The reality is that a hell of a lot - I'd venture the majority - of disabled parking permits are issued to those who, while just about qualifying for one if they harass a doctor who doesn't give a damn enough, really don't need one. If you expand that set out to relatives of someone with a permit who deliberately use the car with the permit, I'd be willing to guess it's the significant majority of permits you see.
My wife qualifies...
No one would dare dispute it. She was in a major car wreck, left in a coma for a month, her brain stem started to die off, her hypothalamus was damaged, her ability to compartmentalise was hammered and she lost 20 IQ points (fortunately, as she was a national merit winner beforehand, she's still way above most people but it's one hell of a loss to someone like that). She suffered a collapsed lung, needed a tracheotomy, broke ribs, shattered her arm to the point that they actually prepped her for amputation before spending 11 hours rebuilding it with metal plates. Her eye socket was cracked affecting her vision, the hammer/stirrup/anvil in one ear were separated leaving her deaf in it, the nerve serving her nose was damaged leaving her barely able to smell or taste much beyond the basic sweet/sour/salty of the tongue. Oh, and her jaw was snapped and subsequently wired leaving her unable to speak at first when she came to.
Her parents were told, in the weeks and months following, to not expect her to ever get out of a wheelchair for more than a few paces again as, given the nature of her brain injuries, she'd likely always fatigue very quickly. They were also told she'd need round-the-clock supervision and she was even certified mentally incompetent for a while (explains her marrying me but that's another issue). She also got told she'd never be able to return to school, given the brain injuries.
Rather than sucking all of that up, she forced her ass out of the wheelchair, got walking slowly and eventually pushed herself to the point of getting qualified as a personal trainer. She even went on an picked up a B.S. in Kinesiology and Pre-Physical Therapy.
The point of all of this being that, despite pushing herself, even now she easily qualifies as disabled - given the brain injuries affecting fatigue etc. and the shattered arm - yet she refuses to take a disabled parking permit or any other benefits. Even at the worst of it, she refused to do so - she'd rather walk slowly because she could still walk a little, than take a space that, as she puts it, "is needed by someone with real problems."
So, having watched her, I think it's a reasonable statement for someone like me to say that the significant majority of parking permit usage I've seen - while maybe technically qualifying - is hardly essential. And that's not to metion the cases where they don't even have a hanging permit or disabled plates but still park in blue spaces.
That being the case, when I watch someone climb out of a raised pickup, a good three or four feet off the ground, having just parked in a disabled parking spot with no permit, before comfortably wandering through flowerbeds etc., yeah, I'm willing to challenge that [politely]. The statistics are clearly enough in favor for me to consider it worth taking the risk.
There are two ways to challenge a law you consider unjust...
Legally, within the bounds of the law.
Illegally, outside of those bounds.
The first solution is taken by people like Ghandi, Martin Luther King, etc. We respect them.
The second is taken by such luminaries as Timothy McVeigh and those fine upstanding people who blow up abortion clinics because they consider abortion a sin. We consider them a$$holes.
What is legal or illegal is not the same as what is right or wrong. But there is a right and a wrong way to challenge that. People often confuse that. Please don't.
This farmer may well have felt that what Monsanto was trying to enforce was wrong. So challenge that in court. Campaign against them. Raise awareness. Start an organisation to fight the patenting of genes. Whether the contract was wrong or not, that doesn't grant the him the right to simply ignore the law and breach a contract he knew about.
Music piracy is much the same thing. I don't necessarily agree with the way the RIAA operates. I'd still rather vote with my cash or challenge them legally than try the childish "well they did something wrong so it entitles me to!"
Moderate -5 - Goes against the general/. sentiment
Condensation happens where something is cooler than the air surrounding it, hence the water condenses on to it.
The reason ultra cooled PCs suffer from condensation, normally, is because the cooling unit (where it connects to the chip it's cooling) is way below the normal air temperature surrounding it.
In a refridgerator, the air is the cool part while the PC is generating the heat. Hence, if anything, any moisture on the system is going to evapourate off, rather than condense on.
The one area which is going to suffer from condensation will be the cooling elements of the refridgerator themselves - as they're the part that drags air temperature down - but they shouldn't be connected to the PC anyway.
Finally, just because the box happens to be a refridgerator, there's no reason you need to keep its interior down around 5C/40F... All it's doing is keeping the PC at a sane temperature in the summer - so the thermostat can be set to a much more reasonable 20C/70F (unless you're trying to overclock to crank out the framerates on Qua... uh... the web browser being used for design plans). By that point the condensation scenario stops being any different to a PC in a regular room.
Put the PC inside a cheap $50 refridgerator. Keeps it cool in summer, protects it from dust year-round. A small hole through the seal for each cable, sealed with whatever, keeps the thing sealed whilst allowing cables to run out.
You'd be lucky to find any cheaper integrated cooling/dust free enclosure.
If you did want to spend more, you could always put it all inside a glass topped cooler, monitor and all, so just a wireless keyboard and mouse were out on top. Plus the thing turns in to another available (albeit not that strong) work surface.
When I set up my new tank, full of bala sharks, it occured to me that I had a laser pointer for driving the cat nuts. Many happy hours were spent shining it on the shark's heads while telling anyone who'd listen, "Look, sharks, with frickin' "lasers" on their heads."
End result: Pissed off bala sharks and friends who think you're an even bigger nerd than they did before. It sounded so much cooler in the movie.
Nah. Taco set up slashdot and ran it for years, just so he could then do that whole on-slashdot proposal thing and have links to pictures of his SO/rapidly becoming fiance. I bow before that kind of intro to bragging.
6. Must have an FM tuner, since people buy Mp3 players to listen to the radio, not their music files.
To be fair, a lot of people who buy the minis are buying them specifically for the gym. Most gyms also have TVs that are muted with their sound broadcast via FM for those with radios. A built in radio stops you looking like a complete nerd, having your MP3 player on one arm, radio on the other, graphing calculator in one pocket, cell phone on your hip, PDA in the other pocket and god knows how many pocket protectors.
Of course, it's an understandable mistake to make on/. as 1) we're all nerds and think that sounds cool and 2) what the hell is a gym anyway?
Which, I guess, is why I married a personal trainer/physical therapist and still bought her an iPod last week which I get to endlessly worship for it's unmatched UI design while never going anywhere near her beloved gym.
No gimmicks. Unless Sony has figured out a way to violate the laws of physics with the camera you mention, I'll bet dimes to dollars that I could take the same shots (well, maybe not the same exact shots that you're privy to, apparently) in the same conditions and have them turn out better with my DSLR.
Sony have. Well, kind of.
I'm not talking about excessively long exposures or anything else like that. What they do is mount the equivalent of an IR flashlight in to the body and then disable the IR filter (note: it may be UV, not IR, I forget the details). That way, you get a monochrome image even in absolute (as far as the human eye can determine) darkness.
Even with a non-visible wavelength flashlight illuminating your subject, you wouldn't be able to reproduce it on most DSLRs as they have filters in place to stop that non-visible light messing up your shots. Some people do disable them as IR photography's really popular within the black and white realm if not an essential component - but it requires the kind of mod that'll invalidate your warranty in an instant.
As a straight feature, I'll grant you, it's kind of gimicky - you've got limited range before that light source dissipates and it's greenscale monochrome.
However, it does have one really nice application - the camera can use that mode to focus without disturbing a subject, then only fire the flash at the instant you want to take the shot. Something like the 10D still needs some basic illumination for its autofocus to work. Sure, you can manually focus but that only works if you, yourself, can still see easily. The V1 (and 727/828s) become a godsend for shooting wildlife at night as you don't do anything to startle them and still get a great color image, in focus, once the flash fires.
So, no laws of physics got violated in the making of this reply. But some tricks you can't do with any camera without modding it were used.
I have a 10D. The mirror lockup custom function is so there's no shake during sensitive exposures. It doesn't give any preview on the LCD while it's taking that shot or in advance of the shot.
The Rebel has a firmware crack that reportedly re-enables the custom functions (as the Rebel is, in many ways, a disabled 10D with sharpening turned up, in a plastic body). That would get you mirror lock up but, just as with the 10D, there's no preview on the LCD, the mirror lockup does something else entirely.
If you know of any way to get a live preview on the LCD while in mirror lock up, I'd love to know about it. But I've never heard of it, nor found it on my 10D.
DSLRs are available from the $800s ($899 being pretty typical for a basic model with a basic lens) but, even as an owner of one, that's not the main reason I'd recommend for most people not to get one...
They're Huge Most normal consumers want a digital camera so they can take it to parties, take it on holiday, etc. Even the 3/4 size DSLRs have physically large bodies and get even bigger when you add lenses. They're not the kind of thing you want to carry on a night out unless you're really serious.
They're Heavy See They're Huge. Even if you don't mind the bulk, you probably don't want to carry the weight of one everywhere you go.
You Can't "Sneak Them In" That tiny little DSC-T1 will get passed all but the most determined concert security. There's no way you'll get a DSLR with lenses and flash past them.
They're Complicated Command line is far more useful than a windowed file manager for geeks. For everyone else, it just adds far too much confusion. They want to point, press a button, get a picture. Maybe some other features would be nice but they don't want their grandmother to be intimidated when they ask her to quickly take a family picture.
They Don't Have Previews On The LCD As the mirror's down to let you look through the view finder, the sensor isn't capturing anything until you press the release. As a result, you don't get live previews on the LCD. This makes holding it up in the air and getting a shot over a crowd way harder than when you can preview that screen. Sure, a serious photographer would never use an LCD for quality reasons - but a typical consumer cares far less about that than the convenience.
No Movie Mode As the mirror can either send the image to the view finder OR the sensor, if it tried to shoot a movie it'd leave a black viewfinder. Sure, the quality sucks but people still like to be able to email a 30 second clip of wishing grandma a happy christmas.
No Gimmick Features Why does technology advance? Because the common man can use it for porn. Sony's DSC-V1 is a little camera that lets you take shots in absolute darkness, without flash - perfect for your home porn movies. The movie features mentioned above are just the same. All of those gimmicks are essential to the common man.
Porn Excuse Number 2 Slipping out your little compact with your date might be a little cheeky and adventurous. Pulling out your DSLR, changing lenses, setting up the tripod and mounting your TTL flash is just plain creepy.
DSLRs are amazing things. I can take images I could only dream of with my digital compact. But, for all that, they really aren't anywhere near as flexible for the average person who wants convenience [and the low price point] over spending hours obsessing over the perfect shot.
Finally, as any photo journalism professor will tell you: The best camera you can ever own is the one you always have with you. Very few photojournalist had their DSLRs out when the planes went in to the twin towers. The tourist with his cheap and nasty video camera did. End result? The tourist got the shot. The best camera for you is the one you'll use the most. For most people, DSLRs are just too big, heavy and inconvenient to use that much while a tiny compact can go everywhere with them.
It's worth noting that I'm English (though living in the U.S.)
When all Americans can correctly differentiate the United Kingdom, from Great Britain, from England; when they can correctly differentiate the House of Lords, House of Commons; hell, when they learn that England isn't a city in U-rope... then I'll make a point of worrying about the singular entity nature of Congress. I'll even be generous enough to do so when only one in ten can.
Until then, I'll carry on not giving a [term for an act of, uh, congress (the other kind)].;)
Congress were told, recently, that complaints to the FCC are rising dramatically.
In 2000 and 2001, the FCC only received 350 complains. In 2002, 14,000. In 2003, 240,000. Clearly TV is becoming much more offensive.
Until you discover that 99.8% of all complaints are from the PTC (Parents Television Council). If you do the math, the 0.2% of complaints that aren't part of a political lobbying body amount to... 480. That's right, an increase of 130 over 2000/2001.
So, while Congress are wringing their hands over how terrible TV has got, the reality is that it's barely changed at all - but a political lobbying group who want to censor TV is creating a vastly disproportionate impact by effectively spamming the crap out of the FCC.
The real truth is that there are roughly 1.5 complaints for every MILLION people in the U.S. - i.e. NO major issues with the content of TV. That a tiny minority interest group can so skew the figures as to make it appear that the ration's as high as one in a thousand is, frankly, disgusting. That Congress are being fed their lies, rather than having the truth pointed out, is even worse.
Though it does beg the question: What would happen if a small group - say a thousand people, sent a letter to the FCC each day complaining that shows didn't go far enough with their nudity, violence and profanity. They'd outnumber the conservative complaints 3:2 for even those small numbers.
Something appealed about the irony of using their own website to complain about their actions. As they helpfully noted: All five FCC commissioners have been sent a copy of your email.
>> I bet you'd struggle to find one in 50 who had ever even written a hello world in qbasic, one in 500 who could do the same in C
And what has that to do with a person's ability to use a computer as a teaching aid? If they're supposed to be teaching computing then sure; if they're just supposed to be *teaching*, though, and are using the computer as another tool, like exercise books and a blackboard are tools, then what does it matter? As long as they *can* use it, they should be fine.
In my day, we had to make our own blackboards before we could teach, then go out to the chalk cliffs and hew our own writing materials from the rock face. We had to cut down our own trees, shred them, soak the fibers in water, dry them and bind them if we wanted books. Then our ma and pa would beat us to death with a broken bottle and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
The down side was we never had any time to learn about the subjects we were meant to be teaching but we sure as hell understood how a blackboard worked.
Tell young'uns that today and they won't believe you.
If we continue down taxing gas usage only, we'll get to a point where rural areas are paying a significant part of the taxes for upkeep of the road.
What, make people who use rural roads that are far less efficient, getting two or three cars per day, pay more than city drivers who densely share the same roads far more efficiently?
Why, that's scandalous!
Besides, have you been to California? I live here. I'm not so sure there actually is anywhere rural. We have cities, mountains, desert, freeways and some weird green stuff up North of which Regan said, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all".
Anyone who's anyone knows Sharper Image have been selling these for years.
There's really no end to the crap Sharper Image can add ions to and double the price for. It only stood to reason they'd release spaceships with them too.;)
You'll find them in their catalogue next to the negative ion vacuum cleaners, negative ion air purifiers, negative ion hair driers, negative ion bikini zone razors, and negative ion pet hair brushes (the scary thing is I only made one of that entire list up).
The data served is the highest publicly available set with one pixel for approx. 460 meters.
Wow. Imagine if this tool with this kind of accuracy was available for Earth?!
"Dude, where are you?" "I'm on Everest." "No you're not." "Yes I am! It's the biggest damn mountain on the planet." "No, you're on a twenty pixel compression artefact." "Damn."
Would you get time to enter the override code in an emergency?
Seeing as the most common gun related emergency most gun owners face is from their own weapon (shooting a family member, being shot by a family member, an intruder getting their weapon, accidentally shooting themselves, etc.) It strikes me as a small price to pay...
As a straigh cost vs. benefit analysis:
If over 50% of cases where you (or a family member) are injured by any weapon come from your own weapon.
If less than 50% of cases where you (or a family member) are injured by someone else's weapon and thus needed your weapon to defend yourself.
Even if your weapon doubles the less than 50% risk, if you remove the greater than 50% risk, you're safer.
Then again, if logic were the only consideration, the NRA wouldn't fight so hard against things like gun safes and trigger locks. The reason they do has far less to do with the intelligence of the argument and far more to do with refusing to set foot on a slippery slope.
Logically, if guns could only be fired by the biometrics of a licensed user, the average teenage gang member would be far less likely to be armed (yes, sophisticated criminals will always get around it) and the average home would remove its single greatest threat from weapons (its own).
But, if they agree to that limitation, what's to stop the next limitation being something like "a gun will not fire unless it registers it's been locked in a gunsafe for at least 12 of the last 24 hours"? Then the next one becomes limitations on who can buy gun safes, making it harder for people to own guns. Then there's a limitation on the types of weapons commercial gunsafes acknowledge. Then a limitation to guns that can fire non-lethal rounds. And so on and so on until they end up without their nice reassuring method of [statistically] killing their own family members.
"Evans bases his Kildall chapter on a 226-page, never-published memoir written by Kildall just before his death in 1994.... But by the time he died at age 52, after falling in a tavern, he had become embittered and struggled with alcohol."
So, the entire chapter is based on the writings of an embittered drunk after he had become an embittered drunk.
"Screw you all, I would have been Shaq if it hadn't have been for that deliberate foul that caused my knee injury!" doesn't make the washed up drunk any more of a pro basketball player. It doesn't even mean the foul was deliberate. It means an embittered person who didn't have any of the rest of the personality aspects that led to the other person's success, never put in the work, never fought as hard to get back up from setbacks, and, likely, wasn't even fouled half as deliberately as they've come to convince themselves has simply convinced themselves that their life could have been better if it wasn't for something unfair someone else did to them.
Basing an article on their embittered rantings, because it makes for a sensational enough article to sell some copies of your book and get some headlines, isn't exactly what I'd call great journalism.
Slashdot Mirror
The reality is that a hell of a lot - I'd venture the majority - of disabled parking permits are issued to those who, while just about qualifying for one if they harass a doctor who doesn't give a damn enough, really don't need one. If you expand that set out to relatives of someone with a permit who deliberately use the car with the permit, I'd be willing to guess it's the significant majority of permits you see.
My wife qualifies...
No one would dare dispute it. She was in a major car wreck, left in a coma for a month, her brain stem started to die off, her hypothalamus was damaged, her ability to compartmentalise was hammered and she lost 20 IQ points (fortunately, as she was a national merit winner beforehand, she's still way above most people but it's one hell of a loss to someone like that). She suffered a collapsed lung, needed a tracheotomy, broke ribs, shattered her arm to the point that they actually prepped her for amputation before spending 11 hours rebuilding it with metal plates. Her eye socket was cracked affecting her vision, the hammer/stirrup/anvil in one ear were separated leaving her deaf in it, the nerve serving her nose was damaged leaving her barely able to smell or taste much beyond the basic sweet/sour/salty of the tongue. Oh, and her jaw was snapped and subsequently wired leaving her unable to speak at first when she came to.
Her parents were told, in the weeks and months following, to not expect her to ever get out of a wheelchair for more than a few paces again as, given the nature of her brain injuries, she'd likely always fatigue very quickly. They were also told she'd need round-the-clock supervision and she was even certified mentally incompetent for a while (explains her marrying me but that's another issue). She also got told she'd never be able to return to school, given the brain injuries.
Rather than sucking all of that up, she forced her ass out of the wheelchair, got walking slowly and eventually pushed herself to the point of getting qualified as a personal trainer. She even went on an picked up a B.S. in Kinesiology and Pre-Physical Therapy.
The point of all of this being that, despite pushing herself, even now she easily qualifies as disabled - given the brain injuries affecting fatigue etc. and the shattered arm - yet she refuses to take a disabled parking permit or any other benefits. Even at the worst of it, she refused to do so - she'd rather walk slowly because she could still walk a little, than take a space that, as she puts it, "is needed by someone with real problems."
So, having watched her, I think it's a reasonable statement for someone like me to say that the significant majority of parking permit usage I've seen - while maybe technically qualifying - is hardly essential. And that's not to metion the cases where they don't even have a hanging permit or disabled plates but still park in blue spaces.
That being the case, when I watch someone climb out of a raised pickup, a good three or four feet off the ground, having just parked in a disabled parking spot with no permit, before comfortably wandering through flowerbeds etc., yeah, I'm willing to challenge that [politely]. The statistics are clearly enough in favor for me to consider it worth taking the risk.
Am I the only one picturing "Adam" right now?...
Looking at the naked Eve who has just turned up beside him, quite liking what he sees. "So, this is what I get for a spare rib?"
Looking at the printer. "Can you get back to me in a few hours? Maybe with the full catalogue?"
PC Load Flesh? What the hell does that even mean?!
When I'm drunk off my rocker and want to select a particular song, it takes forever.
Not exactly the optimum environment for voice activation though, is it...
"I mish jenny! I loved her! MP3 player, play me our [belch] song."
"Sorry, Our Earl Song is not recognized"
"MP3 player, play... play... I will alwaysh... alwaysh... always looove [indistinct sobbing] you."
"Sorry, I Will Awake Awake Always Loofah Uh-Huh Uh-Huh You is not recognized."
"Play I will alwaysh love you!"
"You're drunk, aren't you."
"Yesh"
"Please sober up and get some diction before trying to talk to me again. It's no wonder Jenny left you."
"Hey, you're not supposed to be able to say that to me! How're you doing it?"
"You're drunk. You're having this whole imaginary conversation with yourself. Now please go and lie down. You smell like an ashtray."
There are two ways to challenge a law you consider unjust...
/. sentiment
Legally, within the bounds of the law.
Illegally, outside of those bounds.
The first solution is taken by people like Ghandi, Martin Luther King, etc. We respect them.
The second is taken by such luminaries as Timothy McVeigh and those fine upstanding people who blow up abortion clinics because they consider abortion a sin. We consider them a$$holes.
What is legal or illegal is not the same as what is right or wrong. But there is a right and a wrong way to challenge that. People often confuse that. Please don't.
This farmer may well have felt that what Monsanto was trying to enforce was wrong. So challenge that in court. Campaign against them. Raise awareness. Start an organisation to fight the patenting of genes. Whether the contract was wrong or not, that doesn't grant the him the right to simply ignore the law and breach a contract he knew about.
Music piracy is much the same thing. I don't necessarily agree with the way the RIAA operates. I'd still rather vote with my cash or challenge them legally than try the childish "well they did something wrong so it entitles me to!"
Moderate -5 - Goes against the general
Condensation happens where something is cooler than the air surrounding it, hence the water condenses on to it.
The reason ultra cooled PCs suffer from condensation, normally, is because the cooling unit (where it connects to the chip it's cooling) is way below the normal air temperature surrounding it.
In a refridgerator, the air is the cool part while the PC is generating the heat. Hence, if anything, any moisture on the system is going to evapourate off, rather than condense on.
The one area which is going to suffer from condensation will be the cooling elements of the refridgerator themselves - as they're the part that drags air temperature down - but they shouldn't be connected to the PC anyway.
Finally, just because the box happens to be a refridgerator, there's no reason you need to keep its interior down around 5C/40F... All it's doing is keeping the PC at a sane temperature in the summer - so the thermostat can be set to a much more reasonable 20C/70F (unless you're trying to overclock to crank out the framerates on Qua... uh... the web browser being used for design plans). By that point the condensation scenario stops being any different to a PC in a regular room.
Put the PC inside a cheap $50 refridgerator. Keeps it cool in summer, protects it from dust year-round. A small hole through the seal for each cable, sealed with whatever, keeps the thing sealed whilst allowing cables to run out.
You'd be lucky to find any cheaper integrated cooling/dust free enclosure.
If you did want to spend more, you could always put it all inside a glass topped cooler, monitor and all, so just a wireless keyboard and mouse were out on top. Plus the thing turns in to another available (albeit not that strong) work surface.
Been there, done that.
When I set up my new tank, full of bala sharks, it occured to me that I had a laser pointer for driving the cat nuts. Many happy hours were spent shining it on the shark's heads while telling anyone who'd listen, "Look, sharks, with frickin' "lasers" on their heads."
End result: Pissed off bala sharks and friends who think you're an even bigger nerd than they did before. It sounded so much cooler in the movie.
Moore's Second Law:
Every 18 months there will be twice as many stories saying Moore's law can't continue.
Moore's Third Law:
In 18 months, with hindsight given to whatever the next advance is that they missed, they will look twice as stupid.
Nah. Taco set up slashdot and ran it for years, just so he could then do that whole on-slashdot proposal thing and have links to pictures of his SO/rapidly becoming fiance. I bow before that kind of intro to bragging.
6. Must have an FM tuner, since people buy Mp3 players to listen to the radio, not their music files.
/. as 1) we're all nerds and think that sounds cool and 2) what the hell is a gym anyway?
To be fair, a lot of people who buy the minis are buying them specifically for the gym. Most gyms also have TVs that are muted with their sound broadcast via FM for those with radios. A built in radio stops you looking like a complete nerd, having your MP3 player on one arm, radio on the other, graphing calculator in one pocket, cell phone on your hip, PDA in the other pocket and god knows how many pocket protectors.
Of course, it's an understandable mistake to make on
Which, I guess, is why I married a personal trainer/physical therapist and still bought her an iPod last week which I get to endlessly worship for it's unmatched UI design while never going anywhere near her beloved gym.
No gimmicks. Unless Sony has figured out a way to violate the laws of physics with the camera you mention, I'll bet dimes to dollars that I could take the same shots (well, maybe not the same exact shots that you're privy to, apparently) in the same conditions and have them turn out better with my DSLR.
Sony have. Well, kind of.
I'm not talking about excessively long exposures or anything else like that. What they do is mount the equivalent of an IR flashlight in to the body and then disable the IR filter (note: it may be UV, not IR, I forget the details). That way, you get a monochrome image even in absolute (as far as the human eye can determine) darkness.
Even with a non-visible wavelength flashlight illuminating your subject, you wouldn't be able to reproduce it on most DSLRs as they have filters in place to stop that non-visible light messing up your shots. Some people do disable them as IR photography's really popular within the black and white realm if not an essential component - but it requires the kind of mod that'll invalidate your warranty in an instant.
As a straight feature, I'll grant you, it's kind of gimicky - you've got limited range before that light source dissipates and it's greenscale monochrome.
However, it does have one really nice application - the camera can use that mode to focus without disturbing a subject, then only fire the flash at the instant you want to take the shot. Something like the 10D still needs some basic illumination for its autofocus to work. Sure, you can manually focus but that only works if you, yourself, can still see easily. The V1 (and 727/828s) become a godsend for shooting wildlife at night as you don't do anything to startle them and still get a great color image, in focus, once the flash fires.
So, no laws of physics got violated in the making of this reply. But some tricks you can't do with any camera without modding it were used.
I have a 10D. The mirror lockup custom function is so there's no shake during sensitive exposures. It doesn't give any preview on the LCD while it's taking that shot or in advance of the shot.
The Rebel has a firmware crack that reportedly re-enables the custom functions (as the Rebel is, in many ways, a disabled 10D with sharpening turned up, in a plastic body). That would get you mirror lock up but, just as with the 10D, there's no preview on the LCD, the mirror lockup does something else entirely.
If you know of any way to get a live preview on the LCD while in mirror lock up, I'd love to know about it. But I've never heard of it, nor found it on my 10D.
DSLRs are available from the $800s ($899 being pretty typical for a basic model with a basic lens) but, even as an owner of one, that's not the main reason I'd recommend for most people not to get one...
They're Huge
Most normal consumers want a digital camera so they can take it to parties, take it on holiday, etc. Even the 3/4 size DSLRs have physically large bodies and get even bigger when you add lenses. They're not the kind of thing you want to carry on a night out unless you're really serious.
They're Heavy
See They're Huge. Even if you don't mind the bulk, you probably don't want to carry the weight of one everywhere you go.
You Can't "Sneak Them In"
That tiny little DSC-T1 will get passed all but the most determined concert security. There's no way you'll get a DSLR with lenses and flash past them.
They're Complicated
Command line is far more useful than a windowed file manager for geeks. For everyone else, it just adds far too much confusion. They want to point, press a button, get a picture. Maybe some other features would be nice but they don't want their grandmother to be intimidated when they ask her to quickly take a family picture.
They Don't Have Previews On The LCD
As the mirror's down to let you look through the view finder, the sensor isn't capturing anything until you press the release. As a result, you don't get live previews on the LCD. This makes holding it up in the air and getting a shot over a crowd way harder than when you can preview that screen. Sure, a serious photographer would never use an LCD for quality reasons - but a typical consumer cares far less about that than the convenience.
No Movie Mode
As the mirror can either send the image to the view finder OR the sensor, if it tried to shoot a movie it'd leave a black viewfinder. Sure, the quality sucks but people still like to be able to email a 30 second clip of wishing grandma a happy christmas.
No Gimmick Features
Why does technology advance? Because the common man can use it for porn. Sony's DSC-V1 is a little camera that lets you take shots in absolute darkness, without flash - perfect for your home porn movies. The movie features mentioned above are just the same. All of those gimmicks are essential to the common man.
Porn Excuse Number 2
Slipping out your little compact with your date might be a little cheeky and adventurous. Pulling out your DSLR, changing lenses, setting up the tripod and mounting your TTL flash is just plain creepy.
DSLRs are amazing things. I can take images I could only dream of with my digital compact. But, for all that, they really aren't anywhere near as flexible for the average person who wants convenience [and the low price point] over spending hours obsessing over the perfect shot.
Finally, as any photo journalism professor will tell you: The best camera you can ever own is the one you always have with you. Very few photojournalist had their DSLRs out when the planes went in to the twin towers. The tourist with his cheap and nasty video camera did. End result? The tourist got the shot. The best camera for you is the one you'll use the most. For most people, DSLRs are just too big, heavy and inconvenient to use that much while a tiny compact can go everywhere with them.
It's worth noting that I'm English (though living in the U.S.)
;)
When all Americans can correctly differentiate the United Kingdom, from Great Britain, from England; when they can correctly differentiate the House of Lords, House of Commons; hell, when they learn that England isn't a city in U-rope... then I'll make a point of worrying about the singular entity nature of Congress. I'll even be generous enough to do so when only one in ten can.
Until then, I'll carry on not giving a [term for an act of, uh, congress (the other kind)].
I just sent them:
Congress were told, recently, that complaints to the FCC are rising dramatically.
In 2000 and 2001, the FCC only received 350 complains. In 2002, 14,000. In 2003, 240,000. Clearly TV is becoming much more offensive.
Until you discover that 99.8% of all complaints are from the PTC (Parents Television Council). If you do the math, the 0.2% of complaints that aren't part of a political lobbying body amount to... 480. That's right, an increase of 130 over 2000/2001.
So, while Congress are wringing their hands over how terrible TV has got, the reality is that it's barely changed at all - but a political lobbying group who want to censor TV is creating a vastly disproportionate impact by effectively spamming the crap out of the FCC.
The real truth is that there are roughly 1.5 complaints for every MILLION people in the U.S. - i.e. NO major issues with the content of TV. That a tiny minority interest group can so skew the figures as to make it appear that the ration's as high as one in a thousand is, frankly, disgusting. That Congress are being fed their lies, rather than having the truth pointed out, is even worse.
Though it does beg the question: What would happen if a small group - say a thousand people, sent a letter to the FCC each day complaining that shows didn't go far enough with their nudity, violence and profanity. They'd outnumber the conservative complaints 3:2 for even those small numbers.
Something appealed about the irony of using their own website to complain about their actions. As they helpfully noted: All five FCC commissioners have been sent a copy of your email.
>> I bet you'd struggle to find one in 50 who had ever even written a hello world in qbasic, one in 500 who could do the same in C
And what has that to do with a person's ability to use a computer as a teaching aid? If they're supposed to be teaching computing then sure; if they're just supposed to be *teaching*, though, and are using the computer as another tool, like exercise books and a blackboard are tools, then what does it matter? As long as they *can* use it, they should be fine.
In my day, we had to make our own blackboards before we could teach, then go out to the chalk cliffs and hew our own writing materials from the rock face. We had to cut down our own trees, shred them, soak the fibers in water, dry them and bind them if we wanted books. Then our ma and pa would beat us to death with a broken bottle and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
The down side was we never had any time to learn about the subjects we were meant to be teaching but we sure as hell understood how a blackboard worked.
Tell young'uns that today and they won't believe you.
What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?
I could turn my current PC in to a house? I'd never have to pay a heating bill again!
If we continue down taxing gas usage only, we'll get to a point where rural areas are paying a significant part of the taxes for upkeep of the road.
What, make people who use rural roads that are far less efficient, getting two or three cars per day, pay more than city drivers who densely share the same roads far more efficiently?
Why, that's scandalous!
Besides, have you been to California? I live here. I'm not so sure there actually is anywhere rural. We have cities, mountains, desert, freeways and some weird green stuff up North of which Regan said, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all".
Dude, replace that Linux install with Windows. I just have one big, blue, indeterminate ad.
Anyone who's anyone knows Sharper Image have been selling these for years.
;)
There's really no end to the crap Sharper Image can add ions to and double the price for. It only stood to reason they'd release spaceships with them too.
You'll find them in their catalogue next to the negative ion vacuum cleaners, negative ion air purifiers, negative ion hair driers, negative ion bikini zone razors, and negative ion pet hair brushes (the scary thing is I only made one of that entire list up).
The data served is the highest publicly available set with one pixel for approx. 460 meters.
Wow. Imagine if this tool with this kind of accuracy was available for Earth?!
"Dude, where are you?"
"I'm on Everest."
"No you're not."
"Yes I am! It's the biggest damn mountain on the planet."
"No, you're on a twenty pixel compression artefact."
"Damn."
Would you get time to enter the override code in an emergency?
Seeing as the most common gun related emergency most gun owners face is from their own weapon (shooting a family member, being shot by a family member, an intruder getting their weapon, accidentally shooting themselves, etc.) It strikes me as a small price to pay...
As a straigh cost vs. benefit analysis:
If over 50% of cases where you (or a family member) are injured by any weapon come from your own weapon.
If less than 50% of cases where you (or a family member) are injured by someone else's weapon and thus needed your weapon to defend yourself.
Even if your weapon doubles the less than 50% risk, if you remove the greater than 50% risk, you're safer.
Then again, if logic were the only consideration, the NRA wouldn't fight so hard against things like gun safes and trigger locks. The reason they do has far less to do with the intelligence of the argument and far more to do with refusing to set foot on a slippery slope.
Logically, if guns could only be fired by the biometrics of a licensed user, the average teenage gang member would be far less likely to be armed (yes, sophisticated criminals will always get around it) and the average home would remove its single greatest threat from weapons (its own).
But, if they agree to that limitation, what's to stop the next limitation being something like "a gun will not fire unless it registers it's been locked in a gunsafe for at least 12 of the last 24 hours"? Then the next one becomes limitations on who can buy gun safes, making it harder for people to own guns. Then there's a limitation on the types of weapons commercial gunsafes acknowledge. Then a limitation to guns that can fire non-lethal rounds. And so on and so on until they end up without their nice reassuring method of [statistically] killing their own family members.
Jet engines in laptops? Cool! Can I do the frozen chicken cannon testing, to see if it can survive a bird strike?
What do you mean it's not the same thing? Your new technology sucks then.
"Evans bases his Kildall chapter on a 226-page, never-published memoir written by Kildall just before his death in 1994. ... But by the time he died at age 52, after falling in a tavern, he had become embittered and struggled with alcohol."
So, the entire chapter is based on the writings of an embittered drunk after he had become an embittered drunk.
"Screw you all, I would have been Shaq if it hadn't have been for that deliberate foul that caused my knee injury!" doesn't make the washed up drunk any more of a pro basketball player. It doesn't even mean the foul was deliberate. It means an embittered person who didn't have any of the rest of the personality aspects that led to the other person's success, never put in the work, never fought as hard to get back up from setbacks, and, likely, wasn't even fouled half as deliberately as they've come to convince themselves has simply convinced themselves that their life could have been better if it wasn't for something unfair someone else did to them.
Basing an article on their embittered rantings, because it makes for a sensational enough article to sell some copies of your book and get some headlines, isn't exactly what I'd call great journalism.