The missus. Her stern insistence and, as a last resort, use of the step-ladder to reach the fuse-box is the only reason I still have a life, job, pulse etc when faced with [insert game].
Honestly, I don't remember the details of their methods for enlargement (it really was a few years ago), but they did take a close look at the shots when they were enlarged and even at that close inspection, there wasn't a lot in it. Both were pretty sharp (black cat-suit, white background - decent edge on it) so I'm assuming the enlargement process was as good as they could manage, although there was a slight granularity in the digital shot.
You've raised an interesting point though: at what point does the cost of high-spec optics become prohibitive enough to make a squillion megapixels pointless? Obviously that'll depend on the cost you're prepared to stomach for your quality camera, but surely your everyday consumer won't stretch too far...? Mostly they would only pay so much for a 35mm camera, however good, and in both digital and 35mm it's the lens quality (the significant contributor to cost, at the high end) that becomes the limiting factor. Isn't it?
Isn't that nice? Someone tries to put another impediment in the way of our pursuit of doing-whatever-the-hell-we-want, and a whole community of dedicated hackers puts in the time and effort to smooth that crease out of our lives for good.
Gives you faith in humanity, doesn't it.
(Honestly, I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or not...)
I fear you may be right about the MP war. Interestingly I saw (a few years ago) a program which did a direct comparison of Digi and 35mm SLR. They took two cameras of as close a spec as they could manage, same lens, etc - the Digital was 10MP.
They took a shot of a rather tasty presenter lass in a catsuit, and enlarged the images to cover the side of a multi-storey building in the centre of Birmingham.
There were slight differences in the appearance of the two unbelievably large posters, but resolution was not one of them.
This made me think that, save for extensvie enlargement and manipulation, maybe there's not much need for any resolution beyond 10MP. Okay, so it wasn't exactly a scientific study, and it's a simplified case, but if that was a few years ago then how much more development in resolution do cameras really need today - especially the point-an-shoot variety.
While the MHz war was a little futile and misleading, it did help to drive up the performance of home PCs in general. The MP war will probably, as you say, be a boring and inevitable one, but I can't see that it will be of any benefit to the consumer. There's no accounting for marketing...
...but will people please, for the love of God, learn to do the following before posting the type of reactionary crap that seems to have inundated this discussion:
1. RTFA. It's such a cliche that it's almost funny. That doesn't mean it's not important.
2. RTF Discussion. How many people saw the submission, jumped in and clicked "Reply" without even stopping for 20 seconds to scan the existing posts and realise that the little gem they were about to defecate into cyberspace was
a) completely fucking redundant a thousand times over and
b) already comprehensively shown to portray a lack of understanding of the facts
Okay, so both of those requests are massively redundant in the grand arena of/., but either of the above would have stopped 90% of the above "WTF M$ finally dun some gud, EU sux WTF!!1one" from infecting/. with their particularly redundant form of idiocy.
Just to sum up (although if you've read this far, I don't need to tell you - I'm just getting it off my chest):
M$ are NOT being told by the EU to remove their security gadgets from Vista. They are being told to make it possible for existing security companies to implement their own solutions to a comparable standard by making the APIs and hooks available publicly. The only reason not to do so would be to deliberately lock-out competition. If they do not do so, they are forcing the third-party vendors to write inefficient and possibly ineffective software. This violates not only anti-trust laws, but makes it more likely than ever before that security issues will be harder to defend against and take longer to solve - hardly ideal for the user.
The EU is, in this regard, doing an admirable job of championing the cause of smaller companies AND the average Joe on the street, as well as EVERY business that ends up using Vista. They are not asking M$ to make any significant changes to their software - only to give other companies the information they require to write good software that benefits the user, which is precisely what any OS should do in the first place.
It seems that the majority of what you're saying here pertains more to the fact that China is still a developing culture than to any question of "superiority" of governing styles.
Yes, it goes on in the UK too (though less than in the US, I believe). I mentioned my UK residence only because you seemed to be convinced - without any obvious reason - that I was from the US. I just wanted to stop you on that track because it seemed to be obscuring any objectivity you may have brought to the debate by implying that I did not possess any. I defy you to prove that your opinions are any more objective than mine, or anybody's.
As it is said, power corrupts. Any government, wherever such things are possible, will tend towards strengthening its own power and security. This may start with perfectly reasonable intentions (to prevent overthrow by less scrupulous, dangerous factions, for example), but there is no hard line as to how far these measures should go. Even if the governing body/person/party starts out with nothing but the people's best interests at heart, there is no guarantee that whoever takes their place over time will be so well-intentioned. As well as corrupting, power attracts those whom we would least like to possess it.
Therefore it is not the form or style of government that I see as the issue in China - if the people truly want what they have, so be it. There are two issues I have:
1. Accountability. What we have in the UK is not perfect government or perfect freedom - not by any measure! What we do have is accountability. All laws are made and discussed openly in parliament, all decisions are picked apart by a parliament of people who are elected by their constituency, and the coverage of all of this is freely available to everyone. Whether they like it or not, the government is held accountable. They can lie, sure, but it's very difficult for them to stop anybody of accusing them of doing so. Again, the system isn't perfect and we could pick holes in it 'til the cows come home, but - as Churchill said - it's just better than anything else we've tried.
2. Manipulation. The people can be told anything the government wishes to tell them in the UK, but if the press, a disgruntled member of the populace or any "outsider" chooses to disagree or complain, they are free to do so. (Your citation of the It is this that allows our society to keep itself and its government in check. If we, or other people who might have a valuable different perspective, are not able to do so then there is no way to stop the government from manipulating our perceptions, beliefs and, ultimately, opinions through propoganda and censorship.
Both of these are vital issues when wishing to ensuring that a government is, indeed, what a people truly wants. You say people in China are happy with their government. I say, they do not know any different. There is nothing to stop the government there convincing the people that all the alternative solutions are far worse through propaganda and manipulation of the press - even manipulation of history. If you control people's senses, you control their perception and their opinions.
I am not saying that anything in the west is perfect - far from it. There are times when I really fear for our current society, and I am always on the look out for better examples of how to do things (the liberal Northern European nations are currently quite attractive, for example). However, for the time being at least, we are at least able to assess, criticise and even influence our own government. What chance have the Chinese to assess their government when the only information they have is what the government allows? How can they criticise when they will be arrested for doing so? How can they influence their government when the officials are unelected and unaccountable? Freedom is not a useful goal in itself, but without these freedoms we become very vulnerable indeed, and there is nothing to prevent our government from becoming our destroyer, despot, god.
I see the merit in everything you said, although perhaps your defense of M$ business practices only covers the bare basics of normal business - I'm sure they've done some fairly unethical stuff as well, especially in relation to patenting. Much like many others, true, but then it's the fate of all successful commercial enterprises in the west to be eventually dragged down and impeached by the public - it's not as though they particularly need defending:-)
I especially agree about the games industry; I think there are a lot of people who stick with the operating system they don't particularly like and hate paying for simply for the convenience of gaming, as this is the one type of software where the alternatives are obviously less desirable. I suspect that the games industry, however, is more of a measure of the prevalence of alternative OSes than a determining factor (though it is that as well, to a degree). If it becomes commercially viable to start developing big-budget games for open-source OSes with open standards and APIs, they will start to do so, and if an entire industry is prepared to see FOSS as a reliable base for their revenue then I'm prepared to believe it. At that point it will be fair to say that alternatives are now mainstream, and we will (I suspect) see a sudden rise in their adoption at that time.
Hmm... Yes, I agree - it's the vendor vertical lock-in of APIs and such that has caused the majority of problems (and that probably causes all this friction between M$-users and FOSSers).
I'm starting to think, as a result of this discussion - see other threads - that Windows (or something like it) was an inevitable phase in the evolution of OS software. Much like the IBM PC in the 80's, as somebody else said, at first it was fear of the unknown and incompatibility that drove people (well, the market in general) to stick with what they knew. Then, as the requirements became more clearly defined through experience and familiarity, alternative solutions to well-defined problems became available, and we now have thousands of PC and component manufacturers all using the same standards. In the case of M$ though, they've used every trick in the book to keep their standards as closed as possible and keep everyone else out of the market, which may explain why this phase has lasted so long. The cause of their market dominance could be seen as a combination of their anti-competitive practices and the fact that they pretty much "got their first" in gaining market share during that crucial stage of OS evolution.
So maybe, with luck, we're looking at the same evolution of the OS market. Universal platforms and APIs are the way things will progress, and within a few years your choice of OS will be seen as a matter of taste, preference or function (as it is with Linux now).
Thanks for that - I think you've described the real reasons behind M$'s dominant position more eloquently than I could've.
That still leaves the question though: did this happen because M$ is M$ and thus evil, or would it have happened anyway due to societal laziness? I suspect the latter. Still, maybe society is ready to move on...?
True. Trouble is, that's how these things work, isn't it? I mean if MS hadn't done it, wouldn't somebody else have? It benefits the lazy consumer to buy an OS they know already. It benefits the retailer to sell only boxes that already have that OS. Inevitable situation, inevitable monopoly.
Education and selective culling on the basis of apathy would help (as it would help many, many things), but M$ was always going to happen. I'm just agreeing with you in other words, I suppose.
Still, it's entirely academic, isn't it. We have inherited a crap monopoly and, as this article suggests, there is hope that the beast of M$ has served its purpose and become outmoded, and will die in the natural course of things. The public is a dormant beast, and can wake and turn with surprising speed...
I agree with you - on a personal, individual level - wholeheartedly. Unfortunately it is our society that generates monopolies, not any individual person. I suspect our society craves the comfort and security (for want of a better word) of a ubiquitous OS, which is why M$ has such a monopoly. I don't like it, but could it be an inevitable by-product of Joe Public's apathy and technophobia?
Apart from the painting-the-house bit, isn't that pretty much what the article says? I know it isn't clear from the submission, but it basically bangs on about trying to write a super-OS that's too complex to be useful anymore, and how it's going to kill Vista.
While that's inescapably true, it doesn't answer any of my questions. What you've done is describe, in an unconventional fashion, what a monopoly is - not why it is.
I'm not shouting you down - I want to hear your opinion - but I don't think this really answers anything (or if it does and you're being too subtle for me, I'll need further explanation).
Just to play devil's advocate here (so don't bite my head off); while Windows may be complex, its ubiquitous nature does reduce the need for applications to be particularly portable, and for programmers to be particularly knowledgable. That's an arguable benefit, but it maybe the drive for varied OSes has its drawbacks.
It would obviously be preferable to have a well-written universal OS, but that brings us around to the old saying: The best kind of government would be a benevolent dictator, but how many dictators stay benevolent?
Windows and M$ may be evil, are certainly a pain in the arse, but are they also just an inevitable consequence of the technological and economic environment we have created? If it weren't M$, would we just be having the same problem with someone else? If the devil didn't exist, would it have been necessary for us to have created him?
What do others think about this? (Again, I'm only playing devil's advocate - I want to see how others view this situation)
I'm not on my high-horse about the UK at all - god knows we've got our own skeletons. I was just pointing out that, apropos of nothing, the guy had jumped to the completely incorrect conclusion that I was from the US.
Just for the record, I think you're right on every count.
And I'm telling them to stick two more blades in there. I don't care how. Make the blades so thin they're invisible. Put some on the handle. I don't care if they have to cram the fifth blade in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!
God, I nearly pissed myself laughing at that! Apart from anything else, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened when the first Intel dual-cores came out... (what a botch THEY were)
"How can we make our CPUs more attractive without actually improving their performance?"
"Well, they've had twin-core - let's give them FOUR cores! And an extra one on the back!"
"It's... it's brilliant!"
Slashdot Mirror
"The thing about black-holes is, they're black. And thing about space - the colour of space; your basic space colour - is it's black.
"So 'ow you s'posed to see 'em?"
</geek>
If I had the points, I would mod you to heaven - why are references to PA always funnier when it takes you a minute to get it?
I can't believe I got modded 30% Informative...
The missus. Her stern insistence and, as a last resort, use of the step-ladder to reach the fuse-box is the only reason I still have a life, job, pulse etc when faced with [insert game].
You've raised an interesting point though: at what point does the cost of high-spec optics become prohibitive enough to make a squillion megapixels pointless? Obviously that'll depend on the cost you're prepared to stomach for your quality camera, but surely your everyday consumer won't stretch too far...? Mostly they would only pay so much for a 35mm camera, however good, and in both digital and 35mm it's the lens quality (the significant contributor to cost, at the high end) that becomes the limiting factor. Isn't it?
Gives you faith in humanity, doesn't it.
(Honestly, I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or not...)
They took a shot of a rather tasty presenter lass in a catsuit, and enlarged the images to cover the side of a multi-storey building in the centre of Birmingham.
There were slight differences in the appearance of the two unbelievably large posters, but resolution was not one of them.
This made me think that, save for extensvie enlargement and manipulation, maybe there's not much need for any resolution beyond 10MP. Okay, so it wasn't exactly a scientific study, and it's a simplified case, but if that was a few years ago then how much more development in resolution do cameras really need today - especially the point-an-shoot variety.
While the MHz war was a little futile and misleading, it did help to drive up the performance of home PCs in general. The MP war will probably, as you say, be a boring and inevitable one, but I can't see that it will be of any benefit to the consumer. There's no accounting for marketing...
These are not the DVDs I'm looking for...
1. RTFA. It's such a cliche that it's almost funny. That doesn't mean it's not important.
2. RTF Discussion. How many people saw the submission, jumped in and clicked "Reply" without even stopping for 20 seconds to scan the existing posts and realise that the little gem they were about to defecate into cyberspace was
a) completely fucking redundant a thousand times over and
b) already comprehensively shown to portray a lack of understanding of the facts
Okay, so both of those requests are massively redundant in the grand arena of /., but either of the above would have stopped 90% of the above "WTF M$ finally dun some gud, EU sux WTF!!1one" from infecting /. with their particularly redundant form of idiocy.
Just to sum up (although if you've read this far, I don't need to tell you - I'm just getting it off my chest):
M$ are NOT being told by the EU to remove their security gadgets from Vista. They are being told to make it possible for existing security companies to implement their own solutions to a comparable standard by making the APIs and hooks available publicly. The only reason not to do so would be to deliberately lock-out competition. If they do not do so, they are forcing the third-party vendors to write inefficient and possibly ineffective software. This violates not only anti-trust laws, but makes it more likely than ever before that security issues will be harder to defend against and take longer to solve - hardly ideal for the user.
The EU is, in this regard, doing an admirable job of championing the cause of smaller companies AND the average Joe on the street, as well as EVERY business that ends up using Vista. They are not asking M$ to make any significant changes to their software - only to give other companies the information they require to write good software that benefits the user, which is precisely what any OS should do in the first place.
(See Penny Arcade 12/09/06 if you have no idea what I'm on about)
Yes, it goes on in the UK too (though less than in the US, I believe). I mentioned my UK residence only because you seemed to be convinced - without any obvious reason - that I was from the US. I just wanted to stop you on that track because it seemed to be obscuring any objectivity you may have brought to the debate by implying that I did not possess any. I defy you to prove that your opinions are any more objective than mine, or anybody's.
As it is said, power corrupts. Any government, wherever such things are possible, will tend towards strengthening its own power and security. This may start with perfectly reasonable intentions (to prevent overthrow by less scrupulous, dangerous factions, for example), but there is no hard line as to how far these measures should go. Even if the governing body/person/party starts out with nothing but the people's best interests at heart, there is no guarantee that whoever takes their place over time will be so well-intentioned. As well as corrupting, power attracts those whom we would least like to possess it.
Therefore it is not the form or style of government that I see as the issue in China - if the people truly want what they have, so be it. There are two issues I have:
1. Accountability. What we have in the UK is not perfect government or perfect freedom - not by any measure! What we do have is accountability. All laws are made and discussed openly in parliament, all decisions are picked apart by a parliament of people who are elected by their constituency, and the coverage of all of this is freely available to everyone. Whether they like it or not, the government is held accountable. They can lie, sure, but it's very difficult for them to stop anybody of accusing them of doing so. Again, the system isn't perfect and we could pick holes in it 'til the cows come home, but - as Churchill said - it's just better than anything else we've tried.
2. Manipulation. The people can be told anything the government wishes to tell them in the UK, but if the press, a disgruntled member of the populace or any "outsider" chooses to disagree or complain, they are free to do so. (Your citation of the It is this that allows our society to keep itself and its government in check. If we, or other people who might have a valuable different perspective, are not able to do so then there is no way to stop the government from manipulating our perceptions, beliefs and, ultimately, opinions through propoganda and censorship.
Both of these are vital issues when wishing to ensuring that a government is, indeed, what a people truly wants. You say people in China are happy with their government. I say, they do not know any different. There is nothing to stop the government there convincing the people that all the alternative solutions are far worse through propaganda and manipulation of the press - even manipulation of history. If you control people's senses, you control their perception and their opinions.
I am not saying that anything in the west is perfect - far from it. There are times when I really fear for our current society, and I am always on the look out for better examples of how to do things (the liberal Northern European nations are currently quite attractive, for example). However, for the time being at least, we are at least able to assess, criticise and even influence our own government. What chance have the Chinese to assess their government when the only information they have is what the government allows? How can they criticise when they will be arrested for doing so? How can they influence their government when the officials are unelected and unaccountable? Freedom is not a useful goal in itself, but without these freedoms we become very vulnerable indeed, and there is nothing to prevent our government from becoming our destroyer, despot, god.
That is why I
I see the merit in everything you said, although perhaps your defense of M$ business practices only covers the bare basics of normal business - I'm sure they've done some fairly unethical stuff as well, especially in relation to patenting. Much like many others, true, but then it's the fate of all successful commercial enterprises in the west to be eventually dragged down and impeached by the public - it's not as though they particularly need defending :-)
I especially agree about the games industry; I think there are a lot of people who stick with the operating system they don't particularly like and hate paying for simply for the convenience of gaming, as this is the one type of software where the alternatives are obviously less desirable. I suspect that the games industry, however, is more of a measure of the prevalence of alternative OSes than a determining factor (though it is that as well, to a degree). If it becomes commercially viable to start developing big-budget games for open-source OSes with open standards and APIs, they will start to do so, and if an entire industry is prepared to see FOSS as a reliable base for their revenue then I'm prepared to believe it. At that point it will be fair to say that alternatives are now mainstream, and we will (I suspect) see a sudden rise in their adoption at that time.
I'm starting to think, as a result of this discussion - see other threads - that Windows (or something like it) was an inevitable phase in the evolution of OS software. Much like the IBM PC in the 80's, as somebody else said, at first it was fear of the unknown and incompatibility that drove people (well, the market in general) to stick with what they knew. Then, as the requirements became more clearly defined through experience and familiarity, alternative solutions to well-defined problems became available, and we now have thousands of PC and component manufacturers all using the same standards. In the case of M$ though, they've used every trick in the book to keep their standards as closed as possible and keep everyone else out of the market, which may explain why this phase has lasted so long. The cause of their market dominance could be seen as a combination of their anti-competitive practices and the fact that they pretty much "got their first" in gaining market share during that crucial stage of OS evolution.
So maybe, with luck, we're looking at the same evolution of the OS market. Universal platforms and APIs are the way things will progress, and within a few years your choice of OS will be seen as a matter of taste, preference or function (as it is with Linux now).
I must say, I do like your vision of the future.
That still leaves the question though: did this happen because M$ is M$ and thus evil, or would it have happened anyway due to societal laziness? I suspect the latter. Still, maybe society is ready to move on...?
Education and selective culling on the basis of apathy would help (as it would help many, many things), but M$ was always going to happen. I'm just agreeing with you in other words, I suppose.
Still, it's entirely academic, isn't it. We have inherited a crap monopoly and, as this article suggests, there is hope that the beast of M$ has served its purpose and become outmoded, and will die in the natural course of things. The public is a dormant beast, and can wake and turn with surprising speed...
I agree with you - on a personal, individual level - wholeheartedly. Unfortunately it is our society that generates monopolies, not any individual person. I suspect our society craves the comfort and security (for want of a better word) of a ubiquitous OS, which is why M$ has such a monopoly. I don't like it, but could it be an inevitable by-product of Joe Public's apathy and technophobia?
Now if only we could find a way of combatting the Slashdot monoculture...
Moderation: it's group-think, only faster! (j/k, what's the alternative?)
Apart from the painting-the-house bit, isn't that pretty much what the article says? I know it isn't clear from the submission, but it basically bangs on about trying to write a super-OS that's too complex to be useful anymore, and how it's going to kill Vista.
(Anyone hoping for Woody Allen's "Sleepers"?)
I'm not shouting you down - I want to hear your opinion - but I don't think this really answers anything (or if it does and you're being too subtle for me, I'll need further explanation).
Just to play devil's advocate here (so don't bite my head off); while Windows may be complex, its ubiquitous nature does reduce the need for applications to be particularly portable, and for programmers to be particularly knowledgable. That's an arguable benefit, but it maybe the drive for varied OSes has its drawbacks.
It would obviously be preferable to have a well-written universal OS, but that brings us around to the old saying: The best kind of government would be a benevolent dictator, but how many dictators stay benevolent?
Windows and M$ may be evil, are certainly a pain in the arse, but are they also just an inevitable consequence of the technological and economic environment we have created? If it weren't M$, would we just be having the same problem with someone else? If the devil didn't exist, would it have been necessary for us to have created him?
What do others think about this? (Again, I'm only playing devil's advocate - I want to see how others view this situation)
Just for the record, I think you're right on every count.
Onion, how I've missed you.
Would that work? I have no idea, not sure how they monitor traffic. Answers please?
"Well, they've had twin-core - let's give them FOUR cores! And an extra one on the back!"
"It's... it's brilliant!"
Yes, Intel are the new Gillette. ;-)