Samsung Reinvents Windows (Not the OS) With Touchscreen Display 227
An anonymous reader writes "If you want a large, interactive display on your wall, typically you have to make space for it by moving any pictures out of the way, and finding room next to any shelves or lighting you have installed. Samsung's idea is to remove that problem by creating a transparent display that replaces an actual window, or at least sit over the top of one. The display uses ambient light during the day and then can switch over to a more traditional black background as a night time mode. If you want to shut the daylight out it has virtual blinds you can draw to help darken a room. And from the outside you just like you are tapping your window as none of the graphics can be seen. Yes, your neighbors will talk."
Wouldn't be surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wouldn't be surprised (Score:4, Funny)
So, South Korea?
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It'll just be ad-sponsored (cf: Black Mirror).
Wow! (Score:3)
I'll finally be able to see the dust in the back corner of my cubicle!
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
OMG I had to scroll down 200 "the widget is copied from apple" comments to find a poster actually focusing on the subject! Event if it is an ill fated attempt at being funny.
Anyway. what I can't get my head around is that:
If it's working as they say why are they only showing one side of the screen and at that have the screen pointed into a light box with a printed 3D environment wallpaper.
Finally ? (Score:2)
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While I do wear shirts with letters and images on them, I can somewhat see where you are coming from. I don't wear shirts where the design is the corporate logo/name of the brand of apparel (Nike shirts), and have even taken to removing the large nameplate label from the back waistband of jeans I buy after purchase (rendering them much less brand identifiable).
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Well, yes, it is the idea that clothing, as anything we use, should be functional; that function dictates form; and that "letters and images" pertain to neither function nor form, in clothing. A three-piece suit, expensive or not ( I have two of less than 150 € ), literally "suits" me well. Call me elitist ? Fine. Being elite also brings responsibilities with it, by which I stand.
Moreover, there are way too many letters and images around us, already. Going through the city where I live and work, I m
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I both agree and disagree with you.
I absolutely HATE most t-shirts people wear, particularly those with nonsensical sentences on them, either grammar- or content-wise. I mean, sometimes you'd think they even outsourced design to China... E.g. like this [wordpress.com].
However, clever t-shirts that make me smile, think, or even giggle a little, can sometimes make my day. The shirt linked in great-grandparent I actually quite liked.
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While I do wear shirts with letters and images on them, I can somewhat see where you are coming from. I don't wear shirts where the design is the corporate logo/name of the brand of apparel (Nike shirts), and have even taken to removing the large nameplate label from the back waistband of jeans I buy after purchase (rendering them much less brand identifiable).
Now me, I'll wear a t-shirt advertising for anyone, so long as it's free, if my clothing meets the minimum societal standards of modesty, what do I care?
I'll agree, though, that I'll be damned before I pay for the privilege of advertising for a company.
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I'll agree, though, that I'll be damned before I pay for the privilege of advertising for a company.
Yup, and unfortunately most labels think you should.
Funny enough, I own one Abercrombie and Fitch shirt (a blue curdoroy shirt with quilted insulated lining I wear as a jacket) and one Gap label shirt (black wool over-shirt). These are the only two pieces of clothing I own from these types of brands, and I bought both shirts for less than $5 each... at the Goodwill store.
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Re:Finally ? (Score:5, Funny)
"Sport is for the proletariat"
That one would look great on a Sports t-shirt.
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Foul Ball... (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, those stray baseballs from the backyard are going to get much more expensive... Oh who am I kidding - kids don't play ball anymore.
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No kidding. I took my nine year old son and his 11 year old friend out to fly a kite yesterday. It wasn't good. They just wanted to get back to their DSs.
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Excellent idea. At least they'd have to look up sometimes.
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We're really close to losing an entire generation.
Increase Office Efficiency With "Cloud Window" (Score:3)
These windows should look nice with this ceiling together: http://idle.slashdot.org/story/12/01/05/1517243/germans-increase-office-efficiency-with-cloud-ceiling [slashdot.org]
Perpetual good weather outside! I feel great, and work better!
I had to use a link to Slashdot, because Wikipedia Links are, like, so out, today.
Now my only problem is that I have to replace my broken windows often. Rocks get hurled through them, flaming Native American arrows get shot through them, and even I manage to damage them when plinking with great-great-granddaddy's 'ole Gatling.
Fix that for me, Samsung.
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Though I might want to recommend using the gatling not on the front porch that often.
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Yo Dawg! (Score:2)
I heard you want an interactive display on your wall!
So we put a display in on your windows, so you can see it while it's still transparent.
Now when its sunny you can see your Windows with your windows,
and your neighbors can see you see your display when it's night, but they can't see what you see.
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More News (Score:2)
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> Microsoft sues Samsung for Windows patent infringement
In pane blinds (Score:2)
Also: this reminds me of IronMan.
LOOK! (Score:2)
"And from the outside you just like you are tapping your window as none of the graphics can be seen."
And from the submission you just like you are accidentally your sentence as one of the words can't be seen...
Needs to be Bigger (Score:2)
Does it have rounded corners? (Score:4, Funny)
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Combine it with an e-ink display (Score:3)
Make a tablet with this kind of screen in front of an e-ink display and you'd have the best of both worlds: crisp, clear text with long battery life, or full color.
your neighbors will talk (Score:2)
They will indeed talk if you forget that the window is transparent from their side when you're "actively" watching porn on it!
Doubt it will work (Score:5, Interesting)
These devices look great in the movies but in daily life... well, there are a LOT of people who think tablets will take the place of computers, these thoughtful posts often being written on PC's has of course no bearing on their value...
The problem is that cost, convenience and usability, just don't measure up. Say I see an email I want to respond to on my window... do I then reply to it on the window? Try it, it isn't nearly as comfortable as it seems. Same with things like the weather, the amount of time really spend checking the weather is very very low and the TV which is already in the house is more then happy to report on it.
Your early morning routine just doesn't fit a dozen gadgets all begging for your attention. The people who have enough time to spend in the kitchen looking at their window can't afford it (the unemployed) and the people who can, have better things to do.
It as with the intelligent fridges that have been just around the corner for god knows how long now. People that do the shopping "mum's" are like the soviets, rather then spending a billion dollars creating a pen that works in zero gravity, they use a piece of paper and pencil and call it a shopping list. The early adopters who could afford the early models just don't do shopping that way.
These widgets all seem nice, as nice as when MS called it Active Desktop, which died. Then Vista something or other, which died and now in Windows 8 again, I am supposed to be looking at my desktop rather then at the program I have opened full screen obscuring it completely.
Even on a tech site such as this, I am fairly certain that 99% of you life in a house that is no more techie then that of your parents. For that matter, lights turned off by clapping, once the next tech, how many are still around?
Windows in houses are often the oddest sizes, go ahead, see if what happens if you break one of yours, almost certain a replacement has to be custom made to fit. They are often very large indeed, so that any tech window replacing them, is going to be highly expensive. Until they get within reach of the common geek software for them will be in short supply making them less usable and until companies start working together instead of fighting each other (wanna bet your Samsung Window conspires with your Philips dishwasher to kill off the iPhone?)
Once I specifically made sure I could watch shows like Beyond 2000. Back then I was young and hopeful. Now I am old and angry I just feel bitter that I still don't have my sex robot... eh flying car. I have come to realize that most of the World of the Future stuff just isn't practical.
I mean, a weather widget on a window? What is it going to tell me, what the weather looks like outside? I am not interested enough to pay for an expensive screen, the cost of installing it and for that matter getting up to check. I just look at the cat. sprawles on the kitchen floor (hot), on the window sill huddled up (okayish), buried with the wife in a pile of blankets on the bed (nice and brisk (ducks pillow thrown at him) sorry cold).
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"well, there are a LOT of people who think tablets will take the place of computers, "
I certainly do, I've been a tablet user since the 90's and Tablets are the way of the future if OS makers get off their asses and actually make things work well. Apple is the FIRST to do so with their iPad.
My current favorite is my trusty Fujitsu Stylistic 5022 from 2006 It still has better specs than any of the current toy tablets from apple and the android flavors yet runs Linux (I abandoned windows as it's just too
What language is this? (Score:2)
"And from the outside you just like you are tapping your window as none of the graphics can be seen. "
I have no idea what the heck this says.
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"And from the outside you *look* just like you are tapping your window as none of the graphics can be seen. "
They accidentally a verb.
Re:What language is this? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh come on, it's completely transparent!
Tony Stark's phone anyone? (Score:2)
I hope you... (Score:2)
It might be better ... (Score:3)
Ow, my rotator cuff! (Score:3)
some architects won't like this (Score:3)
My daughter is currently in an urban design class. She has severe dyslexia so I read the materials to her, which gives me some familiarity with all her classes. The architects featured in this class seem to be most concerned about the usefulness of the perimeter of buildings, wanting us to abandon flat featureless walls for the porches and doors and windows -- permeability, they called it -- that were popular before WWII. Although I disagree with some of their philosophies, (I am violently opposed to brutalism, for instance) I agree with this.
So a horror slideshow from their standpoint would be commercial and private buildings with utterly blank walls that end flatly against the property, isolating the residents inside and making the space outside useless except for traveling away from the hulking building. And sadly, there are many examples of that, both for commercial businesses and for private residences.
It occurs to me that technology like this would make that type of design even more likely. If you could put a "window" anywhere, showing any type of scene, what do you care what's actually outside? [1] I know, you can sit this on top of a real window, but I wonder how often that will be done in real life? In an age where all the up and coming adults have been trained since grade school to live with ear buds inserted and head lowered to a 4" display, what chance do us old fogeys who remember fresh air and open views, have, to convince them that houses should have access to the outdoors?
[1] Except, I suppose, from a security standpoint, although there's hardware and software solutions for that.
Amazing! (Score:3)
Really, of all the applications they could have chosen for the main picture, they pick a weather forecast?
Re:Samsung's weather widget (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, cause there's so many unique ways to lay out a weather widget. Oh, right. Apple exclusively owns any layout they happen to use, and anyone else must use the most inconvenient format and layout they can think of.
Because Apple is so unique and innovative [google.com]
Fucking idiot fanboys.
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YESSIR, because the absolutely only way to design a weather app is to make it look exactly like the OS X dashboard widget from 2005
You mean, the Konfabulator weather app design which Apple ripped off for OS X in 1995.
OSX in 1995? Lemme guess, you're one of those HR people demanding 8+ years of Windows 7 experience for current hires?
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Kill yourself, fanboy: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2625952&cid=38735474 [slashdot.org]
Initial release date: October 2001 [wikipedia.org]
Take some advice from your sig, troll.
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Also, you're a huge faggot.
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For a headsup, the bonch [slashdot.org] account and Overly Critical Guy [slashdot.org] accounts are sockpuppets operated by the same organization. See this post [slashdot.org] and a previous post I've made here [slashdot.org] for evidence that these user accounts are used to push the same script, sometimes even copy/paste versions of it.
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Um...the weather widget looks a little familiar [imgur.com], doesn't it?
How long someone uses a an earlier, similar comment by an AC [slashdot.org] as 'proof' that you are using sockpuppets and are a paid account?
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Re:O RLY (Score:5, Funny)
yes..there is a typo in the statement from the article..and I just copied and pasted it directly....did not want to change what the site said....
That's what 'sic' is for. I'd link to the page at wikipedia, but, you know...
Re:O RLY (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously [wikipedia.org]. So many folks are blamed for errors in these days of blogs and chaos, when a simple [ sic [wikipedia.org]] would be perfectly adequate to exonerate them.
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Re:O RLY (Score:5, Insightful)
Disabling JavaScript works here to get around the SOPA banners (which are pretty pointless outside the US, since we can't do anything much about it).
Which is the point. You can't do much about it, but you'll suffer the consequences with the rest of the world.
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OK. And what exactly is this remark trying to achieve?
Except of making one feel helpless, ignored and insignificant?
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Actually, governments stron-arm each other all the time, trying to get laws passed, particularly with copyright stuff lately.
So, yeah, you can do something - you can pressure your leaders to pressure the US congress to not be stupid. SOAP may be dead, but there are two more piles of shitty toilet paper that need to follow it.
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If Wikipedia is broken for you at this particular moment, then that is just evidence that you lack sufficient Kung-Fu to make it work anyway and are therefore unsuitable to make a valid comment in this particular discussion.
(In other words, I think that part of my point is that Wikipedia has been working just fine for me, even though it is after 12:00AM EST. YMMV.)
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But Wikipedia is "down" right now!
Just turn off CSS and you're good to go.
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CSS? not JS?
Re:O RLY (Score:5, Insightful)
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They say specifically that it's ok to circumvent the blackout - they just want you to see their message at least once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more [wikipedia.org]
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How are you supporting the cause by not using Wikipedia? It's not the usage statistics that count, the whole thing is just to raise awareness. It doesn't matter if an already aware person continues to make use of it.
Besides, it seems to be working for me, maybe thanks to adblock..?
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Being supportive of the cause means contacting your representatives, not abstaining from wikipedia. Go ahead and use a workaround, just don't forget to call.
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I'm sure, once we rinse off all the SOPA, wikipedia will come back.
SOPA may be dead (or dieing) but PIPA and the other crap legislation are still out there, and need to be stopped.
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Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah. I don't have an OSX box to play with, but the Windows 7 widget is currently on the right side of my screen, and the screenshots from OP appear accurate: Both Samsung and Apple have widgets that extend beyond the top of a rectangle, while MSFT does not.
So it looks, to me, more like the OSX widiget.
But really, who cares? It's not like whoever is responsible for these various computer devices invented the concept of a concise tabular weather display with informative graphics. Folks had been doing that long, long time before before any of this in both print and on TV.
That the layout persists is more evidence of its perceived usefulness, than it is evidence that it has been flagrantly copied from someone else's creative work.
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:4, Funny)
Enlightenment WM (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:4, Informative)
Contrary to what you may believe, fanboy, Apple are not the epitome of innovation. They'd have gone nowhere if they didn't steal ideas from Xerox (just like Microsoft did). Steve Jobs admitted it himself [youtube.com].
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And Konfabulator was nothing more than Desktop Accessories [wikipedia.org]
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A bit more googling would have told you Konfabulator was created to add back the widgets features into OS X that people loved from OS9 created by Apple!
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You say ripped off when Steve has clearly stated it was in homage to the record label.
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:4, Insightful)
What Jobs said is clearly bullshit. What he actually DID was all about the Benjamins, no "homage" intended.
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually, Apple didn't steal it. Jobs licensed it from Xerox in exchange for Apple stock.
(Apple also improved on it because the Xerox Alto didn't have overlapping windows ,and Woz came up with regions to handle updating overlapping windows. Woz subsequently got in a plane crash (in his Piper) and told Jobs (who visited him in the hospital) that he still knew how to do regions. Later, when Woz talked to Xerox, he found out that no, they di
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I really hope this is just poor satire and there really isn't someone as retarded as this.
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The woman in the video says "I feel like I'm in Minority Report ... and that's ... pretty awesome!"
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:5, Informative)
The window itself is seriously awesome. But the weather app [imgur.com] is a direct rip-off of OS X's weather widget [imgur.com]. There's seriously no other way to design a weather app but how Apple did in 2005?
Never change, Samsung.
The Apple Weather app looks like the weather presentation has looked when PRINTED in different Swedish NEWSPAPERS from cirka 1980 (ever since Swedish newspapers started to be printed in colour). Similar weather presentations was used by Swedish Television when it was still broadcasted in monochrome; Sweden switched to colour TV broadcasts in 1970. I'm not claiming it is a Swedish invention, this kind of weather display may have been used and invented in some other country/-ies decades before it become common in Swedish media. I'm just pointing out that there is a much larger and diverse world outside the boarders of the country you live in.
Just because some "innovation" is brought to the publics attention by some company in USA, that doesn't mean that company invited it. Most (all?) US companies are copycats by nature (and Apple in particular is a pure copyist), usually decades behind how stuff is done in other countries (and usually the US consumer has less to choose from when it comes to different gadgets doing the same thing, differently, US companies like to standardise on one way for a consumer product to work, to avoid that their consumer will get confused (like early automobiles steered by reins), while most companies operatinh outside USA take for granted that their consumers are intelligent enough to understand that different products might achieve the same end result, even if they need to be handled/interpreted differently). Unlike companies in other countries, US companies like to imply that they invented the things they market, even when they didn't. Because the US population like to live in isolation from the (scary/insignificant/...) world outside USA (when was the last time you visited a foreign website? one that was not in English?), US companies can get away with this kind of shenanigans without getting caught.
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The window itself is seriously awesome. But the weather app [imgur.com] is a direct rip-off of OS X's weather widget [imgur.com]. There's seriously no other way to design a weather app but how Apple did in 2005?
Okay, regardless of how Apple prettified the design that originally came to OS X via Konfabulator - this is being overlaid on a window. Here's a novel idea - if you want to know what the weather is like, instead of looking at a weather widget... LOOK OUT THE DAMN WINDOW!
I remember Konfabulator, I tried it once. I then tried Dashboard after Apple introduced it. Then I noticed that Yahoo! bought out Konfabulator in an attempt to bring the concept to Windows, and now Windows 7 has widgets. Bottom line... they'
Re:Weather app is a rip-off of OS X weather widget (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a chart. How many different ways can you display it? There's only a few, so no matter what they did they'll be "ripping off" someone.
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So, you think it's gonna be mostly used like a TV with a few cool (but pretty useless) new features, except that the image quality will likely be worse (since it's a goddamned window), and much more expensive? Not to mention that most homes don't have windows positioned anywhere near the optimal viewing position for a large screen.
Sounds like exactly what I need for checking my flight schedule... Seriously, that's why we have smartphones, tablets, and the like. The only realistic application for this is
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Re:Vertical touch interface ??? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, great ideas. My point is not that this is unusable, but that it's gonna be way too expensive for 99.9% of consumers to consider buying one. Especially since the use cases you mention are "this would be cool, kinda".
Now, to get a very optimistic (as in, low price) estimate of what this will cost: We add up 1 LCD screen of about 40 inches, 16 replacement Ipad digitizers from ebay, and an Atom-powered net-top to run the software and control everything. You end up with $500 for the screen + $800 for the digitizers + $200 for the net-top, or a total cost of $1500.
Note that this very optimistic estimate, assuming that everything scales linearly and that they are able to sell millions of these and get the same economics of scale as with LCD TVs, gives us an unbelievably expensive way to quickly check your email and watch TV while cooking. Particularly when you take into account that 99.9% of all consumers already own several devices that can do exactly these things. The question becomes "would you rather buy this, or would you buy three Ipads instead"? That is why this technology, while cool, will suffer the same fate as the Microsoft Surface.
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There are clearly defined uses. Let's say for a moment you find yourself in a already almost pitch black room. Harrison Ford steps up and says "It's to dark in here". Let's say for the sake of context he's going o do some unscientific test on you about turtles. Just press a button and Harrison is ready to go...
Re:Vertical touch interface ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
10 minutes is an over-estimate - my research has found RTC fatigue occurs in as little as 2 minutes. Its funny how this mistake keeps being made over-and-over again...I speculate that it is due to a lack of serious research and the general prescriptions of avoiding fatigue, without understanding the full range of human capabilities, when designing Touch-UIs such as this.
Anyways yes, for very minimal interactions this concept is great - so much surface area is devoted to glass that I'm sure Samsung is going to have a massive product here, however I foresee the big interest in this being less to do with the interactivity, more with the transparency of the display. Imagine walking down the high street in 2025 and every shop front having animated displays which complement the internal displays. Imaging mirrors where you can try on different colours of make-up, hair shades, hair styles etc; add on some head tracking capabilities and there are some possibly fascinating AR applications.
The tech seems to be scaling up year by year and they appear to have improved the transparency (its was 40% (?) opaque in 2010) - really an exciting product. Cant wait for it to come on a roll ;)
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Refugees from reddit may slashdot slashdot.
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Not to worry, after a few weeks they stop talking and close their blinds instead.