The FSF's objection is precisely right. The standard of "reasonable" often used by government agencies and standards bodies is badly outdated, and based on a model ("all software written by commercial entities") that doesn't reflect the real world anymore. Standards are supposed to be for everybody's benefit, not just that of large corporations.

However making such changes is difficult (these bodies do not move quickly)—so if they're making the effort to update things, they should do it right, not just following the dictates of whatever lobby happens to be shoveling the most money at them.

It's the U.S.; those not in cars are considered mainly useful for target practice.

.... but yeah, that's one reason this is a really dumb idea, and a good example of why "traffic engineers" should never have any authority in city/transportation planning.

It's not really true that the pixels are too small to see, of course, despite Apple's hype. I have a cellphone with 300DPI+ resolution, and it's easy enough to see individual pixels in non-AA fonts at "normal viewing distance" (Japanese fonts at small sizes are usually not anti-aliased).

For anti-aliased graphics and text, it's probably more or less true—AA even at lower resolutions does a good job of hiding the pixels, but one can still discern annoying artifacts for high-contrast edges; 300DPI+ is probably good enough to hide most of those artifacts.

I suspect it was less because it was "optimal", and more because it was an acceptable compromise between a desirable aspect ratio and technical limitations. Remember, back then, when they were using primitive CRTs, the closer to a perfect circle, the easier it was to manufacture, and most efficient rectangular shape was a square. But humans with their two eyes generally want something wider than it is tall (note movie aspect ratios, which were less constrained by technology). A 4:3 aspect ratio provides something which is close enough to a square to efficiently use the technology of the time, but wide enough to provide a somewhat comfortable shape for viewing.

With non-CRT tech, and modern manufacturing technique, there's a lot more freedom to choose a shape which is good for viewing, so it makes sense there's a lot of experimentation with aspect ratios these days.

Personally I love the "medium-wide" aspect ratios like 16:10 for my main hacking monitor; 4:3 feels constraining. Note that I tend to have multiple windows open (multiple editor windows, an editor and some terminal windows, etc) at the same time, and side-by-side windows are vastly preferable to vertically adjacent windows when the windows are tall (typically true of editor windows). A wide aspect ratio fits this usage pretty well. People whose main mode is the MS-style "one-app-window-always-maximized" may have different preferences.

In the case of the ipad, of course, the main style does seem to be "one app visible", and they strongly want a shape which is viable when used either vertically or horizontally. Given those factors, 4:3 does seem a reasonable choice.

Well said.

Moreover, I don't even think such a choice is even necessary—a lot of the cost of blockbuster films is quite artificial; it's not an efficient industry. They don't need to be so crazy expensive to make.

If the current studios die off, but there's enough demand for similar products, people will figure out a way to make them at lower cost, and with a different business model.

That's an example of the most basic and underlying rule of all: those with enough power/money/weapons tend to get their way on issues they really care about, no matter how crazy their position, and regardless of what all the other rules and conventions say.

I don't know what model it is, nor the details of "updating." As she did get the hardware replaced a bunch of times hoping it would fix her problems, maybe the "updates" were all to the same version from the base version used by the manuf.

and yeah, I'm sure it's a windows phone (winphone7)... the person in question actually works at MS, she knows the difference!

[and geez, people (not you, parent poster, but all the people flipping out), calm down, it's just an anecdote, and we all know to take them with a grain of salt, right...? If you have a different exprience, great! But don't accuse me of lying simply because your personal anecdote is different.]

You forgot to add: "... in the United States."

Sure the U.S. is a nation of cheapskates, and they reap what they sow, yada yada—but not every society is the same in this respect.

Japan, in particular is rather different: cheap prices at the expense of all else doesn't get you far there, and service is a very important part of retail. [It's not that prices are irrelevant, of course, simply that the equation is different.]

...and that's not just a joke.

I have a friend that bought a WP7 phone (she used to have an iphone, and loved it, but got a little tired of seeing the same thing every day and wanted to try something new) 'cause it seemed very slick and flashy in the store—only to find out it's insanely buggy / flaky / ill-designed in everyday use. She updates the software regularly and has actually had the hardware replaced multiple times, but things never seem to really improve.

She's not sure whether she'll go back to iphone or try some android thing next, but she's adamant that she's never getting another winphone...