To those who would like to learn what crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by the likes of F***i, the CDC and Johns Hopkins and a multitude of others I suggest reading Robert Kennedy's book "The Real Anthony F***i".

Of course, those totally brainwashed by the endless firehose of propaganda vomited forth by the media and the medical "experts" will not want to see what was done.

And let me point out that none of the perpetrators mentioned by name (the aforementioned, Bill Gates, and a host of other people and institutions) have sued Mr Kennedy - maybe because the defense against slander is that it is the t***h? That's the difference between books and media (from the rag called the New York Times to the moron in his mommy's basement spewing wh**ever on a blogpost) - the latter can get away with publishing just about anything since they can issue a "correction" a month later (which nobody ever sees).

So again, I invite all those who pompously took that holier than thou position for those of us who did not take the jab to see just how much you were hoodwinked.

I recall seeing a TED Talk years ago where the presenter described the origin of GPS - it was really thanks to the Russians orbiting Sputnik, on which which they purposefully installed a radio signal transmitter so anyone around the world could hear proof that the satellite was actually orbiting, including being able to locate it's position above by decoding the doppler effect on the radio signal (approaching compresses the waves, departing extends them, like an ambulance siren approaching and leaving where you are standing).

So a couple of scientists at Bell Labs talked about how they might be able to reverse engineer the concept in such a way as to ascertain one's position on the ground by interpreting the signals received from multiple satellites whose positions are known - their boss liked the idea and the Navy was looking for a way to get submarines a reliable tracking system - and off to the races.

I'm surprised nobody brought up this NY POst article...

https://nypost.com/2024/02/21/business/googles-ai-chatbot-gemini-makes-diverse-images-of-founding-fathers-popes-and-vikings-so-woke-its-unusable/

Woke and A.I. - what could possibly go wrong?

the really sad thing is that ole Carleton there made a second entry on what is apparently the same topic, with zero detail...

Ah - I see from the sample image you posted that....oh, wait...you did not post anything that could give anybody any kind of clue as to what the heck you are talking about.

Or maybe this is a little game? Okay, I'll play...

"yellow squiggle in upper corner"

Right?

And Depth of Focus is not Depth of Field - the latter (as most on this forum know) has to do with the band of acceptable sharpness in front of the lens; the former is the depth of sharpness behind the lens at the focus plane (where the film or digital imaging chip lays).

But perhaps with the upcoming cold fusion power plants we will see the light.

Well, technically, the camera generates pixels based on the photon counts in adjacent photo sites that have red, Green or Blue filters on top of them, right? So even that begs the question of how one defines a pixel...is it the individual photosite or the blend that creates a given color at a point in the X/Y array?

As I understand it, the figures given by printer manufacturers (no doubt coerced by the marketing teams) are not indicative of how fine a series of lines can be actually printed on the substrate - because neither the platen nor the carriage have the physical ability to move in such minute distances. Rather, those 1440 and 2880 numbers refer to the size of the actual ink droplets that are "spit" from the print head - which can impact how finely and smoothly the CYM colors can blend and thus make for perhaps smoother tonal gradients. Of course, using that thinking, I guess dye sublimation printers could be advertised as having a billion DPI capability since the sublimated dye gasses are mixing at the molecular level.

Even the actual printer drivers (the program that runs the printer at the machine level) are not as fine tuned as 1440 DPI - as I understand it smaller printers' drivers might have a 720 DPI while larger format printers are 360 or so DPI.

Well that, of course, is an entirely different problem...for which there is no pat solution. You'll just have to wait and see...and if the forecast looks decent a few days in advance make a run for it.

Why, wasn't George Orwell fairly prescient with "1984" - he seemed to predict where we find ourselves today.

Bear in mind that the entire timeframe of the eclipse is a few minutes - and even from the very beginning of the moon starting to cover the edge of the sun until the time it finally exposes the sun completely is only a few hours. Plus - you do not need to be in some special place to capture it - you are basically going to be loking up. My point is - driving all of 15 miles and finding a parking lot is not (or at least hopefully is not) that big a deal.

Last October, I drove 3 hours to Roswell to catch the previous eclipse - and took my shots from the parking lot of the motel in which i was staying. In April I am driving 9 hours to San Antonio to get in the path, but again will likely just set up in the parking lot of the motel.

That said - you must use a special (typically 17 stop) ND filter in order to shoot the sun directly - otherwise if you use a DSLR you can blind yourself, but with a mirrorless camera you will destroy the sensor by pointing the lens directly at the sun. Also, I opted to shoot in exposure bracket mode, in case the meter was fooled by the unusual lighting. Oh, and these were taken with a Fuji X-T5 and 150-600MM lens plus 2X TC, in case you're wondering.

Anyway, my point is, you don't need to make a huge fuss - as long as you have the solar filter to protect your camera (and eye) - and given you are merely 15 miles from the path of totality it seems to me a no brainer to make the drive.

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Well, I've had the 150-600 for 18 months now and use it on both the X-T4 and X-T5 and FWIW have never had this problem with either body...perhaps you just got "lucky" with that second lens.

Well. I imagine their resolution could find limits at some point if there were to be a, oh, 1 gigapixel chip, right? That said, though, it would be fantastic - put a super wide angle lens on that 1GP body and never take it off - just crop to whatever angle of view you want for the final shot and have plenty of resolution to make poster sized prints! Neat!

I mean, sure, the initial question is banal, but think of the possibilities of that theoretical infinite resolution wide angle lens on a gigapixel chip!

Some are - though for slides or negatives the scanner needs to have a light source in the cover to illuminate from behind and a holder to keep the film flat - Epson makes some models that folks seem to like.

While the impact of this tech on still images is one thing, I think the real impact in the creative community will be felt in the animated versions. This same AI tech can be used to make what are essentially photo-realistic moving images - a gorgeous young woman walking down a pier on a lake with the wind blowing her hair and dress - generated without any human standing in front of a camera, etc. In fact, apparently a couple of top earning "models" on the quasi-porn site "onlyfans" are just that - completely computer generated (and raking in tens of thousands of dollars a month for whoever programmed them). I have heard that for a year or two now many car commercials where we see that vehicle driving across the salt flats or around a mountain switchback or whatever are in fact AI - this time the computer generates that Mustang or Range Rover or whatever over a battery powered blank "sled" that has four wheels (with an adjustable wheelbase) - basically a white box on wheels, as an overlay to give us the impression it was an actual car making those maneuvers.

That is what a large part of the SAG-AFTRA actor strike was about - actors are (rightfully) scared they will be replaced. Which they will. The current argument had to do with producers wanting to pay an actor for a day to take photos that they could then use, royalty free, for any purpose in perpetuity. And it seems perhaps the actors got a bit of a reprieve for now. But there is little doubt that in a few years - 2? 5? certainly before 10 - non existent actors will be generated entirely using AI - no longer will producers need to pay Brad Pitt (or whoever) royalties for using their likeness - we can see above the nature of these images that required no humans on sound stages or in front of or behind cameras, etc.

So once Hollywood is essentially decimated (and imagine if A.I. is put to use to write scripts as well!) what I foresee is a major shift in the world of thespians. Actors who truly love the craft, who want to act in front of other people, will migrate to the stage - live theater might make a comeback as audiences start to get fed up with "fake" talent. Meanwhile, those who today are celebrities without talent (they slept with the right director, whatever) - who I personally think constitutes the majority of that celebrity actor group - they will fade away and perhaps have to learn to code or something.