First, unlike many patents, this one seems fairly specific, and represents to me the sort of things that the patent process should be protecting. That said, I think it would be interesting if the patent system was set up in tiers. That is after you file a patent you have 'X' amount of time (say ~1-3 years give or take) to produce a working example of said patent, if not then the patent is invalidated. If you succeed then the patent is rewritten to the specific working example and extended for a reasonable period of time. This should prevent vague patents and should help eliminate submarine patents to some extent.
What? Have you ever worn a pair of Puma Kings [FLASH ALERT!] on the Pitch? They totally are worth every dollar/pound/euro/... whatever. So clearly you have no idea what you are talking about either with shoes or computers.
Re:Terrorists caused book sales to plunge
on
Larry Wall on Perl 6
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Well actually that's apparently exactly what happened. Maybe not just to computer books, it could have been more of a global . o 0 { I'm not buying anything except bottled water, canned food and shotgun shells } but it certainly had a hugh effect on computer book sales. Part of this was happening anyway, it -seemed- when the burst of the.com bubble stifled innovation and there just wasn't anything that new that people needed a book to learn. While that was true to a point what really was going on was that people needed to learn different things and no publisher was providing it (and largely still don't today). In overly simplistic terms, the bulk market shifted from how do I use my computer to how do I accomplish "x" with my computer. It's also important to realize that the "x" changed too. Most publishers on a whole still don't get this (some do, but the industry on a whole is very reactive so change is slow). O'Reilly has been burned by this just like everyone else. While there is still a good market for well written programming books which has traditionally been O'Reilly's market (and has saved it many times since it traditionally avoided the fickleness of end user consumers) even that is changing. Right now to try to save themselves most Publishers are just attempting to do the same thing by making superficial changes in how books look and selling this facelift as the next big thing ("Head First Java" anyone?) The problem is these books still teach the same old topics which have diminishing interest. It's not the approach... Heck.. IMO "The C Programming language" by K.&R. is still the best computer book out there and much of that has to do with the simple presentation of the material without all the pretense and gimmicks of today. The problem isn't the approach, it's the topic.
But a babble off on some rant... the fact remains 9/11 hurt the book industry along with everyone else, the computer book industry took an extra hit because when people started to buy stuff again they realized that none of the computer books on the shelves dealt with the topics they wanted to learn.
Re:Which just goes to show...
on
Hacking Santa
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Solve, yes...implement, no. The infrastructure needed to actually effect such big far reaching things such as "World Hunger" and "Global Warming" are largely controlled by those interests that profit directly from such things.
If you are a user who wants a more productive Interface use KDE.
Productive doing what exactly? I've never understood this at all. People are productive with applications, the best interfaces should lead you to your apps and your files and then get out of the way. That's exactly why I prefer GNOME over KDE (and generally prefer real simple interfaces like blackbox WM over all these overblown desktops anyway). KDE seems to be in my way most of the time, though admittedly this is improving.
BTW, most people who have to support your average desktop users will likely tell you that most users are in-fact "idiots" and therefore GNOME is perfect. Also, remember there are more of these "idiots" then there are Uber-Geeky-KDE lovers so if Linux really want's to conquer the desktop GNOME is the ticket today. (Then again that's assuming Linux really want's to conquer the Desktop, part of the Schizophrenic nature of the Linux Community is that half the time it want's one thing and the other time it want's the opposite).
I work for a rather large corporation. We run many different OS's around here (Well, Windows/Macs) as desktops (Our corporate email system is exchange so Lookou... Outlook I mean is necessary, at least until they update their exchange server) and they are all locked down fairly tightly. That said they have a DMZ for running test machines of whatever nature you need to run including Linux. Additionally I find that if you have a business case for something they are accommodating. For example the other day I wanted to install OpenOffice.org 2.0 (As more people work with OpenDoc, we need more effective way's to work with it, and OOo 2 seems to be a reasonable way to deal). I emailed the person in charge and was given the appropriate rights (temporarily) to install the software. The point being that:
A) Sometimes if you ask you actually can get what you want.
B) That said if you don't have a *real* good reason for doing what you want to do, then you will likely be denied.
"Can you learn to develop and debug shell scripts in 24 hours? I think not."
What does this have to do with a book designed to get new users familiar with using Unix? (which BTW the book in question is designed to do?) I would add, that yes you could learn to develop and debug scripts in 24 hours if you were so inclined, you might not be any good at it, but you could learn the basics.
The purpose of this book and other like it are to teach the reader the basics of doing something, and overall they tend to do this fairly well. Nowhere do they say that you will gain 10 years of experience in a book.
"In college you'll have a 50-60 hour class on "intro to C" followed by FIVE MORE SEMESTERS of classes that build on it."
That statement seems to reflect more about your ignorance and some of the problems with higher education then actually making a valid point. The main text on the C language is "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie. I quote from the book "C is not a big language, and it is not served well by a big book." The book in question is less then 300 pages... easily worked through in a week or so (and could possibly be absorbed in 24 hours as well). And while this book isn't going to teach you every library and algorithm necessarily to create many outstanding applications, This book will in fact teach you the C language pretty much in it's entirety. (After all all the extensions and libraries are essentially built out of the these very basics taught in this book).
So if you must, be insulted. I don't think too many people on Slashdot really care (and seriously who hasn't been insulted by something on Slashdot at one time or another). But you arguments just point out what are apparently your own shortcoming and misunderstandings about anything. I mean anyone who states "I hate everything that..." without exploring everything you supposedly hate represents the height of ignorance.
Look, this is supposed to be about KDE vs GNOME, This is totally off topic I mean sheesh. I mean clearly one way of spelling is so much better then the other, even though they accomplish the same tasks the interface... wait I'm confused... I guess this is on topic......... ARRRGHHHH!!!! help us...
Sony should take a page from the Johnson and Johnson book. When the Tylenol poisonings happened, J&J took aggressive action to limit the damage and help the people concerned.
lol... Yea, the only problem is that J&J is a traditional American "Family" business (Where in fact the "family" still owns quite a bit of the company and runs it as well) culturally the name and the quality it represents means more then a short term loss. Culturally Japanese companies would never do this, they never admit they are wrong... ever, it would be a huge embarrassment and massive dishonor and more importantly a sign of weakness which other japanese companies would jump all over and it's more important to them to be big strong and correct then whatever fallout this "little misunderstanding" may cause.
As a result, It's going to seriously peeve people off if they try that.
The question is who are the people going to be peeved at? In this case Blizzard could (rightfully so IMO) blame this on Sony. That is if what you are saying was valid... more likely the "non-technical" person wouldn't be going out of there way this much to cheat on WoW without knowing the risks (and if they are then I would hope they did get peeved... don't really want them playing WoW anyway)
"Well, until the iPod Apple had a long history of introducing 'new' gadgets, which were basically stylised rehashes of PC equipment."
Bzzzzt Wrong!
Before the iPod Apple made a stir with OS X, which was certainly not just some stylized rehash of any PC stuff. Before OS X (and even through today... well yesterday at least) Apple made a splash with the iMac which (while certainly done with a great deal of style) redefined what a consumer friendly computer could be (Easy to set up, easy to use (relatively), and will look good at home where people tend to care about those things).
The truth is since Steve returned with his NeXt compatriots Apple's been churning out lot of fantastic new products. Have you looked a Aperture which Apple announced yesterday? That product (unless there's some serious hidden bug in there somewhere) will totally rock the digital photography world. It's exactly the type of tool that everyones wanted and nobody made... Photoshop was resting on it market place domination and everyone else was trying to copy Photoshop.
If you add up all the rumors (without the wishful thinking) you end up with a MacMini Media Center... Then again Ed Zander a Motorola may have crossed a line with all his bitching about his Roker phone being upstaged by the iPodNano so Steves going to push out the Apple Phone as revenge.
Yes... Thus the 20% of small pub / self pub that doesn't suck.
I own a number of books that were *not* published by large publishing companies that are quite good, I also know a few people who could have written for large publishing companies who chose not to.
This does introduce another good point though. Large publishing companies invest quite a bit of money into each book the publish. A great deal of this usually includes professional technical review (for technical books), editing, layout, etc which really adds to the quality of the book. Of course a publisher, in order to stay in business, must earn the investment they make back (hopefully with a little extra profit thrown in). It's these value added resources that really make publisher *not* worry so much about electronic publishing so much, even when the advantages of professional Sales and distribution dry up (which is unlikely for years to come) all the other services will still provide value to works published by professional publishers (though scale might change). Of course, thankfully, most people still prefer books. It's a hugh advantage book publishers have of other media companies, computers and electronic media *can't* provided the same experience as a real book (where music and video are pretty much the same). Today if an electronic copy of a book makes out into the wild, if it's a good book, it's like free marketing.
O'Reilly could be considered a leader (if not the leader) in the online book market.
Ok... I just need to jump in here. Safari != O'Reilly Safari is a joint venture by Pearson Education (AW, PTR, Sams...) and O'Reilly (with Microsoft Press and others publishers adding their content to the mix later).
Also, Tim (and many other publishers) realize that the Google thing will do is help sales of books. Some of the best selling books are available for free online. People on a whole love real books... dead trees and all... after staring at a computer screen for a few hours reading, many people, once they've decided that the content will satisfy their needs/desires will fork over the money for hard copy of the book.
In fact... the only thing such a service does is weed out the worst material (after all if you read a couple of pages of crap you aren't going to buy that book are you?).
A final note... publishers really aren't afraid of competition from self publishing/small publishing (whatever). probably 90% of all self/small published books are published that way because a big publisher turned the book/author away to begin with. This isn't to say that everything published by big publishers is golden (it isn't... by a long shot), but in general I'd say ~ 80% of what you get from big publishing companies is actually quite good, while ~80% of everything else out there sucks.
Googling "love my ipod nano" yields over 2,000,000 results.
So... for every idiot who thinks plastic doesn't scratch as you rub it around in you pocket all day *doh!* there are over four other people who are ecstatically happy with their ipod nano. Those seem like pretty good odds to me.
"Case II: You buy some ephedrine, some lithuim batteries, some drano and some Acetone. They are your property to use as you wish. You decide to whip up a batch of Crack. Are you allowed to do this? NO."
If you could that would really be a feat.. you should win some sort of honorary medal or something if you could. I think you really mean crystal meth... not Crack. Crack is cocaine and baking soda. (both give you a quick euphoric rush, both are addictive (though not equally), both will kill you. (Meth even has a nasty habit of blowing up when you make it too). Meth is easier to get in your upper-middle class neighborhoods and in small towns across the US. Crack is typically more prevalent in poorer city neighborhoods.
It saddens me when people confuse their recreational drugs.
Provided Apple does it's job right this isn't too complex. Essentially it's a rebuild for a Cocoa App. (Next/OpenStep ran on multiple platforms). Remember... with the exception of very low level programming (i.e. some drivers, and almost no productivity apps). You write code for an OS not a hardware platform. If the OS is ported properly along with the supporting lowlevel libraries porting an app is trivial.
I've read that Nikon actually hasn't encrypted the WB *yet*. It also seems that if Nikon wanted to force people to use thier products they would encrypt much more then WB.
It seems highly possible that this a ploy by Adobe to freak people out about propritary RAW formats so everyone will demand thier next camera be DNG compatible (DNG being Adobe's "Standard" Propritary RAW format (Think Microsoft)).
Well... This isn't quite true. Nikon does in fact have photoshop RAW plug-ins, and while they lack features of ACR they do work.
Also, this only effect White Balance. The files can still be read just fine, you'll just have to set WB manually (or use PS's Auto WB) Which really isn't that big of deal since most photographers tweak WB anyway.
Also Nikon Capture is ~$90 ($99 MSRP) which even has a button to open a NEF in Photoshop.
Anyway.. now that the fact are straight... This is a boneheaded decision by Nikon, but they are famous for such things. They make fantastic products, but the management has always been retarded.
Ok, this guy may have some valid ideas about DRM, but I feel that a artist/musician/owner/company... whoever, has the right to protect/use/distribute thier product however they see fit and if someone doesn't like it then they have every right not to purchase it. Wresting control of a item away from it's owner is not a nobal pursuit.
BTW normal consumer actions often police the worst sorts of DRM and Meida lock. Example... Disney once released a DVD were you couldn't skip the previews, they did this once, got slammed by the consumers and stopped doing it. If you want to change something you can do it with dollars.
If this guy is so smart about DRM and the finances of Media Companies, then I suggest he start his own media company and see how long it takes for himto go out of business.
I think the Media companies understand the new marketplace just fine. that's exactly why they want DRM. hell, 99% of the people complaining about DRM are leaches who wouldn't buy anything anyway.
overall the market place will determine what DRM is acceptable, while I agree that this is in a current state of flux, DRM is here to stay. The question isn't whether or not you favor DRM, it should be how should DRM be implemented to protect digital media while not interfearing with the consumer desires. (note.. I say "desires", not "rights", the consumer has the right to not buy a product because they don't like the DRM (or anything else), but they don't have the right to steal it or do something that they know when they buy it they aren't supposed to.
FWIW, I've purchased a number of albums from itunes music store and have no problem with the DRM they impose. Though if given a choice between the Digital media or a CD at the same price I'd take the CD. That's how consumer rights work, you can choose to not buy something for any reason you want, just don't bitch about it
Photography has always been extreamly competitive. Especially the big three (one part Canon, one part Nikon, one part Pentax, Olympus & Minolta). They like to keep things secret, or patented etc. The value to Canon of having the first USM lenses, and then OIS lenses must of been hugh. Before that Nikon dominated, now Canon has the larger share among Sports phtographers and has made large inroads into other areas.
Software is also important. Nikon and Pentax use virtually identical CCD chips in there moderately priced Digital SLR's (~6MB CCD made by Sony) but the results and performance of these Cameras are quite different (Nikon Performace is amazing, Nikon produces shaper images too).
Also, FWIW, I'm not sure what benifit an Open Source Camera OS would have, the competition here drives new advances. That said I do like the idea of a Standard Digital Negative such as what Adobe proposes (though I'm not sure I want Adobe owning a standard).
Slashdot Mirror
First, unlike many patents, this one seems fairly specific, and represents to me the sort of things that the patent process should be protecting. That said, I think it would be interesting if the patent system was set up in tiers. That is after you file a patent you have 'X' amount of time (say ~1-3 years give or take) to produce a working example of said patent, if not then the patent is invalidated. If you succeed then the patent is rewritten to the specific working example and extended for a reasonable period of time. This should prevent vague patents and should help eliminate submarine patents to some extent.
What? Have you ever worn a pair of Puma Kings [FLASH ALERT!] on the Pitch? They totally are worth every dollar/pound/euro/... whatever. So clearly you have no idea what you are talking about either with shoes or computers.
Well actually that's apparently exactly what happened. Maybe not just to computer books, it could have been more of a global . o 0 { I'm not buying anything except bottled water, canned food and shotgun shells } but it certainly had a hugh effect on computer book sales. Part of this was happening anyway, it -seemed- when the burst of the .com bubble stifled innovation and there just wasn't anything that new that people needed a book to learn. While that was true to a point what really was going on was that people needed to learn different things and no publisher was providing it (and largely still don't today). In overly simplistic terms, the bulk market shifted from how do I use my computer to how do I accomplish "x" with my computer. It's also important to realize that the "x" changed too. Most publishers on a whole still don't get this (some do, but the industry on a whole is very reactive so change is slow). O'Reilly has been burned by this just like everyone else. While there is still a good market for well written programming books which has traditionally been O'Reilly's market (and has saved it many times since it traditionally avoided the fickleness of end user consumers) even that is changing. Right now to try to save themselves most Publishers are just attempting to do the same thing by making superficial changes in how books look and selling this facelift as the next big thing ("Head First Java" anyone?) The problem is these books still teach the same old topics which have diminishing interest. It's not the approach... Heck.. IMO "The C Programming language" by K.&R. is still the best computer book out there and much of that has to do with the simple presentation of the material without all the pretense and gimmicks of today. The problem isn't the approach, it's the topic.
But a babble off on some rant... the fact remains 9/11 hurt the book industry along with everyone else, the computer book industry took an extra hit because when people started to buy stuff again they realized that none of the computer books on the shelves dealt with the topics they wanted to learn.
Solve, yes...implement, no. The infrastructure needed to actually effect such big far reaching things such as "World Hunger" and "Global Warming" are largely controlled by those interests that profit directly from such things.
Oh yea... Merry Christmas or whatever
Productive doing what exactly? I've never understood this at all. People are productive with applications, the best interfaces should lead you to your apps and your files and then get out of the way. That's exactly why I prefer GNOME over KDE (and generally prefer real simple interfaces like blackbox WM over all these overblown desktops anyway). KDE seems to be in my way most of the time, though admittedly this is improving.
BTW, most people who have to support your average desktop users will likely tell you that most users are in-fact "idiots" and therefore GNOME is perfect. Also, remember there are more of these "idiots" then there are Uber-Geeky-KDE lovers so if Linux really want's to conquer the desktop GNOME is the ticket today. (Then again that's assuming Linux really want's to conquer the Desktop, part of the Schizophrenic nature of the Linux Community is that half the time it want's one thing and the other time it want's the opposite).
That "FREE RAW plugin for photoshop" is only free in the same way as a car dealer throwing in some "Free" custom floor-mats for that $50,000 car.
I work for a rather large corporation. We run many different OS's around here (Well, Windows/Macs) as desktops (Our corporate email system is exchange so Lookou... Outlook I mean is necessary, at least until they update their exchange server) and they are all locked down fairly tightly. That said they have a DMZ for running test machines of whatever nature you need to run including Linux. Additionally I find that if you have a business case for something they are accommodating. For example the other day I wanted to install OpenOffice.org 2.0 (As more people work with OpenDoc, we need more effective way's to work with it, and OOo 2 seems to be a reasonable way to deal). I emailed the person in charge and was given the appropriate rights (temporarily) to install the software. The point being that:
A) Sometimes if you ask you actually can get what you want.
B) That said if you don't have a *real* good reason for doing what you want to do, then you will likely be denied.
dude, lighten up...
What does this have to do with a book designed to get new users familiar with using Unix? (which BTW the book in question is designed to do?) I would add, that yes you could learn to develop and debug scripts in 24 hours if you were so inclined, you might not be any good at it, but you could learn the basics.
The purpose of this book and other like it are to teach the reader the basics of doing something, and overall they tend to do this fairly well. Nowhere do they say that you will gain 10 years of experience in a book.
That statement seems to reflect more about your ignorance and some of the problems with higher education then actually making a valid point. The main text on the C language is "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie. I quote from the book "C is not a big language, and it is not served well by a big book." The book in question is less then 300 pages... easily worked through in a week or so (and could possibly be absorbed in 24 hours as well). And while this book isn't going to teach you every library and algorithm necessarily to create many outstanding applications, This book will in fact teach you the C language pretty much in it's entirety. (After all all the extensions and libraries are essentially built out of the these very basics taught in this book).
So if you must, be insulted. I don't think too many people on Slashdot really care (and seriously who hasn't been insulted by something on Slashdot at one time or another). But you arguments just point out what are apparently your own shortcoming and misunderstandings about anything. I mean anyone who states "I hate everything that ..." without exploring everything you supposedly hate represents the height of ignorance.
And seriously what did you geeks expect?
Look, this is supposed to be about KDE vs GNOME, This is totally off topic I mean sheesh. I mean clearly one way of spelling is so much better then the other, even though they accomplish the same tasks the interface... wait I'm confused... I guess this is on topic... ... ... ARRRGHHHH!!!! help us...
lol... Yea, the only problem is that J&J is a traditional American "Family" business (Where in fact the "family" still owns quite a bit of the company and runs it as well) culturally the name and the quality it represents means more then a short term loss. Culturally Japanese companies would never do this, they never admit they are wrong... ever, it would be a huge embarrassment and massive dishonor and more importantly a sign of weakness which other japanese companies would jump all over and it's more important to them to be big strong and correct then whatever fallout this "little misunderstanding" may cause.
The question is who are the people going to be peeved at? In this case Blizzard could (rightfully so IMO) blame this on Sony. That is if what you are saying was valid... more likely the "non-technical" person wouldn't be going out of there way this much to cheat on WoW without knowing the risks (and if they are then I would hope they did get peeved... don't really want them playing WoW anyway)
Bzzzzt Wrong!
Before the iPod Apple made a stir with OS X, which was certainly not just some stylized rehash of any PC stuff. Before OS X (and even through today... well yesterday at least) Apple made a splash with the iMac which (while certainly done with a great deal of style) redefined what a consumer friendly computer could be (Easy to set up, easy to use (relatively), and will look good at home where people tend to care about those things).
The truth is since Steve returned with his NeXt compatriots Apple's been churning out lot of fantastic new products. Have you looked a Aperture which Apple announced yesterday? That product (unless there's some serious hidden bug in there somewhere) will totally rock the digital photography world. It's exactly the type of tool that everyones wanted and nobody made... Photoshop was resting on it market place domination and everyone else was trying to copy Photoshop.
If you add up all the rumors (without the wishful thinking) you end up with a MacMini Media Center... Then again Ed Zander a Motorola may have crossed a line with all his bitching about his Roker phone being upstaged by the iPodNano so Steves going to push out the Apple Phone as revenge.
Yes... Thus the 20% of small pub / self pub that doesn't suck.
I own a number of books that were *not* published by large publishing companies that are quite good, I also know a few people who could have written for large publishing companies who chose not to.
This does introduce another good point though. Large publishing companies invest quite a bit of money into each book the publish. A great deal of this usually includes professional technical review (for technical books), editing, layout, etc which really adds to the quality of the book. Of course a publisher, in order to stay in business, must earn the investment they make back (hopefully with a little extra profit thrown in). It's these value added resources that really make publisher *not* worry so much about electronic publishing so much, even when the advantages of professional Sales and distribution dry up (which is unlikely for years to come) all the other services will still provide value to works published by professional publishers (though scale might change). Of course, thankfully, most people still prefer books. It's a hugh advantage book publishers have of other media companies, computers and electronic media *can't* provided the same experience as a real book (where music and video are pretty much the same). Today if an electronic copy of a book makes out into the wild, if it's a good book, it's like free marketing.
Ok... I just need to jump in here. Safari != O'Reilly Safari is a joint venture by Pearson Education (AW, PTR, Sams...) and O'Reilly (with Microsoft Press and others publishers adding their content to the mix later).
Also, Tim (and many other publishers) realize that the Google thing will do is help sales of books. Some of the best selling books are available for free online. People on a whole love real books... dead trees and all... after staring at a computer screen for a few hours reading, many people, once they've decided that the content will satisfy their needs/desires will fork over the money for hard copy of the book.
In fact... the only thing such a service does is weed out the worst material (after all if you read a couple of pages of crap you aren't going to buy that book are you?).
A final note... publishers really aren't afraid of competition from self publishing/small publishing (whatever). probably 90% of all self/small published books are published that way because a big publisher turned the book/author away to begin with. This isn't to say that everything published by big publishers is golden (it isn't... by a long shot), but in general I'd say ~ 80% of what you get from big publishing companies is actually quite good, while ~80% of everything else out there sucks.
Googling "love my ipod nano" yields over 2,000,000 results.
So... for every idiot who thinks plastic doesn't scratch as you rub it around in you pocket all day *doh!* there are over four other people who are ecstatically happy with their ipod nano. Those seem like pretty good odds to me.
If you could that would really be a feat.. you should win some sort of honorary medal or something if you could. I think you really mean crystal meth... not Crack. Crack is cocaine and baking soda. (both give you a quick euphoric rush, both are addictive (though not equally), both will kill you. (Meth even has a nasty habit of blowing up when you make it too). Meth is easier to get in your upper-middle class neighborhoods and in small towns across the US. Crack is typically more prevalent in poorer city neighborhoods.
It saddens me when people confuse their recreational drugs.
Provided Apple does it's job right this isn't too complex. Essentially it's a rebuild for a Cocoa App. (Next/OpenStep ran on multiple platforms). Remember... with the exception of very low level programming (i.e. some drivers, and almost no productivity apps). You write code for an OS not a hardware platform. If the OS is ported properly along with the supporting lowlevel libraries porting an app is trivial.
I've read that Nikon actually hasn't encrypted the WB *yet*. It also seems that if Nikon wanted to force people to use thier products they would encrypt much more then WB.
It seems highly possible that this a ploy by Adobe to freak people out about propritary RAW formats so everyone will demand thier next camera be DNG compatible (DNG being Adobe's "Standard" Propritary RAW format (Think Microsoft)).
Well... This isn't quite true. Nikon does in fact have photoshop RAW plug-ins, and while they lack features of ACR they do work.
Also, this only effect White Balance. The files can still be read just fine, you'll just have to set WB manually (or use PS's Auto WB) Which really isn't that big of deal since most photographers tweak WB anyway.
Also Nikon Capture is ~$90 ($99 MSRP) which even has a button to open a NEF in Photoshop.
Anyway.. now that the fact are straight... This is a boneheaded decision by Nikon, but they are famous for such things. They make fantastic products, but the management has always been retarded.
Ok, this guy may have some valid ideas about DRM, but I feel that a artist/musician/owner/company... whoever, has the right to protect/use/distribute thier product however they see fit and if someone doesn't like it then they have every right not to purchase it. Wresting control of a item away from it's owner is not a nobal pursuit.
BTW normal consumer actions often police the worst sorts of DRM and Meida lock. Example... Disney once released a DVD were you couldn't skip the previews, they did this once, got slammed by the consumers and stopped doing it. If you want to change something you can do it with dollars.
If this guy is so smart about DRM and the finances of Media Companies, then I suggest he start his own media company and see how long it takes for himto go out of business.
Built-in wireless keyboard and mouse??? kinda defeats the purpose methinks.
I think the Media companies understand the new marketplace just fine. that's exactly why they want DRM. hell, 99% of the people complaining about DRM are leaches who wouldn't buy anything anyway.
overall the market place will determine what DRM is acceptable, while I agree that this is in a current state of flux, DRM is here to stay. The question isn't whether or not you favor DRM, it should be how should DRM be implemented to protect digital media while not interfearing with the consumer desires. (note.. I say "desires", not "rights", the consumer has the right to not buy a product because they don't like the DRM (or anything else), but they don't have the right to steal it or do something that they know when they buy it they aren't supposed to.
FWIW, I've purchased a number of albums from itunes music store and have no problem with the DRM they impose. Though if given a choice between the Digital media or a CD at the same price I'd take the CD. That's how consumer rights work, you can choose to not buy something for any reason you want, just don't bitch about it
Photography has always been extreamly competitive. Especially the big three (one part Canon, one part Nikon, one part Pentax, Olympus & Minolta). They like to keep things secret, or patented etc. The value to Canon of having the first USM lenses, and then OIS lenses must of been hugh. Before that Nikon dominated, now Canon has the larger share among Sports phtographers and has made large inroads into other areas.
Software is also important. Nikon and Pentax use virtually identical CCD chips in there moderately priced Digital SLR's (~6MB CCD made by Sony) but the results and performance of these Cameras are quite different (Nikon Performace is amazing, Nikon produces shaper images too).
Also, FWIW, I'm not sure what benifit an Open Source Camera OS would have, the competition here drives new advances. That said I do like the idea of a Standard Digital Negative such as what Adobe proposes (though I'm not sure I want Adobe owning a standard).