Well, duh. Do they really need it spelled out for them. The blu-ray disks are too bloody expensive - and the picture quality isn't THAT much better to justify paying out two to three times the cost of a normal DVD. I'm pretty much where I was 10 or 15 years ago (I'm bad with guesstimating dates) where DVDs had just come out and where stupidly expensive compared to VHS tapes. Like before then CDs were stupidly expensive compared to vinyl and cassettes. Once the reailers can get over themselves and stop trying to fleece their customers - they might start shifting enough units to make a decent, consistent profit... but until then... oh boo-hoo boo-hoo my heart bleeds for them.
Blu-ray players could top the Christmas list, but the format has a long way to go | Technology | guardian.co.uk
Where Priorities lie
When it comes to legislation that purports to protect us from terrorism - by logging every phone call we make, every bit of email we get or send - every webpage we visit - and packet sniff (fnoarh fnoarh) through everything we download just incase it's a violation of copyright - no problem. They're right on that.
Archiving what will inevitably prove to be an important part of our social history - the UK Gov. is not so interested in that. In America-land they've had the wayback machine through archive.org for quite a few years now... but in the UK... mmmm, nadir. Ziltch. Nuffin.
It's as much as what a Govt. isn't obsessed about as what it is - that says a lot about that Govt.
Website archives to be fast-tracked| guardian.co.uk
Archiving what will inevitably prove to be an important part of our social history - the UK Gov. is not so interested in that. In America-land they've had the wayback machine through archive.org for quite a few years now... but in the UK... mmmm, nadir. Ziltch. Nuffin.
It's as much as what a Govt. isn't obsessed about as what it is - that says a lot about that Govt.
Website archives to be fast-tracked| guardian.co.uk
More Moir
So the results of the autopsy are out - Stephen Gately DID die of an undiagnosed heart condition - of actual natural causes and not from drink and/or drugs or from being homosexual.
Proving the amateur forensic 'expert', professional pie-eater and bitter twisted hate-monger Jan Moir was wrong. Wow - who woulda thunk it?
And his partner has made a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission.
Wonder if Jan is considering a move to Uganda, not that she's a homophobe or anything...
Proving the amateur forensic 'expert', professional pie-eater and bitter twisted hate-monger Jan Moir was wrong. Wow - who woulda thunk it?
And his partner has made a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission.
Wonder if Jan is considering a move to Uganda, not that she's a homophobe or anything...
section 44 and function creep
So... according to the Metropolitan police: Terrorists = 9 year olds and under, and anyone at all in possession of a camera taking snapshots - or even a water-colour kit.
Nice to see them taking the real life threat of terrorism so really, really seriously. I feel so much safer knowing we're being watched over by a bunch of power-mad paranoid lunatics - that carry guns.
Nice to see them taking the real life threat of terrorism so really, really seriously. I feel so much safer knowing we're being watched over by a bunch of power-mad paranoid lunatics - that carry guns.
Bumper sales as shoppers beat VAT hike
oh what -again?
Year after year after year after year - in the run up to Christmas we have the news banging on about how shoppers aren't flooding the shops as much as the retailers would like. That's it's a disaster for the economy and all the shops are going to go out of business -the poor lambs. Then all of a sudden - when the sales are on - it's all records-broken as the shoppers flood the shops and it's whooooo! whooooo! whooooo! The extra tags this year being the on-going recession (although we had that last year too) and that VAT (which is evil btw) going back up to what it was before Gordon cut a couple of per cent off as part of his plans to stop the economy totally tanking...
But my point is - when it happens every year with predictable monotony - then it really isn't news is it? It'll be news when the Retailers reign in their greed a bit and NOT hike their prices up in the run up to Xmas and then bleat and moan when punters see right through it and wait for the sales.
-and yes the VAT hike will stall the recovery - duh. Oh, and if the record raise in sales has only come through people putting it on their credit cards - then that's not going to help the recovery either.
Year after year after year after year - in the run up to Christmas we have the news banging on about how shoppers aren't flooding the shops as much as the retailers would like. That's it's a disaster for the economy and all the shops are going to go out of business -the poor lambs. Then all of a sudden - when the sales are on - it's all records-broken as the shoppers flood the shops and it's whooooo! whooooo! whooooo! The extra tags this year being the on-going recession (although we had that last year too) and that VAT (which is evil btw) going back up to what it was before Gordon cut a couple of per cent off as part of his plans to stop the economy totally tanking...
But my point is - when it happens every year with predictable monotony - then it really isn't news is it? It'll be news when the Retailers reign in their greed a bit and NOT hike their prices up in the run up to Xmas and then bleat and moan when punters see right through it and wait for the sales.
-and yes the VAT hike will stall the recovery - duh. Oh, and if the record raise in sales has only come through people putting it on their credit cards - then that's not going to help the recovery either.
Nokia N900 Linux smartphone
Oooh look - it's like their web tablet the N810 but with a phone built in. I've got one of those and it's fun enough - although -to be honest it's a bit clunky and unreliable. The N900 would have to be a drastic improvement upon that to make me want one... especially at £440. That's a bit steep.
Nokia N900 Linux smartphone • Register Hardware
Nokia N900 Linux smartphone • Register Hardware
boomerang kids
What? you mean young graduates - laden with massive student debts can't get a toehold on their first home away from the parents? Would that also have anything to do with successive governments totally reneging on their their responsibilities to encourage the building of social and affordable housing - instead letting house prices spiral to unheard of heights - fuelled by low interest rates and cheap mortgages for those in jobs... and not helped by a continuing housing shortage. Wow - didn't see that one coming.
More young adults in 20s and 30s living with parents than in past 20 years
More young adults in 20s and 30s living with parents than in past 20 years
What is LOMO?
[I wrote this in reply to a Discussion topic some LOMO-newby had started in the LOMO UK flickr group. I liked it so much I thought I might as well slap it up here too. Where, if I'm lucky, more than one person might read it, possibly - or if not that I'll be able to find it again. Hah.]
There's been no one more active in the field of confusing the issue over all this than the lomography.com people themselves. 'Why's that' you ask? Because lomography.com is first and foremost all about marketing - it was invented as a project - not by photographers - but by marketing students putting together a business for their final year in their degree course. So of course a few years down the line, after the last real LCA camera came off the production line, they're now selling old dead stock Russian cameras, new plastic cameras from china, and old fuji instant cameras, etc. etc. And a lot of people are still lapping it up. It suits lomography.com very well to blur the lines and to keep confusing things That's good marketing right there. After all they've a lot of over-priced cameras and old expired film stock to sell.
(My problem with all that is that I'm just plain allergic to spending more money than I have to - just because of flashy advertising. But that's just me.)
So to help things along - I'd like to try and delineate a few things...
there are the LOMO cameras - original old Russian cameras - the best of these by far is still the original LCA.
then there are the 10 LOMOGRAPHY (non) Rules - which just amounts to taking a lot of pictures - wasting rolls and rolls of film without thinking too much and hoping you'll get one or two good pictures out of it every now and then. Theoretically speaking you don't need a Russian camera to follow these rules. You're just less likely get the vignetting and over-saturated colours.
then there's those fun plastic cameras from China - (which by rights should be dirt cheap - but get the hefty LOMOgraphy.com tax slapped on them - after all, that marketing has to be paid for out of somewhere.) But let's face it - they're just gimmicks. They're not real LOMOs though - they're toy cameras and they already have a whole school all of their own to be in.
then there's the faux-lomo - which is a digital photo put through photoshop (or whatever) to give it the 'LOMO look'. As far as I'm concerned that's the one which totally misses the point - since I'd say a big part of Lomography is the spirit of serendipity - of being surprised by what comes out of the camera. If you're adding filters - well there's that serendipity killed stone dead right there. Why stop at the LOMO look? Go to town - you can make it look like a watercolour, a drawing, you can stretch and warp it - there's all those filters - just throw them all on there. Wheeeeee!
So after all that, I have to come clean and say for me personally a proper honest-to-goodness LOMOgraph has to be a photograph that's been taken by a LCA - follows the 10 rules - and surprises the photographer as much as anyone. Otherwise it's a faux-lomo, or a toy camera photo, or a medium format photo, or a photo-photo - but it sure ain't a LOMOgraph.
There's been no one more active in the field of confusing the issue over all this than the lomography.com people themselves. 'Why's that' you ask? Because lomography.com is first and foremost all about marketing - it was invented as a project - not by photographers - but by marketing students putting together a business for their final year in their degree course. So of course a few years down the line, after the last real LCA camera came off the production line, they're now selling old dead stock Russian cameras, new plastic cameras from china, and old fuji instant cameras, etc. etc. And a lot of people are still lapping it up. It suits lomography.com very well to blur the lines and to keep confusing things That's good marketing right there. After all they've a lot of over-priced cameras and old expired film stock to sell.
(My problem with all that is that I'm just plain allergic to spending more money than I have to - just because of flashy advertising. But that's just me.)
So to help things along - I'd like to try and delineate a few things...
there are the LOMO cameras - original old Russian cameras - the best of these by far is still the original LCA.
then there are the 10 LOMOGRAPHY (non) Rules - which just amounts to taking a lot of pictures - wasting rolls and rolls of film without thinking too much and hoping you'll get one or two good pictures out of it every now and then. Theoretically speaking you don't need a Russian camera to follow these rules. You're just less likely get the vignetting and over-saturated colours.
then there's those fun plastic cameras from China - (which by rights should be dirt cheap - but get the hefty LOMOgraphy.com tax slapped on them - after all, that marketing has to be paid for out of somewhere.) But let's face it - they're just gimmicks. They're not real LOMOs though - they're toy cameras and they already have a whole school all of their own to be in.
then there's the faux-lomo - which is a digital photo put through photoshop (or whatever) to give it the 'LOMO look'. As far as I'm concerned that's the one which totally misses the point - since I'd say a big part of Lomography is the spirit of serendipity - of being surprised by what comes out of the camera. If you're adding filters - well there's that serendipity killed stone dead right there. Why stop at the LOMO look? Go to town - you can make it look like a watercolour, a drawing, you can stretch and warp it - there's all those filters - just throw them all on there. Wheeeeee!
So after all that, I have to come clean and say for me personally a proper honest-to-goodness LOMOgraph has to be a photograph that's been taken by a LCA - follows the 10 rules - and surprises the photographer as much as anyone. Otherwise it's a faux-lomo, or a toy camera photo, or a medium format photo, or a photo-photo - but it sure ain't a LOMOgraph.
Peter Mandelson declares war on Rupert Murdoch's media empire
Eeeer. Hello. *Now* someone from Labour is taking on Murdoch? Er... hello. This is a party running out of friends in the media. This is the party that attacked the BBC for reporting that the WMD case for invading Iraq was 'sexed up' and had no basis in reality - the director of the BBC was forced into a resignation over that - and the news part of the BBC has had to walk on egg shells ever since - despite the stark glaring fact that their original reports have subsequently proven to be completely right and that Bush and Blair were telling massive porkies... this hasn't ever been properly acknowledged. In recent months a son of a certain Mr Murdock has been laying into the BBC - for *gasp* providing 'free news' (except it's NOT free - we pay for it out of our license fees, thank you very much) news reports that still manage to convey more in the way of factual accuracy than whatever comes out of the fox news channel. Mmmm and now if the Tory party gets into power next year - they've promised to deregulate news media even more in an effort to appease Murdock in return for his propaganda - sorry, support during the upcoming election campaign. That would NOT be a good thing.
Peter Mandelson declares war on Rupert Murdoch's media empire | Media | The Guardian
Peter Mandelson declares war on Rupert Murdoch's media empire | Media | The Guardian
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