Re: [Paddlewise] Nobel Prize Winners Appropriate to Paddlers and This Forum

I feel the need to add some balance to all the Unix-praise. While it's 
true that Unix/Linux changed the world, and while all great software has 
been developed on Unix/Linux platforms, we should remember that some of 
the _worst_ packages owe their life to Unix too.

- While "vi" is arguably the best and most elegant editor ever, we 
shouldn't forget that the monstrous "Emacs" came from the same cradle.
- Java is the greatest practical joke ever. A language that consists of 
90% declarations and then "compiles" to a processor that doesn't exist 
and never will... Yeah, very funny. To do some actual programming, I'll 
take Python any time.

Back to the topic though: How technology has changed kayaking. I could 
go on for hours, so I'll limit myself to taking pictures.

It's not that long ago that we carried a camera with actual _film_ in 
it. A picture wouldn't get developed until the film was used up; usually 
36 exposures - which could take months, film being expensive. When you 
finally got your pictures back from the shop and looked through the 
blurry mess, you'd have trouble remembering what you actually wanted to 
photograph. Any pictures that were decently exposed and showed something 
that was still interesting after 3 months of waiting would disappear 
into a treasured shoe-box, to stay there forever.

Compare that to how we take pictures now:

First, you select a camera to buy. In the old days, we had to rely on 
friend or expensive magazines to give us reviews. Mostly the advice was 
pretty bad. These days, we don't ask friends, we ask Google, in a 
question like "canon powershot a470 review". Within minutes, you've 
found extensive reviews from users, test-images, solid comparisons with 
other cameras and the cheapest place to buy.

For a price of a single film in the old days, you buy a memory-card that 
will store not 36 but 1000 images - over and over. (Remember when a 30Mb 
harddrive was considered big? My current cheap-as-dirt flashcard is the 
equivalent of a stack of 100 of those drives - yet that flashcard is 
considered _small_ these days.)

Even the cheapest cameras now include a pretty decent video-mode. My 
88-euro compact makes better video than the 1000-euro video camera I 
used to own.

In the old days, we were at the mercy of the shops to decently develop 
and print our pictures. No cropping, no color-balancing, no 
contrast-adjustment. Right now, if you want your own dark-room, you 
don't rebuild your bathroom: You download a piece of software. "The 
Gimp" installs in minutes (seconds on Linux) and gives you a darkroom 
that would cost tens of thousands of dollars some years back - for free.

And no printed pictures anymore, on the usual 2x3 inch glossy paper, 
from the mice-infested shoebox.
We now _share_ pictures, not only by the internet, but also on our 
big-screen TV's or highres laptops and computer screens. The phrase "May 
I show you some pictures?" has taken a whole new meaning.

 Yes, I _love_ technology.
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