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Comment Hit by lightning (Score 3, Informative) 611

by kshkval (#28750199) Attached to: Best Home Backup Strategy Now?
That's exactly what happened to us... the hit took out 2 Macs and the power bricks/adapters for nearly everything else electronic in the house. And it was a strike across the street that travelled thru the dsl line, not the well-protected outlets. I always have at least one backup NOT connected and stored off-site since then. The other awful thing that convinced me to use 3 external drives was backing up to a single drive and having a bad thing happen to both the main drive in my PowerBook and the backup at the same time. The screwup was a funky restore from backup (I'll never use Intego Personal Backup again). Yes, the stupid things happen and you'd better be ready...

Comment 3 backup drives and MobileMe (Score 1) 611

by kshkval (#28749663) Attached to: Best Home Backup Strategy Now?
I have so many drives from so many years of external data that I do 2 Time Machine backups to 2 separate drives, a 3d SuperDuper backup about every 3 months to a drive stored in a safe deposit box and I avail myself of MobileMe sync services. Like I said, I use SuperDuper for the backups to the externally stored drive. That way, if a Time Machine backup is corrupted or wonky, the pooch is not you know what. On an ad hoc basis I backup my user folder using SuperDuper to a portable firewire bus-powered drive from OWC... so, I really have 4 backups. Between MobileMe, my smtp email, my use of gmail and the panoply of manually run backups, I feel pretty safe. Why feel safe? Bc I have done backups to a single drive before and ruined the backup and the main drive simultaneously. It was my fault, but I learned to never depend on a single backup again. Yes, it takes time, but the 3 months I needed to sift through 5 years of data (I used Data Rescue II from ProSoft successfully) was a lot worse. The other 2 Macs in the house are also backed up to 3 backup drives each using the same approach.
The Military

Open Source Software In the Military 91

Posted by kdawson from the keep-it-stupid-stupid dept.
JohnMoD writes With the advent of forge.mil, etc. the military seems to be getting on board with free and open source software. A working group meeting is going to be held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, August 12-13, 2009. There's a pretty good lineup of speakers including a Marine from the Iraq-Marine Expeditionary Forces, who was on the ground and saw the agility open source gave to him and his soldiers. A number of OSS projects are going to be meeting there: Delta 3D, OpenCPI, FalconView, OSSIM, Red Hat, etc. Looks like there will be some good discussions."
Microsoft

The Hidden Costs of Microsoft's Free Office Online 174

Posted by Soulskill from the free-ain't-cheap dept.
Michael_Curator writes "Despite what you've heard, the online version of Office 2010 announced by Microsoft earlier this week won't be free to corporate users. Business customers will either have to pay a subscription fee or purchase corporate access licenses (CALs) for Office in order to be given access to the online application suite (Microsoft already does this with email — the infamous Outlook Web Access). But wait — there's more! A Microsoft spokesperson told me that customers will need to buy a SharePoint server, which ranges from $4,400 plus CALs, or $41,000 with all CALs included, if they want to share documents created using the online version of Office 2010."
Privacy

The NSA Wiretapping Story Nobody Wanted 144

Posted by Soulskill from the since-privacy-is-such-a-minor-issue dept.
CWmike writes "They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead. The cliché doesn't seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein's new book, Wiring up the Big Brother Machine ... and Fighting It. It's an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans. Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006 meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for. He spoke with Robert McMillan for an interview."
Moon

NASA's LRO Captures High-Res Pics of Apollo Landing Sites 197

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the easy-to-photograph-a-sound-stage dept.
The Bad Astronomer is one of many readers who wrote to tell us about NASA's release of high-res photos showing the Apollo landing sites. The photos were taken from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and show the traces of earlier visits to the Moon. "The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution."
Moon

NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Video, But Originals Lost 173

Posted by timothy from the next-year-comes-the-box-set-of-studio-masters dept.
leetrout writes "I attended a media briefing held by NASA at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. this morning where they released restored video of the Apollo 11 mission. The clips released are about 40% of the total footage to be restored by September by Lowry Digital in Burbank, CA. Wired has all the clips. A couple remarkable comments made during the briefing included the opinion from the original footage search committee that the original slow scan footage (stored as a single track on telemetry tapes) has been lost forever as the tapes were likely recycled by the mid '80s (apparently common NASA practice). Also, that someone from the applied physics laboratory was in Australia converting the slow scan directly to video. This differs from NASA's goal of merely broadcasting the event, at which it was successful. Unfortunately, no one knows where those tapes of approximately two hours of footage are located."
The Courts

RIAA Loses Bid To Keep Revenues Secret 229

Posted by timothy from the but-your-honor-that's-our-secret-recipe-for-money-soup dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's motion to keep secret the record companies' 1999-to-date revenues for the copyrighted song files at the heart of the case has been denied, in the Boston case scheduled for trial July 27th, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The Judge had previously ordered the plaintiff record companies to produce a summary of the 1999-to-date revenues for the recordings, broken down into physical and digital sales. On the day the summary was due to be produced, instead of producing it, they produced a 'protective order motion' asking the Judge to rule that the information would have to be kept secret. The Judge rejected that motion: 'the Court does not comprehend how disclosure would impair the Plaintiffs' competitive business prospects when three of the four biggest record labels in the world — Warner Bros. Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and UMG Recording, Inc. — are participating jointly in this lawsuit and, presumably, would have joint access to this information.'"

Comment Why Democrats always lose (Score 2, Informative) 485

by kshkval (#26874993) Attached to: New York Wants To Tax Internet Downloads
Purchases at the store counter are taxed, but this measly, nagging little in-your-face tax is going to make Governor Paterson and the NY state Democratic Party look really bad. I pay taxes once a year for most big things. Now I'll be reminded every time I spend 99 cents that New York state - and by inference, the New York state Democratic Party - has a direct connection to my wallet. Not just for the big things, but even for the niggling things. If I had to pay a Republican to come up with a more effective reinforcement of the "tax and spend" stereotype that the Democrats have tried to distance themselves from for years, i don't think I could have done better than this moronic idea. A very poorly conceived proposal from a tactical political standpoint, it highlights that fact that the Democrats may win the battle but in the end they lose the war (and I'm a NYS Democrat).

Comment NYT falls down on the technical writing again (Score 1) 690

by kshkval (#26867251) Attached to: Do We Need a New Internet?
What's really amazing is the a newspaper with the resources of the NYT allows an ignoramus like Markoff to write something so uselessly alarming and technically deficient. This is an example of the fear-mongering and the moron-level discussions of the internet that plagued us through 8 years of the Bushies. I have to admit, the general level of technical expertise of most NYTs articles is pretty low to substandard (except for Pogue).

Comment Re:Why not study America's EMR? (Score 1) 563

by kshkval (#26427451) Attached to: Obama Proposes Digital Health Records
Once CPRS is rewritten to be platform independent (otherwise known as a web-based front end), it will be useful for hospitals and just about any other location it's used in, including smaller clinics. It has worked beautifully for us for storefront clinics, for example. I have to admit that it does not have a billing module, but if it's a web-based app it can probably get one fairly quickly. And it's free.

Comment Stating the Obvious (Score 2, Interesting) 563

by kshkval (#26422265) Attached to: Obama Proposes Digital Health Records
WTF ppl? I did a Find on this thread and discovered one mention of the most ubiquitous EMR of all time... CPRS. It's the most successful and completely invisible health care tools in history, apparently. It was started back in the 80's and has been a graphic record-keeping tool since the early 90's. Why would anyone want to credit the government for anything well-done, after all? CPRS is secure, is used in major hospitals, dental offices, small corner store community centers (scales easily), is free, open-source and easily configurable. The technical support for CPRS can be done by most plain vanilla tech support shops, the clinical interface is easily learned and well-loved by clinicians and it allows a tone of other products to "hook" into it. CPRS does not give access to insurers for the most part inhibits profiling. An Information Security Officer can patrol the access and use fairly effectively. The next version of CPRS will be platform-independent and built so that users can access lab and other information, request refills, etc. CPRS is going to be ported to the web soon and has been demo'd on the Apple iPhone, Linux and Apple computers (aka, it's not a Windows only solution). Yes, it's got some rough edges and problems, but it has been on the job for nearly 2 decades... So, back to the article that was referenced... the implementation of CPRS and BCMA has proved that an EMR can be launched successfully and effectively. The tech support for CPRS was drawn from the ranks of the VAMC nursing and lab staff, none of whom (to a woman and man, as far as I'm aware) had computer applications training or degrees. A lot of the developer support has been contracted and it has worked very well. There have been a few blowouts, but CPRS is largely loved by all. The corps of very experienced trainers/developers/software specialists can be easily tapped at this point... many of the original CPRS implementation staff are now retiring and are looking for private sector employment. It's been almost 20 or more years and the experience of the VA shows that the transition CAN BE DONE... enough whining and let's get going! The amount of money to be saved is a boat load and more. And the jobs created for support staff will replace all the clerical jobs lost. I've been a clinical applications coordinator since 2003 so I should know... I did not have a day of computer training prior to starting the job. I was handed a key as my only mentoring experience... I am a nurse, and if I can do it, anyone can do it. And there are LOTS of nurses and clinicians who would jump at the chance to do something this thrilling.

Comment Why not study America's EMR? (Score 1) 563

by kshkval (#26421097) Attached to: Obama Proposes Digital Health Records
Why study Britain's EMR? The US has had a successful public sector EMR in use in major medical centers, outpatient clinics and the Indian Health Services for almost 2 decades... it's now called CPRS and the doctors and nurses I work with love it. The effort to build an EMR started in the good ol' USA in the 80's and the EMR took a graphic form in the early 90's. How do I know? I went to my local VAMC for my post-deployment physical following the Gulf War and the VA lost all of my paper records stat (hey, I had a copy). 2 years after that, the same thing could never happen again. I love my work as a Clinical Applications Coordinator and the staff really like using CPRS a lot. Study done.
Privacy

ACLU Protests Police Scanning License Plates 821

Posted by kdawson from the drift-net-fishing-expedition dept.
dustman81 writes "The ACLU is objecting to the practice of police in Springdale, Ohio using an automated license-plate scanner on patrol cars to locate stolen vehicles or those whose owners are wanted on felony warrants. The scanner can read 900 license plates an hour traveling at highway speeds. So far, the scanner has located 95 stolen cars and helped locate 111 wanted felons. The locations of the license plates scanned are tagged with GPS data. All matches are stored (with no expiration date given) and can be brought up later and cross-referenced on a map. If the plate is wanted, the times and locations of where it was scanned can be referenced. The Springdale police department hopes to begin using the system soon to locate misdemeanor suspects. This system is also in use in British Columbia."

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