Re: [dinosaur] Main goals in future dinosaur paleontology

[Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com>]

Some interesting and useful points (I hope others read your very long post too).

DICOM and other proprietary formats (think Mimics) are a serious problem, but 
controlling information and forcing people to buy *your* product to utilize it 
is the American way. It's all about profit. Why do you think Adobe constantly 
releases new versions of Acrobat..? It's absurd. "Portable Document" format 
isn't portable unless everyone has purchased Adobe's latest release. 

People who use the latest version of Acrobat to generate their PDFs are 
unwitting accomplices. Ditto for MS Word, Photoshop, and many other big 
software packages. Most of them peaked years ago, and now they're bloated cash 
cows, with new versions released solely to keep staff employed. Newer versions 
add nothing of value. Pretty soon you'll be able to do word processing, page 
layout, and video editing in Photoshop. Oh wait, you already can! But those 
features have no value because the video editing is inferior to that in 
dedicated video apps, the page layout is inferior, etc. This model has lately 
evolved into "cloud computing" where you don't even own the software anymore. 

And it's actually even worse than all that. Some companies, e.g. Adobe, create 
newer file formats (or add features) that will crash older versions of their 
software or even lock up the computer it's being run on. That sort of thing 
would seem to require premeditation, or at best it's negligent.

Open-source software and open access journals are helping, and the more people 
use them instead of proprietary software and firewalled journals, the better.


--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 4/13/17, Ruben Safir <ruben@mrbrklyn.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [dinosaur] Main goals in future dinosaur paleontology
 To: dinosaur-l@mymaillists.usc.edu
 Date: Thursday, April 13, 2017, 9:44 PM
 
 On 04/13/2017 04:41 PM, Mike
 Habib wrote:
 > Sure, basic CT is an old
 tech, but things like nano-CT are relatively new. The main
 novelty, however, is the prevalence of imaging in
 paleontology. CT imaging may be old, but it hasn't been
 widely available to paleontologists until (comparatively)
 recently.
 > 
 >
 --MBH
 > 
 > Sent from
 my Cybernetic Symbiote
 > 
 >

 ..."The file type that is output from a CT scanner is a "diacom"(sic),
 these need to be converted to either a jpeg or tif in a diacom(sic)
 converter, and then processed into an image stack in a software
 called "ImageJ". These image stacks are then uploaded to "AMIRA"
 (FEI) for processing into 3D models...
 
 Dicom is a huge copyright problem promoted as “the internet of medical
 information”.  According to its standards page,  “It defines the formats
 for medical images that can be exchanged with the data and quality 
 necessary for clinical use. “3  It is controlled by The Medical Imaging
 & Technology Alliance (MITA), a division of the National Electrical

 ... They are not an open forum for digital standards but are
 created as a profit center for a few select and well placed medical
 device companies.