The setup was great, but the ending was disappointing. I was expecting him to visually show a2 + b2 = c2 by cutting up the two squares into tiny pieces and rearranging them to show that they're the same as c2... but sadly he didn't.
So I'm still left waiting for actual visual proof that goes all the way.
It wasn't really abandoned so much as killed by PayPal.
The project used PayPal to gather downpayments, PayPal decided to lock the funds for months (almost a year or maybe longer IIRC) because they saw money coming in but no confirmation of goods coming out. And, you know, when it comes to big companies, no explanation is sufficient, you are guilty of something because some heuristic said so, so the funds were locked, legal threats didn't work (try threatening a company with the power of a small/medium country), and by the time they got their money back, key people who were going to work at a discount to cover key milestones had moved on.
This seems like weird revisionist history or I missed something. I never got a dime back that I spent on the Neo900, which I assumed they spent on their personal lifestyles and travel while trying and failing to design and manufacture a board.
If there was actually a holdup of funds that killed the project, and eventually the funds were released, that's an even worse story. I didn't think there could be a worse story. It would mean that the project fell apart while they were waiting on cash, then when they got it they just treated it like a personal windfall. IIRC I ended up out $1.5K on the thing.
Paypal released the funds to the project, not to the people making the downpayments. Paypal never returns money immediately to anyone, they sit on it for months while they "investigate".
I don't know who you are or where you were but the paypal problems were pretty well announced and _I_ was there. The project was already facing delays because a key person who was needed to make the board layouts was held up with the also now dead DragonBox Pyra handheld.
I have no idea where you think the money went, how much you think there was, but it was a constant game of trying to drum up enough activity to gain attention of potential customers to bring in enough down-payments to pay the salaries of the small number of people working on the project while having enough money to buy parts. The money went into salaries, parts, nobody bought hookers or blow with it, and certainly nobody got anything but stress out of that project in the end. I believe Joerg Reisenweber paid a lawyer out of pocket to try to get PayPal to release the funds.
There's no financial incentive. No other mass consumer device besides PCs use DisplayPort, heck, even PCs generally have an HDMI port. So the percentage of TV buyers who actually need to use DisplayPort (basically Linux users) would be a very very very small minority.
I'd assume if they aren't part of HDMI cartel as the above post suggests, they are paying patent fees for this garbage.
And they are in a good position to unblock this situation by increasing adoption of patent free alternatives, therefore I don't see why they wouldn't have an incentive to avoid paying.
So I'd rather see them as somehow complicit then, instead of having no incentive in this case.
They have to pay the fees regardless, since no TV would sell if it didn't have an HDMI port. So unless the TV manufacturers can also convince set-top box makers, game console manufacturers, Blu-Ray makers etc to include DisplayPort, they'll need to continue including an HDMI port.
So this needs to be an industry-wide switch, not just TV makers.
For now, but that doesn't stop them from nudging things in the direction where HDMI will become obsolete by doing their part. I.e. it's not an instant thing, but each step in that direction helps and they can make a pretty significant one.
So the argument of no incentives just doesn't make sense, but it's a gradual process to get there. Unless their bean counters only understand super short term incentives. Then they should be blamed too for why things aren't improving in this regard.
The incentive seems very thin/weak. Pay extra now to push DP adoption and hope that in ~10-15 years you can drop the HDMI port? Meanwhile you still pay the cartel, and they invest your money directly against your interests. And it all hinges on predicting consumer adoption which is nearly impossible. I honestly don’t see how they could justify making such a step in that direction let alone a significant one.
That's a catch 22 / circular argument that can always be used to excuse inaction, but it's not a real argument. Yes, it's a long term problem to solve and has many moving parts. But if they don't solve their part, they are only slowing it down even more. Any contribution to move things forward moves things forward, and lack of it delays things.
I.e. if you are saying "we feed the cartel, let's not do anything about it, since doing anything will only potentially help later, so we still need to feed the cartel in in the interim" doesn't really stand any argument grounds. I.e. feed the cartel and do nothing is worse than feed the cartel and do what you can to stop that over time.
And their piece of this is pretty big (huge portion of TV market), that's why they in particular should be asked more than others, why they aren't doing their part.
It's not so much that it's a catch 22, its that there's no financial incentive for them. TVs are a low margin item already, and Samsung/LG get their margin by being brand names and advertising fancy features.
I doubt they would meaningfully save money over investing in DP, and the opportunity cost is greater for them to spend that money on the next "Frame" TV or whatever.
LG, Samsung and Sony are the only actual panel manufacturers and they probably bake those license fees into the panels they sell back to HDMI Forum.
May be, but by not solving the problem, they become part of the problem, even if they aren't part of HDMI cartel directly. So it's their fault too problems like above happen.
For DP adoption it's too late. They should push for USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 instead. We are in the phase where about every new laptop has USB4. Connecting your laptop/phone to a TV might be a selling point. I'd love that for hotel TVs.
> RDF stands for Resource Description Framework and is a standard for describing web resources and data interchange, developed and standardized with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Wouldn't have guessed it. My first guess was Relational Document Format.
I reckon your best bet would be the Unihertz Jelly Star[1] - it has a 3" screen, which is comparable to your old HTC Hero (3.2"), and you can run a LineageOS GSI on it. Oh, and it has a programmable hardware button, 3.5mm jack and a frikking INFRARED PORT to control TVs etc!
Sadly no trackball, but no modern phone has one anymore.
So I'm still left waiting for actual visual proof that goes all the way.
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