I bought my first camcorder a few years ago, decided on MiniDV despite it costing much more than analogue.
I love the quality of the video I can record, and that it records 16 bit PCM. I too love the frame accurate edits and the ability to have good audio without expensive kit.
Today there are ever fewer camcorders that record to MiniDV let alone tape, they record in MPEG4 which has a MUCH lower data rate and so already degraded video quality before even editing a frame. Camcorders today all seem to now record on inflexible hard drives or memory cards, how do you backup the unedited footage? In any case, MiniDV tape wins hands down for cost of backing up.
Looked into consumer-level HD camcorders - pointless. We have higher resolution but lower data rate, and the audio is low bitrate MP2, not even PCM. You could record PCM, but then again, who makes consumer DAT any more? Anyway that's another piece of kit you don't want to carry around, and shouldn't.
We have gone from VHS type video to high quality and back down to mediocre video quality in a few short years. Damn you manufacturers. We are getting consumer camcorders worthy of the Youtube video quality.
People thinking of dumping their car to get something more fuel efficient in order to save money make this calculation all the time: how much gas $$/mo will I save, how long would that take to pay off the difference between car X and car Y Maybe in your part of the world that's how people buy cars, but here it's:
1) Can I afford it?
2) Do I look good in it?
3) Do the babes like it and will it get me laid?
Maybe the lowering pc sales is a result of the quality of computers and software, rather than the other gadgets being that good?
From my experience for example, Sony has made products which have more style over practical usage. I'm not going to pay $2000 for a styled pc which you can't use and breaks a month out of warranty.
HD has a low bit-rate compared to proper DV video, HD camcorders do not record PCM audio like DV video does - and actually uses an outdated audio codec (and at a low bit-rate). HD also is harder to edit and lower quality thanks to it not recording every single frame as one complete image like DV does.
Add to that, most new camcorders seem to record on non-removable hard drives or memory cards - stupidly difficult to backup onto something other than yet another (expensive) hard drive in your computer as opposed to cheap tape.
I have seen well encoded amateur HD video, and it's just not that impressive.
The consumers got the digital equivalent of VHS/Betamax, from a decent image (DV) to a poor one (HD), and backing up of footage made harder not easier. We are now moving into a world where video and audio quality no longer matters.
But, if you scrap Whois, you remove a nice money earner from registrars from people / sole trader businesses, that pay extra for their domains / renewals to be protected against their personal data from appearing in Whois.
It'd be nice for Whois to not exist, but I doubt it ever will be scrapped.
claims that it's the world's most energy efficient desktop hard drive and reduces the active and idle power consumption by up to 40 percent over the previous generation. But comparing which hard drive / manufacturer to who, yourself to yourself?
It's all very well talking about having applications that run over the internet instead on your home pc (a sort of basterdised version of dumb-terminals), but what about the security of the files you're sending to the application in the first place? Surely the unedited files are no longer stored just on your pc, but someone else has a copy of it. Do you trust this third party? I wouldn't.
We've heard the "we'll boost the signal" excuse before with analogue and DAB (digital radio) transmitters in very large parts of the south of the UK. When the signals get boosted they get complaints that the French are getting their broadcasts interfered with the English dross, so the signal gets turned back down, and the same awful reception continues. Going to digital will not change this.
Yipee, 30 more channels of substandard audio / video, and general televisual crap!
At least the death of the BBC tax is getting ever closer, and no longer will you be sent to prison for refusing to pay to 'listen' to the governments propaganda mouth-piece.
As a bonus, if they fuck it up enough, millions of people in the UK will be spared watching the Olympics in 2012, the same year superior analogue tv is supposed to be axed for good.
That's a great idea, have two applications that don't do everything very well, merge them into one, then you can say there's only one package that doesn't do things very well.
OpenOffice is good if you don't want to pay Microsoft prices for Office, which should suit the casual user. Thunderbird still has many irritating 'features', and it comes bundled with a Usenet reader (which should IMO be unbundled) - it is not a master of email or Usenet so turn it into master of email.
Very very small print: You need to install this rootkit software to make the MP3's work, but we're telling you in advance this time, so you can't sue us.
Copyright enforcement: If you do something we don't allow to our MP3's, we reserve the right to make that Li-ion battery in your MP3 player go up in smoke. Just see all those laptop batteries as examples of how to enforce copyright!
If such stupidity for (insanely nosy personal information) pre-flight information and arrogant immigration officers etc. was dished out to Americans when they fly abroad, MAYBE then Americans would start to see what is being done in their name.
As it is, more and more tourists are choosing any country other than the USA to have a holiday to, the American tourist industry is moaning at the loss of tourist trade, but the tourists don't care anymore. There are other countries more inviting to tourists to spend their money in.
I have been picking at the cooker (pre-release) of 2008.0 of Mandriva to find problems in it, and overall it is better than 2007.1 (Spring).
The most important thing I think is the switch to the most recent kernel which has speeded the computer up no end compared to the 2007.1 kernel, and at long last small things like the motherboard & processor sensors / fan speeds details work without lots of voodoo from the users side.
The merger of Beryl back to Compiz was not 100% IMO, you'd think the best code would be used, but Compiz uses far more processor resources then Beryl, and has other small faults Beryl didn't. Also, when I moved from Beryl to Compiz, it took some work from the user as it didn't disable this and that before the upgrade and as a result mangled the xorg.conf and compositing-wm configuration. The menu system has changed a bit, and takes some getting used to.
Worth of note, they changed the way the kernel is named a little, so it's now kernel-desktop-xx instead of kernel-xx.
Having said all that, probably most users will download the ISO's and install that way instead of urpmi method.
If you have Mandriva 2007.1, I think it's worth the update, if only for the better speed from the newer kernel.
Thunderbird is the only email package I've got to work on my Linux / Windows machine, which allows me to dual boot and still collect and read email whichever OS I'm in.
It does have an irritating bug of only showing three email accounts in the accounts folder panel, and hiding any other accounts you have, even if you collect email for them (and so you can't read emails to those accounts). Oh, and I don't like it being a Usenet reader as well, it doesn't do it particularly well anyway.
The problem with this system idea is, under current UK law, if you park your car / walk past a persons home and piggy-back off their Wi-Fi signal, you could be arrested and charged for theft of bandwidth under some weird Communications Act. Now of you have these access points, how would an ordinary (usually incompetent) policeman know it is being used by people not "stealing"? Or someone could put up a logo of the scheme outside a home and then point the police that they are not stealing bandwidth - when they actually are. Who's going to know?
Another hair brained scheme by a communications company and regulator hell-bent on not investing in the infrastructure for a better network and instead trying to get everything on the cheap.
I have my new and old machine dual boot linux, and take a bootable DVD with me if people ask for computer help (usually to fix Windows). So that's 2 1/2 more installs.
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I bought my first camcorder a few years ago, decided on MiniDV despite it costing much more than analogue.
I love the quality of the video I can record, and that it records 16 bit PCM. I too love the frame accurate edits and the ability to have good audio without expensive kit.
Today there are ever fewer camcorders that record to MiniDV let alone tape, they record in MPEG4 which has a MUCH lower data rate and so already degraded video quality before even editing a frame. Camcorders today all seem to now record on inflexible hard drives or memory cards, how do you backup the unedited footage? In any case, MiniDV tape wins hands down for cost of backing up.
Looked into consumer-level HD camcorders - pointless. We have higher resolution but lower data rate, and the audio is low bitrate MP2, not even PCM. You could record PCM, but then again, who makes consumer DAT any more? Anyway that's another piece of kit you don't want to carry around, and shouldn't.
We have gone from VHS type video to high quality and back down to mediocre video quality in a few short years. Damn you manufacturers. We are getting consumer camcorders worthy of the Youtube video quality.
1) Can I afford it?
2) Do I look good in it?
3) Do the babes like it and will it get me laid?
I invented myself a job in 2007. Beats everything else in my list.
Coming from the future, Bill and Ted's time machine phonebox lands in Silicon Valley.
Bill: "Hey Ted, I found a copy of Microsoft Vista!"
Ted: "Vintage cr@p."
A more important question, are either of them hurting Microsoft?
Maybe the lowering pc sales is a result of the quality of computers and software, rather than the other gadgets being that good?
From my experience for example, Sony has made products which have more style over practical usage. I'm not going to pay $2000 for a styled pc which you can't use and breaks a month out of warranty.
Just my opinion, but HD video is not that great.
HD has a low bit-rate compared to proper DV video, HD camcorders do not record PCM audio like DV video does - and actually uses an outdated audio codec (and at a low bit-rate). HD also is harder to edit and lower quality thanks to it not recording every single frame as one complete image like DV does.
Add to that, most new camcorders seem to record on non-removable hard drives or memory cards - stupidly difficult to backup onto something other than yet another (expensive) hard drive in your computer as opposed to cheap tape.
I have seen well encoded amateur HD video, and it's just not that impressive.
The consumers got the digital equivalent of VHS/Betamax, from a decent image (DV) to a poor one (HD), and backing up of footage made harder not easier. We are now moving into a world where video and audio quality no longer matters.
But, if you scrap Whois, you remove a nice money earner from registrars from people / sole trader businesses, that pay extra for their domains / renewals to be protected against their personal data from appearing in Whois.
It'd be nice for Whois to not exist, but I doubt it ever will be scrapped.
HANCOCK
Has
Anyone
Noticed
COvert
Curveillance
Kode
Okay, it relies on typo's, but it works, sort of.
Did they test the software on politicians? Whatever expression is pulled, they more than likely they get a score of 'Liar, Liar, pants on fire!'
It's all very well talking about having applications that run over the internet instead on your home pc (a sort of basterdised version of dumb-terminals), but what about the security of the files you're sending to the application in the first place? Surely the unedited files are no longer stored just on your pc, but someone else has a copy of it. Do you trust this third party? I wouldn't.
... If it could save us from Hollywood garbage like "Dude, Where's my car?"
And what will this cost?
We've heard the "we'll boost the signal" excuse before with analogue and DAB (digital radio) transmitters in very large parts of the south of the UK. When the signals get boosted they get complaints that the French are getting their broadcasts interfered with the English dross, so the signal gets turned back down, and the same awful reception continues. Going to digital will not change this.
Yipee, 30 more channels of substandard audio / video, and general televisual crap!
At least the death of the BBC tax is getting ever closer, and no longer will you be sent to prison for refusing to pay to 'listen' to the governments propaganda mouth-piece.
As a bonus, if they fuck it up enough, millions of people in the UK will be spared watching the Olympics in 2012, the same year superior analogue tv is supposed to be axed for good.
That's a great idea, have two applications that don't do everything very well, merge them into one, then you can say there's only one package that doesn't do things very well.
OpenOffice is good if you don't want to pay Microsoft prices for Office, which should suit the casual user. Thunderbird still has many irritating 'features', and it comes bundled with a Usenet reader (which should IMO be unbundled) - it is not a master of email or Usenet so turn it into master of email.
Vista has value in it?
Headline: We're offering MP3's for free!
Very very small print: You need to install this rootkit software to make the MP3's work, but we're telling you in advance this time, so you can't sue us.
Copyright enforcement: If you do something we don't allow to our MP3's, we reserve the right to make that Li-ion battery in your MP3 player go up in smoke. Just see all those laptop batteries as examples of how to enforce copyright!
[not aiming comments at specific companies mind]
If such stupidity for (insanely nosy personal information) pre-flight information and arrogant immigration officers etc. was dished out to Americans when they fly abroad, MAYBE then Americans would start to see what is being done in their name.
As it is, more and more tourists are choosing any country other than the USA to have a holiday to, the American tourist industry is moaning at the loss of tourist trade, but the tourists don't care anymore. There are other countries more inviting to tourists to spend their money in.
When Japan and China recall all the loans made to the USA, let's see who's economy will turn into a carbon copy of what happened to the USSR.
I have been picking at the cooker (pre-release) of 2008.0 of Mandriva to find problems in it, and overall it is better than 2007.1 (Spring).
The most important thing I think is the switch to the most recent kernel which has speeded the computer up no end compared to the 2007.1 kernel, and at long last small things like the motherboard & processor sensors / fan speeds details work without lots of voodoo from the users side.
The merger of Beryl back to Compiz was not 100% IMO, you'd think the best code would be used, but Compiz uses far more processor resources then Beryl, and has other small faults Beryl didn't. Also, when I moved from Beryl to Compiz, it took some work from the user as it didn't disable this and that before the upgrade and as a result mangled the xorg.conf and compositing-wm configuration. The menu system has changed a bit, and takes some getting used to.
Worth of note, they changed the way the kernel is named a little, so it's now kernel-desktop-xx instead of kernel-xx.
Having said all that, probably most users will download the ISO's and install that way instead of urpmi method.
If you have Mandriva 2007.1, I think it's worth the update, if only for the better speed from the newer kernel.
Thunderbird is the only email package I've got to work on my Linux / Windows machine, which allows me to dual boot and still collect and read email whichever OS I'm in.
It does have an irritating bug of only showing three email accounts in the accounts folder panel, and hiding any other accounts you have, even if you collect email for them (and so you can't read emails to those accounts). Oh, and I don't like it being a Usenet reader as well, it doesn't do it particularly well anyway.
The problem with this system idea is, under current UK law, if you park your car / walk past a persons home and piggy-back off their Wi-Fi signal, you could be arrested and charged for theft of bandwidth under some weird Communications Act. Now of you have these access points, how would an ordinary (usually incompetent) policeman know it is being used by people not "stealing"? Or someone could put up a logo of the scheme outside a home and then point the police that they are not stealing bandwidth - when they actually are. Who's going to know?
Another hair brained scheme by a communications company and regulator hell-bent on not investing in the infrastructure for a better network and instead trying to get everything on the cheap.
I have my new and old machine dual boot linux, and take a bootable DVD with me if people ask for computer help (usually to fix Windows). So that's 2 1/2 more installs.