My point was that politics sometimes sometimes follow facts, often they don't, but that doesn't change the nature of the facts themselves.

Yes, totally agree.

Concluding "any facts politicians agree on must be wrong" is as stupid as suggesting the reverse.

Now there you lost me again. The link you provided was the very essence of that - PI as 3.2. I would claim that in general politicians are not scientists and you can say with 99% certainty that any bill such a group tries to pass related to science is going to range from wrong to horribly wrong.

Yes, in fact I would say ""any facts politicians agree on must be wrong", almost by definition!

The article linked says the bill implied Pi should be 3.2...

So you really want to bring that up in the context of a bill that claims humans cause substantial warming? Or that the warming we see is anything to be concerned about?

Observable reality is what it is, no matter how much a law rounds or chastises.

I've been around a few Glass users. I didn't find it creepy from the recording aspect since we are already recorded everywhere already anyway.

I do think it just plain looks ugly though, and bulky enough I wouldn't want it on my face. That was the thing I never got about Glass really - people generally don't wear glasses if they can help it, to the point where people have invasive laser surgery so they don't have to wear glasses... suddenly we are supposed to want to wear them all the time? It just never made much sense to me, not as much as watches do (not talking about the Apple Watch specifically, just the concept of a smart watch).

I can see glasses having some very specific HUD kinds of uses - like sunglasses for driving, or snow goggles each with very specific displays. But I just don't see it being a good form for general use for a wide range of people.

That's all true but for most people 28-50 pixels face is close enough, especially considering the burden carrying a real DSLR and lenses - even smaller mirrorless cameras mean a case and some weight. Some people will do it (I've done it) but fewer and fewer... the iPhone 6 plus IS also works pretty well for helping with lower light.

The iPhone burst capture also really helps with low light, I've used the same technique on "real" cameras where in a burst one will be sharp as it was taken at just the moment your hands stopped shaking briefly.

It also doesn't really matter if just 20% are keepers, because the images are easier to deal with on a smartphone (for most people). You don't have to go through the effort of getting them off the camera and deciding what you like, you can either deal with them in the moment or in brief moments while waiting for something.

What you say is true about digital zooms, you might was well crop - only now you are framing for the crop live on screen essentially, meaning no work later.

In thinking about photography for the masses, what most people want is zero work later. People who are not photographers want no post-process at all, so the closer anything gets to that the more people will use it.

Interesting that the advice to prepare for both Santa and SWAT are identical... Hmm.

Nobody is replacing their DSLRs with cell phones, within some small epsilon.

Quite a few people are, which is why the market is shrinking rapidly. Especially at the low end, which you just said...

if you try to use a cell phone to take photos of your kid's stage play, you'll annoy everyone by standing up in the front row

I've done just that - only from the back row. You can easily attach teleconverters if you want zoom, and frankly lots of people are willing to use digital zoom also. The result you get is much better than the 6x6 pixel thing you describe, even with digital zoom. The fact you can attach external lenses makes a smartphone as versatile as a DSLR to someone that would have only had one or two lenses anyway.

I also have a DSLR, and a lot of lenses. But I also use the iPhone for photography a lot because it is REALLY GOOD at that. Between custom software and an really excellent sensor, there are a number of times where honestly the iPhone is absolutely the best camera for the image at hand, and of course it is always with me which is the first requirement for taking good pictures.

This is incorrect. The process is called deconvolution.

Yes, I know about that...

It's limited by your knowledge of the len's point spread function

Which varies per lens and is different across the whole lens so GAME OVER MAN.

Sure you can just crop off bad edges on glass. But then your glass is much larger than it needs to be, your lens is heavier than it needs to be, and larger than it needs to be.

"Math" alone cannot fix blurred edges. It can fix things like CA or barrel distortion, but not really outright blurring, at least not to a degree that it can equal the results form a good lens.

Good point about the REAL consumer cameras (like an iPhone) not be blurry across the lens, if that was in answer to my post I should have qualified that as consumer standalone cameras.

It doesn't matter how good the sensor, camera, or lens are really - because the entire non-smartphone camera market is shrinking rapidly.

How can Samsung hope to make back the R&D costs of making even a great sensor, camera, and series of lenses? Where will the customers come from? It will take YEARS to pry even marginally serious photographers away from the systems they are already invested in.

It's like having an ocean shrink to a small pool, seeing a writhing mass of sharks within, then putting on a shark costume and yelling "I'm a shark too!" jumping in the pool.

Consumer grade lenses are already blurry at the corners. I'm talking about higher-end DSLR lenses, in those lenses center sharpness is pretty much assumed, the bigger deal is sharpness across the whole frame. That's what you are paying money for in high end lenses, not the easily achieved center sharpness but really great sharpness everywhere.

Also there was no mention of how the bokeh was... that's the element that brings people back to certain lens makers like Zeiss.

But I agree, their lenses aren't as good as Canon's right now BUT if Samsung sold their sensors to 3rd parties like Sony...

I'm sure Samsung will sell some sensors to someone, after all, they sell parts to other companies so it's only natural.

However I can't see Samsung selling sensors to Sony, it would be like selling ice to an eskimo - Sony is the company that makes sensors for many other camera makers and I sure don't see Sony not using their own sensors in cameras.

The whole reason to pay a premium price for a lens is that you get better sharpness across the frame.

I'm sure Samsung's lenses are pretty good, but I'm dubious about them until I see more photographic testing over this spec fest which doesn't tell you a lot about a lens.

I have to say Samsung has some serious balls pushing so hard to enter a shrinking market against giants like Nikon and Canon...

Because very few users of rooted phones use rooted apps in exclusivity.

I still don't understand - neither to jailbrake owners, you can still use the Apple App Store.

If you have the full set of jailbrake + normal apps, the world of apps is not limited.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you need an Apple account to use an iPhone, right?

No. It's useful because they provide free backup and other things, but you can use the iPhone without an AppleID.

You do need an AppleID to use the App Store. But that login is independent from the rest of the system, and is only used by the App Store app.

You can create an AppleID just for the purposes of using the App Store (and for enabling device backup), it doesn't have to have a credit card tied to it until you need to purchase something.

there's an app that doesn't run on IOS that I know he would like to have access to

So the real question is, what is that app and are you SURE there's nothing like it on IOS?

There are a LOT of tablet specific apps, and many of them integrate well with iOS accessibility.

Frankly that "After Dentist" kid is exactly how I feel about five minutes into any president's State Of the Union speech...

It would be great to see the wigged out kid and the biting baby / sibling behind the president as he gave the speech though. I can hear the young britsih accent now, faintly from the back... "Charlie, that man is really boring".