The thing is... higher resolution - and by that I mean a larger number of pixels AND a lens that can actually give you enough detail to utilize it will improve pictures. Too many lenses nowadays are crap - details are blurred and muddy even before you zoom in. It's difficult to get a decently sharp picture, even if you shoot in RAW and do a fair bit of post.
This detail is (imho) important in landscapes, and having this detail is an important part in getting pictures to "pop". Portraits too, but obviously this thing isn't usable for that.
This also has the side effect of getting you a fairly decent, fairly cheap fisheye "lens". Take a number of pictures and you'll have decent FOV and decent quality. Your entry level canon DSLR fisheye (EF-S 10-20mm) goes for roughly $500 and it's a bit of a crapshoot as to what you get (some on Amazon complain about it, some say it's great). Moving up in fisheyes is extremely expensive (and there really aren't many choices for DSLRs anyways - at least in the canon lineup)
Taking a few extra shots and merging them with autostitch (which, btw, is free and a kick ass app) will get you a pretty decent fisheye look for just a couple extra megs and a bit of cpu time.
Yes, laptops. Actually, if you track deal sites, Dell frequently has really good deals for laptops with decent video cards sold under the AAFES (armed forces something or other) program. A few other laptop makers also offer something similar.
And to continue on this for a bit... 150 knots (more or less average approach speed for larger aircraft) translates to about 250 feet per second. On the 4th pic, they "show" you what a 1/6th of a second exposure would look like at 350 feet.
I'm not going to do the math, but I'd wager money that;
1. It it possible for a human to physically move the pointer fast enough to follow the cockpit as it passes overhead at that speed (you're talking about a fairly significant arc) 2. It is possible for someone on the ground to even "see" the pilot's eyes during that time for 1/6th of a second - given the design of the cockpits, elevation of the aircraft, etc. 3. It is possible to track an eyeball sized target for that time.
And even then, due to the lack of dispersion of the beam, it would only affect one eye of a single pilot.
I also hate idiots who screw around with laser pointers as much as anyone else and think people who try to pull this kind of shit need to get the shit beaten out of them, but I hate bad pseudo-science a bit more.
The majority of - and I mean virtually all, except the perhaps the ones sold at the dollar store (end even then) - laser pointers fall into class 3a - for these lasers "eye protection is afforded by the "blink aversion response" to class 3a lasers, except when the laser is viewed using optical aids (telescopes, binoculars)" (http://www.bccdc.org/content.php?item=54)
Clearly, some people - people who actually have, you know, some actual knowledge of the subject - contradict your statement that these lasers can "easily blind someone."
And your link is... remarkably shitty and dishonest. It claims that "A typical flash from a hand-held laser at 1000 feet lasts about 1/50 of a second" and then, for their sample pics, use a camera at f/2.8 and 1/6th of a second long - and then tie it to a slowed down.gif FAIL.
FAIL 1-5mW lasers are rated class 3a according to ANSI Z136.1 - and most - hell, virtually all - pen lasers are class 3a. But, hey, feel free to continue making idiotic comments that include statements like "good enough for most people" and "can get a permit".
When the entire market gives you no choice, the market doesn't solve anything.
Yes, you can buy computers with XP or even linux, but in the vast majority of computer purchases in the last year, the customer has not had a choice.
The market doesn't work when a certain product enjoys a virtual monopoly, it doesn't work when one company uses its size to artificially affect the market - and it doesn't work when consumers are idiots who are swayed by bright and shiny objects.
Indeed. This appears to be the strategy now. "Don't worry about Vista, because Windows 7 will knock your socks off". Just keep in mind that Vista SP1 was supposed to knock our socks off. It's hard not to become cynical with Microsoft's recent track record.
Because the thieves are often TSA employees - who have the keys. With a ziplock, at least you know your bag has been entered. With a TSA lock, everything can still look honky dorry, even though all your stuff is missing and has been replaced with bags of dirt.
Yup, there are many ways to learn the IP address/addresses of your computer once it has been stolen. Thing is, what can you do about it then?>
Before it gets stolen, set it up so it maps a port w/ upnp by default to give you remote access. Get access to it late one night, fire up an email client and send a few emails, such as
To: president@whitehouse.gov, chiefofpolice@city.state.us, someone@localfbifieldoffice.gov Subject: time to die motherfucker! data: I'm using a stolen laptop and a router so you can't track me, but you will see me before you die [etc, etc, more mad rantings, throw some shit from milita pages and mention the constitution a bunch of times]
Then start wiping user folders.
Pretty sure that will get it taken care of. If you don't get it back, at least nobody else will be using it;)
It works great on XP too. Gets rid of the annoying menu fades, slides, shadows and other unnecessary stuff in the gui. You can keep themes on, but most of the checkboxes there are useless. Helps with speed if doing remote access over RDP, VNC, etc and also helps a wee bit with battery life on portables if you have power management enabled. You'll probably want to leave the "use drop shadows..." option if you don't like windows 98 style icon labels.
Why isn't it default? For the same reason that Microsoft feels that you need a 8 gig "temporary internet file" folder (that, incidentally, tends to fragment the hell out of your hard drive), System Restore thinks using 60 GB is perfectly fine (default is 12% of drive space), the page file config is pretty much guaranteed to fragment the PF by resizing the damn thing over and over, and font smoothing is set by default to "Standard" (completely worthless) instead of "Cleartype" (which actually is an improvement) Apparently nobody at Microsoft cares enough to stand up and say, "Maybe we should think about this for a minute."
No offense, but you're a pretty poor law student if you can't realize that this doesn't really fall under contract law, but under consumer protection laws that have been implemented by State governments. Shelf price is the selling price in most states. Just google "attorney general" "scanned price" and you'll get a number of results.
You're also apparantly completely unaware of bait and switch / false advertising laws. Laws that were put in because of scummy, abusive retailers who felt that it was perfectly ok to screw around with people. Certain industries are more tightly regulated (car dealerships) because of... well, let's just call them "widespread practices"
Not only did amazon cancel orders (which may of have been fine), but they also "disappeared" them from their system. Orders where the cost of the CD set gave someone free shipping changed - without any notification - to orders where shipping was charged. Amazon could of have handled this a lot better than trying to cover it up.
It's a little ridiculous to expect Amazon to eat thousands of dollars in losses over an error on their website.
Not according to various consumer protection laws (on the state level) Laws which were implemented to combat abusive retailers engaging in bait and switch tactics.
You mean if the stockboy puts the wrong price on an item that's on the shelf, that's the price they the store has to sell it for? I doubt there's a law anywhere in the country that says that. Making mistakes is bad for the store's image but they aren't legally obligated to honor such an error.
You're wrong. The store has to sell it for the price on the shelf. Most (all?) states have consumer protection laws in place where if the price differs at the register, you get the price on the shelf plus a bit extra (or if it is a small value item, it's free) For example... http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164-34739_20942-134114--,00.html
For some reason, online retailers feel that they can ignore consumer protection laws, and routinely do so. Most likely because the "we're not responsible for price mistakes" line in the "terms and conditions" A major retailer deleting orders without notification is pretty scummy.
Take your average customer who downloads an average of 50 MB/month. Give them the choice of a 5GB quota for $38, or an unlimited plan for $45. They'll choose the unlimited plan every time.
That's because the last time they went 5% "over their usage" with a metered service such as a cell phone company, they were raped with a $429 bill. Are a few bucks saved monthly worth the angst of dealing with abusive overage charges?
If I want to take several litres of water on board a plane, then I should be able to. Its not like restricting the volume of liquids and gels each person can take will make much of a difference. I mean, several people could pool their liquids and blow up the plane.
Since 9/11, I've flown through CDG. The security there was rude and somewhat intimidating.
Everyone who works at CDG is rude and intimidating. CDG is a shitty airport - it was even called "the shame of France" by the French for a while. The problems (lack of signage, chaotic layout, rude employees) are systemic and have been known for years. Probably the worst airport in the world near a major city, although I hear Bombay and some of the former Soviet airports are worse.
Because extremely expensive, no bid, just plain dishonest contracts to incompetents is how a great deal of the US government has work done.
If private sector employees acted like this, they'd be fired for incompetence, the relationship with the incompetent 3rd party would be terminated fairly quickly, pressure would be put on the local district attorney to file fraud and conspiracy criminal charges if there was collusion and a whole lot less money would be spent before it all went away.
In the case of government employees, it's just status quo. Move alone, nothing to see here.
Has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?
Is it really relevant here? Someone in the school administration wanted to silence a single student who raised awareness about a project that was pissing away a significant amount of student money. So they went out, found a flimsy, bullshit excuse and ran with it.
It isn't a matter of active and sustained surveillance of students - it's the matter of a administrator (or one of his minions) doing something stupid that will cost the school quite a few bucks in legal fees and the upcoming settlement in order to protect one of his pet projects.
We all know politics in the real world has pork and corruption, but the academic world takes it a step further in some cases. When you factor in the effect of tenure, it can get ugly very quickly, especially if the tenured employees feel threatened. Quaint notions such as "the law" are ignored - primarily because even though their actions put the school at legal jeopardy, the actual employee really is unaffected. Besides, college students aren't really known for their ability to retain lawyers easily.
I speak with some authority, since I was VP of student government and finance director PCC Sylvania. I've spent a few years in student government and suffice it to say, I've seen a few things. For a bit of background, PCC Sylvania is a campus w/ ~24,000 students. Roughly 86,000 students currently attend PCC's multiple campuses, making it one of the largest schools in terms of enrollment in the USA. Granted, PCC isn't a university, but from what I've seen, student fees are handled in more or less the same manner at any school.
Student government didn't get all the student fees - a significant portion of the collected fees went to projects run by (factions in the) administration and only a few percent trickled down and could be spent by the elected student government. I'm not going to say it was all wasted, but I can completely understand how people can get pissed at how large portions (5-6 figures, year after year) of it were spent.
What can you really expect? After all, you are talking about a funding source that is essentially guaranteed, with virtually no oversight and run / spent by tenured administrators / professors. You're going to have corruption, you're going to have abuses of power and this is really nothing new.
The only thing different here is that it made the papers because even though this type of arbitrary expulsion isn't exactly new (it has been on the rise for the last few years - it's not a result of Virginia Tech), it still makes a fairly good story, especially with the "early departure".
From what I understand, platter swaps probably won't work unless you maintain alignment between the platters. In a single platter drive, this won't be a problem, but if you have more than one...
Angle grinders work quite well. We chopped a few IBM hotswap drives into several pieces, drive, rails, and all - like a hot knife through butter (and flying shit everywhere)
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is... higher resolution - and by that I mean a larger number of pixels AND a lens that can actually give you enough detail to utilize it will improve pictures.
Too many lenses nowadays are crap - details are blurred and muddy even before you zoom in. It's difficult to get a decently sharp picture, even if you shoot in RAW and do a fair bit of post.
This detail is (imho) important in landscapes, and having this detail is an important part in getting pictures to "pop". Portraits too, but obviously this thing isn't usable for that.
This also has the side effect of getting you a fairly decent, fairly cheap fisheye "lens". Take a number of pictures and you'll have decent FOV and decent quality.
Your entry level canon DSLR fisheye (EF-S 10-20mm) goes for roughly $500 and it's a bit of a crapshoot as to what you get (some on Amazon complain about it, some say it's great).
Moving up in fisheyes is extremely expensive (and there really aren't many choices for DSLRs anyways - at least in the canon lineup)
Taking a few extra shots and merging them with autostitch (which, btw, is free and a kick ass app) will get you a pretty decent fisheye look for just a couple extra megs and a bit of cpu time.
Yes, laptops.
Actually, if you track deal sites, Dell frequently has really good deals for laptops with decent video cards sold under the AAFES (armed forces something or other) program.
A few other laptop makers also offer something similar.
And to continue on this for a bit...
150 knots (more or less average approach speed for larger aircraft) translates to about 250 feet per second.
On the 4th pic, they "show" you what a 1/6th of a second exposure would look like at 350 feet.
I'm not going to do the math, but I'd wager money that;
1. It it possible for a human to physically move the pointer fast enough to follow the cockpit as it passes overhead at that speed (you're talking about a fairly significant arc)
2. It is possible for someone on the ground to even "see" the pilot's eyes during that time for 1/6th of a second - given the design of the cockpits, elevation of the aircraft, etc.
3. It is possible to track an eyeball sized target for that time.
And even then, due to the lack of dispersion of the beam, it would only affect one eye of a single pilot.
I also hate idiots who screw around with laser pointers as much as anyone else and think people who try to pull this kind of shit need to get the shit beaten out of them, but I hate bad pseudo-science a bit more.
The majority of - and I mean virtually all, except the perhaps the ones sold at the dollar store (end even then) - laser pointers fall into class 3a - for these lasers "eye protection is afforded by the "blink aversion response" to class 3a lasers, except when the laser is viewed using optical aids (telescopes, binoculars)" (http://www.bccdc.org/content.php?item=54)
.gif
Clearly, some people - people who actually have, you know, some actual knowledge of the subject - contradict your statement that these lasers can "easily blind someone."
And your link is... remarkably shitty and dishonest.
It claims that "A typical flash from a hand-held laser at 1000 feet lasts about 1/50 of a second" and then, for their sample pics, use a camera at f/2.8 and 1/6th of a second long - and then tie it to a slowed down
FAIL.
FAIL
1-5mW lasers are rated class 3a according to ANSI Z136.1 - and most - hell, virtually all - pen lasers are class 3a.
But, hey, feel free to continue making idiotic comments that include statements like "good enough for most people" and "can get a permit".
When the entire market gives you no choice, the market doesn't solve anything.
Yes, you can buy computers with XP or even linux, but in the vast majority of computer purchases in the last year, the customer has not had a choice.
The market doesn't work when a certain product enjoys a virtual monopoly, it doesn't work when one company uses its size to artificially affect the market - and it doesn't work when consumers are idiots who are swayed by bright and shiny objects.
It's hard not to become cynical with Microsoft's recent track record.
Because the thieves are often TSA employees - who have the keys. With a ziplock, at least you know your bag has been entered. With a TSA lock, everything can still look honky dorry, even though all your stuff is missing and has been replaced with bags of dirt.
Yup, there are many ways to learn the IP address/addresses of your computer once it has been stolen. Thing is, what can you do about it then?>
;)
Before it gets stolen, set it up so it maps a port w/ upnp by default to give you remote access. Get access to it late one night, fire up an email client and send a few emails, such as
To: president@whitehouse.gov, chiefofpolice@city.state.us, someone@localfbifieldoffice.gov
Subject: time to die motherfucker!
data: I'm using a stolen laptop and a router so you can't track me, but you will see me before you die [etc, etc, more mad rantings, throw some shit from milita pages and mention the constitution a bunch of times]
Then start wiping user folders.
Pretty sure that will get it taken care of. If you don't get it back, at least nobody else will be using it
A lack of competency on the Indian end has never been a barrier to outsourcing for a company determined to "save money" by gutting the IT budget.
It works great on XP too.
Gets rid of the annoying menu fades, slides, shadows and other unnecessary stuff in the gui.
You can keep themes on, but most of the checkboxes there are useless.
Helps with speed if doing remote access over RDP, VNC, etc and also helps a wee bit with battery life on portables if you have power management enabled.
You'll probably want to leave the "use drop shadows..." option if you don't like windows 98 style icon labels.
Why isn't it default? For the same reason that Microsoft feels that you need a 8 gig "temporary internet file" folder (that, incidentally, tends to fragment the hell out of your hard drive), System Restore thinks using 60 GB is perfectly fine (default is 12% of drive space), the page file config is pretty much guaranteed to fragment the PF by resizing the damn thing over and over, and font smoothing is set by default to "Standard" (completely worthless) instead of "Cleartype" (which actually is an improvement)
Apparently nobody at Microsoft cares enough to stand up and say, "Maybe we should think about this for a minute."
No offense, but you're a pretty poor law student if you can't realize that this doesn't really fall under contract law, but under consumer protection laws that have been implemented by State governments.
Shelf price is the selling price in most states.
Just google "attorney general" "scanned price" and you'll get a number of results.
You're also apparantly completely unaware of bait and switch / false advertising laws.
Laws that were put in because of scummy, abusive retailers who felt that it was perfectly ok to screw around with people.
Certain industries are more tightly regulated (car dealerships) because of... well, let's just call them "widespread practices"
Not only did amazon cancel orders (which may of have been fine), but they also "disappeared" them from their system. Orders where the cost of the CD set gave someone free shipping changed - without any notification - to orders where shipping was charged. Amazon could of have handled this a lot better than trying to cover it up.
It's a little ridiculous to expect Amazon to eat thousands of dollars in losses over an error on their website.
Not according to various consumer protection laws (on the state level)
Laws which were implemented to combat abusive retailers engaging in bait and switch tactics.
You mean if the stockboy puts the wrong price on an item that's on the shelf, that's the price they the store has to sell it for? I doubt there's a law anywhere in the country that says that. Making mistakes is bad for the store's image but they aren't legally obligated to honor such an error.
You're wrong.
The store has to sell it for the price on the shelf. Most (all?) states have consumer protection laws in place where if the price differs at the register, you get the price on the shelf plus a bit extra (or if it is a small value item, it's free)
For example...
http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164-34739_20942-134114--,00.html
For some reason, online retailers feel that they can ignore consumer protection laws, and routinely do so. Most likely because the "we're not responsible for price mistakes" line in the "terms and conditions"
A major retailer deleting orders without notification is pretty scummy.
Fatwallet thread on this
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=74&threadid=807548&start=0
Take your average customer who downloads an average of 50 MB/month. Give them the choice of a 5GB quota for $38, or an unlimited plan for $45. They'll choose the unlimited plan every time.
That's because the last time they went 5% "over their usage" with a metered service such as a cell phone company, they were raped with a $429 bill. Are a few bucks saved monthly worth the angst of dealing with abusive overage charges?
I'd like to see this license I supposedly agreed to when I turned the TV on.
What's that? Silence?
If I want to take several litres of water on board a plane, then I should be able to. Its not like restricting the volume of liquids and gels each person can take will make much of a difference. I mean, several people could pool their liquids and blow up the plane.
You can also go through security twice.
Since 9/11, I've flown through CDG. The security there was rude and somewhat intimidating.
Everyone who works at CDG is rude and intimidating.
CDG is a shitty airport - it was even called "the shame of France" by the French for a while. The problems (lack of signage, chaotic layout, rude employees) are systemic and have been known for years.
Probably the worst airport in the world near a major city, although I hear Bombay and some of the former Soviet airports are worse.
Yup... Matrioshka brain
If you think your bill will go down because of this... well... you're a fucking idiot.
Because extremely expensive, no bid, just plain dishonest contracts to incompetents is how a great deal of the US government has work done.
If private sector employees acted like this, they'd be fired for incompetence, the relationship with the incompetent 3rd party would be terminated fairly quickly, pressure would be put on the local district attorney to file fraud and conspiracy criminal charges if there was collusion and a whole lot less money would be spent before it all went away.
In the case of government employees, it's just status quo. Move alone, nothing to see here.
Has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?
Is it really relevant here? Someone in the school administration wanted to silence a single student who raised awareness about a project that was pissing away a significant amount of student money. So they went out, found a flimsy, bullshit excuse and ran with it.
It isn't a matter of active and sustained surveillance of students - it's the matter of a administrator (or one of his minions) doing something stupid that will cost the school quite a few bucks in legal fees and the upcoming settlement in order to protect one of his pet projects.
We all know politics in the real world has pork and corruption, but the academic world takes it a step further in some cases. When you factor in the effect of tenure, it can get ugly very quickly, especially if the tenured employees feel threatened.
Quaint notions such as "the law" are ignored - primarily because even though their actions put the school at legal jeopardy, the actual employee really is unaffected.
Besides, college students aren't really known for their ability to retain lawyers easily.
I speak with some authority, since I was VP of student government and finance director PCC Sylvania. I've spent a few years in student government and suffice it to say, I've seen a few things.
For a bit of background, PCC Sylvania is a campus w/ ~24,000 students. Roughly 86,000 students currently attend PCC's multiple campuses, making it one of the largest schools in terms of enrollment in the USA.
Granted, PCC isn't a university, but from what I've seen, student fees are handled in more or less the same manner at any school.
Student government didn't get all the student fees - a significant portion of the collected fees went to projects run by (factions in the) administration and only a few percent trickled down and could be spent by the elected student government.
I'm not going to say it was all wasted, but I can completely understand how people can get pissed at how large portions (5-6 figures, year after year) of it were spent.
What can you really expect? After all, you are talking about a funding source that is essentially guaranteed, with virtually no oversight and run / spent by tenured administrators / professors. You're going to have corruption, you're going to have abuses of power and this is really nothing new.
The only thing different here is that it made the papers because even though this type of arbitrary expulsion isn't exactly new (it has been on the rise for the last few years - it's not a result of Virginia Tech), it still makes a fairly good story, especially with the "early departure".
From what I understand, platter swaps probably won't work unless you maintain alignment between the platters. In a single platter drive, this won't be a problem, but if you have more than one...
Angle grinders work quite well. We chopped a few IBM hotswap drives into several pieces, drive, rails, and all - like a hot knife through butter (and flying shit everywhere)