I don’t know, maybe I’m stuck in the same rut?

Yeah, that’s the argument on keeping the mirror. Now that SLRs are having 3″+ LCDs on the back, a few have “LiveView” mode, and people are finding that they actually like it. (But I don’t EVER want a crappy little “Electronic Viewfinder” again!) And the mirror does have to do with the AF sensors, too, although that’s what I meant about working around it — you can make AF work without a mirror. I suppose battery life is a good point, but really, an elaborate system of mirrors is just asking for trouble.

All the shutter is there for is to break, it seems. Camera companies have recently made longer-life shutters, which again seems to be missing the point.

The mirror in an SLR allows you to see through the lens. There have been plenty of digital cameras that have a “live” viewfinder — a tiny LCD screen — but it’s really hard to get the same resolution, not to mention battery life. The prism just flips the image coming from the mirror. And then there’s the AF sensors in there somewhere, too.

There have been cameras with a ‘half mirror’ (for lack of a better, technical term) that didn’t have to flip up (IIRC?), but you lost light (again, IIRC).

But the shutter could (should?) probably go.

But don’t you periodically get the “Unsafe device removal” grumblings?

I saw a famous Linux supporter do a demo last week and he went to the command line several times to do things that I’m sure he does over and over again in a normal day.

Honestly, I don’t *have* to use the command line for anything. There are a few reasons it’s still prevalent, though:

- You can do anything. Take my recent example about IP-blocking everyone who tried to deliver mail to a bizarre, non-existent mail address. Do *that* in a GUI.

- For many of us, it’s just quicker. I can pull up a shell and do something quick before you can even find what you’re looking for in the GUI. Of course the CLI isn’t always best: I much prefer a GUI for moving files around, for example. Or for graphics editing. ;)

- People complain that all the instructions on the web are command-line centric. I noticed this too, but someone finally explained it in a good way. It’s easy to say, “Paste this command in a terminal,” as opposed to navigating someone through a myriad of GUI menus and whatnot.

Going to Open Office after getting used to Office 2007 would be like moving from prime steak to veggie burgers.

You mean that it’s good for you? ;)

I actually know exactly what you mean. Open Office is a decent word processor, but I’m much more comfortable in Office 2007. But it doesn’t run in Linux, even under Wine. So I suck it up and use Open Office. Same thing for iTunes and Photoshop — I hate XMMS/Amarok, and I’m not really a fan of the GIMP. But the newest versions of iTunes and Photoshop haven’t been made to work under Linux yet, either.

And I never seem to have to go to the command line. I saw a famous Linux supporter do a demo last week and he went to the command line several times to do things that I’m sure he does over and over again in a normal day. Why he’d put us with having to open a terminal emulator window to do it I just don’t understand.

And of course applications that I love just don’t run on Linux. Going to Open Office after getting used to Office 2007 would be like moving from prime steak to veggie burgers.