File under 'McCarthy 2.0' or 'we told you so' ??
Courtesy of Gizomondo, it now appears that an RIAA-produced training video for prosecutors uses some novel 'Talking Points' to make their case to a jury, such as the soon-to-be-classic argument that "it'll lead them to everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana, not to mention terrorists and murderers". Also mentioned is that "When you buy a CD, would you like it with or without--the with is enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be." It seems that the RIAA is setting up an alternate reality for jurors to bathe in when making their decisions about how much to punish those guilty of copyright infringement, and as in Hollywood movie treatments 'enhancing' the original script, maybe this will help in soon having Homeland Security directly involved in helping keep these p2p offenders behind bars before they move on to more serious acts of terrorism or shooting rampages. Is there perhaps a direct but hidden connection between those behind the recent rash of campus shootings and music piracy?
Roy Cohn would be proud!

Z.

Here is an interesting dilemna which many other IT people probably have with Digital Assets Management (DAM). We have a real-life media output of around 60 Gigs of audio/video data per week, (that makes it about 3 Terabytes per year, and will be for at least 10 years or so) all of which has to be logged and archived for long-term use, but does not necessarily need to be live 'on-line' all at the same time on a device such as a SAN. What is the most economical and viable method to use which will be rated for at least 20 ~ 30 years of archival life, with the total library size expected to grow to about 50 Terabytes? Is a 72-slot LTO-3 library something that is likely to be a good value per gigabyte of storage? Is there open-source software capable of controlling such a robotic library, and which can initiate restore operations from querying the database where all this media is catalogued? Anyone know of any media asset management software that's already written and could be modified to control such a library and deliver content to a variety of devices over a network? Would love to hear some real-life experiences with similar situations so that I can evaluate what to get and how to configure it. I have read up on systems such as Artesia DAM and Sun iForce, which run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and was hoping for something far less pricey, but still capable and with reasonable redundancy.

As for many others, Slashdot has become a part of my daily ritual, one of the sites I need to check and post on almost every day.

Some of the topics are really of a most provocative nature, and help me understand the way things are evolving ever so rapidly on the cutting edge of fields such as connected, networked relationships and interactions, as well as the rise of a true information-based society.

This is in fact a very primitive glimpse on a segment of the population who probably will be the first to experience and be exposed to the nascent interaction between humanity and the ever-more advanced machines it creates. For the future, - while promising all sorts of unfathomable new technology -, probably also will help some very dark and incomprehensible things take place in a way no one expected.

Also, many of the posts here have links to very interesting and informative sources which I would have never found on my own.

A place where I am not ashamed to admit that I am fascinated by some of the new software programs being developed, where I can read about a new scientific feat that just got publicized, or where I can enjoy being driven to jump into sometimes profound discussion with people I have never met, but who seem to have many similar interests to mine..... Sure sounds like home!!

Z.