Well, war-mongering moron I think. Hopefully the american voters can get rid of this twit the next time an election rolls around. For all of Clinton's inability to keep it in his pants, he was a helluva good president.
Regardless, anyone who THINKS that a nuclear/radiation-based weapon won't bring down the wrath of the entire world upon the country that uses it is sadly deluded.
All it will take is some pictures/video of children/civillians dead/radiation burned to cause a uproar of impeachment level. People just won't stand for that.
Well, going with NiMH instead of NiCad would be a good idea, however LiIons don't handle high-discharge loads nearly as well as NiCads.
LiIons are great for low-draw applications where you need a medium amount of power for a long time, but they'll die pretty quick if you hammer them for every volt/amp they can put out.
I remember somebody wanting to open a premium sports clinic in Canada just for professional athletes, and charge an arm and a leg for premium care. The government said no.
What in god's name is a government doing approving stuff like that anyway? Where's freedom? Is freedom just a function of speech, where we are free to talk about anything, but anything anybody actually does is controlled by the (scientifically illiterate) power hungry?
Well, the Canadian govt. doesn't want to create a "two-tier" healthcare system where people who have more money can "buy" better service. That would be unfair, you know...
Of course, they also seem to miss the fact that a "two-tier" system already exists. People who are injured on the job are bumped right to the front of the healthcare que by worker's comp. Sports athletes usually get near-immediate treatment because they're "big important sports people".
And of course, it's hard to miss that anyone with enough cashola can just pop across the border to the US and pay for instant treatment.
Besides tagging messages as spam for having enough spam-keywords, it also (seems?) to tag incoming messages as "not spam" based on words that only appear in personal communications - when the messages come in. I think some of the other spam-killers also will nab messages which only contain a link, or a minimal amount of non-content.
POPFile has cracked the 98% classification accuracy mark on my system and is continuing to increase.
I never see spam anymore - it has ceased to be a problem for me (at least so far).
Yup, I had a WD80GB fail on me three months ago. One of the "special edition" 8mb buffer drives with the 3 year warantee.
Sent it back to them, and they sent me a "factory reconditioned" drive as a replacement... Grr.
2.5 months later, I get a bill on my credit card for the dead drive which I DID ship back to them. Unfortunately I threw away the shipment tracking number about a week earlier (I did checke the tracking number first, and had made sure they DID receive the drive). Now I can't prove they received the drive. My mistake was apparently not re-doublechecking my return status on their website to make sure they signed the dead drive back in.
So now I have a replacement refurbished drive and a bill for $120 (cdn) on my credit card for the drive I sent back to them. Paying twice for the same drive and getting a refurb.
I am PISSED. I will NEVER, EVER buy or recommend a western digital drive again. In my life.
I always hated the backup process - annoying, slow, even to CDRs or DVD-Rs.
I finally found the solution.
I just put another drive in my system at home. It has reserved space for backups. Two types of backups infact.
1. Backs up all of my important files nightly at 5am.
2. Same files as the nightly backup, but runs once a week.
Both processes just use the NTBackup software in WinXP and run via an "AT" cron-type job. Works like a charm and restores very easily.
Only takes around 10-12gb to do both types of backups, and the entire backup job takes about 8 minutes. Handy!
Would be very easy to have the system automatically FTP the backup file to my machine at work every night (or week) for an off-site backup.
On my system at work, I do something similar and backup across drives (basically copying the important data from one drive to the other - the idea being that both drives are unlikely to fail simultaneously). Also runs nightly.
Backups CAN be painless, just make sure you automate them!
I've tried two headsets with my P800 so far, the HBH-60, and the brand new HBH-35.
As Howard says, the HBH-60 is quite nice. It's fairly small, sounds good, and performs well.
The HBH-35 adds a longer battery life and because it has a mic boom that extends towards your mouth, it's better in noisy environments. The ear-holder on the HBH-35 is soft rubber and is more comfortable than the HBH-60 which is about half-rubber and half plastic. The downside with the HBH-35 is that it's larger and just doesn't feel as solid as the HBH-60.
The only downside to both headsets is that if you press the volume up/down buttons at the same time to check the battery, it flashes the LED on the side of the headset, meaning you can't check the battery level without taking it off. I'd prefer a few beeps in addition to the LED to tell me the level while I'm wearing it in-between calls.
Both sound good however, so I keep the HBH-35 at home and the HBH60 in my car. Given the choice between the two, I'd pick the HBH-60 because of the smaller size and a more solid-feeling construction.
I'd like a bluespoon, but they're just too darn expensive to justify right now.
Also, this lawyer has a long analysis of SCO extortion attempts and debunks a lot of their FUD.
And from the page:
"The jerkheads at SCO refuse to disclose what their IP is choosing instead to only make general and ambiguous public and inflammatory claims about others. Without proof, of course. Even without substance."
I don't know when the last time I've heard a lawyer use "jerkheads" was, but it was probably a long time ago, if ever;)
SCO intends to use force to accomplish their goals, not voluntary association.
Well, I rather expect that rather than SCO as a whole, it's more their board of directors/president.
Regardless if they are eventually successful or not, the sudden stock leap after they started down the litigation path probably made all of the higher-ups in the company a big boatload of money. And they're gonna keep filling that boat as long as possible.
As soon as things starts to turn south, losing lawsuits, frustrated "customers" etc. - I'd imagine that most of the higher-ups in the company will cut the ropes and resign and the boat-o-cash will sail-off into the sunset.
Of course, this would leave the employees and investors of the company high and dry while the CEOs enjoy their money in the bahamas...
But that's how business is supposed to work these days, right?
I used to have a uniden bearcat scanner back in the early 90s that could receive all of the normal frequencies (except for the military ones).
Great fun, could listen to all of the emergency services, all cell phones (they were all analog at the time), cordless phones, with a little serial port interface, you could decode pager text messages, etc.
I sold it off on EBay just before they clamped down on "frequency-unlocked" scanners.
Now 95% of cell phones are digital and encrypted/compressed, and most of the emergency services have scrambled. Cordless phones have gone spread-spectrum with some of them having basic or digital scrambling as well. Pagers have all but vanished in place of cheap digital cell phones and text messages.
Kind of like the demise of the BUD (big ugly dish) that was used for pulling down raw analog feeds once everyone starting going digitally compressed/encrypted.
Well, for the most part, I agree with you, so long as there's no chance of injuring other people.
I fully support drug testing in any occupation where peoples' lives are in someone's hands, eg, police, pilots, doctors & medical personnel, people operating heavy machinery on construction sites, etc.
If you wanna smoke up at home then go in to your 9-5 office cubicle job, good on ya.
If you wanna smoke up at home, then fly a plane I'm a passenger in, or be cutting me open for surgery, etc. - you better be fillin' the cup.
And I figure that anyone selling/using those drug-screening cheat-kits should be locked up as well...
True, but the difference would be that if they're not 100% sure that there's another container inside, they might eventually be satisfied with your answer that there isn't another one.
If they have any concrete proof however, you're in for a rough time.
I'm curious how bestcrypt masks the hidden container inside the real encrypted one - the only way to do this 100% safely is to make the hidden container destroy-able if only the larger main container is mounted and written to.
Well, they don't know that the 800mb is empty, because even free space inside the file is encrypted, so it could be either free, or it could be data. There's no way to be sure without mounting it via a passphrase.
If they were to mount the 200mb partition in write mode and add extra files to it, it would corrupt and probably destroy anything in any other unmounted aspects on the system. The only truely safe way to work on any of the aspects in "write mode" is to mount every aspect inside the file with the proper passwords so everything knows what's allocated and what's not.
Granted, having one aspect destroy another is fairly dangerous in terms of operator error, and this would be bad if the data was important, but if the alternative was that the bad guys were gonna throw you in a hole for the rest of your life, or have people work you over for days/months/years on end with all sorts of nasty torture techniques if they suspected something, having the data destroyed would be just fine in my books.
This is a bit offtopic, but I think it's valuable for anyone wanting to know about encryption - really GOOD encryption when someone's life/freedom may be on the line.
One of the biggest problems with regards to encryption (aside from snakeoil salesmen) is that if someone suspects/knows you're using encryption, they're going to try and get the key out of you. Either by legal means like locking you away in a hole for years until you make with the key, or just resorting to good old fashioned torture to make you cough up the info. Neither option is particularly appealing, so a rather smart solution to the problem was devloped.
The gist of it is that you make a large container file (say, 1gb for example). Inside that container file, are many smaller container files, each one having their own encryption key. You'd have one container with moderate-level stuff that you could "give up" if forced, and another container with the "real good stuff" that you'd get imprisoned/killed if the badguys discovered it.
The interesting way that it works is that in order to get access to the "real good stuff", you need to input the keys to all of the other containers to both decrypt the containers in question, and to fully map the filesystem. No container knows about any other container, nor where it's data is stored inside the 1gb file. Of course the data isn't stored in contigious blocks, and the containers could be fragmented into millions of pieces interwoven with eachother. It's also impossible to "prove" by any means that another container even exists.
So you can open any container and see the info inside it, but all of the containers appear to utilize the entire 1gb of storage space. You never know that anything other than empty space exists in the drive.
It's kind of complex, and I may not have explained it all that well, so before jumping on me, please read up at the website.
It's absolutely elegant, although perhaps not currently easy enough to be utilized by the masses. Still, if I was going into hostile territory, this would be the first thing I got operational on my portable equipment.
It's a mobile HD rack with the key/encryption hardware built-into it. Sounds reasonably secure too. From the site:
- Real-time hardware based encryption with 1-1Gigabit per second throughput and zero performance degradation - NIST Certified DES 64-bit and TDES 128/192-bit encryption engine - Automatic transparent operation encrypts entire hard drive bit-by-bit, including Boot Sector and OS - Portable X-Wall Secure Key for BIOS level user authentication and access control - Operating System and software independent ; does not require device drivers
Sounds like a nice product. With bandwidth in the gigabit range, it isn't going to be a problem on any mechanical storage device.
Regular DES is pretty weak though... Triple DES is reasonably secure though, assuming those are actually the key-lengths shown, and not just marketingspeak. If the price is right, I could see this type of gear becoming quite popular.
Law enforcement would hate it though. Assuming they couldn't get ahold of the key before it was destroyed, they'd be TSOL as far as getting anything out of the drive.
Ya, interestingly enough, because the RIAA is going after people in civil court, rather than criminal court, it's apparently not necessary for them to prove you're "guilty".
All they need to do is show "reasonable evidence" of an infringing activity, and it's probably enough to win the case.
I don't think it's possible for them to get people jail-time under civil court, but they can certainly fine you for a nice sum.
For all intents and purposes, it's like the RIAA is taking you to the People's Court, or good ol' Judge Judy.
Sure they can. Have you never seen the videos or read the reports of the government raiding suspected hackers and such? They just grab anything they think might be valuable, load it in a box and take it away. Kiss your hot PC goodness goodbye.
You're lucky to EVER get your computer back, and it certainly wouldn't be before a trial. By the time your hardware might be returned to you, it will probably be 5 or 6 years out of date...
It'd be interesting to get the specs on that chip in the little interface board they show in the diagram. Might give some insight if it's real security or not.
I've seen some high-security encryption keys that you basically keep on a keychain with you all the time. They have a "panic button" on them that destroys (either electronically, or physically) the internal memory, making recovery of the encryption key impossible.
Although I havn't seen them, I'd imagine it would be easy to make one with a built-in clock of some sort, so if you didn't correctly utilize the key every so-often, it would automatically self-destruct.
Of course, they're probably rather more expensive than what ABIT is proposing.
I'd imagine the key is either a USB token/dongle that you just take with you when you're not using the computer so the motherboard can't get a decryption key for the HD, or a BIOS-type decryption key that you have to enter at bootup to allow the motherboard to decode what's been written to the drive.
Depending on their implementation, it could be reasonably secure, but I don't know that I'd want to protect anything really important with it. Would definatly prevent casual snoopers though, or people who'd put the HD in another machine to bypass OS security, and reselling a used HD/system would be less problematic as far as having to make sure all data was erased properly first.
There's a big difference between "keeping government computers busy for weeks", and "making sure they will never be able to decrypt it before our sun explodes".
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I quite like Bush. He's always good for material on Comedy Central or Leno.
And I love the "deer in headlights" look that he has when he has to do an unscripted press conference.
Great stuff!
Well, war-mongering moron I think. Hopefully the american voters can get rid of this twit the next time an election rolls around. For all of Clinton's inability to keep it in his pants, he was a helluva good president.
Regardless, anyone who THINKS that a nuclear/radiation-based weapon won't bring down the wrath of the entire world upon the country that uses it is sadly deluded.
All it will take is some pictures/video of children/civillians dead/radiation burned to cause a uproar of impeachment level. People just won't stand for that.
N.
Well, going with NiMH instead of NiCad would be a good idea, however LiIons don't handle high-discharge loads nearly as well as NiCads.
LiIons are great for low-draw applications where you need a medium amount of power for a long time, but they'll die pretty quick if you hammer them for every volt/amp they can put out.
N.
I remember somebody wanting to open a premium sports clinic in Canada just for professional athletes, and charge an arm and a leg for premium care. The government said no.
What in god's name is a government doing approving stuff like that anyway? Where's freedom? Is freedom just a function of speech, where we are free to talk about anything, but anything anybody actually does is controlled by the (scientifically illiterate) power hungry?
Well, the Canadian govt. doesn't want to create a "two-tier" healthcare system where people who have more money can "buy" better service. That would be unfair, you know...
Of course, they also seem to miss the fact that a "two-tier" system already exists. People who are injured on the job are bumped right to the front of the healthcare que by worker's comp. Sports athletes usually get near-immediate treatment because they're "big important sports people".
And of course, it's hard to miss that anyone with enough cashola can just pop across the border to the US and pay for instant treatment.
N.
They don't seem to slip past on my end (POPFile).
Besides tagging messages as spam for having enough spam-keywords, it also (seems?) to tag incoming messages as "not spam" based on words that only appear in personal communications - when the messages come in. I think some of the other spam-killers also will nab messages which only contain a link, or a minimal amount of non-content.
POPFile has cracked the 98% classification accuracy mark on my system and is continuing to increase.
I never see spam anymore - it has ceased to be a problem for me (at least so far).
N.
Yup, I had a WD80GB fail on me three months ago. One of the "special edition" 8mb buffer drives with the 3 year warantee.
Sent it back to them, and they sent me a "factory reconditioned" drive as a replacement... Grr.
2.5 months later, I get a bill on my credit card for the dead drive which I DID ship back to them. Unfortunately I threw away the shipment tracking number about a week earlier (I did checke the tracking number first, and had made sure they DID receive the drive). Now I can't prove they received the drive. My mistake was apparently not re-doublechecking my return status on their website to make sure they signed the dead drive back in.
So now I have a replacement refurbished drive and a bill for $120 (cdn) on my credit card for the drive I sent back to them. Paying twice for the same drive and getting a refurb.
I am PISSED. I will NEVER, EVER buy or recommend a western digital drive again. In my life.
N.
I always hated the backup process - annoying, slow, even to CDRs or DVD-Rs.
I finally found the solution.
I just put another drive in my system at home. It has reserved space for backups. Two types of backups infact.
1. Backs up all of my important files nightly at 5am.
2. Same files as the nightly backup, but runs once a week.
Both processes just use the NTBackup software in WinXP and run via an "AT" cron-type job. Works like a charm and restores very easily.
Only takes around 10-12gb to do both types of backups, and the entire backup job takes about 8 minutes. Handy!
Would be very easy to have the system automatically FTP the backup file to my machine at work every night (or week) for an off-site backup.
On my system at work, I do something similar and backup across drives (basically copying the important data from one drive to the other - the idea being that both drives are unlikely to fail simultaneously). Also runs nightly.
Backups CAN be painless, just make sure you automate them!
Set it and forget it!
I've tried two headsets with my P800 so far, the HBH-60, and the brand new HBH-35.
As Howard says, the HBH-60 is quite nice. It's fairly small, sounds good, and performs well.
The HBH-35 adds a longer battery life and because it has a mic boom that extends towards your mouth, it's better in noisy environments. The ear-holder on the HBH-35 is soft rubber and is more comfortable than the HBH-60 which is about half-rubber and half plastic. The downside with the HBH-35 is that it's larger and just doesn't feel as solid as the HBH-60.
The only downside to both headsets is that if you press the volume up/down buttons at the same time to check the battery, it flashes the LED on the side of the headset, meaning you can't check the battery level without taking it off. I'd prefer a few beeps in addition to the LED to tell me the level while I'm wearing it in-between calls.
Both sound good however, so I keep the HBH-35 at home and the HBH60 in my car. Given the choice between the two, I'd pick the HBH-60 because of the smaller size and a more solid-feeling construction.
I'd like a bluespoon, but they're just too darn expensive to justify right now.
N.
For all of it's faults, I'd absolutely LOVE if we had Outlook installed at work...
That's how bad Lotus Notes is...
N.
1 down, 1 to go...
I swear, I'll sing a song and dance a jig when bloody, gawdawful Lotus Notes expires...
Nothing like being forced to use the worst email system ever written while you're at work.
H
Also, this lawyer has a long analysis of SCO extortion attempts and debunks a lot of their FUD.
;)
And from the page:
"The jerkheads at SCO refuse to disclose what their IP is choosing instead to only make general and ambiguous public and inflammatory claims about others. Without proof, of course. Even without substance."
I don't know when the last time I've heard a lawyer use "jerkheads" was, but it was probably a long time ago, if ever
N.
SCO intends to use force to accomplish their goals, not voluntary association.
Well, I rather expect that rather than SCO as a whole, it's more their board of directors/president.
Regardless if they are eventually successful or not, the sudden stock leap after they started down the litigation path probably made all of the higher-ups in the company a big boatload of money. And they're gonna keep filling that boat as long as possible.
As soon as things starts to turn south, losing lawsuits, frustrated "customers" etc. - I'd imagine that most of the higher-ups in the company will cut the ropes and resign and the boat-o-cash will sail-off into the sunset.
Of course, this would leave the employees and investors of the company high and dry while the CEOs enjoy their money in the bahamas...
But that's how business is supposed to work these days, right?
N.
I used to have a uniden bearcat scanner back in the early 90s that could receive all of the normal frequencies (except for the military ones).
Great fun, could listen to all of the emergency services, all cell phones (they were all analog at the time), cordless phones, with a little serial port interface, you could decode pager text messages, etc.
I sold it off on EBay just before they clamped down on "frequency-unlocked" scanners.
Now 95% of cell phones are digital and encrypted/compressed, and most of the emergency services have scrambled. Cordless phones have gone spread-spectrum with some of them having basic or digital scrambling as well. Pagers have all but vanished in place of cheap digital cell phones and text messages.
Kind of like the demise of the BUD (big ugly dish) that was used for pulling down raw analog feeds once everyone starting going digitally compressed/encrypted.
But it was fun while it lasted.
N.
Imagine what happens when they blow up a "bus in the middle of Missouri"
;P
I'm imagining a 15 second sound bite on CNN?
Also imagining maybe a 1/16th page article in the "C" section of the local newspaper, combined with a map of the US, indicating where Missouri is...
N.
Well, for the most part, I agree with you, so long as there's no chance of injuring other people.
I fully support drug testing in any occupation where peoples' lives are in someone's hands, eg, police, pilots, doctors & medical personnel, people operating heavy machinery on construction sites, etc.
If you wanna smoke up at home then go in to your 9-5 office cubicle job, good on ya.
If you wanna smoke up at home, then fly a plane I'm a passenger in, or be cutting me open for surgery, etc. - you better be fillin' the cup.
And I figure that anyone selling/using those drug-screening cheat-kits should be locked up as well...
But that's just me.
N.
True, but the difference would be that if they're not 100% sure that there's another container inside, they might eventually be satisfied with your answer that there isn't another one.
If they have any concrete proof however, you're in for a rough time.
I'm curious how bestcrypt masks the hidden container inside the real encrypted one - the only way to do this 100% safely is to make the hidden container destroy-able if only the larger main container is mounted and written to.
N.
Well, they don't know that the 800mb is empty, because even free space inside the file is encrypted, so it could be either free, or it could be data. There's no way to be sure without mounting it via a passphrase.
If they were to mount the 200mb partition in write mode and add extra files to it, it would corrupt and probably destroy anything in any other unmounted aspects on the system. The only truely safe way to work on any of the aspects in "write mode" is to mount every aspect inside the file with the proper passwords so everything knows what's allocated and what's not.
Granted, having one aspect destroy another is fairly dangerous in terms of operator error, and this would be bad if the data was important, but if the alternative was that the bad guys were gonna throw you in a hole for the rest of your life, or have people work you over for days/months/years on end with all sorts of nasty torture techniques if they suspected something, having the data destroyed would be just fine in my books.
This is a bit offtopic, but I think it's valuable for anyone wanting to know about encryption - really GOOD encryption when someone's life/freedom may be on the line.
One of the biggest problems with regards to encryption (aside from snakeoil salesmen) is that if someone suspects/knows you're using encryption, they're going to try and get the key out of you. Either by legal means like locking you away in a hole for years until you make with the key, or just resorting to good old fashioned torture to make you cough up the info. Neither option is particularly appealing, so a rather smart solution to the problem was devloped.
Naturally, it's called "Rubberhose" (The website)
The gist of it is that you make a large container file (say, 1gb for example). Inside that container file, are many smaller container files, each one having their own encryption key. You'd have one container with moderate-level stuff that you could "give up" if forced, and another container with the "real good stuff" that you'd get imprisoned/killed if the badguys discovered it.
The interesting way that it works is that in order to get access to the "real good stuff", you need to input the keys to all of the other containers to both decrypt the containers in question, and to fully map the filesystem. No container knows about any other container, nor where it's data is stored inside the 1gb file. Of course the data isn't stored in contigious blocks, and the containers could be fragmented into millions of pieces interwoven with eachother. It's also impossible to "prove" by any means that another container even exists.
So you can open any container and see the info inside it, but all of the containers appear to utilize the entire 1gb of storage space. You never know that anything other than empty space exists in the drive.
It's kind of complex, and I may not have explained it all that well, so before jumping on me, please read up at the website.
It's absolutely elegant, although perhaps not currently easy enough to be utilized by the masses. Still, if I was going into hostile territory, this would be the first thing I got operational on my portable equipment.
N.
There's another nice product there as well:
http://www.enovatech.net/html/ps_mobile.htm
It's a mobile HD rack with the key/encryption hardware built-into it. Sounds reasonably secure too. From the site:
- Real-time hardware based encryption with 1-1Gigabit per second throughput and zero performance degradation
- NIST Certified DES 64-bit and TDES 128/192-bit encryption engine
- Automatic transparent operation encrypts entire hard drive bit-by-bit, including Boot Sector and OS
- Portable X-Wall Secure Key for BIOS level user authentication and access control
- Operating System and software independent ; does not require device drivers
Sounds like a nice product. With bandwidth in the gigabit range, it isn't going to be a problem on any mechanical storage device.
Regular DES is pretty weak though... Triple DES is reasonably secure though, assuming those are actually the key-lengths shown, and not just marketingspeak. If the price is right, I could see this type of gear becoming quite popular.
Law enforcement would hate it though. Assuming they couldn't get ahold of the key before it was destroyed, they'd be TSOL as far as getting anything out of the drive.
N.
I posted above on this, but I'll repeat.
If they go after you in criminal court, they have to prove you're guilty.
If they go after you in civil court, they only have to show a judge enough evidence to convince them to rule in their favor.
N.
Ya, interestingly enough, because the RIAA is going after people in civil court, rather than criminal court, it's apparently not necessary for them to prove you're "guilty".
All they need to do is show "reasonable evidence" of an infringing activity, and it's probably enough to win the case.
I don't think it's possible for them to get people jail-time under civil court, but they can certainly fine you for a nice sum.
For all intents and purposes, it's like the RIAA is taking you to the People's Court, or good ol' Judge Judy.
Huh?
Sure they can. Have you never seen the videos or read the reports of the government raiding suspected hackers and such? They just grab anything they think might be valuable, load it in a box and take it away. Kiss your hot PC goodness goodbye.
You're lucky to EVER get your computer back, and it certainly wouldn't be before a trial. By the time your hardware might be returned to you, it will probably be 5 or 6 years out of date...
N.
Good info, mod poster up.
It'd be interesting to get the specs on that chip in the little interface board they show in the diagram. Might give some insight if it's real security or not.
N.
I've seen some high-security encryption keys that you basically keep on a keychain with you all the time. They have a "panic button" on them that destroys (either electronically, or physically) the internal memory, making recovery of the encryption key impossible.
Although I havn't seen them, I'd imagine it would be easy to make one with a built-in clock of some sort, so if you didn't correctly utilize the key every so-often, it would automatically self-destruct.
Of course, they're probably rather more expensive than what ABIT is proposing.
I'd imagine the key is either a USB token/dongle that you just take with you when you're not using the computer so the motherboard can't get a decryption key for the HD, or a BIOS-type decryption key that you have to enter at bootup to allow the motherboard to decode what's been written to the drive.
Depending on their implementation, it could be reasonably secure, but I don't know that I'd want to protect anything really important with it. Would definatly prevent casual snoopers though, or people who'd put the HD in another machine to bypass OS security, and reselling a used HD/system would be less problematic as far as having to make sure all data was erased properly first.
There's a big difference between "keeping government computers busy for weeks", and "making sure they will never be able to decrypt it before our sun explodes".