The example images that make it really clear are academic examples. But the scaled photos are all enough of a change to be worth noticing and caring about if you're a serious amateur photographer (never mind professional). And they don't look particularly unusual to me (I haven't looked for odd trickery, but I assume he's being honest here).
Really? It looked to me like the images I looked at need to be pretty badly pixelated (resized well beyond what a serious amateur would find acceptable) for this to be a serious concern. Of course some people are always going to be more interested in over analysing their photos than producing good ones...*shrug*
... and how are you storing the checksum information?
My checksums are md5 hashes stored in a text file alongside the image files. I am not expecting a malicious attack on the data. If a copy is compromised I expect to fetch the data from a copy that isn't compromised.
Instead of just putting checksums in your backups, why not add (block-level) reed-solomon error correcting codes? Like in parchive for files, and dvdisaster for whole DVD-R images...?
Those algorithms are suitable if you plan to recover partially corrupted data. If data is corrupt, I'd prefer to restore a fresh copy of the file from elsewhere, and would not trust error corrected files. Also I'm not familiar with the tools for doing so on a hard drive. I would of course be using such algorithms implicitly if I was using DVD storage, but I've found it to be unreliable and packages of 4.7GB are inconvenient.
I've had photos butchered by subsequent moving from one jpeg software to another.
If you're continually re-saving the work, you should be working in TIFF. Simply opening pictures up in software isn't going to ruin them. Going back and forth between lots of programs and saving in each will. Any more than 3 saves required, and I'm using TIFF. 1, 2 or 3 saves and the deterioration is neglible if the files are decent to start with.
Yes, Windows XP will choke on your little ~52 megabyte TIFF. Real operating systems won't, Mac OSX with sufficient RAM and good software and there's no problem at all.
Pity about vendor lock in and "rights management" (where the user only has the right to do anything if Apple deems it wholesome) on the Mac platform. I'll stick with windows.
Linux does ok too, though available free software not as high quality.
bad choice! jpeg is lossy format, information is deliberately dropped to make an approximate reproduction!
Many cameras only capture in a lossy format such as jpg. Even those that have RAW sometimes use lossy RAW. Losses only occur once per save. So to mitigate you don't modify files repeatedly. If there is a need to do this, go back to the original, save to TIFF and edit from there. So long as you have the original preserved you can always reapply any edits.
you're like the guy in the India Jones movie who drinks from a fancy chalice, has the flesh and guts dissolve and burn from his bones: "...he chose....poorly....."
I can't tell if you're trolling or just being melodramatic.
really, if you value your work do a little research, maybe standard such as "TIFF Revision 6.0 Final" or similar should be used, and perhaps with widely known and well documented lossless compression.
TIFFs are a poor choice unless multiple edits are going to be made. They slow down current hardware immensely and aren't widely supported. Try flipping through 12MP tiffs using Windows fax and picture viewer on XP.
I think you ought to have some idea what you're on about before you criticise so floridly.
Tip for maintaining files unaltered: Use disk image files and mount them read-only.
Try doing this on Windows XP for a USB hard disk. Official method is to make all USB drives read only. There are clunky kludges out there for getting past this but nothing usable long term.
Also I do make edits of some files, so I need a "working copy", and once I've made these edits I have to keep them. Checksums on the working copy on individual files seem to be the best way to go.
In my own quest to preserve my digital photos, I've created multiple backups on hard disk including a remote backup which gets updated every few months. I use different disks created by different manufacturers and buy new disks every couple of years (but do not throw away old copies).
I've recently come across another aspect that isn't addressed by the article. Data that is in use in an online copy can be modified (including corrupted).There is no point in copying/propagating data if the data you are copying is damaged. Typically this has happened when I've tried DAM software like Lightroom which will modify the original file despite claiming to be non-destructive I have no proof that photos were re-encoded or quality was reduced but I do know original files were altered, and I want an original unaltered file preserved
Most people when they backup files do very little verification to ensure the files they are copying today are the same files that were created 5 or 10 years ago. They rely too much on backup software to do this for them, with no attention paid to what's happened to the data between copies. To keep this under control I've started putting checksums on all my photo files, which I check when I create a fresh copy.
Of course where my photos are captured in a proprietary format I copy to an open or at least well documented format (typically jpg, sometimes also tif). This is done as soon as I transfer the photos, which are not removed from the camera card until i have 2 additional copies. So I shouldn't have the same issues that the author had assuming jpg can still be read throughout my lifetime.
Really don't care about porn. As you said it's abundant for those who want it. But a developer building an app, having it approved, then having the rugged pulled from under them. That I care about. I don't care if it's one vendor or even one sick sad 30 year old still living in his mum's basement.
The only people up in arms are sleazy dudes out to make a quick buck off of someone else's boobies. They've had their day and nothing of value has been lost.
First they came for the emulators, and I said nothing because I had not written an emulator. Then they came for the boobies and I said nothing because I was a puritanical closet pervert.
Because Apple has become about being in a certain mindset. They not only promote it, lately they're doing their best to ENFORCE it. If you use Apple, you're a young, cool, hip, media loving yuppy.
And apparently you have no libido! Within a generation, all the fanbois will die out, which is why they must recruit more each day!
I skimmed it. One of the authors of MySQL I presume self-agrandising and taking credit for "saving" MySQL even though none of Oracle's promises are legally binding.
I don't know every little detail of what's happened and frankly I don't care. If people want it to live on and Oracle don't live up to their agreement, and assuming the code is readable, the community can fork it and move on. If that's no longer legally possible, as far as I'm concerned it's not GPL code. Regardless, my guess is that MySQL will decline but that other projects like Postgress will fill the niche for small free databases. As for the effect on the GPL, things cannot be undone. Once a license is challenged or abused in some way the only possible response is to adapt it to take that into account.
I'm MUCH more worried about Java, OpenOffice, VirtualBox. I'm also concerned about zfs and MySQL, but not as much. Roughly in that order.
Public debate won't give citizens any option to change one damn thing. It'll be debated when the deal is already done.
I'm not saying anyone should run around scared like headless chooks. There should however be protest and plenty of letters written about the illegality and injustice of making this such a closed process.
What's pathetic is that you care so little for your freedom that you're happy for laws to be passed without any public debate so long as you're eventually notified. You can keep not getting yourself worked up over them. Some of us however find it scary that a situation can exist in which such "leaks" are so common.
Can't think of anything that fits with the definition of treason better than a system that passes laws that the citizens aren't permitted to know. That immediately removes the incentive for being law abiding since you can't know if you're breaking the law. Anyone enacting or enforcing such laws should be covered by treason laws.
Can't think of anything more terrifying than threatening to take away a person's ability to communicate, possibly their livelihood without having to PROOVE a crime in court. Enacting such laws is the very definition of terrorism. Where's the anti-terrorism legislation now?
Did you actually have anything to contribute? I notice your vapid commentary got +5 insightful and as predicted I got modded down. Any time I mention that Apple isn't quite the darling company some believe it is I get modded down. Nothing to do with getting worked up. Apple fanbois SUCK.
While it's true that some portion of your customers are going to lie when they say there has been no water intrusion, including, at extra cost a device aimed at proving that your customer is lying on every device is unfair. Let alone close to the external extremedies of the device.
Here's a prediction: First they will deny the problem, and try to cast doubt on the testing methodolgy, then they will acknowledge the problem but claim that it only occurs in a very limited set of circumstances and offer restitution but only for those who complain loudest. Then they'll make a minor change that doesn't actually fix the problem and claim it is fixed (oh and raise prices to cover this change). They'll stall at every step. This seems to be right out of the Apple customer service manual, and they're not the only ones (but they are some of the worst). No different to scratchable iPod minis, or cracked laptop cases. Fucking horseshit.
But it's Apple, it just works, right? Come on fanbois, mod me into oblivion. I don't give a shit.
I still blame pirates as much as I do the game vendors. This is their war, not mine. I shouldn't be taking fire meant for them.
Hey I own thousands of dollars in games. I stopped buying them when I was finding that to play them I would still need to crack them since the copy protection was broken or restricted my use to the point where I couldn't play. The last straw was starforce, which appeared to be damaging hardware. I do not blame the pirates for such shitty copy protection. I think you've been drinking the coolaid. Pirates do not control anti-piracy measures.
Until I need a disk in my CD/DVD drive and/or an Internet connection for single player mode. Or until it's used as an excuse to inflate the price of entertainment.
The game companies do that, not the pirates. So blame them. CD/DVD checks are ineffective, and they'll blame their price increases on anything but greed. Yet pirates continue to crack their games while legit users keep having to deal with the problems. Don't give your game dollars to companies that penalise legitimate users. Simple.
Slashdot Mirror
If you use a PGP key, you don't need a 2nd copy of the secret key at the bank, just the matching public key.
Ride 50 miles one way to work on your bicycle.
Not too hard, I'd only need to do it once before my boss fires me for being 4 hours late.
This is your boss. You're fired for slacking off on slashdot.
The example images that make it really clear are academic examples. But the scaled photos are all enough of a change to be worth noticing and caring about if you're a serious amateur photographer (never mind professional). And they don't look particularly unusual to me (I haven't looked for odd trickery, but I assume he's being honest here).
Really? It looked to me like the images I looked at need to be pretty badly pixelated (resized well beyond what a serious amateur would find acceptable) for this to be a serious concern. Of course some people are always going to be more interested in over analysing their photos than producing good ones...*shrug*
... and how are you storing the checksum information?
My checksums are md5 hashes stored in a text file alongside the image files. I am not expecting a malicious attack on the data. If a copy is compromised I expect to fetch the data from a copy that isn't compromised.
Instead of just putting checksums in your backups, why not add (block-level) reed-solomon error correcting codes? Like in parchive for files, and dvdisaster for whole DVD-R images...?
Those algorithms are suitable if you plan to recover partially corrupted data. If data is corrupt, I'd prefer to restore a fresh copy of the file from elsewhere, and would not trust error corrected files. Also I'm not familiar with the tools for doing so on a hard drive. I would of course be using such algorithms implicitly if I was using DVD storage, but I've found it to be unreliable and packages of 4.7GB are inconvenient.
I've had photos butchered by subsequent moving from one jpeg software to another.
If you're continually re-saving the work, you should be working in TIFF. Simply opening pictures up in software isn't going to ruin them. Going back and forth between lots of programs and saving in each will. Any more than 3 saves required, and I'm using TIFF. 1, 2 or 3 saves and the deterioration is neglible if the files are decent to start with.
Yes, Windows XP will choke on your little ~52 megabyte TIFF. Real operating systems won't, Mac OSX with sufficient RAM and good software and there's no problem at all.
Pity about vendor lock in and "rights management" (where the user only has the right to do anything if Apple deems it wholesome) on the Mac platform. I'll stick with windows.
Linux does ok too, though available free software not as high quality.
bad choice! jpeg is lossy format, information is deliberately dropped to make an approximate reproduction!
Many cameras only capture in a lossy format such as jpg. Even those that have RAW sometimes use lossy RAW. Losses only occur once per save. So to mitigate you don't modify files repeatedly. If there is a need to do this, go back to the original, save to TIFF and edit from there. So long as you have the original preserved you can always reapply any edits.
you're like the guy in the India Jones movie who drinks from a fancy chalice, has the flesh and guts dissolve and burn from his bones: "...he chose....poorly....."
I can't tell if you're trolling or just being melodramatic.
really, if you value your work do a little research, maybe standard such as "TIFF Revision 6.0 Final" or similar should be used, and perhaps with widely known and well documented lossless compression.
TIFFs are a poor choice unless multiple edits are going to be made. They slow down current hardware immensely and aren't widely supported. Try flipping through 12MP tiffs using Windows fax and picture viewer on XP.
I think you ought to have some idea what you're on about before you criticise so floridly.
Tip for maintaining files unaltered: Use disk image files and mount them read-only.
Try doing this on Windows XP for a USB hard disk. Official method is to make all USB drives read only. There are clunky kludges out there for getting past this but nothing usable long term.
Also I do make edits of some files, so I need a "working copy", and once I've made these edits I have to keep them. Checksums on the working copy on individual files seem to be the best way to go.
In my own quest to preserve my digital photos, I've created multiple backups on hard disk including a remote backup which gets updated every few months. I use different disks created by different manufacturers and buy new disks every couple of years (but do not throw away old copies).
I've recently come across another aspect that isn't addressed by the article. Data that is in use in an online copy can be modified (including corrupted).There is no point in copying/propagating data if the data you are copying is damaged. Typically this has happened when I've tried DAM software like Lightroom which will modify the original file despite claiming to be non-destructive I have no proof that photos were re-encoded or quality was reduced but I do know original files were altered, and I want an original unaltered file preserved
Most people when they backup files do very little verification to ensure the files they are copying today are the same files that were created 5 or 10 years ago. They rely too much on backup software to do this for them, with no attention paid to what's happened to the data between copies. To keep this under control I've started putting checksums on all my photo files, which I check when I create a fresh copy.
Of course where my photos are captured in a proprietary format I copy to an open or at least well documented format (typically jpg, sometimes also tif). This is done as soon as I transfer the photos, which are not removed from the camera card until i have 2 additional copies. So I shouldn't have the same issues that the author had assuming jpg can still be read throughout my lifetime.
--
Sammy
Really don't care about porn. As you said it's abundant for those who want it. But a developer building an app, having it approved, then having the rugged pulled from under them. That I care about. I don't care if it's one vendor or even one sick sad 30 year old still living in his mum's basement.
The only people up in arms are sleazy dudes out to make a quick buck off of someone else's boobies. They've had their day and nothing of value has been lost.
First they came for the emulators, and I said nothing because I had not written an emulator.
Then they came for the boobies and I said nothing because I was a puritanical closet pervert.
Damn.... here I was just about to submit v1.00 of VirtualCunt.
You can't. Steve Jobs = prior art dude. Just ask Steve Wozniak. So you've gone from iCunt to uCant.
Because Apple has become about being in a certain mindset. They not only promote it, lately they're doing their best to ENFORCE it. If you use Apple, you're a young, cool, hip, media loving yuppy.
And apparently you have no libido! Within a generation, all the fanbois will die out, which is why they must recruit more each day!
Every time I hear the term "Czar", I think Russian mobster with protection racket. Is it just me?
So, um, I take it you didn't read the article?
I skimmed it. One of the authors of MySQL I presume self-agrandising and taking credit for "saving" MySQL even though none of Oracle's promises are legally binding.
I don't know every little detail of what's happened and frankly I don't care. If people want it to live on and Oracle don't live up to their agreement, and assuming the code is readable, the community can fork it and move on. If that's no longer legally possible, as far as I'm concerned it's not GPL code. Regardless, my guess is that MySQL will decline but that other projects like Postgress will fill the niche for small free databases. As for the effect on the GPL, things cannot be undone. Once a license is challenged or abused in some way the only possible response is to adapt it to take that into account.
I'm MUCH more worried about Java, OpenOffice, VirtualBox. I'm also concerned about zfs and MySQL, but not as much. Roughly in that order.
Public debate won't give citizens any option to change one damn thing. It'll be debated when the deal is already done.
I'm not saying anyone should run around scared like headless chooks. There should however be protest and plenty of letters written about the illegality and injustice of making this such a closed process.
What's pathetic is that you care so little for your freedom that you're happy for laws to be passed without any public debate so long as you're eventually notified. You can keep not getting yourself worked up over them. Some of us however find it scary that a situation can exist in which such "leaks" are so common.
Can't think of anything that fits with the definition of treason better than a system that passes laws that the citizens aren't permitted to know. That immediately removes the incentive for being law abiding since you can't know if you're breaking the law. Anyone enacting or enforcing such laws should be covered by treason laws.
Can't think of anything more terrifying than threatening to take away a person's ability to communicate, possibly their livelihood without having to PROOVE a crime in court. Enacting such laws is the very definition of terrorism. Where's the anti-terrorism legislation now?
I'm not your son, you condescending twit.
Did you actually have anything to contribute? I notice your vapid commentary got +5 insightful and as predicted I got modded down. Any time I mention that Apple isn't quite the darling company some believe it is I get modded down. Nothing to do with getting worked up. Apple fanbois SUCK.
While it's true that some portion of your customers are going to lie when they say there has been no water intrusion, including, at extra cost a device aimed at proving that your customer is lying on every device is unfair. Let alone close to the external extremedies of the device.
Here's a prediction: First they will deny the problem, and try to cast doubt on the testing methodolgy, then they will acknowledge the problem but claim that it only occurs in a very limited set of circumstances and offer restitution but only for those who complain loudest. Then they'll make a minor change that doesn't actually fix the problem and claim it is fixed (oh and raise prices to cover this change). They'll stall at every step. This seems to be right out of the Apple customer service manual, and they're not the only ones (but they are some of the worst). No different to scratchable iPod minis, or cracked laptop cases. Fucking horseshit.
But it's Apple, it just works, right? Come on fanbois, mod me into oblivion. I don't give a shit.
I still blame pirates as much as I do the game vendors. This is their war, not mine. I shouldn't be taking fire meant for them.
Hey I own thousands of dollars in games. I stopped buying them when I was finding that to play them I would still need to crack them since the copy protection was broken or restricted my use to the point where I couldn't play. The last straw was starforce, which appeared to be damaging hardware. I do not blame the pirates for such shitty copy protection. I think you've been drinking the coolaid. Pirates do not control anti-piracy measures.
Until I need a disk in my CD/DVD drive and/or an Internet connection for single player mode. Or until it's used as an excuse to inflate the price of entertainment.
The game companies do that, not the pirates. So blame them. CD/DVD checks are ineffective, and they'll blame their price increases on anything but greed. Yet pirates continue to crack their games while legit users keep having to deal with the problems. Don't give your game dollars to companies that penalise legitimate users. Simple.
This isn't closer to home for me:P~~~~
It's no more than an ad for a codec.