LinuxFest Northwest 2009 takes place April 25 & 26th, at the Bellingham Technical College (BTC). This is the 10th anniversary of LinuxFest. Check out the web site: Linuxfest Norhwest 2009.

I supposed we’ve gotten used to our Federcal Communications Commission (FCC) failing to do much useful with the 300 million taxpayer dollars we give them every year. But now we have a new value consideration for American taxpayers: what is world wide embarassment worth? What is the value of the FCC propping American’s up as the laughing stock of the world, and hypocritcal to boot?

Our FCC just fined a television show $1.4 million dollars for showing a bare bottom (from the side) and a small portion of the side of a woman’s bare breast (from the side, across the room), nearly 5 years ago, before 10pm. No, I’m not kidding. Eerily Taliban-like, no? reports are everywhere… making the worldwide part of the embarassment a sure thing. You can read the details here and here and here.

Personally I cringe whenever I see any of the following these days:

1. an American criticizing a European nation, yes, that includes France
2. the value of my US dollars compared to the Euro, the Canadian dollar, the Chinese Yuan, the Jananese Yen…or almost any other modern currency
3. the prospects for the current crop of presidential candidates actually changing the current disaster we call our government
4. an American saying “stop bitching… we still have it better than other countries“. Yeah, that’s the spirit. Celebrate mediocity all the way until we are just a hair better off than the worst. What then, a “yea we’re not the worst” celebration?

For all those who say we don’t need to get involved because our voters and our government will work it all out eventually, I have to ask, at what price?

It seems the Internet is changing things for the better. In my last post about the Canon EOS-1D MkIII autofocus, I commented how camera manufacturers get away with shipping inferior computerized cameras because we users cannot afford to properly test the single units we purchase. If you get a soft focuser or a stutterer you really can’t make a case with Canon or the dealer, because there are simply too many variables and it is too difficult to prove.

Well, that back focusing issue I highlighted has become a big issue, and the fine work done by the folks at ProPhotoHome is making big waves. NatureScapes now has a lengthy thread describing the issues nature photographers have had with the new MkIII, especially those trying to shoot flying birds. The Rob Galbraith people seem pissed, and were quick to test the new firmware release to see if it fixed the problem: it didn’t.

If the Internet enables grass roots action, we see it happening here. Some of the commentary from the very influential digital photogaphy websites, regarding this new $5,000 digital camera from Canon:

From Rob Galbraith.com:

…on sunny, warm days, the EOS-1D Mark III’s ability to grab focus initially, hold focus on static subjects and track moving subjects is both unusably poor and no match for the camera’s predecessor, the EOS-1D Mark II N…We’ve now shot and analysed about 3400 track, soccer and test frames taken over two days… and the results are effectively the same as before: lots of out-of-focus frames that should be crisply focused. And, as before, simply putting the EOS-1D Mark II N onto the same lens and shooting the same stuff produces a high percentage of in-focus photos.