Reposting what I said in this message in the correct thread:
When I submitted this story, this is one of the main arguments I expected. My response is this: yes, the hack will never reach the awarenes of those consumers who walk into Best Buy and grab the Digital Rebel because its the neatest new camera. They will never know of the hack and the vast majority will not miss the reduced functionality either.
However, for the target market of the 10D, which is serious amateurs, semi-pros and professionals, I think the hack has the potential to have an effect. This type of photography is a small enough community that is increasingly computer and Internet-savy. When researching their alternatives quite likely will find out about the hack through some of the boards where professionals frequent like fredmiranda.com, dpreview.com, robgalbraith.com etc.
When pros are considering a second body to compliment their higher-end dSLR or amateurs are thinking about experimenting with digital than the Digital Rebel has become a very serious alternative to the 10D. $500 is a serious price differential for a larger memory buffer and metal body.
Yes, undoubtedly this voids the warranty. To repost a letter received by CYM in this thread.
"Thank you for contacting Canon Technical Support.
We are sorry to inform you that Canon does not supply specifications to other manufacturers nor do we test with other manufacturers' products.
Therefore, there is always the possibility that they will not interact properly with our cameras. Installing this third party firmware upgrade will indeed void the warranty.
I hope that this helps. If you need further assistance, please respond at your earliest convenience.
Thank you for choosing Canon."
The question is whether Canon will actually make a big deal about the hack if a camera is sent to them for warranty repair. I submitted my rebel under warrany and just reflashed the firmware to the original version before sending it without any difficulty. Other have even reported submitted the camera with earlier versions of the hack installed and have still had it serviced.
Certainly this is a standard marketing practice that happens to many, many consumer products. What will make things much more interesting in the future is that more consumer devices are being hooked up to computers and there are many more bored/keen/unemployed programmers lying around.
When combined with the Internet, which allows parties from geographically dispersed areas to work together to overcome completely artifical barriers like this rebel hacking discussion group . To me, this is a great example of the amazing democratizing possibilities of the Internet. The Internet has the potential to give consumers more power than ever before. Just like P2P file sharing, corporation are going to have to come to grips with the reality that digital technology is altering the rules of the game. Previous practices, like blatant software limitations, simply are problematic. While they can just try to sue the pants off everyone involved, they won't be able to keep pace with all of the hacking activity. Especially when many of the hackers are located in places like Russia, where the rebel hacker is from.
Two of my favourite digital devices - my digital rebel and my archos jukebox - now have greatly increased functionality due to hacking. I can see this happening much more often in the future.
When I submitted this story, this is one of the main arguments I expected. My response is this: yes, the hack will never reach the awarenes of those consumers who walk into Best Buy and buy the Digital Rebel because its the neatest new camera. They will never know of the hack and the vast majority will not miss the reduced functionality either.
However, for the target market of the 10D, which is serious amateurs, semi-pros and professionals, I think the hack has the potential to have an effect. This type of photography is a small enough community that is increasingly computer and Internet-savy. When researching their alternative quite likely will find out about the hack through some of the professional boards like fredmiranda.com, dpreview.com, robgalbraith.com etc. When pros are considering a second body to compliment their higher-end dSLR or amateurs are thinking about experimenting with digital than the Digital Rebel has become a very serious alternative to the 10D. $500 is a serious price differential for a larger memory buffer and metal body.
I sure wish that the slashdot editors treaded a little more lightly with their end comments to a story. Just figured I'd point out that, unless I'm misreading the article, the car in question is in fact uses standard diseal fuel, unlike what the end comment implies.
Although I can understand the impulse for editors to toss out their little two-cents at the end of the story, why isn't it set-up so that, unless further explainations is required, the editor comments only appear when we click the read-more button (and thus are interested in seeing what other people think about the story).
Just my two-cents.
(or for that matter don't include them at all).
Slashdot Mirror
When I submitted this story, this is one of the main arguments I expected. My response is this: yes, the hack will never reach the awarenes of those consumers who walk into Best Buy and grab the Digital Rebel because its the neatest new camera. They will never know of the hack and the vast majority will not miss the reduced functionality either.
However, for the target market of the 10D, which is serious amateurs, semi-pros and professionals, I think the hack has the potential to have an effect. This type of photography is a small enough community that is increasingly computer and Internet-savy. When researching their alternatives quite likely will find out about the hack through some of the boards where professionals frequent like fredmiranda.com, dpreview.com, robgalbraith.com etc.
When pros are considering a second body to compliment their higher-end dSLR or amateurs are thinking about experimenting with digital than the Digital Rebel has become a very serious alternative to the 10D. $500 is a serious price differential for a larger memory buffer and metal body.
Yes, undoubtedly this voids the warranty. To repost a letter received by CYM in this thread.
The question is whether Canon will actually make a big deal about the hack if a camera is sent to them for warranty repair. I submitted my rebel under warrany and just reflashed the firmware to the original version before sending it without any difficulty. Other have even reported submitted the camera with earlier versions of the hack installed and have still had it serviced.
Certainly this is a standard marketing practice that happens to many, many consumer products. What will make things much more interesting in the future is that more consumer devices are being hooked up to computers and there are many more bored/keen/unemployed programmers lying around.
When combined with the Internet, which allows parties from geographically dispersed areas to work together to overcome completely artifical barriers like this rebel hacking discussion group . To me, this is a great example of the amazing democratizing possibilities of the Internet. The Internet has the potential to give consumers more power than ever before. Just like P2P file sharing, corporation are going to have to come to grips with the reality that digital technology is altering the rules of the game. Previous practices, like blatant software limitations, simply are problematic. While they can just try to sue the pants off everyone involved, they won't be able to keep pace with all of the hacking activity. Especially when many of the hackers are located in places like Russia, where the rebel hacker is from.
Two of my favourite digital devices - my digital rebel and my archos jukebox - now have greatly increased functionality due to hacking. I can see this happening much more often in the future.
When I submitted this story, this is one of the main arguments I expected. My response is this: yes, the hack will never reach the awarenes of those consumers who walk into Best Buy and buy the Digital Rebel because its the neatest new camera. They will never know of the hack and the vast majority will not miss the reduced functionality either. However, for the target market of the 10D, which is serious amateurs, semi-pros and professionals, I think the hack has the potential to have an effect. This type of photography is a small enough community that is increasingly computer and Internet-savy. When researching their alternative quite likely will find out about the hack through some of the professional boards like fredmiranda.com, dpreview.com, robgalbraith.com etc. When pros are considering a second body to compliment their higher-end dSLR or amateurs are thinking about experimenting with digital than the Digital Rebel has become a very serious alternative to the 10D. $500 is a serious price differential for a larger memory buffer and metal body.
I sure wish that the slashdot editors treaded a little more lightly with their end comments to a story. Just figured I'd point out that, unless I'm misreading the article, the car in question is in fact uses standard diseal fuel, unlike what the end comment implies. Although I can understand the impulse for editors to toss out their little two-cents at the end of the story, why isn't it set-up so that, unless further explainations is required, the editor comments only appear when we click the read-more button (and thus are interested in seeing what other people think about the story). Just my two-cents. (or for that matter don't include them at all).