5/8/2003: Unabomber's cabin

[Undertoad]

Doesn't look like much. This is the cabin of Theodore Kaczynski, the "Unabomber". Kaczynski built the little hut himself and lived there for 25 years, going insane, writing in journals, and eventually writing long anti-technology screeds and building bombs to mail to technologists.

When they got the guy, they decided to take his cabin intact to his trial, so they could show the conditions he was living under to try to show that he was insane. Eventually Kaczynski pled guilty. For some legal purpose the cabin was kept around, but now it's no longer needed.

It was going to be dismantled, but the owner, a member of Kaczynski's legal team, was spooked when the event drew reporters. It'll probably wind up dismantled after all. Which is okay; what are you going to do, put it into the Museum of Bizarre Criminals?

[That Guy]

I guarantee someone would pay top dollar on eBay for that.

[chrisinhouston]

I'm trying to figure out what the folks in front of the cabin in the upper right are doing. Looks like a photo shoot, a medium or large format camera on a tripod, couple of light stands, some gear cases, a chair for the art director or somebody, some flagging tape to keep out the curius bystanders.

I blew the shot up in Photoshop before it really fell apart and it looks like the first guy on the right is just standing there but the guy next to him is taking a picture with a smaller format camera.

Ever notice how in movies the government guys can always blow up little images infinately and just keep sharpening the images up till you can see every little detail? Perhaps there is a vesion of Photoshop we don't know about like Photoshop CIA.

This will bother me at 2am, not knowing what was going on.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down.

[slang]

Funny. Kinda looks like my house only without the coax cable running out of it and piles of spent ammo casings under the window.

[MachineyBear]

Hey, get yer shack out of my driveway!

[wolf]

Originally posted by slang
Funny. Kinda looks like my house only without the coax cable running out of it and piles of spent ammo casings under the window.

I'll crochet you a brasscatcher, sweetie.

[dfenstrate]

Ever notice how in movies the government guys can always blow up little images infinately and just keep sharpening the images up till you can see every little detail? Perhaps there is a vesion of Photoshop we don't know about like Photoshop CIA.

They can do this, but you need a moving image to do it, and several frames at that. It doesn't work on stills nearly as well.

The reason that you can blow up a moving image a great deal is that you can compare something over several frames. I don't know how to put in words how it works, but it does.

[mitheral]

To a certain degree. But in the movies it's almost always some single frame, grainy, video survalince image that they blow up 10,000X and then read the guys wristwatch or something. The information they are supposedly sharpening only exists as a couple pixels in the original at best.

[dfenstrate]

Originally posted by mitheral
To a certain degree. But in the movies it's almost always some single frame, grainy, video survalince image that they blow up 10,000X and then read the guys wristwatch or something. The information they are supposedly sharpening only exists as a couple pixels in the original at best.

Very true, but by studying how those pixels change over dozens to hundreds of frames, a great deal of information can be extracted. Unfortunately, I can't offer any solid citations, but I remember seeing a demonstration on the Discovery Channel where they took images from a conveinance store security camera that recorded a murder-robbery, and extrapolated enough information to clarify his tattoo, which led to identification and conviction.

Let's say you have 1024 shades of gray, (just a guess on how many shades you could extract from a tape) and an 8x8 grid of pixels to work with for a feature. 640 bits of information. If you have the area on camera and moving for 4 seconds, thats around 8 kilobytes of infomation you have, or an 80*80 grid of 10 bit grey scale, which is significantly more detail. Now, i'm not saying you can necessarily get that much detail, but that is how much information you have to work with.

The theory, i believe, is that a detailed picture will light up different pixels in different ways as it moves up in a frame, as compared to left or right, or down, or as the angle of the surface changes, so that several low resolution representations can be processed into one higher resolution representation.

I'd like to say that it's entirely possible I'm wrong, because it's been years since I've seen this show, but as a graduating engineer, the theory seems sound to me. I'll send it up for peer review .

Here's a relevant NASA press release:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/news/releases/2002/J02-81.html Best I can do right now
and another with some pictures:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast31aug_1.htm

[juju]

Nope, sorry. It's absolutely, 100% unconstitutional.

[bartman]

Originally posted by Undertoad
... Eventually Kaczynski pled guilty.

A little OT, but still...
I had to check again after reading the thread and make sure that you hadn't put 'pleaded'. This is one of the reasons why I read the cellar, for the grammatical integrity, one of the last defensive bastions against the deformation of English. Well, except for Billy and Ruscita(sp?), who can be excused.

You have restored my faith in humanity, and my raised my intestinal fortitude. Or something like that.

Great site.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Bartman, are you really Dave? C'mon 'fess up?

[bartman]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
Bartman, are you really Dave? C'mon 'fess up?

Nope. Really.

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
Bartman, are you really Dave? C'mon 'fess up?

Nope. Really.