No, I think the point here is not to just recreate MAME, but to create a legitimate system of emulation that can can be used for valid historic archive purposes and with the proper corporate and social legitimacy perhaps be able to obtain licenses to otherwise copywritten, trademarked and DRM'd material - something not just meant to allow gamers and pirates to play old games and validate seemingly obsolete trademarks, but rather to allow museums and the like to preserve these works, and perhaps commercial ventures to place these systems in arcades, Wally-worlds, malls, etc. and perhaps earn some licensing profit from these sorts of ventures off of software that otherwise only costs them money to enforce trademark on, yet has likely not returned any real profit in a long time.
Parent is unquestionably flamebait, or offtopic at the very least, regardless of whether the poster had the unmitigated gall to post it as themselves - how it possibly came to be scored insightful I cannot fathom.
The whole point of the parent article is, as another poster below mentions, to change the terms in which people think of evolutionary sciences, and this is far from an American-only issue - there are approximately 1.1 billion Catholics world-wide and another 1 billion Sunni Muslims. Given that there are only roughly 300 million people in the United States and that neither of these belief systems encourages a belief in pure evolution, saying, "The issue is that this ignorant view may be perpetuated in America", is plainly ignorant in and of itself and nothing more than flamebait.
If you have really "never heard anyone in Europe utter such crap", you must live in a cave and this is your first time on the internet - Europe easily spouts its own fair share of crap, not the least of which is that which comes out of Vatican City on a regular basis.
No, I think the topic deserves better consideration and less distraction from the peanut gallery. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, "Great minds discuss ideas...", and it seems to me the parent merely wishes to derail the conversation by switching from the idea at hand to some sort of misguided anti-nationalism that is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand - shame on you.
There are people all over the world who associate, just as the article says, a whole realm of science as an '-ism', whereby it may be made to be an equal of other '-ism's', as if the trail of evidence is still the product of one mans thoughts, observations and ideas, and thereby subject to ridicule as if evolution had no other basis in fact or Darwin's observations could not somehow be reproduced or evidenced. An '-ism' denotes a philosophy or belief, such as fascism, nationalism, taoism, Buddhism, communism, etc., and not a scientific theorem or model with a basis in real-world observation and evidence - evolution has long since ceased being about one mans untested hypotheses. It's about time that the conventions we use to refer to that branch of science catch up with that, as this affects the social perceptions of its validity. People - poor, corrupt, stupid things that we are - think in terms of the language(s) that we speak, and our thought is influenced highly by the words and terms we correlate with a thing, much more so than most of us think, and if you need evidence of that you merely need to look into neurolinguistic programming and how/why so many security and other professionals of all sorts employ it in everything from social engineering to marketing and advertising. To do any less leaves this whole scientific domain in popular conception as something anyone can comment on with equal authority based purely on cognitive perception with no demands of real-world proof, i.e. the domain of philosophy and religion, not science and logic where it belongs.
My room mate, a senior T-Mobile Engineer, did a test just last night of his new G1 on T-Mo's 3G network versus his iPhone on AT&T's network and saw a full 150kbps difference between the two, with advantage going to the G1. On a later test they ran the G1 against the iPhone with both on T-Mobile's network and saw between a 50 - 75kbps difference between the two, again, advantage G1.
So far I'm rather impressed with the device. The trackball is very functional, easy to use, and seems well made. The device is fast and responsive, and while the screen may not be quit as big or pretty as the iPhone's, it's still plenty nice enough. Ok, it doesn't have multi-touch (as far as I can ascertain), but it's fast, very functional and I really really want one now. Web-browsing was a wonderful experience (first time I can say that about a phone), and did I say it was fast? Also the native console and SSH functionality was awesome, and I was very surprised by how well it represented my SSH sessions, including irssi - I must have one.
It really does look better in the hand than it does on photos. Ok, not quite as slick as the iPhone, but I'm also not one of those people who will shell out an extra $X just to get a pretty PC case when all I want is functionality - I don't need my mobile device to be sexy in an artistic way, I want it to be sexy in a functional, useful and powerful way. The teenage emo girls on 4chan can have the iPhone, it's G1 for me.
Don't forget open standards for the phone too, and the fact that with the time and effort you can make it do anything you want to, and not have to be beholden to what Apple thinks you should be able to do, or a glorified pager that is the Blackberry.
I note with amusement you chose to post this as an anonymous coward.
The last shop I worked for routinely beat NewEgg on prices on all but a handful of items - hard drives I could never touch (though we were awfully damned close) on price alone, as well as whenever a video-card was on sale or price reduction. Plus, we factored shipping and system assembly into cost, and good luck getting build support from NewEgg. Good luck also finding out from NewEgg the kinds of things about current or older hardware that only someone who builds on a daily basis would know. Sure, some places will have hardware brands they prefer and are more experienced with, but just because it isn't EXACTLY what you want doesn't mean it won't work as well or better than the build you dreamed up. Perhaps the RAM you think is so great actually sucks (I got this from a lot of gamer kids that would come through), or the video-card is really a POS, especially in combination with your motherboard. If you're running a *nix flavor, you might know more about it than the local guy, but then again, you never know.
Point is, among MANY other things, you get the benefit of the local store for support on many issues. If the place is honest and has good suppliers, the price should be damned close. Too, NewEgg doesn't have the best prices on EVERYTHING. It near to equals out often times in the long run. Unless you buy bits and pieces on TigerDirect and Overstock and eBay. Then you run all kinds of other risks which are too great in number to go over here in detail. Suffice to say, my whole point is, with an honest local place, it's worth the effort to find one, and the $10 to maybe even $100 more you might pay there, in the end run. I can't tell you how many machines I've had brought to me over the years that were built by geeks from parts they bought online that turned out to be shit together - many of them expressed later that they'd wished they'd just come to me in the first place. Why? Because they knew I'd have eaten the cost if I ordered parts that didn't work together, replace items that failed for some reason, and in general take responsibility when/if something didn't work out.
There was a big shop in Atlanta that got nailed for selling pirated software. Most geeks eventually learned not to buy parts there because they overcharged badly, but that was in the days before NewEgg mainly, though they continued to get customers who didn't know better. That, however, is a moot point. ALL forms of business have individuals that will screw people, from online retailers cheating people in one of A(g64,g64) possible ways, to stock brokers and investment bankers, barber shops, megamarts, car mechanics, you name it - there is someone out to screw you in any business, and both the law and a little common sense can protect you; the latter will serve you much better than the former.
Ahhhhh, thank science for someone who truly understands.
daoine_sidhe's (I even know how to pronounce that;) ) exactly right. I spent most of every day working on either old and/or virus/malware infected computers for average joe's who know nothing about computers that the owner knew to start timing how long I spent in conversation and cut me off before too long, just because I'd occasionally stop working to have an intelligent conversation for once, instead of hearing, "I needs me a new 'puter" or "It's done broke an I don't know why. Maybe it's that anti-virus program I downloaded through kazaa."
Prices often came down for complete new systems, or averaged out to meet or beat equivalent specs on whole systems from other manufacturers. I'm surprised you have an assembly charge for full system builds, but then, we basically built ours in on the cost of a whole system. On a low-end machine ($500 to $600), we usually were looking to get about 15% markup over wholesale cost, and as little as 10% on machines much over, say, $1500. Our independent field tech got parts at 6%, but that's because he bought a whole lot from us on a daily basis, did the field work we didn't want to do, and brought us new customers from other clients he had.
You will find terrible shops run by people who suck and/or don't know what they're doing, but finding a good one is well worth it, and indeed, supporting your local economy is always a plus - if the reasons why escape you, I'd suggest an economics class or three: it's actually rather more important than most people seem to think.
daoine_sidhe will understand, I think, as would anyone else who has worked for a local store, when I say it's damned sure not an easy business, and there isn't, in all, really a lot of money in it these days, especially if you have any competition worth a shit and the overhead costs of a storefront, but that's often because the owners of the successful places know they have to be honest and do right by people, and as anyone over the age of 20 knows, there's very little profit in doing right by the customer. For the ethical among us though, it's worth it.
And that's another part of what makes it worth it to the customer to patronize a local business.
Quite, no shop should charge you outright for shipping, and chances are on a whole system you'll pay just as much (if not MUCH more) in shipping charges (or handling/restocking fees, if the retailer claims to waive shipping on orders over $N).
Also, I did admit it might be more expensive than what you could get each individual part for if you bought each part from a given retailer based solely on cost alone, rather than going with a single supplier. If, however, you want to order everything from just one online-retailer for convenience's sake (i.e., price is an issue, but not an overwhelming or defining one), then try your local store. You'll get better warranty and technical support than you will from Tiger or NewEgg for certain, and with an honest shop, you won't get any refurbished items in new clothing like you might buying strictly online (Overstock.com is bad about this, and apparently NewEgg is has done this on occasion too).
It all boils down to whether or not you can find a good, honest, local place with access to several major wholesalers. Easier said than done, yes, but well worth the time and effort, I think.
The sales tax balances out in the end. If it's THAT bad, wait for a stinking tax holiday, like the ones they have at the start of the school season. But really, the savings from a little bit of tax versus the costs of shipping/handling/restocking, plus the poor service and support often experienced from online retailers just doesn't add up in the end.
I've worked for a local shop on two different occasions, and I can tell you that it would be well worth your while to see if there is one in your area with good prices and knowledgeable employees.
If you live in or even near a large city with a number of wholesalers, then you should be able to get prices that are fairly consistent with what you'd pay on-line, but if the shop is honorable (talk to the employees and this should become obvious before too long if you know what you're about and have already done pricing), then it could save you a lot of effort in ordering errors and the like. They will often have parts or builds they prefer, and may even want to build the system for you for an extra fee, but as the parent said, you'll find the *GOOD* places will work hard for their customers and even fix things long out of warranty. You might pay a little more overall than you would if you ordered parts from wherever the single best deal you can get on any item on-line, but it can really be well worth it.
The trick is, knowing and finding a good, honest and knowledgeable shop to work with. Don't alienate them by trying to get them to match every price on-line, but talking to them will let them know you know what you're looking for, and let you decide if they're the right place to work with.
You can always default to getting it all on-line or a part here or there locally, but if you order from any single place, be it Tiger or NewEgg or Best Buy or the local store, you're going to pay a little more. I'd suggest supporting a local business, if you can. As long as the price is reasonable, I assure you it's worth it in the long run. Hopefully you'll never have problems, but no matter where you buy a computer or parts, odds are you'll eventually have a problem, and chances are your local shop will support and treat you better than anywhere else.
It's funny... No matter how many times you tell people, or how intelligent they may be, for some reason you just can't seem to get people to realize that simulations are often worthless in cases like this, as you can make a simulation say or prove anything you want it to by tweaking it's internal dynamics to support whatever result you want. Regardless, unless you have an overwhelming amount of real-world data and flawless physics computational models, no simulation is ever completely valid - modeling the real world inside a computer to that extent is functionally impossible. There simply isn't enough data on what actually happened (hence the desire to create such simulations to begin with) to create an accurate model in the first place. They don't know exactly what each fire did where - fire is notoriously difficult to predict, as the difficulty in even reproducing believable fire effects in computer animation shows: little things like winds currents, fuel spread, what parts of the plane went where in the building and did what all add up to too many statistical errors for any margin to account for, and all they are doing is best guessing here and claiming it must be true because their model agrees with them - I think the model is likely to have been biased in their own favor from the very beginning, even if not purposefully or intentionally. We as human beings are always biased, and it is not unreasonable to believe that our digital (re-)creations are any more impartial than the people who coded them to begin with.
Could I make a simulation of a galaxy that looks and behaves like a galaxy? Easy enough. Does that mean that the laws I founded my simulated galaxy on has anything whatsoever to do with how a real galaxy works? Not at all. It just means that I've managed to create a series of conditions within a computer that outputs some visuals and math that happens to look strikingly like a galaxy. Just because you use a really big computer that took a long time running said simulation does not make it any more valid. I could create a "simulation" that would take years to run but still show convincingly - based on data provided - that the building actually collapsed because of a hole through the planet that leads to China that was opened up as a result of an earthquake caused by digging done for a new hydro-dam there - that still doesn't make it correct or even partially true. Too many factors outside our ability to guess or second-guess or intuit or even, honestly, our ability to perceive, are at work.
How often does it happen that something more complex than a cheap Chinese-made children's toy or other simple item that is designed digitally actually makes it in to the real-world without modification? Does anybody know anybody who has ever designed a 10-story building in CAD that didn't require hundreds or thousands of modifications before construction was completed? I've worked for a (major) aircraft company, and I can tell you for certain that despite all the best modeling and simulation software that a multi-billion dollar aerospace defense contractor can summon, not one of those simulations is ever entirely accurate when it comes to the real world.
Any video-game company that has an engine with solid physics could recreate on a screen the WTC collapse - does that mean the factors they employed to *simulate* that collapse have anything to do with what actually occurred?
I find the quote that is on the bottom of this page as I write this to be incredibly succinct and germane - Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
Quite true. As a systems administrator, consultant, and long-time general PC repair expert, I know intimately how simple Windows is to hack when you have physical access, and have been privelged for many many many incredulous looks from friends / family / customers when trying to explain, "No, I don't need your password, it's irrelevant."
Remote compromise is only marginally more difficult. Regardless, the whole point of the originating poster about this deal making Windows somehow more compromised for the US Gov is ludicrous, because it's already completely compromised on so many levels it's just not funny.
You seriously think that there isn't a U.S. made operating system that hasn't yet been back-doored by the NSA and / or CIA as a result of a back-room deal somewhere? I mean, I'm even a US citizen and I'm not so naive as to believe that they aren't all pretty well universally compromised, and there's no need to "phone home" on a regular basis so as to be caught out that easily - there are ways, and then there are ways. If you think that there is anything in a Windows installation that somehow makes your secure int he face of the Feds, you're sorely mistaken - your only hope is third-party tools which are very possibly just as compromised. Need evidence? Examine the cd-kit given out to Law Enforcement to enable them to access Windows Computers more easily by bypassing encryption and password security features.
I have it on good authority that there's only one OS on the market that remains safe from NSA/CIA/DOD/DOJ back-dooring at this moment, and that is mainly a result of it not being a natively U.S. produced distro.
Now *THIS* is what I still actually come to/. forums for. Sadly, I'm at work where I don't really have time to enjoin this discussion at a higher level and provide a more insightful response (work is keeping me incredibly busy, but I'll try to get around to it later this evening if possible). Parent is totally correct in stating that everyone is biased, some of us more so than others. I don't ever claim to be impartial - I certainly have my own views and opinions, though I try to be more open-minded (than most, it would seem, with the caveat that my mind is not so open that my brains fall out) and lay blame or kudos when and where they belong, equally and at all times; baboo_jackal is very correct in the statement that any claim of the Pentagon is "subverting traditional journalism" is incredibly inane pablum meant only to create FUD and further reinforce the paranoia of those who would believe it.
As for Stengel, he's right, to some degree, though I don't believe it is completely unreasonable for a journalist to be expected to be objective - it's not a gross impossibility; examine an issue from all available sides and report on known facts rather than twisting those facts to fit one's preferred opinionated hyperbole, basic Communications 101 stuff; this doesn't mean that the author can't argue for something better or different, but that still doesn't mean that they have to inject their own bias into every word - sensationalism is for the intellectually weak, both on the side of the author and the reader who accepts it; this is why I scan so many news sources in order to get a better view on events - too bad finding a single media outlet that reports simply what is and not what they would like things to be has thus far been impossible, tho Reuters seems to do a better job than most these days.
Yessss... And we *all* know exactly how honest the average journalist in the mainstream mass American media is these days. Not that I'm defending them per se, but if the military knows that >90% of the drive-by media in this country is already biased against them right out of the box and 100% determined to never ever report anything but the worst they can about the military and the war in Iraq (how many CNN articles do you see about all the schools we're building in Iraq and Afghanistan, or specialty pieces from Time or the NYT about the pain and suffering that our volunteer Army is going through because they've been ordered to do so [their only other options being desertion and... desertion, which is in theory a treason offense also]), you tell me, is it entirely wrong for the military to attempt to put out some good news? Nobody can tell me that other private corporations as well as government officials aren't forcibly injecting their own slant into the news, so why should anybody come down so hard on the military for attempting to defend and promote itself in the way that all militaries have done since the dawn of time?
Re:Happy pi day everyone!!
on
Happy Pi Day
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Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close up the equation with a logical end!
Is there a link to this anywhere? A quick search of google news returns only a link to this/. entry. Are there any real-world references to this? Sorry, but news doesn't originate at/., it is merely reposted here, and pardon me, but I'm not inclined to trust anything I find posted here without a reference to an actual news outlet - kdawson is particularly known for journalistic integrity.
Quite welcome. I had to stop on reading the piece to see what editor put it through. Needless to say, I was not surprised when I discovered the answer.
Shame, looks like the mods are ignoring this thread completely. I had points yesterday, but when I was looking through this thread to find someone to mod up, I realized I had to post instead in an attempt to shed some light on the issue, seeing so many led so far off track by the wording of the original story post. Oh well.
Good point. Personally, I don't see why any restaurant would want to use this. Why make an automated way to give away free lunches to people because they wait? If a customer complains about waiting too long, then you give them the coupon.
I suppose the flipside to that is that the customers who don't complain, but decide that they don't want to come back to the restaurant because they had to wait...
The reason being that IBM makes business machines - including point of sale and business automation systems. What they have described here is a novel method by which the human factor normally necessary to monitor customers' time spent waiting and then selection of an appropriate compensation is automated through their system, almost certainly to be tied in to an existing product like a point of sale terminal that will quite possibly be tied into one of those little pager systems that lets you know when your table is ready. Rather than requiring employees or wait-staff to monitor times spent waiting on a screen and then offer the customer something gratis, the system is designed to do all this for them, thusly eliminating time and resources necessary in what is probably an environment where time is a premium (since people are waiting for service) as well as potential stress or conflict with a customer who may unhappy - now they don't have to approach an already harried manager or wait-staff and present a complaint or argument - the system notes that a pre-programmed threshold (which the establishment has determined to be the minimum time before they would be willing to offer such freebies regardless of system automation) has passed and automatically offers the free item, in theory placating the customer(s) without creating extra resource strain on the staff.
Why patent this? Because IBM wants to offer this ability to restaurants and other businesses who do not want to have to do these things themselves, implemented via a piece of IBM equipment. The patent as described does not prevent a business from offering you a free lunch if you wait too long - IBM obviously spent money time and research effort creating a combined software and hardware method that can automate this process (and thereby expand the services and functions performed/offered to customers already owning or seeking to purchase IBM equipment) - also known as a "value add"; what the patent prevents you from doing is copying or mirroring IBM's research to produce a similar system while not actually doing any innovation of your own. If they didn't file for a patent, then you could just go buy a bunch of chips, assemble your own equipment, and then gank (yes, that's a technical term) the software that they paid someone to develop all without any real investment of your own - exactly what the spirit of the patent system is meant to prevent you from doing - stealing other peoples innovations, not to prevent you from innovating on your own. If you want to use an off-the-shelf or custom built computer and implement your own methodology for accomplishing the same task, there doesn't appear to be anything anywhere in the patent application that would prevent you from doing so; you just can't steal IBM's precise method for doing so. I don't claim to understand how they mean this can be implemented without automation or computerization, I'll admit. I've read as much as the patent application as I can bear to (or have time for, for that matter), but claim 1 indicates automation is necessary. To wit:
1. A system for reducing customer dissatisfaction for waiting, said system comprising:a queue monitoring subsystem that detects an entry of a customer into a waiting queue;a reward computing subsystem that calculates a reward for the customer for being in the waiting queue; anda communication subsystem to communicate the reward to the customer,wherein at least one of said queue monitoring subsystem, said reward computing subsystem, and said communication subsystem is automated.
Very interesting... I'd never tried heating the drives, but it may sometimes be worth a try... Any idea what situations heating may be preferable to freezing?
I don't know where you got this information but this sounds outright stupid to me. Why wouldn't you use encrypted drives? That way the only thing you need to wipe are the keys. That should eliminate the need for any James Bond stuff to prevent capture. Unless you're suggesting all encryption is crackable.
I am suggesting precisely that. While it is still incredibly off-topic when compared against the original parent article (considering most people don't care or need to encrypt their data drives, and said encryption is totally irrelevant to the question of data recovery - just because you don't have a key to read it immediately doesn't mean the data files can't be recovered intact from a disk and later analyzed), yes, even "government grade" encryption is susceptible; I suggest you educate yourself a bit more before you start bandying about words like stupid - look into the details of the U.S. Navy EP-3E ARIES mid-air collision with a Chinese F-8 Finback. In their case, much of the data on the aircraft was encrypted, but this did very little to soothe the Navy's concerns... Fact is, they were fairly certain that the Chinese analysts stood a high probability of recovering vast amounts of sensitive data, encrypted and otherwise from the aircraft, as you can't possibly encrypt everything on the aircraft; too many of the surveillance and communication (not to mention flight control) systems on the aircraft demand or record data at rates far in excess of what an encryption/decryption algorithm can keep up with - crypto requires time and resources, neither of which are generally over abundant when it comes to air operations.
After Sunday's collision, the 24-member crew had just minutes before making an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island to destroy sensitive information. This would include codes for encryption systems and the records of electronic intelligence that had been collected during the flight - both of which would be highly useful to a potential adversary.
The 19 "electronic warfare" technicians, working shoulder-to-shoulder at terminals back in the windowless fuselage, practice such destruction techniques under far less stressful circumstances. The first few minutes last Sunday morning - over water, hundreds of miles from the plane's base on Okinawa, and in the presence of armed and hostile jets - were undoubtedly palm-sweaty tense as the pilots struggled to regain control of the plummeting four-engine plane.
Even if the crew was able to destroy all the computer codes and electronic records of the flight, US military and intelligence services "will probably treat as compromised much of the equipment just to be on the safe side," says Smith, a former military intelligence officer. Using reverse engineering, for example, Chinese technicians will be able to gather important data on the receivers, radars, and other highly classified equipment used in gathering the "SIGINT" (signals intelligence) and "ELINT" (electronic intelligence). This could be the difference between victory and loss in time of war.
There is also this at DarkReading (originally from VARBusiness):
JUNE 16, 2006 | PORTLAND, Ore. -- In 2001, an American spy plane collided in the air with a Chinese fighter and was forced to land on Chinese island. Since then, researchers have been looking for a way to quickly erase computer hard drives to deny access to sensitive intelligence data.
Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta), working with L-3 Communications Corp. (New York), said they have developed a technique for quickly erasing hard-disk drives. The team reports development of a prototype fast-erasure system to prevent sensitive information from reaching enemy eyes.
At the time of the U.S.-China incident, there was no way the
Caveat - Do NOT attempt the freezing procedure on a disk until every other recovery method has been tried and failed. I am not certain whether or not this process will affect a true data recovery facility's ability to recover any data, but on two occasions that I recall, the disks involved after freezing showed signs of what seemed to be bearing or motor failure where the disks at least spun-up (but were not otherwise detected in BIOS or readable) prior to freezing, but afterwards started producing very bad noises... I'm fairly certain one case the drive had been having issues to a cracked bearing... While I would normally think that freezing it (thus causing the bearing to shrink marginally and reducing the strain placed on the drive motor and spindle) would have stabilized it for a while for data recovery, either something happened with the bearing lubricant or motor or... well, I can't be certain, but whatever it was, the drive was then thoroughly shot, as indicated by lots of really *bad* noises coming from the drive that weren't there before.
In neither of the two cases where I suspect this procedure having actually made things worse was the data important enough for the drives to be shipped to a recovery facility where recovery costs start at $500, so I'm not sure, but I tell my customers that if it would be worth spending $500+ to recover their data that they go ahead and contact Cherry Systems and ship their drive to them. From their website:
If you have experienced a data loss, we understand the pressure you may be under. With a success rate of over 90% our experienced technicians at the Cherry Systems Lab can help you.
To increase your chances of a successful hard drive recovery, do not run any utility programs on the drive or allow anyone to work on it unless the drive has been successfully copied or mirrored.
So, I assume they mention this in case someone tried to do something foolhardy or ill-advised (which in general probably includes freezing) to the disk, though I do know that I have sent many other disks that I attempted to recover by software but could'nt (and did not freeze) that were then sent to Cherry and the data from them was successfully recovered... So, that warning may include freezing, though I think if you're intelligent about what tools you do or don't employ and what techniques you do or don't use when considering the importance of the data to be recovered, then you'll probably be safe... However, if it's just some old but unimportant emails or music or something that isn't worth paying $500+ to recover, it can be worth the try - I just wanted to make certain I didn't leave anyone under-informed.
Please see my above reply to Vellmont - a fair majority (but not quite all) of the software tools I use are contained on the Hiren's BootCD, though whenever possible I try to acquire valid licensed copies of these tools whenever possible in order to remain legitimate, thogh this isn't always possible with tools such as Winternals Disl Commander, as it is no longer in production. I do periodically download a new version of the Hiren's CD in order to see if any new tools or techniques I don't know of have cropped up there.
There are different (usually) utilities to recover data that has been deleted/formatted/etc. vs. data that was "lost" due to MFT corruption, tho some applications work alright for both. Some apps seem to have better results in some situations or depending on the actual techniques employed leading up to the recovery process, but I can usually get both. Additionally, occasionally when a disk is suffering unidentifiable physical failure, including where the disk isn't even recognized in BIOS, it sometimes works to place the disk in the freezer overnight, then in the morning or whenever plug the disk in FAST and bootup, then either attempt to copy the data to another disk as normal, or boot into a recovery utility to copy the data just as fast as you can. It doesn't always work, but in the face of absolutely nothing else working, it's worth a try and seems to work about 1/4 of the time, though recovery tools may still be needed, and it may or may not last long enough to recover all the data you need.
My techniques would take too long to outline in this space, and can be discovered by anyone willing to take the time to research software data recovery techniques. While the archive method violates several copyright laws, there is an excellent compendium of related tools on the "Hiren's BootCD" that you can find by searching for a torrent of the same name - this is a pretty comprehensive group of tools for many applications, and the collection of data recovery tools is excellent, especially if you know how to use them in addition to other recovery methods.
As far as data recovery on a drive that has in theory been flipped to pure 0, to 1, and then back to 0 again, ask anyone who works or has worked at a data recovery facility where they physically disassemble the disks for analysis. They'd be able to give you a much more scientific explanation (that's not what I do for a living), but the short of it is that the platters retain a magnetically-resonant harmonic latent in the background that is not immediately apparent to the standard read-heads built in to the disk, or is not apparent to them on individual sectors; however, when all the platters on an entire disk are examined, the standing magnetic harmonic (this may not be exactly the right term, but it's close enough, iirc) may be seen and analyzed in order to reconstruct the data on the disk. When I worked at D.E.C., we had an engineer in the "warp core" downstairs who had purchased a mil-spec "portable clean-room" for dirt cheap at an Army/Navy Surplus store that didn't realize what he had. I distinctly remember him making the claim (other engineers in the building validated his claim, though I never witnessed it myself) that he could even recover about 60%-70% of the data from a disk that had been subject to a "military format", which iirc, at the time referred to a disk that had been formatted to 0 then to 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0 (i.e. seven full flips). It is my understanding that a fully outfitted and funded data recovery analyst (i.e. large corporate or military/government) can still recover similar amounts of data after numerous "disk-shredding" operations.
I'm mainly limited by drive-failure in my ability to recover data. Enough formats or overwrites of the individual sectors may prevent me from being able to see or recover the data with what tools I have available. A full-on format, however, still doesn't ensure I can't get data, unless you use an application specifically meant to wipe a disk that runs from a bootable (non-windows) environment, and some of those seem to do better jobs than others; that said, a full wipe (which happens to generally be a very slow process too) is your best bet short of physical destruction in order to prevent any software based recovery... As far as preventing actual recovery analysts from finding data, use the methods I and Bill Stewart mentioned above - Drill/sandblast the platters, degaussing (and no, a regular magnet will NOT prevent a real analyst from recovering data... you need a particularly high-strength electromagnet), or thermite; these are the only guaranteed methods. You could try rigging up a method using the magnetron from a microwave, but that would bear experimentation and I have no certainty of it's effectiveness.
Examine the "Hard Disk", "Recovery Tools" and "Partition tools" portions on the Hiren's disk, and experiment with the tools available there. It still takes a little experimentation on my part depending on the nature of the data-loss to find exactly the correct or safest procedure for data recovery, but if you know what you're about when it comes to computers, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. There are also a number of tools on the CD that run in Windows instead of from the bootable portion of the CD, and a number of these are also very successful at recovering data - GetDataBackNTFS did for the first recovery on the machine I referenced above... Even though it had been NTFS full formatted and re-installed since, I could have recovered all the data on the disk, incl. OS (except what
How in the name of CowboyNeal did parent get modded as +5 Informative?
I recover deleted data WITHOUT a clean room or disk disassembly process on a nigh-daily basis. There are plenty of software tools that will recover data post-format, deletion, or crash; some even after multiple passes. Just yesterday I recovered about 3.4GB of data from a hard drive (that I didn't know at the time was failing with bad read-heads that were pinging the disk surface and creating physically-bad sectors) that had been reformatted (full format, not quick) and re-installed. The particular sequence of apps and methods I used enabled me to recover almost all the important docs on the machine minus a handful of unrecoverable files in the physically failed sectors. The disk later crashed again after the recovery, which was when I discovered the drive was failing. The MFT and MBR were completely shot and most bootable diagnostic applications listed the disk as unreadable. Others would attempt to read the disk but showed no data, even some tools that are supposed to seek data outside the MBR by examining individual clusters. Once again by using the right tools in the right sequence, I am, as I write this, recovering data from the disk yet again (this time as a slave drive in another machine, backing up to a known good archive drive)... Looks like I'm once again going to get all the data but another handful of files that were stored on physically damaged sectors.
So, no one is pandering - please to know what you're talking about first... Yes, my ability to recover data via software tools extends even to many (but not all) software applications that are supposed to securely and irrevocably destroy data. Also, if you're insistent about staying off-topic in regards to data-destruction in the face of law enforcement, not only are all the software methods you might use to destroy data far too slow, but chances are they just won't do the trick. This was a giant concern for the U.S. Air Force after the collision of a P-3 Orion with a Chinese fighter jet, where it was forced to land in China, and NONE of the data destruction techniques available to the crew were remotely sufficient to destroy enough data in the time available to them, but even if they had been, chances are a devoted enough analyst with the proper equipment and time still would have been able to recover more data than desirable (which, since it was all highly classified, means any data at all) outside of explosives, which they had, but are not generally a good idea to detonate on the inside of a flying aircraft. Since then the U.S.A.F. has developed a method of data destruction that utilizes what is essentially a modified medical defibrillator with a somewhat greater total output and replacement of the standard shock paddles with high-strength electromagnets that are placed on both sides on the drive and then discharged, functionally flipping the polarity of the entire disk and destroying all lingering magnetically resonant harmonics.
A dedicated and determined analyst with the right tools and time can recover vast quantities of data on disk subject even to a "military format"... Modern drives and recording techniques have nothing to do with anything in this regard. The only fool-proof way is massive electromagnetic discharge, incineration or to sand or otherwise physically damage the platters themselves... To quote 'Zerth' from above, "Fe2O3+2Al is your friend." Nothing will do the job quite as readily as Thermite, however it obviously presents it's own issues... especially since setting it off to erase your hard-drives before the authorities arrive is almost certain to earn you a large number of other very serious criminal charges, and liable to burn your home or office down; it's also hard to get the stuff to ignite reliably sometimes.
I'd STILL like to hear an answer to the actual question put forth in the article... We all know that hard disks can be disassembled and forensically recovered in the case of serious failure or attempted data destruction... But a
Shouldn't this have been an obvious or apparent extension of RFC 1149 (or RFC 2549, for that matter) when considered in the context of natural behavior and as a proper logic exercise, instead of just a joke? A very senior security engineer and I managed to find all kinds of other interesting implications when laying out a real-world network design by using IP over Avian carriers as an analogy for the data carrying portion of a cellular telecom network, and then expanding into the rest of the forest for descriptions of other portions and functions of a network of that size and complexity. We gleaned some very interesting insights from the exercise... I'm unsurprised that someone found a corollary in the behavior of a beehive - any natural system you study is liable to have similar applications in computing, whether it's circuit design or layer 3, esp. when the system in question involves a social species.
Well, if you don't want a piece of junk whose components are almost entirely made in North China by slave labor that learned how to solder last week, with memory that no one will take credit for manufacturing (much less warranty) and a HDD drive brand with the highest failure rate on the market, then you don't want a Dell. Lenovo *seems* to be keeping up a reasonable level of quality so far, but, as someone who orders 2 - 3 laptops every week, and has accounts with the largest electronics warehouses in the country, I can tell you that XP-based laptops have become exceedingly rare and difficult to obtain - at least on the east coast of the US, considering that nothing is made here any more and has to be shipped in via the west coast, where they have to filter what is left over from orders there to the eastern US. If I place an order well in advance with no hurry or time-frame on delivery, I can get some of the warehouses to set some aside for me as soon as they come in, but that's about the only way. There's a few models floating around, but those models certainly comprise the lowest number of shipped units, and by the time they make it to the east coast, there's only a few left. We certainly need a lot more market pressure to force Vista out like the polished turd that it is.
I tried to order an XP-based Lenovo just last week - there were none to be had in stock anywhere. Same with HP's, Acer's, and (my favorite) ASUS'. I refuse to sell Dell, I don't really fool with Gateway's, nor any of the cheapo crap that seems to be flooding the market right now. Microsoft is trying their damnedest to to make XP go away, and they've fairly successfully convinced the big manufacturers to focus on Vista sales, which is only now slowly changing due to market demand, thank providence. MS' marketing campaign was rather overwhelming, and had a lot of end-users and sales houses convinced it was going to be the only way to go as they attempt to recoup and justify their $4.6Bn USD failure, but continued news of manufacturers and suppliers offering more and more XP machines again or "downgrades" (let's face it, it's an upgrade) to XP lends some hope - a light at the end of the dark intestinal-tract tunnel that is Vista. Even better is the signs of more and more people switching to Linuxes like Ubuntu (now THAT is an upgrade... or more like "Upgrayedd", with two d's for a double-dose of pimpin') to the point where even Dell is offering to ship PC's pre-installed with it.
Regardless, Vista needs to be thrown out, bathwater and all. I'm just hoping their stock sinks them before the cybernetics revolution comes... I'm damn sure going to be choosing CerebrIX(TM) over WinDome(TM) for myself, but people are stupid enough as it is - the last thing we need is a 50-car pile-up on the interstate all because someone BSOD'd while driving due to a HAL.DLL failure.
CerebrIX(TM) and WinDome(TM) are property of the poster. (come on, laugh!)
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No, I think the point here is not to just recreate MAME, but to create a legitimate system of emulation that can can be used for valid historic archive purposes and with the proper corporate and social legitimacy perhaps be able to obtain licenses to otherwise copywritten, trademarked and DRM'd material - something not just meant to allow gamers and pirates to play old games and validate seemingly obsolete trademarks, but rather to allow museums and the like to preserve these works, and perhaps commercial ventures to place these systems in arcades, Wally-worlds, malls, etc. and perhaps earn some licensing profit from these sorts of ventures off of software that otherwise only costs them money to enforce trademark on, yet has likely not returned any real profit in a long time.
Parent is unquestionably flamebait, or offtopic at the very least, regardless of whether the poster had the unmitigated gall to post it as themselves - how it possibly came to be scored insightful I cannot fathom.
The whole point of the parent article is, as another poster below mentions, to change the terms in which people think of evolutionary sciences, and this is far from an American-only issue - there are approximately 1.1 billion Catholics world-wide and another 1 billion Sunni Muslims. Given that there are only roughly 300 million people in the United States and that neither of these belief systems encourages a belief in pure evolution, saying, "The issue is that this ignorant view may be perpetuated in America", is plainly ignorant in and of itself and nothing more than flamebait.
If you have really "never heard anyone in Europe utter such crap", you must live in a cave and this is your first time on the internet - Europe easily spouts its own fair share of crap, not the least of which is that which comes out of Vatican City on a regular basis.
No, I think the topic deserves better consideration and less distraction from the peanut gallery. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, "Great minds discuss ideas...", and it seems to me the parent merely wishes to derail the conversation by switching from the idea at hand to some sort of misguided anti-nationalism that is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand - shame on you.
There are people all over the world who associate, just as the article says, a whole realm of science as an '-ism', whereby it may be made to be an equal of other '-ism's', as if the trail of evidence is still the product of one mans thoughts, observations and ideas, and thereby subject to ridicule as if evolution had no other basis in fact or Darwin's observations could not somehow be reproduced or evidenced. An '-ism' denotes a philosophy or belief, such as fascism, nationalism, taoism, Buddhism, communism, etc., and not a scientific theorem or model with a basis in real-world observation and evidence - evolution has long since ceased being about one mans untested hypotheses. It's about time that the conventions we use to refer to that branch of science catch up with that, as this affects the social perceptions of its validity. People - poor, corrupt, stupid things that we are - think in terms of the language(s) that we speak, and our thought is influenced highly by the words and terms we correlate with a thing, much more so than most of us think, and if you need evidence of that you merely need to look into neurolinguistic programming and how/why so many security and other professionals of all sorts employ it in everything from social engineering to marketing and advertising. To do any less leaves this whole scientific domain in popular conception as something anyone can comment on with equal authority based purely on cognitive perception with no demands of real-world proof, i.e. the domain of philosophy and religion, not science and logic where it belongs.
My room mate, a senior T-Mobile Engineer, did a test just last night of his new G1 on T-Mo's 3G network versus his iPhone on AT&T's network and saw a full 150kbps difference between the two, with advantage going to the G1. On a later test they ran the G1 against the iPhone with both on T-Mobile's network and saw between a 50 - 75kbps difference between the two, again, advantage G1.
So far I'm rather impressed with the device. The trackball is very functional, easy to use, and seems well made. The device is fast and responsive, and while the screen may not be quit as big or pretty as the iPhone's, it's still plenty nice enough. Ok, it doesn't have multi-touch (as far as I can ascertain), but it's fast, very functional and I really really want one now. Web-browsing was a wonderful experience (first time I can say that about a phone), and did I say it was fast? Also the native console and SSH functionality was awesome, and I was very surprised by how well it represented my SSH sessions, including irssi - I must have one.
It really does look better in the hand than it does on photos. Ok, not quite as slick as the iPhone, but I'm also not one of those people who will shell out an extra $X just to get a pretty PC case when all I want is functionality - I don't need my mobile device to be sexy in an artistic way, I want it to be sexy in a functional, useful and powerful way. The teenage emo girls on 4chan can have the iPhone, it's G1 for me.
Don't forget open standards for the phone too, and the fact that with the time and effort you can make it do anything you want to, and not have to be beholden to what Apple thinks you should be able to do, or a glorified pager that is the Blackberry.
I note with amusement you chose to post this as an anonymous coward.
The last shop I worked for routinely beat NewEgg on prices on all but a handful of items - hard drives I could never touch (though we were awfully damned close) on price alone, as well as whenever a video-card was on sale or price reduction. Plus, we factored shipping and system assembly into cost, and good luck getting build support from NewEgg. Good luck also finding out from NewEgg the kinds of things about current or older hardware that only someone who builds on a daily basis would know. Sure, some places will have hardware brands they prefer and are more experienced with, but just because it isn't EXACTLY what you want doesn't mean it won't work as well or better than the build you dreamed up. Perhaps the RAM you think is so great actually sucks (I got this from a lot of gamer kids that would come through), or the video-card is really a POS, especially in combination with your motherboard. If you're running a *nix flavor, you might know more about it than the local guy, but then again, you never know.
Point is, among MANY other things, you get the benefit of the local store for support on many issues. If the place is honest and has good suppliers, the price should be damned close. Too, NewEgg doesn't have the best prices on EVERYTHING. It near to equals out often times in the long run. Unless you buy bits and pieces on TigerDirect and Overstock and eBay. Then you run all kinds of other risks which are too great in number to go over here in detail. Suffice to say, my whole point is, with an honest local place, it's worth the effort to find one, and the $10 to maybe even $100 more you might pay there, in the end run. I can't tell you how many machines I've had brought to me over the years that were built by geeks from parts they bought online that turned out to be shit together - many of them expressed later that they'd wished they'd just come to me in the first place. Why? Because they knew I'd have eaten the cost if I ordered parts that didn't work together, replace items that failed for some reason, and in general take responsibility when/if something didn't work out.
There was a big shop in Atlanta that got nailed for selling pirated software. Most geeks eventually learned not to buy parts there because they overcharged badly, but that was in the days before NewEgg mainly, though they continued to get customers who didn't know better. That, however, is a moot point. ALL forms of business have individuals that will screw people, from online retailers cheating people in one of A(g64,g64) possible ways, to stock brokers and investment bankers, barber shops, megamarts, car mechanics, you name it - there is someone out to screw you in any business, and both the law and a little common sense can protect you; the latter will serve you much better than the former.
Ahhhhh, thank science for someone who truly understands.
daoine_sidhe's (I even know how to pronounce that ;) ) exactly right. I spent most of every day working on either old and/or virus/malware infected computers for average joe's who know nothing about computers that the owner knew to start timing how long I spent in conversation and cut me off before too long, just because I'd occasionally stop working to have an intelligent conversation for once, instead of hearing, "I needs me a new 'puter" or "It's done broke an I don't know why. Maybe it's that anti-virus program I downloaded through kazaa."
Prices often came down for complete new systems, or averaged out to meet or beat equivalent specs on whole systems from other manufacturers. I'm surprised you have an assembly charge for full system builds, but then, we basically built ours in on the cost of a whole system. On a low-end machine ($500 to $600), we usually were looking to get about 15% markup over wholesale cost, and as little as 10% on machines much over, say, $1500. Our independent field tech got parts at 6%, but that's because he bought a whole lot from us on a daily basis, did the field work we didn't want to do, and brought us new customers from other clients he had.
You will find terrible shops run by people who suck and/or don't know what they're doing, but finding a good one is well worth it, and indeed, supporting your local economy is always a plus - if the reasons why escape you, I'd suggest an economics class or three: it's actually rather more important than most people seem to think.
daoine_sidhe will understand, I think, as would anyone else who has worked for a local store, when I say it's damned sure not an easy business, and there isn't, in all, really a lot of money in it these days, especially if you have any competition worth a shit and the overhead costs of a storefront, but that's often because the owners of the successful places know they have to be honest and do right by people, and as anyone over the age of 20 knows, there's very little profit in doing right by the customer. For the ethical among us though, it's worth it.
And that's another part of what makes it worth it to the customer to patronize a local business.
Quite, no shop should charge you outright for shipping, and chances are on a whole system you'll pay just as much (if not MUCH more) in shipping charges (or handling/restocking fees, if the retailer claims to waive shipping on orders over $N).
Also, I did admit it might be more expensive than what you could get each individual part for if you bought each part from a given retailer based solely on cost alone, rather than going with a single supplier. If, however, you want to order everything from just one online-retailer for convenience's sake (i.e., price is an issue, but not an overwhelming or defining one), then try your local store. You'll get better warranty and technical support than you will from Tiger or NewEgg for certain, and with an honest shop, you won't get any refurbished items in new clothing like you might buying strictly online (Overstock.com is bad about this, and apparently NewEgg is has done this on occasion too).
It all boils down to whether or not you can find a good, honest, local place with access to several major wholesalers. Easier said than done, yes, but well worth the time and effort, I think.
The sales tax balances out in the end. If it's THAT bad, wait for a stinking tax holiday, like the ones they have at the start of the school season. But really, the savings from a little bit of tax versus the costs of shipping/handling/restocking, plus the poor service and support often experienced from online retailers just doesn't add up in the end.
Quite.
I've worked for a local shop on two different occasions, and I can tell you that it would be well worth your while to see if there is one in your area with good prices and knowledgeable employees.
If you live in or even near a large city with a number of wholesalers, then you should be able to get prices that are fairly consistent with what you'd pay on-line, but if the shop is honorable (talk to the employees and this should become obvious before too long if you know what you're about and have already done pricing), then it could save you a lot of effort in ordering errors and the like. They will often have parts or builds they prefer, and may even want to build the system for you for an extra fee, but as the parent said, you'll find the *GOOD* places will work hard for their customers and even fix things long out of warranty. You might pay a little more overall than you would if you ordered parts from wherever the single best deal you can get on any item on-line, but it can really be well worth it.
The trick is, knowing and finding a good, honest and knowledgeable shop to work with. Don't alienate them by trying to get them to match every price on-line, but talking to them will let them know you know what you're looking for, and let you decide if they're the right place to work with.
You can always default to getting it all on-line or a part here or there locally, but if you order from any single place, be it Tiger or NewEgg or Best Buy or the local store, you're going to pay a little more. I'd suggest supporting a local business, if you can. As long as the price is reasonable, I assure you it's worth it in the long run. Hopefully you'll never have problems, but no matter where you buy a computer or parts, odds are you'll eventually have a problem, and chances are your local shop will support and treat you better than anywhere else.
It's funny... No matter how many times you tell people, or how intelligent they may be, for some reason you just can't seem to get people to realize that simulations are often worthless in cases like this, as you can make a simulation say or prove anything you want it to by tweaking it's internal dynamics to support whatever result you want. Regardless, unless you have an overwhelming amount of real-world data and flawless physics computational models, no simulation is ever completely valid - modeling the real world inside a computer to that extent is functionally impossible. There simply isn't enough data on what actually happened (hence the desire to create such simulations to begin with) to create an accurate model in the first place. They don't know exactly what each fire did where - fire is notoriously difficult to predict, as the difficulty in even reproducing believable fire effects in computer animation shows: little things like winds currents, fuel spread, what parts of the plane went where in the building and did what all add up to too many statistical errors for any margin to account for, and all they are doing is best guessing here and claiming it must be true because their model agrees with them - I think the model is likely to have been biased in their own favor from the very beginning, even if not purposefully or intentionally. We as human beings are always biased, and it is not unreasonable to believe that our digital (re-)creations are any more impartial than the people who coded them to begin with.
Could I make a simulation of a galaxy that looks and behaves like a galaxy? Easy enough. Does that mean that the laws I founded my simulated galaxy on has anything whatsoever to do with how a real galaxy works? Not at all. It just means that I've managed to create a series of conditions within a computer that outputs some visuals and math that happens to look strikingly like a galaxy. Just because you use a really big computer that took a long time running said simulation does not make it any more valid. I could create a "simulation" that would take years to run but still show convincingly - based on data provided - that the building actually collapsed because of a hole through the planet that leads to China that was opened up as a result of an earthquake caused by digging done for a new hydro-dam there - that still doesn't make it correct or even partially true. Too many factors outside our ability to guess or second-guess or intuit or even, honestly, our ability to perceive, are at work.
How often does it happen that something more complex than a cheap Chinese-made children's toy or other simple item that is designed digitally actually makes it in to the real-world without modification? Does anybody know anybody who has ever designed a 10-story building in CAD that didn't require hundreds or thousands of modifications before construction was completed? I've worked for a (major) aircraft company, and I can tell you for certain that despite all the best modeling and simulation software that a multi-billion dollar aerospace defense contractor can summon, not one of those simulations is ever entirely accurate when it comes to the real world.
Any video-game company that has an engine with solid physics could recreate on a screen the WTC collapse - does that mean the factors they employed to *simulate* that collapse have anything to do with what actually occurred?
I find the quote that is on the bottom of this page as I write this to be incredibly succinct and germane - Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
Quite true. As a systems administrator, consultant, and long-time general PC repair expert, I know intimately how simple Windows is to hack when you have physical access, and have been privelged for many many many incredulous looks from friends / family / customers when trying to explain, "No, I don't need your password, it's irrelevant."
Remote compromise is only marginally more difficult. Regardless, the whole point of the originating poster about this deal making Windows somehow more compromised for the US Gov is ludicrous, because it's already completely compromised on so many levels it's just not funny.
You seriously think that there isn't a U.S. made operating system that hasn't yet been back-doored by the NSA and / or CIA as a result of a back-room deal somewhere? I mean, I'm even a US citizen and I'm not so naive as to believe that they aren't all pretty well universally compromised, and there's no need to "phone home" on a regular basis so as to be caught out that easily - there are ways, and then there are ways. If you think that there is anything in a Windows installation that somehow makes your secure int he face of the Feds, you're sorely mistaken - your only hope is third-party tools which are very possibly just as compromised. Need evidence? Examine the cd-kit given out to Law Enforcement to enable them to access Windows Computers more easily by bypassing encryption and password security features.
I have it on good authority that there's only one OS on the market that remains safe from NSA/CIA/DOD/DOJ back-dooring at this moment, and that is mainly a result of it not being a natively U.S. produced distro.
Now *THIS* is what I still actually come to /. forums for. Sadly, I'm at work where I don't really have time to enjoin this discussion at a higher level and provide a more insightful response (work is keeping me incredibly busy, but I'll try to get around to it later this evening if possible). Parent is totally correct in stating that everyone is biased, some of us more so than others. I don't ever claim to be impartial - I certainly have my own views and opinions, though I try to be more open-minded (than most, it would seem, with the caveat that my mind is not so open that my brains fall out) and lay blame or kudos when and where they belong, equally and at all times; baboo_jackal is very correct in the statement that any claim of the Pentagon is "subverting traditional journalism" is incredibly inane pablum meant only to create FUD and further reinforce the paranoia of those who would believe it.
As for Stengel, he's right, to some degree, though I don't believe it is completely unreasonable for a journalist to be expected to be objective - it's not a gross impossibility; examine an issue from all available sides and report on known facts rather than twisting those facts to fit one's preferred opinionated hyperbole, basic Communications 101 stuff; this doesn't mean that the author can't argue for something better or different, but that still doesn't mean that they have to inject their own bias into every word - sensationalism is for the intellectually weak, both on the side of the author and the reader who accepts it; this is why I scan so many news sources in order to get a better view on events - too bad finding a single media outlet that reports simply what is and not what they would like things to be has thus far been impossible, tho Reuters seems to do a better job than most these days.
Yessss... And we *all* know exactly how honest the average journalist in the mainstream mass American media is these days. Not that I'm defending them per se, but if the military knows that >90% of the drive-by media in this country is already biased against them right out of the box and 100% determined to never ever report anything but the worst they can about the military and the war in Iraq (how many CNN articles do you see about all the schools we're building in Iraq and Afghanistan, or specialty pieces from Time or the NYT about the pain and suffering that our volunteer Army is going through because they've been ordered to do so [their only other options being desertion and... desertion, which is in theory a treason offense also]), you tell me, is it entirely wrong for the military to attempt to put out some good news? Nobody can tell me that other private corporations as well as government officials aren't forcibly injecting their own slant into the news, so why should anybody come down so hard on the military for attempting to defend and promote itself in the way that all militaries have done since the dawn of time?
Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close up the equation with a logical end!
Is there a link to this anywhere? A quick search of google news returns only a link to this /. entry. Are there any real-world references to this? Sorry, but news doesn't originate at /., it is merely reposted here, and pardon me, but I'm not inclined to trust anything I find posted here without a reference to an actual news outlet - kdawson is particularly known for journalistic integrity.
Quite welcome. I had to stop on reading the piece to see what editor put it through. Needless to say, I was not surprised when I discovered the answer.
Shame, looks like the mods are ignoring this thread completely. I had points yesterday, but when I was looking through this thread to find someone to mod up, I realized I had to post instead in an attempt to shed some light on the issue, seeing so many led so far off track by the wording of the original story post. Oh well.
Good point. Personally, I don't see why any restaurant would want to use this. Why make an automated way to give away free lunches to people because they wait? If a customer complains about waiting too long, then you give them the coupon.
I suppose the flipside to that is that the customers who don't complain, but decide that they don't want to come back to the restaurant because they had to wait...
The reason being that IBM makes business machines - including point of sale and business automation systems. What they have described here is a novel method by which the human factor normally necessary to monitor customers' time spent waiting and then selection of an appropriate compensation is automated through their system, almost certainly to be tied in to an existing product like a point of sale terminal that will quite possibly be tied into one of those little pager systems that lets you know when your table is ready. Rather than requiring employees or wait-staff to monitor times spent waiting on a screen and then offer the customer something gratis, the system is designed to do all this for them, thusly eliminating time and resources necessary in what is probably an environment where time is a premium (since people are waiting for service) as well as potential stress or conflict with a customer who may unhappy - now they don't have to approach an already harried manager or wait-staff and present a complaint or argument - the system notes that a pre-programmed threshold (which the establishment has determined to be the minimum time before they would be willing to offer such freebies regardless of system automation) has passed and automatically offers the free item, in theory placating the customer(s) without creating extra resource strain on the staff.
Why patent this? Because IBM wants to offer this ability to restaurants and other businesses who do not want to have to do these things themselves, implemented via a piece of IBM equipment. The patent as described does not prevent a business from offering you a free lunch if you wait too long - IBM obviously spent money time and research effort creating a combined software and hardware method that can automate this process (and thereby expand the services and functions performed/offered to customers already owning or seeking to purchase IBM equipment) - also known as a "value add"; what the patent prevents you from doing is copying or mirroring IBM's research to produce a similar system while not actually doing any innovation of your own. If they didn't file for a patent, then you could just go buy a bunch of chips, assemble your own equipment, and then gank (yes, that's a technical term) the software that they paid someone to develop all without any real investment of your own - exactly what the spirit of the patent system is meant to prevent you from doing - stealing other peoples innovations, not to prevent you from innovating on your own. If you want to use an off-the-shelf or custom built computer and implement your own methodology for accomplishing the same task, there doesn't appear to be anything anywhere in the patent application that would prevent you from doing so; you just can't steal IBM's precise method for doing so. I don't claim to understand how they mean this can be implemented without automation or computerization, I'll admit. I've read as much as the patent application as I can bear to (or have time for, for that matter), but claim 1 indicates automation is necessary. To wit:
1. A system for reducing customer dissatisfaction for waiting, said system comprising:a queue monitoring subsystem that detects an entry of a customer into a waiting queue;a reward computing subsystem that calculates a reward for the customer for being in the waiting queue; anda communication subsystem to communicate the reward to the customer,wherein at least one of said queue monitoring subsystem, said reward computing subsystem, and said communication subsystem is automated.
I looked for but did not immediately see any cla
Very interesting... I'd never tried heating the drives, but it may sometimes be worth a try... Any idea what situations heating may be preferable to freezing?
I am suggesting precisely that. While it is still incredibly off-topic when compared against the original parent article (considering most people don't care or need to encrypt their data drives, and said encryption is totally irrelevant to the question of data recovery - just because you don't have a key to read it immediately doesn't mean the data files can't be recovered intact from a disk and later analyzed), yes, even "government grade" encryption is susceptible; I suggest you educate yourself a bit more before you start bandying about words like stupid - look into the details of the U.S. Navy EP-3E ARIES mid-air collision with a Chinese F-8 Finback. In their case, much of the data on the aircraft was encrypted, but this did very little to soothe the Navy's concerns... Fact is, they were fairly certain that the Chinese analysts stood a high probability of recovering vast amounts of sensitive data, encrypted and otherwise from the aircraft, as you can't possibly encrypt everything on the aircraft; too many of the surveillance and communication (not to mention flight control) systems on the aircraft demand or record data at rates far in excess of what an encryption/decryption algorithm can keep up with - crypto requires time and resources, neither of which are generally over abundant when it comes to air operations.
From GlobalSecurity.org:
There is also this at DarkReading (originally from VARBusiness):
In neither of the two cases where I suspect this procedure having actually made things worse was the data important enough for the drives to be shipped to a recovery facility where recovery costs start at $500, so I'm not sure, but I tell my customers that if it would be worth spending $500+ to recover their data that they go ahead and contact Cherry Systems and ship their drive to them. From their website:
So, I assume they mention this in case someone tried to do something foolhardy or ill-advised (which in general probably includes freezing) to the disk, though I do know that I have sent many other disks that I attempted to recover by software but could'nt (and did not freeze) that were then sent to Cherry and the data from them was successfully recovered... So, that warning may include freezing, though I think if you're intelligent about what tools you do or don't employ and what techniques you do or don't use when considering the importance of the data to be recovered, then you'll probably be safe... However, if it's just some old but unimportant emails or music or something that isn't worth paying $500+ to recover, it can be worth the try - I just wanted to make certain I didn't leave anyone under-informed.
Please see my above reply to Vellmont - a fair majority (but not quite all) of the software tools I use are contained on the Hiren's BootCD, though whenever possible I try to acquire valid licensed copies of these tools whenever possible in order to remain legitimate, thogh this isn't always possible with tools such as Winternals Disl Commander, as it is no longer in production. I do periodically download a new version of the Hiren's CD in order to see if any new tools or techniques I don't know of have cropped up there.
There are different (usually) utilities to recover data that has been deleted/formatted/etc. vs. data that was "lost" due to MFT corruption, tho some applications work alright for both. Some apps seem to have better results in some situations or depending on the actual techniques employed leading up to the recovery process, but I can usually get both. Additionally, occasionally when a disk is suffering unidentifiable physical failure, including where the disk isn't even recognized in BIOS, it sometimes works to place the disk in the freezer overnight, then in the morning or whenever plug the disk in FAST and bootup, then either attempt to copy the data to another disk as normal, or boot into a recovery utility to copy the data just as fast as you can. It doesn't always work, but in the face of absolutely nothing else working, it's worth a try and seems to work about 1/4 of the time, though recovery tools may still be needed, and it may or may not last long enough to recover all the data you need.
My techniques would take too long to outline in this space, and can be discovered by anyone willing to take the time to research software data recovery techniques. While the archive method violates several copyright laws, there is an excellent compendium of related tools on the "Hiren's BootCD" that you can find by searching for a torrent of the same name - this is a pretty comprehensive group of tools for many applications, and the collection of data recovery tools is excellent, especially if you know how to use them in addition to other recovery methods.
As far as data recovery on a drive that has in theory been flipped to pure 0, to 1, and then back to 0 again, ask anyone who works or has worked at a data recovery facility where they physically disassemble the disks for analysis. They'd be able to give you a much more scientific explanation (that's not what I do for a living), but the short of it is that the platters retain a magnetically-resonant harmonic latent in the background that is not immediately apparent to the standard read-heads built in to the disk, or is not apparent to them on individual sectors; however, when all the platters on an entire disk are examined, the standing magnetic harmonic (this may not be exactly the right term, but it's close enough, iirc) may be seen and analyzed in order to reconstruct the data on the disk. When I worked at D.E.C., we had an engineer in the "warp core" downstairs who had purchased a mil-spec "portable clean-room" for dirt cheap at an Army/Navy Surplus store that didn't realize what he had. I distinctly remember him making the claim (other engineers in the building validated his claim, though I never witnessed it myself) that he could even recover about 60%-70% of the data from a disk that had been subject to a "military format", which iirc, at the time referred to a disk that had been formatted to 0 then to 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0 (i.e. seven full flips). It is my understanding that a fully outfitted and funded data recovery analyst (i.e. large corporate or military/government) can still recover similar amounts of data after numerous "disk-shredding" operations.
I'm mainly limited by drive-failure in my ability to recover data. Enough formats or overwrites of the individual sectors may prevent me from being able to see or recover the data with what tools I have available. A full-on format, however, still doesn't ensure I can't get data, unless you use an application specifically meant to wipe a disk that runs from a bootable (non-windows) environment, and some of those seem to do better jobs than others; that said, a full wipe (which happens to generally be a very slow process too) is your best bet short of physical destruction in order to prevent any software based recovery... As far as preventing actual recovery analysts from finding data, use the methods I and Bill Stewart mentioned above - Drill/sandblast the platters, degaussing (and no, a regular magnet will NOT prevent a real analyst from recovering data... you need a particularly high-strength electromagnet), or thermite; these are the only guaranteed methods. You could try rigging up a method using the magnetron from a microwave, but that would bear experimentation and I have no certainty of it's effectiveness.
Examine the "Hard Disk", "Recovery Tools" and "Partition tools" portions on the Hiren's disk, and experiment with the tools available there. It still takes a little experimentation on my part depending on the nature of the data-loss to find exactly the correct or safest procedure for data recovery, but if you know what you're about when it comes to computers, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. There are also a number of tools on the CD that run in Windows instead of from the bootable portion of the CD, and a number of these are also very successful at recovering data - GetDataBackNTFS did for the first recovery on the machine I referenced above... Even though it had been NTFS full formatted and re-installed since, I could have recovered all the data on the disk, incl. OS (except what
How in the name of CowboyNeal did parent get modded as +5 Informative?
I recover deleted data WITHOUT a clean room or disk disassembly process on a nigh-daily basis. There are plenty of software tools that will recover data post-format, deletion, or crash; some even after multiple passes. Just yesterday I recovered about 3.4GB of data from a hard drive (that I didn't know at the time was failing with bad read-heads that were pinging the disk surface and creating physically-bad sectors) that had been reformatted (full format, not quick) and re-installed. The particular sequence of apps and methods I used enabled me to recover almost all the important docs on the machine minus a handful of unrecoverable files in the physically failed sectors. The disk later crashed again after the recovery, which was when I discovered the drive was failing. The MFT and MBR were completely shot and most bootable diagnostic applications listed the disk as unreadable. Others would attempt to read the disk but showed no data, even some tools that are supposed to seek data outside the MBR by examining individual clusters. Once again by using the right tools in the right sequence, I am, as I write this, recovering data from the disk yet again (this time as a slave drive in another machine, backing up to a known good archive drive)... Looks like I'm once again going to get all the data but another handful of files that were stored on physically damaged sectors.
So, no one is pandering - please to know what you're talking about first... Yes, my ability to recover data via software tools extends even to many (but not all) software applications that are supposed to securely and irrevocably destroy data. Also, if you're insistent about staying off-topic in regards to data-destruction in the face of law enforcement, not only are all the software methods you might use to destroy data far too slow, but chances are they just won't do the trick. This was a giant concern for the U.S. Air Force after the collision of a P-3 Orion with a Chinese fighter jet, where it was forced to land in China, and NONE of the data destruction techniques available to the crew were remotely sufficient to destroy enough data in the time available to them, but even if they had been, chances are a devoted enough analyst with the proper equipment and time still would have been able to recover more data than desirable (which, since it was all highly classified, means any data at all) outside of explosives, which they had, but are not generally a good idea to detonate on the inside of a flying aircraft. Since then the U.S.A.F. has developed a method of data destruction that utilizes what is essentially a modified medical defibrillator with a somewhat greater total output and replacement of the standard shock paddles with high-strength electromagnets that are placed on both sides on the drive and then discharged, functionally flipping the polarity of the entire disk and destroying all lingering magnetically resonant harmonics.
A dedicated and determined analyst with the right tools and time can recover vast quantities of data on disk subject even to a "military format"... Modern drives and recording techniques have nothing to do with anything in this regard. The only fool-proof way is massive electromagnetic discharge, incineration or to sand or otherwise physically damage the platters themselves... To quote 'Zerth' from above, "Fe2O3+2Al is your friend." Nothing will do the job quite as readily as Thermite, however it obviously presents it's own issues... especially since setting it off to erase your hard-drives before the authorities arrive is almost certain to earn you a large number of other very serious criminal charges, and liable to burn your home or office down; it's also hard to get the stuff to ignite reliably sometimes.
I'd STILL like to hear an answer to the actual question put forth in the article... We all know that hard disks can be disassembled and forensically recovered in the case of serious failure or attempted data destruction... But a
Shouldn't this have been an obvious or apparent extension of RFC 1149 (or RFC 2549, for that matter) when considered in the context of natural behavior and as a proper logic exercise, instead of just a joke? A very senior security engineer and I managed to find all kinds of other interesting implications when laying out a real-world network design by using IP over Avian carriers as an analogy for the data carrying portion of a cellular telecom network, and then expanding into the rest of the forest for descriptions of other portions and functions of a network of that size and complexity. We gleaned some very interesting insights from the exercise... I'm unsurprised that someone found a corollary in the behavior of a beehive - any natural system you study is liable to have similar applications in computing, whether it's circuit design or layer 3, esp. when the system in question involves a social species.
Well, if you don't want a piece of junk whose components are almost entirely made in North China by slave labor that learned how to solder last week, with memory that no one will take credit for manufacturing (much less warranty) and a HDD drive brand with the highest failure rate on the market, then you don't want a Dell. Lenovo *seems* to be keeping up a reasonable level of quality so far, but, as someone who orders 2 - 3 laptops every week, and has accounts with the largest electronics warehouses in the country, I can tell you that XP-based laptops have become exceedingly rare and difficult to obtain - at least on the east coast of the US, considering that nothing is made here any more and has to be shipped in via the west coast, where they have to filter what is left over from orders there to the eastern US. If I place an order well in advance with no hurry or time-frame on delivery, I can get some of the warehouses to set some aside for me as soon as they come in, but that's about the only way. There's a few models floating around, but those models certainly comprise the lowest number of shipped units, and by the time they make it to the east coast, there's only a few left. We certainly need a lot more market pressure to force Vista out like the polished turd that it is.
I tried to order an XP-based Lenovo just last week - there were none to be had in stock anywhere. Same with HP's, Acer's, and (my favorite) ASUS'. I refuse to sell Dell, I don't really fool with Gateway's, nor any of the cheapo crap that seems to be flooding the market right now. Microsoft is trying their damnedest to to make XP go away, and they've fairly successfully convinced the big manufacturers to focus on Vista sales, which is only now slowly changing due to market demand, thank providence. MS' marketing campaign was rather overwhelming, and had a lot of end-users and sales houses convinced it was going to be the only way to go as they attempt to recoup and justify their $4.6Bn USD failure, but continued news of manufacturers and suppliers offering more and more XP machines again or "downgrades" (let's face it, it's an upgrade) to XP lends some hope - a light at the end of the dark intestinal-tract tunnel that is Vista. Even better is the signs of more and more people switching to Linuxes like Ubuntu (now THAT is an upgrade... or more like "Upgrayedd", with two d's for a double-dose of pimpin') to the point where even Dell is offering to ship PC's pre-installed with it.
Regardless, Vista needs to be thrown out, bathwater and all. I'm just hoping their stock sinks them before the cybernetics revolution comes... I'm damn sure going to be choosing CerebrIX(TM) over WinDome(TM) for myself, but people are stupid enough as it is - the last thing we need is a 50-car pile-up on the interstate all because someone BSOD'd while driving due to a HAL.DLL failure.
CerebrIX(TM) and WinDome(TM) are property of the poster. (come on, laugh!)
Someone please mod parent insightful, or under-rated at the very least.