Re:Which market is most important to us?
on
Ambient Findability
·
· Score: 1
The second is that while digitally stored information is much easier to copy, it is also much easier to destroy. And a lot of information which would in the past have been rendered in a form that was self-contained and easily transferred physically is now stored in very few copies on harddisks which are volatile. Two examples of this are personal correspondence and photo albums.
Yes, it's easy to destroy individual copies of digitally stored works. But I tend to think that this is more than counteracted by two other forces, one as you say -- it's easy to duplicate -- *VERY* easy. Secondly, which you seem to ignore, it's also easy to keep.
With this I mean that physical correspondence (for example) takes up physical space. I know, I used to be a regular (as in daily) letter-writer over a period of around a decade. It takes up drawers and drawers and drawers, and thus it's tempting to throw away the (usually) single copy of a work simply to save up space. This is even more so for documents that you attach no notsalgic memories to.
My email, say from 1997 on the other hand... I never even considered throwing it away, why should I ? The storage needed, including the extra demands on my backups etc is so utterly trivial it's not even worth mentioning. My total email from 1997 takes up around 2 MB, 20% of that if I bother compressing it. That is like 1000 messages of 2KB each on the average. compressed that is 0.00013% of the capacity of my disc. The expected value of that archive can be *VERY* low and it's still not worth it deleting it.
Ontop of that, all of that information existed in 2 copies, one at the sender and one at the recipient. (that's typically *not* the case by private snailmail correspondence, each end will have only "half" of the conversation) Sure, lots of that will be deleted and/or lost over the decade, but I bet even if I where to loose it, I'd be able to reconstruct half or perhaps even 3 quarters of it. Where I to loose/destroy my physical letters, they'd basically all be gone.
Light waves slow down in a solid medium, but the individual photons do not. The GP is correct in asserting that the slowdown of a light wave is caused by a process of absorption/readmission of photons.
How do we know ? If the new photon is identical to the old, and the absorption/readmission has no observable effect, how do we know it took place at all ? We certainly cannot observe individual photons on their way "between" absorbtion/readmission events, because to do that we'd need to let them interact with some sort of sensor inbetween, and... you see where this leads.
and don't have time/possibility of making a direct measurement
Sure, there's lots of ways of achieving a correct exposure. I never contested that. Sometimes though, many of them are impossible for practical reasons.
A light-meter measures light by the way, more precisely it measures the intensity of light. That is fairly trivial.
The thing is, a camera taking two pictures under *identical* conditions, one black object and one white object will tend to (I oversimplify, but this is Slashdot) consider both objects medium gray and thus correct exposure until that is the case. (it won't go quite that far, but it'll go in that direction)
That is typically not what you want. The problem is, the camera has no way of telling the difference between a object reflecting 10% ligth ligthed with 100W, and a object reflecting 80% ligthed by 12W.
Now, from a pure "data-collection" POV this is fine. As you say, if what you care about is collecting data from a scene, then the ideal exposure is the one where the max brigthness is outputed as 255, and the max darkness is 0. Or, if you want more detail, on the cost of loosing detail in shadows or highligths, then allow the camera to go to 0 or to 255 before the max value is reached.
Thing is, that's fine for a pro photographer that realizes that the camera *only* captures *difference* in ligthlevel, and don't really tell you anything much about the absolute brigthness (not unless combined with info on shutter and aperture anyways). But for the typical point-and-shoot person it's very unexpected, and seems "wrong", that if you have a big checkerboard (white/black) then photographing a single white square, a single black square and the entire board will give three different pictures (i.e. differently exposed, the "white" on one of these pictures won't look like the "white" on the others.
I agree it's a moot point if you know what you're doing.
So, your point is that analog cameras are ideal for very *stupid* beginners that don't know their own best ?
I agree absolutely.
Luckily for these poor sods they are increasingly rescued by the fact that analog cameras are getting hard to find. The US is a bit less technological than I'm used to, but here in Norway, for example, 3 of the 5 biggest gadget-chains don't sell analog cameras *at*all* anymore. The remaining ones have a few, but they're tucked away in a corner, next to the one-time-disposables.
Agreed. But I was talking about medium and large format photography. My other camera (Mamiya RB-67, 2 1/4") can easily achieve 150MP. 4x5" offers north of 250MP. Then there's 8x10", which is still being used (you do the math:)
How often do you print those at like 10 feet times 15 feet, and then look at those prints up close ? At some point or other, it just stops mattering. Okay, so if your field of work is shooting landscape-photos for high-quality posters, it migth matter. (though most posters are printed at 150dpi, which means a 2 foot by 3 foot poster is still only 20Mpix. And I've even made posters (in that size) using my 8Mpix camera and getting decent quality. (yes, that's only around 75dpi. Most posters you look at at a distance of atleast a meter, more often 2 though, and there's a limit also to the spatial resolution of your eyes. a pixel at 75dpi is 0.3mm large, if you print a black-and-white checkerboard at 75dpi, it'll look like uniform grey to your eyes at any distance over about 50cm)
Digital equivalents are definitely a long way off.
Also arguable. Large-formats are used mostly for static scenes, by nessecity they are less light-sensitive than smaller formats. scanning-back DSLRs can also achieve ridicolously high pixelcounts. Furthermore *current* generation high-end DSLRs are already in the 12-16 Mpix range. They migth need an order of magnitude more to start seriously pushing into mid-format territory. But I can still remember when we bougth a 1.2 Mpix camera and paid over $1500 for it. It's not *that* long ago. It migth be like a decade ago.
The pro and consumer photographic markets have always been rather different (how many people buy Hasselblads for their family photos?); and I guess it's hard for non-professionals to get a grasp of the quality demanded by buyers of expensive commercial images.
It's not hard. I just have a different definition of "professional" than you seem to. *SOME* (a tiny fraction!) of those that are professional photographers work in medium or large format with large demands on quality (basically: the best possible) and willingness to sacrifice on *all* other aspects to achieve that. *MOST* professional photographers make their living shooting news for papers, weddings, portraits, postcards, pictures for magazines, whatever. For those quality also matters -- but not enough to push all other concerns aside. (which is basically what you do when you go large-format)
Personally, I remain phanatical about philm.
That's fine. Just as long as you realize that is *is* a phanaticm, one increasingly pushed into the enthusiast niches, increasingly irrelevant. There's people phanatical about vinyl-music too, that doesn't mean it's a must in "professional music". It's quite likely in 10 years, the 0.000001% of pictures that absolutely *MUST* have the highest pixel-count humanely possible, all other concerns be damned, will still be shot on large-format cameras from the 1970ies.
film is only cheaper than digital if you never *use* the camera.
A simple, beginner digital camera of reasonable quality can be had for like $200, less if you buy a used one. Given that you'll pay like $20/film for consumables, even simple low-end ones, you'll have saved back the digital one in 10 films.
If you want to learn -- which means *experimenting* a lot, this means the break-even point of digital migth well come in the first *month*. How is *that* for Return On Investment ?
It's bad with some digitals, mostly because consumers haven't learnt caring about shutter-delay yet. The day people start asking about it, is the day it disappears.
Same for boot-delay (power-on-to-ready)
Even today you don't need to spend $1000 to get low delays. A Canon has a powerup-to-first-shot delay of 0.5 seconds, you can't frame and shoot the first pic quicker than that anyway. Thereafter it has a shutter-delay (button-press-to-picture-taken) of 0.05 seconds, which is not noticeable for most purposes. You can only take 3-4 pictures a second though, I assume due to processing-constraints. For a consumer-camera that should be sufficient.
But 90%+ of all photo-journalists, wedding-photographers, print-photographers and forensic-photographers *Have* changed to digital !
Yes, but no professional photographer uses digital!
I strongly suspect your definition of "professional photographer" is someting akin to: "photographer that does not use digital."
The conventional definition of professional, is one that does it for a living. 90%+ of the people who take photos for a living have, infact, changed to digital.
Sure. But you overlook atleast three important things:
90% of the people who take photos rarely make larger than 4" times 6" prints, and *never* larger than say 10" times 15". For this a entry-level DSLR at today 8Mpix or so is plenty, it'll give you over 200 dpi even in the biggest size (and 600dpi at the normal size.) for many people this is simply "good enough".
Second, you say it's a "long way" off. Even if you needed 20Mpix to compete with good 35mm film profesionally developed, that's still a *short* way off. Remember how long ago it was that a $300 camera would have a maximum of 3Mpix ? Today you can get decent-quality 5-6Mpix for that price. Extrapolate ! (I actually think the trend to more pixels will fall off in consumer-cameras because to many consumers a 20Mpix camera has no advantage over a 5Mpix one, migth even be a *disadvantage* because it means more needed storage)
Third, the *advantages* of digital are so huge, and so uncontested that *even* if digital could never reach the quality-level of film, everyone except a very few phanaticals would still use it. Sorta like how only religiously stereophile care about resolution/samplerate higher than that of CD.
I stopped using my EOS SLR after getting a *shitty* Kodak 3Mpix camera. This wasn't planned -- when I bougth the Kodak I though: for snapshots !, and was under the idea that I'd keep using the EOS for "real photos". You know what ? A year later it was obvious that the EOS was, for all practical purposes, dead. I sold it. Yes, the EOS was *vastly* superior in functions, adjustability, quality and workmanship to the silly little piece of plastic Kodak. But in the end it didn't matter. Pictures *now*. Experiments *for*free*. Pay to develop *only*nice*pictures*. Being able to *digitaly*manipulate/combine pictures. Instant preview. Never run out of film.
Now I have a nice digital SLR. But the thing is, even if today my choise would be between a $200 simple digital compact, and a *excellent* non-digital SLR (say a $3000 camera), I'd still, in practice, reach for the digital compact 95% of the time.
Obviously this is the case for the rest of humanity that can afford digital too. Witness how 90%+ of sold cameras are digital. This from Nikon just confirms it.
Sure it's better. Much better. The ligth-sensor in the camera can only tell how much ligth is being *reflected* by the object, the *real* question is how much ligth is *falling* on the object.
Automatic ligth-meters all fail in that they underexpose a pure white surface and overexpose anything that *should* be mostly black.
You can however solve that sorta by using exposure-bracketing. If I'm really uncertain and don't have time/possibility of making a direct measurement, I just tell my camera to take *3* pictures each time I press the shutter. One overexposed, one "correct" and one underexposed (according to the cameras logic), 99% of the time atleast one of those will be fine.
That's a result of crappy US consumer-protection, not poor engineering. The very same cameras are sold in Scandinavia with a *5* year guarantee. If a significant portion of them failed before that, this would be prohibitively expensive.
The problem is though, that light can be slowed down. According to several sources, light can be slowed down, although they all seem to agree that a photon travels at the speed of light no matter what, just the absorption/release/re-absorption process can slow down how quickly it crosses a given distance.
It's not a "problem" that light can be slowed down, he is confusing the fact that the speed of light *in*vacum* is a constant, with the equally well-known fact that ligth moves slower in all other materials, in some very much slower. (this is the reason we've got difraction, what makes fiber-optics possible and so on.
Several sources my ass. This is something only someone who understands nothing of it, and knows nothing of it himself would say. It's sorta like saying that "according to several sources" there is gravity on earth. While technically correct it's not exactly a insigthful comment.
They *don't* all "seem" to agree that a photon travels at the speed of light, no matter what. Infact that is absolutely totally wrong. It's only correct in vacuum. In *anything* else the speed of ligth (and thus photons) is lower. (the higher the index of refraction of the material, the slower)
He seems to be saying that speed, time and distance is *not* connected to eachother according to distance=time*speed. He says that a photon travels always at C (FALSE!), but that it still can use longer than distance/C time to cross that distance. This leads to the question what exactly he means by "speed" when he explicitly says he does *NOT* mean distance/time.
Ok. I'm being hard on the poor fella. It's just -- sometimes it'd be beneficial if people would recognize the limits in their own understanding. Discussing black holes when you don't know what "speed" is, have no idea what causes refraction. Thinks photons always move at C and so on is sorta pointless.
For the same reason you need to know what "multiply" and "add" means before you can fruitfully discuss second order heterogenous differential equations.
Oh, but that breaks the law, you no doubt protest... Well, guess who writes the law? The government. And China has one of those as well, to write their laws.
Yes. But in China that's the end of it. In some other countries, atleast on paper, the government is *not* the top-power in the land. In a democratic country you can then continue: "Well, guess who controls the goverment ?"
Yes. A photon does indeed travel at the speed of ligth. This is true for the same reason that it is true that a cow generally travels at the speed of cow.
Hint: what is the *definition* of "speed of ligth" ?
Except that it makes it easier for developers to create managable, maintainable software under Linux using a free, standards compliant (yes, it was submitted to ECMA and C# is a standard) open source, and familiar language.
So, you're saying, the benefits of the language itself outweighs the drawbacks ?
I don't see what makes C# enormously much better than all other languages. If anything, it seems very much like a "me too" language with lots of its feature-set borrowed from Java.
Myself I don't like statically typed languages for most jobs anyway, so I tend to prefer Ruby or Python.
Yes. There are benefits to having Free Software work on windows. But here it was a step or two sharper than that again: With a mono-developed Free Software program you end up having a program that works on Windows, ontop of a platform that is de-facto controlled by Microsoft, and for which the Free OSes have only a subset available.
It'd be, for example, trivial to extend such an app using some part that is not available under Mono so that the original Free Software, Mono application is, in its improved form, only usable under Windows.net
In essence this is the BSD vs GPL-licence discussion all over. Developing under mono allows anyone who wish so to fork the app, and make the fork Windows-only. This is true even if the app is under the GPL. Because the app itself is freely distributable, and delivered with source as per the GPL-demand. However that source doesn't help you any -- because you lack the nessecary facilities under Linux.
I personally don't like the idea that software I write suddenly ends up being Windows-only. So for that reason alone I'd never even consider writing to a platform where all we have is a *subset*.
First, I don't think it has been anywhere near "firmly established". Secondly, neither OpenOffice, nor Thunderbird or Firefox is built ontop of technology that is controlled by Microsoft.
Yes, I know, Microsoft doesn't directly control Mono. But they *do* set the de-facto standard for.net and C#.
I simply don't think it's a good strategic choise when you are in a competition to voluntarily choose to build your solution ontop of a platform controled by your main competitor. A competitor that is convicted of abusing it's monopoly-position.
Yeah, sure, it's something completely different from Wine. But my "no" was sorta based on something different, namely the idea that, as stated in the blurb:
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"
Mono will certainly not ever come anywhere *close* to being able to run "all native Windows applications", there's like half a dozen independent reasons for that, ranging from your "it'd require a recompile in any case" trough unpleasant little facts like the fact that Mono is trying to chase a moving target that is willing to spend a lot of money and man-hours precicely to *avoid* that too much works with Mono.
In sum, they'll have all the problems of Wine, and then some. (the need for sourcecode f.ex)
Worse yet: the mono-developers are suggesting one migth want to develop OSS applications with a primary target being Free OSes under Mono. Doing so would be double hurtful: It'd ensure that any such application developed for Linux works perfectly under Windows (because mono is a *subset* of the MS-environment, AND because all OSS-applications come with source), but *not* the oposite.
It's a braindead waste of time. I don't see how I can put it more politely. It actively hurts the Free Software ecosystem.
Yes. Agreed. There need to be a point where a judge says (and stands by it!) "No more bullshit."
The funny thing in my case, by the way, was talking to the owner of the computer-store after he learnt that infact, there was only two choises left for him: Paying me (like I'd demanded all along) or loose his business, and *still* paying me. (I'd be paid by the proceedings from the liquidation)
It's a very very nice feeling to witness an arsehole meet a wall that doesn't yield. I mean, it's his choise if he wants to run at the wall at top-speed or if he aproaches it more carefully, it's not as if the wall cares either way. *grin*
Is it a settled legal matter that copyrighted material has to be available in a form that allows for Fair Use?
Under which legal theory ?
No, and that's part of the problem with current copyrith-law. There are basically two sets of rigths:
Those that you do not have unless the copyrith-holder grants them to you. (i.e. copying, public performance)
Those that you will not be punished for doing, but where the copyrigth-holder is allowed to do his best to prevent you from exersizing them.
Fair use comes in the second category; It is not *forbidden* to use a copyrigthed work in a way that is covered by fair use. But on the other hand, there is nothing that guarantees you that exersizing the rigth will be practical, possible or legal.
An example: You *are* explicitly allowed to cite from a work for purposes of critique. If, however, the work in question is a movie, protected by some sort of DRM, then the DMCA forbids you from breaking the DRM to be able to cite from the movie. It does not matter that the citing in itself is legal. The DMCA contains no language whereby breaking technological barriers becomes legal if the purpose is legal. You'll be punished for breaking the barrier itself, regardless of the fact that your purpose in doing so was perfectly legal.
There are absolutely no single thing you are guaranteed to be allowed doing with a copyrigthed work.
So when people talk of, say "fair use rigth" they mean rigth only in the sense of "not forbidden", not in the sense of: "guaranteed to be possible/legal"
Which is worse:
A) Life + 90 years of copyright
B) Easily bypassed CSS/iTunes encryption
But that's not the question, now is it ? It's not an either or, it's both and more.
What's worse:
Content that you are legally forbidden from copying for 90 years, but which is:
Legally and practicable resellable
Legally and practicable usable in any jurisdiction.
Legally and practicable to exersize any of the fair-use rigths.
Legally and practicable to be *certain* it'll become accessible IF copyrigths are ever again allowed to expire (I wouldn't bet on that myself though...)
Legally and practicable convertible to other formats as the user needs/wishes.
Or Content that you are legally forbidden from copying for 90 years which aditionally:
Prevents you from reselling, lending or borrowing it.
Makes it practicably difficult, and legally forbidden to exersize fair-use (DMCA)
Makes it uncertain if you'll be able to legally (and practically) break the barriers IF copyrigths are ever again allowed to expire.
Makes it unpractical and/or illegal to convert to other formats.
Possibly becomes useless the day the content-provider goes out of business.
Possibly phones home every time you use/access the content.
Possibly becomes useless/inaccessible if you do something as daring as say change OS, computer-harware or portable music-player.
Only usable in those parts of the world where the seller wishes it to be usable.
There are absolutely no benefits to a consumer from DRM. There are a list of drawbacks long as an evil year.
Sure. But payment can *always* be delayed. There's absolutely no way to prevent it. Any system for resolving a dispute will *always* take time. Sure, it's an advantage if it goes quickly, there's no reason it should take a year to settle a simple, undisputed claim. And in general the wheels of justice turn way to slowly. (on the other hand, they *do* have the benefit of producing wonderful dust.
Some people, usually those accustomed to bullying others around with few consequences for themselves realize this too late. A friend of mine is a judge. He tells me that most people realize that a judge is *not* someone you should treat like you've been treating your workers/customers/wife/husband/whomever, but some don't. A while back he had one of the bankruptcy-claims. The business (a 2-person brother-operated one) was ordered to pay such-and-such bill and present proof to the court of having done so within one week.
One week passes. The court hear nothing. The day after one of the brothers show up with proof that they have now paid the bill. He is astounded to learn that the company is no more. It'll be liquidated. All assets sold to the highest bidder. The proceeds used to pay of this, and any other outstanding bills.
But, the brother argues, I'm only one day too late. "Yes," says the judge; "your point being ?". "But we *did* pay !" the brother continues. "Yes," says the judge; "your point being ?". "You can't do this!", he argues. "Yes I can," the judge says. "Furthermore: I told you last week that I *would* do so unless you presented proof of payment within the week."
Can be a bitter pill, I'm sure. But it's also one those people should've learned swallowing years earlier. Sometimes "within a week" mean within 7 days. Not "aproximately". Not "nearly". Not "sorta".
Against the delays, it helps if the guilty part is "allowed" to carry the costs of it. The business that refused to deal with the warranty-repair of my PC ? Fixing it would originaly have cost them nok 400 or so, around 50$. This way it cost them $50. plus postate for my reminders. plus the fee of the "forliksråd" (around $100). plus the fee of the bankruptcy-court (another $100). Plus a standard one-hour estimated for delivering the complaint, billed at lawyer-like rates, payable to the complainer (assuming he wins offcourse) (another $100), then add it all up, and put a 1% interest a month on top of it from the time they *should* have dealt with the problem, and until they actually do. End result, the $50 turns into $450.
Actually, it also works, if legally binding in the huge amounts of cases where one side is *not* in good faith, and the other side simply needs a legal document to, basically, say so.
For example, the large majority of arbited disputes in the norwegian "Forliksråd" runs something like this:
One side in some relation refuses to deal with something he/she/it should. Could be a customer that ignores paying his bill, a business that doesn't respond to requests to warranty-repair a defective computer (I had this happen to me), whatever. You try for a while, but after your second formal letter of complaint is ignored you realize it's time to either give up, or get the law behind you.
You deliver a complaint to the Forliksråd with a written account of how you see the case. (you don't need to document anything, only explain.)
Complaint is delivered to other part, along with information that an answer is to be delivered within 14 days, or the "forliksråd" will be forced to conclude that you agree with the accusations.
No response comes.
Forliksråd decides you are rigth in your claims and issue a ruling to this effect.
Other part is informed of the ruling, and the fact that it becomes legally bindable if it is not appealed within a month.
Other part ignores this too. One month passes.
At this point you've got a legal judgement, and can use any of the means available for getting your money. In the case of a consumer having a dispute with a business the simplest way of getting the money is simply to go demand the business be bankrupted, as it has legal, undisputed, but still unpaid bills. I did this.
It's interesting how a company that's been ignoring your demands to fix their shit for a year is suddenly capable of bringing a courier to your house with full payment, within *the*hour* of them, their bank, their investors, and the entire board of Trustees learning that they are, legally, bankrupt this time next week unless they can show proof that they've paid the bill.
Arbitration with no legal force is, however, as you say, pointless unless both sides actually want to reach an agreement.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's easy to destroy individual copies of digitally stored works. But I tend to think that this is more than counteracted by two other forces, one as you say -- it's easy to duplicate -- *VERY* easy. Secondly, which you seem to ignore, it's also easy to keep.
With this I mean that physical correspondence (for example) takes up physical space. I know, I used to be a regular (as in daily) letter-writer over a period of around a decade. It takes up drawers and drawers and drawers, and thus it's tempting to throw away the (usually) single copy of a work simply to save up space. This is even more so for documents that you attach no notsalgic memories to.
My email, say from 1997 on the other hand... I never even considered throwing it away, why should I ? The storage needed, including the extra demands on my backups etc is so utterly trivial it's not even worth mentioning. My total email from 1997 takes up around 2 MB, 20% of that if I bother compressing it. That is like 1000 messages of 2KB each on the average. compressed that is 0.00013% of the capacity of my disc. The expected value of that archive can be *VERY* low and it's still not worth it deleting it.
Ontop of that, all of that information existed in 2 copies, one at the sender and one at the recipient. (that's typically *not* the case by private snailmail correspondence, each end will have only "half" of the conversation) Sure, lots of that will be deleted and/or lost over the decade, but I bet even if I where to loose it, I'd be able to reconstruct half or perhaps even 3 quarters of it. Where I to loose/destroy my physical letters, they'd basically all be gone.
How do we know ? If the new photon is identical to the old, and the absorption/readmission has no observable effect, how do we know it took place at all ? We certainly cannot observe individual photons on their way "between" absorbtion/readmission events, because to do that we'd need to let them interact with some sort of sensor inbetween, and... you see where this leads.
and don't have time/possibility of making a direct measurement
Sure, there's lots of ways of achieving a correct exposure. I never contested that. Sometimes though, many of them are impossible for practical reasons.
A light-meter measures light by the way, more precisely it measures the intensity of light. That is fairly trivial.
That is typically not what you want. The problem is, the camera has no way of telling the difference between a object reflecting 10% ligth ligthed with 100W, and a object reflecting 80% ligthed by 12W.
Now, from a pure "data-collection" POV this is fine. As you say, if what you care about is collecting data from a scene, then the ideal exposure is the one where the max brigthness is outputed as 255, and the max darkness is 0. Or, if you want more detail, on the cost of loosing detail in shadows or highligths, then allow the camera to go to 0 or to 255 before the max value is reached.
Thing is, that's fine for a pro photographer that realizes that the camera *only* captures *difference* in ligthlevel, and don't really tell you anything much about the absolute brigthness (not unless combined with info on shutter and aperture anyways). But for the typical point-and-shoot person it's very unexpected, and seems "wrong", that if you have a big checkerboard (white/black) then photographing a single white square, a single black square and the entire board will give three different pictures (i.e. differently exposed, the "white" on one of these pictures won't look like the "white" on the others.
I agree it's a moot point if you know what you're doing.
I agree absolutely.
Luckily for these poor sods they are increasingly rescued by the fact that analog cameras are getting hard to find. The US is a bit less technological than I'm used to, but here in Norway, for example, 3 of the 5 biggest gadget-chains don't sell analog cameras *at*all* anymore. The remaining ones have a few, but they're tucked away in a corner, next to the one-time-disposables.
How often do you print those at like 10 feet times 15 feet, and then look at those prints up close ? At some point or other, it just stops mattering. Okay, so if your field of work is shooting landscape-photos for high-quality posters, it migth matter. (though most posters are printed at 150dpi, which means a 2 foot by 3 foot poster is still only 20Mpix. And I've even made posters (in that size) using my 8Mpix camera and getting decent quality. (yes, that's only around 75dpi. Most posters you look at at a distance of atleast a meter, more often 2 though, and there's a limit also to the spatial resolution of your eyes. a pixel at 75dpi is 0.3mm large, if you print a black-and-white checkerboard at 75dpi, it'll look like uniform grey to your eyes at any distance over about 50cm)
Digital equivalents are definitely a long way off.
Also arguable. Large-formats are used mostly for static scenes, by nessecity they are less light-sensitive than smaller formats. scanning-back DSLRs can also achieve ridicolously high pixelcounts. Furthermore *current* generation high-end DSLRs are already in the 12-16 Mpix range. They migth need an order of magnitude more to start seriously pushing into mid-format territory. But I can still remember when we bougth a 1.2 Mpix camera and paid over $1500 for it. It's not *that* long ago. It migth be like a decade ago.
The pro and consumer photographic markets have always been rather different (how many people buy Hasselblads for their family photos?); and I guess it's hard for non-professionals to get a grasp of the quality demanded by buyers of expensive commercial images.
It's not hard. I just have a different definition of "professional" than you seem to. *SOME* (a tiny fraction!) of those that are professional photographers work in medium or large format with large demands on quality (basically: the best possible) and willingness to sacrifice on *all* other aspects to achieve that. *MOST* professional photographers make their living shooting news for papers, weddings, portraits, postcards, pictures for magazines, whatever. For those quality also matters -- but not enough to push all other concerns aside. (which is basically what you do when you go large-format)
Personally, I remain phanatical about philm.
That's fine. Just as long as you realize that is *is* a phanaticm, one increasingly pushed into the enthusiast niches, increasingly irrelevant. There's people phanatical about vinyl-music too, that doesn't mean it's a must in "professional music". It's quite likely in 10 years, the 0.000001% of pictures that absolutely *MUST* have the highest pixel-count humanely possible, all other concerns be damned, will still be shot on large-format cameras from the 1970ies.
A simple, beginner digital camera of reasonable quality can be had for like $200, less if you buy a used one. Given that you'll pay like $20/film for consumables, even simple low-end ones, you'll have saved back the digital one in 10 films.
If you want to learn -- which means *experimenting* a lot, this means the break-even point of digital migth well come in the first *month*. How is *that* for Return On Investment ?
Same for boot-delay (power-on-to-ready)
Even today you don't need to spend $1000 to get low delays. A Canon has a powerup-to-first-shot delay of 0.5 seconds, you can't frame and shoot the first pic quicker than that anyway. Thereafter it has a shutter-delay (button-press-to-picture-taken) of 0.05 seconds, which is not noticeable for most purposes. You can only take 3-4 pictures a second though, I assume due to processing-constraints. For a consumer-camera that should be sufficient.
No "professional" photographer use digital !
But 90%+ of all photo-journalists, wedding-photographers, print-photographers and forensic-photographers *Have* changed to digital !
Yes, but no professional photographer uses digital!
I strongly suspect your definition of "professional photographer" is someting akin to: "photographer that does not use digital."
The conventional definition of professional, is one that does it for a living. 90%+ of the people who take photos for a living have, infact, changed to digital.
90% of the people who take photos rarely make larger than 4" times 6" prints, and *never* larger than say 10" times 15". For this a entry-level DSLR at today 8Mpix or so is plenty, it'll give you over 200 dpi even in the biggest size (and 600dpi at the normal size.) for many people this is simply "good enough".
Second, you say it's a "long way" off. Even if you needed 20Mpix to compete with good 35mm film profesionally developed, that's still a *short* way off. Remember how long ago it was that a $300 camera would have a maximum of 3Mpix ? Today you can get decent-quality 5-6Mpix for that price. Extrapolate ! (I actually think the trend to more pixels will fall off in consumer-cameras because to many consumers a 20Mpix camera has no advantage over a 5Mpix one, migth even be a *disadvantage* because it means more needed storage)
Third, the *advantages* of digital are so huge, and so uncontested that *even* if digital could never reach the quality-level of film, everyone except a very few phanaticals would still use it. Sorta like how only religiously stereophile care about resolution/samplerate higher than that of CD.
I stopped using my EOS SLR after getting a *shitty* Kodak 3Mpix camera. This wasn't planned -- when I bougth the Kodak I though: for snapshots !, and was under the idea that I'd keep using the EOS for "real photos". You know what ? A year later it was obvious that the EOS was, for all practical purposes, dead. I sold it. Yes, the EOS was *vastly* superior in functions, adjustability, quality and workmanship to the silly little piece of plastic Kodak. But in the end it didn't matter. Pictures *now*. Experiments *for*free*. Pay to develop *only*nice*pictures*. Being able to *digitaly*manipulate/combine pictures. Instant preview. Never run out of film.
Now I have a nice digital SLR. But the thing is, even if today my choise would be between a $200 simple digital compact, and a *excellent* non-digital SLR (say a $3000 camera), I'd still, in practice, reach for the digital compact 95% of the time.
Obviously this is the case for the rest of humanity that can afford digital too. Witness how 90%+ of sold cameras are digital. This from Nikon just confirms it.
Automatic ligth-meters all fail in that they underexpose a pure white surface and overexpose anything that *should* be mostly black.
You can however solve that sorta by using exposure-bracketing. If I'm really uncertain and don't have time/possibility of making a direct measurement, I just tell my camera to take *3* pictures each time I press the shutter. One overexposed, one "correct" and one underexposed (according to the cameras logic), 99% of the time atleast one of those will be fine.
That's a result of crappy US consumer-protection, not poor engineering. The very same cameras are sold in Scandinavia with a *5* year guarantee. If a significant portion of them failed before that, this would be prohibitively expensive.
Look:
The problem is though, that light can be slowed down. According to several sources, light can be slowed down, although they all seem to agree that a photon travels at the speed of light no matter what, just the absorption/release/re-absorption process can slow down how quickly it crosses a given distance.
Ok. I'm being hard on the poor fella. It's just -- sometimes it'd be beneficial if people would recognize the limits in their own understanding. Discussing black holes when you don't know what "speed" is, have no idea what causes refraction. Thinks photons always move at C and so on is sorta pointless.
For the same reason you need to know what "multiply" and "add" means before you can fruitfully discuss second order heterogenous differential equations.
Yes. But in China that's the end of it. In some other countries, atleast on paper, the government is *not* the top-power in the land. In a democratic country you can then continue: "Well, guess who controls the goverment ?"
Hint: what is the *definition* of "speed of ligth" ?
So, you're saying, the benefits of the language itself outweighs the drawbacks ?
I don't see what makes C# enormously much better than all other languages. If anything, it seems very much like a "me too" language with lots of its feature-set borrowed from Java.
Myself I don't like statically typed languages for most jobs anyway, so I tend to prefer Ruby or Python.
It'd be, for example, trivial to extend such an app using some part that is not available under Mono so that the original Free Software, Mono application is, in its improved form, only usable under Windows .net
In essence this is the BSD vs GPL-licence discussion all over. Developing under mono allows anyone who wish so to fork the app, and make the fork Windows-only. This is true even if the app is under the GPL. Because the app itself is freely distributable, and delivered with source as per the GPL-demand. However that source doesn't help you any -- because you lack the nessecary facilities under Linux.
I personally don't like the idea that software I write suddenly ends up being Windows-only. So for that reason alone I'd never even consider writing to a platform where all we have is a *subset*.
Yes, I know, Microsoft doesn't directly control Mono. But they *do* set the de-facto standard for .net and C#.
I simply don't think it's a good strategic choise when you are in a competition to voluntarily choose to build your solution ontop of a platform controled by your main competitor. A competitor that is convicted of abusing it's monopoly-position.
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"
Mono will certainly not ever come anywhere *close* to being able to run "all native Windows applications", there's like half a dozen independent reasons for that, ranging from your "it'd require a recompile in any case" trough unpleasant little facts like the fact that Mono is trying to chase a moving target that is willing to spend a lot of money and man-hours precicely to *avoid* that too much works with Mono.
In sum, they'll have all the problems of Wine, and then some. (the need for sourcecode f.ex)
Worse yet: the mono-developers are suggesting one migth want to develop OSS applications with a primary target being Free OSes under Mono. Doing so would be double hurtful: It'd ensure that any such application developed for Linux works perfectly under Windows (because mono is a *subset* of the MS-environment, AND because all OSS-applications come with source), but *not* the oposite.
It's a braindead waste of time. I don't see how I can put it more politely. It actively hurts the Free Software ecosystem.
No.
The funny thing in my case, by the way, was talking to the owner of the computer-store after he learnt that infact, there was only two choises left for him: Paying me (like I'd demanded all along) or loose his business, and *still* paying me. (I'd be paid by the proceedings from the liquidation)
It's a very very nice feeling to witness an arsehole meet a wall that doesn't yield. I mean, it's his choise if he wants to run at the wall at top-speed or if he aproaches it more carefully, it's not as if the wall cares either way. *grin*
Under which legal theory ?
No, and that's part of the problem with current copyrith-law. There are basically two sets of rigths:
Fair use comes in the second category; It is not *forbidden* to use a copyrigthed work in a way that is covered by fair use. But on the other hand, there is nothing that guarantees you that exersizing the rigth will be practical, possible or legal.
An example: You *are* explicitly allowed to cite from a work for purposes of critique. If, however, the work in question is a movie, protected by some sort of DRM, then the DMCA forbids you from breaking the DRM to be able to cite from the movie. It does not matter that the citing in itself is legal. The DMCA contains no language whereby breaking technological barriers becomes legal if the purpose is legal. You'll be punished for breaking the barrier itself, regardless of the fact that your purpose in doing so was perfectly legal.
There are absolutely no single thing you are guaranteed to be allowed doing with a copyrigthed work.
So when people talk of, say "fair use rigth" they mean rigth only in the sense of "not forbidden", not in the sense of: "guaranteed to be possible/legal"
A) Life + 90 years of copyright
B) Easily bypassed CSS/iTunes encryption
But that's not the question, now is it ? It's not an either or, it's both and more.
What's worse:
There are absolutely no benefits to a consumer from DRM. There are a list of drawbacks long as an evil year.
Some people, usually those accustomed to bullying others around with few consequences for themselves realize this too late. A friend of mine is a judge. He tells me that most people realize that a judge is *not* someone you should treat like you've been treating your workers/customers/wife/husband/whomever, but some don't. A while back he had one of the bankruptcy-claims. The business (a 2-person brother-operated one) was ordered to pay such-and-such bill and present proof to the court of having done so within one week.
One week passes. The court hear nothing. The day after one of the brothers show up with proof that they have now paid the bill. He is astounded to learn that the company is no more. It'll be liquidated. All assets sold to the highest bidder. The proceeds used to pay of this, and any other outstanding bills.
But, the brother argues, I'm only one day too late. "Yes," says the judge; "your point being ?". "But we *did* pay !" the brother continues. "Yes," says the judge; "your point being ?". "You can't do this!", he argues. "Yes I can," the judge says. "Furthermore: I told you last week that I *would* do so unless you presented proof of payment within the week."
Can be a bitter pill, I'm sure. But it's also one those people should've learned swallowing years earlier. Sometimes "within a week" mean within 7 days. Not "aproximately". Not "nearly". Not "sorta".
Against the delays, it helps if the guilty part is "allowed" to carry the costs of it. The business that refused to deal with the warranty-repair of my PC ? Fixing it would originaly have cost them nok 400 or so, around 50$. This way it cost them $50. plus postate for my reminders. plus the fee of the "forliksråd" (around $100). plus the fee of the bankruptcy-court (another $100). Plus a standard one-hour estimated for delivering the complaint, billed at lawyer-like rates, payable to the complainer (assuming he wins offcourse) (another $100), then add it all up, and put a 1% interest a month on top of it from the time they *should* have dealt with the problem, and until they actually do. End result, the $50 turns into $450.
For example, the large majority of arbited disputes in the norwegian "Forliksråd" runs something like this:
- One side in some relation refuses to deal with something he/she/it should. Could be a customer that ignores paying his bill, a business that doesn't respond to requests to warranty-repair a defective computer (I had this happen to me), whatever. You try for a while, but after your second formal letter of complaint is ignored you realize it's time to either give up, or get the law behind you.
- You deliver a complaint to the Forliksråd with a written account of how you see the case. (you don't need to document anything, only explain.)
- Complaint is delivered to other part, along with information that an answer is to be delivered within 14 days, or the "forliksråd" will be forced to conclude that you agree with the accusations.
- No response comes.
- Forliksråd decides you are rigth in your claims and issue a ruling to this effect.
- Other part is informed of the ruling, and the fact that it becomes legally bindable if it is not appealed within a month.
- Other part ignores this too. One month passes.
At this point you've got a legal judgement, and can use any of the means available for getting your money. In the case of a consumer having a dispute with a business the simplest way of getting the money is simply to go demand the business be bankrupted, as it has legal, undisputed, but still unpaid bills. I did this.It's interesting how a company that's been ignoring your demands to fix their shit for a year is suddenly capable of bringing a courier to your house with full payment, within *the*hour* of them, their bank, their investors, and the entire board of Trustees learning that they are, legally, bankrupt this time next week unless they can show proof that they've paid the bill.
Arbitration with no legal force is, however, as you say, pointless unless both sides actually want to reach an agreement.