> Can such a device offer any proof that the resulting image (and in particular screen grabs) have not been tampered with?

I think all evidence submitted into court relies on the testimony of the individual who collected or produced the evidence. Whether or not something can theoretically be faked is less important than how trustworthy the person or persons who produced the evidence is, and the supporting coroberating evidence that backs up the claims of where and how they collected the evidence.

ie: Does he have a vested interest? Or is he a disinterested third party? Latter? Then he likely did not tamper with his video. Did he give the memory chip directly to the police at the scene? Very unlikely he tampered with it. Soon after the incident when he had a chance to burn it to a DVDR? Not likely, not unless someone can testify that he's a photoshop freak and likes lying to police and screwing with people. And again, straight back to the question of "conflict of interest or disinterested third party" and "citizen with a clean record".

> Can anybody honestly say there's anything in the US that is so uniquely spectacular

Delicate Arch in Arches National Park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicate_Arch

http://www.uilleann.org/Piperlink-Moab/Delicate-Arch-Trio.jpg

I'm Canadian and so I totally understand and sympathize with the desire to not go to the US, the world is a big place. (Although I think I'm excluded still from a lot of the shit the rest of you have to put up with)

But I've been a *lot* of spectacular places in the world, and Delicate Arch blew me away. The shape, the SIZE, the shaped ground-smooth rock and formations framing it, the bowl below it, it's isolated surrounded by canyons and hills.

Everyone in the world should see Delicate Arch.

( And while you're there, hit Canyonlands, Bryce, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, etc. Here's my trip plan in google maps (note two pages of itinerary to show the entire loop). http://goo.gl/maps/V6VfY Took us 6 days to do the full circle and we skipped San Juan National Forest. You could easily spend 12 days doing the same route. )

Yeahh... especially the gun barrels themselves, they should have stuck out like a sore thumb.

Maybe they really didn't get into the ash remains, the bottom of a fully burnt building is quite a massive pile of burned junk, maybe they just couldn't spot a "surviving box" by looking in from the edge of the basement pit where everything lies in a jumble.

But you would have thought that the fire marshal would have gone in and found the remains while he was doing his job... Maybe he didn't do his job?

Or is it possible that the fire was set to cover the theft of the weapons cabinet? Place was not occupied, thieves would have had tons of time to winch the entire 500lb cabinet into their truck and drive off.

Yes, this frequently works at making failing disks "work again" -- as the manufacturer test sequences and/or simply zeroing the drive gives the drive a chance to find and mark all the bad failed blocks as bad, and the remaining blocks are all the ones that didn't fail and so the disk keeps working for a few more years. I've used this a half dozen times at work.

Of course, this is to make a failing disk "work again", it doesn't help with recovering existing data.

The first thing I'll try with a failing disk is to setup a file by file mirroring program (robocopy is one cli program I use a lot) and set it's "retries" to a moderately high number, like 5 or 10 or 20. Even though you are getting read errors, there are a class of problems where occasionally the read will work, and so each time you try and "rsync" the disk, you get more and more of what's there, till you have a mostly complete copy of the data. This is the same method that some enthusiast utilities use (like grc's disk recovery program, iirc).

I've personally used the freezer trick once. Because of the possibility of condensation, I used the fridge first. I don't recall if I had to use the freezer, but I know I would not have left it in the freezer long (metal transfers heat fast, so it doesn't need to be deep freezed, just a bit colder than the fridge), maybe 5 minutes max, and I recall thinking that I'd end up putting it inside an anti static bag or something with an elastic closing the bag on the cables ... so that the amount of condensation would be limited, either that or run the dehumidifier and/or AC really hard first so that my apt was at low humidity. Definitely would not try it in the middle of a humid summer. Better to wait till winter and turn up your heating system and open your windows so the humidity drops really really low. That's always another option (for those of us that live far enough north), take the system into the chilly cold arid garage so the freezer trick doesn't result in lots of condensation.

Of 5 drives that were failing, 3 I recovered by "retry reads over and over", and 1 I recovered using the freezer trick.

I have one more left that I need to try a "platter swap" with an identical working model number using the "bathroom cleanroom technique". But I'm not looking forward to that, getting the platters out without scratching them on the heads is going to be a massive bitch. I think I'll practice on a few old 9GB drives before I try it with my failed 120GB drive. (I've had it sitting around for forever waiting for me to find the time to do it, I don't actually still use drives that old.)

> And here's the saddest part

Yeah. Almost all forums for discussion on the internet and in real life** have devolved to using extreme soundbites and belittling the people who hold opposing viewpoints. Doesn't matter how polite or insightful or close-knit the community starts off, once the general populace arrives, the discussions become nothing but dregs.

It's now incredibly rare to find insightful "shades of grey" discussions about the pros and cons of any given approach.***

Too many people who obstinately refuse to believe that subsidizing an industry to promote advances in it's technology is useful (and who seem blissfully unaware of the subsidies given to all of the existing competing technologies such as oil and gas).

Too many people who don't understand or have the information available about the subleties of cross border power demands (I'd like to thank the people who posted tidbits of factual information about all of that).

I personally think that Japan's shutdown of all it's nuclear plants is a zealous over-reaction -- but on the other hand some of it's plants are just as old as Fukshima, and their industry and organizations definitely can't be trusted.

I've seen people claiming that "look, all the nukes are off and nothing changed", but other people point out that Germany has gone from exporting massive amounts of power to being nearly neutral in it's energy needs. I'd expect that this means someone else who used to be using clean German nuclear energy is now buying it from .... France? Burning Russian Natural Gas? I haven't seen anyone say what the net effects in total are, everyone is cherry picking their "problem boundaries" to advance their own point of view.

On top of all that my own province has it's head firmly buried in the sand. Won't build new Nukes because they are too expensive. Can't shut down existing ones because there is *no* replacement power nor enough power lines to import electricity even if there was sufficient nearby capacity. And can't build wind as fast as needed because everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) is zealously NIMBYish about "the hidden effects of having a wind mill nearby" ... cause you know ... that low frequency noise ... etc etc etc ... ( all the while driving down highways with their windows open and running fans and AC units indoors, etc etc).

Seriously, there are people in rural areas building small houses every 500m on their property and at the four corners of their properties, because the law says that no windmill can be located within 500m of a "house".

Meanwhile in Europe: http://imgur.com/HcX87

(**) I think the way people think and hold their beliefs is bleeding over and/or being infected by their experiences on the internet

(***) Hmmm, so I kinda know what news sources not to read because it'll be sensationalized BS and soundbites "trolling us" and taken out of context and lacking entirely in subtle details and shades of grey. Is there any forum out there that is similar? Where people that fall for the "trolls" or are incapable of discussing shades of grey politely and using facts - are banned, and the rest of us can sort out what's what? A place that's not entirely one side of the argument or the other? Not nuclear phobes and not anti-greenies? It's not slashdot. It's not reddit.

> If it was an engine going out, then they could have just
> shut it down and flew home on the remaining engine

It's not so simple at takeoff and landing, any time you are below or near low speeds and at low altitudes things get very very complicated.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2000.878212
http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-58841.html

In summary - in theory you can always save the day. In reality -- one mistake, and you're going down hard.

> So he picked a fight

Wait, did Zimmerman start the fight? I mean the actual fight, not anything before it.

If starting a verbal argument means someone else is allowed to beat you up, or if starting a verbal argument means you give up the right to defend yourself from an attacker, the rest of us want to know.

No argument from me that starting a verbal confrontation is dangerous. But following someone and even talking to them, even in an unfriendly way -- does not justify the other person beating you up.

> he had no right to confront him

Where in statutory or case law does it say this? I'm not allowed to talk to a prowler?

> and when he started to lose, he shot the kid.

and after he was setup on and when he was being beaten and his head smashed repeatedly into the ground and began to fear for his life, he shot his assailant.

Funny how that sounds so different depending on how it's worded.

ps: I'm Canadian and I love our gun laws -- if you can't convince me to convict Zimmerman, you're doing something wrong.

Sorry? Why is it such a big deal if it's not CNN or BBC or trolltech?

This is an excellent issue in general - and it's the first article I've seen on Slashdot or Reddit about it. More young people need to be told not to bend over and take it.

I have a friend who's in University, he was "lined up" for a paid position at the University for the summer under the Dean of his college, but then was told for weeks on end as the time came and passed that things were "still being arranged". Finally 6 weeks into summer -- oops, position isn't available ... UNLESS he is willing to work as an unpaid intern.

I'm impressed he told them to gtfo.

I imagine part of the reason he did that was because he was so pissed that they had wasted his time to the point where it was now too late to get a paying summer job in his field. (There are no such positions available half-way through the summer.)

> Some of that zone has been exposed to radioactive materials, but they all appear to be things with short half lives, so they'll quickly decay back to normal background radiation levels

Oooh - can you throw a reference or two my way? I was just discussing that with friends the other day, but none of us had heard of or knew if they'd even properly measured yet what the actual distribution of radionuclides is in the evacuation zone.

ie: if they've measured it, and assuming that there is no further significant release (gotta start somewhere), given what the distribution of radionuclides is, what is the expected radiation level vs time curve going forward at various points in the zone? How much of the zone could be repopulated permanently as soon as the plant is in a totally contained state? In 2 years? In 10?

This was re-debunked on reddit yesterday.
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/f71tv/that_post_about_how_80_of_aols_revenue_comes_from

Of course, given any non-negligible absolute number of people who are in this situation it behooves us as techies to get their stuff straightened out so they're not paying for something they don't need. So what's the real problem? That these x00,000 people don't have a closer family member who is a techie?

Maybe we need to start sticking our noses into the business of anyone we know that sends e-mail from an aol address? In as friendly a way as possible, of course.

Lie. Tell him it's a wonderful idea. Wait for everyone else to quit. Make sure you fake working from home 7-11 so it's theoretically possible they think you're actually working from home. Dazzle them with technical explanations as to why implementing the features are taking so much effort. You'll be last man standing, still being paid, but not working hard.

Then ask for a raise.

He's asking for permission to fuck you.

Fuck him.

You know what does suffer aggregiously at the hands of people who can't type and/or have to hunt and peck?

Documentation, Bug Reports, and Design Documents, everything important that isn't code. You find a person that types and you find complete thorough paragraphs of text. Hunt and peckers no matter how quickly they can peck - brief one liners that leave out 95% of the important details.

I think that says more about how many people are reading slashdot. Most of the stories here now have a paltry handful of comments, and what comments there are ... are trollish spew in nature. Very very few intelligent discussions here. This is the first time I've posted a comment here in ... a LONG time.

I think reddit has finally killed slashdot.

The Romans killed one third of all Frenchmen. LITERALLY enslaved another third. And left the final third grovelling for mercy in a destroyed country.

After destroying tyrannical governments (ones that murdered their citizens openly and wantonly with disregard for any defensible "justice") -- the Americans said "form a government that allows all your citizens to openly participate" -- and then stick around trying to make sure a genocide doesn't break out between the squabbling factions.

1. Bottle helium
2. ...
3. Profit

FUCK YEAH.