My advice would be to find what is a comfortable middleground for you. Unless you're a pro or a serious enthusiast, you probably aren't going to use more than 20% of the functions and options on a high end DSLR. That said, a really cheap Point and Shoot is probably not for you either, since we're on/. after all.
So here's what i tell people when they ask me:
1) Name brand counts for a lot. Don't buy Sony, Panasonic, Casio. Buy Kodak, Canon, Olympus. Sure, the former have made some good cameras but you're far more likely to get a great camera from a company whose first business is in cameras rather than consumer electronics.
2) The megapixel count doesn't mean squat. Anything over 4Mp will do you fine for 6x4 prints and unless you want really big prints, it's the lens that matters. For screen work, you're limited to your monitor resolution anyway.
3) It's all about the zoom. I reckon the human eye has about an 8-10x zoom equivalent. Ideally this is what your camera should be. You have to see the shot with the naked eye before you take it, after all.
4) If you want good shots, first and foremost, go for a camera with a proper grip over a credit card sized one. Trust me, it's a damn sight easier to shoot with and far, far more stable.
5) Get an add-on flash or at least the upgrade potential. For about £90 you can get a pretty decent add-on flash that will utterly transform your indoor/studio shots into less of a deer-in-the-headlights look.
6) Digital zoom doesn't mean shit. Far too many people buy into the '2x optical, 6x digital' pitfall and it's a damn shame. No matter how advanced that digital zoom it, optical will always be the only thing that matters.
7) Get a viewfinder. The image you see in that nifty little LCD is probably overexposed and off-colour. A digital viewfinder, while not perfect, is still better.
I have a two year old Kodak DX6490. It's a 4Mp, 10x optical zoom camera with good manual settings and surprisingly acceptable auto modes. It's only now that i'm thinking of upgrading and since Nikon have mostly done away with flip-out LCD's, i'll probably stick with this camera for a while. (If you shoot weird angles, a flip-out LCD makes life so much easier.
Overall that article was fairly accurate, though i don't agree with DSLRs being more rugged. If it weighs 5lbs and you drop it on a rock, it's going to be just as broken as a 2lb camera.
I couldn't agree more. One of the things that most put me off Ubuntu was that there was no easy way to change the resolution to anything other than default. This for me did not bode well.
Any and all Linux Distro's will finally see some wide mainstream acceptance when you can do everything that you can in Windows, out of the box. This includes the little things like a decent display manager (htf do you get dual head going?) all the way up to the big things like stable gaming. Admittedly the colour scheme at the moment is an utter disaster but to be honest, that isn't what's going to draw in the middle market and the power users. It's out-of-the-box functionality that far outweighs Windows.
And yet this was precisely the sort of thing that was supposed to be eliminated with XP. I don't blame the team, i mean who wants to raise their hand the week before RTM and say that there's a rare but nevertheless catastrophic bug still lurking around?
I think for the next few months my advice to people is to buy a few copies of XP SP2. They'll be needing them for a few years yet.
I am 18, living in the UK and seriously considering trying to move to Canada before the year is out. I'm not the only one of my peers who is attempting such a thing. I've heard talk of France, New Zealand and Japan.
Since the British government seem to be intrinsically linked with the US now and that's something that doesn't look set to change for a long time, i think a lot of people - especially those of my age who still can make a clean break - don't like the way the country is going and so are looking elsewhere. While i don't think we're quite at the same level as the US yet, major governmental decisions have left me questioning what right we have to impose upon people at the local level, let alone on an international scale.
Whether it is right or not to turn your back on the country that raised you i do not know. What i do know is that as someone who has seen the last decade of change and will be looking to start a family in the next one, i really am thinking of the children.
/p.s. So awesome that my sig applies for the first time ever.
I think the chances are that the average joe won't be interested in this technology and so it will mostly focus on home entertainment and integration of communication devices. For example - Bill Gates has an RFID system set up in his home that displays art on monitors depending on the person in the room's taste. This sort of technology wouldn't be that hard to implement.
Or, considering that we're definitely moving more towards MCE TV setups, a TV that will tell you when you have an email?
I know there are certain risks and problems associated with this and it may well be more trouble than it's worth but from a 'why not?' standpoint, it's surely worth a try.
Except it doesn't really work. In my experience even as low level tech advisor to Joe Bloggs, about PC hardware, knowledge goes in one ear and out of the other. You can give them the best advice you can and they'll probably still go to Dell.
The same goes for large corporations and governments. They aren't going to listen to the man who really does know what he's talking about, they're going to listen to the person who will give them the answer they want to hear. Sad, but true.
All 6 years ago, we used to play British Bulldog in the dark. This involved two teams of about 30 kids in the sports hall, no lighting whatsoever and we'd just run at each other in the pitch black. Whoever had the most people still standing was declared the winning team. We'd also play rugby thrice a week and not a single week would go by without a broken bone for someone in my year.
This was at an exclusive private school and i have to say that most of those people in my year grew up to go into law, medicine, business or sports. I firmly believe that had we not had the freedom to do such things, we probably would not have had the independance, drive and ambition to strive for goals in life. When you're constantly told aren't allowed to do something, you start to wonder just what you can do.
It seems to me that the problem isn't with the education system per se but with the state education system, where ridiculous lawsuits often do happen. Admittedly we're some way off from this situation here in the UK but i can see a ban on contact sports happening within the decade and that will be a very sad day for traditional sports.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's just a really big rock. One that happens to be glowing green and contains a small infant.
I guess these sort of coincidences happen every day in Kansas.
I have faith in nothing but this: when the Universe collapses and dies, there will be three survivors. the iPods, the cockroaches, and Tony Fadell - trying to save the iPods.
I admit i have not read TFA as i can't but the premise of the story alone is ludicrous. Sooner or later (probably sooner) a better storage medium will come along. Likely one a little less volatile.
Google video may be the technically superior service, but it is almost completely lacking in social interaction. Youtube encourages you to have a vlog, to post video responses etc. Google video (at least from the standpoint of a Youtube user) is a little cold.
Google may well have the hardware, but they've a lot to learn about what makes a site popular. Myspace has to be one of the ugliest sites around yet its popularity is ever soaring because it is social. Google video just is not.
At the end of the day, Youtube is synonymous with the online video hosting/sharing community and that is what Google are paying £850 million for. That and the ability to integrate with existing Google products (Google calendar & vlog combined? That's some powerful stuff right there.)
I've been wondering the same thing myself. My Acer now only holds about 1/3 of the original charge, takes twice as long to charge and seems to overheat while charging. It was 1 year old last month. To the best of my knowledge it is not a Sony battery but if the problem is caused by the insulation paper, it might not be limited to just the one supplier.
This is complete nonsense. If anything i'd argue that the education system deprives children of their childhood. Being forced to make life changing decisions at 14 and 16 ensures that childhood stops at 13.
The logic of the argument is extremely flawed yet somehow i do want to agree. Fact of the matter is that Win 3.1 was a 'perfectly good' OS. If we all followed that logic we'd still be there. However i am forced to agree that XP is still the best OS out there. I tried out both x64 and x86 editions of the Vista Beta 2. That was a week so awful i honestly felt like i was back on '98 with random crashes for no apparent reason. Chances are i, and most of the/. crowd will probably never upgrade to Vista or at the very least will give it a year on the shelves before we think about it.
I always knew Google were powerful. I did not, however, know they had the power to open source the 4-dimensional analog of the (3-dimensional) cube, where motion along the fourth dimension is often a representation for bounded transformations of the cube through time.
I know he was a great guy and despite his clearly loony behaviour, we all have a fondness for him.
That being said, why is this story on/.? How is this 'news for nerds'? Why is this in the science category?
Common sense, let alone benchmarks would tell me that my 2 year old, £200 video card would perform better than my 2 year old, £200 DVD player.
And to all those folk moaning about the noise and cost of HTPC's - for less than £1000 i could build an almost silent HTPC with 10x the functionality of any standalone DVD player out there.
I know i'm a new member and all, but it seems like we've had 8 slow news days this week.
Slashdot Mirror
And tomorrow there will be 50,000 units on Ebay.
My advice would be to find what is a comfortable middleground for you. Unless you're a pro or a serious enthusiast, you probably aren't going to use more than 20% of the functions and options on a high end DSLR. That said, a really cheap Point and Shoot is probably not for you either, since we're on /. after all.
So here's what i tell people when they ask me:
1) Name brand counts for a lot. Don't buy Sony, Panasonic, Casio. Buy Kodak, Canon, Olympus. Sure, the former have made some good cameras but you're far more likely to get a great camera from a company whose first business is in cameras rather than consumer electronics.
2) The megapixel count doesn't mean squat. Anything over 4Mp will do you fine for 6x4 prints and unless you want really big prints, it's the lens that matters. For screen work, you're limited to your monitor resolution anyway.
3) It's all about the zoom. I reckon the human eye has about an 8-10x zoom equivalent. Ideally this is what your camera should be. You have to see the shot with the naked eye before you take it, after all.
4) If you want good shots, first and foremost, go for a camera with a proper grip over a credit card sized one. Trust me, it's a damn sight easier to shoot with and far, far more stable.
5) Get an add-on flash or at least the upgrade potential. For about £90 you can get a pretty decent add-on flash that will utterly transform your indoor/studio shots into less of a deer-in-the-headlights look.
6) Digital zoom doesn't mean shit. Far too many people buy into the '2x optical, 6x digital' pitfall and it's a damn shame. No matter how advanced that digital zoom it, optical will always be the only thing that matters.
7) Get a viewfinder. The image you see in that nifty little LCD is probably overexposed and off-colour. A digital viewfinder, while not perfect, is still better.
I have a two year old Kodak DX6490. It's a 4Mp, 10x optical zoom camera with good manual settings and surprisingly acceptable auto modes. It's only now that i'm thinking of upgrading and since Nikon have mostly done away with flip-out LCD's, i'll probably stick with this camera for a while. (If you shoot weird angles, a flip-out LCD makes life so much easier.
Overall that article was fairly accurate, though i don't agree with DSLRs being more rugged. If it weighs 5lbs and you drop it on a rock, it's going to be just as broken as a 2lb camera.
I couldn't agree more. One of the things that most put me off Ubuntu was that there was no easy way to change the resolution to anything other than default. This for me did not bode well.
Any and all Linux Distro's will finally see some wide mainstream acceptance when you can do everything that you can in Windows, out of the box. This includes the little things like a decent display manager (htf do you get dual head going?) all the way up to the big things like stable gaming. Admittedly the colour scheme at the moment is an utter disaster but to be honest, that isn't what's going to draw in the middle market and the power users. It's out-of-the-box functionality that far outweighs Windows.
Khaaaan!
I was about to say the exact same thing myself.
As always, BSG tackles the important issues, even before they become issues. Now that's good TV!
And yet this was precisely the sort of thing that was supposed to be eliminated with XP. I don't blame the team, i mean who wants to raise their hand the week before RTM and say that there's a rare but nevertheless catastrophic bug still lurking around?
I think for the next few months my advice to people is to buy a few copies of XP SP2. They'll be needing them for a few years yet.
And yes, i have tried Ubuntu. It looked like ass.
I am 18, living in the UK and seriously considering trying to move to Canada before the year is out. I'm not the only one of my peers who is attempting such a thing. I've heard talk of France, New Zealand and Japan.
/p.s. So awesome that my sig applies for the first time ever.
Since the British government seem to be intrinsically linked with the US now and that's something that doesn't look set to change for a long time, i think a lot of people - especially those of my age who still can make a clean break - don't like the way the country is going and so are looking elsewhere. While i don't think we're quite at the same level as the US yet, major governmental decisions have left me questioning what right we have to impose upon people at the local level, let alone on an international scale.
Whether it is right or not to turn your back on the country that raised you i do not know. What i do know is that as someone who has seen the last decade of change and will be looking to start a family in the next one, i really am thinking of the children.
I think the chances are that the average joe won't be interested in this technology and so it will mostly focus on home entertainment and integration of communication devices. For example - Bill Gates has an RFID system set up in his home that displays art on monitors depending on the person in the room's taste. This sort of technology wouldn't be that hard to implement.
Or, considering that we're definitely moving more towards MCE TV setups, a TV that will tell you when you have an email?
I know there are certain risks and problems associated with this and it may well be more trouble than it's worth but from a 'why not?' standpoint, it's surely worth a try.
You got me all excited about Stargate coming back in the time it took the article to load. Damn you for supplying me with false hope!
You forgot the Negh'Var from All Good Things and WotW.
Ask what you can do for your government!
Except it doesn't really work. In my experience even as low level tech advisor to Joe Bloggs, about PC hardware, knowledge goes in one ear and out of the other. You can give them the best advice you can and they'll probably still go to Dell.
The same goes for large corporations and governments. They aren't going to listen to the man who really does know what he's talking about, they're going to listen to the person who will give them the answer they want to hear. Sad, but true.
All 6 years ago, we used to play British Bulldog in the dark. This involved two teams of about 30 kids in the sports hall, no lighting whatsoever and we'd just run at each other in the pitch black. Whoever had the most people still standing was declared the winning team. We'd also play rugby thrice a week and not a single week would go by without a broken bone for someone in my year.
This was at an exclusive private school and i have to say that most of those people in my year grew up to go into law, medicine, business or sports. I firmly believe that had we not had the freedom to do such things, we probably would not have had the independance, drive and ambition to strive for goals in life. When you're constantly told aren't allowed to do something, you start to wonder just what you can do.
It seems to me that the problem isn't with the education system per se but with the state education system, where ridiculous lawsuits often do happen. Admittedly we're some way off from this situation here in the UK but i can see a ban on contact sports happening within the decade and that will be a very sad day for traditional sports.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's just a really big rock. One that happens to be glowing green and contains a small infant. I guess these sort of coincidences happen every day in Kansas.
I have faith in nothing but this: when the Universe collapses and dies, there will be three survivors. the iPods, the cockroaches, and Tony Fadell - trying to save the iPods. I admit i have not read TFA as i can't but the premise of the story alone is ludicrous. Sooner or later (probably sooner) a better storage medium will come along. Likely one a little less volatile.
He chusheng zajiao de zanghuo!
Google video may be the technically superior service, but it is almost completely lacking in social interaction. Youtube encourages you to have a vlog, to post video responses etc. Google video (at least from the standpoint of a Youtube user) is a little cold.
Google may well have the hardware, but they've a lot to learn about what makes a site popular. Myspace has to be one of the ugliest sites around yet its popularity is ever soaring because it is social. Google video just is not.
At the end of the day, Youtube is synonymous with the online video hosting/sharing community and that is what Google are paying £850 million for. That and the ability to integrate with existing Google products (Google calendar & vlog combined? That's some powerful stuff right there.)
Microsoft said: "Windows Vista will have a reduced functionality mode but one that is enhanced." and just what the hell does that mean?
Orange? Or Green?
I've been wondering the same thing myself. My Acer now only holds about 1/3 of the original charge, takes twice as long to charge and seems to overheat while charging. It was 1 year old last month. To the best of my knowledge it is not a Sony battery but if the problem is caused by the insulation paper, it might not be limited to just the one supplier.
This is complete nonsense. If anything i'd argue that the education system deprives children of their childhood. Being forced to make life changing decisions at 14 and 16 ensures that childhood stops at 13.
Bend over and grab our ankles.
The logic of the argument is extremely flawed yet somehow i do want to agree. Fact of the matter is that Win 3.1 was a 'perfectly good' OS. If we all followed that logic we'd still be there. However i am forced to agree that XP is still the best OS out there. I tried out both x64 and x86 editions of the Vista Beta 2. That was a week so awful i honestly felt like i was back on '98 with random crashes for no apparent reason. Chances are i, and most of the /. crowd will probably never upgrade to Vista or at the very least will give it a year on the shelves before we think about it.
I always knew Google were powerful. I did not, however, know they had the power to open source the 4-dimensional analog of the (3-dimensional) cube, where motion along the fourth dimension is often a representation for bounded transformations of the cube through time.
I know he was a great guy and despite his clearly loony behaviour, we all have a fondness for him. /.? How is this 'news for nerds'? Why is this in the science category?
That being said, why is this story on
Common sense, let alone benchmarks would tell me that my 2 year old, £200 video card would perform better than my 2 year old, £200 DVD player. And to all those folk moaning about the noise and cost of HTPC's - for less than £1000 i could build an almost silent HTPC with 10x the functionality of any standalone DVD player out there.
I know i'm a new member and all, but it seems like we've had 8 slow news days this week.