This is because computer programming is fundamentally different than heavy industry. In industry if you come up with a new idea it could take billions (new X-Ray lithography idea or something) to exploit it. In programming ideas are much easier to implement.
But software patents wouldn't even be so bad at two year lengths. If you did patent something it'd pretty much guarantee you made it to market first (Unless it was Daikatana or Duke Nukem Forever) but it wouldn't delay a competitor's product for long. The idea of patenting discoveries would still suck, but at least it wouldn't suck for long.
Hell, it'd clean up industry a lot if they'd make predatory tactics illegal, either offering a free license to everyone you tried to torpedo (is that what you do with a submarine patent?:) or simply revoking the patent of anyone who plays games with it.
IE not crap? Go to google and search for "IE Exploit". Many of those are huge holes which allow you to read and write local files.
The only comparable hole in Mozilla was patched before 1.0 and was done quickly once discovered, unlike Microsoft's "We'll fix it when we get to it" attitude.
Actually, handled by anyone else, IE might not be bad. It's MS that sucks. Relying on their software hurts. I suspect that by now, IE's code is as spaghetti-ish as Netscape's was before they killed it and wrote Mozilla, but because of MS's internal politics it'll never get re-written, it'll just have more and more cruft glued onto it resulting in more interesting bugs.
If they ever get Palladium working they'll have to face that the biggest threat to user security (which isn't their main focus, security *from* users is...) is IE and they'll probably start only rendering web pages signed by trusted coders or something to avoid fixing it. Chuckle.
Because Gecko doesn't come with a set of compromised-level exploits every month. Because Gecko renders standards compliant HTML properly. And, just because Gecko isn't a bloated, OS-tied, piece of crap like IE. Oh, and because using Gecko lets you keep the exact rendering engine on any other platforms you may port to.
Sigh. My 'Whole Idea of Economics' may be based on that, if you decide to ignore the other 95% of it.
You really need, and I mean the word NEED here, to stop using the word "logical" and by extension, illogical, until you understand what they mean. "Logical" doesn't just mean something that seems to make sense to you, it means something rigorously provable as the result of something else. A=B, B=C, thus logically, C=A. The things you call logical are not. This is hand in hand with you mistaking a philosophy for the objective truth.
What would you say if you and I were living in a libertarian utopia and you pissed me off such that I decided to use my money to attack you? Pretend that I go to every store in town and threaten economic ruin to anyone who sells you anything, and I go to all the businesses in town and I threaten then with ruin if they hire you. So I leave you, not owning any real property (means of production) without food or work. But I've also threatened to ruin anyone who gives you transportation to leave, so that you're stuck in a town without work, or food, or even a way to go elsewhere. If you starve for lack of food, did you "freely choose" to do so?
This kind of blacklisting goes on in our world, even with laws against it. In a libertarian world where there was no higher power to appeal to what would stop me from ruining you?
Don't forget that all I'm doing is investing my money as I see fit, I'm not actually directly hurting you in any way.
What you need to see is that there are many forms of force that don't involve physical violence.
What proof that some prominent rich people got rich through theft do you need? Will one example do, or do you expect me to prove that *some* did by showing you proof that everyone did? Tell me exactly what you require if you aren't happy with the example (Hearst empire, unreasonable land grants during the civil war era) that I provided.
When will you realize that this isn't the basis for any argument, this is merely a supporting point?
Sheesh. Read your message again and try to understand why libertarians come off as crackpots.
Libertarianism isn't based on reality any more than communism is. Both are philosophies dreamed up by people who think the whole world thinks like they do, or would, given the chance.
You attribute many motives and actions to me which aren't in what I wrote. You say that I support taking the rights of the rich people. You say this simply because I don't believe that a stary-eyed idealism is going to magically change the world. How can this be seen as support for something?
You later say that in an objectivist world the rich would have no power over the poor. Perhaps this is right in an ownership sense, but how can you support this claim? There are many instances in our less-capitalist world now where a wealthy landowner controls all the means of food production and guards them jealously, letting someone have a job, but never letting them gain control of their own life by being able to own land or a controlling share of a factory.
Furthermore, there are factory towns where workers are brought and then given jobs that will never pay enough for them to leave, unless they pack their family up and walk the hundreds of miles back to a big city. It's pretty easy to imagine how someone ruthless, with control over resources and the willingness to bankrupt others through foul play (paying their suppliers to not deal with them, etc) could end up with a fairly controlling monopoly. They could then leverage this control into making the workers virtual slaves. Sure, someone could leave, but where could they go, and if they got there, chances are that the owner of that territory would refuse to deal with them, in solidarity with the other landowner because if the workers got the idea that life could be better elsewhere, they might try to pack up and move.
I would accept a world where you and I started equal and you got ahead of me by virtue of working harder (or smarter) and actually earned your way. Why though would I accept a world where I started out below someone else because of past crimes?
You keep claiming that the rich earn their place, as if completely blind to the example I mentioned and the obvious fact that this sort of behaviour is all too common. Why would I accept that I had to start farming a plot I didn't own, or working in someone else's factory, because there was no land for me, having all been claimed (by force) by the ancestors of the current landowner? For this to not be a problem, the number of people whose wealth was created (even in part) by theft (of any form) would have to be statistically insignificant. Any honest reading of history indicates the opposite.
As for the irrationality that would destroy the system, it's a commonly held belief that "the rising tide floats all boats" and that a stronger economy, though it may not directly help you, will indirectly help you by enriching the world including your potential customers, and developing new products for you to buy. However, large controlling monopolies tend to stifle creativity and eventually, the economy. They still bring in money for their owners, but that money isn't as useful because the economy they'd spend it in is weaker. This suggests that everyone would be better off if they tolerated some competition and didn't stifle new development as a threat to their monopoly control. History is full of examples though of people who attempt to strangle the economy just to make themselves marginally richer.
This is irrational. All the money in the world wouldn't have gotten a medieval king to the moon, or given him a heart transplant. Money is only a means of getting things, if you horde it indefinately it's useless. This hording however destroys society and often leads to a bloody rebellion as people try to gain freedom.
The problem with objectivism in the real world is that people all want to be insanely rich without any final goal so they end up working towards stifling everyone else instead of developing towards something. The monopolies of today are powerful enough and exert enough non-government control, creating a world where they could grow unchecked would simply speed us to the point where we'd need to throw the bastards out and start over.
One way around this roadblock is to expand what "human rights" encompasses. If it doesn't include an education many people will be poor (and thus useless to society) for life because of their parents bad economic choices. A little investment here can help everyone in the "rising tide" sense. Also, someone forced through economic means to work in a dead-end job at a factory doesn't help society much either, or the factory owner who isn't motivated to modernize because he's got a steady supply of essentially slave labour. If you guarantee everyone a basic income (or the ability to work for it) that doesn't enrich anyone else, perhaps by giving everyone a birthright of enough land to farm to raise a family in a self sufficient way, you give the family a way out of economic slavery (though a low-end way) and you give the factory owners incentive to develop jobs that are better than this subsistence living.
Currently in the third world many companies are actively interested in destroying farming land and moving the subsistence farmers to the cities. They don't do this to increase the standard of living for these people, they do it to create a cheap workforce for themselves. If the people had an option to dirty and dangerous factory work they'd probably take it. But as their only source of food is the company store, they'll take the work just to stay alive.
Basically, I'm saying that there are many forms of force that don't involve me sticking a gun to your head but that leave you with the same lack of real choice. If you don't recognize this and provide choice for people, you're allowing force by those big enough to control others. They may do this only because they can't see that they'd be better off in the end through cooperation (being irrational) but it still destroys the economic system by taking away everyone else's chance to better themselves through work.
The simplistic form of the libertarian ideals is valid in small groups where everyone has the same goals (live and let live) and where people retain enough power to chuck out someone who starts using force. To mandate that everyone follow these ideals though, without refining them for large group dynamics, is ridiculous. They need to be a general guiding principle "through work, one improves *himself*" instead of a set of hard dogma.
Well, I'm not worried. I've dealt with this since the early 80s.
I've moved data from 5.25s to 3.5s, and then to a HD. I've also waited just a little too long and had to jump through annoying hoops in getting some of the 5.25s transfered over so I know how annoying it can be to do. I won't make that mistake again. I've got disc images on the HD of my old floppies, and my old HD (it's a sparse image now, as I've deleted all the executables I've got on the big drive, and all the data I've moved over, but I've got the space so I'll keep it for a long time to be sure.)
I've got a little 20GB drive I use for backups. It's in the safe deposit box at the bank when I don't have it at home to put data on it.
I do burn CDs, but that's only for sending pictures to relatives. I wouldn't trust the flaky things for backup.
I've actually lost a lot of pictures in print form. My HDs stay in my computer (or the safe deposit box) and I'm not going to lose either of those.
As for viewing with the family, I find it's easier to cluster chairs around the computer (21" monitor) and flip through the pictures where everyone can easily see them. It helps that I store pictures by date and give them good names, I can find a picture among the thousands on the drive faster than I could flip through some awkward book.
It's also great for our relatives with bad eyes. You can zoom in easily on the people in the pictures and scroll around.
People just need to be aware of the backup issues and be careful. But just like you don't leave prints in direct sunlight and you keep track of the books when you move.
Don't get a Nikon Coolpix unless you're into frustrating user interfaces.
A Canon, Minolta, or Olympus would be good. The Canon S30/S40 are good. The Canon G2 is better, it's got an even brighter (wider, faster, etc) lens which helps for shots indoors without flash.
Spend as much as you can reasonably afford. There's never too much detail and you can't get more later. You can print your pictures later if you feel the need, but likely you'll keep all but a few wall-hanging ones on the computer. The savings from this will easily pay for the camera.
You probably won't be happy in the long run with Less than an Canon S40/G2 or comparable. You won't be able to make really clean 8x10s (important for the grandparents) and the better the camera, the more manual functions it'll have, letting you override it when you get better at photography. (And you will, a few thousand pics later, with the camera saving all the settings info for later perusal, and you can't help but learn.)
If you want more, specific info, reply to this. I don't want to get too wordy initially though.
More resolution is always good. It lets you take a picture at maximum zoom, crop it (or zoom in with your picture viewer) and still get high resolution.
And yes, most everyone who has ever said "I wish I had a picture of that" would benefit from a digital camera. There's no barrier to just snapping a shot. If it doesn't work, no loss. If it does, you've got an awesome shot. It's risk free and quickly pays for itself by giving you so many photos you'd have never had. For parents, it's almost essential. So many more pictures of the rugrats, including all the moments that wouldn't be important enough to bring out a film camera that later turn out to be very important.
Don't forget backups. Your CDRs are probably as long-lasting a most drugstore prints but they're considerably cheaper. You can easily afford to burn a few more copies and keep them off-site.
I've never seen anyone do what you say your father did.
As someone else said, the point of digital is to pick and print the best, not everything. Digital loses most of its price advantage if you go and get prints made.
I've shot 8000 pictures since May, I've had 50 4x6 prints made, mostly for greeting cards. The 5800 or so that I've kept are all on the computer. When I did want prints made I tossed the 20 different shots on a CR-RW and walked a few blocks to the neighborhood camera store/photo lab.
As for the use for resolution? It lets you crop a lot and still have a very high-res print.
Besides, if you keep your photos on the computer you can zoom in and scroll around, seeing a lot more detail than you could if you printed out everything at 8x10.
BTW, for anyone looking to buy a digital camera, get one you like the interface for. Nikon has a horrible reputation in this area, Canon is great, Minolta and Olympus are pretty good. The whole point of digital is to allow you to take a picture anywhere, anytime, if you have to fight your camera to use any manual function you're not going to do a lot of photography. For choosing a camera, read the reviews at www.dpreview.com or a similar site. And don't obsess about mega-pixels. Quality is only partly related. A good 4MP will blow away an average 5MPs. And buy one with a 'fast' lens (low F-stop rating. Try to f2.0 at least.) The physical lens needs to be large, a pinhole doesn't let in enough light to be easily usable in the evening or indoors.
I don't see this as a indictment of objectivism, as you put it. What I see is that that many people are incapable of behaving rationally. Objectivism and many other schools of thought assume that people are going to act in their long-term best interest.
If people don't, assumptions about how things will come into balance eventually aren't valid.
As for the issue that many people stole their wealth... I think that many people are where they are as the result of theft, or very questionable practice, by them or their ancestors.
The Hearst empire is largely built on nearly-fraudulent land grants just after the US civil war. This ignores all the shady deals of the publishing side of the business. This is just an example off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more but I can't back up any of my suspicions without more research.
Objectivism requires people acknowledging that skill and ability is what gets you where you are. In a world where this isn't the case, how do you expect people to respect the property "rights" of those they perceive as criminals.
This is what makes it more of a theoretical system instead of something that I think would work.
btw, your figures for self-made wealth ignore the free schooling and often interest free loans that many children of the rich receive which gives them a huge hand up over the real self-made. Lumping Bill Gates in with Dave Thomas (Wendy's) is quite unfair for Dave. Dave grew up poor and fought for everything. Bill went to Harvard(?) for (worth it for the contacts even though e dropped out) and his parents supposedly loaned him money to get started in business at a few critical times. But I don't think this is really on topic.
As for the "self mutilation" idea... A lack of enlightened self interest is most damaging when someone acts economically because of non-economic motives (religion, anger, etc) and hurts many people. Someone could act to destroy a competitor because of some irrational reason and in doing so, destroy their own business. I believe this is very common behaviour and that it means we can't expect a stable social order to emerge simply by trusting that those with money earned it by being rational and will thus keep being rational.
The foundation of libertarian ideals is that people will respect basic human rights and that from this, everything will come into place. I don't see this happening.
See, for example, all the idle and stupid rich in Atlas Shrugged, if you wish to use it as an example. In the libertarian world people would still pass riches to useless children and in a generation or two we'd be right back where we are now, expect that this useless rich would have almost total power over the less rich. (Not that it's much different from today...)
Oh, I didn't say Heinlein is intellectually rigorous. In fact, often the opposite. He doesn't try to prove anything, he just writes a fun story.
I think you'll find your quest is hopeless. No matter how consistent a philosophy is, it can't be directly related to the world. Logic can prove consistency, but it can't prove a physical reality.
Also, Rand makes a few assumptions that I don't think are valid. In a world of people who are only striving for themselves, all of whom have started equal and are intelligent enough to act in their long-term best interest, you can start to see the effects of libertarianism. In a world (ours) where many people are rich only because their parents stole (literally, with force) resources from the original holders and where people irrationally pursue actions that hurt them as well in the end, I don't think we can rely on enlightened self interest.
But yes, exposure to these ideas is good. I just don't think Rand is the proper way to do it. If Galt's speech is the key, that's probably what people should read. I'm sure it's on the net, google for it and post a link instead of pointing people to a book they'll probably get bored with before the 'good stuff' shows up.
The problem with Atlas Shrugged is that people use it to prove something, which it can't do. I can write a book in which the tall people are proved to be naturally smarter and end up taking over the world, but it doesn't prove anything. It wouldn't even make a valid argument for tall people being superior because I wouldn't have presented any evidence, or looked at possibly contrary evidence.
What a book can do is give you something to think about.
However, many people have read Rand's books and though about them, and found them lacking. I sure did. It's not that I didn't agree with her ideas, I'm a bit of a libertarian, but I didn't agree with her conclusions or that simply writing the story proves anything like so many other people do.
Furthermore, I think her ideas would come across more easily, and more usefully, if they were written into a twenty page essay than a long book. The book clouds the basic idea presentation with a plot (that quite frankly wasn't that good).
As such, I wouldn't recommend that anyone read the book. There's no reason to not read it, except that unless you're a strong libertarian in need of a feel-good read.
What's wrong with the book is that all the rich people are geniuses. There's nobody who's rich simply because their grand-parents fenced off a huge tract of grazing land because their wagon got there six months ahead of everyone else's. Nobody in the book made deals to cut off a competitor's raw materials in order to build a monopoly, or sabotages their product in a subtle way and blamed the other product for failing to inter-operate.
If someone like Rearden existed, someone who invented an honestly better product, and who was happy just to profit on his product instead of trying to use some bogus license agreement to forbid trains on track he made from carrying food (for competitors), to allow him to corner the market, I'd support them. In fact, I do. I have no problem with companies that compete strongly, as long as they aren't so afraid of competition that they have to ruin the other company outside of the market. These days companies contribute so heavily to politics that most ruinous laws are passed in favor of the corporations, instead of in favor of the loafing people as Rand suggested.
It seemed simplistic. All of the antagonists were pathetic caricatures and all of the protagonists were uber-men (and women). None of the big business in the book was using standard big-business tactics. Nothing really seemed to apply beyond the scope of the book.
I'd suggest you read Heinlein. He's got the same libertarian viewpoint (quote: "When a place starts to require ID, it's time to leave.") except he's usually got a story behind it. And he's not trying to prove anything so he focuses on plot instead of the politics.
Search for Virtual Linux, a Mandrake based, CD distro that runs entirely off of the CD.
It supports all the major filesystems, has pretty well every utility that Mandrake installs come with, and fits on a CD.
If you want a business-card sized distro, check out PLAC (Portable Linux Assesment CD, or something). But it won't be as full-features of course.
The drawback of these is that they aren't customized to your system the way a rescue disk is. But perhaps they could look for an optional rescue floppy and read a bunch of settings off of it.
This is the same argument about Linux not working on the desktop because it's too hard to install...
Not only is that obsolete (try installing the latest Mandrake, it's about the same as Win2k) but it completely ignores the point that users don't install their own OSes, they either hire someone to do it, or they buy the computer and it comes pre-installed.
If you were to set up a linux computer for your grandmother you wouldn't turn on any servers, you wouldn't leave a link to an XTerm on the desktop, and you wouldn't make her learn that 'Konqueror' or 'Mozilla' was a web browser, you'd pick the one she'd use and call it 'Browse the Internet'.
In my consulting I've seen user's reactions to command lines, either they've gotten one by accident or I've left one open. It scares them. They don't understand the complexities of Windows, so why expect that you'd toss them into this on Linux?
You could set up a pretty decent computer with Open Office, Mozilla, an IM client, and XMMS. The user wouldn't need to install or configure anything and could do most of what they could on Windows, except open email worms.
Of course I could baffle even a power user by dumping them into either of my development workstations, the Linux or the Windows one. Neither has any icons they'd be familiar with and most of the icons launch debuggers or shells. But this isn't a valid test of anything except my BOFH factor.
That's how US law works. There are implied contracts.
But, these are for obvious things (by definition), contracts so obvious that they are implied by your everyday actions. This is what makes giving a clerk money and taking something a sale without having to specifically agree to sale terms or in fact, even talk at all.
There are also implied warranties. If I offer something for sale as a Widget you can be sure that it's going to function, at least a little, as a Widget. There are only a few circumstances where this isn't true. (Lot sales, clearly marked as-is sales, etc.)
A contract that takes effect after you've bought something and taken it home isn't something do obvious that it goes without saying. And moreso, the simple fact that someone once tried an invalid contract doesn't mean you need to expect and honor them in the future.
Would it make sense for a customer to go into a store, but a bottle of milk, and then upon getting home, discover that the milk could only legally be used in certain food products, and that to encourage the dairy industry you had to use it in three days or throw it out, despite the fact that its shelf life might be much longer? It's not any more reasonable when you consider software either.
People don't have to agree with the law to be bound by it. You don't have to agree that reckless driving is an offense to be fined for it. The same (roughly) goes for copyright violation. If you buy a book you know you're bound by copyright law. This doesn't imply that people expect purchasing books to restrict their actions and thus should expect a further "contract" inside the book.
No matter how you look at it, hidden suprise contracts can't be binding.
An EULA keeps you from using the software you just bought.
The GPL doesn't do anything, until you want to make a copy, then it gives you a legal way to do it.
EULAs are an after-market, no-warning contract and are totally invalid under standard contract law. The GPL is a standard type licensing agreement of the type agreed to all the time.
The big difference is that one prevents you from doing things you should be able to do, the other allows you to do things you otherwise couldn't.
I've seen reasonable estimates of up to 25MP for 35mm film. But very high-end ASA 50, with incredible lenses.
Shoot with anything you'd need indoors without studio lighting (and not able to do long exposures) and you're getting down to 5-8mp.
Digitals have noise, but with a good digital the picture noise isn't going to increase as fast as the grain in the film.
The day of digital is here if you're doing anything less than full-page blowups. When the Canon 11MP 1Ds comes out it'll produce better pictures in common wedding environments that pretty well any other 35mm camera.
It is very expensive, but that's why you go to a pro.
But if they make it too painful, people aren't going to. It's not as much that I'm cheap and don't want to pay for reprints as that I want the freedom of deciding for myself if I'd rather have a high quality print made or just toss some pics in email.
If they can't survive off of their labor fees, perhaps they should charge more.
Instead they're ripping off the customers.
If they need the same ammount of money to survive, and every technological and social change makes it harder to collect that in old ways, perhaps they should change their business models.
I think this is a topic you're familiar with or something...
You make a lot of good points about quality, and to the skill that it takes to get the shots.
But how does this relate to photographers having to retain control over the negatives. I wouldn't object to my photographer wanting to keep them in case I lost them, an insurance policy, but I want them too, or at least fair access to them at market rates. I don't expect to get pro prints at drug-store prices, but I want to be free to dump a photographer I don't want to do business with for any reason.
You haven't shown me why I, the customer, would be harmed by having the negatives and reproduction rights.
That's what this thread is about to me. Photographers who exist by extorting prints out of customers, for whom the chance that a guest picture will replace a sale is a terrible thing.
If I need you to take the pictures, can't I choose who prints them? Even if you tell me that you'll do a better job than nearly anyone else, what if I want the choice?
And as for digital, it depends on the results. If you're from the type of family where everyone have 20" prints hanging on their walls you'll appreciate high-quality, perhaps MF, pictures. If like me, you have a few picture frames and 8x10s seem large, you'll value the convenience of digital over the quality of high-end film.
I had my wedding shot in digital with a 1D, the 8x10s look very close to what my photographer had in his portfolio for 8x10s from film. What I gained from the digital aspect was that I had a CD the next day (I wouldn't take anything less than full ownership) and we took them with us to see the relatives on the other side of the continent. Instant gratification.
But really it's about the freedom to do with your pictures as you want to do. Be that with the negatives, scans from negatives, or the raw digital files.
And on a 5x7 or 8x10, behind glass from at least 25cm away, this difference is obvious how?
I freely admit that expensive machines can produce better output, but in the sizes that are covered by consumer printers, the differences aren't so pronounced as to make the cheap output unattractive when you're not specifically looking for flaws.
I've also seen accelerated aging results where pictures were exposed to 10-20 times stronger light than they'd get in a house, including UV. The standard ink-jet prints fade fairly quickly as you say, but the 'long-lasting' ones do quite well, 5-10 years of simulated lifespan at a minimum.
Not perfect, but it's a good budget choice.
If it comes down to be having my favorite 15 wedding pictures printed professionally and no access to the rest, or me having 10 printed professionally and running off copies of the rest as I see fit, after viewing them on the monitor whenever I want, I'll take the latter choice.
I'm satisfied with the quality of digital pictures because I don't want anything over 8x10 really and considering most don't shoot MF unless you're really paying a lot, that's about all I'd get from 35mm film. The 8x10s I've seen from (a nice) digital are better than film in many cases.
As for the scans/copies of the files... I didn't say I'd be happy with them. I *will* email pics to my friends and post them on my webpage. I'd rather get the raw output of the camera (I did) but if I didn't, I'd scan proofs if I needed. It's my day and my money, as far as my morals are concerned I own those pictures.
That's fair. What people want is for them to come, take pictures, provide negatives or original files, and leave. If you want prints you can get them done, either through that photographer or someone else, at a market price.
All technology (digital cameras and picture viewers) does is show how dead their business model is. Many photographers charge per pictures taken, even if they take eight on motor-drive of the same pose. That might have made sense when there were film costs, but now that each picture is essentially free, how is it justified? Photographers used to make the prints because a consumer simply couldn't duplicate a picture without professional help. Now you can send a picture to grandma with a scanner, or by sending the original file. If grandma wants prints she can make them instead of you having them done here and mailed (carefully) to her.
Technology has changed the profession. It hasn't eliminated the skill aspects but it is starting to cut into the technologial gap. (Now if only someone would hurry and invent Asimov's AnOpticon, the light-bending, no lens, technology...) People who really have skill to sell with appreciate it, their skill will be obvious if their tools are the same as yours, but it'll put a lot of hacks out of work, people who are just selling access to their expensive tools.
The article doesn't say "work-for-hire", but that's the standard assumption when you hire someone. When a company pays you to write a program they own the program and the right to use it despite any of your patented ideas you may have used. Simply your making it for them is implicit permission for them to use it.
If a plumber fixes your pipes there's the assumption that it's a one-time job. He'll fix the pipes and get out. If he installed a special pipe that only he had a wrench for (work with me here) or installed a water meter on the pipes and expected to use this to extort further payment, you'd sue him and have another plumber in, at the first guy's expense, to fix the mess.
So why are photographers different? They think they're artists, but the general public does not. They think they have a god-given right to a wacky business model, but does the general public?
I agree that the shopper should get everything spelled out, but this is only necessary because we're in such a kooky world that someone could come take pictures of you, at your insistence and paid by you, and then claim to own the results.
And there are more floppy drives than CD-ROMs probably, but if your professional computer guy gave you files on floppies instead of burning a CD, you'd probably be inconvenienced. Only one of my computers, my MP3 server, has a floppy these days. The others are all sitting in box in storage.
Not to mention that DVD is inherently superior to VHS like CD-ROMs to floppies. Any and every person with an ounce of sense would admit it.
The reason the videographer didn't give them a high-quality copy wasn't because they simply prefered the technology, it was to prevent them making high quality copies.
In my mind, the (photo|video)grapher in this situation is a thief. They're selling a service but not providing what people have a right to expect.
Feh. They'll be out of business soon. I'll never recommend someone who doesn't give you the high-quality 'negatives' and in fact I'll alert my friends to the cheesy attitude that infects this profession. A few smart people will change their business model, the rest will go broke and starve for all I care, the dishonest jerks.
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This is because computer programming is fundamentally different than heavy industry. In industry if you come up with a new idea it could take billions (new X-Ray lithography idea or something) to exploit it. In programming ideas are much easier to implement.
:) or simply revoking the patent of anyone who plays games with it.
But software patents wouldn't even be so bad at two year lengths. If you did patent something it'd pretty much guarantee you made it to market first (Unless it was Daikatana or Duke Nukem Forever) but it wouldn't delay a competitor's product for long. The idea of patenting discoveries would still suck, but at least it wouldn't suck for long.
Hell, it'd clean up industry a lot if they'd make predatory tactics illegal, either offering a free license to everyone you tried to torpedo (is that what you do with a submarine patent?
Couldn't we have beaten Germany by just upping the royalty fees for aircraft until the Krauts couldn't afford to build them? :)
IE not crap? Go to google and search for "IE Exploit". Many of those are huge holes which allow you to read and write local files.
The only comparable hole in Mozilla was patched before 1.0 and was done quickly once discovered, unlike Microsoft's "We'll fix it when we get to it" attitude.
Actually, handled by anyone else, IE might not be bad. It's MS that sucks. Relying on their software hurts. I suspect that by now, IE's code is as spaghetti-ish as Netscape's was before they killed it and wrote Mozilla, but because of MS's internal politics it'll never get re-written, it'll just have more and more cruft glued onto it resulting in more interesting bugs.
If they ever get Palladium working they'll have to face that the biggest threat to user security (which isn't their main focus, security *from* users is...) is IE and they'll probably start only rendering web pages signed by trusted coders or something to avoid fixing it. Chuckle.
Because Gecko doesn't come with a set of compromised-level exploits every month. Because Gecko renders standards compliant HTML properly. And, just because Gecko isn't a bloated, OS-tied, piece of crap like IE. Oh, and because using Gecko lets you keep the exact rendering engine on any other platforms you may port to.
But, other than all of those reasons you mean.
Sigh. My 'Whole Idea of Economics' may be based on that, if you decide to ignore the other 95% of it.
You really need, and I mean the word NEED here, to stop using the word "logical" and by extension, illogical, until you understand what they mean. "Logical" doesn't just mean something that seems to make sense to you, it means something rigorously provable as the result of something else. A=B, B=C, thus logically, C=A. The things you call logical are not. This is hand in hand with you mistaking a philosophy for the objective truth.
What would you say if you and I were living in a libertarian utopia and you pissed me off such that I decided to use my money to attack you? Pretend that I go to every store in town and threaten economic ruin to anyone who sells you anything, and I go to all the businesses in town and I threaten then with ruin if they hire you. So I leave you, not owning any real property (means of production) without food or work. But I've also threatened to ruin anyone who gives you transportation to leave, so that you're stuck in a town without work, or food, or even a way to go elsewhere. If you starve for lack of food, did you "freely choose" to do so?
This kind of blacklisting goes on in our world, even with laws against it. In a libertarian world where there was no higher power to appeal to what would stop me from ruining you?
Don't forget that all I'm doing is investing my money as I see fit, I'm not actually directly hurting you in any way.
What you need to see is that there are many forms of force that don't involve physical violence.
What proof that some prominent rich people got rich through theft do you need? Will one example do, or do you expect me to prove that *some* did by showing you proof that everyone did? Tell me exactly what you require if you aren't happy with the example (Hearst empire, unreasonable land grants during the civil war era) that I provided.
When will you realize that this isn't the basis for any argument, this is merely a supporting point?
Sheesh. Read your message again and try to understand why libertarians come off as crackpots.
Libertarianism isn't based on reality any more than communism is. Both are philosophies dreamed up by people who think the whole world thinks like they do, or would, given the chance.
You attribute many motives and actions to me which aren't in what I wrote. You say that I support taking the rights of the rich people. You say this simply because I don't believe that a stary-eyed idealism is going to magically change the world. How can this be seen as support for something?
You later say that in an objectivist world the rich would have no power over the poor. Perhaps this is right in an ownership sense, but how can you support this claim? There are many instances in our less-capitalist world now where a wealthy landowner controls all the means of food production and guards them jealously, letting someone have a job, but never letting them gain control of their own life by being able to own land or a controlling share of a factory.
Furthermore, there are factory towns where workers are brought and then given jobs that will never pay enough for them to leave, unless they pack their family up and walk the hundreds of miles back to a big city. It's pretty easy to imagine how someone ruthless, with control over resources and the willingness to bankrupt others through foul play (paying their suppliers to not deal with them, etc) could end up with a fairly controlling monopoly. They could then leverage this control into making the workers virtual slaves. Sure, someone could leave, but where could they go, and if they got there, chances are that the owner of that territory would refuse to deal with them, in solidarity with the other landowner because if the workers got the idea that life could be better elsewhere, they might try to pack up and move.
I would accept a world where you and I started equal and you got ahead of me by virtue of working harder (or smarter) and actually earned your way. Why though would I accept a world where I started out below someone else because of past crimes?
You keep claiming that the rich earn their place, as if completely blind to the example I mentioned and the obvious fact that this sort of behaviour is all too common. Why would I accept that I had to start farming a plot I didn't own, or working in someone else's factory, because there was no land for me, having all been claimed (by force) by the ancestors of the current landowner? For this to not be a problem, the number of people whose wealth was created (even in part) by theft (of any form) would have to be statistically insignificant. Any honest reading of history indicates the opposite.
As for the irrationality that would destroy the system, it's a commonly held belief that "the rising tide floats all boats" and that a stronger economy, though it may not directly help you, will indirectly help you by enriching the world including your potential customers, and developing new products for you to buy. However, large controlling monopolies tend to stifle creativity and eventually, the economy. They still bring in money for their owners, but that money isn't as useful because the economy they'd spend it in is weaker. This suggests that everyone would be better off if they tolerated some competition and didn't stifle new development as a threat to their monopoly control. History is full of examples though of people who attempt to strangle the economy just to make themselves marginally richer.
This is irrational. All the money in the world wouldn't have gotten a medieval king to the moon, or given him a heart transplant. Money is only a means of getting things, if you horde it indefinately it's useless. This hording however destroys society and often leads to a bloody rebellion as people try to gain freedom.
The problem with objectivism in the real world is that people all want to be insanely rich without any final goal so they end up working towards stifling everyone else instead of developing towards something. The monopolies of today are powerful enough and exert enough non-government control, creating a world where they could grow unchecked would simply speed us to the point where we'd need to throw the bastards out and start over.
One way around this roadblock is to expand what "human rights" encompasses. If it doesn't include an education many people will be poor (and thus useless to society) for life because of their parents bad economic choices. A little investment here can help everyone in the "rising tide" sense. Also, someone forced through economic means to work in a dead-end job at a factory doesn't help society much either, or the factory owner who isn't motivated to modernize because he's got a steady supply of essentially slave labour. If you guarantee everyone a basic income (or the ability to work for it) that doesn't enrich anyone else, perhaps by giving everyone a birthright of enough land to farm to raise a family in a self sufficient way, you give the family a way out of economic slavery (though a low-end way) and you give the factory owners incentive to develop jobs that are better than this subsistence living.
Currently in the third world many companies are actively interested in destroying farming land and moving the subsistence farmers to the cities. They don't do this to increase the standard of living for these people, they do it to create a cheap workforce for themselves. If the people had an option to dirty and dangerous factory work they'd probably take it. But as their only source of food is the company store, they'll take the work just to stay alive.
Basically, I'm saying that there are many forms of force that don't involve me sticking a gun to your head but that leave you with the same lack of real choice. If you don't recognize this and provide choice for people, you're allowing force by those big enough to control others. They may do this only because they can't see that they'd be better off in the end through cooperation (being irrational) but it still destroys the economic system by taking away everyone else's chance to better themselves through work.
The simplistic form of the libertarian ideals is valid in small groups where everyone has the same goals (live and let live) and where people retain enough power to chuck out someone who starts using force. To mandate that everyone follow these ideals though, without refining them for large group dynamics, is ridiculous. They need to be a general guiding principle "through work, one improves *himself*" instead of a set of hard dogma.
Well, I'm not worried. I've dealt with this since the early 80s.
I've moved data from 5.25s to 3.5s, and then to a HD. I've also waited just a little too long and had to jump through annoying hoops in getting some of the 5.25s transfered over so I know how annoying it can be to do. I won't make that mistake again. I've got disc images on the HD of my old floppies, and my old HD (it's a sparse image now, as I've deleted all the executables I've got on the big drive, and all the data I've moved over, but I've got the space so I'll keep it for a long time to be sure.)
I've got a little 20GB drive I use for backups. It's in the safe deposit box at the bank when I don't have it at home to put data on it.
I do burn CDs, but that's only for sending pictures to relatives. I wouldn't trust the flaky things for backup.
I've actually lost a lot of pictures in print form. My HDs stay in my computer (or the safe deposit box) and I'm not going to lose either of those.
As for viewing with the family, I find it's easier to cluster chairs around the computer (21" monitor) and flip through the pictures where everyone can easily see them. It helps that I store pictures by date and give them good names, I can find a picture among the thousands on the drive faster than I could flip through some awkward book.
It's also great for our relatives with bad eyes. You can zoom in easily on the people in the pictures and scroll around.
People just need to be aware of the backup issues and be careful. But just like you don't leave prints in direct sunlight and you keep track of the books when you move.
Don't get a Nikon Coolpix unless you're into frustrating user interfaces.
A Canon, Minolta, or Olympus would be good. The Canon S30/S40 are good. The Canon G2 is better, it's got an even brighter (wider, faster, etc) lens which helps for shots indoors without flash.
Spend as much as you can reasonably afford. There's never too much detail and you can't get more later. You can print your pictures later if you feel the need, but likely you'll keep all but a few wall-hanging ones on the computer. The savings from this will easily pay for the camera.
You probably won't be happy in the long run with Less than an Canon S40/G2 or comparable. You won't be able to make really clean 8x10s (important for the grandparents) and the better the camera, the more manual functions it'll have, letting you override it when you get better at photography. (And you will, a few thousand pics later, with the camera saving all the settings info for later perusal, and you can't help but learn.)
If you want more, specific info, reply to this. I don't want to get too wordy initially though.
More resolution is always good. It lets you take a picture at maximum zoom, crop it (or zoom in with your picture viewer) and still get high resolution.
And yes, most everyone who has ever said "I wish I had a picture of that" would benefit from a digital camera. There's no barrier to just snapping a shot. If it doesn't work, no loss. If it does, you've got an awesome shot. It's risk free and quickly pays for itself by giving you so many photos you'd have never had. For parents, it's almost essential. So many more pictures of the rugrats, including all the moments that wouldn't be important enough to bring out a film camera that later turn out to be very important.
Don't forget backups. Your CDRs are probably as long-lasting a most drugstore prints but they're considerably cheaper. You can easily afford to burn a few more copies and keep them off-site.
I've never seen anyone do what you say your father did.
As someone else said, the point of digital is to pick and print the best, not everything. Digital loses most of its price advantage if you go and get prints made.
I've shot 8000 pictures since May, I've had 50 4x6 prints made, mostly for greeting cards. The 5800 or so that I've kept are all on the computer. When I did want prints made I tossed the 20 different shots on a CR-RW and walked a few blocks to the neighborhood camera store/photo lab.
As for the use for resolution? It lets you crop a lot and still have a very high-res print.
Besides, if you keep your photos on the computer you can zoom in and scroll around, seeing a lot more detail than you could if you printed out everything at 8x10.
BTW, for anyone looking to buy a digital camera, get one you like the interface for. Nikon has a horrible reputation in this area, Canon is great, Minolta and Olympus are pretty good. The whole point of digital is to allow you to take a picture anywhere, anytime, if you have to fight your camera to use any manual function you're not going to do a lot of photography. For choosing a camera, read the reviews at www.dpreview.com or a similar site. And don't obsess about mega-pixels. Quality is only partly related. A good 4MP will blow away an average 5MPs. And buy one with a 'fast' lens (low F-stop rating. Try to f2.0 at least.) The physical lens needs to be large, a pinhole doesn't let in enough light to be easily usable in the evening or indoors.
I don't see this as a indictment of objectivism, as you put it. What I see is that that many people are incapable of behaving rationally. Objectivism and many other schools of thought assume that people are going to act in their long-term best interest.
If people don't, assumptions about how things will come into balance eventually aren't valid.
As for the issue that many people stole their wealth... I think that many people are where they are as the result of theft, or very questionable practice, by them or their ancestors.
The Hearst empire is largely built on nearly-fraudulent land grants just after the US civil war. This ignores all the shady deals of the publishing side of the business. This is just an example off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more but I can't back up any of my suspicions without more research.
Objectivism requires people acknowledging that skill and ability is what gets you where you are. In a world where this isn't the case, how do you expect people to respect the property "rights" of those they perceive as criminals.
This is what makes it more of a theoretical system instead of something that I think would work.
btw, your figures for self-made wealth ignore the free schooling and often interest free loans that many children of the rich receive which gives them a huge hand up over the real self-made. Lumping Bill Gates in with Dave Thomas (Wendy's) is quite unfair for Dave. Dave grew up poor and fought for everything. Bill went to Harvard(?) for (worth it for the contacts even though e dropped out) and his parents supposedly loaned him money to get started in business at a few critical times. But I don't think this is really on topic.
As for the "self mutilation" idea... A lack of enlightened self interest is most damaging when someone acts economically because of non-economic motives (religion, anger, etc) and hurts many people. Someone could act to destroy a competitor because of some irrational reason and in doing so, destroy their own business. I believe this is very common behaviour and that it means we can't expect a stable social order to emerge simply by trusting that those with money earned it by being rational and will thus keep being rational.
The foundation of libertarian ideals is that people will respect basic human rights and that from this, everything will come into place. I don't see this happening.
See, for example, all the idle and stupid rich in Atlas Shrugged, if you wish to use it as an example. In the libertarian world people would still pass riches to useless children and in a generation or two we'd be right back where we are now, expect that this useless rich would have almost total power over the less rich. (Not that it's much different from today...)
Oh, I didn't say Heinlein is intellectually rigorous. In fact, often the opposite. He doesn't try to prove anything, he just writes a fun story.
I think you'll find your quest is hopeless. No matter how consistent a philosophy is, it can't be directly related to the world. Logic can prove consistency, but it can't prove a physical reality.
Also, Rand makes a few assumptions that I don't think are valid. In a world of people who are only striving for themselves, all of whom have started equal and are intelligent enough to act in their long-term best interest, you can start to see the effects of libertarianism. In a world (ours) where many people are rich only because their parents stole (literally, with force) resources from the original holders and where people irrationally pursue actions that hurt them as well in the end, I don't think we can rely on enlightened self interest.
But yes, exposure to these ideas is good. I just don't think Rand is the proper way to do it. If Galt's speech is the key, that's probably what people should read. I'm sure it's on the net, google for it and post a link instead of pointing people to a book they'll probably get bored with before the 'good stuff' shows up.
The problem with Atlas Shrugged is that people use it to prove something, which it can't do. I can write a book in which the tall people are proved to be naturally smarter and end up taking over the world, but it doesn't prove anything. It wouldn't even make a valid argument for tall people being superior because I wouldn't have presented any evidence, or looked at possibly contrary evidence.
What a book can do is give you something to think about.
However, many people have read Rand's books and though about them, and found them lacking. I sure did. It's not that I didn't agree with her ideas, I'm a bit of a libertarian, but I didn't agree with her conclusions or that simply writing the story proves anything like so many other people do.
Furthermore, I think her ideas would come across more easily, and more usefully, if they were written into a twenty page essay than a long book. The book clouds the basic idea presentation with a plot (that quite frankly wasn't that good).
As such, I wouldn't recommend that anyone read the book. There's no reason to not read it, except that unless you're a strong libertarian in need of a feel-good read.
What's wrong with the book is that all the rich people are geniuses. There's nobody who's rich simply because their grand-parents fenced off a huge tract of grazing land because their wagon got there six months ahead of everyone else's. Nobody in the book made deals to cut off a competitor's raw materials in order to build a monopoly, or sabotages their product in a subtle way and blamed the other product for failing to inter-operate.
If someone like Rearden existed, someone who invented an honestly better product, and who was happy just to profit on his product instead of trying to use some bogus license agreement to forbid trains on track he made from carrying food (for competitors), to allow him to corner the market, I'd support them. In fact, I do. I have no problem with companies that compete strongly, as long as they aren't so afraid of competition that they have to ruin the other company outside of the market. These days companies contribute so heavily to politics that most ruinous laws are passed in favor of the corporations, instead of in favor of the loafing people as Rand suggested.
It seemed simplistic. All of the antagonists were pathetic caricatures and all of the protagonists were uber-men (and women). None of the big business in the book was using standard big-business tactics. Nothing really seemed to apply beyond the scope of the book.
I'd suggest you read Heinlein. He's got the same libertarian viewpoint (quote: "When a place starts to require ID, it's time to leave.") except he's usually got a story behind it. And he's not trying to prove anything so he focuses on plot instead of the politics.
Search for Virtual Linux, a Mandrake based, CD distro that runs entirely off of the CD.
It supports all the major filesystems, has pretty well every utility that Mandrake installs come with, and fits on a CD.
If you want a business-card sized distro, check out PLAC (Portable Linux Assesment CD, or something). But it won't be as full-features of course.
The drawback of these is that they aren't customized to your system the way a rescue disk is. But perhaps they could look for an optional rescue floppy and read a bunch of settings off of it.
This is the same argument about Linux not working on the desktop because it's too hard to install...
Not only is that obsolete (try installing the latest Mandrake, it's about the same as Win2k) but it completely ignores the point that users don't install their own OSes, they either hire someone to do it, or they buy the computer and it comes pre-installed.
If you were to set up a linux computer for your grandmother you wouldn't turn on any servers, you wouldn't leave a link to an XTerm on the desktop, and you wouldn't make her learn that 'Konqueror' or 'Mozilla' was a web browser, you'd pick the one she'd use and call it 'Browse the Internet'.
In my consulting I've seen user's reactions to command lines, either they've gotten one by accident or I've left one open. It scares them. They don't understand the complexities of Windows, so why expect that you'd toss them into this on Linux?
You could set up a pretty decent computer with Open Office, Mozilla, an IM client, and XMMS. The user wouldn't need to install or configure anything and could do most of what they could on Windows, except open email worms.
Of course I could baffle even a power user by dumping them into either of my development workstations, the Linux or the Windows one. Neither has any icons they'd be familiar with and most of the icons launch debuggers or shells. But this isn't a valid test of anything except my BOFH factor.
That's how US law works. There are implied contracts.
But, these are for obvious things (by definition), contracts so obvious that they are implied by your everyday actions. This is what makes giving a clerk money and taking something a sale without having to specifically agree to sale terms or in fact, even talk at all.
There are also implied warranties. If I offer something for sale as a Widget you can be sure that it's going to function, at least a little, as a Widget. There are only a few circumstances where this isn't true. (Lot sales, clearly marked as-is sales, etc.)
A contract that takes effect after you've bought something and taken it home isn't something do obvious that it goes without saying. And moreso, the simple fact that someone once tried an invalid contract doesn't mean you need to expect and honor them in the future.
Would it make sense for a customer to go into a store, but a bottle of milk, and then upon getting home, discover that the milk could only legally be used in certain food products, and that to encourage the dairy industry you had to use it in three days or throw it out, despite the fact that its shelf life might be much longer? It's not any more reasonable when you consider software either.
People don't have to agree with the law to be bound by it. You don't have to agree that reckless driving is an offense to be fined for it. The same (roughly) goes for copyright violation. If you buy a book you know you're bound by copyright law. This doesn't imply that people expect purchasing books to restrict their actions and thus should expect a further "contract" inside the book.
No matter how you look at it, hidden suprise contracts can't be binding.
You're completely ignoring what he's saying.
An EULA keeps you from using the software you just bought.
The GPL doesn't do anything, until you want to make a copy, then it gives you a legal way to do it.
EULAs are an after-market, no-warning contract and are totally invalid under standard contract law. The GPL is a standard type licensing agreement of the type agreed to all the time.
The big difference is that one prevents you from doing things you should be able to do, the other allows you to do things you otherwise couldn't.
Can you see this, or are you trolling?
I've seen reasonable estimates of up to 25MP for 35mm film. But very high-end ASA 50, with incredible lenses.
Shoot with anything you'd need indoors without studio lighting (and not able to do long exposures) and you're getting down to 5-8mp.
Digitals have noise, but with a good digital the picture noise isn't going to increase as fast as the grain in the film.
The day of digital is here if you're doing anything less than full-page blowups. When the Canon 11MP 1Ds comes out it'll produce better pictures in common wedding environments that pretty well any other 35mm camera.
It is very expensive, but that's why you go to a pro.
But if they make it too painful, people aren't going to. It's not as much that I'm cheap and don't want to pay for reprints as that I want the freedom of deciding for myself if I'd rather have a high quality print made or just toss some pics in email.
If they can't survive off of their labor fees, perhaps they should charge more.
Instead they're ripping off the customers.
If they need the same ammount of money to survive, and every technological and social change makes it harder to collect that in old ways, perhaps they should change their business models.
I think this is a topic you're familiar with or something...
You make a lot of good points about quality, and to the skill that it takes to get the shots.
But how does this relate to photographers having to retain control over the negatives. I wouldn't object to my photographer wanting to keep them in case I lost them, an insurance policy, but I want them too, or at least fair access to them at market rates. I don't expect to get pro prints at drug-store prices, but I want to be free to dump a photographer I don't want to do business with for any reason.
You haven't shown me why I, the customer, would be harmed by having the negatives and reproduction rights.
That's what this thread is about to me. Photographers who exist by extorting prints out of customers, for whom the chance that a guest picture will replace a sale is a terrible thing.
If I need you to take the pictures, can't I choose who prints them? Even if you tell me that you'll do a better job than nearly anyone else, what if I want the choice?
And as for digital, it depends on the results. If you're from the type of family where everyone have 20" prints hanging on their walls you'll appreciate high-quality, perhaps MF, pictures. If like me, you have a few picture frames and 8x10s seem large, you'll value the convenience of digital over the quality of high-end film.
I had my wedding shot in digital with a 1D, the 8x10s look very close to what my photographer had in his portfolio for 8x10s from film. What I gained from the digital aspect was that I had a CD the next day (I wouldn't take anything less than full ownership) and we took them with us to see the relatives on the other side of the continent. Instant gratification.
But really it's about the freedom to do with your pictures as you want to do. Be that with the negatives, scans from negatives, or the raw digital files.
And on a 5x7 or 8x10, behind glass from at least 25cm away, this difference is obvious how?
I freely admit that expensive machines can produce better output, but in the sizes that are covered by consumer printers, the differences aren't so pronounced as to make the cheap output unattractive when you're not specifically looking for flaws.
I've also seen accelerated aging results where pictures were exposed to 10-20 times stronger light than they'd get in a house, including UV. The standard ink-jet prints fade fairly quickly as you say, but the 'long-lasting' ones do quite well, 5-10 years of simulated lifespan at a minimum.
Not perfect, but it's a good budget choice.
If it comes down to be having my favorite 15 wedding pictures printed professionally and no access to the rest, or me having 10 printed professionally and running off copies of the rest as I see fit, after viewing them on the monitor whenever I want, I'll take the latter choice.
I'm satisfied with the quality of digital pictures because I don't want anything over 8x10 really and considering most don't shoot MF unless you're really paying a lot, that's about all I'd get from 35mm film. The 8x10s I've seen from (a nice) digital are better than film in many cases.
As for the scans/copies of the files... I didn't say I'd be happy with them. I *will* email pics to my friends and post them on my webpage. I'd rather get the raw output of the camera (I did) but if I didn't, I'd scan proofs if I needed. It's my day and my money, as far as my morals are concerned I own those pictures.
That's fair. What people want is for them to come, take pictures, provide negatives or original files, and leave. If you want prints you can get them done, either through that photographer or someone else, at a market price.
All technology (digital cameras and picture viewers) does is show how dead their business model is. Many photographers charge per pictures taken, even if they take eight on motor-drive of the same pose. That might have made sense when there were film costs, but now that each picture is essentially free, how is it justified? Photographers used to make the prints because a consumer simply couldn't duplicate a picture without professional help. Now you can send a picture to grandma with a scanner, or by sending the original file. If grandma wants prints she can make them instead of you having them done here and mailed (carefully) to her.
Technology has changed the profession. It hasn't eliminated the skill aspects but it is starting to cut into the technologial gap. (Now if only someone would hurry and invent Asimov's AnOpticon, the light-bending, no lens, technology...) People who really have skill to sell with appreciate it, their skill will be obvious if their tools are the same as yours, but it'll put a lot of hacks out of work, people who are just selling access to their expensive tools.
The article doesn't say "work-for-hire", but that's the standard assumption when you hire someone. When a company pays you to write a program they own the program and the right to use it despite any of your patented ideas you may have used. Simply your making it for them is implicit permission for them to use it.
If a plumber fixes your pipes there's the assumption that it's a one-time job. He'll fix the pipes and get out. If he installed a special pipe that only he had a wrench for (work with me here) or installed a water meter on the pipes and expected to use this to extort further payment, you'd sue him and have another plumber in, at the first guy's expense, to fix the mess.
So why are photographers different? They think they're artists, but the general public does not. They think they have a god-given right to a wacky business model, but does the general public?
I agree that the shopper should get everything spelled out, but this is only necessary because we're in such a kooky world that someone could come take pictures of you, at your insistence and paid by you, and then claim to own the results.
And there are more floppy drives than CD-ROMs probably, but if your professional computer guy gave you files on floppies instead of burning a CD, you'd probably be inconvenienced. Only one of my computers, my MP3 server, has a floppy these days. The others are all sitting in box in storage.
Not to mention that DVD is inherently superior to VHS like CD-ROMs to floppies. Any and every person with an ounce of sense would admit it.
The reason the videographer didn't give them a high-quality copy wasn't because they simply prefered the technology, it was to prevent them making high quality copies.
In my mind, the (photo|video)grapher in this situation is a thief. They're selling a service but not providing what people have a right to expect.
Feh. They'll be out of business soon. I'll never recommend someone who doesn't give you the high-quality 'negatives' and in fact I'll alert my friends to the cheesy attitude that infects this profession. A few smart people will change their business model, the rest will go broke and starve for all I care, the dishonest jerks.