Re:5 Megapixel camera?!? Why this thing again?
on
iPhone 4 Rumors Rumble
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· Score: 3, Informative
Had to post all that anonymously, hey?
First off, I'm talking about resolution. I thought I made that clear. Resolution is the ability to distinguish (to resolve) two objects spaced a particular distance apart. I am NOT talking about image quality.
Now, it is quite possible your 12 MP cell phone camera produces visually higher quality images than other cell cameras, or even point and shoot cameras. That does NOT mean it is producing 12 MP worth of resolution, or anything like it.
A DSLR with a very good lens (or a medium/large format with a very good lens) IS the correct item to compare with. We're looking for the best gold standard possible. Again, we are comparing only resolving power. If your 12 MP sensor is not matched with a lens that is capable of providing a sufficiently sharp image then your sensor is being wasted. Again, it might be producing a very nice image, but an image that does not have 12 MP of resolving power.
Have you looked at your pictures zoomed in sufficiently so that you're actually seeing one image pixel per pixel on your screen?
Now, looking at the Pixon 12, it turns out it DOES NOT have a typical cell phone camera lens. That lens has an area that is many times what most cell phones have, and looks like it might even be made out of glass (instead of plastic). The thing even looks like it has multiple lens elements, and might even zoom! Of COURSE that's going to look good compared to any typical cell camera, and against point and shoots too. That IS a point and shoot lens. Again, notice in my post how I said "typical cell phone lens." Also note that we're discussing the iPhone, which has a typical cell phone lens, and is not going to be putting one of those monsters on.
I can see why you posted as an AC. Your post really sounds like you're trying to justify your purchase. Well, to make you feel better, that thing might actually justify a 4-5 MP sensor, far above what a typical cell camera does, and better than most point and shoots. If you take a picture of a standard test chart under standard conditions and post it, we can tell you.
Next time take a more careful read through the post you're replying to, try to understand the actual issue at hand, and remember to keep your temper under control.
Re:5 Megapixel camera?!? Why this thing again?
on
iPhone 4 Rumors Rumble
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you can figure out how to get a raw image out of a camera phone then be my guest. They're usually not accessible. If anything, the sharpening steps that are applied act to cover up the low acquired resolution.
Camera manufacturers get away with it because almost nobody ever looks at their phone photos at anything close to full resolution. You can easily see the softness in a camera phone shot compared one from a decent camera, comparing full screen on a notebook. That's around 1.3 MP. Blown up full screen on a 1080P high def TV is still only a touch over 2 MP.
So when a camera phone can show full quality, no visible softness on a 1080p monitor then maybe it will be time to go to more than 2 MP.
The electrodes don't exactly wear out, they get surrounded by basically scar tissue that forms an insulating layer, and they work less and less well. Most DBS patients have advanced Parkinson's and the lifetime of the electrodes isn't really an issue. Presumably the big market for pleasure centre stimulation would be a somewhat younger population.
I don't know how accurate you have to be to get a reasonable result in the pleasure centre, but DBS surgery for Parkinson's requires fairly good accuracy. An MR scanner that's going to be useful for that sort of thing is going to run you at least a few million, plus periodic topping off of the $30,000 helium supply. Even then, the real cost is the surgeon, OR staff, recovery, malpractice insurance, etc. All of which you can shortcut if you're willing to go to a shady third world back alley, of course.
Even so, major surgery usually starts in the tens of thousands. Most drugs aren't much harder to grow and harvest than standard crops, and you can buy an awful lot of wheat for the price of a single brain surgery.
Slashdot definitely got trolled. The article itself is pretty funny. Besides the bits you mention about the "Goldilocks Mission," they also think the planet is habitable but they might have to build a space elevator because it's thick atmosphere will block out light.
I wonder how many 18-34 year old women in top physical condition they get, who are willing to live in a "Space Center" in the desert?
I suspect periodic brain surgery (electrodes in the brain don't work forever) would be far more expensive than buying your drug of choice at its free market value. Actually, it would probably be more expensive than buying your drug of choice at it's existing market value as well.
No, I should have checked. I originally thought "Samsung" but knew that couldn't be right. But I just couldn't face that page again.
A lot of crimes have been committed against/with the web, but setting words in articles to automatically pop up windows with definitions/advertising/random spam has got to be one of the worst. Even supposedly reputable organizations (is it the NY Times?) seem to feel their readership need every second word wired with an in your face definition.
Perhaps things have changed in the last few years, but I can just picture trying to explain to the average Windows end user how to install and use Cygwin.
Absolutely. I'd use Python and Qt myself. But if you wanted to write a native app for Windows and you didn't HAVE Windows (or didn't care to be subjected to it), what would you use?
The page linked to is an ad laden (carefully selected related items, yeah right) mess that has this third or fourth hand. Even physorg just has a press release that mentions the battery and focuses on Panasonic acquiring Sharp and how harsh the corporate environment is.
How big is this thing? What is it's capacity? Is that a Japanese house, or a North American one?
Re:5 Megapixel camera?!? Why this thing again?
on
iPhone 4 Rumors Rumble
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"With mainstream phones going high with 12+MP en HD video cameras, frankly the 5MB I heard about the new phone are ludicrously pathetic."
Other way around, actually. A 12 MP (or even a 5 MP) sensor in a cell phone is a ludicrously pathetic marketing trick. As a practical matter, a typical cell phone lens is going to give you about 2 MP. Pairing that with a high resolution sensor just means you're measuring the blur more accurately, and wasting storage and processing capacity. Note - there ARE some (rare) cell phones that use bigger lenses, and those might actually get 3 or 4 MP, but definitely not 12.
You can measure the MTF yourself if you want. Last time I had this argument with somebody he actually posted a picture from his 5 MP cell phone camera and we compared with an appropriately blurred version from my 6 MP SLR. Guess what? His picture had an effective resolution of about 2 MP (and horrible noise). Which brings up another point - small lenses will always give you poor low light performance, but you make it much, much worse by trying to capture an crazy number of pixels to boot.
The cell phone appears to be the last bastion of the megapixel myth. Camera manufacturers have started giving up that marketing tactic, with newer cameras going to less resolution and emphasizing noise performance. If the rumors are true, it's actually too bad Apple has given into this ploy... although it's probably hard to source lower resolution sensors now.
I think it would be more likely you're a Linux/Mac developer who for some reason needs to write something for Windows. If you were a Windows developer you'd probably just use MS's tools and test with Mono.
Yes, that's what I said. You need to license ActiveSync to write an ActiveSync push e-mail client.
There are lots of alternatives to ActiveSync for push e-mail, which do not require using any MS software (server OR client). Push-IMAP would seem to be just what you asked for - an open, license free standard for push e-mail. SyncML is another possibility.
If the craniotomy doesn't turn you off, the constant risk of infection should. If that STILL doesn't do it, you have to get the whole thing redone after a while because the brain builds scar tissue around the electrodes, eventually cutting them off.
At a comfortable ambient temperature your body is usually a good deal warmer than the air. I'm sitting in a room with about a temperature of 22 degrees right now, and that's a little warmer than I'd like, but there's still a healthy temperature gradient between that and my 37ish degree core temperature.
Try sitting in a bath where the water is at ambient air temperature and see if it feels cool or not.
Are you sure? You need to license ActiveSync to write software compatible with Exchange. I don't find any indication that the other push e-mail solutions require it. Yahoo has their own system based on SMS notifications, Apple does support Exchange but also has their own push system based on Mobile Me, and the IMAP protocol has been extended (or is being, I think it's still a draft standard). I think Google supports both ActiveSync and Push-IMAP as well, now.
I realize business users get kind of stuck in the Exchange/Blackberry box, but that doesn't seem to be any more a reflection of the actual available options than how they used to insist you had to use an Exchange compatible e-mail client because POP and IMAP (i.e. the way the rest of the world does e-mail) simply didn't exist.
I know one of my IMAP accounts is hosted on some sort of Linux or BSD machine. It used to be a Cobalt server, but I think they switched that a while back. Another is on a Red Hat machine in the lab. Another is definitely a non-MS machine, since you can use Pine to read it. The last is a Mobile Me account, so I really doubt it has much to do with Microsoft.
Nobody uses voltage dividers on electronics. A voltage divider might be cheaper for you to hook up on a breadboard, but it probably isn't for a factory to build into a product. For that you use a voltage regulator which is (1) more efficient, (2) can deal with varying supply voltages and (3) is a single component rather than two (or more) resistors that must be soldered onto the board.
A cheap lighter plug generally doesn't do ANYTHING. If you're lucky there's a fuse in there in case the thing shorts. It just provides a connection to the 12 volt (ish) battery supply. All the power conditioning and conversion is done in the electronic device, usually by a voltage regulator or, in some cases, might be done in some of the fancier lighter to USB plugs that supply five volts, also by a voltage regulator.
In general things like that don't actually exist in the real world. If you want to produce a square wave, for example, you actually end up approximating it, effectively with sinusoids. In the real world you just can't make things vibrate like that, and that includes air.
"measure the location of nearby space objects with fairly good accuracy"
That's one of the big sources of error. Any error in it's position now, however small, gets amplified the further you run the clock forward. There are also errors introduced because the prediction has to be done numerically, there being no known analytical solution to the laws of motion for more than two bodies.
Slashdot Mirror
Had to post all that anonymously, hey?
First off, I'm talking about resolution. I thought I made that clear. Resolution is the ability to distinguish (to resolve) two objects spaced a particular distance apart. I am NOT talking about image quality.
Now, it is quite possible your 12 MP cell phone camera produces visually higher quality images than other cell cameras, or even point and shoot cameras. That does NOT mean it is producing 12 MP worth of resolution, or anything like it.
A DSLR with a very good lens (or a medium/large format with a very good lens) IS the correct item to compare with. We're looking for the best gold standard possible. Again, we are comparing only resolving power. If your 12 MP sensor is not matched with a lens that is capable of providing a sufficiently sharp image then your sensor is being wasted. Again, it might be producing a very nice image, but an image that does not have 12 MP of resolving power.
Have you looked at your pictures zoomed in sufficiently so that you're actually seeing one image pixel per pixel on your screen?
Now, looking at the Pixon 12, it turns out it DOES NOT have a typical cell phone camera lens. That lens has an area that is many times what most cell phones have, and looks like it might even be made out of glass (instead of plastic). The thing even looks like it has multiple lens elements, and might even zoom! Of COURSE that's going to look good compared to any typical cell camera, and against point and shoots too. That IS a point and shoot lens. Again, notice in my post how I said "typical cell phone lens." Also note that we're discussing the iPhone, which has a typical cell phone lens, and is not going to be putting one of those monsters on.
I can see why you posted as an AC. Your post really sounds like you're trying to justify your purchase. Well, to make you feel better, that thing might actually justify a 4-5 MP sensor, far above what a typical cell camera does, and better than most point and shoots. If you take a picture of a standard test chart under standard conditions and post it, we can tell you.
Next time take a more careful read through the post you're replying to, try to understand the actual issue at hand, and remember to keep your temper under control.
If you can figure out how to get a raw image out of a camera phone then be my guest. They're usually not accessible. If anything, the sharpening steps that are applied act to cover up the low acquired resolution.
Camera manufacturers get away with it because almost nobody ever looks at their phone photos at anything close to full resolution. You can easily see the softness in a camera phone shot compared one from a decent camera, comparing full screen on a notebook. That's around 1.3 MP. Blown up full screen on a 1080P high def TV is still only a touch over 2 MP.
So when a camera phone can show full quality, no visible softness on a 1080p monitor then maybe it will be time to go to more than 2 MP.
The electrodes don't exactly wear out, they get surrounded by basically scar tissue that forms an insulating layer, and they work less and less well. Most DBS patients have advanced Parkinson's and the lifetime of the electrodes isn't really an issue. Presumably the big market for pleasure centre stimulation would be a somewhat younger population.
I don't know how accurate you have to be to get a reasonable result in the pleasure centre, but DBS surgery for Parkinson's requires fairly good accuracy. An MR scanner that's going to be useful for that sort of thing is going to run you at least a few million, plus periodic topping off of the $30,000 helium supply. Even then, the real cost is the surgeon, OR staff, recovery, malpractice insurance, etc. All of which you can shortcut if you're willing to go to a shady third world back alley, of course.
Even so, major surgery usually starts in the tens of thousands. Most drugs aren't much harder to grow and harvest than standard crops, and you can buy an awful lot of wheat for the price of a single brain surgery.
Slashdot definitely got trolled. The article itself is pretty funny. Besides the bits you mention about the "Goldilocks Mission," they also think the planet is habitable but they might have to build a space elevator because it's thick atmosphere will block out light.
I wonder how many 18-34 year old women in top physical condition they get, who are willing to live in a "Space Center" in the desert?
I suspect periodic brain surgery (electrodes in the brain don't work forever) would be far more expensive than buying your drug of choice at its free market value. Actually, it would probably be more expensive than buying your drug of choice at it's existing market value as well.
No, I should have checked. I originally thought "Samsung" but knew that couldn't be right. But I just couldn't face that page again.
A lot of crimes have been committed against/with the web, but setting words in articles to automatically pop up windows with definitions/advertising/random spam has got to be one of the worst. Even supposedly reputable organizations (is it the NY Times?) seem to feel their readership need every second word wired with an in your face definition.
"Cygwin is almost certainly sufficient"
Perhaps things have changed in the last few years, but I can just picture trying to explain to the average Windows end user how to install and use Cygwin.
Hey, I could be a blogger!
Absolutely. I'd use Python and Qt myself. But if you wanted to write a native app for Windows and you didn't HAVE Windows (or didn't care to be subjected to it), what would you use?
There aren't really a lot of options.
The page linked to is an ad laden (carefully selected related items, yeah right) mess that has this third or fourth hand. Even physorg just has a press release that mentions the battery and focuses on Panasonic acquiring Sharp and how harsh the corporate environment is.
How big is this thing? What is it's capacity? Is that a Japanese house, or a North American one?
"With mainstream phones going high with 12+MP en HD video cameras, frankly the 5MB I heard about the new phone are ludicrously pathetic."
Other way around, actually. A 12 MP (or even a 5 MP) sensor in a cell phone is a ludicrously pathetic marketing trick. As a practical matter, a typical cell phone lens is going to give you about 2 MP. Pairing that with a high resolution sensor just means you're measuring the blur more accurately, and wasting storage and processing capacity. Note - there ARE some (rare) cell phones that use bigger lenses, and those might actually get 3 or 4 MP, but definitely not 12.
You can measure the MTF yourself if you want. Last time I had this argument with somebody he actually posted a picture from his 5 MP cell phone camera and we compared with an appropriately blurred version from my 6 MP SLR. Guess what? His picture had an effective resolution of about 2 MP (and horrible noise). Which brings up another point - small lenses will always give you poor low light performance, but you make it much, much worse by trying to capture an crazy number of pixels to boot.
The cell phone appears to be the last bastion of the megapixel myth. Camera manufacturers have started giving up that marketing tactic, with newer cameras going to less resolution and emphasizing noise performance. If the rumors are true, it's actually too bad Apple has given into this ploy... although it's probably hard to source lower resolution sensors now.
I think it would be more likely you're a Linux/Mac developer who for some reason needs to write something for Windows. If you were a Windows developer you'd probably just use MS's tools and test with Mono.
Yes, that's what I said. You need to license ActiveSync to write an ActiveSync push e-mail client.
There are lots of alternatives to ActiveSync for push e-mail, which do not require using any MS software (server OR client). Push-IMAP would seem to be just what you asked for - an open, license free standard for push e-mail. SyncML is another possibility.
If the craniotomy doesn't turn you off, the constant risk of infection should. If that STILL doesn't do it, you have to get the whole thing redone after a while because the brain builds scar tissue around the electrodes, eventually cutting them off.
Your quote dropped a "micro" symbol. 30 W/cm2 is enough to power my laptop from a bit of skin about the size of my thumb nail.
At a comfortable ambient temperature your body is usually a good deal warmer than the air. I'm sitting in a room with about a temperature of 22 degrees right now, and that's a little warmer than I'd like, but there's still a healthy temperature gradient between that and my 37ish degree core temperature.
Try sitting in a bath where the water is at ambient air temperature and see if it feels cool or not.
Are you sure? You need to license ActiveSync to write software compatible with Exchange. I don't find any indication that the other push e-mail solutions require it. Yahoo has their own system based on SMS notifications, Apple does support Exchange but also has their own push system based on Mobile Me, and the IMAP protocol has been extended (or is being, I think it's still a draft standard). I think Google supports both ActiveSync and Push-IMAP as well, now.
I realize business users get kind of stuck in the Exchange/Blackberry box, but that doesn't seem to be any more a reflection of the actual available options than how they used to insist you had to use an Exchange compatible e-mail client because POP and IMAP (i.e. the way the rest of the world does e-mail) simply didn't exist.
Microsoft?
I know one of my IMAP accounts is hosted on some sort of Linux or BSD machine. It used to be a Cobalt server, but I think they switched that a while back. Another is on a Red Hat machine in the lab. Another is definitely a non-MS machine, since you can use Pine to read it. The last is a Mobile Me account, so I really doubt it has much to do with Microsoft.
Ask a pilot about his plane sometime, and see what pronoun he uses. Or a car guy about his car.
You don't suppose WWII bomber pilots named their planes, painted women on them and then referred to the aircraft as "it," do you?
Nobody uses voltage dividers on electronics. A voltage divider might be cheaper for you to hook up on a breadboard, but it probably isn't for a factory to build into a product. For that you use a voltage regulator which is (1) more efficient, (2) can deal with varying supply voltages and (3) is a single component rather than two (or more) resistors that must be soldered onto the board.
A cheap lighter plug generally doesn't do ANYTHING. If you're lucky there's a fuse in there in case the thing shorts. It just provides a connection to the 12 volt (ish) battery supply. All the power conditioning and conversion is done in the electronic device, usually by a voltage regulator or, in some cases, might be done in some of the fancier lighter to USB plugs that supply five volts, also by a voltage regulator.
"A square wave is a sine wave with added sine waves of odd harmonics to the fundamental."
So composed of sine waves, yes? It wold be quite fair to say that those square waves are made using sine waves as ingredients?
In general things like that don't actually exist in the real world. If you want to produce a square wave, for example, you actually end up approximating it, effectively with sinusoids. In the real world you just can't make things vibrate like that, and that includes air.
Our definitions of "music" might differ a bit, but most music doesn't make use of square waves, triangle waves, or sawtooth waves either.
"measure the location of nearby space objects with fairly good accuracy"
That's one of the big sources of error. Any error in it's position now, however small, gets amplified the further you run the clock forward. There are also errors introduced because the prediction has to be done numerically, there being no known analytical solution to the laws of motion for more than two bodies.
It's going a wee bit fast.