My Wish for 2012: No More Headline Lies

Here's the headline (Yahoo News, article by Marc Saltzman, December 31, 2011):

"Most Canadians use smartphones to shop"

Seems simple and straightforward, eh? Too bad it's complete bullshit designed by some irresponsible headline writer or news editor to dupe people into clicking on the link to Saltzman's article.

The first sentence of the article reads as follows: "According to a first-of-its-kind survey conducted by Rogers Communications Inc. and Vision Critical, 79 per cent of Canadians believe people will use their smartphones to make purchases over the next few years." Exactly how did Yahoo News get from a general opinion that a lot of people will use smartphones for making purchases to stating unequivocally that "Most Canadians use smartphones to shop"? I can't believe Saltzman himself knows his writing is being abused this way.

Statistics can be manipulated in creative ways. But that is not reporting - it is, rather, manipulation for a specific end. A lie in other words. A recent example about some new cancer research findings is a case in point too. A research group revealed that the incidence of a certain cancer had increased from 0.10% per 100,000 people to 0.15%. That's a change of 50%. What ended up on some popular media outlets was that the incidence of the cancer had increased 50%. That's outright nonsense and gives anyone reading it (who actually believes it) the impression that they're in danger. After all, common sense dictates that an increase of 50% (of anything bad) is bound to be dangerous. A change from 0.10% per 100,000 people to 0.15% per 100,000 people is notable but inconsequential. Yes it's a 50% change, but it is a change that is so vanishingly small (per 100,000 people) that it is meaningless in our day to day lives. Our popular media are idiotic far more often than they should be. They're too often science-dumb, sensationalistic and irresponsible.

My wish for 2012 (the first wish of many I should say), is that copy writers and headlines writers will grow some semblance of a conscience and stop publishing this sort of deliberate inaccuracy. Even more important (because I couldn't care less about Yahoo News), if Saltzman wants readers, wherever he's published, to continue to trust his acumen and his intelligence (both of which he possesses in abundance, make no mistake about that), he and writers like him have to dig themselves out from underneath the sort of article headlines, leads and slugs which do nothing but demean them through no fault of their own.

Read very carefully and very analytically throughout 2012. You'll be glad you did.

You've Willingly Given Away Your Life

One of the horrors of the Stalinist regime, the later Soviet communist regime, the totalitarian variants in East Germany and Czekoslovakia and other similar states was the enormous and detailed personal dossier collection about so many citizens in each country. Millions of dossiers were assembled and carefully tended by the secret police organizations - files containing personal information for individual citizens about their religious affiliation, political affiliations and leanings, personal histories, activities, friends, relations, business dealings and communications, in addition to all the usual census things such as date of birth, home and work addresses, place of birth and on and on.

Doesn't that uncomfortably recent history in Europe all read too much like the massively detailed databases to which we freely, willingly and enthusiastically contribute on FaceBook, MySpace, Google+, Twitter and all the other big social networks?

From the 1920s through the 1980s, citizens in many countries in Europe, Eurasia and in China were summarily singled out for brutal attention by secret police driven by political, religious and philosophically warped taskmasters intent on ferreting out all of what they considered to be dissidents, fifth columnists and citizens plotting sedition, no matter how tenuous the facts or how sadly misinterpreted the dossiers happened to be.

That Zuckerberg, Brin, et al, are not totalitarian leaders bent on the domination of their particular worlds is perfectly evident. They're bent only on the domination of their particular businesses. The difference between the two intents is a significant matter of degree. During the cold war years, totalitarian regimes wanted to subjugate and effectively enslave their populations using an untenably warped version of authoritarian socialism. Nowadays, the Zuckerbergs of the world only want us to click online ads to generate revenue, sell us extra online services in return for monthly subscription fees, and make us so intent on using FaceBook (for instance) that our attention and loyalty (and habitual behavior) can form the basis for more investors to enthusiastically throw more money into the pot.

(Image Not Credited: we're looking for the originator)

I worry about the potentially awful uses for all that personal information we've handed over. Simply stating, "Hey Howard, you idiot, Zuckerberg and his ilk are not clones of Stalin. What the hell is wrong with you?!?" is all well and good and demonstrably accurate, but it also doesn't come close to addressing why it was our parents (and some of us too, more recently) worked as hard to defeat regimes that kept such detailed records about their citizens as we insist on herding ourselves into FaceBook and willingly handing over the exact same sort of information to utter strangers.

I haven't quite figured this out yet. When I do, I'll let you know. In the meantime, remember that telling the whole world about your religious, social, political and philosophical affiliations has historically been a collection of details that a succession of regimes have used to the terrible detriment of their peoples. Live in the digitally connected and online worlds too often if you must, but just remember how much about yourself is now available to anyone who cares to look for the information - for whatever purpose.

In totalitarian regimes, information about individual citizens provides regime leaders with unusual control - often brutal control - over everything. So take the hint: the more information you give up to the utter strangers that own and operate the overarchingly influential social network services, the more control you give those strangers over your life.

You Really Need to Learn to Use What You Already Own

Margaret Wente writing in the Globe & Mail about Occupy Wall Street and the general groundswell of so-called Occupy actions taking place in various cities, has written what in my opinion is a rather arch piece that misses the whole point of the Occupy 'movement' in the first place. It's a bit of a depressing read because it left me with the impression that Ms. Wente has been co-opted by her corporate overlords. I can't say for sure whether that, if it's even accurate, is a good thing or a bad thing, only that the article is disturbing to me.

Ms. Wente points out what she seems to consider is the uselessness of liberal arts degrees and consquently derides some of the protesters who are possessed of liberal arts degrees but who are can't find any work in respect of those degrees. What good is a liberal arts degree? I'm not sure. So why do universities and colleges offer such degrees now and for the past forty years or more? Are such degrees meant to be taken only by scions of the wealthy elite who, by some measures, don't really need to work after graduation?

Ms. Wente's false logic and willingness to spout what I consider to be a party line, expose only the undercurrent of a wealthy corporate godhead that would have us all enslaved in work rituals designed to produce goods for retail economies which no longer work well. Liberal arts degrees are certainly useless in such a world - slaves don't need education, they just need training in how to shoulder a yoke and perform a single task. Produce! Produce! More and More! The overlords, economists and political managers shout these words at every opportunity. Ever greater productivity demanded almost fanatically by the economists whispering in political and financial ears is an illogical cleft stick which eventually traps all believers. Just exactly how "productive" can one be? Can productivity be increased, unrelentingly year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation? I don't think so. We're peaking in some respects. Whether or not someone has a liberal arts degree (vs., say, a trade college certification in plumbing), a medical degree (to participate, in the U.S. at least, in a system of medical care which continues to fail millions of citizens), or a degree in Asian linguistics is not the point. The real reason for the Occupy movement, as I see it, is the backlash from common citizens against a political, social and corporate reality which reserves enormous privilege for a very few people while at the same time placing enormous responsbility for global financial stability based on retail economics ever more burdeonsomely on the backs of citizens who are offered no say, no apparent options, no control and no rights.

How did all these liberal arts grad Occupy people find their way into universities and colleges on government student loans in the first place? By accident? Have the mega-conglomerates suddenly whispered in the ears of governments, giving quiet permission for those governments to now wake from their slumbers? Is that image even a reality? Are governments, education systems, learned social advisors and all their ilk suddenly now shouting, "How did all these students get here?!? Who told all these people they could vie for liberal arts degrees, sociology, anthropology and metapysics degrees?"

The very taxpayers (Ms. Wente included), institutional, government and corporate interests which have for generations so assiduously funded the institutions (and governments) are now roundly deriding liberal arts students and graduates and somehow getting the Ms. Wentes of the corporate media to write supportively derisive articles?

What in hell happened to the dream of a "world of tomorrow" in which we'd be able to work productively for a few hours a day and then pursue our passions, all while tending to our homes and families? That always-distant dream has been summarily replaced by an insistent distopian reality that we'd better damn well like or else. We were surreptitiously sold the old utopian dream for a very long time, right up until the financial monsters and enormous global business realities began dictating that a self-perpetuating wealthy elite would be impossible if everyone was considered equal.

Let me off this train NOW. I'm done buying the latest eructations from Apple and Sony and Nikon and Canon and you-name-it. I'm going to be happy - very happy - with what I've got right up until it eventually breaks down. And then I'm going to do a very, very long reassessment of my needs before I even begin to consider buying a replacement. Think about it. Do you really need another digital SLR or mirrorless camera? Or do you really need to spend a lot more time using the camera gear you've already got in order to become a better photographer. That's not a question - it's a statement. Do you really need to replace your three year old Sony eReader with a Kindle DX? Or do you really need to spend more time reading good books than fretting about whether or not your ereader is the latest model. That's not a question either - it's also a statement.

Something occured to me after I wrote this piece, so I re-read Ms. Wente's Globe & Mail article, and now I'm sure of it: she never mentioned all the unemployed graduates from Journalism schools. It's true - j-school grads - that's the journalism trade that Ms. Wente practices - are all out of work too, in ever increasing numbers, and there are far too few new writing jobs to replace the losses. Bloggers all I guess, and about as useless as any of the other trades or professional pursuits derided by Ms. Wente. Perhaps, the lousy research in the article, vague and deceptively spun stats, and the corporate Globe & Mail spin redolent throughout Ms. Wente's article simply exemplify part of the reality of modern times that articles of this kind written sometimes try to hide.

The Electronic Camera Viewfinder Has Finally Arrived

It's done. The new Sony A77 is an truly astonishing camera. The 2.4M dot OLED electronic viewfinder is a high speed revelation, and provides literally at least 50% more resolution than the best EVF on the market up to now. I've seen it and tried it and all I can say is that I think I now prefer it over an optical viewfinder. Sony has put an enormous amount of R&D effort into the translucent mirror/pellicle technology in the A55 digital camera body and new A77 model in particular and it shows. By comparison, the new Sony EVF is brighter than the excellent Nikon D7000 optical viewfinder (OVF - also an APS-C size sensor camera) in any light, and the Sony EVF is so fast (ultra high refresh rate, no tracking/panning streaks or delays under most shooting circumstances) and accurate (color and contrast in particular), that I doubt any A77 purchasers will give it up once they spend even the briefest amount of time using the camera. Up to ISO 800, technical 24 megapixel image quality is visibly better than the excellent standard set by the 16 megapixel Nikon D7000 and Canon 7D.

It's fair to say that Sony is stealing a march on all the Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic and Samsung competition at this point. It's no surprise after all. Sony has been an on again/off again leader in the television camera business, the lens business, the sensor business, the digital recording business, the digital photography business and a lot of other related technology industries for a very long time. The company has delivered market leading tech before, and now it's doing it again.

With the use of a pellicle (translucent) mirror, there's no moving part in the mirror box, which means no vibration-inducing mirror slap every time you press the shutter. The mirror never moves. With no mirror flipping up and down, Sony implemented full-time phase-detect focusing (one of the best features of digital SLR cameras at least) so that focus accuracy is improved all around for both still photography and video.

It's impossible to know how rigidly Canon and Nikon are committed to conventional single lens reflex (conventional mirror) technology in the digital SLR product roadmap at this point. It's safe to say though, now that Sony has shown how competitively well it can be done, that the next two years will see a raft-load of new electronic viewfinders and pellicle mirrors showing up in serious interchangeable lens models from Canon and Nikon. Did I mention that the A77 is a perfectly sized camera body too? It offers enough physical weight and hand-grip to help stabilize the thing for sharp, handheld focusing, but remains lighter than similar, medium size camera bodies (Nikon D7000, Nikon D300s, Canon 7D, Canon 60D). Good job Sony

Ultra High Res Video Cameras and Why I Hate Them

For the dedicated professional, this post and the subject line above should be of little interest. But non-professional users of digital video cameras - standalone models or hybrid digital SLR cameras containing digital video subsystems - should be made aware of the morass of difficulties they're stepping into when attempting to get into digital video. Vincent Laforet - photographer and videographer of great note; the man really does know what he's doing for the most part - recently posted his impressions of the new RED Epic ultra high definition video camera.

I finally had a chance to look at the Laforet link (thank you to Matt Magnatta for sending it to me because I have not been visiting Laforet's blog). Laforet has made some interesting comments about the new Red Epic, but I think he's way off base in his conclusions about the usefulness of this sort of hybridizing.

For most still photographers, the whole notion of of sitting down with half a terabyte of Red Epic footage (or half a terabyte of any footage) after a day-long shoot in order to begin culling a quarter of a million or more frames in order to begin choosing keepers (as opposed to a photographer's normal practice of sitting down to look through several hundred still shots) is nauseating. If, in the next ten years or so, anything like this sort of product the RED Epic represents reaches the mass market, it will without doubt have to be accompanied by software with built-in AI designed to automatically sort your footage for you. So the idea of serious still street photography as a somewhat considered creative process (snapshots and sudden unusual subjects excepted of course) goes at least partially out the window when someone is just shooting everything in sight using a RED Epic and then later relies on heavy-duty software and extremely heavy-duty computing hardware to automatically sort out the footage. Spray n' Pray shooting with software to 'ease' the task of sorting through a monumental pile of digital footage? Surely Laforet - a genuinely terrific photographer and videographer - is not indirectly implying that we'll soon be willingly sprayin' & prayin' as a matter of course?

I'm not sure why the industry is pushing so hard for consumer adoption of digital video and hybrid digital SLR cameras with powerful digital video subsystems. Editing digital video is not for the faint of heart. My own experience with MGI Software and the development of VideoWave (1995-2001, which was the market leading consumer video editing suite for several years), and all of the market and end user research I did at the time and in the years immediately following the MGI period, showed clearly that enthusiast photographers and videographers struggle with video editing. Fast forward ten years and it seems that digital video editing software has advanced only incrementally. The fact remains that video editing is still needlessly difficult because, among other problems, the so-called Codec standards are just not true standards. Supporting hardware and computer operating systems and video editing software to this day still do not work as closely together as they should to ease the video editing process for photography and videography enthusiasts. Even the briefest sort of polling and survey work quickly shows that the vast majority of digital video footage remains unedited, stored forever on capture media or hard drives, never again seen because the digital video editing process is too onerous for the vast majority of consumer-level shooters.

As far as I'm concerned - whether or not the tech industries intend it - digital video cameras and software do a far better job of driving hard drive and SSD storage device sales, PC and Mac upgrade sales, RAM sales and monitor sales, than helping consumers efficiently capture good digital video and easily edit and produce the results.

Why I Hate Twitter

Zack Whittaker's article in ZDNet last week titled "Generation Y: Try to speak to them in 140-characters or less" was instructive. That Whittaker went through the process just to see how difficult it might or might not be puts him ahead of me in some respects - I wouldn't have bothered.

Dividing, as Whittaker did, his approximately 1400 character article into a series of sub-140 character paragraphs (Twitter's inherent limit is 140 characters per tweet) does not change the fact that the article was approximately 1400 characters long. The article may have some impact when read in its entirety, but break it up into the short paragraphs and transmit it in the form of a series of short bursts and the impact is reduced, the point lost on some people, the article not fully read by others.

Just because a thing can be done (Twitter, 140 character limit, text messages/160 character limit), does not mean it should be done or that we should rush to shoehorn ourselves into it.

We need more space to express ourselves, not less. In an increasingly technically complex world we are limiting ourselves in some respects to less space for expression? Stupid. In an increasingly populous world we are breaking our thoughts up into 140-160 character bites and thereby making ourselves more difficult to understand? Stupid.

Nikon and Other Japanese Makers Look Tense

As expected, the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami had no effect at all on originally predicted fiscal 2011 3Q results. The actual results look quite rosy for now, but darkness looms on the horizon.

By contrast, the fourth quarter results (scheduled for release on or about July 31, 2011) won't be pleasant at all because by then all the awful effects of unreplaceable retail inventory, lack of parts availability, etc., etc. - the results of the earthquake and tsunami, rolling power blackouts, demolished homes, demolished parts fabrication plants, demolished infrastructure and loss of life - will be sorely felt. Almost every other Japanese company (and not just electronics companies either) is in the same situation.

The press conference following the release of the third quarter results is taking place the week of May 9. There will be lots of pressure on Nikon executives to directly answer questions about exactly what production schedule changes have already been made and about exactly what additional production scheduling and product roadmap changes are being seriously considered. A Sony press conference is coming up and a Canon press conference is coming up. Look for lots of pain if you can stand it. Personally, I think these sorts of press conferences are like watching a really terrible audition - uncomfortable, squirming, you want to be somewhere else - but all of the Japanese companies with core domestic manufacturing operations are struggling valiantly to rebuild important parts of themselves right now.

Hopefully, after the Nikon press conference we'll have a much better idea about when we can expect to see a D700 successor, D3 successor and perhaps even when we can expect to see the heavily rumoured Nikon mirrorless camera.

Stay tuned.

We've received innumerable emails from readers looking for answers about Nikon and Canon retail products. Here are some of the questions (and our answers):

1. "I ordered a Nikon D3s from B&H Photo in New York. I've been checking my order status online for three weeks and there's never any update. I'm trying to find out when the camera will show up." The camera will show up later - much later. Nikon has already juggled all of the retail inventory it can, a move which was very unusual for Nikon. Normally, distributors of Nikon products and Nikon itself never permitted inventory from one region to be moved over to another in order to fill heavier demand. But unusual circumstances call for unusual measures. That's over now; all the inventory that could be redistributed has been moved around appropriately. There may be some stragglers of course, but we're talking about literally a few dozen here and there. Our advice is two-fold: either be happy with what you're using right now, or cancel your order because nobody on earth (not even Nikon) can guarantee any sort of delivery date for your D3s except "by the end of 2011." Even then, I wouldn't hold my breath. The caliber of disaster in northeastern Japan has affected everything. The rolling power blackouts continue throughout all the important northern industrial zones in Japan and likely will do so through the middle of 2012.
2. "When do you think Nikon will release a replacement for the D700?" See the answer to #1 above. The short answer? Not in 2011. Nikon may announce the thing soon (the D800?) but actual production units in retail stores won't appear before the middle of 2012. That's our best estimate. Then again, let's call the next camera body in the series a successor to the D700, not a replacement. The D700 is a spectacular camera which is capable, in the hands of a knowlegeable photographer, of producing spectacular, award winning images. You don`t need a 'better'camera; you need to become a better photographer. Buy a used D700 now, before the price of a used one skyrockets because of the growing scarcity of new ones. We mean now. If you already own a D700, stop complaining.
3. "We have to put pressure on Nikon to get retail orders filled. (Retailer X) has my money and is just sitting on it while I have to wait for Nikon to get its act together?" Whoa up there Trigger! Either you're living in some sort of bland suburban bubble or you've never traveled beyond the confines of your sheltered little middle class fiefdom or you're just, well, slightly dumb. The scale of disaster caused by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the dangerous and frightening aggravation caused by the damage done to the nuclear reactor facility at Fukushima, the staggering loss of life and the fact that so many Japanese citizens (you know, the employees who work in all those northern and northeastern Japanese manufacturing facilities) no longer have homes, are the main factors which override your 'sense' that a little pressure on those dudes over there will help grease the wheels. The events of March 11, 2011 and the suceeding problems represent, in total, one of the worst natural disasters in modern history and one of the worst nuclear power disasters in history. Simply raising your voice and speaking sharply to the Japanese (or your retailer) will earn you little besides derision and shocked silence in response.

Be happy with the Nikon (Canon, Olympus, Pentax, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic) gear you already own. Get out there and make some great photos. Stop worrying about the next new series of camera and lens models. Instead, spend a lot more time with the gear you've got and become a better photographer. Use the money you save to buy really good walking shoes or hiking boots.

Japanese Digital SLR Cameras are NOT Radioactive

An active participant at an authoritative photography discussion board recently posted the following:

"How do you see the risk that new pro [Nikon photography] products coming (eventually) out of plants near the affected [Sendai, Japan] area have radiation issues? Probably more than 25 years ago I read a discussion on a classic car which was located near a nuclear test facility for many years. The person who purchased and restored it eventually found out that his health issues were caused by the radiation levels of this car (so the article stated at least). Any experts who would like to comment?"

We should all, I think, try to do our best to dispel these urban myths. There is no science behind any of these car stories. They are unsupported by any actual facts, objective measurements or authoritative investigation. They're nothing but the maunderings of a few people who managed, without the benefit of any actual facts, to come up with the so-called 'conclusion' that it was RADIATION. Probably had nothing to do with a lawsuit. Ahem.

There's that word: RADIATION.

Let's say it again . . . RADIATION.

Show me the car, its exact location near a nuclear power station, and I'll show you the cleanest air, water and earth right there at that power station. Fact is, the irradiated car doesn't exist. What actually does exist? Nuclear power design, management and operational regulations that are so stringent and radiation release regulations that are so stringent that you literally receive more radiation internally from smoking cigarettes annually (tobacco plants tend to absorb and store Strontium among other bad things) than you do from any sources of natural radiation in the environment (including long distance air travel), much less from earth, air or water in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear power station which is normally scrupulously clean.

Radiation levels of camera parts - from Japan or any other place on earth, including used old and clapped out Kiev 120 bodes from Ukraine (you know, where Chernobyl is) - are non-existent.

Look into some of the so-called radiation stories surrounding some of these urban myths. You'll find some genuinely sick/ill people suffering from real maladies. Problem is, too much of the effort some of the car guys put into their classics is done using toxic chemicals (fibreglass resin, grinding dust, primer, paint, industrial adhesives, etc.) worked and used without regular benefit of safety masks, gloves, eye protection or high-volume air ventilation.

The single biggest problem with nuclear power is the management and safe long-term storage of spent fuel cells and rods. Even though fuel cells that have been rodded with boron have been sufficiently used to reduce their ability to produce a fissionable reaction, doesn't mean they're no longer radioactive. That's why they need ongoing cooling after they've been removed from a reactor core. Sooner or later, some smart engineers and scientists will come up with a viable solution - they've been working on it for quite a while though. Solve the spent fuel rod problem and we'll never have to burn another drop of oil or natural gas to heat and power up our homes and businesses. 

Japanese people are not inherently cruel, stupid or venal. They do not knowingly go to work assembling radiation-laced camera parts. They do not knowingly go to work in factories laced with radiation, or drink radiation laced water, or eat radiation-laced food. They question authority and government just as thinking people do everywhere else. The thought or statement that any of the remarkable people with whom I've done business in Japan (or any or their relatives, friends or neighbors) would even dream of manufacturing and shipping radiation-laced cameras is something so bizarre that it's almost beneath contempt.

In the face of the enormous amount of factual information (in and amongst the utter nonsense I admit) presented in the press, online, on TV and on the radio over the past few weeks about nuclear power and radioactivity, it's almost impossible for me to believe that anyone on the planet would be worried. Still, U.S. and Canadian authorities are lined up along the west coast in various locations, scanning and scanning and scanning and scanning for radiation. Spikes in background radiation are being measured. Spikes in background radiation have been occuring for millions of years. Now there are battalions of technicians grid-searching the west coast of North American measuring guppies, carp, sand pebbles, goats, stoats, alley cats, beetles, Hondas, condoms (I kid you not), hamsters, Big Macs, fiddler crabs, turtles and everything else that walks, swims, flies, slithers or crawls. It's an irrational absurdity.

This is not a jibe or stab or punitive attack at any Nikonian, but rather a absolute statement of disappointment that any of us has been driven to even entertain thoughts about cameras containing radiation.

There's more. In his March 27, 2011 blog post, Best Advice car buying columnist L. James Johnson wrote, "Yet, post-tsunami shipping of Japanese vehicles is beginning to resume. This means that at least a few carrier ships containing vehicles that may have been contaminated by radiation are leaving Japanese ports bound for U.S. locations." Oh yeah!? Based on what science? What sort of irresponsible scare-mongering is this? This cat actually thinks the Japanese car makers might be shipping radiation-laced auto cargo around the world right now? It's tantamount to the asinine earthquake preditions made by so-called prognosticators like Luke Thomas who has never been correct beyond the statistics of chance and regression to the mean. Anyway, I think columnist Johnson should be ashamed of himself for writing something so casually illogical and irrational he should be firmly spanked.

The reason there's a no-go zone established after a disaster of some sort near a nuclear power station is that it makes sense to get people out of the area before something happens. The Japanese government and TEPCO could have been smarter about several things, but the fact remains that a lot of the staff and municipal government infrastructure which was supposed to react in the event of damage to the power station was wiped out. Communications wiped out - fiber optics, cell towers, repeaters, networks and the people themselves wiped out.

I repeat what I wrote in a previous post. No Nikon D3/s/x or anything else produced in Sendai, Japan and containing anything other than background radiation will ever reach another country.

Sprint is Moronic

The following is a real email I sent this morning to Sprint Customer Care. It's the sixth email I've sent to Sprint Customer Care (please note that the previous five emails were polite but firm) indicating that they're communicating with the wrong Mr. Carson, that I have lived and worked in Canada all my life and that I have never, ever been a Sprint customer. Evidently, the Mr. Carson (no relation) who signed up for Sprint service quite a few months ago, is not paying his bill. So Sprint is sending emails to the guy. I've got all the email back & forth to back this up, including two which contain apologies from Sprint about the mixup.

Dear Sprint Morons,

This is the sixth time I've written to you, to point out that I am not your customer Mr. ******* Carson. That customer or some boob in the Sprint customer service department is using the email address *.******@gmail.com. Problem is, gmail does not recognize dots in email addresses. As a result, all the insistent email you think you're sending to Mr. ******* Carson is in fact arriving in my *******@gmail.com inbox. Notice that my email address doesn't contain a dot. When gmail receives an email containing a dot in the address, it ignores the dot and sends the email to an address that is the closest match without the dot.

If you're going to insist on using email communications as part of your collection efforts, you really need to learn how the various popular email systems work.

So . . . Sprint . . . you need to contact Mr. ******* Carson at his home address and stop sending your collection spam to me.

If these emails are what passes for collection efforts at Sprint, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

If you fail to immediately cease all further email communication to my email address, I'll simply forward the whole matter to the FCC.

Howard Carson
(in Canada you idiots!)

I'll keep you posted

Travel Photography - Your iPad is NOT a Backup Device!

There's a discussion thread on Nikonians.org right now about the best ways to backup digital photos while you're traveling. Bascially, the discussion revolves around which device to use: Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, netbook, laptop, portable hard drive/pocket drive, portable photo storage/viewer.

A couple of iPad users have weighed in on the usefulness of the device, as have the more plentiful proponents of other devices - netbook and laptop computers in particular. Some of you reading this may already be thinking that the iPad, Tab and the other tablets (Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry Playbook, etc.) have somewhat limited storage capacity, and you're correct. The current 64GB maximum internal storage capacity is as good as it gets for the iPad. Competing devices have memory expansion slots though, which means you can add up to 32GB of additional storage space without having to lug a separate such as a portable hard drive. The only problem with 32GB storage cards (SDHC cards mainly) is that they're still scary-expensive - almost as much as a high-end tablet in the first place. Worse still, there is no Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab which actually have anywhere near 64GB of available storage space at any time - don't forget that a lot of the 64GB maximum storage capacity is already used by apps, digital music files, podcasts and movies. That's what the devices are used for, first and foremost.

Next on the list are external/portable/pocket hard drives. They're great, they're reliable, but they're just dumb storage devices. No screen, no Internet connectivity, no wireless connectivity, no nothing. Just storage.

Netbooks and laptops remain the most popular travel devices because of their inherent versatility. Keyboard, trackpad or mouse (your choice), decent size screen (bigger though not always better than most tablet screens), enormous amounts of storage (anywhere up to 1 terabyte internally), moderate weight (albeit, except for the smaller netbooks, generally heavier than tablets and pocket drives), wireless connectivity, Internet connectivity, ethernet connectivity and productivity capabilities with the the associated processing horsepower (all superior to the Apple iPad, Tab and other devices).

The iPad storage discussion thread on Nikonians seems to inadvertently be a bit about limiting photography choices for the sake of the iPad's limited storage capacity. Nightly culling of photos taken during the day is offered as a means of ensuring the remaining iPad storage capacity (after accounting for apps, music, movies and so on) is sufficient for digital photo backup purposes while traveling. I say that any photographer (anyone - rank amateur, hobbyist, enthusiast, semi-pro or pro) has to choose and make use of gear which properly serves needs, rather than gear which forces the photographer to modify and restrict his or her needs. Nothing else really makes sense. As well, nightly hotel room culling of photos (while you're tired from the day) to ensure that you're not going to be maxing out an iPad or Tab strikes me as a grossly unnecessary restriction, not to mention a dangerously easy way of deleting something you actually wanted to keep. Don't do it. The photo you delete while you're tired, is the photo you'll wish you still had after you get home from your travels.

The iPad and the Tab are being drafted into roles they were never designed to fully accommodate. So I say, save the money you'd spend on an iPad or a Tab, invest in additional SD or CF memory cards (whichever one your digital camera uses), and when you fill up a card while traveling just copy the contents onto whatever netbook or laptop you've got. Then put away the SD or CF card and use a fresh one in the camera instead. Of course you can do the same thing if you're traveling with an iPad or Tab, with the exception of being able to copy everything to the device. I use at least twelve CF cards that are each 8GB or larger on a typical two week photography trip. there's no way for an iPad or a Tab to accommodate that kind of storage need. For travelers who are shooting a combination of digital still photography and high-resolution video, file storage needs are much greater.

I shudder at the thought of having only one copy of irreplaceable travel photos stored only on an iPad or Tab. Two running backups of your digital photos while traveling is the safest policy. The Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab are wonderful devices in a variety of respects, but as we've stated before on Kickstartnews.com, the devices impose too many limits on broadly productive use.