many tribes around the world do not have anythign we'd recognize as an economy, let alone a capitalist one, yet moist definitely have forms of government that can be called a liberal democracy
Democracy, yes. Liberal, no.
Democracy, loosely interpreted as the rule of the majority, is quite widespread, including among some primitive societies. Democracy by itself doesn't need capitalism.
However, "liberal" implies a lot of things -- respect for individual, human rights, rule of law, etc. -- that you will not find in simple tribes. Athens in ancient Greece had a democratic political system, but it definitely wasn't a liberal democracy.
Then there are countries with an economy that has more in common with a communist central planned economy then with capitalism,... for example Sweden
Umm.. you don't know much about a communist economy if you think Sweden is closer to the former USSR than it is to the US... Sweden is very clearly a capitalist country. The fact that the government redistributes a lot of money does not change the underlying economic system.
while liberal democracies and capitalism tend to co-exist in the western world, they are not dependent on one another - lots of brutal dictatorships are capitalist by nature.
Au contraire, they ARE dependent, though this dependency is one-way -- you do not need a liberal democracy to have capitalism, but you do need capitalism in order to have a liberal democracy.
Basically, the way it works is that the camera computes a cryptographically strong hash of the image file at the time the picture is taken and stores it on a tamper-proof secure card. The kit is specifically targeted at law enforcement.
However, for more "artistic" photography, film is a great way to go. It's not just about the actual taking of the pictures, but also the developing of the film and the enlarging of prints. I for one enjoy the process, and it takes quite a bit more skill than just dumping the pictures into Photoshop and adjusting brightness/contrast, levels and colors and whatnot.
I beg to disagree. If you do enjoy the wet-photography process, more power to you. But you should realize that you would find yourself in the same niche that, say, woodworkers, exist in now. If you find in pleasant to mess around with a wet darkroom -- fine. Your choice. But with Photoshop I'll be able to do much more than you'll be able to do in a darkroom.
I've been there and I don't really miss the smell of the developer or the fixer stains on the fingers. I want to make good images -- not practice some ancient and obsolete craft. For making images, digital is much better than a wet darkroom. It's like using power tools compared to using traditional tools. Yes, maybe you lose some of the feel/magic/romance of the process. But the end result tend to be better...
And, by the way, Photoshop needs much skill to be used properly. I'd say that becoming skilled in Photoshop (or Corel PhotoPaint, or Gimp) is harder than getting a clue about darkroom chemistry.
1. Cost - I've invested close to 2K in Nikon SLR hardware in the last four years and to duplicate such a setup in dSLR gear is EXTREMELY expensive
You understand that you only have to change the camera body, right? Your major investment should be in optics -- in lenses -- and these stay the same with digital...
2. Quality - film is simply more deailed... i'll just use my negative scanner...
Hmm... film (that is, 100 ASA film) still has more resolution than standard (5-6Mp) digital, but digital doesn't have any grain. I have printed photos from a Canon D60 (6Mp) digital and from scanned Fuji Provia 100F slides. Scanned slides DO have a bit more resolution, but I like digital more because it has considerably less noise (film grain) in the image.
3. Archival: Good film negatives will last 5-10 decades... digital files are good only as long as you can read them
True, but you do get perfect copies... So far I just copied my old hard drive to my new one (usually at least twice as large) and didn't have any problems. I already have some color negatives that degraded so much I can't get a decent print off them. Digital is much better archive-wise. To repeat myself, perfect copies beat any physical media.
4. B&W - to my knowledge, there is no dSLR that captures the 'metallic' aspect of good B&W negatives
LOL, you are confused... Nobody cares about negatives (except for the photographer himself), everybody cares about prints. Yes, you can make VERY nice platinum prints that you can't make on inkjets -- but inkjets aren't be-all-end-all of digital prints. There are many systems which print digital images on true photographic paper...
...film still has advantages over the current crop of digital cameras, and will continue to do so for some time. These extend from image capture, to processing, to image storage, to print longevity. Film can not be replaced completely until it no longer has advantages in any of these areas.
Ahem.
Just what is the film's advantage in image capture?
In processing, digital is clearly superior. I can do things with Photoshop that darkroom photographers never dreamed about...
As to image storage, making perfect copies beats fiber prints any time. As long as someone copies them over to the current media, my images will look exactly the same in 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 1000 years...
Print longevity, techinically speaking, has nothing to do with film. But since is has been brought up, I can print digital to Fuji Crystal Archive paper with predicted longevity of about 75 years. That's as good or better than any film-based printing. And if you want to bring out long-lived B&W prints, why, then let me point out that my digital image file does not age, as opposed to your negatives. In 500 years my grand-(grand)^n-children will still be able to print my photographs, if they choose to -- what about your film?
Film has always had molecular-scale resolution - kind of an innate property of film, itself.
May I suggest you refrain from making authoritative pronouncements when you don't have a clue?
Film does NOT have a molecular-scale resolution, and it's obvious to anybody who has ever looked at a negative (or a print or a slide) carefully.
Black-and-white film has resolution limited by the size of the silver clumps, and these clumps (the size of which mostly depends on how sensitive film is) are several orders of magnitude larger than molecules. Color film has dye clouds instead of silver clumps, and again, their size is much, much larger than molecules.
What in hell do you think film grain is? Molecules??
You are right that it will be a long, long time before real photographers use digital.
Real photographers are using digital right now. I don't know your definition of a "real" photographer, but most everybody with the exception of large-format camera fanatics has either completely switched to digital or is playing around with it.
It should be noted that photographs can survive an EMP but no digital media can.
Complete bullshit. Magnetic media cannot survive EMP, but digital comes in more flavors than magnetic. Optical, anyone? You know, these shiny things called CD-ROMs..?
The primary purpose of a marriage is to grant legal status to a man and a woman for the purpose of raising a family. Same sexed couples cannot have children on their own, therefore they should not have be entitled to the protections of marriage.
Of course that means that infertile people shouldn't be allowed to marry, right?
Marriage is 'special'. Places that have allowed same sexed marriages have seen increased divorce and infidelity. Same sexed marriage takes away the 'specialness' of marriage.
Define 'specialness' without bringing in religious arguments, please... Besides, this argument can be made against everything, e.g.: Horse-driven carriages are special. Places that allowed motor cars have seen increased traffic accidents. Motor cars take away the specialness of using horses.
Marriage is not a right, it is, at best, a tradition or custom. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman.
Defined by whom? And what's wrong with redefining things?
EU has agreed to use transmission frequencies that could be easily disturbed or completely jammed by the US military
I am a little bit confused. Presumably the range of frequencies suitable for GPS application isn't all that wide. Why is it that some frequencies are easily jammable, and others, similar, are not?
Or is it a question of the US already having hardware in place to jam certain frequencies and it's basically a question of saving money for the US military (that is, not needing to buy/install hardware for Galileo jamming)?
RIAA is not a corporation. It'a a cartel/lobbying group. Scientology is not a corporation either, it's a religious cult.
All you are saying is that sufficiently powerful organizations can influence government and make your life difficult. So what else is new? Read a little history, e.g. of Christian church before there were any corporations.
Corporations can't die.
One word: bankrupcy.
You can't pick and choose news corporations to find the best news for you.
And why not? If you are lazy, Google News works quite well. If you are not lazy, building your own news feed from sites all over the web isn't hard. No, these sites need not be news-oriented, or corporations, or anything like that.
Corporations can collude in secret to remove articles that a partisan mindset shared among managers deems unsuitable. Governments cannot, at least not until this administration, hide what they do for very long.
LOL. Just about anyone can collude in secret. As to governments unable to rewrite history, well, let's just say that you must be a bit naive... (see above: read history).
People do pick and choose governments with ease, every four years. Try firing Microsoft.
Heh. Try electing a non-Demopublican president of the US. Then try making a non-Microsoft computing environment. What's easier?
Corporations, though "persons" with constitutional rights, have absolutely no personal accountability whatsoever for their actions. Want to talk to Time Warner about erasing the record? What is "Time"? Can you schedule an appointment with it? Make it do jail time?
Don't bother to read the news, right? Does the word "Enron" or, say, "Kozlowsi" ring any bells?
Corporations now are the government. What do you call that form of government, komrade? "Police state" is a question begging term.
Get your terminology in order, please. Police state has nothing to do with corporations, it has to do with personal liberties and the ability to be different than everbody else. It's perfectly possible to have a police state without any corporations (e.g. North Korea).
Jeez. This post should be a poster child for the let-me-write-some-anti-corp-bullshit-who-cares-if- it-makes-sense attitude...
Maybe they could add a MMC slot to the cart (or USB drive, smart card, etc.). I don't think it would be that hard, heck, they could probally do it now at the cash registers.
LOL. They do it at the cash registers now. Ever used a "discount" or "customer loyalty" card? All info about purchases made with such cards goes straight into a big database.
Technology could actually help us eat a balanced diet. Imagine how cool it would be if the grocery cart told you that it looked like you were getting too many carbs and not enough protein...
In order for the grocery cart to make a reasonable guess whether my intake of protein is adequate it has to know a whole lot of personal details about me, at the very least sex, age, height, weight, and some measure of how fast my metabolism is. It also has to guess whether I am buying other food at other stores, how often I eat out and what do I order, etc. etc.
So if a grocery cart gets smart enough to tell me what I should and should not be eating, I guess it's close to being as smart as a HAL and should be treated in the same way.:-)
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one 'makes' them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers-and then you cash in on the guilt."
Of course if broadband ISPs were to implementing a simple inbound firewall for every user then they'd eliminate most of these problems overnight: trojaned machines would be unreachable, worms like CodeRed that scan for vulnerabilities would be halted.
Of course then the broadband ISP's better come clean that they are not selling me a pipe to the internet any more. Rather, they are selling me the ability for my Internet Explorer (tm) to access the web and show it to me -- kinda like cable TV, only in the internet age:-/
And, by the way, the firewall will do exactly zilch about trojans and email viruses...
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine if e-mail was just plain old ASCII text with no attachment support. *sigh*
YOU HAVE NOW RECEIVED THE UNIX VIRUS
This virus works on the honor system:
If you're running a variant of unix or linux, please forward this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your files at random.
Sure, no problem.
http://www.phial.com/angborg/
many tribes around the world do not have anythign we'd recognize as an economy, let alone a capitalist one, yet moist definitely have forms of government that can be called a liberal democracy
... for example Sweden
Democracy, yes. Liberal, no.
Democracy, loosely interpreted as the rule of the majority, is quite widespread, including among some primitive societies. Democracy by itself doesn't need capitalism.
However, "liberal" implies a lot of things -- respect for individual, human rights, rule of law, etc. -- that you will not find in simple tribes. Athens in ancient Greece had a democratic political system, but it definitely wasn't a liberal democracy.
Then there are countries with an economy that has more in common with a communist central planned economy then with capitalism,
Umm.. you don't know much about a communist economy if you think Sweden is closer to the former USSR than it is to the US... Sweden is very clearly a capitalist country. The fact that the government redistributes a lot of money does not change the underlying economic system.
while liberal democracies and capitalism tend to co-exist in the western world, they are not dependent on one another - lots of brutal dictatorships are capitalist by nature.
Au contraire, they ARE dependent, though this dependency is one-way -- you do not need a liberal democracy to have capitalism, but you do need capitalism in order to have a liberal democracy.
Look here: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0401/04012903canondvk e2.asp
Basically, the way it works is that the camera computes a cryptographically strong hash of the image file at the time the picture is taken and stores it on a tamper-proof secure card. The kit is specifically targeted at law enforcement.
The market is waaaaay ahead of you... :-)
e as e/20040129_eos1d.html
http://www.cusa.canon.com/templatedata/pressrel
Well, it's just a password to connect to a port where the password happens to consist of connection tries to specific ports.
It's a nice hack, but I am sure there are other ways to implement password-protected port access...
However, for more "artistic" photography, film is a great way to go. It's not just about the actual taking of the pictures, but also the developing of the film and the enlarging of prints. I for one enjoy the process, and it takes quite a bit more skill than just dumping the pictures into Photoshop and adjusting brightness/contrast, levels and colors and whatnot.
I beg to disagree. If you do enjoy the wet-photography process, more power to you. But you should realize that you would find yourself in the same niche that, say, woodworkers, exist in now. If you find in pleasant to mess around with a wet darkroom -- fine. Your choice. But with Photoshop I'll be able to do much more than you'll be able to do in a darkroom.
I've been there and I don't really miss the smell of the developer or the fixer stains on the fingers. I want to make good images -- not practice some ancient and obsolete craft. For making images, digital is much better than a wet darkroom. It's like using power tools compared to using traditional tools. Yes, maybe you lose some of the feel/magic/romance of the process. But the end result tend to be better...
And, by the way, Photoshop needs much skill to be used properly. I'd say that becoming skilled in Photoshop (or Corel PhotoPaint, or Gimp) is harder than getting a clue about darkroom chemistry.
1. Cost - I've invested close to 2K in Nikon SLR hardware in the last four years and to duplicate such a setup in dSLR gear is EXTREMELY expensive
You understand that you only have to change the camera body, right? Your major investment should be in optics -- in lenses -- and these stay the same with digital...
2. Quality - film is simply more deailed... i'll just use my negative scanner...
Hmm... film (that is, 100 ASA film) still has more resolution than standard (5-6Mp) digital, but digital doesn't have any grain. I have printed photos from a Canon D60 (6Mp) digital and from scanned Fuji Provia 100F slides. Scanned slides DO have a bit more resolution, but I like digital more because it has considerably less noise (film grain) in the image.
3. Archival: Good film negatives will last 5-10 decades... digital files are good only as long as you can read them
True, but you do get perfect copies... So far I just copied my old hard drive to my new one (usually at least twice as large) and didn't have any problems. I already have some color negatives that degraded so much I can't get a decent print off them. Digital is much better archive-wise. To repeat myself, perfect copies beat any physical media.
4. B&W - to my knowledge, there is no dSLR that captures the 'metallic' aspect of good B&W negatives
LOL, you are confused... Nobody cares about negatives (except for the photographer himself), everybody cares about prints. Yes, you can make VERY nice platinum prints that you can't make on inkjets -- but inkjets aren't be-all-end-all of digital prints. There are many systems which print digital images on true photographic paper...
...film still has advantages over the current crop of digital cameras, and will continue to do so for some time. These extend from image capture, to processing, to image storage, to print longevity. Film can not be replaced completely until it no longer has advantages in any of these areas.
Ahem.
Just what is the film's advantage in image capture?
In processing, digital is clearly superior. I can do things with Photoshop that darkroom photographers never dreamed about...
As to image storage, making perfect copies beats fiber prints any time. As long as someone copies them over to the current media, my images will look exactly the same in 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 1000 years...
Print longevity, techinically speaking, has nothing to do with film. But since is has been brought up, I can print digital to Fuji Crystal Archive paper with predicted longevity of about 75 years. That's as good or better than any film-based printing. And if you want to bring out long-lived B&W prints, why, then let me point out that my digital image file does not age, as opposed to your negatives. In 500 years my grand-(grand)^n-children will still be able to print my photographs, if they choose to -- what about your film?
GPS or EXIF would allow me to place where, but not always when.
Ahem. EXIF data includes a timestamp...
Film has always had molecular-scale resolution - kind of an innate property of film, itself.
May I suggest you refrain from making authoritative pronouncements when you don't have a clue?
Film does NOT have a molecular-scale resolution, and it's obvious to anybody who has ever looked at a negative (or a print or a slide) carefully.
Black-and-white film has resolution limited by the size of the silver clumps, and these clumps (the size of which mostly depends on how sensitive film is) are several orders of magnitude larger than molecules. Color film has dye clouds instead of silver clumps, and again, their size is much, much larger than molecules.
What in hell do you think film grain is? Molecules??
You are right that it will be a long, long time before real photographers use digital.
Real photographers are using digital right now. I don't know your definition of a "real" photographer, but most everybody with the exception of large-format camera fanatics has either completely switched to digital or is playing around with it.
It should be noted that photographs can survive an EMP but no digital media can.
Complete bullshit. Magnetic media cannot survive EMP, but digital comes in more flavors than magnetic. Optical, anyone? You know, these shiny things called CD-ROMs..?
it hasn't. we used to call it "usenet".
Nah, not even close. Usenet is a free-for-all public discussion. Email exchange is an invitation-only private discussion. Big difference.
LOL.
The primary purpose of a marriage is to grant legal status to a man and a woman for the purpose of raising a family. Same sexed couples cannot have children on their own, therefore they should not have be entitled to the protections of marriage.
Of course that means that infertile people shouldn't be allowed to marry, right?
Marriage is 'special'. Places that have allowed same sexed marriages have seen increased divorce and infidelity. Same sexed marriage takes away the 'specialness' of marriage.
Define 'specialness' without bringing in religious arguments, please... Besides, this argument can be made against everything, e.g.: Horse-driven carriages are special. Places that allowed motor cars have seen increased traffic accidents. Motor cars take away the specialness of using horses.
Marriage is not a right, it is, at best, a tradition or custom. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman.
Defined by whom? And what's wrong with redefining things?
He's a bright kid (in the computer sense), and yet - apparently - stupid enough to pick on a 600 pound gorilla (RIAA/MPAA).
:-)
That's not a sign of stupidity. That's a sign of really big balls
EU has agreed to use transmission frequencies that could be easily disturbed or completely jammed by the US military
I am a little bit confused. Presumably the range of frequencies suitable for GPS application isn't all that wide. Why is it that some frequencies are easily jammable, and others, similar, are not?
Or is it a question of the US already having hardware in place to jam certain frequencies and it's basically a question of saving money for the US military (that is, not needing to buy/install hardware for Galileo jamming)?
Advertising pretending to be news... again...
That's so much bullshit...
- it-makes-sense attitude...
Think Elcomsoft. Think RIAA. Think Scientology.
RIAA is not a corporation. It'a a cartel/lobbying group. Scientology is not a corporation either, it's a religious cult.
All you are saying is that sufficiently powerful organizations can influence government and make your life difficult. So what else is new? Read a little history, e.g. of Christian church before there were any corporations.
Corporations can't die.
One word: bankrupcy.
You can't pick and choose news corporations to find the best news for you.
And why not? If you are lazy, Google News works quite well. If you are not lazy, building your own news feed from sites all over the web isn't hard. No, these sites need not be news-oriented, or corporations, or anything like that.
Corporations can collude in secret to remove articles that a partisan mindset shared among managers deems unsuitable. Governments cannot, at least not until this administration, hide what they do for very long.
LOL. Just about anyone can collude in secret. As to governments unable to rewrite history, well, let's just say that you must be a bit naive... (see above: read history).
People do pick and choose governments with ease, every four years. Try firing Microsoft.
Heh. Try electing a non-Demopublican president of the US. Then try making a non-Microsoft computing environment. What's easier?
Corporations, though "persons" with constitutional rights, have absolutely no personal accountability whatsoever for their actions. Want to talk to Time Warner about erasing the record? What is "Time"? Can you schedule an appointment with it? Make it do jail time?
Don't bother to read the news, right? Does the word "Enron" or, say, "Kozlowsi" ring any bells?
Corporations now are the government. What do you call that form of government, komrade? "Police state" is a question begging term.
Get your terminology in order, please. Police state has nothing to do with corporations, it has to do with personal liberties and the ability to be different than everbody else. It's perfectly possible to have a police state without any corporations (e.g. North Korea).
Jeez. This post should be a poster child for the let-me-write-some-anti-corp-bullshit-who-cares-if
Maybe they could add a MMC slot to the cart (or USB drive, smart card, etc.). I don't think it would be that hard, heck, they could probally do it now at the cash registers.
LOL. They do it at the cash registers now. Ever used a "discount" or "customer loyalty" card? All info about purchases made with such cards goes straight into a big database.
Technology could actually help us eat a balanced diet. Imagine how cool it would be if the grocery cart told you that it looked like you were getting too many carbs and not enough protein...
:-)
In order for the grocery cart to make a reasonable guess whether my intake of protein is adequate it has to know a whole lot of personal details about me, at the very least sex, age, height, weight, and some measure of how fast my metabolism is. It also has to guess whether I am buying other food at other stores, how often I eat out and what do I order, etc. etc.
So if a grocery cart gets smart enough to tell me what I should and should not be eating, I guess it's close to being as smart as a HAL and should be treated in the same way.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one 'makes' them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers-and then you cash in on the guilt."
Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
I am guessing his lawyers explained to him in simple words his chances of winning that lawsuit...
Of course if broadband ISPs were to implementing a simple inbound firewall
:-/
for every user then they'd eliminate most of these problems overnight:
trojaned machines would be unreachable, worms like CodeRed that scan for
vulnerabilities would be halted.
Of course then the broadband ISP's better come clean that they are not selling me a pipe to the internet any more. Rather, they are selling me the ability for my Internet Explorer (tm) to access the web and show it to me -- kinda like cable TV, only in the internet age
And, by the way, the firewall will do exactly zilch about trojans and email viruses...