Misc. Ramblings

It was 1998 or so since the last time the Rolling Stones played a public concert here in Hawaii (I seem to recall they had a private concert for a soft drink convention or some such) and it seems it may be awhile before they do another. The Stones had scheduled a concert later this month but canceled it yesterday. From what I understand, the stated reason is lead singer Mick Jagger is having throat problems and needs to rest it to avoid complications.

If this is the reason, then more power to him and I wish him well. But when the tickets went on sale earlier this year, I was ready to stand in line (figuratively speaking, via online ticket sales) to get my hands on a couple of tickets. But on the morning that tickets went on sale, I found that the cheapest tickets on the floor of stadium were $350 USD and that the best seats were going for $600! SWMBO and I reluctantly decided to pass because we just don't have that kind of money to spend on, well, anything.

But I wonder if a lot of other local people also decided to pass. I mean, the last time the Stones were here the tickets were under $200 for the best seats. In fact, I seem to recall good floor seats going for about $65 or so. Hence, I would not be surprised if the concert was canceled more due to poor ticket sales rather than poor health. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Dan Bricklin is at again. The co-founder of VisiCalc, the beginning of what is known as the modern spreadsheet, is working on something called wikiCalc. What is wikiCalc? As far as I can understand it, without having installed and used it, is that it is a web authoring tool designed for a very specialized niche (you can read his description of it here). Namely, those who need to display tabular data. The program uses the spreadsheet metaphor as its browser-based interface. You can do the usual calculations and cell formating like a spreadsheet and keep a 2-D database. I'm not sure if you would like to use it for more than that but who knows what uses people will find for it (just as spreadsheets have been used for all kinds of unrelated tasks).

Note, it's apparently feature complete, but still in beta so you may not want to install it on a production PC. That said, if you need to display this type of data in HTML, and don't want to learn a lot of CSS or table syntax, this may be the program for you. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

If this DistroWatch article (scroll down) that points to an informal poll is correct, "almost 44% percent of those who attempted the upgrade process encountered "serious problems" or reported that their upgrades went "really bad"." So, I guess, I was in good company when I had problems upgrading from 6.06 to 6.10.

I think almost 44% is sufficiently large that upgraders should do so with caution, if at all. Personally, at this point, I think it is wise to do a clean install, instead. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

It's raining again. It tends to do that during our rainy season. The problem is when too much rain falls during too short a time. Like yesterday when the rain caused a mud slide that closed one of the main tunnels between Honolulu and the windward side of the island.

As seems to be the case when these things happen, traffic diverted to other routes. This additional traffic was greater than the carrying capacity of the roads and everything soon came to a standstill.

Fortunately for yours truly, I don't live on that side of the island and I was able to get home without major slowdowns. That said, traffic will get worse everywhere as more people in more vehicles flood the roads.

I don't know if there is one answer that will solve what may be a very complex problem. Our Mayor believes a fixed light rail rapid transit system is the answer. But as the projected costs keep going up (now set at between $3.6 and $4.5 billion), it seems like this solution may be slowly slipping away.

If not this, what? I wonder, as I hear the rain falling outside and I get ready for the morning commute.

Aloha!

Also seeing one of my posts was John Umbaugh. You may remember I got an unsolicited email from someone saying his name was John Umbaugh, a student in Michigan working a school project. The email asked several personal questions so I decided not to respond directly to the email but rather to post about it. Well, John heard of the post and sent a follow-up email which I post below.

Hello. The other day somebody drew my attention to your entry (http://seto.org/mt-diary/2006/10/open_letter_to.html) about my blog project. I wanted to leave a comment, but I see that comments have been disabled for that post. In any case, I still want to give you a response that - hopefully - addressed most or all of your questions. Below is the text of the comment that I composed.

I'll also post this on my blog site in case others might have similar concerns. Thanks!

-John

---

Hello!

If he were for real, he probably would have come to my site and got it from the link I have on the right side of the page.

In fact, I don't remember how I obtained your email address, but it's been my experience that often people prefer one over the other - or, in the case of blogs with multiple authors, there are several emails, and I have mistakenly emailed the non-primary contact, if there is one.

If so, he would know my full name because it across the banner at the top of this page.

Sometimes people use pseudonyms or even complete alternate identities for their blogs. Sometimes it's even a fictional blog with fictional characters. Rather than leave it to chance or to my own judgment, I wanted to have blog authors characterize their own identites to me.

In fact, if he has come to my site questions three and four are also strange.

Well, if in the case the participant's email was different, I thought that these would facilitate matters. Also, it was my intent that my call for participation would be circulated to other blog authors who might be interested. I know that I've gotten at least a few other interested authors this way.

In today's environment of epidemic identity theft, question five is none of his business. If he wants to give ranges of ages (e.g., 20 to 29, 30 to 39, etc.), I might answer that. But my actual birth date? Shirley you jest.

Birthdates are in a sense more reliable than ages because, if for example I do testing three months from now, on average one fourth of the ages will be inaccurate by one year (assuming that authors were honest with me in the first place about their ages!). That was my rationale.

The bottom line is, if this were a sanctioned study of the University of Michigan I would think John would need to get what is known as Informed Consent.

Perhaps indeed I did not provide as much material as I should have on this matter. I have posted my method here: http://citym.org/blog_author_feature_extraction.pdf . I think this explains in a fair amount of detail why I need the information. As far as safeguarding the information - well, I certainly won't be distributing it to anyone, if that's what you mean. In terms of this being a "sanctioned study" of the University of Michigan - this is simply my class final project, not an "official study."

And finally, neither his email address nor his website is hosted by the University of Michigan.

I _do_ have a Michigan email (you can search for my last name "umbaugh" on the umich directory for confirmation: directory.umich.edu), but I find it much more convenient to use gmail for my mail, and my personal site for hosting the material.

In order for me to give this type of information I have to trust and believe John is who he says he is and will use the data for the purpose he states. But since I don't trust unsolicited emails, especially ones that ask these types of question, I will not be answering John. If you are out there John, sorry, but I decline to participate.

OK! Have a good day!

--
John Umbaugh
citym.org | qwer.us | gamesresearch.com

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

Young Jonathan Riddell of Ubuntu saw my post on problems upgrading Kubuntu 6.06 to 6.10 and asked for additional information (I can call him young because I am twice his age!). I sent to him all that I could recall but he notes on his own blog that "upgrading from Dapper [6.06] to Edgy [6.10] is nasty, apt's dist-upgrade just doesn't work in too many cases. So we need to port the Ubuntu upgrader tool to Kubuntu, which should be possible now that pyKDE is said to work with the embedded Konsole." I'm no expert, but all I can say is Amen!, Brother Jonathan. The Friend speaks my mind!

I have no doubt that if you live in Hollywood, you are probably used to seeing long, 18-wheel trucks parked everywhere with various crafts people hustling to and fro. But here in Hawai'i, although there are some exceptions, (e.g., Hawaii 5-0, Magnum PI, etc.), you don't see that too often.

Well, today, the cast and crew of ABC's TV show "Lost" was in our building filming. Although it is interesting to see the process they go through to film/tape even a very brief scene, their being here did cause some complications.

See, we were holding a conference in the Supreme Courtroom with about 90 people attending while, at the same time, they were filming literally outside the doors of the courtroom. I know it was difficult for us inside to hear because of the noise from outside and, I'm sure, it was difficult for them to film with all the noise that was coming from inside.

I don't know how it was that both events came to be scheduled on the same day, in the same area, but I hope it never happens again!

Above is a low resolution camera phone picture I took of the huge, hot lights they use. The view is looking out of the courtroom into the rotunda. No, you won't see any actors. They are all below on the first floor. By the time I had the opportunity to take the photo (just after the conference finished up), they had already moved below. But there was one stunning woman dressed in a short, black mini-skirt. Boy, she was, as the saying goes, easy on the eyes [ducking and taking cover]. I'm not a Lostie so I couldn't tell you who she is. Sorry.

Aloha!

I had planned on doing a get out the vote post yesterday. You know, the one about how each vote counts so do your civic duty and vote (early, and often...). But actually, if you want to influence legislation, that's usually not the most effective way of doing it.

The best way is to get to know and financially support your representatives. Once you have started a conversation with him or her, you can then try to persuade your representative to come around to your way of thinking. Access doesn't mean you will always get your way, but it helps.

That said, conversations are two way streets. That is, it takes two to converse. Yet, President Bush and many fellow traveling Republicans made it easy on voters yesterday by not listening to them.

In no way did I anticipate the Republicans imploding so quickly. But, I guess, I underestimated the hubris of the certain Republicans who ruled, rather than led our country. I underestimated the Imperial Presidency and his compliant, fellow Republican controlled Congress. In turn, the Republicans underestimated the voters.

As it became clear to the majority of US citizens, (which, apparently, does not include the President and these Republicans) that the war in Iraq was not going as planned and that a new strategy was required, the President refused to deal with reality and refused to listen to the people.

These Republicans, having refused to listen, left the voters with only one choice: vote for a change.

Looking forward, I have four words for Democrats: "Don't screw it up." The voters have given you an opportunity to listen to them. If you do, many good things are possible. If you don't, you will be turned out of office just as surely as the Republicans were.

Aloha!

If you use Kubuntu/Ubuntu and Firefox 2.0 you may have noticed problems with Flash enabled web pages causing Firefox to crash. Interim solutions are here and a forum thread about the problem is here.

The interim solution is:

In the /etc/firefox/firefoxrc file, insert this line:

export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1

YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Linux Journal columnist Nicholas Petreley says the Novell-Microsoft deal "stinks to high heaven." Why? Petreley says Novell is paying MS a percentage of its revenues to stave off patent infringement issues.

This pre-supposes that Novell/SUSE Linux is infringing on MS patents. If so, this may be a serious situation for all distributions of Linux. Petreley says he isn't sure if Novell is just taking a page from the MS playbook and spreading a little fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Still, why pay MS anything if your distribution is not infringing?

I don't know the real reason(s) behind the deal. I have heard it go the other way where MS supposedly had its own patent problems and needed to cover itself by making a deal with Novell. So, who is right?

I don't know. Maybe both versions are wrong. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

I came across this site over the weekend. I thought it might help get your week started. Its a listing of the funniest photos on the web.

There are a couple that I found amusing. Below is one of them. May the Force be with you.

Aloha!

December is looking to be a good month for Linux lovers. Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 is set to ship on December 4. OpenSUSE 10.2 is set for December 7th (hmmm, maybe they could have selected another day). And Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is scheduled to go out the door sometime that month. As always, deadlines can and do change so your mileage may vary. Insert disclaimer here. Dates and links via DistroWatch.com.

Aloha!

According to this article in Forbes, outgoing Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (Republican) is shocked, SHOCKED that anyone would question the ethics of he and his wife receiving gifts through wedding registries at two department stores.

Yes, they were married in 1974. But, apparently, gifts over $100 given to public servants are prohibited by ethics rules unless given by relatives or for an engagement or wedding. So, what does it matter that the wedding was over 30 years ago? And in any case, the governor and his wife are leaving office so surely no one would think the gifts are unethical. Right?

Other articles quote State Sen. Gilbert Baker (Republican), the state Republican Party chairman, saying he was not aware of the registries but saw no problem with them. "I'm glad you let me know about it so I can get online and buy him something,"

To be fair, incoming Democrat Mike Beebe may (or may not) have a few of his own ethics problems. But I am glad that these situations get aired in public so the citizens can make their own determinations.

Aloha!

From Boortz.com .

10. "So she gets the gold and I get the shaft?"
9. "I don't think you would have ruled that way if I'd been a guy (gal)."
8. "I'm really not comfortable raising my right hand and repeating after anyone."
7. "I'm not hiding my income, so help me God."
6. "Why are you picking on me?"
5. "No court is going to tell me what to do!"
4. "You'll have to wait a minute. My cell phone's ringing."
3. "I don't have time for this."
2. "You're the one who should have a psych eval."
1. "With all due respect, Your Honor, have you ever been through a divorce?"

Aloha!

As usual, I'm a little late in celebrating the anniversary of this journal. It was October 20, 1999 when I started posting these mostly short snippets of miscellaneous ramblings. Although I had a website several years prior to that time, I didn't use it to post daily events.

Its been an interesting seven years but I don't know how much longer I can keep going. I mean, what with my life getting a lot busier than it was. Not to mention that sometimes I just don't have anything interesting to say (not that ever stopped me from posting).

Still, I guess I'll continue on for awhile longer...

Aloha!

In 1963, I had barely started going to school when then President John F. Kennedy visited Hawaii (follow this link to the speech he gave upon his arrival).

He came in June, towards what must have been the end of the school year. But I seem to remember the teachers herding all the students to line up along the street near our school because the President's motorcade would be passing by.

Being so young, I doubt I fully understood the importance of the man nor the office he held. I certainly didn't realize that his too short life would end just five months later (on this very day, as it so happens). But I can remember the excitement of seeing the President, even if for a brief instant, while his car passed by. The wave of a hand, and then he was gone.

It was a time of positive and negative possibilities. A time of looking forward, confidently into a future where man would begin the journey to the moon and back. But it was also a time of racial strife, of a widening war in Vietnam, and the threat of nuclear holocaust.

Still, there was an air of optimism during that hot summer day. Yes, there were many problems. But we were confident that these problems could and would be solved.

Recently, current President George Bush laid over on the way back from a visit to Asian countries. Three Honolulu Police Officers, assigned to protect the President's motorcade, were injured, one critically and the others seriously, when the officers' motorcycles skidded out of control on a wet road.

In looking at a photo of the incident and seeing the Secret Service agents and medical staff feverishly attending to the officers, I am filled with flashbacks of other times and places. No, I am not equating what happened to the officers with the shootings/assassination. But the photo brings back memories, not all them good. May we not have to endure such dark times again.

Our best wishes and prayers for the officers and their families.

Aloha!

Tomorrow is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. So, I won't have a post. In addition, I probably won't have a post on Friday since I'm taking vacation time on that day so I can attend the beginning of the holiday season sales. If I don't get around to posting, may you have a great weekend.

Last week Wednesday, I posted about the Honolulu Police Department (HPD) officers who were injured while providing security for President Bush during his short visit to O'ahu. I am very sorry to say that one of the officers died yesterday due to the injuries he suffered from the accident. The Honolulu Star Bulletin has an article on fallen Officer Steve Favela. Officer Favela, age 30, left a wife and four young children (a five-year-old daughter and three sons, ages seven, two and three months). He had served the people of Honolulu for eight years.

The White House issued the following statement: "Officer Favela died from injuries he suffered while protecting us during our visit to Hawaii. We send our condolences to his wife, Barbara, his entire family, and his fellow law enforcement officers. We pray that God will comfort them and that their friends and loved ones will sustain them in this difficult time."

HPD spokesperson Capt. Frank Fujii said of Favela: "I know that Steve was first and foremost a very loving husband, a dedicated, great father, loving son and a great sibling. He is going to be missed by everyone."

On a personal note, based on my own experience from the passing of my father-in-law Sergeant Bobby Ing, a 42-year HPD veteran, and my uncle Detective and Elks Club member William Brown, I know that the Department will provide all the support that it can for the family. But it must still be a devastating time. May the Lord provide His peace and understanding, especially during this Thanksgiving and Christmas season.

Aloha 'Oe

Size, ahem, doesn't always matter. At least, if this New York Times article about digital cameras is correct. It seems they printed three versions of the same image. One each at five, eight, and 13-megapixel resolutions. They then showed them on Times Square and asked passerbys which was which. Of the "dozens" of people who were surveyed, 95% percent could not tell the difference while the other five percent tried but failed to get it right. In fact, according to the article, only one person correctly chose which was which and , the writer feels, even this was a result of random chance, not expertise.

However, since this was a non-scientific, non-double blind experiment you can't say much about the conclusions drawn from this. That said, this sounds to me a lot like double blind studies done on audio perception. It seems there are people who allege they can hear differences in music when said music is played over different types of speaker wire (the more exotic and therefore more expensive, the better). Yet, when these so called golden ears try to tell the difference in controlled, double blind tests, they are unable to do so.

Note, this is not the same as saying there are no differences. Theoretically, there could be. But if there are, the differences appear to be so small as to be below the level of human detection.

I wonder if the same thing isn't happening with digital camera specifications where manufacturers are racing to sell cameras with more and more pixels (with higher and higher prices) because people think they will get sharper, better images (or, at least, manufacturers are either claiming or implying such).

If this article is correct, then unlike the difference between Betamax and VHS, there does not appear to be a difference. So, why spend the extra money on anything above five megapixels? Well, I guess there may be other features that are only available in the higher prices cams. But otherwise, it doesn't make sense to me. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here. Feel free to buy whichever you choose.

By the way, as sort of a bonus rant, I love how manufacturers are adding image stabilization (at an added cost, of course) to their cameras. What is so interesting to me is they are solving a problem they have created. See, a lot of camera shake is being caused by people holding their camera with their arms extended away from their body so that they can view the LCD screen on the back of the camera. This is similar to placing the camera on the end of a pendulum. That is, the camera, at the end of your arms, swings up and down and/or left and right leading to images that, in some light conditions, will result in blur.

However, you probably wouldn't hold the camera this way except many digital cameras don't have optical viewfinders. If they did, you could brace the camera against your face (while looking through the viewfinder), keeping your elbows and arms close to your body, and thus reduce shaking (thereby reducing or eliminating image blur).

An added benefit of optical view finders are that they work great in the sunshine and, conversely, in low light conditions. Both sunshine and darkness wash out every LCD screen I've ever seen. The only downsides I know of are for eyeglass users (because the glasses get in the way of the viewfinder) and if you want to shoot a high or low angle shot (because LCDs allow you to hold the camera away from your eyes, thus making it easier to shoot low or high level shots). Otherwise, why not get a digital camera that has both an optical viewfinder and LCD screen (Sony, Canon, Kodak, and others make models that have both) and have the best of both worlds?

Happy Shopping!

Aloha!

In the rough and tumble world of commercial products, the best doesn't always win. Sometimes, bad marketing triumphs over good products. The most famous example is probably Betamax versus VHS. Although the Sony standard had a visibly superior image, it was VHS that eventually sold more units.

Perhaps a more recent example is the LCD versus plasma TV debate. To my eyes, a good plasma TV is superior to a good LCD. Now, don't get bent out of shape if you prefer LCD. If that's what works for you, great. But to me, plasma has better color, faster response times, better contrast, truer blacks, and you don't need to worry about the angle you are viewing from nor closing the curtains to make the room dark. If we were looking to buy a high definition TV, which we aren't, I wouldn't hesitate to get a plasma.

Unfortunately, the manufacturers seem to be going in the opposite direction. This CNN article says plasma TV sales will peak in 2008 and begin to decline in 2009. I think this could lead to fewer choices and, perhaps, prices being held higher than it would be if there was more demand, selection, and competition.

Obviously, no one, including CNN can predict the future. But if the forecast is correct, I guess we will get a plasma sometime in 2008. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here. Feel free to buy whichever you choose.

According to this article, the TV Land Cable Network has compiled its top 100 greatest TV catch phrases. This being TV, they have a series of count down specials scheduled to air beginning on December 11th.

I'm unfortunately old enough to remember many, but not all of the list. Some that I have used are:

"Book 'em, Danno" (Steve McGarrett, "Hawaii Five-O")

"Danger, Will Robinson" (Robot, "Lost in Space")

"D'oh!" (Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons")

"Jane, you ignorant slut" (Dan Aykroyd to Jane Curtin, "Saturday Night Live")

"Let's be careful out there" (Sgt. Esterhaus, "Hill Street Blues")

"No soup for you!" (The Soup Nazi, "Seinfeld")

"Resistance is futile" (Picard as Borg, "Star Trek: The Next Generation")

"The tribe has spoken" (Jeff Probst, "Survivor")

"Yeah, that's the ticket" (Jon Lovitz as the pathological liar, "Saturday Night Live")

"You look mahvelous!" (Billy Crystal as Fernando, "Saturday Night Live")

Aloha!

The Nebraska State Paper has an article headlined "Too Many Critics Do Not Understand The Duty of Judges". It seems a lot of very earnest and passionate people either don't seem to understand or perhaps don't care that judges are supposed to be impartial.

Let's step back for a minute and define the word impartial. My Oxford Dictionary (10th ed.) says the following: "adj. treating all rivals or disputants equally." My Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed.) defines it as "Unbiased...".

What this means is that the judge is supposed to treat everyone the same, regardless of who may have the more vocal following. Even if it means the judge's life is at risk, he or she is to issue an impartial opinion, based only on the facts of the case and the law.

There are judges that have been killed because they refused to issue a biased opinion. An opinion based on what one group, or even the majority may have wanted, but was contrary to the rule of law. But to do so would have been contrary to what John Adams once hoped: "to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men."

As the article's author put it "Too many people don't understand that a judge is never supposed to make a decision based on what is politically or socially popular with any group - or even with a popular majority, statewide or local." [emphasis in the original] So, for certain groups to loudly proclaim that a judge is not listening to them, and them alone, is not a criticism of the judge. But it may be a criticism of them.

As I've said before, if people have problems with a law, and not all laws proposed by men may be just or fair, then petition their legislators to change the law. In a democracy, this is a way to defend freedom for all.

The author closes with "The independent judiciary is supposed to be independent. The former is obvious. Sadly, it is not obvious to everyone." Let us never forget why the judiciary needs to be independent. For if we fail to do so, the solutions we arrive at may be worse than the problems.

Aloha!

Reader Jon Barrett wrote in to comment on the New York Times posting I did earlier on whether the number of pixels in an image matters once you reach a certain level. His email is below:

Since this got to be fairly lengthy, I decided to e-mail rather than comment on-line.

I don't doubt David Pogue got the results he claimed, however he used an over-simplified methodology which could only reinforce what one can't help but suspect was a predetermined conclusion.

As some of the comments note, the test was flawed. First and foremost, the subject matter was apparently a relatively simple image with not a lot of detail (a baby against a plain background. Since there's not a lot of fine detail to be captured, you don't need a lot of pixels to present it. We don't know what aperture he used for the original photo;sing a wide aperture will give a very shallow depth of field, further reducing available detail. One of the commenters linked to pictures of trees at two different resolutions, and the additional detail in the leaves/needles of the higher resolution image was clearly visible.

Secondly, he didn't mention the downsizing technique used. A straight resizing, casting out every nth pixel, would have different results than any of the resampling algorithms available. What algorithm would most closely represent the different sampling of a smaller pixel-count sensor?

What levels of JPEG compression were used in the downsized files? we all know that degree of compression of a JPEG makes a significant difference in the quality of the image. And very few cameras make zero compression a default JPEG setting.

A better test would have encompassed more than 3 images, and used a more complex image. I'd suggest starting with the large image as he did, performing straight resize as well as a more complex resample to the target resolutions. Add in additional exposures at alternate camera resolutions (as many of the respondents noted, cameras generally offer multiple capture levels). Then, zoom out so crops of the zoomed pictures corresponding to the principal area have the reduced MP count being tested. Then re-position the camera, without zooming, again so that crops provide the same MP count. As a final component, use several cameras from the same product line (and released at approximately the same time) to take the same picture. For instance, use the Canon PowerShot A640, A630, A540 and A530.

I'd also suggest that the final prints be made by a method the average family snapshooter is more likely to use: take the card down to the local Ritz, Wal-Mart or K-Mart for standard machine processing, or use an inexpensive ink-jet printer. It appears that he went to a specialist printing shop; their customized and customizable workflow is designed to minimize loss of quality from even the worst images.

Part 1 (different resampling methods) helps define the effect of resampling on the image.
Part 2 (different camera resolutions) uses the same lens, settings, and sensor to capture the different resolutions. As all resizing is done in-camera, you're minimizing variations in internal processing as well. Comparison with Part 1 allows you to get a better idea of what resizing/resampling algorithm is used in-camera.
Part 3 (zoom and crop) lets you compare the "native" sensor performance, although it introduces lens performance variables due to differing focal lengths and magnifications. IQ at different focal lengths and due to different degrees of magnification are external variables.
Part 4 (move and crop) also allows comparison of "native" sensor performance, while minimizing lens variables due to the zooming. It still leaves effects of magnification on lens quality in play.
Part 5 (different cameras), by using cameras designed around the same time, and from the same product line, you minimize differences in processing and can concentrate more on the differences introduced by the different sensors.

As a quick check, I just took a 6 MP shot from my old D60, resized it in Irfanview to half-size (1.5 MP) and resampled to the same size. There were noticeable differences in colours between the original and the resized images when viewed at the same screen size (10% magnification for the resized ones and 50% for the original). This implies that there's more to MP than just resolution, that colour reproduction enters into the equation.

There's another reason people use the LCD rather than the optical finder (and most Canon PowerShots have optical finders). The framing and parallax of optical finders is a problem; using the LCD, WYSIWYG for a lot less than my DSLRs. Now there are compromises that people could make to allow them to use both, like composing with the LCD and finalizing the shot with the optical finder, but that's also awkward. However, one significant reason IS is creeping into cameras is not operator technique but lens technology. As lenses get longer, and apertures get smaller, exposure times get longer, so camera shake becomes increasingly difficult to control. The smaller sized cameras that are so popular amplify this because they're difficult to brace adequately no matter how you view the image. Standard SLR technique has the photographer supporting the camera from under the lens. Tried that with a pocketable P&S with a 10x, or even a 6x, zoom lens?

Jon Barrett