[I submitted this story to slashdot 2004-07-11 22:12:38 UTC]
Some years ago, an issue of 'Whole Earth' magazine (or one of its variants) had a convincing-looking cover-photo of a flying saucer cruising low over downtown San Francisco in broad daylight. The accompanying feature article proclaimed (in so many words) that photographs can no longer be trusted as evidence of anything, because of the ease of doctoring images with verisimilitude.

Now, an article from Dartmouth college announces that it's safe to go back in the developing tray. Dartmouth Professor Hany Farid and graduate student Alin Popescu 'have developed a mathematical technique to tell the difference between a "real" image and one that's been fiddled with.' Farid says, 'as more authentication tools are developed it will become increasingly more difficult to create convincing digital forgeries.'

This is the only method I've found (so far) for other people to send me msgs from slashdot, without publicizing my email address. I haven't yet found a "PM" ("private message") function in slashdot, so your msg will be visible to others.