The way I heard it, the "something's up because of all the pizza deliveries" story had something to do with activity at the White House during Watergate. I looked it up at Snopes and couldn't find anything.
Interesting. Sounds competently done. Other folks try for the same outcome and can fall short.
I've had occasional reasons to visit some of our "secret" government offices, usually multi-agency installations sort-of gathered under a DHS umbrella. The last one I went to had no sign outside, no sign on the door, no number on the door. How did I know I was standing at the right door? In this non-descript office building in a ho-hum industrial park, there were 50 cars parked outside with US government plates. Inside the building the only unmarked door had more sensors, locks, keypads and other high-tech doodads than I could comprehend. They might as well have put up a neon sign with a big arrow pointing at the door and saying "This way to the secret lair!!!"
Then the clerk (yes, the *clerk*) who let me in turned out to be a guy I had known from years back. I hadn't recognized his name when we spoke on the phone because he'd been issued an official alias, complete with duplicate ID. (Take it from me, if you want good fake ID, get Uncle Sam to make it for you. Nobody does it better.) He realized who I was and looked kinda sheepish when I called him by his real name.
For the entire time I worked there that day, the Special Agents in the place looked at me kinda funny. They just didn't seem to understand why I seemed so amused by everything around me.
We have about 100,000 employees, are an all-MS (Exchange/Outlook) shop, and had something similar happen. Someone sent a notice out to most of the organization by picking a wrong distribution list. Lots of people replied to all saying "I don't want your notices; take me off your list." Lots of people replied to all saying "You shouldn't reply to all to get off the list." One poor lady replied to all "Take me off the list." Then she realized she shouldn't have done that and tried to recall her message. All the time, she had read receipts turned on for all her email by default. Between the replies and the receipts and all the people responding to all just to tell her to quit sending emails, this one user was getting over 100,000 emails a day. I helped her write a rule to delete them all while the Exchange admins killed the original distribution list, but that created a situation where she was getting 60,000+ bounce notices a day. Eventually, it tapered off. For a while there, though, she couldn't do a damn thing. She was about the worst case I heard of but everybody suffered to at least some degree. Not a fun time. I'm awfully glad our little screw up never hit the computer press.:-)
But were people really hearing the difference of incremental improvements, or did they just think they did? If it's the latter, it's still entirely appropriate to be dismissive of their claims. Just because I make an unverifiable claim, and somebody figures out a way to verify that claim, doesn't suddenly mean I was a prophet.
That's not fair. When someone turns out to be right, they deserve to be recognized for it, not dismissed as just a lucky idiot.
Design improvements...not by mumbo-jumbo. If you have no way of measuring progress, how do you know you're even going in the right direction?...You can't improve some nebulous notion of sound quality if you have no way to test what makes the signal "better" or "worse" by some arbitrary audiophile's self-proclaimed standard.
You really are hitting on the root cause of the problem. There's a divide between audiophiles and measurers because they can't communicate. The audiophiles say "I hear a difference." The measurers say "OK, what difference? On what generally acceptable scale of measurements is the sound different and by how much?"
The problem is that there often is no accepted scale, no common language that both groups recognize to describe the differences. In the beginning, by every recognized, accepted measurement, CDs were perfect. It was up to audiophiles to literally invent a new language to describe what they heard before it could be communicated, then measured, then progress could be tracked.
Want an example? Consider soundstaging. Pretty much anyone can understand it. If you sit in front of a system that images well and listen to a good recording of a group of musicians, you can easily close your eyes and point to the drummer being just to the right of center, back behind the lead singer who's directly in the middle up front. You can also point to the bass player off to the right and the pianist off to the left. It's easy to hear and pretty amazing the first time you really experience it. But is there a generally accepted scale of measurement upon which to peg a particular system with regards to imaging accuracy? Not really. We can talk about time issues but there really is no engineer-accepted number that adequately tells us that system A images like a champ while in system B you can't really tell if the drummer is middle-front or 15 feet back of center.
Digital critics were pummeled with this situation in the beginning. We heard digital as crap but there was no measurement like total harmonic distortion that we could point to that quantified just how crappy digital was in the beginning. It took lots of research by people who had pure, unsubstantiated faith in their hearing before what we heard ever got quantified and repeatably measured. That work is still not finished.
It will always be this way. Human ears are the most capable sound-sensing instruments we have. They are also completely non-standardized in their response. Thus, we are capable of hearing differences that we have no way to measure and have no accepted language to describe. Audiophiles accept this and try to make the situation better by describing what they hear. Measurers simply deny, deny, deny. They belittle as unscientific. Then they get proved wrong and the whole cycle starts over again.
Hmmm. Interesting thoughts and I certainly take your points. Here's my opinion on still more Euro brands:
Glock - In the words of Jeff Cooper, a "device for throwing balls." Also the most reliable firearm in that tactical niche. A defensive gun *needs* to be nothing more than a device for throwing balls that's reliable; everything else is secondary. My opinion is that the Glock is the finest fighting pistol ever made. 1911 purists feel free to flame me.
H&K - Great guns. I have a real soft spot for the PSP and (a little less so) for the P7. They make great battle rifles, too. Unfortunately for U.S. civilians, their horrendously bad customer service means that I won't buy from them. I'm a civilian, so if I send them a gun for service, they will work on it when they get around to it. Any gun that comes in from any government agency goes ahead of mine in the service queue. There have been horror stories of H&K literally holding onto civilian-owned guns for years without working on them because they never cleared the police and military work that took priority.
Russian guns - The Toz free pistol looks like it was hammered directly out of iron ore using a campfire for heat and a couple of rocks for forging tools. The thing also seems to magically shoot personal best high scores for any shooter who picks one up. They just feel right and the bullets go where they're supposed to. The thing is a legend. And what about the Makarov? Cheap, small, usually as reliable as a full-size Ruger (and that's saying a lot), it's a wonderful example of a pistol that just works. I'm so glad they are no longer rare in the U.S.. I can remember back in the 1970s when a collector would have to pay more than a grand to get one and all his buddies would look at it with awe, like it was a moon rock. Now you can have one for a couple of bills and actually afford to shoot it.
"...we're still very fucking good at making guns."
No, we're not.
Compare a Remington rifle to a Merkel. If you think that's comparing a mass-production item to a boutique item try comparing a Kimber to a Merkel. Compare the Remington to a Blaser or a Sako.
Compare a Smith and Wesson M41 target pistol to a Unique (out of business and French to boot, but still better than anything you can get from the U.S.), a Hammerli, or a Walter target pistol.
Compare the best revolver to ever come out of the S&W Performance Center to a Korth.
Compare the best semi-custom 1911-pattern target pistol you can get from a low-volume specialty manufacurer in the U.S. to a Pardini centerfire target pistol. Of all these comparisons, this one will be the closest, but only if the U.S. maker didn't have a bad day when they built your pistol.
No, the sad truth is that American gun makers don't take quality as seriously as the Europeans. It's true that you can't beat the bang-for-the-buck of the American brands. The Ruger.22 target auto is more pistol for less money than you can get anywhere. Unfortunately, it also looks like an industrial tool compared to the products of Europe.
For purely custom, incredibly expensive, one of a kind guns, you're as likely to find a suitable artist in the U.S. as elsewhere. But for combining mass production and high quality, no U.S. gun manufacturer can hold a candle to the best Europeans.
Of all audio gear, speaker cables and power cables are probably the ones that have the least effect, if any, on sound quality. I'll grant right off the bat that any difference probably won't be audible. But before everyone gets all comfy in their religous prejudices, consider the history of absolutism - it usually fails in the long run.
We saw it with CD players. 25 years ago it was easy to find hordes and hordes of scientifically-minded folks who proclaimed that CD players were all identical and perfect. They reproduced as high a frequency as the ear could hear. They did so with perfect digital repeatability. They were perfect and identical. That was an unassailable scientific fact. It was even a marketing slogan for Phillips; "Perfect Sound Forever" was their first ad campaign for CDs.
Audiophiles said different. They said they heard differences. When challenged to do double blind, ABX testing, they often failed. They offered up only feeble excuses about how such tests are never structured properly, always being too short and normally using switchboxes that degraded sound. The skeptics and scientists had a field day exposing audiophiles as frauds and hucksters, as (at best) deluded simpletons.
Eventually, though, a funny thing happened. Research got done by audiophiles who were also engineers. They discovered various CD player problems (like jitter) that could be measured and fixed. When those problems were fixed, the audiophiles said the players sounded better. The audiophiles still failed ABX tests and still held to the same excuses, but changes were made, anyway.
Nowadays, anyone who knows what music sounds like (and, yes, that eliminates 98% of the populace right there) can easily tell the difference between a first-gen Sony CDP-101 and a current high-end CD player. There really are differences. Those people who absolutely knew that it was scientifically impossible for any difference to exist turned out to be painfully, embarrassingly wrong. (Nowadays, they tend to fall back on revisionist history: "Oh, we never really said you guys were wrong, just that testing didn't bear you out...etc., etc.")
My point is not to construct an elaborate straw man. My point is that keeping an open mind is a good thing. We have previously seen lots of folks loudly and authoritatively proclaim that a given phenomena does not exist and cannot possibly exist. They cite scientific reasoning (as they spout it) as unquestionable. But that is nothing more than a religous devotion to a position and I reject it.
Sure, the burden of proof is on the people who make claims that cable A sounds better than cable B. I doubt they'll ever succeed. But the vituperative, out-of-hand rejection of alternate views is more than just unseemly; it argues against (indeed, belittles) an inquisitive spirit.
Perhaps some Carl Sagan would be in order. His essay The Dragon in My Garage is right on point. When considering unverifiable and seemingly insane assertions, his advice is that: "...the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the... hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion."
We've seen the mocking, "scientific" approach to audiophile claims turn out to be wrong in the past. We might do well to be a little less sure of ourselves when considering audiophile issues in the future.
Side note: Just to show that there's blame to go all around, note that the offer of the James Randi Educational Foundation folks is, as I have stated elsewhere, disingenuous as all hell. (See Rule 12, a proviso that makes it clear that the offer is only open to whoever they want to make it open to and gives the JREF multiple, too-easy excuses to reject any attempt to claim the reward.) The rules are set up so that the test will never happen. This is little more than a minor publicity stunt that's gotten picked up by too many 'net outlets and given far too much virtual ink, already.
OK, Seagate has announced (again) that they'll have full disk encryption. The last vaporware announcement went nowhere and, in the interim, I chose to use Flagstone drives when I needed full disk encryption in hardware.
Now, just maybe Seagate is going to produce a real product that I can buy. Does anyone want to take a stab at comparing/contrasting the tech used by Seagate and Stonewood? The biggest desktop Flagstone drive is 80 gigs and I'd love to have something as trustworthy in a larger size.
A buying decision is coming up again for me quite soon. This time, I hope I'll have some choice.
...the first rule of Usenet is "don't post anything on Usenet any more."
OK, but how do you know? How can anybody know?
Theoretically, Newzbin can help me find binaries, but the search function is pretty basic. If you're looking for something without a known, reasonably rare text string in the file name in a known format, then you'll inevitably wind up with nothing or thousands of hits. Newzbin also refuses to index binaries posted to non-binary groups; I realize that's something that shouldn't happen, but it does and those files need to be searchable.
As for text entries to Usenet, I can't find a good search solution. Google Groups has, far more times than I can count, failed in my testing. More times than not, I can be looking at a post in my newsreader, copy some unique text from it, enter that text to Google's search, and get back zero results.
I have a premium provider. I have an account with Newzbin. I've been downloading binaries since back when I had to paste together multipart binary files in a text editor to get them to work on my 286, in between autoposting multiple messages to Compuserve. I am no dummy when it comes to all this. I sincerely hope I've overlooked some wonderful resource, but my current take on the situation is that the lack of good search makes usenet a really lousy alternative these days.
And allow me to clarify: I was in no way saying that violence is currently warranted. I was only inquiring if you felt it could *ever* be warranted. The answer, after getting past all the qualifiers, seems to be that, yes, it can be justified in extreme cases even if the result is most likely to be disastrous. So we agree. Cool.
Now, on a more personal level, I feel that the general principle (violence can be justified in extreme circumstances) can be applied to specific cases on a much smaller scale. If someone is about to murder me, I feel no qualms about using deadly force to keep myself alive. So I think it's a terrible overstatement to say that governments should keep a monopoly on violence. There are just too many justifiable exceptions. Obviously, governments, expressing the will of the people, get a monopoly on setting the rules for when violence is allowable. But there are just too many exceptions to justify the notion that only governments should have the power to dispense violence.
How about a compromise? If I am acting in a way a policeman would act (e.g., defending an innocent from attack), perhaps we can simply view that as me acting under the authority of and in the place of a government official? The result is the same - I get to defend myself. And folks like you get to look at it as an action taken under the imprimatur of govt authority.
Of course, that's not the standard we have in the U.S. Here, the standard is "reasonableness." What would a reasonable person do in the same circumstance? In my home state, if someone breaks into my house I will assume they mean me ill will and if they don't run away the instant they hear me load the chamber of my shotgun, no jury in the state would consider it anything but reasonable that I then proceeded to unload the firearm into his chest. (Well, maybe not in Austin...) In other states, the presumption of reasonableness only kicks in when a homeowner runs away. It is, in that view, completely unreasonable to take a life when the simple expedient of walking away is available. So, obviously, there's confusion.
The rules, though, are knowable and fairly reasonable pretty much everywhere. And there's almost no place where the state attitude completely precludes the use of deadly force. (Washington D.C., Chicago, NY maybe, off the top of my head would probably count as exceptions.)
So I'm wondering, do you think this idea that the government should maintain a monopoly on violence is a workable one? Obviously not in the case of justified revolution (we've already covered that), but what about more personal cases? Or, perhaps, do you live someplace other than the U.S. and, therefore, view this entire exchange as seriously nuts?
ALL governments (whether legitimately elected ones or even evil dictatorships) should enforce a strict monopoly on violence - no one else allowed to shoot people except the government.
Instead of simply disagreeing with you, I'd like to ask a question or two. The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, asserts a natural human right to engage in violent (if need be) revolution against oppressive governments. Do you agree that such a right exists in any circumstance? If you do agree, how is that right to be exercised in the most extreme cases other than by non-government folks shooting people (specifically, the people employed by and running the oppressive government in play)?
I'm serious. Your statement sounds really, really logical until, after a little thought, there comes the realization that the end result is that nobody ever gets to revolt and our U.S. Founding Fathers, therefore, were all bad guys. Yeah, they certainly were criminals, temporarily. But I don't think they were wrong. Do you?
Where I work, the servers are encrypted. The laptops are encrypted. The desktops are about to be encrypted.
No disk is ever RMA'd anywhere. If we have a failure, we get a new replacement disk and send back a sheet of paper saying we destroyed the old one.
We wipe sensitive data with 7 random overwrites on all disks in storage that may be used again. Working desktop and laptop disks passing out of the organization for donation to schools or charities get the same treatment.
Dead disk drives from laptops and desktops are treated just like server disks. Server disks at end of life are never passed out of the organization in working condition. They are software-wiped as above, degaussed in a gigantic noisy machine, disassembled, and the platters removed. Glass platters are broken into little bits and thrown out. Metal platters are beaten up with a hammer and then (I am not kidding) a guy in the office makes sculptures out of them. We have an area with various towering sculptures representing literally thousands of decommissioned disks, some of which are really heavy 8-inch platters made, it appears, of copper. I guess that means we've been doing this for a long time.
The sculpture procedure is optional and specific to my local office.:-) At that point, our official procedures clear us to sell the platters by simply pitching them in amongst the other miscellaneous tons of broken equipment we periodically sell off as scrap.
Toll booths create a stop and go traffic nightmare.
I go through 6 toll plazas a day. 90% of the time, I have to drop to about 65mph to do so. (10% of the time, something stupid is going on.)
Don't get me wrong. I hate paying tolls. I think roads should be free to use. The privacy problems with having an EZ Tag scare the crap out of me, though not enough to make me give it up.
However, criticism that toll booths create a stop and go traffic nightmare are overblown and unfair. Old toll installations that rely on human tolltakers have these problems; none of the newer systems I've seen installed in the last decade suffer from such difficulties.
You're not *allowed* to talk rationally after someone utters the word "pedophile." Don't you understand that? If people start talking rationally, Dateline won't be able to make money and all those people out there screaming for blood won't have yet another underclass to feel superior to. You're upsetting the whole balance of nature; quick, take it back!
It's not so much that I take these things personally. I've never actually had a problem with either of the sales venues I cited.
But to further explain, on gunbroker it's terribly common for you to bid on an item, win the bid, and then be told "Oh, a few days before (or even right after) the auction ended, somebody came in the store and bought it." Why didn't the seller remove it from the site? I guess because they're just sloppy but what bothers me is the attitude of "I'm in possession. I don't have to even try to be competent. Screw you."
As for the bassoon, another poster has said that a seller might not want to deliver a fine instrument into the hands of some Jackass-style TV show where they're gonna drink beer out of the thing. Well, why not? If you advertise something for sale, why should you care what the purchaser does with it? It doesn't seem like that's any of the seller's business.
As for their disclaimer, if you've followed their site for years like I have, you know that the disclaimer actually means "The better the instrument, the more control we want to have over who gets it." If you try to buy a rare and special instrument from them, they want you to audition it so they can hear if you're worthy to own it. If they deem you not worthy, they won't sell it to you. An incredibly rich person who wants to buy his preteen a starter instrument will simply be turned away when he tries to buy a USD$30K+ instrument. I sort of understand it but I also feel it's a sort of controlling attitude that I find distasteful.
(An example aside - Have you ever boarded a larger boat where the first thing you saw was one of those cutesy signs that said something about how the captains rules are the only rules? There's a reasonableness to that; in case of an emergency at sea, there's an overriding need for everyone to shut up and unquestioningly, instantly obey the orders of the captain. Lives can be at stake. But lots of recreational boat owners expand that attitude willy-nilly and revel in ordering people around. If you're on their boat, you have to do what they say, even if they're being stupid and making everybody miserable. It seems to me many sellers are falling into the same trap of exercising control under the color reasonableness merely for the sake of being in control and without any solid justification. Surely you chafe when placed under the authority of such people?)
Supposedly, public sales should be fair. I know when I did extensive business on EBay a number of years ago, any item on the auction site was reserved for that sales venue until that auction ended. If someone called and asked me if I had a Barbie airplane in stock (I was helping my sister sell collectible Barbie dolls and accessories) the answer would be "It's up on EBay at the moment so I can't even talk to you about a direct sale. Call me after the auction ends and if it didn't sell, we can negotiate a price." It would never have occurred to me to offer a unique item both online and via direct phone sales at the same time. That would be screwing over one set of customers or the other.
I don't think I'm alone in this attitude. There's a basic notion that sales should be fair. Yes, if someone gives you a valid reason to not do business with them, even a flimsy one, I can accept that. But sellers should be honorable enough to actually honor the offers they make to the public absent a compelling reason.
There was a time when it was perfectly reasonable to say to someone "Yes, my house is for sale but I'm not going to sell it to you because you're black and we don't want your kind around here." Eventually, we as a society realized that shutting someone out of a nominally open commercial opportunity for stupid reasons was a violation of the basic social contract that allows us to cooperatively build a better society. Thus, the Fair Housing laws came into existence.
It's a matter of degree, of course, but if someone says "This is for sale but not to you," I think they are too often being a dick and just taking a little power trip. I find it a tad irritating.
I find this interesting. If you advertise something for sale, shouldn't you have to sell it? Not everywhere, apparently.
Nearly all the firearms-specific versions of EBay, like gunbroker.com, are filled with offerings of used guns that basically say "Subject to prior sale. I'm putting up this web page but if someone comes in my shop and gives me money, you're out of luck. If I decide I don't like you, you're out of luck." This strikes me as quite unfair and unprofessional.
Even some professional-looking web sites that sell things don't really offer them for sale. If you go to Charles Double Reed looking for a new bassoon to purchase, you can't just put it in your shopping cart and send them money. Oh, no. The disclaimer ("Clicking the add to my cart button below does not guarantee that this instrument will be available to you.") makes it clear that they get to decide if you're the kind of person they want to do business with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen those "No shoes, no shirt, no service" signs. I realize sellers have a right to decide who they want to do business with. But this whole business of offering things for sale and then jerking them back at the last second, seemingly at random, just strikes me as symbolic of a "I don't have to follow any nominal rules of social interaction; I make my own" mindset that seems more and more common these days.
Are people just getting ruder, stupider, and prouder of it?
I'm not a teen (far from it) and I've managed to completely lose patience with Freenet, too. I want anonymity but Freenet isn't a usable answer. Every Freenet advocate always says the same thing: "Leave your machine on for a while and it'll do all sorts of data transfer in the background enabling it to better access resources. After it's been on for a while, things get faster."
That's a lie. Over the past couple of years, I've tested this 4 or 5 times. I've set up a dedicated machine, installed Freenet, given the machine a dedicated connection, made a bunch of information requests, and walked away for a week. Sometimes two weeks. Freenet *never* gets faster. NEVER. It NEVER approaches a usable state. Click a link to a small amount of data and it may arrive tomorrow. Click a link to a file of more than a meg and it NEVER arrives.
I'm told that *sites* on Freenet are a lost cause but if you only use Freenet for Frost, then it becomes useful. I may try to test one more time but my experience thus far is that Freenet is nothing but a fraud.
The move from v.5 to v.7 was the last nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned. Freenet has now moved from an attractive concept that bitterly disappoints to a stupid idea (anonymity doesn't exist if you have to know somebody to participate) that probably won't get a chance to disappoint me since it's not even worth investigating anymore.
Maybe, if I've got a week to waste in the future, I may try one last time to use v.5 and Frost. But I kinda doubt it. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 5 or 10 times, shame on me."
This guy sells what you describe (a used, assumed shop-grade M100) for USD$75. His are fully-checked-out and he's considered reputable. I'd expect to pay less from a person I randomly run into online who says theirs works.
I was seriously considering getting a cosmetically nice, fully rebuilt 102 from him for USD$350. However, for less money and an actual Linux OS with vi, this new Asus may be my choice by the time I actually need the new machine. Still, for a writer, the physical attributes of the Tandy are simply unbeatable. I've never typed on any portable note-taker that even came close. My dear God, I love that keyboard!
I'd pay USD$500 if someone would start producing the 102 again with modern peripheral ports running a stripped-down Linux OS. (I say "stripped-down" since vi, network connectivity, and maybe Lynx are basically the only things I need when I'm writing on the road. Oh, yeah, and give it room for 8 AA batteries; long-lived, easily replaceable batteries are seriously useful.) Wi-fi would be an unnecessary luxury and even an ethernet port would be optional; just a couple of USB ports and I'd be happy as long as I could have that wonderful keyboard and flat-as-a-book, easy-to-tote form factor again.
I only posted to try and shut up the folks who were belittling the question. Eventually, I found real progress toward an answer here. I hope those folks can help you.
The change in sweetener is a more subtle thing than trying to pass off New Coke in the old Coke cans. No, I didn't notice the change. How long ago was it?
OTOH, ask those Dr. Pepper fans who live near and dote on the output of the one Dr. Pepper bottler in the U.S. who still uses cane sugar. They'll tell you they can easily tell the difference.
Like lots of photo buffs, the first thing I thought of was the Rochester Institute. And that led me to an answer.
I'm not going to put directly on Slashdot the name and phone number of a real person. However, if you visit the Image Permanence Institute web site and poke around, you'll find a name and phone number you can call to get in touch with an expert on these subjects who will either know the answer or know where to find it.
Obviously, there's a problem, know-nothing slashdot smartmouths be damned. Here's what
Kodak says:
Ambient-Background Radiation
(effects on raw stock)
Ambient gamma radiation is composed of two sources: a low-energy component which arises from the decay of radionuclides and a high-energy component which is the product of the interaction of cosmic rays with the earths upper atmosphere. The radionuclides responsible for the low-energy photons exist in soil and rock and are carried into earth-derived building materials, such as concrete. Upon exposure to ambient-background radiation, photographic negative materials can exhibit an increase in minimum density, a loss in contrast and speed in the dark areas, and an increase in granularity. The changes in film performance are determined by several factors, such as the film speed and length of time exposed to the radiation before the film is processed. A film with an exposure index of 500 can exhibit about three times the change in performance as a film with an index of 125. While this effect on film raw stock is not immediate, it is one reason why we suggest exposing and processing film as soon as possible after purchase. We recommend a period of no more than six months from the time of film purchase before processing, provided it has been kept under specified conditions. Extended periods beyond six months may affect faster speed films as noted above, even if kept frozen. The only way to determine the specific effect of ambient-background radiation is with actual testing or measurements and placing a detector in the locations where the film was stored. The most obvious clue is the observance of increased granularity, especially in the light areas of the scene.
If they bring it back with "substitute raw materials and new manufacturing technologies," it won't be the same thing. Emulsions and our attachments to them are delicate things. Any change, however subtle, will kill the effect. The new film may be just fine. It may be sort of like the old film. But it won't be the same.
Think "New Coke." It was supposed to be the same, wasn't it? In fact, some bottlers changed formulas and put New Coke in remaining stocks of old cans. The first time I tried one of those, I literally did a spit take. It might have been a perfectly fine soda, but it was different. It wasn't what I expected and I could tell that a change had been made.
The human senses are far more sensitive than people realize. New Coke didn't fool me. A change in materials in a film emulsion won't fool they eye of a photographer who loved the old formula.
Now I'm going to go do some research to help this guy. He really does need to arrange good long term storage for his film.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I heard it, the "something's up because of all the pizza deliveries" story had something to do with activity at the White House during Watergate. I looked it up at Snopes and couldn't find anything.
Anybody out there know the source of this story?
Interesting. Sounds competently done. Other folks try for the same outcome and can fall short.
I've had occasional reasons to visit some of our "secret" government offices, usually multi-agency installations sort-of gathered under a DHS umbrella. The last one I went to had no sign outside, no sign on the door, no number on the door. How did I know I was standing at the right door? In this non-descript office building in a ho-hum industrial park, there were 50 cars parked outside with US government plates. Inside the building the only unmarked door had more sensors, locks, keypads and other high-tech doodads than I could comprehend. They might as well have put up a neon sign with a big arrow pointing at the door and saying "This way to the secret lair!!!"
Then the clerk (yes, the *clerk*) who let me in turned out to be a guy I had known from years back. I hadn't recognized his name when we spoke on the phone because he'd been issued an official alias, complete with duplicate ID. (Take it from me, if you want good fake ID, get Uncle Sam to make it for you. Nobody does it better.) He realized who I was and looked kinda sheepish when I called him by his real name.
For the entire time I worked there that day, the Special Agents in the place looked at me kinda funny. They just didn't seem to understand why I seemed so amused by everything around me.
We have about 100,000 employees, are an all-MS (Exchange/Outlook) shop, and had something similar happen. Someone sent a notice out to most of the organization by picking a wrong distribution list. Lots of people replied to all saying "I don't want your notices; take me off your list." Lots of people replied to all saying "You shouldn't reply to all to get off the list." One poor lady replied to all "Take me off the list." Then she realized she shouldn't have done that and tried to recall her message. All the time, she had read receipts turned on for all her email by default. Between the replies and the receipts and all the people responding to all just to tell her to quit sending emails, this one user was getting over 100,000 emails a day. I helped her write a rule to delete them all while the Exchange admins killed the original distribution list, but that created a situation where she was getting 60,000+ bounce notices a day. Eventually, it tapered off. For a while there, though, she couldn't do a damn thing. She was about the worst case I heard of but everybody suffered to at least some degree. Not a fun time. I'm awfully glad our little screw up never hit the computer press. :-)
That's not fair. When someone turns out to be right, they deserve to be recognized for it, not dismissed as just a lucky idiot.
You really are hitting on the root cause of the problem. There's a divide between audiophiles and measurers because they can't communicate. The audiophiles say "I hear a difference." The measurers say "OK, what difference? On what generally acceptable scale of measurements is the sound different and by how much?"
The problem is that there often is no accepted scale, no common language that both groups recognize to describe the differences. In the beginning, by every recognized, accepted measurement, CDs were perfect. It was up to audiophiles to literally invent a new language to describe what they heard before it could be communicated, then measured, then progress could be tracked.
Want an example? Consider soundstaging. Pretty much anyone can understand it. If you sit in front of a system that images well and listen to a good recording of a group of musicians, you can easily close your eyes and point to the drummer being just to the right of center, back behind the lead singer who's directly in the middle up front. You can also point to the bass player off to the right and the pianist off to the left. It's easy to hear and pretty amazing the first time you really experience it. But is there a generally accepted scale of measurement upon which to peg a particular system with regards to imaging accuracy? Not really. We can talk about time issues but there really is no engineer-accepted number that adequately tells us that system A images like a champ while in system B you can't really tell if the drummer is middle-front or 15 feet back of center.
Digital critics were pummeled with this situation in the beginning. We heard digital as crap but there was no measurement like total harmonic distortion that we could point to that quantified just how crappy digital was in the beginning. It took lots of research by people who had pure, unsubstantiated faith in their hearing before what we heard ever got quantified and repeatably measured. That work is still not finished.
It will always be this way. Human ears are the most capable sound-sensing instruments we have. They are also completely non-standardized in their response. Thus, we are capable of hearing differences that we have no way to measure and have no accepted language to describe. Audiophiles accept this and try to make the situation better by describing what they hear. Measurers simply deny, deny, deny. They belittle as unscientific. Then they get proved wrong and the whole cycle starts over again.
Hmmm. Interesting thoughts and I certainly take your points. Here's my opinion on still more Euro brands:
:-)
Glock - In the words of Jeff Cooper, a "device for throwing balls." Also the most reliable firearm in that tactical niche. A defensive gun *needs* to be nothing more than a device for throwing balls that's reliable; everything else is secondary. My opinion is that the Glock is the finest fighting pistol ever made. 1911 purists feel free to flame me.
H&K - Great guns. I have a real soft spot for the PSP and (a little less so) for the P7. They make great battle rifles, too. Unfortunately for U.S. civilians, their horrendously bad customer service means that I won't buy from them. I'm a civilian, so if I send them a gun for service, they will work on it when they get around to it. Any gun that comes in from any government agency goes ahead of mine in the service queue. There have been horror stories of H&K literally holding onto civilian-owned guns for years without working on them because they never cleared the police and military work that took priority.
Russian guns - The Toz free pistol looks like it was hammered directly out of iron ore using a campfire for heat and a couple of rocks for forging tools. The thing also seems to magically shoot personal best high scores for any shooter who picks one up. They just feel right and the bullets go where they're supposed to. The thing is a legend. And what about the Makarov? Cheap, small, usually as reliable as a full-size Ruger (and that's saying a lot), it's a wonderful example of a pistol that just works. I'm so glad they are no longer rare in the U.S.. I can remember back in the 1970s when a collector would have to pay more than a grand to get one and all his buddies would look at it with awe, like it was a moon rock. Now you can have one for a couple of bills and actually afford to shoot it.
OK, back to work now. My break's about over.
No, we're not.
Compare a Remington rifle to a Merkel. If you think that's comparing a mass-production item to a boutique item try comparing a Kimber to a Merkel. Compare the Remington to a Blaser or a Sako.
Compare a Smith and Wesson M41 target pistol to a Unique (out of business and French to boot, but still better than anything you can get from the U.S.), a Hammerli, or a Walter target pistol.
Compare the best revolver to ever come out of the S&W Performance Center to a Korth.
Compare the best semi-custom 1911-pattern target pistol you can get from a low-volume specialty manufacurer in the U.S. to a Pardini centerfire target pistol. Of all these comparisons, this one will be the closest, but only if the U.S. maker didn't have a bad day when they built your pistol.
No, the sad truth is that American gun makers don't take quality as seriously as the Europeans. It's true that you can't beat the bang-for-the-buck of the American brands. The Ruger .22 target auto is more pistol for less money than you can get anywhere. Unfortunately, it also looks like an industrial tool compared to the products of Europe.
For purely custom, incredibly expensive, one of a kind guns, you're as likely to find a suitable artist in the U.S. as elsewhere. But for combining mass production and high quality, no U.S. gun manufacturer can hold a candle to the best Europeans.
Of all audio gear, speaker cables and power cables are probably the ones that have the least effect, if any, on sound quality. I'll grant right off the bat that any difference probably won't be audible. But before everyone gets all comfy in their religous prejudices, consider the history of absolutism - it usually fails in the long run.
We saw it with CD players. 25 years ago it was easy to find hordes and hordes of scientifically-minded folks who proclaimed that CD players were all identical and perfect. They reproduced as high a frequency as the ear could hear. They did so with perfect digital repeatability. They were perfect and identical. That was an unassailable scientific fact. It was even a marketing slogan for Phillips; "Perfect Sound Forever" was their first ad campaign for CDs.
Audiophiles said different. They said they heard differences. When challenged to do double blind, ABX testing, they often failed. They offered up only feeble excuses about how such tests are never structured properly, always being too short and normally using switchboxes that degraded sound. The skeptics and scientists had a field day exposing audiophiles as frauds and hucksters, as (at best) deluded simpletons.
Eventually, though, a funny thing happened. Research got done by audiophiles who were also engineers. They discovered various CD player problems (like jitter) that could be measured and fixed. When those problems were fixed, the audiophiles said the players sounded better. The audiophiles still failed ABX tests and still held to the same excuses, but changes were made, anyway.
Nowadays, anyone who knows what music sounds like (and, yes, that eliminates 98% of the populace right there) can easily tell the difference between a first-gen Sony CDP-101 and a current high-end CD player. There really are differences. Those people who absolutely knew that it was scientifically impossible for any difference to exist turned out to be painfully, embarrassingly wrong. (Nowadays, they tend to fall back on revisionist history: "Oh, we never really said you guys were wrong, just that testing didn't bear you out...etc., etc.")
My point is not to construct an elaborate straw man. My point is that keeping an open mind is a good thing. We have previously seen lots of folks loudly and authoritatively proclaim that a given phenomena does not exist and cannot possibly exist. They cite scientific reasoning (as they spout it) as unquestionable. But that is nothing more than a religous devotion to a position and I reject it.
Sure, the burden of proof is on the people who make claims that cable A sounds better than cable B. I doubt they'll ever succeed. But the vituperative, out-of-hand rejection of alternate views is more than just unseemly; it argues against (indeed, belittles) an inquisitive spirit.
Perhaps some Carl Sagan would be in order. His essay The Dragon in My Garage is right on point. When considering unverifiable and seemingly insane assertions, his advice is that: "...the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the ... hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion."
We've seen the mocking, "scientific" approach to audiophile claims turn out to be wrong in the past. We might do well to be a little less sure of ourselves when considering audiophile issues in the future.
Side note: Just to show that there's blame to go all around, note that the offer of the James Randi Educational Foundation folks is, as I have stated elsewhere, disingenuous as all hell. (See Rule 12, a proviso that makes it clear that the offer is only open to whoever they want to make it open to and gives the JREF multiple, too-easy excuses to reject any attempt to claim the reward.) The rules are set up so that the test will never happen. This is little more than a minor publicity stunt that's gotten picked up by too many 'net outlets and given far too much virtual ink, already.
OK, Seagate has announced (again) that they'll have full disk encryption. The last vaporware announcement went nowhere and, in the interim, I chose to use Flagstone drives when I needed full disk encryption in hardware.
Now, just maybe Seagate is going to produce a real product that I can buy. Does anyone want to take a stab at comparing/contrasting the tech used by Seagate and Stonewood? The biggest desktop Flagstone drive is 80 gigs and I'd love to have something as trustworthy in a larger size.
A buying decision is coming up again for me quite soon. This time, I hope I'll have some choice.
OK, but how do you know? How can anybody know?
Theoretically, Newzbin can help me find binaries, but the search function is pretty basic. If you're looking for something without a known, reasonably rare text string in the file name in a known format, then you'll inevitably wind up with nothing or thousands of hits. Newzbin also refuses to index binaries posted to non-binary groups; I realize that's something that shouldn't happen, but it does and those files need to be searchable.
As for text entries to Usenet, I can't find a good search solution. Google Groups has, far more times than I can count, failed in my testing. More times than not, I can be looking at a post in my newsreader, copy some unique text from it, enter that text to Google's search, and get back zero results.
I have a premium provider. I have an account with Newzbin. I've been downloading binaries since back when I had to paste together multipart binary files in a text editor to get them to work on my 286, in between autoposting multiple messages to Compuserve. I am no dummy when it comes to all this. I sincerely hope I've overlooked some wonderful resource, but my current take on the situation is that the lack of good search makes usenet a really lousy alternative these days.
And allow me to clarify: I was in no way saying that violence is currently warranted. I was only inquiring if you felt it could *ever* be warranted. The answer, after getting past all the qualifiers, seems to be that, yes, it can be justified in extreme cases even if the result is most likely to be disastrous. So we agree. Cool.
Now, on a more personal level, I feel that the general principle (violence can be justified in extreme circumstances) can be applied to specific cases on a much smaller scale. If someone is about to murder me, I feel no qualms about using deadly force to keep myself alive. So I think it's a terrible overstatement to say that governments should keep a monopoly on violence. There are just too many justifiable exceptions. Obviously, governments, expressing the will of the people, get a monopoly on setting the rules for when violence is allowable. But there are just too many exceptions to justify the notion that only governments should have the power to dispense violence.
How about a compromise? If I am acting in a way a policeman would act (e.g., defending an innocent from attack), perhaps we can simply view that as me acting under the authority of and in the place of a government official? The result is the same - I get to defend myself. And folks like you get to look at it as an action taken under the imprimatur of govt authority.
Of course, that's not the standard we have in the U.S. Here, the standard is "reasonableness." What would a reasonable person do in the same circumstance? In my home state, if someone breaks into my house I will assume they mean me ill will and if they don't run away the instant they hear me load the chamber of my shotgun, no jury in the state would consider it anything but reasonable that I then proceeded to unload the firearm into his chest. (Well, maybe not in Austin...) In other states, the presumption of reasonableness only kicks in when a homeowner runs away. It is, in that view, completely unreasonable to take a life when the simple expedient of walking away is available. So, obviously, there's confusion.
The rules, though, are knowable and fairly reasonable pretty much everywhere. And there's almost no place where the state attitude completely precludes the use of deadly force. (Washington D.C., Chicago, NY maybe, off the top of my head would probably count as exceptions.)
So I'm wondering, do you think this idea that the government should maintain a monopoly on violence is a workable one? Obviously not in the case of justified revolution (we've already covered that), but what about more personal cases? Or, perhaps, do you live someplace other than the U.S. and, therefore, view this entire exchange as seriously nuts?
I use Cryptobox. Is that good enough?
I'm serious. I don't know if it's good enough. I chose it because it was easy to use but it could be horribly flawed and I'd never know.
Instead of simply disagreeing with you, I'd like to ask a question or two. The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, asserts a natural human right to engage in violent (if need be) revolution against oppressive governments. Do you agree that such a right exists in any circumstance? If you do agree, how is that right to be exercised in the most extreme cases other than by non-government folks shooting people (specifically, the people employed by and running the oppressive government in play)?
I'm serious. Your statement sounds really, really logical until, after a little thought, there comes the realization that the end result is that nobody ever gets to revolt and our U.S. Founding Fathers, therefore, were all bad guys. Yeah, they certainly were criminals, temporarily. But I don't think they were wrong. Do you?
Where I work, the servers are encrypted. The laptops are encrypted. The desktops are about to be encrypted.
No disk is ever RMA'd anywhere. If we have a failure, we get a new replacement disk and send back a sheet of paper saying we destroyed the old one.
We wipe sensitive data with 7 random overwrites on all disks in storage that may be used again. Working desktop and laptop disks passing out of the organization for donation to schools or charities get the same treatment.
Dead disk drives from laptops and desktops are treated just like server disks. Server disks at end of life are never passed out of the organization in working condition. They are software-wiped as above, degaussed in a gigantic noisy machine, disassembled, and the platters removed. Glass platters are broken into little bits and thrown out. Metal platters are beaten up with a hammer and then (I am not kidding) a guy in the office makes sculptures out of them. We have an area with various towering sculptures representing literally thousands of decommissioned disks, some of which are really heavy 8-inch platters made, it appears, of copper. I guess that means we've been doing this for a long time.
The sculpture procedure is optional and specific to my local office. :-) At that point, our official procedures clear us to sell the platters by simply pitching them in amongst the other miscellaneous tons of broken equipment we periodically sell off as scrap.
Opinions? Good enough?
I go through 6 toll plazas a day. 90% of the time, I have to drop to about 65mph to do so. (10% of the time, something stupid is going on.)
Don't get me wrong. I hate paying tolls. I think roads should be free to use. The privacy problems with having an EZ Tag scare the crap out of me, though not enough to make me give it up.
However, criticism that toll booths create a stop and go traffic nightmare are overblown and unfair. Old toll installations that rely on human tolltakers have these problems; none of the newer systems I've seen installed in the last decade suffer from such difficulties.
You're not *allowed* to talk rationally after someone utters the word "pedophile." Don't you understand that? If people start talking rationally, Dateline won't be able to make money and all those people out there screaming for blood won't have yet another underclass to feel superior to. You're upsetting the whole balance of nature; quick, take it back!
It's not so much that I take these things personally. I've never actually had a problem with either of the sales venues I cited.
But to further explain, on gunbroker it's terribly common for you to bid on an item, win the bid, and then be told "Oh, a few days before (or even right after) the auction ended, somebody came in the store and bought it." Why didn't the seller remove it from the site? I guess because they're just sloppy but what bothers me is the attitude of "I'm in possession. I don't have to even try to be competent. Screw you."
As for the bassoon, another poster has said that a seller might not want to deliver a fine instrument into the hands of some Jackass-style TV show where they're gonna drink beer out of the thing. Well, why not? If you advertise something for sale, why should you care what the purchaser does with it? It doesn't seem like that's any of the seller's business.
As for their disclaimer, if you've followed their site for years like I have, you know that the disclaimer actually means "The better the instrument, the more control we want to have over who gets it." If you try to buy a rare and special instrument from them, they want you to audition it so they can hear if you're worthy to own it. If they deem you not worthy, they won't sell it to you. An incredibly rich person who wants to buy his preteen a starter instrument will simply be turned away when he tries to buy a USD$30K+ instrument. I sort of understand it but I also feel it's a sort of controlling attitude that I find distasteful.
(An example aside - Have you ever boarded a larger boat where the first thing you saw was one of those cutesy signs that said something about how the captains rules are the only rules? There's a reasonableness to that; in case of an emergency at sea, there's an overriding need for everyone to shut up and unquestioningly, instantly obey the orders of the captain. Lives can be at stake. But lots of recreational boat owners expand that attitude willy-nilly and revel in ordering people around. If you're on their boat, you have to do what they say, even if they're being stupid and making everybody miserable. It seems to me many sellers are falling into the same trap of exercising control under the color reasonableness merely for the sake of being in control and without any solid justification. Surely you chafe when placed under the authority of such people?)
Supposedly, public sales should be fair. I know when I did extensive business on EBay a number of years ago, any item on the auction site was reserved for that sales venue until that auction ended. If someone called and asked me if I had a Barbie airplane in stock (I was helping my sister sell collectible Barbie dolls and accessories) the answer would be "It's up on EBay at the moment so I can't even talk to you about a direct sale. Call me after the auction ends and if it didn't sell, we can negotiate a price." It would never have occurred to me to offer a unique item both online and via direct phone sales at the same time. That would be screwing over one set of customers or the other.
I don't think I'm alone in this attitude. There's a basic notion that sales should be fair. Yes, if someone gives you a valid reason to not do business with them, even a flimsy one, I can accept that. But sellers should be honorable enough to actually honor the offers they make to the public absent a compelling reason.
There was a time when it was perfectly reasonable to say to someone "Yes, my house is for sale but I'm not going to sell it to you because you're black and we don't want your kind around here." Eventually, we as a society realized that shutting someone out of a nominally open commercial opportunity for stupid reasons was a violation of the basic social contract that allows us to cooperatively build a better society. Thus, the Fair Housing laws came into existence.
It's a matter of degree, of course, but if someone says "This is for sale but not to you," I think they are too often being a dick and just taking a little power trip. I find it a tad irritating.
I find this interesting. If you advertise something for sale, shouldn't you have to sell it? Not everywhere, apparently.
Nearly all the firearms-specific versions of EBay, like gunbroker.com, are filled with offerings of used guns that basically say "Subject to prior sale. I'm putting up this web page but if someone comes in my shop and gives me money, you're out of luck. If I decide I don't like you, you're out of luck." This strikes me as quite unfair and unprofessional.
Even some professional-looking web sites that sell things don't really offer them for sale. If you go to Charles Double Reed looking for a new bassoon to purchase, you can't just put it in your shopping cart and send them money. Oh, no. The disclaimer ("Clicking the add to my cart button below does not guarantee that this instrument will be available to you.") makes it clear that they get to decide if you're the kind of person they want to do business with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen those "No shoes, no shirt, no service" signs. I realize sellers have a right to decide who they want to do business with. But this whole business of offering things for sale and then jerking them back at the last second, seemingly at random, just strikes me as symbolic of a "I don't have to follow any nominal rules of social interaction; I make my own" mindset that seems more and more common these days.
Are people just getting ruder, stupider, and prouder of it?
I'm not a teen (far from it) and I've managed to completely lose patience with Freenet, too. I want anonymity but Freenet isn't a usable answer. Every Freenet advocate always says the same thing: "Leave your machine on for a while and it'll do all sorts of data transfer in the background enabling it to better access resources. After it's been on for a while, things get faster."
That's a lie. Over the past couple of years, I've tested this 4 or 5 times. I've set up a dedicated machine, installed Freenet, given the machine a dedicated connection, made a bunch of information requests, and walked away for a week. Sometimes two weeks. Freenet *never* gets faster. NEVER. It NEVER approaches a usable state. Click a link to a small amount of data and it may arrive tomorrow. Click a link to a file of more than a meg and it NEVER arrives.
I'm told that *sites* on Freenet are a lost cause but if you only use Freenet for Frost, then it becomes useful. I may try to test one more time but my experience thus far is that Freenet is nothing but a fraud.
The move from v.5 to v.7 was the last nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned. Freenet has now moved from an attractive concept that bitterly disappoints to a stupid idea (anonymity doesn't exist if you have to know somebody to participate) that probably won't get a chance to disappoint me since it's not even worth investigating anymore.
Maybe, if I've got a week to waste in the future, I may try one last time to use v.5 and Frost. But I kinda doubt it. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 5 or 10 times, shame on me."
This guy sells what you describe (a used, assumed shop-grade M100) for USD$75. His are fully-checked-out and he's considered reputable. I'd expect to pay less from a person I randomly run into online who says theirs works.
I was seriously considering getting a cosmetically nice, fully rebuilt 102 from him for USD$350. However, for less money and an actual Linux OS with vi, this new Asus may be my choice by the time I actually need the new machine. Still, for a writer, the physical attributes of the Tandy are simply unbeatable. I've never typed on any portable note-taker that even came close. My dear God, I love that keyboard!
I'd pay USD$500 if someone would start producing the 102 again with modern peripheral ports running a stripped-down Linux OS. (I say "stripped-down" since vi, network connectivity, and maybe Lynx are basically the only things I need when I'm writing on the road. Oh, yeah, and give it room for 8 AA batteries; long-lived, easily replaceable batteries are seriously useful.) Wi-fi would be an unnecessary luxury and even an ethernet port would be optional; just a couple of USB ports and I'd be happy as long as I could have that wonderful keyboard and flat-as-a-book, easy-to-tote form factor again.
OK, I'm beginning to gush. I'll stop now.
You don't have to give away your Tandy. Sell it on EBay or via any other method of your choosing. Fans like me who have previously on this site waxed ecstatic on the virtues of that hardware will pay good money for working examples.
I only posted to try and shut up the folks who were belittling the question. Eventually, I found real progress toward an answer here. I hope those folks can help you.
The change in sweetener is a more subtle thing than trying to pass off New Coke in the old Coke cans. No, I didn't notice the change. How long ago was it?
OTOH, ask those Dr. Pepper fans who live near and dote on the output of the one Dr. Pepper bottler in the U.S. who still uses cane sugar. They'll tell you they can easily tell the difference.
Like lots of photo buffs, the first thing I thought of was the Rochester Institute. And that led me to an answer.
I'm not going to put directly on Slashdot the name and phone number of a real person. However, if you visit the Image Permanence Institute web site and poke around, you'll find a name and phone number you can call to get in touch with an expert on these subjects who will either know the answer or know where to find it.
Obviously, there's a problem, know-nothing slashdot smartmouths be damned. Here's what Kodak says:
If they bring it back with "substitute raw materials and new manufacturing technologies ," it won't be the same thing. Emulsions and our attachments to them are delicate things. Any change, however subtle, will kill the effect. The new film may be just fine. It may be sort of like the old film. But it won't be the same.
Think "New Coke." It was supposed to be the same, wasn't it? In fact, some bottlers changed formulas and put New Coke in remaining stocks of old cans. The first time I tried one of those, I literally did a spit take. It might have been a perfectly fine soda, but it was different. It wasn't what I expected and I could tell that a change had been made.
The human senses are far more sensitive than people realize. New Coke didn't fool me. A change in materials in a film emulsion won't fool they eye of a photographer who loved the old formula.
Now I'm going to go do some research to help this guy. He really does need to arrange good long term storage for his film.