I'm not sure how this is remotely a/. item, but nevertheless... I have to agree with the AC (parent to this msg) on the K-1000 and other recommendations, with some slight adjustments:
1. If you can find one, pick up a Ricoh KR-5. You want the original KR-5 (introduced 1979), not the later versions (Super-II etc) because you want the fully manual version. Take the KR-5 for all the same reasons you'd take the K-1000, except that the Ricoh is smaller and lighter with much better ergonomics; I also like its light meter much better than the K-1000's. It only does 500 shutter speed, not 1000 like the Pentax, but that never bothered me - I always used the slowest film I could find. The Ricoh uses the same Pentax-K mount as the K-1000, so lenses are interchangeable with the Pentax stuff.
2. Spend money on lenses, as has been well said. It is true that you may later wish to change to a camera body that doesn't have the same mount as the Pentax-K (e.g., a Nikon body). Strongly consider Tamron lenses, as they have (unique among professional-quality lenses) an adapter-ring that fits onto the lens so that if you ever change camera bodies, you can just buy the new adapter rings rather than have to replace the lens. If you absolutely must buy cheaper lenses for budget reasons to get going, stop yourself at 2, and then save up and replace those with better ones when you are able.
3. If you have the darkroom available, strongly recommend bulk buys of black and white films that you can process and print yourself. Apart from learning on a fully manual camera, darkroom work is one of the best ways to understand the whole photographic process and equip you to get the best results out of your equipment.
4. Decent film. Experiment to find what works for you, but settle into a small number of film types / speeds and stick with them through the learning process so you have a constant as you experiment. I always liked the Ilford products for B&W but got great results with T-Max too. For colour, my own choice for print film was AGFA which I could get at ISO 25 or 50. As I said, I always went for the slowest film and got the best results by lengthening the shutter speed. Of course, if you're into action photography, this won't work so well for you.
5. Slow film and long shutter speeds reminds me of one other accessory you'll want - a tripod. Doesn't have to be too fancy or expensive, just as sturdy as you can find. If you can spend a little extra on one, I always liked my Cullmann Universal 3335 Macro Tripod - does virtually anything and everything, and you won't mind carrying it fair distances.
I must admit though, I have one beef with the Ricoh KR-5 that I still have. Can't get the darn thing to run Linux. If anybody knows of a project to port Linux to an entirely manual SLR, please let me know.
There's a lot of advice in this thread, and even lots of the conflicting advice is good - each for a given scenario. Problem is you don't yet know which one you've got, or at least we don't. You should discount all advice until you've answered a few basic questions.
What do you want?
This and the questions are ones that you'll have to answer, and obviously they form the personal question. Are you looking for the gravy train or are you just looking for some small assurance or assistance to ensure that your project will thrive? Make sure that your goals align with theirs, obviously... and don't try to be a blatant opportunist about it: if you started your project for a specific set of reasons, don't get confused about them now.
What do they want out of it?
They want something specific that isn't stated, at least not here. They're trying to ensure longevity of the project, or feature enhancements, or something - understand their goals first, so you can decide if they align with yours or not. This is absolutely fundamental, but remember it is not a technical question and will not have a technical answer - this is a business question.
What are their requirements?
They will want specific features or will want specific milestones or minimum hours or what? They'll be looking for something measurable for their money. This is directly related to question no. 1, but the answer here may be a set of technical spec's, as this is the technical form of the previous question.
The answers to these questions will tell you fairly directly which other advice to take from this thread - hourly rate, milestone, whatever. Then you'll get into budget etc., but for now you don't even know (or haven't said) how big this is - do they want major or minor features, is it a week's work or a year's work, full-time or part-time?
Remember, you have not just won the lottery. If their goals align with yours and would be things you'd do anyway, just find a fair and agreeable price and take it. If they conflict with what you want for your project, you'll need to evaluate whether or not to take it simply on that basis. Assuming things are good to proceed, if they make a longer-term committment to you, you may find you'll be able to lower your rate, as it brings extra stability and security to your income. Typically consulting work charges fairly high rates not only because software developers have come to expect fat pay packages, but also because they know they won't be able to bill 100% of their time, and when they are billing they have to build someing in to cover the lean periods. Once you know how big the project is, you'll be better able to fix a rate to it.
I'm a bit late to the discussion, but hopefully this will sift up to where it gets noticed, as I think it will help you - ask the right questions (personal, business, technical, and probably in that order) and you'll get the right answers. Still, it's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I'm going to ignore comments thus far as generally just not representative of Slashdotters, most of whom can find Canada on a map.
This story is a duplicate post on Slashdot, but parts of the story haven't really been covered yet: additional links are to be found in this story, which you can follow to find out more info on the issue, including some sample response from Canadian ISPs, one of which I represent. We're also CAIP members and I can tell you that the only comments I've seen on the members' mailing list so far are all negative, so you can probably expect resistance on our part, as the stories linked indicate. Any Canadian Slashdotters (believe it or not, not everyone here is American - I wonder if there are any geographical/. stats?) should make their views known now during the process leading up to the draft of the law that will result following the consultation process. Unfortunately the document as far as I've read it does not describe a process for doing so as an individual, but it does Identify the three government agencies involved, and industrious persons can probably take it from there.
Contrary to one informationally-ignorant prior post, as Canadians we do have Rights and Freedoms, and as in every other country (yes, including the USA) sometimes we need to speak up to exercise them and make sure that they aren't clawed back from us.
There have been several good suggestions about how to test your T1, but you may have noted that some imply you'd be getting 5 T1s and testing them all so you know which one to keep, which is somewhat unrealistic.
Perhaps the obvious overlooked tidbit is that you're sharing this T1 with other users via a hub.... and it needs to be said that you're at far more risk of the other users siphoning off your bandwidth than you are of your ISP not providing it in the first place. To do any of the suggested tests, you'll want to be disconnecting your neighbours first.
I might suggest a bit of cautious thought here. We are one of those small ISPs, and naturally we buy bandwidth from the bigger ones. Recently, one of them tried to FUD us into buying T1s because another of them is financially insecure at the moment. We told them that we'd be happy to talk to them (and we do intend to deal with them), but don't bother trying to sell us by FUDing the competitor's service, just tell us about the merits of their own and end it there, thank you. We can fill in the blanks for ourselves. We tell everyone that, and I recommend you do the same. If the small guy swears he's not oversubscribing, do you have any reason do disbelieve him besides the FUD of a commissioned salesperson trying to meet his quota? Try asking for a reference or two. Besides, as has been pointed out, oversubscription is not inherently evil, as it's based on the fact that not all of the pipe is in use all of the time.... the same as telephone line pools. It can be done properly. If you're measuring your bandwidth in anything less than sustained Mbps, I'd suggest you won't notice if you're only able to utilize 90% of your 1/3 of the T1, as the difference here is probably less than if your neighbours both decided to run "Windows Update" on their PCs at the same time. One thing worth remembering is that people who are actually able to browse the Internet over a really BIG pipe tend to discover that a lot of the sites on the Internet just aren't that fast. If you really do notice, the logical conclusion is that you and your neighbours are oversubscribing the T1 already, so you really couldn't criticize the ISP for following the same practice, if he is.
The academic side to your question has good merit, and I believe has been answered. Honestly, in your situation the practical side is probably moot. If the local guy checks out with references and offers a good product at a good price, deal with him - give the little guy a break while he competes against the incumbent telcos, a position which is not for the faint of heart. At least he'll know your name when you call and you'll probably get through to the sysadmin if you need support, rather than having to deal with "Operator #17" who can't find your ticket number. If the local guy can't deliver, by all means go with the telco.
Don't know if this entirely qualifies as a 'hack' but progressing along the lines of nominating aircraft designs as "great hacks," we ought not overlook the CF105 Avro Arrow built in Canada in the 1950s. Since the program was ultimately scrapped by the Canadian government at the time (citing budget concerns) before the aircraft ever went into full-scale production, it obviously didn't become as famous as it otherwise would certainly have done, but the fact remains that it was a fantastic achievement.
The Arrow was the first aircraft to pull a 2-G turn at 50,000' without loss of speed or altitude - unusual even today. It was also an extraordinary achievement in the amount and variety of weaponry that it carried in its weapons pack, which could include not only weaponry, but also reconansance equipment, fuel, and just about anything else, most of which could be reloaded or swapped in a matter of minutes - still impressive by today's standards. Consider that an Arrow in 1959 could have flown higher at a similar speed (slightly faster, actually) than an F-14D Tomcat did 31 years later... the Arrow is a 40-year-old accomplishment that would compare remarkably well with the aircraft of today - and comparisons with aircraft of its day are in most instances almost unfair, unless you look only at a single feature.
The CIA's U2 spy-plane had a higher flight ceiling than the Arrow - 60,000' compared with 58,000 - and its only defence was altitude. In 1959, one of the very few things aloft that could have brought one down from its flight ceiling was an Arrow, which could bring down a target at a 70,000' altitude. The U2 was replaced by the SR-71 Blackbird (nominated elsewhere), which the Arrow predates just slightly (the Blackbird first hit the drawing board at Lougheed's SkunkWorks in September 1959, whereas the Arrow project was scrapped in February 1959; note the SR-71 has a strikingly similar cockpit configuration). For further comparison, the F14's flight ceiling is about 53,000', (the SR-71's is around 85,000' achieved in 1976).
The F-117A Stealth Fighter has internal weapons carriage and fly-by-wire controls: the current wave of the future. The Arrow had both in 1957.
The F/A-18 engines (20 years later) each produce 11,000/16,000 pounds thrust without/with afterburner; the Arrow's Iriquois engine produced 19,500/25,600 with a potential for 30,000 -- more similar to a MiG-31 or an F-14.
Delta-wing aircraft were revolutionary at the time - the Arrow was a tail-less delta-wing design with a "blended" cockpit (think Stealth Bomber) rather than the (at that time) conventional "bubble" cockpit with a conventional wing design.
Although the Arrow was intended for use as a fighter-interceptor, its armament bay was larger than a B29 Bomber's.
The Arrow contained serveral other aviation 'firsts' and 'near-firsts' and several 'bests' and 'near-bests' - but the truly amazing thing was the way that Avro brought it all together in a single package. The designers' plans for an 'Ultimate Arrow' suggest they were thinking bigger still, despite having made history already - there is really no telling what might have evolved from the project today if had been left intact. After the project was scrapped, many of the design team from Avro went on to work on other projects, so that certain Arrow features apparently began to appear in a variety of places, including (perhaps) the Concorde, the Stealth Bomber, and at NASA, where 32 Avro engineers ended up working on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo - including Apollo 11 (nominated elsewhere) and I believe 13 (also nominated elsewhere) and the space shuttle.
He acknowledges that someone may be working upon the type of ground-breaking innovation he came up with in the late 70's to revolutionize the industry
Does anyone know what that was? I dont seem to recall anything of the sort happening. Lets see... he bought DOS from someone else, had the personal computer market handed to him on a platter through his mother sitting on a bank board with the then-chairman of IBM, and has since then been one of the biggest thieves of intellectual property in the industry.
-SNIP-
The Microsoft founder, whose company is currently being sued by the US Government for anti-competitive business practices, says he can envisage a future without Microsoft. He acknowledges that someone may be working on the type of ground-breaking innovation he came up with in the 1970s to revolutionise the industry. "Eventually all companies are replaced [by Microsoft (left out of original transcript)]," he tells Mr Paxman.
Ah, imagine.
Imagine there's no Microsoft - It's easy if you try. No hell below us, and above us only sky....Imagine all the people living life in peace....
And just think, even today somebody and his friend might be running a little computer company in his garage, and that person's mother might sit on a bank board with the chairman of a big company (one big enough to face charges under antitrust laws), and that chairman might be looking for something that the guy in the garage overshadowing his partner in the small computer company knows where to find and can resell as his own ground-breaking innovation to the big company to revolutionize the computer industry and replace the largest computer company on the planet - in fact, replace every company.
Yeah, that could happen (more than once, even).
If it did though, I suppose it would probably happen to a non-American student who rather than dropping out of college, finished his degree and was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate. But after all, what are the odds that the "someone [who] may be working on the type of ground-breaking innovation [that Bill Gates] came up with in the 1970s to revolutionise the industry" can't be tossed enough cash to surrender his technology and all intellectual rights thereto to a larger company so that it can be "integrated" into the larger company's products? All this is just hypothetical, of course: "someone may be working on [a] ground-breaking innovation [, as unlikely as that may be]..."
You see? It's all just way too unlikely. Never happen.
Slashdot Mirror
And they've had better objectives applied to them: http://www.ted.com/talks/john_la_grou_plugs_smart_power_outlets_1.htm l
I'm not sure how this is remotely a /. item, but nevertheless... I have to agree with the AC (parent to this msg) on the K-1000 and other recommendations, with some slight adjustments:
1. If you can find one, pick up a Ricoh KR-5. You want the original KR-5 (introduced 1979), not the later versions (Super-II etc) because you want the fully manual version. Take the KR-5 for all the same reasons you'd take the K-1000, except that the Ricoh is smaller and lighter with much better ergonomics; I also like its light meter much better than the K-1000's. It only does 500 shutter speed, not 1000 like the Pentax, but that never bothered me - I always used the slowest film I could find. The Ricoh uses the same Pentax-K mount as the K-1000, so lenses are interchangeable with the Pentax stuff.
2. Spend money on lenses, as has been well said. It is true that you may later wish to change to a camera body that doesn't have the same mount as the Pentax-K (e.g., a Nikon body). Strongly consider Tamron lenses, as they have (unique among professional-quality lenses) an adapter-ring that fits onto the lens so that if you ever change camera bodies, you can just buy the new adapter rings rather than have to replace the lens. If you absolutely must buy cheaper lenses for budget reasons to get going, stop yourself at 2, and then save up and replace those with better ones when you are able. 3. If you have the darkroom available, strongly recommend bulk buys of black and white films that you can process and print yourself. Apart from learning on a fully manual camera, darkroom work is one of the best ways to understand the whole photographic process and equip you to get the best results out of your equipment. 4. Decent film. Experiment to find what works for you, but settle into a small number of film types / speeds and stick with them through the learning process so you have a constant as you experiment. I always liked the Ilford products for B&W but got great results with T-Max too. For colour, my own choice for print film was AGFA which I could get at ISO 25 or 50. As I said, I always went for the slowest film and got the best results by lengthening the shutter speed. Of course, if you're into action photography, this won't work so well for you.
5. Slow film and long shutter speeds reminds me of one other accessory you'll want - a tripod. Doesn't have to be too fancy or expensive, just as sturdy as you can find. If you can spend a little extra on one, I always liked my Cullmann Universal 3335 Macro Tripod - does virtually anything and everything, and you won't mind carrying it fair distances.
I must admit though, I have one beef with the Ricoh KR-5 that I still have. Can't get the darn thing to run Linux. If anybody knows of a project to port Linux to an entirely manual SLR, please let me know.
-brt
There's a lot of advice in this thread, and even lots of the conflicting advice is good - each for a given scenario. Problem is you don't yet know which one you've got, or at least we don't. You should discount all advice until you've answered a few basic questions.
- What do you want?
- What do they want out of it?
- What are their requirements?
The answers to these questions will tell you fairly directly which other advice to take from this thread - hourly rate, milestone, whatever. Then you'll get into budget etc., but for now you don't even know (or haven't said) how big this is - do they want major or minor features, is it a week's work or a year's work, full-time or part-time?This and the questions are ones that you'll have to answer, and obviously they form the personal question. Are you looking for the gravy train or are you just looking for some small assurance or assistance to ensure that your project will thrive? Make sure that your goals align with theirs, obviously... and don't try to be a blatant opportunist about it: if you started your project for a specific set of reasons, don't get confused about them now.
They want something specific that isn't stated, at least not here. They're trying to ensure longevity of the project, or feature enhancements, or something - understand their goals first, so you can decide if they align with yours or not. This is absolutely fundamental, but remember it is not a technical question and will not have a technical answer - this is a business question.
They will want specific features or will want specific milestones or minimum hours or what? They'll be looking for something measurable for their money. This is directly related to question no. 1, but the answer here may be a set of technical spec's, as this is the technical form of the previous question.
Remember, you have not just won the lottery. If their goals align with yours and would be things you'd do anyway, just find a fair and agreeable price and take it. If they conflict with what you want for your project, you'll need to evaluate whether or not to take it simply on that basis. Assuming things are good to proceed, if they make a longer-term committment to you, you may find you'll be able to lower your rate, as it brings extra stability and security to your income. Typically consulting work charges fairly high rates not only because software developers have come to expect fat pay packages, but also because they know they won't be able to bill 100% of their time, and when they are billing they have to build someing in to cover the lean periods. Once you know how big the project is, you'll be better able to fix a rate to it.
I'm a bit late to the discussion, but hopefully this will sift up to where it gets noticed, as I think it will help you - ask the right questions (personal, business, technical, and probably in that order) and you'll get the right answers. Still, it's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Can I claim "First worthwhile post"?
I'm going to ignore comments thus far as generally just not representative of Slashdotters, most of whom can find Canada on a map.
This story is a duplicate post on Slashdot, but parts of the story haven't really been covered yet: additional links are to be found in this story, which you can follow to find out more info on the issue, including some sample response from Canadian ISPs, one of which I represent. We're also CAIP members and I can tell you that the only comments I've seen on the members' mailing list so far are all negative, so you can probably expect resistance on our part, as the stories linked indicate. Any Canadian Slashdotters (believe it or not, not everyone here is American - I wonder if there are any geographical
Contrary to one informationally-ignorant prior post, as Canadians we do have Rights and Freedoms, and as in every other country (yes, including the USA) sometimes we need to speak up to exercise them and make sure that they aren't clawed back from us.
-brt
There have been several good suggestions about how to test your T1, but you may have noted that some imply you'd be getting 5 T1s and testing them all so you know which one to keep, which is somewhat unrealistic.
Perhaps the obvious overlooked tidbit is that you're sharing this T1 with other users via a hub.... and it needs to be said that you're at far more risk of the other users siphoning off your bandwidth than you are of your ISP not providing it in the first place. To do any of the suggested tests, you'll want to be disconnecting your neighbours first.
I might suggest a bit of cautious thought here. We are one of those small ISPs, and naturally we buy bandwidth from the bigger ones. Recently, one of them tried to FUD us into buying T1s because another of them is financially insecure at the moment. We told them that we'd be happy to talk to them (and we do intend to deal with them), but don't bother trying to sell us by FUDing the competitor's service, just tell us about the merits of their own and end it there, thank you. We can fill in the blanks for ourselves. We tell everyone that, and I recommend you do the same. If the small guy swears he's not oversubscribing, do you have any reason do disbelieve him besides the FUD of a commissioned salesperson trying to meet his quota? Try asking for a reference or two. Besides, as has been pointed out, oversubscription is not inherently evil, as it's based on the fact that not all of the pipe is in use all of the time.... the same as telephone line pools. It can be done properly. If you're measuring your bandwidth in anything less than sustained Mbps, I'd suggest you won't notice if you're only able to utilize 90% of your 1/3 of the T1, as the difference here is probably less than if your neighbours both decided to run "Windows Update" on their PCs at the same time. One thing worth remembering is that people who are actually able to browse the Internet over a really BIG pipe tend to discover that a lot of the sites on the Internet just aren't that fast. If you really do notice, the logical conclusion is that you and your neighbours are oversubscribing the T1 already, so you really couldn't criticize the ISP for following the same practice, if he is.
The academic side to your question has good merit, and I believe has been answered. Honestly, in your situation the practical side is probably moot. If the local guy checks out with references and offers a good product at a good price, deal with him - give the little guy a break while he competes against the incumbent telcos, a position which is not for the faint of heart. At least he'll know your name when you call and you'll probably get through to the sysadmin if you need support, rather than having to deal with "Operator #17" who can't find your ticket number. If the local guy can't deliver, by all means go with the telco.
My $.02.
-brt
Don't know if this entirely qualifies as a 'hack' but progressing along the lines of nominating aircraft designs as "great hacks," we ought not overlook the CF105 Avro Arrow built in Canada in the 1950s. Since the program was ultimately scrapped by the Canadian government at the time (citing budget concerns) before the aircraft ever went into full-scale production, it obviously didn't become as famous as it otherwise would certainly have done, but the fact remains that it was a fantastic achievement.
The best website concerning the Arrow is probably the Discovery Channel's Flight Deck which has a good piece on the technical aspects of the Arrow, and exn.ca has some decent stuff as well. There are several other sites which contain pix, specs & plans, noteworthy info and comparisons or narratives (mirrored), and like all obscure subjects online, it also has a Web Ring.
The Arrow was the first aircraft to pull a 2-G turn at 50,000' without loss of speed or altitude - unusual even today. It was also an extraordinary achievement in the amount and variety of weaponry that it carried in its weapons pack, which could include not only weaponry, but also reconansance equipment, fuel, and just about anything else, most of which could be reloaded or swapped in a matter of minutes - still impressive by today's standards. Consider that an Arrow in 1959 could have flown higher at a similar speed (slightly faster, actually) than an F-14D Tomcat did 31 years later... the Arrow is a 40-year-old accomplishment that would compare remarkably well with the aircraft of today - and comparisons with aircraft of its day are in most instances almost unfair, unless you look only at a single feature.
The Arrow contained serveral other aviation 'firsts' and 'near-firsts' and several 'bests' and 'near-bests' - but the truly amazing thing was the way that Avro brought it all together in a single package. The designers' plans for an 'Ultimate Arrow' suggest they were thinking bigger still, despite having made history already - there is really no telling what might have evolved from the project today if had been left intact. After the project was scrapped, many of the design team from Avro went on to work on other projects, so that certain Arrow features apparently began to appear in a variety of places, including (perhaps) the Concorde, the Stealth Bomber, and at NASA, where 32 Avro engineers ended up working on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo - including Apollo 11 (nominated elsewhere) and I believe 13 (also nominated elsewhere) and the space shuttle.
Does anyone know what that was? I dont seem to recall anything of the sort happening. Lets see... he bought DOS from someone else, had the personal computer market handed to him on a platter through his mother sitting on a bank board with the then-chairman of IBM, and has since then been one of the biggest thieves of intellectual property in the industry.
-SNIP-
Ah, imagine.
Imagine there's no Microsoft - It's easy if you try. No hell below us, and above us only sky. ...Imagine all the people living life in peace....
And just think, even today somebody and his friend might be running a little computer company in his garage, and that person's mother might sit on a bank board with the chairman of a big company (one big enough to face charges under antitrust laws), and that chairman might be looking for something that the guy in the garage overshadowing his partner in the small computer company knows where to find and can resell as his own ground-breaking innovation to the big company to revolutionize the computer industry and replace the largest computer company on the planet - in fact, replace every company.
Yeah, that could happen (more than once, even).
If it did though, I suppose it would probably happen to a non-American student who rather than dropping out of college, finished his degree and was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate. But after all, what are the odds that the "someone [who] may be working on the type of ground-breaking innovation [that Bill Gates] came up with in the 1970s to revolutionise the industry" can't be tossed enough cash to surrender his technology and all intellectual rights thereto to a larger company so that it can be "integrated" into the larger company's products? All this is just hypothetical, of course: "someone may be working on [a] ground-breaking innovation [, as unlikely as that may be]..."
You see? It's all just way too unlikely. Never happen.