Point taken. However if you want to do any serious post-processing work, or any serious printing, Linux is likely inadequate.
Gimp can't handle 16-bit RGB. The Nikon/Canon RAW tools don't work on Linux. Wine may be able to run Photoshop and some tools, but it is a pain and isn't 100% foolproof in my experience.
Linux can definitely fit into the workflow...especially for image archival and indexing. But for photo processing, I just don't think it meets the job without the tools ported.
What does medium-format photography have to do with anything? Product photography has always been the niche of large-format, but digital is making huge inroads into that area. For studio photography, medium-format has always been king. But digital is rapidly taking over there as well.
My point is that he claims to be a high and might professional photographer who "uses Linux". But his portfolio appears to be high school sports and pictures of his cats. Thats fine and all...but don't claim to be an authorative professional photographer if thats all he has to show.
Honestly I looked at your website and it looks like you capture high school sports quite well. But tell me you don't do any high-end product or studio photography.
An Epson 4870 scans at 3200DPI and does a damn fine job with slides. It will outdo any $300 dedicated slide scanner. It won't match the level of a $1000 Nikon 4000, but it does quite well.
An Epson 4870 flatbed does a better job scanning slides than my old dedicated Minolta F-2900. So don't give the blanket statement that "flatbed scanners suck for slides".
In fact, when you scan a 4x5" large-format slide (or transparency) with a flatbed, it will give you about 10-times more detail than a scan of a 35mm slide with that $3000 dedicated slide scanner.
If you want an archival color print from either digital files or traditional negatives, go to a lab that uses Fuji Crystal Archive paper in the traditional RA-4 process. Your print will last a 100 years and doesn't have to be underneath glass. In fact I recommend this even if you store your digital pictures on a RAID-5 array backed by tape. There is something to be said about the permanence of a print versus the permanence of digital bits.
Personally, I bought my wedding negatives from the photographer and did all the prints using traditional B&W silver halide paper in my basement darkroom. Fiber-based paper toned in Selenium will last 200 years or more. Heck I even printed the color negatives on B&W paper and they look great.
I have family pictures that are 80 years old and look fantastic. The sad part is that Joe Sixpack's treasured family pictures, created on inkjets or even shoddy photo labs, will not be viewable 80 years from now.
Intel is actively working on adding hardware virtualization (Vanderpool) to its lineup of x86 processors. This will make products, like VMWare, obsolete.
MSIE is a beast that is *tied* to the kernel, uses kernel internals, and thus, is bad. I have yet to see *any* *nix desktop/window manager that does such a thing.
MSIE is no more tied to the kernel than any other application. Tied to Explorer? Absolutely, but no, not the kernel.
Neither is Microsoft Office. Everybody claims that the reason MS Word starts so quickly is that much of it is already loaded when Windows starts. Nice theory...doesn't explain why MS Word running under Wine starts blazingly fast on my Linux box.
1. Has MS ever delivered a reliable gen 1 product?
The first version of Microsoft NT was rock-solid and reliable. I can't remember the first version number off-hand
2. Is this a through and through Microsoft product or are they just the marketers of someone else's (custom) design, built in a contract manufacturers plant?
They are manufactured by Flextonics which is quite reputable. However Microsoft probably speced the design.
3. Why are so many slashdotters buying Microsoft X-Boxes?
Why not? It is a great system. Most cross-platform game reviews that you read (gamespot.com, ign.com, etc) claim that the Xbox version has the best performance and best visual quality.
And here is a reason that will likely get me labeled as a troll: I will assume that you are American. Forgive me if my assumption is wrong. Microsoft is an American company, that employs a substantial number of American citizens, and whose stock is held in mutual funds part of my 401k, my parent's 401k, and numerous other retirement accounts of _normal_ hard-working Americans. Give it some thought before you a) complain about the lack of jobs in the U.S., and then b) purchase Japanese products when there is a comparable U.S. product.
Do you really expect a $150 console to have top-notch DVD and HD drives?? When Microsoft speced the XBox, they probably carefully chose components with MTTFs such 99% of Xboxes will work for several years. In fact most retailers I speak with say that Xbox returns/failures are quite reasonable
Now you can fault them for only providing a 90-day warranty, but I'm curious to know how long the warrenty period is for competing products.
And you might fault them for putting a HD in the machine which typically has lower MTTFs than the rest of the system.
But come on people. The machine costs $150. If you can't stomach a 1-5% risk that it will die in the next couple years, then purchase those silly extended warranties.
Flextronics does all the manufacturing for Xboxes. They are a very reputatable manufacturer...just ask Cisco.
and I don't find the XBox's gaming library to be very attractive --- I hate PC games.
Games are increasingly being released for all three consoles (PS2, GC, Xbox). Those that are, Xbox usually runs them the smoothest. But don't take my word for it, go read the reviews at gamespot.com about any cross-platform game.
If you are looking for an awesome console game, check out X-Men:Legends. It is very cool! A great feature is that your friends can join/leave the game at any time.
Or even play MP3s. I've run X (256 colours, low resolution) quite happily on machines which struggle with MP3 playback. Playing something that sounds a little better, like Ogg or AAC uses even more CPU (unless he's planning on just ripping the CDs without any compression...)
I first started downloading and playing MP3s in 1996. My machine was a Pentium 166MHz running Windows NT 4.0 workstation. MP3s never skipped...even if I opened Word and Excel simultaneously. Not to be a troll, but a 2GHz P4 Linux machine I use at work will hiccup occasionally during MP3 playback and normal use (such as Mozilla). Before I get flamed on how I am misconfigured or something, the machine is not managed by me and I do not have root.
Go to an art fair sometime and look at some prints from large-format photographers. You won't realize the lack of detail until you actually see it for yourself.
computer screen/TV pictures: 2 megapixels 8"x10" prints: 3 megapixels and up 12"x18" prints: 6 megapixels and up bigger prints: the more pixels the better
You have low standards. To make quality 11x14 prints and bigger, I use 4x5" large format film. Although 6x7cm medium-format film would work just as well up to 16x20". In my opinion, a 6 megapixel camera does not make a good 11x14" print...especially some B&W fine art prints.
Iridium was the dumbest investment opportunity since a 3,000 Guilder Tulip bulb in 1624. The constellation cost $5 billion to construct. It was immediately obvious from the very outset to anyone who spent a little while playing around with the math that there would never be any way to make money from this. You could estimate any reasonable supply/demand curve and come up with a loss- from 1 phone at $5 billion apiece to 5 billion phones (about 1 per person on earth who can ho,d a phone) at $2,001 apiece (the phones cost about $2,000 to produce), there was no number in between where they could conceivably ever make money. In fact, there was no way they could do anything but lose billions.
Iridium was concieved by a Motorola engineer whose wife was complaining about the lack of continuous cellular service as she drove through the Illinois suburbs. No joke!
For anyone keeping track its a standard dell machine. It's got a P4 1.6ghz processor. Not a wonderful machine by any means, but really, it should be able to run win2k. My P3 laptop with similar stats ran kde acceptably (before I switched to fluxbox). I can't speak to gnome. I tried it once on my laptop and spacial nautilius drove me away.
Come on. You know Dell is not going to sell a machine that can't run the shipped operating system adequately. Different people have different standards...
"I mean, I can run Office, IE and Outlook together SMOOTHLY on a WinXP box with 128M RAM."
No, you cant. Stop spreading FUD. If you have a slow CPU it might be usable if you have at least 256MB, but SMOOTHLY is something entirely different.
Yes you can. Microsoft devotes a ton of resources to tweaking the UI down to the x86 assembly level. Plus they run the windowing system in kernel-mode. It is unfair, but Windows wins for running a full-featured UI on a small-memory machine.
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Point taken. However if you want to do any serious post-processing work, or any serious printing, Linux is likely inadequate.
Gimp can't handle 16-bit RGB. The Nikon/Canon RAW tools don't work on Linux. Wine may be able to run Photoshop and some tools, but it is a pain and isn't 100% foolproof in my experience.
Linux can definitely fit into the workflow...especially for image archival and indexing. But for photo processing, I just don't think it meets the job without the tools ported.
What does medium-format photography have to do with anything? Product photography has always been the niche of large-format, but digital is making huge inroads into that area. For studio photography, medium-format has always been king. But digital is rapidly taking over there as well.
My point is that he claims to be a high and might professional photographer who "uses Linux". But his portfolio appears to be high school sports and pictures of his cats. Thats fine and all...but don't claim to be an authorative professional photographer if thats all he has to show.
And your 2400 dpi flatbed scans of a 4x5" transparency will blow away a drum-scan of a 35mm negative :)
I guess you don't calibrate your colors.
Honestly I looked at your website and it looks like you capture high school sports quite well. But tell me you don't do any high-end product or studio photography.
An Epson 4870 scans at 3200DPI and does a damn fine job with slides. It will outdo any $300 dedicated slide scanner. It won't match the level of a $1000 Nikon 4000, but it does quite well.
An Epson 4870 flatbed does a better job scanning slides than my old dedicated Minolta F-2900. So don't give the blanket statement that "flatbed scanners suck for slides".
In fact, when you scan a 4x5" large-format slide (or transparency) with a flatbed, it will give you about 10-times more detail than a scan of a 35mm slide with that $3000 dedicated slide scanner.
If you want an archival color print from either digital files or traditional negatives, go to a lab that uses Fuji Crystal Archive paper in the traditional RA-4 process. Your print will last a 100 years and doesn't have to be underneath glass. In fact I recommend this even if you store your digital pictures on a RAID-5 array backed by tape. There is something to be said about the permanence of a print versus the permanence of digital bits.
Personally, I bought my wedding negatives from the photographer and did all the prints using traditional B&W silver halide paper in my basement darkroom. Fiber-based paper toned in Selenium will last 200 years or more. Heck I even printed the color negatives on B&W paper and they look great.
I have family pictures that are 80 years old and look fantastic. The sad part is that Joe Sixpack's treasured family pictures, created on inkjets or even shoddy photo labs, will not be viewable 80 years from now.
Nearly all consumer electronics bearing the "General Electric" name and logo are manufactured and sold by Thomson Electronics of France.
Intel is actively working on adding hardware virtualization (Vanderpool) to its lineup of x86 processors. This will make products, like VMWare, obsolete.
MSIE is a beast that is *tied* to the kernel, uses kernel internals, and thus, is bad. I have yet to see *any* *nix desktop/window manager that does such a thing.
MSIE is no more tied to the kernel than any other application. Tied to Explorer? Absolutely, but no, not the kernel.
Neither is Microsoft Office. Everybody claims that the reason MS Word starts so quickly is that much of it is already loaded when Windows starts. Nice theory...doesn't explain why MS Word running under Wine starts blazingly fast on my Linux box.
1. Has MS ever delivered a reliable gen 1 product?
The first version of Microsoft NT was rock-solid and reliable. I can't remember the first version number off-hand
2. Is this a through and through Microsoft product or are they just the marketers of someone else's (custom) design, built in a contract manufacturers plant?
They are manufactured by Flextonics which is quite reputable. However Microsoft probably speced the design.
3. Why are so many slashdotters buying Microsoft X-Boxes?
Why not? It is a great system. Most cross-platform game reviews that you read (gamespot.com, ign.com, etc) claim that the Xbox version has the best performance and best visual quality.
And here is a reason that will likely get me labeled as a troll: I will assume that you are American. Forgive me if my assumption is wrong. Microsoft is an American company, that employs a substantial number of American citizens, and whose stock is held in mutual funds part of my 401k, my parent's 401k, and numerous other retirement accounts of _normal_ hard-working Americans. Give it some thought before you a) complain about the lack of jobs in the U.S., and then b) purchase Japanese products when there is a comparable U.S. product.
Do you really expect a $150 console to have top-notch DVD and HD drives?? When Microsoft speced the XBox, they probably carefully chose components with MTTFs such 99% of Xboxes will work for several years. In fact most retailers I speak with say that Xbox returns/failures are quite reasonable
Now you can fault them for only providing a 90-day warranty, but I'm curious to know how long the warrenty period is for competing products.
And you might fault them for putting a HD in the machine which typically has lower MTTFs than the rest of the system.
But come on people. The machine costs $150. If you can't stomach a 1-5% risk that it will die in the next couple years, then purchase those silly extended warranties.
Flextronics does all the manufacturing for Xboxes. They are a very reputatable manufacturer...just ask Cisco.
You fvcking foolish troll.
Yes, the whole concept of using references is hogwash. Don't believe anything...do it all yourself. Its the only proof.
and I don't find the XBox's gaming library to be very attractive --- I hate PC games.
Games are increasingly being released for all three consoles (PS2, GC, Xbox). Those that are, Xbox usually runs them the smoothest. But don't take my word for it, go read the reviews at gamespot.com about any cross-platform game.
If you are looking for an awesome console game, check out X-Men:Legends. It is very cool! A great feature is that your friends can join/leave the game at any time.
Or even play MP3s. I've run X (256 colours, low resolution) quite happily on machines which struggle with MP3 playback. Playing something that sounds a little better, like Ogg or AAC uses even more CPU (unless he's planning on just ripping the CDs without any compression...)
I first started downloading and playing MP3s in 1996. My machine was a Pentium 166MHz running Windows NT 4.0 workstation. MP3s never skipped...even if I opened Word and Excel simultaneously. Not to be a troll, but a 2GHz P4 Linux machine I use at work will hiccup occasionally during MP3 playback and normal use (such as Mozilla). Before I get flamed on how I am misconfigured or something, the machine is not managed by me and I do not have root.
Having an inexpensive 32 bit uC is great. How much are the development kits? 500$?
Amen...for the hobbyist that is. I can name several development kits for 8-bit uCs that are less than $100.
On the other hand, a $500 development kit is a trivial business expense.
You have never seen an 8x10 contact print. They are beautiful.
People use 8x10 cameras for a reason...not because 4x5 doesn't give good enough enlargements.
I have comparable 11x14 prints from a 35mm negative and a 4x5 negative. The difference is stunning even when viewed from 5-feet away.
Go to an art fair sometime and look at some prints from large-format photographers. You won't realize the lack of detail until you actually see it for yourself.
computer screen/TV pictures: 2 megapixels
8"x10" prints: 3 megapixels and up
12"x18" prints: 6 megapixels and up
bigger prints: the more pixels the better
You have low standards. To make quality 11x14 prints and bigger, I use 4x5" large format film. Although 6x7cm medium-format film would work just as well up to 16x20". In my opinion, a 6 megapixel camera does not make a good 11x14" print...especially some B&W fine art prints.
Of course it is all subjective.
Because I have friends who work at Microsoft.
Even if you look at Carmack's open-source Quake2 engine, certain routines are hand-coded in assembly to get tweaked performance.
Running at 256 colors will save a lot of memory.
Iridium was the dumbest investment opportunity since a 3,000 Guilder Tulip bulb in 1624. The constellation cost $5 billion to construct. It was immediately obvious from the very outset to anyone who spent a little while playing around with the math that there would never be any way to make money from this. You could estimate any reasonable supply/demand curve and come up with a loss- from 1 phone at $5 billion apiece to 5 billion phones (about 1 per person on earth who can ho,d a phone) at $2,001 apiece (the phones cost about $2,000 to produce), there was no number in between where they could conceivably ever make money. In fact, there was no way they could do anything but lose billions.
Iridium was concieved by a Motorola engineer whose wife was complaining about the lack of continuous cellular service as she drove through the Illinois suburbs. No joke!
For anyone keeping track its a standard dell machine. It's got a P4 1.6ghz processor. Not a wonderful machine by any means, but really, it should be able to run win2k. My P3 laptop with similar stats ran kde acceptably (before I switched to fluxbox). I can't speak to gnome. I tried it once on my laptop and spacial nautilius drove me away.
Come on. You know Dell is not going to sell a machine that can't run the shipped operating system adequately. Different people have different standards...
"I mean, I can run Office, IE and Outlook together SMOOTHLY on a WinXP box with 128M RAM."
No, you cant. Stop spreading FUD. If you have a slow CPU it might be usable if you have at least 256MB, but SMOOTHLY is something entirely different.
Yes you can. Microsoft devotes a ton of resources to tweaking the UI down to the x86 assembly level. Plus they run the windowing system in kernel-mode. It is unfair, but Windows wins for running a full-featured UI on a small-memory machine.
Nothing new here. Check out Berkeley's OceanStore project for an idea of a global storage solution impervious to local disasters.