I guess my alternative would have been to keep the original battery and risk it exploding.
Yo', genius: batteries don't explode when they're no longer capable of holding a charge. There's not even a risk. Where did you come up with such an improbable assumption?
I forsee anti-trust suits in Apple's future, forcing them to open their store to competitors' players by licensing the ability to play iTunes store content on competitive players, or allowing iPod users to buy from multiple stores, or both.
Yes, just like Sony had to sell Betamax and Beta and Digital Beta designs to their competitors.
There are lots of ways to make a digital music player, and no shortage of viable formats. No one has proved or even brought up the possibility that Apple used their market position to actively suppress the competitiveness of these formats or the efforts of rival manufacturers. Unless that happens, there is no foundation or basis for antitrust action.
No one seems to be claiming that Apple's broken the law by creating a successful music store and player. If Apple were using their market position to shut down the efforts of other companies that make media players, accessories, or content. There's a big difference between being popular on the merits of your product and using that popularity to influence the market by illegally restricting consumer choice.
Just because Apple has a closed format YOU don't like doesn't mean that they can be hauled into court for not opening said format. If you don't like it, organize change, but the law in this country says that the U.S. attorney must be reasonably convinced that the law has been broken in order to file an antitrust suit.
Of course, one of those big users of undocumented features was Apple themselves. Remember the "unclean" 24-bit ROMs?
This had nothing to do with any undocumented feature. What actually happened is that Apple was just looking for memory manager flag storage space and they found it in the unused upper 8 bits of the M68000, since only 24 lines were hardwired, but the internal architecture was 32-bit.
This caused problems when Macintosh II shipped, with 32 physical address lines. The OS was lagging at this point so nothing happened right away; System 7, with it's 32-bit memory map would force the issue in 1991, and a loads-at-startup patch (MODE32) was provided to avoid the old style memory manager flag storage routines in ROM.
System 7 users could now use the 32-bit OS with their 32-bit hardware and address more than 8MB of RAM.
In fact, when facing a country such as the US or EU which has basic respect for the rules of war (eg, the Geneva Convention), a "fair" war pretty much maximizes the number of people killed.
About the Geneva Conventions? President Bush says he doesn't have to. And you might want to ask the Iraqi with the glowstick up his ass (or the one chained to a dog), or the "terrorist" in Gitmo told that menstrual blood was smeared on his Koran) about those Geneva Conventions. Check with the people we've sent to Syria for interrogation; ask them about the U.S.' respect for the Geneva Convenstions.
I'm sure they'd all find the notion of the U.S. playing by the rules rather quaint. The respect people once had for us as a nation came partially from the fact that we wouldn't sink to the level of our enemies. We didn't put the Germans in concentration camps. And we certainly didn't fly airplanes into the tallest buildings in Riyadh......but we bombed the fuck out of a country that had nothing - nothing - to do with 9/11. And we're still there while we hand over shovelfuls of money to the one country that had a lot to do with the 19 dead in hell sons of Wahhabi bitches who attacked us.
It is hoped that the engine, designed by UK defense firm QinetiQ and capable of Mach 7.6, will pave the way for ultra fast, intercontinental air travel.
But it won't. You seen the price of fuel these days? Boeing hasn't done research into hypersonic travel in years; every R&D penny they've got is going into fuel-efficient mach.84 cruisers. Maybe some giant Aussie aerospace firm will be interested...
As near as I can tell, this means that somewhere there is a guy named "Homeland Security Okay", and these Closed Proceedings belong to him.
You cad. My name is Homeland Security Okay, and I'll have you know that my Closed Proceedings are mine to do with as I please.
So, he seems to be saying that like the "gifted" children that show higher interest and aptitude in certain areas, Apple must do better because they're clearly capable of it.
I've seen lots of kids drop out of college because of reasoning like that from their parents. They get discouraged and stop trying, because they are capable of doing better, even when they aren't interested in "doing better" at the time.
Just seems counter productive to expect something groundbreaking from Apple everytime there's an annoucement. Apple didn't overhype it - the press did. The rumors sites did. Apple will display innovation when they have something innovative to ship - they never promised that the Intel-based machines would be anything groundbreaking - just Macs with Intel processors - which is exactly what they are, and more (Front Row).
So don't expect the gifted child of the computer industry to display brilliance in every assignment. That's not what being "gifted" about - even Ansel Adams made more average-level work than masterpieces.
Are you suggesting that the sensors used in medium-format backs don't have even worse yield problems than their smaller 36x24mm "35mm" cousins? This flies against my understanding of chip fabrication, but perhaps I've misunderstood you.
No, you've got me there. The margins for MF-sized chips are probably higher, but the yields are lower - more silicon gets wasted, which means more money per square mm to buy a medium format sensor.
Y'know, in my opinion, even if that happens, there's nothing wrong with sticking with your Wisner so long as you can keep making prints you enjoy from it and film keeps being made. In the end, both the prints that I enjoy the most and the prints that my customers purchase aren't the ones that have a little more resolution than their kin, they're the ones for which the subject and composition resonate with them. And it's not as if your Wisner can't produce very fine, very large prints indeed.
Not to be a back-patter, but your second-to-last sentence proves that you Get It(TM) about photography. The most troubling trend in photography has nothing to do with numbers, and everything to do with geeky obsession about numbers.
Finally, if you are referring to home built pcs, must people don't do that. Sure slashdot readers can slap a computer together for a few hundred bucks thats quite nice, but my mom or cousin can't.
At the time Apple deems the hobbyist market worth pursuing, they will release products that the hobbyist market will be interested in.
Otherwise, you can assume that Apple doesn't see any money in the hobbyist market; in other words, the market is too small to pursue.
They don't make tablets or PDAs either. I think most reasonable people can infer that Apple's strategy for the past eight years has been to pursue only markets in which they are reasonably sure they can make money. The Cube and the iPod were the only arguable deviances from this strategy, and the soap-bar shaped gamble paid off in spades.
Anyone else worried that the touch screen is going to get worn out over time?
NO, we're not worried, because it isn't a SHIPPING PRODUCT and no one can BUY ONE, because this is a RUMOR coming from a asite that is MORE OFTEN WRONG THAN NOT.
I really miss the option of being able to frame the shot through the LCD which I could do on much cheaper consumer/prosumer cameras. I've read some discussions on why it isn't/can't be done on DSLRs but I still would like the option.
It could certainly be done, but since the optical path is straight through the lens on an SLR, why would you want to?
Even the best hooded LCDs are very poor compared to an actual view of the scene for judging latitude, framing, and capturing motion.
I'm also a large format photographer - I use a 4X5 camera.
Charlie and I are friends, and I got to see some of his test prints the other day. Compared to 4x5 film test exposures, there was a slight loss of detail in the digital back prints - aliasing or some similar artifact on tiny text along the edge of a dumpster.
One thing though, is that medium format is where digital is really making some quality leaps. Set free from the small but yield-killing 35mm frame sensor size, medium format digital backs are truly, truly impressive now - which was part of the impetus, Charlie explained, for getting the digital back in the first place. It's the first time he's felt digital can approach film for the work he does. It doesn't hurt that typically, medium format glass is some of the best - while more expensive and sharper than most 35mm glass, Zeiss and Mamiya medium format lenses usually have better resolution than large format lenses.
As before, there is no substitute for square inches in photography. I'm sure that within a few years, the supply of readyload 4x5 film will dwindle and I'll be forced to load film holders again. A few years after that, I may have to start looking for a medium format body and a digital back.
I won't hold my back for a usable large format digital back. I've seen Stephen Johnson's work and I really don't want to live with the compromises that a scanning back brings with it - and I"m not stupid enough to believe that there will ever be a market for a 20 square inch image sensor.
At 2500 dpi on the Tango scanner, you're getting virtually every bit of information from film. For my film, that's a 350MB file. Digital backs on medium format can approach this quality today (note that I did not say match or surpass) because there is no film grain or other extra information to gather in a second scanning process. One other advantage for fine art photographers is that you're only looking through one lens to make the printable image - as opposed to an image-making lens and a scanner lens with film. The disadvantages are stark - batteries (I only have one spare battery in my film kit, for my spot meter), storage, in-field backup, etc.
rambling now...but I will stick with film until digital catches up with me and my Wisner.
My "real" camera's lens is bigger than my cell phone. Just because of optical limitations alone, you'll never have a decent camera in a cell phone.
That must be why microscope lenses are so crappy.
I'd like to correct your assertion that it's somehow difficult to make a small, sharp, lens. It's far easier to design and build a tack-sharp lens that is 6mm across than to make an equally sharp lens that is 40mm across. Similarly, the larger the lens, the more elements and groups you must add to the design to correct for chromatic aberration, barrel distortion, and other large lens problems.
The sharpest 35mm lens I ever owned was the T* (T-star) Zeiss lens built in to my Yashica T4 point-and-shoot. A 300mm focal length Canon L-Series lens, at ten times the cost of the Yashica is also very sharp, but a very significant cost goes into making it so.
While it's certainly true that a large lens can be designed to be both CH sharp* and relatively simple, this sort of engineering does cost a lot of money. The Heidelberg Tango scanner I use has a relatively small lens (9mm across), yet can resolve a true 11,000 dpi of resolution - microscope-like in it's reach.
All that's lacking from cell-phone cameras is image quality. There are two ways to fix this:
1. Increase image sensor density 2. Put better and better-protected lenses in front of that image sensor - which probably won't happen for cost reasons
A small lens is inherently an advantage for sharpness and a disadvantage for speed.
*Cunt hair sharp - an old photojournalist reference...
So, it looks like representatives from both parties are editing Wikipedia articles. Let's take a look at how the "liberal" media might treat this story.
Slashdot Headline: "Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers"
CNN Headline: "Democratic Staffers edit World Wide Web Encyclopedia"
Fox News Headline: "Democrats attempt to Rewrite History; Republicans clarify Wikipedia entries."
MSNBC: "Tonight: Chris Matthews Examines the Democratic attempt to modify web databases."
Contrast this to the "bipartisan" Abramaoff bribery scandal, where no money was given to Democrats and Abramoff's clients decreased their giving to Democrats at Abramoff's direction.
*sigh* I know it's a hypothetical, but given the minimization of every single Republican scandal in the past several years, do you really think it's far off base?
We have long argued that, to really take full advantage of multiprocessor machines, you need to be in a production type of environment, and have a strategy for utilizing the significant resources these computers make available. It is possible to do this, and we fault the Macworld article for not pointing it out... this was, after all, one of the reasons for OSX.
What the f*ck?
If I'm not mistaken, this paragraph says that "To use multiprocessor machines efficiently, you must plan your usage for maximum effect".
I'm supposed to strategize my word processing now? And MacWorld is at fault whuh?
I guess the methodology they use is interesting, but it doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot in the context of "CPU utilization". How is that utilization code written? Who knows if it's even 100% accurate on Intel?
Slashdot Mirror
I guess my alternative would have been to keep the original battery and risk it exploding.
Yo', genius: batteries don't explode when they're no longer capable of holding a charge. There's not even a risk. Where did you come up with such an improbable assumption?
I forsee anti-trust suits in Apple's future, forcing them to open their store to competitors' players by licensing the ability to play iTunes store content on competitive players, or allowing iPod users to buy from multiple stores, or both.
Yes, just like Sony had to sell Betamax and Beta and Digital Beta designs to their competitors.
There are lots of ways to make a digital music player, and no shortage of viable formats. No one has proved or even brought up the possibility that Apple used their market position to actively suppress the competitiveness of these formats or the efforts of rival manufacturers. Unless that happens, there is no foundation or basis for antitrust action.
No one seems to be claiming that Apple's broken the law by creating a successful music store and player. If Apple were using their market position to shut down the efforts of other companies that make media players, accessories, or content. There's a big difference between being popular on the merits of your product and using that popularity to influence the market by illegally restricting consumer choice.
Just because Apple has a closed format YOU don't like doesn't mean that they can be hauled into court for not opening said format. If you don't like it, organize change, but the law in this country says that the U.S. attorney must be reasonably convinced that the law has been broken in order to file an antitrust suit.
Once they release the minimum hardware specs for Vista, which they haven't done yet, we'll know more.
Oh, good. Then we can all wait for the story about a couple of geeks who got Vista to run on a Mac. Then four days later, we can all enjoy the dupe.
Of course, one of those big users of undocumented features was Apple themselves. Remember the "unclean" 24-bit ROMs?
This had nothing to do with any undocumented feature. What actually happened is that Apple was just looking for memory manager flag storage space and they found it in the unused upper 8 bits of the M68000, since only 24 lines were hardwired, but the internal architecture was 32-bit.
This caused problems when Macintosh II shipped, with 32 physical address lines. The OS was lagging at this point so nothing happened right away; System 7, with it's 32-bit memory map would force the issue in 1991, and a loads-at-startup patch (MODE32) was provided to avoid the old style memory manager flag storage routines in ROM.
System 7 users could now use the 32-bit OS with their 32-bit hardware and address more than 8MB of RAM.
When FORCE QUIT doesn't work, 120V A/C to the processor does the trick every time.
I just line the applications up in the dock and shoot them.
About the Geneva Conventions? President Bush says he doesn't have to. And you might want to ask the Iraqi with the glowstick up his ass (or the one chained to a dog), or the "terrorist" in Gitmo told that menstrual blood was smeared on his Koran) about those Geneva Conventions. Check with the people we've sent to Syria for interrogation; ask them about the U.S.' respect for the Geneva Convenstions.
I'm sure they'd all find the notion of the U.S. playing by the rules rather quaint. The respect people once had for us as a nation came partially from the fact that we wouldn't sink to the level of our enemies. We didn't put the Germans in concentration camps. And we certainly didn't fly airplanes into the tallest buildings in Riyadh...
War isn't like it used to be.
It is hoped that the engine, designed by UK defense firm QinetiQ and capable of Mach 7.6, will pave the way for ultra fast, intercontinental air travel.
.84 cruisers. Maybe some giant Aussie aerospace firm will be interested...
But it won't. You seen the price of fuel these days? Boeing hasn't done research into hypersonic travel in years; every R&D penny they've got is going into fuel-efficient mach
As near as I can tell, this means that somewhere there is a guy named "Homeland Security Okay", and these Closed Proceedings belong to him. You cad. My name is Homeland Security Okay, and I'll have you know that my Closed Proceedings are mine to do with as I please.
As near as I can tell, this means that somewhere there is a guy named "Homeland Security Okay", and these Closed Proceedings belong to him.
Slashdot headlines make you cringe, hunh? Me too.
but it's triply insulting for 2 extra reasons
Hunh?
Oh God, I hope Apple doesn't use these chips....
MARS, BITCHES!
So, he seems to be saying that like the "gifted" children that show higher interest and aptitude in certain areas, Apple must do better because they're clearly capable of it.
I've seen lots of kids drop out of college because of reasoning like that from their parents. They get discouraged and stop trying, because they are capable of doing better, even when they aren't interested in "doing better" at the time.
Just seems counter productive to expect something groundbreaking from Apple everytime there's an annoucement. Apple didn't overhype it - the press did. The rumors sites did. Apple will display innovation when they have something innovative to ship - they never promised that the Intel-based machines would be anything groundbreaking - just Macs with Intel processors - which is exactly what they are, and more (Front Row).
So don't expect the gifted child of the computer industry to display brilliance in every assignment. That's not what being "gifted" about - even Ansel Adams made more average-level work than masterpieces.
"He (Houston Mayor Bill White) called the chief's proposal a 'brainstorm' rather than a decision.",/I>
That's what stroked were once called...brainstorms.
Better give Mr. Hurtt a C/T scan.
Isn't that the vehicle that Mr. Garrison invented?
Are you suggesting that the sensors used in medium-format backs don't have even worse yield problems than their smaller 36x24mm "35mm" cousins? This flies against my understanding of chip fabrication, but perhaps I've misunderstood you.
No, you've got me there. The margins for MF-sized chips are probably higher, but the yields are lower - more silicon gets wasted, which means more money per square mm to buy a medium format sensor.
Y'know, in my opinion, even if that happens, there's nothing wrong with sticking with your Wisner so long as you can keep making prints you enjoy from it and film keeps being made. In the end, both the prints that I enjoy the most and the prints that my customers purchase aren't the ones that have a little more resolution than their kin, they're the ones for which the subject and composition resonate with them. And it's not as if your Wisner can't produce very fine, very large prints indeed.
Not to be a back-patter, but your second-to-last sentence proves that you Get It(TM) about photography. The most troubling trend in photography has nothing to do with numbers, and everything to do with geeky obsession about numbers.
Finally, if you are referring to home built pcs, must people don't do that. Sure slashdot readers can slap a computer together for a few hundred bucks thats quite nice, but my mom or cousin can't.
At the time Apple deems the hobbyist market worth pursuing, they will release products that the hobbyist market will be interested in.
Otherwise, you can assume that Apple doesn't see any money in the hobbyist market; in other words, the market is too small to pursue.
They don't make tablets or PDAs either. I think most reasonable people can infer that Apple's strategy for the past eight years has been to pursue only markets in which they are reasonably sure they can make money. The Cube and the iPod were the only arguable deviances from this strategy, and the soap-bar shaped gamble paid off in spades.
Anyone else worried that the touch screen is going to get worn out over time?
NO, we're not worried, because it isn't a SHIPPING PRODUCT and no one can BUY ONE, because this is a RUMOR coming from a asite that is MORE OFTEN WRONG THAN NOT.
I really miss the option of being able to frame the shot through the LCD which I could do on much cheaper consumer/prosumer cameras. I've read some discussions on why it isn't/can't be done on DSLRs but I still would like the option.
It could certainly be done, but since the optical path is straight through the lens on an SLR, why would you want to?
Even the best hooded LCDs are very poor compared to an actual view of the scene for judging latitude, framing, and capturing motion.
I'm also a large format photographer - I use a 4X5 camera.
Charlie and I are friends, and I got to see some of his test prints the other day. Compared to 4x5 film test exposures, there was a slight loss of detail in the digital back prints - aliasing or some similar artifact on tiny text along the edge of a dumpster.
One thing though, is that medium format is where digital is really making some quality leaps. Set free from the small but yield-killing 35mm frame sensor size, medium format digital backs are truly, truly impressive now - which was part of the impetus, Charlie explained, for getting the digital back in the first place. It's the first time he's felt digital can approach film for the work he does. It doesn't hurt that typically, medium format glass is some of the best - while more expensive and sharper than most 35mm glass, Zeiss and Mamiya medium format lenses usually have better resolution than large format lenses.
As before, there is no substitute for square inches in photography. I'm sure that within a few years, the supply of readyload 4x5 film will dwindle and I'll be forced to load film holders again. A few years after that, I may have to start looking for a medium format body and a digital back.
I won't hold my back for a usable large format digital back. I've seen Stephen Johnson's work and I really don't want to live with the compromises that a scanning back brings with it - and I"m not stupid enough to believe that there will ever be a market for a 20 square inch image sensor.
At 2500 dpi on the Tango scanner, you're getting virtually every bit of information from film. For my film, that's a 350MB file. Digital backs on medium format can approach this quality today (note that I did not say match or surpass) because there is no film grain or other extra information to gather in a second scanning process. One other advantage for fine art photographers is that you're only looking through one lens to make the printable image - as opposed to an image-making lens and a scanner lens with film. The disadvantages are stark - batteries (I only have one spare battery in my film kit, for my spot meter), storage, in-field backup, etc.
rambling now...but I will stick with film until digital catches up with me and my Wisner.
My "real" camera's lens is bigger than my cell phone. Just because of optical limitations alone, you'll never have a decent camera in a cell phone.
That must be why microscope lenses are so crappy.
I'd like to correct your assertion that it's somehow difficult to make a small, sharp, lens. It's far easier to design and build a tack-sharp lens that is 6mm across than to make an equally sharp lens that is 40mm across. Similarly, the larger the lens, the more elements and groups you must add to the design to correct for chromatic aberration, barrel distortion, and other large lens problems.
The sharpest 35mm lens I ever owned was the T* (T-star) Zeiss lens built in to my Yashica T4 point-and-shoot. A 300mm focal length Canon L-Series lens, at ten times the cost of the Yashica is also very sharp, but a very significant cost goes into making it so.
While it's certainly true that a large lens can be designed to be both CH sharp* and relatively simple, this sort of engineering does cost a lot of money. The Heidelberg Tango scanner I use has a relatively small lens (9mm across), yet can resolve a true 11,000 dpi of resolution - microscope-like in it's reach.
All that's lacking from cell-phone cameras is image quality. There are two ways to fix this:
1. Increase image sensor density
2. Put better and better-protected lenses in front of that image sensor - which probably won't happen for cost reasons
A small lens is inherently an advantage for sharpness and a disadvantage for speed.
*Cunt hair sharp - an old photojournalist reference...
So, it looks like representatives from both parties are editing Wikipedia articles. Let's take a look at how the "liberal" media might treat this story.
Slashdot Headline: "Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers"
CNN Headline: "Democratic Staffers edit World Wide Web Encyclopedia"
Fox News Headline: "Democrats attempt to Rewrite History; Republicans clarify Wikipedia entries."
MSNBC: "Tonight: Chris Matthews Examines the Democratic attempt to modify web databases."
Contrast this to the "bipartisan" Abramaoff bribery scandal, where no money was given to Democrats and Abramoff's clients decreased their giving to Democrats at Abramoff's direction.
*sigh* I know it's a hypothetical, but given the minimization of every single Republican scandal in the past several years, do you really think it's far off base?
What the f*ck?
If I'm not mistaken, this paragraph says that "To use multiprocessor machines efficiently, you must plan your usage for maximum effect".
I'm supposed to strategize my word processing now? And MacWorld is at fault whuh?
I guess the methodology they use is interesting, but it doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot in the context of "CPU utilization". How is that utilization code written? Who knows if it's even 100% accurate on Intel?
Mac Pro
Macintosh on Intel Product names going forward:
Mini->Macintosh
iMac G5->iMac
Power Macintosh -> Macintosh Pro
iBook->iBook or Mac Book
PowerBook -> Mac Book Pro
... and most of them are obsolete as of today!
No new iPods were introduced today; only an Apple FM tuner....
Did Apple suddenly make all iPods sold until today stop working or something? What an ass.