Absolutely, the clickwheel was superior to touchscreens in some situations. One thing that pissed me off about the iPhone (when I had one) that kept me going back to my 1st Gen iPod Nano was that the touchscreen was, for me, useless on a plane. If I was dozing on a plane, I couldn't skip forward or go back with my eyes shut. I had open my eyes and turn on a bright screen, which was annoying both for me, and for others during a long-haul, overnight trip. Adjusting volume was easier too, though that is possible using the hardware volume buttons.
For a dedicated music player, the click/touchwheel was hard to beat.
I've had an idea for touchscreen "blind music control", but I think it'd have to be implemented on the OS level, if the hardware even supports it. Specifically, keep the LCD off, but the touch sensor on to recognize gestures. Gestures that are not rotations of each other, e.g. _| and |_ should help the device differentiate between commands, regardless of orientation.
Yes. If you get the Android SDK, it comes with a VM - you can run pretty much any version. (its kind of slow, as its running a java VM on a virtual ARM processor on your x86. (Though apparently the latest version is an x86 version - haven't confirmed that yet)
Warning you now though - you're running a touch OS with a mouse. Think about the reaction to Metro that people are giving.
My point is, if you don't like running it in the VM, be aware that its a much better experience on actual hardware.
Lets call a spade a spade. That may have been an inexpensive one, but the defining characteristic is "defective", and (QA procedures aside) could have happened at any price point. An inexpensive replacement would have likely worked just as well.
So totally off topic, but prompted by your last sentence: I'm currently renting a car, a Toyota Yaris, I think. They moved the WHOLE DASH to the CENTER.
Oh my god, It is the worst ever. I feel like I'm a danger on the road every time I try to check my speed. Who in their right minds thought this was a good idea?
I'm not an iTunes fan at all, nor an audiophile, but I believe the idea of remastering for itunes is not to put back lost data, but for account for it.
This is me making it up: "Oh, it looks like AAC will reduce sounds in the 18 KHz range, but that makes the bass too powerful and affects the voice. I can reduce the bass a bit and up the voice frequencies to compensate and now it sounds better than pure AAC applied blindly."
Sure, theres that. But what about the "sales and marketing" aspect where you're trying to convince people who already have requirements A, B and C, and that your widget meets those requirements better than a competitors?
"I hear you need paper! Well, Dunder Mifflin can meet your paper needs better than Hammermill. Our paper is whiter, cut more precisely, and our special SoftEdge technology reduces the number of papercuts!"
"I hear you need XYZ specialized financial management solution. Ours is better than theirs."
I see nothing fundamentally wrong with that. (implementation of marketting, such as bribes, is outside the scope of this post)
Eh, not bad at first glance, but I can't be on board with zapping time zones. As someone who deals with international locations across the globe every single day, its a ton easier to find out "oh, they're 8 hours behind us" vs "Hmm, its 0900 Global. We just had lunch... what are they doing in New York at this time? Its 0900 there too - I think its still dark, but I don't know if its close to dawn or if they just woke up."
Except that all the drivers are pretty much unified, so it comes down to detuned hardware... and I suspect manufacturing tolerances these days is such that the detuned hardware isn't as out of spec as it might once have been.
I have no citation, but I remember when the PS3 first came out, Sony admitted to having a 10 year cycle. I was skeptical at the time, but it looks like they'll blow past 5 years at least.
I lived there for 2 and a half years... it never snowed, rained on occasion during the winter... and hailed a few times in spring (Both times, around mid-April.)
if thats so... I don't want one (or four?). I want larger contact patches for better stopping. Screw 1 MPG, I don't want to hit that kid / dog / train that ran out in front of me.
I think we can agree that its complex. I'm not arguing for or against IP. And I agree that the threshold is a fuzzy one. Companies demanding that they take down a home video of a kid dancing, merely because a song they produced is playing in the background illustrates how fuzzy that is.
(To address your building issue though - the architect certainly did have a large amount of creative control when designing the building. But he was commissioned by a company that funded the construction of the building. The architects did their job, were compensated for it, and has no more say. The company that owns the building may try to restrict the _act_ of photography, but they can't very well say "You're not allowed to record photons that bounced off our building - those records belong to us."
But thats besides the point - I wasn't arguing about who has control over a photograph. I was objecting to the idea that there was no creative input into the taking of the photograph. )
But I think the same thing applies to peopl in a crowd. If the people in the crowd had any legal rights over any image they appear in, then security cameras, images of sporting events, of concerts, and of general life, would all be sued into oblivion.
Laws aside, I believe that if someone doesn't want to be photographed, then you shouldn't out of respect, especially if they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But if someones in a public place, the photog is not bound to get permission from each and every person who crosses his viewfinder. Ethically, if the photog expects to make money or widely distribute the photo, then maybe an attempt should be made to gain consent before, or after the photo, if possible. But IMHO that's more of a gentleman's agreement than anything that should be morally or legally required.
On the contrary - tweaking the fstop has an effect on depth of field (basically, the distance in front of, and distance behind, the measured point of focus.) For examples, landscapes often use a small aperture (high fstop) to increase the depth of field, ensuring that the foreground and background are all in focus at once. Portraits and macro-photography often use a low fstop (large aperture) to get everything but the subject out of focus, which forces your eye to the subject. And then, when you get into shallow depths of field, some people then start to get into "bokeh", which is basically defined as "what things look like when they're out of focus."
OK, so I got into the details again.:) sorry.
Here's the thing: You can't overcome technical limitations. Cameras (digital or film) simply cannot capture what the human eye can see. The creative part of photography is manipulating those limitations to your advantage.
A good photographer DOESN'T want to capture the shot realistically. For example - For a long time, I was very careful about getting my colors to match reality as best I could. I'd capture harsh lighting - maybe I'd increase the contrast in post, but I tried to faithfully reproduce what I saw. Only recently, did I discover that adjusting the colors (either in post, or with a color filter) makes images so much more pleasing to the eye, even if they get a bit warmer. In fact, I think the reason I'm harping on this article is because I *JUST* made this discovery for myself, and I'm a bit excited:)
Sweat isn't... but the effect of that sweat is. If someone sweats to get an experience, and then shares that experience (via photography, film, or writing a book), then that is copyrightable. And if someone else takes a billion photographs, and one happens to be identical... guess what - all BILLION of those photographs are copyrightable by the second person. It would be an interesting legal battle if the first sued the second on account of the identical photo, but I believe the 2nd person is within their rights. Know why? Because outside of a completely controlled environment, you won't ever get the same photo. Lighting changes. Shadows change. Clouds change. Sun position changes.
I personally believe that "different paths to the same thing" is perfectly OK and intellectually honest, and encourages innovation - be it software patents, algorithms or brute-forcing a photograph.
I'm not arguing that all photography is creative. I'm not arguing that all photography is legal, or morally right. I"m not arguing "pro-copyright".
I'm simply objecting to the idea that photography is simply "Just being there with a camera", and thus takes no creativity. Whether such creativity is protected by law, or the various edge cases challenging such an idea, those are beyond me.
Because, per my post above, they made creative choices that went into the photograph, both before the shutter opened, how the shutter opened and closed, and in post-production.
Not to mention that a photographer spent their resources in obtaining the equipment to take and process the photograph, and also the resources to travel to the site where the photograph was taken, possibly waiting until a particular time of day for lighting to be better or more dramatic.
Resources, effort, and creative decisions went into the capturing of photons that otherwise would have just bounced off a sidewalk had the camera lens not been in the way.
If anyone's going to have a claim to control, its the photog.
I disagree you not seeing any creative work going into photography. Or maybe you don't know much about the creativity involved in photography and post production. (I didn't, until I recently started learning.) You've narrowed it down to three items, which is great if you're shooting with your iPhone. If it were that simple, then all I'd have to do is be in the right place at the right time with a camera, and I can be the next Ansel Adams.
But in reality, its not that simple - I've realized, since I started playing around more and more, that even with a digital camera, photography is analog in nature. How do you frame a certain shot? Does the image capture a large depth of field? Does it capture motion or freeze it? What kind of lens was used? What kind of exposure did the photographer want? Was a flash used to fill the scene? Was the flash softened? What kind of filters are used to create the effect? What kind of white-balance is the photog using? How is the light being metered for the correct exposure? Is there exposure compensation? Film or digital? Now, don't forget - as you say, time is a factor - the photographer may have an instant or two to figure this out - he may have gone through a significant amount of work to get the shot he wants (wake up pre-dawn to catch shadows just so as people are commuting to work.)
What kind of post-processing is done? Is it retouched, colors adjusted? If film, how was it developed? What kind of cropping choices did the artist make? Is the artist doing HDR processing of multiple exposures?
My point, is that photography does have a creative aspect to it, where the outcome is dependent on the photogs creative choices along the way, along with skill to actually have those choices made and dialed in before the shot they want comes and goes.
"Boot Camp just resizes the hard drive so it can accomodate a Windows install and then you are able to dual-boot your system. It's also possible to install Linux on the other side for example. So it seems like Windows has an issue with the Intel or NVidia chipset, the processor or just plainly consumes more resources than Mac OS."
Not entirely accurate. Bootcamp also provides BIOS emulation, since current gen macs (not sure for how long though) use EFI.
I haven't read the article yet (of course.) but I wonder how battery life is when Win7 (which supports EFI) is installed "Natively", i.e. without BIOS emulation.
"So you're sitting on an idea you consider to be a gold mine, but you're hesitant to share for fear that someone will run off with your gem. Here's why you shouldn't be overly concerned about having your intellectual property stolen."
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely, the clickwheel was superior to touchscreens in some situations. One thing that pissed me off about the iPhone (when I had one) that kept me going back to my 1st Gen iPod Nano was that the touchscreen was, for me, useless on a plane. If I was dozing on a plane, I couldn't skip forward or go back with my eyes shut. I had open my eyes and turn on a bright screen, which was annoying both for me, and for others during a long-haul, overnight trip. Adjusting volume was easier too, though that is possible using the hardware volume buttons.
For a dedicated music player, the click/touchwheel was hard to beat.
I've had an idea for touchscreen "blind music control", but I think it'd have to be implemented on the OS level, if the hardware even supports it. Specifically, keep the LCD off, but the touch sensor on to recognize gestures. Gestures that are not rotations of each other, e.g. _| and |_ should help the device differentiate between commands, regardless of orientation.
Yes. If you get the Android SDK, it comes with a VM - you can run pretty much any version. (its kind of slow, as its running a java VM on a virtual ARM processor on your x86. (Though apparently the latest version is an x86 version - haven't confirmed that yet)
Warning you now though - you're running a touch OS with a mouse. Think about the reaction to Metro that people are giving.
My point is, if you don't like running it in the VM, be aware that its a much better experience on actual hardware.
Lets call a spade a spade. That may have been an inexpensive one, but the defining characteristic is "defective", and (QA procedures aside) could have happened at any price point. An inexpensive replacement would have likely worked just as well.
So totally off topic, but prompted by your last sentence: I'm currently renting a car, a Toyota Yaris, I think. They moved the WHOLE DASH to the CENTER.
This: http://www.carid.com/dash-kit-gallery/images/dash-kits/Toyota_Yaris_2006-UP_2427BE_A04.jpg
Oh my god, It is the worst ever. I feel like I'm a danger on the road every time I try to check my speed. Who in their right minds thought this was a good idea?
And if you make a scratching motion, it sounds like Pacman!
Not in the States*. You just have to pay a $200 tax and get a specific license.
* Individual state laws may vary; some states ban threaded barrels, which makes it almost impossible to mount a sound suppressor.
I'm not an iTunes fan at all, nor an audiophile, but I believe the idea of remastering for itunes is not to put back lost data, but for account for it.
This is me making it up: "Oh, it looks like AAC will reduce sounds in the 18 KHz range, but that makes the bass too powerful and affects the voice. I can reduce the bass a bit and up the voice frequencies to compensate and now it sounds better than pure AAC applied blindly."
(This is what I understood from my reading here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/mastered-for-itunes-how-audio-engineers-tweak-tunes-for-the-ipod-age.ars
I make no claim as to its accuracy - just that its background information relevant to the article at hand.
Sure, theres that. But what about the "sales and marketing" aspect where you're trying to convince people who already have requirements A, B and C, and that your widget meets those requirements better than a competitors?
"I hear you need paper! Well, Dunder Mifflin can meet your paper needs better than Hammermill. Our paper is whiter, cut more precisely, and our special SoftEdge technology reduces the number of papercuts!"
"I hear you need XYZ specialized financial management solution. Ours is better than theirs."
I see nothing fundamentally wrong with that. (implementation of marketting, such as bribes, is outside the scope of this post)
Eh, not bad at first glance, but I can't be on board with zapping time zones. As someone who deals with international locations across the globe every single day, its a ton easier to find out "oh, they're 8 hours behind us" vs "Hmm, its 0900 Global. We just had lunch... what are they doing in New York at this time? Its 0900 there too - I think its still dark, but I don't know if its close to dawn or if they just woke up."
Sounds good in theory, but god it would suck.
I said the same thing about "old movies", and for the most part, you're right.
But there are exceptions. The BR remaster of Sound of Music is, in a word... stunning. Video, audio, etc.
More than any action flicks I have, thats probably the best looking movie I have right now. I never thought I'd ever say that.
Wizard of Oz, also a nice improvement. Not as awesome, and you could probably get away with the remaster on DVD and it'd be about the same.
son of a bitch, all that work and setup for a lame joke, and I forgot to even log on.
Except that all the drivers are pretty much unified, so it comes down to detuned hardware... and I suspect manufacturing tolerances these days is such that the detuned hardware isn't as out of spec as it might once have been.
I have no citation, but I remember when the PS3 first came out, Sony admitted to having a 10 year cycle. I was skeptical at the time, but it looks like they'll blow past 5 years at least.
I lived there for 2 and a half years... it never snowed, rained on occasion during the winter... and hailed a few times in spring (Both times, around mid-April.)
Or the car is alarmed when the doors are locked, while the garage is not alarmed.
Just a use case for locking both.
And I've lived in places where its prudent to deadbolt both the front door and the (reinforced) bedroom door.
Just saying that just because your security scenario doesn't deem it necessary, doesn't mean its not appropriate for someone out there.
if thats so... I don't want one (or four?). I want larger contact patches for better stopping. Screw 1 MPG, I don't want to hit that kid / dog / train that ran out in front of me.
I think we can agree that its complex. I'm not arguing for or against IP. And I agree that the threshold is a fuzzy one. Companies demanding that they take down a home video of a kid dancing, merely because a song they produced is playing in the background illustrates how fuzzy that is.
(To address your building issue though - the architect certainly did have a large amount of creative control when designing the building. But he was commissioned by a company that funded the construction of the building. The architects did their job, were compensated for it, and has no more say. The company that owns the building may try to restrict the _act_ of photography, but they can't very well say "You're not allowed to record photons that bounced off our building - those records belong to us."
But thats besides the point - I wasn't arguing about who has control over a photograph. I was objecting to the idea that there was no creative input into the taking of the photograph. )
But I think the same thing applies to peopl in a crowd. If the people in the crowd had any legal rights over any image they appear in, then security cameras, images of sporting events, of concerts, and of general life, would all be sued into oblivion.
Laws aside, I believe that if someone doesn't want to be photographed, then you shouldn't out of respect, especially if they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But if someones in a public place, the photog is not bound to get permission from each and every person who crosses his viewfinder. Ethically, if the photog expects to make money or widely distribute the photo, then maybe an attempt should be made to gain consent before, or after the photo, if possible. But IMHO that's more of a gentleman's agreement than anything that should be morally or legally required.
On the contrary - tweaking the fstop has an effect on depth of field (basically, the distance in front of, and distance behind, the measured point of focus.) For examples, landscapes often use a small aperture (high fstop) to increase the depth of field, ensuring that the foreground and background are all in focus at once. Portraits and macro-photography often use a low fstop (large aperture) to get everything but the subject out of focus, which forces your eye to the subject. And then, when you get into shallow depths of field, some people then start to get into "bokeh", which is basically defined as "what things look like when they're out of focus."
OK, so I got into the details again. :) sorry.
Here's the thing: You can't overcome technical limitations. Cameras (digital or film) simply cannot capture what the human eye can see. The creative part of photography is manipulating those limitations to your advantage.
A good photographer DOESN'T want to capture the shot realistically. For example - For a long time, I was very careful about getting my colors to match reality as best I could. I'd capture harsh lighting - maybe I'd increase the contrast in post, but I tried to faithfully reproduce what I saw. Only recently, did I discover that adjusting the colors (either in post, or with a color filter) makes images so much more pleasing to the eye, even if they get a bit warmer. In fact, I think the reason I'm harping on this article is because I *JUST* made this discovery for myself, and I'm a bit excited :)
Sweat isn't... but the effect of that sweat is. If someone sweats to get an experience, and then shares that experience (via photography, film, or writing a book), then that is copyrightable. And if someone else takes a billion photographs, and one happens to be identical... guess what - all BILLION of those photographs are copyrightable by the second person. It would be an interesting legal battle if the first sued the second on account of the identical photo, but I believe the 2nd person is within their rights. Know why? Because outside of a completely controlled environment, you won't ever get the same photo. Lighting changes. Shadows change. Clouds change. Sun position changes.
I personally believe that "different paths to the same thing" is perfectly OK and intellectually honest, and encourages innovation - be it software patents, algorithms or brute-forcing a photograph.
I'm not arguing that all photography is creative. I'm not arguing that all photography is legal, or morally right. I"m not arguing "pro-copyright".
I'm simply objecting to the idea that photography is simply "Just being there with a camera", and thus takes no creativity. Whether such creativity is protected by law, or the various edge cases challenging such an idea, those are beyond me.
Because, per my post above, they made creative choices that went into the photograph, both before the shutter opened, how the shutter opened and closed, and in post-production.
Not to mention that a photographer spent their resources in obtaining the equipment to take and process the photograph, and also the resources to travel to the site where the photograph was taken, possibly waiting until a particular time of day for lighting to be better or more dramatic.
Resources, effort, and creative decisions went into the capturing of photons that otherwise would have just bounced off a sidewalk had the camera lens not been in the way.
If anyone's going to have a claim to control, its the photog.
I disagree you not seeing any creative work going into photography. Or maybe you don't know much about the creativity involved in photography and post production. (I didn't, until I recently started learning.) You've narrowed it down to three items, which is great if you're shooting with your iPhone. If it were that simple, then all I'd have to do is be in the right place at the right time with a camera, and I can be the next Ansel Adams.
But in reality, its not that simple - I've realized, since I started playing around more and more, that even with a digital camera, photography is analog in nature. How do you frame a certain shot? Does the image capture a large depth of field? Does it capture motion or freeze it? What kind of lens was used? What kind of exposure did the photographer want? Was a flash used to fill the scene? Was the flash softened? What kind of filters are used to create the effect? What kind of white-balance is the photog using? How is the light being metered for the correct exposure? Is there exposure compensation? Film or digital? Now, don't forget - as you say, time is a factor - the photographer may have an instant or two to figure this out - he may have gone through a significant amount of work to get the shot he wants (wake up pre-dawn to catch shadows just so as people are commuting to work.)
What kind of post-processing is done? Is it retouched, colors adjusted? If film, how was it developed? What kind of cropping choices did the artist make? Is the artist doing HDR processing of multiple exposures?
My point, is that photography does have a creative aspect to it, where the outcome is dependent on the photogs creative choices along the way, along with skill to actually have those choices made and dialed in before the shot they want comes and goes.
What an excellent way for me to stay in touch with my friend Jane.!
"Boot Camp just resizes the hard drive so it can accomodate a Windows install and then you are able to dual-boot your system. It's also possible to install Linux on the other side for example. So it seems like Windows has an issue with the Intel or NVidia chipset, the processor or just plainly consumes more resources than Mac OS."
Not entirely accurate. Bootcamp also provides BIOS emulation, since current gen macs (not sure for how long though) use EFI.
I haven't read the article yet (of course.) but I wonder how battery life is when Win7 (which supports EFI) is installed "Natively", i.e. without BIOS emulation.
Looks like this was picked up on lifehacker, in a sort of recursive posting...
http://lifehacker.com/5322055/ditch-the-secrecy-when-vetting-ideas
"So you're sitting on an idea you consider to be a gold mine, but you're hesitant to share for fear that someone will run off with your gem. Here's why you shouldn't be overly concerned about having your intellectual property stolen."
two words: Interstellar highway.