WDclear is widely available for download. This will write zeros to the entire drive. Google on it and you'll get lots of hits. You can put it on a bootable floppy, but whatever you do, don't bring this floppy to CumpU$A with you. That wouldn't be "nice."
BCwipe is also available for download. This is a DoD grade DOS tool that will not only write zeros but do a 7 pass overwrite with random data. Mind you this takes a long time. About 35 hours on my 40 gig drive. The great thing about this tool is that you can install it under Windows and it will let you wipe your deletes as you make them from the right click menu, or wipe your recycle bin when you empty it or only overwrite the *empty* sectors of your drive. It can also be run from a floppy under DOS. This is the one that I won't leave home without.
This one is nagware though, so let your conscience be your guide on registration.
I'll also point out to the Windows users in the crowd that the linux dd solutions posted by others are still perfectly available to you as well. There are a number of single floppy bootable Linux distributions available for sysadmins and techs to carry around for various emergency and admin situations, like a machine that refuses to boot from its HD. I always like to have one of these about my person, even when I know I'm going to be working on pure Windows machines, because they offer far more functionality than the usual Windows "rescue" disk, often including full network capability and a text based web browser, just in case you need to access the network and/or web to get the files to restore the machine you're working on.
We can't even get to where most species *are* yet.
And while I agree that taxonomy is an important part of biological science, cataloging life isn't the *point* of taxonomy. It might be rather more to the point to *preserve* these species, or at least their DNA (male and female, and put them, into the ark. Riiiiight)
Honestly, I *do* understand what they're trying to do here, but it has an odd, and rather pathetic, feeling of pointlessness to it.
Although I admit the extra five words probably came from the Pepsi can I glued to my tower's exhaust port.
When I finally save up enough box tops to get a "Type-R" monitor sticker and a genuine copy of a fake Recaro executive chair I'll be the fastest damned typist in the world.
You'll probably waste your time doing shit like *practicing.*
"substantial." Note also that the judge *rejected* this argument because the EULA as applied to California residents consists of a contract, and thus the company *is* doing business in California and that *contact* (sic) is substantial.
Note that the term substantial has no precise legal definition, and thus determination in each case is entirely at the disgression of the judge.
One should think very, very carefully before one contracts blindly with the world at large.
a EULA is a contract, not a law. Illegal terms cannot be rendered legal merely by contract.
EULA's are written *generically* to attempt to claim every term of contract that *might* be legal anywere.
Haven't you ever seen the term on generic legal documents "Void where prohibited"?
Just because it's in the EULA doesn't inherently mean it binds you, although the writers would like to *believe* that it does. Since most people do, it works.
Don't be afraid to dissent or even disregard terms of your EULA where you have the legal right to do so.
"This is the same as sueing the "A" group in highschool for not deeming you cool and because of that your self esteem suffered and you became a computer science major."
my computer to reject spam, viruses, spyware, do what I tell it to, not do what I don't tell it to and not worry about it "phoning home" to my software and "content" suppliers without my express permission?
*I don't give a crap that their thingamabob doesn't run on Linux.* I don't care that it doesn't run on my old CoCo, AIX or IBM/360 either, all of which I've been known to use.
It *is*, however, important that I know *up front* that it doesn't, but they won't even tell me *that*, will they?
When I say they told me to "fuck off", I mean that in the sense that they *told me to fuck off.*
That is to say, I went to their *website* and they said they wouldn't tell me *anything* other than to go away because I wasn't a Windows or Mac user. What's more, they told me to go away using exactly the sort of platform independant technology that they could have used to give me information about their product. So, in point of fact, they are capable of giving me a sales pitch but refuse.
They told me, to my face, to "fuck off." Basically because they didn't like my "looks."
Not "This website looks best and only supports some functions in IE 5 or above."
No, they told me to go away.
This is exactly the same as if I had driven into a Ford dealership in a Chevy and asked for a sales brochure or Ford part and been told, "I'm sorry sir, but our sales material and our parts are only for Ford drivers."
This is just as "logical" as putting up a Linux advocacy site and refusing entry to Windows and Mac users.
Come now, wouldn't you believe that *you* had been told to "fuck off" if a site told you to "go away, you're using Windows, come back when you install Linux"?
that I don't get. I mean, really, they aren't rocket science, and anyone with some geek skills can build a full function, unrestricted, box that will do the same thing from off the shelf parts. Many of them available *used* and dirt cheap.
If you aren't such a geek yourself surely you know one who'd almost buy *you* a bag of Doritos and a Coke to have you pay for the hardware to hack this shit up for you?
Hell, it was only a couple of days ago that/. featured a story on the availablity of an off the shelf A/V style case you could even build it in.
Look, I'm not saying there's no market for prebuilt devices of this sort. I'd buy one at a reasonable price to save the trouble of building one, but to attempt to sell one that's so severely *restricted*, especially since those restrictions are clearly based on pushing certain "content" on you, when the tech is off the shelf, well, like I said, I don't get it.
point you my have had your entire post is labeled as hyperbole by making such "illogical" statements such as your post contained?
Whereas the review merely pointed out the *factual* state that the product is inconvient for non Windows/Mac users, and that only Windows/Mac users may even access their website.
This is precisely the sort of information that is not only "logical" in a review, but relevant and necessary.
Nor am I entirely sure why it's so "logical" for Phillips to even refuse to tell non Windows/Mac users about their product when there's no particular impediment to their doing so.
Not supporting particular platforms doesn't bother me as much as it does some. Not everybody can support all platforms and some products aren't even *possible* to support on some platforms.
But telling people who don't use your supported platforms * at the moment* to just go "fuck off" is really a bit much, don't you think?
"A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two is never sure."
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of MS watches.
Not that it'll matter anyway:
"Excuse me, but could you tell me the time?"
"Well, I'd like to. Really I would. But the EULA on my watch says that its output is a trade secret and covered under DMCA copyright protection. At the very least if I told you I'd have to kill you."
The Dick Tracy watch didn't turn out quite the way we imagined when we were kids, did it?
selectric circa 1978. My mustache isn't twirlable. I've never bought foil stars. I don't recall using exclamation points, giant or otherwise, in other than a Strunk and White approved manner, but yes, I do default to old usenet habits when posting online, which has nothing to do with physics papers.
And yes, marketing drones whip up demand for "features" that already exist as available technology so that they can add them later to resell the product. It's called planned obsolesence, it's existed as an overt business policy since the 30's. It's well underdstood, they even teach how to do it in business schools and it works.
If you would prefer I stick to MS products everything I've said of vi is equally applicable to notepad. There isn't a single feature of Word that can't be implimented in notepad with free tools as well as vitually any feature you can *conceive* of. Throw in a little MFC or VB and you can even attach buttons to them to make them "features."
Features are *so* trivial that people who aren't even really programers make them up by the dozen, on the fly, just to use once for a special case and then throw away.
You can download them, literally, by the thousand.
Now go paint your house or it will rot before the week is out. I know. People who sell paint told me so.
As it happens I am a physicist. MS Word's "features" are just fluff. I wouldn't go near it for a scientific paper with a ten mile long super collider. There are actually a few commercial products that exist specifically because of its failings in this field.
The one thing MS Word maybe does a better job of is the quick and dirty prototyping of a paper. For print, if you want a really nice job, you'll have to save it to ASCII and start over from there anyway.
vi does a better job. The fact that you don't understand vi and its functionality, and how to implement it, doesn't mean it does't exist.
But again, there's no money to be made in getting you adopt ASCII as a valid everyday format. You probably think you have to paint your house to "protect" it too, despite the fact that you've probably seen, or at least seen pictures of, wooden buildings that have stood for hundreds of years without a speck of paint on them.
OSS is, we all know, is largely programed by geeks to 'scratch an itch'. Geeks don't itch for "features", they itch for functions. Tools.
A "feature" is something that was invented by the software *industry*, and has little to do with actual functionality. The purpose of a feature is to cater to *customer* demand, or to drive the upgrade cycle to maintain cashflow into the company even though they havn't developed any new *functionality* in years.
As Rex Roberts noted in his book "Your Engineered House" way back in 1964, no one makes money by telling you you don't have to paint your house at all.
Geeks are, by and large, perfectly happy with vi and emacs because they *work.* They not only work, but if you *combine* them with other other tools they can do far *more* than, say, MS Word. So why would a geek spend his time programing a less *funtional* "product"?
He doesn't have to convince to buy new stuff all the time just to suck money from your pocket into his.
He also understands that *stability*, both temporally and in the computer sense is an important "feature" because it increases *funtionality.*
What has OSS come up with in terms of "innovation"?
Well, Perl, Python, Ruby. In fact, OOP itself is the result of "open source" thinking. So is the relational database. These don't have much in the way of "features" though, in the way you've been led (and yes, you've been *led*) to think of them.These are geek tools. No wonder the magazine "pundits" don't know what OSS has done. Everything it's done is under their radar even though they benifit from these geeks tools every day.
Oh, by the way, I'm an "old fart", so I'm more fully aware of one fact of the state of the art of computer software and hardware than most. Before 1980 Open Source was a fairly normal way to go about things, and in many respects the entire computer industry is built on a open source base. It was the *closing* of source in the '80's that strangled development and put it on the same plane as selling chrome on a refridgerator as a "feature".
So what has OSS done? It *created* computer science. I was there. I saw it. I know *why* RMS behaves in some of the goofey ways he does because I fully understand the *stimulus* that resulted in it.
So you want better and more "innovative" software? Ok, the first thing you have to do is drop the entire concept of *feature*. A feature is chrome, bells and whistles added as a *sales tool*. It isn't innovation and it isn't technology. They are generally trivial and completely *devoid* of technology but exist simply to get "the masses" to oooooh and ahhhh over them.
The odds of your being able to do this are slim though. You've been well trained, since birth, to think of software as "technology", and a *product*, not a tool.
Pundits are, for the most part, *paid* members of the "software industry." Their own salaries depend on, either indirectly or *directly* on pushing new features to drive sales.
It isn't even in their interest to notice true innovation and most of them wouldn't recognize it if it bit them on their proverbial asses.
Is it any wonder they might bitch about the lack of "innovation" in OSS because it hasn't come up with any spiffy new "feature" the masters who pay them can take and sell?
Software as a *tool* follows the same slow, evolutionary and *function* based development pattern that say, the hammer does.
Software as "features" follows the same development pattern that leads clothing fashions to change overnight or tailfins on cars to get bigger every year.
and had a look at this. It's an interesting but rather flawed book, at least from the perspective of grasping quantum theory. You'ld be better off with Gribben, and Gribben's merely "ok."
I'll stick with my earlier claim.
By the way, if you haven't read it, Leon Lederman's "The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?" is an excellent first person look into the lives and interests of *experimental* physicists.
French physicist Alain Aspect performed this experiment in 1982, confirming Bell's Theorem ( which in 1964 proved mathmatically that the EPR thought experiment refuting predictions of quantum theory was, in fact, what DOES happen).
The experiment has not only been repeatedly confirmed, but has been done so at greater and greater distances. I believe they're now up to a seperation of 15 km.
Anyone who wants to understand this stuff should read Nick Herbert's book "Quantum Reality." It is the *ONLY* "popular" book that explains quantum theory properly. Let me repeat that, it is the *ONLY* popular book that explains quantum theory properly, so put that copy of "Alice in Quantumland" back on the shelf where it belongs.
For anyone who wants to understand the differences between, and attempts to integrate quantum theory and general relativity Steven Weinberg's "Dreams of a Final Theory" is the clear choice.
Yes, I am a physicist, and no, I will not fix your Mr. Fusion.
It says "Please."It *does not* say "It is illegal".
The construction of legal documents is done very, very carefully. Every comma may have critical meaning. If they had *meant* illegal that's what they would have said. They said "please."
In other words, they are operating under the principle that most people will simply comply with a request on a legal document under the *assumption* that said request is legally binding.
By the way, cops do this sort of crap all the time, implying that people must behave in a certain manner and getting them to voluntarily revoke rights, when no such behaviour is required.
and the data is only required to prosecute some other case this is not strictly legal. The hard disk contains records, such as private email, that the government is not legally entitled to.
This protects *you.* For instance, the government can't use one case to supoena *all* the phone company's records and then go digging through them to find something "interesting."
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see,I used to know what a cubit was. Well, don't you worry about that, get some wood, build it.
When cubits get to small we can start measuring things in "arks".
KFG
without a 'chute. Makes me wonder just what, ummmmm, "terminal" velocity is though.
Sorry.
KFG
Picky picky. :)
KFG
WDclear is widely available for download. This will write zeros to the entire drive. Google on it and you'll get lots of hits. You can put it on a bootable floppy, but whatever you do, don't bring this floppy to CumpU$A with you. That wouldn't be "nice."
BCwipe is also available for download. This is a DoD grade DOS tool that will not only write zeros but do a 7 pass overwrite with random data. Mind you this takes a long time. About 35 hours on my 40 gig drive. The great thing about this tool is that you can install it under Windows and it will let you wipe your deletes as you make them from the right click menu, or wipe your recycle bin when you empty it or only overwrite the *empty* sectors of your drive. It can also be run from a floppy under DOS. This is the one that I won't leave home without.
This one is nagware though, so let your conscience be your guide on registration.
I'll also point out to the Windows users in the crowd that the linux dd solutions posted by others are still perfectly available to you as well. There are a number of single floppy bootable Linux distributions available for sysadmins and techs to carry around for various emergency and admin situations, like a machine that refuses to boot from its HD. I always like to have one of these about my person, even when I know I'm going to be working on pure Windows machines, because they offer far more functionality than the usual Windows "rescue" disk, often including full network capability and a text based web browser, just in case you need to access the network and/or web to get the files to restore the machine you're working on.
KFG
We can't even get to where most species *are* yet.
And while I agree that taxonomy is an important part of biological science, cataloging life isn't the *point* of taxonomy. It might be rather more to the point to *preserve* these species, or at least their DNA (male and female, and put them, into the ark. Riiiiight)
Honestly, I *do* understand what they're trying to do here, but it has an odd, and rather pathetic, feeling of pointlessness to it.
KFG
Although I admit the extra five words probably came from the Pepsi can I glued to my tower's exhaust port.
When I finally save up enough box tops to get a "Type-R" monitor sticker and a genuine copy of a fake Recaro executive chair I'll be the fastest damned typist in the world.
You'll probably waste your time doing shit like *practicing.*
Hoser.
KFG
"substantial." Note also that the judge *rejected* this argument because the EULA as applied to California residents consists of a contract, and thus the company *is* doing business in California and that *contact* (sic) is substantial.
Note that the term substantial has no precise legal definition, and thus determination in each case is entirely at the disgression of the judge.
One should think very, very carefully before one contracts blindly with the world at large.
KFG
a EULA is a contract, not a law. Illegal terms cannot be rendered legal merely by contract.
EULA's are written *generically* to attempt to claim every term of contract that *might* be legal anywere.
Haven't you ever seen the term on generic legal documents "Void where prohibited"?
Just because it's in the EULA doesn't inherently mean it binds you, although the writers would like to *believe* that it does. Since most people do, it works.
Don't be afraid to dissent or even disregard terms of your EULA where you have the legal right to do so.
KFG
And I have no particular reason to believe it isn't, nor do I have any particular reason to care either way if it comes to that.
However, I will point out that Chevy will always sell more Monte Carlos than Ferrari will sell all of its models combined.
Big deal.
This is really only of significance to those that actually believe their jacket saying "Tommy Hilfiger" on it makes it "better."
My neighbor's choice of car has little or no bearing on whether or not a Monte Carlo is a more desirable car for *me.*
KFG
"This is the same as sueing the "A" group in highschool for not deeming you cool and because of that your self esteem suffered and you became a computer science major."
Now why didn't *I* think of that?
KFG
have to include that in tags? :)
Nice faq by the way. Thanks for pointing it out.
Did you know you can still get Z80's? Maybe it's time to stock up.
KFG
my computer to reject spam, viruses, spyware, do what I tell it to, not do what I don't tell it to and not worry about it "phoning home" to my software and "content" suppliers without my express permission?
Cool!
KFG
Let me make it even more explict.
*I don't give a crap that their thingamabob doesn't run on Linux.* I don't care that it doesn't run on my old CoCo, AIX or IBM/360 either, all of which I've been known to use.
It *is*, however, important that I know *up front* that it doesn't, but they won't even tell me *that*, will they?
When I say they told me to "fuck off", I mean that in the sense that they *told me to fuck off.*
That is to say, I went to their *website* and they said they wouldn't tell me *anything* other than to go away because I wasn't a Windows or Mac user. What's more, they told me to go away using exactly the sort of platform independant technology that they could have used to give me information about their product. So, in point of fact, they are capable of giving me a sales pitch but refuse.
They told me, to my face, to "fuck off." Basically because they didn't like my "looks."
Not "This website looks best and only supports some functions in IE 5 or above."
No, they told me to go away.
This is exactly the same as if I had driven into a Ford dealership in a Chevy and asked for a sales brochure or Ford part and been told, "I'm sorry sir, but our sales material and our parts are only for Ford drivers."
This is just as "logical" as putting up a Linux advocacy site and refusing entry to Windows and Mac users.
Come now, wouldn't you believe that *you* had been told to "fuck off" if a site told you to "go away, you're using Windows, come back when you install Linux"?
KFG
that I don't get. I mean, really, they aren't rocket science, and anyone with some geek skills can build a full function, unrestricted, box that will do the same thing from off the shelf parts. Many of them available *used* and dirt cheap.
/. featured a story on the availablity of an off the shelf A/V style case you could even build it in.
If you aren't such a geek yourself surely you know one who'd almost buy *you* a bag of Doritos and a Coke to have you pay for the hardware to hack this shit up for you?
Hell, it was only a couple of days ago that
Look, I'm not saying there's no market for prebuilt devices of this sort. I'd buy one at a reasonable price to save the trouble of building one, but to attempt to sell one that's so severely *restricted*, especially since those restrictions are clearly based on pushing certain "content" on you, when the tech is off the shelf, well, like I said, I don't get it.
KFG
point you my have had your entire post is labeled as hyperbole by making such "illogical" statements such as your post contained?
Whereas the review merely pointed out the *factual* state that the product is inconvient for non Windows/Mac users, and that only Windows/Mac users may even access their website.
This is precisely the sort of information that is not only "logical" in a review, but relevant and necessary.
Nor am I entirely sure why it's so "logical" for Phillips to even refuse to tell non Windows/Mac users about their product when there's no particular impediment to their doing so.
Not supporting particular platforms doesn't bother me as much as it does some. Not everybody can support all platforms and some products aren't even *possible* to support on some platforms.
But telling people who don't use your supported platforms * at the moment* to just go "fuck off" is really a bit much, don't you think?
KFG
You see, on the mini PC you'll be able to see trailers on the full and glorious 5.8" screen with sound coming over a crappy little piezo speaker.
Try matching *that* technology on your desktop or home theater.
It's a brave new world.
KFG
"A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two is never sure."
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of MS watches.
Not that it'll matter anyway:
"Excuse me, but could you tell me the time?"
"Well, I'd like to. Really I would. But the EULA on my watch says that its output is a trade secret and covered under DMCA copyright protection. At the very least if I told you I'd have to kill you."
The Dick Tracy watch didn't turn out quite the way we imagined when we were kids, did it?
KFG
selectric circa 1978. My mustache isn't twirlable. I've never bought foil stars. I don't recall using exclamation points, giant or otherwise, in other than a Strunk and White approved manner, but yes, I do default to old usenet habits when posting online, which has nothing to do with physics papers.
And yes, marketing drones whip up demand for "features" that already exist as available technology so that they can add them later to resell the product. It's called planned obsolesence, it's existed as an overt business policy since the 30's. It's well underdstood, they even teach how to do it in business schools and it works.
If you would prefer I stick to MS products everything I've said of vi is equally applicable to notepad. There isn't a single feature of Word that can't be implimented in notepad with free tools as well as vitually any feature you can *conceive* of. Throw in a little MFC or VB and you can even attach buttons to them to make them "features."
Features are *so* trivial that people who aren't even really programers make them up by the dozen, on the fly, just to use once for a special case and then throw away.
You can download them, literally, by the thousand.
Now go paint your house or it will rot before the week is out. I know. People who sell paint told me so.
KFG
As it happens I am a physicist. MS Word's "features" are just fluff. I wouldn't go near it for a scientific paper with a ten mile long super collider. There are actually a few commercial products that exist specifically because of its failings in this field.
The one thing MS Word maybe does a better job of is the quick and dirty prototyping of a paper. For print, if you want a really nice job, you'll have to save it to ASCII and start over from there anyway.
vi does a better job. The fact that you don't understand vi and its functionality, and how to implement it, doesn't mean it does't exist.
But again, there's no money to be made in getting you adopt ASCII as a valid everyday format. You probably think you have to paint your house to "protect" it too, despite the fact that you've probably seen, or at least seen pictures of, wooden buildings that have stood for hundreds of years without a speck of paint on them.
Marketers just *love* cognitive disonance.
KFG
OSS is, we all know, is largely programed by geeks to 'scratch an itch'. Geeks don't itch for "features", they itch for functions. Tools.
A "feature" is something that was invented by the software *industry*, and has little to do with actual functionality. The purpose of a feature is to cater to *customer* demand, or to drive the upgrade cycle to maintain cashflow into the company even though they havn't developed any new *functionality* in years.
As Rex Roberts noted in his book "Your Engineered House" way back in 1964, no one makes money by telling you you don't have to paint your house at all.
Geeks are, by and large, perfectly happy with vi and emacs because they *work.* They not only work, but if you *combine* them with other other tools they can do far *more* than, say, MS Word. So why would a geek spend his time programing a less *funtional* "product"?
He doesn't have to convince to buy new stuff all the time just to suck money from your pocket into his.
He also understands that *stability*, both temporally and in the computer sense is an important "feature" because it increases *funtionality.*
What has OSS come up with in terms of "innovation"?
Well, Perl, Python, Ruby. In fact, OOP itself is the result of "open source" thinking. So is the relational database. These don't have much in the way of "features" though, in the way you've been led (and yes, you've been *led*) to think of them.These are geek tools. No wonder the magazine "pundits" don't know what OSS has done. Everything it's done is under their radar even though they benifit from these geeks tools every day.
Oh, by the way, I'm an "old fart", so I'm more fully aware of one fact of the state of the art of computer software and hardware than most. Before 1980 Open Source was a fairly normal way to go about things, and in many respects the entire computer industry is built on a open source base. It was the *closing* of source in the '80's that strangled development and put it on the same plane as selling chrome on a refridgerator as a "feature".
So what has OSS done? It *created* computer science. I was there. I saw it. I know *why* RMS behaves in some of the goofey ways he does because I fully understand the *stimulus* that resulted in it.
So you want better and more "innovative" software? Ok, the first thing you have to do is drop the entire concept of *feature*. A feature is chrome, bells and whistles added as a *sales tool*. It isn't innovation and it isn't technology. They are generally trivial and completely *devoid* of technology but exist simply to get "the masses" to oooooh and ahhhh over them.
The odds of your being able to do this are slim though. You've been well trained, since birth, to think of software as "technology", and a *product*, not a tool.
Pundits are, for the most part, *paid* members of the "software industry." Their own salaries depend on, either indirectly or *directly* on pushing new features to drive sales.
It isn't even in their interest to notice true innovation and most of them wouldn't recognize it if it bit them on their proverbial asses.
Is it any wonder they might bitch about the lack of "innovation" in OSS because it hasn't come up with any spiffy new "feature" the masters who pay them can take and sell?
Software as a *tool* follows the same slow, evolutionary and *function* based development pattern that say, the hammer does.
Software as "features" follows the same development pattern that leads clothing fashions to change overnight or tailfins on cars to get bigger every year.
OSS has no incentive to make the tailfins bigger.
Thank God.
KFG
and had a look at this. It's an interesting but rather flawed book, at least from the perspective of grasping quantum theory. You'ld be better off with Gribben, and Gribben's merely "ok."
I'll stick with my earlier claim.
By the way, if you haven't read it, Leon Lederman's "The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?" is an excellent first person look into the lives and interests of *experimental* physicists.
KFG
French physicist Alain Aspect performed this experiment in 1982, confirming Bell's Theorem ( which in 1964 proved mathmatically that the EPR thought experiment refuting predictions of quantum theory was, in fact, what DOES happen).
The experiment has not only been repeatedly confirmed, but has been done so at greater and greater distances. I believe they're now up to a seperation of 15 km.
Anyone who wants to understand this stuff should read Nick Herbert's book "Quantum Reality." It is the *ONLY* "popular" book that explains quantum theory properly. Let me repeat that, it is the *ONLY* popular book that explains quantum theory properly, so put that copy of "Alice in Quantumland" back on the shelf where it belongs.
For anyone who wants to understand the differences between, and attempts to integrate quantum theory and general relativity Steven Weinberg's "Dreams of a Final Theory" is the clear choice.
Yes, I am a physicist, and no, I will not fix your Mr. Fusion.
KFG
It says "Please."It *does not* say "It is illegal".
The construction of legal documents is done very, very carefully. Every comma may have critical meaning. If they had *meant* illegal that's what they would have said. They said "please."
In other words, they are operating under the principle that most people will simply comply with a request on a legal document under the *assumption* that said request is legally binding.
By the way, cops do this sort of crap all the time, implying that people must behave in a certain manner and getting them to voluntarily revoke rights, when no such behaviour is required.
KFG
in *America* freedoms are not granted by the government. Freedoms are *retained by the people* and need not even be enumerated to exist.
On the other hand *power* ( not freedom, an important distinction) of the government is restricted.
The government and *the people* operate under distinctly different sets of rules, and for good reason.
KFG
and the data is only required to prosecute some other case this is not strictly legal. The hard disk contains records, such as private email, that the government is not legally entitled to.
This protects *you.* For instance, the government can't use one case to supoena *all* the phone company's records and then go digging through them to find something "interesting."
KFG