The offset flash on most cameras is usually viewed as a liability that screws up your photos, but these guys have turned around and taken advantage of the effect.
Interesting opinion. My problem with built in flashes is that they are too close to the lens, meaning there is little to no shadowing, flattening out everything.
You'll notice a lot of pro photographers have devices to move the flash further from the lens: either tall stalks with the flash at the end, handheld flash units on wires (to be held arm-outstretched in the non-camera hand), or even RC flash units on tripods several metres from the camera.
People have been forced to learn bizarre and unusual ways of naming objects to force them to appear in the correct order. Such tricks as adding leading zeros and reversing the order of dates have become pandemic.... then it cites iTunes as an app that has this fixed.
For dates: I habitually use ISO 8601 dates (e.g. 2004-12-01) in context other than sortable lists, since it's the most logical representation, and saves all sorts of international confusion.
As for iTunes, this raised a hollow laugh from me, since although I value the special treatment of "The" (Slimserver also does this, via a plugin, incidentally), I've had to prepend all my various artist compilation album titles with a "!", so that I can get them grouped in one place on the iPod.
People have come close to what you suggest with film. Some panoramma camera use "scan" the image onto a long roll of film with a moving lens... and others have "scanned" the world with modified hand scanner..
You don't say enough about where you live to get a proper answer.
If you live South of Newcastle, stop worrying. Get some blankets or plan to spend those terrifying few hours without power in the pub.
If you live in a town, and have no garden, then clearly all this talk about petrol generators is out of the question.
If you live in a remote cottage, get a coal or oil fired stove, it's in keeping:)
NB, The questioner probably confused a lot of Americans with his wording. What most British homes (including his) have is Natural Gas fired central heating: i.e. the hissy stuff that burns with a blue flame, not petroleum spirit/gasoline. Usually a single natural gas boiler heats water which is both used for hot water, and pumped through radiators (by an electric pump) thoughout the home.
Electric storage heaters, hot air systems, electric bar fires, oil heaters etc. are all also used, but radiators fed hot water from gas boilers is by far the most common in the UK.
Wouldn't the remote also turn on all the televisions which were originally off?
So if you don't fancy physically blocking the IR port, another defeating mechanism would be to have two identical TVs next to each other, one turned on, one turned off...
Hmm, not really, if I walk in to a restraunt and you're smoking I'm going to walk right up to the manager and say, I don't fancy dying of lung cancer caused by passive smoking, either enforce a no-smoking policy or I'm eating elsewhere.
That's perfect, as long as you're polite about it. You're providing the manager with the information he needs to adapt to the market. (a true Keynesian free market relies on perfect information among other things).
Do make good of your threat and frequent somewhere with a no-smoking area.
In a year to 18 months here in the UK I'll be walking up to said smoker and saying smoking is banned in public places, put it out or I'll stick it up your arse.
I'm a non-smoker, but I really hope that doesn't coma about. You're being pretty optimistic about the speed government works too, since we were promised saner opening hours 4 years ago...
I believe this is something the market can decide, and I believe there are better ways to get people off cigarettes (nearly wrote "fags" there, but anticipated americans misunderstanding me). Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in 1930s USA. It's not working for narcotics anywhere. It won't work for cigarettes.
It has a simple interface but a lot of what it does isn't that good
That seems to be the i* philosophy. For iPhoto, iTunes and iPod, it's more important that an idiot can use it right away, than that an experienced user can get a lot done efficiently. (albeit a few completely unintuitive UI choices in iTunes/iPod)
Apple's recent firmware upgrades add UI features that I'm sure all iPod users would like. Unfortunately the new firmware only applies to 4G hardware. Bah.
Since you're an AC and I can't message you privately, I'll just have to reply. Beeping soil moisture indicators -- sounds great. How'd you make them, and are they cheap enough to have *lots* in a home?
Completely different. Minitel was like a BBS -- basically a TTY with a modem. Ceefax is teletext -- a set of pages, broadcast on a loop. The only interactivity is that you can tell your TV which of those pages to display.
I'd rather scroll to an exact position once, than have to scroll to an exact position, click, scroll to an exact position, click, etc.
Less clicking === more listening
I disagree. Clicking's more or less instantaneous. Scrolling is more time consuming the longer the list.
Let's say Cornelius is the 50th artist in my list (approximately right). He is 20th beginning with "C".
Time/effort croll to element x of a list = s(x) Time/effort Click = c
Finding Cornelius my suggested way: s(3) + c + s(20) + c
Finding Cornelius the way iPod does today: s(50) + c
For the apple way to be faster/easier c > s(50) - (s(3) + s(20))... there's no way a click is that time consuming. And that's for a letter early on in the alphabet!
Incidentally, I just had a play with my iPod to confirm something. One way the wheel might work well is if you learned how many rotations got you to an approximate position in your collections. e.g. "Three turns gets me to the Ds". It turns out the touch wheel doesn't work like that. If I brush my fingers round three times quickly, I end up at "Leonard Cohen" (alphebetised under "L"). If I go round three times slowly I end up at "The Cult" (in the "C"s.)
Normally I don't go for non-free software, but I paid real money to register Total Recorder -- Windows I'm afraid -- so that I could record the BBC's John Peel RA streams to MP3. It's nice, and if the server plays ball (as the BBC ones do), you can stream non-live content as fast as your network can deliver it.
The scroll wheel is a clever big of engineering alright, and it's a good way to quickly navigate medium sized lists -- maybe three or four screenfuls of choices.
However, the iPod UI designers seemed to take this as an excuse to present you with enormous lists to scroll through with the wheel. My MP3 collection is modest by the standards of most iPod owners (I've not filled 20GB yet) -- but "browse by artist" gives me a list of 209. Scrolling to somewhere near the beginning is OK. Scrolling to somewhere near the end is OK (because you can scroll right to the end, then back). Scrolling to somewhere around the middle of the alphabet is a real pain.
All they needed to do was make it heirarchical --
"Artists -> (easy scroll) -> S -> (easy scroll) -> Smiths"... would be quicker and easier than...
Now seriously. Why not throw in wireless support? Maybe they have and it wasn't mentioned in the/. article (I haven't RTFA yet). But this is really surprising to me.
Maybe because Sony would have to field phone helpline calls about WEP and SSIDs, and need to know the ins and outs of every Access Point that's ever been on the market.
Support is expensive, and to reduce that cost you need to narrow down exactly what you support to as small a set as possible.
Xbox Live! has a similar policy on wireless. "It works, but we don't support it".
I have heard from many sources that Sony released the slimmed down PSone because they had created a new chipset to allow the PS1 hardware to be integrated into the PS2 for backwards compatibility. Thus it made sense to package it as the small, inexpensive, stand-alone PSone to help revive that older market.
I wouldn't be surprised if this new PStwo stems from the exact same type of technology - a redesigned (aka smaller) PS2 chipset designed for integration into the future PS3.
That's quite a logical leap. Because chipping original Playstations was so widespread, the constantly changing design is quite well known. When the PS was still the main console on the market, Sony were continually revising the internal design, to incorporate cheaper components, volume manufacturing techniques, etc.
If you compare an early model PS with one of the last ones off the shelf before PS1 took over, you'll be amazed by the amount of empty space in the newer box.
The other advantage to Sony of doing this, of course is that tiny surface-mounted PCBs are much harder to solder mod chips onto. An acquaintance of mine had a nice earner going chipping Playstations for £10 a time. As the boards got smaller and fiddlier, he got disillusioned with the gig -- the fiddle was no longer worth the money.
I know what you're saying, and you're right: in terms of size + storage + features per dollar, iPod is behind. I'm also not a fan of the UI (but I've no experience of the alternatives).
However, iPod's sheer ubiquity means that for 3rd party support nothing else can touch it. I bought an iPod instead of the alternatives because an iTrip is so much neater than generic FM transmitters. No cables, no fuss (except retuning >:( )
Similarly, you can get looms to fool your car stereo into thinking the iPod is a CD changer (e.g. here -- not an endorsement!). Until there is a standard remote control interface -- and I'm not holding my breath -- only the market leader (by sales) will be supported by third parties in this way.
Need to figure out how best to trigger the darned thnig - mechanical servos and whatnot seem silly, there needs to be a way to remotely trigger a switch without alot of extra crap going up with it...
My last digital camera (Kodak DC200) could be triggered using a serial cable. I looked into making a PIC circuit to do a timed trigger (say, wait 2 mins, then take a picture every 10 seconds) -- but having no experience in such low-level programming, and none of the hardware, I soon shied away from the project.
Modern cameras can be triggered with USB. I assume it would be a big deal for a hobbyist to make something small that does that.
This is because they are not merely copied. The people who create these CD images rip the content from the original high-capacity GD-ROMs (I guess they use either a DC devkit, or a hacked Dreamcast).
Having got the data, they often need to put some effort in to fit the game on a CD-ROM. A common strategy is to recompress video to a lower quality.
But labels are equivalent to folders. The only difference is that the folder metaphor means a message can only be in one (folder|label), whereas with the label metaphor you can give a message as many (folders|labels) as you like.
(Incidentally, Lotus Notes has folders, which are implemented as labels, so you can delete a message from a "folder", yet it might still exist in another "folder" -- very confusing to most users)
Slashdot Mirror
The offset flash on most cameras is usually viewed as a liability that screws up your photos, but these guys have turned around and taken advantage of the effect.
Interesting opinion. My problem with built in flashes is that they are too close to the lens, meaning there is little to no shadowing, flattening out everything.
You'll notice a lot of pro photographers have devices to move the flash further from the lens: either tall stalks with the flash at the end, handheld flash units on wires (to be held arm-outstretched in the non-camera hand), or even RC flash units on tripods several metres from the camera.
Quoth the article:
... then it cites iTunes as an app that has this fixed.
People have been forced to learn bizarre and unusual ways of naming objects to force them to appear in the correct order. Such tricks as adding leading zeros and reversing the order of dates have become pandemic.
For dates: I habitually use ISO 8601 dates (e.g. 2004-12-01) in context other than sortable lists, since it's the most logical representation, and saves all sorts of international confusion.
As for iTunes, this raised a hollow laugh from me, since although I value the special treatment of "The" (Slimserver also does this, via a plugin, incidentally), I've had to prepend all my various artist compilation album titles with a "!", so that I can get them grouped in one place on the iPod.
People have come close to what you suggest with film. Some panoramma camera use "scan" the image onto a long roll of film with a moving lens ... and others have "scanned" the world with
modified hand scanner..
You don't say enough about where you live to get a proper answer.
:)
If you live South of Newcastle, stop worrying. Get some blankets or plan to spend those terrifying few hours without power in the pub.
If you live in a town, and have no garden, then clearly all this talk about petrol generators is out of the question.
If you live in a remote cottage, get a coal or oil fired stove, it's in keeping
NB, The questioner probably confused a lot of Americans with his wording. What most British homes (including his) have is Natural Gas fired central heating: i.e. the hissy stuff that burns with a blue flame, not petroleum spirit/gasoline. Usually a single natural gas boiler heats water which is both used for hot water, and pumped through radiators (by an electric pump) thoughout the home.
Electric storage heaters, hot air systems, electric bar fires, oil heaters etc. are all also used, but radiators fed hot water from gas boilers is by far the most common in the UK.
Wouldn't the remote also turn on all the televisions which were originally off?
So if you don't fancy physically blocking the IR port, another defeating mechanism would be to have two identical TVs next to each other, one turned on, one turned off...
Hmm, not really, if I walk in to a restraunt and you're smoking I'm going to walk right up to the manager and say, I don't fancy dying of lung cancer caused by passive smoking, either enforce a no-smoking policy or I'm eating elsewhere.
That's perfect, as long as you're polite about it. You're providing the manager with the information he needs to adapt to the market. (a true Keynesian free market relies on perfect information among other things).
Do make good of your threat and frequent somewhere with a no-smoking area.
In a year to 18 months here in the UK I'll be walking up to said smoker and saying smoking is banned in public places, put it out or I'll stick it up your arse.
I'm a non-smoker, but I really hope that doesn't coma about. You're being pretty optimistic about the speed government works too, since we were promised saner opening hours 4 years ago...
I believe this is something the market can decide, and I believe there are better ways to get people off cigarettes (nearly wrote "fags" there, but anticipated americans misunderstanding me). Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in 1930s USA. It's not working for narcotics anywhere. It won't work for cigarettes.
It has a simple interface but a lot of what it does isn't that good
That seems to be the i* philosophy. For iPhoto, iTunes and iPod, it's more important that an idiot can use it right away, than that an experienced user can get a lot done efficiently. (albeit a few completely unintuitive UI choices in iTunes/iPod)
I wouldn't hold your breath.
Apple's recent firmware upgrades add UI features that I'm sure all iPod users would like. Unfortunately the new firmware only applies to 4G hardware. Bah.
Since you're an AC and I can't message you privately, I'll just have to reply. Beeping soil moisture indicators -- sounds great. How'd you make them, and are they cheap enough to have *lots* in a home?
Digital doesn't mean HD, michael. You should have known that. There is digital SD (standard-def) too.
Nor does widescreen mean HD. Digital SD TV has been reasonably mainstream for several years in the UK. Some programmes are 16:9, others are 4:3.
I suspect that US digital channels will continue to broadcast repeats of I Love Lucy in glorious 4:3 SD B&W.
I've seen a few unofficial teletext to HTTP gateways. I believe they were all shut down for redistributing copyrighted content.
Completely different. Minitel was like a BBS -- basically a TTY with a modem. Ceefax is teletext -- a set of pages, broadcast on a loop. The only interactivity is that you can tell your TV which of those pages to display.
I'd rather scroll to an exact position once, than have to scroll to an exact position, click, scroll to an exact position, click, etc.
Less clicking === more listening
I disagree. Clicking's more or less instantaneous. Scrolling is more time consuming the longer the list.
Let's say Cornelius is the 50th artist in my list (approximately right). He is 20th beginning with "C".
Time/effort croll to element x of a list = s(x)
Time/effort Click = c
Finding Cornelius my suggested way:
s(3) + c + s(20) + c
Finding Cornelius the way iPod does today:
s(50) + c
For the apple way to be faster/easier
c > s(50) - (s(3) + s(20))
Incidentally, I just had a play with my iPod to confirm something. One way the wheel might work well is if you learned how many rotations got you to an approximate position in your collections. e.g. "Three turns gets me to the Ds". It turns out the touch wheel doesn't work like that. If I brush my fingers round three times quickly, I end up at "Leonard Cohen" (alphebetised under "L"). If I go round three times slowly I end up at "The Cult" (in the "C"s.)
btw I read your website. You sure are cranky.
Is that "grumpy" cranky or "eccentric" cranky?
Normally I don't go for non-free software, but I paid real money to register Total Recorder -- Windows I'm afraid -- so that I could record the BBC's John Peel RA streams to MP3. It's nice, and if the server plays ball (as the BBC ones do), you can stream non-live content as fast as your network can deliver it.
The scroll wheel is a clever big of engineering alright, and it's a good way to quickly navigate medium sized lists -- maybe three or four screenfuls of choices.
... would be quicker and easier than ...
However, the iPod UI designers seemed to take this as an excuse to present you with enormous lists to scroll through with the wheel. My MP3 collection is modest by the standards of most iPod owners (I've not filled 20GB yet) -- but "browse by artist" gives me a list of 209. Scrolling to somewhere near the beginning is OK. Scrolling to somewhere near the end is OK (because you can scroll right to the end, then back). Scrolling to somewhere around the middle of the alphabet is a real pain.
All they needed to do was make it heirarchical --
"Artists -> (easy scroll) -> S -> (easy scroll) -> Smiths"
"Artists -> (difficult scroll) -> Smiths
Now seriously. Why not throw in wireless support? Maybe they have and it wasn't mentioned in the /. article (I haven't RTFA yet). But this is really surprising to me.
Maybe because Sony would have to field phone helpline calls about WEP and SSIDs, and need to know the ins and outs of every Access Point that's ever been on the market.
Support is expensive, and to reduce that cost you need to narrow down exactly what you support to as small a set as possible.
Xbox Live! has a similar policy on wireless. "It works, but we don't support it".
I have heard from many sources that Sony released the slimmed down PSone because they had created a new chipset to allow the PS1 hardware to be integrated into the PS2 for backwards compatibility. Thus it made sense to package it as the small, inexpensive, stand-alone PSone to help revive that older market.
I wouldn't be surprised if this new PStwo stems from the exact same type of technology - a redesigned (aka smaller) PS2 chipset designed for integration into the future PS3.
That's quite a logical leap. Because chipping original Playstations was so widespread, the constantly changing design is quite well known. When the PS was still the main console on the market, Sony were continually revising the internal design, to incorporate cheaper components, volume manufacturing techniques, etc.
If you compare an early model PS with one of the last ones off the shelf before PS1 took over, you'll be amazed by the amount of empty space in the newer box.
The other advantage to Sony of doing this, of course is that tiny surface-mounted PCBs are much harder to solder mod chips onto. An acquaintance of mine had a nice earner going chipping Playstations for £10 a time. As the boards got smaller and fiddlier, he got disillusioned with the gig -- the fiddle was no longer worth the money.
The iPod is a joke at its price range.
I know what you're saying, and you're right: in terms of size + storage + features per dollar, iPod is behind. I'm also not a fan of the UI (but I've no experience of the alternatives).
However, iPod's sheer ubiquity means that for 3rd party support nothing else can touch it. I bought an iPod instead of the alternatives because an iTrip is so much neater than generic FM transmitters. No cables, no fuss (except retuning >:( )
Similarly, you can get looms to fool your car stereo into thinking the iPod is a CD changer (e.g. here -- not an endorsement!). Until there is a standard remote control interface -- and I'm not holding my breath -- only the market leader (by sales) will be supported by third parties in this way.
Need to figure out how best to trigger the darned thnig - mechanical servos and whatnot seem silly, there needs to be a way to remotely trigger a switch without alot of extra crap going up with it...
My last digital camera (Kodak DC200) could be triggered using a serial cable. I looked into making a PIC circuit to do a timed trigger (say, wait 2 mins, then take a picture every 10 seconds) -- but having no experience in such low-level programming, and none of the hardware, I soon shied away from the project.
Modern cameras can be triggered with USB. I assume it would be a big deal for a hobbyist to make something small that does that.
Running "apt-get upgrade" on 500 servers is not do-able.
It sounds very easy to me. In fact with a controlled APT source, I'd let my 500 servers run "apt-get udpate ; apt-get dist-upgrade" in a cron job.
A smart house would probably run their own apt source, and test controlled sets of updates before copying them to their in-house servers.
Any chance of an MP3 link? /. effect subsides?)
(maybe later when the risk of
That being said - just sit where you can see best. ... but I hate watching TV alone. I want to trade comments, or at least glances, with someone else.
they are all around 400Mo
This is because they are not merely copied. The people who create these CD images rip the content from the original high-capacity GD-ROMs (I guess they use either a DC devkit, or a hacked Dreamcast).
Having got the data, they often need to put some effort in to fit the game on a CD-ROM. A common strategy is to recompress video to a lower quality.
And yet some people still went out and bought them? Clueless.
So go ahead and show me another way I can play Capcom's excellent Power Stone, or Soul Calibur.
if I cant make folders whats the point?
But labels are equivalent to folders. The only difference is that the folder metaphor means a message can only be in one (folder|label), whereas with the label metaphor you can give a message as many (folders|labels) as you like.
(Incidentally, Lotus Notes has folders, which are implemented as labels, so you can delete a message from a "folder", yet it might still exist in another "folder" -- very confusing to most users)