Information recovery tools work by subtracting the current pattern of bits from the magnetic reading that the drive outputs. The previous bit pattern generally masks any small variation in the signal, but when that is subtracted from the signal you get a clear pattern of what the old data was. Then you can repeat the trick for a total up to 6 times. Beyond that, the basic noise in the system and the uncertainty of the signal strength makes it impossible to determine the bit pattern.
For this reason, I believe the DOD reccomends writing random data to the disk 7 times, to guarentee that it is destroyed.
Remember, however, that any overwriting makes it impossible to recover data except by special means far beyond that of a normal file recovery program. Tools that recover data after it has been overwritten are not easy to make, and I'm not even sure that they would run on computer hardware. It's possible that such recovery would require special ATA firmware, or even replacing the hard disk firmware.
I'm not an expert, but that is what I've been able to grok from casual reading on the subjectt.
The simplest reason for this is probably copyright law. I know it's stupid if you wouldn't be able to host a file that's being hosted elsewhere, but that's the way copyright law works. Slashdot can let people post mirrors or torrents of content without any real legal liability (actually under the DMCA they might even have some then) and watch them get modded up. Unless the license that the work is under already says so, however, slashdot can't host or distribute files without the copyright owners permission.
Stupid? Yes. Unnecessary restriction? Of course. But these are lawyers we're talking about. OSDN probably has lawyers too, you know. And I'm sure they spend enough time keeping us out of copyright trouble.
The problem here seems to be hardware support...
on
Sun Java Desktop 2 Review
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
but for once this doesn't appear to be the manufacturers' fault.
Trouble with hard disks, especially SATA but also regular ATA, seems to be a common problem this guy is having. That should not be a problem with any modern Linux distro, and why Java Desktop manages to screw it up I suppose we'll see.
Have Ghyslain play a part. Everybody loved his acting ability, and it seems that our expectations for the real actors are so low that it couldn't possibly make it any worse.
I found this on Yahoo News a while ago:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) classified as "secret" and withheld from public dissemination for nearly 29 years a prank terrorist threat against Santa Claus, according to documents released.
The threat -- purported to come from a then- and still-unknown group calling itself the "Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge" -- was contained in a classified compilation of intelligence on possible terrorist attacks produced by the CIA (news - web sites) in late 1974, according to the documents.
"A new organization of uncertain makeup using the name 'Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge' plans to sabotage the annual courier flight of the Government of the North Pole," the CIA said in its December 17, 1974 "Weekly Situation Report on International Terrorism."
"Prime Minister and Chief Courier S. Claus has been notified and security precautions are being coordinated worldwide by the CCCT working group," it said, identifying the night of December 24-25, 1974 as the date for the planned "sabotage."
It was not clear whether the CIA had learned of a prank threat to Santa, or if the analysts compiling the report had inserted it as a holiday joke.
Along with the threat to Santa, the situation report included deadly serious incidents and warnings including intelligence detailing potential terrorist attacks in the Middle East, possible bombs at the British embassy in Buenos Aires and a plane hijacking.
Despite the dubious nature of the threat to Father Christmas, the CIA blacked out all references to it when the situation report was declassified in 1999, according to the documents.
The documents, which include the original report as well as the redacted version released to the public in 1999, were released by the National Security Archive as part of its campaign against the "overclassification" of government files.
"The CIAs secret Santa leads the archives lengthy compilation of declassified documents that illustrate the arbitrary and capricious decision making that all too often characterizes the US governments national security secrecy system," it said in a statement.
The National Security Archive, part of the George Washington University in the US capital, is a private research group that seeks the declassification of government documents through the Freedom of Information Act for historical purposes.
As an example - if someone made a car that looked very much like a Jaguar, but cost a third as much and had more commodity parts under the hood, and started selling it as the Panther. That's very obviously wrong, and even those theme-makers will probably agree.
On the contrary. I can do that with no problem. I'll just make a generic.
Let me explain. I work at a store called "Dollar General" which has many different commoddity products, most of which are generic. The "American Value" knock-off of, say, Spaghetti-O's is almost the exact same thing you get with the name brand. There may be slightly less assurance of quality, but the product is the same. And they stole the idea for rings in sauce from the name brand. The package even looks somewhat similar. The only differences I notice are the name and the price.
Companies do this all the time. If you don't want to pay extra for the real thing, then buy the generic of it. The only exception is medicines that are patented--but this brings up the whole question of whether "look and feel" even deserves a patent in the first place.
So is imitation really so "obviously wrong"? I don't think so.
I thought that the rest of the world was supposed to force the U.S. into Metric.
Not to be a pessimist, I would love for Linux to take over, but I currently see the entire U.S. using an inferrior system that is used only in the U.S. and incompatible with everything else in the world.
I don't know what format they are in, but the work without a hitch in FireFox. I'm glad they're not going with some evil format like WMV.
As for the actual content...
Well it's nothing unusual compared to what I have seen in my own blogging experience. I don't know why I'd bother with this site, there are other sites with more people and more interesting people out there.
I'm not the smartest guy out there - I go to a community college, I get pretty average grades, and I watch porn like everyone else.
Watching porn does not prove that you aren't smart./. is probably the largest concentration of people with genius IQs on the internet, and you can bet good money that they all watch plenty of pr0n. It's a geek thing. I think watching pr0n actually means you're smarter, as long as you misspell it with a zero instead of the letter "o".
This could cause problems. While 3D graphics is a fairly mature field, there are still additions being made to it. Will the format have support for textures? How about mipmaps? Ripmaps? Procedural textures? Some new concept that's about to be introduced?
That sort of thing could be supported in later revisions. I think the most important part of having a universal format is the universal part. Like HTTP, it's important that ALL viewers support it exactly the same.
I certainly hope this will be a royalty-free (as in beer) and restriction free (as in speech) format.
But...
One restriction I wouldn't mind, however, is the same sort of compatibility requirement that JAVA has: If something follows the format, it MUST follow it exactly and have no proprietary extentions. This tripped up MS when they tried to hijack JAVA for their own nefarious purposes.
People who delete their mail after they read it are probably using AOL. I am personally a mail packrat. I even keep old newsletters and blog subscriptions, that way I can search them easily and find what I did. AOL users don't have much choice, AOL automatically deletes mail that has been viewed (the only way to keep it on the server is use the "Mark as Unread" button and eventually have literally 3,000 messages in your inbox and it becomes almost impossible to manage. My grandmother did that. Then AOL started complaining to her that the mailbox was taking to long to load because of too many e-mails, so she deleted some. Then she wished she hadn't after she went searching for a recipie somebody had sent and couldn't find it.
Note: I believe AOL now even deletes "Mark as Unread" e-mail after about am month.
I understand that it would be hard, especially with budget cuts, but library patrons will understand too.
After all there are very few libraries that do not charge 5 or 10 cents for photocopies, and my public library currently charges 25 cents for every color page that is printed. They also charge $1.00 for diskettes for patrons to save word documents made using the two word-processing only computers (which do not have internet connections).
It is not at all unreasonable to think people might pay for such CD. And that itself would increase the percieved value of the CD (after all people would be less likely to use it as a frisbee if it cost them a buck). I don't know what kind of library you come from, but I think no library could allow unlimited use of consumeable resources and keep within it's budget.
If given a simple explanation of what they are getting (i.e. "OpenOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. It has a very similar interface, and can be used on ") I think people would pay for a "burn to suit" service that lets them use a simple interface to create a CD with exactly what they want on it.
You know what... I'm gonna talk to the librarians at the Fredrikson about this idea. I think they might like it.
For anybody with Broadband this will work just fine. For Dial-up users this is not going to cut it. Think of it this way: I go online to download an app and then go offline to use it. Where's the Help? Still online. I must sign back on to download the help files, and although that sounds trivial it's it's not (esp. with dial-up speeds).
For somebody with an always-on connection this sort of caching is reasonable, but for dial-up users it would be a better idea to grab the whole app, help files and all. Or perhaps give the user the option to install the help files now or install them later when they are needed.
Do what is patriotic and good for your country by not reading Slashdot! Help out your homeland to keep us safe from the axis of evil by putting all of your code under evil, propriatary licenses that require the buyer to give up their firstborn son.
That is unlikely. They wouldn't want the terrorists to know that we are on to them.
They couldn't give out the info because the info itself may very well be sensitive (and imagine if they made a mistake and put some highly sensitive info in your file).
Remember that this list has already been compiled--the only change now is that companies in possible target industries will be able to submit your name to the FBI for a "terrorist background check"
And the fact that seeing your own "terrorist rating" is unlikely to impossible makes me worry. Credit ratings can be, and often are, very wrong. What if somebody does something evil in your name somehow? Steals your identity and buys paramilitary supplies with it, perhaps?
Overall, I don't like this idea either.
Slashdot Mirror
For this reason, I believe the DOD reccomends writing random data to the disk 7 times, to guarentee that it is destroyed.
Remember, however, that any overwriting makes it impossible to recover data except by special means far beyond that of a normal file recovery program. Tools that recover data after it has been overwritten are not easy to make, and I'm not even sure that they would run on computer hardware. It's possible that such recovery would require special ATA firmware, or even replacing the hard disk firmware.
I'm not an expert, but that is what I've been able to grok from casual reading on the subjectt.
Stupid? Yes. Unnecessary restriction? Of course. But these are lawyers we're talking about. OSDN probably has lawyers too, you know. And I'm sure they spend enough time keeping us out of copyright trouble.
Trouble with hard disks, especially SATA but also regular ATA, seems to be a common problem this guy is having. That should not be a problem with any modern Linux distro, and why Java Desktop manages to screw it up I suppose we'll see.
I'm waiting for the next version.
Have Ghyslain play a part. Everybody loved his acting ability, and it seems that our expectations for the real actors are so low that it couldn't possibly make it any worse.
The threat -- purported to come from a then- and still-unknown group calling itself the "Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge" -- was contained in a classified compilation of intelligence on possible terrorist attacks produced by the CIA (news - web sites) in late 1974, according to the documents.
"A new organization of uncertain makeup using the name 'Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge' plans to sabotage the annual courier flight of the Government of the North Pole," the CIA said in its December 17, 1974 "Weekly Situation Report on International Terrorism."
"Prime Minister and Chief Courier S. Claus has been notified and security precautions are being coordinated worldwide by the CCCT working group," it said, identifying the night of December 24-25, 1974 as the date for the planned "sabotage."
It was not clear whether the CIA had learned of a prank threat to Santa, or if the analysts compiling the report had inserted it as a holiday joke.
Along with the threat to Santa, the situation report included deadly serious incidents and warnings including intelligence detailing potential terrorist attacks in the Middle East, possible bombs at the British embassy in Buenos Aires and a plane hijacking.
Despite the dubious nature of the threat to Father Christmas, the CIA blacked out all references to it when the situation report was declassified in 1999, according to the documents.
The documents, which include the original report as well as the redacted version released to the public in 1999, were released by the National Security Archive as part of its campaign against the "overclassification" of government files.
"The CIAs secret Santa leads the archives lengthy compilation of declassified documents that illustrate the arbitrary and capricious decision making that all too often characterizes the US governments national security secrecy system," it said in a statement.
The National Security Archive, part of the George Washington University in the US capital, is a private research group that seeks the declassification of government documents through the Freedom of Information Act for historical purposes.
On the contrary. I can do that with no problem. I'll just make a generic.
Let me explain. I work at a store called "Dollar General" which has many different commoddity products, most of which are generic. The "American Value" knock-off of, say, Spaghetti-O's is almost the exact same thing you get with the name brand. There may be slightly less assurance of quality, but the product is the same. And they stole the idea for rings in sauce from the name brand. The package even looks somewhat similar. The only differences I notice are the name and the price.
Companies do this all the time. If you don't want to pay extra for the real thing, then buy the generic of it. The only exception is medicines that are patented--but this brings up the whole question of whether "look and feel" even deserves a patent in the first place.
So is imitation really so "obviously wrong"? I don't think so.
Not to be a pessimist, I would love for Linux to take over, but I currently see the entire U.S. using an inferrior system that is used only in the U.S. and incompatible with everything else in the world.
The song "YATTA" will get into your brain and it won't leave. Except that in the hard disk video you can't quite hear it all that well.
As for the actual content...
Well it's nothing unusual compared to what I have seen in my own blogging experience. I don't know why I'd bother with this site, there are other sites with more people and more interesting people out there.
Watching porn does not prove that you aren't smart. /. is probably the largest concentration of people with genius IQs on the internet, and you can bet good money that they all watch plenty of pr0n. It's a geek thing. I think watching pr0n actually means you're smarter, as long as you misspell it with a zero instead of the letter "o".
Nothing good can come of this sort of lawsuit. Google and other search engines should be free to have their results the way the Internet says.
The Scientology nuts are complaining that a search for "scientology" also results in anti-scientology sites. Should they be awarded damages too?
I don't think so.
Of course they're probably even less fuel-efficient than cars. I'll bet the environmentalists won't be happy.
</mindcontrol entity="ailiens">
<sanity>
You should already know what kind of community this is... and it should be no surprise.
All informative means in this case is that somebody with mod points has a sense of humor.
...it's too late! The ailiens are already here! See?! They left this mark on me! I must do their bidding...
That sort of thing could be supported in later revisions. I think the most important part of having a universal format is the universal part. Like HTTP, it's important that ALL viewers support it exactly the same.
But...
One restriction I wouldn't mind, however, is the same sort of compatibility requirement that JAVA has: If something follows the format, it MUST follow it exactly and have no proprietary extentions. This tripped up MS when they tried to hijack JAVA for their own nefarious purposes.
Just my views on this...
People who delete their mail after they read it are probably using AOL. I am personally a mail packrat. I even keep old newsletters and blog subscriptions, that way I can search them easily and find what I did. AOL users don't have much choice, AOL automatically deletes mail that has been viewed (the only way to keep it on the server is use the "Mark as Unread" button and eventually have literally 3,000 messages in your inbox and it becomes almost impossible to manage. My grandmother did that. Then AOL started complaining to her that the mailbox was taking to long to load because of too many e-mails, so she deleted some. Then she wished she hadn't after she went searching for a recipie somebody had sent and couldn't find it.
Note: I believe AOL now even deletes "Mark as Unread" e-mail after about am month.
After all there are very few libraries that do not charge 5 or 10 cents for photocopies, and my public library currently charges 25 cents for every color page that is printed. They also charge $1.00 for diskettes for patrons to save word documents made using the two word-processing only computers (which do not have internet connections).
It is not at all unreasonable to think people might pay for such CD. And that itself would increase the percieved value of the CD (after all people would be less likely to use it as a frisbee if it cost them a buck). I don't know what kind of library you come from, but I think no library could allow unlimited use of consumeable resources and keep within it's budget.
If given a simple explanation of what they are getting (i.e. "OpenOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. It has a very similar interface, and can be used on ") I think people would pay for a "burn to suit" service that lets them use a simple interface to create a CD with exactly what they want on it.
You know what... I'm gonna talk to the librarians at the Fredrikson about this idea. I think they might like it.
For anybody with Broadband this will work just fine. For Dial-up users this is not going to cut it. Think of it this way: I go online to download an app and then go offline to use it. Where's the Help? Still online. I must sign back on to download the help files, and although that sounds trivial it's it's not (esp. with dial-up speeds). For somebody with an always-on connection this sort of caching is reasonable, but for dial-up users it would be a better idea to grab the whole app, help files and all. Or perhaps give the user the option to install the help files now or install them later when they are needed.
Do what is patriotic and good for your country by not reading Slashdot! Help out your homeland to keep us safe from the axis of evil by putting all of your code under evil, propriatary licenses that require the buyer to give up their firstborn son.
What sort of eclipse can we expect from this? To experience a solar eclipse from a temporary sattelite would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
That is unlikely. They wouldn't want the terrorists to know that we are on to them. They couldn't give out the info because the info itself may very well be sensitive (and imagine if they made a mistake and put some highly sensitive info in your file). Remember that this list has already been compiled--the only change now is that companies in possible target industries will be able to submit your name to the FBI for a "terrorist background check" And the fact that seeing your own "terrorist rating" is unlikely to impossible makes me worry. Credit ratings can be, and often are, very wrong. What if somebody does something evil in your name somehow? Steals your identity and buys paramilitary supplies with it, perhaps? Overall, I don't like this idea either.
What kind of a computer programmer are you? You didn't even start counting at zero!
Maybe my gf will come wardriving with me now...