Vatican Chooses Open FITS Image Format

@10u8 writes "The Vatican Library plans to digtize 80,000 manuscripts and store them in the open data format FITS, originally developed for astronomy and maintained under the IAU. The result is expected to be 40 million pages and 45 petabytes. FITS was chosen because it 'has been used for more than 40 years for the conservation of data concerning spatial missions and, in the past decade, in astrophysics and nuclear medicine. It permits the conservation of images with neither technical nor financial problems in the future, since it is systematically updated by the international scientific community.'"

Comments

The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[eldavojohn]

Pope Benedict XVI was quoted as saying:

"May the devil take the internet and transparency. They are tools of evil. *clears throat* I have decided to go with the open and transparent format of FITS when we transition our most sacred documents so that they are stored ... digitally ... online ... on the ... internet ... for easier access. Hmmmmm."

It's nice to see that at least someone has adhered to a cogent message dating back to such honored traditions as "eye for an eye *cough* turn the other cheek" as well as "love thy neighbors *ahem* kill the Native Americans/witches/heathens."

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[FooAtWFU]

Right. And by that, you mean that Slashdot said this other site said the Pope said. Did you ever consider looking at what he actually said, or are you just making another Regensburg lecture out of it? :)

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[qbzzt]

Sadly, that PBS story didn't include any links to the original text. So we don't know what the Pope actually said, only what Margaret Warner claimed he said, based on an on the fly translation.

BTW, why do you expect the Torah and the New Testament to be any more consistent than US law (about, say, races) in 1800 vs. 2000?

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Jeng]

Wonder if they may accidentally include manuscripts that conspiracy nuts think the Vatican has that the Vatican denies having?

I have no idea which manuscripts those would be.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[gman003]

As a Catholic myself, I can assure you that the Church bureaucracy makes every other organization seem small. It's not even the left and right hands working in opposite directions, it's the three left hands disagreeing with the two right hands and the foot. The head has very little idea what's going on, and several sections outright ignore it, or at least filter out whatever they disagree with.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[jimwelch]

The Vatican Secret Archives, is not really that secret anymore. But at one time, the Archivist (currently Cardinal Raffaele Farina) was one of two Cardinals, that could leave and return to the Papal Conclave (pope election). The new rules, allow for sickness.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[amicusNYCL]

Just imagine how silly he's going to feel when he realizes that the church is choosing to use technology which was produced by the same scientific community the church had previously persecuted.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

But everyone looks the other way from what the dick is doing.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

it's the three left hands disagreeing with the two right hands and the foot.

I guess this fell bureaucratic beast is called Christphod Biblecrux.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine how silly he's going to feel when he realizes that the church is choosing to use technology which was produced by the same scientific community the church had previously persecuted.

Since you point out the persecution of the scientific community by the Church, would you care to give an example from the last 2000 years other than Galileo?

It might interest you to know that the Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[jdsnape]

The vatican tends to be quite slow translating the speeches, but there is an unofficial translation here: http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2010/04/quote-of-month.html

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[antirelic]

I think the FITS format allows for clergy friendly content to be posted to Wikipedia.

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all day.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Ant P.]

Does what they say actually matter, in light of the recent news of what's been done by them?

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully self-identified catholics don't naively toe the vatican party line and are free to think and speak critically about the one true church and god's representative on earth.

Like how I'm proud to call myself a vegetarian. I don't need to follow what hard-core vegetarians do, I just try in my own way to avoid meat when I can. Often at breakfast times. With the obvious exception of bacon and the occasional cheese kransky.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[FooAtWFU]

"Does it matter?" I don't know, man, that depends on what sort of a moral world-view you're subscribing to, and what you mean by "matter". Personally, I don't have a world-view where it's all fine and dandy for me to twist peoples' words and laugh at them for being hypocrites in one matter just because they've done something wrong in another matter, in any case at all. I consider this, first, as a responsibility towards myself. Slashdot-types, who might be thought to ostensibly value Science, ought to be those best able to appreciate some notion of "intellectual honesty". If you then move to the world in general, I don't think that spreading lies or half-truths and such is ever called for, if you think that the Catholic Church is such a villain that you should be able to tell whatever [lies|half-truths|exxagerations] that you can get away with that day (in order to spread to the world a better sense of its villainy, even if it doesn't rest on a foundation of truth) then that's another matter, but I don't think there's any real room for doing so and not being aware that you're rationally doing so and instead relying on blind instinctual hate for the organization.

So yeah, I'd say it does matter -- even if the Catholic Church is Hitler + Lenin + the child abuser of the week + the devil + [Al Gore|George W Bush] and worthy of nothing but hate, I don't see any way that ignorance improves the matter. In fact, it would be downright hypocritical to say that it does, in the light of talking about comments on openness, communication and transparency.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Philip_the_physicist]

The Institute of Physics's magazine /Physics World/ did an article on his trial last year (IIRC, it may have been earlier). He was tried for heresy, but the reason he was tried was not for heliocentric theory, but rather for insulting the Pope (who had been interested in his theories) about an unrelated (somewhat political) matter instead of answering his questions. IOW, he was killed not for arguing against the church but for publicly insulting the man with the power to have him killed, which is generally regarded as a bad idea.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[shadowbearer]

  Every religion ever created by man has splintered, and will continue to do so.

  There is no reality for them to agree on.

SB

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[the_womble]

Its actually quite funny, the website actually has the title "secret archives", and offers to sell you scanned copies on CD.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[the_womble]

Right. And by that, you mean that Slashdot said this other site said the Pope said. Did you ever consider looking at what he actually said, or are you just making another Regensburg lecture out of it? :)

This is Slashdot, and the topic is religion. Need I say more?

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[f3r]

Right. Did you ever consider looking at what he actually said? :)

never

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[someone1234]

I tried to find what he said, but the Internet was not transparent enough for me!
I hope he said, the Internet is still not transparent enough.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, actually very actual

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[rbenson]

Just an FYI.
Galileo was not killed. He was just placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life (which was several years).

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[fulldecent]

Being Catholic, you have very conveniently omitted any mention of the other appendage.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[amicusNYCL]

IOW, he was killed not for arguing against the church but for publicly insulting the man with the power to have him killed, which is generally regarded as a bad idea.

I guess, although one would imagine that the leader of a religion which preaches "love thy brother" may actually follow his own teachings. Of course, history shows that's not always the case.

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

And Galileo wasn't killed at all; he was placed under house arrest. (As the linked-to Wikipedia article says, but is also common knowledge about the trial of Galileo, at least if someone is interested in the history of the trial rather than a shibboleth to say "religion bad/science good".)

Re:The Pope Has Spoken, It Is Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because everyone wants their own piece of the pie. Did you hear what the leader of Mormonism got out of it?

Petabytes

[bigredradio]

[insert tasteless joke here]

Re:Petabytes

[jimwelch]

This will all be porn to the filters, since the artwork often has no clothes {/joke}

Re:Petabytes

[Anonymous Coward]

More like... Pedobytes!

Re:Petabytes

[ruiner13]

Where to Catholic priests store their data? In Pedophiles, of course.

Happy now?

Re:Petabytes

[iamhassi]

You read "petabytes", and think "pedophile"? Seems someone has a problem...

And why does Chrome think petabytes is a misspelling and want me to change it to gigabytes? Hello Google! You probably deal with more petabytes than anyone, how does your browser not recognize that word?

Re:Petabytes

[mr_lizard13]

You read "petabytes", and think "pedophile"? Seems someone has a problem...

And why does Chrome think petabytes is a misspelling and want me to change it to gigabytes?

You spelled pedophile wrong.

Re:Petabytes

[badboy_tw2002]

If you have to tell us its a joke its not funny. {/assholeishstatement}

Re:Petabytes

[Stenchwarrior]

If the Pedo bites, he gets a smack in the face and has to polish the preists' candle-sticks everyday for a month.

Ba-dum bum

Re:Petabytes

[radtea]

You read "petabytes", and think "pedophile"?

No, they read "Catholic Church" and think "pedophile", for the same reason one would read, "Christian Conservative" and think "cruising for gay hookers."

It's just the way the human brain works: things that are found together with relatively high frequency, like Catholic priests and child abuse, or Christian "Conservatives" and unseemly acts in public restrooms, tend to conjure each other up.

Re:Petabytes

[zaxus]

If you have to tell us it's an asshole-ish statement, it's not...oh wait, it was. Nevermind.

Re:Petabytes

[Vintermann]

You're right it's about the way the brain works, but it's not because these things are found together with so high frequency.

It's that they feel so salient when they are.

Re:Petabytes

[CannonballHead]

Christian "Conservatives" and unseemly acts in public restrooms, tend to conjure each other up.

You got your quoted words mixed up. I think you meant: "Christian" Conservatives.

Being [politically] "Conservative" does not necessitate morality. Being "Christian" presumably has some connotation of morality.

I find it interesting that you are ok with calling unseemly acts in public restrooms a Christian, but seem to hesitate to really refer to them as Conservative.

Re:Petabytes

[commandermonkey]

Didn't Jesus preach love thy brother?

The confusion you have may be the result of the two categories, Christian and Conservative, not being mutually exclusive and often portrayed as being highly correlated. I personally know far more self-identified Christians who believe that someones sexual orientation is a private matter and none of their business. It seems that it is only the self-identified conservative wingnut that get bent out of shape that we allow gay people to be members of society.

So, in my experience, railing against gay people is a Conservative thing not a Christian one.

Re:Petabytes

[Anonymous Coward]

Where to Catholic priests store their data? In Pedophiles, of course.

No, that's just where they stick their extra digits.

Re:Petabytes

[zoloto]

The new name for SneakerNet?

Re:Petabytes

[daredd]

I did think of several jokes but I prefer a more sober response.
Why is this worldwide paedophile ring and its ringleader (the pope) not brought to answer for their crimes ?
(BTW this was not written to be flame bait.)

Re:Petabytes

[Anonymous Coward]

The high-hat on your drum kit sounds off.

Re:Petabytes

[GreatBunzinni]

Does the Vatican intend to store their Pedo files in such a way that future generations will keep discovering their fantastic secrets?

Re:Petabytes

[CannonballHead]

Ah, but he wasn't talking about railing against gays; he was talking about being gay and acting lewdly in a public restroom...

Re:Petabytes

[Anonymous Coward]

Christian Conservative Women FTW!!!

Re:Petabytes

[FauxPasIII]

> So, in my experience, railing against gay people is a Conservative thing not a Christian one.

If you're a Christian that believes in Biblical literalism (or at least Biblical infallibility) then that position doesn't make very much sense. Leviticus specifically states that gays, or at least gay men, "must be put to death".

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=468306

If you're a Christian who does _not_ believe the Bible is divinely inspired... well, I'd be interested to hear how you manage that. =)

Re:Petabytes

[Dragonslicer]

Leviticus specifically states that gays, or at least gay men, "must be put to death".

Obligatory question: Why can't I own a Canadian?.

Anyone that believes that homosexuality is wrong because their religious text says so, and then takes their family out for a nice ham dinner after Church on Sunday, is a full-fledged hypocrite.

Re:Petabytes

[AK Marc]

Spandex is an abomination (and not just because of that fat lady in shorts). Killing a goat or sheep is worthy of exile (as is burning dinner or eating blood - there goes the English and their blood pudding and such). Eating rabbit or pig will get you sent to hell, but grasshoppers are ok.

I'd argue that Leviticus is wholly ignored by all but the gay-haters. The closest to literalists are the Jews, who do actually follow rules for many of the things in Leviticus (though only a few even attempt to follow them all, and even then make allowances.

Re:Petabytes

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhMLwBHwq1o

Re:Petabytes

[the_womble]

It's just the way the human brain works: things that are found together with relatively high frequency, like Catholic priests and child abuse, or Christian "Conservatives" and unseemly acts in public restrooms, tend to conjure each other up.

Do you mean "found together" or "mentioned by the media together"? OK, its the same in this context, but I am not aware of any evidence that either of the things you mention happens more often in that particular group, its just that its a juicier story when it does.

Re:Petabytes

[shadowbearer]

  Indeed.

  Hypocrisy is the act of persistently professing beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that are inconsistent with one's actions. Hypocrisy is thus a kind of lie.

  This has been noted before ;-) Personally I prefer the way George Carlin said it "Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told." - and somehow, I don't think he didn't mean it as an all-encompassing comment on all forms of superstition.

  I often suspect that one of the criteria for a species to survive it's inauguration into the universe is to shed all forms of self-flagellation, particularly those of superstition; as superstitious belief is not something that can be duplicated in it's entirety by independent experiment. (Before you respond to this, think carefully about what I just said). Technological capability certainly doesn't come about via irrational belief.

  Note that I am not saying that technologically advanced species will necessarily have any form of ethics or morals that we would recognize. I just think it's unlikely that superstition would play a major part in their sociological makeup; the resource commitment a species would have to make in order to expand beyond their own limited solar system would have to be near total, even and perhaps especially assuming breakthroughs in technology, and widespread irrationality in their sociological and cultural makeup (ie, majority of members believing in something other than the scientific method) makes it unlikely they could put combine those resources.

  Of course, given that the perversity of the universe always operates at a maximum, I am likely wrong in more than one assumption ;)

  --- and yes, to anyone who is wondering, I am putting together many other people's concepts, but these are my own words. I do think this way.

      No, I don't worry about getting laid. That is something that comes when one ceases to worry about it.

SB

Re:Petabytes

[xtracto]

No, they read "Catholic Church" and think "pedophile", for the same reason one would read, "Muslim church" and read "Terrorist"

Re:Petabytes

[yo303]

If you have to post a redundant obvious reply, that's also not funny. I don't even know why I'm typing this.

Re:Petabytes

[thijsh]

It's generally only conservative people (and not necessarily all Christians) that are strongly outspoken against homosexuality, hence the hypocrisy is in the conservatives part when they practice homosexual acts in secret...
You wrongfully assume that being Christian has anything to do with morality, but in real life you are just as likely to get screwed over or helped by a Christian as any other man, we're still all human with human flaws and qualities after all.
The reason why the keyword "Christian" is significant in the context of a hypocritical act is the correlation between deep faith and hypocrisy. Presumably this is because of the psychological effect of cognitive dissonance caused by being confronted with conflicting facts and beliefs (like seeing the T-Rex skeleton of 65 million year old and still believing that the earth is 6000 years old). If you continue to lie to yourself to uphold your beliefs on a massive scale (everyone does this regularly, but religion forces you to do this much more) you create the perfect situation to become a complete hypocrite.

Everyone is always so amazed when an outspoken anti-gay conservative Christian comes out of the closet, but I always think 'It was bound to happen'. When a person *is* a homosexual and thinks he is bad because of it and will even go to hell if he does practice homosexual acts it's quite a natural thing to vent this self-loathing and fear by attacking the very thing he himself is... It's all natural and understandable with basic psychological insights.

Re:Petabytes

[Nutria]

Only a flamingly dense idiot (or liberal with an ax to grind) would confuse Judaism (Old Testament) with Christianity (New Testament).

Re:Petabytes

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Re:Petabytes

[deKernel]

Actually I believe you have that reversed. A true conservative is someone who believe in the personal freedom to be who you want to be as long as you are not hurting other people in the process. It is the Christen portion meaning the Bible that causes issues with homosexuality.

Re:Petabytes

[thijsh]

I think you are confusing a conservatism with a particular american political association (i'm not very familiar with terms in this context, so please elaborate). But by definition 'conservative' has nothing to do with 'being who you want to be', but quite the opposite: avoiding change and limiting yourself to traditional ways that worked before to attain some form of stability. This manifests mainly by resisting rapid change (often the faster or bigger the change the more resistance).

Especially social conservatism creates the biggest resistance against all rapid change of inter-human relations (more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conservatism). So i'd classify anti-gay conservatism under the social (or perhaps cultural) conservatism.

Of course the conservative christians have their separate issues with homosexuality, but that just makes it a double whammy... There are christians that don't mind gay people getting married (not too much I'm afraid). But there are *no* conservatives - by definition - that don't mind big changes. Conservatives will always resist and fear social changes, and this has nothing to do with 'hurting people in the process', the perceived threats are merely psychological in origin.

Re:Petabytes

[thijsh]

You might want to tell that to some Christians... they still live^H^H^H^H preach by the old testament on a weekly basis.

Re:Petabytes

[Anonymous Coward]

No If you read 'church' and didn't think 'pedo' right away, then you've got the problem.

Re:Petabytes

[FauxPasIII]

Am I to understand it's your position that Christian churches do not often press their significant political weight against any movement for homosexual rights, or that they don't often cite the _exact_ words in Leviticus that I link to above as justification? How do you suppose it is that I, an atheistic liberal with an ax to grind, knew exactly which words to google for to turn up that quote then?

Re:Petabytes

[Nutria]

Am I to understand it's your position that Christian churches do not often press their significant political weight against any movement for homosexual rights

No.

or that they don't often cite the _exact_ words in Leviticus that I link to above as justification?

Christians who give as much weight to the OT as the NT are flamingly dense idiots.

What "they" should do instead is quote Romans 1:25-27

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

How do you suppose it is that I, an atheistic liberal with an ax to grind, knew exactly which words to google for to turn up that quote then?

Maybe because you, like I, grew up going to church and still remember much of what you learned, even though you've come to your senses and realized that religion is an artifice.

You just seem a lot angrier about it than I am.

inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

inb4 relgious hatred and hatred of the religious.

Re:inb4

[nkh]

Not really, but I find very funny that the Vatican is using “science and technology" to store its manuscripts, when at the same time they spit so much on this same science and technology.

Re:inb4

[Bertie]

Nothing to do with hatred of the religious, everything to do with hatred of a two-thousand-year-old child-abusing extortion racket. I see no problem with that.

Re:inb4

[Darkness404]

You can find child abuse -everywhere- that you have people in charge of children. There have been child abuse in public schools, yet that hardly justifies condemning education.

There are a -lot- of things you can condemn the Catholic church about, namely the power abuse historically, the sale of indulgences and the failure to adapt to the 21st century. The entire format of the Catholic church is born out of an illiterate population filled with 'visions'. But the entire church failed to change for an enlightened, reasoned population.

But honestly, using child abuse to justify your argument against the Catholic church is simply sensationalized. Had it been anything other than a church it would already be forgotten.

Re:inb4

[Jason Levine]

Isn't the Vatican one of the more reasonable major religions when it comes to science and technology? Obviously, you can't expect any religious group to completely dismiss any role for God to play (if they did they wouldn't be a religion), but they've gone on record saying that Evolution is correct.

It's the folks that read a few Bible verses and then take them as the 100% literal History Of The World that really oppose all things science (as opposed to being a book that man needs to interpret).

Re:inb4

[Panaflex]

Wow... how do you feel about US public schools then? I've read that there are much higher rates of abuse there - just less publicity.

Re:inb4

[RockoTDF]

Had it been anything other than a church it would have been dealt with much more severely by outside powers.

Re:inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

It's protestants that believe in creationism

Re:inb4

[Jer]

[CITATION NEEDED]

Re:inb4

[irenaeous]

That would be nice if it were true. It's not. Abuse rates are much higher in public schools.

The church is held (as it should be) to a higher standard. I blame the celibacy rule for the priesthood which creates a cadre of leadership that is totally insensitive to the needs of families to protect their children and which creates an inviting environment for pedophiles giving them access and cover.

Re:inb4

[RockoTDF]

Good article, but it talks about the media attention and does not discuss law enforcement with regards to the Catholic church or schoolteachers. What I mean to ask is this: Do principles cover up the actions of abusive teachers in the same way that bishops and cardinals do for abusive priests? Do they just transfer them to another school district like it is another parish? I wouldn't think so.

Re:inb4

[Tarsir]

The thing is, the Vatican is not particularly opposed to science and technology. You just think they are because you believe too much of what you read on the front page of Slashdot, and in the comments... You can blindly trust this comment, of course. It's all the others you have to watch out for.

Re:inb4

[carlmenezes]

Really? Heard of priest-scientists? ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/nyregion/13jaki.html?_r=2&hpw , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23640170/, http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/priest-turned-scientist-francisco-ayala-wins-153-million-prize/19414671)

Re:inb4

[religious freak]

Yes. Catholic leadership generally learned their lessons during the Renaissance. You know, the whole obstinate insistence the Earth is at center of the universe, imprisoning Galileo, etc, etc will teach nearly any institution a lesson or two in flexibility. And it only took 1500 years or so...

The church has not "endorsed" evolution though - they just remain fairly silent on it and grudgingly admit the argument may have merit. But I'm with you, I have some appreciation for the institution that attempts to use some kind of critical thought in it's view of the world. Nothing drives me more crazy than intentional ignorance.

Re:inb4

[Bertie]

As fair as I'm aware, they've never, as yet, conducted any Inquisitions, Crusades, or any amount of other heinous, greedy, megalomaniacal skulduggery. And they're certainly not in the business of keeping the masses poor and ignorant to further concentrate their power over them.

The child abuse is one of the Church's lesser crimes, to be honest. It's just current.

Re:inb4

[Mike Buddha]

Earth is at center of the universe, imprisoning Galileo, etc, etc will teach nearly any institution a lesson or two in flexibility. And it only took 1500 years or so...

Actually, heliocentrism began with Copernicus, a priest.

Re:inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

Had it been anything other than a church it would have been dealt with much more severely by outside powers.

Which explains why sexual abuse of minors has gotten the same level of attention in our public schools and in youth organizations like the Scouts. Puh-leeze: it's a thinly veiled attempt to land a few good punches on the Church while it's down...!!!

Re:inb4

[DriedClexler]

Yes. I've heard of a lot more non-priest scientists though.

(Even when factoring in the greater number of non-priests.)

Re:inb4

[GreatBunzinni]

Isn't the Vatican one of the more reasonable major religions when it comes to science and technology? Obviously, you can't expect any religious group to completely dismiss any role for God to play (if they did they wouldn't be a religion), but they've gone on record saying that Evolution is correct.

The Catholic church is largely an European institution and europe has become (thankfully) a very secular society. The folks who happen to reach the Catholic church's higher ranks tend to be born and raised in a very secular society, which is very pro-science, very pro-technology and although they also accept religion they don't take kindly to fundamentalist crackpots. If you have an organization who is led by people who grew up in that environment then those values tend to rub down on your entire organization.

And remember, the Vatican is nonetheless the organization which brought us the inquisition and the crusades, which mean that the organization has been shown to be more than able to not only match the unspeakable atrocities and barbaric acts that other religions commit but also raise them up a notch.

It's the folks that read a few Bible verses and then take them as the 100% literal History Of The World that really oppose all things science (as opposed to being a book that man needs to interpret).

Not really. That aspect of religion doesn't have much to do with orthodoxy and everything to do about control. Science doesn't affect religion in any way, as it's only a method to explain how God's universe works. On the other hand, it pisses off those who rely on God's invocation to gain and preserve authority within a social group. Those idiots believe that science is somehow a bad thing because it tends to provide irrefutable ways to demonstrate that they are full of shit and don't know what they are talking about. I mean, boobs cause earthquakes?. WTF?

Re:inb4

[GreatBunzinni]

Has the US public school system officially implemented a strategy to not only cover up those abuses but also protect those who perpetrated the abuses and maintain them in a position where they can abuse children with impunity?

Re:inb4

[Foobar of Borg]

It's protestants that believe in creationism

Not even just protestants, but a very narrow, crazed faction of protestants. Lutherans, for example, are fairly rational.

Re:inb4

[Sociable Scientician]

Great post. If you look at it, Catholic clerics made crucial contributions to: *the Big Bang theory (Georges Lemaitre) *genetics (Gregor Mendel) * the heliocentric model (Nicolaus Copernicus) * the battery (Giuseppe Zamboni) and many other fields.

Re:inb4

[jabuzz]

You are of course aware that here in England we burned orders of magnitudes more Catholics at the stake, than the inquisition ever had people done away with but that never comes up on the radar. Even to this day we have an annual celebratory burning of a Catholic effergy complete with fireworks and everything.

Re:inb4

[g1zmo]

When I was in high school there was a teacher/coach who kept getting shuffled around from school to school because he had a habit of sleeping with female students. It was pretty common knowledge among us (students) which girls he'd had.

I know of 4 schools (including mine) where he'd worked within a span of 6 years, because the administrators just wanted him to move along without making an public issue.

Re:inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

well, that and the fact that a teacher who's caught raping a child typically doesn't get reassigned to another school to continue raping children at their leisure.

Re:inb4

[ascari]

"Largely European institution"???? Guess it depends entirely on how you define "Europe": The largest Catholic populations in the world are Brazil, Mexico, USA and the Philippines.

Re:inb4

[religious freak]

A fair number of revolutionary ideas began with people supported by the church. That doesn't mean the ideas were embraced by the leadership at the Vatican.

Re:inb4

[Panaflex]

Shakeshaft, C, “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of the Literature”, U.S. Department of Education, 2004

According to the study, 9.6% of public school children will be victims of inappropriate sexual conduct sometime during their 12 years of schooling.

I'm not in this to defend the Church, per se, but only to show that it's a SOCIAL ISSUE across the board. Our society produces these violators, and they go on to become priests, teachers, welders, whatever...

Re:inb4

[Panaflex]

And they're certainly not in the business of keeping the masses poor and ignorant to further concentrate their power over them.

Well, so far the result of public school is a mass of uneducated poor and ignorant people... so if REALITY isn't enough proof then I guess there's no proving you wrong.

Have a nice day!

Re:inb4

[Panaflex]

The study tells of the common practice of silently moving pedophile teachers around in the same manner the Bishops moved pedophile Priests.

Shakeshaft, C, “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of the Literature”, U.S. Department of Education, 2004

Re:inb4

[RockoTDF]

"Datum" is the singular form of "Data", not anecdotal evidence.

Re:inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

A datum is a fact. That is all. Don't mix your memes.

Re:inb4

[the_womble]

Google for child abuse at other institutions: for example the London borough of Islington covered up child abuse of vulnerable children who were in government homes. often keeping children who complained of abuse in the case of the abuser. The result? The leader of the borough council went on to become "minister for children" and has suffered no damage to her political career.

At least bishops responsible for cover ups get made to resign.

Re:inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go in a church, you'll be hearing that they want to be humble, forgiving. That they pray for the sick and poor in the world, and are thankful for what they have. Then there are Christian organizations that help humanity. They want peace on earth.
I very much doubt Pope Benedict doesn't agree with evolution, but he can't really dictate the massive body of the global church. They can't be too progressive, because of the people they will loose. I even doubt that the believe of, say, south American Christians and their picture of god is similar to the picture of Central Europeans. If people would point that out, and how different priests interpret/understand the bible in different ways, there would be a massive split...
I think they are doing reasonably well.

Re:inb4

[chrb]

You are of course aware that here in England we burned orders of magnitudes more Catholics at the stake, than the inquisition ever had people done away

Doubtful. In the Albigensian Crusade alone, which was arguably the start of the Inquisition, the Catholic Church killed over 1 million heretics. ("Kill them all, God will recognize his own!")

It should be noted that both Catholics and Protestants were burned at the stake in Britain:

"During the reign of Queen Mary in England ( 1553- 1558), some two hundred and seventy seven people were burnt at the stake for heresy against the Catholic church and conspiracy against the Queen, including Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley. Between 1555- 57 seventeen Protestants were burnt at the stake outside of the Star Inn in the town of Lewes in Sussex. The traditional bonfire celebrations held annually in the town on 5 November commemorate the burnings as well as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605."

Re:inb4

[thijsh]

I resent the accusation! Welders are some of the finest people there are, they have truly seen the light, and no matter what pressure they are under they always manage to keep it together.

Re:inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

well, that and the fact that a teacher who's caught raping a child typically doesn't get reassigned to another school to continue raping children at their leisure.

You'd be surprised, if you actually read any news.

Most of the "children" who are molested by priests are adolescents; there are only a small percentage that are true pedophiles. That doesn't excuse their behavior, but teachers who have sexual contact with adolescents tend to have the same thing happen to them that priests did -- they simply go elsewhere. If the relationship was consensual or the parents don't want to press charges, the teachers are often just asked to resign... and they go on to another school district. Since there's no hierarchy (unlike the Catholic Church), there's no records of administrators at higher levels moving these people around. In such a situation, there's perhaps a higher threat of repeated abuse, since a new school won't know what they're getting. At least in the case of the church, there were records kept -- and good administrators could actually take action.

You may think this is crazy, but it happens at many if not most schools. I knew someone personally in high school who had a sexual relationship with a guidance counselor, and after I graduated, I knew a friend of a friend who had a relationship with a teacher. This was not a large school. Both the counselor and the teacher were simply asked to leave -- and they both resigned with their credentials intact. I know at least one of them just went onto another job elsewhere.

These relationships were both "consensual," in some sense, but they were both with teenagers below the age of 16 and thus statutory *rape*. So, actually, teachers who are caught raping a child at my school didn't get reassigned -- they were just allowed to go on to another school as if nothing had happened.

Did they ask Pope?

[Ruvim]

This may go against His agenda

Re:Did they ask Pope?

[ProdigyPuNk]

Not really. Nowhere in TFA does it mention these records being available to the general public, let alone free to download over the net. Just because they are digitizing the archives for some safety/redundancy does NOT mean that the church is suddenly backtracking and opening the archives up to everyone.

Re:Did they ask Pope?

[eldavojohn]

Not really. Nowhere in TFA does it mention these records being available to the general public, let alone free to download over the net. Just because they are digitizing the archives for some safety/redundancy does NOT mean that the church is suddenly backtracking and opening the archives up to everyone.

We must have read different articles, the second link to the British Library is confusing if what you say is true:

I am particularly interested in the business model that the Vatican Library will adopt in making these manuscripts digitally accessible. In particular, I am thinking of the manuscripts that are held across institutions and the potential for aggregating them (or even 'virtually re-uniting' them) in Virtual Research Environments.

While not free it sounds like they want to make them more available and make a little cash on the side too to me. Nevertheless they will use the internet to not only spread these articles but also make money. Still a bit two faced, wouldn't you say? Although it's not the utmost in transparency it's still more so than locked underneath the Vatican where only the most holy scholars on site can read them.

Re:Did they ask Pope?

[ProdigyPuNk]

I am naturally very excited about the news. This is a very ambitious project on one of the world's most important manuscript collections. I will keep my eyes peeled for any further details and developments. I am particularly interested in the business model that the Vatican Library will adopt in making these manuscripts digitally accessible. In particular, I am thinking of the manuscripts that are held across institutions and the potential for aggregating them (or even 'virtually re-uniting' them) in Virtual Research Environments.

The way I read the article that paragraph is just the blogger's opinion. He says he will "keep his eyes peeled for any further details," and that he's interested in the "business model that the Vatican Library will adopt in making these manuscripts digitally accessible." Nowhere does he say that this will ACTUALLY happen, though.

Re:Did they ask Pope?

[Bertie]

Nothing two-faced about the Catholic Church wanting to make money. It's what they've always been about.

Re:Did they ask Pope?

[shadowbearer]

  If the people in the Vatican making this decision had any damned sense at all they would open up all the data to anyone, everywhere.

  Otherwise they are just inviting more criticism. Think about it. They claim to want to "spread the word" but they have things to hide?

  What, in particular, do they have to hide?

SB

40 Years?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wikipedia page states FITS was created in '81. How does that translate to more than 40 years of use?

Re:40 Years?

[CannonballHead]

Everyone knows that time goes faster as you get older. Same with formats.

Re:40 Years?

[mooingyak]

The Wikipedia page states FITS was created in '81. How does that translate to more than 40 years of use?

In some years they REALLY used it.

Re:40 Years?

[ProdigyPuNk]

The Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) data format was developed in the late 1970s to interchange astronomical image data. The final negotiations on its design occurred in March 1979. By 1981, the year that the specifications were published in an astronomical journal, FITS had become the de facto standard data interchange format of astronomy. This fact was recognized by the IAU, which adopted FITS as its standard data interchange and archiving format by a resolution at the Patras (1982) General Assembly.

40 years is a bit of a stretch, but if you go from the time FITS was first thought of it is ~ 35 years old. Not bad for ANYTHING related to computing. Imagine if filesystems has 30+ year lifetimes ;p

Re:40 Years?

[zero_out]

Dear friends, don't let this one thing escape you: with the Lord one day is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years like one day. 2 Peter 3:8

Re:40 Years?

[BikeHelmet]

Imagine if filesystems has 30+ year lifetimes ;p

FAT32 and NTFS are getting there...

Re:40 Years?

[bencoder]

40 man-years.

One guy's been using it since it was invented. Someone else found out about it eleven years ago and has been using it since them.

Re:40 Years?

[GreatBunzinni]

They used their own definition of year, the same one which makes them say that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

Re:40 Years?

[jd]

In astronomy, time dilation even affects the data formats.

Re:40 Years?

[jacobsm]

An IBM mainframe filesystem, OS VTOC, was developed during their S360 project in the mid-1960's and is still going strong 45 years later. An optional enhancement, Indexed VTOC's became available in the 1980's, but the original design is still going strong.

Re:40 Years?

[gnola14]

[...]Imagine if filesystems has 30+ year lifetimes ;p

We'd be so fucked up...

Poem of the Man God

[smoothnorman]

I'll believe it when they digitize and make available the works of Maria Valtorta (not so long ago forbidden by cardinal Ratzinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poem_of_the_Man_God#Publication_controversy

Re:Poem of the Man God

[Darkness404]

I don't understand why you disagree with it. Would you expect Microsoft Press to publish a book declaring the virtues of OS X and the outdated legacy of Windows NT? Why would you expect the Vatican to publish a book contrary to their doctrine? The Vatican opposed publication by the other publishers but really couldn't do anything about it. And really, can you blame them for not publishing it? They placed it on a list of 'forbidden' books but it lacked enforcement. If you wanted to read it, you easily could. It was banned in the 1950s, not the 1750s. So really, whats next? Expecting the Pope to put The Book of Mormon on his homepage?

Re:Poem of the Man God

[vegiVamp]

I've just read the WP article he linked to, and as far as I understand it, the book isn't against vatican doctrine. It contains similar, but more complete stories, including geographical, geological, historical and medical details that she couldn't possibly have known; and additionally it also offers conciliatory explanations for a number of inconsistencies between the various gospels.

There's a lot of support in the church for her writings, up to the high levels, and the basis for refusal seems to be the general reluctance to admit new data into the canon, as well as reluctance to acknowledge visions of Jesus and Mary.

I've gotten pretty interested in the text after reading the article, even though I'm by no means religious. I may buy and read it.

Good thing they apologized to Galileo first

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise the IAU might have had some problems with this.

DjVu?

[photonic]

It might not be around as long as FITS, but isn't DjVu more suited for the digitization of manuscripts? If I understand it correctly, DjVu was designed for this job, while FITS was designed for astronomical data, not exactly the same. Not that I am an expert ...

Re:DjVu?

[Xtravar]

Maybe they're just trying to make amends with astronomy after persecuting it so many years ago. "Hey, we have something in common now!"

Re:DjVu?

[TerranFury]

They did that a while ago; they have an observatory and host astronomy conferences. Obviously it's an attempt to live down what their predecessors did to Galileo, but I welcome it.

Re:DjVu?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If its wikipedia entry is to be believed, FITS is extraordinarily flexible. (whether or not this is a good thing in a file format is rather less clear).

Re:DjVu?

[Flavio]

DjVu is a format intended specifically for document distribution which uses lossy compression to obtain small files. It's not nearly as flexible as FITS, so you can't use it to represent hyperspectral images, metadata, etc.

Since the Vatican wants a format for data archival, they probably want to preserve as much information as possible for a wide variety of documents, so they can keep the originals in a vault and not touch them for the next 100 years.

Re:DjVu?

[Lifix]

It might not be around as long as FITS, but isn't DjVu more suited for the digitization of manuscripts?

The Vatican isn't choosing FITS because it's more suited towards digitization of manuscripts. The church intends to be around literally forever and they're choosing FITS because it too, should be around as long as there is SCIENCE! From the FITS wikipedia article: 'FITS was designed with an eye towards long-term archival storage, and the maxim once FITS, always FITS represents the requirement that developments to the format must not render invalid existing files using older versions.'

Re:DjVu?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They did that a while ago; they have an observatory and host astronomy conferences. Obviously it's an attempt to live down what their predecessors did to Galileo, but I welcome it.

Back in the day, the idea of the church actively supporting astronomy is kind of like the christian fundamentalists of today actively supporting evolutionary biology.

Strangers things have happened...

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might not be around as long as FITS, but isn't DjVu more suited for the digitization of manuscripts?

I don't know DjVu, but I'm an astronomer and I've worked with FITS a lot. It's actually a very simple data format. There's a header with all the document metadata, followed by the binary data. The metadata has a few standard [required] keywords, but as long as it's formatted correctly, you can add any header fields you like. The data is stored as uncompressed binary vector (unsigned char, short, int, long, float, or double types are supported). It's about as non-proprietary and flexible a format as you could ask for. The only downside is that the files are normally uncompressed, so they can be big. On the other hand, you can always gzip them after the fact, so it's not as big a limitation as it might seem.

In short, FITS is a pretty good format to choose if your goal is to make digital copies that will still be readable 100 years from now.

-JS

Re:DjVu?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Back in the day, the idea of the church actively supporting astronomy is kind of like the christian fundamentalists of today actively supporting evolutionary biology.

Why is it exactly that those fundamentalists think God is a moron? They assert that he can't design a system that's self-running. So, either he's not omniscient, not omnipotent, or just not as smart as the fundamentalists (given the first two they must agree that he doesn't want to make a self-running system, so they know better).

Why do fundamentalists hate God?

Re:DjVu?

[Panaflex]

They wanted to be absolutely sure... and "back in the day" was around 1758 or 1822, depending on your POV :-)

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the day, the idea of the church actively supporting astronomy is kind of like the christian fundamentalists of today actively supporting evolutionary biology.

WTF? The Jesuits were a major player in seventeenth and eighteenth century astronomy and prior to that had been running the observatory in Rome that the GP mentions since 1582—it's the oldest observatory in Europe.

Read and learn:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Clavius (built the Gregorian calendar and has a crater on the moon named after him)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Verbiest (corrected the Chinese calendar and rebuilt the Beijing Observatory)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Joseph_Boscovich (figured to demonstrate that there was no atmosphere on the moon)

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

in either case they are both documents about heavenly bodies.

maybe playboy too.

Re:DjVu?

[irenaeous]

No, not really. The most important consideration for the ancient Vatican documents is an exact and accurate replication of document image. If you have an document fragment from the third century, a proper reading of the document may hinge on how a particular letter fragment is reconstructed. To do this work properly, you need as exact a replication of the original as possible. It seems that FITS is designed to do just that. DjVu is not. DjVu works with modern documents and is focused on creating high quality readable documents that minimize resources so they can be made available on the web. In some respects, this kind of imaging is more like digitizing astronomical data than it is digitizing documents.

Re:DjVu?

[John Meacham]

DjVu is a good distribution format, but they want an archival format. something that can store everything down to the grain of the paper and the pen strokes used to write them. And not neccesarily just in the wavelengths of "red" "green" and "blue", they may want bands that preserve the previous works on palimpsests. FITS allows storage of much more data than just what is required to look at the page and have it look like it would to a human holding it at arms length. They want something suitable for scientific analysis in the future. But yes, if they were to distribute them on the web for viewing by humans, DjVu would be a fine format to do it in indeed, just not as the main archival format.

Re:DjVu?

[LordLimecat]

Why is it exactly that those fundamentalists think God is a moron....They assert that he can't design a system that's self-runnin

Well, There are many who do believe in evolution, but the opposite implication can be made for those who insist that God could NOT have possibly designed things without evolution-- it denies his sovereignty. The "God is a watchmaker" idea is more properly attributed to theists than to christians.

I do like the sweeping generalizations however, they make for nice strawmen.

Re:DjVu?

[syousef]

They did that a while ago; they have an observatory and host astronomy conferences. Obviously it's an attempt to live down what their predecessors did to Galileo, but I welcome it.

"The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world and the only research group directly supported by the Holy See". It's just the VATT (Vatican Telescope) that's relatively new.

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

FITS is the long term storage solution - maximum possible quality with all aspects of the manuscript
stored (not just a scan, but it describes the source - wide range RGB plus infrared plus metadata
about the manuscript's texture and material of construction). It will result in ginormous files. This
isn't what some shmuck logging into the Vatican's online library will see - it's the starting point
where then the FITS data is converted into something else more compact and immediately useful - the idea
is so you only scan ONCE and then stick the manuscripts back into the moldy vaults and let them sit for
another century or two. Whoever goes into the Vatican's online resource will likely to encounter DjVu,
PDF, or whatever converted down from FITS.

Re:DjVu?

[TerranFury]

Indeed; my "while ago" was meiosis (I'll admit I had to look that word up to remember it), but I didn't really give enough context for that to be clear!

Re:DjVu?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

WTF? The Jesuits were a major player in seventeenth and eighteenth century astronomy and prior to that had been running the observatory in Rome that the GP mentions since 1582--it's the oldest observatory in Europe.

Irrelevant - the fundies have "science centers" dedicated to the proof of 'micro-evolution' - but the people there are not permitted to touch full-blown evolution with a 10-foot stick. Just as all of those examples you cited were curbed by church doctrine.

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

An analogy for pool players:
Two cases:
1) A Pool Player who breaks, and then reaches out and rolls/pushes every ball into a pocket, and then declares "I just cleared the Table!". Lah Dee Freakin Dah!!!
2) A Pool Player who breaks, and on that one single shot puts every ball into a pocket. THAT my friend, is a Pool-Playing GOD.

I see the same with creation: You start with a Big Bang...

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

DjVu is littered with HOW many patents? Could you impelment a djvu decoder?

Besides, I get the distinct impression they're going lossless with this (the argument being they don't want to repeat the work EVER again. Who knows, chances are in the future, this will probably be just 45x1PB drives in a SAN or something..)

Re:DjVu?

[AK Marc]

Why do fundamentalists hate God?

Because He competes with them. They want the power and support breaking His rules by supporting idolatry, as long as they are that idol (and other such things). It's pretty much impossible to be a preacher on TV and not be a heathen.

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it isn't that fundamentalists hate God so much, or think that he is a moron. I think it's more like they are terrified that he doesn't care about every little thing that occurs. God could very well be omnipotent and omniscient, but the fact that he might not give a shit. They think the world should revolve around them and so should God. This is the true violation of the tenements of the faith.

Re:DjVu?

[the_womble]

They probably chose FITS because
1) new versions are developed to be completely backward compatible
2) It can store meta-data such as calibration info which may be important to historians and archivists (e.g. has the colour of the document changed slightly since the last scan?)
3) It is flexible

Re:DjVu?

[the_womble]

Obviously it's an attempt to live down what their predecessors did to Galileo, but I welcome it.

Vatican support for astronomy pre-dates Gailleo. Read the history of the observatory. Even the article you linked to mentions "four centuries of steady support.

The persecution of Gallileo probably had more to do with his insulting the pope (who had previously encouraged his work). This is obviously a bad thing as well, but its a very different bad thing from the popular perception.

Re:DjVu?

[the_womble]

The priests and and monks who devised the Gregorian calendar obviously new a lot of astronomy: adding leap years to correct the drift is very impressive without modern equipment.

Re:DjVu?

[konohitowa]

isn't DjVu more suited for the digitization of manuscripts?

You apparently misread the abstract. They're going to digtize them. I'm not sure if that means they're creating digg buttons for them, or they're creating DNS entries for them.

Re:DjVu?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's flexible in a bunch of ways, some of which may help here.

First, the archivists can choose the number of bits that represent each pixel; 8, 16 and 32 are the common choices. This allows the majority of images to be stored efficiently while a few are scanned and stored with higher dynamic range (more bits per pixel). That's a possible approach to make the palimpsests readable in the images.

Secondly, FITS allows each file to carry unlimited amounts of arbitrary metadata in the form of key-value-comment tuples. This is useful in archiving. Unfortunately, FITS requires the tuples to be written out 1970s-style is 80-column card-images with the names unique in an 8-character namespace.

Thirdly, FITS allows multiple, related images to be grouped in one file: multiple-extension FITS or MEF. This might be applicable for pages of a document.

Fourthly, FITS "supports" (for values of "support" that require truly tortuous programing) tile compression. That's a form of lossless compression which gets particularly good compression factors for for an image with a flat-ish background and sparse foreground. Images of text might well fit that criterion.

Re:DjVu?

[Yvanhoe]

They still lack a medical lab. Claiming condoms worsen the AIDS problem is the modern-day equivalent of Galileo trial. Except that this time it kills thousands of people.

Re:DjVu?

[u38cg]

Have they given up on the Second Coming?

Re:DjVu?

[PastaLover]

They still lack a medical lab. Claiming condoms worsen the AIDS problem is the modern-day equivalent of Galileo trial. Except that this time it kills thousands of people.

I believe their point with condoms was that it encourages people to have sex (and thus..). I don't think a medical lab would help there, maybe a statistics lab?

All missions are spatial

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary probably meant to say "space missions".

-- Your cowardly neighborhood language Nazi.

Naming conventions

[jollyreaper]

I hear they're going to call the results Portable Data Objects, PDO for short. All of the files will end in .PDO. The Vatican is going need a lot of resources to handle all of these PDO files.

That about wraps it up here.

[oldhack]

Well, this just about evens out everything for slashdot crowd.

Let's move along now.

Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one revel in the irony of the Church trusting their sacred archives to science propagated by heathen astronomers, physicists, and double-damned astrophysicists.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one revel in the irony that your ideas are more out of date then the Church! The Vatican is cool about hard science, even evolution for crying out loud.

I think you are confusing the Roman brand with of some of North America's slightly wackier groups.

What about the Monks?

[Herkum01]

Does this mean in the monasteries we are going to have monks transcribing these manuscripts bit by bit? I mean, if you just scan the stuff in what else will they have to do all day. Pray for the boredom to be over...

Re:What about the Monks?

[bdam]

If we're lucky, they'll use that extra time to brew beer.

Image size?

[by (1706743)]

(45 petabytes) / (40 million pages) ~= 1.2 gigabytes / page. Is it just me, or does that seem a little big?

Re:Image size?

[bFusion]

You've got to get a high enough resolution to see all the cryptological details on every single page... didn't you ever see The DaVinci Code or Angels and Demons? Come on.

Re:Image size?

[qbzzt]

DaVinci Code aside, parchment used to be expensive. People reused it. Probably they want a high enough resolution to read any palimpsets they may have.

Re:Image size?

[geantvert]

Let's assume
    - an average page is 10x10 inches (25x25 cm)
    - a high scan resolution of 1200DPI
    - 32bits per pixel (4bytes)

An average uncompressed page takes 10*10*1200*1200*4 = 576000000 = 0.57 gigabytes

A lossless compression can probably reduce the size by 2 but if they are not stupid they will make multiple backups so 1.2 gigabytes per page seems reasonable to me.

Re:Image size?

[bFusion]

Noooo, a wikipedia link, I don't want to learn anything today! *opens page*

Re:Image size?

[ALecs]

Yes :) FITS files are HUGE!

As a sysadmin for an astronomy observatory I find this laughable. FITS was designed to store every last detail about an image (and frequencies for radio astronomy) and it seems WAY overkill to burn that many bits digitizing manuscripts.

But hey, who am I to question the word of the church? :)

Re:Image size?

[Draek]

But all those extra details can be extrapolated in software anyways, didn't you ever watch CSI?

Re:Image size?

[Achromatic1978]

Noooo, a wikipedia link, I don't want to learn anything today! *opens page*

Don't worry, it's Wikipedia - you probably won't.

Re:Image size?

[c]

> Is it just me, or does that seem a little big?

They might want to scan at such a high resolution that someone can study the makeup of the manuscript paper and things like brush and pen strokes...

If you assume 1200DPI non-lossy and uncompressed at 32bpp, an 8.5x11 piece of paper might be 500MB or so (depending on how they encode it), and old manuscripts aren't necessarily going to be as small as regular paper. They're probably also scanning things like maps.

c.

Re:Image size?

[ascari]

That's about the file size of a single 15 mm by 15 mm digitized microscopy slide - so no it doesn't. It's just you.

Re:Image size?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA it says they're using a 50 megapixel hasselblad camera to photograph the pages. 1.2gb sounds quite reasonable when shooting at this resolution...

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Christian, I cannot understand why they do not want to make these records public. What is the big deal in not making it public? Why hide?

Re:Why?

[vbraga]

From the Wikipedia page on the Vatican Library:

The Vatican Library is a research library for history, law, philosophy, science and theology, open to anyone who can document their qualifications and their research needs to view the collection. Photocopies for private study of pages from books published between 1801 and 1990 can be requested in person or by mail.

It's site is here.

It's not uncommon for a research library to be closed for the general public and only open for specialists due to the fragility of a manuscript collection.

The BAV has not made any announcement if the digital archives are going to be open or not, so it's all speculation.

Re:Why?

[Panaflex]

I doubt they're hiding much in the library... thousands of academics are there every year. No, having Joe Public in the stacks is not conducive with preservation - you are welcome to obtain copies.

You can't check out the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives, either!

Re:Why?

[KingPin27]

I may not be able to check it out but at least its printed and I can read it....There are thousands of documents that are to be imaged and tell me...how many of them are we able to get a copy of to read and peruse?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an atheist, and I've been to the Vatican Library. I've met other non-Christians there, as well as Jews and Muslims. The Vatican Library doesn't restrict access based on belief, but only based on training. If you're doing research that has a slight chance of having merit, and if you've been trained on how to handle a really old book, odds are they'll give you access.

And if not, you can always order a microfilm of the books you want to see; they're not that expensive.

Re:Why?

[Panaflex]

You can order reproductions of any document currently microfimed... currently at 150,000 and growing. There's a growing digital library, and of course this project.

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?pag=ufficio_fotografico&ling=eng&BC=11

Computers is black majick! Use Monk scribes!!

[erroneus]

Monk labor is a time-tested and proven method of copying information from one paper/parchment to another. I see no reason to stop now.

Re:Computers is black majick! Use Monk scribes!!

[Jeng]

Do you know if that actually is something that monks still do?

I would assume that the process of manually copying manuscripts started to taper off when the printing press went into operation, let alone now with digital copying processes.

Re:Computers is black majick! Use Monk scribes!!

[vikingpower]

It actually is. I know of more than one Italian monastery that has taken up, once more, the ancient ( medieval ) art of creating so-called evangeliaries: one-copy masterworks, written and painted in by hand.

Re:Computers is black majick! Use Monk scribes!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're selling the religious orders short. Yes, they developed the one-copy manuscript approach. They also were the major beneficiaries of early systems of mass production from one manuscript (cf. The Pecia System). When printing first came into being, most of the books produced by title (=most of the incunabula, for those of you scoring at home) were aimed at the religious orders. I believe ten years ago, when Father Boyle was running the Vatican Library, they had a deal with a University in Brazil to digitize all their Mss. Next thing we heard, Boyle was shipped off "to the farm", and no plans were in place. So this is good news, even if it's probably the same guy pulling the strings who got rid of Boyle. On the bright side, they're using medium-format digital cameras, which is one level of awesome beyond what the current awesome manuscript-digitalization projects use. On the dark side, they haven't stated whether it'll be free or pay-to-play. If it's the former, we'll be praising the keeper and the Vatican Library, the largest collection of medieval manuscripts in the world. If it's the latter, well, we can still get our microfilms at a reasonable price, and some of us are pretty good at scanning them into the digital format (which makes them useful for consultation in the digital age). Be advised about distribution, however: Fair Use on photographs of cultural artifacts over 500 years old varies by country, and most allow that sort of thing. But very few professionals want to piss off the Vatican Library. I know I don't want to lose my card.

Still, if these things end up in digital format, they'll have a way of traveling the globe. The usage studies that I've seen have shown that making texts available actually increases library visits. Of course, library visits don't increase revenues, but Christian charity helps everybody. Heck, I've taught courses where students ended up converting to Catholicism, and I ain't never been baptized. I'm just sayin'.

Re:Computers is black majick! Use Monk scribes!!

[jdsnape]

In the vast vast majority of cases however its not still done (at least not systematically, I suppose the monks may well have Calligraphy as a hobby). There are however a good number of monasteries running printing presses/publishing operations, although now they are starting to fade :( A good example here in the UK is Farnborough abbey press where they both print and bind books.

Re:Computers is black majick! Use Monk scribes!!

[BCSWowbagger]

Unfortunately, monks have high technical support overhead.

Re:Computers is black majick! Use Monk scribes!!

[vikingpower]

You are correct on the presses & publishing operations. Here in Central Europe, many large monasteries also do that, which is a Good Thing. Some of them are, alas, fledgling. I am just fascinated by the idea of a couple of monks, sometimes a single one, spending years and years upon a single evangeliary - and that in the 21st century ! Father Marco in Vallombrosa, in Tuscany, is making one. By hand. It is hoped to be ready around 2015. Isn't that great ?

New metric unit?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is the Vatican Library the new metric equivalent of a Library of Congress?

Wiki say a LOC is approximately 20 tebibytes of uncompressed data, while VL is apparently 45 petabytes.

So, that means (if I did the math right) that it takes about 2046 LOC to equal just one VL. Crazy!

Re:New metric unit?

[Alain Williams]

So, that means (if I did the math right) that it takes about 2046 LOC to equal just one VL. Crazy!

Its willy waving, Pope Benedict XVI (aka Ratzinger) just wants to show that he has a bigger one than Barack Obama.

Re:New metric unit?

[vikingpower]

So, is the Vatican Library the new metric equivalent of a Library of Congress?

Amen, brother, amen...

Re:New metric unit?

[PieSquared]

The LOC measurement is uncompressed plain text.

The VL measurement is uncompressed images of parchment.

High quality images eat storage quickly

[MacFury]

(45 petabytes) / (40 million pages) ~= 1.2 gigabytes / page. Is it just me, or does that seem a little big?

Storage is cheap. The manual process of scanning each of these documents is the costly part. It is thus better to scan at the maximum resolution and quality possible so that they never have to do it again. They may even be scanning multiple passes with different methods (visible, IR, etc.). 1.2GB per page is not unreasonable, even if it uses a lossless compression scheme.

Re:High quality images eat storage quickly

[vikingpower]

Yep. And when you have thousands of priceless artifacts sitting in your library, doing what they do is a very reasonable choice.

Re:High quality images eat storage quickly

[IndustrialComplex]

Storage is cheap. The manual process of scanning each of these documents is the costly part. It is thus better to scan at the maximum resolution and quality possible so that they never have to do it again.

You are correct about the cost. Hell, I've been holding off archiving my audio CDs until I have enough disk space to store them all in a lossless format just so I won't feel the need to do it over again.

There is also another VERY important reason why they don't want to repeat this if at all possible.

You are going to be exposing these priceless artifacts in order to scan them. Even if they had unlimited time and money, they don't want to risk damaging the original items to repeat this process. The slightest jostle or bending could cause the ancient inks/paints to flake or parchment to crumble/crack. You also have the issue that scanning these items will expose them to light which will also degrade the source slightly.

I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the guy who tripped and ripped a page out of something like the Book of Kells. (I actually had an opportunity to access one of the few facsimiles of this manuscript while researching the origins of art forms. Accurate down to the holes in the pages. The facsimile was worth more than a year's tuition)

Re:High quality images eat storage quickly

[jabuzz]

How many CD's do you own!!! A 1TB drive which are dirt cheap these days will hold around 2000 average CD's with lossless compression. There are also 2TB drives on the market as well.

Subtitle is dead wrong

[vikingpower]

"Wouldn't a lossy format make more sense" ? No, timothy, not if and when the images are of priceless and centuries old works of art. The last days, slashdot's quality of reporting has taken a steep plunge. Sheesh.

Re:Subtitle is dead wrong

[RockDoctor]

"Wouldn't a lossy format make more sense" ? No, timothy, not if and when

That sub-title triggered my irony detector. But not yours.
Which part of the Colonies did you grow up in?

Bad jokes aside...

[kurokame]

This is a very good choice of format. Astronomers use FITS because it gives you the option for future or task-specific extensibility while maintaining ease of access to historical data, and because it preserves as much detail as possible in the image data. If you want to archive historical documents, these same attributes make FITS extremely suitable to the task. Also, since FITS is in standard use for astronomy, there are already a lot of existing image processing and analysis tools out there - many or most of which are open source.

UFS has been around for over 30 years

[sir lox elroy]

The Unix file system UFS, AKA FFS and Berkley FFS has been around since the late 70s.

Altar boys have heard it before

[Anonymous Coward]

[insert tasteless joke here]

They've heard it FITS before and they aren't buying it.

Exactly, just like you and religious bigotry

[SuperKendall]

It's just the way the human brain works: things that are found together with relatively high frequency...

Like many slashdot readers and uninformed bigotry against religion.

But then it's easy to hate and fear what you do not understand, because it would take work to understand someone else, and bigotry is born of laziness.

Not at all religious myself, I've just had a lot of friends that were and met many priests that were nothing like the monsters you seem to expect by default.

Re:Exactly, just like you and religious bigotry

[iamhassi]

"But then it's easy to hate and fear what you do not understand"

Amen brother! Sing it to the mountains!

A waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'study' of theology is akin to the study of faeces in the toilet. Both contain only crap, and both will foul anything they come into contact with.
The pathetic pseudo-academic morons who debate this shit are wasting their own lives. Ratzinger should keep his despotic views to himself, and focus on reversing the damage his previous dogma, regarding the restriction of availability of contraception in Africa has caused.
Ratzinger's church has committed genocide on a massive scale, by harbouring direct responsibility for the spread of AIDS.
Shouldn't Ratzinger be facing trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity. There certainly appears to be enough evidence to put together a pretty solid case. There are rumors that such a case might be presented in at least two European countries, and also possibly in the United Kingdom.

Word

[DingerX]

I get paid to (among other things) transcribe medieval manuscripts. It's a data storage technology. In this case, the medium is really expensive (parchment or old-skool paper), and the compression used (contextual abbreviation) often exceeds the capacity of the agent (scribe). The result is text that, if expanded according to ever-changing rules (and remember, we're talking about a couple millennia of shifting conventions), would render nonsense at critical junctures. But, in the hands of someone with reasonable experience and understanding, the same text can achieve a reasonably high level of fidelity to be understood. Now, to be understood in every detail requires two more levels of refinement, and even more cash. But computers can't even get close to the first level at the moment.
So DjVu is not what you need. What you need are really nice color photographs and a storage format that will last. And, yes, you need to make it free too. There's nothing new or artistic about these reproductions.

Galileo affair

[syousef]

Isn't the Vatican one of the more reasonable major religions when it comes to science and technology?.

Yes, and it was only in 1992 that they admitted that they had made a mistake in forcing Galileo to recant that the Earth went around the sun. Yes, Galileo was an ass about how he said it, but it doesn't change the fact that the church opposed the science with real physical and political force. Since this is how a "more reasonable major religion" behaves I think this is an EXCELLENT argument against "moderate" religion.

Re:Galileo affair

[Anonymous Coward]

They opposed him more for being a dick than anything else. And he was wrong on numerous points (comets are just reflections in the upper atmosphere!), and his methodology was all but impossible to verify in a short time-frame, given how crappy telescopes were back then.

Yes, he was eventually proven right, but at the time he had really bad support for his theories, and went around pretty much insulting everybody. It's not as clear cut as most people make it out to be

Re:Galileo affair

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The church opposed Galileo? Or fellow scientist? Read again and re-learn your history before you continue to propagate these kind of myths.

Galileo was a friend of the then Pope. He was saved from worse punishment because of this relationship with the Pope. Even in his "punishment" state, he was free to continue his experiments on science.

You see, in the times that Galileo lived, there is no such thing as "secular scientists". Almost all of "scientists" at that time were also religious people - part of the same Church as Galileo. These "churchy" people who opposed Galileo were not because Galileo's result threatened the Church dogma or because the Church opposed science, but because it threatened their own scientific establishment. After all, Galileo's study and experiments (as well as those scientists from the opposing camp) were *funded* by the Church!

What's new here? Just like today's scientist vie and compete one another for Government grants. And from time to time we know bad apples who used not so-scientific method to get their way.

Re:Galileo affair

[syousef]

Really? The church opposed Galileo? Or fellow scientist? Read again and re-learn your history before you continue to propagate these kind of myths.

I've read extensively thanks. How about you re-read, and stop posting as AC so we can have a proper discussion, because your take on it is laughable. He was about as "free" to continue his experiments as a caged bird. He was also no friend of the pope once he parodied him.

What the church did was inexcusable and apologists like you make me ill.

Re:Galileo affair

[syousef]

They opposed him more for being a dick than anything else.

Well that's okay then isn't it. I mean forcing someone to recant what they know and putting him under house arrest is something we do all the time for 'being a dick'.

And he was wrong on numerous points (comets are just reflections in the upper atmosphere!),

Got news for you. Scientists are wrong all the time. The difference between religion and science is that in science you don't have to take it on faith and what is said CAN be disproven.

and his methodology was all but impossible to verify in a short time-frame, given how crappy telescopes were back then.

Yes, he was eventually proven right, but at the time he had really bad support for his theories, and went around pretty much insulting everybody. It's not as clear cut as most people make it out to be

Yes he was an insulting twit. No his methodology wasn't bad nor was his methodology particularly hard to verify. The idea that the earth was round had been supressed by crackpots for a couple of millennia. It wasn't a new idea. And the church perscuted many people other than him for holding this view.

Re:Galileo affair

[shadowbearer]

  Since this is how a "more reasonable major religion" behaves I think this is an EXCELLENT argument against "moderate" religion.

  It's the religious people who should have to 'enforce' their arguments against science; I certainly haven't seen any of them eschewing the technology that enables them to post their superstitious nonsense on the internet. Even on slashdot - unfortunately, after years here I feel I STILL have to point out that it's science that has created it, not religion.

  If people who subscribe to religious nonsense over technology are going to use the tools that science and technology gave them to spread their ideology, then I am not going to feel sorry for them when their hypocrisy is revealed for what it is.

  More ontopic, the Vatican and all their offshoots have a long ways to go in that respect. Just because there are worse offenders does not exonerate them. Case in point would be birth control, and more specifically the freedom to use it.

  I'll make myself clear; I have no problem with religion, in general. I have a problem with groups of people using religion to control other people. Unfortunately the latter is mostly the case, has been for many centuries, and the conflict between some of those organized groups, in the last ten years or so, has caused a lot of destruction, pain and anguish for pretty much everyone.

  I hear all this stuff nowadays about how X religious group is being persecuted, etc. Oh, really? Going to keep pursuing that until the heat death of the universe, are you?

  I have a message for all of those fundamentalists, whether violent or no; even if you aren't violent, you still contribute to the violence: Keep your religion to yourself. Please. The rational people in this world, and many of your own members, as a matter of fact, are just plain fucking tired of dealing with it. Leave. People. Alone. Keep your religion to yourself. Keep your fanaticism to yourself.

    I know, it's been said before; but never has it been more important than it is now, when both sides have weapons that can destabilize our entire global society and can cause death and destruction on a scale that would make WWII look mild.

  Just adding my words to the many millions that have come before me. I would be remiss in my duty to all the sapient species on this planet, if I did not do so.

  Eleventh Commandment: Keep Thy Religion To Thyself. It's the best one that Bog never came up with.

SB

Re:Galileo affair

[Anonymous Coward]

They opposed him more for being a dick than anything else.

Well that's okay then isn't it. I mean forcing someone to recant what they know and putting him under house arrest is something we do all the time for 'being a dick'.

Haha, no, but that displaces the problem, it is not science vs. religion any more, it's dick vs. politically powerful other dick. Science and religion may have been used as justification for this, but this is not typical of religion (specifically catholic church here). Try insulting an atheist that happens to be head of state or powerful enough. Would you conclude that atheists don't like whatever is your line of work?

and his methodology was all but impossible to verify in a short time-frame, given how crappy telescopes were back then.

Yes, he was eventually proven right, but at the time he had really bad support for his theories, and went around pretty much insulting everybody. It's not as clear cut as most people make it out to be

Yes he was an insulting twit. No his methodology wasn't bad nor was his methodology particularly hard to verify. The idea that the earth was round had been supressed by crackpots for a couple of millennia. It wasn't a new idea. And the church perscuted many people other than him for holding this view.

Oh yeah? Like who? I can think of one, maybe two others, and nobody is trying to say that the catholic church never made any mistake. Finding a few people unjustly killed in two millennia is hardly surprising and doesn't prove anything in regard of "religion doesn't like science". If anything, this proves that religion doesn't prevent some people from being assholes.

Re:Galileo affair

[cprincipe]

"Keep your fanaticism to yourself."

A very ironic statement on your part.

Re:Galileo affair

[shadowbearer]

  Oh? Just where, exactly, am I being fanatical?

SB

Re:Galileo affair

[AthanasiusKircher]

Yes, and it was only in 1992 that they admitted that they had made a mistake in forcing Galileo to recant that the Earth went around the sun.

I'm not defending the church's stance on Galileo in the 1630s, but I do find it interesting that you judge an organization by an action committed almost 400 years ago. While the church took longer to officially admit their wrong-doing, they had already taken Galileo's book off the banned list by the 1750s. They allowed access to scholars who wanted to study the affair beginning in the 19th century, and it was those scholars who actually wrote the history books that portrayed Galileo as the hero of the scientific revolution.

What the church did was certainly wrong, but your 1992 date implies that they hadn't moved on from their objections until then, when actually the Vatican had long since admitted the basic truth of heliocentrism. It's just that they didn't get around to officially "apologizing" (in a way) for what they did to one particular person.

According to your standard, let's start judging most organizations by what they did centuries ago. How many atrocities were committed, slaves captured and abused, genocides, wars, etc. How many of those have been officially admitted to be wrong by national governments and corporations that still exist today? It was only in the late 20th century that everybody started apologizing for various historical incidents, and most countries and corporations still haven't. Does that mean that they all still believe in slavery, etc.? Should we judge nations on their behavior in the 1600s?

If anything, the Catholic Church should be applauded for taking the time to make such a formal statement on something that happened in its history, not ridiculed as if it were still as backward in 1992 as it was in 1632.

Re:Galileo affair

[syousef]

Haha, no, but that displaces the problem, it is not science vs. religion any more, it's dick vs. politically powerful other dick. Science and religion may have been used as justification for this, but this is not typical of religion (specifically catholic church here). Try insulting an atheist that happens to be head of state or powerful enough. Would you conclude that atheists don't like whatever is your line of work?

When politically powerful other dick starts contributing their lack of wisdom to science and saying what views a scientist may hold using power obtained through a religious institution, it does become about science vs religion. ...and unfortunately this is typical of the catholic church. Yes both atheists and theists can be can be dicks, but scientists don't justify it by saying God says it's alright.

I think this is a case of anonymous coward dick justifying church dick who commented on scientific dick. Anonymous coward dick either does not realise or does not admit the harm that has been done.

Re:Galileo affair

[syousef]

Finding a few people unjustly killed in two millennia is hardly surprising and doesn't prove anything in regard of "religion doesn't like science". If anything, this proves that religion doesn't prevent some people from being assholes.

Oh well Hitler only killed a few million Jews, and that has been disputed too. I suppose you'd like to support him too? Oh wait your pope already has. The fact that you can make a disgraceful and ill informed statement like the one above just further proves my point. Did god personally tell you it was justified?

Re:Galileo affair

[tecnico.hitos]

Blame the Church, not the religion.

A religion is a set of beliefs, which people are free to believe to the extent they find adequate. The Church is an organization that becomes dangerous when it gets too much power, like any other.

I like FITS

[serviscope_minor]

I like FITS. It shows its age: the file headers are all arranged in decks of 80 column cards. But who cares? It is robust, easy to parse (if you want to read simple data formats) flexible and stable. One can write a basic image reader and writer in a day, and you will be able to read images from about 30 years old to ones created right now.

There are some slight pecularities, like applying a fixed additive offset to every data element. These are rarely encountered except in specific circumstances: fits does not support unsigned types, but they can be emulated with the right offset.

But basically, it is simple, effective, flexible and will rightfully be readable forever. How long would it take you to hack up a PNG, JPEG or TIFF parser?

Catholic church does real scientific work ...

[perpenso]

Not really, but I find very funny that the Vatican is using “science and technology" to store its manuscripts, when at the same time they spit so much on this same science and technology.

The currently accepted theory regarding the origin of the universe, the "big bang" theory, was developed by a catholic priest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître

The vatican operates a world class astronomical observatory.
http://vaticanobservatory.org/VOF/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1

When I was an undergraduate at a california state university the dean of the chemistry department was also the parish priest at a small local church.

Some religious individuals view math and science as a tool to understand god's creation. Isaac Newton comes to mind.

--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN

Corrected link

[perpenso]

That first link isn't getting parsed correctly, here it is in quotes so it is intact. Just copy and paste.

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître"

Anyone know how to avoid such problems in a posted URL?

Re:Corrected link

[Anonymous Coward]

Using URL standards for non-ASCII characters works : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

Why So Big

[pgn674]

Why is this going to be taking up so much space?

I did some calculations. If you assume they're actually thinking 45 PiB, that's 1.18 GiB / page, or 589.82 GiB / manuscript. If you assume 45 PB, that's 1.05 GiB / page, or 523.87 GiB / manuscript. One of the cameras they're using is 50 megapixels. If you assume 32 bits (4 bytes) per pixel, that's 190.73 MiB. Assuming there's not much meta data, that's about 5.99 photos per page. Is that what they're really doing?

spatial?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Spatial" does not mean what they think it means.

Child Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

(45 petabytes) / (40 million pages) ~= 1.2 gigabytes / page. Is it just me, or does that seem a little big?

Nope, not when you realize each page is a high-def, 3-d movie depicting various acts of brutal lchild rape, commissioned by his holiness.