Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Friday, June 28. 2013

Friday morning links

Why Warp Drives Aren't Just Science Fiction


Is the digital camera dead?


The Child Prodigies Who Became 20th-Century Celebrities


Insty found this: Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!)


That's middle age for ya


GM to Invest $691 Million in Mexico


That's our $


The NSA presents a grave threat to liberty, but the pundits just talk about the Snowden sideshow.


The End of Fannie and Freddie?


Why are mortgages the government's business?


A right to gay marriage?


Why is marriage the government's business?


Farewell, Ataturk - An Islamist vision of the future


Hollywood braces for the Obamacare that Hollywood wanted


Corzine Officially Charged By CFTC For Filing False Reports, Commingling Funds And Other Violations


Major essay by Pethoukoukis:  Taming the Megabanks


Illegal immigration:  "My suspicion is that the Senate Dems actually don’t care if the House
stops the bill.  In that event, all they have to do is scream that the
Republicans are racist immigration enemies."


China resettles two million Tibetans, says Human Rights Watch


France's Socialist Government Told To Slash Spending


Hannan: Banging On About Europe is a Winner


Climate Change Deception Easy Because Most Don’t Understand


STUDY: Networks Air over 90 Global Warming Stories, Ignore Lull in Temperature Trends


James O’Keefe’s Rules for Radicals - The right-leaning provocateur has a new book out


When Helen Keller Confronted the Nazis

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:41 | Comments (18) | Trackbacks (0)

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Is the digital camera dead?

Of course it isn't - dumbest statement ever. What are the things on the cell phones - image trappers?

If you have to switch from a point and shoot to your cellphone to take casual candid wedding pictures you're doing something wrong.

Morrissey is wrong (not unusual by the way) - film cameras aren't dead. Digital cameras cannot reproduce the full rich detail and resolution that film camera is capable of. Vivitar, Nikon, Olympus, Canon - they all make film cameras. If anything, digital SLR cameras might be endangered to be replaced once again by the high quality of rendering on film instead of bits and bytes leaving the casual image taking to cellphones and point and shoots.

I also take issue with the quality of cellphone or tablet cameras being of the same high quality as a P&S. You can take a lens which is smaller projecting to a smaller image sensor and get the same quality image - it's impossible to do. You can have all the megapixels in the world, it's the sensitivity of the image sensor that makes the quality image - not the number of pixels. And that's where Morrissey is wrong.

The closest any digital camera manufacturer has come the truest comparison between digital and film is Olympus with the 4/3rds concept, but even at 12 megapixels, it can't match the quality of film.

Why are mortgages the government's business?

Mission creep.

Illegal immigration

I was watching a report on this issue on the morning news and they interviewed a group of college students at USC who are "undocumented aliens". One said that he now will not have to live in fear of being deported because he is here illegally. I'm thinking to myself - "he's at a major university, taking whatever as a major, he's out in the open not "hiding", he's using student loans to educate himself (he admitted it) and he's interviewing on the TV about his status as being in the country illegally. And he's afraid of being deported. What's wrong with that picture".
#1 Tom Francis on 2013-06-28 07:43 (Reply)
Right about the cameras, Tom. I have an old Canon with an optical zoom lens, I forget the exact megapixels, but the smart phone has more. The phone takes some remarkably nice photos, but there is simply no comparison to the Canon, in any mode the difference is immediately obvious, much greater depth, clarity, and detail in the old, obsolete camera. I think most people do better photography digitally, because they end up taking a lot more photos than they did with film, and the special pictures are more likely to be taken in the first place.
#1.1 Seppo on 2013-06-28 09:21 (Reply)
My non-camera-nut's formula for photo quality is 99% what is captured:1% technical perfection of the capture.
#1.1.1 BillH on 2013-06-28 11:30 (Reply)
Which makes a lot of sense. To somebody like me, and I'm probably what you might call an Advanced Amateur, the whole panoply of what makes a good image is different from somebody who wants to take good snaphots and leave it at that.
#1.1.1.1 Tom Francis on 2013-06-28 14:58 (Reply)
I just got a new cell phone - Samsung - which takes significantly better indoor pictures than any digital camera I've ever owned.

Nothing beats my old Nikon 35mm film camera, but getting the film processed is a pain now.
#1.2 NJSoldier on 2013-06-28 11:46 (Reply)
The simple optical physics of a fixed small cell phone lens, the size of the sensor and the handling compression schema of .jpeg limit the ability of a cell phone camera to take a decent picture. Neither a CCD or CMOS sensor in any pixel count range on a cell phone makes it better than a larger sensor with a larger lens on a point and shoot - it's just the way it is.

In truth, unless the camera is a line scan camera, digital cameras are still behind the sharpness and clarity of a good quality film camera.
#1.2.1 Tom Francis on 2013-06-28 14:54 (Reply)
Why are mortgages the government's business?

To provide a spoils resource to reward favored/faithful Democrats. The salary/bonuses top officials with no apparent experience or qualifications were getting were/are criminal.
#2 phil g on 2013-06-28 07:52 (Reply)
"My suspicion is that the Senate Dems actually don’t care if the House
stops the bill. In that event, all they have to do is scream that the
Republicans are racist immigration enemies."

Repubs might find this accusation works to their advantage. There's no immigrant or Democrat that's going to vote for them anyways, might as well energize their 'redneck, racist' base.
#3 phil g on 2013-06-28 07:57 (Reply)
I am so tired of Republican politicians running as conservatives and acting like liberals. I will no longer vote for Republicans who are Rinos. I would prefer to vote for a Democrat who will of course tax me more and regulate me more and give our country away to illegal aliens. At least I know what he stands for. But I will not vote for a Rino who claims to be on my side and then gives away the farm. If Rubio were to run for president against Hillary in 2016 I will vote for Hillary. In 2014 I will vote against my congressmen who voted for the amnesty bill. I would much rather destroy the Republican party so we can rebuild it then continue this fiction. I only wish we had done this prior to the 2000 election.
#4 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-06-28 10:24 (Reply)
Republicans, in the House now, should tie immigration "reform" to a reduction on the formation and operation of small business. On the premise that if we permit all these new people to function legally here, they'll need a way to grab the American Dream. And the most tried and true way has always been small business owner who can avoid biases of hiring managers and union bosses and create wealth out of their own hard work.

Do that and leave the Dems to vote against immigrants simply because they might have a chance to be come capitalists.
#4.1 JKB on 2013-06-28 15:13 (Reply)
Couple of points on Gay Marriage.

First, just a reminder: DOMA etc is about the Constitutional right to equal protection under the laws - but there's no Constitutional right to get married, per se. Every State could abolish it; the Constitution wouldn't stop it, though it would prevent any ex post facto alteration of the status of those already married.

I certainly don't advocate that; at least not for the purposes of taking a cheap shot at gay people who want to get married.

I just bet there must be a lot of people celebrating the Court's DOMA decision who don't realize that their hard-won prize is for a legal right they otherwise have no right to expect, not as a Constitutionally recognized Civil Right.

Second: The only reason Gay Marriage is an issue at all is because our society no longer values marriage, or understands it - for its primary purpose: child raising and rearing. If our society still valued it for that, not only would there be no gay marriage anywhere, I doubt any large number of gay people would be advocating for it, however vigorously they otherwise defended their rights.

Marriage today is more about supporting wedding photographers. So, many veering into most people don't see why any two people who love each other can't get a certificate from the State that proves it.

I'm not saying that's a good thing, in the big picture. But, if marriage ever regains its place in society, it won't happen because of government; it can't be saved by government.

So, my bias on the issue has been "let Gay people get married." I can't hold it against them that they might want to. Most of them who want it truly don't understand why anybody would object for any reason except spite. Our society hasn't given them any reason to think otherwise; it's not their fault that this is so.
#5 T.K. Tortch on 2013-06-28 10:36 (Reply)
Yall miss the meaning of marriage.

Yall faggots couldn't get married to save thimble full of whiskey.

Marriage is sacred male-female institution.

Murder yall's babies may have been legalized but it is not sacred.
#5.1 Leag on 2013-06-28 15:30 (Reply)
Leag,

WADR... can't never and won't ever figger out U're comments...nor do I want 2...

..butt... on this one...

..done figgered 'er out.

TC
#5.1.1 Garry on 2013-06-28 19:12 (Reply)
Mom, use call me a liar.

When i could get far away from her airborne broom she started goin' to church.

Imagine that.
#5.1.1.1 Leag on 2013-06-29 11:31 (Reply)
Just another thought on marriage and the state, the paperwork provides a baseline for transferring property. Though, with the demise of bastardy as a legal concept, it is less so.

GM creating in Mexico, yep $26.30 a day is cheaper than the same per hour or this local example from Cooper Lighting. What happens when the Mexicans quit coming north?

Pethoukoukis's essay just another reminder that as long as you cover for them, the abusive (whether substance, marital, fiscal, etc) will remain so.
#6 walt moffett on 2013-06-28 11:35 (Reply)
While I despise government motors, there are other wastes of money I despise more.

The $12 Billion or so (the real number is classified) we spend annually on the NSA, for instance, is an even worse waste of my money.
#7 NJSoldier on 2013-06-28 11:51 (Reply)
Dear BD: I forward this to you for posting on tomorrow's site. I turned off the news last night--when I realized that all 6 channels had the same noise--even PBS sounded the same as CNN/FOX or CBS/NBC. I have returned to my quest for fine writing and think DH found a nice piece that the MF folks will enjoy.

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/oceanic-feeling/time-to-bake-a-loaf-of-bread/?utm_source=Aeon+newsletter&utm_campaign=d9ca5249ab-Weekly_03_May&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-d9ca5249ab-62117497
#8 apple pie on 2013-06-28 13:02 (Reply)
Is the digital camera dead? No, but if by that you mean COMPACT digital cameras, well yes, that consumer product is probably on its deathbed. The handwriting is on the wall...actually it's in the annual reports of the big Japanese camera manufacturers. The reported sales of digital compact cameras have been falling for several years and they are way, way down this past year, being outsold by smart phones with built-in cameras. All the major camera companies are now struggling financially. Olympus and Panasonic have signaled they will be cutting way back on the production of compact cameras in the near future. Both companies will be moving instead towards upscale prosumer cameras, including Micro-Four-Thirds models (their 4/3rds cameras are virtually dead).

Most people don't need the customization and control of a compact camera. What they want to do is take a snap and upload it to social media on the Web, where their friends can see it. You don't need 16 MP and a sophisticated camera to do that. What you do need is WiFi connectivity, which compact camera companies have fallen way behind in providing. As for film cameras, only 10% of all camera owners use film, the other 90% are into digital. Film cameras are legacy products; they may survive for a few more years but eventually the sales figures will no longer cover their direct and indirect production costs (including the opportunity costs for underutilizing production lines that could be converted to the more profitable digital segment of the business). The demise of the analog camera will be a business decision; the quality of film versus digital images is irrelevant.
#9 Agent Cooper on 2013-06-29 04:55 (Reply)

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