one day they ditch Android and replace with a new Symbian OS
Common, Nokia had thrown money to their R&D department. They have thrown money at developping their Maemo/Meego platform. They have thrown money at building the N700/N800/N900/N9 series of Linux PDAs/Phones. They have basically paid all the things that became Jolla after the Linux R&D at Nokia got Sacked. (Hence the joke - name). In short they have already financed some sort of "new Symbian OS", i.e.: they have already financed a cool new OS.
Jolla has built Sailfish OS, a very nice full-blown GNU/Linux platform (that has support for Android Apps, through at least 2 different solutions). But Jolla isn't that stellar with hardware (see tablet fiasco).
Why the heck won't Nokia reach out Jolla and find possible uses for Sailfish OS ? They've basically paid for building it, it will help them to distinguish themselves from an over-saturated Android market (just like Samsung is trying with Tizen, build on the exact same "Mer" core), it will help them break the Andoird/iOS binary situation, and unlike Microsoft's failed attemps, it can also leverage an existing App eco system (Android) so it doesn't feel like the poor App-less parent (like Palm/HP WebOS was, or like Windows is trending now) but has access to a proven successful ecosystem of Apps *right now".
We used that stunt to distribute wealth to private contractors to build gadgets for a symbolic purpose.
These gadgets weren't symbolic at all. And I'm not speaking about "space technology has trickled into society" (Microwave, Velcro, whatever...)
I am speaking about very practical stuff some politicians had in mind :
- To send people to the moon, you need to be able to lift into low earth orbit everything they need to reach the moon : the astronauts themselves, their capsule, enough fuel to accelerate the capsule for the trip, and then decelerate when arriving, lander, fuel for the lander, fuel for the return trip, supplies, air, etc... The whole trans-lunar package weights roughly about a hundred tons. That's why the NASA needed to build the Saturn V rocket (and the Soviet attempted to build the N1-L3): to have something able to lift ~100 tons into low earth orbit. It would have NOT been possible with previous generation of launcher technology (or you would have needed a couple of launches that you assemble in orbit. The kind of approach currently considered for Mars).
- The Tsar-Bomba, the biggest nuke ever, in its theoretical full 100 Mt configuration (not the "puny" 50 Mt that the USSR used for tests, to avoid too much nuclear fallout), would probably have weighted in the 50-100 tons range.
Do the maths.
Creating the Saturn V for the NASA (and attempting to create the N1-L3 for USSR) was not only done for the purpose of sending people to the moon.
Sending people to the moon is a very obvious demo telling the world : "We can send people to the moon. We have the technology to lift ~100tons into orbit. So we can lift a translift vehicle that will bring these astronauts to the moon. (And so we can also lift to LEO 100-tons worth of nukes, enough to completely obliterate a whole enemy country)". The whole space race was for show and awe to the masses, but was thinly veiled menace between the defence programs throwing money at it. (A way to tell "with this new bigger rocket I could also be hurling even more nuke to you"). For the defence sector, lunar launcher weren't gadgets, they were very practical vehicle in a pissing contest/nuclear deterrent race.
It also explains why back then no nation bothered anywhere more than probes on Mars. Nobody developed anything bigger than Saturn V, and that could only launch very small payloads to Mars before getting hit by the Tsiolkovski rocket equation (or before considering in-orbit assembly like the current trend). Given the lack of military application of possible solutions (even bigger rockets with bigger payloads, or in-orbit assembly), that's one reason less to get funding.
I am not saying that the single reason behind anything that happened during the space programs was due to the defence sector. I am simply saying that potential military application was among the arguments that has pushed some technology faster forward than others and has contributed to prioritizing some aspect of the space program. (Of course: economics and other have also played very important roles in practice).
And thus to fall back to the subject: - space program wasn't a prestige only useless gadget. - space program wasn't only a cash-cow for private subcontractors. - it was also a program with very practical application for the defence sector (which helped fuel cash into it)
(And that's a small part of the reasons why it is a little bit less easy nowadays to re-start space programs : - Military aren't interested in more space-toys - Drone and autonomous weapons are the new hot topic, No army desperately needs a 300+ tons package in orbit. - Telecoms are the one interested in the current program (cheaper per-launch platforms means possibility to assemble in-orbit an interplanetary vessels like current Mars proposals... but also means cheaper way to put satellites in orbit). - But those tend to has a smaller expendable budget to throw at the space programme).
No, if you want to build real interplanetary vessels, you'll build them in space, not on the Earth. Lifting the entire mass of a ship from the Earth's solution isn't economical or practical; all the major building materials we need are already in space.
One day, we'll maybe be there (once we have enough ore refineries in orbit ?) For now we're still stuck with our industry on Earth, but at least we can already displace the assembly in space.
(but once space assembly is doable, further down the line you can start assembling an industry in-space).
First, Rei, RealDrJohn, it's nice to see a good discussion between specialists (Still one of the reasons why I keep hanging out on/. )
I also think that hyper massive ships are a good solution. More possibility for shielding. More fuel, bigger drives to accelerate to a higher top speed (and then again to decelerate to target orbit at the other end of the trip).
Also it fits better the *current* development of SpaceX and space programs in general : cheap recyclable launchers.
When you want to build a giant inter-planetary vessel, you won't launch it into one single go (not like the new reboot StarTrek's Enterprise) because you're going to get hit hard by the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. You'll launch it piece by piece and build the vessel in space (like the ship harbour of older movies, or like the real-world ISS). See the recent explanation video by SpaceX, showing the capsule and the giant freaking fuel tank (which doubles as a nice shield) being launched in 2 separate steps and then assembled in orbit before leaving for Mars.
That means trying to achieve cheaper multiple-launches which is also what the current needs are (launching sattelites and probes cheaply, instead of send huge masses away), and also what SpaceX is researching (cheap re-usable launchers).
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Also, maybe by then we will have some medical approach to try to shave a few % of the cancer risk. Taking some meds maybe... Maybe under some circumstances, special regiments rich in antioxydant could provably drop the cancer incidence and brain/heart damage in the radiation-exposed mices by 1-2% ?
Worse still, having the job of the controller done by the main phone CPU instead of dedicated hardware. Botching it like that brings down cost, but if something glitches (and the more complicated something is, the more likely it will glitch) then, well. SACF!
On the other hand, they are Samsung. It's still a known brand that cares a tiny bit about their reputation and are going to put some minute efforts into the quality.
It's not of those clowns that mass-produced self-balancing board (handle-bar-less segway clones. A.k.a.: "Hoverboard") at 200 $ a piece and managed such a low price by throwing all safeties and even good practices out of the window.
There's probably a dedicated hardware charging controller. It's probably on the same die as the rest of the SoC, to cut down on costs (so, I a way, you *are* correct when you say "done by the CPU"), but it's probably an autonomous circuit that isn't affected by the CPU re-booting.
There's certifications to pass for the battery by itself, which means those safety circuits end up back on the battery again.
You mean the safety circuits present on that USD 3.95 USB charger from eBay (shipping free), from that seller with 300 positive review (nearly all of them review appearing in the week before he posted the selling of saif USB Charger ?) Or the safety circuits present on that "10'000mAh!!! Long-lige!!!! Hi-quality!!!!" battery from Shenzen ?:-D
Well at least Samsung can look on the bright side: now they can clearly shift the blame to shitty after-market parts.
Or maybe the battery is now fine at more or less fullfilling their promises......but it's the charger that is completely over taxed.
Phone plugged into the provided charger are okay (charger can output all the phone pulls), phone plugged into high quality 3rd party are okay (charger limits what the phone can pull from it).
But phone plugged into cheap no-name Asian sub-5$ knockoffs have the charger overheat, melt, short itself and fry the smartphone.
Many of those important event will simply require using a bit more than the output of a single webcam mounted in the front of the car.
Did it rain on this road when it was below freezing? Was salt applied to the road before the Ice, did the temperature go below 0F (IE salt water freze point.)
(For the people on the other side of the pond: that's -32C)
You means things that non-autonomous cars already on the streets for the past few decades can correctly detect ?
Cars already have temperature sensors, cars already have skid sensors. If the car detects there's a risk of finding snow/ice (=temperature under freezing point) it puts a warning on the dash-board. If the car finds ice, it shouts a huge alarm (=skid detected in addition of the temperature).
This are sensors that predate the emergence of complex powerful computers in cars. Temperature sensors have been there for decades. Skid detection is as old as skid prevention (the car automatically balances the force on breaks). Cars have been able to ring snow alarms even before someone has taught about embedding the processing power of a couple of laptops into them.
Is that horse shaped object on the side of the road a restaurant billboard, or is it momentarily stopped.
Bad example again. Simplistic systems that rely on a single webcam output might get confused. Advanced systems that rely on a stereo pair of cameras (e.g.: Mercedes, Mazda, etc.) and/or a LIDAR complementing the video feeds (e.g.: Volvo, VW and tons of other manufacturers) can actually distinguish such object. In addition, most cars' system is able to see object moving and can detect if the object has recently stopped moving or if it was 100% immobile the whole time.
This is equipment that is already deployed on adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance systems. It's in cars which are currently on the streets. (I think Volvo had some couple of video showing how their car detect pedestrians and bike riders).
I think you're maybe a little bit under-estimating what is currently possible with modern sensors and post-processing. One of the advantage of image processing is that a lot of it is very parallelisable, and thus could be much more easily done on many-core / SIMD / and such technologies. (There's a reason why Nvidia is advertising their in-car neural-networks).
A stationary set of sensors installed in critical areas to facilitate autonomy would allow so much cheaper sensors in the cars, and better speeds, and safer. {...} Instead of having to concentrate on small sections of the environment, like the cars are having to do today, to be able to process all of this in less than a second.
Maybe it's just that I have a different perspective because I tend to drive a lot on the dense and distributed north european highway network... But I have the impression that this is going to require many more sensors.
*Relying* on a set of stationary sensors on the streets means that you can only drive on the small subset of high traffic streets that are equipped with sensors. Outside of stationary sensors streets, the car will be unable to drive autonomously. Which is bad. Given the backlash that some people give against electric car for not having a network of charging station as dense as the gas station, imagine if your car did rely only on sensors available on a small subset of roads.
And that's when counting on the sensors to be 100% operational all the time. Now if you take into account outages, breaking of old age, vandalism and other destruction, etc. You can have even less road with fully available information or with reliable information.
The best would be for cars to optionally benefit from extra information. Pack as much sensors as possible on the car itself (And given the price of some cars, a few extra / better sens
Considering that the charger is in the phone itself
This circuitry's job is "only" to take care of the lithium cells. It's a very critical task (avoid over current, avoid over voltage, avoid over heating, avoid over charge, avoid too fast charging, avoid a deep dis-charge, refuse to charge after a dangerously too deep discharge, etc. Basically Lithium has a tendency to explode if you look it the wrong way). But it still only just this task. It guarantees nothing else beyond this task.
and all the usb cable does is provide 5v power to the phone
THAT is the point of failure. Everything assumes that the cable will provide more or less around 5v. And there's circuitry to shut down the input if veers a a little bit too much away from the safe zone around 5v.
But some ultra-cheap no-name chargers are built hastily. To save costs and speed up deliveries, the circuitry tends to be over simplified and the skip on some security features.
The cheapest sub-5$ chargers ARE NOT fail safe.
how could the cable cause the battery to catch fire?
The shitty after-market charger could over heat, melt some electrical paths, and suddenly wire it's output path straight to the 100-240V AC input.
Suddenly this USB charger has managed to transform your 5v USB charging cable into the USB cousin of The "Etherkiller".
And the security inside most smartphones was never meant to be exposed to 100-240V AC 10-20A. The 5W it usually operates at is magnitude smaller than what can be delivered when such a fault happens.
At that point everything overheats massively and catches fire: - charger, cable, whole smartphone... Even if the battery by some magic wasn't exposed to the shock, the subsequent fire of everything around it will make it explode.
In other words (incoming ob. car analogy !) you're complaining that the wind-shield of your car is damaged although it was supposed to be bullet proof when in practice the whole street was levelled by a nuke dropped from low-orbit.
Smart Streets ! - the abysmal security practices of the wonderful world of "Internet-of-Things" coupled together with - the extremely new and still in its infancy technology of self-driving cars (and still very contested. See comments threads each time Google announce having totalled N million miles).
Still I agree with the parent: extensive research (from Google and others) agrees that the most usefull place to put the sensors into is the car.
(The logic goes : - automated cars needs very fine details. - we don't have such highly detailed maps already - we should makes some, but it's going to be very cumbersome and time-and-ressource-consuming to detail all the raods in every excruciatingly tiny detail (nearly down to the position of every orange street cone) - hey! why don't we crowdsource the data? let's have our cars equipped with good enough sensors and stream their data to us and so we can continuously update the maps. - hey! if the cars' sensors are good enough to see every last orange street cone, why the hell do we need to upload the data and update the maps ? Let the car maps itself what it sees in its vicinity. - So basically, you need plain fucking simple street maps to have a vague idea in which general direction you want to go, and let's have highly sensitive/detailed sensors on the car to continuously see and analyse what's in the imediate vicinity of the car and react accordingly ?)
From that point of view, trying to trick the advertisers into funding more smart streets is nearly useless. Better find a way to monetise the car it self and put more sensors on it.
Hey! Maybe advertisers will pay us to drive!!
Now that's more interesting to me. Specially if I can manage to find a Google Car/Telsa/whatever port of uBlock Origin !:-D
Descent (actually Descent 2) was the most pukey terrible VR experience ever implemented. It's everything done 'wrong' for VR.
Well, *I* didn't have any nausea or whatever while playing it. I even though the 3D effect added a bit to the immersion.
My only complain was the accelerometers input weren't that resposive and a bit too cumber some for this game. Dual joysticks (with optionnal pedals) was and is still my preferred control setup for 6-DOF games.
But well again, I'm not the one crawling on the ground after each play. (I don't suffer much from sea sickness) So your mileage might vary...
I got a VFX1 at about half retail (IIRC at was about $700) and played with it for years. It was much better a couple of years later when GHz machines drove frame rates to 200 (games supporting the VFX1 having been made in the 200MHz era). Yes I know it refreshed at 30Hz, clear vSynch.
I should dust off the VFX1, and see how it feels next to the Oculus.
Finding compatible drivers (and even a compatible machine) for the ISA board (handling the accelerometer) will probably a real pain-in-the-ass.
(On the other hand, given that the VFX1 was one of the few VR headset to get popular - should I say the only major popular from that era - I'm sure you should find at least half a dozen of projects on github with Arduino firmware and schematic so you can drive it over USB).
On the other hand, modern GPUs are capable of so much processing, that you could clearly bump up the quality of the low resolution of VFX1's eye pieces. (You can probably turn FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering to the max to reduce the pixelation a bit).
You'll just need a way to setup the correct display mode to send whatever format the headset needs (I think VFX1 was side-by-side ? I don't remember... I even remember write a quick couple lines of code on the built-in QBasic of MS-DOS to test, but I really don't remember what it did use). Most modern-era "Stereo 3D" openGL drivers tend to rely on VESA DDC pin hardware swap (hello, anything on Nvidia), or auto-swap (hello eMagin Visor Z800), or swap command on a separate channel (hello, USB emitter from Nvidia).
I bet Descent on the Oculus is still a puke fest.
I *hope* the Occulus' 3D Stereo openGL driver can correctly patch into Descent's rendering stack. The problem is that Descent's own built-in stereo stack was designed at a time where you output images straight to the display, and complex (really expensive) optics assemblies make sure that you can see the image distosion-free, whereas on current-era "smartphone screen" VR Headset (Occulus, Vive, Google Cardbox, etc.) rely on cheap simple plastic lens and on the graphics engine outputing a pre-distorted image to compensate for lens aberrations.
Otherwise: I didn't feel any pukey at all when I tested my Visor on Descent (don't remember the source of my driver) and on Quake3 (used Wicked's 3D stereo patched openGL). But then again, I didn't have any problem with the original experience neither.
But I hope for you that increased quality of modern headset will help.
The devs likely never tried it on the VFX1, just went for it.
Given the high price and the rarity of stereo hardware: I'm sure that's probably how it happened indeed.
So some random dev at Parallax did spend some time for the mathematical model of stereo display (get the parallax correctly), wrote some generic code for "get the correct signal output" (side-by-side, vertically interlaced, etc.) Tested it shortly 5min on actual hardware made available to them for a very short timeslot at the office of some stereo headset maker. Saw that it basically works (yes, I have a stereo image, the depth seems correct at first glance), and then worked all the support for various headsets "by specs" (headset XyZ needs a vertically interlaced signal, so use this one when the player picks it up on
For the record: 90s headsets weren't much pukeyer than the Oculus (once you got them running on GHz+ machines and got the frame rates up).
It definitely depends on the user. I've never had any problem, neither with the VFX1, no the Virtual IO I-Glasses. (Neither the blurry display, nor the significant latency did bother me).
(The 2 that where demoed at a local computer shop) But friends of mine got quite dizzy and disoriented while playing Descent on the same hardware.
It all comes down to content.90s never reached anything like critical mass. And no killer app (VR porn).
Because back then, adjusted for inflation they did cost an arm and a leg. As stated above, we only played using the demo hardware at a computer shop. We couldn't manage to afford them.
Whereas mid 2000s, I managed to get eMagine Visor Z800 for a bargain price (I think I managed to catch it for nearly have the official retail price)
Nowadays the Dev Kit 2 of the Occulus Only cost 350$ that's cheaper than some gaming consoles.
So back in the 90s only a few ultra rich could afford VR at home. And thus there wasn't a big enough market to justify producing a lot of content, hence no killer app. Now, they are much more affordable, meaning nearly anyone interested could grab one, with a big enough market, lots more of content producer might by tempted to experiment with it. Including the pronographer. And we all know (VHS, Online-Streaming, etc.) how THIS is going to influence the market.
You wont be able to read text or tell the difference at that fine resolution and screen size, so whats the point?
If you sit on the other side of the living room ? Yeah maybe.
On the other hand, this screen has a pixel density which is approximately in the ~300 DPI range. This put it in the same ballpark as eReader (and the various Apple Retina thingies) Which is a very nice resolution to have for close range. Which means this can be very useful as monitor on your desktop, to which you sit close and which you use to display tons of small windows. Basically the equivalent of a multi-monitor setup, but all in a single package.
Maybe if it were a 50+ inch display I might get excited, but this is just a waste.
Which, while keeping the same pixel density, means such a display would be in the "16K" resolution. As this kind of resolution isn't even declared as a standard, it would be hard to advertise for a television screen. Which means a sizeable portion of customers to which it could be marketed too (all the "living room" users), in adition to the desktop computers / smart table/etc. crowd. Which means they probably won't be interested to demo their "300DPI-range technology" at 50"+ sizes until they can manage to market it to the sheeple too.
Back in the day, a 21 incher was the height of luxury. Insanely expensive.
Before that, Tektronix graphics terminals cost as much as houses.
At this pace, the next generation will be loudly complaining that their luxury gadgets cost a whole pair of chocolate candy bars worth more than normal goods and therefore are never going to catch up because of the crazy price.
Also again, like all the previous times, the tor.onion address ( http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/ ) continues to work flawlessly, no matter what, as long as you have a tor proxy/tor browser/whatever running.
So you've successfully proven the point of the poster you're replying to:
- a CRT was a vital part of a PC installation back then. - taking into account inflation, CRTs did cost an arm and a leg back then
- a VR is a novelty. A gadget for hardcore geeks to play with - VR headset cost a fraction of the above mentionned CRT price.
So a modern toy for a couple of people to experiment is less taxing on your wallet, than a vital part of an installation used to be back then.
And that's at a time when headset are still niche product for hardcore gamers to experiment with. (After a some time, if the technology move more mainstream, it could even get cheaper, with the production scaling up)
the only new thing that Oculus did was....... Um... Nothing.... Nothing at all.
There's hardly a new *thing* that the Oculus does. It does the exact same thing as old VRs back then, only it tries to said things better, thanks to *new technology*.
- It tries to dramatically cut down the price of optics and display: - For display, instead of relying on small very specialized displays (e.g.: like the LCOS found in some) it relies on displays that are now extremely popular and mass produced thanks to smart phone (simply high resolution OLED displays from smartphones) - For it goes for the "almost none" option : instead of a very complex (and very expensive) high quality lens assembly that is able to keep a picture straight, it uses the cheapest solution available and compensate the shape distorsion using (shader-) software. - Thanks to the above, the field of view is dramatically increased.
- It makes the display less blurry (using high fps OLED, instead of the LCD used by some displays back then) - It makes the interface more responsive (instead of using accelerometers only like older headsets, it supplements them with optical tracking for more precision and faster tracking - just like the human balance system, btw). - Both of these drastically reduce the risk of headaches/motion sickness and help a bit with the immersion
- All of the above costs a fraction of what VR headset did cost back then.
So basically Oculus doesn't add any feature, it strives to do the same feature better and cheaper.
If you were quite happy with the VR headsets in the 90s, don't go for the occulus, try to get one of the older for cheap on ebay. If you complained about motion sickness/headache or wished the whole thing to be more responsive/immersive, go get an Oculus, and you'll happily find that it costs a less significant part of your income. If you don't give a damn about VR, then keep your current screen/keyboard/mouse configuration. Whatever rocks your boat.
It's not a question of "worse". It's all about deaths. You can't be "worse dead than dead". The issue is the same: you're dead.
It's a question about numbers and "should I give a fuck about them".
There's a difference between something that has claimed less than 10 deaths since the dawn of humanity, and something that is likely to claim the life of nearly 50% of all people you've met in your life. For the people themselves, it's all the same : they're dead anyway. No one is worse than anyone else, they are all in the same situation, as bas as it can gets.
It's for organising something. If you're going to introduce drastic measures that will require people to completely change their habits and lifestyle, and will prevent them from doing some activities for ever, it'd better be worth.
It's a "cost" vs. "benefit" analysis. If the cost is high (making some everyday task unbearably annoying, banning for ever some activities, etc..) the benefit ought to be a bit more significant than "prevents 1 death out of trillion" (e.g: chance of dying following a direct meteor impact)
Fact is, more than 6,000 kids died in the eight years before lawn darts were banned. Now, is it worth banning just to save 763 lives a year?
Out of which population, what are the other causes of death and at which rate ?
In a big enough sample you could even find significant deaths caused by "improper use of handkerchief".
So put those death in relation with the rest.
If you reach the conclusion that "at 20% of all kids' death, this is the third most dangerous activity in this age group" (similar to deaths by car crashes or cardiovascular disease in adults) - yes, introducing a ban, or at least imposing new security regulations would be a nice idea leading to improvement. If you reach the conclustion that "this only represent 0.1% of all deaths, and is number 143 in the list of all death causes" (similar to deaths by lightning strike or terrorism in developed western countries), you're just wasting resources (though it sucks for those 0.1% kids, there are definitely more urgent matters)
Jobs umbrage at Eric Schmidt for Google adapting iOS ideas in Android
What ? Because Apple actually managed to bring something new which wasn't in countless predecessors in the PDA space ?
I'm genuinely curious. I remember the big noise Apple made around the iPhone, but all I could personally think was "well, somebody has bolted a phone/modem to my Palm. Big deal".
The only details I found of note is that the iPhone went for a capacitive touch screen - similar to laptop's touchpad, enabling multi-touch, but making impossible to make precise strokes [thus no graffiti/handwriting, no sketching, etc.] - whereas any of the other keyboard-less PDA of the time where all resistive touch screens - only one finger at a time to push the button, but if you use a stylus, you can draw extremely precise sketches, or use handwriting-/drawn symbols- based input.
I couldn't in fact any other thing that the iPhone provided that wasn't provided already on PDA. Was rather the opposite: back then the iPhone wasn't very open to hacker/devs/community (at the beginning, it was "webapps" only).
The whole point of buying google was that their boot loader was unlocked, and the hardware was documented and relatively open, and you could install whatever the shit you wanted.
(Even full blown GNU/Linux, Open WebOS, SailfishOS... even some hacked embed Windows for shit and giggles).
If Google isn't locking the new phones, a sizeable portion of their consumer base will still buy them.
If the non-AOSP parts aren't excessively intrusive and destroying the experience, a lot of the remaining portion will keep buying them.
If they manage to paint a white fruit on it, call it "iPixel" instead and add an extra "0" at the end of the price, they'll see a giant inrush of new customer and earn more fucktons of money they've ever dreamed of, even if counting the settlement for trademark infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
one day they ditch Android and replace with a new Symbian OS
Common, Nokia had thrown money to their R&D department.
They have thrown money at developping their Maemo/Meego platform.
They have thrown money at building the N700/N800/N900/N9 series of Linux PDAs/Phones.
They have basically paid all the things that became Jolla after the Linux R&D at Nokia got Sacked.
(Hence the joke - name).
In short they have already financed some sort of "new Symbian OS", i.e.: they have already financed a cool new OS.
Jolla has built Sailfish OS, a very nice full-blown GNU/Linux platform (that has support for Android Apps, through at least 2 different solutions).
But Jolla isn't that stellar with hardware (see tablet fiasco).
Why the heck won't Nokia reach out Jolla and find possible uses for Sailfish OS ?
They've basically paid for building it,
it will help them to distinguish themselves from an over-saturated Android market (just like Samsung is trying with Tizen, build on the exact same "Mer" core),
it will help them break the Andoird/iOS binary situation,
and unlike Microsoft's failed attemps, it can also leverage an existing App eco system (Android) so it doesn't feel like the poor App-less parent (like Palm/HP WebOS was, or like Windows is trending now) but has access to a proven successful ecosystem of Apps *right now".
We used that stunt to distribute wealth to private contractors to build gadgets for a symbolic purpose.
These gadgets weren't symbolic at all.
And I'm not speaking about "space technology has trickled into society" (Microwave, Velcro, whatever...)
I am speaking about very practical stuff some politicians had in mind :
- To send people to the moon, you need to be able to lift into low earth orbit everything they need to reach the moon : the astronauts themselves, their capsule, enough fuel to accelerate the capsule for the trip, and then decelerate when arriving, lander, fuel for the lander, fuel for the return trip, supplies, air, etc...
The whole trans-lunar package weights roughly about a hundred tons.
That's why the NASA needed to build the Saturn V rocket (and the Soviet attempted to build the N1-L3): to have something able to lift ~100 tons into low earth orbit.
It would have NOT been possible with previous generation of launcher technology (or you would have needed a couple of launches that you assemble in orbit. The kind of approach currently considered for Mars).
- The Tsar-Bomba, the biggest nuke ever, in its theoretical full 100 Mt configuration (not the "puny" 50 Mt that the USSR used for tests, to avoid too much nuclear fallout), would probably have weighted in the 50-100 tons range.
Do the maths.
Creating the Saturn V for the NASA (and attempting to create the N1-L3 for USSR) was not only done for the purpose of sending people to the moon.
Sending people to the moon is a very obvious demo telling the world : "We can send people to the moon. We have the technology to lift ~100tons into orbit. So we can lift a translift vehicle that will bring these astronauts to the moon. (And so we can also lift to LEO 100-tons worth of nukes, enough to completely obliterate a whole enemy country)".
The whole space race was for show and awe to the masses, but was thinly veiled menace between the defence programs throwing money at it. (A way to tell "with this new bigger rocket I could also be hurling even more nuke to you"). For the defence sector, lunar launcher weren't gadgets, they were very practical vehicle in a pissing contest/nuclear deterrent race.
It also explains why back then no nation bothered anywhere more than probes on Mars. Nobody developed anything bigger than Saturn V, and that could only launch very small payloads to Mars before getting hit by the Tsiolkovski rocket equation (or before considering in-orbit assembly like the current trend).
Given the lack of military application of possible solutions (even bigger rockets with bigger payloads, or in-orbit assembly), that's one reason less to get funding.
I am not saying that the single reason behind anything that happened during the space programs was due to the defence sector.
I am simply saying that potential military application was among the arguments that has pushed some technology faster forward than others and has contributed to prioritizing some aspect of the space program.
(Of course: economics and other have also played very important roles in practice).
And thus to fall back to the subject:
- space program wasn't a prestige only useless gadget.
- space program wasn't only a cash-cow for private subcontractors.
- it was also a program with very practical application for the defence sector (which helped fuel cash into it)
(And that's a small part of the reasons why it is a little bit less easy nowadays to re-start space programs :
- Military aren't interested in more space-toys - Drone and autonomous weapons are the new hot topic, No army desperately needs a 300+ tons package in orbit.
- Telecoms are the one interested in the current program (cheaper per-launch platforms means possibility to assemble in-orbit an interplanetary vessels like current Mars proposals... but also means cheaper way to put satellites in orbit).
- But those tend to has a smaller expendable budget to throw at the space programme).
No, if you want to build real interplanetary vessels, you'll build them in space, not on the Earth. Lifting the entire mass of a ship from the Earth's solution isn't economical or practical; all the major building materials we need are already in space.
One day, we'll maybe be there (once we have enough ore refineries in orbit ?)
For now we're still stuck with our industry on Earth, but at least we can already displace the assembly in space.
(but once space assembly is doable, further down the line you can start assembling an industry in-space).
First, Rei, RealDrJohn, it's nice to see a good discussion between specialists (Still one of the reasons why I keep hanging out on /. )
I also think that hyper massive ships are a good solution.
More possibility for shielding.
More fuel, bigger drives to accelerate to a higher top speed (and then again to decelerate to target orbit at the other end of the trip).
Also it fits better the *current* development of SpaceX and space programs in general :
cheap recyclable launchers.
When you want to build a giant inter-planetary vessel, you won't launch it into one single go (not like the new reboot StarTrek's Enterprise) because you're going to get hit hard by the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation.
You'll launch it piece by piece and build the vessel in space (like the ship harbour of older movies, or like the real-world ISS).
See the recent explanation video by SpaceX, showing the capsule and the giant freaking fuel tank (which doubles as a nice shield) being launched in 2 separate steps and then assembled in orbit before leaving for Mars.
That means trying to achieve cheaper multiple-launches which is also what the current needs are (launching sattelites and probes cheaply, instead of send huge masses away), and also what SpaceX is researching (cheap re-usable launchers).
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Also, maybe by then we will have some medical approach to try to shave a few % of the cancer risk.
Taking some meds maybe...
Maybe under some circumstances, special regiments rich in antioxydant could provably drop the cancer incidence and brain/heart damage in the radiation-exposed mices by 1-2% ?
Worse still, having the job of the controller done by the main phone CPU instead of dedicated hardware. Botching it like that brings down cost, but if something glitches (and the more complicated something is, the more likely it will glitch) then, well. SACF!
On the other hand, they are Samsung. It's still a known brand that cares a tiny bit about their reputation and are going to put some minute efforts into the quality.
It's not of those clowns that mass-produced self-balancing board (handle-bar-less segway clones. A.k.a.: "Hoverboard") at 200 $ a piece and managed such a low price by throwing all safeties and even good practices out of the window.
There's probably a dedicated hardware charging controller.
It's probably on the same die as the rest of the SoC, to cut down on costs (so, I a way, you *are* correct when you say "done by the CPU"), but it's probably an autonomous circuit that isn't affected by the CPU re-booting.
There's certifications to pass for the battery by itself, which means those safety circuits end up back on the battery again.
You mean the safety circuits present on that USD 3.95 USB charger from eBay (shipping free), from that seller with 300 positive review (nearly all of them review appearing in the week before he posted the selling of saif USB Charger ?) :-D
Or the safety circuits present on that "10'000mAh!!! Long-lige!!!! Hi-quality!!!!" battery from Shenzen ?
Well at least Samsung can look on the bright side: now they can clearly shift the blame to shitty after-market parts.
Or maybe the battery is now fine at more or less fullfilling their promises... ...but it's the charger that is completely over taxed.
Phone plugged into the provided charger are okay (charger can output all the phone pulls), phone plugged into high quality 3rd party are okay (charger limits what the phone can pull from it).
But phone plugged into cheap no-name Asian sub-5$ knockoffs have the charger overheat, melt, short itself and fry the smartphone.
Many important events the car cannot see.
Many of those important event will simply require using a bit more than the output of a single webcam mounted in the front of the car.
Did it rain on this road when it was below freezing? Was salt applied to the road before the Ice, did the temperature go below 0F (IE salt water freze point.)
(For the people on the other side of the pond: that's -32C)
You means things that non-autonomous cars already on the streets for the past few decades can correctly detect ?
Cars already have temperature sensors,
cars already have skid sensors.
If the car detects there's a risk of finding snow/ice (=temperature under freezing point) it puts a warning on the dash-board.
If the car finds ice, it shouts a huge alarm (=skid detected in addition of the temperature).
This are sensors that predate the emergence of complex powerful computers in cars.
Temperature sensors have been there for decades.
Skid detection is as old as skid prevention (the car automatically balances the force on breaks).
Cars have been able to ring snow alarms even before someone has taught about embedding the processing power of a couple of laptops into them.
Is that horse shaped object on the side of the road a restaurant billboard, or is it momentarily stopped.
Bad example again.
Simplistic systems that rely on a single webcam output might get confused.
Advanced systems that rely on a stereo pair of cameras (e.g.: Mercedes, Mazda, etc.) and/or a LIDAR complementing the video feeds (e.g.: Volvo, VW and tons of other manufacturers) can actually distinguish such object.
In addition, most cars' system is able to see object moving and can detect if the object has recently stopped moving or if it was 100% immobile the whole time.
This is equipment that is already deployed on adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance systems. It's in cars which are currently on the streets.
(I think Volvo had some couple of video showing how their car detect pedestrians and bike riders).
I think you're maybe a little bit under-estimating what is currently possible with modern sensors and post-processing.
One of the advantage of image processing is that a lot of it is very parallelisable, and thus could be much more easily done on many-core / SIMD / and such technologies.
(There's a reason why Nvidia is advertising their in-car neural-networks).
A stationary set of sensors installed in critical areas to facilitate autonomy would allow so much cheaper sensors in the cars, and better speeds, and safer. {...} Instead of having to concentrate on small sections of the environment, like the cars are having to do today, to be able to process all of this in less than a second.
Maybe it's just that I have a different perspective because I tend to drive a lot on the dense and distributed north european highway network...
But I have the impression that this is going to require many more sensors.
*Relying* on a set of stationary sensors on the streets means that you can only drive on the small subset of high traffic streets that are equipped with sensors.
Outside of stationary sensors streets, the car will be unable to drive autonomously.
Which is bad. Given the backlash that some people give against electric car for not having a network of charging station as dense as the gas station, imagine if your car did rely only on sensors available on a small subset of roads.
And that's when counting on the sensors to be 100% operational all the time. Now if you take into account outages, breaking of old age, vandalism and other destruction, etc. You can have even less road with fully available information or with reliable information.
The best would be for cars to optionally benefit from extra information. Pack as much sensors as possible on the car itself (And given the price of some cars, a few extra / better sens
Considering that the charger is in the phone itself
This circuitry's job is "only" to take care of the lithium cells.
It's a very critical task (avoid over current, avoid over voltage, avoid over heating, avoid over charge, avoid too fast charging, avoid a deep dis-charge, refuse to charge after a dangerously too deep discharge, etc. Basically Lithium has a tendency to explode if you look it the wrong way).
But it still only just this task.
It guarantees nothing else beyond this task.
and all the usb cable does is provide 5v power to the phone
THAT is the point of failure.
Everything assumes that the cable will provide more or less around 5v.
And there's circuitry to shut down the input if veers a a little bit too much away from the safe zone around 5v.
But some ultra-cheap no-name chargers are built hastily.
To save costs and speed up deliveries, the circuitry tends to be over simplified and the skip on some security features.
The cheapest sub-5$ chargers ARE NOT fail safe.
how could the cable cause the battery to catch fire?
The shitty after-market charger could over heat, melt some electrical paths, and suddenly wire it's output path straight to the 100-240V AC input.
Suddenly this USB charger has managed to transform your 5v USB charging cable into the USB cousin of The "Etherkiller".
And the security inside most smartphones was never meant to be exposed to 100-240V AC 10-20A.
The 5W it usually operates at is magnitude smaller than what can be delivered when such a fault happens.
At that point everything overheats massively and catches fire:
- charger, cable, whole smartphone...
Even if the battery by some magic wasn't exposed to the shock, the subsequent fire of everything around it will make it explode.
In other words (incoming ob. car analogy !) you're complaining that the wind-shield of your car is damaged although it was supposed to be bullet proof when in practice the whole street was levelled by a nuke dropped from low-orbit.
Final score:
Smartphone : 0
USB-killer : 1
Also, as an addendum :
Smart Streets !
- the abysmal security practices of the wonderful world of "Internet-of-Things"
coupled together with
- the extremely new and still in its infancy technology of self-driving cars (and still very contested. See comments threads each time Google announce having totalled N million miles).
"What could possibly go wront ?" (tm)
But don't you see? Advertisers will fund them!
Yep, I see your point.
Still I agree with the parent: extensive research (from Google and others) agrees that the most usefull place to put the sensors into is the car.
(The logic goes :
- automated cars needs very fine details.
- we don't have such highly detailed maps already
- we should makes some, but it's going to be very cumbersome and time-and-ressource-consuming to detail all the raods in every excruciatingly tiny detail (nearly down to the position of every orange street cone)
- hey! why don't we crowdsource the data? let's have our cars equipped with good enough sensors and stream their data to us and so we can continuously update the maps.
- hey! if the cars' sensors are good enough to see every last orange street cone, why the hell do we need to upload the data and update the maps ? Let the car maps itself what it sees in its vicinity.
- So basically, you need plain fucking simple street maps to have a vague idea in which general direction you want to go, and let's have highly sensitive/detailed sensors on the car to continuously see and analyse what's in the imediate vicinity of the car and react accordingly ?)
From that point of view, trying to trick the advertisers into funding more smart streets is nearly useless. Better find a way to monetise the car it self and put more sensors on it.
Hey! Maybe advertisers will pay us to drive!!
Now that's more interesting to me. :-D
Specially if I can manage to find a Google Car/Telsa/whatever port of uBlock Origin !
Descent (actually Descent 2) was the most pukey terrible VR experience ever implemented. It's everything done 'wrong' for VR.
Well, *I* didn't have any nausea or whatever while playing it. I even though the 3D effect added a bit to the immersion.
My only complain was the accelerometers input weren't that resposive and a bit too cumber some for this game.
Dual joysticks (with optionnal pedals) was and is still my preferred control setup for 6-DOF games.
But well again, I'm not the one crawling on the ground after each play. (I don't suffer much from sea sickness) So your mileage might vary...
I got a VFX1 at about half retail (IIRC at was about $700) and played with it for years. It was much better a couple of years later when GHz machines drove frame rates to 200 (games supporting the VFX1 having been made in the 200MHz era). Yes I know it refreshed at 30Hz, clear vSynch.
I should dust off the VFX1, and see how it feels next to the Oculus.
Finding compatible drivers (and even a compatible machine) for the ISA board (handling the accelerometer) will probably a real pain-in-the-ass.
(On the other hand, given that the VFX1 was one of the few VR headset to get popular - should I say the only major popular from that era - I'm sure you should find at least half a dozen of projects on github with Arduino firmware and schematic so you can drive it over USB).
On the other hand, modern GPUs are capable of so much processing, that you could clearly bump up the quality of the low resolution of VFX1's eye pieces.
(You can probably turn FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering to the max to reduce the pixelation a bit).
You'll just need a way to setup the correct display mode to send whatever format the headset needs (I think VFX1 was side-by-side ? I don't remember... I even remember write a quick couple lines of code on the built-in QBasic of MS-DOS to test, but I really don't remember what it did use).
Most modern-era "Stereo 3D" openGL drivers tend to rely on VESA DDC pin hardware swap (hello, anything on Nvidia), or auto-swap (hello eMagin Visor Z800), or swap command on a separate channel (hello, USB emitter from Nvidia).
I bet Descent on the Oculus is still a puke fest.
I *hope* the Occulus' 3D Stereo openGL driver can correctly patch into Descent's rendering stack.
The problem is that Descent's own built-in stereo stack was designed at a time where you output images straight to the display, and complex (really expensive) optics assemblies make sure that you can see the image distosion-free, whereas on current-era "smartphone screen" VR Headset (Occulus, Vive, Google Cardbox, etc.) rely on cheap simple plastic lens and on the graphics engine outputing a pre-distorted image to compensate for lens aberrations.
Otherwise: I didn't feel any pukey at all when I tested my Visor on Descent (don't remember the source of my driver) and on Quake3 (used Wicked's 3D stereo patched openGL).
But then again, I didn't have any problem with the original experience neither.
But I hope for you that increased quality of modern headset will help.
The devs likely never tried it on the VFX1, just went for it.
Given the high price and the rarity of stereo hardware: I'm sure that's probably how it happened indeed.
So some random dev at Parallax did spend some time for the mathematical model of stereo display (get the parallax correctly),
wrote some generic code for "get the correct signal output" (side-by-side, vertically interlaced, etc.)
Tested it shortly 5min on actual hardware made available to them for a very short timeslot at the office of some stereo headset maker.
Saw that it basically works (yes, I have a stereo image, the depth seems correct at first glance),
and then worked all the support for various headsets "by specs" (headset XyZ needs a vertically interlaced signal, so use this one when the player picks it up on
For the record: 90s headsets weren't much pukeyer than the Oculus (once you got them running on GHz+ machines and got the frame rates up).
It definitely depends on the user.
I've never had any problem, neither with the VFX1, no the Virtual IO I-Glasses.
(Neither the blurry display, nor the significant latency did bother me).
(The 2 that where demoed at a local computer shop)
But friends of mine got quite dizzy and disoriented while playing Descent on the same hardware.
It all comes down to content.90s never reached anything like critical mass. And no killer app (VR porn).
Because back then, adjusted for inflation they did cost an arm and a leg.
As stated above, we only played using the demo hardware at a computer shop.
We couldn't manage to afford them.
Whereas mid 2000s, I managed to get eMagine Visor Z800 for a bargain price (I think I managed to catch it for nearly have the official retail price)
Nowadays the Dev Kit 2 of the Occulus Only cost 350$ that's cheaper than some gaming consoles.
So back in the 90s only a few ultra rich could afford VR at home. And thus there wasn't a big enough market to justify producing a lot of content, hence no killer app.
Now, they are much more affordable, meaning nearly anyone interested could grab one, with a big enough market, lots more of content producer might by tempted to experiment with it. Including the pronographer. And we all know (VHS, Online-Streaming, etc.) how THIS is going to influence the market.
You wont be able to read text or tell the difference at that fine resolution and screen size, so whats the point?
If you sit on the other side of the living room ? Yeah maybe.
On the other hand, this screen has a pixel density which is approximately in the ~300 DPI range.
This put it in the same ballpark as eReader (and the various Apple Retina thingies)
Which is a very nice resolution to have for close range.
Which means this can be very useful as monitor on your desktop, to which you sit close and which you use to display tons of small windows.
Basically the equivalent of a multi-monitor setup, but all in a single package.
Maybe if it were a 50+ inch display I might get excited, but this is just a waste.
Which, while keeping the same pixel density, means such a display would be in the "16K" resolution. /etc. crowd.
As this kind of resolution isn't even declared as a standard, it would be hard to advertise for a television screen.
Which means a sizeable portion of customers to which it could be marketed too (all the "living room" users), in adition to the desktop computers / smart table
Which means they probably won't be interested to demo their "300DPI-range technology" at 50"+ sizes until they can manage to market it to the sheeple too.
Back in the day, a 21 incher was the height of luxury. Insanely expensive.
Before that, Tektronix graphics terminals cost as much as houses.
At this pace, the next generation will be loudly complaining that their luxury gadgets cost a whole pair of chocolate candy bars worth more than normal goods and therefore are never going to catch up because of the crazy price.
They also have a .onion address ( http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/ ) so you can simply fire up your tor proxy, and it works flawlessly.
Also again, like all the previous times, the tor .onion address ( http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/ ) continues to work flawlessly, no matter what, as long as you have a tor proxy/tor browser/whatever running.
A CRT works {...}
So you've successfully proven the point of the poster you're replying to:
- a CRT was a vital part of a PC installation back then.
- taking into account inflation, CRTs did cost an arm and a leg back then
- a VR is a novelty. A gadget for hardcore geeks to play with
- VR headset cost a fraction of the above mentionned CRT price.
So a modern toy for a couple of people to experiment is less taxing on your wallet, than a vital part of an installation used to be back then.
And that's at a time when headset are still niche product for hardcore gamers to experiment with.
(After a some time, if the technology move more mainstream, it could even get cheaper, with the production scaling up)
the only new thing that Oculus did was....... Um... Nothing.... Nothing at all.
There's hardly a new *thing* that the Oculus does.
It does the exact same thing as old VRs back then, only it tries to said things better, thanks to *new technology*.
- It tries to dramatically cut down the price of optics and display:
- For display, instead of relying on small very specialized displays (e.g.: like the LCOS found in some) it relies on displays that are now extremely popular and mass produced thanks to smart phone (simply high resolution OLED displays from smartphones)
- For it goes for the "almost none" option : instead of a very complex (and very expensive) high quality lens assembly that is able to keep a picture straight, it uses the cheapest solution available and compensate the shape distorsion using (shader-) software.
- Thanks to the above, the field of view is dramatically increased.
- It makes the display less blurry (using high fps OLED, instead of the LCD used by some displays back then)
- It makes the interface more responsive (instead of using accelerometers only like older headsets, it supplements them with optical tracking for more precision and faster tracking - just like the human balance system, btw).
- Both of these drastically reduce the risk of headaches/motion sickness and help a bit with the immersion
- All of the above costs a fraction of what VR headset did cost back then.
So basically Oculus doesn't add any feature, it strives to do the same feature better and cheaper.
If you were quite happy with the VR headsets in the 90s, don't go for the occulus, try to get one of the older for cheap on ebay.
If you complained about motion sickness/headache or wished the whole thing to be more responsive/immersive, go get an Oculus, and you'll happily find that it costs a less significant part of your income.
If you don't give a damn about VR, then keep your current screen/keyboard/mouse configuration. Whatever rocks your boat.
Systemd trolls coming in 3, 2, 1, ...
Their system hasn't booted yet.
the old "but something else is worse" fallacy.
It's not a question of "worse". It's all about deaths. You can't be "worse dead than dead". The issue is the same: you're dead.
It's a question about numbers and "should I give a fuck about them".
There's a difference between something that has claimed less than 10 deaths since the dawn of humanity, and something that is likely to claim the life of nearly 50% of all people you've met in your life.
For the people themselves, it's all the same : they're dead anyway. No one is worse than anyone else, they are all in the same situation, as bas as it can gets.
It's for organising something.
If you're going to introduce drastic measures that will require people to completely change their habits and lifestyle, and will prevent them from doing some activities for ever, it'd better be worth.
It's a "cost" vs. "benefit" analysis.
If the cost is high (making some everyday task unbearably annoying, banning for ever some activities, etc..) the benefit ought to be a bit more significant than "prevents 1 death out of trillion" (e.g: chance of dying following a direct meteor impact)
Fact is, more than 6,000 kids died in the eight years before lawn darts were banned. Now, is it worth banning just to save 763 lives a year?
Out of which population, what are the other causes of death and at which rate ?
In a big enough sample you could even find significant deaths caused by "improper use of handkerchief".
So put those death in relation with the rest.
If you reach the conclusion that "at 20% of all kids' death, this is the third most dangerous activity in this age group" (similar to deaths by car crashes or cardiovascular disease in adults) - yes, introducing a ban, or at least imposing new security regulations would be a nice idea leading to improvement.
If you reach the conclustion that "this only represent 0.1% of all deaths, and is number 143 in the list of all death causes" (similar to deaths by lightning strike or terrorism in developed western countries), you're just wasting resources (though it sucks for those 0.1% kids, there are definitely more urgent matters)
Jobs umbrage at Eric Schmidt for Google adapting iOS ideas in Android
What ? Because Apple actually managed to bring something new which wasn't in countless predecessors in the PDA space ?
I'm genuinely curious. I remember the big noise Apple made around the iPhone, but all I could personally think was "well, somebody has bolted a phone/modem to my Palm. Big deal".
The only details I found of note is that the iPhone went for a capacitive touch screen - similar to laptop's touchpad, enabling multi-touch, but making impossible to make precise strokes [thus no graffiti/handwriting, no sketching, etc.] - whereas any of the other keyboard-less PDA of the time where all resistive touch screens - only one finger at a time to push the button, but if you use a stylus, you can draw extremely precise sketches, or use handwriting-/drawn symbols- based input.
I couldn't in fact any other thing that the iPhone provided that wasn't provided already on PDA.
Was rather the opposite: back then the iPhone wasn't very open to hacker/devs/community (at the beginning, it was "webapps" only).
You can still drill one into it, if it misses a jack.
(Just don't forget to put the phone in the Microwave to recharge it's battery if it stops working while the drilling is in progress).
The whole point of buying google was that their boot loader was unlocked, and the hardware was documented and relatively open, and you could install whatever the shit you wanted.
(Even full blown GNU/Linux, Open WebOS, SailfishOS... even some hacked embed Windows for shit and giggles).
If Google isn't locking the new phones, a sizeable portion of their consumer base will still buy them.
If the non-AOSP parts aren't excessively intrusive and destroying the experience, a lot of the remaining portion will keep buying them.
If they manage to paint a white fruit on it, call it "iPixel" instead and add an extra "0" at the end of the price, they'll see a giant inrush of new customer and earn more fucktons of money they've ever dreamed of, even if counting the settlement for trademark infringement.