Data Recovered From DVD Leads To Conviction, 24-Year Sentence 231
Lucas123 writes "The Santa Cruz, Calif. DA's office had been counting on a DVD with the recorded testimony of a victim in case against a serial rapist, but when they popped the video into the player, nothing came up — the disc was blank. To make matters worse, the cop who performed the original interview with the victim told the DA she never said she was 'forced,' so the judge wasn't going to allow the witness to testify in a case where her original statement to police was in conflict with her current testimony. After two local data recovery firms said there was no way to restore the data, a third was able to recover the police interview from two years earlier, which led the defendant to plead guilty earlier this month. Close call."
eep (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardware: Recovered Data From a Corrupt DVD Leads To Conviction, 24-Year Sentence
Why did my mind instantly jump to the conclusion that some data recovery tech worker did someone a favor, got sued by the MPAA, and got a 24-year sentence...
Re:eep (Score:4, Interesting)
i was thinking in the same direction too. but when i read this part of the summary:
my immediate question was, "did they try a PAL player?"
what's interesting to me is that two "data recovery firms" told them that the data was unrecoverable, but Seagate Recovery Service was able to recover the data without a problem. that makes me wonder if the earlier data recovery firms even tried to diagnose the problem or if they even knew anything about digital media & data storage. perhaps they thought that just by buying some digital forensics or data recovery software that automatically qualifies them to run a data recovery service. though i'm guessing that's what most police departments do as well.
i guess that's the problem with buying off the shelf software to do your job rather than learning how things work for yourself.
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my immediate question was, "did they try a PAL player?"
I seriously doubt that a police department in Santa Cruz would have recorded it on a PAL device or have a PAL DVD player available.
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It sounds like the TOC was corrupted, in which case you could still get the data pretty easy by doing something along the lines of cat
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i know. i read the article.
the PAL remark was a joke.
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"It was a joke" is not clear from the original post. Too bad smileys are now trademarked, else you could have used one to indicate it was just humor.
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Too bad smileys are now trademarked, else you could have used one to indicate it was just humor.
Only some smileys have been trademarked so far, leaving you with a range of permissible emotions to choose from. You could, for example, have indicated that the post was =:+}====_-_- ("shocking and powerful enough to have stunned me for long enough to grow a knee-length beard while giving me a hairstyle the wife would disapprove of"). This emotion is available for use until midnight tonight when my patent application for it lands on the desk of Vanuatu's Patent Office.
(This message contains humour referenc
Re:eep (Score:4, Informative)
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I concur. Why not just use analog videotape? I have tapes that are 30 years old and although there's some deterioration you can still see/hear the original movie.
Self-erasing DVDs and CDs are just too unreliable for important storage of irreplaceable things (convict testimonies, family memories, wedding video). This is why I still use Super VHS-C for my captures - it's robust and captures an image better than DVD (no compression).
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You can always print your photos out.
Besides, everyone knows that optical media is not suitable as an archival medium. (CD rot.. decay.. we've been hearing about those for years)
In my opinion, The most cost effective/reliable solution for a home user, is buying HDD and using them in some raid configuration, replacing them as they fail once every few years.
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If you seriously believe that, then all I can say is that you've been remarkably lucky. I've seen VHS tapes, only about 10 years old, where the soundtrack was so distorted that it was nearly impossible to make out.
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There's no such thing as media that is near failure proof. That's one of the great benefits of digital media - you can make identical backups before it fails.
Now, why the Santa Cruz DA's office doesn't have some sort of process to keep backups of data and migrate it onto newer media as technology progresses while still retaining proof that it's identical to what was originally recorded (so as to make sure it will stand in a court of law) is another issue altogether - and probably one worth considering seei
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Super VHS looks just as "quality" as any DVD.... I will even go so far as to say "better quality" since S-VHS doesn't have annoying compression blur, blocking, or mosquitos.
I bought one of those fancy "digital" HDD cameras and almost immediately returned it, since the quality was actually worse than my old S-VHS camera.
Re:eep (Score:4, Insightful)
Cops and other institutions are not going to copy their stored DVDs every year. They want something that they can "record once, throw in a box, and forget it". The analog tape fits that role perfectly because even though it might have some magnetic loss, it will still be watchable when Cold Case digs it out of the box in year 2030. ;-)
Re:eep (Score:4, Interesting)
it's interesting that you brought that up. from my personal experience, most brand name NTSC players sold in the U.S. don't support PAL, but most PAL players sold in, say Taiwan, do support NTSC.
also, cheapo $20 DVD players are more likely to support both NTSC and PAL, as well as DivX/MPEG-4 video, etc. than the expensive $100~200 players. they're usually off-brand players, but you can also find these cheap players by major companies like Panasonic or Sony, though you'll have to enter a code to unlock the player.
Actually I thought... (Score:2, Funny)
Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Interesting)
"Our analysis showed there to be damage to the lead-in section of the data," Keith Gnagey, vice president of professional services for i365, said in an e-mail statement about the recovery effort. That meant any attempt "with normal playing software would not be able to get past the beginning of the data."
That's like the directory tree being messed up but the data being intact.
I can't believe the other "two local data recovery firms" got stumped by this simple problem.
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Maybe they are more into "recovery" than "troubleshooting."
Which just confirms my fear that they can't recovery shit in serious situation but just the normal stuff. I've been thinking if there was any idea to turn in my sisters laptop HDD (crash after laptop drop onto table) or not, but I guess not in most cases. Also it cost a fortune anyway.
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Years ago I sent a hard drive into OnTrack that had been soaked in coffee by the owner of a company (spilled coffee in a Thinkpad laptop, the Thinkpad kept running like a champ, the drive died shortly thereafter). $1500 and 2 days later, we had DVDs with the content of the drive.
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I suspect the replaced the logic board / moved the plates to another drive?
The problem is that I have no idea if the heads has slapped into the discs or something such, damage on the electronics would seem salvageable, damage on the actual disks less so =P
Also while she would probably want them back $1500 for 2 weeks of New Zeeland photos of which she still have some on a cd and some on paper + various other images for a half years worth or something such may be to much.
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For personal stuff like that, I'd write it off and tell her to make backups in the future. MozyHome is $4.95/month for unlimited backups. A small price to pay.
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Check out jungle disk, it is potentially cheaper
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Or just clone your data across two drives (your c: drive and an external USB drive). If one fails you still have the second for backup.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe the other "two local data recovery firms" got stumped by this simple problem.
Really. I wonder what the names of those two firms are, so we'll know who NOT to go to.
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I wonder if there's any people out there who intentionally corrupt an ISO image in a controlled way that is known to be recoverable by someone who knows what they are doing (but not perhaps by automated tools) and then sending out burns of the DVD to different companies to see what they can do.
Might be expensive though.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the headline should read "incompetent data recovery nearly lets rapist get away"
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not to defend these people but data storage systems are seldom sold with the caveat "look out, these things don't last forever, make sure you've got a plan B". You'd be amazed how many people outside of IT simply don't consider backup to be important.
And even if a salesman did make that clear to the DA's office, I wonder how long it would be before a less than honest salesman made out that his product didn't have that issue (even though it's exactly the same technology) and took the contract?
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Once data recovery was necessary, the incompetence was already obvious -- on the part of those making or storing the recording.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost sounds like a DVD that wasn't finalized in a direct-to-dvd camcorder.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about that, but I've run into this problem when there's dust on the disk when it's recorded. The laser etches the dust rather than the media, resulting in a disk that's got a small blank section.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you could send the dust to Seagate Recovery Service to get that blank section back.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't know if it was foreign matter or a manufacturing defect in the disc, but I had recorded DVD hanging on my wall at work that had a fuzzy blob of "not burned" on it too. So it's not a farfetched idea.
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I did something similar: put a DVD in to burn, not noticing it had a fingerprint on the underside (it was from a cakebox and had evidently been handled carelessly earlier)
Anyway, after burning the pattern of the fingerprint could be seen in the changed-color DVD medium, just like your dust. I thought it was rather cool. :)
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Dust on media (Score:2, Interesting)
I've tried. Neither 16X DVD nor 40X CD can fling any dust off. You'll need tissue and physical contact.
Re:Dust on media (Score:5, Funny)
Usually it's physical contact first, THEN the tissue.
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You may have had that problem with dusty media, but the explanation sounds suspect. The laser beam is focused to a point inside the disc, not at the surface; at the surface, it's wide and dust simply reduces its intensity at the focused point ( diagram [geekspeak.org]). Looks like BD discs have much less tolerance of dust, due to the data layer bei
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I'll grant that "etches" is an inappropriate description, "blocks the beam, slightly toasts the dust, and prevents data from being writ
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And it's not a problem when that happens. The blank section is error-corrected around, and the disc works fine.
Here's one I did [danamania.com], with a huge oily fingerprint purposely put on a DVD before recording, it was burned, and the 'shadow' of the fingerprint shows up as a huge unburnt patch after the original print has been wiped off.
The disc worked fine afterwards, and worked fine for quite a while until I lost it.
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Same - recording data-only to the disk, and the error correction worked OK there.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually that makes me think of a hair brained scheme. The finger print is essentially a mask applied to the data. Your eyes can see it but the DVD drive error corrects it away because there are enough gaps in the mask where the original data 'shows through' for the error correction to correct away the errors.
Now it seems like if you could record raw data you could make a DVD with a pattern visible to the naked eye but invisible to the DVD reader. So rather than waiting ages and buying expensive media for things like Lightscribe or Labelflash you could burn both the data and the label at the same time and on any media. Unlike DiscT@2 which burned logos on the data side of the disk, the space can be used for both logo and data at the same time.
You could do it with arbitrary bitmaps too - take the bitmap and make holes in it through which enough data shows through to make the disk readable. The burning software could do this with a mask cunningly constructed to make enough holes even in a solid bitmap to make the disk readable. Hell you could let the user select the tradeoff between image quality and error margin.
There's a a downside of course, the more solid the image the more the error correction will be stressed even for a disc which can be read perfectly. It seems like a disc burned with this technology would be less resistant to scratches and fingerprints.
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I thought I'd heard of something like that already.
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Wow. Must be a very "big" dust if you mean it costs data corruption. Normally the forward error correction should make the playback just fine.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:5, Interesting)
So, it doesn't surprise me that two local data recovery firms got stumped. They probably ran the software they bought against the DVD and when nothing came up, they said it was unrecoverable.
Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged (Score:4, Interesting)
Way back when, I bought several such softwares. Most was overblown - lets you "undelete", etc. But then I found some software that perhaps wasn't technically "data recovery" software, but might as well have been...
SPINRITE II. That software was AWESOME!
Back when MFM/RLL was still a consideration, media failures were all too common. Drive sectors would go bad, your FAT table would be corrupted, and your system was horked, often so badly that you couldn't even boot.
But with a copy of SpinRite II and a DOS boot floppy, and a *LOT* of time (often 2-3 days!) and in nearly every case, the computer would be brought back to full operation. I had one system where, whenever the owner had problems with bad sectors, he would rename the file and re-copy from backups. This would cause the area with the bad blocks to become unused, sort of a "manual re-mapping".
Well, his backups got horked right about the same time that the FAT itself corrupted. The system was gone, the data was gone, and he was in a severe panic. But Spinrite II took over a week to recover everything. But it did. Everything. Even the renamed files read/wrote flawlessly.
Could I have recovered this DVD? Probably not - I never claimed to be a "data recovery expert". I was honest with my clients about what I was qualified to do (diagnose/reformat/reload) and what I wasn't. But I recovered LOTS of data anyway.
Now for the funny part:
I owned a small computer sales/service shop for several years. You know, the friendly neighborhood type. We did *alot* of computer repairs. We gave out free diagnostics, which was an excellent way to get more repairs - the diagnosis was free, the repair was reasonable, customers almost always bought.
Frequently, we'd be asked to fix software woes, etc. We'd warn about the risks of software problems, possible loss of data, offer to backup their data first, and we'd even make them sign release forms that they did NOT want us to back up the data.
And then we'd back up the data anyway, routinely. We used a backpack drive that was big enough to keep a dozen or so drive images on it. (parallel port drive with a driver loaded by floppy or CD - this is before USB was common)
Granted, most of the time, the backup wasn't needed. But when it was, (and it was, maybe 1/4 of the time) we would then charge $150 "data recovery". (to reload the data from our backup) Since our charge for backups was $50, our customers made out slightly in the odds, but we were still the heroes and those who actually needed the data were not too hesitant to pay, especially since, with this method, our success rate was 100%!
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What sort of "PC Repair" are we talking about?
If it's the "replace boards one-by-one, then throw away the bad one" style of "repair", then anyone can do that.
*Really* repairing something by replacing *components* on a board takes quite a bit of training and knowledge.
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I can't believe the other "two local data recovery firms" got stumped by this simple problem.
I have more trouble believing that the police only had a single copy of the interview, and no transcript (or maybe that was on the DVD too?).
If the TV shows i've watched are correct, then they are supposed to give a copy to the interviewee too, so what's wrong with running off another copy (or 3) for storage at another site???
I firmly believe that if your are relying on a data recovery firm to save you then someone, somewhere, hasn't done their job properly.
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I bet they still got paid for their efforts, which is probably enough for them.
I doubt it. The two times my company needed to use a data service to recover data from dead hard disks, it was pay for play. If they didn't get any data back, they didn't get paid.
It cost about $1000 each time.
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That sounds like a reasonable approach to a data recovery business that will allow for a solid reputation and huge trust factor to build up a good business to grand levels of market share. Kudos to them!
Your comment makes me wonder two things:
who were the two outfits that claimed it impossible,
and how SRS found the lead-in corruption so fast....Hmmmm...
As a comment above asks, who are these two outfits that claimed impossible-I don't ever want to use them!
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Re:HOW was Only Meta-Data was damaged? (Score:5, Informative)
Probably, yeah. In the worst case, though, the disc might have gotten finalized incorrectly (e.g. using a bad optical drive), in which case even the original DVD burner might not play it....
The lead-in area (at least for the first session) is the innermost recordable portion of the media. If something went wrong in media fabrication, I'd expect that to be the second-most likely part to have problems, second only to the outer edge (which fails verification frequently in cheap media). So this could have been a media defect as well.
I'm not surprised the Seagate folks were able to recover the data. This pales compared with what the Seagate recovery folks deal with every day--head crashes, surface mount desoldering and replacing defective head preamps, maybe even electron microscope recovery of shattered platters.... Compared with that, a few bad blocks in the lead-in of a DVD is downright trivial and might even be recoverable without hacking the drive firmware....
That said, I sure would like to know who the two companies are that couldn't figure this out so I can never send anything to them.... :-)
NOT an anti-MS bash! (Score:4, Interesting)
"Probably, yeah. In the worst case, though, the disc might have gotten finalized incorrectly (e.g. using a bad optical drive), in which case even the original DVD burner might not play it....
The lead-in area (at least for the first session) is the innermost recordable portion of the media. If something went wrong in media fabrication, I'd expect that to be the second-most likely part to have problems, second only to the outer edge (which fails verification frequently in cheap media). So this could have been a media defect as well."
*disclaimer*
This is only my limited experience, so take with a grain of salt....
I have had this very problem in the past, and can currently reproduce it at will today.
Facts:
1. 100 disc stack of blank CD-R | 1x-52x, 700MB, 80 minute Imation (tm) discs.
2. at the time troubles started:
a. One PC (500MHz P3 slot A, 768MB PC 100 RAM, CyberDrv CW058D CD-R/Rw @ 32x/12x/48x cd drive, Win XP Pro SP2, Nero 7
b. Dell desktop: 1.8 GHz AMD Athlon, 1GB PC 2700 RAM, Sony DRUxxx? DVD-+r/rw 4x burner, Win XP SP2, MyDVD-came with drive
c. P4 Prescott socket 478 3.0 GHz, 1 GB PC 2700 RAM, Lite-on DVD-ROM/CD-+r/rw, Kubuntu 6.10 Dapper Drake, K3b.
Results:
2.a,b. would not even recognize the discs, c. would use and burn with no problem.
The perplexing thing is after I burnt a disc in Kubuntu, it would then 'work' in the other two Win XP machines, but the two XP machines refused to use the Imation blanks.
Since then, b.(above) has been dual boot with XP SP2, and Kubuntu 8.04, and XP refuses to recognize the blanks, while Kubuntu/K3b on the same hardware uses them with no problem.
The MEDIA used CAN make a big difference here, as I have found out the hard way.
If I had mod points, I would have given you some '+1 Insightful' love, but alas, this lame reply is the best I can currently do for now.
hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
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One backup copy is never enough (Score:3, Insightful)
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Disc wasn't finalized (Score:5, Informative)
This is a very common problem that happens when a disc isn't finalized on both audio CDs and video DVDs that are recorded on direct to disc consumer recording systems. After a the actual data is written what is a essentially a "table of contents" has to be written at the beginning of the disc, otherwise you get the "blank disc" effect as describe here. That two separate data specialists couldn't figure this out is rather concerning...
Sounds about right (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to do the audio booth at my church for live concerts and the such, and those direct to disk recorders are a pain (or at least the one we used). If you pause them and then try to start them again while they're closing the track, or something to that effect, sometimes they'll merge tracks or not close at all - but the stream is always there, if somew
I'm surprised. (Score:2)
Santa Cruz is 25-30 minutes from Silicon Valley, I'm really surprised there was seemingly only one competent data recovery firm nearby. Chances are there was more, but the D.A. just didn't find them. Still, i'm surprised that it took two years to find one.
-Taylor
Help! (Score:3)
...As a result, Barnes' lawyers claimed that the victim's original police interview, as police remembered it, would have been inconsistent with her trial testimony and therefore would be exculpatory evidence...
Ok, enough with the data recovery stuff. Can someone please explain to me why the victim was not allowed to testify? I tried to understand but it really is beyond me. Maybe someone can help out with a simple car analogy etc. /.er I should have known better...
Obviously this is THE LAST time I RTFA. As a
Re:Help! (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite simple. *Never* talk to the police. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik [youtube.com]
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We're sorry, this video is no longer available.
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We're sorry, this video is no longer available.
It's available just fine for me. Try using a proxy; YouTube sometimes use GeoIP data to determine whether a video should be available to you, at your location.
CJ
Re:Help! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your first sentence answered the question you made in your second sentence. Watch the above linked video for clarification.
Based on the fact that a cop DOES NOT LIE, when the rape victim steps into that box, swears and then says that the cop (who does not lie - EVER) said something wrong - rape victim can end up in jail for purgery.
Or at best, just make a fool of themselves and made to appear like someone who goes around accusing innocent people for no reason.
Correct way is to talk to a lawyer hired by you or appointed to you and have him/her talk to the police.
Naturally, a lawyer that has two things. YOUR best interest in mind and a BRAIN.
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Ok, enough with the data recovery stuff. Can someone please explain to me why the victim was not allowed to testify? I tried to understand but it really is beyond me. Maybe someone can help out with a simple car analogy etc.
The woman was interviewed, the interview recorded on DVD, and the DVD was lost. The vague recollection of a policeman who was present was that she had said in the interview that she wasn't forced. Later she said that she was forced. Now this looks like there is conflicting evidence, and the police conveniently lost the evidence that was speaking _for_ the accused. If the vague recollection of the policeman was right, and if she then was allowed to testify again, there would have been two conflicting testimo
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Don't they take notes or stuff? Human memory isn't exactly the most accurate way to store data and if they can't even remember which the guilty party is they better should keep pen and paper handy.
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They do better than just take notes. They record the whole thing on DVD.
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Title and Summary completely wrong (Score:2)
It's not at all true that the DA was depending on the DVD... In fact the defense just made an issue that the DA had evidence on the DVD that might point to a key witness changing her story. Since they couldn't turn over a copy of the evidence in a usable form, it became a real problem.
If the DVD didn't exist in the first place, the DA would have been better off.
Re:That third house wasn't ILM was it? (not a joke (Score:5, Funny)
For best results, one should loosen their tin-foil hat occasionally.
Just sayin'.
Tinfoil hat eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
For best results, one should loosen their tin-foil hat occasionally.
Just sayin'.
Funny how everyone here is fully aware of the capabilities of our current state of technology in the hands of people with enough resources, yet when someone suggests an actual, real-world possibility for misuse, or the possibility of despotism it's "tinfoil hat" time.
I'm not saying they're doing it to me, or that they're in the walls, but seriously, have those lessons of the mccarthy and now bush eras gone straight out the other ear? I suppose GITMO doesn't exist? I suppose every single protestor is an "anarchist" just like the news says?
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I think you overestimate the resources of the Santa Cruz police.
McCarthy? Bush? GITMO?? Seriously, Santa Cruz isn't exactly playing in that world.
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I think you overestimate the resources of the Santa Cruz police.
McCarthy? Bush? GITMO?? Seriously, Santa Cruz isn't exactly playing in that world.
yes, because if such a job were to be done, it would be a federal prosecution and not delgated to a smaller, less significant branch.
Re:Tinfoil hat eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you want to fake video you are doing much better by using 2D composition instead of 3D rendering, the later one is still quite a bit away from being practical, the first one however can produce quite convincing results without all that much effort.
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Officer Binks was present in the courtroom. I assure you, he's real.
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We shred DVDs. It's a consumer-level shredder. It cuts the disc all to hell and is even pretty thorough at removing the medium from the substrate, or whatever the nomenclature is.
There are consumer shredders that will do discs, but ours was definitely not cheap. A GBC Shredmaster "DOD" model. (We're not a defense shop, we're a research hospital/medical college, among other things.)
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Microwave 5 seconds.
Re:A cheap drill (Score:2)
..and one or two holes: point, set, and match.
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For residential destruction, most people already have a microwave and don't feel like sinking $$ into a CD-capable shredder.
Plus, it looks cool and only takes ~3 seconds.
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I'm curious, but are you insane?
Is the answer to your question: They wouldn't use DVDs?
Re:So it's not only the the 3rd world after all! (Score:4, Insightful)
And you think DVDs are a big deal? Think again. On healthcare for example, we are beaten by Cuba!
I guess you are among those who do not believe that some of these so called 3rd world countries are *slightly* ahead of us especially in what a cellphone can be used for. Now, that's a fact.
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I guess you are among those who do not believe that some of these so called 3rd world countries are *slightly* ahead of us especially in what a cellphone can be used for.
Call me crazy... I typically use it for telephone calls. If there's some hidden Goatse use that I'm unaware of, then ignorance is bliss!
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I guess you are among those who do not believe that some of these so called 3rd world countries are *slightly* ahead of us especially in what a cellphone can be used for.
You mean like in bombs as the trigger device? I know they do that a lot in some third world countries.
BTW adding more features to a cellphone could actually be a further sign of poverty. In a developed country people buy a PDA and a cell phone, they don't need to save money by getting a super cell. Though they do that now with the Smart phones, which are as good, and available in the US, as any cell phones in the world.
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On healthcare for example, we are beaten by Cuba!
References? And define "beaten" (does your definition depend on health being state-provided? then of course, Cuba is a communist country). Beyond the fake tourist front-ends, Cuba's a rotten hole.
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Here you can produce your own comparative data: http://www.unicef.org/statistics/index_step1.php?clear_countries=1&clear_regions=1&clear_indicators=1
Obviously, UNICEF doesn't count hospitals. They go after indicators like child mortality rate, life expectancy, etc.
You will notice that Cuba and the US are basically equivalent with such health care indicators, despite the enormous income disparity.
(I added 2 European count
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While I am shocked, I am not that surprised at all.
...and I am puzzled as to how that works out!
Re:So it's not only the the 3rd world after all! (Score:5, Funny)
While I am shocked, I am not that surprised at all.
...and I am puzzled as to how that works out!
It's easy:
1) Turn on a lamp.
2) Remove the light bulb.
3) With your left-hand forefinger, touch the silver-colored outer shielding where the light bulb screws in.
4) With your right-hand forefinger, touch the contact at the bottom of the receptacle.
Sorry, no "???" nor "profit", but you'll be shocked without being surprised. Hope that helps.
=)
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Haha, you make me laugh. Ask yourself...Who is doing the rating? With this corruption, I can trust nobody except the average American who has proven that the Japanese build better cars and have been doing this for decades.
In case you did not know, the American car giants have lost market share...have a look http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0501/06/A01-50668.htm [detnews.com].
Those Japanese cars are simply better built, have a good resale value and do not give a lot of headache. Aren't these the folks who endorsed
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On the other end, I'm still driving a '98 Oldsmobile Intrigue because it handles like a dream in the weather we get here, has a great stereo, is incredibly comfortable for tall people, has all the power you could want in a familymobile, and hasn't needed a single repair outside regular maintenance. It's sad to me that Detroit can build good cars when they want to, but would rather concentrate on making Behemoth With Towing Package (And Built-In Tent), and those in non-American plants.
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Funny... I had a head crash once, and my girlfriend got pregnant.
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