Flashiness and clarity don't have to be mutually exclusive - and aren't when executed well (which admittedly isn't too often). As for efficiency... the code may or may not be fantastic, but leaving end-users to wander around data visualizations leaves more time for you to do something that's actually important.
How about a built in digital compass that records the direction as part or the filename to help panoramic stitching software, or just because it sounds cool?
Yeah, that would be pretty cool combined with GPS geo-tagging.
How about filenames other than peculiar serial numbers like dsc-12345.jpg? How about an option to use the timestamp as a filename? How about a datestamp and serial number?
You're much better off using software like Picasa, iPhoto, Lightroom, or Aperture for organization, to be honest. I suppose the option would be nice and it wouldn't take a lot of complicated programming to do it, but I think it's really of fairly limited use.
How about a shutter response faster than 500 ms? My dads spotmatic and my old K1000 back in the 80s had a shutter response time somewhere around zero (or at least no longer than typical human or video game player reflexes) but my wife's couple year old nikon takes almost a second to take a picture after the button is pressed, almost useless for action shots.
Get an SLR. Point-and-shoots have always been terribly slow, and probably always will be (if for no other reason than to differentiate them from SLRs). Even the cheapest entry-level ones have
How about a camera that stops shutting off constantly every 30 seconds? Some people take pictures of events that last longer than that, so its just wasting batteries turning on and off over and over. At least put in a menu to shut off the "battery saver" (battery waster, more likely)
I don't see how turning it on and off wastes battery, though it's certainly inconvenient. I've yet to see ANY camera that doesn't have an option to change/disable that, but of course with about 150,000,000 different models out there that doesn't mean much.
How about a tripod mount that isn't made of plastic? Yeah I know the whole cam is plastic, not like the old days, but still, at least some metal threads that won't strip. And make the tripod mount screw deeper than like 3 thread pitch.
Again, get an SLR. A P+S simply isn't designed to be used with a tripod, even if it has the threads. If you're going to use it on a tripod, the body has so little weight to it that you don't exactly need to clamp down on it very hard to keep it from falling off.
What I don't want is cutesy bloatware software for legacy windows boxes... just gimme a SD or CF that plugs into any desktop or wii or laptop anywhere in the world with no weird software install needed.
So get a 9-in-2 (or whatever they are these days) card reader, and rip the jpegs/raws right off the card. Saves on camera battery, too.
Also I don't want an irreplaceable and/or unremovable and/or rechargeable battery. I can buy AA batteries anywhere in the world and carry a ridiculous number of spares in my backpack. A rechargeable bettery thats usually discharged or runs out at a bad time or can never be replaced or can't be charged in less than 15 minutes is useless for me. And that applies 10x for mp3 players too. Its not like the "expense" of batteries will bankrupt me compared to the staggering expense of good equipment. And make the camera compatible with 1.2 volt rechargeables not just 1.5 volt alkalines.
The proprietary Li-Ion batteries in almost all cameras these days tend to hold a charge pretty well, though I agree it's annoying if you don't carry a spare (and spares are always overpriced). Of the gear I have that uses AAs (multiple hotshoe flashes, mostly), all of it is designed to work great with rechargeable AAs - in fact, it tends to work better as they can deliver more current which means faster flash recycle times than alkalines. Of course, I can't speak for all gear, but I can't think of any device I own that takes AAs which doesn't work fine with 1.2v rechargeables.
That trick is true for pretty much any body when you're shooting RAW. Noise shows up much more in darker portions of the image since there's less raw material (light) to work with. When you intentionally overexpose the image by a stop, you've got twice as much light coming into the camera, so the sensor and processor have less guesswork to do. And of course since you're shooting RAW (combined with the 12-to-14-bit sensor), it's easy to pull that back into a normal exposure and let the computer effectively downsample it while retaining the detail.
But if you're obsessing over noise at ISO100, then you're not focusing on creating a good image anyways. I start to get a bit twitchy about noise in the darker portions of shots at ISO800-1000+ on my 40D, but I'll still go to ISO3200 if that's what it takes to get the shot. Yeah it'll be noisy, but I'll take noisy over not getting it.
I bought a replacement set for five bucks at the local five-dollar store (inflation, I guess...) that has an inline mic and button like the original headset. The inline mic is quite a bit bigger than the original iPhone one, but the headset seems a bit more durable, sounds quite a bit better, and is also more comfortable.
I'd like to try them out with the new shuffle to see if the supposed DRM really is true. I won't have volume control (!), but the inline pause/skip button works fine with the iPhone so hopefully would work on the shuffle too. Doesn't help me with plugging it into my car stereo which is why I'd like a shuffle, but that's beside the point.
Within reason. Free software and services can (and often do) still have terms of service attached, including fair use clauses. For example, I'll happily answer some of your computer questions for free (family techie thing - we all do it), but I will not be your personal support bitch. Asking a couple of questions is fine; calling me at two in the morning asking me to walk you through an OS reinstall over the phone is abuse.
It's never going to be possible to charge people a flat fee for all-you-can-use X without the bulk of the consumers overpaying for their moderate usage of X to subsidise the few who exploit the service. This holds for values of X such as bandwidth, pasta, text messaging, icecream, whatever.
That's true, but it doesn't make it a flawed business model. It may not be fair to all parties, but alternative options exist and nobody was forced into signing up for a one-size-fits-most plan.
The bigger issue with this kind of thing is that the long tail users who make up 10% of the subscriber base yet use 90% of the resources are now taking shit for "overusing" the service which was advertised as unlimited but had some sort of implied but never spelled out in writing fair use attachment. Skype for example is "unlimited", but says that there's a fair use limit of 6hrs/day|10k hrs/mo|50#/day - but this is spelled out clearly before you sign up, unlike the ISPs that are starting to trying to modify the usage rights spelled out in the contracts after they've already been signed.
Whether these contracts make sense or not is up for debate. The fact is that if you advertise one thing and then provide something else, you're now liable for false advertising.
No laws currently exist either way, but ISPs (at least US-based ones) are currently operating in a net-neutral manner in order to keep common carrier status and therefore not be liable for any of the illegal downloading their customers do. It's certainly in their best interest to continue doing so; trying to force their own service over a competitor's may net them a bit more cash, but it would also allow them to be put directly in the crosshairs of $100B mass copyright infringement suits from the RIAA and MPAA, among others.
Don't confuse that with QoS between protocols, though. AFAIK, it's okay for them to prioritize VOIP over HTTP over streaming over bit-torrent without losing common carrier status, so long as the prioritization is equal for all destinations (i.e., Skype and Vonage would be on par with their own VOIP offering).
IANAL of course - that's just my understanding of the issues. Could be way off, in which case please correct me.
What do you mean by "deal with those who have taken your creations without compensating you for your labor"? That's the whole point of releasing under a CC license - if people choose to compensate you, great; if not, they wouldn't have bought your material anyways so suck it up.
The record industry is just a promotional vehicle anyways - you only make money on concerts after getting famous. Even bigger artists are usually lucky to break even on CD sales. Releasing under CC removes that overhead, though obviously at the expense of losing the industry's promotion skills. Word of mouth is still king.
All of these two-digit dates are just going to create another computer glitch. Travel back to 3/14/1592 with me or skip it entirely (unless you want to wait around till 15926)
I think it's much more likely that they don't want someone ripping off their iPod OS for their own $39 Chinese knock-off device. Nor do they want people to be easily able to reverse-engineer the app store protocols and hack the thing for their own profits. That it broke third-party replacement firmwares was probably more of a happy (for them) coincidence.
I would expect at the very least Apple's existing headphones with a remote to do that, yes. I'm given the impression that's not the case. As I do own a couple sets of third-party headphones with a remote built in (to replace the headset that comes with the iPhone), I'll wait until I can test them. Either way, I find the requirement for an external remote when using a music player with any non-headphone audio output (which I'm doing 95% of the time) completely idiotic.
That's going, as I've noted in another reply, on a single iLounge review. Not exactly a technical analysis of what's going on inside the earphones. It sounds more like a non-standard control chip, as opposed to a DRM chip.
According to iLounge, even Apple's own previous headphones with remotes built in (for the iPhone and recent Nanos) refuse to control the new shuffle properly. So non-standard that it doesn't even work with your existing products seems pretty unlikely, though I'll happily be proven wrong if someone smashes open the remotes on either set of headphones and finds out what's in there.
See also my reply with the definition of Digital Rights Management (short version - the music is entirely unaffected and can play through any headphones).
Is the music player not also a digital device? It may not be DRM to the letter, but it's still technology to prevent you from freely interacting with your purchases.
I see the electrical equivalent of load balancing coming into play to address that issue. Just because a battery is physically capable of accepting a full charge in a few seconds doesn't mean that it must.
I'm sure that's also awful for battery life - a lot of NiMH batteries at least (I can't speak for other types as I have no idea) can accept fast and slow charges, but the 15-minute rapid chargers take a lot of lifetime off the battery as compared to a four-hour trickle charge.
I doubt Apple is too keen on providing Best Buy with access to their gift card database in order to load up an empty card. I don't work retail, but I can't imagine there's a system in place similar to Paypal's IPN that could allow retailers to instantly notify Apple that a card has been sold and should be activated.
In both cases, it means that these knockoff keys could well exist on legitimate gift cards. I, for one, would be quite pissed to have come home with a $200 gift card only to find out that it's already been redeemed by someone who paid $3 to a guy with a keygen.
True (for most tracks anyways - I think a few are still getting swapped over), but it would still be easy enough for Apple to remove any remaining unused balance on the card.
After getting sued over the whole "Vista-Ready" program, I expect Microsoft will be at least a little bit more careful with their subjective definition of "run".
The issue, if there will be one, will probably be with licensing. A previous article had suggested that MS will release a lower-cost version of Win7 that's geared towards netbook users that will impose an artificial limitation of 3 apps running at once. Which is unusually stupid for Microsoft, as that kind of thing could push more people towards browser-based web apps, rather than their desktop counterparts (Google Docs vs Office, for example) - as if the crazy cost of MS Office wasn't enough of a deterrent, now its competition doesn't eat up one of your three allowed apps because you already had a browser open? Idiots.
I mean, I guess MS is at least trying to "get" why people like netbooks (cheap), but that kind of stupid artificial limitation won't win them many brownie points. I think two versions of Windows (like XP, holy crap!) is plenty - home and pro/office. And the only difference should be that the home version can't join a domain. Charge $99 for Win7 Home like Apple does for OS X and call it a day. Simple, reasonably-priced, and it won't piss people off.
What is there to be gained by Microsoft from a non-standards-compliant browser? ActiveX is its own thing, as are plugins such as Flash and Silverlight. All that the lack of standards compliance in IE6 and 7 (8 seems pretty decent so far, in my limited testing) brings Microsoft is ill will from web developers, which is hardly in their best interest given how much browser market-share they've already lost.
I can see the advantage to keeping Word docs proprietary (or so obscure that they might as well be, as seems to be the case with ooxml) - that pushes Office licenses. But shitty HTML/CSS/JS support in their browser doesn't push any of their products, let alone ones that make money. Companies with old legacy apps that need the ActiveX support or run with IE6's quirks in mind are already MS shops. And those places are either not switching away from MS, or are looking for any alternative options because dealing with their lack of standards compliance is simply too damn expensive. Even Microsoft's own web apps work in pretty much all major browsers, including SharePoint. Maybe not perfectly 100% of the time, but well enough that non-IE users aren't totally screwed.
I'm not sure that's the case. Politicians in the UK are perfectly willing to throw away people's rights in the name of security, but that doesn't mean the population is OK with it. That's certainly the case in the US, though thankfully the trend seems to have slowed a bit when it took a back-seat to the constant economic bickering.
But it's not like Apple isn't very upfront about their policies, both for users and developers. What we have here, per your analogy, is people knowing these Ford limitations and buying them* anyways after deciding that the benefits of buying Ford outweigh the negatives you've just listed.
True. But according to Apple, jailbreaking your phone is illegal (under the DMCA or other such nonsense), so any sales that aren't going through Apple's own app store are all occurring on a black market of sorts.
Of course, that's something you know going into it, unlike your example of a book which you have no way of knowing whether people will carry it or not.
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Mod parent -1, missed Idiocracy reference.
Flashiness and clarity don't have to be mutually exclusive - and aren't when executed well (which admittedly isn't too often). As for efficiency... the code may or may not be fantastic, but leaving end-users to wander around data visualizations leaves more time for you to do something that's actually important.
How about a built in digital compass that records the direction as part or the filename to help panoramic stitching software, or just because it sounds cool?
Yeah, that would be pretty cool combined with GPS geo-tagging.
How about filenames other than peculiar serial numbers like dsc-12345.jpg? How about an option to use the timestamp as a filename? How about a datestamp and serial number?
You're much better off using software like Picasa, iPhoto, Lightroom, or Aperture for organization, to be honest. I suppose the option would be nice and it wouldn't take a lot of complicated programming to do it, but I think it's really of fairly limited use.
How about a shutter response faster than 500 ms? My dads spotmatic and my old K1000 back in the 80s had a shutter response time somewhere around zero (or at least no longer than typical human or video game player reflexes) but my wife's couple year old nikon takes almost a second to take a picture after the button is pressed, almost useless for action shots.
Get an SLR. Point-and-shoots have always been terribly slow, and probably always will be (if for no other reason than to differentiate them from SLRs). Even the cheapest entry-level ones have
How about a camera that stops shutting off constantly every 30 seconds? Some people take pictures of events that last longer than that, so its just wasting batteries turning on and off over and over. At least put in a menu to shut off the "battery saver" (battery waster, more likely)
I don't see how turning it on and off wastes battery, though it's certainly inconvenient. I've yet to see ANY camera that doesn't have an option to change/disable that, but of course with about 150,000,000 different models out there that doesn't mean much.
How about a tripod mount that isn't made of plastic? Yeah I know the whole cam is plastic, not like the old days, but still, at least some metal threads that won't strip. And make the tripod mount screw deeper than like 3 thread pitch.
Again, get an SLR. A P+S simply isn't designed to be used with a tripod, even if it has the threads. If you're going to use it on a tripod, the body has so little weight to it that you don't exactly need to clamp down on it very hard to keep it from falling off.
What I don't want is cutesy bloatware software for legacy windows boxes... just gimme a SD or CF that plugs into any desktop or wii or laptop anywhere in the world with no weird software install needed.
So get a 9-in-2 (or whatever they are these days) card reader, and rip the jpegs/raws right off the card. Saves on camera battery, too.
Also I don't want an irreplaceable and/or unremovable and/or rechargeable battery. I can buy AA batteries anywhere in the world and carry a ridiculous number of spares in my backpack. A rechargeable bettery thats usually discharged or runs out at a bad time or can never be replaced or can't be charged in less than 15 minutes is useless for me. And that applies 10x for mp3 players too. Its not like the "expense" of batteries will bankrupt me compared to the staggering expense of good equipment. And make the camera compatible with 1.2 volt rechargeables not just 1.5 volt alkalines.
The proprietary Li-Ion batteries in almost all cameras these days tend to hold a charge pretty well, though I agree it's annoying if you don't carry a spare (and spares are always overpriced). Of the gear I have that uses AAs (multiple hotshoe flashes, mostly), all of it is designed to work great with rechargeable AAs - in fact, it tends to work better as they can deliver more current which means faster flash recycle times than alkalines. Of course, I can't speak for all gear, but I can't think of any device I own that takes AAs which doesn't work fine with 1.2v rechargeables.
I also don't want effort put into stupid so
That trick is true for pretty much any body when you're shooting RAW. Noise shows up much more in darker portions of the image since there's less raw material (light) to work with. When you intentionally overexpose the image by a stop, you've got twice as much light coming into the camera, so the sensor and processor have less guesswork to do. And of course since you're shooting RAW (combined with the 12-to-14-bit sensor), it's easy to pull that back into a normal exposure and let the computer effectively downsample it while retaining the detail.
But if you're obsessing over noise at ISO100, then you're not focusing on creating a good image anyways. I start to get a bit twitchy about noise in the darker portions of shots at ISO800-1000+ on my 40D, but I'll still go to ISO3200 if that's what it takes to get the shot. Yeah it'll be noisy, but I'll take noisy over not getting it.
I bought a replacement set for five bucks at the local five-dollar store (inflation, I guess...) that has an inline mic and button like the original headset. The inline mic is quite a bit bigger than the original iPhone one, but the headset seems a bit more durable, sounds quite a bit better, and is also more comfortable.
I'd like to try them out with the new shuffle to see if the supposed DRM really is true. I won't have volume control (!), but the inline pause/skip button works fine with the iPhone so hopefully would work on the shuffle too. Doesn't help me with plugging it into my car stereo which is why I'd like a shuffle, but that's beside the point.
Within reason. Free software and services can (and often do) still have terms of service attached, including fair use clauses. For example, I'll happily answer some of your computer questions for free (family techie thing - we all do it), but I will not be your personal support bitch. Asking a couple of questions is fine; calling me at two in the morning asking me to walk you through an OS reinstall over the phone is abuse.
It's never going to be possible to charge people a flat fee for all-you-can-use X without the bulk of the consumers overpaying for their moderate usage of X to subsidise the few who exploit the service. This holds for values of X such as bandwidth, pasta, text messaging, icecream, whatever.
That's true, but it doesn't make it a flawed business model. It may not be fair to all parties, but alternative options exist and nobody was forced into signing up for a one-size-fits-most plan.
The bigger issue with this kind of thing is that the long tail users who make up 10% of the subscriber base yet use 90% of the resources are now taking shit for "overusing" the service which was advertised as unlimited but had some sort of implied but never spelled out in writing fair use attachment. Skype for example is "unlimited", but says that there's a fair use limit of 6hrs/day|10k hrs/mo|50#/day - but this is spelled out clearly before you sign up, unlike the ISPs that are starting to trying to modify the usage rights spelled out in the contracts after they've already been signed.
Whether these contracts make sense or not is up for debate. The fact is that if you advertise one thing and then provide something else, you're now liable for false advertising.
No laws currently exist either way, but ISPs (at least US-based ones) are currently operating in a net-neutral manner in order to keep common carrier status and therefore not be liable for any of the illegal downloading their customers do. It's certainly in their best interest to continue doing so; trying to force their own service over a competitor's may net them a bit more cash, but it would also allow them to be put directly in the crosshairs of $100B mass copyright infringement suits from the RIAA and MPAA, among others.
Don't confuse that with QoS between protocols, though. AFAIK, it's okay for them to prioritize VOIP over HTTP over streaming over bit-torrent without losing common carrier status, so long as the prioritization is equal for all destinations (i.e., Skype and Vonage would be on par with their own VOIP offering).
IANAL of course - that's just my understanding of the issues. Could be way off, in which case please correct me.
What do you mean by "deal with those who have taken your creations without compensating you for your labor"? That's the whole point of releasing under a CC license - if people choose to compensate you, great; if not, they wouldn't have bought your material anyways so suck it up.
The record industry is just a promotional vehicle anyways - you only make money on concerts after getting famous. Even bigger artists are usually lucky to break even on CD sales. Releasing under CC removes that overhead, though obviously at the expense of losing the industry's promotion skills. Word of mouth is still king.
All of these two-digit dates are just going to create another computer glitch. Travel back to 3/14/1592 with me or skip it entirely (unless you want to wait around till 15926)
You can do as you please, but I for one will NOT be putting steak up my nose.
I think it's much more likely that they don't want someone ripping off their iPod OS for their own $39 Chinese knock-off device. Nor do they want people to be easily able to reverse-engineer the app store protocols and hack the thing for their own profits. That it broke third-party replacement firmwares was probably more of a happy (for them) coincidence.
I would expect at the very least Apple's existing headphones with a remote to do that, yes. I'm given the impression that's not the case. As I do own a couple sets of third-party headphones with a remote built in (to replace the headset that comes with the iPhone), I'll wait until I can test them. Either way, I find the requirement for an external remote when using a music player with any non-headphone audio output (which I'm doing 95% of the time) completely idiotic.
That's going, as I've noted in another reply, on a single iLounge review. Not exactly a technical analysis of what's going on inside the earphones. It sounds more like a non-standard control chip, as opposed to a DRM chip.
According to iLounge, even Apple's own previous headphones with remotes built in (for the iPhone and recent Nanos) refuse to control the new shuffle properly. So non-standard that it doesn't even work with your existing products seems pretty unlikely, though I'll happily be proven wrong if someone smashes open the remotes on either set of headphones and finds out what's in there.
See also my reply with the definition of Digital Rights Management (short version - the music is entirely unaffected and can play through any headphones).
Is the music player not also a digital device? It may not be DRM to the letter, but it's still technology to prevent you from freely interacting with your purchases.
I see the electrical equivalent of load balancing coming into play to address that issue. Just because a battery is physically capable of accepting a full charge in a few seconds doesn't mean that it must.
I'm sure that's also awful for battery life - a lot of NiMH batteries at least (I can't speak for other types as I have no idea) can accept fast and slow charges, but the 15-minute rapid chargers take a lot of lifetime off the battery as compared to a four-hour trickle charge.
For an 11-year-old? Um... ok, if you say so.
It'll all be put towards making our cars fly, so that we can finally experience the 21st century as it was meant to be experienced.
I doubt Apple is too keen on providing Best Buy with access to their gift card database in order to load up an empty card. I don't work retail, but I can't imagine there's a system in place similar to Paypal's IPN that could allow retailers to instantly notify Apple that a card has been sold and should be activated.
In both cases, it means that these knockoff keys could well exist on legitimate gift cards. I, for one, would be quite pissed to have come home with a $200 gift card only to find out that it's already been redeemed by someone who paid $3 to a guy with a keygen.
True (for most tracks anyways - I think a few are still getting swapped over), but it would still be easy enough for Apple to remove any remaining unused balance on the card.
After getting sued over the whole "Vista-Ready" program, I expect Microsoft will be at least a little bit more careful with their subjective definition of "run".
The issue, if there will be one, will probably be with licensing. A previous article had suggested that MS will release a lower-cost version of Win7 that's geared towards netbook users that will impose an artificial limitation of 3 apps running at once. Which is unusually stupid for Microsoft, as that kind of thing could push more people towards browser-based web apps, rather than their desktop counterparts (Google Docs vs Office, for example) - as if the crazy cost of MS Office wasn't enough of a deterrent, now its competition doesn't eat up one of your three allowed apps because you already had a browser open? Idiots.
I mean, I guess MS is at least trying to "get" why people like netbooks (cheap), but that kind of stupid artificial limitation won't win them many brownie points. I think two versions of Windows (like XP, holy crap!) is plenty - home and pro/office. And the only difference should be that the home version can't join a domain. Charge $99 for Win7 Home like Apple does for OS X and call it a day. Simple, reasonably-priced, and it won't piss people off.
What is there to be gained by Microsoft from a non-standards-compliant browser? ActiveX is its own thing, as are plugins such as Flash and Silverlight. All that the lack of standards compliance in IE6 and 7 (8 seems pretty decent so far, in my limited testing) brings Microsoft is ill will from web developers, which is hardly in their best interest given how much browser market-share they've already lost.
I can see the advantage to keeping Word docs proprietary (or so obscure that they might as well be, as seems to be the case with ooxml) - that pushes Office licenses. But shitty HTML/CSS/JS support in their browser doesn't push any of their products, let alone ones that make money. Companies with old legacy apps that need the ActiveX support or run with IE6's quirks in mind are already MS shops. And those places are either not switching away from MS, or are looking for any alternative options because dealing with their lack of standards compliance is simply too damn expensive. Even Microsoft's own web apps work in pretty much all major browsers, including SharePoint. Maybe not perfectly 100% of the time, but well enough that non-IE users aren't totally screwed.
Mod parent up. I'd do it myself but I've already posted.
I'm not sure that's the case. Politicians in the UK are perfectly willing to throw away people's rights in the name of security, but that doesn't mean the population is OK with it. That's certainly the case in the US, though thankfully the trend seems to have slowed a bit when it took a back-seat to the constant economic bickering.
But it's not like Apple isn't very upfront about their policies, both for users and developers. What we have here, per your analogy, is people knowing these Ford limitations and buying them* anyways after deciding that the benefits of buying Ford outweigh the negatives you've just listed.
*Ignoring that whole bailout thing.
True. But according to Apple, jailbreaking your phone is illegal (under the DMCA or other such nonsense), so any sales that aren't going through Apple's own app store are all occurring on a black market of sorts.
Of course, that's something you know going into it, unlike your example of a book which you have no way of knowing whether people will carry it or not.