Sure, you need to know when to say no, and sometimes that's going to earn you an enemy. Happens to everyone.
The way I used to tell the 'story' was that there were two big guys, both a bit worse for drink, one the businessman and the other the customer. For as long as they're both sitting there, getting along fine, the business/customer relationship is working. As soon as one of them turns nasty, the relationship has broken down. The rule is: Make sure you're not the one who turns nasty or causes the other guy to turn nasty. If a fight breaks out then you lose, whoever started it.
The point, really, is to remove the distance from the business/customer relationship. You aren't talking to someone on the phone. You aren't telling an employee to "just get rid of them" with some BS about "company policy". You're right there, face to face with the customer, and you need to handle the situation. It is NOT about giving in to unreasonable demands, it's about rejecting those demands in a way that the customer understands it fair.
It's all a bit silly anyway, I know that. Different people do business in different ways. My way works for me, my customers are happy and my business is currently 350% more successful than optimistically predicted at start-up three years ago. I provide the best service, undercut everyone and put the customer first. I believe this is the way to do business and, for me, it has been.
With reference to the example about cell phone companies, put it this way: When the big drunk guy sits down next to you in the pub and tells you that his wife has died and he needs to cancel her cell phone contract, are you going to charge him for doing so or are you just going to do it? It's a no-brainer. The reason these SNAFUs happen is that some businesses see customers as merely a part of the equation, something to be managed in the most immediately profitable way. Faced with getting a glass smashed over your head because you made a bad decision, it's a whole lot easier to make the right decision.
Bottom line, you will NEVER lose customers for always doing the right thing. You might lose the custom of a small number of people, but you'll gain the custom of many more. If that doesn't make sense, read it again:-)
I've worked in customer service for a large retail chain. I now run my own business and I'm in the process of setting up another one. My attitude to customer service is simple...
Always follow the BIG MAN IN A PUB rule.
Imagine you're sat in a pub and there's a big, tough-looking man who's maybe had a bit too much to drink. That man is your customer. Make sure that every policy, every rule, every clause in a contract, every apology or excuse, everything about your customer service, is something that you would comfortably say to that man in the pub while you're sat right there next to him.
If you think there's a part of your customer service that might provoke the man into hitting you then you wouldn't say it to him, would you? So why would it be okay to say it to him over the phone, by letter or by e-mail? Why would it be okay to have an employee say it to him in person?
Keep the big drunk man happy and everyone else will be happy too. Including you.
As any consistently ethical business person will tell you, it isn't a myth or a fantasy -- the better you treat your customers, the better your bottom line will be. You may occasionally get ripped off. You'll even get the odd one or two customers who decide to take a disliking to you for no good reason. But at the end of every day you'll always have a business that is more popular and more profitable than it was at the end of the previous day.
Short term gains generally lead to long term losses.
What I think would be interesting is if people who are familiar with the technology would explain how this changeover could be done in such a way as to have (a) the most negative impact on consumers and (b) the most unfairly anti-competitive impact on the telecoms industry.
Then in six years we can look back at this thread and see if that's how BT did it.
Analysis of a three-kilometer-long ice core drilled from the Antarctic, has revealed our planet has had eight ice ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today.
Quote from BBC story...
Analysis of the ice proves our planet has had eight ice ages during that period, punctuated by rather brief warm spells - one of which we enjoy today.
We're looking into it.Can't say anything more for now, and there aren't any guarantees...
That's the problem -- there aren't any guarantees.
A lot of people threaten to stop buying PC games because of the "no guarantees" license agreement, but they keep on buying them. I have actually stopped. Haven't bought a PC games in, what, two or three years now. It isn't because I don't want to play them, it isn't because I can't afford them, I'm just not willing to agree to a contract that I disapprove of.
It's amazing to me that a developer will publicly admit to a fairly major fault in a game and then say, effectively, "we might fix it or we might not, dunno yet". I'm sure this thought process goes on in many different industries, but game developers openly admit to having this attitude! It makes me wonder: If this is what they admit to then... well, finish the question for yourself.
This is our fault, though. (Well, depending on who you are, it's actually your fault, not mine!) Consumers tolerated unfinished games for so long that there became very little motivation for developers to bother finishing them. We told them time and time again that we'd buy their faulty products and they heard it so often that they said okay, in that case we're happy to sell them to you. So we did this to ourselves. Or rather you did...;-)
A guy I worked with a few years ago used to tell a story about calling another store in the same chain and asking if he could order something over the phone.
After the sales assistant took his order, name, address, etc, the guy explained that he didn't have a credit card so would it be okay for him to fax over a couple of fifties?
It has always bugged me that people write Id without the capital I, apparently for no better reason that that's how it's written in the company logo.
It looks especially bad when it's used at the beginning of a sentence.
When I wrote for gaming sites a few years ago I decided to get the correct 'spelling' straight from the horse's mouth so I checked with John Carmack.
He writes it Id so as far as I'm concerned that's how it's written.
On a similar note, a point of trivia: The manufacturer of GeForce graphics cards spells the company name nVIDIA (small 'n') in the logo, but web/magazine editors are asked to use NVIDIA (all caps) in articles. Why? Who knows. I think it makes more sense to spell it with the small 'n' because at least that gives some clue as to how the word is pronounced, ie: enn-vid-ee-aa
I'm a Canon user so I'll talk Canon, one point at a time...
"I'm interested in getting into digital photography."
Getting into DSLR at the bottom of the ladder will prove expensive because you'll spend $1000 on a camera/lenses and then a few months later you'll be buying more, more, more.
It's better to spend more to start with and get some good, non-beginner equipment that will last you for many years.
"I have looked at many tutorials and buying guides but there are so many digital SLRs I have no idea which ones to even start considering."
Remember that I'm only talking Canon, in which case your choice is between the Rebel/300D and the 10D.
"I want to be able to make decently large prints"
The 300D and 10D are both 6Mpx and will both print nicely up to A3. The 300D sensor is essentially the same as the 10D but it is produced more cheaply and there is some feeling that the image quality is slightly inferior.
"I'd like to get a decent amount of use out of it before upgrading"
I've used the Rebel/300D and I upgraded to the 10D within a month. I then upgraded to the 1D. I'd recommend the 10D to anyone. I wouldn't recommend the 300D. It's essentially a crippled 10D.
"I want good battery life"
Both the 300D and 10D will give you hundreds of shots on a single battery charge which takes a couple of hours. You can also buy a battery grip which attaches to the bottom of the camera and allows you to use two batteries.
"durability is key"
The 300D is fairly tough but it's plastic. The 10D is metal and tougher. The 1D is designed to survive a warzone, literally.
"All of you photographers out there, any suggestions? What did you buy when you started?"
In six months I've gone from a 300D with a couple of cheap lenses to a 1D with approx $8,000 of lenses.
My recommendation, assuming you don't want to go for the 1D which is the best camera ever made, is to get a 10D with a 28-135 Image Stabilizer lens. That will cost you less than $2,000. You will almost certainly want to buy more lenses over time but you'll be happy with the 10D for several years.
There is talk of a 10D replacement within the year but considering the mess Canon has made of the 1D Mk II my advice would be to buy what's right for you now rather than wait for "the next big thing" that may or may not be any good.
Now you need someone to give you the same run-down on Nikon gear. Don't let anyone tell you that Canon or Nikon is considerably better than the other. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
Briefly...
Canon's strengths: Better telephone lenses, slightly better image quality, good resale value, usually brings next-gen tech out a good six months before other manufacturers, good support, lenses are slightly cheaper.
Nikon's strengths: Reputedly better wide lenses, better flash system, high-end cameras are cheaper than Canon's high-end offerings.
Canon cameras are generally used by fashion and sports photographers and more of these are switching to Canon every day.
Nikon cameras are generally used by photojournalists but Canon is becoming much more prevalent in this area nowadays.
If you have any specific questions on Canon gear then feel free to post them in a reply to this comment and I'll answer if I can.
My Canon 1D is 4Mp and it will print to A3 very nicely thank you. The cheaper Canon 10D is 6Mp but not such high quality so you'll still get A3 out of it but not much higher.
I recently bought a laptop with built-in wireless connectivity and a wireless card for my desktop so I could transfer files. This is something that I need to do quite often -- photographs from my digital camera are put onto the laptop "in the field" and then transferred to the desktop at home, previously by firewire.
To cut a long story short, after a week of long, frustrating nights, I gave up trying to get wireless working. Even with security disabled, and having followed maybe half a dozen completely different tutorials, my desktop would constantly disconnect/reconnect so every few seconds I had an info panel popping up to tell me that it had lost the connection and then found it again.
To make matters worse, even when the two machines were briefly connected I couldn't find any way to have my laptop access the 'net through the desktop. With the two machines connected by firewire this works fine.
Both the desktop and laptop are running WinXP Home edition so I've come to the conclusion that this is another one of those wonderful Windows features that works perfectly for some people but hardly works at all for others. Unfortunately I'm one of the "others" this time.
The only clue I have as to what might be going wrong is that the desktop detects two available connections -- one to the laptop and one to itself. So what I think might be happening is that it is switching between the two connections, which means it is intermittently connecting to itself! The laptop only detects the desktop connection so I have no idea why the desktop is detecting itself and obviously I don't know how to prevent this from happening.
I've lost count of the number of times when I've made a point of mentioning that I liked Jar Jar, and the result is that a few people are surprised but many more people say that they liked him too. He was a funny character! I don't believe he was as widely hated as some people would have us believe.
But then, I first saw Episode I on TV and I didn't have the huge expectations/demands of it that many Slashdot readers did. What I got was an entertaining kids film with a cute CGI character that made me laugh. Quite how other people managed to watch the same film and come away hating it, I'll never fully understand.
I'm sure you're right but would you expect the situation to change in, say, the next 12 months?
With the new 1D offering 8Mpx I wonder if resolution requirements for magazines will begin to rise sooner rather than later.
I only do newspaper work currently so 4Mpx is enough for me, but I would expect some magazines to begin rejecting 4Mpx pictures soon, unless of course they are one-off newsworthy shots.
I know that some picture agencies require 11Mpx minimum for advertising and feature shots, but still accept 4Mpx for editorial.
In my opinion we have a lot to thank Nikon for! If their pj cams weren't still 4Mpx I'm sure the minimum requirements for many publications would have risen by now. The D2h came out, what, three months ago, only becoming widely available now, so I reckon we've got at least a year or so before news/editorial shot requirements go up.
It's a tricky situation for Canon shooters. Personally I don't want to move 'up' to the 1D Mk II because I find its pictures to be noticeably lacking in sharpness. So I'm stuck with 4Mpx for now on my 1D.
I was looking through some of the Press Association's recent event shots last week and it was obvious that some of their photogs had switched to the Mk II. The softness of some of the images was shocking.
I hope Canon resolve this issue, either with hardware or firmware revisions. There are numerous other grumbles about the Mk II such as over-sensitive shutter buttons, blown reds, firmware bugs, incompatibility with Metz flashes. Canon have a fair bit of work to do on future versions of this camera or we're going to see Nikon reclaiming the pj crown sooner than expected.
It was done intentionally of course. The testers who tested this game went nuts. At first it was easier, but when the testers said 'this is too difficult', I made it even more difficult
Interesting concept. Also known as: Bad management
Imagine the quote from a film company: We played the movie to test audiences and they said they really hated one character, so we put some of that character's deleted scenes back in.
Or how about: Here at Slashdot we get a lot of complaints about factual errors and duplicate stories. Well would ya just look at the place now...
"There's also about a 4-second spin-up time for the Microdrive - that's a real pain in the ass when you want a quick look at the shots you just took."
I've never experienced that. I press the review button on my camera, the picture comes up on the screen. It has always seemed instantaneous to me, certainly not 4 seconds, not even 1 second.
"Any bigger and they cant be displayed on a monitor at full res. no printer can match the resolution and the files are bloody HUGE."
Which is why you resample down and sharpen (or unsharp for printing). The current standard resolutions for pro work are 4Mpx, 8Mpx and 11Mpx. It is expected that we'll reach 14Mpx and then 22Mpx within the year. These file sizes are necessary for large, high quality magazine prints, billboards, posters, etc. Obviously they aren't intended for the consumer market.
"Transfering 1gig pictures from a memeory card at any speed would still take ages."
I just transferred 2*1Gb cards via a firewire card reader and it took maybe five minutes. I wouldn't mind waiting twice as long for files with twice the resolution.
"Some times its nice to know the tech is out there, but it has no practicle use."
For you, quite possibly it doesn't.
But for me, and for many other people, it has a lot of use.
I use a Canon 1D for sports photography (4Mb files @ 8fps in 16 shot bursts) so I require fast write times, and I use microdrives.
Microdrive write times are fractionally slower than solid state storage but they are also half the price.
Microdrives being more fragile than solid state cards is a much bigger issue than the write times. Some pros won't touch microdrives because of the perceived vulnerability to shock damage but for most practical purposes the write times aren't an issue.
Also you should consider that some cameras don't write to storage at the fastest possible speeds. For example, my 1D can write 16*4Mb files in the same time that the new 1D Mk II can write 20*8Mb files to a card of the same speed. All this talk of write speeds is somewhat irrelevant when you realise that even some of the high-end cameras don't write at the maximum speed.
Tonight's top story:The shocking truth about a legitimate trade body taking legitimate legal action to defend legitimate businesses. Story at eleven!
Maybe someone just needs to shout really loud and really clearly to make me understand why it's wrong to sue people who are stealing from you. Because so far, I'm just not getting it.
I guess the only thing better than crashing 1 computer at a time is crashing an entire room full at once
Yeah because Windows crashes all the time for me. Oh yes, every day. Every hour!
Oh no, hang on, it doesn't. Ever. I boot up in the morning, switch between video and photo editing software hundreds of times throughout the day with regular use of MSIE and Eudora as well, and then I shut it down at night without it having crashed once. Every day. For years.
Old versions of Windows crashed a lot. Current versions don't. Fact.
This is part of the reason why Linux isn't gaining mainstream acceptance fast enough. Linux advocates talk about all these imaginary flaws in Windows and people out here in the real world think "well that isn't my experience at all". The effect is to create a distance between regular people and Linux advocates, which in turn pushes the mainstream acceptance of Linux further and further away. Linux needs to be seen as "the other big operating system", not some niche software used by a minority who seem to have a totally different experience of Windows than the rest of us.
No, the beginning of the end of e-mail was when someone thought of sending unsolicited adverts by snail mail, someone else agreed with them, and our governments did effectively nothing to stop them. Decades later it was a natural progression to start sending those adverts by e-mail, and again, not a whole lot has been done to prevent it.
What the original poster was talking about is essentially identity theft
I'm not trying to sound like "the guy with the secret" but it isn't identity theft. It is based on knowing how credit card companies' internal policies differ from their publicly stated policies.
You do something specific when you pay. Then you tell your credit card company something specific in writing. You get your money back. You will be breaking the law but in a way that would not realistically be possible to prove, so there is little chance of you even being arrested, let alone charged and tried.
The reason you get your money back is that the credit card companies would be breaking the law themselves if they didn't give you it back, and in a way that could be proved.
Remember that the refund comes from the merchant *and* the credit card company profits by imposing a fine upon the merchant. You can see why credit card companies aren't falling over themselves to bring an end to this scam.
Slashdot Mirror
Exceptions to every rule :-)
:-)
Sure, you need to know when to say no, and sometimes that's going to earn you an enemy. Happens to everyone.
The way I used to tell the 'story' was that there were two big guys, both a bit worse for drink, one the businessman and the other the customer. For as long as they're both sitting there, getting along fine, the business/customer relationship is working. As soon as one of them turns nasty, the relationship has broken down. The rule is: Make sure you're not the one who turns nasty or causes the other guy to turn nasty. If a fight breaks out then you lose, whoever started it.
The point, really, is to remove the distance from the business/customer relationship. You aren't talking to someone on the phone. You aren't telling an employee to "just get rid of them" with some BS about "company policy". You're right there, face to face with the customer, and you need to handle the situation. It is NOT about giving in to unreasonable demands, it's about rejecting those demands in a way that the customer understands it fair.
It's all a bit silly anyway, I know that. Different people do business in different ways. My way works for me, my customers are happy and my business is currently 350% more successful than optimistically predicted at start-up three years ago. I provide the best service, undercut everyone and put the customer first. I believe this is the way to do business and, for me, it has been.
With reference to the example about cell phone companies, put it this way: When the big drunk guy sits down next to you in the pub and tells you that his wife has died and he needs to cancel her cell phone contract, are you going to charge him for doing so or are you just going to do it? It's a no-brainer. The reason these SNAFUs happen is that some businesses see customers as merely a part of the equation, something to be managed in the most immediately profitable way. Faced with getting a glass smashed over your head because you made a bad decision, it's a whole lot easier to make the right decision.
Bottom line, you will NEVER lose customers for always doing the right thing. You might lose the custom of a small number of people, but you'll gain the custom of many more. If that doesn't make sense, read it again
I've worked in customer service for a large retail chain. I now run my own business and I'm in the process of setting up another one. My attitude to customer service is simple...
Always follow the BIG MAN IN A PUB rule.
Imagine you're sat in a pub and there's a big, tough-looking man who's maybe had a bit too much to drink. That man is your customer. Make sure that every policy, every rule, every clause in a contract, every apology or excuse, everything about your customer service, is something that you would comfortably say to that man in the pub while you're sat right there next to him.
If you think there's a part of your customer service that might provoke the man into hitting you then you wouldn't say it to him, would you? So why would it be okay to say it to him over the phone, by letter or by e-mail? Why would it be okay to have an employee say it to him in person?
Keep the big drunk man happy and everyone else will be happy too. Including you.
As any consistently ethical business person will tell you, it isn't a myth or a fantasy -- the better you treat your customers, the better your bottom line will be. You may occasionally get ripped off. You'll even get the odd one or two customers who decide to take a disliking to you for no good reason. But at the end of every day you'll always have a business that is more popular and more profitable than it was at the end of the previous day.
Short term gains generally lead to long term losses.
What I think would be interesting is if people who are familiar with the technology would explain how this changeover could be done in such a way as to have (a) the most negative impact on consumers and (b) the most unfairly anti-competitive impact on the telecoms industry.
Then in six years we can look back at this thread and see if that's how BT did it.
Note that the Slashdot submission didn't reference the BBC story.
A lot of people threaten to stop buying PC games because of the "no guarantees" license agreement, but they keep on buying them. I have actually stopped. Haven't bought a PC games in, what, two or three years now. It isn't because I don't want to play them, it isn't because I can't afford them, I'm just not willing to agree to a contract that I disapprove of.
It's amazing to me that a developer will publicly admit to a fairly major fault in a game and then say, effectively, "we might fix it or we might not, dunno yet". I'm sure this thought process goes on in many different industries, but game developers openly admit to having this attitude! It makes me wonder: If this is what they admit to then... well, finish the question for yourself.
This is our fault, though. (Well, depending on who you are, it's actually your fault, not mine!) Consumers tolerated unfinished games for so long that there became very little motivation for developers to bother finishing them. We told them time and time again that we'd buy their faulty products and they heard it so often that they said okay, in that case we're happy to sell them to you. So we did this to ourselves. Or rather you did...
A guy I worked with a few years ago used to tell a story about calling another store in the same chain and asking if he could order something over the phone.
After the sales assistant took his order, name, address, etc, the guy explained that he didn't have a credit card so would it be okay for him to fax over a couple of fifties?
The sales assistant didn't *immediately* say no.
I am *fascinated* by how this comment has been moderated up and down all evening!
Off-topic, informative, off-topic, underrated, off-topic...
It's a bit of info about Id in an Id-related thread. Off-topic?
Why does Slashdot *still* block pound signs?
Look, here's one:
Did you see it?
No?
Because it isn't friggin' there, is it?!
It has always bugged me that people write Id without the capital I, apparently for no better reason that that's how it's written in the company logo.
It looks especially bad when it's used at the beginning of a sentence.
When I wrote for gaming sites a few years ago I decided to get the correct 'spelling' straight from the horse's mouth so I checked with John Carmack.
He writes it Id so as far as I'm concerned that's how it's written.
On a similar note, a point of trivia: The manufacturer of GeForce graphics cards spells the company name nVIDIA (small 'n') in the logo, but web/magazine editors are asked to use NVIDIA (all caps) in articles. Why? Who knows. I think it makes more sense to spell it with the small 'n' because at least that gives some clue as to how the word is pronounced, ie: enn-vid-ee-aa
duh, better telephoto lenses. (The long ones.)
I'm a Canon user so I'll talk Canon, one point at a time...
"I'm interested in getting into digital photography."
Getting into DSLR at the bottom of the ladder will prove expensive because you'll spend $1000 on a camera/lenses and then a few months later you'll be buying more, more, more.
It's better to spend more to start with and get some good, non-beginner equipment that will last you for many years.
"I have looked at many tutorials and buying guides but there are so many digital SLRs I have no idea which ones to even start considering."
Remember that I'm only talking Canon, in which case your choice is between the Rebel/300D and the 10D.
"I want to be able to make decently large prints"
The 300D and 10D are both 6Mpx and will both print nicely up to A3. The 300D sensor is essentially the same as the 10D but it is produced more cheaply and there is some feeling that the image quality is slightly inferior.
"I'd like to get a decent amount of use out of it before upgrading"
I've used the Rebel/300D and I upgraded to the 10D within a month. I then upgraded to the 1D. I'd recommend the 10D to anyone. I wouldn't recommend the 300D. It's essentially a crippled 10D.
"I want good battery life"
Both the 300D and 10D will give you hundreds of shots on a single battery charge which takes a couple of hours. You can also buy a battery grip which attaches to the bottom of the camera and allows you to use two batteries.
"durability is key"
The 300D is fairly tough but it's plastic. The 10D is metal and tougher. The 1D is designed to survive a warzone, literally.
"All of you photographers out there, any suggestions? What did you buy when you started?"
In six months I've gone from a 300D with a couple of cheap lenses to a 1D with approx $8,000 of lenses.
My recommendation, assuming you don't want to go for the 1D which is the best camera ever made, is to get a 10D with a 28-135 Image Stabilizer lens. That will cost you less than $2,000. You will almost certainly want to buy more lenses over time but you'll be happy with the 10D for several years.
There is talk of a 10D replacement within the year but considering the mess Canon has made of the 1D Mk II my advice would be to buy what's right for you now rather than wait for "the next big thing" that may or may not be any good.
Now you need someone to give you the same run-down on Nikon gear. Don't let anyone tell you that Canon or Nikon is considerably better than the other. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
Briefly...
Canon's strengths: Better telephone lenses, slightly better image quality, good resale value, usually brings next-gen tech out a good six months before other manufacturers, good support, lenses are slightly cheaper.
Nikon's strengths: Reputedly better wide lenses, better flash system, high-end cameras are cheaper than Canon's high-end offerings.
Canon cameras are generally used by fashion and sports photographers and more of these are switching to Canon every day.
Nikon cameras are generally used by photojournalists but Canon is becoming much more prevalent in this area nowadays.
If you have any specific questions on Canon gear then feel free to post them in a reply to this comment and I'll answer if I can.
Utter nonsense!
My Canon 1D is 4Mp and it will print to A3 very nicely thank you. The cheaper Canon 10D is 6Mp but not such high quality so you'll still get A3 out of it but not much higher.
I recently bought a laptop with built-in wireless connectivity and a wireless card for my desktop so I could transfer files. This is something that I need to do quite often -- photographs from my digital camera are put onto the laptop "in the field" and then transferred to the desktop at home, previously by firewire.
:-(
To cut a long story short, after a week of long, frustrating nights, I gave up trying to get wireless working. Even with security disabled, and having followed maybe half a dozen completely different tutorials, my desktop would constantly disconnect/reconnect so every few seconds I had an info panel popping up to tell me that it had lost the connection and then found it again.
To make matters worse, even when the two machines were briefly connected I couldn't find any way to have my laptop access the 'net through the desktop. With the two machines connected by firewire this works fine.
Both the desktop and laptop are running WinXP Home edition so I've come to the conclusion that this is another one of those wonderful Windows features that works perfectly for some people but hardly works at all for others. Unfortunately I'm one of the "others" this time.
The only clue I have as to what might be going wrong is that the desktop detects two available connections -- one to the laptop and one to itself. So what I think might be happening is that it is switching between the two connections, which means it is intermittently connecting to itself! The laptop only detects the desktop connection so I have no idea why the desktop is detecting itself and obviously I don't know how to prevent this from happening.
Not impressed with wireless
I've lost count of the number of times when I've made a point of mentioning that I liked Jar Jar, and the result is that a few people are surprised but many more people say that they liked him too. He was a funny character! I don't believe he was as widely hated as some people would have us believe.
But then, I first saw Episode I on TV and I didn't have the huge expectations/demands of it that many Slashdot readers did. What I got was an entertaining kids film with a cute CGI character that made me laugh. Quite how other people managed to watch the same film and come away hating it, I'll never fully understand.
hehe, I was thinking of Jar Jar when I wrote that :-)
But I liked him so I guess I'm kinda disproving my own point. Oh well, saves someone else from doing it!
I'm sure you're right but would you expect the situation to change in, say, the next 12 months?
With the new 1D offering 8Mpx I wonder if resolution requirements for magazines will begin to rise sooner rather than later.
I only do newspaper work currently so 4Mpx is enough for me, but I would expect some magazines to begin rejecting 4Mpx pictures soon, unless of course they are one-off newsworthy shots.
I know that some picture agencies require 11Mpx minimum for advertising and feature shots, but still accept 4Mpx for editorial.
In my opinion we have a lot to thank Nikon for! If their pj cams weren't still 4Mpx I'm sure the minimum requirements for many publications would have risen by now. The D2h came out, what, three months ago, only becoming widely available now, so I reckon we've got at least a year or so before news/editorial shot requirements go up.
It's a tricky situation for Canon shooters. Personally I don't want to move 'up' to the 1D Mk II because I find its pictures to be noticeably lacking in sharpness. So I'm stuck with 4Mpx for now on my 1D.
I was looking through some of the Press Association's recent event shots last week and it was obvious that some of their photogs had switched to the Mk II. The softness of some of the images was shocking.
I hope Canon resolve this issue, either with hardware or firmware revisions. There are numerous other grumbles about the Mk II such as over-sensitive shutter buttons, blown reds, firmware bugs, incompatibility with Metz flashes. Canon have a fair bit of work to do on future versions of this camera or we're going to see Nikon reclaiming the pj crown sooner than expected.
Imagine the quote from a film company: We played the movie to test audiences and they said they really hated one character, so we put some of that character's deleted scenes back in.
Or how about: Here at Slashdot we get a lot of complaints about factual errors and duplicate stories. Well would ya just look at the place now...
"There's also about a 4-second spin-up time for the Microdrive - that's a real pain in the ass when you want a quick look at the shots you just took."
I've never experienced that. I press the review button on my camera, the picture comes up on the screen. It has always seemed instantaneous to me, certainly not 4 seconds, not even 1 second.
"Who needs photos bigger then 3-5 mega-pixles?"
Me please.
"Any bigger and they cant be displayed on a monitor at full res. no printer can match the resolution and the files are bloody HUGE."
Which is why you resample down and sharpen (or unsharp for printing). The current standard resolutions for pro work are 4Mpx, 8Mpx and 11Mpx. It is expected that we'll reach 14Mpx and then 22Mpx within the year. These file sizes are necessary for large, high quality magazine prints, billboards, posters, etc. Obviously they aren't intended for the consumer market.
"Transfering 1gig pictures from a memeory card at any speed would still take ages."
I just transferred 2*1Gb cards via a firewire card reader and it took maybe five minutes. I wouldn't mind waiting twice as long for files with twice the resolution.
"Some times its nice to know the tech is out there, but it has no practicle use."
For you, quite possibly it doesn't.
But for me, and for many other people, it has a lot of use.
Oh really? :-)
I use a Canon 1D for sports photography (4Mb files @ 8fps in 16 shot bursts) so I require fast write times, and I use microdrives.
Microdrive write times are fractionally slower than solid state storage but they are also half the price.
Microdrives being more fragile than solid state cards is a much bigger issue than the write times. Some pros won't touch microdrives because of the perceived vulnerability to shock damage but for most practical purposes the write times aren't an issue.
Also you should consider that some cameras don't write to storage at the fastest possible speeds. For example, my 1D can write 16*4Mb files in the same time that the new 1D Mk II can write 20*8Mb files to a card of the same speed. All this talk of write speeds is somewhat irrelevant when you realise that even some of the high-end cameras don't write at the maximum speed.
Tonight's top story: The shocking truth about a legitimate trade body taking legitimate legal action to defend legitimate businesses. Story at eleven!
Maybe someone just needs to shout really loud and really clearly to make me understand why it's wrong to sue people who are stealing from you. Because so far, I'm just not getting it.
Oh no, hang on, it doesn't. Ever. I boot up in the morning, switch between video and photo editing software hundreds of times throughout the day with regular use of MSIE and Eudora as well, and then I shut it down at night without it having crashed once. Every day. For years.
Old versions of Windows crashed a lot. Current versions don't. Fact.
This is part of the reason why Linux isn't gaining mainstream acceptance fast enough. Linux advocates talk about all these imaginary flaws in Windows and people out here in the real world think "well that isn't my experience at all". The effect is to create a distance between regular people and Linux advocates, which in turn pushes the mainstream acceptance of Linux further and further away. Linux needs to be seen as "the other big operating system", not some niche software used by a minority who seem to have a totally different experience of Windows than the rest of us.
ps -- the scam only works for services, ie: subscriptions to web sites, downloads, game credits, etc. You can't order a TV set and get it for free.
You do something specific when you pay. Then you tell your credit card company something specific in writing. You get your money back. You will be breaking the law but in a way that would not realistically be possible to prove, so there is little chance of you even being arrested, let alone charged and tried.
The reason you get your money back is that the credit card companies would be breaking the law themselves if they didn't give you it back, and in a way that could be proved.
Remember that the refund comes from the merchant *and* the credit card company profits by imposing a fine upon the merchant. You can see why credit card companies aren't falling over themselves to bring an end to this scam.