Last time I looked WA didn't have a state income tax. 9% off the top would be huge for folks at Ballmer's income level. 100k to fight it is probably a sound investment and I'd imagine they would be willing to donate more to that end.

Especially since 9% would only be the start. Once a tax exists people will always find ways to increase it.

Should be able to free dive that with only a single flipper and a pocket full of rocks.

On /., everyone is a pedantic asshole.

From a physics standpoint you are right, a heavy lens should be easier to hold still. However, if you tried holding a pound or two very still in front of your face you'd find it is easier from a strength perspective to hold a lighter weight still.

So the weight is part of the issue, but really it comes down to the nature of what you tend to use the longer lenses for. Typically you are using them to achieve a certain level of "zoom". So you are probably wanting to see something a bit further away than a shorter/wider lens.

Think of it like holding a short stick at something versus a long stick (you can even think of both sticks as being weightless so as to not get hung up on the physical aspect of it). If you hold a 5' long stick your angular changes at your hand to the end of the stick aren't magnified like they are if you are holding a 65' or longer stick.

Why is Mr. High-And-Mighty bothering to post on /. with such important world matters such as the oil in the Gulf, world hunger, nuclear proliferation and North/South Korean relationships escalating?

You must live a very busy life.

Did the NYT edit the photo? I don't see it there anymore (I remember seeing it earlier this morning though).

The quote in the summary about not wanting press to link to the pre-sale site is a bit out of context. The full quote makes slightly more sense:

Fusion Garage’s financial situation is a mess, and it is inappropriate for press to recommend to people to pre-buy a CrunchPad. The company has not yet hired an attorney to respond to our lawsuit. We believe they do not have the cash flow to do so. When the device goes on pre sales today, linked to from scores of gadget and press sites, they will suddenly have cash flow to defend themselves. What they won’t have is cash flow to build the devices. We believe it is irresponsible for press to link to the pre-sale site without disclosing this to readers.

That is so 1999. Quantum dot technology is where it is at these days: http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina64.htm

Don't want to believe me? Fine, I can be ok with that.

I guess that means you should go off and argue with all the folks on wikipedia though: "a Nyquist frequency just larger than the signal bandwidth is sufficient to allow perfect reconstruction of the signal from the samples". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency#The_aliasing_problem

Please, anti-aliasing filters are often nothing more than a low-pass filter with the transition band ending at the nyquist frequency. I wonder why?

I know I'm nit picking here but there is too much damn pseudo science that gets thrown around by people talking about audio that it is a pet peeve of mine.

It sounds like you know just enough sound theory to use the right buzz words in the right places without having a full understanding of what they actually mean.

Aliasing isn't an issue as you approach the nyquist frequency, it is an issue when you pass it.

Using a low pass filter just below the nyquist frequency wouldn't "affect the harmonics" it would remove harmonics above the cut-off frequency. The fundamental and lower harmonics would be just fine.

Whether those high frequency harmonics would actually affect the timbre of the sound in an audible way is an entirely different question...one which I can find conflicting studies on. Either way your speakers aren't going to be able to reproduce those high frequency harmonics anyway so the whole issue is moot.

Thanks for the interesting read for somebody who's "mastering" experience is limited to leveling my own mix for my crappy speakers for the shit that I make myself (read: never leaves my room).

Since you mentioned it, in case you didn't know, 99% of MS doesn't dogfood TFS internally either. The defacto source control mechanism is a system called source depot which shares a lineage with perforce.

Why are you skeptical? That is exactly what a malicious process would do in that case.

I had the exact same thought.

I believe a quote from the video was even something to the extent of "this is a good option to the Toughbook for people who needed the extra processing power".

I should add, I'm not trying to disagree with you if you say you wouldn't be able to use something like this. Obviously you would know best.

I just mean to put forth that something need not be a perfect ideal solution for 100% of the population in order to be a "good thing". Having used a FingerWorks TouchStream for a while (which had very similar controls) it was awesome and I really hope something similar can become more mainstream/heavily adopted.