They should have had their script check the checksum on the file.
Then, if it still reported a violation, they should have had someone download the file and verify that it's infringing the MS Office copyright, and THEN - AND ONLY THEN - sent out a threatening letter.
Yeah - but at least I'd have my software check some checksums on the allegedly pirated files - then have a human go check them out BEFORE mailing out threatening letters.
This sort of harassment needs to stop.
The problem is that it's cheaper to send out a threatening letter than to check carefully and THEN send letters only to true offenders. You just bet that 99% of recipients will stop doing whatever it is you suspect them of - which makes it a cost-effective way to work. The BSA doesn't have these people as customers - so what does it care if it pisses them off?
I suppose, what the world needs is a law to say that if you send someone a letter threatening legal action if they don't do something - then if they don't do it, you should be REQUIRED to take them to court - and to be liable for their costs, pain & suffering, mental anguish, etc, etc if they turn out to be innocent.
Weren't we rather lucky with the DeCSS thing? Didn't someone at a DVD drive manufacturer give away the magic code? I don't think it was 'cracked' in a cryptographic sense. Next time around, it'll be more like the X-box - no hope whatever of cracking the code - mod chips let you do other things with the box - but don't help you with cracking the media format.
Cryptography is getting too good...it's a two-edged sword.
Re:Think about applications for games.
on
Presenting The CDR-ROM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The games manufacturers could even make the CD-writer try to scribble all over the ROM area so you couldn't copy it onto a writable disk.
This sounds like an idea that's most useful for console systems. Avoiding the need for a hard disk or a pluggable RAM cartridge for game saves seems like it would be a big win.
In the PC world, things are more problematic - I wonder whether the market penetration of CD-RW drives (as opposed to just CD-R) is large enough to make this useful for a few years to come? If only 30% of gamers have them, the games manufacturers aren't going to be very interested.
Our radio transmissions reduce in intensity (and thus detectability) as the square of the distance from earth - so they become pretty hard to detect. Remember, our best radio telescopes would be unable to detect any of our transmissions from earth if they were mounted on the nearest star - and that's just four lightyears away. This is a big problem for the SETI guys BTW.
OTOH, Pioneer 10 (if found) would point directly and unambiguously back to us and is just as detectable a billion years from now as it is now.
IIRC, it's not pointing towards any known stars right now - so it's unlikely anyone would just happen to find it. Space is *BIG*.
Part of the problem is that things that were once considered part of AI have moved out and become mainstream technology. Voice recognition, Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Nets, Chess playing computers...all of these were once considered to be unsolved AI problems but since they are now in common use, we don't consider them a part of AI anymore.
You can find plenty of twenty to thirty year old textbooks that tell you that playing chess at grand master level would be a sign of computer intelligence - now we know that all it takes are some clever heuristics and a lot of CPU power.
As soon as computers can pass the Turing Test, it'll be considered laughable that anyone ever thought it required *intelligence* to chat with a human. In a sense, this has already happened. Quite a few people were convinced by Eliza - but you can tell from just looking at the code that it's not intelligent.
The same thing is happening with animals. We used to define humans as the only tool-using animals - then they found birds breaking open clamshells by dropping rocks on them. The definition changed to humans as the only tool *making* animals...then they found chimpanzees who strip the leaves from twigs before they poke them into anthills. So then it was 'self recognition' - that also failed with dolphins who can recognise themselves in a mirror. Now it's some other thing. Animals will never be labelled intelligent" because the definition of intelligence is that thing that humans have but animals do not.
I predict that we'll never have AI. That isn't a failure of the work - it's in the nature of our definition of Intelligence as "that thing that humans have that animals and machines don't have".
I do 3D graphics for flight simulation - and just today, we started looking into PC's with more than 2Gb because our next planned system needs at least that. Give it one more generation and 3/4Gb won't be enough.
Think high resolution satellite photography - with half meter per pixel (or less), textures of 1M x 1M resolution are likely. 1M x 1M x (R+G+B) + MIPmaps == 4Gb. You can page from disk and use various compression schemes (in fact, you have to) - but it's a significant challenge with fast moving, low altitude flight and high frame rate realtime 3D rendering and you need a bunch of memory to cache enough data to allow for rapid changes in direction. 4Gb won't be enough main memory to keep up with our customer's needs within a year or so.
64bit CPU's on the desktop are long overdue IMHO. The biggest obstacle will be finally breaking the binary compatibility people have come to expect since the 8088 CPU. Those of us who have Linux and the source code for everything that matters will be in good shape - but for Windoze users, it's not going to be a pretty sight - 32 bit emulation technology will have to be pretty good.
In the review, it talks about "ChainMail" - which is a fairly meaningless comment for modern readers unfamilar with the context.
"ChainMail" was an earlier set of wargame rules for large scale battles between medieval armies. As I recall, it had a brief appendix covering some add-on rules to allow wizards, orcs, dragons and such like to be added into the battles as a bit of a laugh.
Using the ChainMail rules for purely fantasy warfare became very popular - probably more so than the non-fantasy aspect of the rules. That (I suspect) is the reason that D&D came into being.
The reason the original D&D rules seem confusing is that they assume full knowledge and applicability of the ChainMail rules.
Steve - Chaos/Cleric/Hobbit 19th level - circa 1982.
> Shuttle has racked up (at 100 missions, week each, figures worth checking), > 16800 hours per average passenger,
Right. And over those 16800 hours, it's crashed TWICE - so 8400 hours is the the average time between crashes. In passenger hours, it's still 8400 hours because 7 people fly each time (more or less) and 7 died each time. Avg Passenger-hours is still 8400.
> Jumbo racks up only 168 hours per average passenger per week, assuming it > flew constantly (it does not, so call it 100 hours), so would have to fly > for roughly three years to tot up as many miles.
But I wasn't talking about miles. It takes 9 hours to cross the Atlantic (DFW to LGW - I fly that route a lot)...an 18 hour round trip. If it hauls 466 people each time (I think that's about right for a Jumbo) then one round trip is the same number of passenger hours as the average passenger hours between shuttle crashes.
You are right though - if the Jumbo crashes - it kills all of those people at one go. But Jumbo's from DFW to LGW fly one return trip every single day except for major overhauls), so if they can stay in the air for more than about 18 months (on the average) they are doing better than the shuttle. By far the majority of those aircraft have 20 year plus lifespans - and hardly any of them crash during all that time. Jumbo jets are easily a couple of hundred times more reliable than the shuttle - if you measure passenger-hours.
> If you drove your car for an hour every single day, you would have to > drive for 48 years to knock up as many hours.
But if you drove it TWO hours a day (which is what I said) and if you accept the 8400 passenger-hour average for the shuttle rather than your incorrect 16800 number - then it's 11.5 years. Sorry - I rounded it down to 10.
The Enterprise (replacement for Challenger) cost $2.1bn in late 1980's dollars - *BUT* it was built using spare parts ordered as a part of the original shuttle procurement.
There are no replacement shuttle bodies left. The tooling and expertise for building them has long evaporated.
The engines *are* replaced routinely after every few missions - so presumably those are in good supply.
Since no two shuttles are exactly alike - it's hard to know what the electronics and other subsystems would take to replace.
NASA have said that it would be cheaper and easier to design an entirely new craft than to build a straight replacement for Columbia. So, it would be considerably more costly than $2.1bn - even after adjusting for 2003 dollars.
Quoting shuttle reliability in terms of fatalities per mile is just silly.
What's the reliability in terms of passenger HOURS? That's what matters to most people.
If those 100 missions lasted a week each - then that's one fatality per 8400 passenger hours.
A Jumbo jet racks up 8400 passenger-hours on every return trip to Europe.
Most cars go their entire 150,000 mile lives without a fatality. If they drive an average 30mph, that was 5,000 hours without a fatality.
If you car was a shuttle and you drove it two hours a day every day, you'd expect to die within 10 years...that's not good odds!
Get real - the shuttle is an EXTREMELY unreliable and dangerous transportation system by any useful measure. On the evidence we have so far, climbing into a shuttle and launching gives you a one in 50 chance of dying.
HOWEVER: Astronauts are very willing to take that risk. They aren't stupid people - they know the odds. The don't fly the shuttle every day - or even every year. Most of them only get to fly two or three missions in their lifetimes - and they find the odds acceptable because the returns are so great. If you asked for volunteers to fly one of the remaining shuttle tomorrow without any further investigation of the causes of the accident, they'd be standing in line to do it.
IMHO, people should be less sensitive to shuttle accidents. It was a terrible tragedy seeing those people die so publically over Texas - but more people die in road accidents every day - more people are shot to death in US cities every day. Those astronauts were well aware of the risk - and took it. Their families were prepared for the possibility of their deaths - and they have an amazing support network. If your nearest and dearest is gunned down in the street or mangled in a car wreck, it'll come as a much bigger shock and you won't get as much help to recover from it.
There have been several official Lego sets containing the shuttle. One is of the Shuttle riding piggy-back on the airliner - another is a model launch pad.
This is a terribly sad day - and I feel for the friends and family of the crew.
But Astronauts are well aware of the risks when they do this. Maybe not before the Challenger disaster - but certainly nowadays. There is something like a one in a hundred chance of dying when you travel to orbit. I doubt that any astronaut would argue that it's better odds than that.
For some people - many people perhaps - that risk is perfectly acceptable and they'll stand in line to get a ride to space. Heck, even after this accident, if I could get a ride on a shuttle tomorrow - I'd jump at the chance...if I had to pay a couple of month's salary for the privilage - I'd do it in a heartbeat.
So long as the Astronauts are happy to do this - we shouldn't use loss of life as a reason for ending human spaceflight.
HOWEVER: I think the shuttle and the space station are largely a waste of resources. There are cheaper ways to get the science data they provide. Send people to Mars - yes, plan colonies in space - yes - but not like this.
> If i am being teleported... teleportation would create > copy of me and killed original.
OK Mr Hatchet, your duplicate ('you++' as we like to call him in my line of work) is now at your destination being Heisenburg compensated. Boy are --you lucky --you won't have to go through *that* indignity!
Please stand perfectly still while I blow --you away with this zap-o-matic ray gun of mine. No, No, it won't hurt a bit. Well, actually, it hurts --you a hell of a lot - but since you++ are now at your destination, you++ won't remember a thing about it.
It's a networked multiplayer thingy - and when *YOU* play, you are always "the good guys" - so who is out there playing "the bad guys" ?
The answer is that both sides *think* they are playing the good guys - but the graphics show you as a US soldier and your opponent as some kind of terrorist or something...one man's "Protect the Diplomat on the way to the peace conference" is another man's "Free the Kidnapped Diplomat before he's executed".
What's more subtle is that all the high-tech weaponry that you have is also being used by your competition! Not exactly a realistic situation in "the real world".
Aside from that, I think this is a VERY dubious way to attract testosterone-laden video-game-addicted teenagers into the military - and I'm horrified that taxpayers are shelling out for this.
Yes - your images look quite a bit like mine. I think simple intensity-to-hue lookup (such as is commonly used in 'false colour' imaging) is enough to produce the yellow and magenta region along with all the subtle shading.
With modern computer graphics, you can produce photo-realistic images of anything you like. Photographic "proof" is not longer convincing if you can't trust the people who made the picture. This image proves that this particular band of UFO nuts are not trustworthy - so even if they publish an 8x10 glossy of their president shaking hands with The Great Thwaart of Twaarg himself with the seal of a notary public attesting to it's authenticity - I won't believe it.
Occam's razor dictates that when faced with a choice between bilinear-blending plus false colour versus hordes of invading little green men in pink and yellow spaceships (yeuck!!) - we should go with the faked image theory until overwhelming evidence shows otherwise.
I was very careful to explain that I do NOT believe this to be a 'hand-painted' image, created entirely in Photoshop or GIMP or something.
I believe this was originally an extremely low resolution (maybe 10 x 10 pixels) image of *something* - I don't know what - and could easily have been taken by NASA.
That in itself is extremely unremarkable. The original "unenhanced" version of this picture would not have convinced anyone that this is a UFO - it would be a minute streak with no discernable features.
What was done to that image AFTERWARDS is a clear attempt to make it look like a truly remarkable image of a spacecraft - and *that* is nothing short of fraudulant.
Blow up the image resolution of any tiny picture with bilinear interpolation - and then add false colour and you'll get interesting 'non-natural' looking images of things that seem to be spaceships. You could take a 10x10 picture of your dog and make it look like a UFO. However, there was never any information in the original low resolution image to indicate anything more than a fuzzy blob.
So, the fact that I could paint something that looks like their image isn't proof that they also painted it. It is, however a CLEAR demonstration that inappropriate use of image enhancement techniques can turn a totally non-convincing handful of red pixels into something that *looks* to the uninitiated just like a photograph of a spacecraft. My 'source' image is DEFINITELY nothing but a meaningless blob of pixels. After "enhancement" it looks just as convincing as theirs. Since my final image most emphatically does not prove that a painting of a spacecraft was 'hidden' in the original image - neither does their picture prove that there was a UFO in the original NASA image.
This is a fraud - pure and simple - and that doesn't in any way depend on whether the original source of that handful of pixels was from NASA or anywhere else.
What's interesting to me is whether the person who produced the image from the original 10x10 pixel NASA photo *deliberately* tried to turn it into a spaceship - or whether they were simply so ignorant of the tools they were using that they truly believed they could pull a detailed picture of a spacecraft from so little input data by 'enhancing' it.
I want to see the ORIGINAL, unenhanced NASA image at it's original resolution. Let me examine that image for myself - then maybe I'll be convinced. I doubt it.
Slashdot Mirror
Because then, /. would be sued by *BOTH* BSA's! :-)
> What exactly should they have done if not this?
They should have had their script check the checksum on the file.
Then, if it still reported a violation, they should have had someone
download the file and verify that it's infringing the MS Office copyright,
and THEN - AND ONLY THEN - sent out a threatening letter.
It's irrelvent whether it's commonly done or not. Driving over the speed limit is commonly done - and I still get a ticket when I get caught.
Hey - how else are they going to get their Microsoft Lackey badge?
...and http for that matter.
Yeah - but at least I'd have my software check some checksums on the allegedly pirated files - then have a human go check them out BEFORE mailing out threatening letters.
This sort of harassment needs to stop.
The problem is that it's cheaper to send out a threatening letter than to check carefully and THEN send letters only to true offenders. You just bet that 99% of recipients will stop doing whatever it is you suspect them of - which makes it a cost-effective way to work. The BSA doesn't have these people as customers - so what does it care if it pisses them off?
I suppose, what the world needs is a law to say that if you send someone a letter threatening legal action if they don't do something - then if they don't do it, you should be REQUIRED to take them to court - and to be liable for their costs, pain & suffering, mental anguish, etc, etc if they turn out to be innocent.
Weren't we rather lucky with the DeCSS thing? Didn't someone at a DVD drive manufacturer give away the magic code? I don't think it was 'cracked' in a cryptographic sense. Next time around, it'll be more like the X-box - no hope whatever of cracking the code - mod chips let you do other things with the box - but don't help you with cracking the media format.
Cryptography is getting too good...it's a two-edged sword.
The games manufacturers could even make the CD-writer try to scribble all over the ROM area so you couldn't copy it onto a writable disk.
This sounds like an idea that's most useful for console systems. Avoiding the need for a hard disk or a pluggable RAM cartridge for game saves seems like it would be a big win.
In the PC world, things are more problematic - I wonder whether the market penetration of CD-RW drives (as opposed to just CD-R) is large enough to make this useful for a few years to come? If only 30% of gamers have them, the games manufacturers aren't going to be very interested.
Yeah - I 'invented' laser tag games 5 years before they really appeared.
/. would hate you - so I guess you're better off.
Still - you'd have to patent it then everyone here on
Our radio transmissions reduce in intensity (and thus detectability) as the square of the distance from earth - so they become pretty hard to detect. Remember, our best radio telescopes would be unable to detect any of our transmissions from earth if they were mounted on the nearest star - and that's just four lightyears away. This is a big problem for the SETI guys BTW.
OTOH, Pioneer 10 (if found) would point directly and unambiguously back to us and is just as detectable a billion years from now as it is now.
IIRC, it's not pointing towards any known stars right now - so it's unlikely anyone would just happen to find it. Space is *BIG*.
Part of the problem is that things that were once considered part of AI have moved out and become mainstream technology. Voice recognition, Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Nets, Chess playing computers...all of these were once considered to be unsolved AI problems but since they are now in common use, we don't consider them a part of AI anymore.
You can find plenty of twenty to thirty year old textbooks that tell you that playing chess at grand master level would be a sign of computer intelligence - now we know that all it takes are some clever heuristics and a lot of CPU power.
As soon as computers can pass the Turing Test, it'll be considered laughable that anyone ever thought it required *intelligence* to chat with a human. In a sense, this has already happened. Quite a few people were convinced by Eliza - but you can tell from just looking at the code that it's not intelligent.
The same thing is happening with animals. We used to define humans as the only tool-using animals - then they found birds breaking open clamshells by dropping rocks on them. The definition changed to humans as the only tool *making* animals...then they found chimpanzees who strip the leaves from twigs before they poke them into anthills. So then it was 'self recognition' - that also failed with dolphins who can recognise themselves in a mirror. Now it's some other thing. Animals will never be labelled intelligent" because the definition of intelligence is that thing that humans have but animals do not.
I predict that we'll never have AI. That isn't a failure of the work - it's in the nature of our definition of Intelligence as "that thing that humans have that animals and machines don't have".
I do 3D graphics for flight simulation - and just today, we started looking into PC's with more than 2Gb because our next planned system needs at least that. Give it one more generation and 3/4Gb won't be enough.
Think high resolution satellite photography - with half meter per pixel (or less), textures of 1M x 1M resolution are likely. 1M x 1M x (R+G+B) + MIPmaps == 4Gb. You can page from disk and use various compression schemes (in fact, you have to) - but it's a significant challenge with fast moving, low altitude flight and high frame rate realtime 3D rendering and you need a bunch of memory to cache enough data to allow for rapid changes in direction. 4Gb won't be enough main memory to keep up with our customer's needs within a year or so.
64bit CPU's on the desktop are long overdue IMHO. The biggest obstacle will be finally breaking the binary compatibility people have come to expect since the 8088 CPU. Those of us who have Linux and the source code for everything that matters will be in good shape - but for Windoze users, it's not going to be a pretty sight - 32 bit emulation technology will have to be pretty good.
In the review, it talks about "ChainMail" - which is a fairly meaningless comment for modern readers unfamilar with the context.
"ChainMail" was an earlier set of wargame rules for large scale battles between medieval armies. As I recall, it had a brief appendix covering some add-on rules to allow wizards, orcs, dragons and such like to be added into the battles as a bit of a laugh.
Using the ChainMail rules for purely fantasy warfare became very popular - probably more so than the non-fantasy aspect of the rules. That (I suspect) is the reason that D&D came into being.
The reason the original D&D rules seem confusing is that they assume full knowledge and applicability of the ChainMail rules.
Steve - Chaos/Cleric/Hobbit 19th level - circa 1982.
OK - I'm about geeked out now.
> Shuttle has racked up (at 100 missions, week each, figures worth checking),
> 16800 hours per average passenger,
Right. And over those 16800 hours, it's crashed TWICE - so 8400 hours is the the average time between crashes. In passenger hours, it's still 8400 hours because 7 people fly each time (more or less) and 7 died each time. Avg Passenger-hours is still 8400.
> Jumbo racks up only 168 hours per average passenger per week, assuming it
> flew constantly (it does not, so call it 100 hours), so would have to fly
> for roughly three years to tot up as many miles.
But I wasn't talking about miles. It takes 9 hours to cross the Atlantic (DFW to LGW - I fly that route a lot)...an 18 hour round trip. If it hauls 466 people each time (I think that's about right for a Jumbo) then one round trip is the same number of passenger hours as the average passenger hours between shuttle crashes.
You are right though - if the Jumbo crashes - it kills all of those people at one go. But Jumbo's from DFW to LGW fly one return trip every single day except for major overhauls), so if they can stay in the air for more than about 18 months (on the average) they are doing better than the shuttle. By far the majority of those aircraft have 20 year plus lifespans - and hardly any of them crash during all that time. Jumbo jets are easily a couple of hundred times more reliable than the shuttle - if you measure passenger-hours.
> If you drove your car for an hour every single day, you would have to
> drive for 48 years to knock up as many hours.
But if you drove it TWO hours a day (which is what I said) and if you accept the 8400 passenger-hour average for the shuttle rather than your incorrect 16800 number - then it's 11.5 years. Sorry - I rounded it down to 10.
Sorry - yeah - I did get them switched around. Actually, Enterprise did do
a couple of test glides off the back of it's Jumbo Jet launch.
The Enterprise (replacement for Challenger) cost $2.1bn in late 1980's dollars
- *BUT* it was built using spare parts ordered as a part of the original
shuttle procurement.
There are no replacement shuttle bodies left. The tooling and expertise
for building them has long evaporated.
The engines *are* replaced routinely after every few missions - so
presumably those are in good supply.
Since no two shuttles are exactly alike - it's hard to know what the
electronics and other subsystems would take to replace.
NASA have said that it would be cheaper and easier to design an entirely
new craft than to build a straight replacement for Columbia. So, it would
be considerably more costly than $2.1bn - even after adjusting for 2003 dollars.
Quoting shuttle reliability in terms of fatalities per mile is just silly.
What's the reliability in terms of passenger HOURS? That's what matters to
most people.
If those 100 missions lasted a week each - then that's one fatality per
8400 passenger hours.
A Jumbo jet racks up 8400 passenger-hours on every return trip to Europe.
Most cars go their entire 150,000 mile lives without a fatality. If they
drive an average 30mph, that was 5,000 hours without a fatality.
If you car was a shuttle and you drove it two hours a day every day, you'd
expect to die within 10 years...that's not good odds!
Get real - the shuttle is an EXTREMELY unreliable and dangerous transportation
system by any useful measure. On the evidence we have so far, climbing into
a shuttle and launching gives you a one in 50 chance of dying.
HOWEVER: Astronauts are very willing to take that risk. They aren't
stupid people - they know the odds. The don't fly the shuttle every
day - or even every year. Most of them only get to fly two or three
missions in their lifetimes - and they find the odds acceptable because
the returns are so great. If you asked for volunteers to fly one of
the remaining shuttle tomorrow without any further investigation of
the causes of the accident, they'd be standing in line to do it.
IMHO, people should be less sensitive to shuttle accidents. It was a
terrible tragedy seeing those people die so publically over Texas - but
more people die in road accidents every day - more people are shot to
death in US cities every day. Those astronauts were well aware of the
risk - and took it. Their families were prepared for the possibility
of their deaths - and they have an amazing support network. If your
nearest and dearest is gunned down in the street or mangled in a car
wreck, it'll come as a much bigger shock and you won't get as much help
to recover from it.
There have been several official Lego sets containing the shuttle. One is of the Shuttle riding piggy-back on the airliner - another is a model launch pad.
Check out LeoCAD - same idea as MLCAD (build with virtual Lego - unlimited
parts bin - exporter to POV-ray) - but works under Linux.
http://www.leocad.org
Lego Mindstorms is used in quite a few schools. There is even a special
division (spinoff?) of Lego who deal exclusively with educators.
This is a terribly sad day - and I feel for the friends and family of the crew.
But Astronauts are well aware of the risks when they do this. Maybe not before the Challenger disaster - but certainly nowadays. There is something like a one in a hundred chance of dying when you travel to orbit. I doubt that any astronaut would argue that it's better odds than that.
For some people - many people perhaps - that risk is perfectly acceptable and they'll stand in line to get a ride to space. Heck, even after this accident, if I could get a ride on a shuttle tomorrow - I'd jump at the chance...if I had to pay a couple of month's salary for the privilage - I'd do it in a heartbeat.
So long as the Astronauts are happy to do this - we shouldn't use loss of life as a reason for ending human spaceflight.
HOWEVER: I think the shuttle and the space station are largely a waste of resources. There are cheaper ways to get the science data they provide.
Send people to Mars - yes, plan colonies in space - yes - but not like this.
> If i am being teleported... teleportation would create
> copy of me and killed original.
OK Mr Hatchet, your duplicate ('you++' as we like to call
him in my line of work) is now at your destination being
Heisenburg compensated. Boy are --you lucky --you won't
have to go through *that* indignity!
Please stand perfectly still while I blow --you away with
this zap-o-matic ray gun of mine. No, No, it won't hurt
a bit. Well, actually, it hurts --you a hell of a lot - but
since you++ are now at your destination, you++ won't remember
a thing about it.
...that you always get to play as the Americans.
It's a networked multiplayer thingy - and when *YOU* play, you
are always "the good guys" - so who is out there playing "the
bad guys" ?
The answer is that both sides *think* they are playing the
good guys - but the graphics show you as a US soldier and your
opponent as some kind of terrorist or something...one man's "Protect
the Diplomat on the way to the peace conference" is another man's
"Free the Kidnapped Diplomat before he's executed".
What's more subtle is that all the high-tech weaponry that you
have is also being used by your competition! Not exactly
a realistic situation in "the real world".
Aside from that, I think this is a VERY dubious way to attract
testosterone-laden video-game-addicted teenagers into the military
- and I'm horrified that taxpayers are shelling out for this.
Yes - your images look quite a bit like mine. I think simple intensity-to-hue
lookup (such as is commonly used in 'false colour' imaging) is enough to produce
the yellow and magenta region along with all the subtle shading.
With modern computer graphics, you can produce photo-realistic images of anything you like. Photographic "proof" is not longer convincing if you can't trust the people who made the picture. This image proves that this particular band of UFO nuts are not trustworthy - so even if they publish an 8x10 glossy of their president shaking hands with The Great Thwaart of Twaarg himself with the seal of a notary public attesting to it's authenticity - I won't believe it.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Occam's razor dictates that when faced with a choice between bilinear-blending plus false colour versus hordes of invading little green men in pink and yellow spaceships (yeuck!!) - we should go with the faked image theory until overwhelming evidence shows otherwise.
No, no, no - you misunderstand me.
I was very careful to explain that I do NOT believe this to be a 'hand-painted' image, created entirely in Photoshop or GIMP or something.
I believe this was originally an extremely low resolution (maybe 10 x 10 pixels) image of *something* - I don't know what - and could easily have been taken by NASA.
That in itself is extremely unremarkable. The original "unenhanced" version
of this picture would not have convinced anyone that this is a UFO - it would be a minute streak with no discernable features.
What was done to that image AFTERWARDS is a clear attempt to make it look
like a truly remarkable image of a spacecraft - and *that* is nothing short of fraudulant.
Blow up the image resolution of any tiny picture with bilinear interpolation - and then add false colour and you'll get interesting 'non-natural' looking images of things that seem to be spaceships. You could take a 10x10 picture of your dog and make it look like a UFO. However, there was never any information in the original low resolution image to indicate anything more than a fuzzy blob.
So, the fact that I could paint something that looks like their image isn't
proof that they also painted it. It is, however a CLEAR demonstration that inappropriate use of image enhancement techniques can turn a totally non-convincing handful of red pixels into something that *looks* to the uninitiated just like a photograph of a spacecraft. My 'source' image is DEFINITELY nothing but a meaningless blob of pixels. After "enhancement" it looks just as convincing as theirs. Since my final image most emphatically does not prove that a painting of a spacecraft was 'hidden' in the original image - neither does their picture prove that there was a UFO in the original NASA image.
This is a fraud - pure and simple - and that doesn't in any way depend on whether the original source of that handful of pixels was from NASA or anywhere else.
What's interesting to me is whether the person who produced the image from the original 10x10 pixel NASA photo *deliberately* tried to turn it into a spaceship - or whether they were simply so ignorant of the tools they were using that they truly believed they could pull a detailed picture of a spacecraft from so little input data by 'enhancing' it.
I want to see the ORIGINAL, unenhanced NASA image at it's original resolution. Let me examine that image for myself - then maybe I'll be convinced. I doubt it.