It is a feature. Next thing you know people will say the Ipod Batteries dying after a year is a design flaw too.
Not sure what all the whiny people are so upset about; my iPod Photo 60GB player still has about 80% of it's first week battery life after over two years.
I have the feeling most iPod battery complainers have never owned an iPod.
It's MUCH more environmentally friendly to make fixable electronic gadgets instead of disposable ones.
Yes, it'd be much better for the environment if iPods went through a couple of removable batteries every 20 hours. Because the majority of iPod users have several sets of ready-to-go rechargeable AA batteries around the home, office, car, purse, etc., right?
Nano users, on the other hand, would need lots of rechargeable CR2025 batteries.
And besides - who needs a svelte-looking player? I want mine to be the thickness of the electronics and storage package PLUS the depth of some AA batteries.
A single rechargeable, difficult-but-possible-to-service battery is bad for the environment? Good one. Got me laughing there.
In my experience, these folks are almost always trustafarians rebelling at their rich parents. You can't throw a satchel of patchouli in Santa Cruz or the more bohemian neighborhoods of San Francisco without hitting one of these idiots. As well-intentioned as they may be, they pretty much end up pissing off everyone they try to convince.
They hijacked Greepeace, blackmailed Apple, and tie up city governments. I find them mostly annoying, and apparently, so does Steve Jobs. The company is famously "liberal" (one of the first to extend same-sex benefits, has offered mass transit shuttles for over 20 years, offers extensive telecommute benefits, etc.) in it's political stance and benefits package.
To pretend Apple was some sort of mercury-spewing, lead-laced monster was just blackmail on Greepeace's part. Apple is merely high-visibility and Macs are used by a higher percentage of people sensitive to Greenpeace's message. That's the only reason Apple was singled out.
I do my part without being a jerk, like these Greenpeace people. I choose to drive a car that gets good mileage, walk to most of my destinations, take mass transit to work, recycle, and reduce my energy consumption whenever possible. My key word for living is "sustainability", not "exclusivity".
He could easily have knocked one, maybe even two people unconscious with that thing before anyone could do anything about it.
As a proud, lifetime member of the National Hammer Association, I must insist that we not go too far here. It's part of our constitutional rights - the right to Arm and Hammer - to arm ourselves with hammers. This incident is merely one more reason that everyone ought to carry hamers everywhere they go - if others had been armed with hammers, this student would have had a serious disincentive to consider possibly carrying out the egregious act he was prevented from possibly committing.
Soon, crazy liberal will want to outlaw air hammers, jack hammers, Mike Hammers, pipe hammers - even Diesel hammers - you name it. Act now to preserve your hammer rights - join the NHA.
Since I'm from the deep south (somewhere east of Texas and west of Mississippi) I feel qualified to say...
This is par for the course in this part of the United States. Ignorance, fear and xenophobia run rampant, white men run everything, and opportunism prevails at every turn. Police forces are treated as a paramilitary force, and zero tolerance is the rule in schools - even though it only means that more kids every year get fewer chances at straightening up and becoming successful.
Louisiana (and other population-losing red states) wonder why it's best and brightest move away as soon as they finish college - crap like this is the reason why.
Around 75-80mph, my car shimmies and shakes enough that I don't feel it's safe to drive over that speed.
Then you need to have the suspension, wheels, and tire balance checked. Driving safely doesn't just mean going slow - it means operating a safe vehicle. If your car shimmies and shakes that badly at 75mph, it probably isn't safe trying to make emergency maneuvers or stopping from more normal highway speeds, either.
But no, this is breaking one of the key laws of consumer marketing - once prices go up, they will not come down, regardless of the expenses.
Convenience has gone up. That's what you are paying extra for.
Pizza delivery proves that people will pay more for convenience, especially in a culture that is moving toward cocooning at home in front of the TV and computer.
Agreed. It's now significantly more expensive to buy music from Apple compared to Wal-mart. This is progress?
It's also considerably more convenient. And not that much more expensive. Apple doesn't censor the music or movies they carry. You can buy one song at a time or the entire album. And there's no wasteful packaging.
What is the big one you are refering to? Evidence that will impeach the president? I doubt very much that there has been any action taken by the president that has not come from consitutional power. He's a man of honor. BWAHAHAHAHA!
For a second there, I thought you were serious!
George Bush, honorable...man, these folks crack me up.
But... how the camera uses that dynamic range is definitely different. Film is non-linear (which you can see from the graphs on that page) so as things get very bright or very dark it kind of trails off, with subsequent changes in brightness giving smaller and smaller changes on the film.
You get at something important here...which is that you can squint at highlights or blow a spotlight through the shadows (on slide film) and your brain will "see" more texture than what actually exists on film. That's the lightbox lie.
Digital sensor information portrayed on a calibrated display won't lie like film on a lightbox. It's a lot less romantic - but no less scientific - than the idea of Ansel measuring film with a densitometer in his darkroom.
It's worth noting that Ansel's greatest contribution to photography might not have been his pictures - he, after all, figured out how to convey sensitometry (the Zone system) to everyday photographers.
Bzzzt wrong answer. I shoot both 645 and digital professionally and film still has many advantages- better dynamic range, better resolution, less noise at high ISO, much better enlargeability, true black and white, and permanence.
Much of that stuff was accurate two years ago; that doesn't make it so today.
The widest dynamic range for slide film is Fuji's duplicating film, CDU-II. About eight stops, compared to ten or more for most digital SLRs. Negative film may get you nine stops in ideal conditions, but it's a mistake to say that the best DSLRs and studio backs have short dynamic range.
Film does have the advantage of a non-linear response to light - and non-linear response to color, which is one attraction to film - each has a unique palette. Digital sensors respond in a linear fashion. I prefer the character of film for this reason, but again, I find no reason to shoot film in most situations; grand landscape work with my 4x5 is one place where film clearly wins. In smaller formats, digital is recording more information in a wider range than any camera or film.
You won't find film capable of recording density that the best sensors are capable of. Not anymore. The only way to get ahead of large sensors today is with square inches of film; that's why I still shoot 4x5. After making test prints from a Canon 1DS mkII and 6x7 slide film scanned on a Tango at 3500 dpi, I'm convinced the 1DS is of comparable, if not better quality - and this was almost two years ago.
The clean signal of these newer, better sensors mean more of the information captured is usable as image data; there's no grain, and at low ISO, no discernible noise.
What is this "true" black and white of which you speak? Colored filters in front of black and white film do affect the image; black and white images are made by exposing color-sensitive emulsion that is made with a single layer of un-dyed silver halide. Same thing as Kodachrome slide film - without the dye.
All black and white films are sensitive to different wavelengths on the spectrum. By post-processing your own black and white using Channel Mixer in Photoshop, you're doing the same thing - selecting the percentage of each primary color portrayed as a monochrome image. Seriously - did you not understand that this is how black and white film works?
The concept of "true" black and white may make sense to someone who doesn't understand how film works - but even Photo 101 students know that "black and white" films are color sensitive.
Permanence is one department in which film wins hands down for ease of handling, cataloging, and durability - but make a print of your digital file on to Fuji Crystal Archive (a silver-based paper popular for printing digital work) and your permanence problem becomes a lot less scary - suddenly you have a more permanent copy that is human readable.
It was interesting to see that this "test" consisted of a single scene.
Exactly. C|Net wouldn't know how to do a real photographic "test" if Ansel Adams came back from the dead and held them by the hands while explaining the Zone System - which is still a great way to understand sensitometry.
Actually, my other reply notwithstanding, doesn't film (at least B&W) still win out in dynamic range?
Some photographers are able to squeeze 14 stops out of T-Max 100*; I think that's where sensors are topping out these days.
*Check out John Sexton's Places of Power, or better yet, see his prints - you can discern details in the bulb filaments and the space shuttle's black tiles in his photographs of the shuttle in the VAB. Now _that's_ dynamic range.
Yep, that explains consumer Fujifilm from the early 90's. That crap has such oversaturated colors it was sickening, yet it outsold Kodak Ektachrome so much
Certain Fuji color reversal (slide) films from the 80s were oversaturated. Velvia, a popular Fuji slide film introduced in the 90s, was very saturated, yet very popular with professionals for it's color rendition.
that Kodak removed Ektachromee from the consumer space for everything but slide film despite it being a vastly superior film, leaving only the cheap Gold film line to compete.
Your statement doesn't parse; Ektachrome is a generic term for Kodak E6 process slide film. Kodak Gold film is negative film for prints. Ektar was a highly regarded and unfortunately discontinued print film from Kodak - it was the discontinuation of Ektar which left only Gold on the market.
Superiority for a given purpose is in the eyes of the market; photographers rejected Kodak's poor quality control and lack of innovation in slide films while embracing Fuji's Astia, Provia,and Velvia emulsions - films that gave sharp and accurate color rendition with increasing degrees of saturation.
True, but if you're using prime lenses, are you really even going to think about using a digital camera?
Considering that sensors have a higher effective pixel density than film scanned at 2500 dpi, why not? The signal to noise (grain) ratio from a low ISO DSLR exposure is much higher than even the best color or black and white films.
I still use film in my 4x5 camera, and those exposures far exceed any DSLR's ability to capture information...but probably not for too much longer. I do enjoy the perspective control that a view camera offers, but there's really not a compelling reason to use film in 35mm or medium formats anymore - at least not as a professional.
Edge cases exist where film may be advantageous in the smaller formats, but implying that 'serious' photographers are still using film is falling for mystique rather than the criteria that professional photographers care about most - cost/benefit, quality, and dependability. Digital wins virtually every time for small and medium formats.
RIM has been working on that stuff for *years* before the iPhone was announced.
And Apple had Mac OS X running on Intel for years before they switched microprocessor platforms.
I think you're making the parent's case for them; companies normally roll out contingencies like the Blackberry/Windows mobile solution when their market or viability are threatened, as Apple's was with the PowerPC's performance/cost plateau and focus on embedded device market.
The iPhone is geared up to be Apple's biggest flop since the Newton.
From the summary: Analysts are baffled by the move.
From a 2001 article on the just-introduced iPod:
A big yawner, you say? Perhaps. After all, there are plenty of MP3 players out there. (Compaq Computer (CPQ), for example, offers one for $149.99 on its Web site.) But while Apple's latest debut might not score high on the significance meter -- particularly according to Wall Street analysts hoping for a splashier announcement -- it does offer a glimpse into the tactics computer makers are beginning to employ as demand for their core products wanes. When it comes to Apple, if the analysts can't make heads or tails out of a new product, it's almost certain the product will sell. Usually when you've caught the analysts off-guard, you've moved to an area of consumer savvy marketing that has a life all it's own.
A friend in the EDA industry who has been marketing these tools for twenty years notes that analysts are consistently wrong about the marketability of new products in established markets - he says: "those who can't sell, analyze."
Slashdot Mirror
It is a feature. Next thing you know people will say the Ipod Batteries dying after a year is a design flaw too.
Not sure what all the whiny people are so upset about; my iPod Photo 60GB player still has about 80% of it's first week battery life after over two years.
I have the feeling most iPod battery complainers have never owned an iPod.
It's MUCH more environmentally friendly to make fixable electronic gadgets instead of disposable ones.
Yes, it'd be much better for the environment if iPods went through a couple of removable batteries every 20 hours. Because the majority of iPod users have several sets of ready-to-go rechargeable AA batteries around the home, office, car, purse, etc., right?
Nano users, on the other hand, would need lots of rechargeable CR2025 batteries.
And besides - who needs a svelte-looking player? I want mine to be the thickness of the electronics and storage package PLUS the depth of some AA batteries.
A single rechargeable, difficult-but-possible-to-service battery is bad for the environment? Good one. Got me laughing there.
Key words being "some environmentalists".
In my experience, these folks are almost always trustafarians rebelling at their rich parents. You can't throw a satchel of patchouli in Santa Cruz or the more bohemian neighborhoods of San Francisco without hitting one of these idiots. As well-intentioned as they may be, they pretty much end up pissing off everyone they try to convince.
They hijacked Greepeace, blackmailed Apple, and tie up city governments. I find them mostly annoying, and apparently, so does Steve Jobs. The company is famously "liberal" (one of the first to extend same-sex benefits, has offered mass transit shuttles for over 20 years, offers extensive telecommute benefits, etc.) in it's political stance and benefits package.
To pretend Apple was some sort of mercury-spewing, lead-laced monster was just blackmail on Greepeace's part. Apple is merely high-visibility and Macs are used by a higher percentage of people sensitive to Greenpeace's message. That's the only reason Apple was singled out.
I do my part without being a jerk, like these Greenpeace people. I choose to drive a car that gets good mileage, walk to most of my destinations, take mass transit to work, recycle, and reduce my energy consumption whenever possible. My key word for living is "sustainability", not "exclusivity".
the home of Mr. Dubya,
George W. Bush was born in Connecticut.
Not that it prevented him from being infected with a raging case of stupid once he moved to Texas.
He could easily have knocked one, maybe even two people unconscious with that thing before anyone could do anything about it.
As a proud, lifetime member of the National Hammer Association, I must insist that we not go too far here. It's part of our constitutional rights - the right to Arm and Hammer - to arm ourselves with hammers. This incident is merely one more reason that everyone ought to carry hamers everywhere they go - if others had been armed with hammers, this student would have had a serious disincentive to consider possibly carrying out the egregious act he was prevented from possibly committing.
Soon, crazy liberal will want to outlaw air hammers, jack hammers, Mike Hammers, pipe hammers - even Diesel hammers - you name it. Act now to preserve your hammer rights - join the NHA.
Since I'm from the deep south (somewhere east of Texas and west of Mississippi) I feel qualified to say...
This is par for the course in this part of the United States. Ignorance, fear and xenophobia run rampant, white men run everything, and opportunism prevails at every turn. Police forces are treated as a paramilitary force, and zero tolerance is the rule in schools - even though it only means that more kids every year get fewer chances at straightening up and becoming successful.
Louisiana (and other population-losing red states) wonder why it's best and brightest move away as soon as they finish college - crap like this is the reason why.
Around 75-80mph, my car shimmies and shakes enough that I don't feel it's safe to drive over that speed.
Then you need to have the suspension, wheels, and tire balance checked. Driving safely doesn't just mean going slow - it means operating a safe vehicle. If your car shimmies and shakes that badly at 75mph, it probably isn't safe trying to make emergency maneuvers or stopping from more normal highway speeds, either.
But no, this is breaking one of the key laws of consumer marketing - once prices go up, they will not come down, regardless of the expenses.
Convenience has gone up. That's what you are paying extra for.
Pizza delivery proves that people will pay more for convenience, especially in a culture that is moving toward cocooning at home in front of the TV and computer.
Agreed. It's now significantly more expensive to buy music from Apple compared to Wal-mart. This is progress?
It's also considerably more convenient. And not that much more expensive. Apple doesn't censor the music or movies they carry. You can buy one song at a time or the entire album. And there's no wasteful packaging.
Yeah, I'd call that progress.
Well, if not for those really deadly weapons you might be typing that post in German, or Japanese.
Thanks, Otto. Now I think Wanda is calling you.
Not to mention the fact that it will be that much harder to locate the sniper. At least a gun produces a muzzle-flash and sound.
I dunno. Every futuristic movie I've ever seen is full of PZEEW! and PKEEZ! as the "laser" guns are fired. There's goes your element of stealth!
The database is built from Microsoft's Jet database engine.
As Hyneman would say..."There's your problem."
For a second there, I thought you were serious!
George Bush, honorable...man, these folks crack me up.
Mmmmm, compelling proposition there.
A corporate flop sweat is compelling?
That's not what people were saying when Apple was desperately trying to foist System 7.5 on people in 1995.
Microsoft is very bad at poker when they're holding a shitty hand.
But... how the camera uses that dynamic range is definitely different. Film is non-linear (which you can see from the graphs on that page) so as things get very bright or very dark it kind of trails off, with subsequent changes in brightness giving smaller and smaller changes on the film.
You get at something important here...which is that you can squint at highlights or blow a spotlight through the shadows (on slide film) and your brain will "see" more texture than what actually exists on film. That's the lightbox lie.
Digital sensor information portrayed on a calibrated display won't lie like film on a lightbox. It's a lot less romantic - but no less scientific - than the idea of Ansel measuring film with a densitometer in his darkroom.
It's worth noting that Ansel's greatest contribution to photography might not have been his pictures - he, after all, figured out how to convey sensitometry (the Zone system) to everyday photographers.
Bzzzt wrong answer. I shoot both 645 and digital professionally and film still has many advantages- better dynamic range, better resolution, less noise at high ISO, much better enlargeability, true black and white, and permanence.
Much of that stuff was accurate two years ago; that doesn't make it so today.
The widest dynamic range for slide film is Fuji's duplicating film, CDU-II. About eight stops, compared to ten or more for most digital SLRs. Negative film may get you nine stops in ideal conditions, but it's a mistake to say that the best DSLRs and studio backs have short dynamic range.
Film does have the advantage of a non-linear response to light - and non-linear response to color, which is one attraction to film - each has a unique palette. Digital sensors respond in a linear fashion. I prefer the character of film for this reason, but again, I find no reason to shoot film in most situations; grand landscape work with my 4x5 is one place where film clearly wins. In smaller formats, digital is recording more information in a wider range than any camera or film.
You won't find film capable of recording density that the best sensors are capable of. Not anymore. The only way to get ahead of large sensors today is with square inches of film; that's why I still shoot 4x5. After making test prints from a Canon 1DS mkII and 6x7 slide film scanned on a Tango at 3500 dpi, I'm convinced the 1DS is of comparable, if not better quality - and this was almost two years ago.
The clean signal of these newer, better sensors mean more of the information captured is usable as image data; there's no grain, and at low ISO, no discernible noise.
What is this "true" black and white of which you speak? Colored filters in front of black and white film do affect the image; black and white images are made by exposing color-sensitive emulsion that is made with a single layer of un-dyed silver halide. Same thing as Kodachrome slide film - without the dye.
All black and white films are sensitive to different wavelengths on the spectrum. By post-processing your own black and white using Channel Mixer in Photoshop, you're doing the same thing - selecting the percentage of each primary color portrayed as a monochrome image. Seriously - did you not understand that this is how black and white film works?
The concept of "true" black and white may make sense to someone who doesn't understand how film works - but even Photo 101 students know that "black and white" films are color sensitive.
Permanence is one department in which film wins hands down for ease of handling, cataloging, and durability - but make a print of your digital file on to Fuji Crystal Archive (a silver-based paper popular for printing digital work) and your permanence problem becomes a lot less scary - suddenly you have a more permanent copy that is human readable.
It was interesting to see that this "test" consisted of a single scene.
Exactly. C|Net wouldn't know how to do a real photographic "test" if Ansel Adams came back from the dead and held them by the hands while explaining the Zone System - which is still a great way to understand sensitometry.
Actually, my other reply notwithstanding, doesn't film (at least B&W) still win out in dynamic range?
Some photographers are able to squeeze 14 stops out of T-Max 100*; I think that's where sensors are topping out these days.
*Check out John Sexton's Places of Power, or better yet, see his prints - you can discern details in the bulb filaments and the space shuttle's black tiles in his photographs of the shuttle in the VAB. Now _that's_ dynamic range.
I meant "If you're the kind of person who would use prime lenses, are you really even going to think about getting a camera phone instead of the dSLR"
Oh, well that makes much more sense!
Didn't mean to come off as a know-it-all. I just enjoy talking about photography and how to accomplish it.
Yep, that explains consumer Fujifilm from the early 90's. That crap has such oversaturated colors it was sickening, yet it outsold Kodak Ektachrome so much
Certain Fuji color reversal (slide) films from the 80s were oversaturated. Velvia, a popular Fuji slide film introduced in the 90s, was very saturated, yet very popular with professionals for it's color rendition.
that Kodak removed Ektachromee from the consumer space for everything but slide film despite it being a vastly superior film, leaving only the cheap Gold film line to compete.
Your statement doesn't parse; Ektachrome is a generic term for Kodak E6 process slide film. Kodak Gold film is negative film for prints. Ektar was a highly regarded and unfortunately discontinued print film from Kodak - it was the discontinuation of Ektar which left only Gold on the market.
Superiority for a given purpose is in the eyes of the market; photographers rejected Kodak's poor quality control and lack of innovation in slide films while embracing Fuji's Astia, Provia,and Velvia emulsions - films that gave sharp and accurate color rendition with increasing degrees of saturation.
True, but if you're using prime lenses, are you really even going to think about using a digital camera?
Considering that sensors have a higher effective pixel density than film scanned at 2500 dpi, why not? The signal to noise (grain) ratio from a low ISO DSLR exposure is much higher than even the best color or black and white films.
I still use film in my 4x5 camera, and those exposures far exceed any DSLR's ability to capture information...but probably not for too much longer. I do enjoy the perspective control that a view camera offers, but there's really not a compelling reason to use film in 35mm or medium formats anymore - at least not as a professional.
Edge cases exist where film may be advantageous in the smaller formats, but implying that 'serious' photographers are still using film is falling for mystique rather than the criteria that professional photographers care about most - cost/benefit, quality, and dependability. Digital wins virtually every time for small and medium formats.
This is poor reporting on CNNs part, not a real story.
No surprise there. CNN has been on a crappy headline writing binge today.
RIM has been working on that stuff for *years* before the iPhone was announced.
And Apple had Mac OS X running on Intel for years before they switched microprocessor platforms.
I think you're making the parent's case for them; companies normally roll out contingencies like the Blackberry/Windows mobile solution when their market or viability are threatened, as Apple's was with the PowerPC's performance/cost plateau and focus on embedded device market.
From the summary: Analysts are baffled by the move.
From a 2001 article on the just-introduced iPod: A big yawner, you say? Perhaps. After all, there are plenty of MP3 players out there. (Compaq Computer (CPQ), for example, offers one for $149.99 on its Web site.) But while Apple's latest debut might not score high on the significance meter -- particularly according to Wall Street analysts hoping for a splashier announcement -- it does offer a glimpse into the tactics computer makers are beginning to employ as demand for their core products wanes. When it comes to Apple, if the analysts can't make heads or tails out of a new product, it's almost certain the product will sell. Usually when you've caught the analysts off-guard, you've moved to an area of consumer savvy marketing that has a life all it's own.
A friend in the EDA industry who has been marketing these tools for twenty years notes that analysts are consistently wrong about the marketability of new products in established markets - he says: "those who can't sell, analyze."
You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and your hysterical xenophobia
Actually, Fuh Yu will be making the players for Wal-Mart.