Of course not. Those jeans at the mall don't cost $100 to make either. Nevertheless, that's what the manufacturer and retailers have decided the market will bear.
You're absolutely correct, cell phones are hideously overpriced, most likely because very few people ever buy one unsubsidized. It's not your country though, it's everywhere.
You'll find that $600 is more or less what a smart phone costs. You get them much cheaper in an expensive, restrictive bundle because that's where the company subsidizing your phone makes back it's money. It's not because of where you live.
You're one of the edge cases who doesn't use a Bayer sensor. Or do you? Does your scanner really do three passes?
You'd also likely be best served by simply scanning at a lower resolution. What exactly are you doing that you need such giant images, since you're not archiving them (you have the negatives for that)? The "but I shoot MF film" unfortunately sounds like you might have a bit of the "my scanner goes up to 11, so that's what I scan at" syndrome. Particularly when you turn around and JPEG compress it.
For completely open 16-bit compression you could use TIFF with LZW compression. If you really want lossy you might have to actually use something (gasp) not free, since in this case it seems the open source community is not serving your needs. In the spirit of that community, another option would be to just write one. I'm sure the Ogg guys wouldn't mind too much if you used their intraframe compressor to make your own image compression format. There's lots of JPEG source around you could modify too.
RAW from a Bayer sensor is certainly not 10-15 times the size of max quality JPEG unless you're taking pictures of blue sky or your camera/scanner is lying through it's teeth to you about the resolution or bit depth it's capturing. I've got a fairly typical shot from a Canon 30D here - the 16-bit RAW is 7.1 MB (6.6 zipped) and the max quality JPEG from Photoshop is 4.3 MB.
Ever wondered why there aren't many lossy 16-bit compressors? Because lossy compression is the last thing anyone who really needs 16-bit images is going to do to them!
So in summary, you seem to be someone who has a fetish for insanely high resolution digital images but wants to do horrible things like lossy compression to them, is too cheap to pay someone to serve his very, very tiny niche needs and for whatever reason doesn't want to solve his obscure problem himself.
For the majority of uses, high quality images should be stored as RAW. They're similar in size to high quality JPEG, support all the bit depth, channels and whatever else you need, and are actually lossless. There are a few fringe images that actually have three full colour channels and so the RAW will take up more space, but there aren't many of those.
If you do want some compression, choose from among the host of image file formats. If it's for your own archiving there are a huge number of choices. Nobody needs another one.
Sure, in terms of you or I those thumbnails take up a lot of space. In relation to anything else Google does, they're small potatoes. The bigger ones might be taking up a little more, but not much compared to, say, YouTube.
This announcement has the air of marketing - someone mentions one day that WebM can compress individual frames better than JPEG and the boss immediately wants it packaged up as a JPEG competitor (we're going to take over the net!). He's not really interested in hearing that pretty much any reasonably modern image or video compressor is going to outperform JPEG.
Your post seems to lack a coherent thesis. No, science doesn't reveal truth. It has never claimed to (which is one of the things that separates it from religion). Capital-T Truth is likely not attainable. If it is, we certainly don't know how to go about it.
Science is purely utilitarian. You go with what works. When something comes along that works better, you go with that.
Many times I've had Slashdotters replying who have read the first half of a sentence I wrote but somehow forgot to read the second half. I thought the concern over decreasing attention spans was overblown, but now I'm not so sure.
"-Don't contact ET. On the one hand, what are the odds that we will do so? On the other hand, oops, you're about 100 years too late if we count radio signals alone, ignoring the big thrust that took place in the 70s and 80s."
Fifty years or so of yelling in the dark is a barely perceptible flash in the pan. We're already getting much quieter than we were, and will likely continue to do so in the future. Future attempts to contact aliens will likely have to be purposeful, and by any reasonable estimates we'll need to call for a LONG time to have any reasonable chance of being detected.
"-No need for God, gravity made everything. Creation versus evolution aside, doesn't gravity describe the attraction between particles based on their mass? So, if you have no particles, how could gravity make something ex nihilo?"
Not quite. Gravity is an attractive force between clumps of energy. If you've got some energy (and surprisingly little seems to be required), quantum mechanics and gravity can pretty much take you the rest of the way. Postulating some energy and a few simple rules is a lot simpler than postulating god. Particularly the bumbling, meddling god of the bible religions.
"-No Grand Unified Theory. Seems like a bit of hubris taking its course here. "If I can't find it, no one will!""
What he seems to have said is more along the lines of "I was sure there was one, but now I'm not so sure. There might not be." It actually sounds kind of like the opposite of hubris.
Theoretical physics is very much a young man's game, probably even more so than football. Lederman has a good quote in his book. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what it is, or who said it, but it involves physicists who are in their late twenties being over the hill.
When physicists get older they become administrators and mentors. Important jobs, but not the breakthrough stuff the young ones are known for.
Over the last little while there have been occasional stories on Slashdot where the summary makes some smug comment about free speech being less protected in Canada than in the US.
You do, of course. Google (or whoever) gets to know where you're going and what you're looking at. Same as all Google's other free services - ads and tracking.
Now, the question is, does being default search engine on Android justify it's cost? Particularly when you'd probably be default search engine anyway? Or is Google going to have to do something evil?
Who needs a voice plan? I certainly don't. It would be FAR cheaper if I didn't have one. Ah, and there's the rub. The current cell phone companies will fight the affordable data only plan on anything resembling a phone until they're dead and buried with the bones salted and burned.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course not. Those jeans at the mall don't cost $100 to make either. Nevertheless, that's what the manufacturer and retailers have decided the market will bear.
You're absolutely correct, cell phones are hideously overpriced, most likely because very few people ever buy one unsubsidized. It's not your country though, it's everywhere.
http://www.amazon.com/software-business-education-finance-childrens/b/ref=sa_menu_sw4?ie=UTF8&node=229534
Apparently lots of them. Big names too.
Strange how developers of boxed desktop and notebook software have been happily going with that deal for decades.
You'll find that $600 is more or less what a smart phone costs. You get them much cheaper in an expensive, restrictive bundle because that's where the company subsidizing your phone makes back it's money. It's not because of where you live.
You're one of the edge cases who doesn't use a Bayer sensor. Or do you? Does your scanner really do three passes?
You'd also likely be best served by simply scanning at a lower resolution. What exactly are you doing that you need such giant images, since you're not archiving them (you have the negatives for that)? The "but I shoot MF film" unfortunately sounds like you might have a bit of the "my scanner goes up to 11, so that's what I scan at" syndrome. Particularly when you turn around and JPEG compress it.
For completely open 16-bit compression you could use TIFF with LZW compression. If you really want lossy you might have to actually use something (gasp) not free, since in this case it seems the open source community is not serving your needs. In the spirit of that community, another option would be to just write one. I'm sure the Ogg guys wouldn't mind too much if you used their intraframe compressor to make your own image compression format. There's lots of JPEG source around you could modify too.
RAW from a Bayer sensor is certainly not 10-15 times the size of max quality JPEG unless you're taking pictures of blue sky or your camera/scanner is lying through it's teeth to you about the resolution or bit depth it's capturing. I've got a fairly typical shot from a Canon 30D here - the 16-bit RAW is 7.1 MB (6.6 zipped) and the max quality JPEG from Photoshop is 4.3 MB.
Ever wondered why there aren't many lossy 16-bit compressors? Because lossy compression is the last thing anyone who really needs 16-bit images is going to do to them!
So in summary, you seem to be someone who has a fetish for insanely high resolution digital images but wants to do horrible things like lossy compression to them, is too cheap to pay someone to serve his very, very tiny niche needs and for whatever reason doesn't want to solve his obscure problem himself.
I forgot about Picasa. Still, it can't be a drop in the bucket compared to the other things Google does.
For the majority of uses, high quality images should be stored as RAW. They're similar in size to high quality JPEG, support all the bit depth, channels and whatever else you need, and are actually lossless. There are a few fringe images that actually have three full colour channels and so the RAW will take up more space, but there aren't many of those.
If you do want some compression, choose from among the host of image file formats. If it's for your own archiving there are a huge number of choices. Nobody needs another one.
Sure, in terms of you or I those thumbnails take up a lot of space. In relation to anything else Google does, they're small potatoes. The bigger ones might be taking up a little more, but not much compared to, say, YouTube.
This announcement has the air of marketing - someone mentions one day that WebM can compress individual frames better than JPEG and the boss immediately wants it packaged up as a JPEG competitor (we're going to take over the net!). He's not really interested in hearing that pretty much any reasonably modern image or video compressor is going to outperform JPEG.
Does Google really host that many images? What for?
JPEG was cutting edge a couple of decades ago but it's not very hard to beat now. We still use it because everything supports it and it's good enough.
Ig Nobels are not really an insult. They CAN be, but they aren't necessarily.
Your post seems to lack a coherent thesis. No, science doesn't reveal truth. It has never claimed to (which is one of the things that separates it from religion). Capital-T Truth is likely not attainable. If it is, we certainly don't know how to go about it.
Science is purely utilitarian. You go with what works. When something comes along that works better, you go with that.
Many times I've had Slashdotters replying who have read the first half of a sentence I wrote but somehow forgot to read the second half. I thought the concern over decreasing attention spans was overblown, but now I'm not so sure.
So when Hawking says it's possible there is no unified theory he's almost certainly right?
"-Don't contact ET. On the one hand, what are the odds that we will do so? On the other hand, oops, you're about 100 years too late if we count radio signals alone, ignoring the big thrust that took place in the 70s and 80s."
Fifty years or so of yelling in the dark is a barely perceptible flash in the pan. We're already getting much quieter than we were, and will likely continue to do so in the future. Future attempts to contact aliens will likely have to be purposeful, and by any reasonable estimates we'll need to call for a LONG time to have any reasonable chance of being detected.
"-No need for God, gravity made everything. Creation versus evolution aside, doesn't gravity describe the attraction between particles based on their mass? So, if you have no particles, how could gravity make something ex nihilo?"
Not quite. Gravity is an attractive force between clumps of energy. If you've got some energy (and surprisingly little seems to be required), quantum mechanics and gravity can pretty much take you the rest of the way. Postulating some energy and a few simple rules is a lot simpler than postulating god. Particularly the bumbling, meddling god of the bible religions.
"-No Grand Unified Theory. Seems like a bit of hubris taking its course here. "If I can't find it, no one will!""
What he seems to have said is more along the lines of "I was sure there was one, but now I'm not so sure. There might not be." It actually sounds kind of like the opposite of hubris.
"He's a physicist, not a football player."
Theoretical physics is very much a young man's game, probably even more so than football. Lederman has a good quote in his book. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what it is, or who said it, but it involves physicists who are in their late twenties being over the hill.
When physicists get older they become administrators and mentors. Important jobs, but not the breakthrough stuff the young ones are known for.
It's not so good at doing arithmetic? In science we're also not too hung up on proving anything, never mind everything, true or false.
"Incomplete" and "inconsistent" in this context aren't exactly as they may seem either.
Over the last little while there have been occasional stories on Slashdot where the summary makes some smug comment about free speech being less protected in Canada than in the US.
Huh.
He did say "contender" not "candidate."
So then the Democratic People's Republic of Korea must be both democratic and a republic right?
You do, of course. Google (or whoever) gets to know where you're going and what you're looking at. Same as all Google's other free services - ads and tracking.
Now, the question is, does being default search engine on Android justify it's cost? Particularly when you'd probably be default search engine anyway? Or is Google going to have to do something evil?
Sad thing is, that might even make the XBox profitable.
And is only free on an introductory basis?
Who needs a voice plan? I certainly don't. It would be FAR cheaper if I didn't have one. Ah, and there's the rub. The current cell phone companies will fight the affordable data only plan on anything resembling a phone until they're dead and buried with the bones salted and burned.