever the hell the kids are listening to these days) on your avarage console home stereo from the late 60's and it would probably be even less listenable than it is on an avarage car system.
Did I just write that? I sound like my grandfather...
Expanding on the Trek fantasies expressed by some, how about Rene Auberjonios, spouting:
"I fart in your general direction"
Caught him doing the chef song from the Little Mermaid at a con once. Half the half-wits in attendance called him "Reen". We have some poor excuses for nerds 'round here.
Normally I'd consider virus writers the scum of the earth, but this one is talented enough to be a professional hacker, from my limited experience with assembly language (512 byte boot sector on a FD). Not that I endorse email worms, but this guy has talent.
Sociopathic, self-centred, a total arsehole, but talented nonetheless.
Man, if the author could be turned to the Light Side though... small, efficient windows applications, well written in assembler... sounds like Steve Gibson's Evil Twin.
But there are just as many instances, if not more, where the "customer" should be told to go shove his head up his ass and shuffle it on out the door.
Hmmm... Let's see what shopmonkey war stories I can dredge up from my memory...
The guy who tried to return a cordless phone with no receipt, no box and visible coffee residue in the vents in the underside. I refused to refund it, but as that model had been on the market less than the warranty period and we imported and serviced it offered to send it off for warranty service. Lo, the service department offered a quote for repair of damage from a liquid spill, and the customer never returned my calls.
The customer whose cat pissed in their answering machine, and demanded (but didn't get) a replacement - or a repair either, as our techs refused to even touch it.
The small retailer who returned a fax for warranty repair, and when it came back had a service charge for liquid damage. They swore black and blue that they hadn't done it, state manglement caved and ate the repair cost, and the customer demanded that we deliver and re-install it. Even though it was almost on my way home, I refused to do the delivery on the grounds that I'd say or do something unprofessional - which was wise, as it turns out, as the customer said "Just set it up over there, on the sink..."
...then there's my favourite, the aptly named Mr. Cross. He was a serial offender, so there are many possible tales, but the best one has to be the time he took us to the Small Claims Tribunal because we and Smith-Corona refused to repair his word-processing typewriter under warranty after his colostomy bag leaked into the keyboard.
I know an amateur digital photographer who generates close to 1TB / month with a Canon 1D MarkII. Storage is a major problem.
Has anyone compared the economics of film cameras - 35mm and/or medium format - with digital photography for different classes of users?
Negative scanners are reasonably cheap (sub US$1000 for reasonably snazzy 35mm ones, I have no idea on medium format) and a collection of thumbnails with index details ought to be sufficient to pull a particular negative from the filing cabinet for re-scanning if a print or photochop is required.
Of course, this loses several of the advantages of digital photography (instant availablity, instant delete on the shot where the fat guy walks into frame etc), and developing costs need to be taken into account too, but it might just be more affordable for the next few years.
At what, 2.8 to 3 Mb per shot on best quality, that'd be around 350 photos per month. That's a little under 10 rolls of 36 exposure film if we limit ourselves to 35mm. You can buy a 20-pack of Fuji Professional 400asa 36 exposure for around US$75 on line.
Of course, I'm not a photographer of any greater standing than "Get your fingers out of your mouth, Sweetheart - no, kitty doesn't like cheese in her fur", so my figures and assumptions could be way off. But on the surface, even taking into account developing costs, it would appear much cheaper at that sort of data volume to use film and a film scanner, and only keep or make digital copies of what you really need at any particular point in time. When an easy-to-use, reliable, removable terabyte hits the US$100-200 mark, it will be a better option. Until then, I think film probably wins out on price.
Also, 35mm negatives have very well known archival properties and it won't be a nightmare in 35 years making a scan or print from them, but it could be hard getting an antiquated 800Gb hard disk repaired so you can suck data from it.
is a patent for "method and apparatus," and spells out exactly what the apparatus is supposed to accomplish. It doesn't prevent others from using human conductivity for other unrelated purposes,
This looks like the beginning of a very useful technology, and the beginning of a set of proprietary standards. Hopefully Microsoft Research will actually follow through with actual implementations, because everyone could benefit from this. Nobody sane begrudges Apple the few cents they get for every FireWire device manufactured... but this is Microsoft, and we all know that they're evil incarnate, and couldn't possibly be looking at things like this as a means of diversifying their intellectual property portfolio and will instead use it to secure their monopolistic stranglehold on a dying OS and as a reason to sacrifice more cute little kittens.
The companies say they have long been aware of the work-around but that they were not trying to create an unhackable protection.
Okay, I'm completely boggled now . . . what exactly are they're trying to accomplish?
What they're after is the right to say that a copy-protected album has been a marketing success, and that the return rate on it has been low. People probably would have bought this one even if they had to give their firstborn to Satan, so that's the "marketing success" part taken care of. The "protection" used shouldn't upset conventional CD players either, so that's the "We shipped it with copy protection, and nobody doing anything we would consider legitimate had any problems" part all wrapped up. Sure, we know what they're doing, but John Q. Sixpack probably won't grasp that this is the thin end of the wedge until he gets a right reaming a few years down the track.And even then, he may just accept that that's how things are because that's how the record companies say they should be - after all, they'd just hate to have to sell you a different format for your portable and for home, and they'd think it tragic if you couldn't make a disposable copy for the car.
Sounds more like the basis for instantanious comunication (read too much OSC). If we ever invented non reltivistic FTL or spread far enough that we'd need instantanious communication it would probably be based on this.
Actually, even if we never develop FTL transportation, FTL communication could be very, very useful.
Find stars with earth-like planets, send probes containing quantum-entangled data comms gear and pretty well documented interfaces, and invite them to offworld their call centres to India.
In Germany, at least, the term 'socialist' has never really had a negative connotation like in the US. In fact, it seems to be thrown around all over the place like we throw 'democratic' around.
Indeed. We all know who the National Socialists were.
Take away the unspeakably abhorrent xeno-cidal/-phobic aspects of Nazi doctrine, and you're probably not too far from what many of the more conservative European political parties believe. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - believing in fresh air, clean living and the outdoors doesn't make you a Nazi any more than it makes you a Boy Scout. Wanting good and accessible health care and a welfare system that provides a public safety net without providing a permanent vacation doesn't make you a Nazi any more than it makes you the average Australian, Canadian etc.
Even the evil can have good ideas. The trick is not to let words and concepts become guilty by association, which is what seems to have happened to the word "Socialist" in the American vocabulary.
The problem with MS is that they HAVEN'T adopted the cell phone or razor blade model of business. Let's face it. If the OS were REALLY inexpensive then they could reasonably charge for services outside of the OS such as service packs or feature upgrades. Red Hat, IBM, Apple, they all do it and are profitable.
They may all be profitable, but the question is, "Is what's been suggested a proper and desirable model for the industry to move towards?" For home users, I think it is not.
Microsoft did try a subscription model with Office XP, at least in some markets. It didn't work, and they eventually ended up giving perpetual licences to retail customers who bought subscriptions just to put the whole sorry mess behind them.
People (admittedly, stupid ones - but that's most of them) get sufficiently pissed off at having to pay for their copy of Windows in the first place, let alone having to cough up for an ongoing subscription. You'll never get the subscription pricing sufficiently low to entice all Windows users to keep their machine up to date - hell, it costs nothing but bandwidth to update these days, and people still don't do it. No, low up-front plus ongoing costs would probably be less successful than the present MS pricing and distribution policy at keeping machines up to date. And I can't see people being too happy about having to cough up for a new version of windows to get a new version of DirectX or the Media Player.
I can't speak for everyone, but I believe I'd be happier with an up-front price and guaranteed access to updates until the software is EOL'd than a recurring cost model that I need to remember to pay annualy. I could be wrong (as I haven't looked closely) but aren't Apple providing security updates free whilst charging for the version upgrades? That's hardly a razor pricing model, and not too different from what MS are doing - although to give the devil his due, MS at least only trys the "New Version" trick every two to three years. And RedHat is an annual charging model for paid support, isn't it? Cough up for three years at a time and it feels just like you've bought Windows Server 2003 (except around the anus).
Before anyone decides to mod me down as a troll or a Microsoft Apologist, I'd just like to point out a few things. I'm contemplating going completely Open Source OS at home, just as soon as I figure out how to get past the CD Copy Protection in my son's Thomas the Tank Engine game that stops absolutely nothing except running it under WINE. I used to like Windows as a desktop OS for home use for friends and relations because it was easy enough for them to understand and worked well enough for what they needed it to do - and could be persuaded that that is again the case if the constant stream of Windows security issues ever lets up. I hate the prospect of a zillion un-updated Linux machines on Broadband connections, all with users who log in as root and click on the little link to get free porn in the email they just received, and can see a day in the not too distant future where it will be be as big a problem as compromised windows boxes - and you can bet that the people who will fall victim to this will NOT have bought a subscription to RedHat Network. Hell, who knows, the current Windows security issues may well help everyone in the long term, because J.Random User now knows that bad things can happen if he doesn't run Windows Update or update his antivirus software. And the spate of keylogging trojans and phising spam might help some of these poor saps learn the hard way that they need to exercise a little more thought and caution. And I see a flock of pigs, tracing lazy circles in the sky...
And it's hardly a proper "Modest Proposal", defishguy - I didn't see one single reference to eating babies. I suggest we invent time travel and look up the birth certificates of convicted spammers.
If you eat your pets, you have more problems then just PBDEs
Indeed. Your local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, for one.
As all things, before anyone becomes overly worried, research. Afterall it takes some odd 100+ cans of diet Dr pepper with saccharine a day to get possible cancer.
I wonder what the PBDE accumulation rate would be in someone who lived on an exculsive diet of Slashdotters and the occasional leafy green vegetable? Or would the caffeine and saccharine metabolites from their own and their diet's consumption pose a far greater risk?
If this is true, I expect these guys will be involved in a "tragic fatal accident". *cough* Shell *cough* Imperial.
What makes you think the oil processing and oil distribution sides of the western oil companies aren't already looking at this technology and rubbing their hands with glee? This could be neutral or positive for the refiners and retailers. The ones who should be really worried are nations whose economies rely on sucking black goo out of rocks - like, oh, I don't know, a sizeable percentage of the Middle East.
Hmm... on second thoughts, maybe they should look at their insurance options...
In all likelihood, it was the flammable nature of the skin that led to the ignition. Sure, having all that hydrogen there didn't help once the fire started, but there were a lot of successful hydrogen-filled blimps and dirigibles up to that point (the survival ratio was at least as good, if not better, than that of hydrazine or solid-propellant rockets).
ISTR reading somewhere that while the gaseous hydrogen burnt upwards and fairly cleanly, it was the liquid diesel fuel that was the big problem. Tanks of diesel, inside a big thermite and gun-cotton bag...
Whoever speculated that Shatner would be playing Kirk either has an even lower opinion of Berman than I do (which is saying a great deal), or is even more of a moron than Berman and Braga (which is saying even more).
The former, I suspect.
Perhaps what is needed is an accident involving Berman, Braga, most of the writers and a light aircraft... followed by desperate and nervous studio executives grovelling to Robert Hewett Wolfe.
Not that I'd admit having watched any of that stuff - have you seen the people who attend conventions? Oh wait, I've been to more than a few... never mind...
I care, because I'd rather pay a little more for something that lasts longer. Maybe I'm a fool. Or maybe I just find a small amount of pleasure in stability.
Stability is wonderful, and in some applications highly desirable.
Yes, I buy flourescent bulbs instead of incandescents where possible:)
As do I. They're more expensive than incandescents, but they last much longer. Sure, you have reduced maintenance requirements with fluorescents (and perhaps reduced costs associated with that, even though they cost more initially) but their killer benefit is their power consumption. What if they consumed near enough to the same power as incandescents, and what if they lasted four times as long as incandescents, but also cost eight times as much? What if this was because your fluorescent light was integrated with its fixture and you needed to replace the whole fixture every 5 years, but you just put a new incandescent bulb in the incandescent fixture every two years until the fixture finally broke (maybe 10 years, if you're lucky). That's probably a fair comparison to an LCD display vs. OLED with Replaceable Panel
With current display devices, once the parts that actually produce the image die it is generally not economical to repair the device. If the optical part was replaceable, and the costs worked out to be less over time than the cost of competing technologies with non-replaceable parts, it's a winner. And that's the kicker - the production costs for OLED panels are likely to fall much further than the production costs for LCD panels, so unless there are environmental costs that make recycling OLED panels uneconomical a replaceable-panel OLED display device could be a very compelling option in many applications and for many users.
And I'm considering LCD over DLP (replaceable bulb) or Plasma (trash in five years or after accidentally leaving the nintendo on).
I have no idea what the current state-of-play is in the LCD or DLP product ranges, but even though one has consumables involved (DLP) what are the overall expected lifespans of the devices? If DLP cost significantly less than LCD, then DLP would be the winner in applications where occasional globe replacement and the physical differences between the two technologies aren't an issue - I imagine this would be most loungerooms. Like I imagine the occasional replacement of an OLED insert once you can no longer adjust out the loss of green performance would not be an issue for most laptop or even desktop users if the technology cost significantly less than LCD panels.
But then, who am I fooling about costs over a product lifetime - the initial cost would have to be lower too, because we're probably talking about the same people who buy low-end inkjet printers. Lets just hope that if replaceable-panel displays appear they don't follow that consumables pricing strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, there are some serious hot-button issues for the public here. Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, how seriously screwed some of our industries might be and the so-called "loss of national sovereignty" in the dispute resolution process will hopefully all come together with a dozen other issues (including IP, DRM and anti-circumvention provisions) to consign this particular agreement to the scrapheap. Not that there aren't some good things that might come from it - I just suspect that on balance it's not as good a deal for Australians as our government would have us believe.
Damn... now I have to find another discussion to use my modpoints in.
And yeah, I did just get modpoints... so if you post on this topic, I guess you're safe.
Dremel with bone drill bit
Heat shrink tubing
13 Acupuncture Needles
Hookup wire
soldering iron
DB25 cable,
DB25 breakout box
9V battery
an observer.
Difficulty: Intermediate/Suicidal
Procedure:
Drill holes at various spots on your head. Solder hookup wire to non-pointy ends of sufficient acupuncture needles, and use heatshrink tubing to cover almost all of the needles, leaving only 1mm uncovered at the pointy end. Using the 9V battery, and a return path via somehwere convenient and moist (I suggest your anus, what's a little more humiliation if you've gotten this far?) test your response to electic stimulation at various holes and depths. This is where the observer comes in handy, as you might be in no fit state to write down your observation, or even disconnect the current. Once you've found a useful set of needle positions, wire them up to your breakout box and plug it in to your printer port. Write software to apply a signal to each needle under various conditions.
You could interface it with remote monitoring software, and a complete loss of bowel and bladder control could be used to indicate that a Windows machine on your network has crashed. Aphasia could be used to signify a loss of internet connectivity. And a throbbing erection could be used to signify yet another V1@gr@ spam in your inbox. Remember, you're limited only by your imagination and the rate at which infection sets in!
I seem to recall reading that one of the reasons used for acquiring the F-111 was to have something to drop nukes on Indonesia and other neighbouring countries in the event of Communism spreading into our immediate region.
Did I just write that? I sound like my grandfather...
"I fart in your general direction"
Caught him doing the chef song from the Little Mermaid at a con once. Half the half-wits in attendance called him "Reen". We have some poor excuses for nerds 'round here.
That's it, I ruined my own joke...
Need... coffee... now...
Man, if the author could be turned to the Light Side though... small, efficient windows applications, well written in assembler... sounds like Steve Gibson's Evil Twin.
The guy who tried to return a cordless phone with no receipt, no box and visible coffee residue in the vents in the underside. I refused to refund it, but as that model had been on the market less than the warranty period and we imported and serviced it offered to send it off for warranty service. Lo, the service department offered a quote for repair of damage from a liquid spill, and the customer never returned my calls.
The customer whose cat pissed in their answering machine, and demanded (but didn't get) a replacement - or a repair either, as our techs refused to even touch it.
The small retailer who returned a fax for warranty repair, and when it came back had a service charge for liquid damage. They swore black and blue that they hadn't done it, state manglement caved and ate the repair cost, and the customer demanded that we deliver and re-install it. Even though it was almost on my way home, I refused to do the delivery on the grounds that I'd say or do something unprofessional - which was wise, as it turns out, as the customer said "Just set it up over there, on the sink..."
Negative scanners are reasonably cheap (sub US$1000 for reasonably snazzy 35mm ones, I have no idea on medium format) and a collection of thumbnails with index details ought to be sufficient to pull a particular negative from the filing cabinet for re-scanning if a print or photochop is required.
Of course, this loses several of the advantages of digital photography (instant availablity, instant delete on the shot where the fat guy walks into frame etc), and developing costs need to be taken into account too, but it might just be more affordable for the next few years.
At what, 2.8 to 3 Mb per shot on best quality, that'd be around 350 photos per month. That's a little under 10 rolls of 36 exposure film if we limit ourselves to 35mm. You can buy a 20-pack of Fuji Professional 400asa 36 exposure for around US$75 on line.
Of course, I'm not a photographer of any greater standing than "Get your fingers out of your mouth, Sweetheart - no, kitty doesn't like cheese in her fur", so my figures and assumptions could be way off. But on the surface, even taking into account developing costs, it would appear much cheaper at that sort of data volume to use film and a film scanner, and only keep or make digital copies of what you really need at any particular point in time. When an easy-to-use, reliable, removable terabyte hits the US$100-200 mark, it will be a better option. Until then, I think film probably wins out on price.
Also, 35mm negatives have very well known archival properties and it won't be a nightmare in 35 years making a scan or print from them, but it could be hard getting an antiquated 800Gb hard disk repaired so you can suck data from it.
Find stars with earth-like planets, send probes containing quantum-entangled data comms gear and pretty well documented interfaces, and invite them to offworld their call centres to India.
Take away the unspeakably abhorrent xeno-cidal/-phobic aspects of Nazi doctrine, and you're probably not too far from what many of the more conservative European political parties believe. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - believing in fresh air, clean living and the outdoors doesn't make you a Nazi any more than it makes you a Boy Scout. Wanting good and accessible health care and a welfare system that provides a public safety net without providing a permanent vacation doesn't make you a Nazi any more than it makes you the average Australian, Canadian etc.
Even the evil can have good ideas. The trick is not to let words and concepts become guilty by association, which is what seems to have happened to the word "Socialist" in the American vocabulary.
Microsoft did try a subscription model with Office XP, at least in some markets. It didn't work, and they eventually ended up giving perpetual licences to retail customers who bought subscriptions just to put the whole sorry mess behind them.
People (admittedly, stupid ones - but that's most of them) get sufficiently pissed off at having to pay for their copy of Windows in the first place, let alone having to cough up for an ongoing subscription. You'll never get the subscription pricing sufficiently low to entice all Windows users to keep their machine up to date - hell, it costs nothing but bandwidth to update these days, and people still don't do it. No, low up-front plus ongoing costs would probably be less successful than the present MS pricing and distribution policy at keeping machines up to date. And I can't see people being too happy about having to cough up for a new version of windows to get a new version of DirectX or the Media Player.
I can't speak for everyone, but I believe I'd be happier with an up-front price and guaranteed access to updates until the software is EOL'd than a recurring cost model that I need to remember to pay annualy. I could be wrong (as I haven't looked closely) but aren't Apple providing security updates free whilst charging for the version upgrades? That's hardly a razor pricing model, and not too different from what MS are doing - although to give the devil his due, MS at least only trys the "New Version" trick every two to three years. And RedHat is an annual charging model for paid support, isn't it? Cough up for three years at a time and it feels just like you've bought Windows Server 2003 (except around the anus).
Before anyone decides to mod me down as a troll or a Microsoft Apologist, I'd just like to point out a few things. I'm contemplating going completely Open Source OS at home, just as soon as I figure out how to get past the CD Copy Protection in my son's Thomas the Tank Engine game that stops absolutely nothing except running it under WINE. I used to like Windows as a desktop OS for home use for friends and relations because it was easy enough for them to understand and worked well enough for what they needed it to do - and could be persuaded that that is again the case if the constant stream of Windows security issues ever lets up. I hate the prospect of a zillion un-updated Linux machines on Broadband connections, all with users who log in as root and click on the little link to get free porn in the email they just received, and can see a day in the not too distant future where it will be be as big a problem as compromised windows boxes - and you can bet that the people who will fall victim to this will NOT have bought a subscription to RedHat Network. Hell, who knows, the current Windows security issues may well help everyone in the long term, because J.Random User now knows that bad things can happen if he doesn't run Windows Update or update his antivirus software. And the spate of keylogging trojans and phising spam might help some of these poor saps learn the hard way that they need to exercise a little more thought and caution. And I see a flock of pigs, tracing lazy circles in the sky...
And it's hardly a proper "Modest Proposal", defishguy - I didn't see one single reference to eating babies. I suggest we invent time travel and look up the birth certificates of convicted spammers.
Hmm... on second thoughts, maybe they should look at their insurance options...
The former, I suspect.
Perhaps what is needed is an accident involving Berman, Braga, most of the writers and a light aircraft... followed by desperate and nervous studio executives grovelling to Robert Hewett Wolfe.
Not that I'd admit having watched any of that stuff - have you seen the people who attend conventions? Oh wait, I've been to more than a few... never mind...
With current display devices, once the parts that actually produce the image die it is generally not economical to repair the device. If the optical part was replaceable, and the costs worked out to be less over time than the cost of competing technologies with non-replaceable parts, it's a winner. And that's the kicker - the production costs for OLED panels are likely to fall much further than the production costs for LCD panels, so unless there are environmental costs that make recycling OLED panels uneconomical a replaceable-panel OLED display device could be a very compelling option in many applications and for many users.
I have no idea what the current state-of-play is in the LCD or DLP product ranges, but even though one has consumables involved (DLP) what are the overall expected lifespans of the devices? If DLP cost significantly less than LCD, then DLP would be the winner in applications where occasional globe replacement and the physical differences between the two technologies aren't an issue - I imagine this would be most loungerooms. Like I imagine the occasional replacement of an OLED insert once you can no longer adjust out the loss of green performance would not be an issue for most laptop or even desktop users if the technology cost significantly less than LCD panelsBut then, who am I fooling about costs over a product lifetime - the initial cost would have to be lower too, because we're probably talking about the same people who buy low-end inkjet printers. Lets just hope that if replaceable-panel displays appear they don't follow that consumables pricing strategy.