The images from a modern cell phone camera are competitive with the images from a DSLR from about 15 years ago. Sensor noise has been reduced and sensitivity increased. You can apply these improvements by either holding the sensor size (and pixel pitch) constant and getting much higher ISOs (we've gone from 1600 ISO as a max to 256,000 ISO as a max on DSLRs). Or you can hold ISO constant and reduce sensor size. Cell phone cameras just do the latter. As long as you aren't trying to make a telephoto or shoot in low light, the tiny lens size doesn't hurt you because we aren't yet close to the diffraction and resolution limits for the 20-40mm equivalent that's typically found on cell phone cameras. We still have some size reduction that's possible before we'll hit diffraction limits.
Here's some sample photos from the Nikon D1X from 2001. Now, show me a camera phone that is even close to the dynamic range and light handling of even a relatively primitive DSLR.... The night shots alone from the DSLR blow any camera phone away simply because the sensor is physically larger and is able to take in more light and DSLR lenses are light years better... If you had gone with a 15 year old P&S digital camera, I would agree with you, but DSLRs, even old ones, are in a completely different class.
the i3 comes with a internal combustion engine range extender, wonder what the efficiency drops to when that kicks in..
Care to show me the stats on the ICE range extender you speak of?
The range extender is an option. Maybe it is not offered in the US (although it is mentioned in reviews), but it is available in Germany: http://www.bmw.de/de/neufahrze...
It is a 2 cylinder engine which according to the BMW website increases the range to 300-340km total (about 200 miles).
2 cylinder engines were popular for motorboat outboards and jetskis. The industry switched to 3 cyl and 4 cyl because 2 cyl engines are less efficient and produce a greater amount of pollution. Granted, the electric engine reduces the total pollution amount, but still...
That being said, it does look like some research is being done to produce more efficient 2 cyl engines: http://www.technologyreview.co...
Anyone who knows anything about Ethanol knows that the two best sources are sugar cane and switch grass. Switch grass should be the choice for North America as it can grow just about anywhere. Corn, on the other hand, takes up valuable farm land, requires more water, and has higher production costs. Ethanol from corn is a nothing but a scam perpetrated by the corn industry. Believe this study or not, but there are much better options than corn...
Personally, looking at Tesla, how the company is run and the products they make, I predict that within the next 20 years Tesla will sell more cars per year than Mercedes.
Mercedes has cars in multiple price ranges and doesn't have range issues (gas stations everywhere).
Until Telsa can figure out how to get the pricing down and sell cars near the $30,000.00 (or equivalent) price point AND increase the range AND have near ubiquitous fueling stops (supercharge stations) it's highly unlikely....
Thanks for posting real benchmarks. I can't afford/don't need a Mac Pro but if PCIe SSD become available on other systems, it's nice to know how fast it really operates.
I've always found the single square pieces to be the most useless and the easiest to lose. I could build a detailed model as a kid and the parts that always were prone to falling apart used the single square. Lego always included them in kits where a 1x3 or 1x4 would work better. I understand that they did it to provide a greater variety of pieces for building unique designs but I never ended up using them for anything....
I'm confused. Wasn't the last car capable of a having an after-market head unit installed manufactured a solid 10 years ago? I fail to see the point. The number of such cars is on a rapid decline. For collectors if you're going to buy an ancient car, then wouldn't you be buying it for nostalgia's sake and want the old crappy radio that came with it?
Pretty much, unless you buy a car with just the basic radio. I traded in my 2003 Murano for a new car last summer and it was 10 years old. The A/C controls were built into the Bose radio system. It took an aftermarket company 7 years to release a control panel that would let you swap out the stereo system. Once they did, I was able to replace the crappy Bose with a Kenwood Navigation system without losing any functionality.
My new car is a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee and I have the Uconnect 8.4 infotainment system. It's a good system, but everything is built-in to the unit. It would be necessary to get an add-on module on top of a new stereo system to retain all of the current functionality. The only company that I know of that is on the cutting edge of developing these modules is iDataLink (http://maestro.idatalink.com/). They don't have a module for my car yet, but they do have modules for GM On Star, Ford Sync, and older Uconnect systems.
Personally, I wouldn't replace any stereo system to get CarPlay. In my opinion, its a dumbed down system because it requires you to use your cell phone for the majority of the functionality. Plus, if you have a family who all drive the car, everyone will need an iPhone. Give me a unit with built-in Garmin GPS any day....
Starcraft may be popular for strategy game players, but give me a FPS any day. I cut my teeth on Doom, Quake, Unreal, etc. In my opinion, if you want to measure reflexes, spacial awareness, and situational awareness, these are the games to study and would be closer to sports situations where muscle memory and learned strategy kicks in. Starcraft would be closer to what coaches have to do (i.e. football, making play decisions, etc.) than the athletes.
In any case, no matter what game I play, I do play differently than I used to. Much of this has to do with the compressed time I have available. For example, in FPS games I'm a bit more circumspect as I move through levels because I just don't have the time to start over from scratch multiple times. I used to re-play a game several times just to beat my last score or find the last 3 hidden treasure areas. This made me a much better online player as I would know each level completely by heart. Now, I'm lucky if I remember where I picked up that last weapon...
Look at it this way. The HR person will have two stacks of resumes. One for people with a degree and one for people without. Odds are the only time they'll delve into the non-degree pile is if they find no one in main stack to fill the position. This isn't to say you MUST have a degree to get a job. I lack one and have been employed for a long time. But I'm realizing that as my age gets up there, it will be desirable to get one for my next job.
I actually saw a job posting for a network engineer that was giving preference to people with a Master's degree.
If only HR managers understood this or knew that computer science has nothing to do with computers. The entire computer industry was built by college dropouts and is ruled by technology that changes faster then a 4 year degree. Hire people that understand technology and can learn new tech on the run. Degrees are meaningless in tech and are becoming more so in all areas.
Degrees are not meaningless in Tech. They may be in some specific low end tech jobs, but that's a different question. The purpose of university is to teach you how to learn, communicate with others, and how to write. Granted, a large number of people in the tech world have enough natural curiosity to learn on their own without being taught. However, they miss the breadth of knowledge that a college graduate is exposed to (assuming that the college graduate was actually there to learn and not just party).
I don't know the ins and outs of H1B, but don't they usually require a master degree?
No.
If I remember right, a 1 year TN visa for a Canadian required either a 4-year degree, a 2 year degree + 3 years experience, or 5 years of experience. I could be wrong, but I believe that the requirements for a H1B are similar.
I hate to break it to you, but the ancient term "America" refers to the whole continent, Canada included.
Nope - that would be "North America."
Hey, if you're going to be a pedant...
Ok, since we're being pedantic: technically, "America" refers to the entire landmass (made up of the continents of North and South America and associated islands). Still includes Canada, though.
I've never heard anyone refer to the American Continents as a singular; it's always been "the Americas."
Aw, geez, did I really get drawn back into this? You sneaky bastards.
I've always interpreted America to refer to the major continental land mass of North and South America and Americas to include all of the islands.
For example, my mother was a housewife but she volunteered for the local ambulance for years and grows her own garden every summer. So, she knows how to handle triage and grow food.
I'm into kayaking, hiking, sailing, and used to go fishing with my Dad all the time. I even know how to make flies for fly fishing. I'm also a good shot with a gun or bow. All of these are skills that could come in handy during an apocalypse. None of these are skills learned as part of my profession, but more as a part of growing up in Canada.
Yeah, that Mozilla guy stepped down, but there aren't a lot of real consequences to that (save for him being out an easy paycheck ).
Take a look at Occupy Wall Street. That was a real movement with real impact. It was also systematically (and very effectively) shut down before it accomplished anything:(.
Occupy Wall Street was a protest by a bunch of unorganized 18 to 20 somethings with no leader, agenda, or coherent message. It had no impact whatsoever, other than on the local police overtime budget. Nothing real came out of it simply because there was no real foundation to build on.
If you want to talk about a movement that was systematically destroyed, take a look at the Tea Party. It was originally started by a coalition of conservatives and democrats for the express purposes of promoting of fiscal responsibility within government. It was systematically taken over by the conservative far right and bears no resemblance to what it originally stood for.
The first time your boss buys a new office printer/scanner/fax machine with a tonne of fancy features (stapling, collating, etc), it will all fall apart. With Windows you just load the drivers and go. With Linux, well, good luck with that.....
There are just some things that are not worth the effort and running LINUX on office desktops is one of them.... Besides, it's much more fun playing with servers...
Or hell, keep using sign language on your kid even after getting the implant.
It's only dying because people are lazy.
Did you listen to yourself before you wrote this?
My thought is that anyone who was deaf and can now hear due to technology would be too busy learning about the wonderful world of sounds that we live in, hearing the voices of friends and family, exploring music, catching up on their education, etc.. None of this falls under the heading of being lazy.
Though I will say one thing - I'm glad Win7's native explorer sucked enough to make me look for a replacement, because while XP's was Good Enough, now that I've gotten used to having a file manager that supports tabs, I couldn't possibly go back.
You don't have to. There is a free utility called Clover that adds tabs to Windows explorer....
I don't understand the nostalgia concerning Windows XP. It was always a mediocre version of Windows in comparison to NT and 2K. It's main claim to fame was that it was a major leap from 3.11 and wasn't as bad as Windows ME.
Win 7 is a huge improvement, once you disable the user access control (UAC). I agree that Win 8 is a mess with the touch UI. Once you get past it with Start8 or some other utility, it too is a huge improvement over XP. I also understand the frustration with settings, etc., being move around in the menus, but you get used to it after while.
The only thing that I re-enable in newer versions of Windows, that was enabled by default in XP, is the quick launch tool bar. Personally, I have been very happy to leave XP in the dust.
And that is why we do not hear any intelligent radio transmissions from other star systems.
But does it explain why there's apparently no intelligent postings on Slashdot?
There were originally equal amounts of facts and anti-facts. Computer Scientists are still trying to explain why anti-facts now make up 99.999% of the postings.
it's simple... facts are boring... anti-facts, better known under the scientific term "made up stuff", are much more fun....
Now bathing in sunlight (don't forget the sunscreen) will help us manage our weight.
So, I guess this means that eating dark chocolate, chasing it down with whole milk, while sitting in the sun and reading (good thing I own a Kindle) will help me get rid of those unwanted pounds... Ahhh... This IS the life.... (grin)
Did you see the episode? It was, another, excuse to bash on all things American*. The presented t as if it ran out of charge. They really tried to hide the fact that they were not driving the car under normal road conditions. Clarkson also has a long history of attacking electric cars, and when he is presented with argument, he responds with non sequitors. I like how the article you linked only links to itself and not to any actual reference to the court case.
*sometime justifiable, but all too often I've seen them do things to American car they don't do to non American cars.
Top Gear is Cartainment... In my opinion, it isn't a serious car show. Though, it is popular... Those who watch it understand that the hosts have their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks and that they drive cars hard, not like normal people in day-to-day traffic. Saying that a show is disingenuous because it doesn't represent daily driving habits is a specious argument simply because it isn't that type of show.
The point is that Top Gear isn't a show for people to find information on daily driving. That's what Motor Week and Consumer Reports are for....
I actually think that replacing them with WindowsRT surface units would be better, if they must go that way. There are some from other manufacturers that are laptops running WindowsRT.
Windows RT is basically a bad hobbled version of Windows. Now Windows Pro tablets, on the other hand...
is for the diva to sing the operatic conclusion and for cats and dogs to get along.
Microsoft is so doomed. Who really needs them? Not most people.
Have you seen the latest Samsung tablets? Holy cow the better than Hi-def resolution, vivid colors, awesome performance, none of them running Windows, all of them running Android. I saw them recently and my first reaction was: Microsoft is so doomed.
Slashdot Mirror
The images from a modern cell phone camera are competitive with the images from a DSLR from about 15 years ago. Sensor noise has been reduced and sensitivity increased. You can apply these improvements by either holding the sensor size (and pixel pitch) constant and getting much higher ISOs (we've gone from 1600 ISO as a max to 256,000 ISO as a max on DSLRs). Or you can hold ISO constant and reduce sensor size. Cell phone cameras just do the latter. As long as you aren't trying to make a telephoto or shoot in low light, the tiny lens size doesn't hurt you because we aren't yet close to the diffraction and resolution limits for the 20-40mm equivalent that's typically found on cell phone cameras. We still have some size reduction that's possible before we'll hit diffraction limits.
Here's some sample photos from the Nikon D1X from 2001. Now, show me a camera phone that is even close to the dynamic range and light handling of even a relatively primitive DSLR.... The night shots alone from the DSLR blow any camera phone away simply because the sensor is physically larger and is able to take in more light and DSLR lenses are light years better... If you had gone with a 15 year old P&S digital camera, I would agree with you, but DSLRs, even old ones, are in a completely different class.
http://www.dpreview.com/galler...
the i3 comes with a internal combustion engine range extender, wonder what the efficiency drops to when that kicks in..
Care to show me the stats on the ICE range extender you speak of?
The range extender is an option. Maybe it is not offered in the US (although it is mentioned in reviews), but it is available in Germany: http://www.bmw.de/de/neufahrze...
It is a 2 cylinder engine which according to the BMW website increases the range to 300-340km total (about 200 miles).
2 cylinder engines were popular for motorboat outboards and jetskis. The industry switched to 3 cyl and 4 cyl because 2 cyl engines are less efficient and produce a greater amount of pollution. Granted, the electric engine reduces the total pollution amount, but still...
That being said, it does look like some research is being done to produce more efficient 2 cyl engines: http://www.technologyreview.co...
Anyone who knows anything about Ethanol knows that the two best sources are sugar cane and switch grass. Switch grass should be the choice for North America as it can grow just about anywhere. Corn, on the other hand, takes up valuable farm land, requires more water, and has higher production costs. Ethanol from corn is a nothing but a scam perpetrated by the corn industry. Believe this study or not, but there are much better options than corn...
http://www.scientificamerican....
Personally, looking at Tesla, how the company is run and the products they make, I predict that within the next 20 years Tesla will sell more cars per year than Mercedes.
Mercedes has cars in multiple price ranges and doesn't have range issues (gas stations everywhere).
Until Telsa can figure out how to get the pricing down and sell cars near the $30,000.00 (or equivalent) price point AND increase the range AND have near ubiquitous fueling stops (supercharge stations) it's highly unlikely....
Thanks for posting real benchmarks. I can't afford/don't need a Mac Pro but if PCIe SSD become available on other systems, it's nice to know how fast it really operates.
You mean like this one...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Q: What's the most useless lego piece ?
I've always found the single square pieces to be the most useless and the easiest to lose. I could build a detailed model as a kid and the parts that always were prone to falling apart used the single square. Lego always included them in kits where a 1x3 or 1x4 would work better. I understand that they did it to provide a greater variety of pieces for building unique designs but I never ended up using them for anything....
I'm confused. Wasn't the last car capable of a having an after-market head unit installed manufactured a solid 10 years ago? I fail to see the point. The number of such cars is on a rapid decline. For collectors if you're going to buy an ancient car, then wouldn't you be buying it for nostalgia's sake and want the old crappy radio that came with it?
Pretty much, unless you buy a car with just the basic radio. I traded in my 2003 Murano for a new car last summer and it was 10 years old. The A/C controls were built into the Bose radio system. It took an aftermarket company 7 years to release a control panel that would let you swap out the stereo system. Once they did, I was able to replace the crappy Bose with a Kenwood Navigation system without losing any functionality.
My new car is a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee and I have the Uconnect 8.4 infotainment system. It's a good system, but everything is built-in to the unit. It would be necessary to get an add-on module on top of a new stereo system to retain all of the current functionality. The only company that I know of that is on the cutting edge of developing these modules is iDataLink (http://maestro.idatalink.com/). They don't have a module for my car yet, but they do have modules for GM On Star, Ford Sync, and older Uconnect systems.
Personally, I wouldn't replace any stereo system to get CarPlay. In my opinion, its a dumbed down system because it requires you to use your cell phone for the majority of the functionality. Plus, if you have a family who all drive the car, everyone will need an iPhone. Give me a unit with built-in Garmin GPS any day....
Starcraft may be popular for strategy game players, but give me a FPS any day. I cut my teeth on Doom, Quake, Unreal, etc. In my opinion, if you want to measure reflexes, spacial awareness, and situational awareness, these are the games to study and would be closer to sports situations where muscle memory and learned strategy kicks in. Starcraft would be closer to what coaches have to do (i.e. football, making play decisions, etc.) than the athletes.
In any case, no matter what game I play, I do play differently than I used to. Much of this has to do with the compressed time I have available. For example, in FPS games I'm a bit more circumspect as I move through levels because I just don't have the time to start over from scratch multiple times. I used to re-play a game several times just to beat my last score or find the last 3 hidden treasure areas. This made me a much better online player as I would know each level completely by heart. Now, I'm lucky if I remember where I picked up that last weapon...
Look at it this way. The HR person will have two stacks of resumes. One for people with a degree and one for people without. Odds are the only time they'll delve into the non-degree pile is if they find no one in main stack to fill the position. This isn't to say you MUST have a degree to get a job. I lack one and have been employed for a long time. But I'm realizing that as my age gets up there, it will be desirable to get one for my next job.
I actually saw a job posting for a network engineer that was giving preference to people with a Master's degree.
If only HR managers understood this or knew that computer science has nothing to do with computers. The entire computer industry was built by college dropouts and is ruled by technology that changes faster then a 4 year degree. Hire people that understand technology and can learn new tech on the run. Degrees are meaningless in tech and are becoming more so in all areas.
Degrees are not meaningless in Tech. They may be in some specific low end tech jobs, but that's a different question. The purpose of university is to teach you how to learn, communicate with others, and how to write. Granted, a large number of people in the tech world have enough natural curiosity to learn on their own without being taught. However, they miss the breadth of knowledge that a college graduate is exposed to (assuming that the college graduate was actually there to learn and not just party).
I don't know the ins and outs of H1B, but don't they usually require a master degree?
No.
If I remember right, a 1 year TN visa for a Canadian required either a 4-year degree, a 2 year degree + 3 years experience, or 5 years of experience. I could be wrong, but I believe that the requirements for a H1B are similar.
I hate to break it to you, but the ancient term "America" refers to the whole continent, Canada included.
Nope - that would be "North America."
Hey, if you're going to be a pedant...
Ok, since we're being pedantic: technically, "America" refers to the entire landmass (made up of the continents of North and South America and associated islands). Still includes Canada, though.
I've never heard anyone refer to the American Continents as a singular; it's always been "the Americas."
Aw, geez, did I really get drawn back into this? You sneaky bastards.
I've always interpreted America to refer to the major continental land mass of North and South America and Americas to include all of the islands.
For example, my mother was a housewife but she volunteered for the local ambulance for years and grows her own garden every summer. So, she knows how to handle triage and grow food.
I'm into kayaking, hiking, sailing, and used to go fishing with my Dad all the time. I even know how to make flies for fly fishing. I'm also a good shot with a gun or bow. All of these are skills that could come in handy during an apocalypse. None of these are skills learned as part of my profession, but more as a part of growing up in Canada.
Yeah, that Mozilla guy stepped down, but there aren't a lot of real consequences to that (save for him being out an easy paycheck ).
Take a look at Occupy Wall Street. That was a real movement with real impact. It was also systematically (and very effectively) shut down before it accomplished anything :(.
Occupy Wall Street was a protest by a bunch of unorganized 18 to 20 somethings with no leader, agenda, or coherent message. It had no impact whatsoever, other than on the local police overtime budget. Nothing real came out of it simply because there was no real foundation to build on.
If you want to talk about a movement that was systematically destroyed, take a look at the Tea Party. It was originally started by a coalition of conservatives and democrats for the express purposes of promoting of fiscal responsibility within government. It was systematically taken over by the conservative far right and bears no resemblance to what it originally stood for.
The first time your boss buys a new office printer/scanner/fax machine with a tonne of fancy features (stapling, collating, etc), it will all fall apart. With Windows you just load the drivers and go. With Linux, well, good luck with that.....
There are just some things that are not worth the effort and running LINUX on office desktops is one of them.... Besides, it's much more fun playing with servers...
Or hell, keep using sign language on your kid even after getting the implant.
It's only dying because people are lazy.
Did you listen to yourself before you wrote this?
My thought is that anyone who was deaf and can now hear due to technology would be too busy learning about the wonderful world of sounds that we live in, hearing the voices of friends and family, exploring music, catching up on their education, etc.. None of this falls under the heading of being lazy.
Though I will say one thing - I'm glad Win7's native explorer sucked enough to make me look for a replacement, because while XP's was Good Enough, now that I've gotten used to having a file manager that supports tabs, I couldn't possibly go back.
You don't have to. There is a free utility called Clover that adds tabs to Windows explorer....
http://download.cnet.com/Clove...
I don't understand the nostalgia concerning Windows XP. It was always a mediocre version of Windows in comparison to NT and 2K. It's main claim to fame was that it was a major leap from 3.11 and wasn't as bad as Windows ME.
Win 7 is a huge improvement, once you disable the user access control (UAC). I agree that Win 8 is a mess with the touch UI. Once you get past it with Start8 or some other utility, it too is a huge improvement over XP. I also understand the frustration with settings, etc., being move around in the menus, but you get used to it after while.
The only thing that I re-enable in newer versions of Windows, that was enabled by default in XP, is the quick launch tool bar. Personally, I have been very happy to leave XP in the dust.
And that is why we do not hear any intelligent radio transmissions from other star systems.
But does it explain why there's apparently no intelligent postings on Slashdot?
There were originally equal amounts of facts and anti-facts. Computer Scientists are still trying to explain why anti-facts now make up 99.999% of the postings.
it's simple... facts are boring... anti-facts, better known under the scientific term "made up stuff", are much more fun....
Reminds me of that stupid urban legend about entering your pin at an ATM when under duress.. entering it backwards summons ze police.
What if your PIN is a palindrome?
Then you get your money and the police....
So gamers will be popular either because they are known to be good or simply because they choose the right name and get publicity...
So this is like the difference between Morgan Freeman and Kim Kardashian.
First they tell us that dark chocolate is good for us because of the antioxidants and that it reduces the amount of fat that your body adsorbs from other foods.
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://www.medicalnewstoday.co...
Then they tell us that whole milk, cheese, etc. keeps us leaner
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa...
Now bathing in sunlight (don't forget the sunscreen) will help us manage our weight.
So, I guess this means that eating dark chocolate, chasing it down with whole milk, while sitting in the sun and reading (good thing I own a Kindle) will help me get rid of those unwanted pounds... Ahhh... This IS the life.... (grin)
Did you see the episode? It was, another, excuse to bash on all things American*. The presented t as if it ran out of charge. They really tried to hide the fact that they were not driving the car under normal road conditions.
Clarkson also has a long history of attacking electric cars, and when he is presented with argument, he responds with non sequitors.
I like how the article you linked only links to itself and not to any actual reference to the court case.
*sometime justifiable, but all too often I've seen them do things to American car they don't do to non American cars.
Here ya go... http://www.theguardian.com/med...
Top Gear is Cartainment... In my opinion, it isn't a serious car show. Though, it is popular... Those who watch it understand that the hosts have their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks and that they drive cars hard, not like normal people in day-to-day traffic. Saying that a show is disingenuous because it doesn't represent daily driving habits is a specious argument simply because it isn't that type of show.
The point is that Top Gear isn't a show for people to find information on daily driving. That's what Motor Week and Consumer Reports are for....
I actually think that replacing them with WindowsRT surface units would be better,
if they must go that way. There are some from other manufacturers that are laptops
running WindowsRT.
Windows RT is basically a bad hobbled version of Windows. Now Windows Pro tablets, on the other hand...
is for the diva to sing the operatic conclusion and for cats and dogs to get along.
Microsoft is so doomed. Who really needs them? Not most people.
Have you seen the latest Samsung tablets? Holy cow the better than Hi-def resolution, vivid colors, awesome performance, none of them running Windows, all of them running Android. I saw them recently and my first reaction was: Microsoft is so doomed.
Unless you actually do real work...