[fitsbits] We're in the wrong industry...

[Rob Seaman]

In preparation for the (proposed) ADASS XIX BoF (Pence, White, Gaudet  
& Seaman), "Astronomical Data Compression: Algorithms &  
Architectures", I've been poking around in some peculiar corners of  
image formats.  One interesting case is OpenEXR from Industrial Light  
& Magic:

	http://www.openexr.com

This is a F/OSS format and software package that supports high dynamic  
range computer imaging for the movie industry, principally through 16- 
bit floats.  Scanning down through their announcements we come to:

> January 4, 2007 - OpenEXR wins an Academy Award for Technical  
> Achievement.
>
> The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the  
> 15 winners of Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. A Technical  
> Achievement Award goes to Florian Kainz for the design and  
> engineering of OpenEXR, a software package implementing 16-bit,  
> floating-point, high dynamic range image files. Widely adopted,  
> OpenEXR is engineered to meet the requirements of the visual effects  
> industry by providing for lossless and lossy compression of tiered  
> and tiled images.

This is like FITS, CFITSIO and tile compression winning an Oscar 
(tm)  :-)

Rob