I'm a child of the 80's, and obviously don't have as much experience to work with. I vaguely remember my parents being forced into package deals on family portraits and such. I also remember being put in a lot of lines at weddings for pictures I would never want.
My first real experience with a professional photographer was when I was 16 just getting started in freelance web design. He wanted a website that would rival Pepsi World (back when they were first experimenting with web-based chat) and he wanted to pay $200. We (I was working with a friend) tried to explain the impossibility of his request, but he wouldn't have any of it. We told him we would put together what we could in 15 hours and we would go from there. Well, upon receipt, he said that it was great, handed us $100, and said that he would get back with us about changes. He drafted up a simple contract for monthly maintenance and such which we all signed. After that, he never called back. When we called him, both he and his office secretary denied ever knowing of our existence, let alone a contract. We were kids, so of course we didn't fight it.
But I digress. I think it's sad that they days of personal service (in any industry) are all but gone. I think it's high-time people start asking businesses for what they want instead of just taking what they can get off the prefabricated value menu.
Not that I doubt your experience, but from mine, most of the "brand name" outfits were much more prone to the line-up-and-smile type of work as that's what sells prints to the extended family. My fiancee and I aren't interested in wasting time with photos that will live their entire existence in a box. Basically, we're looking more for "slices of life". The independents have at least claimed to be more creative and interested in putting an artistic slant on things instead of looking out solely for their bottom dollar.
Just for the record, I have also found that many of the independents are just as if not more expensive than the brand name outfits. The main difference being that the independents offer a little more sway to their contract, somewhat because of the more personal relationship, but mostly because of their lack of legal division.
I do have to agree with the advanced lighting on some of the "important" shots. We're doing the bridal shots in-studio well before the wedding to make sure that they come out perfectly.
I also have to second the "personality" comment. These people are going to be wandering around at your wedding and your main piece of history is going to be from their point of view. Make sure you like their outlook on life.
Just to second PT, I haven't had any trouble at all finding wedding photographers perfectly willing to hand over all rights and full-resolution digital copies of everything shot. Around Milwaukee, most of the independent photographers charge a flat rate for their time and hand you a DVD or two and the end of the event. They recommend print shops or even Wal-mart for your prints as the quality is close enough that civilians can't tell the difference and real development studios can't get anywhere near the price point. From my research, most modern photographers make up the cost in optional digital editing. You want shots cropped, spliced, and centered? (1 min in Photoshop) Sure thing, but it'll cost you $10 a shot. Want a nice pastel effect? (30 seconds in Photoshop) $25. You want a black and white shot with a red rose? (1.5 minutes in Photoshop) $50. I have definitely come to realize how valuable my Mad GIMP Ski11z are, if not to the rest of the world, at least to my wedding budget.
The reason I see Debian leaning towards Hurd in the (far off) future is that it was written with the same philosophy as Debian, namely GNU. In my experience, Debian has always been more interested in the philosophy of the software than the user experience. That's why Ubuntu is so successful. They take the rock solid distribution that is Debian and then they sell their souls to Corporate America for the couple of bits that make the user experience really nice. (Disclaimer. I am tying this on the Ubuntu machine on my desk at work.) In my experience, Debian has always been "held back in the market" because of their beliefs. Again, this may or may not be a bad thing. It all depends on what you want out of your software. Yes, I do feel warm and fuzzy inside that nothing on my Debian servers was written to separate my money and my self. Another point to consider is what impact is going to come when GNU adopts GPLv3 and Linux stays with GPLv2. Everyone is trying desperately to make it work out. I honestly hope it does, but I think it's going to be an interesting ride.
Unfortunately, I have to agree that whether or not Debian would switch to Hurd is a moot point in the real world. Debain's philosophy doesn't bring with it a paycheck, thus there will never (in my opinion) be a large scale development effort on Hurd.
I was by no means trying to discredit Debian, although I can see how my original post could have been taken that way. I simply found it quite interesting that the Parent mentioned Debian running a different kernel and I thought it appropriate to point out that it already could. I used Hurd as my example again because of the common tie in the GNU philosophy.
My reasoning against Hurd corporate is (currently) more for development than production servers. Whether we like it or not, the business world is out to make money and developing GPL software simply doesn't easily lead to dollars in the bank. Under GPLv2, using Debian GNU/Hurd on a production wouldn't be a problem at all as the content provided has little to nothing to do with the back end. One of my fears is that GPLv3 is going to change this either in reality or simply in the FUD'd up minds of business. It's not much of a stretch for business folks to look at GPLv3 and see that they're not allowed to use any GPL software on any machine that could possibly serve up DRM content. So much for Debian servers. Again, no matter how much we may disapprove / dislike DRM, it's a fact of life. If you want a strong income stream, it has to come from somewhere.
As an idealistic aside: I do wish that we could "all just get along". I wish DRM wasn't around GPLv3 was unnecessary. I wish I could go around vigilante and replace every proprietary piece of crap system I come by with something that follows open standards. I do my best to inject Open Source software whenever I can. However, at the end of the day, I have a wife, a house, two dogs, a cat, and a student loan. I need a reasonable paycheck to keep real life moving along. Sometime you just have to do what you just have to do so that you have time and resources for the things that are actually important in life. At least that's how I see it...
Please forgive my momentary lapse of judgment. I forgot for a moment that this is Slashdot and anything possibly speaking down about the all holy Linux must be smote with the fires of Hell. FUD is a great thing isn't it? It just amazes me how quickly "advocates of freedom" are to crucify each other as opposed to striving to understand where the other is coming from.
I run Linux on all of my machines. I run Debian on some machine and other distros on others. In my experience, Debian is about freedom in a very big way, moreso than Linux. Linux has adopted the GPL. Hurd was written from the ground up as an OOP kernel using the FSF / GNU philosophy. I'm not trying to say that Linux is a bad thing. In fact, it is a very good thing. Hurd and the entire GNU / FSF philosophy pretty well can't work in the corporate environment. However, if Hurd and Linux were at a place that they were technologically comparable, do you really think that Debian would go with Linux for their mainstream release given their philosophical stance?
I promised myself I wasn't going to get pulled into the political moshpit...
I don't mind the comment. Really, I don't. It's humorous. It is not, however, insightful. How much insight, exactly, does it take to make the president-bashing one-liner that you would expect to hear on some late-night monologue? F'n-A, mods. I know that Slashdot is socio-political Hell, but still. "Funny" != "Insightful". Come on, they're not even the same strln...
As for the parent:
There is one big difference between US (tm) and Them (tm). We (tm) have an organized system in place under which we elected our leader and can, if we so choose, peacefully remove him from power and put someone else in his place. It may not always go smoothly, but I somehow doubt that Bush would order nuclear self-destruction if he were removed from power. Can you say the same about Kim Jong-il?
Yet it is. I bought one a month ago to test in my rehab lab. We decided that our custom FSR solution was better. Given that, the P5 is still a fantastic product considering the $60 price tag.
Actually, the P5 isn't "an Xbox controller". The P5 was designed as a USB PC VR interface. It's been around for close to 10 years and is a pretty well known sales flop. I have one sitting on my bookshelf. I used it once before coming to the conclusion that while it is pretty cool, my custom made FSR glove does a better job for the needs of my rehab lab.
Funny. Really, it is. If I had mod points, you'd get one. Anyway, dad was [Debian Testing], but now he's [Windows] again and I don't like admitting being the son of the devil. Thanks for pouring salt on my wounds.
I wasn't saying that Mass. is trying to force Microsoft out of business. I was responding to the parent post (modded Flaimbait, show's how easy I am) who claimed they should be.
I completely understand that Mass. is looking out for their best interest.
Let it be said that I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy. (Thanks to me, both my girlfriend [Ubuntu] and my mother [Debian Stable] effectively run linux.)
However, I don't believe that Microsoft should be forced out of business for refusing to add in a feature that we all know will cost them money. This is still business, whether we like it or not. No one has to use Windows/Office. What they should be punished for is lying about their reasoning. Anyone with common sense at all can see that "backwards compatability" is a bunch of crap. (Really, look at the previous posts...and this is Slashdot, where no one has common sense.)
Anyways. I'm going to go randomly talk about vendor lock-in while passing out professionally pressed Ubuntu CD's. (I'm not kidding.)
with everyone agreeing to a package format like this, wouldn't it be pretty easy to go out and buy suse, then run a simple command which would download everything and turn your setup into turbolinux or something like that? i see this as a good thing for the end user, but not very good for the individual companies involved.
My first year of college, I went to a big name engineering school in Milwaukee where all of the students were provided with laptops with an extensive software package. A lot of the students complained about the price of the machines (around $3000 for an Armada K62-300 three years ago), but no one complained when it came time to type up papers or compile test code. Also, the infared capable printing stations were nice for those students that did not have their own printers.
As for wireless networking, I don't think it is really necessary on a campus, especially if the school does not provide/force laptop ownership. However as an alternative, I think study lounges, libraries, etc..., should be wired for access to the campus network / the internet.
Loaner laptops would be a good idea if not for human nature. I've been to schools where they loaned out word-processors and even those were abused and damaged. I think that truly functional laptops would be all the worse.
The university I attend now simply blocks the ports for napster, gnutella, etc.. which annoys me a little, but is perfectly understandable.
My school also has email/web terminals, which are never vacant, set up in the hallways of the student union.
As for IMAP/POP, I don't think it matters much to the end user as they both require more setup than the kids want to put forth. Most people on campus don't use the campus email that is provided free of charge. They have hotmail accounts or the like. If the school provided a web interface to the email system, it would probably find more use.
Basically, as much as I don't like to say it, anything that makes the system easier to use for the students is a worthwhile cause. Stupid proof terminals in the student union and full access computers in the privileged labs seems to be a system that works well.
I agree with your comment on the rio being easier to deal with than home/car componant systems. I just bought a top line car sterio w/ a tape deck so that I could use new portables as well as my CD player.
However, I believe that MP3s sound fine. I've never tried headphones, but I have my computer wired to my sterio and, as long as the sound card's mixer is set up right, they sound as good as CD's
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I'm a child of the 80's, and obviously don't have as much experience to work with. I vaguely remember my parents being forced into package deals on family portraits and such. I also remember being put in a lot of lines at weddings for pictures I would never want.
My first real experience with a professional photographer was when I was 16 just getting started in freelance web design. He wanted a website that would rival Pepsi World (back when they were first experimenting with web-based chat) and he wanted to pay $200. We (I was working with a friend) tried to explain the impossibility of his request, but he wouldn't have any of it. We told him we would put together what we could in 15 hours and we would go from there. Well, upon receipt, he said that it was great, handed us $100, and said that he would get back with us about changes. He drafted up a simple contract for monthly maintenance and such which we all signed. After that, he never called back. When we called him, both he and his office secretary denied ever knowing of our existence, let alone a contract. We were kids, so of course we didn't fight it.
But I digress. I think it's sad that they days of personal service (in any industry) are all but gone. I think it's high-time people start asking businesses for what they want instead of just taking what they can get off the prefabricated value menu.
Not that I doubt your experience, but from mine, most of the "brand name" outfits were much more prone to the line-up-and-smile type of work as that's what sells prints to the extended family. My fiancee and I aren't interested in wasting time with photos that will live their entire existence in a box. Basically, we're looking more for "slices of life". The independents have at least claimed to be more creative and interested in putting an artistic slant on things instead of looking out solely for their bottom dollar.
Just for the record, I have also found that many of the independents are just as if not more expensive than the brand name outfits. The main difference being that the independents offer a little more sway to their contract, somewhat because of the more personal relationship, but mostly because of their lack of legal division.
I do have to agree with the advanced lighting on some of the "important" shots. We're doing the bridal shots in-studio well before the wedding to make sure that they come out perfectly.
I also have to second the "personality" comment. These people are going to be wandering around at your wedding and your main piece of history is going to be from their point of view. Make sure you like their outlook on life.
Just to second PT, I haven't had any trouble at all finding wedding photographers perfectly willing to hand over all rights and full-resolution digital copies of everything shot. Around Milwaukee, most of the independent photographers charge a flat rate for their time and hand you a DVD or two and the end of the event. They recommend print shops or even Wal-mart for your prints as the quality is close enough that civilians can't tell the difference and real development studios can't get anywhere near the price point. From my research, most modern photographers make up the cost in optional digital editing. You want shots cropped, spliced, and centered? (1 min in Photoshop) Sure thing, but it'll cost you $10 a shot. Want a nice pastel effect? (30 seconds in Photoshop) $25. You want a black and white shot with a red rose? (1.5 minutes in Photoshop) $50. I have definitely come to realize how valuable my Mad GIMP Ski11z are, if not to the rest of the world, at least to my wedding budget.
The reason I see Debian leaning towards Hurd in the (far off) future is that it was written with the same philosophy as Debian, namely GNU. In my experience, Debian has always been more interested in the philosophy of the software than the user experience. That's why Ubuntu is so successful. They take the rock solid distribution that is Debian and then they sell their souls to Corporate America for the couple of bits that make the user experience really nice. (Disclaimer. I am tying this on the Ubuntu machine on my desk at work.) In my experience, Debian has always been "held back in the market" because of their beliefs. Again, this may or may not be a bad thing. It all depends on what you want out of your software. Yes, I do feel warm and fuzzy inside that nothing on my Debian servers was written to separate my money and my self. Another point to consider is what impact is going to come when GNU adopts GPLv3 and Linux stays with GPLv2. Everyone is trying desperately to make it work out. I honestly hope it does, but I think it's going to be an interesting ride.
Unfortunately, I have to agree that whether or not Debian would switch to Hurd is a moot point in the real world. Debain's philosophy doesn't bring with it a paycheck, thus there will never (in my opinion) be a large scale development effort on Hurd.
I was by no means trying to discredit Debian, although I can see how my original post could have been taken that way. I simply found it quite interesting that the Parent mentioned Debian running a different kernel and I thought it appropriate to point out that it already could. I used Hurd as my example again because of the common tie in the GNU philosophy.
My reasoning against Hurd corporate is (currently) more for development than production servers. Whether we like it or not, the business world is out to make money and developing GPL software simply doesn't easily lead to dollars in the bank. Under GPLv2, using Debian GNU/Hurd on a production wouldn't be a problem at all as the content provided has little to nothing to do with the back end. One of my fears is that GPLv3 is going to change this either in reality or simply in the FUD'd up minds of business. It's not much of a stretch for business folks to look at GPLv3 and see that they're not allowed to use any GPL software on any machine that could possibly serve up DRM content. So much for Debian servers. Again, no matter how much we may disapprove / dislike DRM, it's a fact of life. If you want a strong income stream, it has to come from somewhere.
As an idealistic aside: I do wish that we could "all just get along". I wish DRM wasn't around GPLv3 was unnecessary. I wish I could go around vigilante and replace every proprietary piece of crap system I come by with something that follows open standards. I do my best to inject Open Source software whenever I can. However, at the end of the day, I have a wife, a house, two dogs, a cat, and a student loan. I need a reasonable paycheck to keep real life moving along. Sometime you just have to do what you just have to do so that you have time and resources for the things that are actually important in life. At least that's how I see it...
Please forgive my momentary lapse of judgment. I forgot for a moment that this is Slashdot and anything possibly speaking down about the all holy Linux must be smote with the fires of Hell. FUD is a great thing isn't it? It just amazes me how quickly "advocates of freedom" are to crucify each other as opposed to striving to understand where the other is coming from.
I run Linux on all of my machines. I run Debian on some machine and other distros on others. In my experience, Debian is about freedom in a very big way, moreso than Linux. Linux has adopted the GPL. Hurd was written from the ground up as an OOP kernel using the FSF / GNU philosophy. I'm not trying to say that Linux is a bad thing. In fact, it is a very good thing. Hurd and the entire GNU / FSF philosophy pretty well can't work in the corporate environment. However, if Hurd and Linux were at a place that they were technologically comparable, do you really think that Debian would go with Linux for their mainstream release given their philosophical stance?
Just as a random aside: Debian has been working on shifting off of the Linux kernel for some time because it isn't "free" or "secure" enough.
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install
I promised myself I wasn't going to get pulled into the political moshpit...
I don't mind the comment. Really, I don't. It's humorous. It is not, however, insightful. How much insight, exactly, does it take to make the president-bashing one-liner that you would expect to hear on some late-night monologue? F'n-A, mods. I know that Slashdot is socio-political Hell, but still. "Funny" != "Insightful". Come on, they're not even the same strln...
As for the parent:
There is one big difference between US (tm) and Them (tm). We (tm) have an organized system in place under which we elected our leader and can, if we so choose, peacefully remove him from power and put someone else in his place. It may not always go smoothly, but I somehow doubt that Bush would order nuclear self-destruction if he were removed from power. Can you say the same about Kim Jong-il?
Yet it is. I bought one a month ago to test in my rehab lab. We decided that our custom FSR solution was better. Given that, the P5 is still a fantastic product considering the $60 price tag.
http://www.vrealities.com/P5.html
Actually, the P5 isn't "an Xbox controller". The P5 was designed as a USB PC VR interface. It's been around for close to 10 years and is a pretty well known sales flop. I have one sitting on my bookshelf. I used it once before coming to the conclusion that while it is pretty cool, my custom made FSR glove does a better job for the needs of my rehab lab.
Funny. Really, it is. If I had mod points, you'd get one. Anyway, dad was [Debian Testing], but now he's [Windows] again and I don't like admitting being the son of the devil. Thanks for pouring salt on my wounds.
I wasn't saying that Mass. is trying to force Microsoft out of business. I was responding to the parent post (modded Flaimbait, show's how easy I am) who claimed they should be.
I completely understand that Mass. is looking out for their best interest.
Let it be said that I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy. (Thanks to me, both my girlfriend [Ubuntu] and my mother [Debian Stable] effectively run linux.)
However, I don't believe that Microsoft should be forced out of business for refusing to add in a feature that we all know will cost them money. This is still business, whether we like it or not. No one has to use Windows/Office. What they should be punished for is lying about their reasoning. Anyone with common sense at all can see that "backwards compatability" is a bunch of crap. (Really, look at the previous posts...and this is Slashdot, where no one has common sense.)
Anyways. I'm going to go randomly talk about vendor lock-in while passing out professionally pressed Ubuntu CD's. (I'm not kidding.)
I'm curious to know what kind of code sounds the nicest when played back over a system like this.
Has there been a (recent) poll on what messaging software the slashdot community uses?
with everyone agreeing to a package format like this, wouldn't it be pretty easy to go out and buy suse, then run a simple command which would download everything and turn your setup into turbolinux or something like that? i see this as a good thing for the end user, but not very good for the individual companies involved.
My first year of college, I went to a big name engineering school in Milwaukee where all of the students were provided with laptops with an extensive software package. A lot of the students complained about the price of the machines (around $3000 for an Armada K62-300 three years ago), but no one complained when it came time to type up papers or compile test code. Also, the infared capable printing stations were nice for those students that did not have their own printers.
As for wireless networking, I don't think it is really necessary on a campus, especially if the school does not provide/force laptop ownership. However as an alternative, I think study lounges, libraries, etc..., should be wired for access to the campus network / the internet.
Loaner laptops would be a good idea if not for human nature. I've been to schools where they loaned out word-processors and even those were abused and damaged. I think that truly functional laptops would be all the worse.
The university I attend now simply blocks the ports for napster, gnutella, etc.. which annoys me a little, but is perfectly understandable.
My school also has email/web terminals, which are never vacant, set up in the hallways of the student union.
As for IMAP/POP, I don't think it matters much to the end user as they both require more setup than the kids want to put forth. Most people on campus don't use the campus email that is provided free of charge. They have hotmail accounts or the like. If the school provided a web interface to the email system, it would probably find more use.
Basically, as much as I don't like to say it, anything that makes the system easier to use for the students is a worthwhile cause. Stupid proof terminals in the student union and full access computers in the privileged labs seems to be a system that works well.
I agree with your comment on the rio being easier to deal with than home/car componant systems. I just bought a top line car sterio w/ a tape deck so that I could use new portables as well as my CD player.
However, I believe that MP3s sound fine. I've never tried headphones, but I have my computer wired to my sterio and, as long as the sound card's mixer is set up right, they sound as good as CD's