[Openicc] Drop size calibration

[Robert Krawitz]

   Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 20:22:04 +0100
   From: "edmund ronald" <edmundronald at gmail.com>

   As for Hal's concerns about obsolescence, frankly if the virtual
   machine is supported by the manufacturer as part of the instrument
   hardware, and the manufacturer supports the main Linux
   distributions for five years or so, then I'm not more afraid of the
   virtual machine ceasing to run than of the hardware itself failing
   and being unrepairable. An instrument is an instrument, it spits
   out values and I don't expect to user-upgrade it. My cameras have
   embedded OS es too,but I really don't care what they are as long as
   they communicate with me by means of image files. It's the
   responsibility of Canon or Nikon to ensure my camera focuses
   accurately - I don't expect to involve open source maintainers in
   this.

Well, maybe if you actually trust the manufacturer to maintain support
for that long.  All that needs to happen is for Microsoft, or some
Microsoft ally, to buy the company, and Linux support goes away.  And
even if that doesn't happen, what happens if the company goes out of
business?

As far as embedded devices in cameras go, there was a Russian guy, I
forget his name, who hacked the firmware of the Canon Digital Rebel to
add a bunch of features from the 10D (Canon was trying to maintain
price separation -- while the hardware of the 10D and Rebel wasn't
identical, a lot of the missing features in the Rebel were simply
software things).  Yup, I installed it.  Canon learned, and the Rebel
XT was a lot more like the 20D in terms of software features.

(As far as "communicate with me by means of image files" goes, one of
the unlocked features allowed me to choose which size and quality of
JPEG would be stored along with RAW files.  The standard Canon
firmware stored a medium size standard quality JPEG.  Storing no JPEG
at all, or storing a large fine JPEG, were two of the more useful
settings of that particular feature.)

You're surely also aware that the iPhone has been hacked, as has the
iPod, and just about everything else under the sun.

But then again, when I was in college I was one of the student system
programmers at Project Athena.  Our nickname was the Watchmakers.
Read _The Mote in God's Eye_, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, for
that particular reference :-)  Hackito ergo sum!

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton