While this is undoubtedly true for the engines, for the rest of the machine it may or not be valid. But TFA misses one enormous issue - legal liability. Look at that 100K John Deere combine. It grosses something like 20,000 pounds and has enough horsepower to flatten a pickup truck. It's all controlled by a couple of joysticks in air conditioned cab. It's pretty simple to use.
A lot of thought went into to putting it all together. The 'unnecessary' hydraulic sensor might be the one that keeps the disks from slicing into the cab when the boom is up. Or some other obscure but important safety feature. Yes, farmers have been fixing things since time immemorial. And farmers have been slicing off various bits of their own (or, more often, their kids) anatomy because they bypassed safety features. If you have a machine with a couple of dozen motors, 100 sensors and one giant hydraulic pump, you don't advocate Joe Farmer randomly disconnecting things. Nanny state has been pretty active trying to lessen the amount of carnage done to farm workers. I am unsure of the success, but a lot of the sensors in any industrial device are designed to prevent excessive stupid from occurring.
Now, Deere can, and likely should, have a come to Jesus moment where they actually work with the end user - better diagnostics. Redundant sensors. FedEx the part to the farm rather than the dealer. End user serviceable components. Lots of other things. And it looks like the market is actually working like it's supposed to (I guess that happens). The complicated big rigs aren't as in demand as simpler things. If Deere is smart, then they will learn from their mistakes. If they're not, they'll go bankrupt^Hget a bailout from Congress.
Which is why Canon / Nikon and everybody else has been trying to get NEW people interested with cameras that are smaller / faster / cheaper / better. The mirrorless systems, 4/3, the various Sony incarnations are all trying to get the huge mass of potential consumers to ditch the iPhone and get something better.
The problem is, it's not working very well. Those numbers aren't showing up for various reasons. And, as you point out, the DSLR manufacturers aren't pushing out 'must have' new cameras or lenses. They aren't even rethinking the cameras - just iterating slightly each year and hoping you find some minor feature that makes you shell out between $1000 and $7000 dollars.
Your forgetting that DOF is dependent not only on the lens, but also sensor size. While your cell phone lens may sport an 'impressive' f/stop of 1.4, the itty bitty sensor gives you a DOF much larger than virtually any DLSR.
That's a plus for the average cell phone camera user since a large DOF covers many a focusing sin.
A cell phone can take good pictures but it is a very limited device. As has been pointed out it is 1) wide angle 2) fixed aperture 3) relatively poor low light capability (4) limited sensor size (5) (usually) 8 bit JPEG output (which greatly limits post processing) and (6) has crappy ergonomics.
But, under the right circumstances with some practice and skill you can take excellent photographs with it. As can you with a Holga. (I can't believe there is a Holga store. That's just wrong.)
Monitors did get a lot better, and with higher resolution, though. With 4k (3840 x 2160 or 4096 x 2160), or even 8k (7680×4320) you don't have to zoom out to a fraction of the original size any more. In fact, with your S3 of some 6 MP, you can see the picture in 100%. It means details like noise, camera shake will be more apparent.
I don't care much about more resolution. Give me Adobe RGB everywhere! Give me ProPhoto RGB Give me full CIE 1931!
So, you've got it. Now what are you going to do with it. Print the picture on a printer with a smaller gamut than sRGB? Stick in on Flikr on some random PC with a gamut way less than sRGB and completely out of calibration to boot?
If you are into professional pre press it might make sense. For the rest of us, not so much. And I am an avid (amateur) photographer who can spend hours obsessing over an image. But I hardly print these days and when I do I have a good calibration chain set up. If my yellow is a few nits off from the canonical Pantone, nobody is going to even notice or care.
Newer sensors have managed both higher resolutions AND better high ISO (low light) capabilities. In Ye Olden Days of film, a rule of thumb is that you needed to have a shutter speed of 1/focal length to get acceptable hand held sharpness. That could be challenging with longer lenses in poor light because your choice of film (and early digital cameras) got very limited once the ISO got near 400.
Even though the higher MP cameras require a bit of a change to that formula, somewhere between 1/(1.5 * focal length) and 1/(2 * focal length), depending on the camera and the photographer - most modern sensors can work very well at ISO 3200 and the Nikon D4 can work at ISO 6400 with fairly clean pictures.
That is just amazing.
However, the number of people that need to shoot at 11 frames per second at ISO 6400 is rather small, which is why Nikon isn't making inordinate volumes of the $6000 D4. In fact, the number of people that need (or want) anything beyond a cell phone camera is dwindling which is why Nikon / Canon / et. al. are going to have some troubled times ahead.
I'm pretty sure this IS the 'normal' screening test. Same as you can get over the counter in a number of countries (as far as I can tell from TFA). They have just taped the HIV and Syphilis tests together. It apparently relies on antibody production so there is a lag period between exposure and a positive test.
So all of the caveats of any HIV test except the direct polymerase chain reaction ones that can find a few viral particles floating around. If they can repeat that chemistry in a $34 device, that is interesting and novel since you could get a go / no go result instead of the caveat that you have to wait three to six weeks before you are confirmed negative. Of course, you still have experimental error, machine screwups, quality control, etc. to worry about.
FTFA (referenced by wed128), it uses some sort of 'disposable cartridge'. There are plenty of ELISA based throw away, non powered, no computer required tests available even over the counter. Pregnancy tests and drug screens are two really common ones.
What I don't see is why the researchers had to hook the thing up to a smartphone (or any other bit of electronics) in the first place. Perhaps there are some technical details that require, for example, UV florescence to get the signal up but this isn't clear. They use a custom (read more expensive) cartridge for the three tests. You aren't going to get those things in a convenience store in the Middle of Nowhere. Especially nowhere's that can't even afford disposable gloves.
Yeah, I'm being a bit snarky here but we've seen dozens of these things 'on a smartphone'. Touted for low resource areas because there are smartphones and little else but hampered by the fact that the smartphone really isn't doing all that much more than five dollars of cheap Chinese electronics could do and further they need some other expensive 'special sauce' to work. I would hope (vainly of course) that the 'journalists' could perhaps dive a few millimeters deeper than they do.
And, if you hook the same chemical reactions and transducer technology to a smartphone you can reproduce the same information generated from those chemical reactions and transducers hooked to... wait for it... a computer.
I'm really not seeing the point here. HIV antibody and syphilis ELISA testing have been point-of-care for some time. You open up the foil packet, drop some serum in the little well, wait five minutes and your answer shows up without any further processing, electricity or fuss. The big problem with these type of tests, as far as undeveloped countries go, is that their design and manufacture require sophisticated first world systems. Nigeria has to buy them from Europe. It isn't like you can use the same smartphone dongle over and over again for very little cost.
Although a 32 gauge shotgun and the 5.24 mm (single shot) bullet would make shooting a bear somewhat problematic.
You could successfully shoot yourself after being wounded by the bear, but that's about it. Same thing with the 9 mm. A bit on the weak side for a 600 pound + half armored pissed off animal.
Yes, the Apollo capsule carried shark repellant in the survival kit (as well as a.22 cal pistol). Of course, that was in the days prior to lasers. Now they would have to have sunglasses as well.
Actually there is. Well, not forever... but insanely long.
Reduce your caloric intake by around 70%. Life will suck. You'll be emaciated and feel miserable. But if animal evidence is any guide, you'll live well into your 100's.
Only if you can be kept in a cage with a little wheel that you can run around on and get fed the same diet of pellets composed of floor scrapings.
Slashdot Mirror
This IS NOT farmville. This is a farm.
Kids these days. Never saw Green Acres on TV. They know nothing.
While this is undoubtedly true for the engines, for the rest of the machine it may or not be valid. But TFA misses one enormous issue - legal liability. Look at that 100K John Deere combine. It grosses something like 20,000 pounds and has enough horsepower to flatten a pickup truck. It's all controlled by a couple of joysticks in air conditioned cab. It's pretty simple to use.
A lot of thought went into to putting it all together. The 'unnecessary' hydraulic sensor might be the one that keeps the disks from slicing into the cab when the boom is up. Or some other obscure but important safety feature. Yes, farmers have been fixing things since time immemorial. And farmers have been slicing off various bits of their own (or, more often, their kids) anatomy because they bypassed safety features. If you have a machine with a couple of dozen motors, 100 sensors and one giant hydraulic pump, you don't advocate Joe Farmer randomly disconnecting things. Nanny state has been pretty active trying to lessen the amount of carnage done to farm workers. I am unsure of the success, but a lot of the sensors in any industrial device are designed to prevent excessive stupid from occurring.
Now, Deere can, and likely should, have a come to Jesus moment where they actually work with the end user - better diagnostics. Redundant sensors. FedEx the part to the farm rather than the dealer. End user serviceable components. Lots of other things. And it looks like the market is actually working like it's supposed to (I guess that happens). The complicated big rigs aren't as in demand as simpler things. If Deere is smart, then they will learn from their mistakes. If they're not, they'll go bankrupt^Hget a bailout from Congress.
And people think that the Illuminati isn't real.....
But is this going to have any consequences for those who violated the law on a massive scale?
I'm sure someone will send GCHQ a very stern letter of rebuke.
Which is why Canon / Nikon and everybody else has been trying to get NEW people interested with cameras that are smaller / faster / cheaper / better. The mirrorless systems, 4/3, the various Sony incarnations are all trying to get the huge mass of potential consumers to ditch the iPhone and get something better.
The problem is, it's not working very well. Those numbers aren't showing up for various reasons. And, as you point out, the DSLR manufacturers aren't pushing out 'must have' new cameras or lenses. They aren't even rethinking the cameras - just iterating slightly each year and hoping you find some minor feature that makes you shell out between $1000 and $7000 dollars.
Your forgetting that DOF is dependent not only on the lens, but also sensor size. While your cell phone lens may sport an 'impressive' f/stop of 1.4, the itty bitty sensor gives you a DOF much larger than virtually any DLSR.
That's a plus for the average cell phone camera user since a large DOF covers many a focusing sin.
A cell phone can take good pictures but it is a very limited device. As has been pointed out it is 1) wide angle 2) fixed aperture 3) relatively poor low light capability (4) limited sensor size (5) (usually) 8 bit JPEG output (which greatly limits post processing) and (6) has crappy ergonomics.
But, under the right circumstances with some practice and skill you can take excellent photographs with it. As can you with a Holga. (I can't believe there is a Holga store. That's just wrong.)
Monitors did get a lot better, and with higher resolution, though. With 4k (3840 x 2160 or 4096 x 2160), or even 8k (7680×4320) you don't have to zoom out to a fraction of the original size any more. In fact, with your S3 of some 6 MP, you can see the picture in 100%. It means details like noise, camera shake will be more apparent.
I don't care much about more resolution. Give me Adobe RGB everywhere! Give me ProPhoto RGB Give me full CIE 1931!
So, you've got it. Now what are you going to do with it. Print the picture on a printer with a smaller gamut than sRGB? Stick in on Flikr on some random PC with a gamut way less than sRGB and completely out of calibration to boot?
If you are into professional pre press it might make sense. For the rest of us, not so much. And I am an avid (amateur) photographer who can spend hours obsessing over an image. But I hardly print these days and when I do I have a good calibration chain set up. If my yellow is a few nits off from the canonical Pantone, nobody is going to even notice or care.
Newer sensors have managed both higher resolutions AND better high ISO (low light) capabilities. In Ye Olden Days of film, a rule of thumb is that you needed to have a shutter speed of 1/focal length to get acceptable hand held sharpness. That could be challenging with longer lenses in poor light because your choice of film (and early digital cameras) got very limited once the ISO got near 400.
Even though the higher MP cameras require a bit of a change to that formula, somewhere between 1/(1.5 * focal length) and 1/(2 * focal length), depending on the camera and the photographer - most modern sensors can work very well at ISO 3200 and the Nikon D4 can work at ISO 6400 with fairly clean pictures.
That is just amazing.
However, the number of people that need to shoot at 11 frames per second at ISO 6400 is rather small, which is why Nikon isn't making inordinate volumes of the $6000 D4. In fact, the number of people that need (or want) anything beyond a cell phone camera is dwindling which is why Nikon / Canon / et. al. are going to have some troubled times ahead.
I'm pretty sure this IS the 'normal' screening test. Same as you can get over the counter in a number of countries (as far as I can tell from TFA). They have just taped the HIV and Syphilis tests together. It apparently relies on antibody production so there is a lag period between exposure and a positive test.
So all of the caveats of any HIV test except the direct polymerase chain reaction ones that can find a few viral particles floating around. If they can repeat that chemistry in a $34 device, that is interesting and novel since you could get a go / no go result instead of the caveat that you have to wait three to six weeks before you are confirmed negative. Of course, you still have experimental error, machine screwups, quality control, etc. to worry about.
Wrap that rascal. It's the only way to be sure.
It's only a 'hobby'. It's not a real product.
FTFA (referenced by wed128), it uses some sort of 'disposable cartridge'. There are plenty of ELISA based throw away, non powered, no computer required tests available even over the counter. Pregnancy tests and drug screens are two really common ones.
What I don't see is why the researchers had to hook the thing up to a smartphone (or any other bit of electronics) in the first place. Perhaps there are some technical details that require, for example, UV florescence to get the signal up but this isn't clear. They use a custom (read more expensive) cartridge for the three tests. You aren't going to get those things in a convenience store in the Middle of Nowhere. Especially nowhere's that can't even afford disposable gloves.
Yeah, I'm being a bit snarky here but we've seen dozens of these things 'on a smartphone'. Touted for low resource areas because there are smartphones and little else but hampered by the fact that the smartphone really isn't doing all that much more than five dollars of cheap Chinese electronics could do and further they need some other expensive 'special sauce' to work. I would hope (vainly of course) that the 'journalists' could perhaps dive a few millimeters deeper than they do.
But who am I kidding?
And, if you hook the same chemical reactions and transducer technology to a smartphone you can reproduce the same information generated from those chemical reactions and transducers hooked to ... wait for it... a computer.
I'm really not seeing the point here. HIV antibody and syphilis ELISA testing have been point-of-care for some time. You open up the foil packet, drop some serum in the little well, wait five minutes and your answer shows up without any further processing, electricity or fuss. The big problem with these type of tests, as far as undeveloped countries go, is that their design and manufacture require sophisticated first world systems. Nigeria has to buy them from Europe. It isn't like you can use the same smartphone dongle over and over again for very little cost.
TL;DR
Besides, it's PICTURES!
Several test stations before Mir were launched with AA guns for "self defense".
I'm not saying it was aliens....
Although a 32 gauge shotgun and the 5.24 mm (single shot) bullet would make shooting a bear somewhat problematic.
You could successfully shoot yourself after being wounded by the bear, but that's about it. Same thing with the 9 mm. A bit on the weak side for a 600 pound + half armored pissed off animal.
Pheasant?
I think your sig is bleeding over (so to speak) into your comments.
Yes, the Apollo capsule carried shark repellant in the survival kit (as well as a .22 cal pistol). Of course, that was in the days prior to lasers. Now they would have to have sunglasses as well.
And a clear increase in uterine cancers.
You can't win.
You can't break even.
You have to play the game.
Juan Ponce de Leon? Is that you?
If you don't stop making sense you will not be allowed to post on Slashdot in the future. You certainly won't be allowed to run for office.
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal".
Heinlein
Basically do what you like. Don't sweat the little things.
Work on quality rather than quantity and quit reading dumb studies that run around on the Internet.
Actually there is. Well, not forever... but insanely long.
Reduce your caloric intake by around 70%. Life will suck. You'll be emaciated and feel miserable. But if animal evidence is any guide, you'll live well into your 100's.
Only if you can be kept in a cage with a little wheel that you can run around on and get fed the same diet of pellets composed of floor scrapings.
Oh. Wait.
No, no - the official slogan is 'Between the mountains and reality'.
Well, those folks are dangerous. You want to stay away from them at all costs.