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Comment That pro cameras are better is not relevant (Score 1) 267

Before discounting the inferiority of smart phone cameras to professional cameras, one needs to consider the user. There are millions of average Joes and Janes documenting their lives with their phones today. Go back 20 years ago and look at what the masses were using: instant cameras or some variant. Those cameras were inferior to professional cameras then as well. But the photos today's Joe/Jane are producing are absolutely amazing compared to the photos they were taking in decades past.

Submission + - Ideas for an "anachronistic tools" course 1

Boawk writes: Off and on I've thought about offering a small, workshop-style course on how to use anachronistic tools. The types of tools that immediately come to mind are abacus, slide rule, astrolabe, and sextant. It would be nice to have several of each of these which could be used by students. The course could also include discussions of ancient sites with astronomical significance, such as Stonehenge. What other anachronistic tools, sites, etc. are there that could provide fodder for such a course?
Privacy

Submission + - Maintain privacy by poisoning the privacy well (openthefuture.com) 1

Boawk writes: Can we protect our privacy by flooding the internet with false information about ourselves?

It’s the last approach that really interests me: Pollution. Poisoning the data stream. Putting out enough false information that the real information becomes unreliable. At that point, anyone wishing to know the truth about me has to come to me directly, allowing me to control access. It’s hardly a perfect option — the untrue things can be permanently connected to you, and it does kind of make you hard to trust online — but it’s the one approach to opacity that’s purely social and extremely difficult to stop.


Comment Don't wish higher taxes on Apple (Score 1) 599

Keep in mind that every company has to recoup its costs which includes taxes. If a wand could be waved to ensure all computer manufacturers paid higher taxes, you would see higher computer prices, not lower profits. Those higher taxes come out of your pocket, not the company's. Apple's prices are set according to what the market will bear relative to their competitors. If taxes on all computer manufacturers increase, so will prices.

Comment Cabinets full of phones (Score 2) 649

From my own company, we do heavy mobile development and we litterally have cabinets FULL of mobile phones. Not just one of each, we generally have the same phone with multiple versions on it as well.

This sounds eerily familiar. I worked for Broderbund back in the day. One of their big products was "Print Shop" which allowed the consumer to create greeting cards, etc. to send to their printer. To support that product they had large wall filled with every major printer on the market at the time. A huge patch bay allowed you to hook up a given printer to a given test computer. What's the state of QA for the major PC game creators? Do they have to test with every major graphics card on the market?

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