Without being configured/instructed by the user to do anything on the network, the app (right after pressing the "cancel" button on the initial camera connect screen - didn't want to connect to the camera at this time) places HTTP POST requests with "lumixclub.picmate.jp". At least if that URL is unreachable, the app will also try to contact "panasonic.net" via HTTP.

Obviously, I won't let my firewall allow this unsolicited "phoning home". I'm not a member of any "Lumix club", I don't intend to become one, and I do not want to share any information about my camera or my images with anyone at Panasonic.

It's a plague how electronics manufacturers today abuse your InterNet connection as they like without asking for permission and without having any reason to do so.

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Sony has really earned itself being slapped by investors, consumers and malicious hackers alike.

Also, if your shooting videos outdoors on a sunny day with the GH4, would it be wise to use an ISO of 200 or should it be at 800? That's assuming you have a strong enough ND filter.

Anyone know what's the native ISO for the LX100?.

http://www.dx.com/p/wx6013-universal-360-rotation-directional-microphone-recorder-for-iphone-cellphone-black-369410

Is the source code not enough for meaningful development? Or it is just to complicate to create and compile a new firmware based on the source code? Because I believe with such a strong hardware behind the NX1, there can be many improvements. Even bitrate or fps increases can be very beneficial.

I would like to have a drone for Christmas (which I think the girlfriend is getting) and maybe a Sony A7s. Tell me your Christmas wish list!

This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific. Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts.

These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any. SNIPPED http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535

thx

   
 
TRACKLIST
 
   • extract from Mystery Train (John Lurie)
   • Rebecca Gates and the Consortium - Dangerous
   • OST intro The Wild One
   • Pink Floyd - Time
   • Django Django - Default
   • Jeni Suk - Wildfire (live looping rendition)
   • Mogwai - Burn Girl Prom Queen
   • Sixto Rodriguez - It Started Out So Nice
   • Miniature Tigers - Female Doctor
   • Scout Niblett - It's Up to Emma
   • Hammock - Little Fly_Mouchette
   • Sabina - Toujours
   • Kelvin Jones - Call You Home
   • extract from Mystery Train
   • Barzin - All The While
   • Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
   • Jenny O. - Automechanic
   • Rhye - Open
   • spun OST - Corgan&Co.
   • Junip - Line of Fire
 

monkey photo by Jasper Doest 

✾

R.I.P. Malik Bendjelloul (36), Searching for Sugar Man

                  gashô                   gashô                   gashô   

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday unveiled the much-anticipated summary of its report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture against terrorism suspects, providing often-harrowing insight into U.S. interrogation practices in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and offering a damning look at the CIA’s pattern of giving false information in its defense of the practices and stonewalling lawmakers and executive branch officials responsible for overseeing the agency’s actions.

The 524-page summary released today is less than a tenth of the length of the committee’s full, 6,700-page report. This spring, committee members voted to release only the summary and a Republican rebuttal.

While the summary doesn’t tell the complete story, it nonetheless presents a wide-ranging survey of the CIA’s use of torture, or “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the euphemistic parlance of Bush administration officials and, at times, the committee report itself. Even before reading the report, Bush veterans — including the former president himself, as well as former Vice President Dick Cheney — dinged it ahead of its impending release. Reading the committee’s findings — which depict what Cheney infamously referred to as “the dark side” of the U.S. war on terror — it’s easy to see why the former officials weren’t happy about its unveiling. Here are 10 of the most revolting findings in the committee’s summary.

1. The CIA misled executive branch officials, members of Congress, and the public about torture’s effectiveness.

While Bush and Cheney steadfastly defended the CIA as the release of the report approached, the committee found that agency officials — including former directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden — misled the White House and lawmakers about the effectiveness of U.S. torture techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation.

(click link for rest of article)

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/09/10_appalling_findings_in_the_senates_torture_report/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

First time posting.

I'll be graduating in May with an Associates Degree in Communications from a community college that only has 2 year degrees. I live in New York state 30 minutes from NYC.

Is it possible to get work in TV Production or digital photography? I've been black-balled in my college because I discovered crony collusion in the school newspaper that went all the way up to the Dean's level, and it just went downhill from there.

I have a 3.98 GPA and one withdraw with passing. I have a good portfolio, but no stable job experience.

I'm not looking to go to a four year school (to get a Bachelors degree) for a number of reasons. Is it possible to get a job in the field? Any advice?

Everything was interlaced 480i or at most Telecined 480p in a 480i container. MiniDV was all the rage and HD was a figment of our imagination.

I started with a Canon mini-DV camcorder in late 2003 that shot 480i(720x480). It looked great on my 480i Tube TV. However, it was absolute garbage once you deinterlaced it for computer use with Progressive displays. I sold it almost immediately swearing that I would never buy another interlaced camera again.

So I waited and waited. Everything new was 480i. Even when HD TVs came about the HD consumer cameras were still interlaced 1080i. Then finally the Canon S1-IS came out in 2004. It was a little known jewel. It shot wonderful 480p @ 30 FPS for up to 1 Gigabyte. The nice thing was that it supported the MicroDrive compact flash cards that at the time went up to 4 GB for about $200.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons1is/

That camera revolutionized video for me. At the time everyone asked why I was getting a still camera for video. They all said “Why don’t you get a proper camcorder for the job”? I said “The camcorders are all interlaced and this is progressive”. They looked at me like I was speaking Japanese.

I loved that S1-IS and used it for several years as my main camera. Sure it was only 480p but it was good solid 480p @ 30 FPS and it used a decent bit rate(For that time period). The S1-IS also had a really bright F2.8-F3.1 lens on it. With a 10x optical zoom it did everything I wanted it to do until I saw what the 1080p of the 5D MKII looked like in September of 2008.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos5dmarkii

Reverie, blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that you could get such cinematic shallow depth of field and dynamic range in digital video. In addition the resolution seemed astounding. At the time I couldn’t imagine ever needing more resolution than that.

http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/galleries/galleries/sample_videos/reverie.shtml

I came as close as you could get to buying into the 5D MKII with a complete set of lenses. I saved and saved until I was finally ready to pull the trigger by the fall of 2009. Then something caught my attention.

A little known camera maker (At the time) called Panasonic had developed a 720p camera that was actually really small. It was called the GF1 and looked too good to be true. It could use any lens ever made with adapters. It wasn’t super expensive and all the manual focus lenses for video were super cheap on ebay.

They also had the mighty GH1 but it was hard to find without the super small aperture 14-140mm lens. By that time I had come to realize what I loved so much about the Canon S1-IS was that its lens was relatively bright. Just like I had with interlaced video I swore off super slow mega zooms.

However, I simply couldn’t resist the GF1 with the 20mm F1.7 lens. I bought the GF1 on day one and never looked back. I bought every large aperture MF lens I could get my hands on and loved them all. However, those lenses were heavy when it was all said and done. I realized why full frame wasn’t really considered to be portable back then. 5 or 6 lenses added up to a lot of weight in a backpack even though the camera body was so light.

By that time 720p had become old hat and M4/3s had more than just a few native lenses. They had some fast primes like the new 14mm F2.5, 25mm F1.4, and the 45mm F1.8. Auto Focus was improving in their newer cameras and I found myself wishing for more.

I finally broke down when the GH2 was announced in September of 2010. It was finally the camera that seemed like it could do it all. 1080p video, ETC mode for endless reach, and it was hackable. Those were the good old days. We ALL spent countless hours eeking out every last ounce of bit rate and reliability that we could.

http://www.dpreview.com/products/panasonic/slrs/panasonic_dmcgh2/review

I even gave up on the MF lenses. I had all of the fast primes at that time and MF wasn’t as cool as I once thought it was. I was much more content to just let the camera do the focusing for me. After the firmware update for the GH2 added 1080p at 30 FPS and much improved AF I sold all of my MF lenses for a nice telescope.

Honestly, the GH2 was probably the camera that I could have stopped at and lived with for quite a while. It did everything I needed it to do and did it quite well. However, the hacking had sparked something in me that made me always look for that little bit extra. I went on to buy the GH3, GH4, LX100, and the 35-100mm F2.8 all on the day that they came out. Each one offered a little something extra that I thought made it justify the extra cost. I finally have 4K @ 30 FPS and 1080p @ 96 FPS and the 4K photo from video mode. I couldn’t have ever possibly imagined those things when I first bought the S1-IS.

Well actually I did predict the photo from video mode way back in 2009. It wasn’t an acceptable thing back then to predict that video could one day replace stills. In fact I still don’t think it is acceptable today either.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/31728454

So we have come a long way in video cameras. I wonder what is next. How much farther can we go? Will it be as big a leap forward as it has in the past? Will I still want to spend my money on upgrades in the future or will I finally be satisfied with what I have now? Who knows? Only time will tell.

Please post your stories with how you got started into video and where you are with it today.

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/new-sony-films-pirated-in-wake-of-hack-attack-1201367036/

http://excipio.de/en/service/copyright-intelligence/

Code is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jx8kvy7jw4lxtwi/style.css?dl=0

Here is a demo/preview of the changes:

I welcome Vitaliy or other people to improve on these changes, I don't need any credit.

"Control of resources in the Universe will tend to be dominated by civilizations that adopt a strategy of aggressive expansion (defined as a frontier that expands as a large fraction of the speed of the individual spacecraft involved) rather than those expanding diffusively due to conventional pressures of population dynamics."

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1411.4359v1.pdf

I am giving up about indie filmmaking.

there is two ways to do films: professional dreaming friends and simple production, or money, lots of money.

If you have friends, but if they are amateur, the results will be amateur and there will be no future... professional people wants to be paid. You need good script, location, makeup, clothes, acting, lots of things.

I did some attempts to raise funds, the apefoscope project, the cook picture styles, sponsors. everything failed.

about the apefoscope and cook no need to explain, the community knows the history. about sponsors: they prefer to put their money in famous people, professional jobs which will give them increasing in selling products. it is hard when I come back with a NO answer and listen: we prefer to put an advertising in a tv station instead of put our money in a group of acting students, it is about business. even a location, a restaurant which wants to rent the location for filming, money, money, money. Clothes: I got borrowed clothes from a store once, but then I needed to pay some pieces which got damaged on the production. It is just business, I do not complain, I understand. Doing it for a hobby can be funny, but then I perceived that all people involved are specting success and a second project with money. I would need to be their hero, the front man which can make everybody grow up, and I am not, I recognize.

And then I found myself trying to fix an old tripod and hurted my finger, a little hurt, but I saw my own blood. I feel the flavor of my red in my mouth and then... no, no, I cannot keep fighting this way anymore. I surrender, I give up.

If you have similar dreams about filmmaking, think about money first. Trust your hacked GH2 because it is great, or any camera you have. But remember: you need a crew, and you need to pay for their job. And also remember: if you want success and new projects everybody in the crew must be professional, or no second project will be, or it will be a hobby forever, and even a hobby will need some money to survive.

No, do not give up as I am doing, but try to perceive your skill, your future, ask yourself: do I have a future on this? can I succed? Or keep it a good hobby and clarify to people that it is just a hobby. But a hooby needs time, money and efforts also. Remember this.

I already allowed the free download of the cook picture styles to help the community. my website is already shutdown. about the apefoscope project, it is only thing that really makes me sad, not just about money, but because it is also about image. I will try to show the project to big people here in my country, but I will not be involved. If I find some company here in my country I will transfer all the job to them, including selling and so on. If I do not find someone big willing to turn it into a product here in my country, then I will publish all the specifications on the web for free.

P-V was a home for me on the net for some time, thanks to everybody for the great talk here, keep up the good work. I finished my job on the GH2 patches to help the community, the last GSpot are very mature settings, and now this is: The End for apefos.

In 1999 psychologist David Dunning and his graduate student Justin Kruger published a paper in which they describe what has come to be known (appropriately) as the Dunning-Kruger effect. In a recent article discussing his now famous paper, Dunning summarizes the effect as:

“…incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are,”

He further explains:

• personal-view moved to dedicated server
• Remember that we do not have ads, "sponsors" or anything like such crap injecting stuff.
• Remember what each month we pay for hosting and it this sum is increasing, and additional daily backup located outside of hoster network (for safety).
• Remember what we don't have big team to support site. No admins, paid moderators, etc. So, huge time is invested in keeping this community alive.
• Remember that it is always best to support regularly, even very small amount if you are in economic trouble.