I can give one solid-gold, straightforward, real-life reason for wanting to hack a digital camera.
My Sony DSC 717 takes infrared photos. You can hear the "clunk" as it moves the IR hot mirror out of the way for "Night Shot" mode. It would be perfect for a low-cost scientific aerial mapping application (e.g., http://www.soils.wisc.edu/~wayne/aerial_photos/aer ials_2003_06_14/), replacing custom-built cameras worth thousands of dollars.
But, because somebody once took naughty pictures with a Sony Handicam (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-214389.html?legacy= cnet, Sony crippled the IR function. Now it only works at wide apertures and slow shutter speeds, leaving aerial IR pictures hopelessly overexposed (yes, I tried ND filters) and blurry (I can only slow to about 70 MPH or the nose rises, as do the passengers' gorges).
A simple "don't do that" hack to the firmware would suffice. You *know* that the cripplage is only a couple of lines of code:
if (nightShot) { honkExposure(); }
But, when asked formally and with the full references to the scientific research we were doing (the lead prof, BTW, is internationally renowned in the field, we ain't just grubby grad students looking to save a buck and peek at Auntie Bowdler's bra), Sony blew us off.
Every viable open-source business I can think of makes their money by providing value-added services to a _platform_, which is itself free.
So the way to make the big bucks gaming is to build a colossally excellent engine, slap a great game on top of it, open the whole works after the initial buying frenzy and then either (a) sell subsequent closed-source games written atop it or (b)...sheesh, there is no (b).
For many of us, exercise itself is not fun, hence other priorities squeeze it out. (The rest of you, off in the corner over there and admire each other's pects for awhile, w'dja mind? We be talkin bidness here.)
If you can possibly work more work into getting to work, you decrement your death clock. Within 1 mile? Walk to work. 15-20 minutes. Within 8 miles? Bike. Further out, adjust transport to deposit you within those limits.
You gotta get to work somehow, and you gotta spend time doing it. Might as well fight flab. That way, you're giving up very little else.
That of course is a large part of the justification for design patterns in the first place -- giving us a common language.
Fowler's book got a Productivity Award at this year's Jolts -- only reason he didn't get the Jolt, IMHO (OK, not so humble, I was one of the judges), is that Bob Martin's book was a little more fun to read and a little more generally applicable. (That one, BTW, is Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices).
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My Sony DSC 717 takes infrared photos. You can hear the "clunk" as it moves the IR hot mirror out of the way for "Night Shot" mode. It would be perfect for a low-cost scientific aerial mapping application (e.g., http://www.soils.wisc.edu/~wayne/aerial_photos/aer ials_2003_06_14/), replacing custom-built cameras worth thousands of dollars.
But, because somebody once took naughty pictures with a Sony Handicam (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-214389.html?legacy= cnet, Sony crippled the IR function. Now it only works at wide apertures and slow shutter speeds, leaving aerial IR pictures hopelessly overexposed (yes, I tried ND filters) and blurry (I can only slow to about 70 MPH or the nose rises, as do the passengers' gorges).
A simple "don't do that" hack to the firmware would suffice. You *know* that the cripplage is only a couple of lines of code:
But, when asked formally and with the full references to the scientific research we were doing (the lead prof, BTW, is internationally renowned in the field, we ain't just grubby grad students looking to save a buck and peek at Auntie Bowdler's bra), Sony blew us off.
Open source firmware? You bet we'd go for it.
Every viable open-source business I can think of makes their money by providing value-added services to a _platform_, which is itself free. So the way to make the big bucks gaming is to build a colossally excellent engine, slap a great game on top of it, open the whole works after the initial buying frenzy and then either (a) sell subsequent closed-source games written atop it or (b)...sheesh, there is no (b).
For many of us, exercise itself is not fun, hence other priorities squeeze it out. (The rest of you, off in the corner over there and admire each other's pects for awhile, w'dja mind? We be talkin bidness here.) If you can possibly work more work into getting to work, you decrement your death clock. Within 1 mile? Walk to work. 15-20 minutes. Within 8 miles? Bike. Further out, adjust transport to deposit you within those limits. You gotta get to work somehow, and you gotta spend time doing it. Might as well fight flab. That way, you're giving up very little else.
Fowler's book got a Productivity Award at this year's Jolts -- only reason he didn't get the Jolt, IMHO (OK, not so humble, I was one of the judges), is that Bob Martin's book was a little more fun to read and a little more generally applicable. (That one, BTW, is Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices).
I can highly recommend either book.