No recovery features (WFT does it have to DELETE that file immediately instead of quarantining it for a few days?), and for most end users they will need that PC to work to read the AVG notice and recovery instructions.. Nice catch 22.
I rarely find myself having to accept/deny actions, and that entire safety feature can be turned off if it bugs you.
Vista strikes me as worse from a security perspective than XP. There is more going on in the background that I don't know of, and more of *MY* data is accessed when I'm not using it than is warranted or I would like to permit. Switching off the above "features" is digging a deeper hole.
Another thing I intensely disliked (past tense - I ripped it out) was that Vista would literally "disappear" on me, I'd have no reaction from the system for seconds at the time, both on quite powerful more-than-ready-for-Vista systems. After a few secs it would catch up, but I question a system that I have to wait for when it is so fast it has a gazillion cycles spare between each keystroke.
Anyway, good for you. I have a sysadmin who can also get it to work to a reasonable degree (at which point we hit the UI changes in Vista:-) but he does have to work for it. Out of the box performance is crap. We've left most of our systems in XP, and quite a few desktops in dev don't even use Windows anymore. What they need they'll do in Wine, and the rest is Linux, as is almost everything in production..
And I've got OOo 3 installed now which works for me. May not work for everyone but I prefer that over having to waste hours finding where the hell they stuck the stuff I really need without an option to restore the previous interface. I'm all for change that is gradual and not in a way that it impedes me..
No, sorry. I had it on 2 new systems, different makes, different hardware. Sucked on both, BIG time. Putting it on a decenet box is the equivalent of buying the latest Porsche and putting a foot worth of concrete in it, removing all gears but 3rd and fueling it with a 50/50 mix of diesel and petrol.
"You moved the mouse - Accept/Deny?" was really NOT a joke. Whoever allowed that out on the market ought to be hung by his gonads with some extra weight around his ankles.
While I'm at it, same treatment for the jerk who decided we need a whole new UI for Office 2007- WTF? They changed it ALL, including keyboard shortcuts (oh nooo, we can't have anyone actually "productive" now - they won't buy the upgrade). No wonder the uptake of OOo 3 went through the roof - I installed it myself to get some work done.
I don't need DRM, I don't need sounds when I log on/off (the first to go when I get a new setup) because I'm not employed to advertise for them, I don't need animated cursors, I don't need fancy graphics if they get in the way of. simply. getting. my. work. done.
Will someone PLEASE come up with a suitable Outlook/Exchange replacement that does calendaring (don't mention Evolution, please), and PDQ? It's the whole reason "management" has decided it needs MS - the rest of our stuff runs on either Unix or Linux and simply works..
Why the hell isn't IBM doing something with Lotus? The interface sucks seven ways to Sunday but the damn thing works and is so secure that banks still prefer to use it. If someone could actually get serious about the interface (or maybe code a decent API so open code could use the platform as core) I'm sure there would be interest, it's IMHO the one thing from stopping Linux becoming a business desktop. All IMHO, of course.
Sigh.
MS sells hope - someone said this already. Hope that maybe the next version is better, and we're so addicted to this hope that we blindly buy new hardware and waste a fortune in productivity. Yet they have not delivered since Worries for Workgroups - so from a track record perspective you shouldn't have gone near them. Yet we do. Weird.
What is mainly happening is that the judges are fed a line of bullshit of reasonable quality - IMHO they are asked to judge evidence that is beyond their ability to understand. NOT because they are stupid (in my experience most of them are anything but) but because they don't understand the new technology it is based on.
It is our responsibility to educate, to avoid jargon and to improve clarity in what we say - and never, ever lie or assume. Just stay with the facts.
The issue is practically identical with what I come across when coaching CEOs in understanding IT. They don't want anyone to know I'm doing it (which is why we call it "coaching" and use a non-office venue), and the relief you can see when they finally understand it's in principle a complicated LEGO set is worth the effort (and the income helps too:-). It improves the quality of their decision making rather considerably, and it is IMHO a scandal they don't even teach the very basics like we do in any MBA programme. But hey, we make the cash, so well done:-)
Joking aside, judges have a duty to be impartial, which means they must haven an ear for both parties. If they lack the knowledge to recognise that data is inaccurate or "creatively acquired" then it is unfortunately the task of the opposition to point that out and prove what they say, again in a language that doesn't imply knowledge of the topic to start with (i.e. jargon).
The good news is that more and more judges are beginning to get exposed to this sort of education which will slowly yield results. Sadly, it IS a slow process and I can't see a way to speed it up other than what I'm planning to do in another country (and I can't talk about that yet, sorry).
In any case, please start with the assumption that a judge is not stupid. It is an unfair assumption and causes you to dismiss the problem instead of picking it up and thinking about solutions.
This has a very beta feel to it, but I don't see a "right" or "wrong" here.
We're simply talking about "one of many" input methods. I find it interesting that there is always immediate talk about the death of one thing or another - it depends what you use it for and if it is a suitable substitute. Take mice, if you use the mouse all the time you're (a) risking a lot of RSI and (b) are inefficient. Learning keyboard shortcuts -especially for commands you use often- allows you to work much faster (I presume that's why they have been messed up in Office 2007 - I guess MS appearing to IMPROVE productivity would be somehow a Bad Thing).
In the Minority Report (as well as the new James Bond movie) they use hand gestures to manipulate what is shown. It would be good if that could be done on the screen because your only other control mechanism is a SMALL screen where you can't quite see what you're doing if you work room or hall wide with a high resolution (most wall displays are just blown up small images which is not quite the same concept).
Observations:
1 - Minority Report and this technology are done contactless, you're waving in the air at something (I'm assuming you're past the initial barrier of potentially looking like an idiot when you're being ignored by the technology:-). IMHO this has a very low precision and is thus only good for rough positioning and manipulation. Imagine the size of "air keyboard" you'd need (IMHO, the concepts in Johnny Mnemonic were better for that as he wore gloves which provide that more precise control and thus could do air-typing - yes I know it's only a movie but the idea itself is IMHO viable)
2 - in Quantum of Solace the approach is contact driven, a sort of large scale iPod Touch idea. You'd have to develop better pickup technology than the Ipod though - not touch sensitive, maybe like the laser keyboard? Again it runs over multiple screens which are treated as one big one which is IMHO the most logical approach.
Both approaches deliver questions such as "why transparent glass if it's on a wall" and "can we get luminence high enough so we don't have to live in dark offices when this stuff is online"..
Added bonus question for the Bond Movie - do you now need a whole echelon of security cleared window cleaners?
Anyway, that's my take:-). I like those new ideas, and I don't think we should dismiss something immediately because it doesn't fit in with how we use computers now. When the mainframe was introduced, nobody could have imagined that we now have personal machines on our desktop that are *WAY* more powerful, just because we like to play games on them..
In 20 years time this may all be very different again.
What I like most about "man" is that it works everywhere (a bit like why you have to know at least *some* vi, even if you don't normally use it). The "info" command is IMHO too unwieldy.
That is, of course, all personal preference. That's the other thing I like about Unix and Linux: many ways to do things. Makes for great solution resilience..
BTW, "write" ? I can remember always having an open "talk" window on a friend's system in Oz:-)
I remember from long ago a small experiment that used the energy of a nearby AM transmitter (I told you it was long ago) to light a small bulb.
I wonder how difficult it would be to make something that picks up GSM and WiFi signals and generates a battery charge. You already have LEDs that light up on phone polling and ringing. If nothing else, it would be an idea to charge a mobile phone itself:-)
Let me see, it could break up in individual pieces that don't burn up completely. At the kind of velocity this comes down with you don't need a big piece.
Add Murphy's Law and chances are close to 90% that it'll hit YOU.
It's just a test to replace terrorists as scare tactics, we've done that. But we've got tonnes of debris up there that we may need to use a defence system against, quick, Congress, money!
Sorry, got cynical halfway through typing. Normally it happens earlier. Not enough caffeine..
Interesting, time to do some testing - good to know. However, this approach doesn't address my primary reservation (although I admittedly didn't express it that well): you will need Windows to repair Windows, and from my experience that is not the optimum solution when it has affected the file system.
I would be *extremely* interested in a route where I could boot a Linux live CD and authenticate to an encrypted drive so I could get to the file system for rescue purposes - I wasn't being theoretical here, I have been there. If I have a "translation" slice in between which deals with the crypto side of things it would amount to a solution..
As for the additional key - your assertion that code is public and has been verified lacks a link to evidence that the executables on sale are indeed compiled from that specific source. It would be nice to see a confirmation from an acknowledged independent and competent resource - or maybe you have that and I didn't find it.
Look at the perspective of the average end user - they have no real means to execute such a verification so you need to have such work verified by a trusted independent source (probably foreign to cancel any allegations about NSA sponsorship:-).
BTW, I may appear harsh but if I wasn't happy with what PGP currently provides I wouldn't use it (licensed on all systems that run Windows) - I see the above omissions more as a managed risk:-).
If there is one HUGE problem with whole disk encryption it is recovery from disk failure. I'm not talking about your average Windows crash, PGP whole disk crypto is OK with that. I'm talking about a more massive failure which makes a mess of the NTFS indexing (Windows can do that too).
Normally, you have three options:
- restart and pretend you don't have a problem. Rather hard if you're missing a lot of files:-).
- permit CHKDSK to clean up the disk. In my experience that is a sure way to guarantee you will never be able to access your files in a sensible state ever again. No idea why, but Microsoft doesn't appear to have focused on file recovery with CHKDSK, more on returning the disk to a consistent state. Or maybe I need to do some RTFM:-)
- use another tool to access the disk which doesn't need a 100% clean NTFS layout to still scrape the files off. This can be typically done with a Linux live CD as the read-only NTFS mount of Linux is substantially less picky about how consistent the file system is. I introduced this idea to a large consultancy when I worked there and they have saved a good amount of data this way over the years.
When you use full disk crypto, forget about booting up another OS to recover data. Installing full disk crypto without adding a good backup solution (encrypted, of course) is asking for trouble.
What I like about PGP is the ability to use additional keys which are split, so you need to involve multiple people before you can backdoor it. However, it always makes me wonder if there isn't an additional key of which we don't know anything..
This throws up a very interesting question: if this analysis stands, what happens to the people who have already been "convicted"? What can they do? Class action? Against who?
Ab-so-lu-te-ly 100% spot on. I'd go as far as state that there is something seriously wrong that I have to wait for ANYTHING on a dual core box with 2GB RAM and a harddisk spinning at 7200 rpm. If I'm writing something in Word it occasionally decides to disappear on me, catching up with my keystrokes a couple of secs later. WTF?
Yup, I'm old, maybe my standards were set much earlier at a too high level. I can remember the time that Windows came on 14 3.5" floppies. It sure as hell didn't measure into GBs of animated cursors and DRM infested crap and DLLs which were introduced to SHARE libraries. And ditto for Linux.
If it wasn't that there aren't any drivers available to support it I wouldn't mind installing Worries for Workgroups and the earlier versions of MS Office on this box and see it absolutely fly. Compiling a large scale Turbo Pascal program that would take the machine in those days a good 10 minutes? It would be over by the time the Enter key returned fully to the "up" position..
Yet. we. have. to. wait. for. every. bloody. action..
Unconscionable IMHO. That's a huge waste of resources. Sure, if you're gaming you probably need a lot, but for stupid "I have a gazillion clock cycles between every keypress" word processing? Nope, there's no way to defend that.
There was one possibly unintentionally funny moment in on of the "Stargate" episodes where they have thirty seconds to get the computers online and show what you get to see in the first few minutes of a Solaris bootup.
There is a very intentionally funny one visible in Starwreck where a starship with a massively powerful weapon fires, and it drains every bit of power available. After a couple of secs, lights switch back on and you can see BIOS messages on the screen that is visible. Go and get it, it's full of funny quirks like that - quality humour..
My sentiments exactly. Quite a few replies state "because you MAY have added/changed/eaten xxx" - it is exactly my point that I don't. And if I do I jolly well know about it, and I'm quite happy memorising (or even -gasp- RTFM) a command to manually trigger an update or whatever other start mechanism would exist.
I just resent spending the time on what amounts to doing a full emission test, engine tuning and tyre thread depth check every time I start my car..
Yup, it has always irritated me that the faster my system gets the more I need to wait for it..
There are IMHO 3 levels to this:
1) BIOS boot. Why the hell do I need to wait for this? I don't need the advertising, thanks, and a state check is BS if it worked before - flag and repeat. The maximum allowed delay should be to show a 2 sec message "Press F1 to enter BIOS or re-scan" - and even that one should be able to switch off. I recall reading something about an Open Source BIOS having to be slowed down because it was ready before the disks had spun up - yes please!
2) OS boot. The actual core OS is again something that, once stable, changes very little. Or so goes the theory, with the incredible amount of patching going on in Windows there is indeed a need for re-scan. But that again is something you do once, then skip the proooooooooooooooooobing for something that *may* be there but doesn't respond in teh half century timeout that it has been given. I can recall something called TurboDOS for the Apple ][ that was a good 3x faster, mainly because someone had brought the timeouts back to something sane.. What I find particularly offensive is the Microsoft marketing department forcing a visible desktop that makes it appear the machine is ready, where any enterprise build will take more than it takes to get a coffee before it is finally really is, even after defragging the disk. That's at least something I find less of an issue with Linux. However, these days there is an awful lot of crap that has to be loaded for no apparent reason - maybe time to lift the covers and go back to basics?
On the Linux front an observation aside: once upon a time, Linux booted in seconds even when the then Worries for Workgroups was already starting to get obese. This speed advantage no longer exists other than that a ready desktop really IS ready:-(
3) App level boot. Once the OS is live, all these other gadgets become alive. There is a whole raft of things that sit and watch for events these days, and most of it does so surreptitiously. Picasa shows a logo and tells you it's watching for events, but the iTunes crap hides, ditto for the Apple update. Once upon a time you could look in Windows "startup" and look at what actually loaded, but that was obviously too visible and useful and could -oh shudder- allow the customer to kill off the things they didn't want. These days, only Logitech and OpenOffice do it as intended, the rest all sits under the radar - motives?
ANY program setting up some form of monitoring should be visible, and offer the advanced user a way to kill it off. I want iTunes only to play music, and I will start it up myself hen I need it to sync - that is a choice I should be able to make. Sure, make it idiot proof but for God's sake leave an option for the non-idiots to control it (and bloody stop trying to shove Safai down my throat with every down, sorry, 'up'grade). And I don't recall ever giving permission for the Apple Update program so where did that come from? I think that is in principle a breach of computing laws to install software without authorisation..
There are so many apps that start up a background process for updates that it's a miracle there's bandwidth left for getting any work done, and starting an app starts off some more. Apple iTunes, Firefox -and each extension thereof-, Thunderbird -ditto-) - the moment you start them the hunt for updates begins. "Stable" has been replaced by "perpertual beta" - and we know who started that (yes Redmond, it's you). I can recall where especially an OS patch was A Big Deal. The fact that someone does this monthly (and now doesn't) should not blind you to the fact that it once was an exceptional event rather than rule.
And then there is the way network events are treated: synchronous. Start Outlook and watch the system die while it waits for some sign of life from the server (and then continues this throughout the day). Watch a DNS lookup freeze a system because the netwo
I must admit I wonder just how much energy is lost in refresh operations. The problem is that nothing static is fast enough to keep up (AFAIK, it's been a while since I entertained myself with computing hardware).
However, this isn't the first time short term memory has been used in computing. I can remember (pardon the pun) memory which had to be refreshed, so I'd imagine using that concept would fix the "short" timespan.
However, that's not the only important number. What about latency?
My problem with DRM is that (1) it takes away my control and (2) it risks my investment in whatever contents I have subjected to it.
I can see that with iTunes, I just had a laptop nuke its hard disk and presto, one less system "authorized" to play. The other laptop will never work again, yet the clock ticks further.
Leaving control aside, the other problem is that of reliability. For DRM to work it means every SINGLE component in a DRM chain from source to display/performance has to be in working order. One glitch and the chain breaks, which gives you an MTBF of at most the MTBF of the weakest component in the link. And it's still beta software, it's still beta hardware.
I mean, if it helps MS, I guess there must be some mileage in protesting about people copying Linux at will. They..
What? That's OK?
Look, how the hell are we ever going to tell people to use Linux then, with it being free and all that? You really have no idea how to sell a product, do you? Explain to me otherwise how that expensive crap sells and the free stuff doesn't? You wi..
What? It doesn't sell? Ah, yes, bummer. There's the problem then. Charge for the disk or something.
I obviously hit my least creative time - hitting Submit too early. Caffeine! More!
Anyway, I'm not too worried about this new threat yet - at present it involves a lot of specialist kit and there are still enough people downloading spyware to make this too much effort for little return.
I do, however, wonder what anyone at home can actually do. Would a cable ferrite dampen enough emissions or does one need to go into full Tempest mode?
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No recovery features (WFT does it have to DELETE that file immediately instead of quarantining it for a few days?), and for most end users they will need that PC to work to read the AVG notice and recovery instructions.. Nice catch 22.
Morons..
I rarely find myself having to accept/deny actions, and that entire safety feature can be turned off if it bugs you.
Vista strikes me as worse from a security perspective than XP. There is more going on in the background that I don't know of, and more of *MY* data is accessed when I'm not using it than is warranted or I would like to permit. Switching off the above "features" is digging a deeper hole.
Another thing I intensely disliked (past tense - I ripped it out) was that Vista would literally "disappear" on me, I'd have no reaction from the system for seconds at the time, both on quite powerful more-than-ready-for-Vista systems. After a few secs it would catch up, but I question a system that I have to wait for when it is so fast it has a gazillion cycles spare between each keystroke.
Anyway, good for you. I have a sysadmin who can also get it to work to a reasonable degree (at which point we hit the UI changes in Vista :-) but he does have to work for it. Out of the box performance is crap. We've left most of our systems in XP, and quite a few desktops in dev don't even use Windows anymore. What they need they'll do in Wine, and the rest is Linux, as is almost everything in production..
And I've got OOo 3 installed now which works for me. May not work for everyone but I prefer that over having to waste hours finding where the hell they stuck the stuff I really need without an option to restore the previous interface. I'm all for change that is gradual and not in a way that it impedes me..
No, sorry. I had it on 2 new systems, different makes, different hardware. Sucked on both, BIG time. Putting it on a decenet box is the equivalent of buying the latest Porsche and putting a foot worth of concrete in it, removing all gears but 3rd and fueling it with a 50/50 mix of diesel and petrol.
"You moved the mouse - Accept/Deny?" was really NOT a joke. Whoever allowed that out on the market ought to be hung by his gonads with some extra weight around his ankles.
While I'm at it, same treatment for the jerk who decided we need a whole new UI for Office 2007- WTF? They changed it ALL, including keyboard shortcuts (oh nooo, we can't have anyone actually "productive" now - they won't buy the upgrade). No wonder the uptake of OOo 3 went through the roof - I installed it myself to get some work done.
I don't need DRM, I don't need sounds when I log on/off (the first to go when I get a new setup) because I'm not employed to advertise for them, I don't need animated cursors, I don't need fancy graphics if they get in the way of. simply. getting. my. work. done.
Will someone PLEASE come up with a suitable Outlook/Exchange replacement that does calendaring (don't mention Evolution, please), and PDQ? It's the whole reason "management" has decided it needs MS - the rest of our stuff runs on either Unix or Linux and simply works..
Why the hell isn't IBM doing something with Lotus? The interface sucks seven ways to Sunday but the damn thing works and is so secure that banks still prefer to use it. If someone could actually get serious about the interface (or maybe code a decent API so open code could use the platform as core) I'm sure there would be interest, it's IMHO the one thing from stopping Linux becoming a business desktop. All IMHO, of course.
Sigh.
MS sells hope - someone said this already. Hope that maybe the next version is better, and we're so addicted to this hope that we blindly buy new hardware and waste a fortune in productivity. Yet they have not delivered since Worries for Workgroups - so from a track record perspective you shouldn't have gone near them. Yet we do. Weird.
Unbelievable.
"You can use this pipe to top up the air".
Oh, and if you don't have batteries you'll need the "whistle to attract attention" as well, of course..
Pfft. A breath of fresh air (etc etc).
What is mainly happening is that the judges are fed a line of bullshit of reasonable quality - IMHO they are asked to judge evidence that is beyond their ability to understand. NOT because they are stupid (in my experience most of them are anything but) but because they don't understand the new technology it is based on.
It is our responsibility to educate, to avoid jargon and to improve clarity in what we say - and never, ever lie or assume. Just stay with the facts.
The issue is practically identical with what I come across when coaching CEOs in understanding IT. They don't want anyone to know I'm doing it (which is why we call it "coaching" and use a non-office venue), and the relief you can see when they finally understand it's in principle a complicated LEGO set is worth the effort (and the income helps too :-). It improves the quality of their decision making rather considerably, and it is IMHO a scandal they don't even teach the very basics like we do in any MBA programme. But hey, we make the cash, so well done :-)
Joking aside, judges have a duty to be impartial, which means they must haven an ear for both parties. If they lack the knowledge to recognise that data is inaccurate or "creatively acquired" then it is unfortunately the task of the opposition to point that out and prove what they say, again in a language that doesn't imply knowledge of the topic to start with (i.e. jargon).
The good news is that more and more judges are beginning to get exposed to this sort of education which will slowly yield results. Sadly, it IS a slow process and I can't see a way to speed it up other than what I'm planning to do in another country (and I can't talk about that yet, sorry).
In any case, please start with the assumption that a judge is not stupid. It is an unfair assumption and causes you to dismiss the problem instead of picking it up and thinking about solutions.
That's my 2 cents..
This has a very beta feel to it, but I don't see a "right" or "wrong" here.
We're simply talking about "one of many" input methods. I find it interesting that there is always immediate talk about the death of one thing or another - it depends what you use it for and if it is a suitable substitute. Take mice, if you use the mouse all the time you're (a) risking a lot of RSI and (b) are inefficient. Learning keyboard shortcuts -especially for commands you use often- allows you to work much faster (I presume that's why they have been messed up in Office 2007 - I guess MS appearing to IMPROVE productivity would be somehow a Bad Thing).
In the Minority Report (as well as the new James Bond movie) they use hand gestures to manipulate what is shown. It would be good if that could be done on the screen because your only other control mechanism is a SMALL screen where you can't quite see what you're doing if you work room or hall wide with a high resolution (most wall displays are just blown up small images which is not quite the same concept).
Observations:
1 - Minority Report and this technology are done contactless, you're waving in the air at something (I'm assuming you're past the initial barrier of potentially looking like an idiot when you're being ignored by the technology :-). IMHO this has a very low precision and is thus only good for rough positioning and manipulation. Imagine the size of "air keyboard" you'd need (IMHO, the concepts in Johnny Mnemonic were better for that as he wore gloves which provide that more precise control and thus could do air-typing - yes I know it's only a movie but the idea itself is IMHO viable)
2 - in Quantum of Solace the approach is contact driven, a sort of large scale iPod Touch idea. You'd have to develop better pickup technology than the Ipod though - not touch sensitive, maybe like the laser keyboard? Again it runs over multiple screens which are treated as one big one which is IMHO the most logical approach.
Both approaches deliver questions such as "why transparent glass if it's on a wall" and "can we get luminence high enough so we don't have to live in dark offices when this stuff is online"..
Added bonus question for the Bond Movie - do you now need a whole echelon of security cleared window cleaners?
Anyway, that's my take :-). I like those new ideas, and I don't think we should dismiss something immediately because it doesn't fit in with how we use computers now. When the mainframe was introduced, nobody could have imagined that we now have personal machines on our desktop that are *WAY* more powerful, just because we like to play games on them..
In 20 years time this may all be very different again.
That's why most shops have to tag them and put theft preventers around them.
Besides, going back to my previous comment, the UK government appears to manage losing CDs and DVDs quite comfortably..
AFAIK, the British government appears to have problems with data retention on either media this way..
What I like most about "man" is that it works everywhere (a bit like why you have to know at least *some* vi, even if you don't normally use it). The "info" command is IMHO too unwieldy.
That is, of course, all personal preference. That's the other thing I like about Unix and Linux: many ways to do things. Makes for great solution resilience..
BTW, "write" ? I can remember always having an open "talk" window on a friend's system in Oz :-)
I remember from long ago a small experiment that used the energy of a nearby AM transmitter (I told you it was long ago) to light a small bulb.
I wonder how difficult it would be to make something that picks up GSM and WiFi signals and generates a battery charge. You already have LEDs that light up on phone polling and ringing. If nothing else, it would be an idea to charge a mobile phone itself :-)
Hmmm..
Let me see, it could break up in individual pieces that don't burn up completely. At the kind of velocity this comes down with you don't need a big piece.
Add Murphy's Law and chances are close to 90% that it'll hit YOU.
It's just a test to replace terrorists as scare tactics, we've done that. But we've got tonnes of debris up there that we may need to use a defence system against, quick, Congress, money!
Sorry, got cynical halfway through typing. Normally it happens earlier. Not enough caffeine..
Interesting, time to do some testing - good to know. However, this approach doesn't address my primary reservation (although I admittedly didn't express it that well): you will need Windows to repair Windows, and from my experience that is not the optimum solution when it has affected the file system.
I would be *extremely* interested in a route where I could boot a Linux live CD and authenticate to an encrypted drive so I could get to the file system for rescue purposes - I wasn't being theoretical here, I have been there. If I have a "translation" slice in between which deals with the crypto side of things it would amount to a solution..
As for the additional key - your assertion that code is public and has been verified lacks a link to evidence that the executables on sale are indeed compiled from that specific source. It would be nice to see a confirmation from an acknowledged independent and competent resource - or maybe you have that and I didn't find it.
Look at the perspective of the average end user - they have no real means to execute such a verification so you need to have such work verified by a trusted independent source (probably foreign to cancel any allegations about NSA sponsorship :-).
BTW, I may appear harsh but if I wasn't happy with what PGP currently provides I wouldn't use it (licensed on all systems that run Windows) - I see the above omissions more as a managed risk :-).
If there is one HUGE problem with whole disk encryption it is recovery from disk failure. I'm not talking about your average Windows crash, PGP whole disk crypto is OK with that. I'm talking about a more massive failure which makes a mess of the NTFS indexing (Windows can do that too).
Normally, you have three options:
- restart and pretend you don't have a problem. Rather hard if you're missing a lot of files :-).
- permit CHKDSK to clean up the disk. In my experience that is a sure way to guarantee you will never be able to access your files in a sensible state ever again. No idea why, but Microsoft doesn't appear to have focused on file recovery with CHKDSK, more on returning the disk to a consistent state. Or maybe I need to do some RTFM :-)
- use another tool to access the disk which doesn't need a 100% clean NTFS layout to still scrape the files off. This can be typically done with a Linux live CD as the read-only NTFS mount of Linux is substantially less picky about how consistent the file system is. I introduced this idea to a large consultancy when I worked there and they have saved a good amount of data this way over the years.
When you use full disk crypto, forget about booting up another OS to recover data. Installing full disk crypto without adding a good backup solution (encrypted, of course) is asking for trouble.
What I like about PGP is the ability to use additional keys which are split, so you need to involve multiple people before you can backdoor it. However, it always makes me wonder if there isn't an additional key of which we don't know anything..
This throws up a very interesting question: if this analysis stands, what happens to the people who have already been "convicted"? What can they do? Class action? Against who?
Ab-so-lu-te-ly 100% spot on. I'd go as far as state that there is something seriously wrong that I have to wait for ANYTHING on a dual core box with 2GB RAM and a harddisk spinning at 7200 rpm. If I'm writing something in Word it occasionally decides to disappear on me, catching up with my keystrokes a couple of secs later. WTF?
Yup, I'm old, maybe my standards were set much earlier at a too high level. I can remember the time that Windows came on 14 3.5" floppies. It sure as hell didn't measure into GBs of animated cursors and DRM infested crap and DLLs which were introduced to SHARE libraries. And ditto for Linux.
If it wasn't that there aren't any drivers available to support it I wouldn't mind installing Worries for Workgroups and the earlier versions of MS Office on this box and see it absolutely fly. Compiling a large scale Turbo Pascal program that would take the machine in those days a good 10 minutes? It would be over by the time the Enter key returned fully to the "up" position..
Yet. we. have. to. wait. for. every. bloody. action..
Unconscionable IMHO. That's a huge waste of resources. Sure, if you're gaming you probably need a lot, but for stupid "I have a gazillion clock cycles between every keypress" word processing? Nope, there's no way to defend that.
There was one possibly unintentionally funny moment in on of the "Stargate" episodes where they have thirty seconds to get the computers online and show what you get to see in the first few minutes of a Solaris bootup.
There is a very intentionally funny one visible in Starwreck where a starship with a massively powerful weapon fires, and it drains every bit of power available. After a couple of secs, lights switch back on and you can see BIOS messages on the screen that is visible. Go and get it, it's full of funny quirks like that - quality humour..
My sentiments exactly. Quite a few replies state "because you MAY have added/changed/eaten xxx" - it is exactly my point that I don't. And if I do I jolly well know about it, and I'm quite happy memorising (or even -gasp- RTFM) a command to manually trigger an update or whatever other start mechanism would exist.
I just resent spending the time on what amounts to doing a full emission test, engine tuning and tyre thread depth check every time I start my car..
Yup, it has always irritated me that the faster my system gets the more I need to wait for it..
There are IMHO 3 levels to this:
1) BIOS boot. Why the hell do I need to wait for this? I don't need the advertising, thanks, and a state check is BS if it worked before - flag and repeat. The maximum allowed delay should be to show a 2 sec message "Press F1 to enter BIOS or re-scan" - and even that one should be able to switch off. I recall reading something about an Open Source BIOS having to be slowed down because it was ready before the disks had spun up - yes please!
2) OS boot. The actual core OS is again something that, once stable, changes very little. Or so goes the theory, with the incredible amount of patching going on in Windows there is indeed a need for re-scan. But that again is something you do once, then skip the proooooooooooooooooobing for something that *may* be there but doesn't respond in teh half century timeout that it has been given. I can recall something called TurboDOS for the Apple ][ that was a good 3x faster, mainly because someone had brought the timeouts back to something sane.. What I find particularly offensive is the Microsoft marketing department forcing a visible desktop that makes it appear the machine is ready, where any enterprise build will take more than it takes to get a coffee before it is finally really is, even after defragging the disk. That's at least something I find less of an issue with Linux. However, these days there is an awful lot of crap that has to be loaded for no apparent reason - maybe time to lift the covers and go back to basics?
On the Linux front an observation aside: once upon a time, Linux booted in seconds even when the then Worries for Workgroups was already starting to get obese. This speed advantage no longer exists other than that a ready desktop really IS ready :-(
3) App level boot. Once the OS is live, all these other gadgets become alive. There is a whole raft of things that sit and watch for events these days, and most of it does so surreptitiously. Picasa shows a logo and tells you it's watching for events, but the iTunes crap hides, ditto for the Apple update. Once upon a time you could look in Windows "startup" and look at what actually loaded, but that was obviously too visible and useful and could -oh shudder- allow the customer to kill off the things they didn't want. These days, only Logitech and OpenOffice do it as intended, the rest all sits under the radar - motives?
ANY program setting up some form of monitoring should be visible, and offer the advanced user a way to kill it off. I want iTunes only to play music, and I will start it up myself hen I need it to sync - that is a choice I should be able to make. Sure, make it idiot proof but for God's sake leave an option for the non-idiots to control it (and bloody stop trying to shove Safai down my throat with every down, sorry, 'up'grade). And I don't recall ever giving permission for the Apple Update program so where did that come from? I think that is in principle a breach of computing laws to install software without authorisation..
There are so many apps that start up a background process for updates that it's a miracle there's bandwidth left for getting any work done, and starting an app starts off some more. Apple iTunes, Firefox -and each extension thereof-, Thunderbird -ditto-) - the moment you start them the hunt for updates begins. "Stable" has been replaced by "perpertual beta" - and we know who started that (yes Redmond, it's you). I can recall where especially an OS patch was A Big Deal. The fact that someone does this monthly (and now doesn't) should not blind you to the fact that it once was an exceptional event rather than rule.
And then there is the way network events are treated: synchronous. Start Outlook and watch the system die while it waits for some sign of life from the server (and then continues this throughout the day). Watch a DNS lookup freeze a system because the netwo
I must admit I wonder just how much energy is lost in refresh operations. The problem is that nothing static is fast enough to keep up (AFAIK, it's been a while since I entertained myself with computing hardware).
However, this isn't the first time short term memory has been used in computing. I can remember (pardon the pun) memory which had to be refreshed, so I'd imagine using that concept would fix the "short" timespan.
However, that's not the only important number. What about latency?
USD 3.50 or so :-)
Joking aside, they did contribute quite a lot in the early day, including inflicting RPM on the population :-)
My problem with DRM is that (1) it takes away my control and (2) it risks my investment in whatever contents I have subjected to it.
I can see that with iTunes, I just had a laptop nuke its hard disk and presto, one less system "authorized" to play. The other laptop will never work again, yet the clock ticks further.
Leaving control aside, the other problem is that of reliability. For DRM to work it means every SINGLE component in a DRM chain from source to display/performance has to be in working order. One glitch and the chain breaks, which gives you an MTBF of at most the MTBF of the weakest component in the link. And it's still beta software, it's still beta hardware.
So, no thanks. Not for me. Ever.
I mean, if it helps MS, I guess there must be some mileage in protesting about people copying Linux at will. They ..
What? That's OK?
Look, how the hell are we ever going to tell people to use Linux then, with it being free and all that? You really have no idea how to sell a product, do you? Explain to me otherwise how that expensive crap sells and the free stuff doesn't? You wi..
What? It doesn't sell? Ah, yes, bummer. There's the problem then. Charge for the disk or something.
And give me coffee back. Now.
I guess the MS execs want to avoid another "suitable for Vista" debacle :-)
I bet it will still take a bloody week to boot..
I obviously hit my least creative time - hitting Submit too early. Caffeine! More!
Anyway, I'm not too worried about this new threat yet - at present it involves a lot of specialist kit and there are still enough people downloading spyware to make this too much effort for little return.
I do, however, wonder what anyone at home can actually do. Would a cable ferrite dampen enough emissions or does one need to go into full Tempest mode?