Ostensibly it’s meant for VR. Strap the phone on next to your eyeballs.
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One of the things in my college library was a late Victorian stereoscopic viewer and a full set of slides, which you could use if the librarian thought you were safe. You looked through adjustable lenses.
All of these modern stereo headsets can be summarised as “copy of Victorian original but with a phone or LCD display”.
The most basic versions had images about 60mm square (because that’s roughly the smallest adult eye separation). Cleverer ones had mirrors or prisms so that the images were off to one side and quarter (or even half) plate could be used. Let’s call them about 75 by 100mm.
The resolution of the lenses of those days, allowing for camera shake, was probably no better than 1/15-1/20mm. Which gives a resolution of the image comparable to a 1440px screen divided in two.
Which to me just goes to show that when it comes to human factors nothing much changes.
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A friend of mine has an old stereoscope. We ran some Google Cardboard apps on my phone and used the stereoscope to view them. It worked great! The stereoscope was more adjustable than the standard VR headsets. Didn’t have a proper bracket to hold the phone of course, but it would be a nice steampunk way to do VR.
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It’s been a while since I read the National Geographic magazine– in print form or otherwise. And getting a handle on the print technologies used at the magazine has proven difficult–though perhaps I’m using the wrong keywords.
I did find this:
which suggest that prior to 1978, the print quality of the magazine was really quite poor-- “4 color letterpress” if that means anything to you…
Now, they use rotogravure. (again, if that means anything to you.)
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Letterpress is direct printing. The inked plates are successively pressed onto a sheet of paper. Four colour letterpress needs 4 plates. Because the plates are directly pressed onto paper, which is abrasive, and because the plates stop for a short time, the process is relatively slow and the life of the plates is not long. But letterpress, with careful alignment, is capable of giving excellent quality because the image is transferred directly from plate to paper.
Web offset is the usual modern type of printing. The plates (which are cylinders) are on rotating drums. The drums pick up ink and then are pressed against a rotating drum of a softer material which in turn is pressed against the paper. The process is semi-continuous. In a sheetfed press, one sheet follows another. In a rotary press, the paper is on a continuous roll and is chopped into sheets at the end, automatically. The offset press is much faster because the motion is more or less continuous, and the soft drum wears rather than the plates.
However, the transfer of ink, first from plate to drum and then from drum to paper, meant that for a long time web presses were not as good as letterpress. Which is why Nat Geo, proud of its excellent printing by magazine standards, took so long to adopt it.
I worked as CIO and technical consultant to a commercial printing consultancy for some years and I still get paper Nat Geo - it is extremely well printed using high quality ink on good paper with a gloss layer over, possibly using a 10-unit press. These are seriously expensive pieces of kit costing in the millions, and they are like the gaping mouths of baby birds - they need constant feeding to pay for themselves. Which is why a lot of production moved to the Far East, and why dead tree newspapers are dying out - using a high quality press to churn out colour newsprint on cheap paper with inferior ink is like using a Porsche to go for the milk, and as economic.
Laser printers are a kind of web offset printer. There are web offset inkjets like the Indigo but they’ve never hugely caught on, though they can do excellent work with up to 7 colours.
The Wikipedia articles suck, but there’s no point in trying to edit them.
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I have a friend who was writing a book set at the turn of the century. The killer app from the stereoscope was porn. There were companies that had monthly slide services that would send you pics of ladies with their clothes off. Because they didn’t use the camera techniques that focus on the body parts the way modern porn does, these pics are super tame looking to a modern eye.
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Sing it with me…
The Internet Steroscope is for Porn!
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I used to work with an engineer who started off as an installer for the printing industry. He was sent off to install what was for the day a very advanced 8-unit (4 colour 2 sides) press in a rural US state. The plant was a long way out of town, up a long hill. The press was advanced in that it had a very fast changeover (between plates).
The business of the plant was printing pornography. Periodically the police would come out to check what they were doing. The plant somehow got a tipoff (from a plant or observation, don’t know which.) When the police arrived, all work in progress and the plates were in a truck driving around the hills and the plant was printing illustrated Bibles. The work was wildly profitable, which was why they could afford a state of the art press to be sent out from Germany.
See how computers are eating away at well paid middle class jobs?
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@RAvery please resurrect this thread after you’ve used the service for a month, and tell us if those caps ever came to haunt you
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Resurrect?!
It still lives in my heart!
But I will do as you ask. I could probably write my opinion now, but I’ll give it another couple of weeks.
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OK, I think it’s time for me to update this.
Report coming soon.
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How’s that report coming along?
Gasp! Did they throttle you right out of existence‽
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I am writing it. Something else is just currently receiving more attention.
In other words, Merv will be back after these messages.
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On becoming limitless…
As you may know, a couple months ago I switched to the Verizon Unlimited plan, and have been promising to write a review of my experiences living with that plan. Forgive me for the delay, but I didn’t want to write anything until I had lived with the ups and downs of the service for a little while. I also got caught up writing an epic review of an early 80s sci-fi movie.
First of all we should salute Verizon for choosing the name “Unlimited.” This is an example of their fine sense of corporate humor, it’s enough to make Ajit Pai laugh. I mean you just have to laugh, because this plan is full of limitations. Sure the amount of data you can potentially consume is unlimited, but your ability to get to that data is limited by your ability to jump through flaming hoops.
A little background.
My Verizon plan is tied to my iPhone 5s, which I have had since January of 2015. The plan I signed up for at that time was 1 GB of data for something like $65 month, but because they gave me lousy service when I was trying to sign up they gave me 2 GB per month. I felt like a winner that day, let me tell you. I mean, how could anyone use 2 GB of data in a month?
Two GB was fine while I had WiFi at home, but after fate uprooted me and drew me back to the City of Destiny I realized I needed more data that could travel with me. So, soon after arriving, I upgraded to a $75 plan with 10 GB of data that allowed my iPhone to be a hotspot. That was pretty hot — so now my iPhone, a technological Swiss Army knife, is now a modem too. But websites being what they are these days, 10 GB in a month was hard to stick to.
So now we come to my present plan. Soon after I started this thread I indeed took the plunge and upgraded to the “Unlimited” plan for $95 a month.
Am I happy with it? Yes, on the whole.
But why? Why would I not want WiFi? Because I’m “camping out” in the big city while I’m waiting for my life to restabilize. Seriously. In my apartment I currently have a table, a chair and an air mattress on the floor. I’m not sure if I’ going to stay at this address for more than a year. So having one less bill and one less electronic box plugged into the wall is a good thing.
Here are the positives:
- Only one bill. Not separate bills for internet and cellular service.
- Data speed on my iPhone is quick and convenient, and I have access to data anywhere.
- Data speed to paired devices is very limited, but just fast enough to be basically usable.
- Verizon has recently dropped the price for this plan to $75 a month. That’s $20 more per month for me! Despite all the negatives, listed below, at that price how can you lose?
- I can browse on my phone all I want and never worry about checking my data usage.
- My iPhone tells me how many devices are paired to it, so I can tell if there are any unwanted users.
- Updating the password is incredibly painless.
The negatives:
- The data allowed to paired devices is very limited.
- It seems that all paired devices get to fight over the same limited amount of data.
- Sometimes the speed is so slow you almost feel like cussing. Then you just remind yourself that it’s a first-world problem.
- iOS devices cannot do the iCloud backup over Verizon’s network. Why? I have to imagine it’s some arrangement Apple made with Verizon.
- You also cannot download apps larger than 150mb over Verizon’s network. However you can update the system software over their network. Once again, why? There is no good reason. We’re on the cutting edge here, people.
- You can’t talk on the phone while surfing the 'net.
One last word about Verizon dropping the prices on their “Unlimited” plans. No, I will not be upgrading to their “Unlimited Beyond” plan which is now only $95/month. The only real advantage that plan has to offer is unrestricted speed on paired devices, and that speed drops back to the normal after 15GB of data is used. And what’s 15GB? Bupkis.
That about wraps up everything I can think of saying for now. I’ll be happy to answer any specific questions anyone would like to ask.
@Donald_Petersen, here it is.
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Happy to hear it’s working out for you!
That would be the killer for me. My phone data use is negligible. 95%+ of my usage is on PCs (youtube is big) or the family watching TV via netflix/hulu/etc. or on their phones. And if the family’s phones didn’t work well, they’d end up on more expensive plans rather than link in through the WIFI.
For reference there are 3+ of us here, usually using up to 3 or 4 PCs, as many phones, and a TV. Usage shows 400-800 GB/month total on WIFI (mostly video).
I’d rather shut off the cheaper phone service and just use the phone on WIFI than pay as much as a comcast bill for phone service and try to run everything else off it. But different situations call for different solutions. If it works well for you, that’s great!
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I think you’re making a wise choice.
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Agreed. I’ve been really appreciative of this thread, because it’s a good excuse to review what plans actually work for each situation.
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After forever on ATT (If you pretend Cingular never happened, then it would 22 years this year) I’m finally in a position to start looking at other plans.
While ATT has pissed me off in the past, I just don’t ken to Verizon’s CDMA tech and their coverage sucks at my Work location (according to co-workers with VZN)
I’ll only be moving my own number since my wife is porting her old number to Google Voice (or similar - still looking) so all these FAMILY PLANS do nothing for me.
Google Fi looks interesting, but I’d need a new phone. Does anyone have experience with it?
I hate decisions
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I wish I could help you.
I’ve only heard of “Google Fu.”
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My brother is on Google Fi and likes it, but I think his use-case is unusual. He basically never goes anywhere except his office and his house, which are a couple miles apart and both of which have wifi. So he may use essentially no data every month, but then the option is always there if he needs it - so it makes a lot of sense because you don’t pay for what you don’t use.
To me it looks like a great plan even if you do use a lot of data though. It’s exactly what you would expect - everything that’s annoying or just plain wrong about the traditional carriers is fixed. An impressive example of that is their no-extra-charge, no-hassle, unlimited international data usage - which you need even just in Canada, which is important to people who live along the border like my family; like I said my brother doesn’t go anywhere but my parents go on extended trips in Canada regularly (I used to as well).
I do hope my parents don’t switch too - they were considering it when my brother got it - because I am (and he was) on their grandfathered ATT family plan (which may be as old as yours) which is relatively inexpensive for not unlimited, but enough data that I use it with great abandon and never even think about it - and I just switched to an iPhone after years of Nexuses (1-6P, skipping some), and of course only Android phones work with Google Fi.
Considering how much data the excellent iPhone X allows me to blow through each month with great ease, I would probably not save money on Google Fi compared to the grandfathered plan, but I’d probably still switch (if you could use iPhones) because of everything else about it.
I suspect if they did allow iPhones AT&T and Verizon would lose a lot of customers, fast (at least those like me who bought unlocked phones) - but besides the obvious fact that Google wants to promote usage of Android, my understanding is that a lot of the extra Fi features are built into Android, and it’s hard to imagine Apple working with Google to do something like that - the fact that any Google stuff works on the iPhone at all feels like it was allowed only very begrudgingly, even at this late date in iPhone history. Of course, I would still take it without the extra features.
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