You can get 35mm SLR's that do not have much automation for cheap. Since the camera manufacturers are pushing the auto-everything cameras, the manual camera bodies and lenses have a low resale value (with the exception of "collector's" cameras). The big change came with autofocus lenses, which require new camera bodies full of fancy electronics. After that, the manufacturers just starting piling on the "features".
If you opt for a manual focus camera, you can get a nice system for cheap, and still have automatic exposure metering (with full manual override), and probably auto film wind (of questionable usefulness, except for sports).
If you really want to learn photography, these cameras are better than the full-auto ones. You will actually learn about exposure and focussing. Not that there is much to learn - these things are pretty straightforward, once you don't have to fight against what your full-auto camera thinks it needs to do.
Nikon and Canon are the best-known brands, and, because of that, they will command a higher resale value than others.
I sold cameras in the early 1980's, when cameras had "just the right amount of automation". At that time, my opinion was that Olympus and Pentax offered better "value for money" than Nikon and Canon. The quality was comparable, and the prices more reasonable. In the resale market, a manual-focus Olympus or Pentax can be purchased for peanuts.
I just checked e-bay, and see a full Olympus OM-2 system, with three Olympus lenses, flash, and accessories for well under $200. This is the system I started with, and recommend it highly.
Recommended cameras to look for:
Olympus OM-2, OM-3, OM-4: Basically the same camera, with upgrades over time. Has aperture-priority auto-exposure and full-manual exposure. Top-notch line of lenses. These cameras are also smaller and lighter than average. Very rugged.
Olympus OM-1: Manual-exposure-only.
Pentax K-1000: Cheap when it was new, so should be really cheap now! Kind of clunky operation.
Pentax ME Super: Very small. Aperture-priority auto, and full manual. Manual-exposure is awkward to use. Not as rugged as Olympus OM-series.
Pentax MX: Very small. Manual-only operation. Extremely rugged.
Nikon FM, FM-?: An excellent, rugged camera. Large. Manual-only. Overpriced on resale market.
Nikon FE, FE-?: Like the FM, but with aperture-priority automatic exposure.
Nikon F2, F2A, F2AS: Legendary photo-journalist camera. Huge and heavy. Too much of a collector's camera for good prices.
Nikon F3: Follow-on to the F2. Considered a failure by the photo-journo's, but really an excellent, rugged beast.
Cameras to avoid:
Canon AE-1: Uses shutter-priority automatic, which is not as nice as aperture-priority. Plastic body is not rugged. (The AE-1 was a hot seller, but Canon's later models are much better.)
Nikon EM: One of the crappiest cameras ever sold.
Pentax ME: Has no manual-exposure mode. Auto-only.
For lenses, in this vintage, it is best to stick to the Olympus, Pentax, or Nikon lenses. While the 3rd-party lensmakers (Sigma, Tamron, etc.) are very good nowadays, they were a couple of steps behind in the days of manual focus (with some exceptions, like the Vivitar Series 1 lenses).
It is a real pain to use the auto-focus lenses on a manual-focus body. The focussing rings are too small, and the action is really loose. It is much better to find older lenses.
If you count by touching your thumb to the segments of your fingers (each finger has three segments), then you can count to twelve (four fingers times three segments each).
Even better, you only need to employ one hand!
If you use both hands, you can count up to 144 (one gross).
Yeah, the spammer may currently earn $1000/week by generating 20 leads at $50 commission each. With the higher volume from the "attack", he generates 1000 leads, and gets $1 each. In the end, the spammer still gets $1000/week.
What makes or breaks this scheme is: what is the fixed cost of processing each of the leads? If it is low, the spammer and commission payer only lose a little profit. If the per-lead processing cost is high, the profits disappear.
So, what resources are required to process each lead?
One of the problems with the legal system is: the party suing (SCO) can drop its case at any time.
The sad thing about this is: the party getting sued (IBM) does not have the option to say, "I want to continue this lawsuit, so I can win and a legal precedent can be set."
I am reminded of the time when the Parent's Music Resource Center (ie. Tipper Gore) sued The Dead Kennedys (ie. Jello Biafra) and Alternative Tentacles for obscenity because of album gatefold art. When what was supposed to be the crushing defeat of a small band and record label turned into certain defeat for the PMRC, they simply dropped the suit, shortly before the trial would have gone to a verdict. Although the PMRC's ability to bully bands and labels evaporated, no actual legal precendent regarding obscenity was set. The DK's did not have the resources to launch a counter-suit, because they had been brought to ruin fighting the suit.
The same thing could happen in SCO's suit against IBM. Fortunately IBM has the resources to make the counter-suit, so precendent could still be set.
In these cases, it should be required that both parties have to agree to drop the case. It would eliminate the extra time and expense of a counter-suit. Just finish the first suit, set the precendent, award damages to the winner (ie. the party being sued), and move on.
Once you are committed to launching a suit against another party, you should have to finish it.
GPL coexists with the laws of each country. There is no global GPL enforcement.
If a country passes laws which are counter to GPL, as with copyright, there is nothing you can do, inside that country.
For example, Taiwan was famous for many years because it did not adhere to "international" copyright law. Within Taiwan, you could copy anything freely. However, if a Taiwanese company wanted to export a product that violates copyright, they found many borders closed. Also, foreign companies would refuse to send products to Taiwan.
In the same way, if Vietnam chose to ignore the GPL, they would be free to do so. Foreign countries could refuse to import products containing GPL violations (or shut down all trade with Vietnam until the laws are changed). Foreign companies can refuse to do business with GPL violators.
The question then becomes: If Vietnam is violating GPL, what pressures make economic sense to engage?
It all comes down to economics. If a country believes they will do better by striking down GPL, they will do so.
I have an Ericsson T39m phone, Palm Tungsten, and a DLink bluetooth USB dongle for my Mac.
I can iSync the Palm, phone, and Mac without wires.
I can also connect to the internet using the Palm through the phone's GPRS modem. Then I can check email on my imap server, or surf the web using a wap or web browser. You can do the same with a laptop.
What would be truly awesome is an iPod with bluetooth, mated with car stereos and home stereos with bluetooth. You could stream audio from the iPod over your "local" speaker system. The iPod could even auto-detect the local bluetooth receiver. You could also have two-way control.
The advantage over 802.11 for these purposes is lower power consumption. Disadvantage is shorter range.
The naming game is done to allow the name to be registered as a trademark, and have the trademark enforcable.
Intel came up with "Pentium" because the chip cloners were calling their chips 80x86-compatible. Intel had not trademarked the numbers, and it is possible that such a generic trademark might not stand up in court, anyway. Now, if AMD wants to claim Pentium compatibility, they have to acknowledge that Pentium is a trademark owned by Intel.
These "made up" names are easy to trademark and enforce, since no one will "accidentally" use the word Pentium or Efficeon.
Apple might not be able to enforce a trademark on plain "G5" (after all, there are plenty of things referred to as G5 or 5G), but "Powermac G5" is not a problem.
I keep hearing how M$ has $40 - 50 billion dollars on hand. Not to mention BG's billions!
With this kind of cash, they could rent a building and staff it with hundreds of people whose sole purpose is to fix the security problems. After all, they have source code for the whole thing.
One group could audit the code from all Windoze versions and fix all of the buffer overruns, and other basic coding errors.
Other groups could address components of the system, examining the code and testing for various exploits. Their job is to find the holes before the crackers, and fix them.
Who cares if they step on the toes of the OS developers? It will shame the OS developers into writing better code!
4. The goal of MediaMax was not to invent the "holy grail" (since one does not exist). The idea was to provide users with a way to legally use the CD, whether that be for copying or sharing the music.
The normal CD format already provides for this: legitimate owners can copy or share the music, in a legal way.
"Hackers" can illegally use a SunnComm'ed CD almost as easily as a non-broken CD.
What value is SunnComm bringing to the table? Stopping the non-criminal element of society from "accidentally" using the CD in an illegal fashion?
SunnComm's product appears to provide no value to licensees of their "technology". The standard CD format provides the same usage, without the added risk that the consumer will find it unplayable.
The guy being sued subpeonas documents from SunnComm to show that people at the company knew their "technology" could be circumvented in an obvious and trivial fashion.
The investors and licensees of the "technology" sue SunnComm for fraud and deceptive business practices.
I recall reading a study showing that a word's silhouette is important to recognition. The researchers looked at using just the silhouettes of words (in sentences) and the recognition rates.
When the first and last letters are added, the recognition rates jump to a very high score.
Thus, "the wetar si fnie" is grasped more quickly than "the wtear si fnie", since the silhouettes are preserved.
The term "free trade" is often used to describe trade agreements which do not fit the definition.
True free trade allows:
Free movement of goods.
Free movement of capital.
Free movement of labor.
The European Union has all three. It is a true "free trade" system.
Most others, including NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), do not allow free movement of labor. NAFTA permits "brain drain" labor movement to occur fairly easily ("temporary" work visas are easy to obtain for skilled/educated workers), but unskilled labor cannot cross borders.
NAFTA and its ilk are not free trade agreements. They are better described as trans-national outsourcing agreements.
Indemnity
on
Back To SCO
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I think the paragraph on "indemnity" is interesting.
SCO should offer, to those who purchase their license, this guarantee of indemnity:
SCO guarantees that all IP associated with the SCO license is the sole, undisputed property of SCO. Should said property be shown to be actual property of a third party, SCO will pay all legal fees, rememdies and any other fees associated with any dispute arising from the third party.
Thus, SCO would show that they are certain they haven't infringed on GPL'd code (or any other party's code).
If SCO is unwilling to make such a guarantee of indemnity, it shows that they don't believe their own case.
Slashdot Mirror
If Gov. Schwarzeneggar suspects that this is the proto-SkyNet, he will move to shut it down.
After all, that's what we elected him for: to steer us towards an alternate future!
If you opt for a manual focus camera, you can get a nice system for cheap, and still have automatic exposure metering (with full manual override), and probably auto film wind (of questionable usefulness, except for sports).
If you really want to learn photography, these cameras are better than the full-auto ones. You will actually learn about exposure and focussing. Not that there is much to learn - these things are pretty straightforward, once you don't have to fight against what your full-auto camera thinks it needs to do.
Nikon and Canon are the best-known brands, and, because of that, they will command a higher resale value than others.
I sold cameras in the early 1980's, when cameras had "just the right amount of automation". At that time, my opinion was that Olympus and Pentax offered better "value for money" than Nikon and Canon. The quality was comparable, and the prices more reasonable. In the resale market, a manual-focus Olympus or Pentax can be purchased for peanuts.
I just checked e-bay, and see a full Olympus OM-2 system, with three Olympus lenses, flash, and accessories for well under $200. This is the system I started with, and recommend it highly.
Recommended cameras to look for:
Cameras to avoid:
For lenses, in this vintage, it is best to stick to the Olympus, Pentax, or Nikon lenses. While the 3rd-party lensmakers (Sigma, Tamron, etc.) are very good nowadays, they were a couple of steps behind in the days of manual focus (with some exceptions, like the Vivitar Series 1 lenses).
It is a real pain to use the auto-focus lenses on a manual-focus body. The focussing rings are too small, and the action is really loose. It is much better to find older lenses.
If you count by touching your thumb to the segments of your fingers (each finger has three segments), then you can count to twelve (four fingers times three segments each).
Even better, you only need to employ one hand!
If you use both hands, you can count up to 144 (one gross).
This is pretty close:
SLiVR
Since this takes a 1/2 gigapixel panoramic image in "one shot," it is more impressive than stitching 196 images together.
Stitching 196 images together is an interesting stunt, but it is not practical.
China, at 1.3 billion people, is 20% of the world's 6.4 billion.
That's enough to sustain their own format, and to attract interest from foreign media providers.
If India was to team up on the EVD, they'd have 35%!
Yeah, the spammer may currently earn $1000/week by generating 20 leads at $50 commission each. With the higher volume from the "attack", he generates 1000 leads, and gets $1 each. In the end, the spammer still gets $1000/week.
What makes or breaks this scheme is: what is the fixed cost of processing each of the leads? If it is low, the spammer and commission payer only lose a little profit. If the per-lead processing cost is high, the profits disappear.
So, what resources are required to process each lead?
One thing investigators can do is to look for evidence that the accused's computer has been "hacked".
If no evidence is found, it is unlikely that the computer was hacked. It is doubtful that the intruder could completely cover his tracks.
The accused may plant evidence of hacking on his own computer, but it may be possible for a forensic analyst to detect this.
Companies would even hire a rival Yakuza group to protect them from the one making threats.
Mobsters doing ddos is just a high-tech example of an age-old practice.
Some more info: article
So, the copy-protection scheme causes problems for the people who are using CD's lawfully, and will not stop the hackers.
In that case, why bother to use the copy protection? Is it to piss off the general public, so they stop buying these broken products?
One of the problems with the legal system is: the party suing (SCO) can drop its case at any time.
The sad thing about this is: the party getting sued (IBM) does not have the option to say, "I want to continue this lawsuit, so I can win and a legal precedent can be set."
I am reminded of the time when the Parent's Music Resource Center (ie. Tipper Gore) sued The Dead Kennedys (ie. Jello Biafra) and Alternative Tentacles for obscenity because of album gatefold art. When what was supposed to be the crushing defeat of a small band and record label turned into certain defeat for the PMRC, they simply dropped the suit, shortly before the trial would have gone to a verdict. Although the PMRC's ability to bully bands and labels evaporated, no actual legal precendent regarding obscenity was set. The DK's did not have the resources to launch a counter-suit, because they had been brought to ruin fighting the suit.
The same thing could happen in SCO's suit against IBM. Fortunately IBM has the resources to make the counter-suit, so precendent could still be set.
In these cases, it should be required that both parties have to agree to drop the case. It would eliminate the extra time and expense of a counter-suit. Just finish the first suit, set the precendent, award damages to the winner (ie. the party being sued), and move on.
Once you are committed to launching a suit against another party, you should have to finish it.
GPL coexists with the laws of each country. There is no global GPL enforcement.
If a country passes laws which are counter to GPL, as with copyright, there is nothing you can do, inside that country.
For example, Taiwan was famous for many years because it did not adhere to "international" copyright law. Within Taiwan, you could copy anything freely. However, if a Taiwanese company wanted to export a product that violates copyright, they found many borders closed. Also, foreign companies would refuse to send products to Taiwan.
In the same way, if Vietnam chose to ignore the GPL, they would be free to do so. Foreign countries could refuse to import products containing GPL violations (or shut down all trade with Vietnam until the laws are changed). Foreign companies can refuse to do business with GPL violators.
The question then becomes: If Vietnam is violating GPL, what pressures make economic sense to engage?
It all comes down to economics. If a country believes they will do better by striking down GPL, they will do so.
I have an Ericsson T39m phone, Palm Tungsten, and a DLink bluetooth USB dongle for my Mac.
I can iSync the Palm, phone, and Mac without wires.
I can also connect to the internet using the Palm through the phone's GPRS modem. Then I can check email on my imap server, or surf the web using a wap or web browser. You can do the same with a laptop.
What would be truly awesome is an iPod with bluetooth, mated with car stereos and home stereos with bluetooth. You could stream audio from the iPod over your "local" speaker system. The iPod could even auto-detect the local bluetooth receiver. You could also have two-way control.
The advantage over 802.11 for these purposes is lower power consumption. Disadvantage is shorter range.
The naming game is done to allow the name to be registered as a trademark, and have the trademark enforcable.
Intel came up with "Pentium" because the chip cloners were calling their chips 80x86-compatible. Intel had not trademarked the numbers, and it is possible that such a generic trademark might not stand up in court, anyway. Now, if AMD wants to claim Pentium compatibility, they have to acknowledge that Pentium is a trademark owned by Intel.
These "made up" names are easy to trademark and enforce, since no one will "accidentally" use the word Pentium or Efficeon.
Apple might not be able to enforce a trademark on plain "G5" (after all, there are plenty of things referred to as G5 or 5G), but "Powermac G5" is not a problem.
This is why I run IPNetRouter on 9.2.2 as my Firewall/NAT!
It is a trivial amount of cash for MS to spend! It hardly makes a dent in their resources.
Depending on how this cash is invested, they could lose or gain more than $500 million due to a day's fluctuations in the stock market.
There would be no stock market crash.
With this kind of cash, they could rent a building and staff it with hundreds of people whose sole purpose is to fix the security problems. After all, they have source code for the whole thing.
One group could audit the code from all Windoze versions and fix all of the buffer overruns, and other basic coding errors.
Other groups could address components of the system, examining the code and testing for various exploits. Their job is to find the holes before the crackers, and fix them.
Who cares if they step on the toes of the OS developers? It will shame the OS developers into writing better code!
Why M$ isn't doing this is beyond my imagination.
The bigger worry for SunnComm would be the "chilling effect on share price" when they lose the lawsuit.
No wonder they are backing down.
The normal CD format already provides for this: legitimate owners can copy or share the music, in a legal way.
"Hackers" can illegally use a SunnComm'ed CD almost as easily as a non-broken CD.
What value is SunnComm bringing to the table? Stopping the non-criminal element of society from "accidentally" using the CD in an illegal fashion?
SunnComm's product appears to provide no value to licensees of their "technology". The standard CD format provides the same usage, without the added risk that the consumer will find it unplayable.
Look here:
Alias.
Performa was Spindler's idea. He was actively draining the "cool" out of Apple during his reign.
What do you expect from a guy who really wanted to be Michael Dell?
I recall reading a study showing that a word's silhouette is important to recognition. The researchers looked at using just the silhouettes of words (in sentences) and the recognition rates.
When the first and last letters are added, the recognition rates jump to a very high score.
Thus, "the wetar si fnie" is grasped more quickly than "the wtear si fnie", since the silhouettes are preserved.
True free trade allows:
The European Union has all three. It is a true "free trade" system.
Most others, including NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), do not allow free movement of labor. NAFTA permits "brain drain" labor movement to occur fairly easily ("temporary" work visas are easy to obtain for skilled/educated workers), but unskilled labor cannot cross borders.
NAFTA and its ilk are not free trade agreements. They are better described as trans-national outsourcing agreements.
SCO should offer, to those who purchase their license, this guarantee of indemnity:
SCO guarantees that all IP associated with the SCO license is the sole, undisputed property of SCO. Should said property be shown to be actual property of a third party, SCO will pay all legal fees, rememdies and any other fees associated with any dispute arising from the third party.
Thus, SCO would show that they are certain they haven't infringed on GPL'd code (or any other party's code).
If SCO is unwilling to make such a guarantee of indemnity, it shows that they don't believe their own case.
- See each movie multiple times in theatres.
- See the re-releases in theatres.
- See the IMAX Ultimate LOTR Marathon theatrical release.
- Buy each movie DVD on first issue.
- Buy the Extended Edition DVD on first issue.
- Buy the Extended Edition DVD collector's 3-pack (with bonus material).
- Buy the Super Extended Edition with more bonus extras DVD 5-pack.
- Buy the "Superbit" 3-pack (with better image quality).
- Buy it all again on HD-DVD.
New Line will make plenty of money!