Google to Digitize National Archives Footage 273
Anil Kandangath writes "Google today announced their pilot program to digitize the entire video content of the National Archives and make it globally accessible for free on Google Video. The history of the world should be universally accessible and this is definitely a great step towards making sure that our history is not lost, and that everyone has equal and easy access towards such information. Google has provided some sample videos from the National Archives, such as the 1969 moon landing."
One (Score:4, Funny)
Re:One (Score:2, Insightful)
"One small step for a Google, one giant leap for google kind."
Get your facts straight before coming to
YAY! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a start (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a start (Score:2, Informative)
Re:YAY! (Score:5, Funny)
The 1969 moon landing will be archived along with other gems of human history, such as "Poop Today" [google.com] and "My ex-girlfriend shows her pussy" [google.com]. Frankly, kudos to Google! I can't wait.
Re:YAY! (Score:2)
Re:YAY! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:YAY! (Score:2)
Where? I haven't used Google Video very much and I can't seem to find that option.
Re:YAY! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:YAY! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:YAY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just..wow. What would make you not complain?
They're giving you something quite nice for free and you still spit on it!
AND it got modded insightful!
Re:YAY! (Score:2)
This is astonishingly cool news... I can sit here, in Auckland, New Zealand, and trawl (not troll) through archive footage going back to Sir Thomas Lipton sailing in one of the first America's Cup yachting regattas.
Come on, people. Are we so jaded that this isn't taken for what it is? It's fantastic news. Gone are the days of history text books that don't mention the Korean War, let alone anything more recent. Gone are the maths texts that have been scribbled on/chewe
Re:YAY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yay us. But all this information in the world is useless unless we put it to good use.
I have a friend who is extremely proud of the mega tool collection he has in his garage. He could do so much with it, like fix cars for extra cash, or maybe build an electronic gizmo with instructions found on the Internet. But he doesn't, so to him those tools are worthless.
Our collective information is great, now we just need to do something with it!
Re:YAY! (Score:3, Interesting)
Things like flying to the moon? Sending robots to another planet and then controling them via invisible forces that we have mastered and harnassed to do our bidding. Perhaps you were thinking more like capturing the forces behind the flashes of light in the sky, storing their power, and then harnessing that to send devices floating around our planet so that they can map and pinpoint every position on it within a few centimeters?
Valid question... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I'd like to ask a related question. Are Google also providing the national archives with their OWN copy, in an open format, which they are free to use as they see fit? I know that's part of what the Libraries involved in Google Scholar/Books have been offered, and that's the only reason I think they should participate. It's all well and good that Google makes this stuff available online for free, but the stuff belongs to us all, and its digitisation shouldn't be restricted to google.com, or any other
presentation format versus archive format (Score:3, Informative)
Fedora (Score:3, Funny)
Low Res Yes, But Crappy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to break this to you, but for most of the history of "movies" it's all been pretty low-res. I watched those shots form the moon live in 1969, and it didn't look any better than what I just called called up on my extremely hi-res monitor. The main difference being that in 1969 my college student budget extended to a black and white tube set from the Salvation Army Trift Store. We're talking about an analog video squirt from the moon at a time when I was doing college physics and chemistry with a slide rule and calculus with a pencil.
These images are extremely important, and having them freely available is priceless. Rading about history is not the same as seeing the people involved. Seeing Churchill give a speech is far better than reading it. Seeing Nixon's Checkers speech is priceless.
Re:YAY! (Score:2)
I want Zapruder! (Score:2)
Or maybe it's just that their natural secretiveness will extend to this.
But I betcha we don't get the Zapruder movie.
Re:I want Zapruder! (Score:2)
What? No, no, no, Cuba Killed Kennedy [theconservativevoice.com] and we're liberating it when Iraq is done, now that we have evidence.
Please try to keep your conspiracies straight!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I want Zapruder! (Score:2)
Not any more. DHS was afraid that terrorists would break in and take the body hostage, so they secretly removed his body and buried it in an ostensibly unnamed grave. If terrorists manage to break in, authorities will just dig up the real body and 'find it' nearby -- claiming that the thieves were scared off and had to leave it behind.
And now, having told you, I'll have to hunt you down and kill you.
Moon Landing? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Moon Landing? (Score:2)
Like archive.org... (Score:4, Interesting)
Archive.org could use their support too...their site performance is usually sluggish, though they already have some biggies sponsoring them, including HP, NSF and the LOC.
Re:Like archive.org... (Score:2, Funny)
Archive.org did try selling its archive operations to google once, but google refused, pointing out that it already has the entirety of archive.org in the googlecache.
Re:Like archive.org... (Score:2)
Rick Prelinger's archive was donated to the Library of Congress in 2002. They may have asked google to help host this, but as usual google doesn't care about anything they can't get tons of press from, so hosting something that has been around for a while doesn't suit their needs.
Re:Like archive.org... (Score:2)
This is sort of thing that slashdotters take a gospel. If it is a joke, good one.
this is how it starts... (Score:2, Funny)
It all started as an innocent attempt to record and catalog everything in the universe.. but the brains decided they had to destroy the universe right after it finished recording the last bit of data, so things would stop happening and new data would not have to be recorded.
History of the World? (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell is the US national archives the "history of the world"?
It's exactly what it says it is - the "US National Archives" - i.e. the US version of video recorded history, given whatever slant the news networks of the day were putting on things.
I'm not anti-American (I have American family), but I WISH the US would remember that they are ONE country in a VERY big world.
I wouldn't go so far (Score:5, Informative)
Hey buddy, I'M an American... (Score:2, Interesting)
You should live here, it is unbelievable. One guy falls from a building in Chicago and it gets three minutes of the evening news. A mudslide in another country kills thousands and it only gets a few seconds.
Some other country may as well equal some other planet to most of my neighbors.
Re:History of the World? (Score:2)
The sun never sets on the American Empire...
Re:History of the World? (Score:2)
To put it in Slashdot terms, it's like saying "It'd be great if Microsoft released all of their source code. Releasing Windows XP's source code is a good start". Sure Windows XP isn't the only product Microsoft makes but it's still a piece of the puzzle.
Re:History of the World? (Score:2, Interesting)
One thing to remember is that this "coloring" of history has happened since the beginnings of recorded history, no matter which culture/nation espouses it.
To counteract this, we should embrace ALL information available about whichever subject is "on topic"- the more info availabl, the better our chances to find the "truth".
It reminds me of what my maternal grandfather used to try and pound th
Good News (Score:2)
Could be good..but... (Score:2)
Troll (Score:2)
And you're basing this on what? Google seemed to have no difficulty standing up to the US government when it requested information from them. There are probably a lot of things you could criticize Google for, but a lack of willingness to stand up to the US government in defense of their legal rights has so far not been one of them.
Re:Troll (Score:2)
Re:Could be good..but... (Score:2)
And you would be right.
( 1 - 10 of about 1,830,000 for google censor china)
Free for *download* would be good for this content (Score:2)
I do like the fact that Google is digitizing this footage, though IMHO the government spending money on doing that and providing the end result to the public would be a much, much better way to spend our tax dollars than several other much more expensive
Who pays the piper, calls the tune (Score:2)
There's not a lot of political will for the government to digitize all this stuff on its own (at which point we might even insist that it be digitized in a proper free format...!). Google's offered to do the heavy lifting, NARA have offered to provide the material (which is public domain anyway).
If it really bothers you that you can't have 'em for download, well...you can pay for the digitization, too.
Re:Free for *download* would be good for this cont (Score:2)
Re:Free for *download* would be good for this cont (Score:2)
Re:Free for *download* would be good for this cont (Score:2)
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2)
no fair! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:no fair! (Score:3, Funny)
And yes, I invented electricity.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Shareholders Or Visionaries? (Score:2)
"A tobacco company once gave $125,000 worth of food to a charity, according to an estimate by The Wall Street Journal. Then they spent well over $21 million telling people about it. I guess, when you sell a deadly, addictive product, you need all the good PR you can get."
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Shareholders Or Visionaries? (Score:2)
Yes.
Visionary profiteers is what the US was built on. Google just joins a very long list of them. Have a vision, bring it to the masses, make a pile of money. That is as American of a mentality as you can get.
Re:Shareholders Or Visionaries? (Score:2)
Overlooking the fact that forcing the definition to be one or the other IS an oversimplification, I would have to say that Google is the profiteer, but not in the traditional sense of the word.
Google will certainly be making money off of this archive, in the form of AdWords revenue, but, in contrast with Ben Franklin's social library, it will cost the end user nothing. It's as if a library were funded not by taxes, but by local
Re:Shareholders Or Visionaries? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shareholders Or Visionaries? (Score:2)
The internet is a great big public library to a point. Maybe there should be some online libraries like nyc.publiclibrary.com where you can browse through what they have in their digital library. Each having different sets of books but ultimately being searchable through publiclibrary.com/.org so you c
National Archives (Score:5, Insightful)
How about productions by PBS and NPR? Where are their digital archives?
Re:National Archives (Score:2)
Besides, do you really want a (partially) government-funded entity managing the storage and presentation of its own history?
Re:National Archives (Score:2)
Re:National Archives (Score:4, Insightful)
Jails (quite a number of them) can, and usually are, be privately run. Just like in the IT world were services are outsourced. I'm sure Google is charging someone for this, it just better not be the public, atleast not directly.
just my 2cents.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:National Archives (Score:2)
They would need their funding beefed up and let's face it, Google is flush with cash and already has the technical resources. Mind you, I'm not necessarily in favor of a publically-traded corporation having unfettered access to the materials therein, but if it allows the public access to a treasure trove of historical information, I'm all for it.
How about productions by PBS and NPR? Where
Re:National Archives (Score:2)
because if it was in the hand of the public, they'll either be reimbursed through taxes (higher taxes for everyone) or charge a service fee if you want to use it.
Re:National Archives (Score:2, Informative)
And when the documents become "reclassified?" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And when the documents become "reclassified?" (Score:2)
lessons in codec aging (Score:2)
>this is definitely a great step towards making sure that our history is not lost
possibly.. it could also be a lesson in data formats if the material is as volumnous as i think it is.. i've got a 10 year old cd of some dragonball z fansubs in some old divx(3.11aplha?) w/ a hacked audio codec.. it's tough to play those anymore.. silly extreme example, but for a more serious one, look at old software and the need for emulation.
if i were trying to sell a video codec, i would be begging for google to use min
Making it available globally (Score:2)
But the million dollar question is... (Score:2)
Re:But the million dollar question is... (Score:2)
The net's killer app -- now come on, BBC! (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's my favourite line from that page:
You can't get less evil than that.
From the BBC's announcement in August 2003:
Re:The net's killer app -- now come on, BBC! (Score:2)
I disagree. The "web" has no mission whatsoever. It is anarchy, glorious anarchy. Do what you will.
Maybe it's time for ... "Gnuugle"? (Score:2)
The name "Gnuugle" sort of conveys the idea: a distributed-index commons, if you will. Of course, others are possible -- maybe "Woogle"?
great firewall (Score:2)
Moon landing unedited (Score:2)
Great! (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry, but we've decided to classify that (Score:2)
Is Google-Hi-Res available? (Score:2)
better to do the Lib of Congress (Score:2)
No one will risk being sent to gitmo for copyright by republish
Re:Outtakes (Score:2)
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
This project seems to fit right in.
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
The PE ratio comes from the dividing the current stock price by the earnings per share (ammount of profit per share). So if they were as massively profitable as you say the PE ratio should be significantly lower. They are not massively profitable compared to their stock price, they have a internet bubble PE ratio and have to have *massive* continued growth to sustain this; growth more massive than they have had over the
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
That's quite a few people clicking.
Re:where's the beef? (Score:2)
Re:Censorship? (Score:5, Funny)
You've been browsing through the Clinton years haven't you?
Re:China too? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right... (Score:2)
Re:No. (Score:2)
Here's the link to the AVI of the moon landing link in the summary
http://video.google.com/videogvp/TheEagleHasLande
Re:No. (Score:2)
Re:Future of Google (Score:2)