I know I'll be moderated down for saying this, but this is the exact reason Flash [blashpemy!] is still the choice for this kind of stuff. You can do it in SVG, something that kinda works across browsers and often requires a plugin anyway, or you can do it in Flash, which is rendered faster, works the same across browsers and platforms and it's already installed!
The same goes for HTML5/Video (how many content providers will want to encode to both H264 and OGG rather than just to H264 and use a flash player?) and web fonts? (TTF vs. EOT).
But this is Slashdot. Microsoft is the devil, Adobe/Flash is evil, Opera is slightly less evil, Apple is good and Google is a saint.
Same thing in my country (Romania). For some reason everyone prefers subtitles. One big TV network tried about 10 years ago to dub a soap opera... they spent a fortune on advertising but everyone hated it - it was such a massive flop no one ever tried it again. I have some dubbed Disnay movies but they translated the songs too - and guess what, my 5 year old son prefers the originals.
As for software, I know a few people forced to use translated Office versions. All of them grumble as they need to map the terminology used.
Good translations are hard, especially when the source material is heavy; this is apparent when works of the same author are translated by different people. LoTR had a wonderful translation, while The Hobbit, although technically correct, had no 'flavour'. To stay in the realm of fantasy and give you an example, the name 'Diagon Alley' from Harry Potter missed it completely.
Just to be pedantic, point-and-shoot cameras (aka focus-free, including the ones in cell phones) are not focused to infinity but rather to the hyperfocal distance
I can assure you that getting high-quality images of paintings is NOT simple - lighting is critical to capture the texture, color, and avoid reflections and shadows
Spot on.
I argued along the same lines in the previous Slashdot post, only to be marked as a troll (first time in 8 years). I do have karma to burn so I'll say it again: if you believe there's no art and technical skills in digitizing paintings, you haven't tried.
My most demanding undertaking was with an artist specialized in painting on glass and using gold foils. I had to create some clever light rigs to avoid any reflections and capture depth. Making gold actually look like gold and not just a yellow-amber color was demanding too. And then, for each painting I sat for hours with her in front of a calibrated display to get the colors exactly right.
Damn, where are my mod points when I need them most?
Please read the article referenced by the parent poster. It's long, I know, but it really helps placing this dispute in the proper context.
I was torn before, but seeing that basically Fairey built a career on taking existing photos and graphics and replacing the text with his own (also pretty childish too) makes me understand why the photographer is pissed off.
Replying to myself: someone in a different post argues that National Gallery does not allow the public to take pictures. Is that true? Not even without flash? Very few museums I've visited had such a rule and I know for a fact that in British Museum taking photos is permitted.
OK - it should be easy then. You go to the National Gallery, take 3300 pictures, release them under Creative Commons or public domain and upload them.
It can be done. I've done it. But it's not trivial (hint: avoiding reflections and highlights, correcting perspective & distortion, making sure the colors are accurate).
I am the eye in the sky Looking at you I can read your mind I am the maker of rules Dealing with fools I can cheat you blind And I don't need to see any more To know that I can read your mind.
I won't even bother getting into details, but flash can't get the clipboard contents, only set it (much like all other browsers). Don't get me started on your XMLHttpRequest argument...
Just one thing: check the number of vulnerabilities in Flash compared to the number of vulnerabilities discovered in your favourite browser.
I wanted to write more in-depth, but this is Slashdot, where people love to hate flash. I bet if it was made by Linus/RMS/Jobs, the same crowd would have worshiped it...
Years ago we've done some work for a record label to promote an artist. When the job was over, we received a few "special" complimentary CDs - a lot better packaging, hand-signed, lots of extras. It was really nice and it succeeded in making us feel, well, special. It was probably a short-run that was given to press and so on as part of the promotion.
So they CAN do it. If, instead of a cheap plastic holder and some paper they'd add something of value, people would have an extra incentive to buy the CD as opposed to download the mp3 (legally or not).
I did not want any scandal. I am not a full-time photographer but I do value my reputation. Like I said, parents are sometimes overprotective. It's not my job to try and change their minds - most of the time they don't want to and you can't really reason with an angry mother. I could have acted in a stiff manner, since the MR was legally binding, but really, it wouldn't have done me any good.
It's simple -- I did not want any scandal. I was compensated for the wasted time and I also value my reputation. I could have acted in a stiff manner, since the MR was legally binding, but really, it wouldn't have done me any good.
It goes like this: photographer goes to publisher with a photo. Publisher sees the a face on the photo - asks "do you have a release with that photo? If not, please provide one, or we won't use your photo." Most of the time the publisher doesn't know the person on the photo and doesn't even care, so in the end it's still photographer's job to get the release.
Apparently she added that after I read her original post. I don't know how Facebook handles upload, i.e. if you upload the high-res, does it resize it and keeps the original or discards it.
Not completely true. You still need a model release (e.g. like this) to use the photos commercially. No stock agency will accept your photos without one (some will accept photos of persons without a MR for editorial purposes only, but unless you're photographing a celebrity, it's still useless).
As I mentioned in another post, I am an exclusive contributor to iStock. I once made a session with a girl (over 18), very simple and decent stuff - business-like clothing and setting. She did sign a model release and was perfectly happy with it. But when her mother found out, I got a phone call -- she did not agree to her daughter's actions and that she was concerned about how some might use her pictures. I tried to explain to her that iStock's TOS disallow any pornographic or sensitive usage (including 'edorsement' and such) but she was still upset. I did not want to cause any problems, so I deleted all pictures and tore up the model release. Since I'm a parent myself, I can understand how other parents tend to be (over)protective.
BTW, if you think about doing pro/semi-pro shoots with a model, have a read.
I've read about this over a week ago and it's very strange: There's no way anyone can take a 600px wide pic and blow it up to 1-2 m. 2m is about 80 inches; so that picture would have to be printed at 7.62 dpi (ppi would be more accurate). No way.
The only way that pic could have been used is if the ad people had access to the original file, which is assumed to be a hi-res picture from a dSLR. How could that happen? I see a few possibilities:
The lady printed the high-res pic somewhere and a clerk took the pic, forged the model releases and submitted it to a microstock agency;
She uploaded the full size pic to Facebook and they used her pic. I am not familiar with Facebook's TOS (don't use it) so I don't know if you grant them the use of the stuff you upload;
The photographer sold the pic - again, model releases should have been required; 'extraordinarymommy' says she did not sign any model release. I don't want to accuse the photographer of anything, I'm just stating the options.
To keep things in perspective, copyright is mostly respected in all Central and East Europe - it's not like it's a jungle. Stock images from sites like iStock are very cheap and of good quality. A 12-15 Mp file costs $20 at iStock, that's nothing when you have a paying customer. There's no NEED for anyone to steal the pic.
Course of action: contact the grocery store, find out who made their ad. Contact the ad agency. If they got the file legitimately, they will have no issue cooperating. If the file was from a stock agency, contact them and they will resolve the issue. If the ad agency cannot provide and proof, get a lawyer, threaten to sue but look for a settlement; a trial would be long a costly.
I second this. If you check my posts, I don't think I ever written something positive about MS, but for the last few days I've been playing with Bing side by side with Google.
My findings so far: - Bing's index is noticeably smaller than Google's; searching for very specific keywords simply do not show some results (I wasn't searching for porn) - In 90% of the cases, Bing's results were similar to Google's, basically same results with small differences in ordering (#4 becomes #2, #3 is #6, etc.) - The remaining 10% - sometimes Bing produces a very good result in the first 1-2 results, some other times it "thinks" you were looking for something else. - Like Google, it favors results from Wikipedia.
The default result sets are more than useless - are laughable. I searched for europe demographics and it automatically created a set of rows that was made of Gibraltar, Isle of Man and Faroe Islands; for columns it created Image, Description, Language, Capital and Currency. The same search on Wolfram Alpha produced clear, concise results.
Eventually, I could get good results on Squared too by starting with an empty square and adding rows and columns myself. Took about 10 minutes; I could have made a simple search to get the same results.
I realize Google-bashing is dangerous around here, but they definitely have to improve Squared if they want it to be useful.
The word google does vaguely imply searching, looking, grepping. To me anyway.
That's because in 10 years you had the time to associate the word "google" with "search".
For me, non-native English speaker, "google" meant nothing. Yeah, I know it's a misspelling for "goggle" but I never made the connection myself. And nobody in my country uses it as a verb.
I actually like "Bing". I associate it with "Ping", so "Just bing it!" doesn't sound bad.
Yes and no. They do have the overall story planned. It progresses nicely and logically. They don't have all the minor details in place; they can't even plan very well ahead as there are many unforeseen events (just look at Babylon 5 and how they had to replace Sinclair with Sheridan for example).
When you have the story laid out correctly, you get Babylon 5 or Lost. When you don't, you get Heroes.
That's the plan. You set things up unbalanced, so that you have enough conflict not just for the movie but for years.
An emotionless Spock is 'perfect'. First, no one likes perfection; then, there's no potential for conflict in that.
By making Spock ironic, ambitious, prideful, by making it flawed, the director can show character growth in sequels and entire plots can be devised around it.
Slashdot Mirror
I know I'll be moderated down for saying this, but this is the exact reason Flash [blashpemy!] is still the choice for this kind of stuff. You can do it in SVG, something that kinda works across browsers and often requires a plugin anyway, or you can do it in Flash, which is rendered faster, works the same across browsers and platforms and it's already installed!
The same goes for HTML5/Video (how many content providers will want to encode to both H264 and OGG rather than just to H264 and use a flash player?) and web fonts? (TTF vs. EOT).
But this is Slashdot. Microsoft is the devil, Adobe/Flash is evil, Opera is slightly less evil, Apple is good and Google is a saint.
Same thing in my country (Romania). For some reason everyone prefers subtitles. One big TV network tried about 10 years ago to dub a soap opera... they spent a fortune on advertising but everyone hated it - it was such a massive flop no one ever tried it again. I have some dubbed Disnay movies but they translated the songs too - and guess what, my 5 year old son prefers the originals.
As for software, I know a few people forced to use translated Office versions. All of them grumble as they need to map the terminology used.
Good translations are hard, especially when the source material is heavy; this is apparent when works of the same author are translated by different people. LoTR had a wonderful translation, while The Hobbit, although technically correct, had no 'flavour'. To stay in the realm of fantasy and give you an example, the name 'Diagon Alley' from Harry Potter missed it completely.
Just to be pedantic, point-and-shoot cameras (aka focus-free, including the ones in cell phones) are not focused to infinity but rather to the hyperfocal distance
Spot on.
I argued along the same lines in the previous Slashdot post, only to be marked as a troll (first time in 8 years). I do have karma to burn so I'll say it again: if you believe there's no art and technical skills in digitizing paintings, you haven't tried.
My most demanding undertaking was with an artist specialized in painting on glass and using gold foils. I had to create some clever light rigs to avoid any reflections and capture depth. Making gold actually look like gold and not just a yellow-amber color was demanding too. And then, for each painting I sat for hours with her in front of a calibrated display to get the colors exactly right.
Damn, where are my mod points when I need them most?
Please read the article referenced by the parent poster. It's long, I know, but it really helps placing this dispute in the proper context.
I was torn before, but seeing that basically Fairey built a career on taking existing photos and graphics and replacing the text with his own (also pretty childish too) makes me understand why the photographer is pissed off.
Replying to myself: someone in a different post argues that National Gallery does not allow the public to take pictures. Is that true? Not even without flash? Very few museums I've visited had such a rule and I know for a fact that in British Museum taking photos is permitted.
OK - it should be easy then. You go to the National Gallery, take 3300 pictures, release them under Creative Commons or public domain and upload them.
It can be done. I've done it. But it's not trivial (hint: avoiding reflections and highlights, correcting perspective & distortion, making sure the colors are accurate).
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't need to see any more
To know that
I can read your mind.
Well, it depends on how big the minimum quarterly fee was...
And please, don't toss words like "rape" around unless you mean a really traumatic event. In Spyglass' case, the proper word would be "tricked".
Can you say "FUD"?
I won't even bother getting into details, but flash can't get the clipboard contents, only set it (much like all other browsers). Don't get me started on your XMLHttpRequest argument...
Just one thing: check the number of vulnerabilities in Flash compared to the number of vulnerabilities discovered in your favourite browser.
I wanted to write more in-depth, but this is Slashdot, where people love to hate flash. I bet if it was made by Linus/RMS/Jobs, the same crowd would have worshiped it...
Years ago we've done some work for a record label to promote an artist. When the job was over, we received a few "special" complimentary CDs - a lot better packaging, hand-signed, lots of extras. It was really nice and it succeeded in making us feel, well, special. It was probably a short-run that was given to press and so on as part of the promotion.
So they CAN do it. If, instead of a cheap plastic holder and some paper they'd add something of value, people would have an extra incentive to buy the CD as opposed to download the mp3 (legally or not).
I don't usually reply to trolls, here it goes.
I did not want any scandal. I am not a full-time photographer but I do value my reputation. Like I said, parents are sometimes overprotective. It's not my job to try and change their minds - most of the time they don't want to and you can't really reason with an angry mother. I could have acted in a stiff manner, since the MR was legally binding, but really, it wouldn't have done me any good.
It's simple -- I did not want any scandal. I was compensated for the wasted time and I also value my reputation. I could have acted in a stiff manner, since the MR was legally binding, but really, it wouldn't have done me any good.
Technically true.
It goes like this: photographer goes to publisher with a photo. Publisher sees the a face on the photo - asks "do you have a release with that photo? If not, please provide one, or we won't use your photo." Most of the time the publisher doesn't know the person on the photo and doesn't even care, so in the end it's still photographer's job to get the release.
Apparently she added that after I read her original post. I don't know how Facebook handles upload, i.e. if you upload the high-res, does it resize it and keeps the original or discards it.
Not completely true. You still need a model release (e.g. like this) to use the photos commercially. No stock agency will accept your photos without one (some will accept photos of persons without a MR for editorial purposes only, but unless you're photographing a celebrity, it's still useless).
The problem is commercial usage.
As I mentioned in another post, I am an exclusive contributor to iStock. I once made a session with a girl (over 18), very simple and decent stuff - business-like clothing and setting. She did sign a model release and was perfectly happy with it. But when her mother found out, I got a phone call -- she did not agree to her daughter's actions and that she was concerned about how some might use her pictures. I tried to explain to her that iStock's TOS disallow any pornographic or sensitive usage (including 'edorsement' and such) but she was still upset. I did not want to cause any problems, so I deleted all pictures and tore up the model release. Since I'm a parent myself, I can understand how other parents tend to be (over)protective.
BTW, if you think about doing pro/semi-pro shoots with a model, have a read.
I've read about this over a week ago and it's very strange: There's no way anyone can take a 600px wide pic and blow it up to 1-2 m. 2m is about 80 inches; so that picture would have to be printed at 7.62 dpi (ppi would be more accurate). No way.
The only way that pic could have been used is if the ad people had access to the original file, which is assumed to be a hi-res picture from a dSLR. How could that happen? I see a few possibilities:
To keep things in perspective, copyright is mostly respected in all Central and East Europe - it's not like it's a jungle. Stock images from sites like iStock are very cheap and of good quality. A 12-15 Mp file costs $20 at iStock, that's nothing when you have a paying customer. There's no NEED for anyone to steal the pic.
Course of action: contact the grocery store, find out who made their ad. Contact the ad agency. If they got the file legitimately, they will have no issue cooperating. If the file was from a stock agency, contact them and they will resolve the issue. If the ad agency cannot provide and proof, get a lawyer, threaten to sue but look for a settlement; a trial would be long a costly.
Disclosure: I am an exclusive contributor to iStock myself and I live in another Central European country.
I second this. If you check my posts, I don't think I ever written something positive about MS, but for the last few days I've been playing with Bing side by side with Google.
My findings so far:
- Bing's index is noticeably smaller than Google's; searching for very specific keywords simply do not show some results (I wasn't searching for porn)
- In 90% of the cases, Bing's results were similar to Google's, basically same results with small differences in ordering (#4 becomes #2, #3 is #6, etc.)
- The remaining 10% - sometimes Bing produces a very good result in the first 1-2 results, some other times it "thinks" you were looking for something else.
- Like Google, it favors results from Wikipedia.
The default result sets are more than useless - are laughable.
I searched for europe demographics and it automatically created a set of rows that was made of Gibraltar, Isle of Man and Faroe Islands; for columns it created Image, Description, Language, Capital and Currency. The same search on Wolfram Alpha produced clear, concise results.
Eventually, I could get good results on Squared too by starting with an empty square and adding rows and columns myself. Took about 10 minutes; I could have made a simple search to get the same results.
I realize Google-bashing is dangerous around here, but they definitely have to improve Squared if they want it to be useful.
That's because in 10 years you had the time to associate the word "google" with "search".
For me, non-native English speaker, "google" meant nothing. Yeah, I know it's a misspelling for "goggle" but I never made the connection myself. And nobody in my country uses it as a verb.
I actually like "Bing". I associate it with "Ping", so "Just bing it!" doesn't sound bad.
Yes and no.
They do have the overall story planned. It progresses nicely and logically. They don't have all the minor details in place; they can't even plan very well ahead as there are many unforeseen events (just look at Babylon 5 and how they had to replace Sinclair with Sheridan for example).
When you have the story laid out correctly, you get Babylon 5 or Lost. When you don't, you get Heroes.
Indeed. The funny thing is that even though they push Silverlight, major sites drop it and go back to Flash/AIR.
After MLB move reported a while ago on Slashdot, New York Times dropped their Silverlight reader and unveiled the Times Reader 2, which is AIR based.
That's the plan. You set things up unbalanced, so that you have enough conflict not just for the movie but for years.
An emotionless Spock is 'perfect'. First, no one likes perfection; then, there's no potential for conflict in that.
By making Spock ironic, ambitious, prideful, by making it flawed, the director can show character growth in sequels and entire plots can be devised around it.
OK, I admit I'm from a backward country in E.Europe.
I have NEVER ever heard of a "restless leg syndrome" up until now. Never. I actually thought that the original poster made the term up...
I use to bite my nails. Is that a syndrome? Maybe it's a compulsive behavior that can affect my health. Quick - gimme some pills!