John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:28:23 -0500, "Anthony Fremont"
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
We just spent about an hour taking pics of a scope trace, to include
in a manual. Three cameras:

Fuji S5200 5.1 mpix 10x optical zoom

Sony CyberShot 7.2 mpix 12x

Sony Mavica, floppy disk, 800 kpix I think, 14x

See the winner: Mavica!

A friend of mine has one of those, it takes pretty good pictures and
movies with sound. My first digital camera was an HP 315 IIRC, what
a POS and only
$400. I figured they knew what they were doing, boy was I stupid.
I then
spent nearly that much for a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W/1 a couple of
years back and it can't take macro shots for crap. The autofocus
will screw you every chance it gets. So the only hope is fixed
focus mode and bracketing the distance. The flash is a nightmare on
it as well. It takes decent pics most of the time if you let it do
it's thing, but trying to treat it like a "real" camera is
disappointing at best. I wish I simply had a 5MP digital back for
my Canon EOS Elan and I'd be happy.


Yeah, I'd love to have a digital camera that behaves just like my
Olympus SLR: manual focus, split image optical finder, light meter,
nice things you turn to adjust focus, exposure time, and f-stop. I
haven't seen an autofocus that works right, and the LCD screens aren't
good enough to get a really sharp manual focus, and the manual focus
controls tend to be very clumsy.

Grrrrr.

I hear that. Other non favorite advances in technology include:
1) HDTV imagery ruined by compression artifacts (what's the point? I don't
live and die by TV, but I do like NASCAR and _some_ of the HD programming
available)
2) Self check out at the grocery store (some things just aren't designed to
be automated that way)
3) Automated voice attendents (with the obligatory "due to the UNUSUALLY
large call volume...." gimme a break)
4) Call centers in foreign countries
5) Operating systems that have the nerve to tell a sysadmin level user
"Access denied" in order to protect the virus (gawd, I could just shoot
myself sometimes)
6) DRM/HDCP (saddest thing ever nothing wrong with it's legitimate use,
but watch how the movie/music industry will screw you out of your legal
rights with it) which brings us to more of the same
7) downgraded sound/video quality in an "untrusted" environment (why isn't
everyone ****ed off about being treated like a criminal unless you can prove
otherwise) which brings us to
8) lack of privacy and the sale of personal/financial information as a
commodity (Is everyone anesthetized? Why is this allowed to take place?)
9) click thru license agreements (the worlds lawyers better hope I never get
three wishes)

I could probably add to this list for days, but ........ Care to add any
yourself. I'm curious what folks here really hate about technology abuse.