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Monday, May 20, 2002
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 Monday, May 20, 2002
started 5/20/2002; 12:50:11 AM - last post 5/22/2002; 4:20:22 PM
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Doc Searls - Monday, May 20, 2002 
5/20/2002; 4:50:11 AM (reads: 11880, responses: 13)
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Bloghole 
That's the best name so far for bloggers who won't link. Others include "hermitlogger" and "clogger" (a practical favorite).
Dysrelevance
Two years ago, even one year ago, any industry conference would have revolved, unavoidably, around Microsoft. Not any more. About the only thing that anybody on stage has said about Microsoft today is, essentially, that it doesn't matter.
Stuff like this doesn't help.
Backbloggery
Eric Norlin is blogging away on a buncha the stuff below. Dig it.
Happy Birthday to the big guy
It's Craig's birthday today. His daughter's too. Blog him well. (And maybe he'll start blogging back. We miss him.)
What do you call a blogger who won't link? We need a name for that.
Eric Olsen at Tres Producers (and the Blog Nation Book site) lays into Andrew Sullivan for Andrew's tendency to link sparsely to fellow bloggers (which I've noted before — and before that — as has Dan), and apparently for giving a much smaller shit about fellow bloggers than he does about his fellow media bigwigs.
While I agree with Eric, I also forgve Andrew (there, I linked him) for it. Media bigwigs are a real and legitimate community. He's in it, we're not, and he's a lot more interested in that community than with ours. But he's also blogging's man on the inside. Let's count that blessing.
That said, the permalink problem is inexcusable. Here's what I get when I link to today's Daily Dish:
| | Warning: Failed opening 'archives/2002_05_19_dish_archive.html' for inclusion (include_path='') in /Library/WebServer/WebSites/dev.andrewsullivan.com/index.php on line 99
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Clearly Andrew needs to bring his blog into somebody's garage and get it fixed. Leaving it unfixed is a real fuck-you to the rest of us. It's a worse fuck-me for AndrewSullivan.com.
If it ain't fixed, don't break it
Here's Declan's rundown on the raft of Net-related legislative sausage moving through the pork chain in Congress right now.
Underheard
I can't report on the speeches and panels I'm witness to here, but I can talk about other stuff. Here are a few nuggets:
| | From an offline conversation: "Microsoft is getting creamed in the server space." By what? "Two things....Closed source — we want to know what's in our base infrastructure, and we can't see it (with Microsoft OSes) — and licensing... they should be selling apps, not OSes." What's creaming them? "UNIX: Linux, BSD, OS X. Customers don't want to pay for the OS any more. They want to pay for solutions. Applications." And this kicker: "It's VMS vs. UNIX all over again."
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| | I'll say this about the current and former FCC guys giving two points of view here: They get it. They're not in perfect alignment with my own prejudices (e.g. they use the terms "consumer" and "customer" interchangeably, which I dislike), but they're polar opposites of Sen. Hollings, and even of bureacrats such as the CARP panel. Makes me think the BPDG is gonna have a hard time driving its agenda straight into regulation, bypassing lawmaking.
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| | Too bad Kevin Werbach couldn't make it to the conference here (lotta shit here is right up his alley), but ya gotta love the reason.
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| | By the way, there are lots of folks here who work for, deal with, or used to deal with, the government. I'm looking for help thinking out a marketing plan for GeekPAC. I any of ya'll (either here or elsewhere) want to contact me about that, please do.
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eZistance is futile
Powerbooks running OS X are fast becoming the majority laptop in hacking circles. Ev is the latest.
And now Scoble! Holy shit:
| | ...all my friends on the OS X platform keep showing me great little utilities and other things that are being released almost daily. What happened? Apple embraced Unix and by doing that Apple embraced developers.
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| | Why? There's a lot of Unix expertese out there. Lots of kids learned Unix in school. Lots more learned it on the job. Now Apple has joined a nice user interface with Unix, and developers are taking notice.
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This is a significant post. Very, very telling. Scoble has been a hard-core Microsoft guy for years now. Though he went to Microsoft from the Mac platform many years ago, he's no Mac Moonie. (In fact, there are very few of those left, and they're holding on to the classic OS with a bloody death-grip of denial.) He's a smart user who cares about the people who matter most: independent developers. He's watching where the wind blows, and writing very wisely about it.
Here's what I think (at 11am on a Monday in May): Apple is doing a lot of things right (or close enough), and their circle of the development Venn diagram is overlapping hugely with the UNIX community, including committed open source folks, commercial "solutions" developers and all those science types for whom UNIX is simply a universal environment — and they're still highly compatible with Microsoft as a fellow platform vendor. Yes, there's reason to be concerned about Steve Jobs' Hollywood connections (Apple is in the BPDG), he's clearly his own man, and blessedly free of the antitrust lawsuits that have terribly damaged Microsoft's spirit (no matter how much they may deny it). The energy coming off Apple right now is very stong and positive. People there are having fun. They're competitive, but not combative (a critical advantage over Microsft's only serious — but perhaps fatal — character flaw)
My advice (no, I don't own any): buy Apple stock. There is a sea-change happening, and it's going down fast.
Is there a service checkbox for "eventual?"
Tom:
| | The American system of health care reminded me of the dollhouse of an ex-child. Of a once-intriguing theory no longer captivating to game theorists. Of a patient etherized upon a table.
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Context: Tom's daughter's recent emergency room experience. Amazing how the most necessary and comforting places in the world can also be the most scary — and too often for the wrongest of reasons.
Mum-fi
It looks like they have wi-fi here at the Vortex conference. They also require an NDA. So I'll blog mostly about stuff other than what I'm here for. The main topic I won't be talking about is "Reinventing the Networking Industry." Here are the speakers I won't be quoting (unless I get their permission, which is a handy loophole).
I'm on my own wi-fi right now, with my base station dialing into Earthlink while I blog in the dark from elsewhere in the hotel room. Handy.
It does look like a good conference, by the way.
A G2 for the G4
I'm narrowing down the digital carera I covet to the Canon Powershot G2, methinks. It's not small, but not big either; and it has a hotshoe for a bounce-able external flash. I also like the flip-out screen so I can shoot holding the camera at many angles from my head.
Looks like the bottom price is around $600.
Lemur in the coal mine
Here's the Head Lemur on anti-spam posturing in Congress.
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Steven O'Toole - Re: Friday, May 17, 2002
5/20/2002; 3:58:58 PM (reads: 627, responses: 0)
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re: Canon Powershot G2
I have the predecessor G1. It's very nice. One of the few cameras that takes the IBM 1GB Microdrive.
But a few weeks ago my wife dropped it. Doesn't look too bad, just a little off kilter. No local repair places. Send it to Chicago. They estimate it'll take at least $475 to repair!
Keep a firm grip on your G2!
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Tommy Williams - Re: Canon G2
5/20/2002; 3:59:41 PM (reads: 1451, responses: 11)
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The Canon G2 is a great camera. You can get good results in full-auto mode, but it has enough control (including a RAW shooting mode) to stretch a long way as you build your skills in digital photography and raise your quality bar.
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Bubba - Re: Canon G2
5/20/2002; 7:30:21 PM (reads: 791, responses: 4)
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I love my G2. Probably my only complaint/problem for me is red eye in low light conditions. I'm sure it's just me, though, or something I have set incorrectly.
Bubba
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Tommy Williams - Re: Canon G2
5/20/2002; 7:35:17 PM (reads: 893, responses: 3)
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Any compact camera is going to suffer from red eye in low light conditions, at least to some extent. Red eye is a result of the light of the flash reflecting from the open iris back into the lens. The wider the iris is open, the worse the red eye (thus the problem in low-light) and the closer the flash is to the lens, the worse the red eye (hence the problem in compact cameras).
The G2 provides (and Doc mentions in his post) a workaround: it has a hotshoe to put on an external flash. This, of course, destroys the compactness of the setup, but it is part of the extensibility of the camera that I think makes it so attractive.
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Bubba - Re: Canon G2
5/20/2002; 7:39:44 PM (reads: 908, responses: 0)
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Cool, thanks. Have you tried any of the add-on lenses?
Bubba
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Doc Searls - Re: Canon G2
5/20/2002; 9:44:21 PM (reads: 1013, responses: 1)
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The pix in this article here were taken by my Sony PC-110 camcorder, which has a 1-megapixel still mode. Works pretty well for the Web, all things considered. Also works under very low light. Amazing, actually.
Look at the better indoor shots in the rest of the gallery from the same trip, all taken with a 12-year-old Minolta SLR. Most of the good indoor shots were taken with an external flash bounced off a white (or brushed metal) ceiling. The worst were either beyond the range of the flash or taken with the flash aimed directly, mostly because a bounce surface wasn't available. Some of the best outdoor shots involved bounced flash too.
These 35mm pix, by the way, were produced by Kodak PictureCD, which are pretty cheap at Costco. Very good quality, too. Much better than the hard copy prints.
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John C - Re: Canon G2
5/21/2002; 7:18:37 PM (reads: 857, responses: 2)
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I still reckon the Fuji 6900z is a slightly better camera. I bought one at the same time my friend got a G2 and I'm convinced I got the better deal. As I see it the real advantages to each are as follows:
G2 - 15s maximum shutter time (fuji = 3s), moveable view screen, remote control, slightly smaller size
6900 - 3x3 grid mode, higher res (6M), 6x optical zoom, aperture range 2.8-11 (G2 = 2-8), better shape for holding in your hand, b&w mode (questionable usefulness though)
Another friend has the predecessor to the 6900 and has a range of kit like external flash, telephoto, wide angle lenses and a selection of filters. He never uses his SLR any more.
Just my opinion though!
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Bubba - Re: Canon G2
5/21/2002; 8:15:03 PM (reads: 1001, responses: 0)
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If you need any further convincing, I've got a picture of Mont Blanc in Eastern France that I took last Friday that I would love to share. The photo is actually 3 shots that I've stitched together with the PhotoStitch software that comes with the G2. Let me know if you would like to see the picture. I'll send it to you, but just so you know up front, it is fairly good size at almost 700 KB.
Bubba
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Doc Searls - Re: Canon G2
5/21/2002; 9:47:58 PM (reads: 867, responses: 1)
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... but a tougher shape for the pocket, from what I can see.
I'll need to touch & feel both of them, though.
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Peter Kaminski - Re: Canon G2
5/22/2002; 6:30:43 AM (reads: 872, responses: 0)
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I traded up from a Canon S10 to a G2 for Christmas 2001. So far I've shot about 2000 pictures and 60 video clips, and I love it.
I've had a lot of fun with the manual controls, getting pics now I couldn't before; and at the same time, the automatic mode is really good. I used to regularly go back and use Photoshop to tweak brightness and dynamic range in my S10 shots; with the G2 output, I hardly ever need to.
Accessory-wise, I bought a 1Gb Microdrive and a spare battery. I really like having the space on the Microdrive. Battery life has been very impressive, and I've rarely swapped batteries in the field.
I've got two albums of miscellaneous shot from the G2 on the web:
SF misc, 8 pics
NY misc, 58 pics
The larger size images are reduced from the original 2272x1704 files.
The gallery software I used, BTW, is the excellent BreezeBrowser. I highly recommend it for its handling of Canon-specific image features and its lossless JPEG manipulation.
Pete
istori/log
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Will Parker - Canon G2 vs. the S-40
5/22/2002; 5:20:45 PM (reads: 803, responses: 1)
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Howdy, Doc.
My wife and I spent about two years shopping for a digital camera, and finally settled on the Canon S-40. As you're probably aware, the S-xx series are the 'consumer' versions of the pro-oriented G series. The S-40, as it turns out, is about 85% of a G-2. 85% in every way - features, price, and weight. I hasten to add that Canon has not made any compromises regarding picture quality - the S-40 may not have all the exposure or hardware options that the G-2 does, but the pictures themselves are every bit as good.
BTW, a word of warning if you're using a Mac. Apple's iPhoto simply does NOT display imported pictures to best advantage. We started out blaming the camera, but when we took a look at the raw pictures from the camera using Canon's software, we knew we had a winner. Now we use iPhoto for photo management and ordering, and do our viewing in PhotoShop.
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John C - Re: Canon G2
5/22/2002; 7:05:20 PM (reads: 887, responses: 0)
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Yeah, it's not going to fit in your pocket unless you also invest in a pair of MC Hammer style balloon pants!
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Peter Kaminski - Re: Canon G2 vs. the S-40
5/22/2002; 8:20:22 PM (reads: 894, responses: 0)
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