"I have yet to do extensive testing with the [Canon] D60 [a 6 Megapixel digital camera], but I can say that D60 8X10" prints, and indeed the one D60 11 X 16.5"print I have done so far, are better than any previous 8X10" or larger print I have made from 35 mm colour, no matter how printed. In fact, I would say that the 11X16.5" print is pretty close to similar-sized images printed conventionally (or digitally) from 645 format negatives. In simpler words, I believe the 6 MP D60 is superior to 35 mm colour film-not just the equal. A possible exception might be a really good print from a Kodachrome slide -- but I can't claim to have any that are in fact better"...[cut cut]... "I doubt that I will ever 'seriously' use 35 mm colour film again! When I want to produce a quality result, I will choose digital -- or a larger format than 35 mm."
And as a side note, MegaPixels aren't always a good measurement of the quality of Digital Cameras. For example the Canon D30, a 3 megapixel camera produces better images than Sony F707, 5 megapixel camera.
Why? Here is a quote from http://www.luminous-landscape.com/dq.htm
"The reason is simple, it [Canon D30] has a much better SNR. Why you ask? The Sony pixels are much, much smaller. Smaller pixels have less area to gather light. Less light means less signal. For a given semiconductor process, the noise stays the same regardless of pixel size and the signal increases with pixel size."
Disclaimer:
I don't love or hate.NET and Micro$oft...
I can easily admit that there are somethings that M$FT does that are quite cool,
e.g. helping me to get 1600% gain on my nVidia shares!:)
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Guthrie [@microsoft.com]
To: aspngcommunity
Subject: [aspngcommunity] RE: First.NET Created Virus
Just to be clear -- this was not a ".NET virus."
It's a standard Windows virus written largely in unmanaged assembler that happens to locate and modify.NET Framework (MSIL PE) files. So claims that this is the "first.NET virus" are basically inaccurate.
To be infected, a user would have to download an infected.exe application to their system and run it locally -- it cannot spread through Internet Explorer or through Outlook (which blocks potentially dangerous attachments).
In fact, because of the security enhancements in Windows XP it cannot even trigger and spread if you are running Windows XP no matter how hard you try (even if you download and run the.exe on the command line).
In addition, for downloaded code on all platforms, additional safeguards for.NET managed code also detect this virus and will not run it. In other words, users who are taking standard security precautions (like running the current operating system and not downloading and running code they don't know about) won't ever be infected.
Hope this helps explain it some more,
Scott
P.S. Ironically, the virus author even talks about how hard it would be to write a real ".NET virus" -- "How easy it sounded, so hard to code it was. C#, such like Java have VERY STRICT type checking. And I figured out that there's NO easy way how to work with stringz - once a string is defined, you CAN'T change it - and I needed to do that, becoz it was very important for viral functionality."
I live in Iceland (no, we don't live in igloos:) ) and here cash "is almost extinct".
I, for example, never ever use cash, except when paying in parking meters and people here are already starting thinking of paying the parking meters through cell phones ( >80% of all Icelanders have cell phones).
Credit cards and Debit cards are accepted everywhere, even on some camping places "in the middle of f*** nowhere" and everybody uses the cards like crazy, most Icelanders rarely use money.
We have already almost eliminated checks and replaced them with debit cards (that took only about 2-3 years). And the cash is next.
There are already some experiments taking place here in Iceland
involving SmartCards as "coins cards"
- the service will be publicly available within 2 years.
(In some news from VISA in Iceland, all credit/debit cards in Iceland
(and perhaps in the rest of the world) will be SmartCards before 2005)
I personally like the idea of cashless society,
You are "never ever short of cash even if you are":)
- I can't buy something for $25 if I only have a $20 bill
but that isn't a problem with debit/credit cards,
in worst case scenario, you always have the overdraw @ the bank:)
The cards take much less space than money, especially coins
and when the smart cards will be common, you will only have carry one card that acts as your
drivers licence, identifcation card, credit/debit/coin card, your discount member card, etc.
It is also easier for you to do your home-accounting, etc.
Although some tend to spend more....
Crimes in the CashLess society will of course change and criminals will require more knowledge and different kind of skills. But hey they need to involve like the rest of us, everything is knowledge-driven now days:) This might perhaps lead to fewer crimes because of more requirements....
Call us stupid or ignorant, but most Icelanders don't have any privacy issues against card usages
- we are such a small nation (the population is only about 280000)
that "almost everybody knows everything about everybody" already:)
No seriously, privacy issues aren't our biggest fears/concerns.
So far our privacy hasn't been exploited although almost everything we do is linked to us through our National ID (a bit similair to the US Social Security Id)
- e.g. you can't rent a movie on video without given your National ID!
Yes, even the video rentals have access to the central National Id database,
that stores our name, age, gender, residence and marital status.
But the users of the database aren't allowed to exploit that information and they don't!
We have laws about privacy and the laws don't allow two different data sources to be joined by using the National ID without our permission....
And in the case of video rentals, they aren't allowed to store rental data for more than few days after the movie has been returned. So the rentals can't analysis their data much and categorize people...
I'm not saying that because exploitation isn't allowed nobody would ever do it if they had the opportunity.
I know that some people commit crimes... but still that would never get them very far, because as everybody knows "crimes don't pay", at least not in the long run....:)
I don't think many people would base their business as a marketing firm on using illegal methods of exploiting privacy.... That firm wouldn't last long...
This is quote from a American women living in Iceland, making fun of our card-usages:
"...in order to finalize the transition into a cashless society, there will be a Kronur [Iceland's local currency] burning festival, where all country men shall shall bring their paper money, burry it in the ground, drenched in amonia, and later serve it to foreign tourist, explaining to them, that this is the national food and it would be highly offensive not to eat it."
As Kent Beck, the guy behind Extreme Programming says: "Embrace change"...
Embrace the cash less society - at least it can give us a continued dotcom-like conference-topics:)
Slashdot Mirror
...by the way Google is hiring senior Java software engineers....
...at least some think so.
...[cut cut]... "I doubt that I will ever 'seriously' use 35 mm colour film again! When I want to produce a quality result, I will choose digital -- or a larger format than 35 mm."
A quote from: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d60-first.htm
"I have yet to do extensive testing with the [Canon] D60 [a 6 Megapixel digital camera], but I can say that D60 8X10" prints, and indeed the one D60 11 X 16.5"print I have done so far, are better than any previous 8X10" or larger print I have made from 35 mm colour, no matter how printed. In fact, I would say that the 11X16.5" print is pretty close to similar-sized images printed conventionally (or digitally) from 645 format negatives. In simpler words, I believe the 6 MP D60 is superior to 35 mm colour film-not just the equal. A possible exception might be a really good print from a Kodachrome slide -- but I can't claim to have any that are in fact better"
And as a side note, MegaPixels aren't always a good measurement of the quality of Digital Cameras. For example the Canon D30, a 3 megapixel camera produces better images than Sony F707, 5 megapixel camera. Why? Here is a quote from http://www.luminous-landscape.com/dq.htm
"The reason is simple, it [Canon D30] has a much better SNR. Why you ask? The Sony pixels are much, much smaller. Smaller pixels have less area to gather light. Less light means less signal. For a given semiconductor process, the noise stays the same regardless of pixel size and the signal increases with pixel size."
Disclaimer: I don't love or hate .NET and Micro$oft...
I can easily admit that there are somethings that M$FT does that are quite cool,
e.g. helping me to get 1600% gain on my nVidia shares! :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Guthrie [@microsoft.com]
To: aspngcommunity
Subject: [aspngcommunity] RE: First .NET Created Virus
Just to be clear -- this was not a ".NET virus."
It's a standard Windows virus written largely in unmanaged assembler that happens to locate and modify .NET Framework (MSIL PE) files. So claims that this is the "first .NET virus" are basically inaccurate.
To be infected, a user would have to download an infected .exe application to their system and run it locally -- it cannot spread through Internet Explorer or through Outlook (which blocks potentially dangerous attachments).
In fact, because of the security enhancements in Windows XP it cannot even trigger and spread if you are running Windows XP no matter how hard you try (even if you download and run the .exe on the command line).
In addition, for downloaded code on all platforms, additional safeguards for .NET managed code also detect this virus and will not run it. In other words, users who are taking standard security precautions (like running the current operating system and not downloading and running code they don't know about) won't ever be infected.
Hope this helps explain it some more,
Scott
P.S. Ironically, the virus author even talks about how hard it would be to write a real ".NET virus" -- "How easy it sounded, so hard to code it was. C#, such like Java have VERY STRICT type checking. And I figured out that there's NO easy way how to work with stringz - once a string is defined, you CAN'T change it - and I needed to do that, becoz it was very important for viral functionality."
I live in Iceland (no, we don't live in igloos :) ) and here cash "is almost extinct".
:) :)
:) This might perhaps lead to fewer crimes because of more requirements....
:)
:)
:)
I, for example, never ever use cash, except when paying in parking meters and people here are already starting thinking of paying the parking meters through cell phones ( >80% of all Icelanders have cell phones).
Credit cards and Debit cards are accepted everywhere, even on some camping places "in the middle of f*** nowhere" and everybody uses the cards like crazy, most Icelanders rarely use money.
We have already almost eliminated checks and replaced them with debit cards (that took only about 2-3 years). And the cash is next.
There are already some experiments taking place here in Iceland
involving SmartCards as "coins cards"
- the service will be publicly available within 2 years.
(In some news from VISA in Iceland, all credit/debit cards in Iceland
(and perhaps in the rest of the world) will be SmartCards before 2005)
I personally like the idea of cashless society,
You are "never ever short of cash even if you are"
- I can't buy something for $25 if I only have a $20 bill
but that isn't a problem with debit/credit cards,
in worst case scenario, you always have the overdraw @ the bank
The cards take much less space than money, especially coins
and when the smart cards will be common, you will only have carry one card that acts as your
drivers licence, identifcation card, credit/debit/coin card, your discount member card, etc.
It is also easier for you to do your home-accounting, etc.
Although some tend to spend more....
Crimes in the CashLess society will of course change and criminals will require more knowledge and different kind of skills. But hey they need to involve like the rest of us, everything is knowledge-driven now days
Call us stupid or ignorant, but most Icelanders don't have any privacy issues against card usages
- we are such a small nation (the population is only about 280000)
that "almost everybody knows everything about everybody" already
No seriously, privacy issues aren't our biggest fears/concerns.
So far our privacy hasn't been exploited although almost everything we do is linked to us through our National ID (a bit similair to the US Social Security Id)
- e.g. you can't rent a movie on video without given your National ID!
Yes, even the video rentals have access to the central National Id database,
that stores our name, age, gender, residence and marital status.
But the users of the database aren't allowed to exploit that information and they don't!
We have laws about privacy and the laws don't allow two different data sources to be joined by using the National ID without our permission....
And in the case of video rentals, they aren't allowed to store rental data for more than few days after the movie has been returned. So the rentals can't analysis their data much and categorize people...
I'm not saying that because exploitation isn't allowed nobody would ever do it if they had the opportunity.
I know that some people commit crimes... but still that would never get them very far, because as everybody knows "crimes don't pay", at least not in the long run....
I don't think many people would base their business as a marketing firm on using illegal methods of exploiting privacy.... That firm wouldn't last long...
This is quote from a American women living in Iceland, making fun of our card-usages:
"...in order to finalize the transition into a cashless society, there will be a Kronur [Iceland's local currency] burning festival, where all country men shall shall bring their paper money, burry it in the ground, drenched in amonia, and later serve it to foreign tourist, explaining to them, that this is the national food and it would be highly offensive not to eat it."
As Kent Beck, the guy behind Extreme Programming says: "Embrace change"...
Embrace the cash less society - at least it can give us a continued dotcom-like conference-topics