Posted on 10/05/2007 11:07:44 PM PDT by neverdem
HANOVER, N.H. — As Hany Farid sat in his office here at Dartmouth College on a recent morning, he fiddled with his laptop and cracked disconcerting little jokes.
“Don’t ever send me a photograph of yourself,” said Dr. Farid, head of the Image Science Laboratory at Dartmouth. “I’ll do the most terrible things to it.”
Dr. Farid, a 41-year-old engineer, is a founder of a subdiscipline within computer science: digital forensics. Most days, he spends his time transforming ordinary images into ones with drastic new meanings. Click, goes his mouse. Courtney Love has joined Grandpa at the family barbecue. Click. Click. Elvis Presley is on Dartmouth’s board of trustees.
The purpose of all this manipulation is to discover how computerized forgeries are made. Intelligence agencies, news organizations and scientific journals employ Dr. Farid’s consulting services when they need to authenticate the validity of images. Dr. Farid sells a software package, “Q,” to clients so they, too, can become digital detectives.
An edited version of two hours’ worth of conversation follows.
Q. Let’s start with some definitions. What exactly is digital forensics?
A. It’s a new field. It didn’t exist five years ago. We look at digital media — images, audio and video — and we try to ascertain whether or not they’ve been manipulated. We use mathematical and computational techniques to detect alterations in them.
In society today, we’re now seeing doctored images regularly. If tabloids can’t obtain a photo of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie walking together on a beach, they’ll make up a composite from two pictures. Star actually did that. And it’s happening in the courts, politics and scientific journals, too. As a result, we now live in an age when the once-held belief that photographs were the definitive record of events is gone.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Scientists: Appendix protects good germs
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
So that’s why the British soldiers shot its nose off...
It would be hard to miss!
It was the Germans that shot the beeothces nose off....
Show some respect, will ya?
The Brits would have had a cup of tea, then said, "Damn, that beeotch is bloody ugly, let's get the bloody hell out of here!!
Put your nose in the corner, mister.
And stay there until I say otherwise!
The issues in that region are tough enough already.....Egypt will not be pleased......
A poll conducted on the Internet found that fully 21% of respondents believed Napoleon was responsible for the Sphinx's missing nose. One of the most recent examples of the persistence of this falsehood was Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March" speech where he said: "White supremacy caused Napoleon to blow the nose off the Sphinx because it reminded you [sic] too much of the Black man's majesty." And the perpetuation of this myth in "Afrocentric" circles was even the subject of a segment of the U.S. television investigative journalism program "60 Minutes."This error has persisted in spite of the fact that the truth can be readily found in such common reference sources as the Encyclopedia Americana> (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1995). vol.25, p.492-3 under "Sphinx", which states: "Over the centuries the Great Sphinx has suffered severely from weathering...Man has been responsible for additional mutilation. In 1380 A.D. the Sphinx fell victim to the iconoclastic ardor of a fanatical Muslim ruler, who caused deplorable injuries to the head. Then the figure was used as a target for the guns of the Mamluks." In the book The Egyptian Pyramids: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990), p.301, the author, J.P. Lepre, adds the fact that, in addition to the 14th century damage, "The face was further disfigured by the eighteenth century A.D. ruler of Egypt, the Marmalukes [Mamluks]."
It was the French, no, the Turks...
This is the Helen whose face launched a thousand lunches.
No, I trust those guys........
It was that beeotch Pelosi or her butler, Reid, right?
Now that was funny....the belly is still shaking.....
INSERT "FAT HELEN" JOKE >>HERE<<
Nice, could make a GGG topic, so thanks!
I will never believe another photo now...
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