The shuttle was originally sold on the idea of being able to retrieve broken sats and have them brought to earth for fixing, then relaunched.
However, shuttle flight costs exceeded projections enough that it cost less to simply put a new sat up into space, and put the malfunctioning one into the ocean.
"Because the vast majority of businessmen, "geniuses" or not (mostly not) are incapable of thinking past next quarter's results."
Actually you can blame this too on the general public. The funds needed to undertake such projects are such that you need public investment. It's the investors who don't look past the next quarter's return.
There are plenty of businessmen willing to gamble on it. But nobody will give them enough money to try.
Nikon is notorious for its deliberate slowness. I think adobe is trying to prod some better support out of nikon for the d2x as CS2 is coming out momentarily. And get people talking more about DNG.
But I agree that the people making the most noise about this are the least likely to ever actually use such a camera as the D2X.
Nikon does have a nikon capture plug in for photoshop.
The main problem with NC is that its slowish.
In an ideal world, all raw converters would create the same, good image (as defined by the manufacturer) from the camera, using default settings. Of course, the photographer could override these.
From there you could pick and choose a converter based on work flow, speed etc.
So I'd rather have some kind of standard based on camera variables (there arent that many, and they tend to be universal), to tell a program how to process the files...
because right now, every raw program interprets an image differently from the start. And thats a bad thing.
ACR (adobe's raw converter) has always produced suboptimal results with NEF, so many don't use it. It takes quite a bit of profiling and tweaking to get an image that doesnt look flat and dull out of it - something other raw converters dont seem to have a problem with. So typically you export to TIFF in another converter, then do your photoshopping.
Most really high end camera systems use completely proprietary formats that only their own software can read. I've got a 22mp digital back here that costs 5 times what a D2X costs and it can only be handled with its own software. This has been pretty normal for years...
As a professional, this is an annoyance, but at the same time, I can't say it bugs me too much. Photographers arent quite as obsessed with things like this as typical slashdotters are. Got better things to do...
It is however, a PR nightmare. Nikon's never been too good at PR. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I think theres much more going on behind the scenes between adobe and nikon than is let on.
..is more than that, but as far as white balance goes, the camera (particularly a high end one like the d2x) has a sensor for detecting the color temperature, which is what white balance really is. This becomes the "As Shot" WB in the file, and the apparently encrypted info.
i always use the "as shot" as a starting point. DSLRs are typically pretty accurate. I've found on nikon cameras anyway, using Auto WB is more accurate than actually setting it on the camera (exception is in a studio setting where you need to set it on daylight for the strobes or tungsten for the hots).
So no, its not the end of the world if CR doesnt use the As Shot data. But its a hassle and will require more time to get the "right" WB set manually. And time is what photographers have very little of.
One is that the camera (sometimes) has an onboard white balance sensor that detects the temperature of the light you're in. These sensors vary in quality so on some cameras they might be useless, while on others they might work really well. Some cameras do this on the chip... but if its accurate, its good to know.
The other reason is time. If your camera accurately set the white balance for you, you dont have to mess with it in photoshop, thus saving time, and assuming you dont feel like changing the white balance.
as a professional photographer, ive encounted maybe one or two people who shot jpeg, and thats because they did on-demand printing at events - they carried a printer with them and sold the pics they just took to attendees.
Everyone else shoots raw because you get all 12 bits of dynamic range which is necessary for quality cast corrections, you can perfect white balance later (or experiment with it), and you dont have to deal with compression and sharpening artifacts that shooting jpeg does, you can do better tonal curves... the reasons are numerous.
In sum, the only people who should ever shoot jpeg are snapshooters and professionals who must do instant turnaround.
These sky is falling articles always make me roll my eyes. The public in general has always been shortsighted about things they don't know much about - and the public doesn't know much about anything (if you take it as a whole).
I bet if you asked "should everyone be given $10,000 by the government", they'd all say yes to it too! On the face of it, it sounds like a good deal. This is because they do not look deep enough to see why it is foolish.
The wisest thing government founders have realized over the years is that democracy is good but you need to avoid the tyranny of the majority by putting in protections and have a representative system. It's a careful balance that tends to swing one way or the other though.
They downgraded the stream quality substantially, and the free radio player "upgrade" put a time limit on how long you could listen, removed the channel favorites and other things.
You can get around those though with the spinamp winamp plugin. But the sound quality is still poor.
the sound quality is very tinny (although better than netscape/aol radio) and the selection of channels is kind of poor. Many of the novel XM radio channels arent available online.
EMP can be shielded pretty easily. Most military-grade electronics are shielded. After all, it wouldnt do to have the very planes that drop nuclear bombs fall out of the sky when their payload detonates...
One of the things I thought about when i first saw the matrix was, what, they forgot how to shield EMP in the next 200 years?
nor unexplainable. black holes, quantum computation and string theory are all well explored and worked out with what knowledge we currently have. However, as this knowledge expands, sometimes the theories must be changed or expanded. After all, even the classic laws of physics fail to hold their own in relativistic situations, thus requiring an expansion.
Nothing crackpot about that, at all. Unless you expect some kind of Final Truth... and thats pretty crackpot.
at machines that size IO is one of the huge limiting factors. just because your processor is capable of.3 tflops doesnt mean if you somehow lash a bunch together you're going to get x*.3 tflops.
these systems need pretty specialized custom designed IO to achieve their speeds and thats where the interesting things happen. the processors themselves are pretty ordinary.
For 99% of people working with images professionally, the Gimp does everything they need.
You obviously don't work with images professionally.
Theres not even icc profiling available, which is an absolute must have. No adjustment layers makes it laughable as a professional editting tool. To say that 99% of professionals could use gimp and not lose anything compared to photoshop is just ridiculous. Why would you even suggest that.
um no, gimp doesnt even have adjustment layers. Even the most basic of PS books will have the user working in those. The mantra of anyone who does photoshop is non-destructive editting because of the immense time savings and workflow ease...
The problem with gimp isnt that its controls don't match photoshop. The problem with gimp is that its functionally inferior for anything but the most basic (and I do mean basic... no adjustment layers, cmon) of editting.
You're using a lot of logical leaps to get from "natural sensation of steering wheel vibrates when i hit a bump" to "electronic simulation in generic video game controller complete with design and implementation"
Here's a clue on whats not obvious: something needing logical leaps.
do you have access to information that we dont? Please share. In almost every one of these kinds of cases the company that holds the patent does in fact go to the company and attempts to get them to license it. In almost every one of these kinds of cases, the company does in fact license the patent unless for some reason their lawyers think they can get out of it.
Apparently sony thought they could, immersion sued, and the judge ruled that immersion was right.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the amount. Watch dials often use tritium to make them glow and thats not regulated.
Similarly, smoke detectors work by using an alpha particle source (americium) emitting at a detector and they're not regulated either.
The shuttle was originally sold on the idea of being able to retrieve broken sats and have them brought to earth for fixing, then relaunched.
However, shuttle flight costs exceeded projections enough that it cost less to simply put a new sat up into space, and put the malfunctioning one into the ocean.
heh, mix one part insecurity, one part immaturity, and one part "havent done anything worthwhile in life" and you have "the slashdot attitude".
Actually you'll see this attitude on a lot of web forums. The internet gives the pathetic and alienated a voice.
"Because the vast majority of businessmen, "geniuses" or not (mostly not) are incapable of thinking past next quarter's results."
Actually you can blame this too on the general public. The funds needed to undertake such projects are such that you need public investment. It's the investors who don't look past the next quarter's return.
There are plenty of businessmen willing to gamble on it. But nobody will give them enough money to try.
Nikon is notorious for its deliberate slowness. I think adobe is trying to prod some better support out of nikon for the d2x as CS2 is coming out momentarily. And get people talking more about DNG.
But I agree that the people making the most noise about this are the least likely to ever actually use such a camera as the D2X.
Nikon does have a nikon capture plug in for photoshop.
The main problem with NC is that its slowish.
In an ideal world, all raw converters would create the same, good image (as defined by the manufacturer) from the camera, using default settings. Of course, the photographer could override these.
From there you could pick and choose a converter based on work flow, speed etc.
So I'd rather have some kind of standard based on camera variables (there arent that many, and they tend to be universal), to tell a program how to process the files...
because right now, every raw program interprets an image differently from the start. And thats a bad thing.
I actually am a pro photographer.
...
ACR (adobe's raw converter) has always produced suboptimal results with NEF, so many don't use it. It takes quite a bit of profiling and tweaking to get an image that doesnt look flat and dull out of it - something other raw converters dont seem to have a problem with. So typically you export to TIFF in another converter, then do your photoshopping.
Most really high end camera systems use completely proprietary formats that only their own software can read. I've got a 22mp digital back here that costs 5 times what a D2X costs and it can only be handled with its own software. This has been pretty normal for years
As a professional, this is an annoyance, but at the same time, I can't say it bugs me too much. Photographers arent quite as obsessed with things like this as typical slashdotters are. Got better things to do...
It is however, a PR nightmare. Nikon's never been too good at PR. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I think theres much more going on behind the scenes between adobe and nikon than is let on.
where the heck did you find a tokina 12-24 in nikon mount? I've been looking for ages now and everywhere is sold out.
..is more than that, but as far as white balance goes, the camera (particularly a high end one like the d2x) has a sensor for detecting the color temperature, which is what white balance really is. This becomes the "As Shot" WB in the file, and the apparently encrypted info.
i always use the "as shot" as a starting point. DSLRs are typically pretty accurate. I've found on nikon cameras anyway, using Auto WB is more accurate than actually setting it on the camera (exception is in a studio setting where you need to set it on daylight for the strobes or tungsten for the hots).
So no, its not the end of the world if CR doesnt use the As Shot data. But its a hassle and will require more time to get the "right" WB set manually. And time is what photographers have very little of.
2 reasons.
One is that the camera (sometimes) has an onboard white balance sensor that detects the temperature of the light you're in. These sensors vary in quality so on some cameras they might be useless, while on others they might work really well. Some cameras do this on the chip... but if its accurate, its good to know.
The other reason is time. If your camera accurately set the white balance for you, you dont have to mess with it in photoshop, thus saving time, and assuming you dont feel like changing the white balance.
as a professional photographer, ive encounted maybe one or two people who shot jpeg, and thats because they did on-demand printing at events - they carried a printer with them and sold the pics they just took to attendees.
Everyone else shoots raw because you get all 12 bits of dynamic range which is necessary for quality cast corrections, you can perfect white balance later (or experiment with it), and you dont have to deal with compression and sharpening artifacts that shooting jpeg does, you can do better tonal curves... the reasons are numerous.
In sum, the only people who should ever shoot jpeg are snapshooters and professionals who must do instant turnaround.
No, the only people who get screwed by this are photographers who just want to use their normal tools.
Only on slashdot would some retard think this is about software companies.
These sky is falling articles always make me roll my eyes. The public in general has always been shortsighted about things they don't know much about - and the public doesn't know much about anything (if you take it as a whole).
I bet if you asked "should everyone be given $10,000 by the government", they'd all say yes to it too! On the face of it, it sounds like a good deal. This is because they do not look deep enough to see why it is foolish.
The wisest thing government founders have realized over the years is that democracy is good but you need to avoid the tyranny of the majority by putting in protections and have a representative system. It's a careful balance that tends to swing one way or the other though.
They downgraded the stream quality substantially, and the free radio player "upgrade" put a time limit on how long you could listen, removed the channel favorites and other things.
You can get around those though with the spinamp winamp plugin. But the sound quality is still poor.
that XM has more than just music stations right?
the sound quality is very tinny (although better than netscape/aol radio) and the selection of channels is kind of poor. Many of the novel XM radio channels arent available online.
EMP can be shielded pretty easily. Most military-grade electronics are shielded. After all, it wouldnt do to have the very planes that drop nuclear bombs fall out of the sky when their payload detonates...
One of the things I thought about when i first saw the matrix was, what, they forgot how to shield EMP in the next 200 years?
nor unexplainable. black holes, quantum computation and string theory are all well explored and worked out with what knowledge we currently have. However, as this knowledge expands, sometimes the theories must be changed or expanded. After all, even the classic laws of physics fail to hold their own in relativistic situations, thus requiring an expansion.
Nothing crackpot about that, at all. Unless you expect some kind of Final Truth... and thats pretty crackpot.
at machines that size IO is one of the huge limiting factors. just because your processor is capable of .3 tflops doesnt mean if you somehow lash a bunch together you're going to get x*.3 tflops.
these systems need pretty specialized custom designed IO to achieve their speeds and thats where the interesting things happen. the processors themselves are pretty ordinary.
wait till its fully online.
For 99% of people working with images professionally, the Gimp does everything they need.
You obviously don't work with images professionally.
Theres not even icc profiling available, which is an absolute must have. No adjustment layers makes it laughable as a professional editting tool. To say that 99% of professionals could use gimp and not lose anything compared to photoshop is just ridiculous. Why would you even suggest that.
The problem with gimp isnt that its controls don't match photoshop. The problem with gimp is that its functionally inferior for anything but the most basic (and I do mean basic... no adjustment layers, cmon) of editting.
remember, a 2 paragraph article makes everyone on slashdot both intimately familiar with the specifics on a case, but also a patent lawyer.
ah to be 13 (or mentally 13) again...
You're using a lot of logical leaps to get from "natural sensation of steering wheel vibrates when i hit a bump" to "electronic simulation in generic video game controller complete with design and implementation"
Here's a clue on whats not obvious: something needing logical leaps.
do you have access to information that we dont? Please share. In almost every one of these kinds of cases the company that holds the patent does in fact go to the company and attempts to get them to license it. In almost every one of these kinds of cases, the company does in fact license the patent unless for some reason their lawyers think they can get out of it.
Apparently sony thought they could, immersion sued, and the judge ruled that immersion was right.