As an interesting side note to this dramatic and terrifying exchange of
ideas and thoughts, http://iwl.me/ identifies Rod Goke's writing style to be
similar to Edgar Allen Poe.
-No Kidding!
Wavy Caver
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Rod Goke rod.g...@earthlink.net wrote:
Given Louise's recent comments about speedy Photognomes and Gills
suspicions that these mischievous pranksters were responsible for
Photoshopping curious structures into the satellite photos of certain
Mexican ponds, I think we need to clear up a few misconceptions about
Photognomes and what they do. First, there is ample reason to believe that
Photognomes, as Louise calls them, really do exist and that they can, and
sometimes do, use Photoshop or some similar software tools to edit satellite
photos provided to us by Google.
I'm afraid, however, that Louise is slightly misinformed about where the
Photognomes reside and the speed with which they do their deeds. I hope I'm
not disillusioning anyone too brutally here, but the satellite views
provided to us by Google are not sent directly to our computers from the
satellites in real time. Instead, they are pieced together from many
separate satellite photos, which may have been taken at different times,
perhaps months or even years earlier in some cases. Consequently, the
Photognomes don't have to ride around on satellites, editing images in real
time. Instead, they have plenty of time to do their work right here on
earth, much as would a typical human Photoshop user. They don't have to work
with superhuman speed or even be real gnomes. In fact, I'll bet that most of
them are Earthbound humans working for Google with Google's computers and
software tools.
What is it that Photognomes actually do? Well, somebody or something has to
select the appropriate satellite photos and combine them together into a
format that can be displayed to us by Google as a seemingly large continuous
image, and this computerized representation has to be continually updated,
partly as a result of newer photos becoming available, and partly as a
result of changing demands and policies about what may and may not be shown
to the public. Much of this work is probably automated, but there is little
doubt that at least some humans are involved in the process and that they
have the technical ability to modify images with Photoshop or some similar
photo editing software before the images are made available to the public.
There have been many reports of images being modified to obscure information
that governments or other organizations considered sensitive for security
reasons, as detailed on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data
Hence, there really is reason to believe that Google's human Photognomes
can and sometimes do modify satellite images.
Were any of these Photognomes mischievous enough to have Photoshopped
strange patterns into the satellite images of two curious ponds near
Almagre as a prank, as Gill suggested? Personally, I very much doubt that
anyone actually did, but I can't deny that it is possible. It certainly is
conceivable that someone in Google could have had the technical means and
opportunity to do it.
Gill's hypothesis is very difficult to prove or disprove. It is almost
impossible to rule out on the basis of image analysis alone, because
practically any pattern could be inserted into a digital image in this
manner. Sometimes, forensic analysis of a digital image can reveal evidence
that an image was modified, but it is virtually impossible for this kind of
analysis to prove that an image was not modified. Generally, the best that
can be said is, We couldn't find any evidence of tampering, so the image
might be genuine. Some of the more common forensic analysis techniques are
inconclusive in the curious ponds case. For example, one techniques is to
examine shadows in different parts of the same picture to see if they imply
contradictory information about the light source or sources. Within the
curious pond patterns, however, considerable uncertainty exists about which,
if any, of the dark lines and rectangles are actually shadows, so we can't
be sure what, if anything, they imply about light sources. Similarly, one
can compare image sizes of recognizable objects in different portions of a
picture to see if they imply contradictory information about
camera-to-subject distances, but this is not applicable to the curious pond
patterns, because we can't recognize any objects of known size within the
suspicious patterns. Another basic forensic technique is to see if a
suspicious portion of an image matches some other portion of the image and,
hence, was most likely copied. The patterns in the ponds, however, obviously
don't resemble anything else in the vicinity, so if they were copied from
somewhere, we have no idea where. Until we get more definitive information
about what
