Adobe's tools still rule the professional world. It's not just the feature set, it's the entire ecosystem of support and training. Yes, for a large part of the professional world, Photoshop is synonymous with digitial photo editing - it's even used as a verb (Adobe might want to watch that, it'll become the next "hoover").
I'm not denying that Photoshop is the dominent photo editing program, but that is not the same thing as digital photography. Professional photography just means making money taking pictures, which is mostly product photos, studio shoots, etc. There are plenty of photojournalists, bug/nature/landscape photogs, and oodles of artists and armatures that don't touch Photoshop, particularly those that got their start on manual film cameras. As I'm sure you are aware, Photoshop is a wedge issue amongst digital photographers like the Linux/Windows/OS X debate around here.
Back in 2006, IIRC, colour management on Linux wasn't an option, the Gimp didn't do CYMK or 16bit editing and RAW file conversion was hit and miss. It may be different now, but I've had no reason to go back and find out.
There again you are conflating editing with photography. I have never had a problem with my RAW workflow on Linux. I think that your problem with digital photography on Linux is that you want a pixel editor in your workflow and there is obviously nothing wrong with that, but there are plenty of people that don't--myself included--and for us Linux is fast, scriptable, and efficient.
I once spent a weekend trying to get a decent print from my Linux system to a moderately high end Epson printer. I just could not get the colours to come out right. In Photoshop I could soft proof, and I think I got it right at the second attempt. Just the cost of paper and ink wasted trying to get it working under Linux would pay for a copy of Windows in next to no time.
I have always had to rely on (non-free) third-party drivers for high-end photo printers under Linux, but they have never let me down. With a profiled monitor and soft proofs everything works great... although I once wasted stacks of paper on what turned out to be a faulty print head. I was convinced that it was a Linux problem and pulled my hair out for days trying to get the colors right. These days maintaining a photo printer at home isn't worth it.
You seem to be dismissing anyone that doesn't photoshop their pictures as non-serious about photography, but I'm not trying to start the Photoshop Argument here, nor am I trying to convince you to switch back. I'm just pointing out that there is a large community of serious digital photographers that use Linux and even more that don't use pixel editors.
I find the Finder to be perhaps the worst file manager ever made.
Yes!!! A thousand times yes!!!
Can we retire the "just works" phrase, or at least find better ways to qualify it?
The way I see it Linux offers you nearly infinite configurations and choices and not all of them work well. Apple severely limits those choices (most notably by restricting OS X to their own hardware), but what they do offer you works quite well. The downside of the Linux strategy is legacy support and compatibility. The downside of the Apple approach is that they are constantly killing off features. But on the right hardware, Ubuntu "just works" as does OS X.
Which MacBook Air? I dipped my toe into the water with a late 2010 Air and the instructions for dual booting Linux looked more like hacking a game console. I couldn't even get it to recognize a thumb drive as bootable. I too love the hardware of the Air, but withe each update, Apple is actively trying to either get me to migrate to i-everything or drive me away from their OS entirely.
I am in the exact opposite situation. I use OS X at work because I'm surrounded by Luddites running WinXP that unknowingly switched over to docx/xlsx the moment Microsoft made it the default. And I like Keynote. At home everything runs Linux because it "just works," it's infinitely customizable, it runs smoothly on older hardware, and it doesn't force changes on me. Apple pretty much forced me off of Snow Leopard and now I'm supposed to be excited at re-learning the OS because its so much better now!
Spaces? No,you didn't really like those--our new solution is so much better that we're not even going to give you the option to go back. Save As? No, we have a much better idea called "Duplicate." And we're completely sure that you want to have to close every, single document before quitting a program to keep them from re-opening with the program, which will happen automatically when you log back in. Aren't you super happy that every time you open Textedit a zillion random text files that you thought you had deleted open up? And we assume that everyone uses a touchpad, touchscreen, or touchmouse and just loves making complex gestures instead of keyboard shortcuts. We're also pretty sure that you want to install every update all the time, so clicking anywhere on the App Store update notification will open the App Store which will then probably ask you to re-enter your AppleID credentials because, why not? Oh, and iTunes is the single greatest piece of software known to man, so it should randomly grab focus, constantly require updates, and magically set itself as the default for everything. But competently managing podcasts is not something that you're interested in because you should be using an iPhone.
I've basically just cloned my/home partition and key files from/etc from Debian to Redhat to Slackware to Gentoo to Ubuntu. Granted KDE railroaded me into 4, but at least I can still configure it to behave the way I want it to. I've had a few hiccups with new versions and new hardware (certainly with Bluetooth, but never with HDMI audio), but then again I've had plenty of Grey Screens of Death on OS X and I can't even upgrade the RAM on my MacBook Air.
BTW when KDE hangs waiting for a network resource you can usually still Control+Alt+Function to a login prompt instead of rebooting.
Not to mention the unilateral decision to get rid of Save As. I will never, ever get used to the Duplicate/Save A Copy nonsense. Open a file, make changes, decide you want to Save it As a new document, click Duplicate, OS X says "Do you want to revert the document before duplicating it?" No, of course not, so OS X saves over the original AND makes a copy with the changes... then use the pointlessly graphics-heavy browser to flip through old versions to restore the original so you can work on the copy. Why Apple, why? Why do you punish me every time I forget the order of operations for editing a copy of a file?
Oh, and the idiocy of inverting the scroll wheel to make it more "natural" and then having to add an option to revert back to the old way because--shocker--not everyone uses their crappy mice.
I ran Linux on the desktop from the late 90s until about 2006, when I started getting seriously into digital photography. I reached a point where I needed Photoshop and real colour management, which left me with the choice of Windows or Mac.
I hope you aren't equating Photoshop with serious digital photography... When I started getting seriously into digital photography I reached a point where I needed python, bash, and rsync to manage and backup hundreds of thousands of files, batch-edit EXIF information, etc. I've been processing digital photos since the late 90's and my KDE/Linux desktop has evolved right alongside my camera hardware, complete with "real color management." I'll grant you that at one point I had plug my monitor into a Windows XP machine to profile it, but that's it. I'm sure Windows works great for you and OS X for others, but I can assure you that there is a healthy community of photographers on the Linux bandwagon.
I can live with DRM for a rental service. I am more interested in features, performance, and usability. There are other reasons I would complain about Netflix before getting into the DRM.
Purchases on the other hand are an entirely different kettle of fish.
But why should you have to? Do you want DRM? Does Netflix? Rights holders strangle competition through exclusive contracts and force distributors like Netflix to waste time and energy on DRM, which at best doesn't immediately negatively impact the user experience and only restricts your choices to popular platforms like Android and iOS (but goes so far as to restrict the type of monitor you view it through). There is no consumer demand, no added value, and no positive contribution to the user experience; it's like agreeing to wear handcuffs to the movie theater to prevent cams.
There is no such thing as a "purchase." You are purchasing physical media--polycarbonate, some aluminum, whatever--but the bulk of the price that you pay is more like an EULA in which you implicitly enter into a "fair use" agreement whereby you are allowed to watch, in a private setting, the contents via a specific medium. With digital distribution and DRM, there is no difference between "rental" and "purchase;" there are only different payment schemes to charge you for viewing. These distinctions have always been there, but weren't an issue in the VHS days where purchasing a cassette still restricted you to watching a movie on a TV with a VCR attached. You can watch this same scenario play out with consoles banning used games; what is "used" in a digital world where copying is free?
In Fantasy Land we all boycott DRM and the rights holders see the error of their ways, but in Reality Land too many people tolerate DRM because "they can live with it" or they aren't engaged enough to even understand what it is. That is why counteractive phenomena like the Pirate Bay and the prosecution of Aaron Swartz are so important.
Netflix is a subscription-based service provider which streams content to you. In this scenario, to what end does DRM inhibit your experience or tread on your right as a consumer? I am legitimately curious, because while I am very anti-DRM in most scenarios, I fail to see the issue with a DRM-lock on content designed and intended to only be streamed.
1) Arbitrary region blocks. I can't use my US-based subscription outside of the USA. That might not be a big deal to you, but it is a deal-breaker for me. If I have residence in the US, an American credit card, a mailing address, a physical house, citizenship, then why the f**** can't I watch movies when I'm abroad? And what alternative do I have if, for example, I live half the year in South America? Dubbed movies over satellite? Spanish language soap operas? Football! Football! Football! Or the Pirate Bay...
2) Distribution agreements. The reason Netflix uses DRM is not because they want it or their customers want it, it is because the rights holders want it. Thus, in order for Netflix to contract with a studio/network/distributor, they must implement DRM and they can only stream content; there is no such thing as "intended to only be streamed." It is an arbitrary constraint demanded by rights holders. That means that an entire studio/network/distributor can also remove all of their content from Netflix because, say, they were acquired by a cable company that wants you to stream their content through some box that their hardware partner wants to sell you. And that brings me to point 3...
3) Fragmentation. Why the f*** can't I watch everything on everything? Hardware limitations? Software limitations? No, DRM. Let's say I download a movie "illegally" and store it on a dirt-cheap RAID array in the closet that is connected to my router. Now I can watch said movie using a cross-platform suite like XBMC on any device in my house and when I stop playing on one, it picks up where I left off on another. I can also use something like Emit to stream that movie to my phone anywhere on Earth. If I am going to be somewhere without Internet, like a 12-hour plane flight, I can cross my fingers and hope that they have a decent selection of movies, or just copy my downloaded movie to my tablet, which brings me to point 4...
4) Gouging. Media companies want me to pay for the right to view their product. And they want me to either pay for each viewing or for each way of viewing separately. They don't care that I watched Spaceballs about a hundred times in the theater, bought Spaceballs the VHS and then Spaceballs the DVD and then (the 25th Anniversary) Spaceballs the Blu-Ray; they want me to pay again to watch it on my i-thing and once more on my Android thing and again on the next device I buy. That is gouging, otherwise known as collusion (because the media companies negotiate price structures and squeeze small competitors through bodies like the MPAA).
5) The never-ending "copyright." It isn't enough to turn a profit on foreign box office sales; they want a 25-year-old movie to continue to generate revenue for them in perpetuity throughout the universe. When it comes time to force my son to watch my favorite movies from the 80's, we wont' have a VHS player, a DVD player, a Blu-ray player, Silverlight will be dead, and whatever gizmos are capable of playing movies will demand that I pay, once again, for something that should have fallen into the public domain. Of course, those gizmos will be perfectly able to play the non-DRM encumbered, x264-standard encoded movie in an open-source MKV container that I downloaded all those years ago. Do you know why "It's a Wonderful Life" continues to pop up on TV so regularly? It's basically because someone forgot to copyright it. What is so different about Spaceballs? And look at the Star Wars franchise, where Lucas managed to hang on to unprecedented control over his creative works (a "mistake" that 20th Century Fox made exactly once.) Robot Chicken can do
You don't have the right to break the law because you think they're stupid.
I have the right to break whatever law I damn well please, but I knowingly accept the risk. Let's put this into perspective. Breaking copyright law is not (yet) the same as theft or violent crime. It's more like riding your bike on the sidewalk or installing a purchased copy of Windows on two computers in your house. The media companies certainly have the right to control their content and to sue you for violating their copyrights, but they do not (yet) have the right to charge you with a crime and lock you up in jail for seeding a torrent.
In most places in the world, however, it is a (severe) criminal offense to possess marijuana. But that doesn't stop people from smoking it, thereby demonstrating the futility of the law and the harmlessness of the drug. (Note that the use of other drugs, like crack and meth, have had the opposite effect and elicited stricter penalties and, in some cases, public health programs.) Same goes for DRM; we keep downloading to show media conglomerates what we want content distribution to look like. I know I'm no alone here; I would gladly pay for the level of service that usenet provides, even with all the headache of PAR files and buggy fetchers/parsers. What they offer, however, is a hodgepodge of websites and half-baked software tied to various hardware platforms and myriad "This content is not available in your region" messages.
Give me XBMC with flat-rate and micropayment back ends that don't categorically exclude some studios/networks/distributors and watch me pay for what I currently get for free.
Not just history, but current events. A combination of a bloody, eight-year war with Iraq and policies that encouraged large families have lead to a glut of young people; something like 2/3 of the population is ~30. That generation is not particularly religious (particularly not by the standards that most Americans use to hypocritically stereotype the Middle East), is very pro-Western and anti-isolationism, well-educated, and very aware of the world. The policies of the country, however, are dominated by a small, ultra-conservative minority of old assholes. Decades of turmoil and common sense drive smart, young people out of the country rather than driving them to stay and launch some sort of up-rising that may result in an even worse regime. They watched the "Arab Spring" and took away the lesson that the arabs didn't really improve their situation. Those that see the sanctions as the fault of their government's stubbornness want out, those that see them as the fault of the imperialist West don't; everyone agrees that the sanctions hit ordinary Iranians the hardest.
When you see sweeping generalizations about intolerance, religious fundamentalism, and insane foreign policy, just remember that the Bush administration arrested and tortured people in secret prisons with no trials. Does that mean that all ~300,000,000 Americans supported that policy? Should the world now treat all Americans like paranoid war-mongers that embrace pre-emptive war and a police state? Was Bush v Gore definitive evidence that Americans can't hold fair elections? If you answered yes, then feel free to un-hypocritically pass the same sort of judgements against the entire population of another country with crazy political leaders. Otherwise, put yourself in the shoes of a 28-year-old with an advanced degree that is fluent in English and that has to use an "illegal" VPN to exercise your curiosity of the outside world--would contribute to society by risking everything to join a violent rebellion or by trying to get out and establish a career and citizenship in the West?
For those that don't know Boston, the frats at MIT are famous for their stunts, including inventing a unit of measure "the Smoot" for the Harvard bridge (which, oddly, links MIT to Boston) by flipping a pledge end-to-end over the entire length of the bridge. But that is exactly what makes MIT so weird; everyone lives in "off campus" housing, much of which is a stone's throw from campus. It's as if they only interact with each other. Maybe I'm biased because I was up the river a bit, but I feel like I ran into people from every university except MIT at the bars around town. And despite spending a considerable amount of time on campus, it always felt like walking around the Borg Cube.
What always fascinated me about MIT is the seeming lack of a "university neighborhood." It was like MIT people never left campus and had no social lives to speak of. I think it went out of business, but one of the few bars close to campus was themed like a laboratory, where you drank beer out of beakers. During the day, people would scurry out of the buildings to the food trucks, awkwardly scarf down their lunches, and then scurry back. I used to love watching them try to play Frisbie when the sun came out, which I can can only describe with a direct quote from Dodgeball: "It's like watching a bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob out there." I had always thought the jokes about just how nerdy MIT was were exaggerations, but that has to be the highest concentration of nerd-stereotypes that I have ever seen; super-smart, interesting people, but I can certainly see how the Charm School has lasted 20 years.
Despite your stupidity, you must be very proud of your absolutely mastodonic penis.
You would think so, but the effort of hefting the damn thing precludes pissing contests with trolls, which would otherwise be a favorite past time for one as stupid as myself.
A bit off topic but this troubles me and I never manage to get really good answers to this one.
Supposing that "All citizens have the legal right to marry a member of the opposite sex" is both the letter and spirit of the current law...how does one resolve the following edge cases:
1) A naturally-born hermaphrodite who can pass equally well for either gender based upon dress. Can such a person marry someone of either gender, thus being a direct contradiction to the spirit of the law? Or can such a person just not get married, thus suffering a grave injustice? Must the person choose a gender and stick with it for his/her entire life (which seems a bit arbitrary), and will the person be forced to get a divorce, by the state, if (s)he changes his/her gender-facade after getting married?
2) If a man has a gender-changing surgery and becomes a woman, what gender can she then marry? Can she marry a man now that she is a woman? Or must she marry another woman and have an ostensibly homosexual relationship due to being genetically heterosexual?
Reflection upon these edge cases makes it seem to me that the distinction between men and women isn't quite as absolute as the law would make it out to be. Since these things can be a bit ambiguous or even change, it seems like the law should just not take gender into account (at least for the issue of marriage).
Both of these situations obviously happen and are about as convoluted as you would think exactly because the laws, as currently prosecuted, treat all humans as belonging to one of two categories; male or female. I'm no expert, but I do read/listen to Dan Savage, who addresses exactly these types of topics. Transgendered people are often stuck in a weird limbo where they are anatomically (and, more importantly, mentally) one gender, but legally the other. There are avenues for legally changing ones gender exactly because of situations like hermaphrodites, whose gender is usually arbitrarily assigned by the parents at birth, often accompanied by surgery, but whom do not always identify with their assigned gender. The situation is no different for people who are anatomically assigned one gender, but whom identify with the other, often from a very young age.
These sorts of complexities are exactly why stupid over-simplified slogans like "one man, one woman" with shortly become anachronisms. What matters is not what is between your legs, but between your ears--if you identify as a lesbian trapped in a man's body or a lesbian in a woman's body, why should the law treat you differently because of circumstances that are beyond your control? It is exactly the same as discriminating based on race or place of birth. Yet, somehow, we deem it perfectly logical to ban religious discrimination carte blanche, even though religion is clearly a choice. I think that you can ascribe this debacle to the prevalence of slavery when the constitution and bill of rights were written. Of course you had to protect speech and freedom of religion, but you had to be careful about things like "equal protection," to ensure that "equal" included only land-owning white males.
What we have now are people who love "democracy" when the majority gets to vote on the rights of a minority, but who are perfectly happy to gerrymander congressional districts to ensure that republican/democrat/black/white representatives are sent to Congress, despite actual will of the majority, particularly when they are doing so to protect their own minority opinion.
"Been running Linux for 15 years now, and it's better than it ever has been."
You're right, it is better than it ever has been. I cut my teeth on Slackware, back when a bad X11.config actually fucked up your monitor. And I did just that. Through it all, there was never a better operating system that was as open or as flexible as Linux. I could run it on cobbled together parts from dead x86 boxes pulled from dumpster dives.
Now that I actually have some disposable income, I chose a Mac. Why? It let's me get shit done instead of fiddle-fucking with things that I don't honestly care about anymore. Back in college, I had all the time to compile and tweak libproffer0.2.3 from alpha to see if I could get it work. Now, I'd rather just pop in a DVD or download a binary blob and drag it to/Applications. My family time is limited and I'd rather be spending it with them. Does that mean the extra few hundred bucks was wasted? Maybe. I'd gladly trade that. My circumstances are my own experiences, but these are my opinions.
I'm right there with you; back in the day not only did I have the time to tinker with X11.config or compile the latest kernel from source, but it was in fact how I learned about computers and was exposed to programming (I am not a programmer nor do I do anything related to IT for a living). These days it is way more important for me to have a fast, reliable workflow that is compatible with all the other software that my largely computer illiterate colleagues work with. I routinely send documents out in ODT format and have them returned in DOCX; at least I can fire up Word on my Mac and export it in DOC so NeoOffice can open it correctly. But as much as I love the MacBook Air, I hate Apple desktops, so I do run OSX on a hackintosh... I dunno, maybe to maintain some semblance of nerd cred.
At home I still run Linux because I prefer it and I'm not under time pressure. But I still keep an OSX partition for days when I work from home because, at the end of the day, I find that what I really like about OSX is the availability of software. There are some killer programs--most by small developers--that just don't exist on other platforms and that make my life easier. However, I find the direction the OS is headed distressing. Let's say I want to copy a Keynote presentation and then edit the copy; I'd better remember to first "Duplicate" and then "Save a Copy" because if I edit it first and then Duplicate it will ask if I want to Revert first, but if I don't, then I get two copies of the edited document and have to waste time reverting the original with the pointlessly fancy Apple-style graphics. Why? Because Apple unilaterally decided that "Save As" needed to go away (sounds familiar... GNOME!). And don't get me started on the disaster that is iTunes, the abomination that Apple insists drive my venerable and infinitely useful iPod Nano. At lest I can still use rsync to backup my Mac.
My hope is that something--maybe Linux gaming--will drive Linux just enough into the mainstream that the same sort of software that I like on the Mac starts popping up on Linux. Then I will probably migrate away from the hybrid iOSenstein that OSX has morphed into that ties you to the Apple Cloud and Appstore and actively punishes you for using Android devices instead of i-things.
The link in TFA that says it the pixels are 7.5 x larger than the "best commercial professional cameras in existence" actually points to a page that says:
Each pixel on the new sensor measures 19 microns square, more than 7.5-times the surface area of the pixels on the CMOS sensor incorporated the company most advanced (and expensive) top-of-the-line EOS-1D X camera released last year.
TFA therefore assumes that Canon makes the best cameras in existence. Excluding professional digital backs, the Nikon D800 has 4.88 micron pixels, which is 23.8 square microns--but let's assume that "microns square" means square pixels 19 microns on each side even though it specifically refers to surface area. 4.88 x 7.5 microns = 36.6 microns, which is about twice the size of the pixels in this sensor. Moreover, the camera is a prototype and only for video. The D800 is on the market and capable of both stills and HD video.
I happen to be a Nikon fanboy, so I look at this as Canon hyping their lab results to cover up for the fact that Nikon beat Canon to market with a 36.3 million pixel full-frame sensor, which they responded to with the 22.3 million pixel Canon EOS 5D Mark III. I also happen to own a D800E and have never, ever seen a DSLR punish a lens (because the sensor exposes every flaw) so thoroughly or produce such amazing dynamic range and color depth at ISO 6400.
Except that cutting spending now is like applying leeches to a sick patient. You cut spending when the economy is healthy to promote action by the private sector.
Better hurry and get in your time machine and go back to warn Presidents Coolidge and Harding that their ~46% cut in Federal spending won't really kick off the "roaring '20s" and end the post-WW1 recession of 1920-21.
Strat
You're comparing a 7-month recession to the meltdown of the entire global economy? Alright, then why didn't the end of the Iraq war lead to booming economy like WWII? I mean, if we're making false equivalencies... At any rate it was Coolidge that slashed spending and taxes after he took office 1923, when the economy was going gangbusters thanks in large part to the automobile and electrification, which was exactly the right time to cut; the economy was healthy and taxes were still stuck at high war-time levels, along with spending. He also slashed top tax rates further in 1926, citing that "tax cuts lead to an increase in revenue, so more tax cuts should lead to more revenue," (I'm obviously paraphrasing) which makes him a conservative hero--the first supply-side president! They, of course, don't like to tell the rest of that story; that rampant deregulation under Coolidge inflated a huge bubble in the financial sector that precipitated the Great Depression... wait, that sounds familiar somehow.
Maybe cutting welfare for scientists isn't the best choice for first round budget trimming, but that budget does have to go down at some point.
Welfare? Are you high? Investments in research consistently yield the highest returns of any form of investment because they generate the technology and IP that drives the entire modern economy, including keeping people healthy and living longer. Why do you think the DoD invests so much in research? It's because it produces technology that directly benefits every aspect of the military. Besides, welfare implies a handout in place of money that would otherwise be earned; i) scientists don't pocket that money, they use it to hire people (i.e., to "create jobs") and to purchase necessary equipment/infrastructure--it is definition of stimulative and ii) where else are you supposed to get $1 million to do fundamental research? Private companies and philanthropic organizations (and Defense) fund specific research goals that are near to technological application, not the zillions of person-hours of basic research on which they were built.
If there is anything that a sane, rational government should spend money on, it is scientific research. And this isn't "the first round" of cuts for science, which have been under assault by Congress for years, but flies under the radar because ordinary people can't be bothered to see the connection between the plummeting quality and quantity of STEM in the US and research funding.
Not to mention that the entire annual budget for the NSF is ~$8 billion, which is about how much money was just up and lost, in cash, in Iraq. The Pentagon probably blows $8 billion on toilet paper in a year.
Still, looking at the list, there's a number of worthy budget cuts, such as the oversized federal law enforcement, small business loans, and various "government service" rent seeking. And one really has a hard time arguing against a 13% cut back in defense spending.
Except that cutting spending now is like applying leeches to a sick patient. You cut spending when the economy is healthy to promote action by the private sector. You increase spending when the economy is unhealthy to backstop the potential for long term unemployment, which can ruin entire generations. An across-the-board spending cut to almost any government agency will do far more harm than good, but research--because it draws so heavily on international talent--is the most vulnerable.
After nearly a decade of back-door budget cuts to basic research funding during the Bush years, in 2007-2008 thousands of people were left stranded with years of education and training only to find academic positions evaporating as the housing crisis froze the funding for positions that were already being advertised for. In subsequent years positions that would normally receive on the order of a dozen applications were receiving hundreds. There was a little bubble with the stimulus, and then right back to strangling NSF, NIH, etc.
That kind of uncertainty and hostility from Congress drives talent away from the US; Europe and Asia are still dumping money into research like crazy. Europeans and Asians used to compete to come to the US, hoping to land a position in the land of opportunity. Increasingly, they come for a degree or a postdoc and then head home for a better position and stable funding in a first-world country with modern infrastructure.
Sure, it's only $85 billion, which is a rounding error in the total budget, but the force-multiplication of the way the sequester is applied will harm the US in the long term. And what is Washington concerned with? Finger-pointing, because carpet-bombing swing states with ads about whose fault the sequester was in the next election cycle is clearly more important to them than solving actual problems.
Not to mention that, if French workers really only work three-hour days, any CEO worth his salt would be scrambling to copy that level of productivity. I mean, you can make fun of France all you like, but it is certainly not a depressed third-world nation. So either he's an idiot for making ridiculous, inflammatory, bigoted statements (apparently in public) or completely incompetent for not pouncing on whatever the French are doing to maintain what is apparently the most productive work force on the planet.
If the US situation is too confusing for you, look at Europe, where politicians are united on anti-global warming efforts. Has it helped? Not one bit. Europeans have been saddled with large costs and no effective reductions to show for it. Electric and hydrogen vehicles are nearly non-existent in Europe, and car ownership and VMT remain high. The only reductions in carbon output have been due to outsourcing carbon-intensive production to China and due to economic slowdowns. Countries are also not doing so well on renewables, with production in most European countries only being 10-20% (but places like Germany only achieve that by importing a lot of non-renewable energy).
The largest market for Tesla cars is Scandinavia, where they have for years been introducing charging stations to pave the way for electric cars because of all the hydro and wind power they have developed (particularly Norway). One program that I found interesting was to actually use electric cars for energy storage; it is distributed and surprisingly efficient. Fly over the North Sea and take a look at the gargantuan wind turbines that they have been building out for the last couple of decades. They're mixed in with the oil platforms that manage not to leak and kill all off the sea life, despite being in rough seas. (And the profits are largely held collectively by the people via governments managing giant oil funds, but that is a different story). When they generate more power than they are consuming, they pump water uphill, storing it as potential energy.
In Germany and the Netherlands (and probably elsewhere) cars are effectively being pushed out of cities in two ways; one, cars that do not meet certain emission requirements are not allowed to enter urban zones and two, taxes and fees are increasingly being assessed based on emission standards. That, plus the discovery of large natural gas fields in the Netherlands and elsewhere has pushed a lot of LNG conversions, which takes old, polluting cars and turns them into relatively clean LNG cars (that can enter "green" emission zones.) Why the push to get cars out of cities? Public transport, of course. European cities are rife with efficient public transportation, with rural areas typically linked by a well-maintained rail system. Out the window of your high-speed train you are likely to see wind turbines decorating the horizon as they unobtrusively populate so much farmland these days.
The last fiscal quarter, solar energy reached grid parity in Europe thanks in large part to ongoing competition between German and Chinese solar panel manufacturers creating a glut. That means that you can now buy solar power for the same price as the regular nuclear/fossil mix. Germany now generates enough solar power that it has a surplus, which it sells to neighboring countries, yet it is investing in more large-scale solar plants. (Yes, there have been cases of Germany exporting coal and re-importing electricity, but it is anecdotal.) This competition is, in turn, driving neighboring countries to accelerate their long-term green energy strategies as, for example, France is used to selling its excess nuclear-generated power with impunity, not competing with solar from Germany. Cities across Europe are scrambling to get their ambitious solar-panel projects (X% of rooftops with solar panels, etc.) done because of "green pride."
Air quality has consistently improved in virtually the entire EU (places like Athens which suffer from inversion layers and unfortunate geography obviously still have rampant pollution problems) since politicians "united" on anti-global warming efforts. Electricity and gas are more expensive in Europe, but that is because they are paying up-front costs that Americans get in the back-end (pun intended), like a bloated military to keep oil flowing from the Middle East and an electricity grid that makes India's look good. A lot of those costs are defrayed by, for example, not having to own a car if you live in virtually any reasonably cited cit
Still it seems like collecting data for no obvious reason, just to know that some one came into the store who spent time in the Shoes department 6 weeks ago.
I think the idea is that information now has value, particularly when it can be associated with consumer habits. Whether or not the grocery store cares how frequently a particular MAC address visits their store, when compiled into a large enough data set--so the logic goes--and cross-referenced with other large data sets, you can mine information that would be otherwise impossible without something intrusive like a survey. The MAC address also contains information about the chipset in your phone, when it was manufactured, etc. It isn't that much further to guessing your income, where you live, and eventually your shopping habits. Even without knowing your name, you could imagine a "smart" grocery store adjusting prices in real-time just, sort of like how airlines drop cookies to see if you have already searched for a ticket so they can keep the price high just for you. It's the high-tech version of the Ralph's Club Card; they want you to use it when you make purchases to track you, but now they can do it without your name or any personal information or anything proactive on your part.
My feeling is that people find it creepy when a computer knows their name. Not many people wants to walk into the grocery store and hear a computer say "Hey Bob Smith, nice to see you again! Pizza bagels are on sale, and I know how much you like those." But if the grocery store sees "consumer type A431" approaching, the sign for pizza bagels may light up and blink "Sale! Sale! Sale!" which is intrinsically less creepy despite accomplishing the same thing. I could imagine doing that just with you MAC address and your approximate height and weight, which is easy to get from the self-checkout machine (it has a camera and weights things). The computer says "5'9", 235 lbs, $500 phone; clearly a Slashdot reader. I'll put the Hot Pockets, Mountain Dew, and hand lotion on special next time I see that MAC address hash."
Slashdot Mirror
Adobe's tools still rule the professional world. It's not just the feature set, it's the entire ecosystem of support and training. Yes, for a large part of the professional world, Photoshop is synonymous with digitial photo editing - it's even used as a verb (Adobe might want to watch that, it'll become the next "hoover").
I'm not denying that Photoshop is the dominent photo editing program, but that is not the same thing as digital photography. Professional photography just means making money taking pictures, which is mostly product photos, studio shoots, etc. There are plenty of photojournalists, bug/nature/landscape photogs, and oodles of artists and armatures that don't touch Photoshop, particularly those that got their start on manual film cameras. As I'm sure you are aware, Photoshop is a wedge issue amongst digital photographers like the Linux/Windows/OS X debate around here.
Back in 2006, IIRC, colour management on Linux wasn't an option, the Gimp didn't do CYMK or 16bit editing and RAW file conversion was hit and miss. It may be different now, but I've had no reason to go back and find out.
There again you are conflating editing with photography. I have never had a problem with my RAW workflow on Linux. I think that your problem with digital photography on Linux is that you want a pixel editor in your workflow and there is obviously nothing wrong with that, but there are plenty of people that don't--myself included--and for us Linux is fast, scriptable, and efficient.
I once spent a weekend trying to get a decent print from my Linux system to a moderately high end Epson printer. I just could not get the colours to come out right. In Photoshop I could soft proof, and I think I got it right at the second attempt. Just the cost of paper and ink wasted trying to get it working under Linux would pay for a copy of Windows in next to no time.
I have always had to rely on (non-free) third-party drivers for high-end photo printers under Linux, but they have never let me down. With a profiled monitor and soft proofs everything works great... although I once wasted stacks of paper on what turned out to be a faulty print head. I was convinced that it was a Linux problem and pulled my hair out for days trying to get the colors right. These days maintaining a photo printer at home isn't worth it.
You seem to be dismissing anyone that doesn't photoshop their pictures as non-serious about photography, but I'm not trying to start the Photoshop Argument here, nor am I trying to convince you to switch back. I'm just pointing out that there is a large community of serious digital photographers that use Linux and even more that don't use pixel editors.
I have no problem with catholics being anti-gay and excluding gays from their church
I'm not religious, but I have a problem with them not excluding child molesters and pretending Mother Teresa wasn't a sadist.
But where I do have a problem is when the members of the church try to deprive the rights of homosexuals outside of church.
Really the entire gay/lesbian/transgender/BDSM/etc. community, and atheists, women, and anyone who uses birth control.
I find the Finder to be perhaps the worst file manager ever made.
Yes!!! A thousand times yes!!!
Can we retire the "just works" phrase, or at least find better ways to qualify it?
The way I see it Linux offers you nearly infinite configurations and choices and not all of them work well. Apple severely limits those choices (most notably by restricting OS X to their own hardware), but what they do offer you works quite well. The downside of the Linux strategy is legacy support and compatibility. The downside of the Apple approach is that they are constantly killing off features. But on the right hardware, Ubuntu "just works" as does OS X.
Which MacBook Air? I dipped my toe into the water with a late 2010 Air and the instructions for dual booting Linux looked more like hacking a game console. I couldn't even get it to recognize a thumb drive as bootable. I too love the hardware of the Air, but withe each update, Apple is actively trying to either get me to migrate to i-everything or drive me away from their OS entirely.
I am in the exact opposite situation. I use OS X at work because I'm surrounded by Luddites running WinXP that unknowingly switched over to docx/xlsx the moment Microsoft made it the default. And I like Keynote. At home everything runs Linux because it "just works," it's infinitely customizable, it runs smoothly on older hardware, and it doesn't force changes on me. Apple pretty much forced me off of Snow Leopard and now I'm supposed to be excited at re-learning the OS because its so much better now!
Spaces? No,you didn't really like those--our new solution is so much better that we're not even going to give you the option to go back. Save As? No, we have a much better idea called "Duplicate." And we're completely sure that you want to have to close every, single document before quitting a program to keep them from re-opening with the program, which will happen automatically when you log back in. Aren't you super happy that every time you open Textedit a zillion random text files that you thought you had deleted open up? And we assume that everyone uses a touchpad, touchscreen, or touchmouse and just loves making complex gestures instead of keyboard shortcuts. We're also pretty sure that you want to install every update all the time, so clicking anywhere on the App Store update notification will open the App Store which will then probably ask you to re-enter your AppleID credentials because, why not? Oh, and iTunes is the single greatest piece of software known to man, so it should randomly grab focus, constantly require updates, and magically set itself as the default for everything. But competently managing podcasts is not something that you're interested in because you should be using an iPhone.
I've basically just cloned my /home partition and key files from /etc from Debian to Redhat to Slackware to Gentoo to Ubuntu. Granted KDE railroaded me into 4, but at least I can still configure it to behave the way I want it to. I've had a few hiccups with new versions and new hardware (certainly with Bluetooth, but never with HDMI audio), but then again I've had plenty of Grey Screens of Death on OS X and I can't even upgrade the RAM on my MacBook Air.
BTW when KDE hangs waiting for a network resource you can usually still Control+Alt+Function to a login prompt instead of rebooting.
Not to mention the unilateral decision to get rid of Save As. I will never, ever get used to the Duplicate/Save A Copy nonsense. Open a file, make changes, decide you want to Save it As a new document, click Duplicate, OS X says "Do you want to revert the document before duplicating it?" No, of course not, so OS X saves over the original AND makes a copy with the changes... then use the pointlessly graphics-heavy browser to flip through old versions to restore the original so you can work on the copy. Why Apple, why? Why do you punish me every time I forget the order of operations for editing a copy of a file?
Oh, and the idiocy of inverting the scroll wheel to make it more "natural" and then having to add an option to revert back to the old way because--shocker--not everyone uses their crappy mice.
I ran Linux on the desktop from the late 90s until about 2006, when I started getting seriously into digital photography. I reached a point where I needed Photoshop and real colour management, which left me with the choice of Windows or Mac.
I hope you aren't equating Photoshop with serious digital photography... When I started getting seriously into digital photography I reached a point where I needed python, bash, and rsync to manage and backup hundreds of thousands of files, batch-edit EXIF information, etc. I've been processing digital photos since the late 90's and my KDE/Linux desktop has evolved right alongside my camera hardware, complete with "real color management." I'll grant you that at one point I had plug my monitor into a Windows XP machine to profile it, but that's it. I'm sure Windows works great for you and OS X for others, but I can assure you that there is a healthy community of photographers on the Linux bandwagon.
I can live with DRM for a rental service. I am more interested in features, performance, and usability. There are other reasons I would complain about Netflix before getting into the DRM.
Purchases on the other hand are an entirely different kettle of fish.
But why should you have to? Do you want DRM? Does Netflix? Rights holders strangle competition through exclusive contracts and force distributors like Netflix to waste time and energy on DRM, which at best doesn't immediately negatively impact the user experience and only restricts your choices to popular platforms like Android and iOS (but goes so far as to restrict the type of monitor you view it through). There is no consumer demand, no added value, and no positive contribution to the user experience; it's like agreeing to wear handcuffs to the movie theater to prevent cams.
There is no such thing as a "purchase." You are purchasing physical media--polycarbonate, some aluminum, whatever--but the bulk of the price that you pay is more like an EULA in which you implicitly enter into a "fair use" agreement whereby you are allowed to watch, in a private setting, the contents via a specific medium. With digital distribution and DRM, there is no difference between "rental" and "purchase;" there are only different payment schemes to charge you for viewing. These distinctions have always been there, but weren't an issue in the VHS days where purchasing a cassette still restricted you to watching a movie on a TV with a VCR attached. You can watch this same scenario play out with consoles banning used games; what is "used" in a digital world where copying is free?
In Fantasy Land we all boycott DRM and the rights holders see the error of their ways, but in Reality Land too many people tolerate DRM because "they can live with it" or they aren't engaged enough to even understand what it is. That is why counteractive phenomena like the Pirate Bay and the prosecution of Aaron Swartz are so important.
Netflix is a subscription-based service provider which streams content to you. In this scenario, to what end does DRM inhibit your experience or tread on your right as a consumer? I am legitimately curious, because while I am very anti-DRM in most scenarios, I fail to see the issue with a DRM-lock on content designed and intended to only be streamed.
1) Arbitrary region blocks. I can't use my US-based subscription outside of the USA. That might not be a big deal to you, but it is a deal-breaker for me. If I have residence in the US, an American credit card, a mailing address, a physical house, citizenship, then why the f**** can't I watch movies when I'm abroad? And what alternative do I have if, for example, I live half the year in South America? Dubbed movies over satellite? Spanish language soap operas? Football! Football! Football! Or the Pirate Bay...
2) Distribution agreements. The reason Netflix uses DRM is not because they want it or their customers want it, it is because the rights holders want it. Thus, in order for Netflix to contract with a studio/network/distributor, they must implement DRM and they can only stream content; there is no such thing as "intended to only be streamed." It is an arbitrary constraint demanded by rights holders. That means that an entire studio/network/distributor can also remove all of their content from Netflix because, say, they were acquired by a cable company that wants you to stream their content through some box that their hardware partner wants to sell you. And that brings me to point 3...
3) Fragmentation. Why the f*** can't I watch everything on everything? Hardware limitations? Software limitations? No, DRM. Let's say I download a movie "illegally" and store it on a dirt-cheap RAID array in the closet that is connected to my router. Now I can watch said movie using a cross-platform suite like XBMC on any device in my house and when I stop playing on one, it picks up where I left off on another. I can also use something like Emit to stream that movie to my phone anywhere on Earth. If I am going to be somewhere without Internet, like a 12-hour plane flight, I can cross my fingers and hope that they have a decent selection of movies, or just copy my downloaded movie to my tablet, which brings me to point 4...
4) Gouging. Media companies want me to pay for the right to view their product. And they want me to either pay for each viewing or for each way of viewing separately. They don't care that I watched Spaceballs about a hundred times in the theater, bought Spaceballs the VHS and then Spaceballs the DVD and then (the 25th Anniversary) Spaceballs the Blu-Ray; they want me to pay again to watch it on my i-thing and once more on my Android thing and again on the next device I buy. That is gouging, otherwise known as collusion (because the media companies negotiate price structures and squeeze small competitors through bodies like the MPAA).
5) The never-ending "copyright." It isn't enough to turn a profit on foreign box office sales; they want a 25-year-old movie to continue to generate revenue for them in perpetuity throughout the universe. When it comes time to force my son to watch my favorite movies from the 80's, we wont' have a VHS player, a DVD player, a Blu-ray player, Silverlight will be dead, and whatever gizmos are capable of playing movies will demand that I pay, once again, for something that should have fallen into the public domain. Of course, those gizmos will be perfectly able to play the non-DRM encumbered, x264-standard encoded movie in an open-source MKV container that I downloaded all those years ago. Do you know why "It's a Wonderful Life" continues to pop up on TV so regularly? It's basically because someone forgot to copyright it. What is so different about Spaceballs? And look at the Star Wars franchise, where Lucas managed to hang on to unprecedented control over his creative works (a "mistake" that 20th Century Fox made exactly once.) Robot Chicken can do
You don't have the right to break the law because you think they're stupid.
I have the right to break whatever law I damn well please, but I knowingly accept the risk. Let's put this into perspective. Breaking copyright law is not (yet) the same as theft or violent crime. It's more like riding your bike on the sidewalk or installing a purchased copy of Windows on two computers in your house. The media companies certainly have the right to control their content and to sue you for violating their copyrights, but they do not (yet) have the right to charge you with a crime and lock you up in jail for seeding a torrent.
In most places in the world, however, it is a (severe) criminal offense to possess marijuana. But that doesn't stop people from smoking it, thereby demonstrating the futility of the law and the harmlessness of the drug. (Note that the use of other drugs, like crack and meth, have had the opposite effect and elicited stricter penalties and, in some cases, public health programs.) Same goes for DRM; we keep downloading to show media conglomerates what we want content distribution to look like. I know I'm no alone here; I would gladly pay for the level of service that usenet provides, even with all the headache of PAR files and buggy fetchers/parsers. What they offer, however, is a hodgepodge of websites and half-baked software tied to various hardware platforms and myriad "This content is not available in your region" messages.
Give me XBMC with flat-rate and micropayment back ends that don't categorically exclude some studios/networks/distributors and watch me pay for what I currently get for free.
Not just history, but current events. A combination of a bloody, eight-year war with Iraq and policies that encouraged large families have lead to a glut of young people; something like 2/3 of the population is ~30. That generation is not particularly religious (particularly not by the standards that most Americans use to hypocritically stereotype the Middle East), is very pro-Western and anti-isolationism, well-educated, and very aware of the world. The policies of the country, however, are dominated by a small, ultra-conservative minority of old assholes. Decades of turmoil and common sense drive smart, young people out of the country rather than driving them to stay and launch some sort of up-rising that may result in an even worse regime. They watched the "Arab Spring" and took away the lesson that the arabs didn't really improve their situation. Those that see the sanctions as the fault of their government's stubbornness want out, those that see them as the fault of the imperialist West don't; everyone agrees that the sanctions hit ordinary Iranians the hardest.
When you see sweeping generalizations about intolerance, religious fundamentalism, and insane foreign policy, just remember that the Bush administration arrested and tortured people in secret prisons with no trials. Does that mean that all ~300,000,000 Americans supported that policy? Should the world now treat all Americans like paranoid war-mongers that embrace pre-emptive war and a police state? Was Bush v Gore definitive evidence that Americans can't hold fair elections? If you answered yes, then feel free to un-hypocritically pass the same sort of judgements against the entire population of another country with crazy political leaders. Otherwise, put yourself in the shoes of a 28-year-old with an advanced degree that is fluent in English and that has to use an "illegal" VPN to exercise your curiosity of the outside world--would contribute to society by risking everything to join a violent rebellion or by trying to get out and establish a career and citizenship in the West?
For those that don't know Boston, the frats at MIT are famous for their stunts, including inventing a unit of measure "the Smoot" for the Harvard bridge (which, oddly, links MIT to Boston) by flipping a pledge end-to-end over the entire length of the bridge. But that is exactly what makes MIT so weird; everyone lives in "off campus" housing, much of which is a stone's throw from campus. It's as if they only interact with each other. Maybe I'm biased because I was up the river a bit, but I feel like I ran into people from every university except MIT at the bars around town. And despite spending a considerable amount of time on campus, it always felt like walking around the Borg Cube.
They still fuck around, but with nerd panache
What always fascinated me about MIT is the seeming lack of a "university neighborhood." It was like MIT people never left campus and had no social lives to speak of. I think it went out of business, but one of the few bars close to campus was themed like a laboratory, where you drank beer out of beakers. During the day, people would scurry out of the buildings to the food trucks, awkwardly scarf down their lunches, and then scurry back. I used to love watching them try to play Frisbie when the sun came out, which I can can only describe with a direct quote from Dodgeball: "It's like watching a bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob out there." I had always thought the jokes about just how nerdy MIT was were exaggerations, but that has to be the highest concentration of nerd-stereotypes that I have ever seen; super-smart, interesting people, but I can certainly see how the Charm School has lasted 20 years.
Despite your stupidity, you must be very proud of your absolutely mastodonic penis.
You would think so, but the effort of hefting the damn thing precludes pissing contests with trolls, which would otherwise be a favorite past time for one as stupid as myself.
A bit off topic but this troubles me and I never manage to get really good answers to this one.
Supposing that "All citizens have the legal right to marry a member of the opposite sex" is both the letter and spirit of the current law...how does one resolve the following edge cases:
1) A naturally-born hermaphrodite who can pass equally well for either gender based upon dress. Can such a person marry someone of either gender, thus being a direct contradiction to the spirit of the law? Or can such a person just not get married, thus suffering a grave injustice? Must the person choose a gender and stick with it for his/her entire life (which seems a bit arbitrary), and will the person be forced to get a divorce, by the state, if (s)he changes his/her gender-facade after getting married?
2) If a man has a gender-changing surgery and becomes a woman, what gender can she then marry? Can she marry a man now that she is a woman? Or must she marry another woman and have an ostensibly homosexual relationship due to being genetically heterosexual?
Reflection upon these edge cases makes it seem to me that the distinction between men and women isn't quite as absolute as the law would make it out to be. Since these things can be a bit ambiguous or even change, it seems like the law should just not take gender into account (at least for the issue of marriage).
Both of these situations obviously happen and are about as convoluted as you would think exactly because the laws, as currently prosecuted, treat all humans as belonging to one of two categories; male or female. I'm no expert, but I do read/listen to Dan Savage, who addresses exactly these types of topics. Transgendered people are often stuck in a weird limbo where they are anatomically (and, more importantly, mentally) one gender, but legally the other. There are avenues for legally changing ones gender exactly because of situations like hermaphrodites, whose gender is usually arbitrarily assigned by the parents at birth, often accompanied by surgery, but whom do not always identify with their assigned gender. The situation is no different for people who are anatomically assigned one gender, but whom identify with the other, often from a very young age.
These sorts of complexities are exactly why stupid over-simplified slogans like "one man, one woman" with shortly become anachronisms. What matters is not what is between your legs, but between your ears--if you identify as a lesbian trapped in a man's body or a lesbian in a woman's body, why should the law treat you differently because of circumstances that are beyond your control? It is exactly the same as discriminating based on race or place of birth. Yet, somehow, we deem it perfectly logical to ban religious discrimination carte blanche, even though religion is clearly a choice. I think that you can ascribe this debacle to the prevalence of slavery when the constitution and bill of rights were written. Of course you had to protect speech and freedom of religion, but you had to be careful about things like "equal protection," to ensure that "equal" included only land-owning white males.
What we have now are people who love "democracy" when the majority gets to vote on the rights of a minority, but who are perfectly happy to gerrymander congressional districts to ensure that republican/democrat/black/white representatives are sent to Congress, despite actual will of the majority, particularly when they are doing so to protect their own minority opinion.
"Been running Linux for 15 years now, and it's better than it ever has been."
You're right, it is better than it ever has been. I cut my teeth on Slackware, back when a bad X11 .config actually fucked up your monitor. And I did just that. Through it all, there was never a better operating system that was as open or as flexible as Linux. I could run it on cobbled together parts from dead x86 boxes pulled from dumpster dives.
Now that I actually have some disposable income, I chose a Mac. Why? It let's me get shit done instead of fiddle-fucking with things that I don't honestly care about anymore. Back in college, I had all the time to compile and tweak libproffer0.2.3 from alpha to see if I could get it work. Now, I'd rather just pop in a DVD or download a binary blob and drag it to /Applications. My family time is limited and I'd rather be spending it with them. Does that mean the extra few hundred bucks was wasted? Maybe. I'd gladly trade that. My circumstances are my own experiences, but these are my opinions.
I'm right there with you; back in the day not only did I have the time to tinker with X11 .config or compile the latest kernel from source, but it was in fact how I learned about computers and was exposed to programming (I am not a programmer nor do I do anything related to IT for a living). These days it is way more important for me to have a fast, reliable workflow that is compatible with all the other software that my largely computer illiterate colleagues work with. I routinely send documents out in ODT format and have them returned in DOCX; at least I can fire up Word on my Mac and export it in DOC so NeoOffice can open it correctly. But as much as I love the MacBook Air, I hate Apple desktops, so I do run OSX on a hackintosh... I dunno, maybe to maintain some semblance of nerd cred.
At home I still run Linux because I prefer it and I'm not under time pressure. But I still keep an OSX partition for days when I work from home because, at the end of the day, I find that what I really like about OSX is the availability of software. There are some killer programs--most by small developers--that just don't exist on other platforms and that make my life easier. However, I find the direction the OS is headed distressing. Let's say I want to copy a Keynote presentation and then edit the copy; I'd better remember to first "Duplicate" and then "Save a Copy" because if I edit it first and then Duplicate it will ask if I want to Revert first, but if I don't, then I get two copies of the edited document and have to waste time reverting the original with the pointlessly fancy Apple-style graphics. Why? Because Apple unilaterally decided that "Save As" needed to go away (sounds familiar... GNOME!). And don't get me started on the disaster that is iTunes, the abomination that Apple insists drive my venerable and infinitely useful iPod Nano. At lest I can still use rsync to backup my Mac.
My hope is that something--maybe Linux gaming--will drive Linux just enough into the mainstream that the same sort of software that I like on the Mac starts popping up on Linux. Then I will probably migrate away from the hybrid iOSenstein that OSX has morphed into that ties you to the Apple Cloud and Appstore and actively punishes you for using Android devices instead of i-things.
The link in TFA that says it the pixels are 7.5 x larger than the "best commercial professional cameras in existence" actually points to a page that says:
Each pixel on the new sensor measures 19 microns square, more than 7.5-times the surface area of the pixels on the CMOS sensor incorporated the company most advanced (and expensive) top-of-the-line EOS-1D X camera released last year.
TFA therefore assumes that Canon makes the best cameras in existence. Excluding professional digital backs, the Nikon D800 has 4.88 micron pixels, which is 23.8 square microns--but let's assume that "microns square" means square pixels 19 microns on each side even though it specifically refers to surface area. 4.88 x 7.5 microns = 36.6 microns, which is about twice the size of the pixels in this sensor. Moreover, the camera is a prototype and only for video. The D800 is on the market and capable of both stills and HD video.
I happen to be a Nikon fanboy, so I look at this as Canon hyping their lab results to cover up for the fact that Nikon beat Canon to market with a 36.3 million pixel full-frame sensor, which they responded to with the 22.3 million pixel Canon EOS 5D Mark III. I also happen to own a D800E and have never, ever seen a DSLR punish a lens (because the sensor exposes every flaw) so thoroughly or produce such amazing dynamic range and color depth at ISO 6400.
Except that cutting spending now is like applying leeches to a sick patient. You cut spending when the economy is healthy to promote action by the private sector.
Better hurry and get in your time machine and go back to warn Presidents Coolidge and Harding that their ~46% cut in Federal spending won't really kick off the "roaring '20s" and end the post-WW1 recession of 1920-21.
Strat
You're comparing a 7-month recession to the meltdown of the entire global economy? Alright, then why didn't the end of the Iraq war lead to booming economy like WWII? I mean, if we're making false equivalencies... At any rate it was Coolidge that slashed spending and taxes after he took office 1923, when the economy was going gangbusters thanks in large part to the automobile and electrification, which was exactly the right time to cut; the economy was healthy and taxes were still stuck at high war-time levels, along with spending. He also slashed top tax rates further in 1926, citing that "tax cuts lead to an increase in revenue, so more tax cuts should lead to more revenue," (I'm obviously paraphrasing) which makes him a conservative hero--the first supply-side president! They, of course, don't like to tell the rest of that story; that rampant deregulation under Coolidge inflated a huge bubble in the financial sector that precipitated the Great Depression... wait, that sounds familiar somehow.
Maybe cutting welfare for scientists isn't the best choice for first round budget trimming, but that budget does have to go down at some point.
Welfare? Are you high? Investments in research consistently yield the highest returns of any form of investment because they generate the technology and IP that drives the entire modern economy, including keeping people healthy and living longer. Why do you think the DoD invests so much in research? It's because it produces technology that directly benefits every aspect of the military. Besides, welfare implies a handout in place of money that would otherwise be earned; i) scientists don't pocket that money, they use it to hire people (i.e., to "create jobs") and to purchase necessary equipment/infrastructure--it is definition of stimulative and ii) where else are you supposed to get $1 million to do fundamental research? Private companies and philanthropic organizations (and Defense) fund specific research goals that are near to technological application, not the zillions of person-hours of basic research on which they were built.
If there is anything that a sane, rational government should spend money on, it is scientific research. And this isn't "the first round" of cuts for science, which have been under assault by Congress for years, but flies under the radar because ordinary people can't be bothered to see the connection between the plummeting quality and quantity of STEM in the US and research funding.
Not to mention that the entire annual budget for the NSF is ~$8 billion, which is about how much money was just up and lost, in cash, in Iraq. The Pentagon probably blows $8 billion on toilet paper in a year.
Still, looking at the list, there's a number of worthy budget cuts, such as the oversized federal law enforcement, small business loans, and various "government service" rent seeking. And one really has a hard time arguing against a 13% cut back in defense spending.
Except that cutting spending now is like applying leeches to a sick patient. You cut spending when the economy is healthy to promote action by the private sector. You increase spending when the economy is unhealthy to backstop the potential for long term unemployment, which can ruin entire generations. An across-the-board spending cut to almost any government agency will do far more harm than good, but research--because it draws so heavily on international talent--is the most vulnerable.
After nearly a decade of back-door budget cuts to basic research funding during the Bush years, in 2007-2008 thousands of people were left stranded with years of education and training only to find academic positions evaporating as the housing crisis froze the funding for positions that were already being advertised for. In subsequent years positions that would normally receive on the order of a dozen applications were receiving hundreds. There was a little bubble with the stimulus, and then right back to strangling NSF, NIH, etc.
That kind of uncertainty and hostility from Congress drives talent away from the US; Europe and Asia are still dumping money into research like crazy. Europeans and Asians used to compete to come to the US, hoping to land a position in the land of opportunity. Increasingly, they come for a degree or a postdoc and then head home for a better position and stable funding in a first-world country with modern infrastructure.
Sure, it's only $85 billion, which is a rounding error in the total budget, but the force-multiplication of the way the sequester is applied will harm the US in the long term. And what is Washington concerned with? Finger-pointing, because carpet-bombing swing states with ads about whose fault the sequester was in the next election cycle is clearly more important to them than solving actual problems.
Not to mention that, if French workers really only work three-hour days, any CEO worth his salt would be scrambling to copy that level of productivity. I mean, you can make fun of France all you like, but it is certainly not a depressed third-world nation. So either he's an idiot for making ridiculous, inflammatory, bigoted statements (apparently in public) or completely incompetent for not pouncing on whatever the French are doing to maintain what is apparently the most productive work force on the planet.
all 11 winners are from the US.
The two Dutch scientists that won would probably disagree.
If the US situation is too confusing for you, look at Europe, where politicians are united on anti-global warming efforts. Has it helped? Not one bit. Europeans have been saddled with large costs and no effective reductions to show for it. Electric and hydrogen vehicles are nearly non-existent in Europe, and car ownership and VMT remain high. The only reductions in carbon output have been due to outsourcing carbon-intensive production to China and due to economic slowdowns. Countries are also not doing so well on renewables, with production in most European countries only being 10-20% (but places like Germany only achieve that by importing a lot of non-renewable energy).
The largest market for Tesla cars is Scandinavia, where they have for years been introducing charging stations to pave the way for electric cars because of all the hydro and wind power they have developed (particularly Norway). One program that I found interesting was to actually use electric cars for energy storage; it is distributed and surprisingly efficient. Fly over the North Sea and take a look at the gargantuan wind turbines that they have been building out for the last couple of decades. They're mixed in with the oil platforms that manage not to leak and kill all off the sea life, despite being in rough seas. (And the profits are largely held collectively by the people via governments managing giant oil funds, but that is a different story). When they generate more power than they are consuming, they pump water uphill, storing it as potential energy.
In Germany and the Netherlands (and probably elsewhere) cars are effectively being pushed out of cities in two ways; one, cars that do not meet certain emission requirements are not allowed to enter urban zones and two, taxes and fees are increasingly being assessed based on emission standards. That, plus the discovery of large natural gas fields in the Netherlands and elsewhere has pushed a lot of LNG conversions, which takes old, polluting cars and turns them into relatively clean LNG cars (that can enter "green" emission zones.) Why the push to get cars out of cities? Public transport, of course. European cities are rife with efficient public transportation, with rural areas typically linked by a well-maintained rail system. Out the window of your high-speed train you are likely to see wind turbines decorating the horizon as they unobtrusively populate so much farmland these days.
The last fiscal quarter, solar energy reached grid parity in Europe thanks in large part to ongoing competition between German and Chinese solar panel manufacturers creating a glut. That means that you can now buy solar power for the same price as the regular nuclear/fossil mix. Germany now generates enough solar power that it has a surplus, which it sells to neighboring countries, yet it is investing in more large-scale solar plants. (Yes, there have been cases of Germany exporting coal and re-importing electricity, but it is anecdotal.) This competition is, in turn, driving neighboring countries to accelerate their long-term green energy strategies as, for example, France is used to selling its excess nuclear-generated power with impunity, not competing with solar from Germany. Cities across Europe are scrambling to get their ambitious solar-panel projects (X% of rooftops with solar panels, etc.) done because of "green pride."
Air quality has consistently improved in virtually the entire EU (places like Athens which suffer from inversion layers and unfortunate geography obviously still have rampant pollution problems) since politicians "united" on anti-global warming efforts. Electricity and gas are more expensive in Europe, but that is because they are paying up-front costs that Americans get in the back-end (pun intended), like a bloated military to keep oil flowing from the Middle East and an electricity grid that makes India's look good. A lot of those costs are defrayed by, for example, not having to own a car if you live in virtually any reasonably cited cit
Still it seems like collecting data for no obvious reason, just to know that some one came into the store who spent time in the Shoes department 6 weeks ago.
I think the idea is that information now has value, particularly when it can be associated with consumer habits. Whether or not the grocery store cares how frequently a particular MAC address visits their store, when compiled into a large enough data set--so the logic goes--and cross-referenced with other large data sets, you can mine information that would be otherwise impossible without something intrusive like a survey. The MAC address also contains information about the chipset in your phone, when it was manufactured, etc. It isn't that much further to guessing your income, where you live, and eventually your shopping habits. Even without knowing your name, you could imagine a "smart" grocery store adjusting prices in real-time just, sort of like how airlines drop cookies to see if you have already searched for a ticket so they can keep the price high just for you. It's the high-tech version of the Ralph's Club Card; they want you to use it when you make purchases to track you, but now they can do it without your name or any personal information or anything proactive on your part.
My feeling is that people find it creepy when a computer knows their name. Not many people wants to walk into the grocery store and hear a computer say "Hey Bob Smith, nice to see you again! Pizza bagels are on sale, and I know how much you like those." But if the grocery store sees "consumer type A431" approaching, the sign for pizza bagels may light up and blink "Sale! Sale! Sale!" which is intrinsically less creepy despite accomplishing the same thing. I could imagine doing that just with you MAC address and your approximate height and weight, which is easy to get from the self-checkout machine (it has a camera and weights things). The computer says "5'9", 235 lbs, $500 phone; clearly a Slashdot reader. I'll put the Hot Pockets, Mountain Dew, and hand lotion on special next time I see that MAC address hash."