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Comment S95 (Score 1) 569

If you want to take some nice pictures when you're out doing stuff, and don't want to make a big production of it, the Canon S95 is a great buy right now (less than $300 on Amazon). It's recently-discontinued, and replaced by the S100, but for the money it's really hard to beat. It's got a sensor that's a bit larger than most compact cameras, and has lots of manual control if you really want to learn about photography.

Will you get better pictures with a $500 DSLR? Yeah, no question. Will the DSLR be more responsive? Oh, yes. But if the size of the thing is an issue, you'll get great results with the S95. And you won't be out tons of dough, so you can get the DSLR when you need it.

I've got a Canon G12, which is a similar camera. A little bit longer zoom, a fantastic flip-out screen and a viewfinder, and some other goodies, but it is larger.

Now I want a DSLR, for better creative control, better low-light performance, and better action shots. But I won't ditch the G12. I don't always want to stand out as "that guy" with the bigass camera.

Anyway, check out the S95. Others have mentioned it, but I wanted to emphasize it. Back when I was learning about cameras, I wondered why anyone would pay $420 (as it was at the time) for 3.8x zoom and 10 megapixels when I could get 20x zoom and 14 megapixels for the same price. The thing with lots of zoom is, you need to reduce the sensor size to allow those long focal length lenses to be a reasonable size. I borrowed a Canon "superzoom" for a while, and was dismayed by the image quality. Putting fewer megapixels onto a larger sensor is way better. That, and they put an excellent bit of glass into the S95.

Comment It's because of the bees (Score 1) 255

If accident rates for bee trucks are higher than rates in the general trucking industry (which I don't think is established in TFA), it could be because a small number of bees get into the cab during loading, and then emerge to startle the driver en route. Insect distractions are a significant cause of non-commercial auto accidents.

Comment Re:if you've done both since childhood (Score 1) 393

That's certainly my experience. I'm a fairly fast ten-key operator, and I actually went through most of my life without being consciously aware that phones and calculators had different numeric layouts.

I started to notice the difference when I worked in retail about fifteen years ago, and we had a credit card reader. Credit card readers, like ATMs, follow the phone layout (123 at the top). When a magnetic strip was worn, I had to enter the full credit card number into reader, and then part of the credit card number into the POS system, which used a standard computer keyboard. When a single context is split between the two formats, it does get annoying.

Comment Thanks, Everyone! (Score 1) 575

From TFA:

[Facebook] gives users the illusion of and hides the details away from them "for their own good"

One day you will look back on this and realise what we have done here is right, you will thank the rulers of the internet, we are not harming you but saving you.

Well... at least everyone is looking out for my interests.

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