In an attempt to stem the many photoshopped images that wind up on the front pages of major newspapers, Canon has integrated a special crytographic security measure that allows someone to determine if the image is an original or has been altered.
In brief, modern DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) cameras produced by Canon feature Original Data Security system which is meant to securely validate the authenticity of image data and prove image genuineness. Accordingly, one can use OSK-E3 (Canon Original Data Security Kit) which comprises smart card and special software to verify a digitally signed image.
Unfortunately, ElcomSoft today revealed a vulnerability in their algorithm that allows anyone to cryptographically sign any image so that it appears authentic.
ElcomSoft discovered the vulnerability which allows producing images that will be positively validated by Canon’s own Original Data Security Kit (OSK-E3) regardless of whether or not the images are, in fact, genuine.
See some humorous images on their site, as well as the PDF detailing the vulnerability.
Lots of sites are showing this clip of Hans Rosling in a new hour-long documentary on BBC called “the Joy of Stats”. The video mixes the same visualization that made him famous in his TED talk, but instead mixed it up with some fake augmented reality displays.
[W]ithout statistics we are cast adrift on an ocean of confusion, but armed with stats we can take control of our lives, hold our rulers to account and see the world as it really is. What’s more, Hans concludes, we can now collect and analyse such huge quantities of data and at such speeds that scientific method itself seems to be changing.
The Pixel Farm has released a fun new gadget called ‘AirGrade’ completely free, bringing some of their colour-grading prowess to the masses. It opens a full world of professional film & TV grading tools to the user, all controllable via a fun iPhone app.
To grade an image using Airgrade, users roll a 3D trackball and rotate a radial wheel on their iPhone to adjust precise tonal ranges using Lift, Gamma, Gain controls – recognised by professional colourists as Shadow, Midtone and Highlights – plus a Saturation control for overall colour intensity. The result appears interactively on their Mac, and on any other connected monitoring device, such as a digital projector. A shake of the iPhone resets the parameters, allowing a fresh grade to be made.
Zambezia is an animated 3-D film that is expected to be released in 2011. Triggerfish Animation has uploaded a short promotional piece for the film on YouTube 3-D. Triggerfish Animation is a small company that is based in Cape Town, South Africa. Break out your red/cyan glasses and take a look at it.
Want to know the basics in buying a new 3-D setup, whether for television or computers? Neil Schneider from MTBS-TV (which stands for Meant To Be Seen in case you are wondering) covers all the basics in this video. Part II, which is for high definition televisions, and Part III, which is for 3-D personal computers, are after the break.
SweClockers.com has posted a product folder from Palit which reveals that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 will be released on December 7th. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 is built using the GF110 chip, just like the GTX 580 uses. The GTX 570 will have 480 CUDA cores just like the old GTX 480. Performance is expected to be very close to a GTX 480. The GTX will have a 732MHz core and the shaders will be clocked at 1.464 GHz. The GTX 570 will have 1.28 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 3.8 GHz. The memory bus will be 320 bits wide and have 152 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The GTX 570 should cost about $400.
Remember that the Radeon 6900 series has been delayed until Dec 13th. It looks to me like Nvidia is the one firing on all cylinders now, and AMD is struggling a bit. That is a drastic difference from late last year and early this year when it was Nvidia that was having problems and AMD could do no wrong.
Now this is a cool idea. Take two projectors, some cameras, some IR sensors, and build yourself a multi-touch curved display that fits in the form factor of a desk. Take a look at the video to see some of the uses that they put it to. Personally, after looking at their photo application, I think that this might be great for a video editing application.
BendDesk is a curved interactive surface that combines a horizontal and vertical multi-touch surface seamlessly with a curve.
We begin our daily selection with a look at some Black Friday facts, provided by Credit Score – you can also check other infographics about this topic here. Mindflash shows us who’s hiring for the Holidays, while online spending continues to surge – at least in Canada, according to Credit Cards Canada‘s inforgraphic. The commercial relations between the U.S. and China are subject to analysis by Pay Pal, and, finally, Credit Loan comes up with the revealing infograhic about the largest advertising budgets in the world.
The “Super Model Army Knife” package is a cheap little toolkit (only $15!) that can generate ambient occlusion and normal maps and bake them into models for you, improving the detail of rendered models with minimum impact to rendertimes.
Render great-looking normal maps using a high-res model and/or from a texture.
Render great-looking ambient occlusion maps up to 2048×2048 in less than a minute.
Generate “color bleed” lighting maps.
Use “Ground occlusion” to easily simulate the effects of the ground.
Parallelized raytracer is super fast, utilizing multicore processors.
Support for loading and saving .obj Silo .sia and Collada .dae files.
JVC is introducing a new projector, called the DLA-VS2100U D-ILA, at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) this week in Orlando, specially designed for simulation environments and visualization applications. It’s the usual stuff, 1920×1080 resolution and 20,000:1 contrast ratio, but it has this new ‘anti-smear reduction’ mode that sounds interesting.
A key new feature is an anti-smear reduction mode, which reduces image smearing during fast-motion scenes through frame insertion or black frame insertion. In addition, a new color management system enables users to match color primaries to other projectors. The DLA-VS2100U is also more compatible with software genlock synchronization used in some simulation environments, and it offers Ethernet connectivity, in addition to RS-232, for network-based monitoring and projector control.
It ships with a 1.4-2.8:1 zoom lens, and should be available in march.
In an attempt to stem the many photoshopped images that wind up on the front pages of major newspapers, Canon has integrated a special crytographic security measure that allows someone to determine if the image is an original or has been altered.
Lots of sites are showing this clip of Hans Rosling in a new hour-long documentary on BBC called “the Joy of Stats”. The video mixes the same visualization that made him famous in his TED talk, but instead mixed it up with some fake augmented reality displays.
The Pixel Farm has released a fun new gadget called ‘AirGrade’ completely free, bringing some of their colour-grading prowess to the masses. It opens a full world of professional film & TV grading tools to the user, all controllable via a fun iPhone app.
We begin our daily selection with a look at some Black Friday facts, provided by 
The “Super Model Army Knife” package is a cheap little toolkit (only $15!) that can generate ambient occlusion and normal maps and bake them into models for you, improving the detail of rendered models with minimum impact to rendertimes.
JVC is introducing a new projector, called the DLA-VS2100U D-ILA, at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) this week in Orlando, specially designed for simulation environments and visualization applications. It’s the usual stuff, 1920×1080 resolution and 20,000:1 contrast ratio, but it has this new ‘anti-smear reduction’ mode that sounds interesting.
VizWorld.com 
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