Likewise, anybody that controls the mail servers that the email travels through en route can view the emails, but that doesn't mean that one can't expect that random other parties not involved in the infrastructure can request a copy without a court order.
Other uninvolved parties like the government? Because that is *exactly* what the federal government has been asserting.
I'm not sure why you'd be interested in pretending that you don't get this... When's the last time you heard of an investigation in which the law enforcement and legal officials involved DID NOT want to see evidence relevant to their investigation?
I think that you are being obtuse if you can't see the difference between this data (which is claimed to be a privacy breach) and other types of evidence.
If the data really is private, then surely the government should obtain a warrant to get the data? Or is it public, in which case Google has done nothing wrong?
They are clearly guilty of receiving and recording electromagnetic signals IN A FREQUENCY THAT IS PUBLIC AND UNLICENSED, by devices that were advertising their SSID and transmitting unencrypted data
I think that there is a good case that privacy concepts need to be re-thought in the light of what is possible now through data-mining. Today, private information can be derived from amassing and relating lots of disparate public information. This is an issue that is not simply dispatched by pointing out that the source information was public. I think that we need new concepts of privacy.
because a lot of large companies back net neutrality - including Google and Amazon.
Google's support of net neutrality isn't wholehearted though. Didn't Google endorse the concept of non-neutral wireless Internet? IMHO, Google is large enough that it doesn't need net neutrality. In fact, potetentially, it could benefit. A non-neutral Internet will benefit all incumbents at the expense of new entrants to the field. The new entrants won't be able to pay the Danegeld/tolls/fees demanded by the ISPs so they will be at a great disadvantage in gaining new users.
Recent polls that showed some 67% of Americans believe that the top 2% should pay at least the same taxes that they did in the 90's also show that nearly 70% do not want cuts in government spending just to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and an even higher percentage do not want to see a rise in the retirement age or cuts in Social Security or Medicare.
All of which makes me wonder why Obama didn't try to get this passed before the election, when it would have made a great wedge issue. Remind me: what side is he on?
In the past few years working with DRM systems I've basically come to appreciate the 'mom rule'. Namely, if a technology's good enough to keep your mom from accessing data, then it's probably good enough --- meaning it'll keep 90+% of potential customers on the paying hook.
The thing about software and the Internet is that if enough people want it, but it is too difficult to do, it becomes easy to do. If there is demand, someone will make it trivially easy to bypass the filters.
The best hacks are still in hardware, chips built into capacitors, resistors etc. just waiting for that encoded signal to come in via their power feed to initiate intermittent power fluctuations (better than burn out, far harder to fix) and, really destructive when all spares will suffer from the same fault.
You mean by damaging sensitive hardware such as centrifuges (by speeding them up and slowing them down quickly) in ways that are not immediately obvious, but will take a long time (2 years) to replace or repair? I know it's not popular here, but try RTFA.
"Plus addressing" works with gmail, giving any gmail subscriber unlimited aliases. Unfortunately, quite a lot of sites won't accept addresses with "+" in them.
My computers are behind a proxy that blocks certain websites and referrer headers. I use Firefox and block third party cookies.
When there was a story a month or so ago about tracking, it pointed to websites where one could look up what information they held on you. They had no information about me.
Look at this page. It's for a local police department in a city that has lots of blind people because of the presence of the California School for the Blind. This is the first page that Google lists for the site. I can't imagine that a screen reader can make anything of the front page and there are no navigation buttons.
Could you point me to some reputable source that is qualified to say so and actually does that?
Put it th other way, why should the article be trusted? Look at the bio of the expert who is quoted and ask yourself if he is independent in this matter?
But the whole complaint was debunked long ago -- Foundem is just a link farm. It has no value the should put it high in Google's ranking.
"Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good." Samuel Johnson, over 200 years ago.
Sony, at least, tries to do some industrial design on the hardware side,
And, IMHO, fails miserably, because Sony builds products that screw the user. For example: laptops that can't have additional memory installed. Cameras that use an expensive proprietary flash card format. Consider the latter issue: what benefit does using the Sony flash memory format bring to the user? None whatsoever -- it just increases the cost of using the product.
Sony design is full of fail. I bought a Sony car radio about a year ago that has a USB connector for use with flash drives, except..... it can only read the first 4GB of the flash drive. The radio was introduced around the beginning of 2009, when flash drives much larger than 4GB were available.
Sony used to make great products, now it is trying to capitalize on the good name it built up over many years to sell cr*p. That will work for a while but not for ever.
I think that the judge in one of the sex.com cases decided that a domain name is not property (hence letting Network Solutions off the hook for transferring the domain name to the hijacker).
Does "obtaining consent" and allowing "opt-out" mean that customers will be free to terminate their Internet connection if they don't opt-in? Or will there be an option to retain Internet service while opting-out of the snooping?
Any backup not tested is not a backup. You must read the data back or else it is not tested, no matter the media used.
So, every time that I copy a file on my filesystem, I should copy it elsewhere again and make sure it is the same as the original? People the world over trust hard drives to make good copies all the time. I am quite sure that you do. The difference is that hard drives have a lot of internal checking built-in. If hard drvies can't be trusted to write good data, then backups become moot, because the source data will likely be bad.
Basically, your arguments all come down to assuming that hard drives have the similar failure mechanisms as tapes. This is a stupid assumption.
Oh, and on the prices? A 1.5TB LTO tape costs the same (or more) than a hard drive, although, I expect you will apply some unnecessary "quality" or other requirement on the hard drive to show that it might cost more. Remember that you don't need "enterprise" or RAID-optimized hard drive for backups (in fact, using a RAID-rated hard drive is probably a bad idea for backups).
I would rather use the correct solution to my problem.
Yes, so would I. And I believe that for small networks, hard drives provide the most appropriate solution. I don't believe your claim that tapes take only as much effort as using tapes -- I've used tapes in the past, so I can compare.
You on the other hand use something that is slower, no single sata drive can do 100MB/s from start to finish,
I found a drive that does virtually 100MB sustained data rate, so your point is simply wrong. Besides, which, as long as the backup runs overnight, who cares what speed it runs at? Essentially, in order to justify your approach you are inventing unnecessary requirements.
Furthermore, your 100MB/s requirement for hard drives is disingenuous, because with your tape backups, you claim to verify each tape, thus doubling the total data transfer size. This step is not necessary for every backup to hard drives.
My risk from using hard drives for longer term backup is insignificantly greater than yours. By alternating snapshots, even if one backup drive fails, I can clone the other backup to a new hard drive, thus losing only the alternate backups. The chance of needing an old file that was only on the failed hard drive but not the backup from the week before or the week after is vanishingly small.
As for pricing, which you seem very concerned about, let me specify a requirement: my backup medium must take 1.5TB uncompressed. Now the tape prices are comparable to hard drive prices. It's only at one size (800GB) that tapes are significantly cheaper than hard drives.
But, feel free to waste your company's time or your client's money!
Those seem to cost more than $30. Putting a bunch of backups on one disk, means you can lose them all at once.
Well done missing all my other points:
1. The price difference is immaterial when considered against the cost of labor
2. It's a backup, not an archive!
And to address your point above:
3. You can have more than one backup disk, reducing the impact of any backup disk failure. (and once again, its a backup not an archive!)
Perhaps your time doesn't cost anything, but I would rather use a practical, effective solution that works and minimizes the amount of time I spend making and testing backups.
How often do you verify that those tape backups are complete and without error? Can you be sure that there are no errors on the tape? Were the heads clean when you ran the last backup? How many times has that particular tape been used? Are you sure that you are rotating in the correct tape? When did you last replace your cleaner tape? All these are questions that must be answered when using tapes. On theother hand, I can connect the backup hard drive via SATA and look at the SMART data to ensure it is healthy.
It must also last years unpowered and be rated for such use. Max cost should be $30, the cost of an LTO4 tape.
You are confusing archives with backups and the cost difference is insignificant. Furthermore, the ease of use reduces the cost to less than that of using tapes (unless your time is free?)
While there may be theoretical advantages to tapes, in practice, in a small company envorinment, hard drives work much better. Also, with a hard drive, I can have 10 or more backups of 1TB of data on a 1.5TB hard drive, through the magic of rsync and "cp -al ". Try doing that with tapes! Yes, you can do incremental backups with tape, but they rely usually rely on the files' datestamps, and require multiple tapes, increasing the probability of (undetected) failure.
Hard Drives are a pragmatic and effective solution to backups for many small companies.
amanda or bacula are free and a very good fit for such places.
The cost of hard drives is so low today, that tape backups rarely make sense. A hard drive in a USB enclosure that can easily be taken offsite makes much more sense. It is far easier to see if the backup is successful (files don't need to be compressed) and restoring is also much easier (since you don't have to deal with multiple tapes, compressed files, etc.)
There is plenty of security theatre in India also. Stamping the tag on hand-carry bags? SInce the tags are not fixed onto the bags, they can be easily removed, moved to another bag. It seems to serve no purpose whatsoever. They won't let you off the plane without a ticket? That wasn't my experience a few weeks ago.
In the US, the biggest threat is the TSA agents themselves. The screeners are allowed to leave their station, go for lunch and return to their station without being scanned. How difficult is it to get someone through the employee screening for the TSA? They don't have to be a suicide bomber, since the rogue TSA agent could hand a package to the real bomber.
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Other uninvolved parties like the government? Because that is *exactly* what the federal government has been asserting.
How many times have the Feds argued in court (or filings) that people have no expectation of privacy in emails?
You don't have blind people in your country? People always look left and right properly and are never alerted by the sound of a car?
I think that you are being obtuse if you can't see the difference between this data (which is claimed to be a privacy breach) and other types of evidence.
If the data really is private, then surely the government should obtain a warrant to get the data? Or is it public, in which case Google has done nothing wrong?
I think that there is a good case that privacy concepts need to be re-thought in the light of what is possible now through data-mining. Today, private information can be derived from amassing and relating lots of disparate public information. This is an issue that is not simply dispatched by pointing out that the source information was public. I think that we need new concepts of privacy.
I'm a little confused on how giving more people access to the data helps to ameliorate the supposed privacy invasion?
Google's support of net neutrality isn't wholehearted though. Didn't Google endorse the concept of non-neutral wireless Internet? IMHO, Google is large enough that it doesn't need net neutrality. In fact, potetentially, it could benefit. A non-neutral Internet will benefit all incumbents at the expense of new entrants to the field. The new entrants won't be able to pay the Danegeld/tolls/fees demanded by the ISPs so they will be at a great disadvantage in gaining new users.
All of which makes me wonder why Obama didn't try to get this passed before the election, when it would have made a great wedge issue. Remind me: what side is he on?
The thing about software and the Internet is that if enough people want it, but it is too difficult to do, it becomes easy to do. If there is demand, someone will make it trivially easy to bypass the filters.
You mean by damaging sensitive hardware such as centrifuges (by speeding them up and slowing them down quickly) in ways that are not immediately obvious, but will take a long time (2 years) to replace or repair? I know it's not popular here, but try RTFA.
"Plus addressing" works with gmail, giving any gmail subscriber unlimited aliases. Unfortunately, quite a lot of sites won't accept addresses with "+" in them.
My computers are behind a proxy that blocks certain websites and referrer headers. I use Firefox and block third party cookies.
When there was a story a month or so ago about tracking, it pointed to websites where one could look up what information they held on you. They had no information about me.
More cores. Oh, wait....
Look at this page. It's for a local police department in a city that has lots of blind people because of the presence of the California School for the Blind. This is the first page that Google lists for the site. I can't imagine that a screen reader can make anything of the front page and there are no navigation buttons.
Put it th other way, why should the article be trusted? Look at the bio of the expert who is quoted and ask yourself if he is independent in this matter?
But the whole complaint was debunked long ago -- Foundem is just a link farm. It has no value the should put it high in Google's ranking.
"Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good." Samuel Johnson, over 200 years ago.
And, IMHO, fails miserably, because Sony builds products that screw the user. For example: laptops that can't have additional memory installed. Cameras that use an expensive proprietary flash card format. Consider the latter issue: what benefit does using the Sony flash memory format bring to the user? None whatsoever -- it just increases the cost of using the product.
..... it can only read the first 4GB of the flash drive. The radio was introduced around the beginning of 2009, when flash drives much larger than 4GB were available.
Sony design is full of fail. I bought a Sony car radio about a year ago that has a USB connector for use with flash drives, except
Sony used to make great products, now it is trying to capitalize on the good name it built up over many years to sell cr*p. That will work for a while but not for ever.
I think that the judge in one of the sex.com cases decided that a domain name is not property (hence letting Network Solutions off the hook for transferring the domain name to the hijacker).
Does "obtaining consent" and allowing "opt-out" mean that customers will be free to terminate their Internet connection if they don't opt-in? Or will there be an option to retain Internet service while opting-out of the snooping?
So, every time that I copy a file on my filesystem, I should copy it elsewhere again and make sure it is the same as the original? People the world over trust hard drives to make good copies all the time. I am quite sure that you do. The difference is that hard drives have a lot of internal checking built-in. If hard drvies can't be trusted to write good data, then backups become moot, because the source data will likely be bad.
Basically, your arguments all come down to assuming that hard drives have the similar failure mechanisms as tapes. This is a stupid assumption.
Oh, and on the prices? A 1.5TB LTO tape costs the same (or more) than a hard drive, although, I expect you will apply some unnecessary "quality" or other requirement on the hard drive to show that it might cost more. Remember that you don't need "enterprise" or RAID-optimized hard drive for backups (in fact, using a RAID-rated hard drive is probably a bad idea for backups).
Yes, so would I. And I believe that for small networks, hard drives provide the most appropriate solution. I don't believe your claim that tapes take only as much effort as using tapes -- I've used tapes in the past, so I can compare.
I found a drive that does virtually 100MB sustained data rate, so your point is simply wrong. Besides, which, as long as the backup runs overnight, who cares what speed it runs at? Essentially, in order to justify your approach you are inventing unnecessary requirements.
Furthermore, your 100MB/s requirement for hard drives is disingenuous, because with your tape backups, you claim to verify each tape, thus doubling the total data transfer size. This step is not necessary for every backup to hard drives.
My risk from using hard drives for longer term backup is insignificantly greater than yours. By alternating snapshots, even if one backup drive fails, I can clone the other backup to a new hard drive, thus losing only the alternate backups. The chance of needing an old file that was only on the failed hard drive but not the backup from the week before or the week after is vanishingly small.
As for pricing, which you seem very concerned about, let me specify a requirement: my backup medium must take 1.5TB uncompressed. Now the tape prices are comparable to hard drive prices. It's only at one size (800GB) that tapes are significantly cheaper than hard drives.
But, feel free to waste your company's time or your client's money!
Well done missing all my other points:
1. The price difference is immaterial when considered against the cost of labor
2. It's a backup, not an archive!
And to address your point above:
3. You can have more than one backup disk, reducing the impact of any backup disk failure. (and once again, its a backup not an archive!)
Perhaps your time doesn't cost anything, but I would rather use a practical, effective solution that works and minimizes the amount of time I spend making and testing backups.
How often do you verify that those tape backups are complete and without error? Can you be sure that there are no errors on the tape? Were the heads clean when you ran the last backup? How many times has that particular tape been used? Are you sure that you are rotating in the correct tape? When did you last replace your cleaner tape? All these are questions that must be answered when using tapes. On theother hand, I can connect the backup hard drive via SATA and look at the SMART data to ensure it is healthy.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/seagate_barracuda_720012_1tb
You are confusing archives with backups and the cost difference is insignificant. Furthermore, the ease of use reduces the cost to less than that of using tapes (unless your time is free?)
While there may be theoretical advantages to tapes, in practice, in a small company envorinment, hard drives work much better. Also, with a hard drive, I can have 10 or more backups of 1TB of data on a 1.5TB hard drive, through the magic of rsync and "cp -al ". Try doing that with tapes! Yes, you can do incremental backups with tape, but they rely usually rely on the files' datestamps, and require multiple tapes, increasing the probability of (undetected) failure.
Hard Drives are a pragmatic and effective solution to backups for many small companies.
The cost of hard drives is so low today, that tape backups rarely make sense. A hard drive in a USB enclosure that can easily be taken offsite makes much more sense. It is far easier to see if the backup is successful (files don't need to be compressed) and restoring is also much easier (since you don't have to deal with multiple tapes, compressed files, etc.)
There is plenty of security theatre in India also. Stamping the tag on hand-carry bags? SInce the tags are not fixed onto the bags, they can be easily removed, moved to another bag. It seems to serve no purpose whatsoever. They won't let you off the plane without a ticket? That wasn't my experience a few weeks ago.
In the US, the biggest threat is the TSA agents themselves. The screeners are allowed to leave their station, go for lunch and return to their station without being scanned. How difficult is it to get someone through the employee screening for the TSA? They don't have to be a suicide bomber, since the rogue TSA agent could hand a package to the real bomber.