I’ve watched only a few episodes of the CSI lineage of entertainment, mostly because they pissed me off almost immediately with their made-up tech bullshit. It’s like Hollywood completely forgets that the internet is making people a little bit smarter, and that shit don’t fly no more.
But they still try to pull this kind of shit.
Those CSI shows are multiplying like rabbits. I personally prefer forensics as the people in those white suits that hand inspector Morse or Frost a piece of a puzzle.
So, the face on Mars wrecked the store?
That is exactly what I was thinking too LOL!
lol excellent call!
Enhance!
Boo, the HTML tags note at the bottom lies, no anchor there. Supposed to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhF_56SxrGk
What amazes me is how much all of those scenes knock off from this one, from Blade Runner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkcU0gwZUdg . I think that might be the ur-example of all those “photo enhancement” sequences in cop shows. (The video you linked to contains a couple of short clips but the scene is worth watching in its entirety.)
Is Ivan! He hear Omar no longer own shop after sellink to women! Ivan not happy for loss of good customer for grey market merchandise. Example must be made.
It’s Nice Pete from Achewood! It ALLLLLLLLLL makes sense now. Onstad has a bunch of projects going on…not a lot of time to update strips…sees another one getting popular…sends Nice Pete after the characters. Yes, YEEEEEESSSSSSS
There is ONE method of enhancing a photo vaguely, remotely similar to what’s depicted in those TV shows, that I’m aware of, that actually exists. However, it requires multiple images of the subject matter (face, license plate, etc) in similar but not exactly the same pixel positions. With enough of these images, software designed to detect near-earth objects can “guess” at pixel details to fill in the blanks and increase the resolution of a photograph some (SOME). It cannot take a dime-store security camera video from 320×200 to 1080p. It cannot take a single image from a $5 special pre-paid cellphone and turn it into a high resolution image. There are a lot of things it cannot do. What it CAN do is take multiple images from very similar frames and combine them into one, slightly higher resolution image. Note the use of the word “slightly”.
This method has been used once, to my knowledge, to find and capture a criminal. They were only able to recover enough detail to make out a logo on his jacket. Once the witnesses to the incident had been asked about the specific sports logo, they remembered enough details about the suspect to help point police in the right direction. His face was unrecoverable in those images, and no other details aside from the logo could be made out. How this image technology made it into popular tripe in the form it’s in today is beyond me, unless a screenwriter somewhere read the headlines for a story about it, stopped there, and started writing scripts that centered around what he thought he had read about. 😛
There was a project at University of Michigan a few years back that was also vaguely similar. Basically, it could bring an out-of-focus photo into focus in software. However, because it depended on very fine gradations of color, you needed an image that had no processing done on it; film was fine, raw digital was fine, but JPEG was useless (as was TIFF, as I recall). It also couldn’t go up in resolution from what you had started with; no CSI magic “enhance” here. And, of course, there were images it just plain couldn’t deal with, but it was successful a decent percentage of the time.
All of this is my recollection, so take the details with a grain of salt.
Hey If Mr Spock and Mr Checkov had as good tricorders/scanners as CSI; they would know where the nuclear wessels were!
What’s probably worse is when cops expect that level of technology, which must exist because hey, they saw it on TV.
Now, all the local cops use electronic ticket software, but about fifteen years ago, we passed on an RFP that included scanning the hand-written citation, deciphering the cop’s scribbles, and entering the charges directly into the database. YeahNo.
Considering the low opinion I have of the ATF, I could easily see they’d take Mick’s inability to identify the subject in the photo as somehow interfering with justice, maybe even tampering with evidence, possibly even aiding and abetting the crime.
Looks like a member of Gwar to me.
Hmm… looking at the super-maxi-enhanced version of the photo … is that Ivan?
Eh, idunno… this perp has a jawline that Ivan could only dream of…
I have a friend that is a criminal defense lawyer. He HATES those crime shows. Everyone expects the evidence to be packaged and perfect like it came from a store. “Can’t we enhance it?” comes from cops, jury, witnesses, DAs… Mostly not judges or lawyers though. and don’t mention DNA evidence to him. People think they can rob a liquor store in daylight without a disguise, and if there’s no DNA evidence… then they got nuthin’!
There was one episode this past season, where they used a security camera to zoom in on a water bottle TO READ A FINGERPRINT OFF THE BOTTLE! Now that is taking it way too far! And I remember when CSI first aired, they emphasized that the science on the show was reasonably realistic. Not anymore….
I like CSI and a few similar shows, but when looking at those shows you have to keep in mind, that they have less in common with reality and more with detective fiction. I see stuff like image-enhancing or virtual reconstruction of the deed more akin to Holmes, Poirot, etc. taking a bit of dirt and reasoning, that the murderer must have been an italian sailor with a limp, that breakfasts in a certain coffeehouse.
Going with the crazy stalker that Alex has from the coffee shop.
My thoughts run in a similar vein, but I’d vote for the culprit being Alex’s 1st asshole-boyfriend…
…who hooked her on drugs, beat her, & led to the ruination of half her face.
I would’ve added Heidi’s abusive ex, if he wasn’t dead.
I’m giving the Esteemed Author the benefit of the doubt, here, & trusting that he won’t pull an “Agatha Christie”-type move on us, such as springing a vengeful sibling of Heidi’s ex.
ALSO:
1)__I’d take issue with a measure of “5-to-6 FEET tall”!
That’s a size-range of (+/-)6 inches = 1 FOOT!!!?!!
That’s *HUGE*!
No matter how bad the security-camera, just have an officer of *known* height walk past the area in the same manner, & compare the two images to scale the perp’s size more accurately. I see no excuse nowadays for a size-range of more than (+/-) 2 inches, when guessing a suspect’s height, unless the camera was also destroyed in the blast, & is therefore not available for a “re-shoot”.
2)__If the image is so crappy that they need a FOOT of leeway in their height-estimate, how do they pinpoint the GENDER with such certainty…?
Final thought – if he has clearly covered his hands-&-head, why has nobody mentioned that he might be MASKED?
Now that you mention it, it COULD be Michael Myers, yes indeed.
It was Rorschach! Cleaning up the filth and immorality of a polyamorous-run business!
Alex’s ex is a good suspect, all kinds of jealousy / revenge motivation, but don’t forget
Tom, either… his favorite hang-out has been “radically feminized” (“feminized? More like fagified! – Tom”),
and his buddy Omar has abandoned him. Plastic- badge mall cops are not traditionally the most stable of individuals,
after all….
Surely a vengeful sibling of Heidi’s room-mate’s ex. Heidi’s exes contributed images of their naked arses to her web profile. Heidi’s room-mate’s ex contributed eight pints of blood to her carpet.
I remember one episode of CSI were they injected rubber into a stab wound to get a perfect recreation of the knife use. ‘Bout fell out of my chair.
I’m guessing it’s Tom.
I’m guessing you are correct.
HAHA this strip is hilarious! 😀
Oh, and: *hugs*
BTW, I think that looks a little like Walter White.
After chemo.
No, wait! It’s Slenderman!!
AAAUGHHHHH!!!
My first thought was the Dark Lord from a certain series of popular books
Ha ! It’s Kevin Bacon in his hollow man disguise…….
Looks like the ghost of Anna Nicole Smith……………………..
What about the episode with the p90’s? they could tell what kind of gun it was from the & I quote “the special machine gun ammo” that ONLY that 1 firearm fired! So in Hollywood there are no fn 5.7s or ar 57’s or …well you get my drift
Or the episode where they looked at a hole in a glass window and said “yep that’s a 9mm”
Really? She could eyeball it and tell that the hole was exactly .355″. so a 9mm para or a 380 acp or a 9×18 Makarov or a 357 sig or several other 9’s but not .356″ or .357″ for .38’s or .357 mag’s.
I mean c’mon
You can get very high megapixel security cameras which will allow you to zoom in quite a bit and still have a great picture. You also need a very good storage system with a LOT of hard drive space. One business I worked with that had this put over a half million just into the camera system. Of course, they had over a 60 million worth of stuff on the property that they were securing.
you should check out the quality of the color light enhancing cameras McDonalds uses! Next time you go through a McD’s drive thru at night, look up at the monitors inside the pay-window cubicle! Jeeez!
yep, the sec cams at the gas stations I managed had really good digital zoom in color, while the banks STILL used crappy B&W cams
The B&W cameras arguably have better night-vision capability, personally though I think they should mount color and B&W cameras in tandem, because, among other issues, B&W night vision sees black clothing as white if certain dyes were used to color it.
cough…looks like Tom to me….cough…
lets just hope Mick got rid of Omar’s marriage- license- denial fireworks!
JGrant… your strip rocks, by the way.
now I will go back to being a silent observer for another six months..lol 🙂
Looks like Homer Simpson
I knew I’d seen that perp before! It just took me a while to remember where!