JPEGs are a lossy format. End of story. You cannot get away from the fact that once an image is saved as a JPEG, it loses picture quality.

You may be able to create a RAW from a JPEG, but so what, if you have the time and skill to digitally paint the minute details that have been lost by the conversion to and from JPEG back into the resulting RAW, you might as well have spent the effort designing something of your own!!

The difference between an original image saved as a RAW or a bitmap and one saved as a JPEG is visible to the naked eye... A really good JPEG might look pretty convincing, but not after you exaggerate the effects by further compressing both images in a back-to-back comparison...

I was gonna build something like this with some statistical stuff too... Only for computer games. But I worked out it was too expensive, and too dangerous. Looks like Honda beat me and my fantasy hobby project to it. Lol! ;P

How about THIS!...

http://www.bobblebrook.com/games/coign-of-vantage

Think: randomly generate a string of letters, render it to a low pixel graphic, then randomly position the pixels in 3D space so that they can only be read from one angle and rotate randomly. Get the user to solve it and then fill in the answer as usual.

Easy and quick to solve for a human, (easier than the game on that page because the user would not need to be so precise to simply read the letters) but I would imagine a machine would have a tough time solving this and reading the letters correctly, provided the pixels were the same color (hence no color palette matching) and the algorithm used to position the pixels was at least pseudo-random within a given set of constraints.

Sending the 3D scene to the client also would make no difference provided the rotation of the letters to the global axis was random enough that a machine could not know where in the scene to position the camera to get the best result.

We already do it like this in python, the only difference being you have to explicitly pickle an object each time you want to save it's state. Now if the OS can do it all for me, and do it well, then I'm all for it. But the problem is, it's obviously going to be using some automatic system which I have no control over. Whereas if I program that system myself, I get to choose when and where it saves! This to me, seems more useful than forcing every program to let the OS manage it. Maybe I am wrong?

I think it's a very good concept that should be explored further. But at the end of the day, people never move on to a better version of something unless there's a good reason to do so. And programmers, to be frank, don't care that they have to save files and such, it's only the users that are bothered about that.

And one other thing that bothers me - some code needs to be fast... And being fast means throwing pointers around very quickly. And sometimes that requires treating them like integers. (say for a fast and simple binary tree where you do some pointer magic to find each node without it being explicitly referenced) This is stated as being impossible - so Phantom OS can preserve security between applications. This means that it will require extra layers in between to basically reimplement some 'virtual pointer' functionality that Phantom OS disposes of with it's 'pointers'. That will make life complicated, and slow down programs that need something along these lines. When I'm raytracing, I want it to build the octrees in seconds, not in days.

Sorry about the spelling mistakes. English was never my strong point, even though I AM English! :P Needless to say, I've never really felt the urge to speak any other languages on top of that!

I think you are somewhat right about the breed of people that program for windows. But what I have also noticed, is that when 'free' (as in beer) software or shareware on windows does exist, it also tends to lack any real community and is often maintained by no more than one guy. Thus the quality of such software is generally poor. Quite a lot of these small projects grow into much larger projects over time, and by that time, it's too late.

Generally, if you start with a small piece of software that's full of hacks and bad coding practices, you end up with a big piece of software that's full of hacks and bad coding practices. Not always, but these are exceptions - usually due to various parts of the software having been recoded until there's no old code left even. The thing is, the same applies to Windows - some of the stuff in Windows' core has been around for years and is complete rubbish. One of those things is the registry.

I don't think Microsoft should break backwards compatibility, but I'm sure they could come up with a plan to drop the registry somehow if they sat down and thought about it for a while. The two problems are: maintaining full backwards compatibility, and getting new programs to use the new system instead. The first obviously rests on the OS, the second on the developers programming for it. The real question is: how do you push these developers in the right direction without giving yourself a bad name?

They could easily implement a new system with a wrapper for backwards compatibility. And if they don't want any system at all that the OS has to manage then they could take a leaf out of the book of the guys behind every other API that's ever been rewritten or dropped - depreciate the system and tell the developers to do it differently! They could force programs compiled to run on the latest version of windows to use a different system and keep the old system more or less intact but depreciated until no programs really use it anymore. That just seems like plain common sense.

Probably the real reason for not removing the registry is because of their deals with companies that don't want it removed. (e.g. companies that make money out of people's computers playing up because of registry errors) I don't personally know who Microsoft's business partners are, but knowing Microsoft, there are strings being pulled under the table somewhere.

Then there'd probably be the pain of having to rewrite the kernel to allow hacking it in some other way.

Not so. People program games for windows only because DirectX is far superior to OpenGL. And because gamers already run windows, and gamers end up being the ones who program games. (although I would say that any really serious games programmer would much rather program for consoles) The backbone of the Linux OS is far superior in design, but windows is way more idiot friendly. Unless Linux becomes suitable for idiots, then it will never take over from windows. In my opinion, I'm a whole lot happier with it as it is. Every attempt at making parts of it idiot proof in the past have ended up making some simple task 100 times more complicated, which is something technically savvy people like me find incredibly annoying. That's why we use Linux in the first place.

Almost every problem I've ever had running Linux which has taken me a lot of time to sort out has been caused by some bug or complication introduced while trying to make it more user friendly.

Lets just face it though, a lot of users running windows only have half an idea of what a virus even is. Most people I've had to sort out problems for running windows have had multiple trojans and pieces of malware running on their PCs and don't even seem to notice them let alone care! And the windows registry is one of the worst designed pieces of slime ever invented by mankind. I hope Microsoft decide to ditch it.

Hmm - I might think about that one actually. I'm a self taught guy, so that would be the second option, but I have pretty much everything you mentioned except the qualifications.

I'd never even thought of it until I read your post!

Do you think anybody would employ me? Would I need some sort of programming portfolio? I am very into VFX, and shader writing is something I'm would be very interested in persuing - I have read many papers on it, I understand the methods involved and am currently trying to get my head round all the implementation, but I'm sure I could be the next Jim Blinn one day if I had the opportunity. I also understand the various forms of simulation used in the VFX industry. Would it be worth my while spending the next month writing shaders to prove my skills to a potential employer or should I try and get into the industry another way and work my way there?

The only other career path I am considering is computer games design. I could write a demo game with shaders included perhaps, then I might get offers from both games companies and the VFX industry. What about a demo game with amazing GLSL shaders, brilliant animation, lots of special effects, particles systems, and fluid simulation? Obviously that might be showing off somewhat and might take more than a single month, but I think I could do it. I'm getting desperate for a job, especially one I would enjoy! :/

Either way, I'm a genuinely interested guy, I'm only 18, and if I chose that as a career option, I might well have a lot ahead of me!

Does anyone know of any good companies I could try here in the UK? I currently live near Brighton on the south coast but would be happy to move north.

The slight snag is that I come from the UK, and I really don't want to move to America! :/

It's sound advice. But I would say, "if you really want to work", it's less that "something is strange about you" and more that you use work as a means of escape from everyday life, so not strange, but the wrong way round yes!... That's the reason most people who work hard give. They live very stressful lives at home, and would rather be working where they can relax doing the same mundane, boring, repetitive task - where they can think straight! But that's not the way it's meant to be! If you have a problem thinking straight at home, you need to be more laid back...

Well I'm a Christian, so for me, that cost has already been paid...