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At a certain point, you're going to run into a point where air turbulence, haze, lens quality, etc affect your image and nothing can avoid that.
What should be done is to limit the zoom to that point (even if the image can technically zoom in further)

Take for example, this pic (it's big - and I sort of hate my webhost, so feel free)
http://vehiclehitech.com/pictures/!%20Photography/2008-02-24-KelownaSkylinePanorama-attempt1.jpg
I shot it with a $100 lens, so at 100% it doesn't look too great (the jpeg artifacts don't help either)
But at around 35% (if you're able to easily scale it in your browser), it looks pretty decent, right?

I experienced the same problem.
This is a screenshot I took on one of the occassions where file operations would just seem to stall for no reason at all.

And it actually took 3 minutes to finish deleting 9mb

Sure, you can have movie mode ;)

Time Lapse vids shot with a Nikon D50 ;)

Also funny, although it needs no text.
Linky

Well, hopefully they will and will use a different save dialog. The new save dialog box is the worst thing to happen in windows gui design in years.

This actually makes my head hurt

Better? No, not really You get to see a whopping 10 icons in the default view (it randomly switches depending on the folder), and more than half of the window is useless.
You can resize it, but you'll have to resize it every time.

Well, hopefully they will and will use a different save dialog. The new save dialog box is the worst thing to happen in windows gui design in years.

This actually makes my head hurt

Better? No, not really You get to see a whopping 10 icons in the default view (it randomly switches depending on the folder), and more than half of the window is useless.
You can resize it, but you'll have to resize it every time.

I like my fake leopard better.
That, my friends, is what happens when you play red alert 2 for 9+ hours, take some (more) vicodin and codeine and notice that Photoshop CS has been sitting in the taskbar the whole time.

Whining includes going to the BBB and other toothless organizations. (No large corporation gives a shit about the BBB.)

I disagree. With so many companies staffing their 800 lines with people who really can't do anything, a quick bbb complaint often gets a call back within a day or so from someone who is actually empowered to fix your problem. It isn't really the BBB that companies are worried about, it is the reporter for a news startion saying something like, "So, Mr. Jones, why does your company have over 350 unanswered BBB complaints?"
Compusa got forcibly delisted from the BBB (mostly for the rebate bullshit the ftc later punished them for) a couple of years ago and it was a pain in the ass for them to get back on and their reputation suffered.
That said, if a company just doesn't care about negative PR - tiger direct comes to mind - yeah, filing a bbb report won't do shit.

One of your options can be to do amusing things to companies. Phillips was suposed to give me a refund on a set of headphones but were apparantly retarded and kept losing / not receiving the receipt (I think the shitbirds were hoping I would just go away, however I'm... passionate about getting my money when companies owe me something.)
So I called one day and informed them they were going to receive 1701* copies of the receipt if the cheque didn't ship that day. So that night, 1701 faxes of the receipt (ok, so a few errored out) were sent. Later that day, I received a polite call from an american woman (the fucking filipinos on their 800 line can't tie their own fucking shoes without approval from the us office) and they sent me a cheque.

*about 1701 - I used to watch star trek a lot and I did a quick estimate on how many faxes I could send while I slept - it was around this number, so I just used it. I suppose this made a lot more sense / was funny to me when I was full of angst over this. Not so much anymore.

Add a gun or guns and the situation has the potential to end tragically for either party or by-standers.

Because we all know, if there weren't any guns around, they would of have started a bonfire, brought out the smores and sang a acapella version of kumbaya. The fact is that the gun in that situation was there, and the police were not. It also doesn't matter if you're a 105 pound woman or a 350 pound quarterback, a gun is just as effective in your hands if you practice a bit and just as deadly for those on the other end of it. Yes, that cuts both ways, but you have the same thing with knives and bats (athough England is trying to ban knives too...)

And as for this myth of "adrenaline will cause you to shoot people" - that is bullshit and I speak from first hand experience. A drunken frat boy decided it would be a good idea to steal a toner cartridge for a Laserjet IIIp (retard...) while I was moving. He approached me as I was looking for something in the trunk and during our "talk", I slipped a magazine full of hydrashoks hollowpoint ammo into my 9mm and loaded a round. When it became clear that dumbass just wanted to steal something and run off, I just shrugged and pretty much let him do it.
I somehow managed to overcome the irresistable urge to empty my magazine into him and let him go as he and his dumbass friends sped off (and skidded around a corner and tore up the right side of his new suv, lol).
The police never showed up, by the way - in some places the local cops are useless.

A good chunk of UK cops carry concealed .380s (you can conceal a .380 pretty much anywhere. My carry piece when I lived in the states
And it was not uncommon in London to see snipers on the rooftops and police officers walking around with mp5's when I went about a month ago.

Oh, finally, it might not be the greatest idea to use the UK as an example, where you have gangs of thugs and idiots running around "happy slapping" people, carrying bats or whatever improvised weapons that are available to them while ordinary citizens are worried about a 5 year sentence for carrying a swiss army knife in their pocket.

Add a gun or guns and the situation has the potential to end tragically for either party or by-standers.

Because we all know, if there weren't any guns around, they would of have started a bonfire, brought out the smores and sang a acapella version of kumbaya. The fact is that the gun in that situation was there, and the police were not. It also doesn't matter if you're a 105 pound woman or a 350 pound quarterback, a gun is just as effective in your hands if you practice a bit and just as deadly for those on the other end of it. Yes, that cuts both ways, but you have the same thing with knives and bats (athough England is trying to ban knives too...)

And as for this myth of "adrenaline will cause you to shoot people" - that is bullshit and I speak from first hand experience. A drunken frat boy decided it would be a good idea to steal a toner cartridge for a Laserjet IIIp (retard...) while I was moving. He approached me as I was looking for something in the trunk and during our "talk", I slipped a magazine full of hydrashoks hollowpoint ammo into my 9mm and loaded a round. When it became clear that dumbass just wanted to steal something and run off, I just shrugged and pretty much let him do it.
I somehow managed to overcome the irresistable urge to empty my magazine into him and let him go as he and his dumbass friends sped off (and skidded around a corner and tore up the right side of his new suv, lol).
The police never showed up, by the way - in some places the local cops are useless.

A good chunk of UK cops carry concealed .380s (you can conceal a .380 pretty much anywhere. My carry piece when I lived in the states
And it was not uncommon in London to see snipers on the rooftops and police officers walking around with mp5's when I went about a month ago.

Oh, finally, it might not be the greatest idea to use the UK as an example, where you have gangs of thugs and idiots running around "happy slapping" people, carrying bats or whatever improvised weapons that are available to them while ordinary citizens are worried about a 5 year sentence for carrying a swiss army knife in their pocket.

Well, actually, it was a Sony Vaio - and it wasn't an actual scroll wheel (that would of have made sense and stuff, especially seeing how it was centered between the mouse buttons) - I discovered this after I installed the drivers, it was basically a "scroll me to alt tab between applications or go through sony's magical menu of apps we think you should have".
Never did get the damn thing working as a scroll wheel.
The laptop was stolen at the begining of this year and between that useless wheel, the actual honest to god desktop p4 processor that sucked the batteries dry in an amazing amount of time, the insurance settlement and the deal I got on a replacement laptop, I found it really, really hard to feel all that bad about losing it.
You can see a wee bit of the laptop in this pic. Link (yes, the insurance lady loved that picture too, lol)
I'd love a laptop with a scroll wheel too.

Instead of a .22, something like a Kel-Tec P3AT can be carried. 6+1 rounds of .380 in a 7.2 oz package that is less than an inch thick and is very, very easily concealable.
Here's a picture of mine beside my cell phone, pda, etc.
It also happens to be pretty cheap at ~$200.
It isn't a revolver (which is nice because it can shoot out of a pocket without jamming up - something like a SW 342PD would be a good choice for a small revolver) but it is tiny.

If you are going to carry, check out packing.org for information on ccw reciprocity.

Tasers are... well... the cheap ones are crap. Sure they look scary, but some really don't do all that much. Really, hitting someone with one of the cheap ones will just piss them off.

Taser does sell a civilian version, but it costs $300 more than the .380, is bigger, weighs more and shoots only once. It is legal in most places though - although it is becoming illegal in some as local governments start banning it. NJ has a ban on it as well.

Also, a surefire or similar flashlight is a good thing to have. Very bright and you can get their G2 model for cheap ($35ish).

Rubbing alcohol is great for cooling down. Burns if splashed in someone's eyes too ;)

Ok, I suck at math and all, but I can't be the first one who picked this up.

1920 x 16 = 30720 != 7680
1080 x 16 = 17280 != 4320

Also, sometimes more resolution isn't always better. I don't really want to see the exact number of pimples on someone's face.
That sort of stuff is visible even in this screen cap, which is in 720p and encoded with xvid (cap is from HBO's "Rome", BTW). I really don't want to be able to make out globs of makeup on someone's face. Ignorance is bliss I guess (teeny bopper pop stars would look terrible in this, but perhaps there is an advantage to having teens disgusted by the face of the latest coke snorting "musician")

Even a .22 will screw up a hard drive, but you'll probably be able to recover some data (but you can silence a .22 really well, if you use sub sonic rounds) Just don't shoot it at an 45 degree angle or something.

Something a bit bigger, like a .380 or 9mm will
a.) put a nice 9mm hole into the platter
b.) make a nice and small entry hole
c.) warp the platter so severly that some of the platter will end up outside the casing.
linky
d.) penetrate more than 1 drive.

That said, open it up and nuke the platters for 10 minutes, you'll be fine ;)

Why the consistent anti-law inforcement sentiment on /.?

Oooh, oooh.
This is why