The tips on choosing a good angle, lighting, "framing the picture" with foreground elements and such are still valid, but as cameras get higher resolution, I think many of these tips can be changed to "Favor taking wider and more versatile shots of the subject matter - choose image composition, orientation, location of subject matter etc. while editing the image."
My 3 megapixel camera takes pictures that look great printed at 8X10". Ramp up to a 5 MP camera, and you can afford to crop, rotate, and reposition the subject of the picture in an image editor. In my opinion, more megapixels mean that you can take pictures for maximum flexibility rather than focusing on taking the perfect picture.
...why is it that the internet just begs to coin words and phrases that are simultaneously annoying and stupid.
For instance... "blog". The very mention of that word makes me cringe. It sounds as though someone tried to create the internet equivalent of the Smurfs use of the word "smurf". "I'm going to blog in my blog."
Now we have "captchas", which sounds like someone from New Jersey got a little tipsy and decided to name these images.
What the blazes is a "captcha"? Just call it distorted text, just call it a diary! Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go protect my blog with captchas.
The PSP has been announced and out in the open for how long now, 8 months? Meanwhile, the Nintendo DS has been announced for maybe a week now?
I'm as skeptical as the next guy about the DS, but it's completely obvious that, with an 8 month head start, a publisher's plans for a portable console are going to be much more solid for the PSP than for the DS, that they've just barely been introduced to.
I could rant about how stupid these things are, about all the security holes in the system, about all of the abuses, about the violation of rights, and on and on and on. Instead I'd just like to say that if it does somehow get rammed down our throats then I want chip number 666! Thankyou.
One interesting thing about it all - if they use the general encoding scheme used for UPC bar codes, we'll all have something close to a 6-6-6 on us, though not exactly.
If you look here (cached because howstuffworks.com seems to be flaking out), you'll see that a UPC bar code has a start code, some data, a middle code, some data, and an end code.
Each digit is represented by a set of bars and spaces - 6 is represented by 1-1-1-4, 2 thin bars, close together, followed by a long space. It is the only digit to have 2 thin bars separated by a 1 unit space. Interestingly, the start code (1-1-1), middle code (1-1-1-1-1), and end code (1-1-1) are all 2 thin bars, close together, so if you just look at them, they look very much like an encoded six.
Point is, get yourself a UPC bar code based ship, and you're pretty close to that 6-6-6 you've been hoping for.
1) To frighten the ignorant into purchasing support so that they are now indemnified.
2) To give news outlets another opportunity to mention the friction between JBoss and Geronimo. Though they outwardly state that it's been blown out of proportion, the very mention of it in the same press release has the insidious implication that if you choose Geronimo instead of JBoss, you won't be indemnified, and JBoss could come calling in the near future.
McFact No. 9: Customer surveys had shown that McDonald's customers PREFERRED their coffee served at that higher temperature. What temperature other restaurants serve their coffee at is irrelevant - the market average should not be construed as a standard.
Trial lawyers are scum. If something is truly a public danger, make a law about it. It's insane to make multi-million dollar awards in court when the defendant didn't even violate the law. The disparity between criminal and civil cases is absurd. Whatever you think about the O.J. Simpson case, it's still frivolous that he was ordered to pay $33.5 million in civil court damages for his liability in a crime he was acquitted of.
From http://sivasakti.com/articles/man/virility-art62.h tml, we can make the same flawed argument.
"7. Do tight pants prevent the secretion of sperm? Yes. Tight pants keep the testicles close to the rest of the body and thus their temperature rises. The temperature of the testicles should normally be 2 degrees below the temperature of the rest of the body in order for the sperm to be produced."
So pants cause impotence. Alternately, people could learn to wear pants that fit, and to tie their ties a little looser.
One has to wonder how they intend to use the enhanced features. It seems to me that this configuration is a toy for technophiles, and little more. With the mix of technologies, it looks like they're trying to merge a PS2 with a PVR.
If they're smart enough to do this in the PS3, and maintain backward compatibility with PS2 and PS1, they have a strong entry into the next generation. The PS2 grabbed a lot of sales because it combined a gaming console with something many people didn't have yet, but wanted - a DVD player. This next time around, they could do that same thing with a PVR, but only if Microsoft and Nintendo don't do the same thing first. Sony stole that DVD player/game console market because they were the first to market. Microsoft offered the same functionality (albeit hamstrung out of the box), but most of the people who could be coerced to buy a game console because it would also net them a DVD player had already bought a PS2.
The more I think about it, the more this looks like a proof of concept to beta test the convergence of these technologies. This PSX is a niche product at best, but it will give them a change to iron out technical issues with the PVR/console combination so the can comfortably launch the PS3 with all of this plus a new core for the console part.
The DVD burning functionality is also an interesting cross-over play when combined with the memory stick slot - it adds a new audience. It Sony can bundle the right tools in there, users will be able to pull the memory stick out of their digital cameras (and digital videocams in the mid-term), and burn those images to a DVD. The possibilities are broad, but signs point to this being an R&D product that will be sold to niches to cover some of the R&D costs.
The articles state that the PSX would probably come out in the US in 2004. Given that the next generation of consoles is slated to arrive in 2004-2005, it seems strange that they would spend extra money on a redesign of the PS2 instead of putting their resources into the PS3.
The possibilities seem to be 1) This machine is a test bed for many of the technologies they plan to put in the PS3, and they want to use the PSX as a dry run, 2) They plan to come to market late with the PS3, and this is a stopgap measure, or 3) They're morons, and are spending all of this money to release a dated gaming system (with nifty bells and whistles) just as consumers have started salivating over the next generation.
Netflix had a big spread in Wired several months back... the business model of the company is such that they are only profitable on accounts which rent 5 or less movies a month.
The quote is "Some subscribers rent twenty or more. (Which is a problem: Netflix loses money on postage for households that rent more than five a month.)".
It doesn't make a ton of sense to me - Netflix mails lightweight envelopes standard USPS First Class letter. For 5 rentals, you have:
$0.37 postage (each way) * 2 (each movie to & from) * 5 movies = $3.70
So $19.95 monthly fee - $3.70 in postage = $16.25 If their "other" costs for customers are $16.25 a month per costumer, they're in a lot of trouble. Assuming your average subscriber is going to watch fewer than 5 movies a month (just over 1 per weekend) is playing some very long odds.
...the RIAA and MPAA have issued a joint statement that consumers are not ready for the power of file-sharing networks, and should be content with CDs and DVDs for the foreseeable future.
I can't speak for Sun's true motivation here - that would be speculation. What I am fairly certain of is that the high per-CPU licensing cost of most J2EE application servers, the pricing model encourages companies to buy the biggest iron they can to avoid buying more licenses as well. Coincidentally, Sun happens to sell big iron servers.
So what happens if JBoss gains credibility through licensing? Well, the cost model gets turned on its head. If the incremental software cost is now $0 instead of $10k for each additional CPU/Server, you can now consider multi-CPU Wintel boxes, or even clusters of low-end commodity server hardware.
Suppose you go "cheap" with a Sun 280R, list price $13k, with BEA Weblogic, ~$10k = $23k for the solution.
Now, suppose it takes only 2 $3k Dell servers to attain equivalent performance - total cost is $26k by the time you add 2 CPU licenses. It's both cheaper and simpler to go with one server.
Turn it around now, for the JBoss case:
Sun Fire 280R = $13k total cost
And suppose that it now takes *4* of those $3k Dell servers to attain equivalent performance. Your total cost, $12k, is still $1k cheaper. For what you were paying before, you could have 7 of these servers, and spare change to boot.
It seems to me that Java isn't a huge money makes (nor a huge money loser) for Sun, it is merely a means to the end of driving Sun hardware sales. Change the J2EE cost model, and the plan is toast.
It's not like the auto industry hasn't been doing this for years by building plants in other countries to take advantage of their cheap labor.
It's not at all the same thing. The equivalent is software shops that outsource their development to a foreign contractor or subsidiary. Even then, the cars are subject to significant transport costs and import tariffs. Neither of these constraints apply to software.
I have to wonder if the USian labor force isn't partly to blame by pricing themselves out of the market.
What a cheap attempt to reshape the argument. The core of this issue here is the enforcement and abuse of an existing US law. Most anyone still in technology today could probably share several anecdotal stories of abuse of the visa system. We have every right to expect our government to enforce our laws to protect our citizens. Sadly, political donations often trump the rule of law, and often reshape the law.
If/when the H1-B visa system is corrected to reflect its legal mandate, then a different discussion will ensue, one which will reflect the actual going market rate and answer your pricing question. The result would be either:
Near full employment for US citizens with highly-needed skills - in this case, the market rate for these employees would probably actually rise, and H1-B would be use to fill the gaps, as is the intent.
A new debate begins for companies - outsource, or build here? There are inherent disadvantages to overseas development - building software is very communications intensive - unclear or misunderstood requirements and miscues can have tragic effects on a project. Discussions can rarely be held face-to-face, and conference calls require at least one side of the ocean to participate outside of normal work hours. With the current H1-B environment, fewer companies feel the need to consider this option. A debate over import tariffs on foreign-developed code would likely ensue.
Either one of these outcomes is a welcome change from the status quo. It's simply speculation to base market conclusions on the existing environment of fraud.
Re:Separating Content from Presentation a Good Thi
on
Office 2003 and XML
·
· Score: 1
Apparently, all formatting and presentation information is removed from the XML.
And this is bad how? Isn't this the dream that XML document proponents have aspired to for years? You just can't please some people..
It's a good thing if it removes the actual formatting (tab here, bullet there) and replaces that with conceptual tags such as paragraph, list, etc, allowing each client to decide how those things are rendered.
In theory, someone should be able to create a word processor that, if it interprets all of the same elements and attributes in all of the same ways, can render the document identical to Word's interpretation. Instead, I believe we are getting the functional equivalent of being able to programmatically paste our text into notepad.
Bear in mind, exactly the same things were said about ADD, ADHD...
ADD and ADHD - gotta love them. Pure garbage labels given to children on the disciplinary fringe as an excuse to drug them. My wife is a teacher - I hear her describe the behavior of her "ADD" children, and it sounds an awful lot like the way I acted as a child. Was I tough to control? You bet. Does it mean I should have been drugged into behaving - absolutely no way.
Don't forget about the latest lme excuse coming down the pipe, ODD - "Oppositional Defiant Disorder". Sounds like puberty to me, but what do I know...
A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least six months during which four or more of the following are present:
Often loses temper
often argues with adults
often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults' requests or rules
often deliberately annoys people
often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
I still don't buy into this digital divide crap. There are plenty of things that low-income residents would like, but can't afford. Since one of the arguments presented in the article is that they can use it to get news. Is there then also a "Cable TV Divide" that prevents them from learning from the news channels and other programming (such as Junkyard Wars and Monster Garage)!
So long as this remains funded by private industry and charities, more power to them. It's the danger that this "digital divide" concept might be pushed into the social responsibility realm where the perception is that it should be funded with tax dollars. It makes me about as pissed as the moment I realized that some of the subsidized housing here in Atlanta was better than the apartment I was living in - it's not about necessity, it's become something completely different.
I feel obligated to quote Michael Powell, "I think there's a Mercedes divide. I'd like one, but I can't afford it."
The ruling said that the 20-year copyright extension ("Sonny Bono act"?) was not unconstitutional. RTFA.
Right. And do you actually believe that within the next 20 years, they won't pass yet another extension? If you think that, you're ignoring volumes of history (link courtesy of Jason Scott).
The point is that as long as these corporations have copyrights that are valuable to them, additional extensions will be purchased from Congress (barring a drastic shift in the temperment of Congress). So the story is correct, we will never get these copyrights into the public domain.
Slashdot Mirror
My 3 megapixel camera takes pictures that look great printed at 8X10". Ramp up to a 5 MP camera, and you can afford to crop, rotate, and reposition the subject of the picture in an image editor. In my opinion, more megapixels mean that you can take pictures for maximum flexibility rather than focusing on taking the perfect picture.
...perhaps they should change it to FireDrake?
For instance... "blog". The very mention of that word makes me cringe. It sounds as though someone tried to create the internet equivalent of the Smurfs use of the word "smurf". "I'm going to blog in my blog."
Now we have "captchas", which sounds like someone from New Jersey got a little tipsy and decided to name these images.
What the blazes is a "captcha"? Just call it distorted text, just call it a diary! Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go protect my blog with captchas.
I'm as skeptical as the next guy about the DS, but it's completely obvious that, with an 8 month head start, a publisher's plans for a portable console are going to be much more solid for the PSP than for the DS, that they've just barely been introduced to.
......suing your competition into oblivion using moronically awarded patents
One interesting thing about it all - if they use the general encoding scheme used for UPC bar codes, we'll all have something close to a 6-6-6 on us, though not exactly.
If you look here (cached because howstuffworks.com seems to be flaking out), you'll see that a UPC bar code has a start code, some data, a middle code, some data, and an end code.
Each digit is represented by a set of bars and spaces - 6 is represented by 1-1-1-4, 2 thin bars, close together, followed by a long space. It is the only digit to have 2 thin bars separated by a 1 unit space. Interestingly, the start code (1-1-1), middle code (1-1-1-1-1), and end code (1-1-1) are all 2 thin bars, close together, so if you just look at them, they look very much like an encoded six.
Point is, get yourself a UPC bar code based ship, and you're pretty close to that 6-6-6 you've been hoping for.
Netflix Fanatic 1.1.4 mirrored here. Note that it's only for Mac OS X.
Someone get a torrent going...
1) To frighten the ignorant into purchasing support so that they are now indemnified.
2) To give news outlets another opportunity to mention the friction between JBoss and Geronimo. Though they outwardly state that it's been blown out of proportion, the very mention of it in the same press release has the insidious implication that if you choose Geronimo instead of JBoss, you won't be indemnified, and JBoss could come calling in the near future.
Trial lawyers are scum. If something is truly a public danger, make a law about it. It's insane to make multi-million dollar awards in court when the defendant didn't even violate the law. The disparity between criminal and civil cases is absurd. Whatever you think about the O.J. Simpson case, it's still frivolous that he was ordered to pay $33.5 million in civil court damages for his liability in a crime he was acquitted of.
From http://sivasakti.com/articles/man/virility-art62.h tml, we can make the same flawed argument.
"7. Do tight pants prevent the secretion of sperm?
Yes. Tight pants keep the testicles close to the rest of the body and thus their temperature rises. The temperature of the testicles should normally be 2 degrees below the temperature of the rest of the body in order for the sperm to be produced."
So pants cause impotence. Alternately, people could learn to wear pants that fit, and to tie their ties a little looser.
One has to wonder how they intend to use the enhanced features. It seems to me that this configuration is a toy for technophiles, and little more. With the mix of technologies, it looks like they're trying to merge a PS2 with a PVR.
If they're smart enough to do this in the PS3, and maintain backward compatibility with PS2 and PS1, they have a strong entry into the next generation. The PS2 grabbed a lot of sales because it combined a gaming console with something many people didn't have yet, but wanted - a DVD player. This next time around, they could do that same thing with a PVR, but only if Microsoft and Nintendo don't do the same thing first. Sony stole that DVD player/game console market because they were the first to market. Microsoft offered the same functionality (albeit hamstrung out of the box), but most of the people who could be coerced to buy a game console because it would also net them a DVD player had already bought a PS2.
The more I think about it, the more this looks like a proof of concept to beta test the convergence of these technologies. This PSX is a niche product at best, but it will give them a change to iron out technical issues with the PVR/console combination so the can comfortably launch the PS3 with all of this plus a new core for the console part.
The DVD burning functionality is also an interesting cross-over play when combined with the memory stick slot - it adds a new audience. It Sony can bundle the right tools in there, users will be able to pull the memory stick out of their digital cameras (and digital videocams in the mid-term), and burn those images to a DVD. The possibilities are broad, but signs point to this being an R&D product that will be sold to niches to cover some of the R&D costs.
The articles state that the PSX would probably come out in the US in 2004. Given that the next generation of consoles is slated to arrive in 2004-2005, it seems strange that they would spend extra money on a redesign of the PS2 instead of putting their resources into the PS3.
The possibilities seem to be 1) This machine is a test bed for many of the technologies they plan to put in the PS3, and they want to use the PSX as a dry run, 2) They plan to come to market late with the PS3, and this is a stopgap measure, or 3) They're morons, and are spending all of this money to release a dated gaming system (with nifty bells and whistles) just as consumers have started salivating over the next generation.
I think Anthony Scholfield is in the midst of exploring step 2.
Article in Wired is here.
The quote is "Some subscribers rent twenty or more. (Which is a problem: Netflix loses money on postage for households that rent more than five a month.)".
It doesn't make a ton of sense to me - Netflix mails lightweight envelopes standard USPS First Class letter. For 5 rentals, you have:
$0.37 postage (each way) * 2 (each movie to & from) * 5 movies = $3.70
So $19.95 monthly fee - $3.70 in postage = $16.25 If their "other" costs for customers are $16.25 a month per costumer, they're in a lot of trouble. Assuming your average subscriber is going to watch fewer than 5 movies a month (just over 1 per weekend) is playing some very long odds.
...the "cell" chip won't be in the PS3.
Perhaps it should be "Poor Object Oriented Programming"?
Network engineer is taken, it refers to someone working in telecommunications.
With the telecom meltdown, it would seem that title has come available once again.
...the RIAA and MPAA have issued a joint statement that consumers are not ready for the power of file-sharing networks, and should be content with CDs and DVDs for the foreseeable future.
I can't speak for Sun's true motivation here - that would be speculation. What I am fairly certain of is that the high per-CPU licensing cost of most J2EE application servers, the pricing model encourages companies to buy the biggest iron they can to avoid buying more licenses as well. Coincidentally, Sun happens to sell big iron servers.
So what happens if JBoss gains credibility through licensing? Well, the cost model gets turned on its head. If the incremental software cost is now $0 instead of $10k for each additional CPU/Server, you can now consider multi-CPU Wintel boxes, or even clusters of low-end commodity server hardware.
Suppose you go "cheap" with a Sun 280R, list price $13k, with BEA Weblogic, ~$10k = $23k for the solution.
Now, suppose it takes only 2 $3k Dell servers to attain equivalent performance - total cost is $26k by the time you add 2 CPU licenses. It's both cheaper and simpler to go with one server.
Turn it around now, for the JBoss case:
Sun Fire 280R = $13k total cost
And suppose that it now takes *4* of those $3k Dell servers to attain equivalent performance. Your total cost, $12k, is still $1k cheaper. For what you were paying before, you could have 7 of these servers, and spare change to boot.
It seems to me that Java isn't a huge money makes (nor a huge money loser) for Sun, it is merely a means to the end of driving Sun hardware sales. Change the J2EE cost model, and the plan is toast.
It's not at all the same thing. The equivalent is software shops that outsource their development to a foreign contractor or subsidiary. Even then, the cars are subject to significant transport costs and import tariffs. Neither of these constraints apply to software.
What a cheap attempt to reshape the argument. The core of this issue here is the enforcement and abuse of an existing US law. Most anyone still in technology today could probably share several anecdotal stories of abuse of the visa system. We have every right to expect our government to enforce our laws to protect our citizens. Sadly, political donations often trump the rule of law, and often reshape the law.
If/when the H1-B visa system is corrected to reflect its legal mandate, then a different discussion will ensue, one which will reflect the actual going market rate and answer your pricing question. The result would be either:
Either one of these outcomes is a welcome change from the status quo. It's simply speculation to base market conclusions on the existing environment of fraud.
It's a good thing if it removes the actual formatting (tab here, bullet there) and replaces that with conceptual tags such as paragraph, list, etc, allowing each client to decide how those things are rendered.
In theory, someone should be able to create a word processor that, if it interprets all of the same elements and attributes in all of the same ways, can render the document identical to Word's interpretation. Instead, I believe we are getting the functional equivalent of being able to programmatically paste our text into notepad.
ADD and ADHD - gotta love them. Pure garbage labels given to children on the disciplinary fringe as an excuse to drug them. My wife is a teacher - I hear her describe the behavior of her "ADD" children, and it sounds an awful lot like the way I acted as a child. Was I tough to control? You bet. Does it mean I should have been drugged into behaving - absolutely no way.
Don't forget about the latest lme excuse coming down the pipe, ODD - "Oppositional Defiant Disorder". Sounds like puberty to me, but what do I know...
I still don't buy into this digital divide crap. There are plenty of things that low-income residents would like, but can't afford. Since one of the arguments presented in the article is that they can use it to get news. Is there then also a "Cable TV Divide" that prevents them from learning from the news channels and other programming (such as Junkyard Wars and Monster Garage)!
So long as this remains funded by private industry and charities, more power to them. It's the danger that this "digital divide" concept might be pushed into the social responsibility realm where the perception is that it should be funded with tax dollars. It makes me about as pissed as the moment I realized that some of the subsidized housing here in Atlanta was better than the apartment I was living in - it's not about necessity, it's become something completely different.
I feel obligated to quote Michael Powell, "I think there's a Mercedes divide. I'd like one, but I can't afford it."
Right. And do you actually believe that within the next 20 years, they won't pass yet another extension? If you think that, you're ignoring volumes of history (link courtesy of Jason Scott).
The point is that as long as these corporations have copyrights that are valuable to them, additional extensions will be purchased from Congress (barring a drastic shift in the temperment of Congress). So the story is correct, we will never get these copyrights into the public domain.