If ever you wanted to buy a high end camera, now is the time..... they will likely go cheap what with being discontinued.
Konica Minolta to exit photo business Konica Minolta Photo Imaging Inc. has decided to withdraw from the photo business, it said Thursday. The Japanese company plans to exit the film and digital camera markets by March this year and will transfer part of its assets related to digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras to Sony Corp., it said. The decision highlights how tough times are now for many long-time camera manufacturers. The introduction of digital photography in the 1990s brought with it a large number of new competitors, and specialist knowledge built up over the years related to things like the chemical reaction to light was superseded in importance by the ability to design and make semiconductor chips. Last week Nikon Corp. said it would end production of most of its 35 millimeter film cameras to focus on digital models.
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Konica Minolta throws in the towel, quits the camera biz Posted Jan 19th 2006 4:14AM by Paul Miller Filed under: Digital Cameras Not to be outdone by Nikon, who recently announced a nearly complete exit of the film-based camera business, Konica Minolta has just announced that they're pulling out of the camera biz altogether. The company announced that they were scaling back consumer operations in November, especially killing off their film line and mainly concentrating their DSLR line. Now they're ceasing operation altogether, along with ending their film and photo paper production. Sony will be continue to manufacture cameras compatible with Konica Minolta lenses, which furthers a partnership the two companies formed last year, and will receive some of Konica Minolta's DSLR related assets.
How To Make Awesome Cars A Reality (330 mpg diesel-hybrid) January 18, 2006 04:56 PM - Michael G. Richard, near Ottawa This concept car is amazing! It is a 2-seat, 3-wheel serial (bio)diesel hybrid called the Aptera: It achieves 330 miles per gallon (0.7 liter/100 kilometers!) in normal city and highway driving, has a 0.055-0.06 coefficient of drag (much lower than even the best current hybrids, and even than other cool prototypes like the 70 mpg Boxfish diesel hybrid by DaimlerChrysler) and a projected price of less than $20,000. Great uh? But the reaction of most people when they look at it is: "It'll never pass safety tests! You'd get run over by an Escalade!" They are most probably right; if that vehicle was to be on our roads at the same time as the huge vehicles we currently have, it would be at a ginormous safety disadvantage. But if it was on the road with other vehicles of the same type (not necessarily as small, but in the same ballpark of weight and efficiency -- we'd gladly settle for the bigger 200 mpg biodisel-hybrid compromise that could be designed using the same technologies), the playing fiel would be level and safety would not be such a problem. It is the same thing with SUVs vs cars; road mortality had been dropping for decades until suburbanites & other people who don't need them started buying trucks, and now road-safety has been compromised. The real problem is: Even if we can make very efficient vehicles with radical new designs, how do we get them on the road? How do we make the transition from our current breed of heavy metal machines to small aerodynamic composite-materials hybrids (and fuel cells) without having both types share the pavement? The faster that happens, the best it will be for all of us, but the way things are going, it will probably unfold in North-America is like this: oil will keep getting more expensive, SUVs sales will keep going down, cars will progressively slim down (Small Japanese Cars Are Coming to North-America, Again) and hybridizing until North-America catches up to Europe and Asia in vehicle size. Then it will be a lot more realistic to envision a move to such cool vehicles as the concept-hybrid mentioned at the beginning of this post. Thanks to ::Green Car Congress for the info on the Aptera. The production powertrain will consist of a 12 hp (9 kW) diesel engine with a 25 hp (19 kW) permanent magnet DC motor. (Accelerated Composites is designing the prototype with a gasoline engine for cost.) The electric motor is coupled through a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT); when the engine is off the car can run on the electric motor alone. [...] The Aptera weighs 850 lbs and is made almost entirely of lightweight composites, based on Accelerated Composites’ Panelized Automated Composite Construction (PAC2) process. It accelerates from 0–60 mph in 11 seconds, and has a top speed of 95 mph. ::Accelerated Composites, ::A 330 mpg Car For Everyone (pdf)
TALK ABOUT MOTIVATION FOR LOSING WEIGHT:
Narrow escape for dieting convict An Australian prisoner has broken out of a top security jail by losing enough weight to squeeze through a gap between the bars of his cell and a brick wall. Robert Cole, 36, was serving time for armed robbery and assault. He went into prison weighing 70kg and left it weighing 56kg, according to the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. Authorities at Sydney's Long Bay Prison were "obviously very embarrassed" by the escape, a prison official told the AFP news agency. The government of New South Wales state has called for a meeting of top prison officials following the escape - the third from a state prison in the last week. 'Armed and dangerous' Cole is believed to have lost his weight in a matter of weeks. To aid his passage through the gap, he used an unknown implement to chip away at brickwork around his window. Prison officials discovered he had fled on Wednesday morning, leaving puffed-up pillows under his blanket to give the impression he was still in bed. A judge two years ago concluded he was too mentally ill to stand trial. Police have warned the escaped man is dangerous and may well be armed.
TAKING PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD TO NEW HEIGHTS:
Snake 'befriends' snack hamster A rodent-eating snake and a hamster have developed an unusual bond at a zoo in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, the Associated Press news agency reports. Their relationship began in October last year, when zookeepers presented the hamster to the snake as a meal. The rat snake, however, refused to eat the rodent. The two now share a cage. "I have never seen anything like it," a zookeeper at the Mutsugoro Okoku zoo said, adding that the hamster was known to fall asleep sitting atop the snake. The hamster was initially offered to Aochan, the two-year-old rat snake, because it was refusing to eat frozen mice, the Associated Press reports. As a joke, the zookeeper said they named the hamster Gohan - the Japanese word for meal. "I don't think there's any danger. Aochan seems to enjoy Gohan's company very much," zookeeper Kazuya Yamamoto told the Associated Press news agency. The apparent friendship between the snake and hamster is one of many reported bonds spanning the divide between predator and prey.
(as of this moment moscow city is at -15 degrees F. It was -35 yesterday. And for the record, we do understand them... we understand that they are NUTS)
ONE OF MY FAVORITE SUBJECTS, CITY RATS.
The Wireless VGA Extender eliminates some other wires too Posted Jan 19th 2006 8:00AM by Paul Miller Filed under: Displays, Wireless Every fanboy has a diagram stashed somewhere detailing some level of wire-free desktop nirvana, but if only he could eliminate that pesky VGA cable (and those annoying power cables, still working on that one) then he would be truly happy. Well the Wireless VGA Extender is here to help, and not only does it take your VGA signal wireless, up to a 1024x768 resolution, but it can transmit your PS/2 plugs for a keyboard and mouse, and an audio jack across the room with it. The range is 100 feet, which should be plenty for most fanboy operations, however the ordering form says that the device isn't for residential use, so you'll have to work it out with the FCC if this is ever going to end up in your living room.
Ted: Automatic TV torrent downloader Posted Jan 18th 2006 5:15PM by Jordan Running Filed under: Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware Being TiVoless, I've tried a couple programs that claim to be able to automatically download the TV shows I want to see, but have always returned to doing it manually. Ted is another such program, but it has the distinction of being a cross-platform Java app. It also seems to have a clean and simple interface, but looks like it only supports one RSS feed for each show, which may cause problems if the shows you like are on the obscure side. When it finds a new episode of one of your shows, it'll automatically load it into the BitTorrent client of your choice and start the download.
COOL:
By Nick Allen |
As Nasa prepares to launch a mission to Pluto, the space tourism industry is gearing up for blast off in 2009. But before you book a ticket, consider this: weightlessness is just falling with style, and as for a spaceship... Planet Earth is the best you'll find, and it's free! It is easy to forget that we are in space already. We are moving through it on a rocky globe that has sufficient gravity to hold us firmly to its surface. Indeed, Earth has so much gravitational attraction that - unlike the Moon - it can hold down individual gas molecules and provide us with an atmosphere. "Spaceship Earth" even rotates to give us a good view all round. Packed with food, minerals and natural resources, it is by far the best spaceship we have. But of course by space we normally mean "outer space" - the immense, cold, dark place up there, where "nobody can hear you scream".
Pretty good article on a reporters trip to antarctica.... pretty cool;
so a wine and cheese party is not such a good idea.... unless your buying cheap wine:
- 19 January 2006
- From New Scientist Print Edition
NEXT time you are organising a cheese and wine party, don't waste your money on quality wine. Cheese masks the subtle flavours that mark out a good wine, so your guests won't be able to tell that you are serving them cheap stuff. Bernice Madrigal-Galan and Hildegarde Heymann of the University of California, Davis, presented trained wine tasters with cheap and expensive versions of four different varieties of wine. The tasters evaluated the strength of various flavours and aromas in each wine both alone and when preceded by eight different cheeses. They found that cheese suppressed just about everything, including berry and oak flavours, sourness and astringency. Only butter aroma was enhanced by cheese, and that is probably because cheese itself contains the molecule responsible for a buttery wine aroma, Heymann says. Strong cheeses suppressed flavours more than milder cheeses, but flavours of all wines were suppressed. In other words, there are no magical wine and cheese pairings. Heymann suggests that proteins in the cheese may bind to flavour molecules in the wine, or that fat from the cheese may coat the mouth, deadening the tasters' perception of the wines' flavours. The paper will appear online in March in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.
Sun Farm Network January 19, 2006 07:23 AM - John Laumer, Philadelphia The Sun Farm Network, a turnkey service currently available only to residential properties in New Jersey, makes solar power affordable and easy to use. In addition to providing the equipment, design, and installation, the Network offers financing that eliminates up-front cost, and support programs that make solar power easy. Customers pay for their solar equipment out of the cost savings realized through reduced utility bills. Sun Farm's stated goal is to make their customers' equivalent cost of solar electricity at least 10% less than what they would ordinarily pay in utility bills. Interesting model. Let us know if you've heard of similar services elsewhere.
Tax Breaks for Going Green January 19, 2006 06:00 AM - Lloyd Alter, Toronto Oh, to live in America, where the Government actually promotes energy efficiency through the Energy Policy Act. Readers of the Wall Street Journal never miss a dodge, and neither should you: read here in the ::Real Estate Journal
Straw, Sticks & Bricks - An EcoMaterials Resource January 19, 2006 12:56 AM - Warren McLaren, Sydney Looking for a one-stop-shop to buy the various green building materials we are regularly noting here? Give Straw, Sticks & Bricks a whirl. We picked just a few from their vast selection for our little photo montage above. First is bamboo (nuff said!) flooring, followed by Durapalm, a palmwood lumber created from plantation palm trees no longer producing plam nuts (often after 80 years). Next in line is yet another Treehugger fav: Green roofs) can now be created as a modular system - 24" x 24" "trays" complete with “the soil medium and plantings appropriate for your climate!” The rich, gold coloured timber then along the collage is Mesquite salvaged from the burn piles of agricultural land clearing. And last, but not least, is Interface’s FLOR carpet derived from an annually renewable resource - corn. These materials and a whole whack more can be supplied by Straw, Sticks & Bricks, who’ve had a retail store in Lincoln, Nebraska since earth day 2004, and recently opened another in Kansas City. They also ship nationwide, via their website — ::Straw, Sticks & Bricks.
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