The only people who'll want this are wildlife documentary makers and people with really expensive security systems. I doubt it will ever be seen in a consumer device (or even a 'prosumer' device).
Of course it won't be in a consumer device, or in a professional photographer's kit. It'll find application in scientific instrumentation.
Have they used their 120 megapixel APS-H sized sensor? Have they used the 50 megapixel one before that?
This is just money down the toilet. It's development to make the executives feel good. It's R&D masturbation.
I love Canon, I love their sensors and cameras but they are and the path to bankruptcy. Quick make the employees stand not sit make them and run everywhere so they look busy!
You DO realize that image sensors are used for more than just consumer digital cameras, right?
Nikon DSLR's don't.
They're deliberately using older tech. (read that as patent expired)
Which is why Nikons can be used professionally, where Cannons cannot.
True, if you want to take a photograph, a cannon isn't very useful.
Having said that, many many professional photopgraphers use Canon equipment, so please stop talking out of your ass.
My understanding is that the iphone (unlike other more basic phones) initially didn't allow tethering at all and now only allows it if the carrier specifically enables it.
Your understanding is incomplete. Tethering was always possible on the iPhone, but since AT+T did not want to allow it, Apple didn't include a simple way to enable it. Now that AT+T has decided that tethering is OK if you pay extra for it, Apple has included the simple enable mechanism.
Enabling no-added-cost tethering is the best reason to jailbreak an iPhone.
Well, illegal flamethrower pipes aren't very useful. It's more like: a car requires expensive 92 octane fuel, not for performance, but because the car's manufacturer was paid by oil companies to put a sensor in the engine that shuts it off if anything less than 92 octane fuel comes in. Now, it's legal to hack the sensor to permit cheap, 87 octane fuel, which runs just as well as 92 in this car.
it must get tiring, seeing conspiracy theories everywhere. Some engines have high compression and need high-octane gas.Of course the car manufacturer could (and in many cases, do) add logic to the engine controller that detects knock and retards timing to mitigate it, but then the performance goes to shit.
I don't think legality was holding people back. It mainly was the technical expertise to do so.
I think jailbreaking will be still limited to the hobbiest.
To use a car analogy (Which will be replied to with a better analogy proving me wrong):
Now everyone can put "illegal" flamethrower pipes on their car and not get arrested, but who's going to do it but hobbiest?
Either your web browser doesn't have a spell-check feature, or you like telling the world that you're an ignorant doofus.
Yes, unions will fix it! Just like they saved the American car industry. Oh, wait.
You're an idiot. The American car industry's problems aren't with its labor costs, it's with their product -- a product that apparently fewer and fewer customers want. And the products are the result of design, which is dictated by what the marketing types think the customers want. And these marketing type seemed to think that the customers were always going to want huge SUVs, and the top-level executives at these companies couldn't figure out that designs needed to be updated more often as the whims of the consumer changed.
As for the labor and pension and retirement-benefits cost: did you know that after WW2, the UAW wanted to be the organization offering the medical and retirement benefits to the workers? But the employers said no, they wanted to handle those benefits, because if your pension is based on the years you work for a specific employer, the more likely it is that you'll stay with that employer for your whole career.
Now, of course, the auto manufacturers are reaping what they've sown -- rather than let the union deal with a very large retiree population, the manufacturers have to deal with it.
Except for the testimony of the UN weapons inspectors
You should try reading the report right before the invasion. There wasn't a smoking gun, and the inspectors wanted more time, but they also noted that Saddam had to be dragged kicking and screaming the whole way to let the inspectors do their work. Saddam didn't do himself any favors by acting like he had something to hide.
Saddam, being a strongman, was trying to avoid looking weak to his subjects and to the larger Arab world. He had too much invested in the appearance of having a WMD program to just up and go, "Hah! Just kidding!"
Yes, the weapons inspectors wanted more time, because when it comes to prosecuting a war of choice -- and that's what it was -- they wanted to be certain. Bush of course just wanted to "Get Saddam" and couldn't stand waiting for diplomacy and inspections.
They strongly supported John McCain until it became obvious that Palin was sinking his ship.
McCain's ship was already sinking by the time he chose Palin out of desperation. It actually worked for awhile, too, if you remember, until the media tore her apart.
Uh, the media did not tear her apart. She self-destructed by whiffing on the softball questions tossed to by Katie Couric, after which her access to the media was limited to Fox News. It soon became clear that she was an airhead (or worse). McCain's choice of such a woefully inadequate running mate showed that his judgement was indeed poor, and as such the so-called "Independent voters" broke for Obama.
So, what you call "the media tear[ing] her apart" is really an all-too-rare example of the media doing their job.
so, really, exactly what does this "Open source hardware definition" define?
Does it simply allow someone to post schematics, firmware sources, Gerber files and BOMs with the implied, "Please don't make a bunch of these and sell them as your own design," or is there more to it?
TFA doesn't talk about any sort of interoperability standards or anything else. it certainly doesn't talk about the notion of "contributing changes back to the community."
I understand all of the arguments about, "Why aren't commercial products 'maker-friendly'?" (and I know why they are not), but still.. what am I missing?
FPGAs are great for prototyping and when you actually do need dynamic reconfiguration of low level code (gates).
In reality they are slower and more expensive to the point that they really aren't useful outside of specialized applications, which is why your PC uses an intel x86 microprocessor and an nVida or ATI GPU rather than some random FPGA.
And the end result is that you're STILL making software, not hardware.
FPGAs are cool and useful, but to think they can be used in a generalized way shows you have no idea what they are used for.
I suppose that the many many products shipping with FPGAs are "specialized." Your point of view is outdated. And of course we don't use FPGAs in a "generalized way," as FPGA designs (other than the toys one would come up with to use on a development board) are indeed application-specific.
Basically, without FPGAs, my company simply could not build our products.
This is open source hardware, the patents are all gone, anyone can make them. A number
of manufacturers make them to a single double edged standard.
The point is a hardware definition not making the actual hardware itself. Its defining standards
for making the hardware. Having open source definitions for hardware makes it easier for hardware manufacturers
to be compliant with the standard at cost.
Having a free open standard makes low cost vanilla hardware easy.
What if this "standard" is totally inapplicable to my application? This is the part that I don't understand.
CDs are in fact "records"; they are as much records of performances as LPs were. I don't know why people stopped calling them records just because the media holding the records changed.
EXACTLY. Please mod parent UP!
(It's also reasonable to call a CD an "album," as in a collection of things, in this case, songs.)
I disagree with the notion that the new Mini is aimed at the living room, because this $699 box is $300-$400 more than the Boxee Box, Popcorn Hour and other less-expensive media players. It's more likely that the Mini's primary market is education and home users who want a desktop Mac for under $1K.
Neither of the media boxes you suggest can also function as your file server, backup server, gaming platform or whatever else you choose to install on your mini since it's, you know, a full on computer.
Agreed -- I have a G4 (7410) mac mini in the living room cabinet by the TV. In addition to running eyeTV with my old eyeTV 250 FW interface and a big FW hard disk attached, it's also our DVD player, home network DNS and it's my Subversion server which I can get to from anywhere on the internet. Works for me.
We can watch TV shows on it, too, either rips or from iTunes or wherever. About the only thing we can't do is watch Hulu on it because that requires Flash, which as everyone knows, sucks on OS X.
custom motherboard, custom case, custom cooling, small size, ability to run OSX and not violate the terms, are all things that add markup. Look at shuttle.
Ugh, Shuttle, what crap. I used a Shuttle case/mobo because I needed to build a small-form-factor PC that would work with a Matrox PCIe frame grabber. What Shuttle doesn't tell you is that their stupid motherboard is set up such that the single PCIe slot will ONLY work with a graphics adapter. It made no sense to me then, it still makes no sense to me, and their support was awful.
The economy is crippled because growth is greatly hampered by the (ever growing, and recently heavily grown) relative weight of national debt. Debt is what remains when an 'investment' (stuff money is spent on) didn't return a profit - which is damn near everything government spends money on. To reduce debt requires targeted risk taking. The desire to take indidvidual risk is reduced when the loss of others' risk gets forcibly shared. Any organization that has the ability to take risk with someone else's money (i.e., when loss is forced on others) will take excess risk compared to an individual deciding what is worthwhile or an organization that cannot rid itself of loss. As a country we cannot rid ourself of the loss government forces on us - we eventually pay the piper.
We can start reducing this debt by pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
As if my education was not expensive enough, now they throw this out there. America is already rediculously expensive it seems for education, something like this will only make it more so..
How do you even know people were endangered? Speeding cameras are most often placed on ofter deserted streets!
Really? Since their main purpose is to generate revenue, putting a speed camera on a deserted street makes no sense. Here in the Old Pueblo, the two camera vans are always parked on the busiest roads, and there are permanent cameras on a couple very busy roads.
Tiny 14 megapixels on latest batch of cameras are there to showcase the lens weaknesses and noise reduction algorithms.
No professional photographer needs more megapixels than his lens can resolve. And pros are often more pragmatic than regular consumers: some still shoot with first generation Canon 1D (4MP) - it works, and is enough for newspapers. A lot of pros shoot product photos for their customers' web sites - they don't need resolution at all, only good lighting.
Ya know, hey, HP, how about instead of adding this feature, why not just continue to support your older (but not all that old) printers in newer operating systems?
Everyone said I was daft to install Windows 3.1 (before WFW 3.11) on a 286, but I installed it anyways.
At first, it borked my machine. So I did a reinstall which burned down and then borked my machine. The third install burned down, fell over and then borked my machine... but the fourth one stayed up!
And that's what you'll get, lad.
I wish mod points were in units of Great Tracts of Land!
Slashdot Mirror
The only people who'll want this are wildlife documentary makers and people with really expensive security systems. I doubt it will ever be seen in a consumer device (or even a 'prosumer' device).
Of course it won't be in a consumer device, or in a professional photographer's kit. It'll find application in scientific instrumentation.
Will this be in a camera? No. Good god no.
Have they used their 120 megapixel APS-H sized sensor? Have they used the 50 megapixel one before that?
This is just money down the toilet. It's development to make the executives feel good. It's R&D masturbation.
I love Canon, I love their sensors and cameras but they are and the path to bankruptcy. Quick make the employees stand not sit make them and run everywhere so they look busy!
You DO realize that image sensors are used for more than just consumer digital cameras, right?
Nikon DSLR's don't. They're deliberately using older tech. (read that as patent expired) Which is why Nikons can be used professionally, where Cannons cannot.
True, if you want to take a photograph, a cannon isn't very useful.
Having said that, many many professional photopgraphers use Canon equipment, so please stop talking out of your ass.
My understanding is that the iphone (unlike other more basic phones) initially didn't allow tethering at all and now only allows it if the carrier specifically enables it.
Your understanding is incomplete. Tethering was always possible on the iPhone, but since AT+T did not want to allow it, Apple didn't include a simple way to enable it. Now that AT+T has decided that tethering is OK if you pay extra for it, Apple has included the simple enable mechanism.
Enabling no-added-cost tethering is the best reason to jailbreak an iPhone.
Well, illegal flamethrower pipes aren't very useful. It's more like: a car requires expensive 92 octane fuel, not for performance, but because the car's manufacturer was paid by oil companies to put a sensor in the engine that shuts it off if anything less than 92 octane fuel comes in. Now, it's legal to hack the sensor to permit cheap, 87 octane fuel, which runs just as well as 92 in this car.
it must get tiring, seeing conspiracy theories everywhere. Some engines have high compression and need high-octane gas.Of course the car manufacturer could (and in many cases, do) add logic to the engine controller that detects knock and retards timing to mitigate it, but then the performance goes to shit.
I don't think legality was holding people back. It mainly was the technical expertise to do so.
I think jailbreaking will be still limited to the hobbiest.
To use a car analogy (Which will be replied to with a better analogy proving me wrong): Now everyone can put "illegal" flamethrower pipes on their car and not get arrested, but who's going to do it but hobbiest?
Either your web browser doesn't have a spell-check feature, or you like telling the world that you're an ignorant doofus.
Yes, unions will fix it! Just like they saved the American car industry. Oh, wait.
You're an idiot. The American car industry's problems aren't with its labor costs, it's with their product -- a product that apparently fewer and fewer customers want. And the products are the result of design, which is dictated by what the marketing types think the customers want. And these marketing type seemed to think that the customers were always going to want huge SUVs, and the top-level executives at these companies couldn't figure out that designs needed to be updated more often as the whims of the consumer changed.
As for the labor and pension and retirement-benefits cost: did you know that after WW2, the UAW wanted to be the organization offering the medical and retirement benefits to the workers? But the employers said no, they wanted to handle those benefits, because if your pension is based on the years you work for a specific employer, the more likely it is that you'll stay with that employer for your whole career.
Now, of course, the auto manufacturers are reaping what they've sown -- rather than let the union deal with a very large retiree population, the manufacturers have to deal with it.
Except for the testimony of the UN weapons inspectors
You should try reading the report right before the invasion. There wasn't a smoking gun, and the inspectors wanted more time, but they also noted that Saddam had to be dragged kicking and screaming the whole way to let the inspectors do their work. Saddam didn't do himself any favors by acting like he had something to hide.
Saddam, being a strongman, was trying to avoid looking weak to his subjects and to the larger Arab world. He had too much invested in the appearance of having a WMD program to just up and go, "Hah! Just kidding!"
Yes, the weapons inspectors wanted more time, because when it comes to prosecuting a war of choice -- and that's what it was -- they wanted to be certain. Bush of course just wanted to "Get Saddam" and couldn't stand waiting for diplomacy and inspections.
They strongly supported John McCain until it became obvious that Palin was sinking his ship.
McCain's ship was already sinking by the time he chose Palin out of desperation. It actually worked for awhile, too, if you remember, until the media tore her apart.
Uh, the media did not tear her apart. She self-destructed by whiffing on the softball questions tossed to by Katie Couric, after which her access to the media was limited to Fox News. It soon became clear that she was an airhead (or worse). McCain's choice of such a woefully inadequate running mate showed that his judgement was indeed poor, and as such the so-called "Independent voters" broke for Obama.
So, what you call "the media tear[ing] her apart" is really an all-too-rare example of the media doing their job.
so, really, exactly what does this "Open source hardware definition" define?
Does it simply allow someone to post schematics, firmware sources, Gerber files and BOMs with the implied, "Please don't make a bunch of these and sell them as your own design," or is there more to it?
TFA doesn't talk about any sort of interoperability standards or anything else. it certainly doesn't talk about the notion of "contributing changes back to the community."
I understand all of the arguments about, "Why aren't commercial products 'maker-friendly'?" (and I know why they are not), but still .. what am I missing?
You already are.
FPGAs are great for prototyping and when you actually do need dynamic reconfiguration of low level code (gates).
In reality they are slower and more expensive to the point that they really aren't useful outside of specialized applications, which is why your PC uses an intel x86 microprocessor and an nVida or ATI GPU rather than some random FPGA.
And the end result is that you're STILL making software, not hardware.
FPGAs are cool and useful, but to think they can be used in a generalized way shows you have no idea what they are used for.
I suppose that the many many products shipping with FPGAs are "specialized." Your point of view is outdated. And of course we don't use FPGAs in a "generalized way," as FPGA designs (other than the toys one would come up with to use on a development board) are indeed application-specific.
Basically, without FPGAs, my company simply could not build our products.
signed, FPGA hardware guy.
This is open source hardware, the patents are all gone, anyone can make them. A number of manufacturers make them to a single double edged standard.
The point is a hardware definition not making the actual hardware itself. Its defining standards for making the hardware. Having open source definitions for hardware makes it easier for hardware manufacturers to be compliant with the standard at cost.
Having a free open standard makes low cost vanilla hardware easy.
What if this "standard" is totally inapplicable to my application? This is the part that I don't understand.
CDs are in fact "records"; they are as much records of performances as LPs were. I don't know why people stopped calling them records just because the media holding the records changed.
EXACTLY. Please mod parent UP!
(It's also reasonable to call a CD an "album," as in a collection of things, in this case, songs.)
Vitamin A.
Humans can synthesize vitamin D when they are exposed to sunlight.
At the risk of increased chance of skin cancer. There was a discussion on NPR about this a couple of weeks ago.
Make is to DIY what Wired is to technology ...
Exactly.
Neither of the media boxes you suggest can also function as your file server, backup server, gaming platform or whatever else you choose to install on your mini since it's, you know, a full on computer.
Agreed -- I have a G4 (7410) mac mini in the living room cabinet by the TV. In addition to running eyeTV with my old eyeTV 250 FW interface and a big FW hard disk attached, it's also our DVD player, home network DNS and it's my Subversion server which I can get to from anywhere on the internet. Works for me.
We can watch TV shows on it, too, either rips or from iTunes or wherever. About the only thing we can't do is watch Hulu on it because that requires Flash, which as everyone knows, sucks on OS X.
custom motherboard, custom case, custom cooling, small size, ability to run OSX and not violate the terms, are all things that add markup. Look at shuttle.
Ugh, Shuttle, what crap. I used a Shuttle case/mobo because I needed to build a small-form-factor PC that would work with a Matrox PCIe frame grabber. What Shuttle doesn't tell you is that their stupid motherboard is set up such that the single PCIe slot will ONLY work with a graphics adapter. It made no sense to me then, it still makes no sense to me, and their support was awful.
The economy is crippled because growth is greatly hampered by the (ever growing, and recently heavily grown) relative weight of national debt. Debt is what remains when an 'investment' (stuff money is spent on) didn't return a profit - which is damn near everything government spends money on. To reduce debt requires targeted risk taking. The desire to take indidvidual risk is reduced when the loss of others' risk gets forcibly shared. Any organization that has the ability to take risk with someone else's money (i.e., when loss is forced on others) will take excess risk compared to an individual deciding what is worthwhile or an organization that cannot rid itself of loss. As a country we cannot rid ourself of the loss government forces on us - we eventually pay the piper.
We can start reducing this debt by pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
As if my education was not expensive enough, now they throw this out there. America is already rediculously expensive it seems for education, something like this will only make it more so..
Too bad this "education" didn't include spelling.
How do you even know people were endangered? Speeding cameras are most often placed on ofter deserted streets!
Really? Since their main purpose is to generate revenue, putting a speed camera on a deserted street makes no sense. Here in the Old Pueblo, the two camera vans are always parked on the busiest roads, and there are permanent cameras on a couple very busy roads.
Tiny 14 megapixels on latest batch of cameras are there to showcase the lens weaknesses and noise reduction algorithms.
No professional photographer needs more megapixels than his lens can resolve. And pros are often more pragmatic than regular consumers: some still shoot with first generation Canon 1D (4MP) - it works, and is enough for newspapers. A lot of pros shoot product photos for their customers' web sites - they don't need resolution at all, only good lighting.
You need resolution to allow for cropping.
What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.
Heh! Odds of that being approved for the App Store are approximately 3,720 to 1.
Install GlimmerBlocker on a machine that's always available, and use it as a proxy for your phone.
Ok, so it's completely ridiculous, but it works.
Ya know, hey, HP, how about instead of adding this feature, why not just continue to support your older (but not all that old) printers in newer operating systems?
Everyone said I was daft to install Windows 3.1 (before WFW 3.11) on a 286, but I installed it anyways.
At first, it borked my machine. So I did a reinstall which burned down and then borked my machine. The third install burned down, fell over and then borked my machine... but the fourth one stayed up!
And that's what you'll get, lad.
I wish mod points were in units of Great Tracts of Land!
... start a religion.