In 10 years cheaper digital cameras will exceed the quality of large format photography.
I would dispute that assumption. Due to the limitations of lenses that exist in the physical world, you cannot simply make the pixels on a CCD arbitrarily small so that you can have more of them. Even if you could conquer the noise problems that go along with the small pixels in the consumer grade 6MP and 8MP sensors, which are much smaller than the sensors that you find in the more expensive DSLRs, you would run into the limit of the lens before you had enough pixels to rival 4x5 LF film, let alone 8x10. The only way to make a digital sensor match the resolution of 4x5 LF film is to make the sensor nearly as big as the 4x5 sheet of film, which is what they have done here. The problem is, it is wicked expensive. I mean, they made one of these things, it probably cost millions of dollars all told, and even if they were to mass produce them, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per part. (Just a guess)
People are used to tech products like this getting vastly better and vastly cheaper over time, and the reason this happens is, to over simplify, that we develop the ability to manufacture them with smaller and fewer chips. The fact is, CCDs have already reached the point that the resolution is more bound by the lens then by the number of pixels on the sensor. They really aren't going to get much higher resolution, at least, not meaningfully. One thing I do think will continue to improve is sensitivity, I would definitely like to have a digital camera capable of decent noise performance at ISO 12800, that would be fantastic. (And that would be something that would revolutionize available-light photography.)
Large Format film will be resolution king for the foreseeable future. You simply cannot project an image with as much resolution as you can get from a scan of an 8x10 inch sheet of film onto something that is 18x24 millimeters, within the physical constraints of this universe. With 18x24 millimeters being the practical limit for how big you can make a sensor that will go in an affordable, consumer grade digital camera, I simply don't see your prediction coming true.
4x5 film doesn't come in rolls, it comes in sheets that you load into a holder, one to a side. You have to load the film in complete darkness, and hope that the holders won't leak. When taking the picture, you focus with a groundglass that is situated where the film will be, then close the lens, insert the holder into the camera, and pull out the dark-slide, and then take your exposure, and you should be taking lots of notes. Because there is so much manual labor that you have to do for each exposure, there is a whole different mindset to Large Format Photography, you will go out and expect to take a half dozen exposures, while the digital camera encourages the practice of just shooting anything and everything, and then sifting through the thousand or so exposures for the good ones.
The owner of a camera shop near where I live once had the opportunity to use a Large Format Polaroid camera, which exposes Polaroid fim that is 20 by 24 inches. He described it this way: "Take your megapixels and shove them up your ass!"
I think the point is that by paying $300 for one, you are donating two of them to people in developing countries, so you would be paying $300 and getting a $200 tax deduction for the charitable donation. While the $200 deduction isn't usually worth $100, you would have to be a real Factory Wrapped Douche to buy one for $200 from an arbitrageur. It would not be something you could brag about in the same manor that you normally would brag about saving $100 by buying from a gray market. What you would have is a brightly colored laptop of shame.
What this is just replacing the hosts file with something more obscure, the malware writers will simply learn how to modify it to do what they want. Meanwhile, you will have a false sense of security.
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. The only sensible definition for a planet is an object that is spherical due to its own gravity, orbits a star, and is not itself a star. But these bozos keep saying "But Pluto is so different from the other planets, we can't call it a planet!" Well boohoo. So it's freaking different! Earth and Jupiter are somewhat freaking different from each other, last time I checked, but we call both of those objects planets! "But then there will probably be a thousand planets in the solar system!" they say. I say, get over it! This is not a big problem unless you're an astrologer! I honestly don't give a rat's ass about Pluto's legacy as being called a planet, if we are going to continue calling it a planet then we also need to call this other object (and several others) planets as well. The problem is, we keep being told that this needs to be controversial because defining a planet is somehow difficult, what I think is happening here is that there are a group of scientists who have an emotional problem with there being a thousand planets in the solar system and are preventing the IAU from adopting the obvious definition.
Apple actually used to sell Macs with no OS installed. I bought one back then, a PowerMac 9600/300 VAR Edition, which came with zero RAM, no hard drive, and no video card. It did come with MacOS on CD, though.
In my experience, the limiting factor to how loud and obnoxious the audience gets is not the audience but the management. I once went to a showing of Rocky Horror that got shut down in the middle because the operators were worried about damage to the upholstery or something. Shutting off the film was, perhaps, the single worst thing they could do to protect the seats, though, since the crowd did get rather annoyed at being told to stay put until the police showed up. (I guess they figured the cops would have nothing better to do than grill a bunch of Rocky Horror fans to root out the one who set off the shaving cream bomb.) Fortunately, the multiple fire exits made that demand impractical.
1) your HD-DVD is encoded at 1080i which it may not be - 720p content is entirely possible and a lot of "720p" content is barely 900x500 in resolution anyway due to overscan borders, extra widescreen bars
What an utterly stupid argument. Do you seriously thing that none of the resulting 960 x 540 frame will be lost to overscan borders, or extra widescreen bars? In fact, exactly the same proportion of the image will be lost to those factors.
I really can't imagine filling a drive that's a thousand times the size of what I want until we have full-resolution movies for our 108" plasma screens that have the same pixel pitch as computer LCDs (so.. what... about 10800p?), encoded at something more or less equivalent to 45.1ch WAV audio and video as bitmaps reading at 60fps.
1.2 Petabytes is enough for only 1.89 hours of 25,380 x 10,800 (2.35:1) video, at 16 bits per color channel, 120 frames per second (as long as we are being ridiculous, lets have an even multiple of 24 please), and with 400 separate languages each with 50 channels of CD quality audio. Uncompressed of course. That would be about 199 GB per second. Note that the audio here is less than 1 percent of the total.
I would add Sigma to the good list. Their current 3.4 MPixel SD10 is getting a little long in the tooth, but it is as good as any 6 to 8 MPixel Bayer sensor camera due to the Foveon sensor that they use. Very solid camera, as well.
Thus, if you could measure the probabililty of all properties at once, you can transmit information by measuring a single property.
Well, if you could measure the probability of a high card being next in a blackjack deck, without knowing anything about the previous cards that have been played, you could make a fortune in Las Vegas.
The particles are not like voodoo dolls that move on both ends when you apply a physical force on one end. The phenomenon is that when you measure some property of a particle on one side, its corresponding particle will be found to have the same value for that property when someone on that side gets around to measuring it. That is actually not so profound, but the thing that Einstein thought of as spooky was that the act of measuring a property of the particle on one end will cause some other property of both particles to become less measurable, otherwise you could measure one property on one end, the other property on the other end, and thus know both properties of both particles precisely which would violate the Uncertainty Principle.
The problem is, the Detangle operation is a Peek, not a Poke. The result is random. The spooky bit is that the Peek on one end will always agree with the Peek on the other end. There is no way to actually transmit information FTL with the method described. Think of it this way: Take a deck of cards, shuffle, then cut it in half with a band saw. Send one half-deck across the galaxy at sub light speed, then "measure" the top half-card by looking at it on your end. Guess what? the top half-card on the other end will agree! The difference between the macro and micro scales here is that when you measure one property of your particle, you actually cause some other property of both particles to become less certain. You could actually use either particles or playing cards as an encryption method, but the cards have the flaw that a spy could look at one half-deck without disturbing it.
TFA is confused about sensor sizes. First, it says this:
But like an SLR, it has a huge sensor inside, 21.5 by 14.4 millimeters.
And then it says this:
Yet without switching lenses, the R1 also zooms in 5x (a 120-mm equivalent). Unlike the focal-length measurements of other digitals, these are true 35-mm camera equivalents that don't have to be multiplied by, say, 1.5.
The 35mm frame size is 36 by 24 mm, for a diagonal of 43mm, which is 1.67 times the diagonal of the sensor in the camera. So you have to multiply by 1.67 to get your "35mm equivalents". If you look at the front of the camera (pictured here) you can see that the actual focal length range of the lens is 14.3mm to 71.5mm, and when you multiply by 1.67, you get the quoted 24mm to 120mm. It is hardly new, or in any way a "feature" for a digital camera manufacturer to quote the "35mm equivalent" when talking about focal lengths. It is, however, totally bogus, IMO, because it tells you nothing about depth of field, which depends on the actual physical focal length and the distance to the subject. Given that the maximum apeture at the longer end of the range is f/4.8, your subject will have to be pretty close to get the claimed ability to use "that professionals' trick of blurring the background".
If you really want quality, get a large format view camera. Can be had for half the price of a good digital SLR, and you get much higher resolution with film that size. Digital will not be able to touch it for the forseeable future, you just can't fit enough pixels into a CCD small enough to be economical, yet still big enough that a lens can resolve individual detail onto each pixel. You just have to get out of the mindset of taking 200 to 400 exposures in an afternoon, and into the mindset of taking 2 to 4.
Slashdot Mirror
Frontier House.
DVD, ShmeeVD. I have "The Matrix" on Laserdisc!
In 10 years cheaper digital cameras will exceed the quality of large format photography.
I would dispute that assumption. Due to the limitations of lenses that exist in the physical world, you cannot simply make the pixels on a CCD arbitrarily small so that you can have more of them. Even if you could conquer the noise problems that go along with the small pixels in the consumer grade 6MP and 8MP sensors, which are much smaller than the sensors that you find in the more expensive DSLRs, you would run into the limit of the lens before you had enough pixels to rival 4x5 LF film, let alone 8x10. The only way to make a digital sensor match the resolution of 4x5 LF film is to make the sensor nearly as big as the 4x5 sheet of film, which is what they have done here. The problem is, it is wicked expensive. I mean, they made one of these things, it probably cost millions of dollars all told, and even if they were to mass produce them, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per part. (Just a guess)
People are used to tech products like this getting vastly better and vastly cheaper over time, and the reason this happens is, to over simplify, that we develop the ability to manufacture them with smaller and fewer chips. The fact is, CCDs have already reached the point that the resolution is more bound by the lens then by the number of pixels on the sensor. They really aren't going to get much higher resolution, at least, not meaningfully. One thing I do think will continue to improve is sensitivity, I would definitely like to have a digital camera capable of decent noise performance at ISO 12800, that would be fantastic. (And that would be something that would revolutionize available-light photography.)
Large Format film will be resolution king for the foreseeable future. You simply cannot project an image with as much resolution as you can get from a scan of an 8x10 inch sheet of film onto something that is 18x24 millimeters, within the physical constraints of this universe. With 18x24 millimeters being the practical limit for how big you can make a sensor that will go in an affordable, consumer grade digital camera, I simply don't see your prediction coming true.
4x5 film doesn't come in rolls, it comes in sheets that you load into a holder, one to a side. You have to load the film in complete darkness, and hope that the holders won't leak. When taking the picture, you focus with a groundglass that is situated where the film will be, then close the lens, insert the holder into the camera, and pull out the dark-slide, and then take your exposure, and you should be taking lots of notes. Because there is so much manual labor that you have to do for each exposure, there is a whole different mindset to Large Format Photography, you will go out and expect to take a half dozen exposures, while the digital camera encourages the practice of just shooting anything and everything, and then sifting through the thousand or so exposures for the good ones.
The owner of a camera shop near where I live once had the opportunity to use a Large Format Polaroid camera, which exposes Polaroid fim that is 20 by 24 inches. He described it this way: "Take your megapixels and shove them up your ass!"
Safety shmaftey! I say, a "cool" bang is not a "cool" bang unless it involves an Alkali metal, preferably Caesium!
I think the point is that by paying $300 for one, you are donating two of them to people in developing countries, so you would be paying $300 and getting a $200 tax deduction for the charitable donation. While the $200 deduction isn't usually worth $100, you would have to be a real Factory Wrapped Douche to buy one for $200 from an arbitrageur. It would not be something you could brag about in the same manor that you normally would brag about saving $100 by buying from a gray market. What you would have is a brightly colored laptop of shame.
Stage III syphilis is not undetectable with a lab test.
For the opposite effect, check out the page on ECT. The Side effects and complications section strays very far from NPOV.
What this is just replacing the hosts file with something more obscure, the malware writers will simply learn how to modify it to do what they want. Meanwhile, you will have a false sense of security.
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. The only sensible definition for a planet is an object that is spherical due to its own gravity, orbits a star, and is not itself a star. But these bozos keep saying "But Pluto is so different from the other planets, we can't call it a planet!" Well boohoo. So it's freaking different! Earth and Jupiter are somewhat freaking different from each other, last time I checked, but we call both of those objects planets! "But then there will probably be a thousand planets in the solar system!" they say. I say, get over it! This is not a big problem unless you're an astrologer! I honestly don't give a rat's ass about Pluto's legacy as being called a planet, if we are going to continue calling it a planet then we also need to call this other object (and several others) planets as well. The problem is, we keep being told that this needs to be controversial because defining a planet is somehow difficult, what I think is happening here is that there are a group of scientists who have an emotional problem with there being a thousand planets in the solar system and are preventing the IAU from adopting the obvious definition.
Apple actually used to sell Macs with no OS installed. I bought one back then, a PowerMac 9600/300 VAR Edition, which came with zero RAM, no hard drive, and no video card. It did come with MacOS on CD, though.
In my experience, the limiting factor to how loud and obnoxious the audience gets is not the audience but the management. I once went to a showing of Rocky Horror that got shut down in the middle because the operators were worried about damage to the upholstery or something. Shutting off the film was, perhaps, the single worst thing they could do to protect the seats, though, since the crowd did get rather annoyed at being told to stay put until the police showed up. (I guess they figured the cops would have nothing better to do than grill a bunch of Rocky Horror fans to root out the one who set off the shaving cream bomb.) Fortunately, the multiple fire exits made that demand impractical.
1) your HD-DVD is encoded at 1080i which it may not be - 720p content is entirely possible and a lot of "720p" content is barely 900x500 in resolution anyway due to overscan borders, extra widescreen bars
What an utterly stupid argument. Do you seriously thing that none of the resulting 960 x 540 frame will be lost to overscan borders, or extra widescreen bars? In fact, exactly the same proportion of the image will be lost to those factors.
I really can't imagine filling a drive that's a thousand times the size of what I want until we have full-resolution movies for our 108" plasma screens that have the same pixel pitch as computer LCDs (so.. what... about 10800p?), encoded at something more or less equivalent to 45.1ch WAV audio and video as bitmaps reading at 60fps.
1.2 Petabytes is enough for only 1.89 hours of 25,380 x 10,800 (2.35:1) video, at 16 bits per color channel, 120 frames per second (as long as we are being ridiculous, lets have an even multiple of 24 please), and with 400 separate languages each with 50 channels of CD quality audio. Uncompressed of course. That would be about 199 GB per second. Note that the audio here is less than 1 percent of the total.
I would add Sigma to the good list. Their current 3.4 MPixel SD10 is getting a little long in the tooth, but it is as good as any 6 to 8 MPixel Bayer sensor camera due to the Foveon sensor that they use. Very solid camera, as well.
If it wasn't for that built in flywheel that prevents turning the camera on its side...
Thus, if you could measure the probabililty of all properties at once, you can transmit information by measuring a single property.
Well, if you could measure the probability of a high card being next in a blackjack deck, without knowing anything about the previous cards that have been played, you could make a fortune in Las Vegas.
But you can't.
The particles are not like voodoo dolls that move on both ends when you apply a physical force on one end. The phenomenon is that when you measure some property of a particle on one side, its corresponding particle will be found to have the same value for that property when someone on that side gets around to measuring it. That is actually not so profound, but the thing that Einstein thought of as spooky was that the act of measuring a property of the particle on one end will cause some other property of both particles to become less measurable, otherwise you could measure one property on one end, the other property on the other end, and thus know both properties of both particles precisely which would violate the Uncertainty Principle.
The problem is, the Detangle operation is a Peek, not a Poke. The result is random. The spooky bit is that the Peek on one end will always agree with the Peek on the other end. There is no way to actually transmit information FTL with the method described. Think of it this way: Take a deck of cards, shuffle, then cut it in half with a band saw. Send one half-deck across the galaxy at sub light speed, then "measure" the top half-card by looking at it on your end. Guess what? the top half-card on the other end will agree! The difference between the macro and micro scales here is that when you measure one property of your particle, you actually cause some other property of both particles to become less certain. You could actually use either particles or playing cards as an encryption method, but the cards have the flaw that a spy could look at one half-deck without disturbing it.
Well, I did sort of mention that when I talked about how limiting the maximum aperture was going to be.
TFA is confused about sensor sizes. First, it says this:
But like an SLR, it has a huge sensor inside, 21.5 by 14.4 millimeters.
And then it says this:
Yet without switching lenses, the R1 also zooms in 5x (a 120-mm equivalent). Unlike the focal-length measurements of other digitals, these are true 35-mm camera equivalents that don't have to be multiplied by, say, 1.5.
The 35mm frame size is 36 by 24 mm, for a diagonal of 43mm, which is 1.67 times the diagonal of the sensor in the camera. So you have to multiply by 1.67 to get your "35mm equivalents". If you look at the front of the camera (pictured here) you can see that the actual focal length range of the lens is 14.3mm to 71.5mm, and when you multiply by 1.67, you get the quoted 24mm to 120mm. It is hardly new, or in any way a "feature" for a digital camera manufacturer to quote the "35mm equivalent" when talking about focal lengths. It is, however, totally bogus, IMO, because it tells you nothing about depth of field, which depends on the actual physical focal length and the distance to the subject. Given that the maximum apeture at the longer end of the range is f/4.8, your subject will have to be pretty close to get the claimed ability to use "that professionals' trick of blurring the background".
Does anyone with a slashdot id under 5000 understand it?
No.
Audio captchas?
"I couldn't say where its comin' from, but I just played a game called Dinah-Moe Humm..."
If you really want quality, get a large format view camera. Can be had for half the price of a good digital SLR, and you get much higher resolution with film that size. Digital will not be able to touch it for the forseeable future, you just can't fit enough pixels into a CCD small enough to be economical, yet still big enough that a lens can resolve individual detail onto each pixel. You just have to get out of the mindset of taking 200 to 400 exposures in an afternoon, and into the mindset of taking 2 to 4.