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Of course photo.net is the ultimate photography website, but there are several good beginners' articles at Megapixel.net. It's more than just a camera review site.

Many have suggested photo.net, and I agree and second the commet to be sure to read the static content as well as the boards. I also like Usefilm, particularly as a place to post pictures and get comments. The three Ansel Adams books (The Camera, The Negative, and The Print are classics and loaded with useful information, and The National Geographic Photography Field Guide is hugely informative and inspirational as well.

Speaking of inspiration, spend time looking at the sorts of pictures that you like and thinking about what you like about them and how they might have been made.

Lastly, definitely shoot a lot of pictures. It's especially easy and cheap with digital. Taking pictures takes practice and the more you shoot the better you'll be.

You should note that photo.netters have a fairly low tolerance for newbies who post questions to the forums without searching the archives.

Apart from that, shoot loads and when you see the results try to analyse which pictures really work best and why

My final recommendation is to see other photographers work for inspiration. Most photo technique books have pretty dull photos in them, and once you master basic technique you'll learn more from studying the masters.

Try out photo.net -- this is the biggest english-speaking community in the field.

I also found www.photozone.de a few days ago. A bit basic, but the stuff under teqnique should get you started.

Just remember that the sight on your camera isn't a gun, think of it more as composing a picture in the view finder. Pay attention not only to your subjects but what else you can see behind/around them. Don't be afraid to ask people to move closer in group shots, try crouching down or standing on something to get a different view on things, don't be afraid to move around rather than just standing and clicking.

• Philip Greenspun runs and excellent photo site. It has been around for years, and the tutorials and/or comments are hard to beat.
• In print, the best starting point, in my opinion are four of Ansel Adam's books. In particular:
  1. The Camera;
  2. The Negative;
  3. The Print, and;
  4. Basic Techniques

What about photo.net?

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This to me is a sure sign of a guy stuck in academia.

• Teaching Computer Science at MIT. How many of you would be asked to teach Computer Science at the most prestigious tech school on Earth?
• Founded ArsDigita, and wrote large tracts of the ArsDigita Community System in TCL. That company and product became the foundation for many Fortune 500 companies' websites.
• Through his evangelism, course developments at MIT, and the ArsDigita University, helped to bring web courses like MIT's 6.171 to mainstream university teaching.
• Wrote two of the best technical books I have ever read, and put them up for free in HTML on his website: Internet Application Workbook and Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
• Created and developed Photo.net, which averages 6 million hits/day. See more statistics here.

Why do we care about his opinion? Did he build any large scale scalable web application? Was he involved in maintaining and supporting any commerical projects? Did he make any critical insight of the strength and weakness of these development tools? Sounds like he draw his conclusion mostly from some student project. In that case I would say Microsoft wins hands down. Microsoft is very good at making and packaging complete development tools and is relative easy for novice to learn and use. Does it make VB the best programming language over other alternatives? I won't make that conclusion.

This to me is a sure sign of a guy stuck in academia.

• Teaching Computer Science at MIT. How many of you would be asked to teach Computer Science at the most prestigious tech school on Earth?
• Founded ArsDigita, and wrote large tracts of the ArsDigita Community System in TCL. That company and product became the foundation for many Fortune 500 companies' websites.
• Through his evangelism, course developments at MIT, and the ArsDigita University, helped to bring web courses like MIT's 6.171 to mainstream university teaching.
• Wrote two of the best technical books I have ever read, and put them up for free in HTML on his website: Internet Application Workbook and Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
• Created and developed Photo.net, which averages 6 million hits/day. See more statistics here.

Why do we care about his opinion? Did he build any large scale scalable web application? Was he involved in maintaining and supporting any commerical projects? Did he make any critical insight of the strength and weakness of these development tools? Sounds like he draw his conclusion mostly from some student project. In that case I would say Microsoft wins hands down. Microsoft is very good at making and packaging complete development tools and is relative easy for novice to learn and use. Does it make VB the best programming language over other alternatives? I won't make that conclusion.

See this
The topic has been researched extensively by many fields of science, and the verdict is out: green, not yellow. Any introductory textbook in anatomy, human perception, digital signal/video processing, or even a desktop encyclopedia can tell you all this.

The cone for green is most sensitive to a wavelength of about 531 nanometers. This has been measured both by subjective tests and objectively by activating individual chemicals found in the cones. If you are wondering whether the brain perceives a different color (i.e. yellow) when that cone is active (by itself), then here is a test you can do: find an LED which emits light at 530 or so nm and observe it. I will bet you a few cool million that it will be distinctly green. If you don't believe me, you can buy one and try it.

By the way (unrelated) that company sells really cheap, really bright LEDs that most other companies will gouge you for. I highly recommend them if you plan on doing case modding, alternative lighting, etc.

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

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This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag".

Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.)

A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well.

A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software:

A blue, plastic cock.

An AIDS ribbon.

A frozen piece of shit.

A cock ring (with or without razor blades.)

KY Jelly.

Anal warts/tearings.

Billy Mays.

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First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

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This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag".

Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.)

A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well.

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A blue, plastic cock.

An AIDS ribbon.

A frozen piece of shit.

A cock ring (with or without razor blades.)

KY Jelly.

Anal warts/tearings.

Billy Mays.

Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make

So the thing that interested me most about this Sony was it's Carl Zeiss lens 28 - 200 mm equiv. F2.0 - F2.8 aperture.

Zeiss is famous for quality, and 105 mm lens, at f 2.8 is a beautiful combination for selective focus portraits.

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

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0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag". Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.) 1. A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well. A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software. A blue, plastic cock. An AIDS ribbon. A frozen piece of shit. A cock ring (with or without razor blades.) KY Jelly. Anal warts/tearings. Billy Mays. Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make note of this and include one, if not all, of the Official Gay Items in your software. The GGPL rest

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

Second, you need to succeed in gathering a few "Gay Users" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to contact Richard Stallman, creator of the GGPL, and ask him to sacrifice a straight person for you in the name of All Fags.

If you have mod points and would like to support GGPL, please moderate this post up.

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And now, the GGPL.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag". Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.) 1. A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well. A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software. A blue, plastic cock. An AIDS ribbon. A frozen piece of shit. A cock ring (with or without razor blades.) KY Jelly. Anal warts/tearings. Billy Mays. Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make note of this and include one, if not all, of the Official Gay Items in your software. The GGPL rest

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

Second, you need to succeed in gathering a few "Gay Users" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

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0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag". Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.) 1. A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well. A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software. A blue, plastic cock. An AIDS ribbon. A frozen piece of shit. A cock ring (with or without razor blades.) KY Jelly. Anal warts/tearings. Billy Mays. Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make note of this and include one, if not all, of the Official Gay Items in your software. The GGPL rest

So anyone even vaguely interested in photography won't give this a second look.

It's not the tools, it's how you use them.

Ever heard of Lomo, or the even-more-respected-by-"art"-photographers-but-not -as-hyped Holga? which comes with a lens that's not only crappy, but has serious camera-to-camera variance so you have to buy a few ($15 each in lots of 2-5), find & tape up the light leaks, then shoot to find out which distortion you like the best.

Every photographer doesn't have Greenspun's aesthetic.

Some people like cheap cameras 'cause you can shoot on any street in the world without worrying about getting ripped off. This guy has a Leica, but check out his ode to the lowly Canonet of the golden age of 35mm (1967-1988)

Do you know that Leicas from the 30s still work and are repairable, but LCDs have finite lifetime and spare parts mfg a the same time as the original cameras age the same way, so NO Nikon F5s will be operational in 50 years?

So anyone even vaguely interested in photography won't give this a second look.

It's not the tools, it's how you use them.

Ever heard of Lomo, or the even-more-respected-by-"art"-photographers-but-not -as-hyped Holga? which comes with a lens that's not only crappy, but has serious camera-to-camera variance so you have to buy a few ($15 each in lots of 2-5), find & tape up the light leaks, then shoot to find out which distortion you like the best.

Every photographer doesn't have Greenspun's aesthetic.

Some people like cheap cameras 'cause you can shoot on any street in the world without worrying about getting ripped off. This guy has a Leica, but check out his ode to the lowly Canonet of the golden age of 35mm (1967-1988)

Do you know that Leicas from the 30s still work and are repairable, but LCDs have finite lifetime and spare parts mfg a the same time as the original cameras age the same way, so NO Nikon F5s will be operational in 50 years?

You might want to check out photo.net, originally created by Phillip Greenspun of Arsdigita fame. I can't guarantee that the images there are royalty-free - in fact, I'm quite sure that they are copyrighted but they do appear to be published for exposure to the general populace. I presume that each source has it's own rules for re-use of the images.

Part of the problem with photography is that a picture on film (or nowadays digital) is not the same as what you see. For any photo, the lightness / darkness is partly subjective to the settings on the camera, and greatly subjective to the person handling processing. "Dodging and burning" or darkening and lightening portions of an image to bring out masked detail is a common practice, and most (99.999% I'd say) photographers consider a dodged and burnt image to be unaltered unless it makes the image appear truly different than the scene it was taken from. Color photos are even more confusing, because the human mind compensates for variations in lighting, while film doesn't (except for built-in biases to certain lights per film). Colors also have to be adjusted during printing using a system of filters.

Photo.net has what I consider an authoritive determination of what is classified as altered, and I suspect for those not familiar with photography, it will give you a bit of an idea about just how subjective a printed image can be, from the type of paper used, to the amount of contrast in the print, to the dodging and burning, and the color compensation... and these are all AFTER exposure considerations. Many more considerations can be made before the exposure!

Part of the problem with photography is that a picture on film (or nowadays digital) is not the same as what you see. For any photo, the lightness / darkness is partly subjective to the settings on the camera, and greatly subjective to the person handling processing. "Dodging and burning" or darkening and lightening portions of an image to bring out masked detail is a common practice, and most (99.999% I'd say) photographers consider a dodged and burnt image to be unaltered unless it makes the image appear truly different than the scene it was taken from. Color photos are even more confusing, because the human mind compensates for variations in lighting, while film doesn't (except for built-in biases to certain lights per film). Colors also have to be adjusted during printing using a system of filters.

Photo.net has what I consider an authoritive determination of what is classified as altered, and I suspect for those not familiar with photography, it will give you a bit of an idea about just how subjective a printed image can be, from the type of paper used, to the amount of contrast in the print, to the dodging and burning, and the color compensation... and these are all AFTER exposure considerations. Many more considerations can be made before the exposure!

Google has a whole list of them here.
As far as free services go, Photobase is pretty good. Phil Greenspun's Photo.net gives you some space plus a community of amateur to pro photographers to boot.

While I was indulging my data storage daydreams, I came across a discussion board thread which talks about the various issues surround storing digital media (pictures, in this case). It was pretty intersting reading. I hadn't thought about gold-plated CDs before, and that sounds like a great idea as long as the hardware to read them exists for the duration of the media's shelf life. Even NASA has been having trouble in that area.

At first blush, I'd say the way to save all the images would be some sort of distrubuted filesystem, a la Freenet. Package an ASCII metafile with the ROMs file format info along with the actual image file and that should do it. Some sort of centralized system of making sure that at least N copies exist in "the wild" and the data could be reasonably safe. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but it occurred to me that data integrity and file formats might not be the only barriers to long-term data storage. Governments aren't especially data-friendly 100% of the time, either. If you really want to save data for all posterity, you have to protect it from yourself as well.

-B

Too much hype. All they did was stack pixel detectors rather than mosaic them. The mosaic was simpler and now cheaper, this thing costs $1800 in a camera, else I'm sure someone could've come up with it. The real accomplishment is creating those silicon layers precisely, not coming up with lets stack em

They say the resolution is like a 120mm film, and the color lattitude is big. So are CMOS sensors in Canon and Nikon's cameras. Checkout the awesome photos on photo.net. A lot of those have been shot by modern digital cameras with CCDs and they dont look bad. Mead has his own marketing to do to try and take Foveon to Intel and Microsofts level, so he has to push down CCD. Theres a reason why people are buying digital cameras with sensors smaller than fingernails and submitting their pictures on professional photography site. I think Mead has work to do.

The feature set is supposed to be pretty good, according to DPReview. The only real complaints they had about the camera were the red noise, and poor behavior in low light conditions. The camera had some really nice features including "undo last delete", histograms for each of the coolor channels, and even the ability to zoom in on an area of the pictures while examining the histogram to get a histogram for a small region of your photo. The software that comes with the camera is also supposed to be very good (though I have no idea if it works in OSX yet).

Over at Photo.net people seem to like some of the Sigma lenses pretty well. The 70-200 I think, is supposed to be a fine lens and people use it on other bodies all the time.

I agree I would have liked to see a Nikon or Canon body with this chip, but given that's probably a year or two off I'm probably going to buy the SD9 as my first digital SLR.

I think the moderator system might need a revamping... I mean honestly who thinks its a good idea to moderate a post without reading it first. Heck, anyone who moderated the parent post is welcome to email me, ive got a bridge for them, real cheap.

If you don't obtain it legally, then you're denying someone their due profits, and that can be termed theft.

Getting back to the morality aspect, few people would argue that copyright infringement is legal, or in some way morally justified. But it's not theft. Znork's comments are right-on: the manipulation of getting people to equate copyright infringement with theft is a giant, and disingenuous, PR campaign on the part of the **AAs. It would be incredibly inconvenient for them if society were to collectively accept that there is a fundamental difference between the two.

Folks may be interested to know that the U.S. Supreme Court has even weighed in on this point. Take a look at this writeup and read Justice Blackmun's comments on the distinction. (For the record, LaMacchia definitely committed copyright infringement, and no one is saying that what he did was anything short of a crime. But the principle from the Dowling decision, quoted extensively by Justice Blackmun, is that copyright infringement and theft are fundamentally different.)

Yes; we should be acting like spoilt little children, to as much of an extent as our pocketbooks will permit.

It is, after all, the American dream .

Say what you like about Gates and Microsoft, but the fact remains that in dollar terms, he's done far more for worthy causes than the typical Open Source advocate

Sure, he is giving a lot of money to his foundation.

On the other hand, according to this source, he is worth more than US$ 60bn.

And, according to this other source, our charitable friend Bill Gates makes about US$ 31 per second.

I don't think RMS, Linux, or ESR wealth or income will ever come close...

So, for Mr Bill Gates, giving US$ 1.2bn per year is... what? Giving away 1/50th of his total worth per year?? Now, that's pretty generous.

Don't misunderstand me: I truly thing it's generous. But you have to put this into perspective, especially when it comes to your comment about ESR. I personnaly think the article you referenced sipply means ESR is determined to enjoy his money... while we enjoy, for free, the software he created.

Horse huckey. You listen to WAY too much Rush Limbaugh. The slash taxes folks and the Reagan faithful have conveniently forgotten that at the end of the Reagan years, the US had the largest deficit in it's entire history. Although he later whimped out, Bush the elder was exactly right in the early 80's when he declared Reagan's "trickle down" theory as voodoo economics.

The conservative message hasn't changed since Reagan and it's just as idiotic today as when the Gipper first dreamt it up. Case in point: The spendthrift Democrats had a multitrillion dollar surplus at the end of the Clinton years, and the current "fiscally responsible" Republican president has frittered that away on a moronic $300 per person refund transforming that huge surplus into a huge deficit in a matter of two short years. So I ask you, which model seems to work better? Tax and spend (Democrats -> massive surplus) or Spend without taxing (Republicans -> massive deficit)

[snip]

the top income erners are pay way too much tax and at some point this is bound to collapse at the way it's going. The lower income erners (the largest percent of people) are being taken off the tax rolls and the burden of welfare programs and being shifted to the rich.

You need to expand your reading list beyond the spoon-fed conservative pablum you've been reading. The income gap between rich and poor has been increasing steadily for the last 30 years. This isn't some liberal massaged-numbers plot, it is a fact. The discrepancy isn't because the non-rich are lazy or are working less, it's because the rich have been given more and more ways to hoard their loot.

This is an admittedly extreme example, but comparing the wealth of Bill Gates with the median household income in the U.S. ($50,000/year) yeilds a ratio of 1,189,810 : 1

To put that number in perspective, the wage earners in a typical American household would need to have made $50,000/year since they were australiopithicenes to equal what Mr. Bill has.

A more down to earth example is someone who earns $1,000,000/year only has to work 3 years to earn what the average household does in 60. I don't care how amazing a person might be, there are damn few millionaires who's contribution to society is so great that it warrants paying them what most Americans earn in a lifetime of toil.

The class warfare tactics are working as well. You hear "The working family" all the time, but what does that mean? to these class warfare people, you are only a working man/family if you make less than x number of dollars. so to them the rich dont' WORK for their money, they just use and exploit people. I'm sure that these rich people don't wake up every day and sit on their asses. So the only difference between them and the "working man" is that they make more money.

Live in denial if you want, but the rich ARE given advantages and opportunities that the rest of us are not. Take the stock market, there is a rule in place that restricts those with account balances of less than $25,000 from making more than 5 trades in any given stock per week. Those with more than $25,000 could make 100, 200, 300 trades per week if they choose. It's a rich boy privelege that purposely excludes those of lesser means.

How is this a problem? Well, someone above the cutoff point could buy 5000 shares make 3 or 4 five cent gain trades per day and end the week $3,750 to $5,000 richer. The small guy would have to hold out for 500 percent returns to earn the same amount. So while the rich guy can chug along week after week piling on the cash, the little guy has to clutch his 100 shares and hope for a bolt from the blue 500 percent miracle. And this is only a drop in the privelege bucket.

His Travels With Samantha was one of the first online free books ever, circa 1992-3. Later, he wrote the stupendous book on web publishing, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing with his samoyed, Alex.

Two very good reads by a very good writer. Sorry, I know some people don't like Philip and this isn't flamebait -- I truly admire many of his initiatives, like the free Remindme and Clickthrough services, in addition to the remarkable photo.net which has grown enormous tentacles nowadays. Both books are intimately related to those efforts.

His Travels With Samantha was one of the first online free books ever, circa 1992-3. Later, he wrote the stupendous book on web publishing, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing with his samoyed, Alex.

Two very good reads by a very good writer. Sorry, I know some people don't like Philip and this isn't flamebait -- I truly admire many of his initiatives, like the free Remindme and Clickthrough services, in addition to the remarkable photo.net which has grown enormous tentacles nowadays. Both books are intimately related to those efforts.

I've posted some photos from time to time, and have gotten very useful feedback.

--Mike--

These cameras sound interesting, but I'm waiting to see how the foveon cameras turn out. The camera previewed there was recently announced to by $1800 for the body.

I have to think that buying a really high end diigtal camera in the next few years is only practical for a company with a lot of money - otherwise the imaging and storage technologies being developed and refined really make waiting worth while.

At the moment a good film scanner and camera are as appealing to me a digital system, and cheaper too. Plus film is a lot easier to deal with at the moment when travelling if you take more than a few hundred pictures.

All I know is that those three chicks on his site are totally hot.

I've been very happy with this camera. It offers *complete* control over things such as ISO, focus, f-stop, shutterspeed, Noise reduction, etc. in addition to many nice P&S settings.

My only complaint is that low-light pictures turn out reddish no matter how I adjust the settings. If you want a manual focus that you adjust by rotating a lens barrel, then you won't get that either. However, the compact body of the coolpix 885 makes up for a lack of manual focus barrel and you are still able to selectively focus in pictures such as: this macro shot

Photo.net would be a really good place to get the answer. If you do go there do yourself a favor and search the archives before posting.

One of the best narrations of a cross-country trip (and it's even more than just that), is Phil Greenspun's Travels with Samantha. Great photos too; this sounds like a good/fun thing to do while traveling, plus if you're not already a good photographer, it's a great chance to improve.

Also check Philip Greenspun's (of ArsDigita fame) photo.net which is a possibly the best (and original) one-stop photography resource on the net.
The tutorials are fantastic, and the community is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, you honestly won't find more pros and experts in one place.

Latest digital reviews include the Minolta Dimage 5, the Canon EOS D60 (I so want one of these! Or an EOS-1D if I won the lottery), and the Nikon D100, so it proves that they're very up-to-date.

Check it out!

Also check Philip Greenspun's (of ArsDigita fame) photo.net which is a possibly the best (and original) one-stop photography resource on the net.
The tutorials are fantastic, and the community is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, you honestly won't find more pros and experts in one place.

Latest digital reviews include the Minolta Dimage 5, the Canon EOS D60 (I so want one of these! Or an EOS-1D if I won the lottery), and the Nikon D100, so it proves that they're very up-to-date.

Check it out!

Also check Philip Greenspun's (of ArsDigita fame) photo.net which is a possibly the best (and original) one-stop photography resource on the net.
The tutorials are fantastic, and the community is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, you honestly won't find more pros and experts in one place.

Latest digital reviews include the Minolta Dimage 5, the Canon EOS D60 (I so want one of these! Or an EOS-1D if I won the lottery), and the Nikon D100, so it proves that they're very up-to-date.

Check it out!

Also check Philip Greenspun's (of ArsDigita fame) photo.net which is a possibly the best (and original) one-stop photography resource on the net.
The tutorials are fantastic, and the community is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, you honestly won't find more pros and experts in one place.

Latest digital reviews include the Minolta Dimage 5, the Canon EOS D60 (I so want one of these! Or an EOS-1D if I won the lottery), and the Nikon D100, so it proves that they're very up-to-date.

Check it out!

Also check Philip Greenspun's (of ArsDigita fame) photo.net which is a possibly the best (and original) one-stop photography resource on the net.
The tutorials are fantastic, and the community is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, you honestly won't find more pros and experts in one place.

Latest digital reviews include the Minolta Dimage 5, the Canon EOS D60 (I so want one of these! Or an EOS-1D if I won the lottery), and the Nikon D100, so it proves that they're very up-to-date.

Check it out!

Also check Philip Greenspun's (of ArsDigita fame) photo.net which is a possibly the best (and original) one-stop photography resource on the net.
The tutorials are fantastic, and the community is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, you honestly won't find more pros and experts in one place.

Latest digital reviews include the Minolta Dimage 5, the Canon EOS D60 (I so want one of these! Or an EOS-1D if I won the lottery), and the Nikon D100, so it proves that they're very up-to-date.

Check it out!

Look at openACS. Its a fast evolving toolkit, with a lot of features out of the box. The current project website is not the best looking, but the toolkit has been used to develop a lot of interesting sites.

Methodology
If I were you, I would stay away from the Vignettes and other off-the-shelf CMSs. To paraphrase Phil Greenspun, these guys pricing works along the lines of ... shake the customer by his feet and see how much money falls out, then charge another $50 000k for support.

I would also not be in a rush to implement a totally custom solution. Building from scratch is usually a dumb idea(tm). No point in reinventing the wheel. Having said that there is a slight difference between a Michelin-clad Ferrari wheel and a 0BC Roman chariot's wheel...

I agree with you, do not go for the slashdot look. That virtually rules out most of the nukes (phpnuke, postnuke, drupal, slashcode etc). It is

so boring

so overused

suitable for weblogs and news sites but not for more mainstream content sites.

oss is good
The beauty of using OSS toolkits is that you get a head start. If any consultant (read salesman) tells you that their product fits your needs perfectly, then a. shoot them, b. chop them into little pieces c.feed them to the snakes d. shoot the snake ..... just for good measure.

The best that you can hope for is to have a basic and solid foundation that you can build on.

decisions
Some of the things to look for include the following:

• ability to handle workflow.
• ability to deal with permissions
• ability to deal with authentication
• ability to handle more than just plain text
• ability to version ... rollbacks ... track changes
• ability to handle templates, ... proper templates, not just color changes.
• level of developer support
• level of developer competence
• pace of changes

For each toolkit, look at sites that have implemented it. If they *all* look the same, steer clear. Its a sure sign that templating was poorly implemented, or that the toolkit is difficult to customise.

Post a couple of questions on the boards. If the tone is friendly, then you know that if you did pay these guys to do work for you, the service would be great.

If you are building a proper CMS, its going to be painful.

and you win an all expenses paid tour of some of the sites built using openACS and its cousin ACS classic.

• Grand Expeditions
• Wine Access
• photo.net
• Stirling Engines
• Online Ireland and more here
• Away
• Sherman power sports
• Net effect

...But I just got to rant. Sorry, cameras do not 'take good pictures'. Its the person behind the viewfinder that takes the pictures. Some really awesome exposures have been taken with cheap plastic cameras.

Equipment can help you, sure, if youre trying to catch images of the rare south african pocket fox in his native environment, but what makes or breaks a picture is the composition. If you really want to say your camera 'takes good pictures', then start studying composition and the artistry of photography. Heres some obligatory links:

Photo.net
Apogee Photo Magazine

Anyone who wants to understand RMS should read Free as In Freedom first. It's free as in beer and free as in speech.

The most chilling part of the whole book is a reference to Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists. It's chilling really, to think of young Bill, writing this letter, unaware of where he will be in 25 some-odd years.

Two quotes from this letter are very interesting:

Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

I think he succeeded in the hiring and deluging, but some might want to qualify "good".

But ultimately, he got one thing terribly wrong...

What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?

It turns out that the Internet makes that thing possible. A math whiz at MIT, a graduate student in Finland, a couple hundred thousand computer hobbyists all over the world can do this.

Before you attack RMS for his wacky views, remember that he has committed his life to his views. He's committed his life to proving Gates' letter wrong.

Of course, you can buy tools from someone, and IMHO, that's okay. I can't grow bananas in my back yard, so I pay money for them. I suppose RMS would do without bananas.

But the GNU project is all about making the quality tools for free. The GPL enforces that notion with our own crazy copyright law. To extend my analogy, I do grow basil in a window box. You're welcome to some of my basil, but if you want to a whole lot of it, please give me some of your fine pesto sauce. You don't want to share, OK, then get your mitts off my plants.

More than many other modern occupations, programming is a craft: like gardening, or woodworking. Many people do it for fun. Some are lucky enough to get paid. The freedom RMS is fighting for is the freedom to share your code openly. You get my basil, I get your pesto, and everyone can get bananas. The conventional rules of scarcity don't apply with code. As we share, our tools get better, we become better craftsmen and perhaps we get our $208 back.

I've got a Coolpix 995, and it takes GREAT photos. In case you were wondering about just long exposures... here's a self portrait which shows a fairly long (4 second) exposure.

--Mike--

While I don't know if such efforts are successful or not, the OpenACS project I lead is directly oriented to this space (and other common-interest communities).

I'd say that thus far such communities most naturally grow around subjects of global interest (such as photo.net), which spawned the codebase that grew to be OpenACS.

But I wouldn't give up on communities of more narrow interest. After all, in wetware space frequently membership to meetings is depressingly low. Yet ... much can be done by dedication, knowlege, and persistence.