Nothing defines mobile tech more than automobiles, and GM bringing Android to the Chevy Volt shows how technologies can be joined in a meaningful way. The Volt will appear this year and is going to use Android to provide interaction with the owner that at times is downright spooky.
Want your electric car to remind you if you forget to plug it in to charge? The Volt and Android will do that. Or how about searching for a destination on your Android phone and having the destination sent to your car so it can take you there using Google Maps Navigation the next time you’re in the car? That’s the kind of meaningful interaction that Chevy and Android are bringing to Volt owners later this year.
Earth2Tech got a hands-on demonstration of the Android app on a Droid and shot a video of it in action that is really impressive. Up to now my inner geek has been jonesing for relatively cheap gadgets. Now I’m seriously wanting a Chevy Volt.
For more research on connected cars check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):
Chipworks and iFixit teamed up to take a look beneath the Kin Two’s black and lime exterior, finding some things that were expected, like the NVIDIA Tegra APX2600 processor, and some that were, well, not, like a Sony image sensor. More »
I know you’ve been wondering what’s in the Kin Two since it first came out and now you can see the phone’s delicious innards up close. iFixIt tore it up and found an Nvidia Tegra processor, which is nice, and “two very cool springs.” Where did they hide the magical unicorn hoof shavings?
* The Kin Two is 19.05 mm thick. That makes for a bigger bulge in the pants, given that the iPhone and Motorola Droid are 12.3 mm and 13.7 mm thick, respectively. (Enter “Is that a Kin Two, or are you happy to see me?” jokes here.)
* The Kin Two has two very cool-looking (to a mechanical engineer) springs that keep the phone’s halves either fully-open or fully-closed.
* For being able to shoot all of 8 megapixels, the camera only eats up about .5 cm^3 of space inside the Kin.
* The digitizer is a Synaptics unit, and the main controller chip is labeled T1021A1 0939 ACOM755.
* Samsung’s moviNAND KLM8G4DEDD package supplies the 8GB of storage space for the Kin. It features a very advanced thirty nanometer architecture, and can transfer data at speeds up to 52 MB/s.
* Avago has two chips inside the Kin Two: an ACFM-7103 CS/Cellular/S-GPS Qunitplexer and an ACPM-7353 dual-band power amplifier.
* The camera is the Sony IMX046. The IMX046 is fabricated using a 90 nm CMOS process. The camera’s resolution is 8.11 effective megapixel (8 active megapixel), 1.4 μm sized pixel, 1/3.2″ optical format. Samsung was the first to use this camera in the M8800.
* Taking a cue from the iPhone and Zune HD, the Kin Two has an accelerometer. It’s an STMicro 331DL 3 Axis nano MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) device.
Just in case the legendary 7-layer Windows 7 Whopper wasn’t enough for you, Microsoft has introduced “Hot Fried 77,” the Windows 7 restaurant, featuring 7 Windows-themed dishes. And beer. However, if you’re looking to grab a quick bite of hot fried Windows, be prepared to travel fast: The restaurant is in Taiwan, and is only open going to be open for two months.
According to reports out of Taiwan, the restaurant features 7 different dishes, which rotate each day, and go for about T$77 (US$3) each. Unfortunately, the food is apparently fairly standard fare, so if you were hoping for something that would give you the piquant essence of Start Menu, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
The documents include, according to the Committee:
On May 13, 2010, the Committee released the questions included in the bipartisan Committee questionnaire. The responses were received on May 18, 2010.
Committee Questionnaire
Question 12A – Publications – Books, Articles, Reports, Letters to the Editor, Editorial Pieces, Other Published Materials
Attachment 1
Attachment 2
Attachment 3
Attachment 4
Attachment 5
Attachment 6
Attachment 7
Attachment 8
Attachment 9
Attachment 10
Question 12B – Reports, Memoranda, Policy Statements, Minutes, Agendas, Other Materials
Question 12C – Testimony, Official Statements, Other Communications
Question 12D – Speeches, Remarks, Lectures, Panel Discussions, Conferences, Political Speeches, Symposia, Panels, Continuing Legal Education Events, Question and Answer Sessions
Question 12E – Outlines and Notes from Speeches
Question 12F – Interviews
Question 12G – Reports, Memoranda, Policy Statements from Public Office
Question 12H – Community-Wide Letters, Emails and Other Communications
Question 12I – Letters, Pamphlets, Website Content, Articles, Other Materials
BACKGROUND: “On Thursday, May 13, 2010, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) released the bipartisan questionnaire the Senate Judiciary Committee has asked Solicitor General Elena Kagan to complete in connection with her nomination to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”
[JURIST] A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release of three individuals accused of crimes committed as part of the “Christian warrior” militia called Hutaree [militia website; CNN backgrounder]. Judge Victoria Roberts of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan [official website] ordered the release of the suspects, two men and one woman, after federal prosecutors withdrew their objections. Roberts originally granted bail [JURIST report] to all nine militia suspects, but the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] granted an emergency stay [JURIST report] blocking their release. The appeal on the release of the other six members is still pending. The nine members have been indicted [JURIST report] on charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials, and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence in connection with a plan to kill Michigan law enforcement officers. The suspects being released will be monitored electronically and their freedom of movement will be severely restricted.
Militia groups such as the Hutaree are reportedly on the rise in the US. A recent report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center [advocacy website] suggests that a lack of regulation on the Internet [JURIST report] is fueling this increased prevalence. A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) [advocacy website; JURIST comment], released last year, noted that these groups are making a comeback [JURIST report] after declining in number for several years. The SPLC said that such groups are generally anti-tax, anti-immigration, and increasingly racially motivated since the election of the country’s first African-American president, Barack Obama. The SPLC also warned that these groups could soon pose a security risk to the country, quoting one official as saying “[a]ll it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”
Nissan may be doing all the green talking with models like the Leaf — which already sounds like a sales success, but they also have other impressive plan. The rumor mill is on the grind again and if the gossip hounds are to be believed, we might soon get to witness the Infiniti M in coupe and convertible versions.
There is no conclusive evidence suggesting the arrival of these two models but the word is that Nissan is considering expanding the M Lineup to compete with the likes of the E-Class (which I tested in Stuttgart last month — the coupe) and the 6-Series. It is most likely that the models will be based on the Essence Concept if Nissan does give its production a nod-ahead.
“Ned is fully committed to running for governor,” said Lamont spokeswoman Justine Sessions. “He’s running to create jobs, bring new leadership to Hartford, and he’s looking forward to working with Senator Blumenthal to move Connecticut forward.”
As for the Blumenthal matter, Lamont had this to say:
“I’ve known Dick for more than 25 years. He is a good friend and a dedicated public servant who works day in and day out on behalf of the people of Connecticut. As our Attorney General, he has been a tireless champion for Connecticut families, and as our next Senator he’ll bring that unwavering work ethic and record of results to Washington.”
Tracey Meadows Jackson Facebook Picture, Along With Mark Souder’s Picture
Tracey Meadows Jackson is the latest person to be embroiled in a Republican sex scandal, with Indiana Republican Mark Souder resigning today after admitting to an affair with the part time staffer.
There’s always some irony with family value Republicans getting caught up in sex scandals, but Tracey Jackson and Mark Souder really cranked it to 11. The two actually filmed an abstinence only video together in November of 2009. Watch the Mark Souder abstinence video below and revel in the hypocrisy of a guy who can’t stay faithful to his wife talking about how important it is to wait until marriage to have sex:
Tracey Jackson was also a frequent commenter on Mark Souder’s facebook page:
There’s no doubt about it – we cover quite a few mobile phone OSes in this industry. And they all have their various pros and cons. Some are exceptionally great at e-mail, while others excel in the media category, while others are fantastic in the web browsing department. At the end of the day, there’s a mobile phone OS out there for just about everyone.
So, we ask you – what mobile phone OS do you use? If you use more than one device, you can pick up to three (3) answers (if you use more than three, pick the top three that you use). Cast your vote, and defend your OS (or OSes) in the comments!
{Widget type=”poll” id=”3221801″ name=””Which mobile phone OS do you use? (Pick up to 3)”}
[JURIST] The UK coalition government will review the country’s Human Rights Act [BBC backgrounder] after two Pakistani terror suspects successfully avoided deportation by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission [official website] due to concerns for their safety. The commission identified both Abid Naseer and Ahmed Faraz Khan as terrorism suspects but concluded that it was not possible for them to be deported to Pakistan, where terrorism suspects face torture or death.The Human Rights Act was created in 1988 to encompass the fundamental rights in the European Convention of Human Rights [text]. Policymakers hope that, by reviewing the act, they can develop a plan of action for ensuring deportees would be treated properly upon returning to their native countries. Since the act does not allow the two suspects to be detained without trial, the two men will most likely be subjected to control orders that would restrict their movement and require them to be under constant watch. Naseer and Khan were two of 10 Pakistani men captured last year in connection with a terrorism plot targeting Manchester and Liverpool.
The Human Rights Act has been a point of contention between liberal and conservative groups in the UK. In 2006, then-prime minister Tony Blair called for an amendment to the act to allow the government greater discretion to protect public safety, while conservative leaders called for the act to be repealed [JURIST reports]. Human Rights Watch [official website] urged the new UK government to continue its support of the act last week in addition to a request for the government to set up a judiciary inquiry [JURIST report] on torture [JURIST news archive] allegations. The rights group claimed that allegations of complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects have badly damaged the nation’s reputation and that steps need to be taken to restore the nation’s reputation as “a nation that respects human rights.”
Vanessa Williams has joined the cast of ABC’s Desperate Housewives!
Williams — who departed her role as Wilhelmina Slater when the network pulled the plug on Ugly Betty last month — is venturing over to The Alphabet’s other hit dramedy to stir up a ruckus on Wisteria Lane, TV Guide has learned.
Just a few weeks ago, talk show chatterbox Wendy Williams squealed that Desperate Housewives was a casting an African-American actress to fill the prominent role of an “intelligent restaurteur” on the show. Now we know it is Vanessa who will appear as a series regular on DH next season.
“I’m a big fan of Vanessa’s work and I’m so excited that she’ll be moving into the neighborhood next season to cause trouble in all the ladies’ lives,” says series creator Marc Cherry. “But don’t expect Vanessa to be at the center of next season’s big mystery. “I think our mystery is going to involve Paul Young [returning cast member Mark Moses].”
In related news, on Sunday night, actress Dana Delaney wrapped up her two season run on Desperate Housewives for the new ABC show Body of Proof.
We’ve all seen the horrifying footage of the oil leaking,
leaking and still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
And we’ve watched as BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has made such ludicrous statements
as the Gulf is a big place, there really isn’t that much oil if you compare it
to all that water. What’s more, we’ve read that BP repeatedly told Minerals
Management Service (MMS), the federal agency charged with overseeing offshore
drilling in our nation’s waters, that their proposed plans for the Deepwater
Horizon rig posed minimal risk to the environment so there really was no reason
to prepare for a disaster. And, MMS took them at their word.
Fast forward 43 days and we could be watching the same story
unfold in one of our nation’s last pristine, untouched places—Alaska’s
Arctic Ocean.
Right now, Shell Oil is moving forward with plans for
exploratory drilling, the very same type that Deepwater Horizon was doing in
the Gulf, in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. As they await the final
permits from MMS, Shell has submitted their final assurances on the soundness
of their plans—a letter sent on Friday contains such common sense-defying
assertions as “in Arctic conditions, ice can aid oil spill response.” Like BP,
they never bothered to put together much of a plan for a blowout because “a
large oil spill, such as a crude release from a blowout, is extremely rare and
not considered a reasonably foreseeable impact.” And just as they did with BP,
MMS thus far has taken Shell at their word.
There are some differences between the Gulf and the Arctic.
One difference, that Shell continues to trot out as their top
nothing-to-worry-about-here talking point, is that the Arctic
is much shallower than the Gulf. While this may be true and this may sound
oddly reassuring to those of us who like to be able to see the bottom of the
pool when we’re treading water, it doesn’t mean much when it comes to an
offshore well blowout. In fact, according to a recent report by Elmer P.
Danenberger III, who was an expert witness in front of Congress just last week,
blowouts are more likely in shallow waters than in deep waters. From 1992
to 2006, the majority of the blowouts that occurred in our nation’s offshore
waters were from shallow water wells. So much for Shell’s “we don’t need to
plan for a blowout because it would never happen in shallow water” messaging.
And the ice thing. First thing I should mention is that not
only does sea ice cover the Arctic Ocean for much of the year but the weather
conditions that come with it are far from hospitable to activities such as
cleaning up an offshore oil spill. In the Gulf, clean up was held up by 8-foot
waves. In the Arctic, the waves tend to form
20-foot crests, with gale force winds and negative temperatures in October. It
could be months before the clean-up crews could travel the hundreds of miles
between them and an Arctic spill site—and find conditions that would lend
themselves to effective spill response. In the Gulf, there were 32 vessels on
hand within 24 hours of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. In the Arctic,
that capacity is 13 vessels. The closest boat dock is 250 miles away from the
proposed well sites in the Chukchi Sea and it abuts the tiny village of
Wainwright (population: 546). As numerous other federal agencies
(including MMS) and the U.S. Coast Guard have said: “There has been little
experience with under-ice or broken-ice oil spills, and there is little
evidence to suggest that the capability exists currently to successfully clean
up a spill of this type up in a timely manner.”
But all that’s okay because in Shell’s world, the ice will
take care of things and the oil will be easier to clean up because it will be
contained within the ice that forms the basis of one of our planet’s most
abundant and unique ecosystems. This isn’t just ice we’re talking about people—the ice plays host to algae, that feeds a phytoplankton bloom in the water
beneath the ice, that feeds crustaceans and other invertebrates, that feeds numerous
fish species, that feed seals, birds and whales, that feed polar bears and
humans. I’m no scientist, but that sounds like a lot of life under that ice
that would be destroyed by oil. And, as a young man in Point Hope, Alaska,
who grew up hunting, eating and celebrating fish, birds, seals, whales, and
polar bears and now feeds his own family with the same subsistence traditions,
said: “The ice may contain the spill but who will contain the ice?”
Folks like that young man, who call the Arctic Ocean their
garden because it feeds their past, their future, their way of being, have been
watching the footage in the Gulf with a horrific sense of foreboding. We and
the Obama administration owe it to them—not to mention our planet—to stop
taking oil companies at their word. The Gulf disaster has shown us what can
happen. Let’s not tempt fate and wait for worse to happen in the Arctic.
It’s been almost a month since the sirens of the Deep Water Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico lacerated the night with tortured warnings of impending doom. Chief electronic technician Mike Williams, who nearly perished in the catastrophe, recounted in excruciating detail on CBS’s 60 Minutes on May 16 the horror of that night and the appalling negligence that contributed to the worst human-made disaster in recorded history.
Essentially what Williams tells us is that the Deep Water drilling operation was under unparalleled pressure to drill faster and deeper, cutting corners and defying essential aspects of the industry’s well established drilling protocol. We can argue about whether BP and other oil giants are ramping up drilling due to the end of cheap and abundant oil on this planet or simply because of greed and a voracious obsession with profits. To engage in that kind of debate, however, is to ignore the most fundamental issue at the root of this disaster. Corporate culture, media, politicians, and the misguided American public are all failing to grasp the issue, and I suggest, are behaving like enablers responding to an addict’s fatal overdose, as well as failing to recognize the extent to which they themselves are addicts.
Let me clarify: The addict is the oblivious citizen of industrial civilization who delusionally demands that he/she must at all costs maintain a lifestyle made possible by cheap hydrocarbon energy. That citizen overdosed on April 20, 2010 and may have taken the planet to their grave with them.
Now let me count the ways in which this cataclysmic oil spill is very much like a fatal drug overdose. In order to fully understand the analogy, it’s necessary to grasp the extent to which the culture of industrial civilization is addictive. What makes it addictive?
Quite simply, an uncompromising—yes relentless insistence on maintaining the lifestyle to which it has become addicted, and like the addict, willing to do whatever it takes to do so, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. This includes evidence that the addiction itself will ultimately and invariably prove fatal for the addict, for the addict has little interest in rational, scientific research. He is obsessed with only one thing: lifestyle. It doesn’t matter what it costs him or anyone else. Life is all about the next fix, period. The fix could be a possession, a person, or a position in life.
So when the addict, the culture of empire, overdoses and takes everyone and everything with him, he can use the defense mechanism of blame. It wasn’t my lifestyle that caused this, he says, but the corporation that pumped the oil. Furthermore, it was the administration’s fault for not adopting tougher regulation. While these factors may have entered into the equation, they are not the fundamental issue. Focus on blame works beautifully for awhile to distract attention from the devastation caused by the addict. But eventually, it wears thin.
Another favorite distracting tactic of the addict is “Look how I’m trying to fix it.” He mobilizes his enablers to convince the world that something is being done to reverse the repercussions of his latest shitstorm. First we’ll try a dome structure to cover the oil leak and capture the oil. Or if that doesn’t work, we’ll blast garbage into the leak. Or if that doesn’t work, we’ll use a siphoning tube. In fact, even as I write this article, BP is proclaiming that it has “turned a corner” in the oil spill. This should reassure all the oil addicts, facilitating their craving and assuaging any embarrassing traces of guilt. It’s all better now; this temporary nightmare is going to go away. Ya see, human ingenuity, especially of the corporate kind, will solve all problems and clean up all messes created by the addict.
Then there’s my favorite addict appeasement approach: alternative energy. Don’t worry, says the enabler. We’ll get wind or solar or something online for you as soon as we can so that your lifestyle won’t miss a beat. Yes, that may take fifty years, but meanwhile, we’ll think of something to keep it going for you because this is America, and the lights never permanently go out here.
Before the addict experiences a fatal overdose and ravages everyone and everything around him, there is always the choice to end the addiction and enter treatment. Treatment involves withdrawal from the substance, then taking a long, exhaustive, meticulous look inside oneself to confront the demon of the addiction. Much support is necessary; the addict cannot make the journey alone.
The Transition Handbook frames our dependence on hydrocarbon energy in terms of an addiction. We can blame, rationalize, project, deny—we can employ whatever defense mechanism we choose from humanity’s vast repertoire of them, but like the hard core addict, the human race is committing suicide. It is willing to kill every form of life in the oceans, cause the extinction of every species on earth, pollute every cubic inch of breathable air, poison every drop of water on the planet, and yes, enable an unfathomable cataclysm such as we are witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico at this moment, in order to perpetuate the lifestyle to which it feels entitled. Like all addictions, this one is both irrational and insane.
Every person who has chosen to research Peak Oil, climate change, global economic meltdown, species extinction, and population overshoot is not unlike an addict who has some moment of clarity in which he can actually choose to walk to the nearest rehab facility and fall on his face screaming for help. None of us can do that investigative work without the massive support of other “cheap energy addicts in recovery”. None of us can do it without a spiritual as well as a logistical recovery program which all authentic recovery absolutely requires.
Like the recovering addict there will be moments of terror about what the future holds, and the greater the devastation we have created, such as the largest oil spill in the history of the world, the more daunting the future will feel. Like the recovery of the addict, our recovery will require rigorous honesty and a commitment to finding meaning and purpose, not in the substance, which is killing us and the planet, but in a different kind of lifestyle. This will be a lifestyle of simplicity, cooperation, and deep connection with nature and our fellow humans. It may mean alterations in our behavior that feel like sacrifices until we realize that the joy, meaning, and contentment they bring us are what we wanted all along.
Therefore, as we witness the spread of the most devastating and widespread oil slick in history; as we see the photos of oil saturated wildlife and watch frantic fisherman in despair because they have lost their livelihood; as we watch enablers blaming and scrambling to fix the un-fixable, let us do as they say in Twelve Step programs, and take a searching and fearless moral (and energy) inventory of our lives and notice where we are in our recovery from addiction to cheap and abundant fossil fuels. Richard Heinberg’s book The Party’s Over documents how brief in the history of the human race the party was, how much fun it was, and of course, how lethal it was and is. So while the enablers are blaming and fixing, it behooves all of us to ask of ourselves the toughest question of all: What are we doing to recover?
James Madison owned 5,000 acres. George W. Bush ran an oil business. But no president amassed more wealth than our first one. George Washington’s net worth was equal to $525 million in 2010 dollars, according to a study from 24/7 Wall Street. By comparison, eight presidents — including Lincoln, Grant and Wilson — had net worths below one million dollars.
An arresting thought: President George Washington’s salary was two percent of the total US budget in 1789.
It’s interesting to see the list as a kind of shadow economic history of the United States. The first dozen presidents tended to have significant, but fragile, fortunes predicated on real estate and commodity speculation that was tied to fluctuating crop yields. James Madison, for example, amassed a $100 million fortune (remember, all numbers are adjusted for inflation to 2010 dollars) but died after significant depreciation of his tobacco plantation.
But our presidents’ net worth numbers take a plunge in the mid-19th century after the Panic of 1837 produced a six year recession. 24/7 explains:
Beginning with Millard Fillmore in 1850, the financial history of the
presidency entered a new era. Most presidents were lawyers who spent
years in public service. They rarely amassed large fortunes and their
incomes were often almost entirely from their salaries. From Fillmore
to Garfield, these American presidents were distinctly middle class.
These men often retired without the money to support themselves in a
fashion anywhere close to the one that they had as president. Buchanan,
Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield had almost no net worth at
all.
Starting in the early part of the 20th century, many presidents came into office with significant inheritance through corporations (Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and both of the Bushes). But since LBJ, five presidents from Nixon through Obama came from little or no inheritance.
Most of what you’ve read lately about the “crisis of economics” is rubbish. The Great Recession poses no challenge to the core ideas of modern macroeconomics. The notion that mainstream economics claimed that bubbles cannot happen, or deplored any and all financial regulation, or advocated laissez faire, or upheld any of the other shibboleths that the past two years have supposedly refuted, is ridiculous. Please note that critics of the policies that helped cause the recession almost invariably do so from within the prevailing paradigm–using lines of argument that were already well developed.
The nearest thing to an exception to this is central-bank independence. Here is an idea that was very widely accepted–not as a foundational principle of mainstream macroeconomics, obviously, but nonetheless as a clear-cut commandment. This principle has been cast aside–and rightly so–during the response to the emergency, first in the US and now in Europe. But the idea is so tenacious that nobody seems willing to admit it. Here, as my new column for the FT argues, is a big idea of orthodox economics that really does need to be re-examined.
Gran Turismo 5 at the Nürburgring – Click above for the high-res image gallery
Gran Turismo 5 is taking longer to push to market than most automakers need to bring a vehicle from CAD drawing to the showroom floor, but Polyphony Digital is taking every opportunity to show off just how fantastic the racing simulator will (eventually) be. Spectators arriving at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring were surprised with a series of GT5 demo stations featuring the Grand Prix, Nordschleife, and the 24 Hours courses.
We have been both expecting and demanding that the full Nürburgring experience be included in every copy of the long-awaited game when it finally (hopefully) hits store shelves in time for Christmas, and it looks like our expectations will be met. Check out our ever-increasing gallery of GT5 images below. The first eight shots come straight from Germany, and the quality of the images is very impressive. And make sure to check out the aerial photo of tent city. In true Euro form, almost every virtual vehicle is a wagon.
Remember the “megapixel myth” that has driven camera specs for the last decade or so? Yeah, it’s still here; it’s called the “HD hoax” now. I just made that up. But seriously. The idea behind the megapixel myth was that simply increasing the size of the output image didn’t usually result in a better picture in any way. In fact, in addition to filling up the memory card faster, this megapixel bloat led to images that were noticeably less sharp and true to life. Similarly, so-called HD cameras and sensors are now being sold strictly on numbers and not on features or performance. But more data for the image is always better, right? Not quite.
What set this post off was that yesterday, Omnivision announced that they were packing 1080p onto a 1/6″ sensor. An admirable feat of miniaturization. But the reality is that this “high definition” is anything but.
First, a quick crash course in digital imaging. Forgive me if I gloss over or miss some of the more technical particulars.
1. Light approaches and hits the “event horizon” of the lens.
It’s not actually called the event horizon, but it’s the very outside of the lens, and the shape and placement of this determines the focal length of the lens — wide angle, portrait, telephoto, and so on. More bulbous, extruded lenses capture more light from a larger field of view. Lenses with physically larger surface areas collect more light, which is why lenses with low F numbers often have large front elements.
2. The light passes through a number of lens elements in order to be straightened and resized.
Light comes into a lens from a number of directions. Wider lenses can have light coming in from very disparate angles, and even telephotos have to deal with light hitting the lens at the “wrong” angle and creating flare and glow. Once the “right” light enters the lens assembly, it passes through a number of optic elements, bending and re-bending the light to produce a projected image on the other side of the lens. Depending on the aperture selected, it will have a certain amount of the scene in focus, but the total light that comes out the interior end of the lens depends on the amount of light that came in the exterior end. 3. The light hits the sensor.
Where there was originally film, there is now a sensor, usually a CMOS in most cameras, though a few still use CCDs. Imagine a vast surface of little buckets made to collect light. The image seen by the lens on the outside is projected onto these, with a small amount of error introduced by flaws in the lens elements (there can be dozens in zoom lenses) or arrangement thereof. This creates things like chromatic aberration, vignetting, and softness at some apertures. The light is meant to be going as straight as possible into these buckets; a bit of light from a red dress must not end up in a bucket which is holding the light from the green grass behind the dress. If there must be overlap, it must be as small as possible — this produces sharpness and contrast. The distance between the buckets and the size of the buckets determines (to an extent) sensitivity and pixel pitch. And the buckets must be able to hold a lot or a little of light and dump it out accurately later; this produces correct exposure and dynamic range.
4. The sensor dumps the data.
Someone has to empty the buckets. The graphics processor or CPU does this by unloading them from the top to the bottom. Looking down on the sensor, the top left bucket gets emptied first, then the next one to the right and so on, until the CPU reaches the end, at which point it starts over at the left on the next row. It does this as fast as it can, but sometimes it’s not fast enough. While it’s unloading the buckets, it’s often the case that they’ve started filling up again. This is called a rolling shutter, and it’s a major problem with digital cameras: it creates (among other things) something called skew, which distorts vertical lines and features. The faster the data is pulled off the sensor, the less skew there is and the more accurate the output image is.
5. The data is processed.
Now the raw data must be encoded into a form that’s compact and readable by devices and programs designed to “play” that content. Pictures are often saved to JPEGs. Video these days is often saved to codecs such as H.264 or AVCHD. The quality of encoding depends largely on the amount of processing power applied to the original data. If you are encoding a movie on your computer and set quality to “draft,” it will search for edges only on a gross scale, only sample color every X pixels instead of Y pixels, and so on. You understand: shortcuts are taken. You trade quality for speed, as in other things. Dedicated processors for this are a big help, as they utilize parallel processing to accelerate the job, and can do more in a second or cycle than an ordinary CPU. The finished file is then stored on whatever medium is available.
Sorry, that ended up being longer than I expected it to be. But now, if you didn’t before, you know the rudiments of the process. Now, let’s get on with the news. Omnivision, an established creator of image sensors, has created a sensor that is 1/6th of an inch diagonally that records 1080p video. To give you an idea of how large a 1/6″ sensor is, here is a very handy little chart. The largest frame represents the size of a 35mm film frame, considered the referential standard for these things.
My Rebel XSi, the T2i I just reviewed, and many other DSLRs fall under the 1.5 and 1.6x crop factor (APS-C) squares. The new Micro four thirds cameras are there as 4/3″, and a large majority of compact digital cameras and camcorders I’ve seen and reported use a 1/2.3″ sensor, a bit smaller than the 1/2″ one. The rugged cameras I reviewed recently, for example, all had 1/2.3″ sensors or thereabouts. A sensor 1/6″ of an inch across would be approximately half the size of the (already tiny) 1/3″ sensor there.
Now, every camera that I’ve shot with, including the impressive T2i, has problems with HD. Somewhere along the line, in one of those steps I mentioned above, something goes wrong. And with imaging, it only takes one weak link to create a bad photo or video. High definition shouldn’t just be a name for a resolution. It should mean the level of definition in the image is high.
The pocket cams out there, for instance, can barely ape “HD.” Under the correct circumstances, in good lighting and with no motion, you would look at the 720p image and think “yes, that’s high definition.” For the most part, though, motion is blurry, colors are mixed, edges are indistinct, and there’s a weird sort of texture over the whole frame. What the hell? You paid good money for “full HD” (as the pocket cams are now advertising: 1080p in a phone-sized package). Why aren’t you getting images like the ones you see on TV?
The reason is that although the technology in one area or another may have advanced (lately it’s been sensors), the other bits of the camera are torpedoing the image quality all day long. Let’s go through the problems that occur during the process described above, in a $200 camcorder or phone shooting at 1080p.
1. and 2. The lens of the camera is garbage to begin with.
Think about it: devices which need tiny sensors are almost guaranteed to have terrible lenses. First, they’re tiny. You’re not getting a lot of light in one end, which means you don’t get a lot out the other end. Second, they’re cheap. The elements even in the nicest autofocus phone cameras are extremely small and (I’m guessing) are ground down from pieces too flawed to be used for large elements. Even perfectly good medium-sized digital cameras get tons of fringing and CA. Third, you’re losing a lot of detail through the plastic lens protectors and whatever oil and grime is on there. You can often tell a good camera by how well it picks up the flaws in the lens assembly.
3. Not only is the sensor small, but the “buckets” are small
Remember how we imagined a bunch of buckets next to each other? Now imagine those buckets are thimbles, and are expected to do the same job as buckets. This can only be done by using a boosted ISO to guesstimate how much light would have hit the buckets, but it creates a huge amount of error and noise. Not only that, but now that the buckets are thimbles, tiny things packed close together (high pixel pitch) there is even less tolerance for optic error! The tiny amount of error present even in a perfectly good lens is multiplied many times because the targets are so small — think what the shabby optics of a $3 lens assembly will do to the light. Now the red dress and the green grass are overlapping by a huge amount, resulting in a huge drop in sharpness and contrast. Even within stretches of a single color, the “sample size” for determining what color a pixel should be is totally distorted by boosted sensitivity, and color accuracy suffers as a result. These things can be minimized by predicting them and intelligently correcting for them, but only to a certain extent.
4. and 5. The sensor is slow and the CPU is slow
Granted, this issue is something that will only improve; RED One cameras, plagued by slow sensor offloading speeds, worked hard to produce firmware that fixed this, and now rolling shutter artifacts (while still present) are much reduced. Also, hardware encoding chips are getting cheaper and smaller, and will probably be featured in most video-shooting devices within a year or so. But now and for the next generation of imaging devices, you’re looking at a lot of skew (vertical and horizontal). And on the encoding front: 1080p video from the T2i, at 30 frames per second, was about 340MB. It’s a lot of space and takes a fair amount of data bandwidth to handle. It’s pretty much guaranteed that these smaller devices, Snapdragon processor or not, are going to be throttling it in order to make sure there are no missed frames, errors, or that sort of thing. This hurried processing results in a muddy look to the video, high resolution as it is, because edges and details have been rubbed out by a single hasty encoding pass.
Now, I’m not trying to break Omnivision’s balls here. Creating such a tiny sensor that is capable of producing such a high-res image however many times a second is a serious achievement. Mission accomplished. The thing is, unfortunately, said sensor doesn’t really enable devices to do anything different. You’re just going to magnify the problems that are already there, and fill up your SD card faster to boot. Will it take pictures and video? Sure. High resolution pictures and high definition video… of a low-quality image. It’s a bit like taking a picture of another picture, and expecting the second picture to be better than the first. So if it’s not really high definition, why is it being recorded and stored in high definition? So they have a big number to sell you, of course, like 240Hz and 18 megapixels.
How can you avoid this? Well, just like the megapixel race, you really can’t. Video recording devices are simply going to overdo it the way still cameras overdid it, and now we all have hundreds or thousands of dubious images which despite being 10 or 15 megapixels, if you look closely or print too big, have all kinds of weird artifacts in them. It’ll be the same for video. You can choose to record at a lower resolution; 720p (even VGA sometimes) is just fine, after all, and often will record at the same framerate, meaning better image quality. And actually look at the lenses on the cameras you buy. Lenses that are bigger across are (generally speaking) better, and every lens has its F numbers printed on it or in its spec sheet. If you’re trying to decide between a few cameras, look at their lenses: if one device maker is shirking on the lens, arguably the most important part of the camera, then you can be sure they shirked elsewhere too. Also, don’t buy anything that shoots in 1080i. Interlacing is a monster deserving of its own post.
I’d like to say that my issue with inflated video resolutions (and megapixels) is something that will be alleviated by time, like some of Ebert’s objections to 3D. But the cost of good optics isn’t really coming down, and really, the size of the lens is a physical barrier not likely to be surmounted any time soon. The methods we have for collecting and measuring light aren’t sufficient, and the improvements yet to be made for them will do nothing to help the fact that with bad components, it’s garbage in, garbage out.
Nothing defines mobile tech more than automobiles, and GM bringing Android to the Chevy Volt shows how technologies can be joined in a meaningful way. The Volt will appear this year and is going to use Android to provide interaction with the owner that at times is downright spooky.
3. The light hits the sensor.
