We were on the eastbound Amtrak Empire Builder (runs from Seattle to Chicago in two days), and found out the evening of the derailment when we reached Minot, ND. All eastbound passengers that were to get off between Minot and Grand Forks were removed from the train, and bused to their destinations. They were the lucky ones.
Since we were ticketed through to Minneapolis, we were told to stay on the train, while it was re-routed SE directly towards Fargo. The idea was that BNSF was routing all eastbound traffic east of Minot directly through Fargo, and all westbound traffic from Fargo via Grand Forks and the northern tier (which is the normal Amtrak Empire Builder route) to lessen two-way congestion on those segments of the rail lines.
This worked OK until we found ourselves about 30 miles northwest of Fargo (not on the same rails as the derailment, which was due west of Fargo) behind two freight trains that ran out of time for their crews, due to their detour from their regular route along the northern tier. There is a hard and fast and apparently completely unbreakable rule that requires crews to park their train when they reach 12 hours, even if the train is on the main line, and will block all trains behind it. There they will sit, until a relief crew can reach them by car. Sometimes the only available relief crew must come from their original relief station, which may be hundreds of miles away. In the meantime, everyone else on the line behind them can simply just pound sand, including a passenger train filled with 300 passengers. If the freights could have run just a half-hour longer, they would have reached the Fargo yards, and we could have proceeded. It occurs to me that there should be some means of allowing 'bending the rules' in extraordinary circumstances, but I realize that permission to do so would have to come 'from the top', say the Secretary of Transportation, otherwise there could be all sorts of abuses.
So we sat all night, waiting for the two freights to get their relief crews. The outside temperature was well below zero, and there had been recent snow, not conducive for anyone attempting to travel the roads in the area. I bet you can guess the next issue -- yep, our crew was about to 'expire'. So we backed up about 10 miles at about 10 miles an hour to a convenient US highway crossing, and waited for our relief crew to come from, you guessed it, St. Cloud, MN, which was almost all the way to Minneapolis on the far side of Fargo.
So, after a long wait, we were finally under way, but we were told that for some reason (supposedly something to do with the track conditions) we were not allowed to proceed any faster than 10 miles an hour all the way to Fargo, a distance of some 30 miles. Another 3 hours go by, and we arrive in Fargo now about 12 hours late. The train proceeds to serve lunch, since it had provisions for all the way to Chicago, which it normally arrives by mid- to late-afternoon. In spite of Fargo being a 'service' stop, they DO NOT TAKE ON ANY PROVISIONS. In fact, the only time the Empire Builder takes on provisions is in Seattle and Chicago, carrying everything they need for the two day trip. The only other thing they do on 'service stops' is to drain the black tanks on the cars, and take on water, and fuel the engines. So you can guess the next thing that happens on a train that is running more than 12 hours late -- they start to run out of food. More about that later.
So, after leaving Fargo, we get all the way to Moorhead, MN, which is only a couple miles east of Fargo, when we stop again, and the announcement this time is that our whistle is broken. That means that we can only go at 10 miles an hour (maybe this is the reason for the slow trip into Fargo, but that was never explained as being related to a broken whistle). So, the plan was to wait for a freight engine to arrive, hook to the front of our train, and then use the freight engine's whistle. After waiting another hour or so, some bright guy with a blow torch managed to thaw
I have a prime example of that, just before the exit ramp on my commute home. The guy that was painting the lines decided to pull to the emergency strip, but forgot to shut off the paint machine. There is a nice bright white line going directly off the pavement....
Consider that Sony supplies virtually all the sensors used in digital cameras in the world market, including Konica-Minolta (Canon is a notable exception).
KM, as a camera manufacturer, must buy a critical (and highest-priced) component from Sony, who not only sells the same components to all their competitors, but also competes with KM in their own market (digicams).
Makes it kind of hard to make a buck, see?
Sony, who is working hard to knock Kodak out of the number one spot for digital camera sales, needed an entry into the DSLR market, and KM, having lost USD$407 million in the last year, was ripe for the picking.
It's telling that of all the business that Sony was interested in acquiring from KM, the only thing they took was the DSLR business. That nicely fills in the current hole in Sony's lineup.
I interviewed with MS in the early 80's, hooked up by a recruiter. They were essentially interested in having me write the drivers for the Microsoft Mouse, which had not been introduced, yet.
I talked to a couple of lower-level folks, got a short tour of the then-new 'campus', where all the offices had windows, and each area had free pop, etc (so no one had to ever leave to get food).
Then the 'big cheese' interview. He waved expansively at the building across the way, and said "400 of the world's best programmers work there". I said, "That's nice." He peered at me, and asked, "Do you want to work for Microsoft?" I said, "It would have been a waste of everyone's time for me to fly all the way out here from Michigan, if I wasn't interested".
After returning home, I received a job offer that was considerably less than I was currently making, but with a 'sweetener' of 1500 shares of pre-IPO MS stock at $1 a share. I reasoned that it wasn't worth uprooting my family and relocating, for a cut in pay, and I sure couldn't live off of worthless stock options, so I turned them down.
Every time I want to kick myself, I figure out how much those options would be worth these days...
I find that essentially *none* of the current crop of digicams can replace the simple 35mm film point-and-shoot cameras, mainly because it takes anywhere from 1 to 3 seconds to "power up" the camera, even from standby, and typically anywhere from a 1/2 to 1 second to take a picture *after* you push the shutter button.
This makes digicams unsuitable (and surprisingly so), for a lot of folks that are unaware of these limitations.
So, at the moment, DSLRs are the only digital cameras available that can operate at the speeds of the film-based cameras that everyone has been using in the past.
Don't underestimate the importance of this point. Soccer moms and football dads that want to snap a picture of their offspring in action will find digicams to be a total waste of money. Even trying to keep up with a toddler will be more than a digicam can handle. They simply focus too slow, and by the time the shutter goes off, the kid has already stuck his nose in your lens.
Except for Thorin Oakenshield. Despite his single-mindedness on their quest to rid their mountain of Smaug and regain their gold, he was the one that managed to hold the group together when Gandalf was absent, and his final scene is one of the most touching aspects of Tolkien's writing.
The HF bands sure were quiet during the recent power outage, though 8-).
Haven't been able to hear signals that weak (and that clearly) in years, over the awful RF racket that seems to permeate the air in and around cities.
I was almost sad to see the power come back on, and listen to all the computer- and powerline-generated crap in my neighborhood spring back to life.
Ham operators are having to deal almost daily with the cacaphony of all the consumer electronics that somehow passed FCC certification, but once installed in the neighbor's house, magically lose all shielding, and can be heard from hundreds of feet away.
And please, don't get me started about the mess of signals that our modern vehicles put out. Some time ago, the auto manufacturers cut a deal with the FCC for blanket exception to part 15, which deals with unintentional RF radiators. At one time, this protected the car folks from having to do much to stop ignition noise, except to placate those customers that couldn't hear their own AM car radio. Now that everyone listens to FM on much higher frequencies, the emphasis is on stopping radiation only in the AM band (.5 - 2 MHz) and VHF Hi-Lo frequencies (30 Mhz and up to about 200 or 300 Mhz). Everyone else (including the mobile ham HF operators) can just pound sand. 8-(
The last thing we need is for the power companies to purposefully put wideband hash on unshielded overhead transmission lines that stretch for miles across the landscape.
My first Heinlein book as a juvenile was "Red Planet". I still remember that book with fondness, and detest the various film/cartoon adaptations that have appeared since. There are only three authors whose books I have taken the time to read more than once: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and J.R.R. Tolkein. As a juvenile, I had repeatedly read both Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" and Heinlein's "Red Planet", and I recently re-read "Martian Chronicles" to discover the same delight I discovered on first reading. I was first introduced to the Hobbit, and the LOTR trilogy in college, and have since read it (aloud) twice to first my son and then my daughter, and have almost finished reading the Hobbit to my grandson (currently eight years old). We will be starting on the LOTR trilogy, soon.
In all these cases, I'm attracted to the lyricism of these works. Tolkein is well known in that regard, even among the "great unwashed", especially now that the film adaptations have become so successful. As for Bradbury, things like the encounter with the old Martians on the sea floor at night, the description of the house attempting to save itself , and the "million year picnic" (all from the Martian Chronicles) just sing with imagery, a delight for the senses -- something to be savored and turned over in the mind, indeed something to be shared with others. I have read those selections, and others, to various members of my family at one time or another, because of the strong mental imagery and wonder involved. There is so much poetry in these books.
As far as Heinlein goes, my all-time favorite story of his is "The Farmer's Daughter" in Time Enough for Love. There is an incredible sadness (expressed eloquently by Heinlein) in spending a lifetime with someone you love and cherish, only to see her waste away of old age and realize that you will survive her by thousands of years. No wonder Lazurus Long was so despondent after living 4000 years, that he was willing to die, rather than continue outliving all his relatives and loves of his life.
Absolutely incredible story telling in those books. Of course, there are warts, and not everyone turns out a masterpiece every time they set pen to paper. But, it was well worth my time to wade through all the mediocre stuff I've read from various authors in the past to discover some of the really truly great gems out there.
A jet full of Polish citizens was flying over the US southwest, when the pilot said, "On your starboard side, you'll see the Grand Canyon."
Everyone moved to look out the windows, and the jet crashed.
The official accident investigation report read, "Too many Poles in the right-half plane".
As a recipient of one of the local Wind River's sales office's highly anti-Linux sales pitches, my boss, who is generally neutral about such things, was particularly put off by the condescending attitude on the part of the sales folks and the white paper they were circulating. The effect was that they were taking us as a bunch of uneducated fools, because we might be considering using Linux in an upcoming embedded project.
In fact, the project was one that had been 'orphaned' by Wind River, because they had bought out ISI, and 'deep-sixed' PSOS (thanks, guys). Faced with having to re-write all the OS interfaces in the code to upgrade to faster processors, we figured it would be just about as much trouble to move to a Linux-based system, and that would 'future-proof' us against further corporate shenanigans.
I had used VxWorks in the past on other projects, and had achieved a nice working relationship with the local Wind River sales and engineering support folks. Wind River's behavior over the last few years, though, has pretty much destroyed that.
Wind River may be trying to jump on the band wagon now, but it may already be too late. Folks like me have long memories.
*My* point is that there is a market for legacy 'bridge' devices. Your original post inferred that no one should be wasting their time on such things, because all new devices would use new technologies. I only wished to point out that no matter what new devices may be using, that it is most certainly not a waste of time or energy to find ways to hook up old devices to wireless technologies, especially because there is a considerable installed base, and no one is anxious to replace working devices just for the sake of embracing a new connection technology.
To get folks to throw out all their old devices, one must provide a compelling reason for doing so. So far, I've not seen one, in view of the current state of wireless devices. I'm not even so sure that I see a compelling reason to re-buy all wired devices in the near future, either.
But, then again, my crystal ball is known to be cloudy, more often than not. I suspect most everyone's is that way from time to time.
If you feel that I'm still misunderstanding you somehow, my apologies. Perhaps I have a different viewpoint than yours. If so, we may just have to let it be.
Bzzt! Sorry, name calling doesn't make you more right than I.
"going away" is not the same as "already gone". You may wish it were so, but there is a great deal of what you may consider 'legacy' equipment out there.
Instead of trying to convince folks that all there current technology is crap, and we should all just junk it all and pay for all nice, shiny, new stuff, with 10-base, no wait 100-base, no wait, why not gibabit interfaces attached, you would impress a lot more folks (and make a lot more money, or at least have your 15 minutes of fame) by inventing a dead-simple way for all those millions of folks to choose wireless, instead of wired, by installing a bridge that hooks there existing household wired system to a wireless provider.
That's all. You go ahead and buy all the toys you want. I'm a toy freak, myself. But, that doesn't mean that I,m anxious to throw out what works, just for the sake of the latest technology. Once I buy a good piece of electronic gear, it tends to stay in my household for about 10 years, give or take a few. A lot of folks operate on that basis. If it takes that long to turn over a large consumer base of electronics, a bridge technology will do far more good in the interim.
ComCast is the second largest cable provider in the U.S. They took over MediaOne/RoadRunner/ATT in the SE Mich area, and succeeded in torqueing off most everyone that was unfortunate enough to hook up to them.
Recently, their cable modem service has been slowing improving, to the point where it was about two or more years ago, when MediaOne was running it. But, I digress. 8-)
ComCast recently offered a free DVR settop box to their 'digital' cable subscribers (I don't get their digital service, just the $8.95 a month 'lifeline' basic analog TV service, to avoid the $10 a month surcharge if I don't subscribe to cable as a cable modem user -- I use DirecTV for all my TV viewing, with multiple DirecTV receivers and a DirecTiVO and old 14-hour TiVO, both with lifetime subscriptions). Anyhoo, the ComCast offer has strings attached. You can only time shift channels (meaning - record, and all those 'stupid live TV tricks') that are essentially not supported by advertising. That means essentially the big networks, like NBC, CBS, etc. are not recordable.
And, if the recent FCC decision to allow broadcasters to tag various shows with the 'broadcast flag' really gets implemented broadly, it will just get worse.
If your cable-provider supplied DVR lets you record anything you want, more power to you. Just remember, though, that if it ever occurs to them that they (or their upstream TV providers) figure out that they can make more money by restricting your fair use rights, recent history has shown that they won't hesitate to make the most of it.
Hmm. If land-line connected things are going away, how come I still have (all current technology, mind you) 3) DirectTV receivers, 1) answering machine, and 1) Fax machine, all of which sport an RJ-11 jack?
The point being, that a *lot* of folks would much more appreciate a black box that provides RJ-11 connections, and has wireless connectivity on the other side, so that we could (if we wish) discard the land-line connection(s).
Imagine just unplugging the telco land-line connection at your customer access box, and replacing it with a wireless node. Voila! all your landline appliance now operate wirelessly.
"and has, from what I have been told, almost all of the same features as Tivo"
Bzzt! Sorry, try again.
The cable-modem supplied DVRs all prohibit you from time-shifting any non-premium (i.e. commercial-supported) content. That's straight from my ComCast brochure on the subject.
No thanks, but I'll keep my TiVO. I like being able to decide which channels I can record, rather than leaving it up to my cable/satellite TV provider.
We may be in violent agreement, here 8-). What I was driving at was that you could get a decent setup that might even outperform the price point of a Sony 717, by getting good, used glass for your Digital Rebel. The used zoom I got easily cost about $400 new, but by getting one in pristine condition for 1/4 that price, I finessed the price equation, so to speak.
And, I didn't end up with a 'dead end' system, with non-interchangeable lenses. I already have one of those, thank you, in the form of a Nikon Coolpix 4500 I got this past summer, with all the trimmings. I thought it might be pushed into service as a replacement for my aging (and largely ignored these past ten years or so) Olympus OM setup.
Unfortunately, even though it's a really nice digicam, it just doesn't take the place of an SLR in form or function.
Fortunately, the price of the Digital Rebel make it so I didn't have to repeat the mistake by buying one of the 'prosumer' non-SLRs for at or over $1000, only to wish I hadn't, later.
So, instead of boxing yourself in with an even more expensive dead-end non-SLR, you can start with the Rebel (with or without the kit lens), and one good used lens, spend no more than a 'prosumer' digicam costs, and have a system that can be built up with compatible glass.
Even if you decide to upgrade the Digital Rebel body later, at least you didn't pay $7000 or more for it (unlike the 1Ds), and you can keep and reuse most of the glass (except for the 'S' kit lens, which you only paid $100 for in the first place -- no crying over spilt milk, there).
Sans lens. I still say that's a far cry from the Rebel with an included (arguably not so great) 18-55mm lens.
By the time you crib a decent Nikon wide-to-tele zoom into the equation, you are *way* over budget.
And, you *still* have to deal with the fact that no one takes noise-free ISO 400 pictures like the Canons. No one. I have a Nikon camera, and the Canon Digital Rebel beats it all hollow when it comes to taking noise-free pictures. The Canon doesn't have that hokey 'noise reduction' mode, because it doesn't need it. Period.
I really wanted to stay with the Nikon crowd, but they just aren't keeping up.
OK, I'll bite. What's wrong with a nice body, and some good, *USED* lenses?
I scored a Rebel kit (with 18-55mm lens -- what can I say? It's a decent lens for $100, as long as you aren't too critical about it), and a nice, used 70-210 f/4 w/hood for $119.
Now the zoom is not USM, image stabilized, or even 'L' glass, but that's OK by me, for the price. I like the constant f-stop, unlike some of the newer zooms, and it leaves me room in my budget to get some prime glass (new or used).
Conclusion? Of course, all that matters is the lens and the film (in this case, the digital sensor). I just haven't found it necessary to spend upwards of $2000 on glass, yet.
I'm sure that I'll find an excuse to upgrade glass in the future (how do you think used glass makes it to the local camera emporium?), but I can do that in stages, as my budget (and interests) allow.
First reply to this points out the difference in apparent focal length (1.6x), but there is also a difference in depth of field. If you are used to getting a particular depth of field, for portrait shots, with a particular lens, you will find that the depth of field with that lens is greater on a sub-35mm sensor body (I *do* wish that folks would stop calling sub-35mm DSLRS "35mm DSLRS". It does everyone a disservice to muddy the waters like that).
So, both of those issues need consideration. At the moment, a full-frame 35mm DSLR costs big bucks, but the prices will continue to fall. In the meantime, if you can live with the focal length and depth of field issues, the Digital Rebel is a really nice way to break into DSLR photography. If you have any good SLR experience, you can essentially ignore the built-in modes, and go directly to (P)rogram, (A)perature prefered, (T)ime prefered, or (M)anual.
Also, spend a bit more and get the 550EX flash, that gives you some manual modes. You can use it to add 2nd curtain and high-speed sync back to the Digital Rebel. It also has a nice near-IR focus assist light, which beats the way the Rebel uses the built-in flash (flash, flash, flash) as a poor-man's focus assist. If you are really wiley, you can coerce the Rebel into using the 550ex for focus assist, but not use the flash, for museum photography, and other low-light situations where a flash is prohibited or not desirable.
I had a blast a couple of weekends ago, night shooting the American Niagra Falls from a balcony room on the Canadian side. Exposures ran from 10 to 15 seconds at f/8, using an older 70-210 f/4 lens. A large, stable tripod and remote control for this is a must! Shot RAW, and post-processed in Capture 1 DSLR Rebel edition ($29). Wonderful pictures.
One last thought. If you are really into long exposure/long lens landscape photography, consider that the Digital Rebel lacks mirror lock-up. This might be enough to cause you to reconsider, although I've not detected a vibration problem, yet, probably because I'm not using 'L' lenses at high focal lengths. My lenses are probably too soft, to be able to see any effect from mirror vibration.
The 10D only costs about $700 more (sans lens), and you might not care for the $100 18-55 zoom that comes with the Rebel kit, anyway. If you already have a nice collection of Canon glass, you could make do with what you have, and get a better body (like the 10D). I was starting from scratch, having only an old Olympus SLR, pre-auto focus, so none of the lenses would have done me much good. After looking over the reviews and comments on The Luminous Landscape, I decided to go with Canon lenses and equipment. In particular, Canon DSLR's have a very impressive noise factor at ISO 400, usually better than other manufacturer's cameras at ISO 100. This can make all the difference in the world when trying to get that elusive shot in available darkness.
Microsoft is not the only player in the PC support game. Look to Widcomm, who has the lion's share of OEM software/device driver support, both for PC-connected Bluetooth devices, but also in the iPAQ market, where they are the authors (and royalty benefactors) of the built-in Bluetooth support.
In essence, Microsoft is reluctant (or maybe even hamstrung by sweet OEM deals that Widcomm has) to bundle Bluetooth support on their machines. This is a double-edged sword. First of all, any so-called 'standard' driver and Bluetooth radio they might put in a PC would be incompatible with anything that a consumer bought off-the-shelf kit that has a radio dongle or card, a device, and a Bluetooth stack of drives/applications that need to be loaded on the PC.
Even if you could get Widcomm's stuff to play nicely with all the others in the Bluetooth pool, there is still the awful reality that most Bluetooth implementations, even at the radio level, sport some number of incompatibilities, mainly due to the Bluetooth SIG's propensity for documenting many features as 'optional'. In document speak, that's pretty much the same as 'not supported' or 'We'll support that only if everyone else does', the equivalent of 'when the Sun explodes.'
This is one case where if Microsoft bought out a company (Widcomm) they could unlock the log-jam of Bluetooth software support, and maybe get the hardware vendors lined up, and quit squabbling over things.
Slashdot Mirror
We were on the eastbound Amtrak Empire Builder (runs from Seattle to Chicago in two days), and found out the evening of the derailment when we reached Minot, ND. All eastbound passengers that were to get off between Minot and Grand Forks were removed from the train, and bused to their destinations. They were the lucky ones.
Since we were ticketed through to Minneapolis, we were told to stay on the train, while it was re-routed SE directly towards Fargo. The idea was that BNSF was routing all eastbound traffic east of Minot directly through Fargo, and all westbound traffic from Fargo via Grand Forks and the northern tier (which is the normal Amtrak Empire Builder route) to lessen two-way congestion on those segments of the rail lines.
This worked OK until we found ourselves about 30 miles northwest of Fargo (not on the same rails as the derailment, which was due west of Fargo) behind two freight trains that ran out of time for their crews, due to their detour from their regular route along the northern tier. There is a hard and fast and apparently completely unbreakable rule that requires crews to park their train when they reach 12 hours, even if the train is on the main line, and will block all trains behind it. There they will sit, until a relief crew can reach them by car. Sometimes the only available relief crew must come from their original relief station, which may be hundreds of miles away. In the meantime, everyone else on the line behind them can simply just pound sand, including a passenger train filled with 300 passengers. If the freights could have run just a half-hour longer, they would have reached the Fargo yards, and we could have proceeded. It occurs to me that there should be some means of allowing 'bending the rules' in extraordinary circumstances, but I realize that permission to do so would have to come 'from the top', say the Secretary of Transportation, otherwise there could be all sorts of abuses.
So we sat all night, waiting for the two freights to get their relief crews. The outside temperature was well below zero, and there had been recent snow, not conducive for anyone attempting to travel the roads in the area. I bet you can guess the next issue -- yep, our crew was about to 'expire'. So we backed up about 10 miles at about 10 miles an hour to a convenient US highway crossing, and waited for our relief crew to come from, you guessed it, St. Cloud, MN, which was almost all the way to Minneapolis on the far side of Fargo.
So, after a long wait, we were finally under way, but we were told that for some reason (supposedly something to do with the track conditions) we were not allowed to proceed any faster than 10 miles an hour all the way to Fargo, a distance of some 30 miles. Another 3 hours go by, and we arrive in Fargo now about 12 hours late. The train proceeds to serve lunch, since it had provisions for all the way to Chicago, which it normally arrives by mid- to late-afternoon. In spite of Fargo being a 'service' stop, they DO NOT TAKE ON ANY PROVISIONS. In fact, the only time the Empire Builder takes on provisions is in Seattle and Chicago, carrying everything they need for the two day trip. The only other thing they do on 'service stops' is to drain the black tanks on the cars, and take on water, and fuel the engines. So you can guess the next thing that happens on a train that is running more than 12 hours late -- they start to run out of food. More about that later.
So, after leaving Fargo, we get all the way to Moorhead, MN, which is only a couple miles east of Fargo, when we stop again, and the announcement this time is that our whistle is broken. That means that we can only go at 10 miles an hour (maybe this is the reason for the slow trip into Fargo, but that was never explained as being related to a broken whistle). So, the plan was to wait for a freight engine to arrive, hook to the front of our train, and then use the freight engine's whistle. After waiting another hour or so, some bright guy with a blow torch managed to thaw
Been waiting to use that one....
Oh, wait, you were serious?
I have a prime example of that, just before the exit ramp on my commute home. The guy that was painting the lines decided to pull to the emergency strip, but forgot to shut off the paint machine. There is a nice bright white line going directly off the pavement....
Consider that Sony supplies virtually all the sensors used in digital cameras in the world market, including Konica-Minolta (Canon is a notable exception).
KM, as a camera manufacturer, must buy a critical (and highest-priced) component from Sony, who not only sells the same components to all their competitors, but also competes with KM in their own market (digicams).
Makes it kind of hard to make a buck, see?
Sony, who is working hard to knock Kodak out of the number one spot for digital camera sales, needed an entry into the DSLR market, and KM, having lost USD$407 million in the last year, was ripe for the picking.
It's telling that of all the business that Sony was interested in acquiring from KM, the only thing they took was the DSLR business. That nicely fills in the current hole in Sony's lineup.
I talked to a couple of lower-level folks, got a short tour of the then-new 'campus', where all the offices had windows, and each area had free pop, etc (so no one had to ever leave to get food).
Then the 'big cheese' interview. He waved expansively at the building across the way, and said "400 of the world's best programmers work there". I said, "That's nice." He peered at me, and asked, "Do you want to work for Microsoft?" I said, "It would have been a waste of everyone's time for me to fly all the way out here from Michigan, if I wasn't interested".
After returning home, I received a job offer that was considerably less than I was currently making, but with a 'sweetener' of 1500 shares of pre-IPO MS stock at $1 a share. I reasoned that it wasn't worth uprooting my family and relocating, for a cut in pay, and I sure couldn't live off of worthless stock options, so I turned them down.
Every time I want to kick myself, I figure out how much those options would be worth these days...
I find that essentially *none* of the current crop of digicams can replace the simple 35mm film point-and-shoot cameras, mainly because it takes anywhere from 1 to 3 seconds to "power up" the camera, even from standby, and typically anywhere from a 1/2 to 1 second to take a picture *after* you push the shutter button.
This makes digicams unsuitable (and surprisingly so), for a lot of folks that are unaware of these limitations.
So, at the moment, DSLRs are the only digital cameras available that can operate at the speeds of the film-based cameras that everyone has been using in the past.
Don't underestimate the importance of this point. Soccer moms and football dads that want to snap a picture of their offspring in action will find digicams to be a total waste of money. Even trying to keep up with a toddler will be more than a digicam can handle. They simply focus too slow, and by the time the shutter goes off, the kid has already stuck his nose in your lens.
Except for Thorin Oakenshield. Despite his single-mindedness on their quest to rid their mountain of Smaug and regain their gold, he was the one that managed to hold the group together when Gandalf was absent, and his final scene is one of the most touching aspects of Tolkien's writing.
Haven't been able to hear signals that weak (and that clearly) in years, over the awful RF racket that seems to permeate the air in and around cities.
I was almost sad to see the power come back on, and listen to all the computer- and powerline-generated crap in my neighborhood spring back to life.
Ham operators are having to deal almost daily with the cacaphony of all the consumer electronics that somehow passed FCC certification, but once installed in the neighbor's house, magically lose all shielding, and can be heard from hundreds of feet away.
And please, don't get me started about the mess of signals that our modern vehicles put out. Some time ago, the auto manufacturers cut a deal with the FCC for blanket exception to part 15, which deals with unintentional RF radiators. At one time, this protected the car folks from having to do much to stop ignition noise, except to placate those customers that couldn't hear their own AM car radio. Now that everyone listens to FM on much higher frequencies, the emphasis is on stopping radiation only in the AM band (.5 - 2 MHz) and VHF Hi-Lo frequencies (30 Mhz and up to about 200 or 300 Mhz). Everyone else (including the mobile ham HF operators) can just pound sand. 8-(
The last thing we need is for the power companies to purposefully put wideband hash on unshielded overhead transmission lines that stretch for miles across the landscape.
In all these cases, I'm attracted to the lyricism of these works. Tolkein is well known in that regard, even among the "great unwashed", especially now that the film adaptations have become so successful. As for Bradbury, things like the encounter with the old Martians on the sea floor at night, the description of the house attempting to save itself , and the "million year picnic" (all from the Martian Chronicles) just sing with imagery, a delight for the senses -- something to be savored and turned over in the mind, indeed something to be shared with others. I have read those selections, and others, to various members of my family at one time or another, because of the strong mental imagery and wonder involved. There is so much poetry in these books.
As far as Heinlein goes, my all-time favorite story of his is "The Farmer's Daughter" in Time Enough for Love. There is an incredible sadness (expressed eloquently by Heinlein) in spending a lifetime with someone you love and cherish, only to see her waste away of old age and realize that you will survive her by thousands of years. No wonder Lazurus Long was so despondent after living 4000 years, that he was willing to die, rather than continue outliving all his relatives and loves of his life.
Absolutely incredible story telling in those books. Of course, there are warts, and not everyone turns out a masterpiece every time they set pen to paper. But, it was well worth my time to wade through all the mediocre stuff I've read from various authors in the past to discover some of the really truly great gems out there.
That's Photons (you know, light particles?), not Protons.
Everybody knows that Protons have mass. It's the basis of the periodic table.
If you're gonna tell the joke, you gotta' get the punchline correct...
A jet full of Polish citizens was flying over the US southwest, when the pilot said, "On your starboard side, you'll see the Grand Canyon." Everyone moved to look out the windows, and the jet crashed. The official accident investigation report read, "Too many Poles in the right-half plane".
In fact, the project was one that had been 'orphaned' by Wind River, because they had bought out ISI, and 'deep-sixed' PSOS (thanks, guys). Faced with having to re-write all the OS interfaces in the code to upgrade to faster processors, we figured it would be just about as much trouble to move to a Linux-based system, and that would 'future-proof' us against further corporate shenanigans.
I had used VxWorks in the past on other projects, and had achieved a nice working relationship with the local Wind River sales and engineering support folks. Wind River's behavior over the last few years, though, has pretty much destroyed that.
Wind River may be trying to jump on the band wagon now, but it may already be too late. Folks like me have long memories.
*My* point is that there is a market for legacy 'bridge' devices. Your original post inferred that no one should be wasting their time on such things, because all new devices would use new technologies. I only wished to point out that no matter what new devices may be using, that it is most certainly not a waste of time or energy to find ways to hook up old devices to wireless technologies, especially because there is a considerable installed base, and no one is anxious to replace working devices just for the sake of embracing a new connection technology.
To get folks to throw out all their old devices, one must provide a compelling reason for doing so. So far, I've not seen one, in view of the current state of wireless devices. I'm not even so sure that I see a compelling reason to re-buy all wired devices in the near future, either.
But, then again, my crystal ball is known to be cloudy, more often than not. I suspect most everyone's is that way from time to time.
If you feel that I'm still misunderstanding you somehow, my apologies. Perhaps I have a different viewpoint than yours. If so, we may just have to let it be.
Cheers...
"going away" is not the same as "already gone". You may wish it were so, but there is a great deal of what you may consider 'legacy' equipment out there.
Instead of trying to convince folks that all there current technology is crap, and we should all just junk it all and pay for all nice, shiny, new stuff, with 10-base, no wait 100-base, no wait, why not gibabit interfaces attached, you would impress a lot more folks (and make a lot more money, or at least have your 15 minutes of fame) by inventing a dead-simple way for all those millions of folks to choose wireless, instead of wired, by installing a bridge that hooks there existing household wired system to a wireless provider.
That's all. You go ahead and buy all the toys you want. I'm a toy freak, myself. But, that doesn't mean that I,m anxious to throw out what works, just for the sake of the latest technology. Once I buy a good piece of electronic gear, it tends to stay in my household for about 10 years, give or take a few. A lot of folks operate on that basis. If it takes that long to turn over a large consumer base of electronics, a bridge technology will do far more good in the interim.
Recently, their cable modem service has been slowing improving, to the point where it was about two or more years ago, when MediaOne was running it. But, I digress. 8-)
ComCast recently offered a free DVR settop box to their 'digital' cable subscribers (I don't get their digital service, just the $8.95 a month 'lifeline' basic analog TV service, to avoid the $10 a month surcharge if I don't subscribe to cable as a cable modem user -- I use DirecTV for all my TV viewing, with multiple DirecTV receivers and a DirecTiVO and old 14-hour TiVO, both with lifetime subscriptions). Anyhoo, the ComCast offer has strings attached. You can only time shift channels (meaning - record, and all those 'stupid live TV tricks') that are essentially not supported by advertising. That means essentially the big networks, like NBC, CBS, etc. are not recordable.
And, if the recent FCC decision to allow broadcasters to tag various shows with the 'broadcast flag' really gets implemented broadly, it will just get worse.
If your cable-provider supplied DVR lets you record anything you want, more power to you. Just remember, though, that if it ever occurs to them that they (or their upstream TV providers) figure out that they can make more money by restricting your fair use rights, recent history has shown that they won't hesitate to make the most of it.
I'd rather have 5 technically savvy people that aren't on some rather large telecommuncations companies' payrolls, thank you very much.
The point being, that a *lot* of folks would much more appreciate a black box that provides RJ-11 connections, and has wireless connectivity on the other side, so that we could (if we wish) discard the land-line connection(s).
Imagine just unplugging the telco land-line connection at your customer access box, and replacing it with a wireless node. Voila! all your landline appliance now operate wirelessly.
"and has, from what I have been told, almost all of the same features as Tivo" Bzzt! Sorry, try again. The cable-modem supplied DVRs all prohibit you from time-shifting any non-premium (i.e. commercial-supported) content. That's straight from my ComCast brochure on the subject. No thanks, but I'll keep my TiVO. I like being able to decide which channels I can record, rather than leaving it up to my cable/satellite TV provider.
And, I didn't end up with a 'dead end' system, with non-interchangeable lenses. I already have one of those, thank you, in the form of a Nikon Coolpix 4500 I got this past summer, with all the trimmings. I thought it might be pushed into service as a replacement for my aging (and largely ignored these past ten years or so) Olympus OM setup.
Unfortunately, even though it's a really nice digicam, it just doesn't take the place of an SLR in form or function.
Fortunately, the price of the Digital Rebel make it so I didn't have to repeat the mistake by buying one of the 'prosumer' non-SLRs for at or over $1000, only to wish I hadn't, later.
So, instead of boxing yourself in with an even more expensive dead-end non-SLR, you can start with the Rebel (with or without the kit lens), and one good used lens, spend no more than a 'prosumer' digicam costs, and have a system that can be built up with compatible glass.
Even if you decide to upgrade the Digital Rebel body later, at least you didn't pay $7000 or more for it (unlike the 1Ds), and you can keep and reuse most of the glass (except for the 'S' kit lens, which you only paid $100 for in the first place -- no crying over spilt milk, there).
By the time you crib a decent Nikon wide-to-tele zoom into the equation, you are *way* over budget.
And, you *still* have to deal with the fact that no one takes noise-free ISO 400 pictures like the Canons. No one. I have a Nikon camera, and the Canon Digital Rebel beats it all hollow when it comes to taking noise-free pictures. The Canon doesn't have that hokey 'noise reduction' mode, because it doesn't need it. Period.
I really wanted to stay with the Nikon crowd, but they just aren't keeping up.
I scored a Rebel kit (with 18-55mm lens -- what can I say? It's a decent lens for $100, as long as you aren't too critical about it), and a nice, used 70-210 f/4 w/hood for $119.
Now the zoom is not USM, image stabilized, or even 'L' glass, but that's OK by me, for the price. I like the constant f-stop, unlike some of the newer zooms, and it leaves me room in my budget to get some prime glass (new or used).
Conclusion? Of course, all that matters is the lens and the film (in this case, the digital sensor). I just haven't found it necessary to spend upwards of $2000 on glass, yet.
I'm sure that I'll find an excuse to upgrade glass in the future (how do you think used glass makes it to the local camera emporium?), but I can do that in stages, as my budget (and interests) allow.
Clean your sensor.
So, both of those issues need consideration. At the moment, a full-frame 35mm DSLR costs big bucks, but the prices will continue to fall. In the meantime, if you can live with the focal length and depth of field issues, the Digital Rebel is a really nice way to break into DSLR photography. If you have any good SLR experience, you can essentially ignore the built-in modes, and go directly to (P)rogram, (A)perature prefered, (T)ime prefered, or (M)anual.
Also, spend a bit more and get the 550EX flash, that gives you some manual modes. You can use it to add 2nd curtain and high-speed sync back to the Digital Rebel. It also has a nice near-IR focus assist light, which beats the way the Rebel uses the built-in flash (flash, flash, flash) as a poor-man's focus assist. If you are really wiley, you can coerce the Rebel into using the 550ex for focus assist, but not use the flash, for museum photography, and other low-light situations where a flash is prohibited or not desirable.
I had a blast a couple of weekends ago, night shooting the American Niagra Falls from a balcony room on the Canadian side. Exposures ran from 10 to 15 seconds at f/8, using an older 70-210 f/4 lens. A large, stable tripod and remote control for this is a must! Shot RAW, and post-processed in Capture 1 DSLR Rebel edition ($29). Wonderful pictures.
One last thought. If you are really into long exposure/long lens landscape photography, consider that the Digital Rebel lacks mirror lock-up. This might be enough to cause you to reconsider, although I've not detected a vibration problem, yet, probably because I'm not using 'L' lenses at high focal lengths. My lenses are probably too soft, to be able to see any effect from mirror vibration.
The 10D only costs about $700 more (sans lens), and you might not care for the $100 18-55 zoom that comes with the Rebel kit, anyway. If you already have a nice collection of Canon glass, you could make do with what you have, and get a better body (like the 10D). I was starting from scratch, having only an old Olympus SLR, pre-auto focus, so none of the lenses would have done me much good. After looking over the reviews and comments on The Luminous Landscape, I decided to go with Canon lenses and equipment. In particular, Canon DSLR's have a very impressive noise factor at ISO 400, usually better than other manufacturer's cameras at ISO 100. This can make all the difference in the world when trying to get that elusive shot in available darkness.
In essence, Microsoft is reluctant (or maybe even hamstrung by sweet OEM deals that Widcomm has) to bundle Bluetooth support on their machines. This is a double-edged sword. First of all, any so-called 'standard' driver and Bluetooth radio they might put in a PC would be incompatible with anything that a consumer bought off-the-shelf kit that has a radio dongle or card, a device, and a Bluetooth stack of drives/applications that need to be loaded on the PC.
Even if you could get Widcomm's stuff to play nicely with all the others in the Bluetooth pool, there is still the awful reality that most Bluetooth implementations, even at the radio level, sport some number of incompatibilities, mainly due to the Bluetooth SIG's propensity for documenting many features as 'optional'. In document speak, that's pretty much the same as 'not supported' or 'We'll support that only if everyone else does', the equivalent of 'when the Sun explodes.'
This is one case where if Microsoft bought out a company (Widcomm) they could unlock the log-jam of Bluetooth software support, and maybe get the hardware vendors lined up, and quit squabbling over things.