True. So the only change that is needed, for speed, is to remove any code which tries to do stuff like allocate a file continously and/or keep the filesystem unfragmented. For a RAM-based disk it makes no difference whatsoever if the file is fragmented or not, so there's no point having code trying to avoid that.
This should lead to reduction of code, simplification and a tiny speed-boost. (since "allocate continously, avoid fragmentation" in certain situations is sligthly more work than simply "allocate however the hell you please")
This benefit may be eaten up by extra work to do wear-leveling, unless the drive fixes that automagically internally (which most do)
Average debt ain't the entire picture though. If the debt is just living-costs, then sure, you're worse off. But if the debts are matched by an increase in activa, it's not nessecarily a bad thing.
If I buy a house for $500K, pay $100K with cash and borrow the rest, then my debt jump by $400K, but I'm no poorer than I was before the transaction.
I guess that's why it's so scary to many if the US housing-market crashes. It'll leave many people with the debt, but *without* the value.
Sure. Many are. But the average aren't. That's my point. For every dollar spent above means, there's more than another dollar spent under means.
Your official "savings-rate" is somewhat silly, because it is only net-income minus spendings, so it ignores capitalgains. For example, if I have $10K in stocks, which grow to $12K during the year, earn (netto)$50K and spend $51K the so-called "savings-rate" will say I'm at -2%, despite the fact that I'm actually 2% *richer* at the end of the year than I was at the start of the year. (conversely, interest paid, such as on credit-cards *ARE* counted, go figure)
We don't really disagree that much, I *do* agree that living off debt is a completely silly thing to do. I do however think it hurts the ones doing it more than the others. Like I said, it only takes 2-3 years for the effect to be negative, and most of us are gonna be around significantly longer than that.
Personally we save around 25% of our (net) income, in addition to a few percents put aside for retirement by my employer. The savings are shared aproximately 50/50 between paying off the mortgage and investing in a globally diversified stock-portofolio. (portofolio makes it sound like a big deal, it's not, we're not rich (yet!)) I'm figuring, if the bust comes, I'll be in a good position to buy when everyone wants to sell. That is an enjoyable position to be in.
Savings are low in Norway too, compared to a few years ago. Still, low in this case means a net-savings rate of aproximately 5%, so I guess we're in greener territory than you guys. It helps that nearly all established families in norway own a house or apartment, even the ones who aren't "saving" as such generally are atleast slowly paying off the mortgage.
True, true, the person spending $3000 now, and thereafter paying $100/month spends a bit more this month than he otherwise would. But surely you're not saying that credit-card-use is such a new phenomenon that currently everyone is in this phase. Remember, paying back the $3000 will take him something like 4-5 years at $100, at a total cost in the $5000-$6000 range, this means it only takes 2.5 years for his spendings to neutralise, therafter they drop.
Put differently, compared over a period *shorter* than 2.5 years, the person will appear to spend more than one not using credit. Over any period more than 2.5 years long, he'll be spending less.
2.5 years ain't a long time. Americans have been wild with credit-cards for a lot longer than that.
This argument would hold true if Americans, as a group, where actually currently spending more money than you're earning. You are however not. The net-savings rate is still positive.
Put differently, the total spendings for USA for 2006 (or any recent year) is *lower* than total earnings for USA for 2006. True true, most other countries have a better saving-rate than you do, but even with you it's still positive.
Some people for sure spend more than they earn, but others earn more than they spend. (generally young people buying their first house/car etc spend more than they earn, older people spend less than they earn, mainly paying back debt)
No idea. I personally care much less if my kids view erotic or pornographic stuff than stuff with violence out of proportion to their age. Indeed, if the child is young enough, it is likely to confuse pornography with violence, it won't really understand what is going on and may well believe that one of the actors is somehow hurting the other (even if what's really going on is perfectly normal sex)
Why would people cry about inflation, isn't US inflation in the low single-digits, like 2-3% or so a year ?
I don't think the rest of your theory holds water. True, credit allows people to pay more *now* for items than they would otherwise be able to. *But* it also forces them to pay less *later* for stuff than they otherwise, because later they'll effectivly have a lower net-income since parts of the income will go to paying interest on stuff they bougth earlier.
I don't see how a person buying a TV for $3000 now, and thereafter reducing his spendings by $5000 over the next 4 years stimulates prices more than a person that *doesn't* buy a TV for $3000 now, but instead buys a TV for $5000 in 3 years. (less than 4 because he *gets* interest rather than paying it, and also doesn't pay various fees etc)
Credit gives you, overall, *less* to spend. Not more. Because when you use credit, you'll pay back what you borrowed, plus interest.
That means credit only makes sense when $X now *really* is more worth to you than $x++ later. This is sometimes the case. Buying a house for a quarter million last year was more worth to me than having aproximately $350K 15 years later, because it means my family have somewhere to live for those 15 years (and that is worth paying $150K for, renting similar housing would be more expensive)
By long term unemployment, the *last* thing you want to do is start living off credit. The minute you do, you're in deep shit. If there's not enough money to pay for gas or groceries this month. How are there going to be enough for gas, groceries *AND* insanely high interest next month ?
You really have only two choices. Raise income, or cut costs. Probably both. If you're unemployed, odds are you don't *NEED* gas to survive, hell, odds are you don't *NEED* owning a car at all. Sell it. Yes it sucks. But I promise you, if you instead keep the car, and pay for it with credit-cards, the end-result is going to suck a lot more.
A plane-ticket is not expensive. You'd need to have a large family, or have someone die *far* away for the tickets to cost more than a couple thousand. Unexpected costs in the range of ~$1000 come regularily (probably 2-3 times a decade) for a family. That's the sort of money you should have for precisely that kind of circumstances. Saving it up beforehand is *easier* than paying it off afterwards, the difference is you *get* interest rather than *paying* interest. This is *especially* true if you own NOTHING valuable (like a car or house), if you *do* own one of those things, you can get a loan with that object as safety, and pay a small fraction of the interest that credit-card-companies charge.
The health-insurance thing is stupidity. Nobody should be without coverage. Indeed, in a sane country nobody would be without it. (but that's not the individual Americans fault, unless they voted for such politicians or didn't vote at all, in which case they've got themselves to blame) In Norway for example, there are precisely 1 condition for full coverage 1) Legally in the country for a (planned or actual) period longer than a year. That's it. If you're an illegal immigrant you'll get basic healthcare too, but you don't qualify for full coverage in that case, nobody will pay, for example, your reproductive therapy if you're an illegal immigrant.
Still, I'm willing to concede that under US circumstances, borrowing to cover health-expenses may be the best choice (even though it's a sucky choice) but the same advice applies here: credit-card debt is the worst possible type of debt. If you've got any kind of security whatsoever you can get a loan at perhaps a quarter the interest-rate. Otherwise, selling whatever you don't *really* need is superior to credit-card-debt in most of the cases.
The thing is, either you've got a high income, and will be able to quickly pay-off the high medical credit-card-debt. In this case you should've had health-insurance and a couple thousand saved up already. Or you're poor and don't own anything, in which case you will have *HELL* of a problem ever getting out of the swamp you insert yourself in by starting to live off credit-cards.
Most of the Americans that have outstanding interest-bearing credit-card debt aren't in any of these categories though. They're more commonly simply unable to buy in 6 months the object of desire which they want *NOW*.
Read what I'm writing please. You are not making your credit-card company any money. So obviously you're not the kind of customer they want. (or the kind for which their offers are designed)
What is stupid is using the card in the way the companies *obviously* hope that you'll use it: in such a way that you have to pay their insane interest-rates. Obviously a lot of people must be doing that, otherwise the credit-card companies would have to revise their business-plan.
Fixed-rate makes sense as "insurance" against unpleasant surprises. I agree. But it's expensive insurance (on the average you end up paying more than a variable-interest loan, and you aren't free to move whenever you want. Well, you are, but if interest has been falling, and you want to move, you'll have to cover the banks loss (as compared to what they'd earned if you stayed)
Thus the standard advice for all insurance applies: Only get it if you need it. That is, if you cannot afford to cover the potential loss by yourself. We've got floating interest. But that is only because we could afford to pay approximately double the interest we pay today, and that just ain't likely. (interest would have to grow quickly too to make trouble, because in a few years we'll have paid back a lot and will thus be able to handle even higher interest, if it should be needed)
Dunno. But the US "credit-card" thing seems very strange to most non-americans. There are credit-cards elsewhere too, sure. But essentially living off them is very uncommon, and indeed the most common visa-card in for example Norway ain't a credit-card at all, but a debit-card.
To me, it appears credit-cards are designed to milk those who are stupid, or who are unable to control their urges sufficiently to do what is wise rather than what is smart. Zero interest for the first 30-60 days, and thereafter an interest that is out of this world (frequently literally 5 to 10 times the interest the same person pays on say their mortgage) This is justified with the "no security" argument, but that falls down once you notices that credit-card companies don't actually offer you the opportunity of posting a security (say a house or car) and have your interest-rate cut back drastically.
In the US it seems rather common for people to actually have interest-carrying credit-card debt. Which asfar as I can understand must be an insane thing to do. If you're low on cash, paying 5-10 times the normal interest-rate is the *least* thing you need. So, I guess I just don't get it. Why would anyone ever be paying the insane interest-rates on a typical credit-card ?
Free speech ain't absolute. There is a large (and growing!) number of exceptions, stuff that you are, quite simply, not allowed to say. And punished if you say them anyway. How to bypass an "effective access-control mechanism" that is used for protecting a copyrigthed work is just one of this class of forbidden utterances.
This is true. The DMCA is one of those laws that are more outrageous the more you think about it.
In the USA, land of the free, you are indeed free to write a book detailing efficient ways of killing people. There's no problem with that whatsoever aslong as it's only clear instructions as to how to, and not actually recomending people actually do that other than in self-defence. (or when the administration decides to occupy another middle-eastern country)
But it is not allowed to tell people how to make a copy of a DVD-movie. *that* knowledge is harmful. That *must* be kept secret, it is important enough that we need to put limits to free speech in this area.
I don't have a reference newer than the one posted several times in this thread.
But it is reasonable. Normal HDDs are able to (and required to) read with a very low error-rate, even under very suboptimal conditions. Which means the signal used needs to be significantly above the noise-floor.
If you apply more sophisticated magnetic sensors, and have more optimal conditions, and don't care about getting 99.999999% of the bits correct, you'll be able to do more.
Even being able to guesstimate the likely value of bits with say 80% probability is more than enough to leak information. It's sufficient that you can look for blocks that look like english text, and proceed from there.
Actually, I've played quite a few games on mac that require the original cd to play, despite being fully installed to the hard-disk.
It's stupid, because it annoys the hell out of the legit customers, while making no difference to the pirates that use no-cd hacks anyway. Hell, even many legit customers download no-cd hacks for getting rid of the annoyance.
I agree that the craptitude is, in general, far higher on windows than on Mac though.
True. With proprietary software you frequently get a lot of stress, even when using completely legit software, dealing with problems DELIBERATELY put there by the manufacturers. Like games that don't want to play because you've got some piece of software installed that *could* allow you to run the game without the CD. (notably daemon-tools prevents quite a few games from running, *unless* you run them trough daemon-tools, ironically.)
Sure it is. You cannot sue someone for something when they did it because they depended on your promise. If you declare that X contains nothing that is copyrigthed by you, and someone acts on that information, you can't later change your mind and sue them for having, in essence, believed you.
If there was indeed a mistake, and it does contain your copyrigthed material, the error was yours, not theirs. Look up promissory estoppel.
SCO was bit on the arse by this too, the declared publically that they had no problem with Linux 2.2, which off the bat cleared a lot of 2.4 (those parts equal to 2.2), which is moot now, since they don't appear to infact own any unix-copyrigths, but nevertheless you'll find this in IBMs claims (made before this latest development)
Cam releases are worse than -nothing- because *you* don't consider them of good enough quality to be worth your time ?
Seems to me, a release which *some* consider viewable will always be preferable to a release that is viewable by *NOBODY* because it doesn't even exist. And *some* do consider cams viewable, if they didn't they wouldn't be downloading them.
That's a valid reason too. Tried listening to my favourite Grieg in the car once, but had to give it up. Problem was, you literally could hear nothing whatsoever in the more silent parts, because of the ambient noise being high. And if I cranked it until the silent parts where listenable, it was painfully loud on the loud parts.
Music with a very high dynamic range simply don't work in loud environments.
Read it long ago. It just hypothesises past 2 overwrites. It is by no means a practical concern. Even from a theoretical POV the paper is weak. It literally says that overwriting *any* number of times may be insufficient. But that'd imply infinite data-storage-capacity, which clearly is unphysical. If you could recover even a single byte from each of the last infinite overwrites, that'd mean infinite data-storage. Which ain't how the physical universe works.
No, that is underparanoid. A single overwrite is almost certainly fully recoverable with even standard data-salvage methods.
That is because, a bit simplified explained, a 1 overwritten by an 1 will end up as say 1.05, a 0 overwritten by a 1 will end up as say 0.95, the difference between the two are significant and actually quite easy to detect, even with normal college-equipment.
Overwriting 3-5 times with random data should however be sufficient in a practical sense.
If you're paranoid, then you are paranoid. If, however, you are concerned with the real world, then in actual fact, it is completely unlikely that you'll have any problem whatsoever with data being recovered after, for example, the overwrite-scheme I suggested. Unlikely enough that you have other bigger problems unless you live in a 24x7 armed-guard faraday-cage facility.
I know the paper. Still, the conclusion is that by using the simple method they recommend an attackers job can be made "significantly more expensive, if not impossible."
The attacks presented there are also just hypothesis past the "twice-overwritten" level. Nobody has, as far as I know, in the open literature demonstrated recovery of data overwritten more than twice with random data. It is likely that the NSA and friends are ahead of the open research on this area, but not ligthyears ahead. At some point physical limits do bite them in the ass.
But, as you say, that's paranoia. The thing is though, the value of old hard-drives is very low. So though a wipe-operation may safely salvage them, it may simply not be worth the cost. Also, the physical destruction is more understandable to PHBs and probably impresses the general public more. It also has the advantage of being easier to verify. How do you KNOW that the program really did overwrite like it claims to do ? It's a lot easier to feel certain that the hard-drive really was dumped into the molten iron.
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True. So the only change that is needed, for speed, is to remove any code which tries to do stuff like allocate a file continously and/or keep the filesystem unfragmented. For a RAM-based disk it makes no difference whatsoever if the file is fragmented or not, so there's no point having code trying to avoid that.
This should lead to reduction of code, simplification and a tiny speed-boost. (since "allocate continously, avoid fragmentation" in certain situations is sligthly more work than simply "allocate however the hell you please")
This benefit may be eaten up by extra work to do wear-leveling, unless the drive fixes that automagically internally (which most do)
Average debt ain't the entire picture though. If the debt is just living-costs, then sure, you're worse off. But if the debts are matched by an increase in activa, it's not nessecarily a bad thing.
If I buy a house for $500K, pay $100K with cash and borrow the rest, then my debt jump by $400K, but I'm no poorer than I was before the transaction.
I guess that's why it's so scary to many if the US housing-market crashes. It'll leave many people with the debt, but *without* the value.
Sure. Many are. But the average aren't. That's my point. For every dollar spent above means, there's more than another dollar spent under means.
Your official "savings-rate" is somewhat silly, because it is only net-income minus spendings, so it ignores capitalgains. For example, if I have $10K in stocks, which grow to $12K during the year, earn (netto)$50K and spend $51K the so-called "savings-rate" will say I'm at -2%, despite the fact that I'm actually 2% *richer* at the end of the year than I was at the start of the year. (conversely, interest paid, such as on credit-cards *ARE* counted, go figure)
We don't really disagree that much, I *do* agree that living off debt is a completely silly thing to do. I do however think it hurts the ones doing it more than the others. Like I said, it only takes 2-3 years for the effect to be negative, and most of us are gonna be around significantly longer than that.
Personally we save around 25% of our (net) income, in addition to a few percents put aside for retirement by my employer. The savings are shared aproximately 50/50 between paying off the mortgage and investing in a globally diversified stock-portofolio. (portofolio makes it sound like a big deal, it's not, we're not rich (yet!)) I'm figuring, if the bust comes, I'll be in a good position to buy when everyone wants to sell. That is an enjoyable position to be in.
Savings are low in Norway too, compared to a few years ago. Still, low in this case means a net-savings rate of aproximately 5%, so I guess we're in greener territory than you guys. It helps that nearly all established families in norway own a house or apartment, even the ones who aren't "saving" as such generally are atleast slowly paying off the mortgage.
This logic doesn't work.
True, true, the person spending $3000 now, and thereafter paying $100/month spends a bit more this month than he otherwise would. But surely you're not saying that credit-card-use is such a new phenomenon that currently everyone is in this phase. Remember, paying back the $3000 will take him something like 4-5 years at $100, at a total cost in the $5000-$6000 range, this means it only takes 2.5 years for his spendings to neutralise, therafter they drop.
Put differently, compared over a period *shorter* than 2.5 years, the person will appear to spend more than one not using credit. Over any period more than 2.5 years long, he'll be spending less.
2.5 years ain't a long time. Americans have been wild with credit-cards for a lot longer than that.
This argument would hold true if Americans, as a group, where actually currently spending more money than you're earning. You are however not. The net-savings rate is still positive.
Put differently, the total spendings for USA for 2006 (or any recent year) is *lower* than total earnings for USA for 2006. True true, most other countries have a better saving-rate than you do, but even with you it's still positive.
Some people for sure spend more than they earn, but others earn more than they spend. (generally young people buying their first house/car etc spend more than they earn, older people spend less than they earn, mainly paying back debt)
No idea. I personally care much less if my kids view erotic or pornographic stuff than stuff with violence out of proportion to their age. Indeed, if the child is young enough, it is likely to confuse pornography with violence, it won't really understand what is going on and may well believe that one of the actors is somehow hurting the other (even if what's really going on is perfectly normal sex)
Why would people cry about inflation, isn't US inflation in the low single-digits, like 2-3% or so a year ?
I don't think the rest of your theory holds water. True, credit allows people to pay more *now* for items than they would otherwise be able to. *But* it also forces them to pay less *later* for stuff than they otherwise, because later they'll effectivly have a lower net-income since parts of the income will go to paying interest on stuff they bougth earlier.
I don't see how a person buying a TV for $3000 now, and thereafter reducing his spendings by $5000 over the next 4 years stimulates prices more than a person that *doesn't* buy a TV for $3000 now, but instead buys a TV for $5000 in 3 years. (less than 4 because he *gets* interest rather than paying it, and also doesn't pay various fees etc)
Credit gives you, overall, *less* to spend. Not more. Because when you use credit, you'll pay back what you borrowed, plus interest.
That means credit only makes sense when $X now *really* is more worth to you than $x++ later. This is sometimes the case. Buying a house for a quarter million last year was more worth to me than having aproximately $350K 15 years later, because it means my family have somewhere to live for those 15 years (and that is worth paying $150K for, renting similar housing would be more expensive)
By long term unemployment, the *last* thing you want to do is start living off credit. The minute you do, you're in deep shit. If there's not enough money to pay for gas or groceries this month. How are there going to be enough for gas, groceries *AND* insanely high interest next month ?
You really have only two choices. Raise income, or cut costs. Probably both. If you're unemployed, odds are you don't *NEED* gas to survive, hell, odds are you don't *NEED* owning a car at all. Sell it. Yes it sucks. But I promise you, if you instead keep the car, and pay for it with credit-cards, the end-result is going to suck a lot more.
A plane-ticket is not expensive. You'd need to have a large family, or have someone die *far* away for the tickets to cost more than a couple thousand. Unexpected costs in the range of ~$1000 come regularily (probably 2-3 times a decade) for a family. That's the sort of money you should have for precisely that kind of circumstances. Saving it up beforehand is *easier* than paying it off afterwards, the difference is you *get* interest rather than *paying* interest. This is *especially* true if you own NOTHING valuable (like a car or house), if you *do* own one of those things, you can get a loan with that object as safety, and pay a small fraction of the interest that credit-card-companies charge.
The health-insurance thing is stupidity. Nobody should be without coverage. Indeed, in a sane country nobody would be without it. (but that's not the individual Americans fault, unless they voted for such politicians or didn't vote at all, in which case they've got themselves to blame) In Norway for example, there are precisely 1 condition for full coverage 1) Legally in the country for a (planned or actual) period longer than a year. That's it. If you're an illegal immigrant you'll get basic healthcare too, but you don't qualify for full coverage in that case, nobody will pay, for example, your reproductive therapy if you're an illegal immigrant.
Still, I'm willing to concede that under US circumstances, borrowing to cover health-expenses may be the best choice (even though it's a sucky choice) but the same advice applies here: credit-card debt is the worst possible type of debt. If you've got any kind of security whatsoever you can get a loan at perhaps a quarter the interest-rate. Otherwise, selling whatever you don't *really* need is superior to credit-card-debt in most of the cases.
The thing is, either you've got a high income, and will be able to quickly pay-off the high medical credit-card-debt. In this case you should've had health-insurance and a couple thousand saved up already. Or you're poor and don't own anything, in which case you will have *HELL* of a problem ever getting out of the swamp you insert yourself in by starting to live off credit-cards.
Most of the Americans that have outstanding interest-bearing credit-card debt aren't in any of these categories though. They're more commonly simply unable to buy in 6 months the object of desire which they want *NOW*.
Read what I'm writing please. You are not making your credit-card company any money. So obviously you're not the kind of customer they want. (or the kind for which their offers are designed)
What is stupid is using the card in the way the companies *obviously* hope that you'll use it: in such a way that you have to pay their insane interest-rates. Obviously a lot of people must be doing that, otherwise the credit-card companies would have to revise their business-plan.
Fixed-rate makes sense as "insurance" against unpleasant surprises. I agree. But it's expensive insurance (on the average you end up paying more than a variable-interest loan, and you aren't free to move whenever you want. Well, you are, but if interest has been falling, and you want to move, you'll have to cover the banks loss (as compared to what they'd earned if you stayed)
Thus the standard advice for all insurance applies: Only get it if you need it. That is, if you cannot afford to cover the potential loss by yourself. We've got floating interest. But that is only because we could afford to pay approximately double the interest we pay today, and that just ain't likely. (interest would have to grow quickly too to make trouble, because in a few years we'll have paid back a lot and will thus be able to handle even higher interest, if it should be needed)
Sadly, I don't think you guys are anywhere near the bottom.
Yet.
Dunno. But the US "credit-card" thing seems very strange to most non-americans. There are credit-cards elsewhere too, sure. But essentially living off them is very uncommon, and indeed the most common visa-card in for example Norway ain't a credit-card at all, but a debit-card.
To me, it appears credit-cards are designed to milk those who are stupid, or who are unable to control their urges sufficiently to do what is wise rather than what is smart. Zero interest for the first 30-60 days, and thereafter an interest that is out of this world (frequently literally 5 to 10 times the interest the same person pays on say their mortgage) This is justified with the "no security" argument, but that falls down once you notices that credit-card companies don't actually offer you the opportunity of posting a security (say a house or car) and have your interest-rate cut back drastically.
In the US it seems rather common for people to actually have interest-carrying credit-card debt. Which asfar as I can understand must be an insane thing to do. If you're low on cash, paying 5-10 times the normal interest-rate is the *least* thing you need. So, I guess I just don't get it. Why would anyone ever be paying the insane interest-rates on a typical credit-card ?
Free speech ain't absolute. There is a large (and growing!) number of exceptions, stuff that you are, quite simply, not allowed to say. And punished if you say them anyway. How to bypass an "effective access-control mechanism" that is used for protecting a copyrigthed work is just one of this class of forbidden utterances.
This is true. The DMCA is one of those laws that are more outrageous the more you think about it.
In the USA, land of the free, you are indeed free to write a book detailing efficient ways of killing people. There's no problem with that whatsoever aslong as it's only clear instructions as to how to, and not actually recomending people actually do that other than in self-defence. (or when the administration decides to occupy another middle-eastern country)
But it is not allowed to tell people how to make a copy of a DVD-movie. *that* knowledge is harmful. That *must* be kept secret, it is important enough that we need to put limits to free speech in this area.
Completely outrageous.
I don't have a reference newer than the one posted several times in this thread.
But it is reasonable. Normal HDDs are able to (and required to) read with a very low error-rate, even under very suboptimal conditions. Which means the signal used needs to be significantly above the noise-floor.
If you apply more sophisticated magnetic sensors, and have more optimal conditions, and don't care about getting 99.999999% of the bits correct, you'll be able to do more.
Even being able to guesstimate the likely value of bits with say 80% probability is more than enough to leak information. It's sufficient that you can look for blocks that look like english text, and proceed from there.
Actually, I've played quite a few games on mac that require the original cd to play, despite being fully installed to the hard-disk.
It's stupid, because it annoys the hell out of the legit customers, while making no difference to the pirates that use no-cd hacks anyway. Hell, even many legit customers download no-cd hacks for getting rid of the annoyance.
I agree that the craptitude is, in general, far higher on windows than on Mac though.
True. With proprietary software you frequently get a lot of stress, even when using completely legit software, dealing with problems DELIBERATELY put there by the manufacturers. Like games that don't want to play because you've got some piece of software installed that *could* allow you to run the game without the CD. (notably daemon-tools prevents quite a few games from running, *unless* you run them trough daemon-tools, ironically.)
Sure it is. You cannot sue someone for something when they did it because they depended on your promise. If you declare that X contains nothing that is copyrigthed by you, and someone acts on that information, you can't later change your mind and sue them for having, in essence, believed you.
If there was indeed a mistake, and it does contain your copyrigthed material, the error was yours, not theirs. Look up promissory estoppel.
SCO was bit on the arse by this too, the declared publically that they had no problem with Linux 2.2, which off the bat cleared a lot of 2.4 (those parts equal to 2.2), which is moot now, since they don't appear to infact own any unix-copyrigths, but nevertheless you'll find this in IBMs claims (made before this latest development)
I get that point, but I think it's a weak one.
Cam releases are worse than -nothing- because *you* don't consider them of good enough quality to be worth your time ?
Seems to me, a release which *some* consider viewable will always be preferable to a release that is viewable by *NOBODY* because it doesn't even exist. And *some* do consider cams viewable, if they didn't they wouldn't be downloading them.
That's a valid reason too. Tried listening to my favourite Grieg in the car once, but had to give it up. Problem was, you literally could hear nothing whatsoever in the more silent parts, because of the ambient noise being high. And if I cranked it until the silent parts where listenable, it was painfully loud on the loud parts.
Music with a very high dynamic range simply don't work in loud environments.
Read it long ago. It just hypothesises past 2 overwrites. It is by no means a practical concern. Even from a theoretical POV the paper is weak. It literally says that overwriting *any* number of times may be insufficient. But that'd imply infinite data-storage-capacity, which clearly is unphysical. If you could recover even a single byte from each of the last infinite overwrites, that'd mean infinite data-storage. Which ain't how the physical universe works.
No, that is underparanoid. A single overwrite is almost certainly fully recoverable with even standard data-salvage methods.
That is because, a bit simplified explained, a 1 overwritten by an 1 will end up as say 1.05, a 0 overwritten by a 1 will end up as say 0.95, the difference between the two are significant and actually quite easy to detect, even with normal college-equipment.
Overwriting 3-5 times with random data should however be sufficient in a practical sense.
If you're paranoid, then you are paranoid. If, however, you are concerned with the real world, then in actual fact, it is completely unlikely that you'll have any problem whatsoever with data being recovered after, for example, the overwrite-scheme I suggested. Unlikely enough that you have other bigger problems unless you live in a 24x7 armed-guard faraday-cage facility.
I know the paper. Still, the conclusion is that by using the simple method they recommend an attackers job can be made "significantly more expensive, if not impossible."
The attacks presented there are also just hypothesis past the "twice-overwritten" level. Nobody has, as far as I know, in the open literature demonstrated recovery of data overwritten more than twice with random data. It is likely that the NSA and friends are ahead of the open research on this area, but not ligthyears ahead. At some point physical limits do bite them in the ass.
But, as you say, that's paranoia. The thing is though, the value of old hard-drives is very low. So though a wipe-operation may safely salvage them, it may simply not be worth the cost. Also, the physical destruction is more understandable to PHBs and probably impresses the general public more. It also has the advantage of being easier to verify. How do you KNOW that the program really did overwrite like it claims to do ? It's a lot easier to feel certain that the hard-drive really was dumped into the molten iron.