I find it hilarious that Time Warner Cable is, at least by implication, suggesting that there actually exists a browser in which dealing with them could represent "the best possible shopping experience"...
I can understand the "popularity" argument, though it certainly does tend to coddle poor design practices, the fewer browsers they have to check for correct rendering on the cheaper their web development will be.
I find the "security" one much harder to understand(unless, as is quite likely, it is just being used cynically to make a purely cost-based decision sound more urgent). From a security perspective, things like IE6 and FF2.0 are seriously retro; but supported, which makes it seem quite unlikely that they are making the "security" decision based on the presence/absence of some specific feature(e.g. specific SSL/TLS ciphers, "anti-phishing filters", XSS countermeasures, etc.). Further, the "Safari 3.0 or higher (Mac Only)" thing seems downright inscrutable from a security perspective, and not much clearer from a web-design perspective. Is Safari version X on Windows really that drastically different? And is Chrome all that different, in terms of the rendering features that you would need to present a bunch of numbers, some fine print about fees, and clip-art of smiling families?
The alternative can be even worse, though. A suitably constructed organization can be nigh-immortal; but making an organization immutable is a task requiring extraordinary cunning, skill, and more than a bit of luck. It generally isn't possible.
You don't want to be more brittle than you have to be; but having shutdown conditions that kick in if you have fulfilled, or can no longer move toward fulfilling, your objective is superior to shambling on in ossified organizational undeath until your environment eventually kills you.
Surviving your founder is pretty easy. Retaining correct function post-founder is much harder.
True enough. I should have been more specific: any phone/network combination where a data transport less ass-backwards than data-over-SMS isn't available will be using control channel for SMS, which will lead to congestion pretty quickly if anybody tries this on any scale.
For any combination where SMS is transmitted over some sort of sensible data channel, this scheme would be largely pointless because you could just do your data transmission over the same channel. There might be a few edge cases where SMS is actually cheaper; but any broad adoption will cause carriers to iron those out pretty quickly...
Hydrogen may, depending on how the tech evolves, and how you crunch the numbers, end up being a cheaper/better energy storage tool than batteries for vehicle-sized applications; but it's still just storage. You have to generate the stuff, either by cracking some hydrocarbon and throwing the carbon away(which does reduce the CO2 problem; but actually means less usable energy per unit environmental destruction and political havoc caused by fossil fuel extraction) or by using some electrical source to crack water. The latter scenario requires either a massive ramp of solar/wind/hydro or more nukes than you can shake a stick at.
There is basically zero free hydrogen within our little gravity well and, barring the Fusion guys actually getting that working, the energy you generate from a given quantity of hydrogen will always be less than the energy you spent to produce it. That doesn't make it useless, the exact same thing is true of rechargable batteries; but it consigns it to the role of energy storage, not energy generation.
I hope you guys have some sort of backup water supply lined up...
If you are really lucky, which seems unlikely, you won't see a repeat of the "coal country" scenario. There is a bump in jobs and tax revenue(though, because it tends to be accompanied by levels of regulatory capture that would make anyone outside of a narco-state wince, a smaller and less pleasant bump than would otherwise be expected). Most of the profits leave the area and those that remain are usually spent by the time the minerals are gone. You are then back where you started, except you now live in a superfund site. It's worked out real well for Appalachia...
I don't see what gives you that impression. I'm merely pointing out that, with truecrypt(or any conceptually similar system), there are two things needed to obtain the actual decryption key and decrypt the volume: the password, and the keyfile.
The most secure configuration involves storing the keyfile separately from the encrypted volume(on a smartcard, USB drive, etc.). For reasons of convenience, though, Truecrypt(and, again, most of the conceptually similar systems) support storing the keyfile in the same location as the encrypted material, which is much less of a pain because you only need a password for access, don't have to carry a separate device, and so forth.
If this guy used the system properly, his volumes will be secure. Guessing a 1MB(in the case of truecrypt) random keyfile, or breaking the encryption will be functionally impossible.
If he went with the convenient setup, then the feds have both his encrypted volumes and his keyfiles. They only lack his password. Guessing passwords is, barring extraordinarily good ones, many orders of magnitude easier than guessing encryption keys, and is frequently within easy reach of brute force attack.
You need to use passwords that are both long and good. A naive brute-force system is, as you say, going to take forever to get "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"; but a slightly cleverer system that starts with a dictionary attack in the relevant language(s), then common slang and permutations(like l33tsp35k), then moves on to cliche phrases in those languages, and then just starts the naive brute-force would crush a password of that sort like a bug.
Some time back, I think it was on slashdot, there was discussion of a system designed specifically for that purpose. It would be seeded with all relevant and available biographical details(any writings, books/movies found in suspect's residence, terminology associated with known hobbies/professional background, etc.) and generate a dictionary of password guesses that somebody would "cleverly" choose if they were looking for something obscure; but personally memorable.
If it isn't some horrible random string, the per-character entropy is likely to be painfully low.
If the key is also stored on the drive, protected only by a password, it isn't merely "not crazy to think that the NSA could have this capability" it is "crazy to think that random script-kiddies do not have this capability".
Most people pick lousy passwords. Brute-forcing them is restricted only by the speed of your hardware(and password-guessing is one of those conveniently parallel problems that scales with almost perfect linearity across however many nodes you want to throw at it).
Either this guy is way above average when it comes to picking good passwords, or the key was, in fact, stored separately and never located, or (tinfoil hat) they actually cracked his password three years ago, didn't find enough evidence to build a case, and would rather "admit defeat", and encourage other malefactors to trust in their encryption, than just admit that they don't have a case....
Did you even bother to read the summary? The petition was against homosexual domestic partnerships. Stem cells and subsidies weren't even on the table.
I suspect that you'll find that the business of finding and recruiting honest men is harder than it looks. Arguably, most of political philosophy throughout history has basically just been work on assorted toy problems that arise out of our failure to solve that one.
Even worse, when it comes to complex projects(and IT counts), even a supply of honest men isn't good enough to assure success. Malicious actors can definitely poison the best of projects; but good people sail projects on to the rocks all the time.
I'm not a subject-matter expert; but, based on how badly a lot of injuries tend to heal in mature humans(I managed to grow a couple of arms and 10 fingers once, why not again if I happen to lose one or two?), I can only assume that evolutionary pressures imposed by some combination of the risk of cancer and the fact that, until the invention of modern medical care and life support systems, a quick-and-dirty healing job that turns into a ghastly mass of scar tissue is safer than a perfect regrowth that you won't live long enough to finish...
That's Un-American! I deserve the right to petition for laws restricting other people's behavior without any risk of being called to account for having done so!
This country was founded by people who knew that the right to oppress people they didn't like was a right worth crossing the ocean and living in ass-end of the earth for! Who are some activist judges to deny our puritan heritage?
The US Constitution, motherfucker! have you read it?
"Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads
;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
You must be some kind of pinko, to suggest a market-based solution instead of a (lightly) veiled corporate subsidy.
In all seriousness, though, while there is a compelling public interest argument to be made in favor of the post office doing some un-economic things(and about the best chain of precedent you'll find for any US federal function, outside of war), like providing postal service to podunk towns that would have nothing otherwise; there seems to be no reason why they need to subsidize merely convenient services that have plenty of viable substitutes. If Saturday delivery costs more, offer it at a premium(or not at all, if you don't think you can make money at the new price point). People can either suck it up and wait till monday, or suck it up and pay Fedex/UPS.
I attended a demonstration of a reading and writing of wax cylinders less than 6 months ago(they played back some historic ones, nothing high value because they degrade when played repeatedly, and then had a small band cut a new cylinder, live. Pointless, but pretty cool to watch). You can actually still get new media(some enthusiast worked out the formula, and it's just a trivial molding exercise from there), albeit not in huge quantities, and ~1900 vintage readers and writers work just fine with the sort of maintenance that anybody handy with small machines can provide. Plus, they are relatively simple, so it would be a "hobbyist + machine shop" level project to produce new ones.
Wax cylinders have been abandoned for all practical purposes because of their profound disadvantages; but among people who care for hobby reasons, support is still available....
Given that most courts actually believe cops whose lips are moving, I strongly suspect that the overwhelming majority of "tampering" inflicted on these cards will be done the old fashioned way. That is, there will be basically no attacks against the card itself; but the pictures taken just might be of "tidied" scenes, and the occasional inconvenient card might get tragically lost.
Sure, for some super high-profile case, the NSA can probably just 'ask' Sandisk to produce as many writable duplicates of the allegedly unique cards as they need, and have Verisign or whoever provide a 'secure' timestamp for whatever time they require. For the overwhelming majority of cases, though, that'd be overkill. Heck, the tampering would probably be more likely to cause scandal than would the existing techniques for getting the results you want. Compared to the surprisingly useless; but emotionally compelling, junk like eyewitness testimony, photographs would be practically objective, particularly if a "common photoshop artefacts detectomatic" software package can be put together so that all but the most useless defense attorneys can trivially check for mediocre hackjobs.
Assuming that the cards are, in fact, viable, the question won't be "can you find a reader?", it'll be "can you find(or reverse-engineer) the spec?". Given that, for normal SD cards, part of the spec is SPI mode, and the data are usually on a FAT16 or FAT32 filesystem, I'm guessing that the answer will be "Yes."
For consumer purposes, where Joe User doesn't want to have to be an electrical engineer just to look at the photos he took 20 years ago, a reader is pretty much a necessity. That is fair enough. A working reader is also extremely useful(not absolutely necessary; but sure pushes things toward "economic") when it comes to relatively dense storage that relies largely on the reader, like tapes and DVDs.
SD, though, does the majority of the work on the card, presenting a simple electrical interface to the world. Unless we are all fighting off mutant cockroaches with our bloodied bare hands, or chanting frenzied prayers to some iron-age sky-god, talking to one with future tech should be quite trivial. The only realistic way that the things could become unreadable would be if SanDisk fucked it up and decided that some sort of uber-proprietary DRM/obfuscation nonsense was absolutely vital...
I can only assume that Facebook will be effectively immune from prosecution for anything short of building its own nuclear arsenal, just as soon as the old judges and politicians die off, and are replaced by ones whose law school years are documented on Zuckerberg's giant voyeurism datastore...
Corporations have feelings and a whole crop of shareholders at home, needing to be fed. It would be inhumane to punish them as harshly as those degenerate potheads and copyright infringers.
Never is, of course, a serious issue; but hours or days late would be solvable with the right protocol.
Bittorrent, in effect, deals with rather similar issues(since it is typically used to transfer files so large that they make common home internet connections feel like ghastly retro shit) reasonably effectively. It may take a while; but sufficient patience will get you past any number of corrupted blocks, dropped packets, hosts that disconnect, etc.
Any sort of latency-sensitive application will be right out the window; but dumping blocks of data from point A to ghastly-end-of-the-earth B should be totally doable....
It's an especially terrible plan, if widely adopted, because SMS comes out of the control channel. If you have enough SMS traffic flying around, the carrier will either have to start dropping it, or have plenty of available voice/data channel lying idle because they don't have enough control channel capacity to set up and tear down calls.
Obviously the poor people in the sticks might not have fancy 3G stuff; but why would you attempt to shove data over SMS(aside from short message snippets from embedded devices, and suchlike applications), when GPRS already exists? All sorts of dirt cheap phones support being used as modems, without any special software, and, while it might well be more expensive now, for economically perverse reasons, SMS won't be cheaper for long if it becomes standard practice to do general-purpose data transfer over SMS on a large scale...
Given how often accounts get frozen "for security reasons" without any form of useful recourse, I'd say that Paypal encourages you to take cash out of your account as fast as possible...
Slashdot Mirror
I find it hilarious that Time Warner Cable is, at least by implication, suggesting that there actually exists a browser in which dealing with them could represent "the best possible shopping experience"...
I can understand the "popularity" argument, though it certainly does tend to coddle poor design practices, the fewer browsers they have to check for correct rendering on the cheaper their web development will be.
I find the "security" one much harder to understand(unless, as is quite likely, it is just being used cynically to make a purely cost-based decision sound more urgent). From a security perspective, things like IE6 and FF2.0 are seriously retro; but supported, which makes it seem quite unlikely that they are making the "security" decision based on the presence/absence of some specific feature(e.g. specific SSL/TLS ciphers, "anti-phishing filters", XSS countermeasures, etc.). Further, the "Safari 3.0 or higher (Mac Only)" thing seems downright inscrutable from a security perspective, and not much clearer from a web-design perspective. Is Safari version X on Windows really that drastically different? And is Chrome all that different, in terms of the rendering features that you would need to present a bunch of numbers, some fine print about fees, and clip-art of smiling families?
The alternative can be even worse, though. A suitably constructed organization can be nigh-immortal; but making an organization immutable is a task requiring extraordinary cunning, skill, and more than a bit of luck. It generally isn't possible.
You don't want to be more brittle than you have to be; but having shutdown conditions that kick in if you have fulfilled, or can no longer move toward fulfilling, your objective is superior to shambling on in ossified organizational undeath until your environment eventually kills you.
Surviving your founder is pretty easy. Retaining correct function post-founder is much harder.
True enough. I should have been more specific: any phone/network combination where a data transport less ass-backwards than data-over-SMS isn't available will be using control channel for SMS, which will lead to congestion pretty quickly if anybody tries this on any scale.
For any combination where SMS is transmitted over some sort of sensible data channel, this scheme would be largely pointless because you could just do your data transmission over the same channel. There might be a few edge cases where SMS is actually cheaper; but any broad adoption will cause carriers to iron those out pretty quickly...
Hydrogen may, depending on how the tech evolves, and how you crunch the numbers, end up being a cheaper/better energy storage tool than batteries for vehicle-sized applications; but it's still just storage. You have to generate the stuff, either by cracking some hydrocarbon and throwing the carbon away(which does reduce the CO2 problem; but actually means less usable energy per unit environmental destruction and political havoc caused by fossil fuel extraction) or by using some electrical source to crack water. The latter scenario requires either a massive ramp of solar/wind/hydro or more nukes than you can shake a stick at.
There is basically zero free hydrogen within our little gravity well and, barring the Fusion guys actually getting that working, the energy you generate from a given quantity of hydrogen will always be less than the energy you spent to produce it. That doesn't make it useless, the exact same thing is true of rechargable batteries; but it consigns it to the role of energy storage, not energy generation.
I hope you guys have some sort of backup water supply lined up...
If you are really lucky, which seems unlikely, you won't see a repeat of the "coal country" scenario. There is a bump in jobs and tax revenue(though, because it tends to be accompanied by levels of regulatory capture that would make anyone outside of a narco-state wince, a smaller and less pleasant bump than would otherwise be expected). Most of the profits leave the area and those that remain are usually spent by the time the minerals are gone. You are then back where you started, except you now live in a superfund site. It's worked out real well for Appalachia...
MIT and LurkerXXX are considering different questions and arriving at different answers.
MIT says that natural gas is the best practical low-carbon-emission fuel.
LurkerXXX notes that current production methods are just ducky, as long as you hate groundwater and like cancer.
I don't see what gives you that impression. I'm merely pointing out that, with truecrypt(or any conceptually similar system), there are two things needed to obtain the actual decryption key and decrypt the volume: the password, and the keyfile.
The most secure configuration involves storing the keyfile separately from the encrypted volume(on a smartcard, USB drive, etc.). For reasons of convenience, though, Truecrypt(and, again, most of the conceptually similar systems) support storing the keyfile in the same location as the encrypted material, which is much less of a pain because you only need a password for access, don't have to carry a separate device, and so forth.
If this guy used the system properly, his volumes will be secure. Guessing a 1MB(in the case of truecrypt) random keyfile, or breaking the encryption will be functionally impossible.
If he went with the convenient setup, then the feds have both his encrypted volumes and his keyfiles. They only lack his password. Guessing passwords is, barring extraordinarily good ones, many orders of magnitude easier than guessing encryption keys, and is frequently within easy reach of brute force attack.
You need to use passwords that are both long and good. A naive brute-force system is, as you say, going to take forever to get "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"; but a slightly cleverer system that starts with a dictionary attack in the relevant language(s), then common slang and permutations(like l33tsp35k), then moves on to cliche phrases in those languages, and then just starts the naive brute-force would crush a password of that sort like a bug.
Some time back, I think it was on slashdot, there was discussion of a system designed specifically for that purpose. It would be seeded with all relevant and available biographical details(any writings, books/movies found in suspect's residence, terminology associated with known hobbies/professional background, etc.) and generate a dictionary of password guesses that somebody would "cleverly" choose if they were looking for something obscure; but personally memorable.
If it isn't some horrible random string, the per-character entropy is likely to be painfully low.
If the key is also stored on the drive, protected only by a password, it isn't merely "not crazy to think that the NSA could have this capability" it is "crazy to think that random script-kiddies do not have this capability".
Most people pick lousy passwords. Brute-forcing them is restricted only by the speed of your hardware(and password-guessing is one of those conveniently parallel problems that scales with almost perfect linearity across however many nodes you want to throw at it).
Either this guy is way above average when it comes to picking good passwords, or the key was, in fact, stored separately and never located, or (tinfoil hat) they actually cracked his password three years ago, didn't find enough evidence to build a case, and would rather "admit defeat", and encourage other malefactors to trust in their encryption, than just admit that they don't have a case....
Did you even bother to read the summary? The petition was against homosexual domestic partnerships. Stem cells and subsidies weren't even on the table.
I suspect that you'll find that the business of finding and recruiting honest men is harder than it looks. Arguably, most of political philosophy throughout history has basically just been work on assorted toy problems that arise out of our failure to solve that one.
Even worse, when it comes to complex projects(and IT counts), even a supply of honest men isn't good enough to assure success. Malicious actors can definitely poison the best of projects; but good people sail projects on to the rocks all the time.
I'm not a subject-matter expert; but, based on how badly a lot of injuries tend to heal in mature humans(I managed to grow a couple of arms and 10 fingers once, why not again if I happen to lose one or two?), I can only assume that evolutionary pressures imposed by some combination of the risk of cancer and the fact that, until the invention of modern medical care and life support systems, a quick-and-dirty healing job that turns into a ghastly mass of scar tissue is safer than a perfect regrowth that you won't live long enough to finish...
Arlington National Cemetery is not an organization that can afford to take the risk of having their servers turned into zombies lightly...
That's Un-American! I deserve the right to petition for laws restricting other people's behavior without any risk of being called to account for having done so!
This country was founded by people who knew that the right to oppress people they didn't like was a right worth crossing the ocean and living in ass-end of the earth for! Who are some activist judges to deny our puritan heritage?
The US Constitution, motherfucker! have you read it?
"Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads
; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
You must be some kind of pinko, to suggest a market-based solution instead of a (lightly) veiled corporate subsidy.
In all seriousness, though, while there is a compelling public interest argument to be made in favor of the post office doing some un-economic things(and about the best chain of precedent you'll find for any US federal function, outside of war), like providing postal service to podunk towns that would have nothing otherwise; there seems to be no reason why they need to subsidize merely convenient services that have plenty of viable substitutes. If Saturday delivery costs more, offer it at a premium(or not at all, if you don't think you can make money at the new price point). People can either suck it up and wait till monday, or suck it up and pay Fedex/UPS.
I attended a demonstration of a reading and writing of wax cylinders less than 6 months ago(they played back some historic ones, nothing high value because they degrade when played repeatedly, and then had a small band cut a new cylinder, live. Pointless, but pretty cool to watch). You can actually still get new media(some enthusiast worked out the formula, and it's just a trivial molding exercise from there), albeit not in huge quantities, and ~1900 vintage readers and writers work just fine with the sort of maintenance that anybody handy with small machines can provide. Plus, they are relatively simple, so it would be a "hobbyist + machine shop" level project to produce new ones.
Wax cylinders have been abandoned for all practical purposes because of their profound disadvantages; but among people who care for hobby reasons, support is still available....
Given that most courts actually believe cops whose lips are moving, I strongly suspect that the overwhelming majority of "tampering" inflicted on these cards will be done the old fashioned way. That is, there will be basically no attacks against the card itself; but the pictures taken just might be of "tidied" scenes, and the occasional inconvenient card might get tragically lost.
Sure, for some super high-profile case, the NSA can probably just 'ask' Sandisk to produce as many writable duplicates of the allegedly unique cards as they need, and have Verisign or whoever provide a 'secure' timestamp for whatever time they require. For the overwhelming majority of cases, though, that'd be overkill. Heck, the tampering would probably be more likely to cause scandal than would the existing techniques for getting the results you want. Compared to the surprisingly useless; but emotionally compelling, junk like eyewitness testimony, photographs would be practically objective, particularly if a "common photoshop artefacts detectomatic" software package can be put together so that all but the most useless defense attorneys can trivially check for mediocre hackjobs.
Assuming that the cards are, in fact, viable, the question won't be "can you find a reader?", it'll be "can you find(or reverse-engineer) the spec?". Given that, for normal SD cards, part of the spec is SPI mode, and the data are usually on a FAT16 or FAT32 filesystem, I'm guessing that the answer will be "Yes."
For consumer purposes, where Joe User doesn't want to have to be an electrical engineer just to look at the photos he took 20 years ago, a reader is pretty much a necessity. That is fair enough. A working reader is also extremely useful(not absolutely necessary; but sure pushes things toward "economic") when it comes to relatively dense storage that relies largely on the reader, like tapes and DVDs.
SD, though, does the majority of the work on the card, presenting a simple electrical interface to the world. Unless we are all fighting off mutant cockroaches with our bloodied bare hands, or chanting frenzied prayers to some iron-age sky-god, talking to one with future tech should be quite trivial. The only realistic way that the things could become unreadable would be if SanDisk fucked it up and decided that some sort of uber-proprietary DRM/obfuscation nonsense was absolutely vital...
I can only assume that Facebook will be effectively immune from prosecution for anything short of building its own nuclear arsenal, just as soon as the old judges and politicians die off, and are replaced by ones whose law school years are documented on Zuckerberg's giant voyeurism datastore...
Corporations have feelings and a whole crop of shareholders at home, needing to be fed. It would be inhumane to punish them as harshly as those degenerate potheads and copyright infringers.
Never is, of course, a serious issue; but hours or days late would be solvable with the right protocol.
Bittorrent, in effect, deals with rather similar issues(since it is typically used to transfer files so large that they make common home internet connections feel like ghastly retro shit) reasonably effectively. It may take a while; but sufficient patience will get you past any number of corrupted blocks, dropped packets, hosts that disconnect, etc.
Any sort of latency-sensitive application will be right out the window; but dumping blocks of data from point A to ghastly-end-of-the-earth B should be totally doable....
It's an especially terrible plan, if widely adopted, because SMS comes out of the control channel. If you have enough SMS traffic flying around, the carrier will either have to start dropping it, or have plenty of available voice/data channel lying idle because they don't have enough control channel capacity to set up and tear down calls.
Obviously the poor people in the sticks might not have fancy 3G stuff; but why would you attempt to shove data over SMS(aside from short message snippets from embedded devices, and suchlike applications), when GPRS already exists? All sorts of dirt cheap phones support being used as modems, without any special software, and, while it might well be more expensive now, for economically perverse reasons, SMS won't be cheaper for long if it becomes standard practice to do general-purpose data transfer over SMS on a large scale...
Given how often accounts get frozen "for security reasons" without any form of useful recourse, I'd say that Paypal encourages you to take cash out of your account as fast as possible...