Being arrested I'm not worried about. I'm sure it's not a very pleasant experience, but I know I'll be in and out rather quickly if that were to happen. The polysterene sounds like a better idea than mine.. I was just planning on using bubble wrap, cuz I know I can pick up a few sheets at work, but that white stuff is just even better (and in almost every electronics box out there!). :P As for film.. I'll give Ilford a try. I just got a roll of TMax 400 back, and it was a bit too grainy for my taste. And the one time I used 800 film, it was extremely awful (though that was Konica and it was free.. so I might give it another chance later on). For the strap, I figured I'd just use laptop anti-theft wire instead of the cloth strap - it's thin and it's extremely solid. I figure I can just slide it in a cotton strip so I don't get my hand ripped off in case someone gets nasty. :) All in all, should be fun stuff - I keep the 'no pain no gain' line in mind going into this. :) Now I'll just start practicing on quickly turning and focusing so I don't just get blurry shots all the time. :P =DarkPen=

Well, Adobe does distribute OEM products (Premiere, for example, is bundled with some Pyro capture cards, etc). Chances are, though, that this is one of those Asia-based rings (no, I'm not stereotyping.. Thailand is world-reknowned for their high-quality warez that even come in full color boxes with manual and fake certificate of authenticity) that might send you a CD that looks real and comes with a serial number and all, but I'd be wary about giving them any money, even if they don't end up ripping you off. :/ Also, odds are the real ripoff comes with shipping & handling.. or that you'll just get a CD with a few thousand links of where to download it from, most of them shut down by the time you receive it. Thing is, by now, I doubt any legitimate company with nothing to hide resorts to spam to conduct honest business. =DarkPen=

Well, it's the last weekend of June, so I'm planning early enough to be prepared. :) I'm partly there to (surprisingly, considering where I work) protest as well, because I believe making a military compound out of reach of everyone goes against the democratic right to demonstrate, my biggest worry is to be mistaken to be someone from the media, which is also a target in these situations. takes up yoga Just cuz you never know when it's gonna be useful. :P =DarkPen=

Slynky: don't know about the pizza van, but the Flowers By Irene truck does a great job. ;) It's even more inconspicuous in Canada! :P It's interesting how photography pulls just about anyone from any field, though. =DarkPen=

I'm a communications engineer and analyst for a branch of the military. Which over here means I actually hold 10 different but related jobs. :P =DarkPen=

"Using JPEGs in this situation would be kinda pointless no? If you can somehow modify the hard -coded instruction sets in the browser or offline image viewers, wouldnt that be a virus itself??:) If you could do this, you could make the image viewer delete any pictures opened, etc." Thank you for proving my point. grin Seriously though, that's part of my point.. if you can do this, why not do something incredibly easier that will spread your virus much more, y'know? The good part out of all this (from my opinion) is that people are starting to doubt the oh-almighty authoritaw from McAfee and others, which may break a little bit of the Palpatine hold they've got on customers. =DarkPen=

What a nice pipe organ.. I want to hear someone play In-A-Gadda-Da-Vita on it! :P =DarkPen=

Oh, and btw Slynky.. 'Poon-Tang Blues' is a song The Doors did on live shows occasionally. :) (not that I'm old enough to have seen them live, but they're my fave nonetheless) and thanks Misha. :) =DarkPen=

Well, even option a) is a bit far-fetched, considering it's a hard-coded element of the browser/image viewer (unlike, say, an ActiveX control in IE, which is just in a way an application layer). There's always a way to use an exploit, of course, but then the best way to transmit that would be through an html file with javascript/java code that would contain a JPEG, but not through the JPEG itself. My point is, there's a way to do it of course, but it's so incredibly complex (well, not that much from my POV, but generally) that it just wouldn't be a good way to do it. People who write viruses either do it for a) the challenge, b) to get noticed, or c) because it's incredibly easy to do. 95% of the viruses out there are c), thanks to programs like Virus Lab (oh, the fun I had with that in high school). B) are mostly the ones that get around - like the Kournikova virus, or Melissa or 9/11 or whatnot. A)'s are the ones to 'look out' for, except those people don't usually spread their code, and even if they did, the complexity of transmitting a virus through JPEG files is too high to even be worth the effort. Of course, the best way to effectively do it would be to somehow alter the main HTML files of major web sites (Yahoo, eBay, CNN, etc) to contain ActiveX or Java controls to run an off-server ASP file to somehow modify hard-coded instruction sets in the browser or offline image viewers, and then attach malicious code to JPEGs here and there.. which would most likely be a detected intrusion and stopped first of all, or if it's not, it would be noticed by a lot of people who have their security levels in IE set to anything other than 'everything allowed' (which is most people). So it just wouldn't catch on. As for your b), well, those are still very early on. Altamira and others use them for their resizing software, and the source code to those things are usually very well protected. Until vector-based graphics really catch on on the web in 'true form' (as opposed to Flash-contained and equivalents, since they kinda fit in that category), I wouldn't worry about that. And hey, I don't just put the blame on CNN. McAfee, Symantec and others are just as guilty.. though on the other hand they're just looking after their own profit margin. I tend to respect anyone who can actually make a living, but that's probably because I live somewhere where I'm incredibly overtaxed. grin probably doesn't make much sense right now But that's ok, it's late and I'm tired and just catching up on tonight's posts before going to bed. Hopefully it made -some-. :P =DarkPen=

cackle Hey, gotta do my part after my long absence. :P You just stuck 'Poon-Tang Blues' in my head now, though.. grr. =DarkPen=

Why would you want to reverse engineer them? The whole file format's specifications are available so that anyone may be able to program an image viewer. Even the source code is available (though that costs money). I have both at work, and looking at the main JPEG document, there's nothing in it that could be used to run malicious code. JPEG File Interchange Format features: o Uses JPEG compression o Uses JPEG interchange format compressed image representation o PC or Mac or Unix workstation compatible o Standard color space: one or three components. For three components, YCbCr (CCIR 601-256 levels) o APP0 marker used to specify Units, X pixel density, Y pixel density, thumbnail o APP0 marker also used to specify JFIF extensions o APP0 marker also used to specify application-specific information If you're worried about that last one: "Application-specific APP0 marker segments are identified by a zero terminated string which identifies the applications (not 'JFIF' or 'JFXX'). This string should be an organization name or company trademark. Generic strings such as dog, cat, tree, etc. should not be used." I tell you, it's just not possible, unless you make bogus JPEG files that contain malicious code (which, when opened would appear corrupted) and a viewer program to go along with it that will recognize the instructions and run them (and if you use Photoshop, ACDSee, Paint Shop Pro, etc, it's just not possible as the JPEG instruction set is hard coded). That's the thing with virii (viruses? my French's coming through.. heh), they have to be run. Of course, you can fool anyone into running a virus (naked pics of Anna Kournikova [sp?] seemed to do the trick once), and Outlook Express/Outlook can be configured to run ASP files which could infect you depending on your Internet Explorer settings, but it all comes down to being careful. =DarkPen=

"But Gullotto said there's no reason a virus writer couldn't make the picture itself able to infect other computers." That's just silly. Pictures aren't executable files, don't carry any code, don't have any instructions. They're just data sets that are fed through a JPEG/GIF/whatever interpreter. One way you could make a JPEG file contaminate anything else (and pretty much the only way) would be to modify the JPEG-reading instructions in an application read a modified header, for example, that would carry virus-like code. Which would be quite a lot of trouble. Now, this virus is an actual executable program that looks for JPEG files - which is an entirely different situation. It's just like any virus out there in that you have to run it first. And server admins don't usually (unless someone's not very concerned about viruses) run executable files they receive by email. It's another virus alert blown out of proportion (I'm aiming this at CNN, not you, Misha) - just use common sense: don't open any attachments you don't expect, scan any files you download from peer-to-peer networks, etc etc, and your risks of infection are extremely low. I've never owned a virus scanner and only used one once, when I couldn't pinpoint a problem I was having (turned out to be one of my own programs that was the culprit.. heh) and I've never been infected in the 15+ years that I've used computers. My brother even had a rather huge virus collection at one time (easily over a thousand, including some scary ones from the old DOS days) sitting on floppies.. that was interesting. :) =DarkPen=

The one I made was for an electronic cable release plug (3 pins on the side of where the lens would go). As far as mechanical, those are rather cheap to begin with, plus you'd just need something to push down on the shutter release. I'd go to a dollar store or Canadian Tire and find one of those tube grappling thingees (you know, it's like a long, flexible metal tube with a spring button at one end, and when you push down on it there's little claws that come out the other) and figure out a way to make it hold to the camera. If it's electronic, though, you have to figure out how the pins are set up, and then it's just a matter of shorting the appropriate pins. - darkpen (yep, still around, just extremely busy)

Man, and here I thought kilts were making a comeback. :P - darkpen

Eep! Man, I just saw Evolution.. :P Good one. :) - darkpen