One problem that I have read is that OneNote's hand-writing recognition is not as good on smart boards as it is on a tablet (especially one with a Wacom pen), but it still works relatively well. Set OneNote to automatically index all handwriting, photos, and audio, and it can make it easy for students to search the notebooks if they are looking for a specific topic that was discussed. You insert your existing Word/Writer/othertextfile into the Notebook before class and have students go to the board to answer the questions, etc (my brain thinks from the Mathematics/Sciences, but if you have another subject, I'm sure you can still come up with novel ways to utilize the technology.
I'm a OneNote convert myself. I find it useful to embed photos and audio directly into lecture notes, and you can synchronize audio with the notes and post them online easily. This allows students to reference not only the notes from within class, but the context of the notes from the audio spoken in class. You can also record video in OneNote and embed it within the notebooks.
I personally use a tablet (Samsung Ativ 500T) and screencast to a projector. If for some reason something is done on someone's pen/paper or the physical whiteboard, just take a quick photo and add it to the notebook. When the lecture is finished, it's automatically synchronized to a shared OneDrive notebook that the students can view in browser or via their own OneNote desktop, Android, iOS, or WP applications. The only big thing they need to fix is that viewing OneNote in the browser can cause hand-writing to not be perfectly aligned with photos, so it can make it annoying on my Linux box if I have too many photos in the page (the effect amplifies the further down the page you go).
I would be interested to see someone do a smartboard setup with OneNote, but I've not researched to see how well it works. Mostly, you just need cursor tracking and some way to know when contact has been made.
I have an undergrad in Mathematics, and planetarium, museum, and other informal education opportunities are great. I've been teaching in planetariums for 7yrs, and I absolutely love the lack of bureaucracy compared to K-12. Community college teaching is also a viable option.
It takes a bit of digging, but if you look at those test scores, you'll see some major biases there. Take China and India for example: their scores on international tests are not for the country as a whole, but only the rich metropolitan areas.
Same goes for many other countries which track students into trade schools before ever getting to these tests.
If we only tested our best performing schools, we'd look like the cream of the crop, too!
College/University professors, at least in the US, have no training in how to teach. It's appalling that our higher education centers do not require the professors to take courses in HOW to teach, as many of them are piss poor teachers.
We require certification to teach up through high school, but once you hit college, we don't care about your teaching abilities as long as you are a subject area expert.
"Banning laptops is not the answer here. If one student is a problem, address that student directly and respectfully resolve the issue. Don't make capricious rules against everyone because of a few students who are an issue."
How about I quote my above statement for you:
"Banning laptops in the classroom is absurd. It's hitting a nail with an anvil. Establishing proper etiquette protocol and disciplinary procedures for students who disrupt a classroom is a much more sensible solution to outright bans. Computers are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives, and students need to learn to be able to use them in a professional manner. Just as you don't see people staring at porn in the classroom or in a business meeting (typically), we shouldn't see people staring at their friend's FB page."
Classroom disruption procedures are already in place in almost every student handbook (every one I've looked at both on the student and the instructor side). This is simply accepting that laptops, cell phones, and other media/internet devices can and do disrupt the classroom. They need to be treated like Walkmans, drum sticks, and naked people.
If someone is quickly checking a fact online or is typing an a word processor, it's no more a distraction than a pen and paper being held upright. If someone is playing a flashy game or flipping screens regularly, its no different than excessively tapping a pencil on a desk or jumping up and down saying, "the power of Christ compels you!"
Use the procedures in place to address the issue, and if necessary, simply add the couple words in the handbook to ensure the idiots out there can't run around the rules claiming it isn't explicitly spelled out that their distraction of choice isn't covered.
You seem to think that a disciplinary process means no personal responsibility. As with all disciplinary issues, I subscribe to the reliable "chain of command" principle in which you always confront the offender first. Should that fail, there is an escalation process to resolve the issue through someone with more authority and capability to resolve the issue be it through punitive or persuasive means.
To achieve that end, one needs established rules governing what is considered a violation.
The issue is not finding a device free of working with DRM, but rather a store that sells DRM-free works.
If you want an ebook reader built on open source software, look at the Nook. Many have even rooted them to allow for custom installations. It allows for a variety of DRM and DRM-free formats to be used (should you find those DRM-free stores).
The market is in its infancy, and until one store gains a good monopoly (like iTunes with music), you're not going to see real competition (like DRM stripped books).
Personally, I say let them filter certain websites on the academic networks with the ability to request per-account authorizations when a student is doing a research project dealing with social networking. It's not going to stop anyone from SD, but it will at least stop the casual classroom infringer (for a while). Granted, soon everyone will just have CDMA or GSM laptops capable of getting online from anywhere, and school wifi networks will be bypassed completely. It's a tricky subject, and students will have to familiarize themselves with the network regulations to decide what campus to go to.
Banning laptops in the classroom is absurd. It's hitting a nail with an anvil. Establishing proper etiquette protocol and disciplinary procedures for students who disrupt a classroom is a much more sensible solution to outright bans. Computers are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives, and students need to learn to be able to use them in a professional manner. Just as you don't see people staring at porn in the classroom or in a business meeting (typically), we shouldn't see people staring at their friend's FB page.
Being a learned scholar in the English language, I'm sure you, as an learned scholar, would agree that a word's meaning can only be gaged with context.
For example: I have five bucks.....am I a hunter? What about an American with a little cash in my pocket? Maybe, five of my children have attended OSU.
In the context of "zoom" when relating to photographic arts, Zoom Lens, the accepted meaning is, "a mechanical assembly of lens elements for which the focal length (and thus angle of view) can be varied, as opposed to a fixed focal length (FFL) lens (see prime lens). They are commonly used with still, video, motion picture cameras, projectors, some binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, telescopic sights, and other optical instruments."
"magnification: the ratio of the size of an image to the size of the object"
These are two very different uses. Magnification and zoom are very different in photography. They refer to entirely different concepts and are not equatable.
I'm sure you are an excellent optical designer, but your expertise is in the optical (and from what I read of you, microscopic) arts, not photographic arts. Please, like the previous posters before you, stick with your expertise area, advise on it, but do not speak as an expert in a subject in which you have minimal qualifications. It's dangerous for people like yourself to make policy.
Absolutely love it! If I had $45,000, I'd sadly spend it on something else, but if I had a few million, I'd grab that lens in a heartbeat.....well, not correct. I'd have that money invested, and anything on top of that investment would go into an account to buy that lens:-D.
Props on finding a mirror lens designed for a camera, not an eyepiece!
Now, if we could just use that to get 10mm on the wide end, we'd have that "easy" 500x zoom lens;-). Good thing we've got regulations from the above poster that would limit this lens to a 1000-5000mm Zoom....otherwise, we might just have a problem!:-D
Methinks your understanding of photographic terms is lacking. You're thinking microscopic rather than telescopic: Magnification versus zoom.
In macro/micro photography, terms are used like 1:1, 2:1, 4:1, 1:4, 1:200 etc. Those are ratios of the physical size of the object to the physical size it takes up on a sensor (as in, magnifying an object that takes up.35mm to take up 35mm on a lens would be a 100x MAGNIFICATION). That is entirely different from the term 2x Zoom lens, which is a ratio of the longest and shortest focal lengths of a lens.
Annnnd..... you missed the point entirely. You CAN build a 500x zoom for a p&s. period.
Oh so wrong. A 500mm lens is easy to build (well, 500mm in 35mm equivalence. A 500X lens would be an incredible feat. Lets say it's 10mm on the wide end (VERY close to fisheye). That would be a 10mm-5000mm lens. Hell, you find me a 5000mm lens on any system and I commend you. Technical knowledge, you know not.
Lenses are not special on dslrs in any technical sense of the word. I specifically said that dslrs are more capable of producing better pictures. My recommendations on limiting quality are also more effective than the uninformed "ban all dslr" policy that is in place.
Lenses on dSLRs are not special in any sense of the word. The issue is that your caps on pixel count is absurd on small format lenses. Diffraction, the scattering of light passing through an eyelit, as modified by smaller absolute apertures (although equivalent relative apertures), limits the camera's ability to resolve beyond 8-10MP. Even the significantly larger 4/3rd sensor on the Olympus and Panasonic system is diffraction limited to f/6ish. So, your arbitrary limitations would be useless and simply limit a company's ability to market their new 50bajillion megapixel camera to the public. It's as arbitrary as banning dSLR cameras.
Yes, i know that you really can only subjectively measure quality, and sensor size matters when calculating relative zoom, but that isnt practical as a policy. What would be practical would be banning higher powered lenses, and limiting quality of sensor.
"Higher powered lenses" are an arbitrary assignment. Are you saying banning telephoto lenses beyond a certain throw is a good idea? 'cause that MIGHT be more worthwhile. I can find you a 1x lens that can spy a rivet on a bridge across town easily. Again, the multiplier has no bearing.
Issue is, how does anyone enforce that? Smaller sensor cameras use smaller lenses. There are some amazing 300mm+ lenses on P&S cameras that fold up into the body. Do we have all police become considerably more technically sound than yourself?
It all reeks of political stupidity. Are they also banning EVIL cameras (no reflex mirror)? Interchangeable lens systems? Does that include adapters screwed onto the front of fixed lens systems?
Point is, what you propose is nothing more than what they propose. It's all stupidity by those with no technical knowledge on the subject area.
So you can act like a smug dick all day, but to imply that the slr aspect of a camera is what defines its capacities is wrong. Just. Wrong.
Awwwwww.....did you not comprehend my previous post? Exactly my point. You, and those like you, are sadly the ones making these arbitrary rules.
Annnnnnd.....you know nothing about photography. A 5x lens can be a 8-40mm (35mm equiv), or a 100-500mm lens. The "X" is nothing more than a ratio of the focal length at the widest to telephoto end of the lens.
Also, with smaller sensors, aperture is the limiting factor for lens/sensor resolving power due to diffraction issues. Most lenses on compact cameras cannot resolve beyond 8-10MP anyway.
And no, you cannot build a 500x zoom on a P&S nor a dSLR. It's impractical and extremely expensive. There's a reason you rarely see beyond 10x zooms on dSLR cameras and 16x on super-zooms.
Like those politicians, you should not ever be put in a position to make policy.
I couldn't have survived high school without something to keep my mind occupied. I constantly programmed on my TI-83+, and I couldn't imagine NOT having the ability to script tasks or create random programs for fun.
The TI-83 got me into programming, and it's helped me hone many of my logic skills!
Re:Tappin to the music...
on
The Mouse Vanishes
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This is exactly why I hate tapping on track pads. I keep my fingers on the mouse, on the trackpad, and my keys, depending on what I'm doing. It slows your response time to have to keep your finger hovering above the clickable surface. Virtual keyboards will never work for speed typists. They MAY work for situations on the fly where your only alternative is using the touch-screen on a tablet, but in most situations, a tactile keyboard and mouse provide greater efficiency.
The advantage of the E-330 over other dSLRs is that it has mirror-down live view with a dedicated live-view sensor and a swivel LCD display. This way the primary imaging sensor does not heat up to cause digital noise, and it's much easier to frame. Other consumer live-view implementations before and since use the primary imaging sensors for the image view. These sensors often overheat quickly and cause a degradation in imaging quality.
The EXIF on that photo says 13 seconds at ISO 200 and f/2.8 with a Nikon D2Xs. Even though that camera is a 2006 model, I'd think it would have been able to take acceptable ISO800 photos which could chop that exposure down to about 3 seconds or so. I'm going to assume that the camera was modified to remove the Near IR/IR filter, but if not, that would definitely help the reds come through better.
With less motion, the colors would have been able to compound better, and I'm betting that an ISO800 shot would have had better definition as the photon strikes would have a higher likelihood of compounding on top of each other rather than spreading across multiple pixels. Then again, I've never shot from space at an object moving 28,000kph relative to me. I'm guessing they don't have a TON of time to dink around with exposure settings, although 1000 tweets in, they must have a little spare time.
Please cite a court ruling dealing with nothing more than scanning and logging SSIDs. All of the decisions to my knowledge deal with people accessing a unsecured wireless networks, not simply recording the SSIDs. I would be happy (and saddened) for you to prove me wrong if you have evidence that judges have ruled logging the SSIDs of wireless routers to be a criminal offense equal to accessing a computer network without authorization.
You obviously have no clue how wifi works. The routers are broadcasting their identification codes and names. All your computer has to do is listen. It's the same as if you were just tuning into all the local FM bands and listening to what other people were listening to (as most of those devices are unencrypted). He doesn't have to "ping" the other wifi networks to listen to them. He doesn't hack anything or attempt to decrypt anything; he simply listens to routers shouting out their names. Perfectly legal. If you scan for wifi access points with Windows, you're doing the same thing; the only difference: he wrote the names down and put the names online.
* A university email is often used as a verification that a person is affiliated with the place. This is useful for example for site licences.
All university email addresses through Gmail also have.edu addresses.
* Google could change privacy settings in the future. Imagine that external parties could buy lists of "names" or "grades".
As with any contract, if a company decides to change its policies, you can renegotiate or go with another. Other companies (aka Microsoft et al) will have migration solutions.
* Once hooked, it is difficult to switch back. Once, the IT culture has been outsourced, also the IT talent has disappeared and higher education becomes dependent on external companies.
You outsource phone, mail, construction, and other services. Once it is outsourced, it will actually be fairly easy to migrate to another solution. Plus, with the savings from getting rid of parts of the IT staff and infrastructure costs, you'll be able to afford consultations with more money on top.
* There is a lot of research and confidential information going over email. If I were a researcher working in a cutting edge field, I would be worried to have information about the projects safe.
There is a lot of confidential information going through the snail mail system, cell phone towers, and the regular phone system. All in all, seeing incompetence of a lot of university IT staffs, I would trust a company whose core business is to keep your information safe more than the local IT staff.
* Google delivers now. Will it in 10 years? What happens if Sergey and Larry have moved on completely and accountants eying primarily the stock market have taken over? It might become more expensive for a university in the future. Or, due to lack of other possibilities, one is forced to accept a partner which is less careful about privacy settings.
Again, like any utility, there are options.
* A lot of students and faculty already use gmail now. But they do not have to. If somebody wants, it is possible to have all benefits from external email providers. Why force it?
Cost savings that can be applied elsewhere,.edu address associated with your gmail, the ability to migrate seamlessly from your.edu address to a alumni address.
* Some redundancy is nice. Its can be beneficial to have different email addresses and use them for different things. If one provider does not deliver, one can use an other one. Being forced to use an external email provider leave less options and adds more dependencies.
Being forced to have all of your information going through the university mail servers provides the same issue. I've seen outages at the university level that would shame a corporation. Outages do happen, but a company like Google has the expertise and resources to resolve it quickly.
Jews are both a religion and a race, hence killing relatives of religiously Jewish people during WWII. Being Jewish is hereditary passed from the mother, so technically a lineage with daughters in every generation born from the daughters will perpetuate the race for as many generations as they keep it up.
No. A 1" dia fan yields about.785inch squared area. So, an order of magnitude would require ~7.85sq inches of space. Divide by ~3.14, take that to the 1/2 power, multiply by two, and you have a ~3" dia fan which I would wager is about the size of fan that the XBox or PS3 has.
Slashdot Mirror
Try OneNote with the smartboard. It sounds like others have done it successfully: http://shc-edutech.hct.ac.ae/p...
http://blogs.office.com/2014/0...
http://emrefirat.edublogs.org/...
One problem that I have read is that OneNote's hand-writing recognition is not as good on smart boards as it is on a tablet (especially one with a Wacom pen), but it still works relatively well. Set OneNote to automatically index all handwriting, photos, and audio, and it can make it easy for students to search the notebooks if they are looking for a specific topic that was discussed. You insert your existing Word/Writer/othertextfile into the Notebook before class and have students go to the board to answer the questions, etc (my brain thinks from the Mathematics/Sciences, but if you have another subject, I'm sure you can still come up with novel ways to utilize the technology.
I'm a OneNote convert myself. I find it useful to embed photos and audio directly into lecture notes, and you can synchronize audio with the notes and post them online easily. This allows students to reference not only the notes from within class, but the context of the notes from the audio spoken in class. You can also record video in OneNote and embed it within the notebooks.
I personally use a tablet (Samsung Ativ 500T) and screencast to a projector. If for some reason something is done on someone's pen/paper or the physical whiteboard, just take a quick photo and add it to the notebook. When the lecture is finished, it's automatically synchronized to a shared OneDrive notebook that the students can view in browser or via their own OneNote desktop, Android, iOS, or WP applications. The only big thing they need to fix is that viewing OneNote in the browser can cause hand-writing to not be perfectly aligned with photos, so it can make it annoying on my Linux box if I have too many photos in the page (the effect amplifies the further down the page you go).
I would be interested to see someone do a smartboard setup with OneNote, but I've not researched to see how well it works. Mostly, you just need cursor tracking and some way to know when contact has been made.
I have an undergrad in Mathematics, and planetarium, museum, and other informal education opportunities are great. I've been teaching in planetariums for 7yrs, and I absolutely love the lack of bureaucracy compared to K-12. Community college teaching is also a viable option.
Apollo-Soyuz was the big joint mission between the two powers.
Along those same lines, I'm sure that global warming will end since piracy is on the rise ;-). (FSM reference)
It takes a bit of digging, but if you look at those test scores, you'll see some major biases there. Take China and India for example: their scores on international tests are not for the country as a whole, but only the rich metropolitan areas.
Same goes for many other countries which track students into trade schools before ever getting to these tests.
If we only tested our best performing schools, we'd look like the cream of the crop, too!
College/University professors, at least in the US, have no training in how to teach. It's appalling that our higher education centers do not require the professors to take courses in HOW to teach, as many of them are piss poor teachers.
We require certification to teach up through high school, but once you hit college, we don't care about your teaching abilities as long as you are a subject area expert.
"Banning laptops is not the answer here. If one student is a problem, address that student directly and respectfully resolve the issue. Don't make capricious rules against everyone because of a few students who are an issue."
How about I quote my above statement for you:
"Banning laptops in the classroom is absurd. It's hitting a nail with an anvil. Establishing proper etiquette protocol and disciplinary procedures for students who disrupt a classroom is a much more sensible solution to outright bans. Computers are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives, and students need to learn to be able to use them in a professional manner. Just as you don't see people staring at porn in the classroom or in a business meeting (typically), we shouldn't see people staring at their friend's FB page."
Classroom disruption procedures are already in place in almost every student handbook (every one I've looked at both on the student and the instructor side). This is simply accepting that laptops, cell phones, and other media/internet devices can and do disrupt the classroom. They need to be treated like Walkmans, drum sticks, and naked people.
If someone is quickly checking a fact online or is typing an a word processor, it's no more a distraction than a pen and paper being held upright. If someone is playing a flashy game or flipping screens regularly, its no different than excessively tapping a pencil on a desk or jumping up and down saying, "the power of Christ compels you!"
Use the procedures in place to address the issue, and if necessary, simply add the couple words in the handbook to ensure the idiots out there can't run around the rules claiming it isn't explicitly spelled out that their distraction of choice isn't covered.
You seem to think that a disciplinary process means no personal responsibility. As with all disciplinary issues, I subscribe to the reliable "chain of command" principle in which you always confront the offender first. Should that fail, there is an escalation process to resolve the issue through someone with more authority and capability to resolve the issue be it through punitive or persuasive means.
To achieve that end, one needs established rules governing what is considered a violation.
The issue is not finding a device free of working with DRM, but rather a store that sells DRM-free works.
If you want an ebook reader built on open source software, look at the Nook. Many have even rooted them to allow for custom installations. It allows for a variety of DRM and DRM-free formats to be used (should you find those DRM-free stores).
The market is in its infancy, and until one store gains a good monopoly (like iTunes with music), you're not going to see real competition (like DRM stripped books).
Personally, I say let them filter certain websites on the academic networks with the ability to request per-account authorizations when a student is doing a research project dealing with social networking. It's not going to stop anyone from SD, but it will at least stop the casual classroom infringer (for a while). Granted, soon everyone will just have CDMA or GSM laptops capable of getting online from anywhere, and school wifi networks will be bypassed completely. It's a tricky subject, and students will have to familiarize themselves with the network regulations to decide what campus to go to.
Banning laptops in the classroom is absurd. It's hitting a nail with an anvil. Establishing proper etiquette protocol and disciplinary procedures for students who disrupt a classroom is a much more sensible solution to outright bans. Computers are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives, and students need to learn to be able to use them in a professional manner. Just as you don't see people staring at porn in the classroom or in a business meeting (typically), we shouldn't see people staring at their friend's FB page.
For example: I have five bucks.....am I a hunter? What about an American with a little cash in my pocket? Maybe, five of my children have attended OSU.
In the context of "zoom" when relating to photographic arts, Zoom Lens, the accepted meaning is, "a mechanical assembly of lens elements for which the focal length (and thus angle of view) can be varied, as opposed to a fixed focal length (FFL) lens (see prime lens). They are commonly used with still, video, motion picture cameras, projectors, some binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, telescopic sights, and other optical instruments."
"magnification: the ratio of the size of an image to the size of the object"
These are two very different uses. Magnification and zoom are very different in photography. They refer to entirely different concepts and are not equatable.
I'm sure you are an excellent optical designer, but your expertise is in the optical (and from what I read of you, microscopic) arts, not photographic arts. Please, like the previous posters before you, stick with your expertise area, advise on it, but do not speak as an expert in a subject in which you have minimal qualifications. It's dangerous for people like yourself to make policy.
So long, and I'm glad you liked the fish :-).
Props on finding a mirror lens designed for a camera, not an eyepiece!
Now, if we could just use that to get 10mm on the wide end, we'd have that "easy" 500x zoom lens ;-). Good thing we've got regulations from the above poster that would limit this lens to a 1000-5000mm Zoom....otherwise, we might just have a problem! :-D
Methinks your understanding of photographic terms is lacking. You're thinking microscopic rather than telescopic: Magnification versus zoom. In macro/micro photography, terms are used like 1:1, 2:1, 4:1, 1:4, 1:200 etc. Those are ratios of the physical size of the object to the physical size it takes up on a sensor (as in, magnifying an object that takes up .35mm to take up 35mm on a lens would be a 100x MAGNIFICATION). That is entirely different from the term 2x Zoom lens, which is a ratio of the longest and shortest focal lengths of a lens.
Annnnd..... you missed the point entirely. You CAN build a 500x zoom for a p&s. period.
Oh so wrong. A 500mm lens is easy to build (well, 500mm in 35mm equivalence. A 500X lens would be an incredible feat. Lets say it's 10mm on the wide end (VERY close to fisheye). That would be a 10mm-5000mm lens. Hell, you find me a 5000mm lens on any system and I commend you. Technical knowledge, you know not.
Lenses are not special on dslrs in any technical sense of the word. I specifically said that dslrs are more capable of producing better pictures. My recommendations on limiting quality are also more effective than the uninformed "ban all dslr" policy that is in place.
Lenses on dSLRs are not special in any sense of the word. The issue is that your caps on pixel count is absurd on small format lenses. Diffraction, the scattering of light passing through an eyelit, as modified by smaller absolute apertures (although equivalent relative apertures), limits the camera's ability to resolve beyond 8-10MP. Even the significantly larger 4/3rd sensor on the Olympus and Panasonic system is diffraction limited to f/6ish. So, your arbitrary limitations would be useless and simply limit a company's ability to market their new 50bajillion megapixel camera to the public. It's as arbitrary as banning dSLR cameras.
Yes, i know that you really can only subjectively measure quality, and sensor size matters when calculating relative zoom, but that isnt practical as a policy. What would be practical would be banning higher powered lenses, and limiting quality of sensor.
"Higher powered lenses" are an arbitrary assignment. Are you saying banning telephoto lenses beyond a certain throw is a good idea? 'cause that MIGHT be more worthwhile. I can find you a 1x lens that can spy a rivet on a bridge across town easily. Again, the multiplier has no bearing.
Issue is, how does anyone enforce that? Smaller sensor cameras use smaller lenses. There are some amazing 300mm+ lenses on P&S cameras that fold up into the body. Do we have all police become considerably more technically sound than yourself?
It all reeks of political stupidity. Are they also banning EVIL cameras (no reflex mirror)? Interchangeable lens systems? Does that include adapters screwed onto the front of fixed lens systems?
Point is, what you propose is nothing more than what they propose. It's all stupidity by those with no technical knowledge on the subject area.
So you can act like a smug dick all day, but to imply that the slr aspect of a camera is what defines its capacities is wrong. Just. Wrong.
Awwwwww.....did you not comprehend my previous post? Exactly my point. You, and those like you, are sadly the ones making these arbitrary rules.
Annnnnnd.....you know nothing about photography. A 5x lens can be a 8-40mm (35mm equiv), or a 100-500mm lens. The "X" is nothing more than a ratio of the focal length at the widest to telephoto end of the lens. Also, with smaller sensors, aperture is the limiting factor for lens/sensor resolving power due to diffraction issues. Most lenses on compact cameras cannot resolve beyond 8-10MP anyway. And no, you cannot build a 500x zoom on a P&S nor a dSLR. It's impractical and extremely expensive. There's a reason you rarely see beyond 10x zooms on dSLR cameras and 16x on super-zooms. Like those politicians, you should not ever be put in a position to make policy.
I couldn't have survived high school without something to keep my mind occupied. I constantly programmed on my TI-83+, and I couldn't imagine NOT having the ability to script tasks or create random programs for fun. The TI-83 got me into programming, and it's helped me hone many of my logic skills!
This is exactly why I hate tapping on track pads. I keep my fingers on the mouse, on the trackpad, and my keys, depending on what I'm doing. It slows your response time to have to keep your finger hovering above the clickable surface. Virtual keyboards will never work for speed typists. They MAY work for situations on the fly where your only alternative is using the touch-screen on a tablet, but in most situations, a tactile keyboard and mouse provide greater efficiency.
The advantage of the E-330 over other dSLRs is that it has mirror-down live view with a dedicated live-view sensor and a swivel LCD display. This way the primary imaging sensor does not heat up to cause digital noise, and it's much easier to frame. Other consumer live-view implementations before and since use the primary imaging sensors for the image view. These sensors often overheat quickly and cause a degradation in imaging quality.
The EXIF on that photo says 13 seconds at ISO 200 and f/2.8 with a Nikon D2Xs. Even though that camera is a 2006 model, I'd think it would have been able to take acceptable ISO800 photos which could chop that exposure down to about 3 seconds or so. I'm going to assume that the camera was modified to remove the Near IR/IR filter, but if not, that would definitely help the reds come through better.
With less motion, the colors would have been able to compound better, and I'm betting that an ISO800 shot would have had better definition as the photon strikes would have a higher likelihood of compounding on top of each other rather than spreading across multiple pixels. Then again, I've never shot from space at an object moving 28,000kph relative to me. I'm guessing they don't have a TON of time to dink around with exposure settings, although 1000 tweets in, they must have a little spare time.
Please cite a court ruling dealing with nothing more than scanning and logging SSIDs. All of the decisions to my knowledge deal with people accessing a unsecured wireless networks, not simply recording the SSIDs. I would be happy (and saddened) for you to prove me wrong if you have evidence that judges have ruled logging the SSIDs of wireless routers to be a criminal offense equal to accessing a computer network without authorization.
You obviously have no clue how wifi works. The routers are broadcasting their identification codes and names. All your computer has to do is listen. It's the same as if you were just tuning into all the local FM bands and listening to what other people were listening to (as most of those devices are unencrypted). He doesn't have to "ping" the other wifi networks to listen to them. He doesn't hack anything or attempt to decrypt anything; he simply listens to routers shouting out their names. Perfectly legal. If you scan for wifi access points with Windows, you're doing the same thing; the only difference: he wrote the names down and put the names online.
All university email addresses through Gmail also have .edu addresses.
* Google could change privacy settings in the future. Imagine that external parties could buy lists of "names" or "grades".
As with any contract, if a company decides to change its policies, you can renegotiate or go with another. Other companies (aka Microsoft et al) will have migration solutions.
* Once hooked, it is difficult to switch back. Once, the IT culture has been outsourced, also the IT talent has disappeared and higher education becomes dependent on external companies.
You outsource phone, mail, construction, and other services. Once it is outsourced, it will actually be fairly easy to migrate to another solution. Plus, with the savings from getting rid of parts of the IT staff and infrastructure costs, you'll be able to afford consultations with more money on top.
* There is a lot of research and confidential information going over email. If I were a researcher working in a cutting edge field, I would be worried to have information about the projects safe.
There is a lot of confidential information going through the snail mail system, cell phone towers, and the regular phone system. All in all, seeing incompetence of a lot of university IT staffs, I would trust a company whose core business is to keep your information safe more than the local IT staff.
* Google delivers now. Will it in 10 years? What happens if Sergey and Larry have moved on completely and accountants eying primarily the stock market have taken over? It might become more expensive for a university in the future. Or, due to lack of other possibilities, one is forced to accept a partner which is less careful about privacy settings.
Again, like any utility, there are options.
* A lot of students and faculty already use gmail now. But they do not have to. If somebody wants, it is possible to have all benefits from external email providers. Why force it?
Cost savings that can be applied elsewhere, .edu address associated with your gmail, the ability to migrate seamlessly from your .edu address to a alumni address.
* Some redundancy is nice. Its can be beneficial to have different email addresses and use them for different things. If one provider does not deliver, one can use an other one. Being forced to use an external email provider leave less options and adds more dependencies.
Being forced to have all of your information going through the university mail servers provides the same issue. I've seen outages at the university level that would shame a corporation. Outages do happen, but a company like Google has the expertise and resources to resolve it quickly.
Jews are both a religion and a race, hence killing relatives of religiously Jewish people during WWII. Being Jewish is hereditary passed from the mother, so technically a lineage with daughters in every generation born from the daughters will perpetuate the race for as many generations as they keep it up.
The PS3 and 360 have a 10" cooling fan?!
No. A 1" dia fan yields about .785inch squared area. So, an order of magnitude would require ~7.85sq inches of space. Divide by ~3.14, take that to the 1/2 power, multiply by two, and you have a ~3" dia fan which I would wager is about the size of fan that the XBox or PS3 has.