It's not through fear of some diabolical use of flash, it's entirely annoyance with animated ads. Ads should just sit there unless and until I click on them.
It's not necessarily the ads, (hell, I've clicked on a small static ad once or twice) it's the way they're implemented.
Let's take for example a company that will remain nameless but their initials are Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It's not that their website contains ads. It's that the pages take so long to load even with fiber to the house, and the ads autoplay, or pop over full page with hidden "dismiss" buttons, or pop under and autoplay (yes, I know I already said "autoplay") to an extent that it resembles a porn site.
...which makes me wonder, is there some balancing point where ads conflict with content to the extent that consumers start to get driven away until you've reached some maximum level of people dumb enough to continue to try to use the site? Because I have a feeling that they're way past that.
I'd say... (well, I *did* say, in an open letter to my daughter that's been a continuous project for the last few years) that there will be a time just a few years from now (13-15) where your emotions will be in turmoil, and you may not be able to make sense of it or know why you're having the feelings you have. This is a normal part of growing up, and it will pass. You just need to do the best you can and wait it out.
Later you'll go through a different set of emotions and crises when it's time to leave home and set out on your own. This too will pass.
During these times, you may say or do things that you will regret later. Know that your family understands this and will not hold it against you.
All I ask of you is that you follow your heart and strive to do your best. Find something you want to do and become the best you can at it, no matter what it is. Think clearly, make educated decisions, set your own course. The people worth having in your life will remain, the people who aren't will go. This is a natural process.
Many times throughout your life you will be saying goodbye for the last time -- to friends, family, pets. This is part of the price we pay for living our lives. Eventually people will be saying goodbye to you. But your influence on others -- the footprints you've left in other people's lives -- will live on. And this will be enough.
It doesn't seem like there's any way to know whether I'm googling afflictions of mine or had by family members or friends. (Many of which obviously apply to the other sex.) How is that supposed to work?
Yeah, same here. When I hear a term or a disease or a disorder I hadn't heard of, I usually google it, as computer or phone are usually nearby. That must have created a really eclectic list of ailments and behaviors.
A few days ago I got a letter that my doctor had retired effective immediately. Maybe she saw the list...
Working power drill press, wood lathe, jig saw, sanding disk.
Or, the Thingmaker die caster with high temp exposed parts?
Heaven forefend that we give our kids toys that let them learn useful things.
Can anyone even do woodburning crafts anymore?
I think we can go one-up on the thingmaker. Earlier there was a molten lead casting kit. Never mind kids were allowed to play with lead, it was *molten* lead.
Yeah. Windows Phone? Wiki says it's been out for five years, and as an IT person and somewhat of a gadget nerd, I've only ever seen one (1) in the wild.
I guess it's interesting in a train-wreck sort of way.
With all the GUI churn Microsoft is going through lately, it really seems like it would be more practical to design a base set of services and a command line interface that changes little, and then put a separate GUI as an application on top of that. Then they could change out the GUI as CEOs come and go, without having to redesign the base. They could hide the underlying layer by disabling the ability to boot to command line, except for debug purposes.
As many have already pointed out, $2 won't even buy a decent cup of coffee, so most people (or, most people who post here anyway) wouldn't miss it. Regardless of how one might feel about the value received, the investment is pretty much down in the noise.
But where this can do damage (to anyone, not only the minimum-waged) is the mistaken belief that one can acquire the prize by buying a *whole lot* of tickets. Every once in awhile you hear of people who have hocked their possessions and put every dime they had into lottery tickets. It doesn't end well.
I think this whole story is a great example of police mis-allocating resources. Cut the cost of SWAT and armored trucks, and you have enough money to get some computer specialist to identify suspicious/fake calls for swat whenever you get them.
Maybe cops should learn some restraint in their use of force?
Hm. That's one possible outcome of swatting. If there are a few high profile innocent deaths as a result, policy may be changed to approach more cautiously. But they'd have to be really high profile, and we (and the media) would have to really rub their noses in it. I don't see it happening.
Don't care about the hacking, but he should be tortured for swatting.
No kidding. People could die from that. The days of the police sauntering in gun holstered saying "'ello 'ello what's all this then?" are flat gone, if they ever existed. If someone is bursting into your home with guns pointed, things can get lethal very quickly. Regardless of whether any crime was committed.
I use an Olympus Stylus 1 at work for product shots.
Can't live without remote viewing on my phone.
Get rid of specular highlights on plastic by covering the entire setup with a white sheet and using the phone to do the shot.
Perhaps phones and cameras may complement each other?
That's brilliant. I'll have to try that. My two older pro bodies support remote viewing with a laptop and a cable, but yeah, there's no reason why a camera with built-in wifi and a smart phone couldn't do the same thing.
That's a great solution for specular highlights, and an excellent practical use of a feature that would at first seem gimmicky. Well done.
I think what's happened is that general consume expectations have changed. Consumers have been trained to want snaps and short videos of what's happening in the moment, and cell phones fill that need admirably. They're not high quality -- the lenses on most phones are atrocious, and it really is not all about the pixel count [1], but it's the camera that you always have on you, and you can share in seconds, so it's no surprise at all that it's filled a need that, really, hardly existed before. I get paid to take pictures with professional gear, yet I still take snaps with my camera phone. I understand that the two platforms fill different needs.
Is conventional photography dead? Hardly. There are things you can do with more conventional camera/lens/lighting combinations that phones and tablets just can't match. I think what we're seeing is a shift where people previously fumbling with cameras found their needs met with their phone camera, and the pros continue to use pro equipment.
Of course, pro equipment is changing too. 4/3, video in-camera, (with external modules to capture pcm stereo sound and sync it with the video), VR in-camera (Sony Alpha) or in-lens (Canon and Nikon), and a host of new post-processing capabilities, are changing the face of photography. But there will always be things high end equipment can do that can only be done by high end equipment, and there will always be a market for that somewhere.
During these shifts, I'd expect perfectly capable products to be left by the wayside. I would expect pocket cameras to have a hard time of it, as there is a lot of overlap with what current cell cameras can do. But wait a few years, and people may realize that shooting with a fixed plastic lens and zooming in software doesn't give good enough results, and midrange dedicated cameras may make a comeback. But they'll probably have some type of sharing built in. (We're already seeing dedicated cameras with wifi dongles, and more lately, wifi built in.)
[1] Pixel count is the MIPS of this century. Past a certain point, (which in my opinion has already passed in consumer gear) most users will not notice. Just as most generic consumer PCs have more CPU than most consumers need, most modern camera sensors have way more pixels than most consumers will ever notice. Also like MIPS, there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between pixel count and performance. Things like color depth, color pallet, different types of distortion, moire, in-camera post processing, and several other factors have as much or more to do with how well the photo turns out than mere resolution. And the hard fact is, the more pixels you have, the longer it takes to write to storage (other things being equal), the more space it takes up, and the longer it takes to load into and export out of editors. As a pro, I saw a moderate but constantly irritating slowdown in my workflow just going from a 12 Mpixel camera to a 24 Mpixel camera. (Nikon pro bodies.) Every operation that involved reading or writing a file was taking noticeably longer. Bigger isn't necessarily better. There has to be a *reason* to go to higher resolution, else you're probably fooling yourself.
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It's not through fear of some diabolical use of flash, it's entirely annoyance with animated ads. Ads should just sit there unless and until I click on them.
It's not necessarily the ads, (hell, I've clicked on a small static ad once or twice) it's the way they're implemented.
Let's take for example a company that will remain nameless but their initials are Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It's not that their website contains ads. It's that the pages take so long to load even with fiber to the house, and the ads autoplay, or pop over full page with hidden "dismiss" buttons, or pop under and autoplay (yes, I know I already said "autoplay") to an extent that it resembles a porn site.
Thanks, will look for that.
I have flash turned off (who doesn't?) but lately I've noticed that ads have begun to autoplay again.
So, how do you make html5 "always ask first"?
http://xkcd.com/791/
I'd say... (well, I *did* say, in an open letter to my daughter that's been a continuous project for the last few years) that there will be a time just a few years from now (13-15) where your emotions will be in turmoil, and you may not be able to make sense of it or know why you're having the feelings you have. This is a normal part of growing up, and it will pass. You just need to do the best you can and wait it out.
Later you'll go through a different set of emotions and crises when it's time to leave home and set out on your own. This too will pass.
During these times, you may say or do things that you will regret later. Know that your family understands this and will not hold it against you.
All I ask of you is that you follow your heart and strive to do your best. Find something you want to do and become the best you can at it, no matter what it is. Think clearly, make educated decisions, set your own course. The people worth having in your life will remain, the people who aren't will go. This is a natural process.
Many times throughout your life you will be saying goodbye for the last time -- to friends, family, pets. This is part of the price we pay for living our lives. Eventually people will be saying goodbye to you. But your influence on others -- the footprints you've left in other people's lives -- will live on. And this will be enough.
Point.
It doesn't seem like there's any way to know whether I'm googling afflictions of mine or had by family members or friends. (Many of which obviously apply to the other sex.) How is that supposed to work?
Yeah, same here. When I hear a term or a disease or a disorder I hadn't heard of, I usually google it, as computer or phone are usually nearby. That must have created a really eclectic list of ailments and behaviors.
A few days ago I got a letter that my doctor had retired effective immediately. Maybe she saw the list...
Working power drill press, wood lathe, jig saw, sanding disk.
Or, the Thingmaker die caster with high temp exposed parts?
Heaven forefend that we give our kids toys that let them learn useful things.
Can anyone even do woodburning crafts anymore?
I think we can go one-up on the thingmaker. Earlier there was a molten lead casting kit. Never mind kids were allowed to play with lead, it was *molten* lead.
So what's the solution? Ban automation?
It probably doesn't. But the smart ones who get started early enough will benefit. And for the rest, well, there's always food service.
Learn to fix robots.
I don't know why I'm even commenting on this.
Yeah. Windows Phone? Wiki says it's been out for five years, and as an IT person and somewhat of a gadget nerd, I've only ever seen one (1) in the wild.
I guess it's interesting in a train-wreck sort of way.
With all the GUI churn Microsoft is going through lately, it really seems like it would be more practical to design a base set of services and a command line interface that changes little, and then put a separate GUI as an application on top of that. Then they could change out the GUI as CEOs come and go, without having to redesign the base. They could hide the underlying layer by disabling the ability to boot to command line, except for debug purposes.
Oh, wait...
Shrug. And it gets you, like, three cups of coffee at McDonald's.
So fucking what?
What's that get you? 1/3 of a small coffee at Starbucks?
It'll get you a medium ("Grande" in Starbucks-speak) coffee-of-the-day if you don't add anything to it. (Which is how I order it.)
But the point is still valid. The cost of a single ticket is down in the noise.
As many have already pointed out, $2 won't even buy a decent cup of coffee, so most people (or, most people who post here anyway) wouldn't miss it. Regardless of how one might feel about the value received, the investment is pretty much down in the noise.
But where this can do damage (to anyone, not only the minimum-waged) is the mistaken belief that one can acquire the prize by buying a *whole lot* of tickets. Every once in awhile you hear of people who have hocked their possessions and put every dime they had into lottery tickets. It doesn't end well.
I think this whole story is a great example of police mis-allocating resources. Cut the cost of SWAT and armored trucks, and you have enough money to get some computer specialist to identify suspicious/fake calls for swat whenever you get them.
But that's not as much fun.
Maybe cops should learn some restraint in their use of force?
Hm. That's one possible outcome of swatting. If there are a few high profile innocent deaths as a result, policy may be changed to approach more cautiously. But they'd have to be really high profile, and we (and the media) would have to really rub their noses in it. I don't see it happening.
Don't care about the hacking, but he should be tortured for swatting.
No kidding. People could die from that. The days of the police sauntering in gun holstered saying "'ello 'ello what's all this then?" are flat gone, if they ever existed. If someone is bursting into your home with guns pointed, things can get lethal very quickly. Regardless of whether any crime was committed.
I use an Olympus Stylus 1 at work for product shots.
Can't live without remote viewing on my phone.
Get rid of specular highlights on plastic by covering the entire setup with a white sheet and using the phone to do the shot.
Perhaps phones and cameras may complement each other?
That's brilliant. I'll have to try that. My two older pro bodies support remote viewing with a laptop and a cable, but yeah, there's no reason why a camera with built-in wifi and a smart phone couldn't do the same thing.
That's a great solution for specular highlights, and an excellent practical use of a feature that would at first seem gimmicky. Well done.
I think what's happened is that general consume expectations have changed. Consumers have been trained to want snaps and short videos of what's happening in the moment, and cell phones fill that need admirably. They're not high quality -- the lenses on most phones are atrocious, and it really is not all about the pixel count [1], but it's the camera that you always have on you, and you can share in seconds, so it's no surprise at all that it's filled a need that, really, hardly existed before. I get paid to take pictures with professional gear, yet I still take snaps with my camera phone. I understand that the two platforms fill different needs.
Is conventional photography dead? Hardly. There are things you can do with more conventional camera/lens/lighting combinations that phones and tablets just can't match. I think what we're seeing is a shift where people previously fumbling with cameras found their needs met with their phone camera, and the pros continue to use pro equipment.
Of course, pro equipment is changing too. 4/3, video in-camera, (with external modules to capture pcm stereo sound and sync it with the video), VR in-camera (Sony Alpha) or in-lens (Canon and Nikon), and a host of new post-processing capabilities, are changing the face of photography. But there will always be things high end equipment can do that can only be done by high end equipment, and there will always be a market for that somewhere.
During these shifts, I'd expect perfectly capable products to be left by the wayside. I would expect pocket cameras to have a hard time of it, as there is a lot of overlap with what current cell cameras can do. But wait a few years, and people may realize that shooting with a fixed plastic lens and zooming in software doesn't give good enough results, and midrange dedicated cameras may make a comeback. But they'll probably have some type of sharing built in. (We're already seeing dedicated cameras with wifi dongles, and more lately, wifi built in.)
[1] Pixel count is the MIPS of this century. Past a certain point, (which in my opinion has already passed in consumer gear) most users will not notice. Just as most generic consumer PCs have more CPU than most consumers need, most modern camera sensors have way more pixels than most consumers will ever notice. Also like MIPS, there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between pixel count and performance. Things like color depth, color pallet, different types of distortion, moire, in-camera post processing, and several other factors have as much or more to do with how well the photo turns out than mere resolution. And the hard fact is, the more pixels you have, the longer it takes to write to storage (other things being equal), the more space it takes up, and the longer it takes to load into and export out of editors. As a pro, I saw a moderate but constantly irritating slowdown in my workflow just going from a 12 Mpixel camera to a 24 Mpixel camera. (Nikon pro bodies.) Every operation that involved reading or writing a file was taking noticeably longer. Bigger isn't necessarily better. There has to be a *reason* to go to higher resolution, else you're probably fooling yourself.