You can tell the difference if it is significantly enlarged --- 8x12 or more. But I've seen good P&S and bad P&S, and the name on them is not sufficient to rate them. e.g. My father's Nikon had horrendous barrel distortion.
One thing I would like is the better low light performance of a larger sensor. That is the one real weakness of the compact design, and likely the biggest expense of an SLR system -- lenses.
As for all the people saying they still use dialup, why?
Because I'm in the middle of Africa?
I share a 750mb/s sattelite downlink with about 1000 people. It costs around $3500 a month. It wasn't much more expensive than the 256kb/s ISDN line that we used to use. (our uplink is still ISDN)
That covers the school, but us staff can get dial-up for about US$20/month which is cheap for this country.
Or I can use my GPRS phone at 20/- per megabyte (That's about US 28c/mb).
One thing I do look forward to about moving back to Canada is my DSL internet.
I went through hundreds of rolls of film on my old Canon AE-1 from the early '80s. I had a couple lenses and got some pretty decent pics from it.
In 1997 I bought a Mavica (640x480, floppy disk) and discovered a few things about me: - I wasn't afraid of wasting film. - I wasn't afraid of experimenting. - I always had a decent zoom along. - I didn't look like a journalist swooping in to make a big deal out of events.
I now have a Sony H-1. I have rediscovered the issues of control that I missed so much in my previous cameras. I wish they were a little more convenient (manual exposure and focus), but I can and do use them.
What I get that a DSLR doesn't do: -A single package with a 12x zoom -compact -WYSIWYG (which is a plus or minus, depending on your POV) -cheap! ($250) -fewer moving parts, hence more reliable in theory. (particularly in my dusty environment)
Over the years I've changed from being a "photographer going along with the group" to "a member of the group who has a camera along". I think it is the social issues that make me appreciate the smaller camera more than anything else. For the past couple years I've taken most of my photos with a 2mp Sony U20 (tiny!) so that I'm not seen as a tourist lugging a big camera. I always had it with me and I got many shots that I never would have got with a bigger camera. Having it with you is the most important thing. Now I have a 2mp camera on my phone which does almost as good.
The only thing that a DSLR will get you over a good P&S is a bit clearer view of your subject -- which really only matters if you are using manual focus. You add complexity, weight, and the hassle of extra lenses for a marginal increase in picture quality.
Good P&S cameras are at the knee of the curve right now. They aren't much more expensive than a cheap P&S, but if you want better, you pay significant amounts for marginal improvements.
I'm having too much experience with fake batteries, particularly from ebay. I bought a Ericsson phone with 2 cheap batteries. They have Ericsson written on them, they have holograms on them etc etc. You plug it into the charger and it says "charging alien battery".
I bought a Sony camcorder battery off ebay. It came in a sealed plastic package with lots of Sony info on it. It looks identical to the one that came with the camera (except one tiny piece of plastic) -- all the stickers, patent #s etc. Plug it in the first time and the camera says "This camera can only be used with Sony Infolithium batteries". Eventually it charged and it does work, but I know it is fake.
Around here (Kenya) you can buy brand name parts for everything from cell-phones to cars -- all of which are fake. I gather that in some cases the fakes are better than the originals!
My 1 minute walk to the office would be a lot less inconvenient if I had something other than dial-up in my home.
Of course I'm in the middle of africa, so having internet at all is a bonus.
My TRS-80 Model 1 could do that!
on
Scanjet Music
·
· Score: 1
The Z80 processor in it run at about 1.2 MHz, overwhelming any AM radio within spitting distance. Someone realized that you could use that "bug" as a feature, and included sound effects in Space Invaders by putting an AM radio next to the computer. Any frequency would do...
Later I typed in a Basic program (we had a tape drive but no floppy) and played the theme from this great big hit movie from a couple years before -- Star Wars.
That was 1980. I was in 9th grade. Yeah, I'm feeling old.
There are many issues to be worked out here. I was on the main road across the country last week, however it was tortuously rough pavement with car-eating potholes.
There is a huge unemployed population here. Most businesses employ more people than they need. You go to the greengrocers in the city and someone will push your cart, select the best produce, and carry your bags to your car -- for the quarter tip you give them -- which is likely what they work for.
The two people we employ in our house went through 8th grade(standard primary school), speak at least three languages, read what they can (although a newspaper costs an hour's wages). We pay them a pittance by North American standards, but they work well and happily and are glad to be employed.
A friend has set up one computer center to help give some kids a leg up in the job world. He has funding for 9 more, but construction is going a bit slow. The school it is at has no water or electricity. The center is solar powered for 10 laptops, and the kids are thrilled to have a chance to learn.
Does Linux make sense? Absolutely! Why should Kenya be paying the US for something that it can get for free? Is my friend using Linux? No. I couldn't convince him to do that, he worked for Compaq and Oracle and believes that windows is the future.
On the other hand I was given a new Linux mailserver to administer this week and there is certainly some expertise in the country to use is, I just wish education of Linux could be more widespread.
Oh, and I'm on a 256kb connection for about 1000 users. We are doing some testing with VSAT connections, but politics and Kenyan procurement seems to stretch things for weeks and months.
You can't make the rotor go faster because the tip of the foward moving blade will break the speed of sound.
The dynamic math is this is driving me nuts. If the retreating blade is at 90 deg, you take a snapshot of it and find that, gee, the whole blade is moving forwards through the air at the same velocity.
If you take the rotational speed, velocity of a point = Y rpm x Z distance from axis, you will get different linear forward velocities at different points along the blade.
Am I missing something, or are others confused on this too?
My Epson C42UX cost $69. Both cartridges ran out at once. Cost for new pair of cartridges: $69 (tax included).
Since then printer prices have gone up to discourage people from buying a new printer every time they ran out of ink.
And I snagged a discarded Laserjet IV, replaced the rollers for $20 and no longer think about the cost of ink -- a replacement cartridge for it costs the same a load of ink for the epson.
I'm in atlantic Canada. One day after finishing a QSL on 20 metres I heard a morse signal down in the noise. Out of curiosity I started to copy it and heard my callsign!
A guy in Hawaii running 1.5 watts.
Morse was used for simplicity of equipment and ability to communicate in absurdly poor conditions. The largest problem is that it relies on practiced operators. Five minutes and I can learn how to send and read SMS. It takes months of practice to read morse.
The article is pretty much right on the money. If it is government, they accept donated MS software. If it private, they use pirated. Cost takes a back seat to practicality. Everyone knows MS, why introduce something different?
The key is training. I hope to bring some people up to speed on FOSS and let it spread a little. When cost doesn't matter, what you are familiar with does.
I've been poking around google maps for a week, thrilled to see the detail in places, but I havent' found an "easter egg" yet! It is pretty amazing that they cover the globe with satellite photos (not maps), but I'd love to see more detail, particularly in Africa.
Elsewhere Steve tells about his project to install some computer labs in these remote, almost forgotten, schools in Kenya. He currently has money for about 8 of them, with one being installed. I tried to convince him to use Linux, but he refused. I'll be there later this year, perhaps we can make a difference in some of these kid's lives.
I don't think he tried out for the "master builder" He has done some contract work for Lego, and I think he is quite happy to be freelance. I think he actually gets more exposure on his own than he would as a Lego employee.
The clock is a few years old. Erik "used to be" a programmer, but now considers himself a full-time lego builder. He is also a champion scrabble player.
Overall, a geek of geeks, right at home on slashdot. Once the server his server has cooled down, make sure you take a look over his full portfolio.
And I would really like that desk. I think that is what put him from "Lego hobbyist" to "profitable Lego artist".
I like it! Uhuru has a nice political ring to it, and doesn't have the confusion to go with multiple meaning of "free." You could lose the Q and X keys on the keyboard as well.
I think it is great to do a project like this. As far as cost goes, you have to remember that the Gross National Income of all sub-saharan africa is about equal to that of The Netherlands. Per capita income $400/yr. Yes, computer literate people make more than that, but money is a real issue.
An interesting side issue is the use of Swahili. Tanzania counts only swahili as an official language. Most business is done in Swahili. In Kenya, English and Swahili are official languages, and are taught in parallel in school. It is regarded as showing a higher status if you speak in English, so swahili is relagated to second place, and tribal language limited to close friends and family. I suspect that most computer users in Kenya would be more than happy to work in english.
I still admire the fact that kids who live in mud huts and have never been in a car can speak three languages. I struggle enough with one!
I've used a low-end HP Photosmart slide scanner quite extensively. I was able to obtain very good results in the thousands of scans I did. They were not of a professional level, but suitable for what I wanted.
I have a good HP scanner at work, with a tranparancy adaptor. POS.
Moral of the story: Use something designed to do the job, not adapted to function.
e.g. Kodachrome, dedicated slide-scanner, photoshop, Mac.
It is a niche market. Live with it. The tools exist and cost money.
SA-Exim is the biggest reason I miss running my own server (DSL in basement). My hosted account has Spamassassin, but it just labels spam. I use thunderbird to sort/trash it.
I never did get the tar-pit set up in exim, but I like the concept of tieing up the senders.
Slashdot Mirror
You can tell the difference if it is significantly enlarged --- 8x12 or more. But I've seen good P&S and bad P&S, and the name on them is not sufficient to rate them. e.g. My father's Nikon had horrendous barrel distortion.
One thing I would like is the better low light performance of a larger sensor. That is the one real weakness of the compact design, and likely the biggest expense of an SLR system -- lenses.
As for all the people saying they still use dialup, why?
Because I'm in the middle of Africa?
I share a 750mb/s sattelite downlink with about 1000 people. It costs around $3500 a month. It wasn't much more expensive than the 256kb/s ISDN line that we used to use. (our uplink is still ISDN)
That covers the school, but us staff can get dial-up for about US$20/month which is cheap for this country.
Or I can use my GPRS phone at 20/- per megabyte (That's about US 28c/mb).
One thing I do look forward to about moving back to Canada is my DSL internet.
I went through hundreds of rolls of film on my old Canon AE-1 from the early '80s. I had a couple lenses and got some pretty decent pics from it.
In 1997 I bought a Mavica (640x480, floppy disk) and discovered a few things about me:
- I wasn't afraid of wasting film.
- I wasn't afraid of experimenting.
- I always had a decent zoom along.
- I didn't look like a journalist swooping in to make a big deal out of events.
I now have a Sony H-1. I have rediscovered the issues of control that I missed so much in my previous cameras. I wish they were a little more convenient (manual exposure and focus), but I can and do use them.
What I get that a DSLR doesn't do:
-A single package with a 12x zoom
-compact
-WYSIWYG (which is a plus or minus, depending on your POV)
-cheap! ($250)
-fewer moving parts, hence more reliable in theory. (particularly in my dusty environment)
Over the years I've changed from being a "photographer going along with the group" to "a member of the group who has a camera along". I think it is the social issues that make me appreciate the smaller camera more than anything else. For the past couple years I've taken most of my photos with a 2mp Sony U20 (tiny!) so that I'm not seen as a tourist lugging a big camera. I always had it with me and I got many shots that I never would have got with a bigger camera. Having it with you is the most important thing. Now I have a 2mp camera on my phone which does almost as good.
The only thing that a DSLR will get you over a good P&S is a bit clearer view of your subject -- which really only matters if you are using manual focus. You add complexity, weight, and the hassle of extra lenses for a marginal increase in picture quality.
Good P&S cameras are at the knee of the curve right now. They aren't much more expensive than a cheap P&S, but if you want better, you pay significant amounts for marginal improvements.
Michael
I'm having too much experience with fake batteries, particularly from ebay. I bought a Ericsson phone with 2 cheap batteries. They have Ericsson written on them, they have holograms on them etc etc. You plug it into the charger and it says "charging alien battery".
I bought a Sony camcorder battery off ebay. It came in a sealed plastic package with lots of Sony info on it. It looks identical to the one that came with the camera (except one tiny piece of plastic) -- all the stickers, patent #s etc. Plug it in the first time and the camera says "This camera can only be used with Sony Infolithium batteries". Eventually it charged and it does work, but I know it is fake.
Around here (Kenya) you can buy brand name parts for everything from cell-phones to cars -- all of which are fake. I gather that in some cases the fakes are better than the originals!
I guess there are more middle-aged Canadians on here than just me.
KD, the staple food of university students cooking on their own.
I recall once asking someone what they were having for supper. "K-F-D-A" was the reply. It didn't need any translation...
My 1 minute walk to the office would be a lot less inconvenient if I had something other than dial-up in my home.
Of course I'm in the middle of africa, so having internet at all is a bonus.
The Z80 processor in it run at about 1.2 MHz, overwhelming any AM radio within spitting distance. Someone realized that you could use that "bug" as a feature, and included sound effects in Space Invaders by putting an AM radio next to the computer. Any frequency would do...
Later I typed in a Basic program (we had a tape drive but no floppy) and played the theme from this great big hit movie from a couple years before -- Star Wars.
That was 1980. I was in 9th grade. Yeah, I'm feeling old.
My Ericsson T39 from 2001 has an ignore button on the side.
There are many issues to be worked out here. I was on the main road across the country last week, however it was tortuously rough pavement with car-eating potholes.
There is a huge unemployed population here. Most businesses employ more people than they need. You go to the greengrocers in the city and someone will push your cart, select the best produce, and carry your bags to your car -- for the quarter tip you give them -- which is likely what they work for.
The two people we employ in our house went through 8th grade(standard primary school), speak at least three languages, read what they can (although a newspaper costs an hour's wages). We pay them a pittance by North American standards, but they work well and happily and are glad to be employed.
A friend has set up one computer center to help give some kids a leg up in the job world. He has funding for 9 more, but construction is going a bit slow. The school it is at has no water or electricity. The center is solar powered for 10 laptops, and the kids are thrilled to have a chance to learn.
Does Linux make sense? Absolutely! Why should Kenya be paying the US for something that it can get for free? Is my friend using Linux? No. I couldn't convince him to do that, he worked for Compaq and Oracle and believes that windows is the future.
On the other hand I was given a new Linux mailserver to administer this week and there is certainly some expertise in the country to use is, I just wish education of Linux could be more widespread.
Oh, and I'm on a 256kb connection for about 1000 users. We are doing some testing with VSAT connections, but politics and Kenyan procurement seems to stretch things for weeks and months.
Michael
You can't make the rotor go faster because the tip of the foward moving blade will break the speed of sound.
The dynamic math is this is driving me nuts. If the retreating blade is at 90 deg, you take a snapshot of it and find that, gee, the whole blade is moving forwards through the air at the same velocity.
If you take the rotational speed, velocity of a point = Y rpm x Z distance from axis, you will get different linear forward velocities at different points along the blade.
Am I missing something, or are others confused on this too?
Thanks snopes
/Canadian
My Epson C42UX cost $69. Both cartridges ran out at once. Cost for new pair of cartridges: $69 (tax included).
Since then printer prices have gone up to discourage people from buying a new printer every time they ran out of ink.
And I snagged a discarded Laserjet IV, replaced the rollers for $20 and no longer think about the cost of ink -- a replacement cartridge for it costs the same a load of ink for the epson.
I'm in atlantic Canada. One day after finishing a QSL on 20 metres I heard a morse signal down in the noise. Out of curiosity I started to copy it and heard my callsign!
A guy in Hawaii running 1.5 watts.
Morse was used for simplicity of equipment and ability to communicate in absurdly poor conditions. The largest problem is that it relies on practiced operators. Five minutes and I can learn how to send and read SMS. It takes months of practice to read morse.
de VE9MKS
The article is pretty much right on the money. If it is government, they accept donated MS software. If it private, they use pirated. Cost takes a back seat to practicality. Everyone knows MS, why introduce something different?
The key is training. I hope to bring some people up to speed on FOSS and let it spread a little. When cost doesn't matter, what you are familiar with does.
You would not believe the amount of "nuclear grade" (low halogen) duct tape we use at a nuke plant.
It doesn't hold the plant together, but it has multiple uses for contamination control.
I've been poking around google maps for a week, thrilled to see the detail in places, but I havent' found an "easter egg" yet! It is pretty amazing that they cover the globe with satellite photos (not maps), but I'd love to see more detail, particularly in Africa.
Or for the page discussing a few things about schools in Kenya.
Elsewhere Steve tells about his project to install some computer labs in these remote, almost forgotten, schools in Kenya. He currently has money for about 8 of them, with one being installed. I tried to convince him to use Linux, but he refused. I'll be there later this year, perhaps we can make a difference in some of these kid's lives.
Michael
And everyone should learn how to paint, because this new fangled photography thing just doesn't last as long, and loses the artistry.
Sometimes the worst thing a company can do is keep someone employed who is casuing problems for the company.
The ability to get rid of troublemakers and deadbeats is an indication that management is in control and willing to make things happen.
I don't think he tried out for the "master builder" He has done some contract work for Lego, and I think he is quite happy to be freelance. I think he actually gets more exposure on his own than he would as a Lego employee.
The clock is a few years old. Erik "used to be" a programmer, but now considers himself a full-time lego builder. He is also a champion scrabble player.
Overall, a geek of geeks, right at home on slashdot. Once the server his server has cooled down, make sure you take a look over his full portfolio.
And I would really like that desk. I think that is what put him from "Lego hobbyist" to "profitable Lego artist".
OK, reply to my own post....
I see the project name is klnX, so you can't lose the "X" on the keyboard. Perhaps it should be renamed "klncks"
I like it! Uhuru has a nice political ring to it, and doesn't have the confusion to go with multiple meaning of "free." You could lose the Q and X keys on the keyboard as well.
I think it is great to do a project like this. As far as cost goes, you have to remember that the Gross National Income of all sub-saharan africa is about equal to that of The Netherlands. Per capita income $400/yr. Yes, computer literate people make more than that, but money is a real issue.
An interesting side issue is the use of Swahili. Tanzania counts only swahili as an official language. Most business is done in Swahili. In Kenya, English and Swahili are official languages, and are taught in parallel in school. It is regarded as showing a higher status if you speak in English, so swahili is relagated to second place, and tribal language limited to close friends and family. I suspect that most computer users in Kenya would be more than happy to work in english.
I still admire the fact that kids who live in mud huts and have never been in a car can speak three languages. I struggle enough with one!
I've used a low-end HP Photosmart slide scanner quite extensively. I was able to obtain very good results in the thousands of scans I did. They were not of a professional level, but suitable for what I wanted.
I have a good HP scanner at work, with a tranparancy adaptor. POS.
Moral of the story: Use something designed to do the job, not adapted to function.
e.g. Kodachrome, dedicated slide-scanner, photoshop, Mac.
It is a niche market. Live with it. The tools exist and cost money.
SA-Exim is the biggest reason I miss running my own server (DSL in basement). My hosted account has Spamassassin, but it just labels spam. I use thunderbird to sort/trash it.
I never did get the tar-pit set up in exim, but I like the concept of tieing up the senders.