At the very least you have two options when it comes to dealing with corporations. Buy their stuff or don't buy it. You imply that America is run by big evil corporations, yet, you forget where they get their money from and in turn who holds the real power.
But hey, at least you're not a follower and have a totally unique view about corporations, and are just subversive and cool enough to spell America with a K instead of a C.
The People *would* hold power, if they realized they're being fleeced by their leaders, their preachers, and their companies. But instead, they just blindly Consume, Consume, Consume. S'allright, someone's gotta make it, and someone's gotta spend it.
But don't kid yourself that The People can control the course of this country. They do what they're told, generally speaking (and yeah, I know about generalizations.) And the one doing the telling is TV and the Pulpit.
Anyway.. what is it with you and this little pro-Apple crusade you're on? Are you an Apple shareholder? Do you have some vested interest in the iPhone?
As for spelling Amerika with a K, it seems to irritate you, so I'll do it s'more. C'mon, sing with me!
Oh beautiful, for Business Case, and sheep being shorn!
Of Piles of Cash, made suspiciously, From lies and lies and guile!
Ameeeeerika, Ameeeerika, our checkbooks bleed for thee! And when we're done, we'll all go home And watch NASCAR on tee-vee!
Seriously though, if you don't like the terms attached to the iPhone and can't afford the risks involved with hacking it, why did you get one?
And what in my post gave you the idea that I have an iPhone? I'm not a trendy fashion whore, I don't run out and get the latest $SHINY because some blog, ad or other intrusion says I must get it.
For my mobile musical enjoyment I have my 8gb sansa, no DRM, no hassle, no iTunes, no lock-in. That, and a set of in-the-ear phones, and I don't have to listen to your iPhone's ringtones. Or the ads urging me to Buy It.
As for Corporate Amerika, wake up and smell the Starbucks Coffee. You have what they want. They'll stop at nothing to get it. Guess who actually runs this country? It ain't the gov't. The gov't is just an intermediary.
Smart is irrelevant. It's the morality of it. If you went out and bought an iPhone and didn't plan on using att, this is what you get. They clearly state that the iphone will only work on their network. If you decide to prove that wrong and mess up your phone why should Apple and/or the credit card companies exchange your money/replace your iphone?
That it "only" works with ATT is a ruse, done in software. The thing should work on any GSM/GPRS network. Perhaps not 100% pretty, but it should work in the sense that it can take and make calls. The maker of the device chose to strike a deal with the service provider to be "exclusive." In other words, they've artificially limited what the thing can do. To like, maximize profit.
Profit. Has nothing to do with morality. And the people who unlocked it are not guilty of having low morals, they're guilty of wanting choice -- the one thing Apple will never willingly provide.
Maybe you *should* spike yours, as it is apparent the workings of the technology is > you, *and* you naively trust what Corporate Amerika tells you.
Being a "professional" also means that you follow the ethical standards of your profession. Otherwise your behaviour is "unprofessional".
The word you're thinking of is "whore" or "prostitute". One who sells one's abilities, talent, or name for an unworthy purpose.
Puta mierda, that makes my entire IT dept a Band of Whores. Would Getting a Paycheck be considered a Worthy? 'cause that's the only positive i can think of, when I think of what we do..
...instead of being a separate entity it is a symptom of something else?
I just throw that up for discussion, because I have many of the hallmarks of ADD.. can't sit still, fidget, must always be doing *something*, had a devil of a time "paying attention" at the spoonfed crap at school..
Is it possible all that jazz is linked to something else, like, say, bi-polar disorder? Because *that* one the docs are fairly sure I got.
Is it further possible that the idiot box had a big hand in developing that?
...isn't how well it handles the loud, compressed crap so pervasive today.
The true test of an audio system is how well can it handle the un-compressed, quiet tracks. Because it is those which have low-level info.. page turns, the 3rd fiddle shifting in her chair, the loose change in the conductor's pocket, the guy walking behind the drumset, the guitar player tokin'... it's all there, on a good, un-compressed, wide-DR recording.
It takes a really bangin' hi-fi to deal with the quiet, uncompressed stuff... because after the quiet, ppp, soft parts, usually comes a ffff part, loud enough to wake up the dead. =oD
It also could be just the rantings of a zealot -- judging from his love-me page http://www.dannycarlton.net/ he does seem to be a zealot about a few different things. He also seems to be using this as a "magnet" to get traffic to his other sites. Like sites he charges to host for others.
Why don't we all drop him a line? Let him know how much we appreciate his pissing over our right to not be bombarded by advertising at every corner of the internet.
He's got the stones to call Firefox users a "Cult" -- when he's visibly a member of the biggest Cult of all time? What was that about glass houses and stones?
I'm a fairly recent convert to digital photography. I never considered for once using an inkjet -- got burned years ago by a series of Epson Stylus printers, and swore I'd never return to inkjet -- monochrome nor color.
So, when I want hardcopies of my digital images, I send them to Adorama in NYC (Noritsu RGB laser printer / kodak Endura paper / traditional color chemistry)
A few notes:
For YEARS now, when you take film to be printed, that film is scanned, and what is printed is a low-rez scan of that film. The days of the one-hour photo guy making optical prints from your negs are *long* gone. I'm sure there are a few labs out there that still do pure optical, but I bet they're "pro" labs like Dale and the like. Hardly what joe sixpack would use.
Places like Adorama make their ICC profiles available.
If you're a digital photographer, you MUST CALIBRATE YOUR MONITOR with a device like Heuey, Spyder or EyeOne or similar. I can't stress this enough. If you want the UNCORRECTED print look anything like what you see on the monitor, you must calibrate. With a device. Eyeballing isn't enough.
If you use a decent online photo printer, they'll offer to "correct" your images. IF you have a calibrated monitor, say NO. Print 'em as-is. Otherwise you'll get nasty surprises.
Digital printing has given control to the photographer that most people didn't even know existed. In the one-hour-photo era, the machine ops would "guess" at what it is you wanted -- leading to blue susnsets and orange mid-day shots, and worse. With digital YOU are in control, so please make an effort to learn about the art of printing. What applied in the hobbyist darkroom still applies today, only the tools have changed.
To me this is a no-brainer. Endura is rated by Kodak to 100 years -- this is a big jump from the older papers. Comparing the quality of Endura vs. an Inkjet print it is quickly apparent the ink photoprinters are one of the biggest ripoffs, one of the biggest cashcows to hit the market since the Gilette razor. With most online printers, 4x6 is 19 cents, 10x8 a buck and change, 11x14 about 5 to 7 bucks. Cheap cheap.
And lastly, food for thought:
Even "silver" color prints are prone to fading. The only true archival photo medium for physicial prints is a PAPER (not resin, PAPER) black and white silver print. All other technologies fade with time, some faster than others. Kodak claims their Endura Professional paper is good to 100 years in home use. Dunno how true that'll be -- but I hope it lasts longer than the stuff we used in the 70's and 80's -- some of my negatives have noticable color shifts (primarily the old Kodacolor II stuff) and most of my prints from back then have faded -- even in dark storage.
I've seen inkjet prints on "photo" paper in co-worker's offices and cubes, and let me tell ya.. in 2 years they look like a 20 year old Kodacolor print -- faded, faded....gone.
There's no way I'll bite into these printers. I'll keep sending my stuff to Adorama and maybe MPix. I favor Adorama because they offer the most flexible interface for the ardent amateur / pro, and I don't think they're as "morally correct" as WalMart. I don't think Adorama will call the cops if you have the temerity of taking a picture of your two year old in their birthday suit. Walmart has been known to do that. There are documented cases of WalMart calling cops and family services because someone had the demented, damaging idea of taking a picture of their kids playing in the tub. Some of these cases have ruined lives. So... say NO to walmart.
I shun Kodak / Snapfish / Ofoto because in their TOS they have "..will not print blasphemous images." What if I decided to make a photograph of a dog taking a leak on a crucifix? Or something equally or more blasphemous? I dont want some "morally concious" printer denying me the ability to print my work... so to hell with the Moralist printers.. of which Kodak / Ofoto seems to be the worst of, with WalMart
Even when the reason they wouldn't otherwise see it is that it didn't really happen? That's why pjs who make bogus images, once outed, are pretty much relegated to making pictures of somene's snot-nosed anklebiters at the local Sears. Their own community shuns 'em. No agency will carry their stuff, once it's proven to be bogus.
Fox may be interested in bogus photos, natch. They've built an empire around bogus.
These forgeries have become the stock-in-trade of the "stringers" used by "venerable" news agencies such as Reuters and AP. Many of these stringers are in fact confederates of terrorists and criminals, and their work is part of the disinformation campaign that is part of the GWOT. Ask for a refund for your tinfoil hat. I think it is broken.
Photo manipulation has been around since the beginning of photography. Proving a photograph has been diddled with can be quite difficult.
So now you say AP and Reuters work for the "other side". That "stringers" are in the employ of terrorists and criminals. Proof? Sources? Or is it that you don't like to see photographs critical of our policies and actions here and abroad?
I mean, that's what photojournalism is for -- to show Joe and Jane Sixpack things they normally wouldn't see. If you ask me, I'll tell you part of the distaste our country had for the Vietnam war was fueled by photographs taken in Vietnam by photographers represented by AP, Reuters, Magnum, and other agencies. Like Nick Ut's shot of the girl running towards the camera, skin fairly melting off from a napalm strike. Or like a series LIFE ran showing a day in the life of a helicopter crew, including the pain of mortal wounds, the reactions of the chopper's crew to their crewmate's loss.. the anger and pain and frustration visibile on the gunner's face after a mission goes bad and they lose half the crew? Were those faked? Were those pictures taken to aid the other side? I don't think so. They were taken in the heat of battle, they show battle, and what comes out of battle. Mainly injury and death. That should be shown, regardless of whose death or injury it is. War by nature is injurious -- people need to be reminded of that. Preferably without something like Fox MovieTone News filtering it, cleaning it up and sanitizing it for our protection.
Y'know, like Fox News does today. They *ARE* the MovieTone News of our times, and are every inch as fake and hokey as MovieTone newsreels were back in the day.
No thanks. I'd rather see the real deal, un-diddled, un-edited, preferably from an agency born from 2 great war photographers: Magnum.
Good photojournalism shows you the image, and nothing more. It is up to the viewer to decide if what is being depicted is good, or bad. If it is in line with our goals, or not. Good photojournalism makes the viewer think about things they may not like to think about.
To paint all photographers with your broad brush does the profession a disservice. These people risk their lives to get that picture.
Maybe you'd like to read up on one Robert Capa, and how he got his ticket punched in what would later be called the Vietnam War, in 1955, after being retired, after vowing never to cover a war after covering WWII, after going into Normandy with the 1st wave. He went to Vietnam as a favor to LIFE (who'd bailed him out many a time).. stepped off a truck in a convoy to get a shot of the convoy, triggered a landmine, and died with his Contax II in his hand. When you tar and feather the entire profession, you're also tarring and feathering people who gave their lives so the Western press could show people like you what was going on in some hellhole whose name no one can even pronounce right. Just like photographers today risk their lives to show you what we're doing in some other hellhole whose name we can't even pronounce right. >.
Or is it that you *dont* want anyone to see what our armed forces are doing Over There, at the command of our deranged politicians and policies? Hmmm?
As long as the message gets through, the words used matter not. Sometimes a spade is just an entrenching tool, right?
Sometimes, to get the message out, the message has to be obfuscated just a little, so it slips right past those opposed to said message.
This is why I think the most important tool we have in the quest to rid civilization of blind faith in supernatural entities is the arts.
Art is the only place where a spade can be a entrenching tool, or where all of humanity can be represented as a single ship. It is the only place where one can place deeply controversial ideas and present them in a manner which will sail right past those with closed minds.. and sometimes, just sometimes, it'll stick a wedge in a closed mind, and pry it open.
So no, I don't mind if evolution is also expressed as 'adapt and overcome.' A rose, by any name...
Support the arts, folks. Encourage your kids to not only write, draw, paint, sing and play, but also to deeply listen, to deeply look into the work to see or hear the other, cloaked meaning.. when a pro-arts organization needs money, be generous.. when an artist is censored, sanctioned or punished for expressing something un-popular.. support them and their freedom of expression.
The Arts have already started cracks in the facade.. all we need to do is drive those wedges deeper. It will take time and effort. That facade is strong, and well-built, over thousands of years, by skilled craftsmen, experts at manipulating people's fear, and using that fear as a lever to raise the blocks forming the facade. But as usual, that which has been built, can be taken down -- even if it has to be stone by stone.
long ago, i had an AST "tower" (pentium II, or was it I? So long ago..;o) that zapped me mildly. I measured from chassis to ground a nice 40 VAC. But only when the network card (coax) was in it. o.O
It's not pining, it's passed on. This camera is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late camera. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you shot it in to space to the orbit, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-camera. You mean....
I thought nobody under 30 read comics anymore, especially in the US. And that the only way comics got a wide recognition these days were through movie and television adaption.
Speak for yourself, I'm a bit past 30 and I enjoy comics. Okkay, manga. I've been so out of the loop with the US comic thing I dunno which way is up regarding those. I can only take so many 'reboots' and 'retcons'.
But don't kid yourself, there's a sizable contingent of post-30-ish people who enjoy comics and cartoons (manga / anime too.)
Of course, I'd *hope* such people would be able to spot a shill comic as easily as they can spot a legit, from-the-heart work.
I won't dispute Big Oil lies. EVERYONE lies. Those whose lives / profits depend on X thing will spend a lotta money to preserve X thing. Duuuh. Of course Big Oil lies. They're masters at it, they're one of the biggest crooks in history.
But so do the enviro-extremists. They REALLY like to lie, because the whole enviro-scam is the ONLY way they can make cash. Big Oil actually sells a PRODUCT... the EnviroWeenies only sell FEAR. Take that FEAR away, and their cash goes away. Not to mention their sphere of influence.
I hate it deeply, but I'm siding with the oil guys on this one. The enviroweenies are worse than the oil guys. The Enviro-nutjobs base THEIR argument on a deeply flawed, 19th-century theory: The fossil fuel theory. Never proven, and kinda dodgy. If it takes rotting dinos to make oil (a hydrocarbon) how come hydrocarbons are found freely in space, and can be synthesized in a lab? Them space dee-nos must have some amazin' cloakin' devices, eh?
Furthermore, it can be argued that short of blowing up a whole lotta nukes, there's not much our puny species can do to actually screw up the earth. Contrary to the constant drone of the enviros. Sure, I"m all for clean air, clean water, and not putting crap into the ecosystem -- but some crap WILL get by, always had, always will, and the biggest polluters have been -- VOLCANOS and asteroid hits. Not us. We are insignificant. We can do harm on the short term, but I really think our ability to truly mess up this joint is being highly overstated by merchants of fear.
...while all that ice melts, it lowers the salinity of the oceans, thus displacing warm currents from where they are to somewhere else, thusly altering the global train of weather systems, thusly contributing to a "little ice age", reinforced by CO2 in the stratosphere?
Sounds paradoxical, but that could be one outcome of losing the polar ice cap... an ice age.
Personally, I think we'll see just that -- a little ice age lasting a century or two. The scary part is, according to some, we could see this in our own lifetimes.
Oh well. I used to live in North Dakota. Bring it on.
a little something the Russians seem to have figured out in the 1950's.
Perhaps their theory of deep-earth oil generation is more valid, less bogus, than the rather ancient (19th Century!) "oil came from rotting dinosaurs" theory the West subscribes to.
Sounds to me that what we consider "reservoirs" are actually behaving like capacitors: Supplied with oil from below, these reservoirs hold oil closer to the surface, where we tap into 'em... but the motherlode is deeper, far deeper than what we consider 'normal'.
I suggest y'all pick up "Black Gold Stranglehold" by Corsi & Smith, and "Deep Hot Biosphere" by Thomas Gold. Both present a case, supported by what seems to me fairly solid evidence and logic, that the Earth indeed makes the black gooey stuff on her own, without having to depend on rotting Barneys to do so.
Also, in Louisiana's coast, a well went dry.. well, that well spouted again.. it had somehow automagically re-filled itself. (cited in "Stranglehold"), some info out on the web on this.
So folks.. read a little, and start challenging the fossil fuel theory. I think the idea at least deserves exploration, yes?
Or is this country still going to cling to a 19th century (never proven) theory, and then force-feed the flawed decisions born from using that quaint antique of a theory to the rest of the world? 'Cause that's exactly what we're doing.. preaching based on unproven, untested theory from two centuries ago.
what the Google search algorithm is to Google. In case there's no die-hard flickr-rers in here, Interestingness is really sorting out chaff from wheat, as regards to photography. It's not just tagging stuff, folks -- it's separating good photographs, funny photos, *cough* interesting photos, artful, emotional photos from the rest of the garbage sent into flickr.
Try this experiment: Search Flickr for a thing, concept or emotion. Sort by "Most Recent." Bask in the great number of bad snapshots. Now take the same search, and sort by "Interesting". Whoa -- art. And if not art, at the very least, "interesting".
No one other than the writers know how it works. Flickr don't say how it works. A few points, based on observation:
o Interesting has nothing to do with art, really -- but artful shots are bound to be more interesting than typical bad snaps.
o In scale of weight: At the top there's Favorites, then Comments, and finally, Views.
o I suspect the algorithm also somehow interprets the photo on its own, with no human help. Probably looking for photographic concepts such as tonality, composition (rule of thirds, etc.) I feel this because I've uploaded images which I would say should rank very low, yet almost immediately they're ranked higher than I expected -- with no views, no comments. This suggests to me Flickr's algorithm is actually looking at the pix. If this is true, then it's remarkable.
I say they have every right in the world to patent it. It makes Flickr different than the other 'sharing' sites.
Slashdot Mirror
The People *would* hold power, if they realized they're being fleeced by their leaders, their preachers, and their companies. But instead, they just blindly Consume, Consume, Consume. S'allright, someone's gotta make it, and someone's gotta spend it.
But don't kid yourself that The People can control the course of this country. They do what they're told, generally speaking (and yeah, I know about generalizations.) And the one doing the telling is TV and the Pulpit.
Anyway.. what is it with you and this little pro-Apple crusade you're on? Are you an Apple shareholder? Do you have some vested interest in the iPhone?
As for spelling Amerika with a K, it seems to irritate you, so I'll do it s'more. C'mon, sing with me! Yah, I'll keep my dayjob, a songwriter I'm not.
And what in my post gave you the idea that I have an iPhone? I'm not a trendy fashion whore, I don't run out and get the latest $SHINY because some blog, ad or other intrusion says I must get it.
For my mobile musical enjoyment I have my 8gb sansa, no DRM, no hassle, no iTunes, no lock-in. That, and a set of in-the-ear phones, and I don't have to listen to your iPhone's ringtones. Or the ads urging me to Buy It.
As for Corporate Amerika, wake up and smell the Starbucks Coffee. You have what they want. They'll stop at nothing to get it. Guess who actually runs this country? It ain't the gov't. The gov't is just an intermediary.
That it "only" works with ATT is a ruse, done in software. The thing should work on any GSM/GPRS network. Perhaps not 100% pretty, but it should work in the sense that it can take and make calls. The maker of the device chose to strike a deal with the service provider to be "exclusive." In other words, they've artificially limited what the thing can do. To like, maximize profit.
Profit. Has nothing to do with morality. And the people who unlocked it are not guilty of having low morals, they're guilty of wanting choice -- the one thing Apple will never willingly provide.
Maybe you *should* spike yours, as it is apparent the workings of the technology is > you, *and* you naively trust what Corporate Amerika tells you.
Jobs, in his best Palpatine voice: "I will make it legal!"
Puta mierda, that makes my entire IT dept a Band of Whores. Would Getting a Paycheck be considered a Worthy? 'cause that's the only positive i can think of, when I think of what we do..
Oh wait, that was tried before, and in some cases, cost humanity bigtime.
What is it with those in power, and fear of information?
Too bad for them, info can't be killed anymore. Supressed, made harder to find, sure -- but not wiped out on a wholesale scale.
...instead of being a separate entity it is a symptom of something else?
I just throw that up for discussion, because I have many of the hallmarks of ADD.. can't sit still, fidget, must always be doing *something*, had a devil of a time "paying attention" at the spoonfed crap at school..
Is it possible all that jazz is linked to something else, like, say, bi-polar disorder? Because *that* one the docs are fairly sure I got.
Is it further possible that the idiot box had a big hand in developing that?
...isn't how well it handles the loud, compressed crap so pervasive today.
The true test of an audio system is how well can it handle the un-compressed, quiet tracks. Because it is those which have low-level info.. page turns, the 3rd fiddle shifting in her chair, the loose change in the conductor's pocket, the guy walking behind the drumset, the guitar player tokin'... it's all there, on a good, un-compressed, wide-DR recording.
It takes a really bangin' hi-fi to deal with the quiet, uncompressed stuff... because after the quiet, ppp, soft parts, usually comes a ffff part, loud enough to wake up the dead. =oD
This smacks of astroturfing.
It also could be just the rantings of a zealot -- judging from his love-me page http://www.dannycarlton.net/ he does seem to be a zealot about a few different things. He also seems to be using this as a "magnet" to get traffic to his other sites. Like sites he charges to host for others.
Why don't we all drop him a line? Let him know how much we appreciate his pissing over our right to not be bombarded by advertising at every corner of the internet.
We can send him love letters at: godaddy@dannycarlton.net (which I doubt is real) or use the form at http://dannycarlton.com/contact.php
He's got the stones to call Firefox users a "Cult" -- when he's visibly a member of the biggest Cult of all time? What was that about glass houses and stones?
I'm a fairly recent convert to digital photography. I never considered for once using an inkjet -- got burned years ago by a series of Epson Stylus printers, and swore I'd never return to inkjet -- monochrome nor color.
So, when I want hardcopies of my digital images, I send them to Adorama in NYC (Noritsu RGB laser printer / kodak Endura paper / traditional color chemistry)
A few notes:
For YEARS now, when you take film to be printed, that film is scanned, and what is printed is a low-rez scan of that film. The days of the one-hour photo guy making optical prints from your negs are *long* gone. I'm sure there are a few labs out there that still do pure optical, but I bet they're "pro" labs like Dale and the like. Hardly what joe sixpack would use.
Places like Adorama make their ICC profiles available.
If you're a digital photographer, you MUST CALIBRATE YOUR MONITOR with a device like Heuey, Spyder or EyeOne or similar. I can't stress this enough. If you want the UNCORRECTED print look anything like what you see on the monitor, you must calibrate. With a device. Eyeballing isn't enough.
If you use a decent online photo printer, they'll offer to "correct" your images. IF you have a calibrated monitor, say NO. Print 'em as-is. Otherwise you'll get nasty surprises.
Digital printing has given control to the photographer that most people didn't even know existed. In the one-hour-photo era, the machine ops would "guess" at what it is you wanted -- leading to blue susnsets and orange mid-day shots, and worse. With digital YOU are in control, so please make an effort to learn about the art of printing. What applied in the hobbyist darkroom still applies today, only the tools have changed.
To me this is a no-brainer. Endura is rated by Kodak to 100 years -- this is a big jump from the older papers. Comparing the quality of Endura vs. an Inkjet print it is quickly apparent the ink photoprinters are one of the biggest ripoffs, one of the biggest cashcows to hit the market since the Gilette razor. With most online printers, 4x6 is 19 cents, 10x8 a buck and change, 11x14 about 5 to 7 bucks. Cheap cheap.
And lastly, food for thought:
Even "silver" color prints are prone to fading. The only true archival photo medium for physicial prints is a PAPER (not resin, PAPER) black and white silver print. All other technologies fade with time, some faster than others. Kodak claims their Endura Professional paper is good to 100 years in home use. Dunno how true that'll be -- but I hope it lasts longer than the stuff we used in the 70's and 80's -- some of my negatives have noticable color shifts (primarily the old Kodacolor II stuff) and most of my prints from back then have faded -- even in dark storage.
I've seen inkjet prints on "photo" paper in co-worker's offices and cubes, and let me tell ya.. in 2 years they look like a 20 year old Kodacolor print -- faded, faded....gone.
There's no way I'll bite into these printers. I'll keep sending my stuff to Adorama and maybe MPix. I favor Adorama because they offer the most flexible interface for the ardent amateur / pro, and I don't think they're as "morally correct" as WalMart. I don't think Adorama will call the cops if you have the temerity of taking a picture of your two year old in their birthday suit. Walmart has been known to do that. There are documented cases of WalMart calling cops and family services because someone had the demented, damaging idea of taking a picture of their kids playing in the tub. Some of these cases have ruined lives. So... say NO to walmart.
I shun Kodak / Snapfish / Ofoto because in their TOS they have "..will not print blasphemous images." What if I decided to make a photograph of a dog taking a leak on a crucifix? Or something equally or more blasphemous? I dont want some "morally concious" printer denying me the ability to print my work... so to hell with the Moralist printers.. of which Kodak / Ofoto seems to be the worst of, with WalMart
That's no hexagon.. that's an AT Field!
Fox may be interested in bogus photos, natch. They've built an empire around bogus.
Photo manipulation has been around since the beginning of photography. Proving a photograph has been diddled with can be quite difficult.
So now you say AP and Reuters work for the "other side". That "stringers" are in the employ of terrorists and criminals. Proof? Sources? Or is it that you don't like to see photographs critical of our policies and actions here and abroad?
I mean, that's what photojournalism is for -- to show Joe and Jane Sixpack things they normally wouldn't see. If you ask me, I'll tell you part of the distaste our country had for the Vietnam war was fueled by photographs taken in Vietnam by photographers represented by AP, Reuters, Magnum, and other agencies. Like Nick Ut's shot of the girl running towards the camera, skin fairly melting off from a napalm strike. Or like a series LIFE ran showing a day in the life of a helicopter crew, including the pain of mortal wounds, the reactions of the chopper's crew to their crewmate's loss.. the anger and pain and frustration visibile on the gunner's face after a mission goes bad and they lose half the crew? Were those faked? Were those pictures taken to aid the other side? I don't think so. They were taken in the heat of battle, they show battle, and what comes out of battle. Mainly injury and death. That should be shown, regardless of whose death or injury it is. War by nature is injurious -- people need to be reminded of that. Preferably without something like Fox MovieTone News filtering it, cleaning it up and sanitizing it for our protection.
Y'know, like Fox News does today. They *ARE* the MovieTone News of our times, and are every inch as fake and hokey as MovieTone newsreels were back in the day.
No thanks. I'd rather see the real deal, un-diddled, un-edited, preferably from an agency born from 2 great war photographers: Magnum.
Good photojournalism shows you the image, and nothing more. It is up to the viewer to decide if what is being depicted is good, or bad. If it is in line with our goals, or not. Good photojournalism makes the viewer think about things they may not like to think about.
To paint all photographers with your broad brush does the profession a disservice. These people risk their lives to get that picture.
Maybe you'd like to read up on one Robert Capa, and how he got his ticket punched in what would later be called the Vietnam War, in 1955, after being retired, after vowing never to cover a war after covering WWII, after going into Normandy with the 1st wave. He went to Vietnam as a favor to LIFE (who'd bailed him out many a time).. stepped off a truck in a convoy to get a shot of the convoy, triggered a landmine, and died with his Contax II in his hand. When you tar and feather the entire profession, you're also tarring and feathering people who gave their lives so the Western press could show people like you what was going on in some hellhole whose name no one can even pronounce right. Just like photographers today risk their lives to show you what we're doing in some other hellhole whose name we can't even pronounce right. >.
Or is it that you *dont* want anyone to see what our armed forces are doing Over There, at the command of our deranged politicians and policies? Hmmm?
As long as the message gets through, the words used matter not. Sometimes a spade is just an entrenching tool, right?
Sometimes, to get the message out, the message has to be obfuscated just a little, so it slips right past those opposed to said message.
This is why I think the most important tool we have in the quest to rid civilization of blind faith in supernatural entities is the arts.
Art is the only place where a spade can be a entrenching tool, or where all of humanity can be represented as a single ship. It is the only place where one can place deeply controversial ideas and present them in a manner which will sail right past those with closed minds.. and sometimes, just sometimes, it'll stick a wedge in a closed mind, and pry it open.
So no, I don't mind if evolution is also expressed as 'adapt and overcome.' A rose, by any name...
Support the arts, folks. Encourage your kids to not only write, draw, paint, sing and play, but also to deeply listen, to deeply look into the work to see or hear the other, cloaked meaning.. when a pro-arts organization needs money, be generous.. when an artist is censored, sanctioned or punished for expressing something un-popular.. support them and their freedom of expression.
The Arts have already started cracks in the facade.. all we need to do is drive those wedges deeper. It will take time and effort. That facade is strong, and well-built, over thousands of years, by skilled craftsmen, experts at manipulating people's fear, and using that fear as a lever to raise the blocks forming the facade. But as usual, that which has been built, can be taken down -- even if it has to be stone by stone.
The antidote to Religion is Art.
long ago, i had an AST "tower" (pentium II, or was it I? So long ago.. ;o) that zapped me mildly. I measured from chassis to ground a nice 40 VAC. But only when the network card (coax) was in it. o.O
Flickr's coolness comes from its Interestingness algorithm, something Picasa lacks.
Can it be...
It's dead, Jim.
As for the groupthink, well, it's slashdot. What'dya expect?
*glares at his obviously defective coffee*
Why, right you are. And now, back to our previously-scheduled Monday wake-up session...
Speak for yourself, I'm a bit past 30 and I enjoy comics. Okkay, manga. I've been so out of the loop with the US comic thing I dunno which way is up regarding those. I can only take so many 'reboots' and 'retcons'.
But don't kid yourself, there's a sizable contingent of post-30-ish people who enjoy comics and cartoons (manga / anime too.)
Of course, I'd *hope* such people would be able to spot a shill comic as easily as they can spot a legit, from-the-heart work.
You mean the world-at-large, yes? I think England pioneered consumerism while the US was still stealing from the natives and making the push Westward.
Don't blame us, in other words.
I won't dispute Big Oil lies. EVERYONE lies. Those whose lives / profits depend on X thing will spend a lotta money to preserve X thing. Duuuh. Of course Big Oil lies. They're masters at it, they're one of the biggest crooks in history.
But so do the enviro-extremists. They REALLY like to lie, because the whole enviro-scam is the ONLY way they can make cash. Big Oil actually sells a PRODUCT... the EnviroWeenies only sell FEAR. Take that FEAR away, and their cash goes away. Not to mention their sphere of influence.
I hate it deeply, but I'm siding with the oil guys on this one. The enviroweenies are worse than the oil guys. The Enviro-nutjobs base THEIR argument on a deeply flawed, 19th-century theory: The fossil fuel theory. Never proven, and kinda dodgy. If it takes rotting dinos to make oil (a hydrocarbon) how come hydrocarbons are found freely in space, and can be synthesized in a lab? Them space dee-nos must have some amazin' cloakin' devices, eh?
Furthermore, it can be argued that short of blowing up a whole lotta nukes, there's not much our puny species can do to actually screw up the earth. Contrary to the constant drone of the enviros. Sure, I"m all for clean air, clean water, and not putting crap into the ecosystem -- but some crap WILL get by, always had, always will, and the biggest polluters have been -- VOLCANOS and asteroid hits. Not us. We are insignificant. We can do harm on the short term, but I really think our ability to truly mess up this joint is being highly overstated by merchants of fear.
...while all that ice melts, it lowers the salinity of the oceans, thus displacing warm currents from where they are to somewhere else, thusly altering the global train of weather systems, thusly contributing to a "little ice age", reinforced by CO2 in the stratosphere?
Sounds paradoxical, but that could be one outcome of losing the polar ice cap... an ice age.
http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-02/cover/
Personally, I think we'll see just that -- a little ice age lasting a century or two. The scary part is, according to some, we could see this in our own lifetimes.
Oh well. I used to live in North Dakota. Bring it on.
a little something the Russians seem to have figured out in the 1950's.
Perhaps their theory of deep-earth oil generation is more valid, less bogus, than the rather ancient (19th Century!) "oil came from rotting dinosaurs" theory the West subscribes to.
Sounds to me that what we consider "reservoirs" are actually behaving like capacitors: Supplied with oil from below, these reservoirs hold oil closer to the surface, where we tap into 'em... but the motherlode is deeper, far deeper than what we consider 'normal'.
I suggest y'all pick up "Black Gold Stranglehold" by Corsi & Smith, and "Deep Hot Biosphere" by Thomas Gold. Both present a case, supported by what seems to me fairly solid evidence and logic, that the Earth indeed makes the black gooey stuff on her own, without having to depend on rotting Barneys to do so.
Also, in Louisiana's coast, a well went dry.. well, that well spouted again.. it had somehow automagically re-filled itself. (cited in "Stranglehold"), some info out on the web on this.
So folks.. read a little, and start challenging the fossil fuel theory. I think the idea at least deserves exploration, yes?
Or is this country still going to cling to a 19th century (never proven) theory, and then force-feed the flawed decisions born from using that quaint antique of a theory to the rest of the world? 'Cause that's exactly what we're doing.. preaching based on unproven, untested theory from two centuries ago.
what the Google search algorithm is to Google. In case there's no die-hard flickr-rers in here, Interestingness is really sorting out chaff from wheat, as regards to photography. It's not just tagging stuff, folks -- it's separating good photographs, funny photos, *cough* interesting photos, artful, emotional photos from the rest of the garbage sent into flickr.
Try this experiment: Search Flickr for a thing, concept or emotion. Sort by "Most Recent." Bask in the great number of bad snapshots. Now take the same search, and sort by "Interesting". Whoa -- art. And if not art, at the very least, "interesting".
No one other than the writers know how it works. Flickr don't say how it works. A few points, based on observation:
o Interesting has nothing to do with art, really -- but artful shots are bound to be more interesting than typical bad snaps.
o In scale of weight: At the top there's Favorites, then Comments, and finally, Views.
o I suspect the algorithm also somehow interprets the photo on its own, with no human help. Probably looking for photographic concepts such as tonality, composition (rule of thirds, etc.) I feel this because I've uploaded images which I would say should rank very low, yet almost immediately they're ranked higher than I expected -- with no views, no comments. This suggests to me Flickr's algorithm is actually looking at the pix. If this is true, then it's remarkable.
I say they have every right in the world to patent it. It makes Flickr different than the other 'sharing' sites.