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Electronic Paper Plant to be Built in Germany 105

Posted by samzenpus from the my-aibo-ate-my-homework dept.
Aqua_boy17 writes "BBC News is reporting today that Cambridge based firm PlasticLogic is set to build the world's first manufacturing facility dedicated to producing plastic circuits. In particular the company is focused on developing flexible plastic circuits that cost much less than silicon and would soon enable electronic paper devices that could be used to store large amounts of text and other data. The company has secured $100 million in venture capital and is set to build its first facility in Dresden, Germany. Construction of the facility should be completed by 2008 according to the article. Industry experts expect market demand for this technology to approach $30 billion by the year 2015."
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Electronic Paper Plant to be Built in Germany More

Electronic Paper Plant to be Built in Germany

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  • What...? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by fabs64 ( 657132 )
    The summary contradicts the headline :-S

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Psychotria ( 953670 )
      The company has secured $100 million in venture capital and is set to build its first facility in Dresden, Germany

      Yep, looks like a contradiction to me. You're 100% wrong :-)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by URSpider ( 242674 )
      The summary contradicts the headline :-S


      What the summary is missing is that the polymer electronics built in this factory will be laminated to electrophoretic imaging materials made by E Ink Corporation to form flexible electronic paper displays. Thus, the final output of the factory will indeed be electronic paper.

  • So... (Score:2, Funny)

    by gadzook33 ( 740455 )
    what's a picture worth now? I can't keep track...
  • Have technologists made that wonderful electronic paper where you can store your entire porn collection on one sheet?

    • Wife (Score:3, Funny)

      by Harmonious Botch ( 921977 )
      I already store my entire porn collection on one sheet. Well, 1/2 actually.

    • Let me be the first to make this joke (Score:4, Funny)

      by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @02:27AM (#17455330)
      Have technologists made that wonderful electronic paper where you can store your entire porn collection on one sheet?
      I can store 6 billion bits of information in a single piece of tissue paper.

      Although I never read the information in that format since I can rely on copies that are kept elsewhere.

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by xoyoyo ( 949672 )
        In which case you have an extremely low sperm count. The human genome contains 3 billion base pairs which (as it's base 4) comes to about 4*(3*10^9)=12billion bits and there are roughly 280 million tadpoles in each puddle of love so actually your total data output is about 3,360,000,000,000,000,000 bits or 2.9 exabytes of data.
        • The human genome contains 3 billion base pairs which (as it's base 4) comes to about 4*(3*10^9)=12billion bits

          A base 4 digit contains two bits of information, not four. 00, 01, 10, 11.

          and there are roughly 280 million tadpoles in each puddle of love so actually your total data output is about 3,360,000,000,000,000,000 bits

          That's wrong too. You can't just multiply by the count; each one contains a unique set of 3 billion bits which is always a different subset of the same 6 billion bits, chopped up into cont

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by xoyoyo ( 949672 )
            >> A base 4 digit contains two bits of information, not four. 00, 01, 10, 11.

            True, true, I was muddling my bases.

            >> That's wrong too. You can't just multiply by the count; each one contains a unique set of 3 billion bits which is always a different subset of the same 6 billion bits, chopped up into contiguous chunks. Unless you want to count the same information more than once if it appears in multiple places. But it's not as if each one is from a different guy.

            I left that out in the interests o

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )
      I hope they laminated it.
    • In 4 wonderful shades of greyscale...

      Of course technically a laptop screen is also a flexible plastic (albeit not quite as flexible) - old tech I tell you...

  • Electronic paper is the future. (Score:5, Informative)

    by ravee ( 201020 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @02:09AM (#17455274) Homepage Journal
    Recently, I was viewing a TV program reviewing a number of cell phones (which are the current craze in India). And their findings was in terms of cost effectiveness and design, the Motorola MotoFone F3 was their choice. This cellphone is sold for just around $25. And how did they cut the cost so much ?

    Enter their unique display which uses Electronic paper which is developed by the US based E-Link. This cell phone doesn't need power to constantly display an image on the screen. It only needs a little charge when the text (or whatever) needs to be changed. The display stays on even when the battery is pulled out! And more over it is a beautiful phone sleek and thin.

    I believe more and more gadgets are going to be manufactured using this new technology. Sony has already released its e-book reader which has the same effects of reading a real book. So PlasticLogic the company is on to a good thing.
  • An electronic paper Airplane!

  • Ecological Horror (Score:5, Funny)

    by darkonc ( 47285 ) <`stephen_samuel' `at' `bcgreen.com'> on Thursday January 04, 2007 @02:25AM (#17455324) Homepage Journal
    Do you have any idea how many millions of electronic trees are going to die to feed this plant???!

  • e-book vs dead-tree formats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mogster ( 459037 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @02:34AM (#17455350)
    I know a few people, myself included who dislike reading e-books due to the nature of the screen. Also it's not easy to curl up with a good e-book on a computer (laptops are too bulky and pocket pc screens are too small)

    If this works and can link with eInk screens to create an easily held, clearly visible book format then I'd be happy to switch away from the dead-tree format.

    And we'd save a few trees along the way
    • Have you had a look at Sony's latest eReader [sony.com]? I've been considering purchasing one myself, as laptops really are too bulky for enjoyable reading on a couch or in bed.

      Of course the real problem with eReaders is the cost; even these "cheap" new Sony ones still cost around $450.

      • Re:Sony eReader (Score:5, Informative)

        by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @02:53AM (#17455406) Homepage Journal
        As the owner of one I really couldn't be happier with the device itself(the software that came with it is another story). I recently did a trans-atlantic flight and the device was a hell of a lot easier to take with me than even one book, let alone 2 or 3. Sharp display, and very readable text.

        Sony's software sucks, but there are plenty of ways to get around having to use it, and they REALLY need more books in their bookstore. BTW, it costs $350USD.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Steve001 ( 955086 )

          I, too, have one of the new Sony e-book readers (QReader) and I can say the screen is simply outstanding for book reading. The screen is as easy on the eyes as reading on regular paper. It is a vast improvement over the PDAs I've used in the past for e-book reading.

          Due to the backlight, I've found that using a PDA for e-book reading becomes hard on the eyes after several minutes, plus the size of the screen is a disadvantage when reading e-books. Besides the screen quality of the QReader, another advantag

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Spit ( 23158 )
            Due to the backlight, I've found that using a PDA for e-book reading becomes hard on the eyes after several minutes,

            The old mono Palm Pilots are great for reading on. I've been reading with Weasel and Plucker for years, small text but easy to read.

            • True. The old monochrome Palm screens were not bad for reading, even with the backlight. Also, without the need for the backlight they had very good battery life.

              Unfortunately, the new Palms basically require the backlight to be on to be visible. This is a significant hit on the battery life.

        • It's not about the technology (Score:4, Insightful)

          by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @09:05AM (#17457342) Homepage
          The state of eBooks has been the same since the year 2000. It's never been a technology issue. I'm glad your new Sony is nice, and I'm sure it's a significant improvement over the Rocket eBook, but the Rocket eBook is more than good enough.

          The problem is, was, and for the foreseeable future will be, as you say, "they REALLY need more books in their bookstore." (By the way, how are those books priced? There is also a problem with overpricing and greed. Circa 2000-2001 I had numerous conversations with interested onlookers about my Rocket eBook and there was always mounting interest until they said "What do the books cost?" I'd answer "Same as hardbounds for books that aren't in paper, otherwise same as a paperback." Their jaw would drop in disbelief and that would be the end of the conversation).

          But it wasn't the price. It was lack of titles. An electronic bookstore with a thousand titles may give the impression of plentitude, but it's less than a good airport bookstore and it doesn't even compare to a plain old brick-and-mortar mall bookstore.

          At one time, I went over the list of books chosen for Oprah's book club. At the time there were about forty titles. Something like thirty of them were available as audiobooks, yet only about six were available as eBooks in any format whatsoever. For no eBook format were more than three or four of them available.

          There are numerous ways of reading eBooks that are good enough to provide a comfortable, enjoyable, "ludic" reading experience, but until you can buy the books you want at a reasonable price, it ain't gonna happen.

          I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.

          I hope you have better luck with your Sony.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.

            The battery is easily fixed. Buy a new REB from eBookwise to scavenge the batte

          • I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.

            This is why I really love the ebook philosophy at Baen [baen.com]. Baen is a fairly l

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

              I've bought from Baen. As a company they are brilliant. I'd wish a broader range of fiction from them, but they're a great company. I just wish that a decent ebook reader was an order of magnitude cheaper. They ought to be. All I really want is a screen and a really minimal amount of computer power and storage attached so it can run a PDF display and browser. Not much to ask, you'd think.
            • I've heard many good things about Baen and I'm sure they're admirable, but unfortunately they are not the company that publishes the books of Barbara Kingsolver, or Mark Kurlansky, or Erik Larson, or Elizabeth George...

              I can name any particular song I'm interested in that there's at least a 90% chance the iTunes Music Store will have it. Not just Ashlee Simpson, either. I was watching the Sopranos, and an Artie Shaw tune called "Comes Love" is playing in the background, and I think "hmmm... that's interesti

          • dpbsmith wrote as part of a post:

            I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.

            I hope you have better luck with your So

        • Sony's electronic bookstore has 11,000 books, and has been running (under various names) since at least early 2002, giving them a post rate of approximately 6.02 books per day. In late December, I gave some webspace to a guy from IRC who wanted to start converting e-books for MoonShell for the Nintendo DS; he's already over the 200 mark.

          At this rate, Brandon's personal, free pet project is going to personally overtake Sony in about 27 years. MoonBooks defeats Connect [stonecypher.net], and it has classics instead of just (
          • Meh, manybooks.net has a ton(maybe all?) of their content formatted in Sony's book format as well as a host of others. I don't really want or need sony adding classics(they have a bunch there, but why pay when you can get it legally for free). I do want more modern books though, as I tend to split my reading 50/50 among classics and modern books. More non-fiction would especially be nice.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Mogster ( 459037 )
        Yeah the cost is what puts me off eReader (although I'm not sure if they're even available in my neck of the woods yet).

        If the reader could be made available relatively cheaply say $100USD (around $130 NZD atm) then titles could be sold at current market rates - eventually as the technology becomes more widespread then even title prices would drop

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Lisana ( 90858 )
        I got a Sony Reader for Christmas, and I'm really loving it. http://www.mobileread.com/ [mobileread.com] has some excellent forums (first link in the bar below the header) where there are quite a few people who own the Reader, Irex's Iliad, and other eInk devices.

        Granted, the Connect software is not the greatest, and they have a limited selection of books (they were giving out a $50 store credit with purchase/registration of a Reader, not sure if that's still in effect), but http://www.manybooks.net/ [manybooks.net] has a good chunk of th

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by redcane ( 604255 )
      Every now and then you need to sacrafice convenience for the greater good. Every now and then you need to sacrafice convenience for the environment.
    • "I know a few people, myself included who dislike reading e-books due to the nature of the screen"

      The problem is not with the screen, it's with the interface. A book on a computer should be 3D and handle just like a book in the real world. Except you dont have to apply force to keep the book open or the pages from flopping over.
    • i read books off my pda all the time. a 4" vga screen is very good for reading, a 3.5" qvga screen isn't that good but it suffices.

  • Impact on design and style (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Knutsi ( 959723 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @02:39AM (#17455364)
    This may be a tad off topic, but I still think it's interesting to imagine the effect on style and design ultra-cheap electronic paper could have. Remember the breakfast Tom Cruise had in Minority Report, where a cartoon played on his box of cereals?

    If price drops enough, this may lead to inventions such as memory-cards with previews of the content showing right on the card, elecronic labels right in store shelves, changing walls in buildings, floors with directional arrows flying around, guiding you in unfamiliar places, electronic wallpaper for your appartment... add a few giftet artists to all this potential, and I'm sure the world would never look the same again (:

    More and more, I think Clarke's third law holds true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws [wikipedia.org]
    • add a few giftet artists to all this potential, and I'm sure the world would never look the same again (:
      Yes, I can imagine how it's going to be: World's Worst Website [angelfire.com]. Walk trough Walmart low price products will be a unforgettable experience.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Knutsi ( 959723 )
        Heh, I can imagine (: We don't know Walmart over here tho', but I'd guess they have the money to hire someone with experience to do their design. Information is cheap. Like websites, the design would be a priority since it will have a huge impact on the experience.

        Great site by the way, looks just like my first website back in 1998 ;D
    • Electronic labels do exist already; overhere there's a store which only has these electronic labels which get updated wirelessly and instantly.

      First company making these I found online; Electronic Shelf Labels [elabelsys.com]
    • It does get one's imagination going if you think about the different potential applications. Remember the scene in (I think?) Total Recall where the girl sitting at the desk is changing her nail color with a touch of a stylus? This type of technology could well enable stuff like that. And I love the idea of having wallpaper that I could change at my whim.

      OTOH, I'd hate to see this become yet another outlet for annoying adverts that could be seen everywhere you go. It already drives me completely nuts w

  •   I thought the world wanted to become less dependent on oil and not more dependent?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 )
      I assume you mean the plastic used to build e-readers.

      But imagine if e-readers take over. Less newspapers and books. Less logging and distribution of paper products - daily newspapers and magazines. Shipments from Amazon.com. Less factories set to refine paper and recycle it (our biggest export to China is used paper so they can print their newspapers). Less printers to print crap. Less storage cabinets to store paperwork. Less oil and other materials used all around.

      I also imagine companies like Ama

      • There was a science fiction/comedy book named "Cyberbooks" by Ben Bova (per Amazon.com it was released in 1989). It was set about 20 years in the fuure and it dealt with attempt to introduction of an ebook reader to the public (the device is shown on the cover and it looks a bit like a Palm handheld, the first Palm handheld was released in 1996), and the forces that work against it. I thought it was a good read, and found much humor in the book publishing business.

        A place I could see e-books taking over b

    • I think it depends on what oil. It would be good to reduce our dependency on fossil oil. However, I see nothing wrong with using vegetable oil, which we can produce ourselves. I think a lot of useful things can be done with it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by me-g33k ( 984217 )
      The v1.5 gen readers are now out but in limited supply. I am interested in the Sony Reader [sonystyle.com] product but they're hard to find around and the +$300 price is still a big lump to swallow. One real saving grace is that I can now pack a lot more reference material in an easily searchable format without having to power up my notebook. Or even as a side reference without stealing screen space on my notebook or desktop.

      I'm just now going through my collect pile of trade paperbacks and I have over 500+ of them. I'm fi

  • And who else is based in Dresden? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flying pig ( 925874 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @03:35AM (#17455574)
    AMD, that's who. Apart from the obvious concentration of necessary skills in the area, what a good idea to start up right next to a large semi company that is expanding its product spectrum.

    Cambridge, Mass. and Cambridge, East Anglia. There must be something about those freezing cold winters that encourages people to stay indoors and invent things.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      Cambridge, East Anglia normally doesn't have cold winters. There is something called "Gulfstream" (while Cambridge, Mass. get's cold winters due to water down from Labrador...).
      • Cambridge, East Anglia used to get fscking cold in the winter when I was studying there 20-odd years ago - there's a bastard east wind that blows across all the way from the Urals and freezes the hell out of East Anglia in the winter.

        Never been back (the pubs were good, but not that good, and you can get IPA and Abbot pretty much anywhere nowadays) since, but even with global warming, I reckon it'll still be a mite chilly!

      • "Gulfstream" is an executive jet. The "Gulf stream" runs down the West side of the country (the side I now very sensibly live on...) Cambridge is on the East side (the side I grew up on.) I can assure you from in-depth personal experience over a number of years that Cambridge, East Anglia has cold winters.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sique ( 173459 )
          For someone living in Tyrolia (Austria), winters in Cambridge, East Anglia are rather warm and slightly rainy instead of cold :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blirp ( 147278 )
      The real reason most programmers look down on COBOL is because it was designed by a woman.


      Cobol wasn't designed by a woman. It was designed by a committee. Of men.

      M.

    • Since I live here and have worked in the semiconductor industry here: - AMD - Toppan - Infineon - AMTC (Advanced Mask and Technology Center) Dresden is called "Silicon Saxony". Wikipedia has a nice summary (danger, German) [wikipedia.org].
  • I look forward to reading Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5" on that material.

  • ObGodwin (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dgm3574 ( 153548 )
    But will this new electronic paper combust at 451F like the old stuff [wikipedia.org]? Or will the thought police simply be able to turn off electronic paper which displays ideas they don't like [com.com]? ;-)
  • Well that's going to make the whole "Ihre Papiere, bitte!" question a bit difficult to answer, no?
  • i can preprogram my cheat sheets onto a blank sheet of paper

  • Gotta love English! (Score:3, Funny)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Thursday January 04, 2007 @10:01AM (#17458000) Homepage Journal
    "Electronic Paper Plant to be Built in Germany"

    So, is this an electronic plant that makes paper, or a plant that makes electric paper?

    Q: How many Lojbanists [wikipedia.org] does it take to change a broken light bulb?
    A: Two: one to decide what to change it into, and one to figure out what kind of bulb emits broken light.
    • *sigh* Ya know, I knew no matter how carefully I worded and proofread this some grammar nazi would get me for something. So as a public service to Slashdot readers around the world I'm fixing the title:

      "Electronic Paper Plant to be Grown in Germany"

      There, happy now? :p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sootman ( 158191 )
        Sorry, no offense meant. Not trying to be a grammar nazi (headlines are--almost by definition--almost always grammatically incorrect in some way), it just struck me as funny. (My wife is Hungarian and she's always complaining about our language, so it's always on my mind.) I wasn't meaning to make fun of you at all--the fact is, it's hard to write good headlines. (Just watch Jay Leno for proof!) I like your alternative--very clever. :-)

        Worst headline ever, from the Orlando Sentinel a year or so ago: "QUAKE'
        • No offense taken, my good man. I guess when you do a submission, it's kind of like your baby and you become a little more sensitive than normal.

          But I do know what you're saying about headlines. Someone sent me a bunch of them several years ago and they were a riot. Example: "Having trouble with your menu? Use your children.", stuff like that. English is a bizzarre language, and I like to have fun with it when I can. It drives my wife nuts too as she's a native Colombian of German descent so English

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sootman ( 158191 )
            It's a total cliché but it's true--learning another language makes you learn more about your own. I learned more about English grammar in my first semester of Spanish than I did in all previous years--I'm sure I was taught it all at some point, but I never had to really use the rules of English grammar because I could speak the language without trying and I did the (more or less) right thing naturally. But in learning Spanish, all that stuff about infinitives, progressives, the subjunctive, etc. fina

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