Our bank was not one of the ones who received bail out money (we were profitable and ranked one of the best banks in the country for customer service and satisfaction, formerly Commerce Bank of NJ), but you can be damn sure our share holders would not have allowed this. Reason being, our shareholders ousted the owner and founder of our bank, so they don’t take kindly to this sort of thing. I just wish the people who had stock in these banks would get rid of these golden parachutes and get someone in there who can run these banks profitably, so the offsett of bonuses are paid for out of bank profit, and not tax payer bail out money!
Well, I recently picked up a new camera. Now, a lot of people have said, don’t get the d60, its really just a d40 with Dynamic Lighting built in. I have to both agree and disagree to some extent. While its a lot of the same, same body, same size and feel, it also ups a few features I find the value in while not killing your budget. Oh, and they have a deal where you can get an additional 55-200mm lense for no extra charge!
1, continuous shooting is snappier for sharper images. Its no secret that hand held shots are blurry when on the go and you don’t have a tripod on hand or time to set one up. Continuous shooting helps you choose the sharpest images from any subject you may be shooting. Any faster you make it in frames per second, the better, even if it is only marginally, you will get sharper images every time.
2, lower ISO for slightly smoother images and macro shots. Some people say you can’t tell the difference, but if you really compare the two side by side you will see less noise with the 100 than in a 200 shot and smoother overall glow for thing like flowers and such.
With 10 megapxels in the d60 vs 6 in the d40, ISO-100 helps when cramming in more details so you don’t get that grainy blue in sky shots and neutral gray tones aren’t washed out as one solid color.
3, highest ISO, 3200 and its as clean as any camera at that high an ISO. Not that you will need it or should be shooting in 3200, but the Auto-no flash option for indoor shots when a flash can’t be used, say, against glass in a museum or aquarium, comes in really handy and gets a much cleaner picture in my opinion than the d40. Having the option to go up to 3200 if needed is a plus, but probably won’t be making it into any galleries with shots that high of an ISO.
4 More megapixels and slightly larger sensor, larger images at the largest setting. (3,008 x 2,000 for the d40, 3,872 x 2,592 for the d60, and yes it makes a difference to me when I do fine prints, I have more area to play with when cropping images before printing! Still doesn’t go as large as my Kodak Widescreen 16:9 shots, but that camera needs a tripod for every shot just to come close to anything sharp in a picture. Otherwise its damn near impossible to get a good shot on manual settings, and the auto/p modes over expose everything and have no changeable lens or clip on filters so you tend to get horrible washed out colors or overly saturated tones, even when bracketing exposures are used)
5, True Whitebalance control! The d40 does auto whitebalance, nothing else. With the d60, you can get creative and use images on the camera as a white balance setting, or set your own based on something in front of you as well as many built in ones. It greatly corrects indoor lighting and low light pictures in dark places to get the exact color of what you see in front of you. What you see is what you get when you set it correctly in manual mode(Pre). Auto tends to leave different color temperatures than what is really there, either too blue, or too yellow/red. Manually setting the white point before a shot is something many photographers would do on a film camera, with metering and all kinds of things involved, this makes it dead simple and easy to use.
I’m not a pro camera guy or anything, but I do like to take photos. I have been getting more and more into photography over the years and know the value of a good camera is key to nice shots. Yes, there are those who say, camera does not matter, its the photographer and the subject, but more than having a good eye is knowing that you don’t need a $5,000 camera to get the same shots you can with a $200 camera. It just depends on how hard you want to work at it and what format you want to live with. I don’t have the patience with Film cameras, and wasting time developing blurry images is not why I like to shoot pictures learning how to correct things like a Camera Jedi. I also don’t like simple point and shoot cameras because they leave out the part of experimenting with lenses and filters, as well as the intimate joy of getting that most excellent shot, which can often be impossible with the wrong camera. The d60, for me, is the middle ground, somewhere between pro-sumer and consumer price range while giving next to stellar pro shots on anyones budget!
I guess it was bound to happen eventually. I mean, they are like Microsoft in some respect when it comes to hackers, every ones love-hate relationship, in that they don’t like them, yet they bother to try to hack them anyway. Personally I think it only proves the point that they are popular to begin with and for good reason, regardless of how (un)important the people who hacked them think they are, these so called hackers probably wouldn’t have been inspired to learn about such things without people like Dan and Kevin in the first place. Its ironic, but every time I see a black hat do something like this and the recent “anti-sec” movement, it only brings more attention to the people they are trying to make examples out of, causing the exact opposite of what they intended to do, which is show how irelavent someone is. They only end up making those people more popular, which probably pisses themselves off even more. I call for a new movement, the “Anti-tard-hat” movement, where black hats to hack hackers get no more press for their actions. In other words, move along people, nothing to see here…
Im currently looking for a new job, so anyone in the South Jersey area hiring IT people, specifically Networking and Cisco skills, please give me a shout! Oh, and by the way, I will work, for money!
I think in part, the Health Care Reform they offered back in 93 would have probably put some caps on what we have with todays healthcare. In part, it was probably ahead of its time, even though everyone seemed to appose it at the time they tried to implement it. Now we have some 20/20 vision, where hindsight shows us what really happened and I have to say, we lost out in the end.
Here is an article which explains it better than I could, but this is more than just my opinion, its a clear show of what was to come and what ended up taking place after the Clinton’s plan died in Congress. Hopefully Obama can get a grapple on the skyrocketing costs while forcing the insurance companies to work for us, not against us.
I see they recently brought back the Electric Company to PBS, but its nothing compared to the original from the 70’s! The new episodes try to bring back that magic of the educational show but it lacks one thing. Star Power! If you go back and watch the acting and performance of the orginal, you will notice, there were lots of famouse people who first started their careers doing the show or during the height of their careers. Morgan Freeman for one, Bill Cosby, Carol Burnett, Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, and so on. Also, the skits were better, the music was fun and funky for kids and the cartoons are just from an era that can’t be replaced. Hulu, in its infinite wisdon, has brought back the show! Er, at least, uploaded the old episodes so you can watch them on their site. For example, one of the best of, http://www.hulu.com/watch/84268/the-electric-company-1970s-episode-32
“Hak5.org was defaced, rm’d, and is being restored ASAP. No speculation about the hack, please.”
Noticed it was gone yesterday, but have now confirmed via IRC that yes, the site is down. I know they don’t want to go into details about it in IRC, but for the life of me, I am surprised they lasted this long without a hit like this. They are a pretty big target considerign the volume of traffic they get and the viewers who watch the show. I just hope they had backups of everything, because I know how hard they work on the show in the spare time of their regular life plus day jobs, it would suck to see it all destroyed by some loser who managed to break into the site.
Kind of ironic though, a site about hacking getting hacked…
Henry Paulson was one of the proponents of the October 2008 Bank bailout. I said it then and I will say it now, he pushed to get this deal put through for several reasons. One being that he was retiring with the oncoming election and knew he would be replaced at the end of his term, and two, he had stock in one of the failing banks and knew that he would not get anything out of his retirement stocks. So in his infinite wisdom, he basically hoodwinked Congress and got money put into the banks he had an interest in, Goldman-Sachs. Now, I am watching the douche bag explain to Congress what happened and where things fell apart. He can’t seem to keep any of his stories straight, and he looks like that vein in the side of his head is about to burst in a massive heart attack. If his face gets any more flushed I’d say you could probably cook some eggs on it…
Paulson, you lied. Admit it. And anyone who bought his line of crap is just as much to blame, because if I could see it back then he was only looking out for his own bank account, other people in the government would have as well yet they let it happen anyway.
We need a new slate of people in Congress and as sad as it is to say, Obama is not exactly doing the job he set out to do either. I voted for him, but I have to admit, I would much rather he stick to his guns and push for the things he campaigned about than compromising on any of those issues. We voted for him because of what he set out to do and accomplish, not for what Congress is going to dictate and pile on top of his policies. Too much partisan bickering and too much back pedaling by all of Congress at this point is causing things to move too slowly. They need to let go of the reigns and let Obama pass the things he set out to do and then work on implementing these policies, spending the money where it needs to go and where Bush never invested it in the first place (what domestic policy did Bush have? None!), the people and infrastructure of our states, our environment, healthcare, education and new jobs.
Watching the Michael Jackson memorial right now on TV. I’m supposed to be asleep because I have work tonight, but something kept me awake for some reason. I had no idea today was the memorial services, and just happened to turn on the tube and catch it. I’m glad I caught some of it…
