Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
"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."
My work here is dung.
[insert tasteless joke here]
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
The Wikipedia page states FITS was created in '81. How does that translate to more than 40 years of use?
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
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.
Otherwise the IAU might have had some problems with this.
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 ...
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
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.
My work here is dung.
Well, this just about evens out everything for slashdot crowd.
Let's move along now.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
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.
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...
(45 petabytes) / (40 million pages) ~= 1.2 gigabytes / page. Is it just me, or does that seem a little big?
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.
Nothing two-faced about the Catholic Church wanting to make money. It's what they've always been about.
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.
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!
(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.
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Had it been anything other than a church it would have been dealt with much more severely by outside powers.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
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.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
It's protestants that believe in creationism
"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.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
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!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
[CITATION NEEDED]
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.
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?
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
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.
The Unix file system UFS, AKA FFS and Berkley FFS has been around since the late 70s.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
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.
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)
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
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.
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.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
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.
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.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
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.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
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?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yes. I've heard of a lot more non-priest scientists though.
(Even when factoring in the greater number of non-priests.)
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
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?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Not even just protestants, but a very narrow, crazed faction of protestants. Lutherans, for example, are fairly rational.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
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.
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.
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.
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
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?
"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.
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?
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.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
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...
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
"Datum" is the singular form of "Data", not anecdotal evidence.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
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
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
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.
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."
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.