quite frankly if your solution to poor lighting is dslr instead of finding a way to bring in more light, you're on the wrong idea trail buddy.
It depends on the situation. If you're taking candid photos at a family party, then changing the lighting isn't appropriate, unless you mean adding flash. Certainly I would at least do that if possible.
If you're taking pictures at your kid's recital, then even the flash is a no-go - you need all the performance you can get out of the camera.
Now, if I'm doing portraits, then I'm going to use the right lighting, but even then if you are doing Christmas pictures in a nicely decorated house with subdued lighting, the last thing you want to do is start shining white lights all over the place.
The DSLR is going to take very nice pictures at ISO 400-800, and the cell phone is going to be struggling at ISO 50. Sure, if it was your only option you could find a use for the cell phone, but no photographer is going to reach for it.
good lighting conditions aren't all that rare for most people. we usually don't hang around in poorly lit situations. we're talking about civilians, not pro photographers here, i hope that goes without saying.
Uh, just about any indoor setting is poor lighting. Any situation where there is a mixture of sun and shade is poor lighting. Anything in the evening or later is poor lighting (and while aesthetically sunrise/sunset is EXCELLENT lighting, in terms of technical performance they will challenge cheap cameras).
That's why all those teenager-taken phone shots at parties have white faces and eyes against dark clothes and really dark backgrounds. The camera can't handle the light, and you get a dinky little flash blasted at the subject from an inch away from the lens. A DSLR doesn't need nearly as much flash which automatically makes the photos look nicer, and even the built-in flashes have much more distance between the flash and lens (and anybody serious will be using a bounce flash if not off-camera flash).
Interesting. It looks like the 5D pictures weren't processed at all - they could stand some sharpening.
That is important, because most consumer-oriented cameras (such as in phones) apply quite a bit of sharpening automatically. Professional cameras almost always avoid any processing, so that you don't get further losses when you post-process them (professional photographers almost always post-process).
Also, half of the comparisons used JPEGs taken by the 5D. Again, serious photographers rarely capture JPEGs, because they lose dynamic range and end up being double-processed (and they're lossy besides).
I did note that the RAW photos taken by the 5D handled one of the high-contrast shots much better (lots of shade in the foreground with the sky and sunlit buildings in the background).
Focus speed is also an issue with cell phone cameras - a DSLR will focus MUCH faster and more accurately, especially in low light. They can also capture pictures in rapid succession. Most DSLRs are designed so that if you push the shutter release, they take a picture, no matter WHAT else is going on in terms of modes/etc (well, unless you put it on delay timer or something). A DSLR is always ready to take a picture, and will do so very quickly.
The main advantage of the cell phone is that you always have it on you. However, if you're actually planning on taking photos, I'd pick the DSLR any day. There is just no comparison in the photos they take except under the most ideal conditions.
seriously speaking, under good lighting conditions phone cams have been on par with SLRs for all practical purposes for quite a while now.
Under good lighting conditions $20 cameras have been on-par with $800 cameras for decades.
The problem is that good lighting conditions are fairly rare.
I'd love to have a decent phone camera, but it is really hard to accomplish in optics that are a few mm across what you can do with optics that are several cm across. My current phone camera is very prone to lens flares, has fairly poor dynamic range, and isn't terribly light-sensitive. It captures plenty of blurry pixels though.
I have a DNA sequence from 23andme. I'd like to see the first service do any kind of analysis where I can upload my genome sequence and see the results of the analysis.
Depends on your budget, but that's not really true for most people anymore. You can get a very high performance, name brand 500GB SSD for $259 now.
Sure, but everything I said still holds. 500GB is enough that it would probably cover gaming as long as you don't have TOO many games installed, but isn't really much at all if you're storing video.
Why do SSD makers only make 2.5" SSDs? It seems like a lot of the capacity limitation is self-enforced by constraining themselves to laptop-sized drives.
Why can't they sell "yesterday's" flash density at larger storage capacities in the 3.5" disk form factor? For a a lot of the use cases, the 3.5" form factor isn't an issue. More, cheaper flash would enable greater capacities at lower prices.
The same thing is true for hybrid drives -- the 2.5" ones I've used have barely enough flash to make acceleration happen, a 3.5" case with a 2.5" platter and 120GB flash would be able to keep a lot more blocks in flash and reserve meaningful amounts for write caching to flash.
I doubt anybody really wants these big SSDs anyway. I mean, who buys an SSD when they need to store 1TB of data? I could see it for certain niches, such as for a cache (even an SSD is cheaper than RAM, and is of course persistent as well). Otherwise anybody storing a lot of data uses an SSD for the OS, and an HD for storage, and you don't need a big SSD for the OS. Still, I wouldn't mind a 3.5" drive just for the sake of it using the same mount as my other drives.
Same boat - though I do have an SSD I use for the OS, and I rsync it daily to the RAID (not so much because I think SSD is any less reliable than a hard drive, but because I only have one SSD and I don't want to be stuck doing a full reinstall/reconfig/restore due to the loss of any single drive).
SSDs are really only a complete HD replacement if you don't do anything that involves video/multimedia, which generally includes gaming (unless you don't mind uninstalling/reinstalling games all the time). They still have their use even if you do those things, especially if you're wiling to shuffle data around as-needed.
People have been proclaiming the death of the HD for ages, but until the price difference becomes more like the difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM HD and not the difference between a golf cart and a BMW, that simply isn't going to happen.
I just bought a Samsung 840 Evo 250 GB drive for like $150. I believe that the 500 GB was under $300.
That is eminently affordable.
$300 for 500GB of SSD vs $100 for a few TB of hard drive. You're talking about a factor of 10 difference.
For a PC that doesn't need to store multimedia SSDs are both practical and to be recommended. For PCs that actually need to store any volume of data, they won't be practical for a LONG time as far as I can see. Sure, the price will drop, but the price of hard drives also drops.
Your suggestion amounts to basing the whole tenure of a convict on the "knowledge" that he will not commit similar crimes henceforth, when there is no way to acquire said knowledge.
That's quite a claim. Do you have any proof to back it up? You're suggesting that there is a whole realm of technological advancement which will never progress.
Sure, nobody has figured it out yet, but it is quite a leap to go from that to a declaration that nobody will ever figure it out. Recognizing the superiority of a system based on rehabilitation does not mean that we have to pretend that we've actually figured out how to do it.
I think that's an interesting fantasy world. All you need to do is change human behavior.
Sure, but just about everything in our lives today was nothing but fantasy at some point in the past, often in the not-so-distant past. Not all that long ago all the experts would have told you that Apple had already proven that nobody wants to buy a consumer tablet computer.
The first step to changing things is to recognize that what we're doing today isn't the best way that things could be done. That doesn't mean tearing down prisons over night, but it does mean that we can start taking steps to fix things.
Somehow Europe isn't full of mass-murderers, and they manage to get by spending far less than the US on their prison system.
There isn't anything magical about the human brain. It is finite and governed by the laws of physics, and therefore it can be understood. It might take time to get there, but today we aren't really even trying.
>Netflix has started paying Comcast and Verizon directly and the FCC is saying that's perfectly fine.
Yes, it's completely fine that Netflix now pays Comcast for direct access to their network, rather than continuing to pay Cogent for transit when Cogent couldn't handle the traffic.
How could they handle it? The destination was on Comcast's network, and Comcast was not providing an adequate connection to accept all that traffic, despite advertising to their own customers that they could download data at a higher rate than was achievable. If you want to deliver data to a Comcast customer, there is no way to do it without Comcast's help.
I'd say that the solution is for people to stop buying broadband from Comcast, but when they're the only provider in your area, or one of two, then you don't get much choice. It is like telling stores that if they think that Visa charges too much for transactions that they shouldn't accept Visa.
The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so. It's like a multiple-item auction seller who, in order to increase the auction price, refuses to make more items available in the auction.
The problem is that they actually advertise a certain bandwidth to consumers. If a turnpike charged you $2 to travel some length and issued a guarantee that you'd be able to maintain an average speed of 50mph, and then you found it was congested, they couldn't just point to the speed limit signs and say that it wasn't their problem.
And its already been appealed, and the FAA will win, the presiding judge fucked up in multiple ways. There isn't any question about this.
How did they mess up? What regulation has the FAA passed which does govern drones? Please note the word "regulation" has a specific legal definition, and it doesn't include things like letters, press releases, or "AC's." Congress has established processes that agencies have to follow when creating regulations, and the FAA has not followed these with regard to drones.
The FAA has rules for hobby aircraft, which this man violated multiple times, and those rules have barely changed since the 60s!
Actually, the FAA does not have rules for hobby aircraft. They have an advisory circular that recommends certain behaviors when operating remote control aircraft, but it does not have the force of law, and even the circular itself uses words like "recommend."
Wow, seriously? If they were talking to ATC, that sounds like a drone was flying into class D (or C or B) airspace without clearance... that's a big no-no regardless of what type of flying object it is.
Approach at JFK would be class B - class D wouldn't technically be considered approach.
As far as it being a "no-no" I don't think the FARs actually govern unmanned operations, but I agree that it is foolish to operate a drone in such airspace without taking care to ensure that it will not be in conflict with other traffic.
It is illegal for anyone without special permission to fly a drone over(sic) a tornado without a lot of special clearance. The "top" of a tornado will be well above the altitude limits on RC aircraft. It would also be in the realm of dangerous.
If this is illegal, please cite the relevant law or regulation.
You don't get to pretend you're qualified to have an argument about safety issues when you don't even know the rules, which are simple to find, with a quick Google search... or the many times its been posted here (with citations) on slashdot.
What FARs pertain to drone operations, specifically? The only court to rule on this issue declared that the FAA did not actually set any rules governing commercial drone operations.
The FAA has done a lot of talking and publishing on this subject, but they've yet to do any actual rulemaking.
I think the FAA has jurisdiction over anything that flies.
They just say, "Keep within these limits and we won't care what you do." So the question is whether this guy's recklessnes exceeded those limits.
The thing is, Federal agencies aren't allowed to "just say" things and then enforce them as if they are laws.
For something to be legally binding you need one of two things: 1. Congress must pass a law that outright makes some activity illegal. 2. Congress must pass a law giving authority to a regulatory agency (like the FAA) to create regulations within some domain, and then the agency has to create a regulation.
In the case of the FAA, Congress has given it the power to regulate air traffic, but the FAA has not created any regulations that pertain to drones. They've issued all kinds of threats, press releases, and advisory statements. However, the only thing that is enforceable in court are regulations, and they don't have any of those. The only court case to go to judgment so far went against the FAA for this reason (FAA vs Raphael Pirker).
So we're surprised when a government agency uses common sense when enforcing a law now? This sounds exactly like what the FAA should be regulating...
What law are they enforcing, specifically? I'm not aware of any laws or regulations that regulate drones, and the only Federal Court to actually rule on this issue wasn't aware of any either.
Technically, the airspace IS restricted - by FAA rules. Typically you're not allowed to fly anything below 1000' AGL in a populated area. And a city is definitely a populated area.
Please cite the rule, including the part of the rule that indicates that it pertains to drones. Note that AC's are not regulations, and are not legally binding unless incorporated by reference into a regulation.
We've had this exact conversation already two months ago. The FAA regulates ALL US airspace, and ALL flying machines. It really is that simple.
The FAA has jurisdiction to regulate these things, but to date I'm not aware of them passing any regulations that impact drones. Thus, officially the FAA has no problems with people flying drones anywhere.
If you disagree, please cite the relevant law or regulation. I don't care about press releases, advisory circulars, or anything that isn't in the US Code or the Code of Federal Regulations, which is the sum total of the Federal rules people need to follow in the US.
You seem to think it's okay for people to rape and kill and never pay a price for that behavior. I say there must be consequences for the perpetrators. If you think that's sick then so be it. You are entitled to your opinion.
And hence there will not be reform unless there is a big change in society. Your opinion is clearly shared by a large majority of Americans.
I don't see why people who commit bad acts need to pay a price for their behavior. People who are prone to rape and kill need to be changed so that they are no longer prone to doing these things. That should happen whether or not they've actually raped or killed anybody, and they shouldn't be let out on the street until we're fairly confident that they have in fact been fixed.
The current system is a catch and release program where people do bad things, then get locked up so that we can feel good about getting revenge, and then at some point they're usually let back out so that they can do more bad things. People who commit really serious crimes usually aren't let back out, so we just pay to feed them for the rest of their lives.
In the future I'd rather see, people wouldn't murder each other in the first place, and when they do for whatever reason, then they'd be turned into model citizens who won't murder anybody else again, and they could start paying back society by contributing positively. If people have your attitude towards the matter, that could be fixed as well.
Slashdot Mirror
quite frankly if your solution to poor lighting is dslr instead of finding a way to bring in more light, you're on the wrong idea trail buddy.
It depends on the situation. If you're taking candid photos at a family party, then changing the lighting isn't appropriate, unless you mean adding flash. Certainly I would at least do that if possible.
If you're taking pictures at your kid's recital, then even the flash is a no-go - you need all the performance you can get out of the camera.
Now, if I'm doing portraits, then I'm going to use the right lighting, but even then if you are doing Christmas pictures in a nicely decorated house with subdued lighting, the last thing you want to do is start shining white lights all over the place.
The DSLR is going to take very nice pictures at ISO 400-800, and the cell phone is going to be struggling at ISO 50. Sure, if it was your only option you could find a use for the cell phone, but no photographer is going to reach for it.
good lighting conditions aren't all that rare for most people. we usually don't hang around in poorly lit situations. we're talking about civilians, not pro photographers here, i hope that goes without saying.
Uh, just about any indoor setting is poor lighting. Any situation where there is a mixture of sun and shade is poor lighting. Anything in the evening or later is poor lighting (and while aesthetically sunrise/sunset is EXCELLENT lighting, in terms of technical performance they will challenge cheap cameras).
That's why all those teenager-taken phone shots at parties have white faces and eyes against dark clothes and really dark backgrounds. The camera can't handle the light, and you get a dinky little flash blasted at the subject from an inch away from the lens. A DSLR doesn't need nearly as much flash which automatically makes the photos look nicer, and even the built-in flashes have much more distance between the flash and lens (and anybody serious will be using a bounce flash if not off-camera flash).
Interesting. It looks like the 5D pictures weren't processed at all - they could stand some sharpening.
That is important, because most consumer-oriented cameras (such as in phones) apply quite a bit of sharpening automatically. Professional cameras almost always avoid any processing, so that you don't get further losses when you post-process them (professional photographers almost always post-process).
Also, half of the comparisons used JPEGs taken by the 5D. Again, serious photographers rarely capture JPEGs, because they lose dynamic range and end up being double-processed (and they're lossy besides).
I did note that the RAW photos taken by the 5D handled one of the high-contrast shots much better (lots of shade in the foreground with the sky and sunlit buildings in the background).
Focus speed is also an issue with cell phone cameras - a DSLR will focus MUCH faster and more accurately, especially in low light. They can also capture pictures in rapid succession. Most DSLRs are designed so that if you push the shutter release, they take a picture, no matter WHAT else is going on in terms of modes/etc (well, unless you put it on delay timer or something). A DSLR is always ready to take a picture, and will do so very quickly.
The main advantage of the cell phone is that you always have it on you. However, if you're actually planning on taking photos, I'd pick the DSLR any day. There is just no comparison in the photos they take except under the most ideal conditions.
seriously speaking, under good lighting conditions phone cams have been on par with SLRs for all practical purposes for quite a while now.
Under good lighting conditions $20 cameras have been on-par with $800 cameras for decades.
The problem is that good lighting conditions are fairly rare.
I'd love to have a decent phone camera, but it is really hard to accomplish in optics that are a few mm across what you can do with optics that are several cm across. My current phone camera is very prone to lens flares, has fairly poor dynamic range, and isn't terribly light-sensitive. It captures plenty of blurry pixels though.
I have a DNA sequence from 23andme. I'd like to see the first service do any kind of analysis where I can upload my genome sequence and see the results of the analysis.
The service already exists, though they did a good job of not posting the link to http://www.prosapiagenetics.co...
However, it isn't until you get pretty far along in uploading your data that they try to hit you up for a fee (something like $20-50).
Depends on your budget, but that's not really true for most people anymore. You can get a very high performance, name brand 500GB SSD for $259 now.
Sure, but everything I said still holds. 500GB is enough that it would probably cover gaming as long as you don't have TOO many games installed, but isn't really much at all if you're storing video.
For the average person, even 500GB is overkill.
You know they make 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapters, right? Most 2.5" SSD even ship with them.
Sure, I was just saying that it would be nice to not need one. I'm not going to pay an extra $20 for the convenience though.
Why do SSD makers only make 2.5" SSDs? It seems like a lot of the capacity limitation is self-enforced by constraining themselves to laptop-sized drives.
Why can't they sell "yesterday's" flash density at larger storage capacities in the 3.5" disk form factor? For a a lot of the use cases, the 3.5" form factor isn't an issue. More, cheaper flash would enable greater capacities at lower prices.
The same thing is true for hybrid drives -- the 2.5" ones I've used have barely enough flash to make acceleration happen, a 3.5" case with a 2.5" platter and 120GB flash would be able to keep a lot more blocks in flash and reserve meaningful amounts for write caching to flash.
I doubt anybody really wants these big SSDs anyway. I mean, who buys an SSD when they need to store 1TB of data? I could see it for certain niches, such as for a cache (even an SSD is cheaper than RAM, and is of course persistent as well). Otherwise anybody storing a lot of data uses an SSD for the OS, and an HD for storage, and you don't need a big SSD for the OS. Still, I wouldn't mind a 3.5" drive just for the sake of it using the same mount as my other drives.
Same boat - though I do have an SSD I use for the OS, and I rsync it daily to the RAID (not so much because I think SSD is any less reliable than a hard drive, but because I only have one SSD and I don't want to be stuck doing a full reinstall/reconfig/restore due to the loss of any single drive).
SSDs are really only a complete HD replacement if you don't do anything that involves video/multimedia, which generally includes gaming (unless you don't mind uninstalling/reinstalling games all the time). They still have their use even if you do those things, especially if you're wiling to shuffle data around as-needed.
People have been proclaiming the death of the HD for ages, but until the price difference becomes more like the difference between 5400RPM and 7200RPM HD and not the difference between a golf cart and a BMW, that simply isn't going to happen.
I just bought a Samsung 840 Evo 250 GB drive for like $150. I believe that the 500 GB was under $300.
That is eminently affordable.
$300 for 500GB of SSD vs $100 for a few TB of hard drive. You're talking about a factor of 10 difference.
For a PC that doesn't need to store multimedia SSDs are both practical and to be recommended. For PCs that actually need to store any volume of data, they won't be practical for a LONG time as far as I can see. Sure, the price will drop, but the price of hard drives also drops.
Your suggestion amounts to basing the whole tenure of a convict on the "knowledge" that he will not commit similar crimes henceforth, when there is no way to acquire said knowledge.
That's quite a claim. Do you have any proof to back it up? You're suggesting that there is a whole realm of technological advancement which will never progress.
Sure, nobody has figured it out yet, but it is quite a leap to go from that to a declaration that nobody will ever figure it out. Recognizing the superiority of a system based on rehabilitation does not mean that we have to pretend that we've actually figured out how to do it.
I think that's an interesting fantasy world. All you need to do is change human behavior.
Sure, but just about everything in our lives today was nothing but fantasy at some point in the past, often in the not-so-distant past. Not all that long ago all the experts would have told you that Apple had already proven that nobody wants to buy a consumer tablet computer.
The first step to changing things is to recognize that what we're doing today isn't the best way that things could be done. That doesn't mean tearing down prisons over night, but it does mean that we can start taking steps to fix things.
Somehow Europe isn't full of mass-murderers, and they manage to get by spending far less than the US on their prison system.
There isn't anything magical about the human brain. It is finite and governed by the laws of physics, and therefore it can be understood. It might take time to get there, but today we aren't really even trying.
>Netflix has started paying Comcast and Verizon directly and the FCC is saying that's perfectly fine.
Yes, it's completely fine that Netflix now pays Comcast for direct access to their network, rather than continuing to pay Cogent for transit when Cogent couldn't handle the traffic.
How could they handle it? The destination was on Comcast's network, and Comcast was not providing an adequate connection to accept all that traffic, despite advertising to their own customers that they could download data at a higher rate than was achievable. If you want to deliver data to a Comcast customer, there is no way to do it without Comcast's help.
I'd say that the solution is for people to stop buying broadband from Comcast, but when they're the only provider in your area, or one of two, then you don't get much choice. It is like telling stores that if they think that Visa charges too much for transactions that they shouldn't accept Visa.
The ISPs aren't creating "slow lanes." They're simply refusing to widen the freeway until they're paid to do so. It's like a multiple-item auction seller who, in order to increase the auction price, refuses to make more items available in the auction.
The problem is that they actually advertise a certain bandwidth to consumers. If a turnpike charged you $2 to travel some length and issued a guarantee that you'd be able to maintain an average speed of 50mph, and then you found it was congested, they couldn't just point to the speed limit signs and say that it wasn't their problem.
Mod parent up - the only court ruling on this matter said as much.
If the FAA wants to regulate drones, there is a legal process they need to follow.
And its already been appealed, and the FAA will win, the presiding judge fucked up in multiple ways. There isn't any question about this.
How did they mess up? What regulation has the FAA passed which does govern drones? Please note the word "regulation" has a specific legal definition, and it doesn't include things like letters, press releases, or "AC's." Congress has established processes that agencies have to follow when creating regulations, and the FAA has not followed these with regard to drones.
The FAA has rules for hobby aircraft, which this man violated multiple times, and those rules have barely changed since the 60s!
Actually, the FAA does not have rules for hobby aircraft. They have an advisory circular that recommends certain behaviors when operating remote control aircraft, but it does not have the force of law, and even the circular itself uses words like "recommend."
Wow, seriously? If they were talking to ATC, that sounds like a drone was flying into class D (or C or B) airspace without clearance... that's a big no-no regardless of what type of flying object it is.
Approach at JFK would be class B - class D wouldn't technically be considered approach.
As far as it being a "no-no" I don't think the FARs actually govern unmanned operations, but I agree that it is foolish to operate a drone in such airspace without taking care to ensure that it will not be in conflict with other traffic.
It is illegal for anyone without special permission to fly a drone over(sic) a tornado without a lot of special clearance. The "top" of a tornado will be well above the altitude limits on RC aircraft. It would also be in the realm of dangerous.
If this is illegal, please cite the relevant law or regulation.
You don't get to pretend you're qualified to have an argument about safety issues when you don't even know the rules, which are simple to find, with a quick Google search ... or the many times its been posted here (with citations) on slashdot.
What FARs pertain to drone operations, specifically? The only court to rule on this issue declared that the FAA did not actually set any rules governing commercial drone operations.
The FAA has done a lot of talking and publishing on this subject, but they've yet to do any actual rulemaking.
I think the FAA has jurisdiction over anything that flies.
They just say, "Keep within these limits and we won't care what you do." So the question is whether this guy's recklessnes exceeded those limits.
The thing is, Federal agencies aren't allowed to "just say" things and then enforce them as if they are laws.
For something to be legally binding you need one of two things:
1. Congress must pass a law that outright makes some activity illegal.
2. Congress must pass a law giving authority to a regulatory agency (like the FAA) to create regulations within some domain, and then the agency has to create a regulation.
In the case of the FAA, Congress has given it the power to regulate air traffic, but the FAA has not created any regulations that pertain to drones. They've issued all kinds of threats, press releases, and advisory statements. However, the only thing that is enforceable in court are regulations, and they don't have any of those. The only court case to go to judgment so far went against the FAA for this reason (FAA vs Raphael Pirker).
So we're surprised when a government agency uses common sense when enforcing a law now? This sounds exactly like what the FAA should be regulating...
What law are they enforcing, specifically? I'm not aware of any laws or regulations that regulate drones, and the only Federal Court to actually rule on this issue wasn't aware of any either.
Technically, the airspace IS restricted - by FAA rules. Typically you're not allowed to fly anything below 1000' AGL in a populated area. And a city is definitely a populated area.
Please cite the rule, including the part of the rule that indicates that it pertains to drones. Note that AC's are not regulations, and are not legally binding unless incorporated by reference into a regulation.
We've had this exact conversation already two months ago.
The FAA regulates ALL US airspace, and ALL flying machines.
It really is that simple.
The FAA has jurisdiction to regulate these things, but to date I'm not aware of them passing any regulations that impact drones. Thus, officially the FAA has no problems with people flying drones anywhere.
If you disagree, please cite the relevant law or regulation. I don't care about press releases, advisory circulars, or anything that isn't in the US Code or the Code of Federal Regulations, which is the sum total of the Federal rules people need to follow in the US.
You seem to think it's okay for people to rape and kill and never pay a price for that behavior. I say there must be consequences for the perpetrators. If you think that's sick then so be it. You are entitled to your opinion.
And hence there will not be reform unless there is a big change in society. Your opinion is clearly shared by a large majority of Americans.
I don't see why people who commit bad acts need to pay a price for their behavior. People who are prone to rape and kill need to be changed so that they are no longer prone to doing these things. That should happen whether or not they've actually raped or killed anybody, and they shouldn't be let out on the street until we're fairly confident that they have in fact been fixed.
The current system is a catch and release program where people do bad things, then get locked up so that we can feel good about getting revenge, and then at some point they're usually let back out so that they can do more bad things. People who commit really serious crimes usually aren't let back out, so we just pay to feed them for the rest of their lives.
In the future I'd rather see, people wouldn't murder each other in the first place, and when they do for whatever reason, then they'd be turned into model citizens who won't murder anybody else again, and they could start paying back society by contributing positively. If people have your attitude towards the matter, that could be fixed as well.