But the high-end digi-cameras now (10MP) are finally better than any film.
In a word, Horsehockey. While 10MP is getting close enough for most purposes, there is a bit of a misconception involved. First, we need to understand the difference between "film" resolution and "digital" resolution.
Most mid-range color films in the early 90s (when I was a professional commercial photographer) would resolve 110 to 125 lppm (that's "line pairs per millimeter", or successive lines of white and black), with some of the high-resolution black and white films going as high as 425 lppm (Kodak Technical Pan in Technidol developer). To make the math easy, we'll compare that to at 3000x4000 (12 MP) digital camera.
Initially, 125 lppm x 25 (the approximate width of the 35mm format's picture taking area in mm)= 3,125 line pairs per inch, or 6,250 resolvable edges. Already twice the 'resolution' of the 12 MP digital cam, without moving up to any of the 'pro' films, and certainly not addressing medium/large format, like the 6x6cm that my Hassy ELM takes.
Lenses, on the other hand... In the 90s, some of the best 35mm lenses in the world would only resolve some 125 lppm in a ~1cm paraxial region; most Japanese glass had poor contrast (by comparison to various Bavarian competitiors, like Leica, Rollei, Hassy, etc) although they were acceptably sharp.
So, before this turns into a book; if you're shooting for personal record (snapshots), a digital camera will probably be as good as any point-and-shoot, if not better. In some cases, a 10 MP camera would be good enough for professional use, depending on the final print size of the image; but nothing digial exceeds the quality of decent 35 mm, and nothing digital even comes close to exceeding the image quality of the medium format machines.
Any network that is completely understood is obsolete.
Hrm... Last time I checked, park benches existed at the expense of the city/other municipality or authority, and *were* paid for by our 'tax dollars', yet no one asked us if we would like to have advertising painted on them.
I've been ranting for some time about the RIAA and the music industry in general, since long before P2P file trading and mp3s in general, whilst I was listening to mods on my Amiga and reading the complaints of the music artists faced with the absolute lack of integrity and institutionalized venality of the Music Industry as a whole.
The facts remain that the Industry makes money at the *expense* of the artist; because of the way we 'do it', the number of new artists must necessarily be limited (as the number of different products increases, the cost of promoting your brand goes up), and the industry as a whole absorbs most of the cash from any given CD. I'd much rather give *my* money to the artist. In fact, I'd rather see 100 artists making $100,000 a year than one artist making $10,000,000 (and yes, I mean that, even if the $10m artist is one I like, personally)... The RIAA cannot allow that to happen.
In the end, however, the very underpinnings of our current copyright system are collapsing under their own archaic weight. The constant confusion of those who insist that we are not purchasing a "song", but a "CD" (It's illegal for me to download a song that I own on cd, according to RIAA), but we don't really buy a "CD" with IP, because M$ Windows 'LICENSE' is non-transferrable. One way or the other, people.
The ip landscape is changing, and all I know is that it's not going to look the same in ten years - not even close. The RIAA and the recording giants are fighting for their lives in this age of near-zero-cost distribution. Somebody will win, and somebody will lose, and if recent years are any guide, the losers will be you and me, and the only winners will be, not the recording artists or actors, but the CORPORATIONS, and ONLY the corporations.
I was reading on http://www.baen.com, and came across a Robert Heinlein work in the free section that gave me the words I've been looking for to describe the current situation in IP:
"I will stipulate that many persons have canceled life-insurance policies as a result thereof, but I challenge them to show that anyone so doing has suffered any loss or damage therefrom. It is true that the Amalgamated has lost business through my activities, but that is the natural result of my discovery, which has made their policies as obsolete as the bow and arrow. If an injunction is granted on that ground, I shall set up a coal-oil-lamp factory, and then ask for an injunction against the Edison and General Electric companies to forbid them to manufacture incandescent bulbs."
Come on; this is at the heart of the entire issue, isn't it? Whether or not IP can *really* be compared reasonably to... ("Real Properties"? "Physical Properties", whatever you choose to call them.)
Here's the difference. When you purchased your car, you purchased a unique item with a physical presense and value; if I 'borrow your car and drive home', I have deprived you of its use, i.e, its value. If I download your MP3 file, I have not *taken* anything from you. I have deprived you of no value.
Whether or not the pundits and legal beagles decide that it is legal for me to possess a piece of intellectual property from a unique source other than the physical piece I purchased (i.e., a downloaded mp3 rip of a different, identical CD to the one I purchased), the distinction is pointless. You can't have it both ways; either I purchased a physical object (The CD), which I then own and can do with/that copy/ what I wish (think software non-transferrable licenses, etc), or I purchased a license to use that property. If I purchased a license to use that piece of IP, then my copy of an identical IP is legal, provided I don't use (or allow to be used) both at the same time (The backup copy argument, etc... )
Complex or not, the question is MOOT to a reasonable person who's not blinded by the rhetoric of an industry based on deception and begging the government to pass laws protecting them from obsolescense. If I have paid for a copy of the song, does it really matter where the copy I'm listening to *came* from?
Copyright was never intended to allow an individual or corporation to build a multi-million dollar industry based on a single piece of IP; it was intended to allow a creator to obtain reasonable compensation for intellectual innovation, whether it be aesthetic or technical, for a reasonable and limited time. Does the heart surgeon that repaired your father's ticker get paid every time dad's heart beats? Does the builder that constructed the house get paid again every time someone walks through the door? Are IPs at all similar to Physical Properties?
I would LOVE to see the artists get paid. Unfortunately, a ridiculously small sum of my money actually goes to the artist.
As a one time musician myself, I tell you honestly that I would rather see 100 artists making $100k/year doing something they love than 1 artist making $10,000,000/yr doing what the Marketriods push them to do and push us to buy. It's in the 'Recording Companies' best interests to limit the number of artists they distribute and sell as many cds as possible (the more unique products, the higher the average production cost per CD, the lower the profit margin); Innovation and diversified offerings are anathema to our current system, in simple economic terms.
Good point, but IBM's got a pretty heavy commitment to Linux. Not that OSX and Linux are incompatible platforms, but since they've spent so much money on Linux and Linux development and told the world that Linux was their chosen product to oppose M$ in the midrange market, they'd look pretty silly rolling up YANIX plaform to further attenuate their support dollars.
I can't wait to see how these things (G5s) run with apps written specifically for them!
No doubt the 68k was a better chip before the Intel crowd got flat memory space - working with the segmented memory models of the X86 chips was a pain in the @$$. 'tiny, medium, large, huge, and supersize'... sheesh.
Not to mention the fact that my 8 Mhz (Maybe 7.65? can't remember for certain) Amiga ran CIRCLES around my dad's hot-stuff 14 Mhz 286. And his 20 Mhz 386. In fact, his first 486DX w/ a VGA card was *almost* as fast.
If *anyone* had understood marketing the way M$ and Intel did, we'd be running 68k based machines today.
Good grief... "the 1.2GHz model already matches 3GHz Xeon in FP scores"? Buddy, you're high. First, the best scores of the 2.8 Ghz Xeon are in the high 1100s, whilst the suns barely squeak into four digit land - this is not matching performance in these days when 5% is considered 'spanking' someone.
You're also comparing apples and... well... ok, 64 bit processors to 32 bit processors. If we roll out the Intel 64 bit Itanic, we discover that a 1.3Ghz Itanic puts up 1770 or so, which is 70% better than the UIII at a slightly slower 1.2 Ghz.
I'm not religious about processors or operating systems, but such a blatantly misguided statement cannot just get ignored. I'm not familiar enough with the IBM offerings to spot the Power 4s, but maybe someone else can look at this list (www.spec.org(scores)) and let us know whether or not they're within shouting distance of the other chips.
The new Mac is awesome. Sun servers are not. Period. No glamour, no speed, and not particularly more dependable than our Compaq boxen.
In fact, in simple userspace terms, I can tell you that a dual P4 Xeon 2.8 compiles the open-source toolkits we use an about half the time required by a V880 with eight processors and 8 GB RAM. Both using make -j.
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In a word, Horsehockey. While 10MP is getting close enough for most purposes, there is a bit of a misconception involved. First, we need to understand the difference between "film" resolution and "digital" resolution.
Most mid-range color films in the early 90s (when I was a professional commercial photographer) would resolve 110 to 125 lppm (that's "line pairs per millimeter", or successive lines of white and black), with some of the high-resolution black and white films going as high as 425 lppm (Kodak Technical Pan in Technidol developer). To make the math easy, we'll compare that to at 3000x4000 (12 MP) digital camera.
Initially, 125 lppm x 25 (the approximate width of the 35mm format's picture taking area in mm)= 3,125 line pairs per inch, or 6,250 resolvable edges. Already twice the 'resolution' of the 12 MP digital cam, without moving up to any of the 'pro' films, and certainly not addressing medium/large format, like the 6x6cm that my Hassy ELM takes.
Lenses, on the other hand... In the 90s, some of the best 35mm lenses in the world would only resolve some 125 lppm in a ~1cm paraxial region; most Japanese glass had poor contrast (by comparison to various Bavarian competitiors, like Leica, Rollei, Hassy, etc) although they were acceptably sharp.
So, before this turns into a book; if you're shooting for personal record (snapshots), a digital camera will probably be as good as any point-and-shoot, if not better. In some cases, a 10 MP camera would be good enough for professional use, depending on the final print size of the image; but nothing digial exceeds the quality of decent 35 mm, and nothing digital even comes close to exceeding the image quality of the medium format machines.
Any network that is completely understood is obsolete.
Hrm... Last time I checked, park benches existed at the expense of the city/other municipality or authority, and *were* paid for by our 'tax dollars', yet no one asked us if we would like to have advertising painted on them.
The facts remain that the Industry makes money at the *expense* of the artist; because of the way we 'do it', the number of new artists must necessarily be limited (as the number of different products increases, the cost of promoting your brand goes up), and the industry as a whole absorbs most of the cash from any given CD. I'd much rather give *my* money to the artist. In fact, I'd rather see 100 artists making $100,000 a year than one artist making $10,000,000 (and yes, I mean that, even if the $10m artist is one I like, personally)... The RIAA cannot allow that to happen.
In the end, however, the very underpinnings of our current copyright system are collapsing under their own archaic weight. The constant confusion of those who insist that we are not purchasing a "song", but a "CD" (It's illegal for me to download a song that I own on cd, according to RIAA), but we don't really buy a "CD" with IP, because M$ Windows 'LICENSE' is non-transferrable. One way or the other, people.
The ip landscape is changing, and all I know is that it's not going to look the same in ten years - not even close. The RIAA and the recording giants are fighting for their lives in this age of near-zero-cost distribution. Somebody will win, and somebody will lose, and if recent years are any guide, the losers will be you and me, and the only winners will be, not the recording artists or actors, but the CORPORATIONS, and ONLY the corporations.
I was reading on http://www.baen.com, and came across a Robert Heinlein work in the free section that gave me the words I've been looking for to describe the current situation in IP:
Robert A. Heinlein, in "Life-Line",
--
my other computer is a Mac.
ROTFLMAO!!! That's funny!
...
... ("Real Properties"? "Physical Properties", whatever you choose to call them.)
/that copy/ what I wish (think software non-transferrable licenses, etc), or I purchased a license to use that property. If I purchased a license to use that piece of IP, then my copy of an identical IP is legal, provided I don't use (or allow to be used) both at the same time (The backup copy argument, etc... )
But seriously, folks
Come on; this is at the heart of the entire issue, isn't it? Whether or not IP can *really* be compared reasonably to
Here's the difference. When you purchased your car, you purchased a unique item with a physical presense and value; if I 'borrow your car and drive home', I have deprived you of its use, i.e, its value. If I download your MP3 file, I have not *taken* anything from you. I have deprived you of no value.
Whether or not the pundits and legal beagles decide that it is legal for me to possess a piece of intellectual property from a unique source other than the physical piece I purchased (i.e., a downloaded mp3 rip of a different, identical CD to the one I purchased), the distinction is pointless. You can't have it both ways; either I purchased a physical object (The CD), which I then own and can do with
Complex or not, the question is MOOT to a reasonable person who's not blinded by the rhetoric of an industry based on deception and begging the government to pass laws protecting them from obsolescense. If I have paid for a copy of the song, does it really matter where the copy I'm listening to *came* from?
Copyright was never intended to allow an individual or corporation to build a multi-million dollar industry based on a single piece of IP; it was intended to allow a creator to obtain reasonable compensation for intellectual innovation, whether it be aesthetic or technical, for a reasonable and limited time. Does the heart surgeon that repaired your father's ticker get paid every time dad's heart beats? Does the builder that constructed the house get paid again every time someone walks through the door? Are IPs at all similar to Physical Properties?
I would LOVE to see the artists get paid. Unfortunately, a ridiculously small sum of my money actually goes to the artist.
As a one time musician myself, I tell you honestly that I would rather see 100 artists making $100k/year doing something they love than 1 artist making $10,000,000/yr doing what the Marketriods push them to do and push us to buy. It's in the 'Recording Companies' best interests to limit the number of artists they distribute and sell as many cds as possible (the more unique products, the higher the average production cost per CD, the lower the profit margin); Innovation and diversified offerings are anathema to our current system, in simple economic terms.
I can't wait to see how these things (G5s) run with apps written specifically for them!
No doubt the 68k was a better chip before the Intel crowd got flat memory space - working with the segmented memory models of the X86 chips was a pain in the @$$. 'tiny, medium, large, huge, and supersize'... sheesh.
Not to mention the fact that my 8 Mhz (Maybe 7.65? can't remember for certain) Amiga ran CIRCLES around my dad's hot-stuff 14 Mhz 286. And his 20 Mhz 386. In fact, his first 486DX w/ a VGA card was *almost* as fast.
If *anyone* had understood marketing the way M$ and Intel did, we'd be running 68k based machines today.
You're also comparing apples and... well... ok, 64 bit processors to 32 bit processors. If we roll out the Intel 64 bit Itanic, we discover that a 1.3Ghz Itanic puts up 1770 or so, which is 70% better than the UIII at a slightly slower 1.2 Ghz.
I'm not religious about processors or operating systems, but such a blatantly misguided statement cannot just get ignored. I'm not familiar enough with the IBM offerings to spot the Power 4s, but maybe someone else can look at this list (www.spec.org(scores)) and let us know whether or not they're within shouting distance of the other chips.
The new Mac is awesome. Sun servers are not. Period. No glamour, no speed, and not particularly more dependable than our Compaq boxen.
In fact, in simple userspace terms, I can tell you that a dual P4 Xeon 2.8 compiles the open-source toolkits we use an about half the time required by a V880 with eight processors and 8 GB RAM. Both using make -j.