Posted 11/03/2009 at 05:49:32pm

"expand that same energy" 

In the first paragraph I think you mean "expend". 

Posted 10/25/2009 at 08:21:56pm

Heh too bad there's only one BK in the whole damn country.  Or is it up to two now?

Posted 10/12/2009 at 10:02:22pm

Dust cleaning technologies do very little in the real world.  There's plenty of documentation around the internets on this, so it's probably best not to hype it any more than it already is.

As a magazine serving a wide-ranging audience, there are certain to be people curious about the video performance so I fail to see why it's so terrible that they mention it.  Especially considering Canon's 5DmkII and 7D cameras - in spite of being dSLRs - are building quite a reputation as very high quality video devices, it's natural to wonder where the Rebel line fits in.

For anyone wondering if they should make the jump up to the dSLR level, remember that skills > lens quality > camera body.  Yes, in that order.  :-) 

Posted 10/06/2009 at 11:41:38pm

I'm a photographer and I don't use Macs.  Photoshop and Lightroom work excellent on either platform.

Posted 09/30/2009 at 08:01:30pm

It always takes a while for coders to learn to take advantage of the new tools.  You can witness this on the console side as well.  In the very beginning, there's often a lot of chatter about how the first round of games on "new console X" doesn't look as good as people had hoped.  Similarly with new levels of DX, games may get patched to "use DX11" but chances are it will be 6-12 months (or more) before we see titles that really show off the improved underpinnings.  Crysis is a very good example, because while it may have technically supported DX10, few  people actually thought it made much difference.  Later titles did a better job of implementing the new tech.

Is it pointless to buy new hardware that supports DX11?  If you plan to keep that video card for a few years, you'll probably be glad you got the DX11 support in the long run.  Just don't expect to be wowed by it right out of the box.

That said, the additional muscle you get from a new part - regardless of its DX compatibility level - will probably make you happy if your current card is a few gens old.

 Personally I'm stoked for the new compute instructions in DX11.  I hope to see this supported in future apps from Adobe (ehem - LightRoom!!), as I expect it will be since they supported CUDA in CS4. 

Posted 09/16/2009 at 11:23:38pm

I'm sure there's a lot -- a WHOLE lot, but 95% strikes me as too high.

Posted 09/16/2009 at 12:21:54am

The link from "announced" is broken.

Posted 09/14/2009 at 04:48:02am

Porn habits aside...

The reason optical media fails to excite anymore is because it just doesn't seem as big as it once did.  Back when CDs first hit the street, they were three to four times the size of an average HDD.  It was exciting to imagine how much you could archive onto just one disc.  Flash forward to present day tech, and it's more like "how many discs per HDD?"  Even 100GB/disc seems like a headache - both in the disc-swapping sense, and the "how am I gonna catalog these" sense.

 I'm a small time photographer, and already my image collection is over 130GB.  I intend to grow my business quite a bit in the next few years, and all I can say is thank god HDD capacities are growing as fast as they are.  The only practical solution for me is to use external drives to back up my internal drive.  I stopped waiting for an optical tech that could handle my needs a long time ago.

 I also sympathize with the user who complained about having more discs laying around his house.  I almost never burn anything anymore (I'm not just talking about photos at this point) and I don't even like buying games that I can't get from Steam.  Just too much physical dust-collecting shit to have lying around. 

Posted 09/10/2009 at 05:15:07pm

"Cute" is how everything is sold in Japan, and is not just limited to children's products as we're generally accustomed to in the west.  Hell, even my gas company has a cutesy mascot.

 The title of the video: ストリートビューのプライバシーについて = About Street View's Privacy

The opening title screen: Google マップのストリートビュー = Google Maps' Street View

When the camera character makes notes at 1:27, he's not writing in Japanese.  Those are unintelligible "cute" notes. 

Posted 08/28/2009 at 01:39:22am

4 of my last 5 video card purchases were either DOA or grew unstable later as a result of nvidia's manufacturing woes.  Personally, I'll be switching to ATI until I'm satisfied nVidia has smoothed this wrinkle out.