IMHO, it's not really necessary though. I only block ads so that I don't have to put a post-it note over the flashing, animated garrish and obscene sh*T designed to distract you from reading the ad.
A really responsible ad blocker might download the ad with an additional "I'm not looking" string and render it in a user-configurable fashion (e.g. unanimated, a low contrast black and white washed out variant)
None of this would have been necessary if some company like doubleclick were to have taken the initiative years ago and create plugins which let people feed back on ads like sending a "I'm not interested in your product" header, or "I find your ad terribly distracting and garrish" header. Then doubleclick could have built an interest profile on you and used your pseudonymous identity to show you stuff you wanted to see... which for very many people would be nothing
But instead, they sat on their laurels and now they have to contend with a glut of ad-hostile blockers.
Nope, what I would do is bite the bullet and pay for Windows along with some antivirus software and deal with the complexity of interacting with your favourite OS and keeping the environment stable.
In reality, yeah, many people would probably pirate the OS and pirate the software. But when you wonder why there are no little guys offering slightly lesser products for $50 instead of full blown professional products for $1000, you'll know that you've got the $1000 product for nothing, and software companies, by tolerating piracy, have effectively found a way to freeze out the competition through "market dumping" and pass the blame on to the consumers.
IMHO, the software license model is flawed. It depends on the public legal system to incur the costs of enforcing private interests. Make the software companies pay for their screwed up business model and they'd all quickly shift from a software license model towards a service-based model. Why are our taxes being used to protect Microsoft from piracy?
Yeah, for those who don't know, the grey market is where a Canadian sets up a subscription to DirecTV (or whatever) from the U.S., and sets up their dish in Canada. It only violates the content regulations and stuff. They're still paying their bill and everything.
For somebody who wants "ethnic" programming like Mexican Spanish content in Canada, it can be the only option, so I have a hard time faulting somebody for subscribing.
The reverse (U.S. resident getting a Canadian dish) applies as well. I'm not sure what Canada has that the U.S. isn't allowed to get though.
Now I think you could set yourself up to be pretty much impossible to track if you partner up with a friend on the other side of the border... you set up their dish and they set up your dish, you each pay for each other's subscriptions so that there's no money-trail. Just make sure your dish doesn't have advertising written on it:-)
If they're compatible, you might just be able to swap receivers...
Mod-chipping and stuff for free viewing is black-market... unless you're a cypherpunk or something and can't stand the thought of signals passing through your body without knowing what they mean. Yes, it's illegal to tune them in and decode them.
IMHO, modern science isn't seeking answers to the same questions that modern religion is providing answers to.
Sometimes religious leaders and theologists, for whatever reason, stomp into the realm of scientific speculation, but after a few hundreds years of scientific research, they're generally discredited.
What some vocal religious minds generally fail to account for is that science is merely studying the universe we live in, whether or not a higher being created it -- it just doesn't matter. In a strict sense, by trying to avoid a human interpretation of the outcome, science is *cough* seeking a better understanding of *cough* God *cough*. Those who impede man's understanding of the universe, are impeding man's understanding of God's works.
While those who are devout followers of the cult of "I am not religious" may object strongly to the notion, I don't think that the personal drive for many scientists is all that far from that of most religious scholars.
The statement that morality is somehow tied to religion is a little spooky to me, it implies that you might think that the agnostic, and/or cult-like science worshippers are incapable of "moral" behaviour. (By the way, there's a modern line of thinking that morality appears as a natural consequence of game theory... A Google search on "ethics" and "game theory" bring up a few results.)
Domino runs on Linux, and well-designed apps for the web can be used from a browser without any trouble. The bigger problem is probably the nature of the Notes Mail Database design for the web, it blows chunks and could probably use an overhaul to look more like Hotmail or Gmail... but that should not be a hard thing to do. Really!
One feature you'll lose with a web-based mail client though is the ability to function while a server is unavailable (network outage, physically disconnected etc.)
I think a more accurate statement might be that the Notes fat client on Windows is superior to anything on Linux.... a statement more towards the complete lack of competition for Lotus Notes rather than the capability of the software.
I figure piracy is the greatest concern from networks providing content online... otherwise, I imagine PBS and community broadcasters would be happy to sell their content to whomever wanted to pay for it.
But for small commercial networks like HGTV, the Food Network and stuff, would cable companies refuse to carry them if they sold their content online? I mean, this could be the death of cable providers who aren't savvy enough to realize that more fat Internet content means more fat Internet cable users:-)
For that matter, they might have a reason to start setting up multicasting and delivering special content through multicasting clients.
There are slightly less direct methods to the scam too... the camera can be just about anywhere, and the card readers have been caught on the door-openers, so the machine doesn't even need to be tampered with.
You know, next they could make a movie out of Breakout
"Suddenly, without warning, there's a brilliant flash straight ahead. You
check the radar screen. Nothing. Pretty soon there's another flash, and
another. Next thing you know the flashes have turned into one gigantic
force field of some kind and it's dead ahead. You check the radar screen
again, still nothing."
Let's face it, the alien setting in DOOM was probably a cop-out to get rid of the bad taste around killing people and glorifying WWII.
In my experience, this is only true if you're stripping down a pre-existing application package to suit a customer's needs. I mean, if it is so obvious to implement, why not have it pre-written and save the coding, testing and documenting altogether? Just license and charge for configuration and deployment.
To go the library and custom code route opens a big can of worms... how do you bill your customer for their use? Is your customer licensing or buying the solution or the code? How are you handling security updates or bug reports? Are you charging for labour? If so, are you free to sell the solution (less the cost of labour to develop it) to their competitors, or are you committing to a non-compete clause? Certainly, you're not giving them your libraries? Since you're not, how can you be paid for the shortcut in time, yet assure them no problems appear in the code they don't own?
If you can do it in 30 minutes, do it, pretend it was pre-written, license it like any other software and bill for deployment.
That's a strange thing to say, there's never been an end to innovations... anything you can think of has probably already been done... like the trackpoint, glidepoint, split keyboards, zero angle, movement of the function keys, the boomslang type devices, multibutton mice, trackballs, wacom type tablets, pucks, lightpens, yoke/flight controllers, pedals for both games and chording keystrokes, voice command, joysticks, both proportional and touchpads, force-feedback of various sorts, including mice and joysticks... and those are just the mildly practical interface devices...
Before Apple started hacking with it, it was called a Jog-Dial, and you can get them just fine on a keyboard, almost exactly as you describe:
Get a small radiant gas fireplace with one of those barbeque-style starter buttons. Alternatively, although a little extreme, sort out your woodburning fireplace.
We're still one step down from a monopoly, this is more along the lines of Joe's tire shop v.s. the big tire chains.
You can still produce and sell music yourself, and the costs aren't that high. You can still play at local bars and get college radio play, but you're locked out of the most popular venues you need to finance better production quality because the big guys selling the airwaves are milking too much cash out of the big record companies... it creates an artificial barrier to entry and it's not really anyone's fault.
If it were a monopoly, rather than a collection of record companies, then the record companies could starve the radio stations for content, compelling them to lower the prices. But since it is not a monopoly, he who backs down, is replaced by his competitor.
Other than that, I agree, for the health of the market, regulation is required to make this type of business practice unattractive.
I never said "pink spandex", and I didn't say everyone was a bigot, just that most people are aware of the tolerated vocal bigots in western male culture. Oh well.
...By the same token men try to apear manly, such as to attract women. The fact that it's easier to look manly (thanx to testasterone, and a derth of mens fasion magazines) than womanly is NOT MY FAULT! I didn't make up the rules, I just play by them.
Think about what you're saying!
"Easier to look manly?" Whether it is true or not, you're not talking about a biological "manliness", you're talking about a sociological one. A man is a man, whether he's reading a men's fashion magazine or not! For that matter, he could be as gay as a fairy, head-to-toe in rainbows and pastels, and he's still a man, never to be mistaken for a woman (transvestites excepted)
I also don't think you're talking about "easier", I think you're saying that spending time on your appearance is not seen as a "manly" thing to do.
Most women don't care if you fit a guy's definition of "manly", they want you to fit their definition of "manly". A woman's definition of manly generally does not include a fear of being seen to spend time on your appearance.
...but aside from a few purple t-shirts and a very sparing use of bicycle shorts while cycling, I too conform to the dull drab of jeans and a t-shirt or business casual attire.
Whether the root cause is food or not, I don't know, but in Britain, labour was relatively expensive, wheras in India, labour was cheap.
So, if you're running a textile business, and you need to power a fabric loom, you have India do all the work with their manual looms and skilled workforce.
Domestic work would of course be more profitable, but there aren't nearly as many skilled people working the looms in Britain.
Slavery inhibited this need in the Roman empire, but in Britian, it was nowhere near as prevalent... not enough slaves.
...so somebody figured out that you could get more work out of people if you began using water-powered looms, then steam powered looms, then you used British government to restrict the sales of cheaper and superior Indian textiles, finally forcing Indians to buy more expensive, inferior textiles from Britain...
Slavery might have inhibitied this need in the Americas, but one thing came with the American conquerors that the Romans never had... guns. The development, sale and distribution of firearms was a technological boon for the Americas. Then came the railway... this covered the creation of a coal-engine-fine machinery industry across the country which could be tapped for both skills and resources to create new technologies like the wireless and so forth.
When the British machinery was used in the U.S., the need for slavery or slave-wages was reduced and eventually eliminated, only the most unscrupulous designer labels practicing slavery or wage-slavery today.
But food probably does play a part in dictating why there was so much cheap labour in India v.s. Britain, it's tough to say... it's just as remarkable to look at why Rome didn't develop modern technology as why Britain and the Americas did.
I don't know, in my experience, "fashion" and "grooming" involves effort and time. There's a homophobic and male-superior trait in hetrosexual male culture which says that if you spend time "grooming", you're abnormal.
It goes something like this: If you spend too much time on your hair, you might be gay, which means you like men, like a woman, which means you're womanly, which means you're inferior and probably posess all kinds of inferior female traits.
Most men do not stygmatize people on this, but they're subconciously aware of what would provoke those who do stygmatize. Just try to wear spandex or a pink shirt... why is it hard? Why do you get funny looks? Why don't you have pink in your wardrobe?
So, many men are afraid to be seen to take an inordinately large amount of effort in personal grooming. "inordinately" is relative based on what you do in your life. A bricklayer who shows up to work daily with well-polished shoes (even before changing out of them) would probably get his coworkers talking... whereas a business man regularly getting his shoes polished on his lunch break would not.
So a cheap, short haircut, jeans and a T-shirt is generally not fashion, it's conforming. There are social pressures on men not to deviate... I think too this is why we have the 3-peice suit, the tuxedo and the business casual formula. Do not deviate!
The opposite is true too... although not being a woman, I can't say how much women strive to appear womanly, and how much they'd be ostracized for going around everywhere with a cheap, efficient hair cut, jeans and a t-shirt.
I have a 1.3 MP Fuji camera and it's o.k. I actually bought it because I figured Fuji would have a better chance of doing reasonable optics than Panasonic or Sony.
The odd part about it is that it has a tiny little lens, the kind you'd see in a cameraphone. The only problems appear in shots with low-lighting and no flash, or where the flash can't reach. I.e. what you'd expect... a lack of light-gathering ability. But for the vast majority of shots, it's o.k., and 1.3MP pictures aren't bad to deal with. The perfered medium for display is a computer monitor these days, but it will produce a reasonable holiday 5x7, it doesn't need a camera bag, nor will it ruin my vacation if it is stolen.
My point being, you can get reasonable shots with a small lens, a flash and 1.3MP. It shouldn't be impossible to get reasonable optics in a cameraphone... although my experience is that a cell phone's camera is worse than the worst brand-name digital camera.
There was a time when the lowest common denominator of social behaviour was to be unimposing on the people around you. You would be polite and courteous to those around you.
Now the lowest common denominator of social behaviour is to be tolerant, no matter how horrible the people around you are. We all must tolerate them and not interfere with the activities of those around us. From screaming children, screaming adults, overwhelming perfumes, body odour, aggressive dogs, swearing, public harassment of hapless victims around them, loud stereos, late night parties, we must tolerate them.
The result is that the greatest asshole reaps the greatest bennefit. The people who do not value peace and quiet are never for want. Those who do not like it, have to distance themselves from the greatest assholes, leaving public spaces full of the most horrible people immaginable.
If somebody asked me to turn off a T.V. in a public place, I would be embarassed that I was disturbing them and I would turn it down or off right away. It's a public space after all, not my living room.
I just mean the sociopaths. Hacking around with car stereos is fun, and getting a nice sound out of one is also a lot of fun, but some people tweak their subs so that they feel the maximum vibration possible, thinking that high bass doesn't hurt their hearing. They're after the rumble, not the booming, and they don't care how many windows they shake in the process.
To give you an idea of the scope... If a boom car following a fire engine passes my house, as long as there aren't any sirens, it won't be the fire engine I hear... the huge engine of the pumper truck barelling down the street full speed will be completely drowned out by the bass of the sociopath.
The engine and performance mods are just as bad... if I drove down the street with my horn stuck, I'd be arrested, but if I had a stereo blasting obsenities, that'd be o.k.
If I removed my muffler and drove down the street, I'd be arrested. Now if I tweaked my car to make as much noise as possible, that'd be o.k.
I think the police don't see this kind of thing as enough of a problem. IMHO, it should be part of emissions testing and traffic laws. In many places you're not allowed to wear headphones in a car, but you are allowed to play a stereo so loud you couldn't hear an emergency vehicle if it were hammering on its horn behind you... for that matter, you might just think you've got some real kick'n bass when they start ramming your car out of the way.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO, it's not really necessary though. I only block ads so that I don't have to put a post-it note over the flashing, animated garrish and obscene sh*T designed to distract you from reading the ad.
A really responsible ad blocker might download the ad with an additional "I'm not looking" string and render it in a user-configurable fashion (e.g. unanimated, a low contrast black and white washed out variant)
None of this would have been necessary if some company like doubleclick were to have taken the initiative years ago and create plugins which let people feed back on ads like sending a "I'm not interested in your product" header, or "I find your ad terribly distracting and garrish" header. Then doubleclick could have built an interest profile on you and used your pseudonymous identity to show you stuff you wanted to see... which for very many people would be nothing
But instead, they sat on their laurels and now they have to contend with a glut of ad-hostile blockers.
Nope, what I would do is bite the bullet and pay for Windows along with some antivirus software and deal with the complexity of interacting with your favourite OS and keeping the environment stable.
In reality, yeah, many people would probably pirate the OS and pirate the software. But when you wonder why there are no little guys offering slightly lesser products for $50 instead of full blown professional products for $1000, you'll know that you've got the $1000 product for nothing, and software companies, by tolerating piracy, have effectively found a way to freeze out the competition through "market dumping" and pass the blame on to the consumers.
IMHO, the software license model is flawed. It depends on the public legal system to incur the costs of enforcing private interests. Make the software companies pay for their screwed up business model and they'd all quickly shift from a software license model towards a service-based model. Why are our taxes being used to protect Microsoft from piracy?
Yeah, for those who don't know, the grey market is where a Canadian sets up a subscription to DirecTV (or whatever) from the U.S., and sets up their dish in Canada. It only violates the content regulations and stuff. They're still paying their bill and everything.
For somebody who wants "ethnic" programming like Mexican Spanish content in Canada, it can be the only option, so I have a hard time faulting somebody for subscribing.
The reverse (U.S. resident getting a Canadian dish) applies as well. I'm not sure what Canada has that the U.S. isn't allowed to get though.
Now I think you could set yourself up to be pretty much impossible to track if you partner up with a friend on the other side of the border... you set up their dish and they set up your dish, you each pay for each other's subscriptions so that there's no money-trail. Just make sure your dish doesn't have advertising written on it :-)
If they're compatible, you might just be able to swap receivers...
Mod-chipping and stuff for free viewing is black-market... unless you're a cypherpunk or something and can't stand the thought of signals passing through your body without knowing what they mean. Yes, it's illegal to tune them in and decode them.
Nope, you've just reduced the incentive for the software authors to port to another platform.
Litigation in the U.S. is a substitute for a lack of public health insurance. She may have had no choice but to pursue McDonald's.
IMHO, modern science isn't seeking answers to the same questions that modern religion is providing answers to.
Sometimes religious leaders and theologists, for whatever reason, stomp into the realm of scientific speculation, but after a few hundreds years of scientific research, they're generally discredited.
What some vocal religious minds generally fail to account for is that science is merely studying the universe we live in, whether or not a higher being created it -- it just doesn't matter. In a strict sense, by trying to avoid a human interpretation of the outcome, science is *cough* seeking a better understanding of *cough* God *cough*. Those who impede man's understanding of the universe, are impeding man's understanding of God's works.
While those who are devout followers of the cult of "I am not religious" may object strongly to the notion, I don't think that the personal drive for many scientists is all that far from that of most religious scholars.
The statement that morality is somehow tied to religion is a little spooky to me, it implies that you might think that the agnostic, and/or cult-like science worshippers are incapable of "moral" behaviour. (By the way, there's a modern line of thinking that morality appears as a natural consequence of game theory... A Google search on "ethics" and "game theory" bring up a few results.)
Domino runs on Linux, and well-designed apps for the web can be used from a browser without any trouble. The bigger problem is probably the nature of the Notes Mail Database design for the web, it blows chunks and could probably use an overhaul to look more like Hotmail or Gmail... but that should not be a hard thing to do. Really!
One feature you'll lose with a web-based mail client though is the ability to function while a server is unavailable (network outage, physically disconnected etc.)
I think a more accurate statement might be that the Notes fat client on Windows is superior to anything on Linux.... a statement more towards the complete lack of competition for Lotus Notes rather than the capability of the software.
I figure piracy is the greatest concern from networks providing content online... otherwise, I imagine PBS and community broadcasters would be happy to sell their content to whomever wanted to pay for it.
But for small commercial networks like HGTV, the Food Network and stuff, would cable companies refuse to carry them if they sold their content online? I mean, this could be the death of cable providers who aren't savvy enough to realize that more fat Internet content means more fat Internet cable users :-)
For that matter, they might have a reason to start setting up multicasting and delivering special content through multicasting clients.
Today, a small part of the English language died.
So does the government pay them by letting them keep some of the comissioned works?
There are slightly less direct methods to the scam too... the camera can be just about anywhere, and the card readers have been caught on the door-openers, so the machine doesn't even need to be tampered with.
You know, next they could make a movie out of Breakout
"Suddenly, without warning, there's a brilliant flash straight ahead. You check the radar screen. Nothing. Pretty soon there's another flash, and another. Next thing you know the flashes have turned into one gigantic force field of some kind and it's dead ahead. You check the radar screen again, still nothing."
Let's face it, the alien setting in DOOM was probably a cop-out to get rid of the bad taste around killing people and glorifying WWII.
F=ma is the definition of F. The fact that mass is variable does not make it an approximation.
In my experience, this is only true if you're stripping down a pre-existing application package to suit a customer's needs. I mean, if it is so obvious to implement, why not have it pre-written and save the coding, testing and documenting altogether? Just license and charge for configuration and deployment.
To go the library and custom code route opens a big can of worms... how do you bill your customer for their use? Is your customer licensing or buying the solution or the code? How are you handling security updates or bug reports? Are you charging for labour? If so, are you free to sell the solution (less the cost of labour to develop it) to their competitors, or are you committing to a non-compete clause? Certainly, you're not giving them your libraries? Since you're not, how can you be paid for the shortcut in time, yet assure them no problems appear in the code they don't own?
If you can do it in 30 minutes, do it, pretend it was pre-written, license it like any other software and bill for deployment.
No, the taxpayers will. The mayor's friends will get the contracts though.
That's why Project Managers pad programmer's estimates, and multiply them by a guesstimate outrageous factor.
That's a strange thing to say, there's never been an end to innovations... anything you can think of has probably already been done... like the trackpoint, glidepoint, split keyboards, zero angle, movement of the function keys, the boomslang type devices, multibutton mice, trackballs, wacom type tablets, pucks, lightpens, yoke/flight controllers, pedals for both games and chording keystrokes, voice command, joysticks, both proportional and touchpads, force-feedback of various sorts, including mice and joysticks... and those are just the mildly practical interface devices...
Before Apple started hacking with it, it was called a Jog-Dial, and you can get them just fine on a keyboard, almost exactly as you describe:
http://www.bella-usa.com/
Get a small radiant gas fireplace with one of those barbeque-style starter buttons. Alternatively, although a little extreme, sort out your woodburning fireplace.
<armchair opinion>
We're still one step down from a monopoly, this is more along the lines of Joe's tire shop v.s. the big tire chains.
You can still produce and sell music yourself, and the costs aren't that high. You can still play at local bars and get college radio play, but you're locked out of the most popular venues you need to finance better production quality because the big guys selling the airwaves are milking too much cash out of the big record companies... it creates an artificial barrier to entry and it's not really anyone's fault.
If it were a monopoly, rather than a collection of record companies, then the record companies could starve the radio stations for content, compelling them to lower the prices. But since it is not a monopoly, he who backs down, is replaced by his competitor.
Other than that, I agree, for the health of the market, regulation is required to make this type of business practice unattractive.
</armchair opinion>
I never said "pink spandex", and I didn't say everyone was a bigot, just that most people are aware of the tolerated vocal bigots in western male culture. Oh well.
Think about what you're saying!
"Easier to look manly?" Whether it is true or not, you're not talking about a biological "manliness", you're talking about a sociological one. A man is a man, whether he's reading a men's fashion magazine or not! For that matter, he could be as gay as a fairy, head-to-toe in rainbows and pastels, and he's still a man, never to be mistaken for a woman (transvestites excepted)
I also don't think you're talking about "easier", I think you're saying that spending time on your appearance is not seen as a "manly" thing to do.
Most women don't care if you fit a guy's definition of "manly", they want you to fit their definition of "manly". A woman's definition of manly generally does not include a fear of being seen to spend time on your appearance.
...but aside from a few purple t-shirts and a very sparing use of bicycle shorts while cycling, I too conform to the dull drab of jeans and a t-shirt or business casual attire.
Whether the root cause is food or not, I don't know, but in Britain, labour was relatively expensive, wheras in India, labour was cheap.
So, if you're running a textile business, and you need to power a fabric loom, you have India do all the work with their manual looms and skilled workforce.
Domestic work would of course be more profitable, but there aren't nearly as many skilled people working the looms in Britain.
Slavery inhibited this need in the Roman empire, but in Britian, it was nowhere near as prevalent... not enough slaves.
...so somebody figured out that you could get more work out of people if you began using water-powered looms, then steam powered looms, then you used British government to restrict the sales of cheaper and superior Indian textiles, finally forcing Indians to buy more expensive, inferior textiles from Britain...
Slavery might have inhibitied this need in the Americas, but one thing came with the American conquerors that the Romans never had... guns. The development, sale and distribution of firearms was a technological boon for the Americas. Then came the railway... this covered the creation of a coal-engine-fine machinery industry across the country which could be tapped for both skills and resources to create new technologies like the wireless and so forth.
When the British machinery was used in the U.S., the need for slavery or slave-wages was reduced and eventually eliminated, only the most unscrupulous designer labels practicing slavery or wage-slavery today.
But food probably does play a part in dictating why there was so much cheap labour in India v.s. Britain, it's tough to say... it's just as remarkable to look at why Rome didn't develop modern technology as why Britain and the Americas did.
I don't know, in my experience, "fashion" and "grooming" involves effort and time. There's a homophobic and male-superior trait in hetrosexual male culture which says that if you spend time "grooming", you're abnormal.
It goes something like this: If you spend too much time on your hair, you might be gay, which means you like men, like a woman, which means you're womanly, which means you're inferior and probably posess all kinds of inferior female traits.
Most men do not stygmatize people on this, but they're subconciously aware of what would provoke those who do stygmatize. Just try to wear spandex or a pink shirt... why is it hard? Why do you get funny looks? Why don't you have pink in your wardrobe?
So, many men are afraid to be seen to take an inordinately large amount of effort in personal grooming. "inordinately" is relative based on what you do in your life. A bricklayer who shows up to work daily with well-polished shoes (even before changing out of them) would probably get his coworkers talking... whereas a business man regularly getting his shoes polished on his lunch break would not.
So a cheap, short haircut, jeans and a T-shirt is generally not fashion, it's conforming. There are social pressures on men not to deviate... I think too this is why we have the 3-peice suit, the tuxedo and the business casual formula. Do not deviate!
The opposite is true too... although not being a woman, I can't say how much women strive to appear womanly, and how much they'd be ostracized for going around everywhere with a cheap, efficient hair cut, jeans and a t-shirt.
I have a 1.3 MP Fuji camera and it's o.k. I actually bought it because I figured Fuji would have a better chance of doing reasonable optics than Panasonic or Sony.
The odd part about it is that it has a tiny little lens, the kind you'd see in a cameraphone. The only problems appear in shots with low-lighting and no flash, or where the flash can't reach. I.e. what you'd expect... a lack of light-gathering ability. But for the vast majority of shots, it's o.k., and 1.3MP pictures aren't bad to deal with. The perfered medium for display is a computer monitor these days, but it will produce a reasonable holiday 5x7, it doesn't need a camera bag, nor will it ruin my vacation if it is stolen.
My point being, you can get reasonable shots with a small lens, a flash and 1.3MP. It shouldn't be impossible to get reasonable optics in a cameraphone... although my experience is that a cell phone's camera is worse than the worst brand-name digital camera.
There was a time when the lowest common denominator of social behaviour was to be unimposing on the people around you. You would be polite and courteous to those around you.
Now the lowest common denominator of social behaviour is to be tolerant, no matter how horrible the people around you are. We all must tolerate them and not interfere with the activities of those around us. From screaming children, screaming adults, overwhelming perfumes, body odour, aggressive dogs, swearing, public harassment of hapless victims around them, loud stereos, late night parties, we must tolerate them.
The result is that the greatest asshole reaps the greatest bennefit. The people who do not value peace and quiet are never for want. Those who do not like it, have to distance themselves from the greatest assholes, leaving public spaces full of the most horrible people immaginable.
If somebody asked me to turn off a T.V. in a public place, I would be embarassed that I was disturbing them and I would turn it down or off right away. It's a public space after all, not my living room.
I just mean the sociopaths. Hacking around with car stereos is fun, and getting a nice sound out of one is also a lot of fun, but some people tweak their subs so that they feel the maximum vibration possible, thinking that high bass doesn't hurt their hearing. They're after the rumble, not the booming, and they don't care how many windows they shake in the process.
To give you an idea of the scope... If a boom car following a fire engine passes my house, as long as there aren't any sirens, it won't be the fire engine I hear... the huge engine of the pumper truck barelling down the street full speed will be completely drowned out by the bass of the sociopath.
The engine and performance mods are just as bad... if I drove down the street with my horn stuck, I'd be arrested, but if I had a stereo blasting obsenities, that'd be o.k.
If I removed my muffler and drove down the street, I'd be arrested. Now if I tweaked my car to make as much noise as possible, that'd be o.k.
I think the police don't see this kind of thing as enough of a problem. IMHO, it should be part of emissions testing and traffic laws. In many places you're not allowed to wear headphones in a car, but you are allowed to play a stereo so loud you couldn't hear an emergency vehicle if it were hammering on its horn behind you... for that matter, you might just think you've got some real kick'n bass when they start ramming your car out of the way.