Would they have failed to notice them filling dozens of HDDs a week when they should've only needed a small number for a country?
From TFA:
Google last week said it had collected 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured wireless area networks, or WLANS, from around the world as its roving cars compiled a photo archive for Street View.
600GB for the entire world? Compared to the amount of image data they must have collected that's barely a drop in the ocean, hardly as glaringly obvious as you make it out to be.
It already exists. Use google chrome and the gPDF extension, and all pdf files are opened by google's own javascript based viewer. Also availible for firefox as well!
Actually, most high voltage power supplies now contain bleeder resistors, which are large value (many megaohm) resistors connected in parallel across all high voltage capacitors, slowly discharging them when the power is disconnected at a rate unlikely to affect normal operation, hence discharging them to a safe level within a few hours.
The rest of it really isn't that dangerous either, as the high voltage output is AC at a high frequency, and hence because of the skin effect only flows over the surface of the skin and does not penetrate to a depth where it may affect the heart or other sensitive organs, which is why the GP describes the high voltage produced as "painless".
If you are worried about viruses on your machine, only let Virtual Machine snapshots connect to a network
Buy a USB-based wireless device (they're only $20 or so). Disable the wireless device on your Notebook's OS. Before you leave, build a Virtual Machine running an OS of your choice (Linux works nicely). Install the OS from scratch, boot it, update it, and then open up a browser instance. Configure it so that the USB wireless device is forwarded directly to the VM, and install its drivers in the VM. Snapshot the Virtual Machine's state. When you're travelling, turn off your Notebook's wireless signal the entire time. If you want to use the Internet, plug in the USB wireless device, start your VM, and use the Internet through it. When you're done, shut down the VM and revert its state to the saved snapshot state that you made before you started your trip. This should help ensure that any viruses you are hit with only survive the duration of that single VM session.
This would be excellent advice, but unfortunately, he's using a netbook. This normally means an Intel Atom processor, which is sadly devoid of any hardware visualization support whatsoever, therefore stopping the otherwise excellent virtualbox from working. Some very good points otherwise though.
What the GP appears to be refering to is an ATA password. This does not encrypt any data on the disk, but it does lock the drive, and store a hash of the password on the disk itself. Replacing the circuit board will not fix this, as the new circuit board will detect the password, and keep the drive locked.
Care to point out what alternative device you bought instead then? Because as far as I know, there are no rechargeable mp3 players designed to have their batteries changed by the user. Apple is hardly unique.
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Would they have failed to notice them filling dozens of HDDs a week when they should've only needed a small number for a country?
From TFA:
Google last week said it had collected 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured wireless area networks, or WLANS, from around the world as its roving cars compiled a photo archive for Street View.
600GB for the entire world? Compared to the amount of image data they must have collected that's barely a drop in the ocean, hardly as glaringly obvious as you make it out to be.
This may be somewhat offtopic, but Wikileaks is still desperately in need of donations.
It already exists. Use google chrome and the gPDF extension, and all pdf files are opened by google's own javascript based viewer. Also availible for firefox as well!
The rest of it really isn't that dangerous either, as the high voltage output is AC at a high frequency, and hence because of the skin effect only flows over the surface of the skin and does not penetrate to a depth where it may affect the heart or other sensitive organs, which is why the GP describes the high voltage produced as "painless".
If you are worried about viruses on your machine, only let Virtual Machine snapshots connect to a network
Buy a USB-based wireless device (they're only $20 or so). Disable the wireless device on your Notebook's OS. Before you leave, build a Virtual Machine running an OS of your choice (Linux works nicely). Install the OS from scratch, boot it, update it, and then open up a browser instance. Configure it so that the USB wireless device is forwarded directly to the VM, and install its drivers in the VM. Snapshot the Virtual Machine's state. When you're travelling, turn off your Notebook's wireless signal the entire time. If you want to use the Internet, plug in the USB wireless device, start your VM, and use the Internet through it. When you're done, shut down the VM and revert its state to the saved snapshot state that you made before you started your trip. This should help ensure that any viruses you are hit with only survive the duration of that single VM session.
This would be excellent advice, but unfortunately, he's using a netbook. This normally means an Intel Atom processor, which is sadly devoid of any hardware visualization support whatsoever, therefore stopping the otherwise excellent virtualbox from working. Some very good points otherwise though.
What the GP appears to be refering to is an ATA password. This does not encrypt any data on the disk, but it does lock the drive, and store a hash of the password on the disk itself. Replacing the circuit board will not fix this, as the new circuit board will detect the password, and keep the drive locked.
Care to point out what alternative device you bought instead then? Because as far as I know, there are no rechargeable mp3 players designed to have their batteries changed by the user. Apple is hardly unique.