Here's what I don't get: why do so many people get hung up on population growth? I think Earth would be sustainable and more enjoyable with maybe 2-3 billion. There's way too many of us...
Not only that, their control is dumb. They say they did the control in "identical conditions" but "without being exposed to the laptop". I mean, how stupid do you have to be? The control must be next to the same laptop with WIFI off, dumbasses. Only then can you be somewhat sure that wifi-on vs. wifi-off makes any difference. Maybe it wasn't wifi but vibrations from the hard drive, for all I know.
About the only problem I have is that they sell exclusively via distributors. I really dislike hardware that I can't simply order online... I mean, you can get a $50k custom-built server spec'd and ordered online, their stuff isn't any different so why can't one buy it directly?!
Huh? ripit, in its basic mode of operation, creates a decrypted, clean copy of a dvd, without any bogus sectors etc. That's it. Why would it do what you claim is beyond me, perhaps it's a bug. I haven't used ripit's compress feature, so perhaps you're referring to that?
That's almost what I could do with a Pentax SLR with autowind attached. It would snap about 3 pics per second until the film ran out, and I could manually track focus while doing that. And I'm not a pro, not even a very competent amateur. On a point-and-shoot -- forget it.
The problem is that, contrary to how an SLR would work, the stupid camera forgets the focus when you take the picture! So it will refocus from scratch no matter what you're doing. And I'm not quite sure how advanced the focus software is on most cameras, but it seems that it's generally done to just about work and left there. For example, there's no reason why an already focused camera would have to move any optics to determine that it's close enough to being focused. You get this info from doing image analysis alone. The CPUs on most cameras are way underpowered to do serious image analysis -- tracking/detecting a face is about as much as you can expect of them. It's hard to beat a competent human at focusing.
Alas, my other gripe is that on an SLR, in decent light, you can close down the iris and set it for good depth of field and center the focus based on what you're shooting, and you may get decent pictures without touching anything. If I'm chasing my toddler in a sunlit room, I'd, say, set it for 1.5m, f/6-f/8 and click away -- if you have a decently sized sensor, it will look fine. There's no way to set it up like that on most point-and-shoots, even if the hardware is there. The designers of the software seem never ever to have taken a picture with a real camera...
Yep. I personally see no reason for a home use camera to have more than 8 megapixels, as long as the sensor is decent. All those megapixels, as you've said, only take more storage and are wasted in presence of noise. Heck, if I could have a big sensor (say 40mm across), I would gladly settle for 6 megapixels.
Rimshot! We're in perfect agreement. My missus needs to learn how to use an SLR, though, but she has strong leanings towards one. I've used russian and german SLRs as a kid. Even the russian ripoff of the Hasselblad 60mm camera. It was heavy like a brick;)
The autofocus seems to take roughly same time on the one's I've had in the last 6 years (a Sony, a Canon and two Olympus models). That's a real bummer. Also, the save times on most point-and-shoots are abysmal (half a second on this year's $250 model).
It's a matter of time now until someone gets a larger FPGA and puts the HDMI decryptor on it and, say, 6 or 8 SATA interfaces. That way you'd easily stream the data to hard drives, all on one compact board. This can be had on a board that's still probably under $500. The next step will be to put a video compressor on said larger FPGA, and leisurely push the data over a USB 2 connection...
The problem with non-SLRs is that they seemingly all suck when it comes to turnaround time between pictures, and their autofocus is universally slow -- if you have ever had experience with manual focus. A decent 35mm film SLR from the 80s with TTL exposure control, IMHO, outperforms pretty much every point-and-shoot when it comes to how quickly you can retake a previously set-up picture. Most of them, at least with experienced operator, will outperform even starting from scratch (focus way off, aperture/iris way off, etc).
Entry-level SLRs seem to be really a class above point-and-shoots, especially that you regain control of the focus adjustment and aperture. This really is a make-or-break when taking multiple pictures of the same subject, like you often do (bits are cheap!).
Sigh. You had lower GUI response lag to pressing keyboard or joystick buttons on freaking JetPac on ZX Spectrum 2.5 decades ago than you have on a DVR box from 2005. If that's not fucked up then I guess one's definition of "fucked up" needs to be sent back to the calibration lab.
Looking at anecdotes in my immediate family, we were catching flu approximately once every 15 years per person, and that was before the flu vaccine was available. Ever since we have been vaccinated, we have never had anything that resembled a flu (where you're miserable for more than a week). While your reference about flu is interesting, I don't think that there's enough flu out there for weather to make a big difference. Surely if the situation is close to an epidemic than a weather change will exploit the sensitivity in the system, but otherwise I'd think that you've cited something that's fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
So let me rephrase my assertion to be more specific: our body is not inherently likelier to get sick merely due to cold weather.
When you're improperly dressed in the cold, yes. I think that generally if you're out there in bad weather and feel miserable due to thermal discomfort, you're not appropriately dressed.
At least around here, you can't go to many parks too long after dark because they are closed by then and you'll get arrested for criminal trespassing if you get caught. The "closing" is on paper, as there's no fence and no gates, only a proclamation on a sign somewhere where you may well miss it:) I'm not arguing about general safety of parks, that can't be generalized. Substitute a humongous backyard for a park:)
I think you've got it backwards, unless you're talking about noses of others running, and their germs transferring onto you by hand contact. If so, then of course there's truth to that, but still it doesn't make the cold itself a cause of getting sick.
Sure, if the area is so dangerous that you can't see the kid and everywhere is close to falling off a cliff, then I agree. If you wait a bit with the kid in your arms, in most any large urban setting you will soon see the surroundings well enough to know what the kid is doing.
Ahh, but you see, I gave a disclaimer: "not if you're maintaining proper body temperature, at least". Darkness is mostly irrelevant unless you want to use solar light for keeping you warm. With sun below the horizon, life gets somewhat easier as clouds will not change the heat flux that gets to your body. As long as you can keep your 18 month old properly insulated, you'll be OK. We've been talking hour long walks with our 1 week old in sub-zero temperatures and he has done fine. It's all a matter of proper clothing.
As for losing the kid: in a way you must be lucky that you live in a setting with so little light pollution that you can actually lose the kid in a metro park;)
The problem with the content industry is that they have always sucked with their digital delivery. This is, unfortunately, a generalization that has no exceptions, and has equally applied from the time the first network set up a website till now. Jobs had repeatedly bashed them about it, and they still haven't learned their lesson.
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Here's what I don't get: why do so many people get hung up on population growth? I think Earth would be sustainable and more enjoyable with maybe 2-3 billion. There's way too many of us...
Seconded. Adds about $300 to the bill, if you're in the U.S.
Not only that, their control is dumb. They say they did the control in "identical conditions" but "without being exposed to the laptop". I mean, how stupid do you have to be? The control must be next to the same laptop with WIFI off, dumbasses. Only then can you be somewhat sure that wifi-on vs. wifi-off makes any difference. Maybe it wasn't wifi but vibrations from the hard drive, for all I know.
About the only problem I have is that they sell exclusively via distributors. I really dislike hardware that I can't simply order online... I mean, you can get a $50k custom-built server spec'd and ordered online, their stuff isn't any different so why can't one buy it directly?!
Huh? ripit, in its basic mode of operation, creates a decrypted, clean copy of a dvd, without any bogus sectors etc. That's it. Why would it do what you claim is beyond me, perhaps it's a bug. I haven't used ripit's compress feature, so perhaps you're referring to that?
That's almost what I could do with a Pentax SLR with autowind attached. It would snap about 3 pics per second until the film ran out, and I could manually track focus while doing that. And I'm not a pro, not even a very competent amateur. On a point-and-shoot -- forget it.
The problem is that, contrary to how an SLR would work, the stupid camera forgets the focus when you take the picture! So it will refocus from scratch no matter what you're doing. And I'm not quite sure how advanced the focus software is on most cameras, but it seems that it's generally done to just about work and left there. For example, there's no reason why an already focused camera would have to move any optics to determine that it's close enough to being focused. You get this info from doing image analysis alone. The CPUs on most cameras are way underpowered to do serious image analysis -- tracking/detecting a face is about as much as you can expect of them. It's hard to beat a competent human at focusing.
Alas, my other gripe is that on an SLR, in decent light, you can close down the iris and set it for good depth of field and center the focus based on what you're shooting, and you may get decent pictures without touching anything. If I'm chasing my toddler in a sunlit room, I'd, say, set it for 1.5m, f/6-f/8 and click away -- if you have a decently sized sensor, it will look fine. There's no way to set it up like that on most point-and-shoots, even if the hardware is there. The designers of the software seem never ever to have taken a picture with a real camera...
This discussion is very useful. I'll try and find that one in the store somewhere and see how it feels.
Yep. I personally see no reason for a home use camera to have more than 8 megapixels, as long as the sensor is decent. All those megapixels, as you've said, only take more storage and are wasted in presence of noise. Heck, if I could have a big sensor (say 40mm across), I would gladly settle for 6 megapixels.
Rimshot! We're in perfect agreement. My missus needs to learn how to use an SLR, though, but she has strong leanings towards one. I've used russian and german SLRs as a kid. Even the russian ripoff of the Hasselblad 60mm camera. It was heavy like a brick ;)
Many parents can't make a rational decision without being hit on the pocket first. So they fixed that problem, apparently :)
The autofocus seems to take roughly same time on the one's I've had in the last 6 years (a Sony, a Canon and two Olympus models). That's a real bummer. Also, the save times on most point-and-shoots are abysmal (half a second on this year's $250 model).
It does. It even, apparently, comes from the factory with keys in its OTP prom.
You do know that splitting out an HDMI clock requires fairly simple hardware and you only need one HDMI output from your computer for that, right?
It's a matter of time now until someone gets a larger FPGA and puts the HDMI decryptor on it and, say, 6 or 8 SATA interfaces. That way you'd easily stream the data to hard drives, all on one compact board. This can be had on a board that's still probably under $500. The next step will be to put a video compressor on said larger FPGA, and leisurely push the data over a USB 2 connection...
The problem with non-SLRs is that they seemingly all suck when it comes to turnaround time between pictures, and their autofocus is universally slow -- if you have ever had experience with manual focus. A decent 35mm film SLR from the 80s with TTL exposure control, IMHO, outperforms pretty much every point-and-shoot when it comes to how quickly you can retake a previously set-up picture. Most of them, at least with experienced operator, will outperform even starting from scratch (focus way off, aperture/iris way off, etc).
Entry-level SLRs seem to be really a class above point-and-shoots, especially that you regain control of the focus adjustment and aperture. This really is a make-or-break when taking multiple pictures of the same subject, like you often do (bits are cheap!).
I'm serious. People who write GUIs for those devices have no clue about doing their job right. None at all. And I mean what I say.
Sigh. You had lower GUI response lag to pressing keyboard or joystick buttons on freaking JetPac on ZX Spectrum 2.5 decades ago than you have on a DVR box from 2005. If that's not fucked up then I guess one's definition of "fucked up" needs to be sent back to the calibration lab.
Looking at anecdotes in my immediate family, we were catching flu approximately once every 15 years per person, and that was before the flu vaccine was available. Ever since we have been vaccinated, we have never had anything that resembled a flu (where you're miserable for more than a week). While your reference about flu is interesting, I don't think that there's enough flu out there for weather to make a big difference. Surely if the situation is close to an epidemic than a weather change will exploit the sensitivity in the system, but otherwise I'd think that you've cited something that's fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
So let me rephrase my assertion to be more specific: our body is not inherently likelier to get sick merely due to cold weather.
When you're improperly dressed in the cold, yes. I think that generally if you're out there in bad weather and feel miserable due to thermal discomfort, you're not appropriately dressed.
At least around here, you can't go to many parks too long after dark because they are closed by then and you'll get arrested for criminal trespassing if you get caught. The "closing" is on paper, as there's no fence and no gates, only a proclamation on a sign somewhere where you may well miss it :) I'm not arguing about general safety of parks, that can't be generalized. Substitute a humongous backyard for a park :)
I think you've got it backwards, unless you're talking about noses of others running, and their germs transferring onto you by hand contact. If so, then of course there's truth to that, but still it doesn't make the cold itself a cause of getting sick.
Sure, if the area is so dangerous that you can't see the kid and everywhere is close to falling off a cliff, then I agree. If you wait a bit with the kid in your arms, in most any large urban setting you will soon see the surroundings well enough to know what the kid is doing.
Ahh, but you see, I gave a disclaimer: "not if you're maintaining proper body temperature, at least". Darkness is mostly irrelevant unless you want to use solar light for keeping you warm. With sun below the horizon, life gets somewhat easier as clouds will not change the heat flux that gets to your body. As long as you can keep your 18 month old properly insulated, you'll be OK. We've been talking hour long walks with our 1 week old in sub-zero temperatures and he has done fine. It's all a matter of proper clothing.
As for losing the kid: in a way you must be lucky that you live in a setting with so little light pollution that you can actually lose the kid in a metro park ;)
The problem with the content industry is that they have always sucked with their digital delivery. This is, unfortunately, a generalization that has no exceptions, and has equally applied from the time the first network set up a website till now. Jobs had repeatedly bashed them about it, and they still haven't learned their lesson.