/dev/nikc/blog

Tim Bray also says that “the best attack on pirates is to make their work more difficult and expensive, while simultaneously making the legal path to products straightforward, easy, and fast.”

Right on Tim, but…

Google’s Android Market lets you install paid applications only if you are in one of the 13 supported countries. The “legal path” is neither “straightforward, easy, or fast” if you don’t live in one of the 13 countries that are supported. Maybe instead of focusing on developing anti-piracy services, Google should add more locations to the paid Android Market.

Android Market and Piracy

By the looks of it, this blog seems to have failed the test of time. I’ve had fuck all to say for over 2 months now. Not even a single link worth posting. Not a single photo worth showing.

So, until I find a new boost of inspiration somewhere, the status of /dev/nikc/blog is discontinued.

Being a subscriber to a plethora of photo blogs, I was very pleased when I recently learned that Google Reader was equipped with a feature to give a lesser preference to “spamming” (i.e. frequently updating) streams by choosing the Sort by Auto, thus diminishing the urge to use the “Mark all as read” button when the reading list grows to numbers uncomprehensible to all but the most brilliant mathematicians in world history.

It was almost like magic, and it seems Google now thinks so too.

What if you could pick up that old gear you used to love photographing with, but just can’t be bothered to use because of the hassle of using film over digital? Surely a thought that has crossed the minds of many of us who think that all that really was essential in a camera body had already peaked by the late 70′s.

Well, there was actually an attempt at a concept enabling you to do just that. Back in 1998 a company called Imagek (later Silicon Film) introduced a digital film concept.

Dpreview hosts an article, dated 1999, containing images of a prototype and the specs. A digital film cassette than can store 24 images, designed to fit common professional and prosumer camera bodies and equipped with a sensor boasting a whopping 1.3 megapixels!

A post on photo.net from 2004 includes a brochure like image for yet another prototype mockup. The thread also contains a good summation describing the general atmosphere surrounding the project:

It isnt vaporware; more like no taxes; peace in the middle east; the 100MPG carburetor; the paperless office or paperless bathroom; a woman who has only one pair of shoes; kids who dont ask for money; etc.

Whether or not it was ever more than a joke is hard to say, but, sadly, this dream will probably never be a reality.