While it is definitely unlawful to trespass where there is an obvious attempt to limit access, there is some question of the legality of using access points that are intentionally left unprotected. While nobody is going to go to prison for this, it opens up more legal questions than it answers.
If it is illegal to use an unprotected service unauthorized, then it follows it must be unlawful to invite people to use your Internet connection. Furthermore: What about those that make the name of the access point its key? What about those that use default key settings? They are certainly saying: "Use me, I'm free".
The spirit of the law is to prevent abuse, so there is some question for those that need a quick portable connection and have no intent to abuse. A user with any technical knowledge would simply encrypt their channel, something that is virtually transparent on Unix systems. Due to short term use and reflections, such a law is not enforceable. This is not an area for politicians to play with as their technical knowledge is normally about 'point and click' level. Then, what about passive monitoring? I was told that the Internet has no real legal protections in that area, let alone unlicensed spectrum most of these devices operate on.
Yeah, right - so much for "You keep out of the music business, and we won't sell computers".
My very thoughts. Beatles on vinyl is also interesting (and DRM free). As has been mentioned above, many have beat iTunes to this punch. I'm no big Beatles fan (slightly before my time) but the few I got from mp3.com were either vinyl rips or from the master tapes at 384kbps. Even $300Million probably won't bring that kind of quality to the consumer. (DRM free, but some nations are crying "foul".)
Schiphol has had this technology for a few years now. The 'technicians' watch the show in a curtained box some distance from the gates and relay findings to security. When I asked if it was a 'sub-millimeter' system, I was told so, with a smile. They also have infrared that can spot people with a fever, who cannot fly. This system is passive. This device operates at about 10uM or 30THz.
BTW, 1mm = 300GHz and a true 'T-ray' is at about 1000GHz or 1/3mm.
If and only if this is your thing -- Seems more bother to back-engineer a chip than to do it clean. But buy chip, make masks, layer by layer, fab a run of chips, activate all as one.... Sound familiar? "Stolen blueprints" (actually film) doesn't sound all that likely. Besides it would be exceedingly easy to be caught doing that. Getting the API for an ASIC seems as criminal as it gets, but I'm no expert on China.
If a manufacturer refuses to reveal a digital chip, getting the API from the commercial driver reverse-engineering is another more sensible approach. Analogue fakes can be revealed by testing. A fake is highly unlikely to be as good as the real thing. (Think cola.)
Finally, if someone actually got the real "blueprints", the nature of the crypto could be determined by experts in that field. Someone said: "DRM", this might actually beat it out for lameness.
Letters from lawyers are neither, particularly considering some have even told us where we can post them. They "cease and desist", something well known within the legal community for many years.
Yes, if you are talking about "legal stations". They sound like shit at any rate even 320kbit/s which should, in theory be better sounding than CDs. (Think before you flame -- Try it first on Unix:) I don't care about the 'commercial outfits' or those that pretend to conform to the (impossible) rules.
You can't stop 'pirate Internet radio', particularly when its legal. (How can it be stopped?) I want more "pirate stations" on the Internet. Use of any "quality-reducing" technology (read: 'loud-sounding' stations) are quickly tuned away from. "Pirate" Internet radio solves both problems.
If you think developers are lazy, the average non-user is pathetic. I guess I'd be quite screwed-up if I used such an opiate for over ten years. I prefer to serve and I was shown NT (the __only__ Windows when we began the experiment) was unsuitable right in front of my face.
The answer: People are lazy! (not just developers) What I cannot tolerate is all the needless suffering this laziness has caused. I'm pissed. Most people who are shown Linux (and more likely *BSD from the younger ones) take to Unix real fast. If "Generation X" had full use of their computers, they'd be dangerous!
Sorry this seems so burnt-out, but two days of dealing with Windows "non-users" is beyond my limits. ANYTHING UNIX(tm) or "Unix-like" simply attracts smarter people. That's not simply because they used it in university, Unix users are simply smarter. (Duh)
I find it hard to laugh really hard until Microsoft is gone. Mr. Pope, all the modern evils are in Microsoft, _not Google_ btw. Ironic that I happen to have a guest staying from that very town. Nobody wants Vista here (in Europe) and therefore a small chuckle. Clearly if they play, well, Microsoft... and every compliant OS works fine, tsk, tsk, I side with the people of Lund.
.....in den Haag if need be. This is clearly illegal and the US (the Federal Government) is very unpopular here. It would be nice if it were tried in the US, but this must be heard somewhere. US Feds have no place here (in Europe) -- Except as tourists.
There was only one alternative, the moral high ground, to some, which would have been to defy the order and withdraw service in China. What would Google do? Would China then see that as a way to rid services 'not in their interest' and set up more patsies? Let the Chinese decide when its time to overthrow their government. (If it hasn't already happened.)
In theory, it looks possible, at least locally, but there are a few 'tried and true' methods that have never been patched. Aren't most DoS attacks a bit childish? If you knock a machine off line, you can't hack it anymore. Trying to prove certain vulnerabilities will admitably cause crashes. 'Everyone' knew MSRPC was insecure, but it was years (and countless crashes) before it was actually proved.
Hearing Brian Eno's 'musical mis-behaviour' at 04:00hrs repeated over and over, or random 'game noises' would be 'just cause', IMO as it could avoid a scene or wasting the time of the police. Using the bug, that is the topic of this discussion as an 'attack vector', could even make matters worse. DoS is a 'last resort method' and should be a 'sure kill' directed at the offending process.
So why can my Windows 98/95/2000/ME/XP computers play mp3s without this happening?
Slower Network Cards....but today we have faster LANs, "Gigabit" (400MB/s with 'PC arch') is standard and 10GB is moving in. Therefore:
Higher Bus bandwidth...
BillSF
(Troll warning: redundant) Crappy software aside, 32bit x 33MHz is rather limiting compared to the 64bit x 133MHz standard that has been with us for awhile. IMO, it appears Microsoft has failed to keep up with the hardware. If MS had put less energy in the hoax called "DRM" and all other politics, including "backward compatibility", this would not be a release issue. 64bit machines with 8x the bus bandwidth are about all you can buy today. Where's Microsoft? They say "Compare". Sure: "Open mouth, insert foot" -- One click option: "OK"? What is there to compare?
The paper has very few details. The thoughts I get are: 1) Hints of 'room temperature' superconductors. 2) A new type of amplifier -- only maybe. 3) A joke paper. That seems to be what most think. The charged ping-pong balls on the van der Graf generator is a nice explanation. 16VDC on the nano-scale is HIGH VOLTAGE.
It can get trickier. The arrangement of chips varies by size and vendor. The controller used and how the chips are connected affect this too. There is a very friendly computer shop that lets me try everything and return if it doesn't work as advertised. I picked up two 2G sticks for about EUR 10,-- each that use a Psion controller and are arranged in 16k blocks. (A four GB stick, with the same Taiwan brand, at EUR 39,-- turned out to be very slow. You have to test them. Except for quick tweaks, its not wise to make excessive writes. It must (in this case) write 16k no matter how small the file. (symlinks are hell) I simply allocate the same space on a HD and do 'dd if=/dev/sdN... of=/dev/da1s2a bs=16k' and that will run 396M in about 22s on BSD and surprisingly much faster with Linux. I use them as boot loaders with the kernel and userland. I slice them because ext2fs has different requirements. Reading is not normally a problem with current sticks. That block size parameter is quite important. I get 30MB/s on BSD (ufs2) and a surprising 90MB/s on Linux. (ext2fs). This is _much_ faster than the claimed rates for msdosfs/ntfs they advertise. (12MB/s write, something I've never seen msdosfs/ntfs do.) Bottom line is I can have upto a dozen or more systems on two sticks.
The lower cost units tend to be better, perhaps only because they are smaller or compliant to my filesystems. It may be worth noting I colour code the usb sockets to avoid mistakes. It is really easy to mess up, so always having a copy on a real hd is very comforting. Since the sticks are ROM and written once per development cycle, they will never wear out electricly. (The USB sockets will go much faster.) I think we all know what happens if you use dos. This is my experience and these things are developing rapidly. They are as fast as ordinary SCSI drives (they are SCSI drives) and indeed somewhat more stable. Expect a hot product from Seagate.:)
Sorry, but I've had some real bum luck with S.M.A.R.T. New drives have told me they're bad. Quite a discussion follows, but some know, maybe its not a time-out, but a surface scan (fsck) is clearly a better indicator. Some OSs can do this while live. I just had it when I realised S.M.A.R.T. was crashing a new machine. Solid as a rock now.
The right way: As simple as will get the job done. Its been used on the space shuttle since the beginning. When you hear the three computers agree, this is three 1802, a 1MHz 8-banger that was approved for this 30 years ago. The other "certified perfect" piece of hardware is the i486. Sure a few more may have been added, but nothing 'hi-tech'.
What kind of line speed does it take to say, control the dijkes. This is not the place to say _exactly_ how its done, but I'm not afraid of a break. Trains are the other extreme, you need a real computer. The embedded boxes that take the measurements are simple in design, a PIC or 1802, a world favourite in payphones.
Going on the net can't be all that bad, but as one writer noted, thoughtlessly designed systems lock out the rightful user. Of course, never run ssh on port 22 and if life is on the line, a telephone backup must be used. "Fuzzing" is over rated, sure it crashes poorly designed systems, but well designed systems would have to be flooded quite fast to prevent a 'distress signal'. (Upstream the networks are well monitored.) I will always remember the first security lesson from a German professor: Rule No.1 NO Microsoft products!
My biggest fear is the possibility (actually quite easy) of spoofing an IP of a rightful owner. These addresses must either be secrets or rotated often, preferably both. Still a dedicated network, where management can only look and then pick up the phone is almost mandatory if human life is at stake. True fast hopping radio can be most secure, stealth and 'unjamable'. Fibre is secure too.
It is rather remarkable with this publicly known for years and even popular music (figure out that yourself) telling how to do it, it hasn't been a problem. Broadcast and cable is totally vulnerable, though breaches rarely occur. It is rather commonplace to control a TV sender through a DTMF telephone: Would you know what to do if you got in? In a real war, things could go from bad to worse. Social engineering would be a primary tool. (Could anything be easier to social engineer than the military?) Loose lips do bad things. Its all about logic to do it right. Its scary to see sysadmins use Windows for stupid reasons like: "It works best on my laptop". Then don't use it for anything else!
It is so often when doing a security audit, you hear: "I let my kids play games and surf the web". On company computers that do important things. Damn. Don't use Windows and keep your computer to yourself.
Cds seem to be like anything else. If they last past a certain time, say a few months in the case of CDs, they will go on to last at least 25 years and nobody knows really how long. I have a couple CDs from 1983 and hey still play. However, they should always be copied and the copy played. Why my first CDs lasted six or so years is careful handling, not to mention at first most CDs needed to be returned for replacement at least once.
Cable is a dead horse. Either its fibre to within 100m or so, (good for at least 1GBit/s, 4-wires) then copper or fibre all the way. Sand is cheaper than copper, so in the end, fibre wins. The "copper people" say it lasts far a much shorter period of time, due to moisture. Putting 3GHz down cables designed for 1GHz would be a nightmare beyond imagination.
Why not consider enforcing laws already on the books? Learning how criminals ply their trade is the first step in learning security. Criminals make good cops -- proved. The vast majority of people that 'play hacker' do so to improve their own knowledge of security.
Short of an actual head crash, rare in modern drives, it is possible to get all your data back if you are quick. At the first 'glitch' get a new drive and transfer the old data. Check the old drive. If its not making strange noises, it may still be good. This could be as easy as building a new file system. If this indicates 'bad blocks', write 'all zeros' to at least the first GB or so. (preferably the entire drive) If you don't have 'bad blocks' now, you have a spare drive you can put all your CDs/DVDs on or otherwise use for material that can be replaced.
One bad block: Forget it, more are sure to follow. Cremation or burial at sea is advised. (after saving the data:) Alternately, you may be lucky enough to live in a city that will destroy it while you watch. If I find a computer 'on the street', I go for the drives. Chances are I've been beaten to them! This is perhaps the most over-looked aspect of keeping your data secure. I've seen an ATM repairmen 'just leave a drive on the street'. No amount of passes will completely erase a drive.
BTW: Turn off S.M.A.R.T. This is like the indication of an ink cartridge: When the maker thinks you need a new drive.
One TByte is 2^40 bytes. I wouldn't say it doesn't exist as those daring can probably low-level format this machine to that. This 'salesman talk' is deceptive, but One Trillion Bytes is metric. Don't forget every file system needs some overhead, to at least index the files and 'free space' (non-MS) to avoid fragmentation. Every modern OS needs swap space. If you get 900GB of space _you can use_ you are doing very well. Only when used as a 'tape streamer' can you expect to get all available _formatted_ space. If you push these limits, performance will suffer.
Another article on what Vista doesn't do.... While I don't use any MS "operating system" products, if you feel you 'need to', perhaps MPlayer from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ is your answer. The Windoz pre-compiled port is incomplete but people I know, that use Windows, pick MPlayer. (In Europe, the media player is not normally bundled as its seen as an anti-trust issue.) If the 'DRM' is only in the media player, this should work and its "free". It might be a hack to get Vista to accept it though. Please send them a few bucks if you use a pre-compiled version, but they'd probably prefer someone to complete the port over money. The entire source tree and API is also available from the MP site and mirrors.
BillSF
PS: I use a EUR 30,-- ATI Radeon RV370 X550 which should be all the video card you need. $1000 is more than I pay for an entire dual-core amd64/3000MHz (2800MHz in 64bit mode) system with 4G of RAM and two 500G hard drives!
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While it is definitely unlawful to trespass where there is an obvious attempt to limit access, there is some question of the legality of using access points that are intentionally left unprotected. While nobody is going to go to prison for this, it opens up more legal questions than it answers.
If it is illegal to use an unprotected service unauthorized, then it follows it must be unlawful to invite people to use your Internet connection. Furthermore: What about those that make the name of the access point its key? What about those that use default key settings? They are certainly saying: "Use me, I'm free".
The spirit of the law is to prevent abuse, so there is some question for those that need a quick portable connection and have no intent to abuse. A user with any technical knowledge would simply encrypt their channel, something that is virtually transparent on Unix systems. Due to short term use and reflections, such a law is not enforceable. This is not an area for politicians to play with as their technical knowledge is normally about 'point and click' level. Then, what about passive monitoring? I was told that the Internet has no real legal protections in that area, let alone unlicensed spectrum most of these devices operate on.
Yeah, right - so much for "You keep out of the music business, and we won't sell computers".
My very thoughts. Beatles on vinyl is also interesting (and DRM free). As has been mentioned above, many have beat iTunes to this punch. I'm no big Beatles fan (slightly before my time) but the few I got from mp3.com were either vinyl rips or from the master tapes at 384kbps. Even $300Million probably won't bring that kind of quality to the consumer. (DRM free, but some nations are crying "foul".)
Schiphol has had this technology for a few years now. The 'technicians' watch the show in a curtained box some distance from the gates and relay findings to security. When I asked if it was a 'sub-millimeter' system, I was told so, with a smile. They also have infrared that can spot people with a fever, who cannot fly. This system is passive. This device operates at about 10uM or 30THz.
BTW, 1mm = 300GHz and a true 'T-ray' is at about 1000GHz or 1/3mm.
If and only if this is your thing -- Seems more bother to back-engineer a chip than to do it clean. But buy chip, make masks, layer by layer, fab a run of chips, activate all as one.... Sound familiar? "Stolen blueprints" (actually film) doesn't sound all that likely. Besides it would be exceedingly easy to be caught doing that. Getting the API for an ASIC seems as criminal as it gets, but I'm no expert on China.
If a manufacturer refuses to reveal a digital chip, getting the API from the commercial driver reverse-engineering is another more sensible approach. Analogue fakes can be revealed by testing. A fake is highly unlikely to be as good as the real thing. (Think cola.)
Finally, if someone actually got the real "blueprints", the nature of the crypto could be determined by experts in that field. Someone said: "DRM", this might actually beat it out for lameness.
Letters from lawyers are neither, particularly considering some have even told us where we can post them. They "cease and desist", something well known within the legal community for many years.
Yes indeed, with your feet. You simply do what you have to do to do your thing, dig?
Yes, if you are talking about "legal stations". They sound like shit at any rate even 320kbit/s which should, in theory be better sounding than CDs. (Think before you flame -- Try it first on Unix :) I don't care about the 'commercial outfits' or those that pretend to conform to the (impossible) rules.
You can't stop 'pirate Internet radio', particularly when its legal. (How can it be stopped?) I want more "pirate stations" on the Internet. Use of any "quality-reducing" technology (read: 'loud-sounding' stations) are quickly tuned away from. "Pirate" Internet radio solves both problems.
If you think developers are lazy, the average non-user is pathetic. I guess I'd be quite screwed-up if I used such an opiate for over ten years. I prefer to serve and I was shown NT (the __only__ Windows when we began the experiment) was unsuitable right in front of my face.
The answer: People are lazy! (not just developers) What I cannot tolerate is all the needless suffering this laziness has caused. I'm pissed. Most people who are shown Linux (and more likely *BSD from the younger ones) take to Unix real fast. If "Generation X" had full use of their computers, they'd be dangerous!
Sorry this seems so burnt-out, but two days of dealing with Windows "non-users" is beyond my limits. ANYTHING UNIX(tm) or "Unix-like" simply attracts smarter people. That's not simply because they used it in university, Unix users are simply smarter. (Duh)
I find it hard to laugh really hard until Microsoft is gone. Mr. Pope, all the modern evils are in Microsoft, _not Google_ btw. Ironic that I happen to have a guest staying from that very town. Nobody wants Vista here (in Europe) and therefore a small chuckle. Clearly if they play, well, Microsoft... and every compliant OS works fine, tsk, tsk, I side with the people of Lund.
BillSF
.....in den Haag if need be. This is clearly illegal and the US (the Federal Government) is very unpopular here. It would be nice if it were tried in the US, but this must be heard somewhere. US Feds have no place here (in Europe) -- Except as tourists.
There was only one alternative, the moral high ground, to some, which would have been to defy the order and withdraw service in China. What would Google do? Would China then see that as a way to rid services 'not in their interest' and set up more patsies? Let the Chinese decide when its time to overthrow their government. (If it hasn't already happened.)
In theory, it looks possible, at least locally, but there are a few 'tried and true' methods that have never been patched. Aren't most DoS attacks a bit childish? If you knock a machine off line, you can't hack it anymore. Trying to prove certain vulnerabilities will admitably cause crashes. 'Everyone' knew MSRPC was insecure, but it was years (and countless crashes) before it was actually proved.
Hearing Brian Eno's 'musical mis-behaviour' at 04:00hrs repeated over and over, or random 'game noises' would be 'just cause', IMO as it could avoid a scene or wasting the time of the police. Using the bug, that is the topic of this discussion as an 'attack vector', could even make matters worse. DoS is a 'last resort method' and should be a 'sure kill' directed at the offending process.
Simply happy to have a 'modern' jdk on a modern machine running a modern OS. Very slick stuff. :) Something new again? I call that real progress.
So why can my Windows 98/95/2000/ME/XP computers play mp3s without this happening?
...but today we have faster LANs, "Gigabit" (400MB/s with 'PC arch') is standard and 10GB is moving in. Therefore:
Slower Network Cards.
Higher Bus bandwidth...
BillSF
(Troll warning: redundant)
Crappy software aside, 32bit x 33MHz is rather limiting compared to the 64bit x 133MHz standard that has been with us for awhile. IMO, it appears Microsoft has failed to keep up with the hardware. If MS had put less energy in the hoax called "DRM" and all other politics, including "backward compatibility", this would not be a release issue. 64bit machines with 8x the bus bandwidth are about all you can buy today. Where's Microsoft? They say "Compare". Sure: "Open mouth, insert foot" -- One click option: "OK"? What is there to compare?
The paper has very few details. The thoughts I get are:
1) Hints of 'room temperature' superconductors.
2) A new type of amplifier -- only maybe.
3) A joke paper. That seems to be what most think.
The charged ping-pong balls on the van der Graf generator is a nice explanation. 16VDC on the nano-scale is HIGH VOLTAGE.
Twee = two. Didn't know it had an English meaning.
It can get trickier. The arrangement of chips varies by size and vendor. The controller used and how the chips are connected affect this too. There is a very friendly computer shop that lets me try everything and return if it doesn't work as advertised. I picked up two 2G sticks for about EUR 10,-- each that use a Psion controller and are arranged in 16k blocks. (A four GB stick, with the same Taiwan brand, at EUR 39,-- turned out to be very slow. You have to test them. Except for quick tweaks, its not wise to make excessive writes. It must (in this case) write 16k no matter how small the file. (symlinks are hell) I simply allocate the same space on a HD and do 'dd if=/dev/sdN... of=/dev/da1s2a bs=16k' and that will run 396M in about 22s on BSD and surprisingly much faster with Linux. I use them as boot loaders with the kernel and userland. I slice them because ext2fs has different requirements. Reading is not normally a problem with current sticks. That block size parameter is quite important. I get 30MB/s on BSD (ufs2) and a surprising 90MB/s on Linux. (ext2fs). This is _much_ faster than the claimed rates for msdosfs/ntfs they advertise. (12MB/s write, something I've never seen msdosfs/ntfs do.) Bottom line is I can have upto a dozen or more systems on two sticks.
:)
The lower cost units tend to be better, perhaps only because they are smaller or compliant to my filesystems. It may be worth noting I colour code the usb sockets to avoid mistakes. It is really easy to mess up, so always having a copy on a real hd is very comforting. Since the sticks are ROM and written once per development cycle, they will never wear out electricly. (The USB sockets will go much faster.) I think we all know what happens if you use dos. This is my experience and these things are developing rapidly. They are as fast as ordinary SCSI drives (they are SCSI drives) and indeed somewhat more stable. Expect a hot product from Seagate.
Sorry, but I've had some real bum luck with S.M.A.R.T. New drives have told me they're bad. Quite a discussion follows, but some know, maybe its not a time-out, but a surface scan (fsck) is clearly a better indicator. Some OSs can do this while live. I just had it when I realised S.M.A.R.T. was crashing a new machine. Solid as a rock now.
BillSF
The right way: As simple as will get the job done. Its been used on the space shuttle since the beginning. When you hear the three computers agree, this is three 1802, a 1MHz 8-banger that was approved for this 30 years ago. The other "certified perfect" piece of hardware is the i486. Sure a few more may have been added, but nothing 'hi-tech'.
What kind of line speed does it take to say, control the dijkes. This is not the place to say _exactly_ how its done, but I'm not afraid of a break. Trains are the other extreme, you need a real computer. The embedded boxes that take the measurements are simple in design, a PIC or 1802, a world favourite in payphones.
Going on the net can't be all that bad, but as one writer noted, thoughtlessly designed systems lock out the rightful user. Of course, never run ssh on port 22 and if life is on the line, a telephone backup must be used. "Fuzzing" is over rated, sure it crashes poorly designed systems, but well designed systems would have to be flooded quite fast to prevent a 'distress signal'. (Upstream the networks are well monitored.) I will always remember the first security lesson from a German professor: Rule No.1 NO Microsoft products!
My biggest fear is the possibility (actually quite easy) of spoofing an IP of a rightful owner. These addresses must either be secrets or rotated often, preferably both. Still a dedicated network, where management can only look and then pick up the phone is almost mandatory if human life is at stake. True fast hopping radio can be most secure, stealth and 'unjamable'. Fibre is secure too.
It is rather remarkable with this publicly known for years and even popular music (figure out that yourself) telling how to do it, it hasn't been a problem. Broadcast and cable is totally vulnerable, though breaches rarely occur. It is rather commonplace to control a TV sender through a DTMF telephone: Would you know what to do if you got in? In a real war, things could go from bad to worse. Social engineering would be a primary tool. (Could anything be easier to social engineer than the military?) Loose lips do bad things. Its all about logic to do it right. Its scary to see sysadmins use Windows for stupid reasons like: "It works best on my laptop". Then don't use it for anything else!
It is so often when doing a security audit, you hear: "I let my kids play games and surf the web". On company computers that do important things. Damn. Don't use Windows and keep your computer to yourself.
BillSF
Cds seem to be like anything else. If they last past a certain time, say a few months in the case of CDs, they will go on to last at least 25 years and nobody knows really how long. I have a couple CDs from 1983 and hey still play. However, they should always be copied and the copy played. Why my first CDs lasted six or so years is careful handling, not to mention at first most CDs needed to be returned for replacement at least once.
Cable is a dead horse. Either its fibre to within 100m or so, (good for at least 1GBit/s, 4-wires) then copper or fibre
all the way. Sand is cheaper than copper, so in the end, fibre wins. The "copper people" say it lasts far a much shorter period of time, due to moisture. Putting 3GHz down cables designed for 1GHz would be a nightmare beyond imagination.
BillSF
Why not consider enforcing laws already on the books? Learning how criminals ply their trade is the first step in learning security. Criminals make good cops -- proved. The vast majority of people that 'play hacker' do so to improve their own knowledge of security.
BillSF
Short of an actual head crash, rare in modern drives, it is possible to get all your data back if you are quick. At the first 'glitch' get a new drive and transfer the old data. Check the old drive. If its not making strange noises, it may still be good. This could be as easy as building a new file system. If this indicates 'bad blocks', write 'all zeros' to at least the first GB or so. (preferably the entire drive) If you don't have 'bad blocks' now, you have a spare drive you can put all your CDs/DVDs on or otherwise use for material that can be replaced.
:) Alternately, you may be lucky enough to live in a city that will destroy it while you watch. If I find a computer 'on the street', I go for the drives. Chances are I've been beaten to them! This is perhaps the most over-looked aspect of keeping your data secure. I've seen an ATM repairmen 'just leave a drive on the street'. No amount of passes will completely erase a drive.
One bad block: Forget it, more are sure to follow. Cremation or burial at sea is advised. (after saving the data
BTW: Turn off S.M.A.R.T. This is like the indication of an ink cartridge: When the maker thinks you need a new
drive.
One TByte is 2^40 bytes. I wouldn't say it doesn't exist as those daring can probably low-level format this machine to that. This 'salesman talk' is deceptive, but One Trillion Bytes is metric. Don't forget every file system needs some overhead, to at least index the files and 'free space' (non-MS) to avoid fragmentation. Every modern OS needs swap space. If you get 900GB of space _you can use_ you are doing very well. Only when used as a 'tape streamer' can you expect to get all available _formatted_ space. If you push these limits, performance will suffer.
BillSF
Another article on what Vista doesn't do.... While I don't use any MS "operating system" products, if you feel you 'need to', perhaps MPlayer from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ is your answer. The Windoz pre-compiled port is incomplete but people I know, that use Windows, pick MPlayer. (In Europe, the media player is not normally bundled as its seen as an anti-trust issue.) If the 'DRM' is only in the media player, this should work and its "free". It might be a hack to get Vista to accept it though. Please send them a few bucks if you use a pre-compiled version, but they'd probably prefer someone to complete the port over money. The entire source tree and API is also available from the MP site and mirrors.
BillSF
PS: I use a EUR 30,-- ATI Radeon RV370 X550 which should be all the video card you need. $1000 is more than I pay for an entire dual-core amd64/3000MHz (2800MHz in 64bit mode) system with 4G of RAM and two 500G hard drives!