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Comment Phone cameras and "point 'n' shoots" (Score 2) 422

I HATEHATEHATE them. They don't do what I want, impose their own priorities, and make it impossible for me to tell them (quickly, or at all) what *I* want to do. When I hit the shutter button, that's not a suggestion; I want the shutter to trip at that exact moment, not dick around trying to focus on what it thinks I want. I know what I want; I often shoot in "M" mode on DSLRs, and I can judge exposure by the "sunny 16" rule -- if it's sunny, the exposure is f 16 at 1/ISO speed.

If they had a camera phone which let me set ISO, f stop and shutter speed easily, and allowed for easy manual focus and *instant* shutter release, I might feel differently.

Comment Systemd and spirit of Debian (Score 5, Insightful) 647

From a Linux Journal article by Ian Murdock in 1994:

As the Debian developers create their pieces, they follow strict guidelines for constructing and maintaining these pieces, called packages. Because these guidelines are followed, each package can be dropped into the system independently without damaging or interfering with programs from other packages. By working with a set of consistent rules and with identical tools, the volunteers can and do create a truly modular system.

Nuff said.

Comment Re:"Microsoft's long love of BASIC...." (Score 4, Informative) 547

I'd say that MS's love of BASIC goes back at least a decade before that; they wrote the ROM BASIC for the TRS-80 (as I found when doing a PEEK scan through it).

Umm.. try 1975, when Harvard dropout Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, the first microcomputer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC/

Comment Wake me up when any flavor of OO has outline mode (Score 4, Insightful) 285

I'd *love* to ditch MS Office for any version of Open Office, but none of them give me MS Word's Outline Mode, an integral part of Word since Word for Windows back in the '90s.

For you real old-timers, it's not KAMAS (a CP/M based outliner that I maintain has never been surpassed), but it's the only thing current that comes within shouting distance

Comment I just shot a roll of Kodak Gold 100 today (Score 1) 70

.. and I bet there are plenty of Slashdot users who still shoot film instead of, or in addition to (me) digital. Actually, I was going "mass market" -- I normally shoot E6 transparencies ("slide film"). Now *that* is a business that's fast disappearing.

True black and white film, however, will be around forever, as an art medium. It is much, much easier to make (some can actually do it at home), and there are several small-scale manufacturers in Eastern Europe, England, India and China, as well as Fuji, the Japanese giant. It has qualities that are difficult or impossible to produce digitally.

Comment Braudel (Score 1) 700

The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II, by Fernand Braudel.

Braudel's book is a truly stunning/awe-inspiring/breathtaking summary of the nature and history of the Mediterranean and the lands surrounding it. Two volumes, and I think he gets around to Philip II somewhere in the second volume.

Anything Braudel wrote will be worthwhile and entertaining reading, but make sure that the translator is Sian Reynolds - she did a superb job, and I had the illuminating experience of reading some essays by Braudel that she translated alongside the same essays translated by someone else -- it was night and day.

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