Samsung Employees Conspired To Sell AMOLED Tech; 11 Arrested 93
zacharye writes with this snippet from BGR: "Nearly a dozen suspects have been arrested and charged with crimes related to the theft and sale of AMOLED display technology under development at Samsung. Yonhap News Agency on Thursday reported that 11 suspects either currently or formerly employed by Samsung Mobile Display have been arrested. One 46-year-old researcher at Samsung is believed to have accepted a payment of nearly $170,000 from an unnamed 'local rival firm' in exchange for trade secrets pertaining to proprietary Samsung technology used in the company's AMOLED panels..."
aMOLEd did it (Score:5, Funny)
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Define "well". 170 grand cash, tax free, is like 4 -5 years salary for a PhD level researcher in south korea (who are about 20-30% lower paid than their US counterparts on a nominal, if not PPP basis).
Even by US standards 170 grand is a lot up front. Remember that they're paying someone to steal it, not paying someone to develop it. It could have been a 500 person job to develop the technology, they're just paying someone who has admin access on the files to make a copy, not even necessarily senior empl
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Re:Who benefits the most? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm no fan of apple, but your barking up the wrong tree. Apple doesn't use AMOLED screens because AMOLED screens don't offer the high resolution that apple wants. Samsung does manufacture the apple 'retina' displays but they are not based on AMOLED technology. No need to call them in as the bad guy here.
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Actually he is not ... Apple tried to the get AMOLEAD in the iPhone. And that's from someone working for Samsung in Korea.
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Re:Who benefits the most? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple doesn't use AMOLED screens because AMOLED screens don't offer the high resolution that apple wants.
It used to be true, but I'm not so sure now. Galaxy Nexus has a 720p AMOLED screen - but that's PenTile. If you count subpixels rather than pixels, though, it's actually exactly the same pixel count as iPhone 4. Granted, physical resolution is still lower - iPhone screen is 3.5", Galaxy Nexus is 4.5". Still, that's about 250 DPI. Given that they are talking about some ongoing developments here, I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung is actually planning to roll out "retina" (300+ DPI) OLED displays soon.
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Consumers benefit the most if all of a sudden there are many competitors in this market even if the original development is stolen.
Re:Who benefits the most? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that a way to justify theft?
Some people also benefit from armored money trucks spilling their cargo over a highway.
But it raises the cost of doing business, and ultimately society pays a price for that.
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You assume that stolen tech will introduce more competition, which will drive the prices down and increase selection for consumers.
I will assume that stolen tech will result in lawsuits, possibly shutdown of the company that was "stealing" and all the resulting costs passed over to the consumer.
Have a nice day.
And who will fund the next generation of invention (Score:2)
Consumers might benefit in the short term, but in the long term as investors refuse to risk their capital in high tech .. nobody will benefit. Also without an accumulation of capital (since nobody will be able to make a large profit margin due to competition), there won't be anyone with the capital to fund new research.
Consumers don't always benefit (Score:1)
Hmmm... like the Nichicon electrolytic capacitor theft? Exploding capacitors for a decade. The consumer doesn't always win.
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There is a reason why a PC I build for a customer lasts so long it gets passed down to several family members while that $300 Dell special gets shitcanned 3 weeks after the warranty is gone, and that is because of quality parts. I make sure i have the best parts, from solid caps to high quality fans, whereas the Dell uses the cheapest shit they can get their hands on.
How do you tell which parts are built to last? Most reviews I see on Newegg, Anandtech, etc. focus on initial quality, performance, and price:performance, not durability.
I built a gaming PC in early 2007 with mid-range parts, like a motherboard with solid caps, and nothing has failed so far (using it now). But beyond that, I'd have no idea how to build a durable computer. What's your secret?
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Also, do you have a website or anything set up for your pc building business? I may want to refer friends/acquaintances to you if they want a pc built and I'm too busy/lazy to do it for them.
OMGWTFLOLBBQ head apslode (Score:2)
only pirates are so intent on changing the language
ahhhhh, the ironing is delicious. Thanks, AC!
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"unnamed local rival" (Score:1)
Any chance the first letter of the rival's name is L and the second letter is G? I didn't know they were that desperate for organic LED tech.
This is what happens (Score:1, Redundant)
When you let bloggers masquerade as real journalists. For those like me who weren't aware, AMOLED:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOLED#Comparison_to_other_technologies [wikipedia.org]
AMOLED displays provide higher refresh rates than their passive-matrix OLED counterparts, improving response time often to under a millisecond, and they consume significantly less power. This advantage makes active-matrix OLEDs well suited for portable electronics, where power consumption is critical to battery life.
Re:This is what happens (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider the readership demographic: either you already know what AMOLED is (it is fairly well known in mobile tech circles), or you are sufficiently cognizant to look it up yourself.
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I haven't the time to look up every acronym and backronym on the entire internet. I strongly suspect very few people do. As a basic standard any news reporter should clarify at a minimum the more eldritch terms. And this isn't being particularly picky, it is a literal journalistic standard.
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I haven't the time to look up every acronym and backronym on the entire internet. I strongly suspect very few people do.
Then I would recommend the same thing I do to people in meatspace who blather on about topics they know nothing about: tell them to shut their pie-holes and learn something.
As a basic standard any news reporter should clarify at a minimum the more eldritch terms. And this isn't being particularly picky, it is a literal journalistic standard.
This is 1000% correct; I myself get rather pissed when I'm reading an article and they refer to a person by their surname without spelling out the whole thing first...
Lowther? What the fuck is a Lowther????
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Then I would recommend the same thing I do to people in meatspace who blather on about topics they know nothing about: tell them to shut their pie-holes and learn something.
If you were simultaneously representing yourself as a news outlet, I'd say you were therefore a piss poor news outlet. :D Honestly, you have people whining about verbatim copy pasta newsfeeds on here all the time, someone points out the same thing and its bad cos blog.
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If you were simultaneously representing yourself as a news outlet, I'd say you were therefore a piss poor news outlet. :D
So.. Fox? Or perhaps MSNBC? I won't bother mentioning CNN, as they're more of a playground than a news organization these days (whose day is it to play with the "Magic Wall?")
Honestly, you have people whining about verbatim copy pasta newsfeeds on here all the time, someone points out the same thing and its bad cos blog.
I bitch, but I have to admit the summaries here are still far more grammatically and factually correct than, say, every article on Yahoo. I hate Yahoo News for their piss-poor reporting and total lack of proofreading... yet I keep going back...
it's positively masochistic...
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So.. Fox? Or perhaps MSNBC? I won't bother mentioning CNN, as they're more of a playground than a news organization these days (whose day is it to play with the "Magic Wall?")
Oh yeah I'll definetely be going back to that website for all my news needs. After all, its better than Fox. Seriously, you aren't striking a blow for the popularity of anyone here.
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You would have a point of AMOLED was an eldritch term. It's not.
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True. However, if you're the /. crowd, you'd know it was something related to display technology already. Hell, the public knows it's something about display technology because the term AMOLED has been plastered all over
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Hell, the public knows it's something about display technology because the term AMOLED has been plastered all over the place.
Bullshit.
That is all.
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I'm in the grip of a rare spasm of nerd rage here, stand well back. The Slaine-like warp paroxysms have already resulted in me demolishing my F5 key in an attempt to slashdot slashdot singlehanded. Roll me round in snow quick for gods' sake!
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It sucks to be called out on being wrong? That's not a rhetorical question, BTW. The only difference between me and you is not necessarily amount of knowledge, but simply the fact I don't feel compelled to act like an asshat everytime I say something that is not quite correct.
a) there is nothing incorrect in anything I said and b) its usually people who are badly wrong, such as yourself, who then start getting all personal when they have noplace else to run.
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I went to a cellphone provider's webiste and looked at their phones. Like this one [rogers.com]. Of which "AMOLED" is plastered on at least 6 phones.
It's a technology, and it's a marketing spec plastered all over the place. I just saw an ad for some Samsung Android phone, and it claimed a Super AMOLED screen. A radio ad for the Galaxy Nexus (heard of that phone? It came with I
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The time taken to post the complaint exceeds the time spent to do this [lmgtfy.com]
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While you're there could you google "basic journalistic standards if you are purporting to be reporting news, and presumably trying to make money in said endeavour".
I'll never visit that site again, and I'd be surprised if many others did either. The bloglords flexing their sarcasm on /. isn't really much of a persuader either.
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Well, one thing is for sure, I'm impressed with the speed at which google [lmgtfy.com] crawls slashdot.
As for the exact function/definition of AMOLED, do you really need it to know the basic gist of the story (employees of Samsung were nabbed trying to sell trade secrets for display technology). If the article were about a new AMOLED screen, it might be more useful, but the story in this case was more about the bust than the actual tech.
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AMOLED SECRETS STOLEN! wtf is an amoled, probably some sort of oled, lets look that up and see whats what. Oh right, well I'll just post that on slash with a tut tut for the poor journalism that wasted my time searching for it. Cue bloggers up in arms over disparagement of blogs, cue comments saying it would have been easier to just look it up than to complain about it missing the behaviour modification benefits of complaints in terms of those offering a service, and we are done.
Any questions.
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See you're really new here.
The original purpose of this site was some guy's personal BLOG.
Ain't *SHIT* for journalistic standards in a blog format, and that same format EXISTS TO THIS DAY.
7-digit UIDs, so brainless and late to the party, as always.
If you're this far behind in technology, you'll never get anywhere any time soon,
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Slashdot was around before "blogs" gained any currency in the mainstream, and its a news feed with discussion forum attached, boyo. I guess you could call that a "Newsog" or something.
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I did, champ. And then I came back and posted it to slashdot for all to admire, thus saving others the ongoing bother of having to search for it themselves, a courtesy I'd expect in advance from any site claiming to present the news to me. And who knows how many future shoddy performances I've prevented merely by complaining, since as everyone is aware, you don't improve things unless you open your mouth.
Got it?
Great.
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"And then I came back and posted it to slashdot for all to admire"
All while avoiding your own vaunted 'basic journalistic integrity' and never posting a detailed explanation in the comments, all the while ranting. So much for your 'integrity.'
Please, child. Detach yourself from mummy's PC, reattach to her tit.
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Eh the wikipedia link and explanation are in the very first post there khyb, and it's your mummy's tit I'll be detaching from.
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Your explanation didn't even come close to anything resembling journalism. Very short on detail.
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"it's your mummy's tit I'll be detaching from"
Seems I was right to label you a child, with such unimaginative repetition spewing from your keyboard.
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I haven't the time to look up every acronym and backronym on the entire internet.
According to this quick search [google.com.au] "AMOLED" has been mentioned 4910 times on this site. I'd say this term has moved into the realm of assumed knowledge, and that you've moved into the realm of assumed stupidity.
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As its coming from an Aussie, I'll file that under "standard issue social malformation" to be honest.
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While I'll agree with you that it's ridiculous to be expected to know every acronym that is currently in use, you aren't being required to look up every single one. The article mentions ONE specific acronym.
I'm assuming that since you are posting to /., you probably have internet access. Even on a slow connection, it should take less time to pull up a new tab, type in "www.google.com," type in "AMOLED," and click search, than to make multiple comments here on /.. Or, if you have Firefox, you can simply high
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And after doing that I might decide to you know post it on slashdot. Which I did. I know RTFA is somewhat frowned upon in these parts, but at least try to RTFC like a good lad.
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"As a basic standard any news reporter should clarify at a minimum the more eldritch terms."
Nowadays, "eldritch" IS eldritch.
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"I haven't the time to look up every acronym and backronym on the entire internet"
Judging by your comment history, you're lying.
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I figured it was some kind of Organic LED but didn't really care what the AM part meant. It shows pictures == I'm happy.
Aside - Why do DVDs look like crap on LED flat panels, but greats on my CRT? I've never been able to figure that out. Maybe it's poor scaling in the LED.
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OLED doesn't have anything in common with "LED" TVs. The latter refer to the use of LED for backlight, but screen itself is still the usual TFT LCD, and picture quality is by and large the same.
In OLED, individual pixels are organic LEDs, and there's no backlight (which is why its black is really black).
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DVDs look like crap on LCD vs CRT because most are recorded in an interlaced format. LCD isn't an interlaced display device, CRTs are.
You need to deinterlace the image.
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I'm just lolling at the "redundant" downmod from an emotionally wounded blogger, myself.
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Thanks for posting. Sorry you got modded down.
We need more AMOLED manufacturers (Score:1)
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Too bad that they fail. Another AMOLED manufacturer is a must !
Really? Your preferred way to get more of the stuff you want made is to encourage theft from the people who are risking giant piles of money to develop it in the first place? What are you, 8 years old?
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Governments have already done that with first to patent laws. Seriously what did you think would be the outcome of laws like that.
"Business" as usual (Score:4, Interesting)
"According to authorities, the man unsuccessfully attempted to sell the information to a Chinese display manufacturer at that time."
Call me biased or whatever, but I already knew the word Chinese was gonna be in there before I even read the story.