If the US army is that good, why did they call in the Australia SAS (special armed services)? They're reknowned for being the best of the best in the world (yes, they eat US seals for breakfast, and Gherkas for dinner if you ask me). SAS specialists were in the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just because the US spends lots of money on technology, doesn't mean their army is good.
Oh dear. Since my karma is already bad, and fucked up, I couldn't give a damn, so all you fucked up/. mods can suck my dick. The parent had it right. Fuck the proprietary operating systems, long live Linux. Crap like Apple deserves to go bust. I actually hate Apple far more than Microsoft, and my love of them is well known.
Julian May's excellent Milieu Saga (and the following Golden Torc series). Drama. War. Science. Action. Intrigue and mystery, and some humour. It would make a brilliant trilogy of movies imho.
Why not a movie adaption of H P Lovecraft & August Derleth's most excellent "Lurker at the threshold". I'd very dearly love to see this made into a movie.
WTF? So where is that freedom of speech that you yankees bander on about so much? You don't have it. You have convenient freedom of speech - when it's not convenient for big business or your corrupt government the individual gets bullied and harassed and made a goose of. I'd rather live in hell for all eternity than live in the US of A. The sad thing is, your idiotic laws, your capitalistic nature is spreading like a disease throughout the rest of the civilised world. There's a reason why I can't stand most Americans, and the US government, and you're living proof of it.
Part of the problem though is cost. Have you seen how expensive those digital backs for medium and large formats are? Even pros are having a hard time justifying the costs involved. And even if you use such a large CMOS/CCD sensor, you're going to find that resolution isn't going to be all it's cracked up to be. Even cameras like the Canon EOS 1ds/1dsmark II in reality have far too much pixels for the size of the sensor. If you want to read why this is, have a gawk at this thread:
Neither is my hero, and neither deserves to be. RMS for what he has done for the Free Software movement. Furtheremore, RMS is a real human, with feelings and consideration for other humans - his achievements have been for the betterment of his fellow man. I can't say the same for either Jobs or Gates - both of which, are highly overrated individuals imho.
Quote: "They were never as cheap as the low-end Nikon or Canon, but for a little bit more money you got a lot more features. I thought this was the case with their digital line as well."
huh? Never as cheap? Are we talking bottom of the rung cameras, mid range of high end semi-pro and pro cameras? Minolta has a few bottom of the range digital SLR cameras at very competitive prices - for example, the Minolta Maxxum 5D, which retails in Australia for $1299. That's including a 18-70mm lens. I'll quote a magazine named PhotoReview Australia that says:
"The few negative features include: Out-of-the-camera images with the default settings are somewhat soft and lacking in contrast, so additional processing is required. Shot-to-shot times are a little slow. The kit lens suffers from slight barrel distortion at its wide end and a low level of lateral chromatic aberration throughout the zoom range."
That said, it's rated as the runner up to the best digital SLRs under $1500 in the market (the Olympus E500 wins the award). Now, this camera is cheaper than Canon's eos 350D, or Nikon's D50. This disproves the point of yours that I've quoted above I feel.
Now, of course, I'm talking about digital SLRs here, when it comes to good old fashioned film SLRs, Canon and Nikon have offered cheaper offerings. You can't blame Canon for that. Canon's AF has long been the best in the business. You can dispute that if you want, but have a look at what percentage of the sport photographer pro's are using Canon, versus the rest;-) Same for wildlife photographers. Nikon has long had the best exposure system imho (and I'm a long time Canon user). People buy on performance. Canon & Nikon's offerings have offered better performance for less money.
Quote: "I think where they failed was waiting so long to bring out a DSLR that was lens-compatible with their Maxxum series of film SLRs."
Umm yes. Definitely. That's certainly not Canon or Nikon's fault, that's bad management on Minolta's part. Period.
Quote: "Canon brought out DSLRs that were basically a chip shoved into their film bodies and used the film-series lenses."
huh? And isn't that the logical way to do it? You put the CCD or CMOS chips on the film plane. That makes economic sense. It also means your customers don't have to go out and buy new lenses just to suit the DSLRs. That's called looking after your customers. And, Canon has pioneered the CMOS chip. Sigma's Foveon chip is pretty interesting as well when you look at the technology involved. Again, don't blame Canon or Nikon for Minolta's bad design decisions.
Quote: "it was just introduced too late and at too high a price to compete with Nikon."
That's right. Because of bad management decisions, and bad design decisions. Because of that, they lose market share. The more market share you have, the more cameras you sell, the cheaper your production prices become, the cheaper you can offer the camera to your customers and still maintain a profit level. Elementary economics I'm afraid. Again, stop blaming Canon and Nikon for Minolta's bad decisions.
Quote: "Image stabilization is not an easy feature to sell, altough I think it's a really good deal given that to get the same thing in Nikon or Canon you'd need all new lenses."
And if you're starting out anew, it doesn't make a difference does it? You buy the IS lens outright from the beginning. Sure, if you have a range of lenses already, then you'll have to fork out extra for IS capability. My Canon 300mm F4 IS L series lens has it, and truth be told, I never use it (the IS feature that is). Some photographer's swear by IS, all I can say is, how did photographers manage to still get good shots in the "early days" before IS? One word: SKILL. The more skilled photographer is always going to get the shot more often than than the unskilled one. It's just a fact of life.
I'll agree with you on Sony, they peddle proprietary crap, intended to lock in th
Hang on here, IBM is getting investigated by the SEC, but the SEC can't investigate our favourite litigious company called SCO? What gives? Maybe Microsoft is bribing top notch politicians to get the SEC to investigate it's one real opponent - IBM? Nothing surprises me in the slightest!
It's long been known that 'earbud' style headphones are bad for you and causing impairment to your hearing. The main problem is that ears are designed (by nature) to "funnel" the sound in, using your pinna, helix, antihelix. This part of the ear actually helps recreate high frequency noise. By having the sound go directly into the ear canal, you are having a high concentrate of sound going direct to the tympanic membrane, rather than being naturally dissipated as nature intended.
You might be interested in these two websites on basic human ear anatomy:
Those of us in the 'hi-fi' circles have long since known about this issue, and it's why you'll see us throwing away the earbud style headphones as soon as we open the packaging, and using high quality circum-aural headphones, such as:
Note that these are completely closed headphones, so you can't really hear outside noise too well, and it also limits how much noise others can hear from your headphones. Myself, I prefer open headphones, they make the ears sweat less, and they remain much more comfortable for longer periods of listening from my experience.
As to headphone brands, I wouldn't touch Koss with a barge pole (very tinny sound, poor bass, muddled midrange). I'd usually recommend either Sennheiser, or Beyer Dynamic. I currently use a Sennheiser PX100 for my iPod mini, a Sennheiser HD433 for my PC, and for my hi fi system (around 30k worth of stuff I might add, so it's rather high end), I use my good old faithful Sennheiser 540 gold references.
You are also correct to watch the volume, especially with headphones. I think that speakers, in most cases are less damaging with volume than headphones, but only because of the proximity of headphones to the human ear. That said, I wouldn't recommend playing your speakers at 105db and above for lengthy periods of time!!!
amsn runs fine here on a Libranet GNU/Linux box. Running 0.94-3. Haven't had it crash or freeze in at least 4-6 months now, the stability issues that were present a year or so ago are now all fixed as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe you're using a really bad Linux distribution that doesn't package things very well?
Dave
I think you'll find that it'll be a bit more silent than what you're portraying - it'll all be done by biological warfare. Do you wonder why 'bird flu' has broken out in some areas of China? And spread from there I might add. Could it be that the Chinese military is testing this 'bird flu' and developing it? Sacrificing a few peasants to see how devastating it is when they have so many people isn't really a big issue, especially if they have a antidote all ready, just in case it does get out of hand inside Chinese territory.
Once they've perfected it they'll attack enemies silently. You'll see huge outbreaks of bird flu, far more than the current medical systems can possibly handle (the Australian government has already admitted this). Traditional armed invasion is just too messy, too risky, and takes too long. Nukes, well they don't leave much, except the cockroaches and a myriad of other insect lifeforms.
Think of it - 60% of your population either wiped out, or seriously ill. How will that affect the economy of your country? Your economy collapses, the rest of the infrastructure will collapse as well. China is big enough to survive internally, based on it's own population. It's also the fastest growing economy in the world. Imagine how much trouble Wall Street would have if companies had to remove their factories from China and relocate elsewhere (the cost of relocation), and then try and find somewhere else where the labour costs are as cheap! The increases in expenditure would be horrific, further crippling the economy. And if the US economy fails, most of the rest of the world's economies will take a nasty downturn. We've seen this happen twice in the past 20 years already, the Dow Jones tumbling, and the rest of the world follows very quickly.
China will most probably start to 'act' in the next ten years I predict. And I think you'll see deals done with Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia to 'divide and conquer'.
I hope I'm wrong, because world peace will cease to exist, but my gut instinct tells me...
Are the moderators able to delete the above comment? It's disgraceful and disrespectful.
Dave Pastern
Re:Save it? Why not just give it away at this poin
on
Libranet On The Rocks
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· Score: 1, Interesting
How the fuck does a comment like this get a +2? It's blatantly wrong, and the person obviously hasn't done an ounce of research to validate his facts. No wonder/. moderation really is very badly fucked. No wonder many people trash/. moderation. Since my karma is negative (for simply posting actually factual comments that others just simply dislike and mod down for inappropriate reasons) I really couldn't give a fuck what you fucked up moderators (or whatever you want to call yourselves) think.
Libranet 3 was released early April 2005. It's now November 2005. That's about 7 months by my reckoning. So, how the fuck do you get 2 years out of that?
Most of the rests of the posts on this article are just crap. Ubuntu this, Ubuntu that. I couldn't give a rats ass about a Debian based distribution that isn't binary compatible with Debian. Sorry, no thanks. Ubuntu is SOOOOO overrated it isn't funny. Vastly overrated.
For those that posted about Xandros being better than Libranet - in your dreams. Since Xandros used a customised version of KDE, try upgrading it - and lose ALL of the Xandros customisations. Go on. XFM (Xandros File Manager)? Linspire was the same, a real bitch to update and keep in synch with Debian.
YAST? sure, go have a look at the Alioth packages. Make sure you're running a mixture of unstable/experimental, and be prepared to lose half of kde (and I'm running kde 3.4.2 from unstable btw). YAST has been opened for nearly 2 years now, and not that much has really happened with it. It's still a little project over at Alioth, Debian itself hasn't shown an official ounce of interest in it.
Slackware? It's a nice distro. But - Slackware really has packages, no repositories to worry about. Let me explain. You can grab a Slackware package from anywhere, and install it, doesn't matter where. Debian or Debian based distributions want you to point at a particular server side repository. That's a problem. You (generally) just can't go and grab any.deb file and install it. RPM has the same problems as well.
I've been using Libranet since 2.7. I was using Windows XP and Debian Woody at the time. I liked it. When I had some spare cash a few months down the track, I bought 2.8.1. Used that for nearly two years. I'd still be most probably using it now except for ext3 crashing and having to spend a week pulling my data off it...I was one of the many Libranet 3 beta testers, so when 2.8.1 died, I bit the bullet and installed the beta that I'd been using, which has performed flawlessly since. Like many Libranet users, I help out on the forums as best as possible (given knowledge and time). This is pretty damn well sad news, as Libranet was the first distribution that I could just install and it worked out of the box. No fart assing around. It just worked. It was Debian compatible, and obviously used dpkg. RPM just sucks major I'm afraid to say. The sooner RPM is killed off, and every distro gathers around dpkg, the better Linux will be.
Humour aside, Mice are incredibly intelligent beings. Rats are even more so interesting. Young rats (both male & female) sing when they're playing (usually wrestling, or "rattie kung fu" as I call it). Humans miss out a lot of this, because quite frankly, our eyesight, hearing, touch and smell are pathetic compared to many other species.
Eagles can see a rabbit in foot long grass from a mile up.
A lot of spiders have six or even eight eyes, allowing 360 degree view instantly!
Mice and rats and cats use their whiskers for manoeuvring, but furthermore have excellent balance.
Gimp hard to use? I'd like to disagree. I tried to use Photoshop, but found that it was unintuitive, difficult to use, provided very poor help files, and it's UI sucked. No, it blowed. I tried GIMP and boy, it was a breath of fresh air. I love working with the GIMP, it's a joy, not a frustration [like Photoshop is]. Oh, and Photoshop is very much overpiced. I'm pretty sure, that part of your argument is because YOU are used to the Photoshop way of doing things, and because the GIMP doesn't do it the Photoshop way, you're now bitching about it. Tough shit. There's nothing saying the Photoshop way is the right way. For me, it certainly wasn't. I believe that the GIMP's UI is fine. What it does need is 32 bit support, and CMYK. If it can get those two things, then it'll start to attract more Photoshop users. These should be at the top of the list for the GIMP developers imho.
Quote: "They simply out-compete everyone else by producing a superior product (superior at least, in the definition of most consumers)."
Umm no. I wish I'd never bought my iPod mini - after 4 months of nothing but trouble (and it was my 2nd one, my first one was a D.O.A unit). It turns itself off, saying low battery, even when there's sufficient battery charge. On Monday Night I charged the unit the entire night (7 or so hours), last night (Thursday) I turned it on and it's dead flat. So much for Apple's 24 day battery lifespan when idle. And yes, I had turned it off. And - I hadn't used it at all between Monday night and last night. So much for reliability. And the word is, many, many, many iPod mini owners are experiencing the same problem.
I'll let you into a secret, when I worked for Apple at their support setup in Sydney, Australia, it was well known internally that eMacs had a 1 in 10 d.o.a ratio, as did iPods (not the iPod mini, which I believe is significantly higher).
So, as to your comments on making better and higher quality products than the opposition, that's bullshit. Prettier yes, definitely not more better/higher quality or reliability. Not from my experience at working for Apple Australia in their tech support section for nearly a year.
Onto other comments - Apple is the most litigious company I've ever seen. They're unbelievable. Steve Jobs would sue his own mother to make a buck. Microsoft might be a monopoly, but at least they don't go suing anyone and everyone. If Apple was a monopoly like Microsoft, there'd be a real mess.
Quote: "Within hours of a major worm breaking out, there's usually a patch available on Windows Update, and it's prominently advertised all over the Microsoft home page."
That is pure fudshit (ie fud-like bullshit).
Quote: "Microsoft are the leader of the pack in terms of promoting downloadable, automatic updates,"
I think Debian might like to argue with that statement. You might argue that it's not automated, and I'll argue that I can add it as a cron job. Done. 5 seconds work.
Quote: "But that doesn't help if users don't understand that they need to install these patches or bad stuff will happen."
Have you actually lived in the real world? Most Windows users don't give a shit about viruses, or worms, or spyware. They have absolutely *no* idea what they're doing. By the time they realise that they have a virus, it's too late. I've seen people turn off anti virus software because "it slowed my PC down too much". Idiots use Microsoft Windows. Smarter people use BSD or Linux.
Quote: "Almost any generic criticism that is made of MS security is also applicable to major OSS platforms/applications"
Wrong. OSS patches much quicker than Microsoft ever has, or ever will. Don't believe the bullshit hype that some "security consultant companies" have said, especially considering that Microsoft bribed, oops, I mean paid them lots of money to come up with pro Microsoft choices.
Quote: "If you want to make a noise, please go and find a friend or family member who doesn't use a personal firewall and anti-virus software. "
Funny thing is, most Apple, BSD & Linux users that I know don't use anti virus software, or firewalls, and never have, and don't intend to. They don't have a sprout of viruses coming out of their asses. So, that leads me to believe that it's due to problems with the platform itself, and inherent security principles, than anything else.
Quote: "If we all did this instead of bitching about how Microsoft "don't write secure code" -- who does, exactly? -- that would help everyone a lot more."
No one writes *totally* secure code, but there are those that do write significantly better code from a security point of view (openBSD as an example).
Quote: "Members of congress get elected, and that takes lots of money. I can't give/donate nearly as much money as organized groups like the RIAA, so members of congress won't listen to me. If the RIAA wants music file sharers chased, arrested and prosecuted, and members of congress want money for the next election, guess what the FBI will be doing?"
And this is where it's all wrong. People elect and vote for governments, not business. Business should have NO say in politics whatsoever. Neither should religion for that matter. All donations to politicians should be banned and made illegal, as being a form of bribery. A politician is elected, by the people, for the people, nothing more, and nothing less. Also making politicians punishable for lying, and responsible for any decisions (or lack of decisions) that they make is a damn good idea. They are elected public servants, and should behave as so. Unfortunately, the majority of the populace is far too stupid, and far too lazy to see this.
Quote: "Why in god's name would you want a fully graphical openGL powered install sequence. All you're doing is installing the thing. #1 thing linux developers need to get over. It's not about graphics durring install, it's about fewer clicks (if you want to be ready for the desktop that is)"
You obviously haven't installed or used Mac OS X then have you! As to the fewer clicks, I believe Linspire installs in around 4 clicks. Try that with Microsoft Windows! Your comments have just proven how much you really don't know.
Quote: "You're really going to argue the point that one program that edit's text is better than another?"
Yes I am thank you. I do all my html in notepad at my workplace - using notepad is a pain in the ass! You run it [your html code] via the w3c html validator and it refers to an error on line 277. Tell me - notepad doesn't off you a line count option. Neither does Wordpad. So...you either count 277 lines (and waste time), or email it home, open it in something like kwrite, turn on line numbering and voila!
Quote: "We're arguing bloat here and I'll still maintain that notepad is less bloated than kedit."
You're arguing bloat actually. I didn't say anything about bloat, I talked about usability.
Quote: "sure GIMP is better but not everyone who sets up a PC needs a fully featured raster-based image editor"
No, they do not. My point was what was included with Microsoft Windows by default, vs pretty much any Linux distribution. MS Paint can only do so much. Want to open a graphics file larger than a mb? Forget it. I've seen it totally lock up a system, with a fucking huge memory leak! Even if you install MS Office, and use something like MS Photo editor, it's crippled - it won't open a file larger than a mb! Really great offerings from our friends Microsoft - NOT. The Gimp, on the otherhand, handles it nice and easily.
Quote: "Believe it or not, there's a huge array of free software available for us windows users too... even OSS! "
Yes, there is a reasonable amount of freeware available for the average Windows user. Finding it might be a different story though. You think your average person is going to easily find freeware? I don't think so. Again, with most modern Linux distributions you get a pretty damn nice choice.
Most Microsoft Windows users pirate software. They mightn't like to admit it, but they do. Why do they do so? Because, by default, Windows offers fuck all. And they don't want to go out paying a grand for Photoshop, money for this, money for that. They want to be able to use their computer, and use it cheaply, to do their average tasks. Not spend a fortune. Microsoft is happy to encourage the proprietary software business to keep everyone on the gravy train, nothing more, and nothing less. It's all about money, not their customers.
Quote: "Would someone be able to do it if they weren't a linux-fanboy? No."
I disagree. The average computer user isn't as dumb as you're making out. The vast majority of people that are trying Linux have friends who have introduced them to it, who are prepared to be part of a community and help. And by that, I'm not saying that Linux is difficult (which, in some instances, it can be - but so can Microsoft Windows). Put a new user in front of Windows and they'll get stuck as well. So don't go giving me any of that "it's too hard for the newbie" bullshit. Microsoft Windows isn't exactly helpful to the newbie either.
Quote: "I also realize that linux is nothing more than the kernel, and yes it's VERY VERY TINY."
Actually, the kernel isn't that tiny. It's growing exponentially between releases. A 2.6 kernel dwarfs a 2.4 kernel.
Quote: "But in order to get it to do anything meaningful you have to start piling on software and packages."
I disagree. You sure you're not using a very pared down Linux distribution, and then bitching because it doesn't offer much choice?
Quote: "the average user won't be able to get anything to work that wasn't installed with the OS"
Umm no. I can think of many instances that solidly prove you wrong, but since you wish to *try* and be a troll, I'll digress.
Quote: "Windows... 1 CD & 30minute install on a slow machine Easy partitioning that requires only a single partition."
Umm no. Definitely not. Windows XP, on an AMD 3000xp CPU, 512mb DDR 400 ram took 40 minutes to do a full format of the hard drive, and then a further near hour to do the install. Installer stuck at a horrible 640*480 resolution, non changeable by the user. Oh, and 256 bit resolution. Not even fully graphical!!!
Quote: "1 slim text editor (notepad) 1 slim word-processor (wordpad) 1 calculator (calc) 1 crappy paint program that is being slowly phased out 1 piece of software to do one job" [typo corrected]
Yes, and notepad, to put it lightly is not particularly good. Neither is wordpad. kwrite easily beats both of them, hands down. Paint isn't that bad, it's simplistic and works (mostly). Compare Paint to the GIMP (pretty much a default install on nearly every distribution in existence). Need I say anymore?
Quote: "If you need more software, there's downloads available."
Ah yes. You're referring to "pirate" software. Everyone knows that most pirates are using Microsoft Windows. Even Microsoft knows it. They pirate software without thought for copyright or ownership. I don't have to worry about that - my software isn't pirated:-)
Quote: "They can be installed quickly because you just double click them."
Ah yes. Oh yes. And have you seen how much crap is left when you uninstall an application - again, via a simple click. Tonnes of stuff as DLL files, items left in Program Files, countless stuff left in the Windows registry etc. You don't have this problem with Linux (or BSD ports for that matter). Both systems are far superior to the "Windows way" that you're evangelising. All I have to do is a simple:
apt-get install programname.
How hard is that? I can even make an alias for it if I want, so all I have to type is:
agi programname
Quote: "I don't wanna hear anything about Windows being bloated"
See, you *really* don't know what you're talking about. Windows is well...everything. Because you cannot remove the Windowing system, the windowing server, the shell, the included "core" freebie applications. You're stuck with it all.
Linux, on the overhand, is the kernel. What you are referring to is a GNU/Linux distribution. Compare the kernels and you'd be in for a surprise.
Quote: "Unless you want to use a useless operating system that boots off of a floppy or usb-keychain."
Odd. I, and many other users, use Linux for our main systems, on a day-to-day basis. We don't have any problems.
Well, it seems that blackmail and victimisation is a big thing with the BSA doesn't it? Do what we want or we'll audit you. Personally, these guys should *never* have had any legal right to audit your premises, that's just current governments paying lip service to the software industry. We need real governments, that stand up for the rights of the people, and not the greedy bastard corporations that currently rule the roost.
Get rid of the MPAA, RIAA, ARIA, limit copyrights to 25 years maximum, get rid of software patents and we'll be laughing. Oh and have *real* politicians, not ones that are so out of touch with the real world, and heavily bribed by corporations. That would *really* help.
Sadly, the average Australian (and American) is lazy, stupid and doesn't give a fuck.
Slashdot Mirror
If the US army is that good, why did they call in the Australia SAS (special armed services)? They're reknowned for being the best of the best in the world (yes, they eat US seals for breakfast, and Gherkas for dinner if you ask me). SAS specialists were in the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just because the US spends lots of money on technology, doesn't mean their army is good.
Dave
Oh dear. Since my karma is already bad, and fucked up, I couldn't give a damn, so all you fucked up /. mods can suck my dick. The parent had it right. Fuck the proprietary operating systems, long live Linux. Crap like Apple deserves to go bust. I actually hate Apple far more than Microsoft, and my love of them is well known.
Dave
Julian May's excellent Milieu Saga (and the following Golden Torc series). Drama. War. Science. Action. Intrigue and mystery, and some humour. It would make a brilliant trilogy of movies imho.
Why not a movie adaption of H P Lovecraft & August Derleth's most excellent "Lurker at the threshold". I'd very dearly love to see this made into a movie.
Dave
WTF? So where is that freedom of speech that you yankees bander on about so much? You don't have it. You have convenient freedom of speech - when it's not convenient for big business or your corrupt government the individual gets bullied and harassed and made a goose of. I'd rather live in hell for all eternity than live in the US of A. The sad thing is, your idiotic laws, your capitalistic nature is spreading like a disease throughout the rest of the civilised world. There's a reason why I can't stand most Americans, and the US government, and you're living proof of it.
Dave
Part of the problem though is cost. Have you seen how expensive those digital backs for medium and large formats are? Even pros are having a hard time justifying the costs involved. And even if you use such a large CMOS/CCD sensor, you're going to find that resolution isn't going to be all it's cracked up to be. Even cameras like the Canon EOS 1ds/1dsmark II in reality have far too much pixels for the size of the sensor. If you want to read why this is, have a gawk at this thread:
p ?t=2849
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.ph
Dave
Neither is my hero, and neither deserves to be. RMS for what he has done for the Free Software movement. Furtheremore, RMS is a real human, with feelings and consideration for other humans - his achievements have been for the betterment of his fellow man. I can't say the same for either Jobs or Gates - both of which, are highly overrated individuals imho.
Dave
Quote: "They were never as cheap as the low-end Nikon or Canon, but for a little bit more money you got a lot more features. I thought this was the case with their digital line as well."
;-) Same for wildlife photographers. Nikon has long had the best exposure system imho (and I'm a long time Canon user). People buy on performance. Canon & Nikon's offerings have offered better performance for less money.
huh? Never as cheap? Are we talking bottom of the rung cameras, mid range of high end semi-pro and pro cameras? Minolta has a few bottom of the range digital SLR cameras at very competitive prices - for example, the Minolta Maxxum 5D, which retails in Australia for $1299. That's including a 18-70mm lens. I'll quote a magazine named PhotoReview Australia that says:
"The few negative features include: Out-of-the-camera images with the default settings are somewhat soft and lacking in contrast, so additional processing is required. Shot-to-shot times are a little slow. The kit lens suffers from slight barrel distortion at its wide end and a low level of lateral chromatic aberration throughout the zoom range."
That said, it's rated as the runner up to the best digital SLRs under $1500 in the market (the Olympus E500 wins the award). Now, this camera is cheaper than Canon's eos 350D, or Nikon's D50. This disproves the point of yours that I've quoted above I feel.
Now, of course, I'm talking about digital SLRs here, when it comes to good old fashioned film SLRs, Canon and Nikon have offered cheaper offerings. You can't blame Canon for that. Canon's AF has long been the best in the business. You can dispute that if you want, but have a look at what percentage of the sport photographer pro's are using Canon, versus the rest
Quote: "I think where they failed was waiting so long to bring out a DSLR that was lens-compatible with their Maxxum series of film SLRs."
Umm yes. Definitely. That's certainly not Canon or Nikon's fault, that's bad management on Minolta's part. Period.
Quote: "Canon brought out DSLRs that were basically a chip shoved into their film bodies and used the film-series lenses."
huh? And isn't that the logical way to do it? You put the CCD or CMOS chips on the film plane. That makes economic sense. It also means your customers don't have to go out and buy new lenses just to suit the DSLRs. That's called looking after your customers. And, Canon has pioneered the CMOS chip. Sigma's Foveon chip is pretty interesting as well when you look at the technology involved. Again, don't blame Canon or Nikon for Minolta's bad design decisions.
Quote: "it was just introduced too late and at too high a price to compete with Nikon."
That's right. Because of bad management decisions, and bad design decisions. Because of that, they lose market share. The more market share you have, the more cameras you sell, the cheaper your production prices become, the cheaper you can offer the camera to your customers and still maintain a profit level. Elementary economics I'm afraid. Again, stop blaming Canon and Nikon for Minolta's bad decisions.
Quote: "Image stabilization is not an easy feature to sell, altough I think it's a really good deal given that to get the same thing in Nikon or Canon you'd need all new lenses."
And if you're starting out anew, it doesn't make a difference does it? You buy the IS lens outright from the beginning. Sure, if you have a range of lenses already, then you'll have to fork out extra for IS capability. My Canon 300mm F4 IS L series lens has it, and truth be told, I never use it (the IS feature that is). Some photographer's swear by IS, all I can say is, how did photographers manage to still get good shots in the "early days" before IS? One word: SKILL. The more skilled photographer is always going to get the shot more often than than the unskilled one. It's just a fact of life.
I'll agree with you on Sony, they peddle proprietary crap, intended to lock in th
Hang on here, IBM is getting investigated by the SEC, but the SEC can't investigate our favourite litigious company called SCO? What gives? Maybe Microsoft is bribing top notch politicians to get the SEC to investigate it's one real opponent - IBM? Nothing surprises me in the slightest!
Dave
So this is why light doesn't work properly under water?
It gets the bends!!!
Dave
PS Sorry guys, couldn't resist the exceptionally bad pun!
It's long been known that 'earbud' style headphones are bad for you and causing impairment to your hearing. The main problem is that ears are designed (by nature) to "funnel" the sound in, using your pinna, helix, antihelix. This part of the ear actually helps recreate high frequency noise. By having the sound go directly into the ear canal, you are having a high concentrate of sound going direct to the tympanic membrane, rather than being naturally dissipated as nature intended.
t argetpages/specialts/ent/ear_part.asp
m _aural/
You might be interested in these two websites on basic human ear anatomy:
http://www.doctoronline.nhs.uk/masterwebsite1Asp/
and
http://www.hearingcenteronline.com/anatomy.shtml
Those of us in the 'hi-fi' circles have long since known about this issue, and it's why you'll see us throwing away the earbud style headphones as soon as we open the packaging, and using high quality circum-aural headphones, such as:
http://www.productwiki.com/headphone_style__circu
Note that these are completely closed headphones, so you can't really hear outside noise too well, and it also limits how much noise others can hear from your headphones. Myself, I prefer open headphones, they make the ears sweat less, and they remain much more comfortable for longer periods of listening from my experience.
As to headphone brands, I wouldn't touch Koss with a barge pole (very tinny sound, poor bass, muddled midrange). I'd usually recommend either Sennheiser, or Beyer Dynamic. I currently use a Sennheiser PX100 for my iPod mini, a Sennheiser HD433 for my PC, and for my hi fi system (around 30k worth of stuff I might add, so it's rather high end), I use my good old faithful Sennheiser 540 gold references.
You are also correct to watch the volume, especially with headphones. I think that speakers, in most cases are less damaging with volume than headphones, but only because of the proximity of headphones to the human ear. That said, I wouldn't recommend playing your speakers at 105db and above for lengthy periods of time!!!
Dave
amsn runs fine here on a Libranet GNU/Linux box. Running 0.94-3. Haven't had it crash or freeze in at least 4-6 months now, the stability issues that were present a year or so ago are now all fixed as far as I'm concerned. Maybe you're using a really bad Linux distribution that doesn't package things very well? Dave
Actually,
I think you'll find that it'll be a bit more silent than what you're portraying - it'll all be done by biological warfare. Do you wonder why 'bird flu' has broken out in some areas of China? And spread from there I might add. Could it be that the Chinese military is testing this 'bird flu' and developing it? Sacrificing a few peasants to see how devastating it is when they have so many people isn't really a big issue, especially if they have a antidote all ready, just in case it does get out of hand inside Chinese territory.
Once they've perfected it they'll attack enemies silently. You'll see huge outbreaks of bird flu, far more than the current medical systems can possibly handle (the Australian government has already admitted this). Traditional armed invasion is just too messy, too risky, and takes too long. Nukes, well they don't leave much, except the cockroaches and a myriad of other insect lifeforms.
Think of it - 60% of your population either wiped out, or seriously ill. How will that affect the economy of your country? Your economy collapses, the rest of the infrastructure will collapse as well. China is big enough to survive internally, based on it's own population. It's also the fastest growing economy in the world. Imagine how much trouble Wall Street would have if companies had to remove their factories from China and relocate elsewhere (the cost of relocation), and then try and find somewhere else where the labour costs are as cheap! The increases in expenditure would be horrific, further crippling the economy. And if the US economy fails, most of the rest of the world's economies will take a nasty downturn. We've seen this happen twice in the past 20 years already, the Dow Jones tumbling, and the rest of the world follows very quickly.
China will most probably start to 'act' in the next ten years I predict. And I think you'll see deals done with Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia to 'divide and conquer'.
I hope I'm wrong, because world peace will cease to exist, but my gut instinct tells me...
Dave
Are the moderators able to delete the above comment? It's disgraceful and disrespectful.
Dave Pastern
How the fuck does a comment like this get a +2? It's blatantly wrong, and the person obviously hasn't done an ounce of research to validate his facts. No wonder /. moderation really is very badly fucked. No wonder many people trash /. moderation. Since my karma is negative (for simply posting actually factual comments that others just simply dislike and mod down for inappropriate reasons) I really couldn't give a fuck what you fucked up moderators (or whatever you want to call yourselves) think.
.deb file and install it. RPM has the same problems as well.
Libranet 3 was released early April 2005. It's now November 2005. That's about 7 months by my reckoning. So, how the fuck do you get 2 years out of that?
Most of the rests of the posts on this article are just crap. Ubuntu this, Ubuntu that. I couldn't give a rats ass about a Debian based distribution that isn't binary compatible with Debian. Sorry, no thanks. Ubuntu is SOOOOO overrated it isn't funny. Vastly overrated.
For those that posted about Xandros being better than Libranet - in your dreams. Since Xandros used a customised version of KDE, try upgrading it - and lose ALL of the Xandros customisations. Go on. XFM (Xandros File Manager)? Linspire was the same, a real bitch to update and keep in synch with Debian.
YAST? sure, go have a look at the Alioth packages. Make sure you're running a mixture of unstable/experimental, and be prepared to lose half of kde (and I'm running kde 3.4.2 from unstable btw). YAST has been opened for nearly 2 years now, and not that much has really happened with it. It's still a little project over at Alioth, Debian itself hasn't shown an official ounce of interest in it.
Slackware? It's a nice distro. But - Slackware really has packages, no repositories to worry about. Let me explain. You can grab a Slackware package from anywhere, and install it, doesn't matter where. Debian or Debian based distributions want you to point at a particular server side repository. That's a problem. You (generally) just can't go and grab any
I've been using Libranet since 2.7. I was using Windows XP and Debian Woody at the time. I liked it. When I had some spare cash a few months down the track, I bought 2.8.1. Used that for nearly two years. I'd still be most probably using it now except for ext3 crashing and having to spend a week pulling my data off it...I was one of the many Libranet 3 beta testers, so when 2.8.1 died, I bit the bullet and installed the beta that I'd been using, which has performed flawlessly since. Like many Libranet users, I help out on the forums as best as possible (given knowledge and time). This is pretty damn well sad news, as Libranet was the first distribution that I could just install and it worked out of the box. No fart assing around. It just worked. It was Debian compatible, and obviously used dpkg. RPM just sucks major I'm afraid to say. The sooner RPM is killed off, and every distro gathers around dpkg, the better Linux will be.
Anyways, I've said my piece, so I'll shove off.
Dave W Pastern
Humour aside, Mice are incredibly intelligent beings. Rats are even more so interesting. Young rats (both male & female) sing when they're playing (usually wrestling, or "rattie kung fu" as I call it). Humans miss out a lot of this, because quite frankly, our eyesight, hearing, touch and smell are pathetic compared to many other species.
Eagles can see a rabbit in foot long grass from a mile up.
A lot of spiders have six or even eight eyes, allowing 360 degree view instantly!
Mice and rats and cats use their whiskers for manoeuvring, but furthermore have excellent balance.
The wonders of nature go on and on.
Dave
Gimp hard to use? I'd like to disagree. I tried to use Photoshop, but found that it was unintuitive, difficult to use, provided very poor help files, and it's UI sucked. No, it blowed. I tried GIMP and boy, it was a breath of fresh air. I love working with the GIMP, it's a joy, not a frustration [like Photoshop is]. Oh, and Photoshop is very much overpiced. I'm pretty sure, that part of your argument is because YOU are used to the Photoshop way of doing things, and because the GIMP doesn't do it the Photoshop way, you're now bitching about it. Tough shit. There's nothing saying the Photoshop way is the right way. For me, it certainly wasn't. I believe that the GIMP's UI is fine. What it does need is 32 bit support, and CMYK. If it can get those two things, then it'll start to attract more Photoshop users. These should be at the top of the list for the GIMP developers imho.
Dave
Quote: "They simply out-compete everyone else by producing a superior product (superior at least, in the definition of most consumers)."
Umm no. I wish I'd never bought my iPod mini - after 4 months of nothing but trouble (and it was my 2nd one, my first one was a D.O.A unit). It turns itself off, saying low battery, even when there's sufficient battery charge. On Monday Night I charged the unit the entire night (7 or so hours), last night (Thursday) I turned it on and it's dead flat. So much for Apple's 24 day battery lifespan when idle. And yes, I had turned it off. And - I hadn't used it at all between Monday night and last night. So much for reliability. And the word is, many, many, many iPod mini owners are experiencing the same problem.
I'll let you into a secret, when I worked for Apple at their support setup in Sydney, Australia, it was well known internally that eMacs had a 1 in 10 d.o.a ratio, as did iPods (not the iPod mini, which I believe is significantly higher).
So, as to your comments on making better and higher quality products than the opposition, that's bullshit. Prettier yes, definitely not more better/higher quality or reliability. Not from my experience at working for Apple Australia in their tech support section for nearly a year.
Onto other comments - Apple is the most litigious company I've ever seen. They're unbelievable. Steve Jobs would sue his own mother to make a buck. Microsoft might be a monopoly, but at least they don't go suing anyone and everyone. If Apple was a monopoly like Microsoft, there'd be a real mess.
Dave
Quote: "Within hours of a major worm breaking out, there's usually a patch available on Windows Update, and it's prominently advertised all over the Microsoft home page."
That is pure fudshit (ie fud-like bullshit).
Quote: "Microsoft are the leader of the pack in terms of promoting downloadable, automatic updates,"
I think Debian might like to argue with that statement. You might argue that it's not automated, and I'll argue that I can add it as a cron job. Done. 5 seconds work.
Quote: "But that doesn't help if users don't understand that they need to install these patches or bad stuff will happen."
Have you actually lived in the real world? Most Windows users don't give a shit about viruses, or worms, or spyware. They have absolutely *no* idea what they're doing. By the time they realise that they have a virus, it's too late. I've seen people turn off anti virus software because "it slowed my PC down too much". Idiots use Microsoft Windows. Smarter people use BSD or Linux.
Quote: "Almost any generic criticism that is made of MS security is also applicable to major OSS platforms/applications"
Wrong. OSS patches much quicker than Microsoft ever has, or ever will. Don't believe the bullshit hype that some "security consultant companies" have said, especially considering that Microsoft bribed, oops, I mean paid them lots of money to come up with pro Microsoft choices.
Quote: "If you want to make a noise, please go and find a friend or family member who doesn't use a personal firewall and anti-virus software. "
Funny thing is, most Apple, BSD & Linux users that I know don't use anti virus software, or firewalls, and never have, and don't intend to. They don't have a sprout of viruses coming out of their asses. So, that leads me to believe that it's due to problems with the platform itself, and inherent security principles, than anything else.
Quote: "If we all did this instead of bitching about how Microsoft "don't write secure code" -- who does, exactly? -- that would help everyone a lot more."
No one writes *totally* secure code, but there are those that do write significantly better code from a security point of view (openBSD as an example).
Your comments are pro Microsoft fud.
Dave
Quote: "Members of congress get elected, and that takes lots of money. I can't give/donate nearly as much money as organized groups like the RIAA, so members of congress won't listen to me. If the RIAA wants music file sharers chased, arrested and prosecuted, and members of congress want money for the next election, guess what the FBI will be doing?"
And this is where it's all wrong. People elect and vote for governments, not business. Business should have NO say in politics whatsoever. Neither should religion for that matter. All donations to politicians should be banned and made illegal, as being a form of bribery. A politician is elected, by the people, for the people, nothing more, and nothing less. Also making politicians punishable for lying, and responsible for any decisions (or lack of decisions) that they make is a damn good idea. They are elected public servants, and should behave as so. Unfortunately, the majority of the populace is far too stupid, and far too lazy to see this.
Dave
Quote: "Why in god's name would you want a fully graphical openGL powered install sequence. All you're doing is installing the thing. #1 thing linux developers need to get over. It's not about graphics durring install, it's about fewer clicks (if you want to be ready for the desktop that is)"
You obviously haven't installed or used Mac OS X then have you! As to the fewer clicks, I believe Linspire installs in around 4 clicks. Try that with Microsoft Windows! Your comments have just proven how much you really don't know.
Quote: "You're really going to argue the point that one program that edit's text is better than another?"
Yes I am thank you. I do all my html in notepad at my workplace - using notepad is a pain in the ass! You run it [your html code] via the w3c html validator and it refers to an error on line 277. Tell me - notepad doesn't off you a line count option. Neither does Wordpad. So...you either count 277 lines (and waste time), or email it home, open it in something like kwrite, turn on line numbering and voila!
Quote: "We're arguing bloat here and I'll still maintain that notepad is less bloated than kedit."
You're arguing bloat actually. I didn't say anything about bloat, I talked about usability.
Quote: "sure GIMP is better but not everyone who sets up a PC needs a fully featured raster-based image editor"
No, they do not. My point was what was included with Microsoft Windows by default, vs pretty much any Linux distribution. MS Paint can only do so much. Want to open a graphics file larger than a mb? Forget it. I've seen it totally lock up a system, with a fucking huge memory leak! Even if you install MS Office, and use something like MS Photo editor, it's crippled - it won't open a file larger than a mb! Really great offerings from our friends Microsoft - NOT. The Gimp, on the otherhand, handles it nice and easily.
Quote: "Believe it or not, there's a huge array of free software available for us windows users too... even OSS! "
Yes, there is a reasonable amount of freeware available for the average Windows user. Finding it might be a different story though. You think your average person is going to easily find freeware? I don't think so. Again, with most modern Linux distributions you get a pretty damn nice choice.
Most Microsoft Windows users pirate software. They mightn't like to admit it, but they do. Why do they do so? Because, by default, Windows offers fuck all. And they don't want to go out paying a grand for Photoshop, money for this, money for that. They want to be able to use their computer, and use it cheaply, to do their average tasks. Not spend a fortune. Microsoft is happy to encourage the proprietary software business to keep everyone on the gravy train, nothing more, and nothing less. It's all about money, not their customers.
Quote: "Would someone be able to do it if they weren't a linux-fanboy? No."
I disagree. The average computer user isn't as dumb as you're making out. The vast majority of people that are trying Linux have friends who have introduced them to it, who are prepared to be part of a community and help. And by that, I'm not saying that Linux is difficult (which, in some instances, it can be - but so can Microsoft Windows). Put a new user in front of Windows and they'll get stuck as well. So don't go giving me any of that "it's too hard for the newbie" bullshit. Microsoft Windows isn't exactly helpful to the newbie either.
Quote: "I also realize that linux is nothing more than the kernel, and yes it's VERY VERY TINY."
Actually, the kernel isn't that tiny. It's growing exponentially between releases. A 2.6 kernel dwarfs a 2.4 kernel.
Quote: "But in order to get it to do anything meaningful you have to start piling on software and packages."
I disagree. You sure you're not using a very pared down Linux distribution, and then bitching because it doesn't offer much choice?
Quote: "Running a desktop where y
My apologies, you are correct, I meant 256 colours.
Dave
hahaha. All of about 2 minutes at most (since I'm a speed typist doing around 90wpm). Grow a brain you moron. Dave
Quote: "the average user won't be able to get anything to work that wasn't installed with the OS"
:-)
Umm no. I can think of many instances that solidly prove you wrong, but since you wish to *try* and be a troll, I'll digress.
Quote: "Windows... 1 CD & 30minute install on a slow machine Easy partitioning that requires only a single partition."
Umm no. Definitely not. Windows XP, on an AMD 3000xp CPU, 512mb DDR 400 ram took 40 minutes to do a full format of the hard drive, and then a further near hour to do the install. Installer stuck at a horrible 640*480 resolution, non changeable by the user. Oh, and 256 bit resolution. Not even fully graphical!!!
Quote: "1 slim text editor (notepad) 1 slim word-processor (wordpad) 1 calculator (calc) 1 crappy paint program that is being slowly phased out 1 piece of software to do one job" [typo corrected]
Yes, and notepad, to put it lightly is not particularly good. Neither is wordpad. kwrite easily beats both of them, hands down. Paint isn't that bad, it's simplistic and works (mostly). Compare Paint to the GIMP (pretty much a default install on nearly every distribution in existence). Need I say anymore?
Quote: "If you need more software, there's downloads available."
Ah yes. You're referring to "pirate" software. Everyone knows that most pirates are using Microsoft Windows. Even Microsoft knows it. They pirate software without thought for copyright or ownership. I don't have to worry about that - my software isn't pirated
Quote: "They can be installed quickly because you just double click them."
Ah yes. Oh yes. And have you seen how much crap is left when you uninstall an application - again, via a simple click. Tonnes of stuff as DLL files, items left in Program Files, countless stuff left in the Windows registry etc. You don't have this problem with Linux (or BSD ports for that matter). Both systems are far superior to the "Windows way" that you're evangelising. All I have to do is a simple:
apt-get install programname.
How hard is that? I can even make an alias for it if I want, so all I have to type is:
agi programname
Quote: "I don't wanna hear anything about Windows being bloated"
See, you *really* don't know what you're talking about. Windows is well...everything. Because you cannot remove the Windowing system, the windowing server, the shell, the included "core" freebie applications. You're stuck with it all.
Linux, on the overhand, is the kernel. What you are referring to is a GNU/Linux distribution. Compare the kernels and you'd be in for a surprise.
Quote: "Unless you want to use a useless operating system that boots off of a floppy or usb-keychain."
Odd. I, and many other users, use Linux for our main systems, on a day-to-day basis. We don't have any problems.
Maybe you do?
Dave
hahahah only in fucked up America can shit like this happen.
This fuckster can go sue himself up the ass for all I care:
stealth stealth stealth stealth stealth stealth stealth!!!
It does indeed look like US law etc has really gone to the dogs!
Dave
Well, it seems that blackmail and victimisation is a big thing with the BSA doesn't it? Do what we want or we'll audit you. Personally, these guys should *never* have had any legal right to audit your premises, that's just current governments paying lip service to the software industry. We need real governments, that stand up for the rights of the people, and not the greedy bastard corporations that currently rule the roost.
Get rid of the MPAA, RIAA, ARIA, limit copyrights to 25 years maximum, get rid of software patents and we'll be laughing. Oh and have *real* politicians, not ones that are so out of touch with the real world, and heavily bribed by corporations. That would *really* help.
Sadly, the average Australian (and American) is lazy, stupid and doesn't give a fuck.
Dave