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So what do we have now, an integral over pain X time?
I get to lash you with a wet noodle for ever, but I only get to
cut you up with a power saw if I'm quick about it?
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Note the difference here. One is saying, if *Christ* disagrees with
a Christian being gay, *Christ* can change that.
The other is saying, if *I* think being gay is wrong, that a Christian
cannot be gay, *I* need to tell them to change.
As Lois said, and as before her Paul wrote to the believers in Rome,
WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE ANOTHER'S SERVANT?
-jen
--
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I agree with the body of your post, but please reconsider your phrasing
here. I think these ideas are selfish AND rational, which
is commendable.
Don't give selfishness a bad rap. If we were all selfless there would
be no moral reason NOT to have a draft. It [the draft] is the ultimate
in mindlessly serving your fellow man with no thought to the importance
of the self.
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This may sound argumentative, but do the pro-homosexual crowd give the
same support to church members that are involved in incestuous relationships?
If we do a little substitution above, we get:
"although by no means all episcopalians are sympathetic to incestuous
men and women, there certainly is a fairly larget percentage (in my
experience) who are. I am good friends with an episcopalian minister
who is ordained and living in a monogamous incestual relationship. This
in no way diminishes his ability to minister -- in fact he has a very
significant ministry with the Incest association of his community..."
Do the same standards apply? If not, why not? And while we're in the
ballpark, what about bestiality? I can't recall offhand if there are
any direct statements in the Bible regarding sex with animals; does that
activity have more or less a sanction?
Please avoid responses such as "you're taking this to extremes". I would
guess that a disproportionate percentage of the inerrant Bible community
views homosexual acts with distaste in the same manner that society at
large views incest.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Cokely | (714) 833-4760 scott.cokely@nb.rockwell.com
"They came for the Davidians, but I did not speak up because
I was not a Davidian. Then they came for me..." Opinions expressed
are mine and do not represent those of Rockwell.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[ Obviously you can replace homosexuality in the above statement by
anything from murder to sleeping late. That doesn't mean that the
same people would accept those substitutions. The question is whether
the relationships involved do in fact form an appropriate vehicle to
represent Christ's relationship to humanity. This is at least
*partly* an empirical question.
In some cases types of human relationship have been rejected because
over time they always seem to lead to trouble. I think that's the
case with slavery. One can argue that in theory, if you follow Paul's
guidelines, it's possible to have Christian slaveholders. But in
practice, over a period of time, most people came to the conclusion
that nobody can really have that degree of control over another and
not abuse it.
The message you were responding to was asking you to look at the
results from Christian communities that endorse homosexuality. (Note:
Christian homosexuals, not people you see on the news advocating some
extremist agenda). You may not want to base your decision completely
on that kind of observation, but I would argue that it's at least
relevant. You can't answer the request by asking why you shouldn't
look at the Incest association, because in fact there is no such
association. If there were, it might be reasonable for you to look at
it too. Of course that doesn't mean that the results of all such
examinations would necessarily come out the same way. Part of why
there aren't groups pushing all possible relaxed standards is that
some of them do produce obviously bad results.
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We are using pkzip V2.04 and I am interested to hear from
people who have used one of the many Windows programs that
call these.
Which ones are available and does any one stand out amongst
the rest?
Is there a full windows version that does not call the DOS
PKZIP/PKUNZIP commands?
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Does anyone on this group use this program? It stacks up pretty well to
Corel Draw, and since I don't have a CDROM, it was the best buy...
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|
Thanks to Bruce Barnett, who recommended xvttool, and Bernward Averwald and
Liam Quin, who recommended modifying .Xdefaults to get the desired behavior
for a *class* of xterms.
In xvttool, simply create a key file that looks like:
"a" "A"
"b" "B"
"c" "C"
...
and specify said key file on the command line. This will translate
any input into any other (in my case, lo-case to up-case). Works great, and
you get a customizable button-pad on the right or left side.
To use an xterm solution, add to your .Xdefaults:
capxterm*VT100.Translations: #override \
<Key>a: string("A")\n\
...
or:
capxterm.vt100.translations: #override \n\
<Key>a: insert-string(A) \n\
<Key>b: insert-string(B) \n\
...
and invoke as: xterm -name capxterm
Thanks loads!
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THE diarrhea problem? WHAT diarrhea problem? First, candidal overgrowth is
not a frequent problem during antibiotic therapy, and not all cases of
antibiotic-related diarrhea have anything to do with candida. But a case
of vaginal candidiasis or oral thrush after antibiotic therapy isn't going
to surprise anyone either. That's not what people are disagreeing with.
Oh, really? Where'd you come up with this? You know, it's really
appalling to see you try to comment authoritatively on clinical matters
in a bizarre synthesis from reading reports in the literature.
Bobbing for citations in the research literature isn't medicine.
I hope you're not giving the wrong idea to your medical students.
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There are very few disciplines where 100% certainty is necessary to
state something as fact. Baseball is not one of them.
Therefore I can say that I know Clemens was better than Morris last
year, and Larkin was better than Griffin. No, I can't ascertain this.
I can't prove it. But I'm not required to do so.
And since you obviously feel that such threads are meaningless,
why don't you simply stay out of them?
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Hello, I've raytraced and rendered and the only difference I've found
is that raytracing takes a hell of a lot longer. Am I missing
something?
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I didn't mean that it would necessarily help him improve at that
specific deficiency. I meant that if having Bonds bat behind him
gives Williams (possibly unfounded) confidence, that might translate
into more hitting productivity. But you're right -- if Williams'
biggest problem is more physical than mental, that's less likely
to make a difference.
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Apologies... Your mail is probably in the pile that arrived just before
I got sick about a month ago... A reply will appear eventually...
So far, there have been none (unless you count an interview in The Amateur
Computerist about the history of netnews, which may be disqualified because
TAC's budget doesn't run to reproducing photos...).
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The most current orbital elements from the NORAD two-line element sets are
carried on the Celestial BBS, (513) 427-0674, and are updated daily (when
possible). Documentation and tracking software are also available on this
system. As a service to the satellite user community, the most current
elements for the current shuttle mission are provided below. The Celestial
BBS may be accessed 24 hours/day at 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, or 9600 bps using
8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity.
Element sets (also updated daily), shuttle elements, and some documentation
and software are also available via anonymous ftp from archive.afit.af.mil
(129.92.1.66) in the directory pub/space.
STS 55
1 22640U 93 27 A 93117.24999999 .00043819 00000-0 13174-3 0 47
2 22640 28.4694 264.3224 0004988 261.3916 194.3250 15.90699957 104
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Brad Thone <C09615BT@WUVMD> writes...
Yep. If Ed's list is over 45-degrees, the wind's too strong to ride. :-)
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...
...
I can think of another alternative:
4) OOBE's are a form of contact with the demonic world, whereby one
intentionally or unintentionally surrenders control of his or her perceptions
to spiritual beings whose purpose is to deceive and entrap them.
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(Deletion)
Sorry, Gregg, it was no answer to a post of mine. And you are quite
fond of using abusing language whenever you think your religion is
misrepresented. By the way, I have no trouble telling me apart from
Bob Beauchaine.
I still wait for your answer to that the Quran allows you to beat your wife
into submission. You were quite upset about the claim that it was in it,
to be more correct, you said it wasn't.
I asked you about what your consequences were in case it would be in the
Quran, but you have simply ceased to respond on that thread. Can it be
that you have found out in the meantime that it is the Holy Book?
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Hello all,
I thought you all might like to see this. It's a letter from Jerry
Berman to David Chaum from November of 1985, in response to
information that Mr. Chaum sent to Mr. Berman.
While I have to congratulate EFF for its prompt response to the
Clipper Chip announcement from the White House, I think it's important
to recognize the philosophy of their Executive Director, as explained
below.
I agree that legal remedies are important, but when pressed, I'd
prefer to retain the ability to use purely technical solutions to
preserve my privacy, because they'll hold up under fire.
Mr. Chaum has consented to the publication of this letter on the Net.
I don't work for, nor am I a member of EFF, ACLU, or any similar
organizations, but I do agree with them on a great many things.
--Aristophanes
----------
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
WASHINGTON OFFICE
122 Maryland Avenue, NE
November 1, 1985 Washington, DC 20002
--------------------
National Headquarters
Mr. David Chaum 132 West 43rd Street
Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science New York. NY 10036
P.O. Box 4079 (212) 944-9800
19O9 AB Amsterdam Norman Dorsen
President
Dear Mr. Chaum: Ira Glasser
Executive Director
Eleanor Holmes Norton
CHAIR
National Advisory
Council
Thank you for sending me a most interesting article. A
society of individuals and organizations that would expend the
time and resources to use a series of 'digital pseudonyms' to
avoid data linkage does not in my opinion make big brother
obsolete but acts on the assumption that big brother is ever
present. I view your system as a form of societal paranoia.
As a matter of principle, we are working to enact formal
legal protections for individual privacy rather than relying on
technical solutions. We want to assume a society of law which
respects legal limits rather than a society that will disobey the
law, requiring citizens to depend on technical solutions. e.g.
require a judical warrant for government interception of data
communications rather than encrypt all messages on the assumption
that regardless of the lawt the government will abuse its power
and invade privacy.
As a matter of practicality, I do not think your system
offers much hope for privacy. First, the trend toward universal
identifiers is as much.-a movement generated by government or
industry's desire to keep track of all citizens as it is by
citizens seeking simplicity and convenience in all transactions.
At best, your system would benefit the sophisticated and most
would opt for simplicity. The poor and the undereducated would
never use or benefit from it.
Finally where there's a will, there's a way. If government
wants to link data bases, it will, by law, require the disclosure
of various individual pseudonyms used by citizens or prohibit it
for data bases which the government wants to link. Since
corporations make money by trading commercial lists with one
another, they will never adopt the system or if it is adopted,
will use "fine printn contracts to permit selling various codes
used by their customers to other firms.
The solution remains law, policy, and consensus about limits
on government or corporate intrusion into areas of individual
autonomy. Technique can be used to enforce that consensus or to
override it. It cannot be used as a substitute for such
consensus.
Sincerely Yours,
/Sig/
Jerry J. Berman
Chief Legislative Counsel
& Direrector ACLU
Privacy Technology Project
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BMWs boxer twin! (no two wheelers here?) Been around since 1923. I think the
other examples are Johnny come latelies... I may be wrong so no flames please..
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No smiley on the part about atheism, I see. Do you realize that your
statement says that I was mentioning "nonsense" about atheism? This is
hard for me to defend against if this is the claim you are making, as you
have only included the last two sentences of my post and mentioned the
first. Please address the substance of my post rather than rejecting it
out of hand.
But, because of the sometimes ambiguous nature of English, I may be
misinterpreting your wording here. Please clarify: did you or did you not
mean to call my statements about atheism "nonsense"? If so, care to back
up that claim?
OK, then. Start up the amatuer psycology again. How am I "broken"?
*YAWN* Excuse me, I don't recall any portion of my post in which I called
Christians arrogant quote me, if I did. I do remember calling Christianity
"silly" and then following that up with information that I was nine years
old when I thought that. I also said that I find faith to be intellectually
dishonest and I would like to see some sort of proof of your god's
existence. I define "faith" as "belief in the absense of any proof", BTW.
Also, I subscribe to a.a as I mentioned and we see fundies of all types
there, so in answer to your question: "no."
Finally, I'd hardly call Christianity "beseiged" in this country. I seldom
see Christians ridiculed for merely practising their religion or wearing
crosses or having Christian bumper stickers. I don't know for sure, of
course, I only say I haven't seen it happening. What I have seen happening
is my homosexual and/or friends being beat up, or preached at by people
who claim to be Christ's followers. I know that this sort of thing isn't
practiced by the majority of Christians, but it is a very vocal minority
who are doing it and I don't see comperable victimization of Christians.
The implication being that I am not self-respecting, of course. I'm not a
student of psychology, BTW, but I am a student of Creative Writing and
Linguistics, so literary analysis _is_ my forte. Also, if the implications
I see are improper, please let me know.
I'm here because I'm not sequestered in my own little atheist cubbyhole as
you seem to think atheists should be. Did it occur to you that I _don't_
think I know everything and that maybe someone will say something that
will change my life? Have you read my other posts here or did you see
"atheist" and decide it was time to poke at someone who doesn't deserve
your respect?
Aw, geez. I'm sorry, I probably am getting my back up a little too high,
here. It's just that the "nonsense" thing really annoys me. I figure you
should see my first reactions, though, since they are my true reactions to
your question.
Now, the smoothed feather version:
I seek all sorts of knowledge. That's why I came to my university. Yes, I
am looking at your religion (well, sorta, I have no idea what *kind* of
Christian you are) from the outside, and hopefully with an objective view.
I've been trying to ask reasoned questions here, because I genuinely don't
know the answers to them, but when I saw the question directed at atheists
I figured I would answer. After all, you can speculate about atheist
motives here all you want (hence the "amatuer" psychology crack), but
without an atheist, you can't be sure of even one atheist's motive.
I'm hoping people really
want to know and I was trying to show that I actually checked out several
religions and I actually read all the pamphlets people have to offer and I
actually think about these things. Instead, I'm still faced with the
implication that atheism is some kind of aberration and that only "broken"
people are atheist.
Try it from the flip side: I posit that atheism is the natural
state and only broken people are theists. I offer as proof that so many
people witness from horrible lives which picked up as soon as they
discovered their religion, that religion is regional (if people didn't
follow the religion of their areas, there would be a more homogenous
mix), so many terrorists claim theistic motives, and that theists tend
to be so pushy and angry when challenged on alt.atheism. Why are religions
so successful? Because there is so much suffering in the world, which
"breaks" people.
It's an uncomfortable situation whichever way you look at it, which is another
reason I'm here, to try to see the flip side of my thinking (and also as
a watchdog for logical fallacies :).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The implication here being that atheists can't possibly know anything
about Christianity. Probably jumping at shadows again, but I think my
reaction is somewhat justified. After all, the first post suggested that
atheists are "broken", hostile people. This post confirms that someone
else believes it.
^^^^^^^^^^
Well, he got me there. I am a strong atheist, because I feel that lack of
evidence, especially about something like an omnipotent being, implies
lack of existence. However, I haven't met the strong atheist yet who said
that nothing could ever persuade him. Call me a "seeker" if you like, I
don't.
_Weak_ atheism is being ignore here, though. Some atheists simply say "I
don't believe in any god" rather than my position: "I believe that no
god(s) exist." For the weak atheist, the is no atheism to disbelieve,
because they don't actively believe in atheism. (If you think this is
confusing, try figuring out the difference between Protestants and
Methodists from an atheist point of view :).
This is another fallacy many theists seem to have, that everyone believes in
something (followed up by "everyone has faith in something"). Guess what?
My atheism ends the moment I'm shown a proof of some god's existence. Is
that really too much to ask?
Well, I guess you won't succeed in converting him or me. Why the
supposition that you will fail to convince him? (amatuer psycology on) Is
it because you yourself are unconvinced? :)
And I told you that I find faith to be intellectually dishonest. Note that
I can only speak for myself. If you find faith to be honest, show me how.
I have been unable to reconcile it so far. Maybe that's how I'm "broken"?
I tell you that I have invisible fairies living in my garden and that
you should just take my word for it. If you accept that, you are of a
fundamentally different mind than I and I really would like to know how you
think. All I ask for is proof of the assertion "God exists". Logical or
physical proofs only, please. Then we'll discuss the nature of "God".
Prayer?! Uh, oh, we'll have to revoke his atheist club card and beanie! :)
Good luck to you, as well. And, again, I apologize if the inferences I
made were inaccurate.
Muppets and garlic toast forever,
Max (Bob) Muir
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|
And this results in a fire that starts in one room and torches the entire place
before anyone in the adjacent rooms can escape? I don't think so. So much for
the smolder theory.
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In case anyone was wondering about upgrading their 386 or 486 class machine
without spending a lot of money, I looked into replacing the processor
on those machines and here are the facts (as I understand them).
If you have a PS/2 Model 70 or Model 80, you can replace the i386 chip with
either 1) a Cyrix 486DLC chip for $130 which will increase your processing
power by about 60% for normal fuctions, and not at all for math functions.
This chip will only run at your original clock speed, ie. if you have a 16MHz
machine the Cyrix 486DLC will run at 16MHz.
note: Windows does not use the math functions, so it is a good upgrade if
you are running Windows.
Or, 2) you can get a Kingston 486/NOW platform for $450 with a 25MHz i486SX
on it which will increase your normal processing power by about 100%, if you
were running at 25MHz originally. But again it will not increase the speed
of your math fuctions. I think that it will continue to run at 25MHz even
if your original processor runs at a slower speed.
There is also 3) the Kingston 486/NOW platform for $750 with a 33MHz i486DX
on it. This might speed up your math functions as well, but I am not sure.
If you have a PS/2 Model 70 B21 or other PS/2 machine with either an i486SX
or a non-clock doubling i486DX (ie. it runs at either 25 or 33MHz) in it,
then you can get an Intel Overdrive chip (which is really an i486DX2 chip) and
replace your chip with it. You should get about 95% better preformance for
both normal and math functions. The 25/50 Mhz version of the Overdrive chip
costs $450 and the 33/66MHz version costs $700. The replacement for the
25MHz 486SX chip is an espeacially good deal as it provides the math
coprocessor which the 486SX does not have. Note that the speed ratings on the
Overdrive chips are the maximum speed at which they can run. If you have a
20MHz 486SX, then the Overdrive chip will run at 20/40MHz, ie. 20MHz externally
and 40MHz internally. There is no reason to buy an Overdrive chip which is
rated at faster then your machine, you will not get faster performance.
You should be able to buy these chips from any of the microchip merchants that
advertise at the back of PC Magazine or PC Week. You might want to shop
around as prices do vary. If you need a name/phone number for a source for
a particular chip, e-mail me, and I will respond with a couple of sources.
Lawrence Khoo
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Please Help if you can. Whenever I try to run windows useing the 16
million color mode with the drivers supplyed with my Diamond Stelth 24x
It will lock up requireing a full system reset to break out. The drivers
that I have for windows are V.1.00 for windows 3.1 (which IS the version
of windows I am useing)
My Setup
---------
386DX40 128KCach
4 Megs of ram
14" SVGA touch Monitor non-interlaced
AMI Bios
Any and all help would be apreciated, The card seems to work fine in other
modes, I usually run windows in 800x600 mode and probs at all, so I am
hopeing it is a driver and not a card problem.
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I would like to hear from people who are thinking of going to the Urbana 93
conference in December this year. I have recently received info from IFES
(International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) and am thinking about
attending although I am still not sure whether I can afford it.
I would also like to hear from people involved in IFES or IVF groups just to
hear how things are going on your campus.
Are there any news groups or groups of people who already do this.
I am involved in the Christian Fellowship at the University of Technology
Sydney in Australia. If you are interested to find out how we are going
mail me to find out.
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The subject says it all. I'm wondering if anyone on the net has
had any experiences with Cornell Computer Systems of California.
I was checking out their ad in Computer Shopper, and they seem to
have a good balance between service, price, and hardware. The question
is -- are they reliable?
E-mail responses would be appreciated.
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It works for me. I've run Motif 1.1.3,1.1.4,1.1.5,1.2,1.2.1, and 1.2.2 on
an X11R5 server with MotifBC defined.
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|
I have some articles available on the Church and gay people, from
a pro-gay viewpoint, which might interest some of the people
participating in this thread. Please email me if you would like
to have me send them to you (warning, about 70k worth of material.
Make sure you have mailbox and/or disk space available.)
There are no short answers to the questions we've been seeing here
("how do you explain these verses?", "How do you justify your actions?")
If you've been asking and you really want an idea of the other people's
thinking, I encourage you to do some serious reading.
--
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I have ordered many times from Competition accesories and ussually
get 2-3 day delivery. Once they had to backorder something, but they
sent me a card to say it would be two weeks. Came in 10 days or so.
Always be satisfied, with CA and in life.
| 0
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|
Is this not the same movie that sold at McDonald's for $7.99??
(new)?
| 1
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4,828
|
But the sperm would be very diluted in a "x" gallon swimming pool
| 9
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We were at a dealership today looking at buying a car and
the salesman was showing us something he was calling a
"buy back". Is that a car that was fleeted and then
given back for the new model the next year? If that
is so, how many miles is a good number to have on it
and are these types of cars generally a good buy?
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People *die* of natural causes, too. We hear all this bellyaching over
things like murder and war while Mother Nature is killing people all of
the time.
In fact, more people die of natural causes than due to the conscious
actions of other people. So, what's a few murders here and there?
--
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[Note: This is a repost of my earlier response to Mr. Starr,
which was not properly formatted. Apologies to those who've
seen the following before:]
To explain my position on the "War On Drugs," I offer this:
Drugs And Crime: A New Approach
by Ken Barnes
Given that:
1. The trade in illegal drugs is responsible for
much of the crime which afflicts our nation.
2. People who want drugs (particularly people who
are predisposed to addiction) will find a way to get
them, whether or not they are legally available.
3. Despite current law enforcement efforts, drugs
are readily available to those who want them.
4. Addiction to drugs, both legal and illegal, is
responsible for a significant drain on the productive
resources of our country, and this occurs in a variety
of ways, from the cocaine-addicted babies who are
unable to learn, to the spread of disease among
addicts, to the tragic consequences of alcohol abuse
and tobacco smoking.
5. A general economic principle of government is
that whatever is subsidized you get more of, and
whatever is taxed you get less of. To be most
effective in confronting the nation's drug problem,
some way must be found to utilize these additional
powers of government to make drug dealing and drug use
less attractive.
While this country's current efforts to combat
legal drugs have succeeded in some respects, (there is
a greater awareness of the health consequences of
smoking, and designated-driver programs have helped
reduce drunk driving, for example), the same cannot be
said for the "war" on illegal drugs. There remains a
core group of illegal drug users which support
international networks of smugglers, pushers, growers,
processors, kingpins, and gangsters. These networks
and their "marketing activities," which include drive-
by shootings, corrupting law enforcement authorities,
and smuggling weapons, are directly or indirectly
responsible for a large proportion of the crimes
committed in our country every day.
Clearly, illegal drugs and rising crime are
linked. It takes only a moment's reflection to
recognize how they are linked. The link is money. As
with this country's failed effort to prohibit alcohol
consumption, a black market has been created, in which
greedy local monopolies, like the gangsters of a
bygone era, have profited enormously from their
illegal trade. The victims of this trade include not
only the innocent people unfortunate enough to be
caught in the crossfire, but, I would argue, the drug
users themselves.
Were it not for the black market, and the violent
monopoly of the drug lords, drug users might not be
the thieves, robbers, prostitutes and murderers they
have become in order to pay the high prices the drug
lords demand. In the absence of the drug lords, most
would be, I believe, simply people with a problem,
either a moral problem_or_a medical problem, but_not_a
criminal problem.
Let me be clear however, I am_not_advocating that
we let the criminals who have been preying on our
society for these many years of Prohibition off the
hook. On the contrary, the new approach I advocate is
one which would not result in either the government or
private industry getting into the business of
promoting crack cocaine, or any other presently
illegal drug for that matter. Neither is it an
approach which sees law abiding citizens handing over
more and more of their freedom and privacy in an
effort to track down illegal drug users, until "the
land of the free and the home of the brave" looks like
a police state.
Here then is my proposal:
1. Possession and use of all presently illegal
drugs is decriminalized, but buying and selling them
remains illegal. 'Potheads' can grow their own
marijuana (as many already do today), other drug users
can legally import their poison of choice as long as
they pay the tariffs, and a barter economy of drug
experimenters develops.
2. Because of the barter economy which supplies
the drug users, the black market profits that have so
enriched the drug lords dwindle. If these drugs can
be obtained for 'free' or next to nothing, why buy
them? Nevertheless, there will be those who will seek
to sell these "noncommercial" drugs even at relatively
low prices. Therefore,
3. Law enforcement activity is concentrated on
those individuals who continue to buy and sell, and
also on the crimes committed by drug users too poor to
afford even low prices. But here is where the
strategy begins to differentiate between the drug
dealers, the victimizers, and the drug users, their
victims.
4. Upon arrest for_any_crime,_suspects are
permitted to choose whether or not they will undergo a
drug test. Those who choose to cooperate are informed
that upon conviction for the crime they are accused
of, if they are found to be a drug user, they will be
institutionalized until they are clean, and only then
will they begin to serve their sentence. If they
choose to cooperate and are already drug-free, they
can begin to serve their sentence right away. Those
who choose not to undergo the drug test and are
convicted face stiffer fines and serve longer
sentences.
5. Institutionalization of drug using criminals
serves several purposes:
Drug using criminals (and this includes drunk
and/or 'stoned' drivers) are separated from their
sources of supply, thus reducing the total number of
drug users in society at large, and consequently
decreasing the demand for drugs on the street, putting
more of the remaining drug dealers out of business.
Institutionalization provides an incentive for
drug using criminals to straighten themselves out,
before becoming part of the general prison population.
While helping protect society from crime,
institutionalization could also serve to deter drug
users from becoming criminals, since drug using
criminals, unlike other criminals, would be delayed
prior to serving their sentences by the additional
time it takes for them to sober up.
Institutionalization of drug using criminals
separate from the general prison population would also
provide a closely monitored pool of addicts who could
volunteer for research studies of new techniques and
treatments for addictive disease, with the potential
to benefit both themselves and others.
6. Dealers in illegal drugs are generally not
drug users themselves, and this is particularly true
of the drug bosses or kingpins running large illicit
organizations. Under this proposal, dealers would be
more readily identifiable, since upon arrest they
would presumably pass the drug test, or else decline
to take it in order to avoid having to explain why
they are in possession of drugs when it is apparent
they do not use them. Declining to take the test,
they would of course face stiffer penalties. While
each case of attempted sale of a noncommercial drug
would have to stand on own its merits, the outcome of
a suspect's drug test could provide additional
evidence for the prosecution.
7. Just as cigarette taxes have contributed to
the decline of smoking in our country by making
cigarettes more costly while at the same time
providing revenue for anti-smoking campaigns,
noncommercial drugs should be taxed, and the money
generated should be used to combat their use.
Enforcement of this tax should be on a voluntary basis
however, and should not be used as an excuse to
infringe on the rights and privacy of noncommercial
drug users, since to do so would have the effect of
reintroducing Prohibition.
Instead, drug users will be encouraged to pay the
tax by reminding them that if untaxed drugs are ever
found in their possession during the course of routine
police operations, they will be required to pay the
tax immediately or else forfeit their untaxed drugs to
be destroyed. If drug dealers are found to be selling
noncommercial drugs on which taxes have not been paid,
they will face additional prosecution for evading the
tax. The strategy of adding tax evasion to drug
dealing charges is already in use in some
jurisdictions, but its effectiveness is currently
limited by the illegality of drug possession.
Revenue from drug possession taxes and import
tariffs would be used to fund anti-drug advertising
campaigns, and provide support to private sector drug
treatment programs for those unable to afford
treatment.
8. Taxpayer subsidies to all drug producers must
be ended. Federal support of tobacco farming is both
immoral and wasteful in this era of tight budgets, and
the marijuana crops grown illicitly on federal lands
in many states must likewise be eliminated.
While my proposal would have the effect of
permitting the use of what are now illegal drugs, it
would hold the users of all drugs responsible for
their actions, and I believe, would reduce the harm
drugs have on our society, particularly the crime
caused by the illegal drug trade. So long as we
remain a free nation, with relatively porous borders,
and freedom for our citizens to travel, we will always
have a drug problem. Whether it takes the form of
heroin addicts dying in abandoned buildings, drunk
drivers killing and maiming others on our streets, or
emphysema patients struggling for breath after a
lifetime of smoking, the results are the same:
needless suffering and death. As a society we must
recognize that while our society permits us to harm
ourselves with drugs, as we are already doing
(regardless of the drug laws), we must take a stand
against the harm that drugs and drug users cause to
others. We must particularly oppose the vicious and
violent cartels which prey on the weakness of drug
users. By taking the profits out of their deadly
trade, my proposal goes a long way towards shutting
down these powerful criminal organizations.
The question of whether drug use is a moral or
medical problem depends on which group of drug users
you're talking about. Different drugs have different
effects, and some are more addictive than others. The
addictiveness of a drug also often varies between
individuals, and so we have some people who can drink
alcohol in moderation, while others find they cannot
resist the bottle. Nicotine, which former Surgeon
General C. Everett Koop declared to be as addicting as
heroin, is a legal drug with known harmful effects,
and while some people can stop smoking by willpower
alone, others continue to smoke even after treatment
for lung cancer.
For those individuals who can stop taking drugs
on their own, we may argue that because they have
chosen to use them, this represents a moral failure on
their part, or an unwillingness to face the
difficulties of life. But for the addicts, while they
may have chosen to use drugs the first time, by the
time they discover their addiction it is too late. We
cannot hold them responsible for their disease, any
more than we would blame someone who is drowning for
an inability to swim. Perhaps they should have known
not to go near the water, or perhaps someone should
have warned them of the danger, but in their present
circumstances warnings will not help. Neither does it
help for the drug dealers on the shore to be tossing
them weights.
| 13
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Save youself the cash. Take it from a BMW mechanic. Idiot lights are for just that. Buy yourself a ballpoint pen and write it down yourself. Change your oil every 3000 mi. and you will be just fine.
| 4
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4,833
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How about some sources for all these numbers? Or is this more stuff that
"everybody knows"?
| 0
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4,834
|
I'm familiar with the telethon situation (an individual on CompuServe
was also victimized and was equally pissed). That was a local
television station contract which could not be broken. For that item,
I strongly suggest you call that affiliate and vent your anger on
them. (Supposedly one station had told my friend that they have
received hundreds of angry calls which will translate into far less
incentive to pre-empt hockey telecasts in future. The contract was
written when the pathetic WLAF was in that time slot.)
| 16
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|
Laser printers often emit ozone (which smells sort of like Clorox).
Adequate ventilation is recommended.
| 9
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4,836
|
agents
of
The original poster did not say why his mother had been in hospital
but I can answer a few general points.
Elderly patients may exhibit a marked difficulty in coping after
being in hospital for a few days. The drastic change of environment
will often unmask how marginally they have been coping at home. Even
young people find the change unsettling.
Though we have thought that this decrement in function after - say -
anaesthesia and surgery for a fractured hip (a common event in the
elderly) was due to anaesthesia there is good evidence that the
change of situation is much more important. Some hospitals have
tried a 'rapid transit' system for hip fractures, aiming to have the
patient back at home within 24 hours of admission. The selection of
the anaesthetic has no effect on the ability to discharge these
patients early.
Anaesthetists who work with the elderly (which is almost all of us)
generally take care to tailor the choice and dose of drugs used to
the individual patient. Even so, there is some evidence that full
mental recovery may take a surprisingly long time to return. This is
the sort of thing which is detected by setting quite difficult
tasks, not the gross change that the original poster noted.
Haloperidol (Haldol TM) is a long acting drug. The plasma half life
of the drug is up to 35 hours. If the decanoate (a sort of slow
release formulation) is used it may be weeks. The elderly are
sensitive to haloperidol for a number of reasons. Without knowing
more it is hard to comment.
| 9
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|
Hi folks,
I'm doing an animated film on new methodes in loom
research (You know, the thing they make cloth with.)
and need a model of a loom. The format should be
in ascii faceted geometry and fairly straight
forward to figure out. Any help or pointers would be
greatly appreciated.
-Thanks
Rick Boykin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rick Boykin (rboykin@cscsparc.larc.nasa.gov)
Computer Sciences Corporation, Hampton, VA.
"So maybe I could be a fly
and feed arachnid as I die" -Tom Marshall
| 7
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4,838
|
writes...
Oh, probably.
Ms. Nichols has given the average game times (and average runs scored) for
1983 and 1992. (A very nice piece of information, Ms. Nichols. Who knows?
She may be listening, and not have me in her kill file after all.) Those
numbers indicate somewhere in the neighborhood of half-a-run *less* being
scored per game, and the games taking 15 minutes *longer*. Something is
being done now that wasn't done ten years ago, which is extending the games
by 15 minutes. Ms. Nichols thinks it's more pitches. Given the increasing
specialization of pitchers, it wouldn't surprise me.
If it's not simply more pitches, though, I don't think it's unreasonable
to think that something can be done to get ten of those minutes back. Then
I get a couple more from shortening the warmup time for a relief pitcher
after he comes in, and a couple more still from enforcing existing rules,
which have been stated in other posts in this thread (and other related ones).
The problem is, who decides whether that time is "wasted?" You don't seem
to think it is at all. Right now, I think it is, although I have heard one
case favoring giving the reliever all the warmups he thinks he needs (the
difference in mounds between the field and pen) -- but who knows? If the
rules get changed, maybe something I didn't foresee will happen to change my
mind. But you can bet a lot of minds would fail to foresee the same thing,
or else nothing will be changed.
RG
| 11
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When it's too windy to stand.
When you're on the road in high winds, stay alert. Even more alert
than your "alert 'cause you're on a motorcycle and they're out to kill
you" kind of alert. Be aware of the terrain, and how it may funnel
wind in sudden gusts (well, not gusts to somebody standing there, but
it's gusty 'cause you ride through it). If you are riding in a steady
crosswind, be aware of a hill that will block the wind, and adjust your
lean angle. Be aware of passing trucks to your windward side, your
lean angle will change dramatically both as you enter and as you leave
their turbulance cone. Reducing your profile may help, ie, lean on the
gas tank and kiss the triple clamp. Keep a nimble hand on the
steering, be ready to countersteer into and out of sudden wind bursts.
Keep a larger than usual buffer zone, both ahead and behind, and to the
side, you can easily be blown half a lane over before you can react by
countersteering. Keep a close eye on traffic in your mirror, if
someone is coming up wanting to pass, get out of their way early. Stop
often for short brakes, extensive riding in high winds is both mentally
and physically fatiguing.
| 0
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4,840
|
Has anyone successfully programmed this beast using the bootloader pgm
with the circuit described in `the little green handbook, pg 9-1`?
Dan.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Blockley ! I may say something profound
Environmental science ! here one day.
Murdoch University !
Western Australia, 6153 !
blockley@essun1.murdoch.edu.au !
phone 09-360 2737 !
| 15
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If ESPN pisses you off, call them - they do respond to calls. Last night I
called when they said they were cutting to baseball and we couldn't see the
sudden-death overtime for the BUffalo game. Apparently they received enough
calls so they waited for the overtime to finish before cutting away.
Their phone number is 203-585-2000
| 16
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|
-- That means that there cannot be any atheists since there is NO WAY that you
can prove that there is no god. Atheists are people who BELIEVE that there is no
god, most not only believe, but also are damn sure that there isn't a god (like
me).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cursor, aka Nick Humphries, u2nmh@csc.liv.ac.uk, at your service.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What's the use of computers? They'll never play | "Why pay money to see
chess, draw art or make music." - Jean Genet. | bad films? Stay home
"Intelligence isn't to make no mistakes, but how | and see bad TV for
to make them look good." - Bertolt Brecht. | free." - Sam Goldwyn.
| 9
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|
I see no other way of interpreting them other than homosexuyality
being wrong. Please tell me how these verses can be interpreted in
any other way. I read them and the surrounding text.
| 18
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|
Maybe you had accidentally sealed in some water? I cleaned my chain
thoroughly, took it on a short ride to dry it off and heat it up
a bit, and the paraffin sank deep into the rollers and formed a good
seal on the outside. No rust, but then again I live in Tucson!
| 0
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|
That's pretty good.
A friend had an Audi that he named Murphy.
| 4
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|
How about the name and number of the pin place. I would think that 115
or so people calling to bitch about why orders placed after ours are getting
done first might speed things along.
Dean
| 0
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4,847
|
Does any one know where I can get a telecaption decoder module?
Need it to build a close caption decoder.
Thanks.
Wayne
| 15
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|
I'm looking for any and all information regarding packet radio
implementation on the PC. Software, hardware, whatever.
Please e-mail any info to koberg@spot.colorado.edu.
| 15
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|
Thank you. I now know at least that though I may be on drugs, at
least I'm not the only one.
Yes, this took some getting used to -- of course not having an Indian
connection, no knowledge of hindi, etc., this was not trivial for me.
I did have, thanks to the wonders of the net, "A Glossary to *Satanic
Verses*", posted to rec.arts.books by Vijay Raghavan, which explains a
lot of the Indian English constructions, Indian culture references,
even the Islamic references ("Jahilia", "Submission", the context of
the Satanic Verses incident, etc.) -- what I have only covers the
first couple of hundred pages, but it helped me get into the flow of
the novel [I can mail this to anyone interested; if anyone has
portions after part I, if they exist, I'd like to get those].
| 14
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|
Well, we already suffer from street hoardings. If you don't
watch TV, you are free of commercials there, but if you want
to go from A to B you cannot escape beer ads.
I think the right time to stop this proposal is now.
If this idea goes through, it's the thin end of the wedge. Soon
companies will be doing larger, and more permanant, billboards in the
sky. I wouldn't want a world a few decades from now when the sky
looks like Las Vegas. That would _really_ make me sad.
Coca Cola company will want to paint the moon red and white. (Well,
if not this moon, then a moon of Jupiter). Microscum will want to
name a galaxy `Microscum Galaxy'. Where do we draw the line?
Historically mankind is not very good at drawing fine lines.
I'm normally extremely enthusiastic about all forms of resource
allocation for space research; I think it's the most important
investment possible for mankind in the long run. But this is not
the way to get the money.
-ans.
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We're having to associate with you against our will. This is fascism!
You don't have to associate with anyone against your will. Go live in a
cave. We won't miss you.
Drewcifer
| 13
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|
Playmation is available direct from Anjon & Associates for $299. It's hard
to beat that price. Also, you'd be better off with a newer version than
an older version that had bugs that have long since been clobbered.
| 7
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4,853
|
That's fascinating. I heard that the Chinese, rather than
the Italians, invented pasta.
| 14
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4,854
| 3
|
|
4,855
|
I would like to know as well, since I just bought a 200MB Seagate IDE
drive and want to add it to my computer (a four-year-old Gateway
386/20), which currently has an 80MB Seagate SCSI drive. The SCSI
controller is such that the docs told me not to specify it in the CMOS
setup, i.e. both hard drive settings are listed as "Not installed,"
and apparently the SCSI controller works its wonders. I wondering if
this is a problem. Also, I remember how, when I helped my cousin
install his second IDE drive, we had to define a master/slave
relationship for them; do I need to do something similar here?
Same here.
Any help would be appreciated, since I intend to install this drive
ASAP; I'd like to know what to do (and what not to do) before I start.
Thanks!
--
| 5
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4,856
|
# # Actually, I was rather surprised to see an article on this subject
# # (i.e. the "new, inproved" survey saying that roughly 1% of men are gay)
# # on the front page of The New York _Times_ recently (I think it was
# # on Thurs, 15 April). The headline was something to the effect of
# # "New Survey Finds 1% of Men Are Gay"
#
# Does anyone else see the difference between "1% of Men Are Gay" and 1%
# of Men surveyed *say* they are gay? Does the NY Times think that
# there is no one "in the closet"?
I see. When survey after survey show 1-4%, we are supposed to believe
ONE survey, done with very poor assumptions, with a very atypical
population, 40 years ago when the society was FAR more repressed about
homosexuality than it is now. Yeah, right.
# Russ Anderson | Disclaimer: Any statements are my own and do not reflect
| 13
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4,857
|
Has anybody ever heard of Hawk EISA/VLB motherboards? NET Computers
International (from Computer Shopper) has the 486/33 version w/256k
cache for $559. I'm trying to decide between this motherboard and the
NICE motherboard. Thanks!
PS: The Hawk motherboard has 3 EISA slots, two of which are VLB. The
spec sounds identical to the Nice.
| 5
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4,858
|
What string did you use to do this?
| 5
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4,859
|
[...stuff deleted...]
Thank you. I thought I was in the twilight zone for a moment.
It still amazes me that many people with science backgrounds
still confuse the models and observables with what even they
would call the real world.
-jim halat
| 14
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|
I assume that can only be guessed at by the assumed energy of the
event and the 1/r^2 law. So, if the 1/r^2 law is incorrect (assume
some unknown material [dark matter??] inhibits Gamma Ray propagation),
could it be possible that we are actually seeing much less energetic
events happening much closer to us? The even distribution could
be caused by the characteristic propagation distance of gamma rays
being shorter then 1/2 the thickness of the disk of the galaxy.
| 12
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|
21 Apr 1993 10:28:02 Gillian E Runcie Writes:
Dear Gillian
That is such a wickedly cool idea; why didn't I think of it??? However, here
in Canada the aerials (antenna) are usually near the driver or passenger areas
and I would surely be seen......but I'll give it a try anyway.
Thanks for the first truely useable piece of information I have heard in a long
time (and you are by no means a mere female, as this way at getting back takes
real guts to do).
| 0
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4,862
|
Recently we have found TIFF manipulation packages which do not recognize
TIFF files output by xv. This is due to a missing XRESOLUTION and YRESOLUTION
tag which apparently is required (or at least believed to be required) for
valid TIFF. I have checked both xv 2.x and xv 3.x and neither of these
do indeed copy these tags.
Has anyone out there hacked in the fixes for xv to support these tags?
I have been told that I could find some code in tiff/tools/tiffcp.c, but
that directory is one of many of the tiff group not distributed with xv. I
hope to obtain the original tiff src and look at it, but would prefer
to find code already known to work in xv.
| 7
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|
While the 64K limit may not be _necessary_ limitation, they probably fall
within the category of 'reasonable' limitations. If you find yourself
trying to allocate an edit control for more than 64K of text, it's probably
time take a good look at your program's design.
In what way is 8192 a 'small' number? It seems to me that you'd hit the
wall in many other ways before you'd hit the systemwide limit on global
handles, unless, of course, you're abusing GlobalAlloc.
And _please_ don't try to tell me that it's impossible to abuse the
resources available under other operating systems. All systems have
limits. The question is whether or not the limits are _reasonable_. So
far, you haven't offered a single argument which suggests that Windows'
limits are any less reasonable than limits in other systems.
--
Rick Schaut
UUCP:...{uunet | uw-beaver}!microsoft!richs
| 17
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|
From the Pluto Fast Flyby Instrument definition research anouncemnet,
the instrument payload constraints are:
Mass allocation - 7 kilograms (15.4 lbs)
Power allocation - 6 watts
Required instruments:
Visible imaging system (1024x1024 CCD, 750 mm fl, f/10 optics)
IR mapping spectrometer (256x256 HgCdTe array, 0.3% energy resolution)
UV spectrometer (55-200 nm, 0.5 nm resolution)
Radio science (ultrastable oscilator incorporated in telecom system)
ultrastable means 10^-14.
This doesn't leave much room for payloads which are totally unrelated
to the mission of the spacecraft. In addition, the power will come
from a radioisotope thermal generator, and the whole space craft will
be about 2 feet in diameter, with no booms, which means there will be
strong gamma-lines from Pu-239 and associated schmutz in the
background, which tends to reduce sensitivity somewhat.
It would still be nice, and our group here at Goddard is looking
in to it.
| 12
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|
Nah, let's reserve rec.sports.idiots for people who POST
obvious flamebait, like yourself.
If someone posts something as controversial (not to mention
idiotic) as what Austin posted in a widely accessed newsgroup,
someone should challenge the statement. There is a school
of thought that suggests that silence = consent. Whereas
this idea may not apply to everything in life, it certainly
SHOULD apply to a forum of public discussion, which r.s.b.
is.
If you've been reading r.s.b. lately, you'll find
that even elementary school children have had access
to our postings, alibet in an edited form. It's making me
think a little more carefully about some of the things I post.
In conclusion, if someone like Austin wants to post his drivel
in some obscure newsgroup that I don't read, fine. He's got the
right to rant, rave, and drool all he wants to in the name
of free speech. But if he drools in a newsgroup that I read,
then I will support the right of anyone to provide rebuttal
to his drooling.
Now, of course, you don't have to read any of this.
And if you want to cut down on flames, then
DON'T POST FLAMEBAIT!
(You don't have to respond to flames, either. Saves cyberspace)
| 11
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|
I am looking for a text/reference that will include pinouts,
description, and functionality for just about any IC made.
Does such a text exist? Are there docs on the Internet that
reference IC's? It would be a great idea if each major
IC manufacturer made available to the public an anonymous
FTP site with all it's data books in the form of text files.
(ala RFC style). This would save time and money for the
IC manufacturer since a text file costs nothing to send
around the world via internet and since most users of
IC's
are found in the internet anyway.
Are there any books available for purchase that reference
(as many as possible)? Or am I going to be stuck obtaining
a zillion databooks from the manufacturers (those little
phonebook-type books that are obsoleted every couple years)
| 15
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|
As opposed to Universal or Catholic or "FourSquare Gosple". I think that
the Greek Orthodox Church would take high offense at your misuse of the
word. Your version of Christianity is neither mainstream nor bible derived
you make claims of bible-centricity that are not derivable soley from the
Bible. About six-seven months ago, you claimed that your primary objection
to the LDS was that "our" doctrine was not bible-derived, And now this
(and other) claims can be shown, are also not bible interpeting bible.
Simple truths... oh for example?
"paradise exalted to heaven"
paradise wasn't equal to heaven and _now_ it is? Yet you claim that
peeple can not be exalted to heaven, nicht wahr?
When I read the story, I found that "Abraham's Bosom" wasn't so much
a place, but somewhere the rich man could see and talk to Abraham?
Gee this is fairly close to what the LDS call spirit prison, and what
you have called false doctrine...
[ vers deleted reproduced below quoted from the SunSpot Gopher Archive ]
This part is _not_ supported from scripture, nor does it support your
claim that the "paradise" where Christ descended was exalted.
Making such claims on this little "evidence" ignores the witness of the
scripture
Using this to argue that paradise or spirit prison, is now changed from
a Pre-Easter postion to post-easter by God postion is not supportable.
Makeing such a claim requires more evidence than you have given here...
Yes, and your reasons are in general not supported by any direct reading
of the scriptures. You have demonstrated that you claims to scriptural
"proof" need to be cross-checked. The referencs that you supply often do
not support your postion, if they are read in the context of the scripture.
How about that those who have been in paradise, and have accepted
the gosple will be judged of Jesus Christ, and then return to the
presence of God. Is that somehow different from your expressed view
that the paradise spoken of (or "Abraham's Bosom")
Should we go back and discuss your view on why the Angle of the Lord
is the Lord again... ;-)
| 8
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|
Joachim Martillo writes
If you were to substitute the word "Jew"/"Jewish" in this posting where you
see the word "Muslim"/"Islamic", switch Joachim and Mohammed's names around,
and then repost this, you would get a flood of messages attacking the author
as an anti-semite. And rightly so. The author of this crap is a racist, pure
and simple. He obviously has no qualms about being open with it, either,
unlike some other Arab- and Mulsim-bashers on the Net.
Now, I for one, am not going to look at Joachim's posting and infer from it
that all Jews think this way. Sure, there might be some, but this view is not
a part of Judaism, and it is stupid to believe that all Jews' minds are this
twisted. However, some Muslims might look at Joachim's flame as a
reaffirmation of their worst fears about Jews: that they all hate Arabs and
are racists.
For this reason, I am alarmed that not more Jews on the Net have spoken out
against what Joachim has said. They have the chance to possibly change the
anti-semitic views of some people on the net, to show them that all Jews do
*not* hate all Arabs and Muslims, just like all Muslims do *not* hate all
Jews. Yet they are missing that chance. Remember, to many people, silence
implies consent.
Peace.
--
| 2
|
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|
:-)
I can just imagine it. The mother is wheeled into the labour ward. After
delivery a government agent steps up to read the baby its rights...
"You have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right anything
you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you."
"Waaaaaaaaah"
--
Anthony Shipman "You've got to be taught before it's too late,
CP Software Export Pty Ltd, Before you are six or seven or eight,
19 Cato St., East Hawthorn, To hate all the people your relatives hate,
Melbourne, Australia, 3121 You've got to be carefully taught." R&H
| 3
|
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|
Does anyone know of a program for the PC that
will take AutoCad DXF format files and convert
them to a raster format, like PCX, GIF, etc?
Thanks in advance....
ED
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Here's a suggestion for the logical argument FAQ. I don't think it's covered,
though the fallacy probably has a better name than the one I used: How about
it, mathew?
INCONSISTENCY AND COUNTEREXAMPLE
This occurs when one party points out that some source of information takes
stand A, which is inconsistent with B. There are two variations in which B is
either a mutually-agreed-on premise or else a stand elsewhere from the same
source. The second party fallaciously responds by saying "see, the source
really does say B, it's right here!"; this reply does not refute the allegation
of inconsistency because it does not show that the source _only_ says B.
Example of the first type: "The Koran says unbelievers should be treated in
these ways. We can both agree these are immoral." "The Koran clearly says in
this other passage that unbelievers are not to be treated that way."
Example of the second type: "There are two Biblical creation stories." "You're
wrong, since the Bible clearly describes the creation as [description]."
--
"On the first day after Christmas my truelove served to me... Leftover Turkey!
On the second day after Christmas my truelove served to me... Turkey Casserole
that she made from Leftover Turkey.
[days 3-4 deleted] ... Flaming Turkey Wings! ...
-- Pizza Hut commercial (and M*tlu/A*gic bait)
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This doesn't melt plastic, at least it hasn't melted the plastic
bottle that I bought it in yet. Maybe I'd better go check that
bottle, its been sittin' awhile -:)
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*********************************************************************
That's cool; I wish everyone had the smae kind of names; the
world would certainly be a better place!!
| 2
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This might be illegal without a very specific Presidential declaration
or even a change in law. In general (sic), U.S. military troops are not
permitted to be used for domestic policing operations.
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What do you accept as a fact -- the roundness of the earth (after
all, the ancient Greeks thought it was a sphere, and then Newton said
it was a spheroid, and now people say it's a geoid [?])? yourself
(isn't your personal identity just a theoretical construct to make
sense of memories, feelings, perceptions)? I'm trying to think of
anything that would be a fact for you. Give some examples, and let's
see how factual they are by your criteria (BTW, what are your
criteria?).
"Gravity is _not_ a fact": is that a fact? How about Newton's
and Einstein's thoughts about gravity -- is it a fact that they had
those thoughts? I don't see how any of the things that you are
asserting are any more factual than things like gravity, atoms or
evolution.
In short, before I am willing to consider your concept of what
a fact is, I'm going to have to have, as a minimum, some examples of
what you think are facts.
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Quite right, your batteries should be perfectly alright and retain
most of their charge if drained and dried well, but I'd throw out the
electrolyte and buy some more when you need it.
And before anyone says I'm wrong, remember that new batteries almost
always come ready charged and dry, and they are perfectly OK even after
several years' storage at the shop.
| 0
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|
Is there a Chicago Cubs mailing list?? If so, I'd like to join.
Any help appreciated....
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Good point, I'd overlooked that. The Eclipse has a 3 point mount, 1 at
the rear and 2 at the front, and it's very stable on the FJ. I have seen
some with harnesses that mount to the sides of the tank, and that would
be a real problem on the FJ.
| 0
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A person I know, belonging to a research lab of a rivate
company, claimed to me during a priavte conversation that, given the
equipment in his lab, he could crack a Kerberos ticket in 15 minutes to
an hour. He had access to rather powerful DES hardware, but not of an
extraordinare kind, I believe. The attack was possible because of the
amount of known plaintext in the ticket, which itself constitutes a small
message. This was two years ago.
DES is no longer usable for encryption of really sensitive data. For a
lot of purposes, however, it is still very adequate.
| 3
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And it is not Hirschbeck's job to help Gant with any of these difficulties.
If Gant can't gather his concentration for whatever reason, that just makes
him all the more meat in the batter's box. The umpire's job is to
maintain flow of play. Gant is not entitled to time to regather his
faculties.
Nor is anyone else.
Absolutely. I think it'd be more accurate to say Gant was foolish.
If a disputed strike call is ample reason for a timeout, games would last
about nine-fifteen weeks, if Jack Morris or Dave "Whiner" Stieb were
pitching. A disputed strike call is not sufficient for a time out.
Suck it up, get back in the box, and never badmouth the blue. They're
not going to change their mind, and you're just going to come across
as a pinhead, which won't help you with the borderline calls.
FTR - I never speak to umpires when I don't know them personally, nor
do I glance at them, or react to calls. As a result, I think I get more
than my fair share of borderline calls at the plate, because I have a
rep of having a good eye. (Actually, there are a lot of negative
connotations that go with that rep, including copious questions about
my masculinity, party affiliation, and sexual preference.)
Irrelevant. He was wasting time THEN.
1. Because it's not his job.
2. Because setting the precedent of cutting slack THERE can easily
extend to those 3 hour games. (Kind of like the phantom DP.)
Gant hurt himself, and the Braves disrupted the game. Your biases are
exposed, and I'm sitting here defending umpires and the SF Giants,
which is like Phyllis Schlafly defending Gary Segura, Jack Kevorkian,
and the Swedish Abortion Team.
I believe Terry said the magic word. There are some truly quick ways
to get tossed from a ballgame. For a primer, email me.
Good ways to get tossed from a game:
1. Ask Ken Kaiser if he got his money back from Nutri-System.
2. Kiss Rich Garcia on the lips, and say "Hi, Honey, I'm Home!"
3. Goose Eric Gregg.
4. Ask Bruce Froemming if his parents had any children that lived.
5. Get Naked.
(Source: The Greg Spira Book of Diamond Ettiquette, as told to
Peter Gammons. 1991, Collier Press.)
| 11
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In Turkish Genocide Apology <9304261739@zuma.UUCP> as scribed by its servile
dolt sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic) we read a response to article <1993Apr26.
175246.24412@colorado.edu> perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman) who
[EP] This has been discussed before, by several people, on this net. The
[EP] statement is attributable either to Hajj Amin al-Husseini, former Grand
[EP] Mufti of Jerusalem - and the leader of the Palestinian death squads
[EP] during the 1948 war, or to one of his chief henchmen.
[(*] In Russia General Dro (the Butcher), the architect of the Turkish
[(*] genocide in WWI, was working closely with the German Secret
[(*] Service. He entered the war zone with his own men and acquired
[(*] important intelligence about the Soviets. His experience with
[(*] the Turkish genocide in x-Soviet Armenia made him an invaluable
[(*] source for the Germans.[2]
What a fool! For the above to be true, [which it is not] the WWI Russian
General Dro must have worked from his grave to assist x-Soviet Armenia.
Soviet Armenia became ex-Soviet Armenia in 1991 and Dro died in 1958! Then
Dro would have to travel back in time, while dead, from 1991 to WWII to help
Nazi Germany!
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|
You might try the rec.models.rockets newsgroup. Interesting stuff,
some of it should probably be classified as artillery.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 0
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|
Macedonia said yesterday it had neither requested or needs such
forces.
This is sort of like sending the National Guard to Bel Air when
the riot is in South Central!
Obviously, Clinton is again trying to make policy for image purposes
in America rather than to try to deal with the real problem and
assume a share of responsibility for the problem. He obviously
didn't even consult with the Macedonians...he was just looking at
the map of the former Yugoslavia for the safest place to put
American troops so he could say to the Europeans...hey, look, we
have troops on the ground in the former Yugoslavia too...now let
me bomb so I can make it look like I am doing something in the
American media.
The problem is that the blue berets in Bosnia are dead meat if
Clinton starts bombing, but Clinton doesn't have the courage to
ask that the blue berets leave, because then he becomes primarily
responsible to the Bosnian policy of the UN and the allies.
Clinton wants to have his cake and eat it too...he wants to feel
free to use American military power for the sake of domestic
US politics and his domestic image, but he doesn't want to assume
the primary international leadership role in the UN and among
the allies, like Bush, for all his faults, did in the Gulf War...
because with leadership comes responsibility, and Clinton seems
to want to retain the Europeans as scapegoats.
Clinton wants to leave the Europeans in charge and responsible,
but wants to freelance on the side...and if his freelancing gets
too hot, he wants to be able to cut and run...the American public may
be easily fooled...European leaders aren't.
| 2
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|
While this is essentially a discussion of reincarnation in the context of
Christianity Gerry Palo has made some comparisons to Asian religious
beliefs on this topic which have simplified the Asian idea of karma
to the point of misrepresentation.
There are significant differences in the idea of karma among Hindus,
Jains, Buddhists (and even among the various Buddhist traditions.)
To refer to karma as a system of reward for past deeds is totally
incorrect in the Buddhist and Jain traditions. Karma is considered to
be a moral process in which intentions (either good or evil) shape
a person's predilections for future intention and action and
produce a person who is more prone to good than evil, or the opposite --
"reward" has nothing to do with it. Both Jainism and Buddhism are atheistic
so there is no deity to dispense rewards or punishments. Karma is usually
described in terms of seeds and reaping the fruit thereof. In fact "As you
sow, so shall you reap" is found in the Pali Canon as I recall, the metaphor
of natural growth is explicit.
Hinduism, or some sects in that tradition, are I believe much more
deterministic and involve concepts closer to reward and punishment being
theistically inclined.
In point of fact, the Theravadin Buddhist tradition of Southeast Asia
considers karma as only one of five influences in human life, and in
fact from their point of view they would be unable to explain the mechanics
of karma without the element of free will.
Also in Eastern religions there is a difference between reincarnation and
rebirth, which is essentially absent in Western considerations.
Isn't Origen usually cited as the most prestigious proponent of reincarnation
among Christian thinkers? What were his views, and how did he relate them
to the Christian scriptures?
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|
It was brought to my attention that there was an oversight in the SIGKids
Research Showcase Call for Participation and Entry Form.
Please note that the SIGKids Research Showcase is part of
SIGGRAPH '93, August 1-6, 1993 Anaheim, California.
Thank you,
Diane Schwartz
SIGKids Committee Member
Institute for the Learning Sciences
1890 Maple Avenue, Suite 150
Evanston, Illinois 60201
| 7
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|
I'm interested in a center channel for my home theater. If yu have one
and would be interested in selling one please let me know. Thanks. Prefer
ably an Infinity or Polk Audio.
| 1
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4,887
|
LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
Discover what lies ahead in Love, Health and Finance
Speak LIVE with a Psychic of your choice
900-446-6995 Extension 107
YOU MUST BE 18 OR OVER TO CALL.
| 1
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|
Hey dude you are making me paranoid! What an argument!!!
No, Frank Crary's arguments are based on the assumption that most people
are sane, normal people. tpg disproves this of gun owners. USEnet as a whole
disproves it of humanity as a whole.
We now have proof positive that guns don't make you safer. Buy a lot of
guns and you either get shot in the no knock raid or get the FBI to burn
down your house. See even in the paranoid mindset of tpg there are good reasons
to support gun control.
Cuddles 'n kisses
| 19
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|
Rich,
First of all you might want to join the VetteNet (vettes@chiller.compaq
.com) during your search/acquisition of the 67. $20k sounds about
right for a wrong engine, condition 3 car. This means that the car may
not have significant investment value but could be an excellent driver
and or hobby car. You will also want to get a copy of the Corvette
Black Book immediately. Don't leave home (to look at Vettes) without it.
Since you are contemplating spending >$20k, you might want to invest a
few hours in reading the "Corvette Buyer's Guide" and purchase Noland
Adams' tape "How to Buy a Corvette." The tape shows you how to check
for damage, etc.. There are many many factors that will affect the
value, road worthiness, and repair expense of your proposed 67. The
list is much too long to go into here. Join the VetteNet where
there are over 100 current Corvette owners (many with 60s vintage
vettes) that are available to help you. The pubs I mentioned above
are available from Mid-America Designs (800) 637-5533 and several
other Corvette parts sources. Good luck!!!
| 4
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|
Without restating the thread going here.....
Zoloft is a stimulating antidepressant.
It is unfortunate that antidepressant therapy is trial and error, but
if it is any help, there are a lot of people using the side effects of
the many medications to help manage other conditions.
Hang in there, maybe someday a "brain chemistry set" will be available
and all the serotonin questions will have answers.
| 9
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|
PROGRAM EUROCRYPT'93, MAY 23-27, LOFTHUS, NORWAY
------------------------------------------------
General chair : Kaare Presttun
email: eurocrypt93@alcatel.no
Program chair : Tor Helleseth
Department of Informatics
University of Bergen
N-5020 Bergen
NORWAY
email: torh@ii.uib.no
=========================================================================
MONDAY, May 24
---------------
SESSION 1 : AUTHENTICATION
--------------------------
Chair: J. Seberry
9.00- 9.30 Welcome and opening remarks
9.30-10.00 On the Relation Between A-codes and Codes Correcting Independent
Errors, T. Johansson, B. Smeets (Lund University, Sweden),
and G. Kabatianskii (Institute for Problems of Information
Transmission, Russia)
10.00-10.20 Optimal Authentication Systems, R. Safavi-Naini and L. Tombak
(University of Wollongong, Australia)
10.20-10.50 Coffee or tea
SESSION 2 : PUBLIC KEY
----------------------
Chair: A. Odlyzko
10.50-11.10 Factoring Integers using SIMD Sieves, B. Dixon (Princeton
University, USA) and A.K. Lenstra (Bellcore, USA)
11.10-11.30 A New Elliptic Curve Based Analogue of RSA,
N. Demytko (Telecom Research Laboratories, Australia)
11.30-11.50 Weaknesses of a Public-Key Cryptosystem Based on Factorization
of Finite Groups, J. Stern (ENS, France)
11.50-14.00 Lunch
SESSION 3 : BLOCK CIPHERS
-------------------------
Chair: A. De Santis
14.00-14.20 Differentially Uniform Mappings for Cryptography,
K. Nyberg (Technical University of Vienna, Austria)
14.20-14.40 On Permutations Against Differential Cryptanalysis,
T. Beth and C. Ding (EISS, University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
14.40-15.10 Two New Classes of Bent Functions,
C. Carlet (INRIA, France)
15.10-15.30 Boolean Functions Satisfying a Higher Order Strict Avalanche
Condition, T.W. Cusick (SUNY, Buffalo, USA)
15.30-16.00 Coffee or tea
SESSION 4 : SECRET SHARING
--------------------------
Chair: Y. Desmedt
16.00-16.30 Size of Shares and Probability of Cheating in Threshold Schemes,
M. Carpentieri, A. De Santis and U. Vaccaro (University of
Salerno, Italy)
16.30-17.00 Nonperfect Secret Sharing Schemes and Matroids, K. Kurosawa,
K. Okada, K. Sakano, W. Ogata and S. Tsujii (Tokyo Institute of
Technology, Japan)
TUESDAY, May 25
---------------
SESSION 5 : STREAMCIPHERS I
---------------------------
Chair: T. Helleseth
9.00-10.00 From the Memoars of a Norwegian Cryptolog, E. Selmer (University
of Bergen, Norway) (Invited talk)
10.00-10.20 On the Linear Complexity of Products of Shift-Register Sequences,
R. Gottfert and H. Niderreiter (Austrian Academy of Sciences,
Vienna, Austria)
10.20-10.50 Coffee or tea
SESSION 6 : STREAMCIPHERS II
----------------------------
Chair: D. Gollman
10.50-11.20 Resynchronisation Weaknesses in Synchronous Stream Ciphers,
J. Daemen, R. Govaerts and J. Vandewalle (ESAT, KU Leuven,
Belgium)
11.20-11.40 Blind Synchronization of m-Sequences with Even Span,
R. Games and J.J. Rushanan (MITRE, USA)
11.40-12.10 On Constructions and Nonlinearity of Correlation Immune Functions,
J. Seberry, X. Zhang and Y. Zheng (University of Wollongong,
Australia)
12.10-14.00 Lunch
SESSION 7 : DIGITAL SIGNATURES
------------------------------
Chair: C. Schnorr
14.00-14.30 Practical and Provable Secure Release of a Secret and Exchange of
Signatures, I.B. Damgard (Aarhus University, Denmark)
14.30-14.50 Subliminal Communication is Easy Using the DSA,
G.J. Simmons
14.50-15.10 Can OSS be Repaired, D. Naccache (Gemplus, France)
15.10-15.40 Coffee or tea
SESSION 8 : PROTOCOLS I
-----------------------
Chair: K. Kurosawa
15.40-16.00 Limitations of Logical Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols,
C. Boyd and W. Mao (University of Manchester, United Kingdom)
16.00-16.30 Practical Anonymous and Secure Voting Scheme, K. Itoh, C. Park
and K. Kurosawa (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
16.30-16.50 Untransferable Rights in a Client-Independent Server Environment,
J. Domingo-Ferrer (University of Barcelona, Spain)
16.50-17.20 Interactive Hashing Simplifies Zero-Knowledge Protocol Design,
R. Ostrovsky (UC Berkeley, USA), R. Venkatesan (Bellcore, USA) and
M. Yung (IBM T. Watson, USA)
RUMP SESSION
-------------
Chair: I. Ingemarsson
20.00-24.00 Accepted paper:
Security in Digital Mobile Communication Systems,
C. Park, K. Kurosawa, T. Okamoto and S. Tsujii (Tokyo
Institute of Technology, Japan)
WEDNESDAY, May 26
-----------------
SESSION 9 : HASH FUNCTIONS
---------------------------
Chair: B. Preneel
9.00- 9.20 One-Way Accumulators: A Decentralized Alternative to Digital
Signatures, J. Benaloh and M. de Mare (Clarkson University, USA)
9.20- 9.40 Some Attacks on the ARL Hash Function, I.B. Damgard and
L.R. Knudsen (Aarhus University, Denmark)
9.40-10.10 Collisions for the Compression Function of MD5, B. den Boer and
A. Bosselaers (ESAT, KU Leuven, Belgium)
10.10-10.30 How to Find and Avoid Collisions for the Knapsack Hash Function,
J. Patarin (Bull CP8, France)
10.30-11.00 Coffee or tea
SESSION 10: PAYMENT SYSTEMS
---------------------------
Chair: I.B. Damgard
11.00-11.20 Single Term Off-Line Coins, N.T. Ferguson (CWI Amsterdam,
The Netherlands)
11.20-11.40 Improved Privacy in Wallets with Observers,
R.J.F. Cramer (CWI Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and
T.P. Pedersen (Aarhus University, Denmark)
11.40-12.10 How to Prevent the Mafia Fraud Using Distance-Bounding Protocols,
S. Brands and D. Chaum (CWI Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
12.10-14.00 Lunch
SESSION 11: CRYPTANALYSIS
--------------------------
Chair: G.J. Simmons
14.00-14.20 On the Distribution of Characteristics in Bijective Mappings,
L. O'Connor (University of Waterloo, Canada)
14.20-14.40 On the Security of the IDEA Block Cipher,
W. Meier (HTL, Switzerland)
14.40-15.10 Linear Cryptanalysis Method for DES Cipher,
M. Matsui (Mitsubishi, Japan)
15.10-15.40 New Types of Cryptanalytic Attacks Using Related Keys,
E. Biham (Technion, Israel)
15.40-16.10 Coffee or tea
SESSION 12 : PROTOCOLS II
-------------------------
Chair: P. Landrock
16.10-16.40 Reconciliation on a Secret Key Through Public Discussion,
G. Brassard and L. Salvail (University of Montreal, Canada)
16.40-17.10 Global, Unpredictable Bit Generation Without Broadcast,
D. Beaver and N. So (Penn State University, USA)
17.10-17.40 IACR Business meeting
==========================================================================
| 3
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|
Yes there is, the patent can be classified as secret. I recently
saw a patent from 1947 (dealing with nuclear weapons technology)
that was only declassified in the last couple of years. There
is of course the problem of enforcing the patent.
This is absolutely right.
| 3
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|
Archive-name: jpeg-faq
Last-modified: 2 May 1993
This FAQ article discusses JPEG image compression. Suggestions for
additions and clarifications are welcome.
New since version of 18 April 1993:
* New version of XV supports 24-bit viewing for X Windows.
* New versions of DVPEG & Image Alchemy for DOS.
* New versions of Image Archiver & PMView for OS/2.
* New listing: MGIF for monochrome-display Ataris.
This article includes the following sections:
[1] What is JPEG?
[2] Why use JPEG?
[3] When should I use JPEG, and when should I stick with GIF?
[4] How well does JPEG compress images?
[5] What are good "quality" settings for JPEG?
[6] Where can I get JPEG software?
[6A] "canned" software, viewers, etc.
[6B] source code
[7] What's all this hoopla about color quantization?
[8] How does JPEG work?
[9] What about lossless JPEG?
[10] Why all the argument about file formats?
[11] How do I recognize which file format I have, and what do I do about it?
[12] What about arithmetic coding?
[13] Does loss accumulate with repeated compression/decompression?
[14] What are some rules of thumb for converting GIF images to JPEG?
Sections 1-6 are basic info that every JPEG user needs to know;
sections 7-14 are advanced info for the curious.
This article is posted every 2 weeks. You can always find the latest version
in the news.answers archive at rtfm.mit.edu (18.70.0.226). By FTP, fetch
/pub/usenet/news.answers/jpeg-faq; or if you don't have FTP, send e-mail to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with body "send usenet/news.answers/jpeg-faq".
Many other FAQ articles are also stored in this archive. For more
instructions on use of the archive, send e-mail to the same address with the
words "help" and "index" (no quotes) on separate lines. If you don't get a
reply, the server may be misreading your return address; add a line such as
"path myname@mysite" to specify your correct e-mail address to reply to.
----------
[1] What is JPEG?
JPEG (pronounced "jay-peg") is a standardized image compression mechanism.
JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the original name of the
committee that wrote the standard. JPEG is designed for compressing either
full-color or gray-scale digital images of "natural", real-world scenes.
It does not work so well on non-realistic images, such as cartoons or line
drawings.
JPEG does not handle black-and-white (1-bit-per-pixel) images, nor does it
handle motion picture compression. Standards for compressing those types
of images are being worked on by other committees, named JBIG and MPEG
respectively.
JPEG is "lossy", meaning that the image you get out of decompression isn't
quite identical to what you originally put in. The algorithm achieves much
of its compression by exploiting known limitations of the human eye, notably
the fact that small color details aren't perceived as well as small details
of light-and-dark. Thus, JPEG is intended for compressing images that will
be looked at by humans. If you plan to machine-analyze your images, the
small errors introduced by JPEG may be a problem for you, even if they are
invisible to the eye.
A useful property of JPEG is that the degree of lossiness can be varied by
adjusting compression parameters. This means that the image maker can trade
off file size against output image quality. You can make *extremely* small
files if you don't mind poor quality; this is useful for indexing image
archives, making thumbnail views or icons, etc. etc. Conversely, if you
aren't happy with the output quality at the default compression setting, you
can jack up the quality until you are satisfied, and accept lesser compression.
[2] Why use JPEG?
There are two good reasons: to make your image files smaller, and to store
24-bit-per-pixel color data instead of 8-bit-per-pixel data.
Making image files smaller is a big win for transmitting files across
networks and for archiving libraries of images. Being able to compress a
2 Mbyte full-color file down to 100 Kbytes or so makes a big difference in
disk space and transmission time! (If you are comparing GIF and JPEG, the
size ratio is more like four to one. More details below.)
If your viewing software doesn't support JPEG directly, you'll have to
convert JPEG to some other format for viewing or manipulating images. Even
with a JPEG-capable viewer, it takes longer to decode and view a JPEG image
than to view an image of a simpler format (GIF, for instance). Thus, using
JPEG is essentially a time/space tradeoff: you give up some time in order to
store or transmit an image more cheaply.
It's worth noting that when network or phone transmission is involved, the
time savings from transferring a shorter file can be much greater than the
extra time to decompress the file. I'll let you do the arithmetic yourself.
The other reason why JPEG will gradually replace GIF as a standard Usenet
posting format is that JPEG can store full color information: 24 bits/pixel
(16 million colors) instead of 8 or less (256 or fewer colors). If you have
only 8-bit display hardware then this may not seem like much of an advantage
to you. Within a couple of years, though, 8-bit GIF will look as obsolete as
black-and-white MacPaint format does today. Furthermore, for reasons detailed
in section 7, JPEG is far more useful than GIF for exchanging images among
people with widely varying color display hardware. Hence JPEG is considerably
more appropriate than GIF for use as a Usenet posting standard.
[3] When should I use JPEG, and when should I stick with GIF?
JPEG is *not* going to displace GIF entirely; for some types of images,
GIF is superior in image quality, file size, or both. One of the first
things to learn about JPEG is which kinds of images to apply it to.
As a rule of thumb, JPEG is superior to GIF for storing full-color or
gray-scale images of "realistic" scenes; that means scanned photographs and
similar material. JPEG is superior even if you don't have 24-bit display
hardware, and it is a LOT superior if you do. (See section 7 for details.)
GIF does significantly better on images with only a few distinct colors,
such as cartoons and line drawings. In particular, large areas of pixels
that are all *exactly* the same color are compressed very efficiently indeed
by GIF. JPEG can't squeeze these files as much as GIF does without
introducing visible defects. This sort of image is best kept in GIF form.
(In particular, single-color borders are quite cheap in GIF files, but they
should be avoided in JPEG files.)
JPEG also has a hard time with very sharp edges: a row of pure-black pixels
adjacent to a row of pure-white pixels, for example. Sharp edges tend to
come out blurred unless you use a very high quality setting. Again, this
sort of thing is not found in scanned photographs, but it shows up fairly
often in GIF files: borders, overlaid text, etc. The blurriness is
particularly objectionable with text that's only a few pixels high.
If you have a GIF with a lot of small-size overlaid text, don't JPEG it.
Computer-drawn images (ray-traced scenes, for instance) usually fall between
scanned images and cartoons in terms of complexity. The more complex and
subtly rendered the image, the more likely that JPEG will do well on it.
The same goes for semi-realistic artwork (fantasy drawings and such).
Plain black-and-white (two level) images should never be converted to JPEG.
You need at least about 16 gray levels before JPEG is useful for gray-scale
images. It should also be noted that GIF is lossless for gray-scale images
of up to 256 levels, while JPEG is not.
If you have an existing library of GIF images, you may wonder whether you
should convert them to JPEG. You will lose a little image quality if you do.
(Section 7, which argues that JPEG image quality is superior to GIF, only
applies if both formats start from a full-color original. If you start from
a GIF, you've already irretrievably lost a great deal of information; JPEG
can only make things worse.) However, the disk space savings may justify
converting anyway. This is a decision you'll have to make for yourself.
If you do convert a GIF library to JPEG, see section 14 for hints. Be
prepared to leave some images in GIF format, since some GIFs will not
convert well.
[4] How well does JPEG compress images?
Pretty darn well. Here are some sample file sizes for an image I have
handy, a 727x525 full-color image of a ship in a harbor. The first three
files are for comparison purposes; the rest were created with the free JPEG
software described in section 6B.
File Size in bytes Comments
ship.ppm 1145040 Original file in PPM format (no compression; 24 bits
or 3 bytes per pixel, plus a few bytes overhead)
ship.ppm.Z 963829 PPM file passed through Unix compress
compress doesn't accomplish a lot, you'll note.
Other text-oriented compressors give similar results.
ship.gif 240438 Converted to GIF with ppmquant -fs 256 | ppmtogif
Most of the savings is the result of losing color
info: GIF saves 8 bits/pixel, not 24. (See sec. 7.)
ship.jpg95 155622 cjpeg -Q 95 (highest useful quality setting)
This is indistinguishable from the 24-bit original,
at least to my nonprofessional eyeballs.
ship.jpg75 58009 cjpeg -Q 75 (default setting)
You have to look mighty darn close to distinguish this
from the original, even with both on-screen at once.
ship.jpg50 38406 cjpeg -Q 50
This has slight defects; if you know what to look
for, you could tell it's been JPEGed without seeing
the original. Still as good image quality as many
recent postings in Usenet pictures groups.
ship.jpg25 25192 cjpeg -Q 25
JPEG's characteristic "blockiness" becomes apparent
at this setting (djpeg -blocksmooth helps some).
Still, I've seen plenty of Usenet postings that were
of poorer image quality than this.
ship.jpg5o 6587 cjpeg -Q 5 -optimize (-optimize cuts table overhead)
Blocky, but perfectly satisfactory for preview or
indexing purposes. Note that this file is TINY:
the compression ratio from the original is 173:1 !
In this case JPEG can make a file that's a factor of four or five smaller
than a GIF of comparable quality (the -Q 75 file is every bit as good as the
GIF, better if you have a full-color display). This seems to be a typical
ratio for real-world scenes.
[5] What are good "quality" settings for JPEG?
Most JPEG compressors let you pick a file size vs. image quality tradeoff by
selecting a quality setting. There seems to be widespread confusion about
the meaning of these settings. "Quality 95" does NOT mean "keep 95% of the
information", as some have claimed. The quality scale is purely arbitrary;
it's not a percentage of anything.
The name of the game in using JPEG is to pick the lowest quality setting
(smallest file size) that decompresses into an image indistinguishable from
the original. This setting will vary from one image to another and from one
observer to another, but here are some rules of thumb.
The default quality setting (-Q 75) is very often the best choice. This
setting is about the lowest you can go without expecting to see defects in a
typical image. Try -Q 75 first; if you see defects, then go up. Except for
experimental purposes, never go above -Q 95; saying -Q 100 will produce a
file two or three times as large as -Q 95, but of hardly any better quality.
If the image was less than perfect quality to begin with, you might be able to
go down to -Q 50 without objectionable degradation. On the other hand, you
might need to go to a HIGHER quality setting to avoid further degradation.
The second case seems to apply much of the time when converting GIFs to JPEG.
The default -Q 75 is about right for compressing 24-bit images, but -Q 85 to
95 is usually better for converting GIFs (see section 14 for more info).
If you want a very small file (say for preview or indexing purposes) and are
prepared to tolerate large defects, a -Q setting in the range of 5 to 10 is
about right. -Q 2 or so may be amusing as "op art".
(Note: the quality settings discussed in this article apply to the free JPEG
software described in section 6B, and to many programs based on it. Other
JPEG implementations, such as Image Alchemy, may use a completely different
quality scale. Some programs don't even provide a numeric scale, just
"high"/"medium"/"low"-style choices.)
[6] Where can I get JPEG software?
Most of the programs described in this section are available by FTP.
If you don't know how to use FTP, see the FAQ article "How to find sources".
(If you don't have direct access to FTP, read about ftpmail servers in the
same article.) That article appears regularly in news.answers, or you can
get it by sending e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with
"send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources" in the body. The "Anonymous FTP
List FAQ" may also be helpful --- it's usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/faq in
the news.answers archive.
NOTE: this list changes constantly. If you have a copy more than a couple
months old, get the latest JPEG FAQ from the news.answers archive.
[6A] If you are looking for "canned" software, viewers, etc:
The first part of this list is system-specific programs that only run on one
kind of system. If you don't see what you want for your machine, check out
the portable JPEG software described at the end of the list. Note that this
list concentrates on free and shareware programs that you can obtain over
Internet; but some commercial programs are listed too.
X Windows:
XV (shareware, $25) is an excellent viewer for JPEG, GIF, and many other
image formats. It can also do format conversion and some simple image
manipulations. It's available for FTP from export.lcs.mit.edu (18.24.0.12),
file contrib/xv-3.00.tar.Z. Version 3.00 is a major upgrade with support
for 24-bit displays and many other improvements; however, it is brand new
and still has some bugs lurking. If you prefer not to be on the bleeding
edge, stick with version 2.21, also available from export. Note that
version 2.21 is not a good choice if you have a 24-bit display (you'll get
only 8-bit color), nor for converting 24-bit images to JPEG. But 2.21 works
fine for converting GIF and other 8-bit images to JPEG. CAUTION: there is a
glitch in version 2.21: be sure to check the "save at normal size" checkbox
when saving a JPEG file, or the file will be blurry.
Another good choice for X Windows is John Cristy's free ImageMagick package,
also available from export.lcs.mit.edu, file contrib/ImageMagick.tar.Z.
This package handles many image processing and conversion tasks. The
ImageMagick viewer handles 24-bit displays correctly; for colormapped
displays, it does better (though slower) color quantization than XV or the
basic free JPEG software.
Both of the above are large, complex packages. If you just want a simple
image viewer, try xloadimage or xli. xloadimage supports JPEG in its latest
release, 3.03. xloadimage is free and available from export.lcs.mit.edu,
file contrib/xloadimage-3.03.tar.Z. xli is a variant version of xloadimage,
said by its fans to be somewhat faster and more robust than the original.
(The current xli is indeed faster and more robust than the current
xloadimage, at least with respect to JPEG files, because it has the IJG v4
decoder while xloadimage 3.03 is using a hacked-over v1. The next
xloadimage release will fix this.) xli is also free and available from
export.lcs.mit.edu, file contrib/xli.1.14.tar.Z. Both programs are said
to do the right thing with 24-bit displays.
MS-DOS:
This covers plain DOS; for Windows or OS/2 programs, see the next headings.
One good choice is Eric Praetzel's free DVPEG, which views JPEG and GIF files.
The current version, 2.5, is available by FTP from sunee.uwaterloo.ca
(129.97.50.50), file pub/jpeg/viewers/dvpeg25.zip. This is a good basic
viewer that works on either 286 or 386/486 machines. The user interface is
not flashy, but it's functional.
Another freeware JPEG/GIF/TGA viewer is Mohammad Rezaei's Hiview. The
current version, 1.2, is available from Simtel20 and mirror sites (see NOTE
below), file msdos/graphics/hv12.zip. Hiview requires a 386 or better CPU
and a VCPI-compatible memory manager (QEMM386 and 386MAX work; Windows and
OS/2 do not). Hiview is currently the fastest viewer for images that are no
bigger than your screen. For larger images, it scales the image down to fit
on the screen (rather than using panning/scrolling as most viewers do).
You may or may not prefer this approach, but there's no denying that it
slows down loading of large images considerably. Note: installation is a
bit tricky; read the directions carefully!
A shareware alternative is ColorView for DOS ($30). This is easier to
install than either of the two freeware alternatives. Its user interface is
also much spiffier-looking, although personally I find it harder to use ---
more keystrokes, inconsistent behavior. It is faster than DVPEG but a
little slower than Hiview, at least on my hardware. (For images larger than
screen size, DVPEG and ColorView seem to be about the same speed, and both
are faster than Hiview.) The current version is 2.1, available from
Simtel20 and mirror sites (see NOTE below), file msdos/graphics/dcview21.zip.
Requires a VESA graphics driver; if you don't have one, look in vesadrv2.zip
or vesa-tsr.zip from the same directory. (Many recent PCs have a built-in
VESA driver, so don't try to load a VESA driver unless ColorView complains
that the driver is missing.)
A second shareware alternative is Fullview, which has been kicking around
the net for a while, but I don't know any stable archive location for it.
The current (rather old) version is inferior to the above viewers anyway.
The author tells me that a new version of Fullview will be out shortly
and it will be submitted to the Simtel20 archives at that time.
The well-known GIF viewer CompuShow (CSHOW) supports JPEG in its latest
revision, 8.60a. However, CSHOW's JPEG implementation isn't very good:
it's slow (about half the speed of the above viewers) and image quality is
poor except on hi-color displays. Too bad ... it'd have been nice to see a
good JPEG capability in CSHOW. Shareware, $25. Available from Simtel20 and
mirror sites (see NOTE below), file msdos/gif/cshw860a.zip.
Due to the remarkable variety of PC graphics hardware, any one of these
viewers might not work on your particular machine. If you can't get *any*
of them to work, you'll need to use one of the following conversion programs
to convert JPEG to GIF, then view with your favorite GIF viewer. (If you
have hi-color hardware, don't use GIF as the intermediate format; try to
find a TARGA-capable viewer instead. VPIC5.0 is reputed to do the right
thing with hi-color displays.)
The Independent JPEG Group's free JPEG converters are FTPable from Simtel20
and mirror sites (see NOTE below), file msdos/graphics/jpeg4.zip (or
jpeg4386.zip if you have a 386 and extended memory). These files are DOS
compilations of the free source code described in section 6B; they will
convert JPEG to and from GIF, Targa, and PPM formats.
Handmade Software offers free JPEG<=>GIF conversion tools, GIF2JPG/JPG2GIF.
These are slow and are limited to conversion to and from GIF format; in
particular, you can't get 24-bit color output from a JPEG. The major
advantage of these tools is that they will read and write HSI's proprietary
JPEG format as well as the Usenet-standard JFIF format. Since HSI-format
files are rather widespread on BBSes, this is a useful capability. Version
2.0 of these tools is free (prior versions were shareware). Get it from
Simtel20 and mirror sites (see NOTE below), file msdos/graphics/gif2jpg2.zip.
NOTE: do not use HSI format for files to be posted on Internet, since it is
not readable on non-PC platforms.
Handmade Software also has a shareware image conversion and manipulation
package, Image Alchemy. This will translate JPEG files (both JFIF and HSI
formats) to and from many other image formats. It can also display images.
A demo version of Image Alchemy version 1.6.2 is available from Simtel20 and
mirror sites (see NOTE below), file msdos/graphics/alch162.zip.
NOTE ABOUT SIMTEL20: The Internet's key archive site for PC-related programs
is Simtel20, full name wsmr-simtel20.army.mil (192.88.110.20). Simtel20
runs a non-Unix system with weird directory names; where this document
refers to directory (eg) "msdos/graphics" at Simtel20, that really means
"pd1:<msdos.graphics>". If you are not physically on MILnet, you should
expect rather slow FTP transfer rates from Simtel20. There are several
Internet sites that maintain copies (mirrors) of the Simtel20 archives;
most FTP users should go to one of the mirror sites instead. A popular USA
mirror site is oak.oakland.edu (141.210.10.117), which keeps Simtel20 files
in (eg) "/pub/msdos/graphics". If you have no FTP capability, you can
retrieve files from Simtel20 by e-mail; see informational postings in
comp.archives.msdos.announce to find out how. If you are outside the USA,
consult the same newsgroup to learn where your nearest Simtel20 mirror is.
Microsoft Windows:
There are several Windows programs capable of displaying JPEG images.
(Windows viewers are generally slower than DOS viewers on the same hardware,
due to Windows' system overhead. Note that you can run the DOS conversion
programs described above inside a Windows DOS window.)
The newest entry is WinECJ, which is free and EXTREMELY fast. Version 1.0
is available from ftp.rahul.net, file /pub/bryanw/pc/jpeg/wecj.zip.
Requires Windows 3.1 and 256-or-more-colors mode. This is a no-frills
viewer with the bad habit of hogging the machine completely while it
decodes; and the image quality is noticeably worse than other viewers.
But it's so fast you'll use it anyway, at least for previewing...
JView is freeware, fairly fast, has good on-line help, and can write out the
decompressed image in Windows BMP format; but it can't create new JPEG
files, and it doesn't view GIFs. JView also lacks some other useful
features of the shareware viewers (such as brightness adjustment), but it's
an excellent basic viewer. The current version, 0.9, is available from
ftp.cica.indiana.edu (129.79.20.84), file pub/pc/win3/desktop/jview090.zip.
(Mirrors of this archive can be found at some other Internet sites,
including wuarchive.wustl.edu.)
WinJPEG (shareware, $20) displays JPEG,GIF,Targa,TIFF, and BMP image files;
it can write all of these formats too, so it can be used as a converter.
It has some other nifty features including color-balance adjustment and
slideshow. The current version is 2.1, available from Simtel20 and mirror
sites (see NOTE above), file msdos/windows3/winjp210.zip. (This is a slow
286-compatible version; if you register, you'll get the 386-only version,
which is roughly 25% faster.)
ColorView is another shareware entry ($30). This was an early and promising
contender, but it has not been updated in some time, and at this point it
has no real advantages over WinJPEG. If you want to try it anyway, the
current version is 0.97, available from ftp.cica.indiana.edu, file
pub/pc/win3/desktop/cview097.zip. (I understand that a new version will
be appearing once the authors are finished with ColorView for DOS.)
DVPEG (see DOS heading) also works under Windows, but only in full-screen
mode, not in a window.
OS/2:
The following files are available from hobbes.nmsu.edu (128.123.35.151).
Note: check /pub/uploads for more recent versions --- the hobbes moderator
is not very fast about moving uploads into their permanent directories.
/pub/os2/2.x/graphics/jpegv4.zip
32-bit version of free IJG conversion programs, version 4.
/pub/os2/all/graphics/jpeg4-16.zip
16-bit version of same, for OS/2 1.x.
/pub/os2/2.x/graphics/imgarc12.zip
Image Archiver 1.02: image conversion/viewing with PM graphical interface.
Strong on conversion functions, viewing is a bit weaker. Shareware, $15.
/pub/os2/2.x/graphics/pmjpeg11.zip
PMJPEG 1.1: OS/2 2.x port of WinJPEG, a popular viewer for Windows
(see description in Windows section). Shareware, $20.
/pub/os2/2.x/graphics/pmview85.zip
PMView 0.85: JPEG/GIF/BMP viewer. GIF viewing very fast, JPEG viewing
fast if you have huge amounts of RAM, otherwise about the same speed
as the above programs. Strong 24-bit display support. Shareware, $20.
Macintosh:
Most Mac JPEG programs rely on Apple's JPEG implementation, which is part of
the QuickTime system extension; so you need to have QuickTime installed.
To use QuickTime, you need a 68020 or better CPU and you need to be running
System 6.0.7 or later. (If you're running System 6, you must also install
the 32-bit QuickDraw extension; this is built-in on System 7.) You can get
QuickTime by FTP from ftp.apple.com, file dts/mac/quicktime/quicktime.hqx.
(As of 11/92, this file contains QuickTime 1.5, which is better than QT 1.0
in several ways. With respect to JPEG, it is marginally faster and
considerably less prone to crash when fed a corrupt JPEG file. However,
some applications seem to have compatibility problems with QT 1.5.)
Mac users should keep in mind that QuickTime's JPEG format, PICT/JPEG, is
not the same as the Usenet-standard JFIF JPEG format. (See section 10 for
details.) If you post images on Usenet, make sure they are in JFIF format.
Most of the programs mentioned below can generate either format.
The first choice is probably JPEGView, a free program for viewing images
that are in JFIF format, PICT/JPEG format, or GIF format. It also can
convert between the two JPEG formats. The current version, 2.0, is a big
improvement over prior versions. Get it from sumex-aim.stanford.edu
(36.44.0.6), file /info-mac/app/jpeg-view-20.hqx. Requires System 7 and
QuickTime. On 8-bit displays, JPEGView usually produces the best color
image quality of all the currently available Mac JPEG viewers. JPEGView can
view large images in much less memory than other Mac viewers; in fact, it's
the only one that can deal with JPEG images much over 640x480 pixels on a
typical 4MB Mac. Given a large image, JPEGView automatically scales it down
to fit on the screen, rather than presenting scroll bars like most other
viewers. (You can zoom in on any desired portion, though.) Some people
like this behavior, some don't. Overall, JPEGView's user interface is very
well thought out.
GIFConverter, a shareware ($40) image viewer/converter, supports JFIF and
PICT/JPEG, as well as GIF and several other image formats. The latest
version is 2.3.2. Get it from sumex-aim.stanford.edu, file
/info-mac/art/gif/gif-converter-232.hqx. Requires System 6.0.5 or later.
GIFConverter is not better than JPEGView as a plain JPEG/GIF viewer, but
it has much more extensive image manipulation and format conversion
capabilities, so you may find it worth its shareware fee if you do a lot of
playing around with images. Also, the newest version of GIFConverter can
load and save JFIF images *without* QuickTime, so it is your best bet if
your machine is too old to run QuickTime. (But it's faster with QuickTime.)
Note: If GIFConverter runs out of memory trying to load a large JPEG, try
converting the file to GIF with JPEG Convert, then viewing the GIF version.
JPEG Convert, a Mac version of the free IJG JPEG conversion utilities, is
available from sumex-aim.stanford.edu, file /info-mac/app/jpeg-convert-10.hqx.
This will run on any Mac, but it only does file conversion, not viewing.
You can use it in conjunction with any GIF viewer.
Previous versions of this FAQ recommended Imagery JPEG v0.6, a JPEG<=>GIF
converter based on an old version of the IJG code. If you are using this
program, you definitely should replace it with JPEG Convert.
Apple's free program PictPixie can view images in JFIF, QuickTime JPEG, and
GIF format, and can convert between these formats. You can get PictPixie
from ftp.apple.com, file dts/mac/quicktime/qt.1.0.stuff/pictpixie.hqx.
Requires QuickTime. PictPixie was intended as a developer's tool, and it's
really not the best choice unless you like to fool around with QuickTime.
Some of its drawbacks are that it requires lots of memory, it produces
relatively poor color image quality on anything less than a 24-bit display,
and it has a relatively unfriendly user interface. Worse, PictPixie is an
unsupported program, meaning it has some minor bugs that Apple does not
intend to fix. (There is an old version of PictPixie, called
PICTCompressor, floating around the net. If you have this you should trash
it, as it's even buggier. Also, the QuickTime Starter Kit includes a much
cleaned-up descendant of PictPixie called Picture Compressor. Note that
Picture Compressor is NOT free and may not be distributed on the net.)
Storm Technology's Picture Decompress is a free JPEG viewer/converter.
This rather old program is inferior to the above programs in many ways, but
it will run without System 7 or QuickTime, so you may be forced to use it on
older systems. (It does need 32-bit QuickDraw, so really old machines can't
use it.) You can get it from sumex-aim.stanford.edu, file
/info-mac/app/picture-decompress-201.hqx. You must set the file type of a
downloaded image file to 'JPEG' to allow Picture Decompress to open it.
If your machine is too old to run 32-bit QuickDraw (a Mac Plus for instance),
GIFConverter is your only choice for single-program JPEG viewing. If you
don't want to pay for GIFConverter, use JPEG Convert and a free GIF viewer.
More and more commercial Mac applications are supporting JPEG, although not
all can deal with the Usenet-standard JFIF format. Adobe Photoshop, version
2.0.1 or later, can read and write JFIF-format JPEG files (use the JPEG
plug-in from the Acquire menu). You must set the file type of a downloaded
JPEG file to 'JPEG' to allow Photoshop to recognize it.
Amiga:
(Most programs listed in this section are stored in the AmiNet archive at
amiga.physik.unizh.ch (130.60.80.80). There are many mirror sites of this
archive and you should try to use the closest one. In the USA, a good
choice is wuarchive.wustl.edu; look under /mirrors/amiga.physik.unizh.ch/...)
HamLab Plus is an excellent JPEG viewer/converter, as well as being a
general image manipulation tool. It's cheap (shareware, $20) and can read
several formats besides JPEG. The current version is 2.0.8. A demo version
is available from amiga.physik.unizh.ch (and mirror sites), file
amiga/gfx/edit/hamlab208d.lha. The demo version will crop images larger
than 512x512, but it is otherwise fully functional.
Rend24 (shareware, $30) is an image renderer that can display JPEG, ILBM,
and GIF images. The program can be used to create animations, even
capturing frames on-the-fly from rendering packages like Lightwave. The
current version is 1.05, available from amiga.physik.unizh.ch (and mirror
sites), file amiga/os30/gfx/rend105.lha. (Note: although this directory is
supposedly for AmigaDOS 3.0 programs, the program will also run under
AmigaDOS 1.3, 2.04 or 2.1.)
Viewtek is a free JPEG/ILBM/GIF/ANIM viewer. The current version is 1.04,
available from amiga.physik.unizh.ch (and mirror sites), file
amiga/gfx/show/ViewTek104.lha.
If you're willing to spend real money, there are several commercial packages
that support JPEG. Two are written by Thomas Krehbiel, the author of Rend24
and Viewtek. These are CineMorph, a standalone image morphing package, and
ImageFX, an impressive 24-bit image capture, conversion, editing, painting,
effects and prepress package that also includes CineMorph. Both are
distributed by Great Valley Products. Art Department Professional (ADPro),
from ASDG Inc, is the most widely used commercial image manipulation
software for Amigas. ImageMaster, from Black Belt Systems, is another
well-regarded commercial graphics package with JPEG support.
The free IJG JPEG software is available compiled for Amigas from
amiga.physik.unizh.ch (and mirror sites) in directory amiga/gfx/conv, file
AmigaJPEGV4.lha. These programs convert JPEG to/from PPM,GIF,Targa formats.
The Amiga world is heavily infested with quick-and-dirty JPEG programs, many
based on an ancient beta-test version of the free IJG JPEG software (thanks
to a certain magazine that published same on its disk-of-the-month, without
so much as notifying the authors). Among these are "AugJPEG", "NewAmyJPEG",
"VJPEG", and probably others I have not even heard of. In my opinion,
anything older than IJG version 3 (March 1992) is not worth the disk space
it's stored on; if you have such a program, trash it and get something newer.
Atari ST:
The free IJG JPEG software is available compiled for Atari ST, TT, etc,
from atari.archive.umich.edu, file /atari/Graphics/jpeg4bin.zoo.
These programs convert JPEG to/from PPM, GIF, Targa formats.
For monochrome ST monitors, try MGIF, which manages to achieve four-level
grayscale effect by flickering. Version 4.1 reads JPEG files. Available
from atari.archive.umich.edu, file /atari/Graphics/mgif41b.zoo.
I have not heard of any other free or shareware JPEG-capable viewers for
Ataris, but surely there must be some by now? Pointers appreciated.
Acorn Archimedes:
!ChangeFSI, supplied with RISC OS 3 version 3.10, can convert from and view
JPEG JFIF format. Provision is also made to convert images to JPEG,
although this must be done from the CLI rather than by double-clicking.
Recent versions (since 7.11) of the shareware program Translator can handle
JPEG, along with about 30 other image formats. While older versions can be
found on some Archimedes bboards, the current version is only available by
registering with the author, John Kortink, Nutterbrink 31, 7544 WJ, Enschede,
The Netherlands. Price 35 Dutch guilders (about $22 or 10 pounds).
There's also a commercial product called !JPEG which provides JPEG read/write
functionality and direct JPEG viewing, as well as a host of other image
format conversion and processing options. This is more expensive but not
necessarily better than the above programs. Contact: DT Software, FREEPOST,
Cambridge, UK. Tel: 0223 841099.
Portable software for almost any system:
If none of the above fits your situation, you can obtain and compile the free
JPEG conversion software described in 6B. You'll also need a viewer program.
If your display is 8 bits or less, any GIF viewer will do fine; if you have a
display with more color capability, try to find a viewer that can read Targa
or PPM 24-bit image files.
There are numerous commercial JPEG offerings, with more popping up every
day. I recommend that you not spend money on one of these unless you find
the available free or shareware software vastly too slow. In that case,
purchase a hardware-assisted product. Ask pointed questions about whether
the product complies with the final JPEG standard and about whether it can
handle the JFIF file format; many of the earliest commercial releases are
not and never will be compatible with anyone else's files.
[6B] If you are looking for source code to work with:
Free, portable C code for JPEG compression is available from the Independent
JPEG Group, which I lead. A package containing our source code,
documentation, and some small test files is available from several places.
The "official" archive site for this source code is ftp.uu.net (137.39.1.9
or 192.48.96.9). Look under directory /graphics/jpeg; the current release
is jpegsrc.v4.tar.Z. (This is a compressed TAR file; don't forget to
retrieve in binary mode.) You can retrieve this file by FTP or UUCP.
If you are on a PC and don't know how to cope with .tar.Z format, you may
prefer ZIP format, which you can find at Simtel20 and mirror sites (see NOTE
above), file msdos/graphics/jpegsrc4.zip. This file will also be available on
CompuServe, in the GRAPHSUPPORT forum (GO PICS), library 15, as jpsrc4.zip.
If you have no FTP access, you can retrieve the source from your nearest
comp.sources.misc archive; version 4 appeared as issues 55-72 of volume 34.
(If you don't know how to retrieve comp.sources.misc postings, see the FAQ
article "How to find sources", referred to at the top of section 6.)
The free JPEG code provides conversion between JPEG "JFIF" format and image
files in GIF, PBMPLUS PPM/PGM, Utah RLE, and Truevision Targa file formats.
The core compression and decompression modules can easily be reused in other
programs, such as image viewers. The package is highly portable; we have
tested it on many machines ranging from PCs to Crays.
We have released this software for both noncommercial and commercial use.
Companies are welcome to use it as the basis for JPEG-related products.
We do not ask a royalty, although we do ask for an acknowledgement in
product literature (see the README file in the distribution for details).
We hope to make this software industrial-quality --- although, as with
anything that's free, we offer no warranty and accept no liability.
The Independent JPEG Group is a volunteer organization; if you'd like to
contribute to improving our software, you are welcome to join.
[7] What's all this hoopla about color quantization?
Most people don't have full-color (24 bit per pixel) display hardware.
Typical display hardware stores 8 or fewer bits per pixel, so it can display
256 or fewer distinct colors at a time. To display a full-color image, the
computer must map the image into an appropriate set of representative
colors. This process is called "color quantization". (This is something
of a misnomer, "color selection" would be a better term. We're stuck with
the standard usage though.)
Clearly, color quantization is a lossy process. It turns out that for most
images, the details of the color quantization algorithm have MUCH more impact
on the final image quality than do any errors introduced by JPEG (except at
the very lowest JPEG quality settings).
Since JPEG is a full-color format, converting a color JPEG image for display
on 8-bit-or-less hardware requires color quantization. This is true for
*all* color JPEGs: even if you feed a 256-or-less-color GIF into JPEG, what
comes out of the decompressor is *not* 256 colors, but thousands of colors.
This happens because JPEG's lossiness affects each pixel a little
differently, so two pixels that started with identical colors will probably
come out with slightly different colors. Each original color gets "smeared"
into a group of nearby colors. Therefore quantization is always required to
display a color JPEG on a colormapped display, regardless of the image
source. The only way to avoid quantization is to ask for gray-scale output.
(Incidentally, because of this effect it's nearly meaningless to talk about
the number of colors used by a JPEG image. Even if you attempted to count
the number of distinct pixel values, different JPEG decoders would give you
different results because of roundoff error differences. I occasionally see
posted images described as "256-color JPEG". This tells me that the poster
(a) hasn't read this FAQ and (b) probably converted the JPEG from a GIF.
JPEGs can be classified as color or gray-scale (just like photographs), but
number of colors just isn't a useful concept for JPEG.)
On the other hand, a GIF image by definition has already been quantized to
256 or fewer colors. (A GIF *does* have a definite number of colors in its
palette, and the format doesn't allow more than 256 palette entries.)
For purposes of Usenet picture distribution, GIF has the advantage that the
sender precomputes the color quantization, so recipients don't have to.
This is also the *disadvantage* of GIF: you're stuck with the sender's
quantization. If the sender quantized to a different number of colors than
what you can display, you have to re-quantize, resulting in much poorer
image quality than if you had quantized once from a full-color image.
Furthermore, if the sender didn't use a high-quality color quantization
algorithm, you're out of luck.
For this reason, JPEG offers the promise of significantly better image quality
for all users whose machines don't match the sender's display hardware.
JPEG's full color image can be quantized to precisely match the user's display
hardware. Furthermore, you will be able to take advantage of future
improvements in quantization algorithms (there is a lot of active research in
this area), or purchase better display hardware, to get a better view of JPEG
images you already have. With a GIF, you're stuck forevermore with what was
sent.
It's also worth mentioning that many GIF-viewing programs include rather
shoddy quantization routines. If you view a 256-color GIF on a 16-color EGA
display, for example, you are probably getting a much worse image than you
need to. This is partly an inevitable consequence of doing two color
quantizations (one to create the GIF, one to display it), but often it's
also due to sloppiness. JPEG conversion programs will be forced to use
high quality quantizers in order to get acceptable results at all, and in
normal use they will quantize directly to the number of colors to be
displayed. Thus, JPEG is likely to provide better results than the average
GIF program for low-color-resolution displays as well as high-resolution ones!
Finally, an ever-growing number of people have better-than-8-bit display
hardware already: 15-bit "hi-color" PC displays, true 24-bit displays on
workstations and Macintoshes, etc. For these people, GIF is already
obsolete, as it cannot represent an image to the full capabilities of their
display. JPEG images can drive these displays much more effectively.
Thus, JPEG is an all-around better choice than GIF for representing images
in a machine-independent fashion.
[8] How does JPEG work?
The buzz-words to know are chrominance subsampling, discrete cosine
transforms, coefficient quantization, and Huffman or arithmetic entropy
coding. This article's long enough already, so I'm not going to say more
than that here. For technical information, see the comp.compression FAQ.
This is available from the news.answers archive at rtfm.mit.edu, in files
/pub/usenet/news.answers/compression-faq/part[1-3]. If you need help in
using the news.answers archive, see the top of this article.
[9] What about lossless JPEG?
There's a great deal of confusion on this subject. The JPEG committee did
define a truly lossless compression algorithm, i.e., one that guarantees the
final output is bit-for-bit identical to the original input. However, this
lossless mode has almost nothing in common with the regular, lossy JPEG
algorithm, and it offers much less compression. At present, very few
implementations of lossless JPEG exist, and all of them are commercial.
Saying "-Q 100" to the free JPEG software DOES NOT get you a lossless image.
What it does get rid of is deliberate information loss in the coefficient
quantization step. There is still a good deal of information loss in the
color subsampling step. (With the V4 free JPEG code, you can also say
"-sample 1x1" to turn off subsampling. Keep in mind that many commercial
JPEG implementations cannot cope with the resulting file.)
Even with both quantization and subsampling turned off, the regular JPEG
algorithm is not lossless, because it is subject to roundoff errors in
various calculations. The maximum error is a few counts in any one pixel
value; it's highly unlikely that this could be perceived by the human eye,
but it might be a concern if you are doing machine processing of an image.
At this minimum-loss setting, regular JPEG produces files that are perhaps
half the size of an uncompressed 24-bit-per-pixel image. True lossless JPEG
provides roughly the same amount of compression, but it guarantees
bit-for-bit accuracy.
If you have an application requiring lossless storage of images with less
than 6 bits per pixel (per color component), you may want to look into the
JBIG bilevel image compression standard. This performs better than JPEG
lossless on such images. JPEG lossless is superior to JBIG on images with
6 or more bits per pixel; furthermore, JPEG is public domain (at least with a
Huffman back end), while the JBIG techniques are heavily covered by patents.
[10] Why all the argument about file formats?
Strictly speaking, JPEG refers only to a family of compression algorithms;
it does *not* refer to a specific image file format. The JPEG committee was
prevented from defining a file format by turf wars within the international
standards organizations.
Since we can't actually exchange images with anyone else unless we agree on
a common file format, this leaves us with a problem. In the absence of
official standards, a number of JPEG program writers have just gone off to
"do their own thing", and as a result their programs aren't compatible with
anybody else's.
The closest thing we have to a de-facto standard JPEG format is some work
that's been coordinated by people at C-Cube Microsystems. They have defined
two JPEG-based file formats:
* JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format), a "low-end" format that transports
pixels and not much else.
* TIFF/JPEG, aka TIFF 6.0, an extension of the Aldus TIFF format. TIFF is
a "high-end" format that will let you record just about everything you
ever wanted to know about an image, and a lot more besides :-). TIFF is
a lot more complex than JFIF, and may well prove less transportable,
because different vendors have historically implemented slightly different
and incompatible subsets of TIFF. It's not likely that adding JPEG to the
mix will do anything to improve this situation.
Both of these formats were developed with input from all the major vendors
of JPEG-related products; it's reasonably likely that future commercial
products will adhere to one or both standards.
I believe that Usenet should adopt JFIF as the replacement for GIF in
picture postings. JFIF is simpler than TIFF and is available now; the
TIFF 6.0 spec has only recently been officially adopted, and it is still
unusably vague on some crucial details. Even when TIFF/JPEG is well
defined, the JFIF format is likely to be a widely supported "lowest common
denominator"; TIFF/JPEG files may never be as transportable.
A particular case that people may be interested in is Apple's QuickTime
software for the Macintosh. QuickTime uses a JFIF-compatible format wrapped
inside the Mac-specific PICT structure. Conversion between JFIF and
QuickTime JPEG is pretty straightforward, and several Mac programs are
available to do it (see Mac portion of section 6A). If you have an editor
that handles binary files, you can strip a QuickTime JPEG PICT down to JFIF
by hand; see section 11 for details.
Another particular case is Handmade Software's programs (GIF2JPG/JPG2GIF and
Image Alchemy). These programs are capable of reading and writing JFIF
format. By default, though, they write a proprietary format developed by
HSI. This format is NOT readable by any non-HSI programs and should not be
used for Usenet postings. Use the -j switch to get JFIF output. (This
applies to old versions of these programs; the current releases emit JFIF
format by default. You still should be careful not to post HSI-format
files, unless you want to get flamed by people on non-PC platforms.)
[11] How do I recognize which file format I have, and what do I do about it?
If you have an alleged JPEG file that your software won't read, it's likely
to be HSI format or some other proprietary JPEG-based format. You can tell
what you have by inspecting the first few bytes of the file:
1. A JFIF-standard file will start with the characters (hex) FF D8 FF E0,
followed by two variable bytes (often hex 00 10), followed by 'JFIF'.
2. If you see FF D8 at the start, but not the rest of it, you may have a
"raw JPEG" file. This is probably decodable as-is by JFIF software ---
it's worth a try, anyway.
3. HSI files start with 'hsi1'. You're out of luck unless you have HSI
software. Portions of the file may look like plain JPEG data, but they
won't decompress properly with non-HSI programs.
4. A Macintosh PICT file, if JPEG-compressed, will have a couple hundred
bytes of header followed by a JFIF header (scan for 'JFIF'). Strip off
everything before the FF D8 and you should be able to read it.
5. Anything else: it's a proprietary format, or not JPEG at all. If you are
lucky, the file may consist of a header and a raw JPEG data stream.
If you can identify the start of the JPEG data stream (look for FF D8),
try stripping off everything before that.
In uuencoded Usenet postings, the characteristic JFIF pattern is
"begin" line
M_]C_X ...
whereas uuencoded HSI files will start with
"begin" line
M:'-I ...
If you learn to check for the former, you can save yourself the trouble of
downloading non-JFIF files.
[12] What about arithmetic coding?
The JPEG spec defines two different "back end" modules for the final output
of compressed data: either Huffman coding or arithmetic coding is allowed.
The choice has no impact on image quality, but arithmetic coding usually
produces a smaller compressed file. On typical images, arithmetic coding
produces a file 5 or 10 percent smaller than Huffman coding. (All the
file-size numbers previously cited are for Huffman coding.)
Unfortunately, the particular variant of arithmetic coding specified by the
JPEG standard is subject to patents owned by IBM, AT&T, and Mitsubishi.
Thus *you cannot legally use arithmetic coding* unless you obtain licenses
from these companies. (The "fair use" doctrine allows people to implement
and test the algorithm, but actually storing any images with it is dubious
at best.)
At least in the short run, I recommend that people not worry about
arithmetic coding; the space savings isn't great enough to justify the
potential legal hassles. In particular, arithmetic coding *should not*
be used for any images to be exchanged on Usenet.
There is some small chance that the legal situation may change in the
future. Stay tuned for further details.
[13] Does loss accumulate with repeated compression/decompression?
It would be nice if, having compressed an image with JPEG, you could
decompress it, manipulate it (crop off a border, say), and recompress it
without any further image degradation beyond what you lost initially.
Unfortunately THIS IS NOT THE CASE. In general, recompressing an altered
image loses more information, though usually not as much as was lost the
first time around.
The next best thing would be that if you decompress an image and recompress
it *without changing it* then there is no further loss, i.e., you get an
identical JPEG file. Even this is not true; at least, not with the current
free JPEG software. It's essentially a problem of accumulation of roundoff
error. If you repeatedly compress and decompress, the image will eventually
degrade to where you can see visible changes from the first-generation
output. (It usually takes many such cycles to get visible change.)
One of the things on our to-do list is to see if accumulation of error can
be avoided or limited, but I am not optimistic about it.
In any case, the most that could possibly be guaranteed would be that
compressing the unmodified full-color output of djpeg, at the original
quality setting, would introduce no further loss. Even such simple changes
as cropping off a border could cause further roundoff-error degradation.
(If you're wondering why, it's because the pixel-block boundaries move.
If you cropped off only multiples of 16 pixels, you might be safe, but
that's a mighty limited capability!)
The bottom line is that JPEG is a useful format for archival storage and
transmission of images, but you don't want to use it as an intermediate
format for sequences of image manipulation steps. Use a lossless format
(PPM, RLE, TIFF, etc) while working on the image, then JPEG it when you are
ready to file it away. Aside from avoiding degradation, you will save a lot
of compression/decompression time this way :-).
[14] What are some rules of thumb for converting GIF images to JPEG?
As stated earlier, you *will* lose some amount of image information if you
convert an existing GIF image to JPEG. If you can obtain the original
full-color data the GIF was made from, it's far better to make a JPEG from
that. But if you need to save space and have only the GIF to work from,
here are some suggestions for getting maximum space savings with minimum
loss of quality.
The first rule when converting a GIF library is to look at each JPEG, to
make sure you are happy with it, before throwing away the corresponding GIF;
that will give you a chance to re-do the conversion with a higher quality
setting if necessary. Some GIFs may be better left as GIFs, as explained in
section 3; in particular, cartoon-type GIFs with sixteen or fewer colors
don't convert well. You may find that a JPEG file of reasonable quality
will be *larger* than the GIF. (So check the sizes too.)
Experience to date suggests that large, high-visual-quality GIFs are the best
candidates for conversion to JPEG. They chew up the most storage so offer
the most potential savings, and they convert to JPEG with least degradation.
Don't waste your time converting any GIF much under 100 Kbytes. Also, don't
expect JPEG files converted from GIFs to be as small as those created
directly from full-color originals. To maintain image quality you may have
to let the converted files be as much as twice as big as straight-through
JPEG files would be (i.e., shoot for 1/2 or 1/3rd the size of the GIF file,
not 1/4th as suggested in earlier comparisons).
Many people have developed an odd habit of putting a large constant-color
border around a GIF image. While useless, this was nearly free in terms of
storage cost in GIF files. It is NOT free in JPEG files, and the sharp
border boundary can create visible artifacts ("ghost" edges). Do yourself
a favor and crop off any border before JPEGing. (If you are on an X Windows
system, XV's manual and automatic cropping functions are a very painless
way to do this.)
cjpeg's default Q setting of 75 is appropriate for full-color input, but
for GIF inputs, Q settings of 85 to 95 often seem to be necessary to avoid
image degradation. (If you apply smoothing as suggested below, the higher
Q setting may not be necessary.)
Color GIFs of photographs or complex artwork are usually "dithered" to fool
your eye into seeing more than the 256 colors that GIF can actually store.
If you enlarge the image, you will see that adjacent pixels are often of
significantly different colors; at normal size the eye averages these pixels
together to produce the illusion of an intermediate color value. The
trouble with dithering is that, to JPEG, it looks like high-spatial-frequency
color noise; and JPEG can't compress noise very well. The resulting JPEG
file is both larger and of lower image quality than what you would have
gotten from JPEGing the original full color image (if you had it).
To get around this, you want to "smooth" the GIF image before compression.
Smoothing averages together nearby pixels, thus approximating the color that
you thought you saw anyway, and in the process getting rid of the rapid
color changes that give JPEG trouble. Appropriate use of smoothing will
often let you avoid using a high Q factor, thus further reducing the size of
the compressed file, while still obtaining a better-looking output image
than you'd get without smoothing.
With the V4 free JPEG software (or products based on it), a simple smoothing
capability is built in. Try "-smooth 10" or so when converting GIFs.
Values of 10 to 25 seem to work well for high-quality GIFs. Heavy-handed
dithering may require larger smoothing factors. (If you can see regular
fine-scale patterns on the GIF image even without enlargement, then strong
smoothing is definitely called for.) Too large a smoothing factor will blur
the output image, which you don't want. If you are an image processing
wizard, you can also do smoothing with a separate filtering program, such as
pnmconvol from the PBMPLUS package. However, cjpeg's built-in smoother is
a LOT faster than pnmconvol...
The upshot of all this is that "cjpeg -quality 85 -smooth 10" is probably a
good starting point for converting GIFs. But if you really care about the
image, you'll want to check the results and maybe try a few other settings.
---------------------
For more information about JPEG in general or the free JPEG software in
particular, contact the Independent JPEG Group at jpeg-info@uunet.uu.net.
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Since the law requires that wiretaps be requested by the Executive
Branch and approved by the Judicial Branch, it seems clear that one
of the key registering bodies should be under the control of the
Judicial Branch. I suggest the Supreme Court, or, regionally, the
Courts of Appeal. More specifically, the offices of their Clerks.
Courts already operate substantial record-keeping operations. Some
of these records are confidential. So the concept of a court holding
information in confidence in accordance with law has longstanding legal
precedents. The judiciary is more immune to pressure from the executive
branch than any executive branch agency or contractor can be. So judicial
control of keys is appropriate.
For the other half of the key, I suggest a unit of Congress, the
General Accounting Office. The GAO is Congress's staff unit for keeping
tabs on the Executive Branch, and has an excellent reputation. It's
controlled strictly by Congress; the Executive Branch has no authority
over it.
With keys split between the Legislative and Judicial branches,
we might have a chance of this system working honestly. If, of course,
a way can be found to keep the keys from being siphoned off before
they reach the repositories.
This should not be construed as an endorsement by me of the
whole Clipper concept. But if we have to have it, splitting control
across all three branches of government might make it work.
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=FLAME ON
=
=Reading through the posts about Kirlian (whatever spelling)
=photography I couldn't help but being slightly disgusted by the
=narrow-minded, "I know it all", "I don't believe what I can't see or
=measure" attitude of many people out there.
Where have you seen that attitude?
=I am neither a real believer, nor a disbeliever when it comes to
=so-called "paranormal" stuff; but as far as I'm concerned, it is just
=as likely as the existence of, for instance, a god, which seems to be
=quite accepted in our societies - without any scientific basis.
=I am convinced that it is a serious mistake to close your mind to
=something, ANYTHING, simply because it doesn't fit your current frame
=of reference. History shows that many great people, great scientists,
=were people who kept an open mind - and were ridiculed by sceptics.
Fine, jackass. Suppose you point out even ONE aspect of Kirlian photography
that's not explained by a corona discharge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL
| 9
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"We however, shall be innocent of this sin, and will pray with earnest
entreaty and supplication that the Creator of all may keep unharmed the
numbers of His elect."
-St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, 59.2, (c. 90 AD)
"Ignatius also called Theophorus, to the Church at Ephesus in Asia,
which is worthy of all felicitation, blessed as it is with greatness by
the fullness of God the Father, predestined from all eternity for a
glory that is lasting and unchanging, united and chosen in true
suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God..."
-St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, Address,
(c 110 AD)
"We say therefore, that in substance, in concept, in orgin and in
eminece, the ancient and Catholic Church is alone, gathering as it does
into the unity of the one faith which results from the familiar
covenants .... those already chosen, those predestined by God who knew
before the foundation of the world that they would be just."
-St. Clement, Patriarch and Archbishop of Alexandria, Miscellanies,
7.17.107.3, (c 205 AD)
Of course the doctrine was explained more fully later on by Sts.
Augustine, Aquinas, etc., but the seeds were ther from the beginning.
I think you are reading it wrong. I say those who are not saved are not
saved on account of their own sins. It is not because God did not give
them sufficient grace, for He does do so, in His desire that all men
might be saved. However, as only some are saved - and those who are
saved are saved by the grace of God, "not by works, lest any man should
boast" - the others are damned because of their obstinacy in refusing to
heed the call of God. They are damned by their own free will and
chosing, a choice forseen by God in His causing them to be not
predestined, but reprobated instead.
Certainly God does not distribute grace evenly. If He did, no one could
have their heart hardened (or rather, harden their heart, thus causing
God to withdraw His grace). But, you are correct - the world is divided
into those who God knows to be saved, and those God knows to be on the
road to perdition. THe key is that God knows it and we do not. Thus,
no one can boast in complete assurance that they are one of the elect
and predestined. But no one who is a Christian in good standin should
doubt their salvation either (that shows a lack of trust in God).
You must admit it is possible. Anyway, why would you want something in
the hear and know, when you can recieve 100 fold in heaven? Better to
lay up your treasure in heaven is what Jesus said.
This is not to condemn the rich, but simply to point out that those who
are rich are frequently very evil or immoral, so God must give them
their blessing know, as they have chosen. Remeber, Jesus promised
tribulation in this world, and hatred of others because we are
Christians. He did not promise heaven on earth. He promised heaven.
Not really. Unless you do penance here on earth, you will have to do it
in Purgatory, as Paul pointed out (1 Corinthians 3.15). Those with
poorer works, though still done with good intentions, will only be saved
through fire (the damned will of course go into fire immeadiately, for
whatever good they did was not for God but for self (dead works)). Of
course, the Church gives indulgences, has Confession, and Annointing of
the Sick to remove sin and the the vestiges of sin, so there is really
little excuse for ending up in Purgatory - it is a last hope for the
somewhat lazy and careless as I said above in referring to Paul.
And no comments were taken as flames. You are one of the more polite
people I have talked to over the net.
Andy Byler
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Then there are always osteopathy colleges....
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There's an out for him. The announcement talked about strong cryptography
I believe. Specifically:
nor is the U.S. saying that "every
American, as a matter of right, is entitled to an
unbreakable commercial encryption product."
Every vendor claims his product is unbreakable -- so this was sloppy wording.
I am not claiming that we private citizens should have access to the NSA's
best, secret algorithms. I don't want any NSA algorithms, actually.
I'll let them break my pitiful amateur algorithms -- and RSA's.
All I want is what I have already -- the ability and right to invent and use
my own algorithms, share them with my friends and sell them.
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One of the responsibilities of a licensed physician is to read the medical
literature to keep up with changes in medical practice. All the clamor
over laetril resulted in the NCI spending quite a bit of money on clinical
trials which proved(to me anyway) that laetril was ineffective against
cancer. A physician who continued to use it, when better, more effective,
treatments are available, may deserve to be called a quack. Anti-fungals
are in a different class. The big question seems to be is it reasonable to
use them in patients with GI distress or sinus problems that *could* be due
to candida blooms following the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics? Gorden
Rubenfeld, through e-mail, has assured me that most physicians recognize
the chance of candida blooms occuring after broad-spectrum antibiotic use
and they therefore reinnoculate their patients with *good* bacteria to
restore competetion for candida in the body. I do not believe that this is
yet a standard part of medical practice. He deals with critical care
patients where fungal infection(systemic) is a real problem and just
because he tries to keep *good* bacteria in his patients does not mean that
all physicians do this. I think that aspergillis is more likely to be
found in the sinus mucus membranes than is candida. Women have been known
for a very long time to suffer from candida blooms in the vagina and a
women is lucky to find a physician who is willing to treat the cause and
not give give her advise to use the OTC anti-fungal creams. Since candida
colonizes primarily in the ano-rectal area, GI symptoms should be more common
than vaginal problems after broad-spectrum antibiotic use.
The problem we have here David is proof that GI discomfort can be caused by
a candida bloom. The arguement is that without proof, no action is
warrented.
Medicine has not, and probalby never will be, practiced this way. There
has always been the use of conventional wisdom. A very good example is
kidney stones. Conventional wisdom(because clinical trails have not been
done to come up with an effective prevention), was that restricitng the
intake of calcium and oxalates was the best way to prevent kidney stones
from forming. Clinical trials focused on drugs or ultrasonic blasts to
breakdown the stone once it formed. Through the recent New England J of
Medicine article, we now know that conventional wisdom was wrong,
increasing calcium intake is better at preventing stone formation than is
restricting calcium intake.
The conventional wisdom in animal husbandry has been that animals need to
be reinnoculated with *good* bacteria after coming off antibiotic therapy.
If it makes sense for livestock, why doesn't it make sense for humans
David? We are not talking about a dangerous treatment(unless you consider
yogurt dangerous). If this were a standard part of medical practice, as
Gordon R. says it is, then the incidence of GI distress and vaginal yeast
infections should decline.
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