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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What to do after digitizing VHS tapes? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Now that I've spent close to a month digitizing a desk drawer's worth of VHS tapes, deinterlacing and postprocessing the originals to minimize years of tape decay, and compressing everything down to H.264, I've found myself with a hard drive full of loosely organized videos. They'll get picked up by my existing monthly backup, but I feel like I haven't gained much in the way of redundancy, as I thought I would. Instead of having tapes slowly degrade, I'm now open to losing entire movies at once, should both of my drives go bad. Does anyone maintain a library, and if so, what would they recommend? Is having them duplicated on two drives (one of which is spun down for all but one day of the month) a good-enough long term strategy? Should I look into additionally backing up to optical discs or flash drives, building out a better (RAIDed) backup machine, or even keeping the original tapes around despite them having been digitized?

Submission + - Extent of Antarctic sea ice reaches record levels (abc.net.au)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Scientists have declared a new record has been set for the extent of Antarctic sea ice since records began. Satellite imagery reveals an area of about 20 million square kilometers covered by sea ice around the Antarctic continent. Jan Lieser from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) said the discovery was made two days ago.

"Thirty-five years ago the first satellites went up which were reliably telling us what area, two dimensional area, of sea ice was covered and we've never seen that before, that much area.

Submission + - Treasure Map: NSA, GCHQ work on real-time 'Google Earth' internet observation (spiegel.de) 1

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: from Der Spiegel:
According to top-secret documents from the NSA and the British agency GCHQ, the intelligence agencies are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom.

The document that Der Spiegel has seen shows a map with the name 'Treasure Map'. On the map are the names of Deutsche Telekom and NetCologne and their networks highlighted in red, where the legend says that within the networks 'access points' exist for 'technical observation'.

Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.

Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world — every smartphone, tablet and computer — is to be made visible. Such a map doesn't just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.

The breathtaking mission is described in a Treasure Map presentation from the documents of the former intelligence service employee Edward Snowden which SPIEGEL has seen. It instructs analysts to "map the entire Internet — Any device, anywhere, all the time."

Treasure Map allows for the creation of an "interactive map of the global Internet" in "near real-time," the document notes. Employees of the so-called "FiveEyes" intelligence agencies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which cooperate closely with the American agency NSA, can install and use the program on their own computers. One can imagine it as a kind of Google Earth for global data traffic, a bird's eye view of the planet's digital arteries.

The New York Times reported on the existence of Treasure Map last November. What it means for Germany can be seen in additional material in the Snowden archive that SPIEGEL has examined.

Comment Re:What are the bounds of property? (Score -1, Troll) 166

by Aldenissin (#47899655) Attached to: Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World

Well, how does it smell, since you've obviously got it on you? I'd advise you in the future to ask someone for evidence first, especially if you are going to make demands after you've just insulted them via their speech. For example, a better way, "It smells like BS to me, would you please supply some evidence and additional information?

Now, would you please refer to sections B. and C below? To answer your question, you must angle the camera's down so that they record only up to the top of the fence or to the property line.Private property has an expectation of privacy in Georgia.

(B) For an owner or occupier of real property to use for security purposes, crime prevention, or crime detection any device to observe, photograph, or record the activities of persons who are on the property or an approach thereto in areas where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy; or

  (C) To use for security purposes, crime prevention, or crime detection any device to observe, photograph, or record the activities of persons who are within the curtilage (fenced yard) of the residence of the person using such device. A photograph, videotape, or record made in accordance with this subparagraph, or a copy thereof, may be disclosed by such resident to the district attorney or a law enforcement officer and shall be admissible in a judicial proceeding, without the consent of any person observed, photographed, or recorded
http://www.ehow.com/info_83762...

Submission + - Despite Obama's Pledge to Curb It, NSA Mass Surveillance Wins Rubber Stamp (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the Justice Department's request for another 90-day extension of the National Security Agency's controversial mass surveillance program, exposed publicly last summer by Edward Snowden and authorized under Section 215 of the post-9/11 Patriot Act. The spying authority is next set to expire on Dec. 5.

The extension marks the third of its kind since President Obama pledged in January to reform how the NSA spies on Americans during a major policy speech delivered amid withering scrutiny of the nation's intelligence-gathering practices.

Submission + - US Patent Office seeking consultant that can stamp-out fraud by patent examiners (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: A month after Slashdot reported Every Day Is Goof-Off-At-Work Day At the US Patent and Trademark Office (http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/08/11/1519201/every-day-is-goof-off-at-work-day-at-the-us-patent-and-trademark-office), the USPTO issued a statement that it is “committed to taking any measures necessary” to stop employees who review patents from lying about their hours and getting overtime pay and bonuses for work they didn’t do. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/09/13/patent-office-to-hire-outside-consultant-to-review-telework-program/)

USPTO officials also told congressional investigators that they are seeking an outside consulting firm to advise them on how managers can improve their monitoring of more than 8,000 patent examiners.

The Patent Examiners union responded to the original Washington Post report with a statement (http://popa.org/2523/) that includes these lines:

To claim that the USPTO has “thousands” of examiners not doing their work is simply ridiculous on its face. It represents poor journalistic rigor on the part of a well-respected newspaper like the Washington Post. If “thousands” of USPTO employees were not doing their work, it would be impossible for this agency to be producing the best performance in recent memory and, perhaps, in its entire 224 year history.

In related news, USPTO Commissioner Deborah Cohn (http://www.uspto.gov/about/bios/cohn_bio.jsp) has announced plans to resign just months after a watchdog agency revealed that she had pressured staffers to hire the live-in boyfriend of an immediate family member over other, better-qualified applicants. (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/8/patent-office-head-step-down-amid-nepotism-charge/) An agency spokesman declined to say whether Cohn's decision to resign was tied to the nepotism probe. The live-in-boyfriend was among more than 700 people applying for the job, but he failed to qualify as one of the 250 candidates to advance to the first round of screening. When he finished 75th out of 76 applicants in the final round of screening, Cohn "intervened and created an additional position specifically for the applicant," wrote Inspector General Todd Zinser in a statement on the matter.

Comment Re:Hmm... (Score -1, Troll) 166

by Aldenissin (#47898033) Attached to: Justice Sotomayor Warns Against Tech-Enabled "Orwellian" World

Government workers are special people. But rejoice, dearheart, for you are a first class citizen! You have the right to remain silent, and anything you say or do WILL be used against you in the court of law. It's the second class and above that the first class has elected to handle such "dangerous" things. This is for umm, 'your" safety, yea that's it, "your" safety. (Phew almost didn't dig my way out of that one, that's why I'm a leader!)

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