How does a research area that is largely based on using cells from aborted babies not conflict with religion in any way, shape, or form?
Except stem cells are just that, stem cells, and abortions aren't the only way to get them. Another method of getting stem cells are from umbilical cords. And there are others.
Lucky for you, however I am not aware of any experience of God in my life. About 12 years ago I did believe in a spirit or soul, however after I came out of a coma I was in when I had an accident I no longer did believe in one. I don't know whether to cry or laugh, maybe both, but while in the coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. Well if they asked me what I think I'd argue with them about that, my life has been a living hell since. For years I prayed to understand. Before the accident I believed in reincarnation so I thought there was something I either had to learn or I had been a monster, perhaps a NAZI guard in a concentration camp, but eventually I gave up. Now when thinking about any supreme deity existing I can only think that if there is one it must be sadistic.
Either way, the odds that universe would exist in any recognizable, with planets, galaxies, stars and so on, are way too small to be coincidence. (source)
Here is more from the original article:
The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies.
Actually I don't see that as a problem. Earlier this year I read an article in I believe Sciam about how the universe is expanding faster than people thought and gave this scenario of how our heavens may look in 100 billion years or whatever, I don't recall. The galaxies fly out so far and fast people on earth will no longer see the lights from them. Meanwhile the stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, grow closer together with nothing visible outside of it. Then last week I read another article on the life span of different living species. Trees can live for thousands of years, humans and whales for 100 years or more, but some insects only live days. In a universe where the velocity is "too fast" for you may not be for life forms that only live in a nanosecond.
THEN you multiply those odds by the odds you speak of with carbon forming and such...
Just because all the life humans know are carbon based how does this rule out life based on another element?
only then do you come up with the odds for our type of life
Ah, I thing I may see, "our type of life". What if there are other types of life? Such as silicon based life that only lives a nanosecond? I don't know the answers, and I heard elsewhere lawyers aren't supposed to ask questions they don't know the answer to, but I'm not a lawyer and I am asking and seeking.
Of course, it's easy to simply say, "Oh, there are infinite universes, one for each possibility for the laws of nature". Really? There's more evidence for God!
Really? What evidence is there for God? Could any evidence also be used to explain something that does not require a God? I used to believe, but I lost those beliefs years ago even though I continue to search.
Faith and prayer have also been shown in studies they can help. I don't have any faith and don't pray but I will admit they may offer something to those who need it.
I am curious why misapplication of evolutionary biology on a large scale is forgiveable, leading to hundreds of millions of deaths, but misapplication of Christian dogma leading to a few deaths at worst is something we must, at all costs, root out.
Misapplication of Christian dogma only leading to a few deaths? The Holy Roman Empire massacred thousands of nonbelievers as well as those of Agnostic Christians. Charlemagne, the Frankish King, was the founder of the Holy Roman Empire and he massacred thousands. Then there was the Spanish Inquisition, authorized by the Vatican. Queen Isabella required all Jews and Muslims, mostly Spanish Moors, to either convert to Christianity, leave Spain, or they would be killed. Then there were the campaigns against heathens, pagans, and witches among others.
To say "misapplication of Christian dogma leading to a few deaths at worst" is grossly ignorant or lying about the facts of the Christian Church(s).
Whilst a lot of criminals convert to a Theistic religion in prison (to escape punishment and get a reduced sentance) many of them were devoutly religious to begin with.
Except some who go through JailHouse Conversions come out a better person. Some justice systems, as some American Indian tribes did, use Restorative Justice wherein the offender works with the injured party, some thus gain an insight that might be called religious.
I understand you were just making a point, I don't think i've ever met a 'godist' with such ridiculous views as those you have given your straw man. A godist would be more likely to believe that God is working through the health workers at the hospital to save his/her son.
Actually some religious groups don't allow life saving medical services. For instance Jehovah's Witnesses are against blood transfusions.
well, the Bible says God created all of the creatures on the earth, but it doesn't describe the method by which He did it, does it?
The late pope, John Paul II, said "God" used evolution to create all life on earth.
Having said that, I'm not quite ready to embrace evolution as the origin of species (as opposed to evolution within species, which I do accept), but this discovery is definitely interesting.
Having said that, well I didn't say it I'm only attributing it, I'm not ready to accept any religion. I used to consider myself spiritual but not religious, now I can't even say I'm spiritual. Though I used to believe in a spirit, soul, I no longer do.
Falcon
Ah, I'm so jealous of those who have faith, it's make my life so easy to have some higher power to blame.
It's come to the stage that commercial competition with microsoft simply isn't viable...
I don't suppose Google or Sony has got the memo? Or Apple, for that matter?
Google had, and still has, a good search engine whereas MS didn't. I recall from years ago how people complained about how they couldn't tell the difference between search results and ads when using MSN, the few tymes I used it myself I didn't find any relevant results. Now, if you look at MS's Live.com it has a clean interface, like Google. Sony was in game consoles before MS so had an advantage there. And Apple has been around as long as MS, MS even writes software for Macs. I'm typing this on a Mac I got less than 10 months ago, after switching from Windows. It came with a trialware version of Office 2004 for Mac. Switching because I don't like it that MS treats it's users like criminals, which is what Activation is about, I was not about to use it. Instead I use NeoOffice the native Mac port of OpenOffice.
I use OpenOffice entirely, whereas the majority of everyone I know insist that they "need" MS Office. So I will try to say to them that for schoolwork/writing letters, OO.o has everything they need, but without the price tag. I will then go on to say that it can save the MSOffice formats, so there won't be any compatibility issues, and that there's barely any difference in the interface, so it's not like they've got to learn a new piece of software. yet somehow, they still end up spending £200 on MSOffice.
Owning a Mac I use NeoOffice the native Mac port of OpenOffice. I've downloaded and read MS Office docs, including Office 2007.docx files and tables or charts, without trouble, that is until last week. Last week someone emailed me a document that could not be properly viewed, I'm still waiting to hear back from them after writing them about that. However NeoOffice has 2.2.3 out now yet my version is 2.1. So maybe the new version can open it.
When people realize that one doent need a 200$ operating system to take care of most tasks, they will switch.
Does that explain why people are switching to Macs? Leopard costs $130, a family pack of for 5 Macs cost $200, while the 10 client license for OSX Server cost $500 and for unlimited clients it's $1000.
Acer, Dell, IBM, Asus, and the rest of the gang will make sure of that.
Yea, Micheal Dell has said he'd love to be able to sale Dells with OSX preinstalled. While I'd love to run OSX on most any PC when Apple licensed Mac clones before, they lost money. This was while John Scully was CEO of Apple. But when Apple brought Steve Jobs back he looked at the books and saw Apple was bleeding because of the licensing so he ended it.
Also, if you think about it, because Apple designs the hardware and software inhouse they are able to make sure it "just works". Once third parties can install OSX on their own PCs you can kiss that reputation goodbye.
Only an american could list those as bad things.... *sigh*...
Strict gun control is hitting the target when you shoot. As for gun violence, all Europe has to do is look in Europe, specifically Switzerland. All able bodied males are required to have a firearm yet crimes used with firearms are lower than in the US, where most "able bodied" males don't have firearms. It's not availability of firearms, it's more the culture; whereas Switzerland has a culture of peace, and money, the US has one of "the Wild West".
I had not considered the idea of creating an actual random key and sending it to a 'central' database for retrieval by the evil-doer.
I hadn't thought of it myself, not directly, instead I got the idea from a post further up in the discussion about TFA. Prior to this I thought something along the lines that the encrypting virus could generate some sort of key then when the owner of the hostaged documents paid they'd then be given a way to send the key the to the hostage taker who could then use it to look up the decryption key. It works out similarly but my way requires extra steps.
Sigh, think I'll need to backup more often...
I know I do, however even after losing about 500GB of docs, I still haven't done a full backup in almost 1 year. And what happened to my PC another reason why backups should be made. The PC had Linux preinstalled and though I hadn't had it a year I started having trouble so I took it into the shop. They told me the mobo had to be replaced, then after it was the tech called and said Linux had to be reinstalled. I have no idea why, unless the mobo replacement was different than the one it replaced. I had two HDDs installed, the original 40GB one and a second 750GB that was setup as the users' home directory. I specifically gave instructions not to format or reformat the second drive but to make it the users' directory. The tech though set installation on autopilot which did format the drive. Now I want to unformat it so I can recover the docs, but I keep putting it off.
Then again, if the encryption key is 'random', how does the decryptor know ?
Maybe the virus can create a signature or message that's sent to the creep, who can then use it to look up the key that will decrypt the docs. If someone's computer was contaminated I'd think there's a good possibility there's no firewall. And if there isn't one it can then contact another computer over the net, perhaps one that's part of a spam or botnet. It could then pass along the encryption key.
IF someone was willing to pay for the decryptor and he actually received said piece of software, and it actually works (if...if...if... ), I surely hope he will send a copy to the major anti-virus companies and relevant OSS forums so they can reverse-engineer the thing.
While decryption could be a separate software program, it could aslo be part of the original virus. Either way I don't think it would help, unless there's an err in it. People have had access to the code of encryption programs, such as GnuPGP, and I don't think it has dune them much good.
Instead of all of these AV vendors spending (between them) thousands of man-hours to find holes so they could reverse-engineer a way to decrypt such files, maybe they should create a multi-company "decryption slush fund". This fund would be there to buy decryption keys from virus authors
Unless the virus authors are idiots and stupid they wouldn't use the same decryption key for every infection.
A $1 million ransom would even catch the attention of Nigerian authorities
Why would this catch Nigerian authorities attention? They're already swimming in billions of petrodollars.
Backup's not even necessary... modern file systems will let you roll back to the previous version of a file.
Hardware does fail, in the past 10 years I've had to replace 6 harddisk drives. Two failed within the first year, so they were still under warranty. I don't recall or know the manufacturer of them, but the other 4 were Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital.
And I bet most users don't even care loosing a file.
I certainly did. I had a 750GB HDD for a second drive that held the user documents, and it had less than 200GB of free space left. The PC died so I took it in, it was still under warranty. The techs said the mobo had to be replaced, and Linux reinstalled, it came with Linux preinstalled. I specifically told the tech not to format the second drive but to set it as the user's home directory. I found how after bringing it home it was reformatted anyway. Now as I didn't have backups, it would have taken more than 100 disks to backup everything using DVD disks and I couldn't afford an external drive at the tyme, I haven't used the drive since then and want to use an unformat and recover program to save the data.
Seriously - any business worth a damn is going to have backups (the ones that don't? they kinda deserve it IMHO...)
This doesn't just affect businesses with IT departments, it also affects individuals and small businesses that can't afford IT. I've talked to a number of people who didn't understand that they needed backups, and some were otherwise intelligent.
Home users have CD/DVD-R's, external disk backups, stuff stashed across multiple machines
CD/DVD media can fail, I've bought some movies on DVD I had to return because they would not play. Some movies played once but wouldn't play again, not even in a second player. Here's a discussion on Photo.net about "gold" archival DVDs, which are specifically made to last a long tyme. Here's an article by PC World asking "Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span?" I doubt many people have networks at home either. External HDDs are ok if you copy your backups, store 2 or more disks in different places, then test and replace them occasionally. Actually that what some people use their iPods for, external backups.
2 different sites, but admittedly in the same large city. Tested each year new ones are added to the vault. Every 10 years they will be 'refreshed' with a duplicate of the original. ( either in the same format, or newer if one exists by then, such as moving floppies to tape, or old emerald tapes to DVD )
Ok, how many people go through with all this though, keeping multiple copies of backups stored in different places? I imagine in industries like banking and medicine they'll have pretty stringent backup plans but I don't think many others will. I've been wrong before and I may be wrong here though.
Money can be traced, easily (don't believe what they say about Western Union). This is a great way to track down and capture the people who are spreading the virus.
I don't think it's as easy to trace money as you think. The extorter could have you wire transfer the money to a bank in the Caymans, which will then automatically transfer it to one in Russia, and with more transfers the money could end up in India. There a nobody could pick the money up from the bank and deposit it in another bank.
If money was so easy to trace then I'd think there wouldn't be many, if any, drug kingpins.
unless it's also randomizing the keys the first time they sell a decrypter (assuming they actually do and don't just take your money) the anti-virus companies will get their hands on it and plug that into the 'clean' function for this virus.
I don't know how it works but I'd think a miscreant virus writer would use different keys and not the same key for each PC infected.
Sure, you don't save every daily incremental, but you need to keep permanent copies of full backups on, say, a monthly basis. Permanent as in: you're not too cheap to overwrite them when you run out of room. Otherwise you're not really backing your stuff up.
Backups are not forever, media fails as does hardware. The best thing to do is to make and keep multiple copies of backups, on different media or hardware. And if you have a lot of data, that may mean a number of external hdds. Then as new technology comes along transferring old backups to new media or hardware. Here's a story about a "Computer Tech Accidentally Erases Info on Alaska's $38 Billion Oil Fund". No problem they thought, they had a backup. The backup, tape, had 9 months of data yet it was unreadable, it linked to a Physorg.com article but articles "expires 15 days after original publication date."
There are real banks in Nigeria, owned by the ruling ethnic group, that's where the billions of dollars from oil goes. The rulers get their money while those who live where the oil comes from, the Niger Delta, have to fight for scraps.
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How does a research area that is largely based on using cells from aborted babies not conflict with religion in any way, shape, or form?
Except stem cells are just that, stem cells, and abortions aren't the only way to get them. Another method of getting stem cells are from umbilical cords. And there are others.
FalconLucky for you, however I am not aware of any experience of God in my life. About 12 years ago I did believe in a spirit or soul, however after I came out of a coma I was in when I had an accident I no longer did believe in one. I don't know whether to cry or laugh, maybe both, but while in the coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. Well if they asked me what I think I'd argue with them about that, my life has been a living hell since. For years I prayed to understand. Before the accident I believed in reincarnation so I thought there was something I either had to learn or I had been a monster, perhaps a NAZI guard in a concentration camp, but eventually I gave up. Now when thinking about any supreme deity existing I can only think that if there is one it must be sadistic.
FalconEither way, the odds that universe would exist in any recognizable, with planets, galaxies, stars and so on, are way too small to be coincidence. (source)
Here is more from the original article:
The fundamental boundary value (or initial condition) problem with the big bang is the criticality of the initial velocity. If this velocity is to fast, the matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into planets, stars, and galaxies.
Actually I don't see that as a problem. Earlier this year I read an article in I believe Sciam about how the universe is expanding faster than people thought and gave this scenario of how our heavens may look in 100 billion years or whatever, I don't recall. The galaxies fly out so far and fast people on earth will no longer see the lights from them. Meanwhile the stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, grow closer together with nothing visible outside of it. Then last week I read another article on the life span of different living species. Trees can live for thousands of years, humans and whales for 100 years or more, but some insects only live days. In a universe where the velocity is "too fast" for you may not be for life forms that only live in a nanosecond.
THEN you multiply those odds by the odds you speak of with carbon forming and such...
Just because all the life humans know are carbon based how does this rule out life based on another element?
only then do you come up with the odds for our type of life
Ah, I thing I may see, "our type of life". What if there are other types of life? Such as silicon based life that only lives a nanosecond? I don't know the answers, and I heard elsewhere lawyers aren't supposed to ask questions they don't know the answer to, but I'm not a lawyer and I am asking and seeking.
FalconOf course, it's easy to simply say, "Oh, there are infinite universes, one for each possibility for the laws of nature". Really? There's more evidence for God!
Really? What evidence is there for God? Could any evidence also be used to explain something that does not require a God? I used to believe, but I lost those beliefs years ago even though I continue to search.
FalconFaith and prayer have also been shown in studies they can help. I don't have any faith and don't pray but I will admit they may offer something to those who need it.
Falcon
I am curious why misapplication of evolutionary biology on a large scale is forgiveable, leading to hundreds of millions of deaths, but misapplication of Christian dogma leading to a few deaths at worst is something we must, at all costs, root out.
Misapplication of Christian dogma only leading to a few deaths? The Holy Roman Empire massacred thousands of nonbelievers as well as those of Agnostic Christians. Charlemagne, the Frankish King, was the founder of the Holy Roman Empire and he massacred thousands. Then there was the Spanish Inquisition, authorized by the Vatican. Queen Isabella required all Jews and Muslims, mostly Spanish Moors, to either convert to Christianity, leave Spain, or they would be killed. Then there were the campaigns against heathens, pagans, and witches among others.
To say "misapplication of Christian dogma leading to a few deaths at worst" is grossly ignorant or lying about the facts of the Christian Church(s).
FalconWhilst a lot of criminals convert to a Theistic religion in prison (to escape punishment and get a reduced sentance) many of them were devoutly religious to begin with.
Except some who go through JailHouse Conversions come out a better person. Some justice systems, as some American Indian tribes did, use Restorative Justice wherein the offender works with the injured party, some thus gain an insight that might be called religious.
FalconI understand you were just making a point, I don't think i've ever met a 'godist' with such ridiculous views as those you have given your straw man. A godist would be more likely to believe that God is working through the health workers at the hospital to save his/her son.
Actually some religious groups don't allow life saving medical services. For instance Jehovah's Witnesses are against blood transfusions.
Falconwell, the Bible says God created all of the creatures on the earth, but it doesn't describe the method by which He did it, does it?
The late pope, John Paul II, said "God" used evolution to create all life on earth.
Having said that, I'm not quite ready to embrace evolution as the origin of species (as opposed to evolution within species, which I do accept), but this discovery is definitely interesting.
Having said that, well I didn't say it I'm only attributing it, I'm not ready to accept any religion. I used to consider myself spiritual but not religious, now I can't even say I'm spiritual. Though I used to believe in a spirit, soul, I no longer do.
Falcon
Ah, I'm so jealous of those who have faith, it's make my life so easy to have some higher power to blame.OSX is not an operating system, it's a whole heap of (very well done) toolkits and apps bundled with a *nix operating system.
It's still gaining market share, therefore the OS is not dead.
FalconIt's come to the stage that commercial competition with microsoft simply isn't viable...
I don't suppose Google or Sony has got the memo? Or Apple, for that matter?
Google had, and still has, a good search engine whereas MS didn't. I recall from years ago how people complained about how they couldn't tell the difference between search results and ads when using MSN, the few tymes I used it myself I didn't find any relevant results. Now, if you look at MS's Live.com it has a clean interface, like Google. Sony was in game consoles before MS so had an advantage there. And Apple has been around as long as MS, MS even writes software for Macs. I'm typing this on a Mac I got less than 10 months ago, after switching from Windows. It came with a trialware version of Office 2004 for Mac. Switching because I don't like it that MS treats it's users like criminals, which is what Activation is about, I was not about to use it. Instead I use NeoOffice the native Mac port of OpenOffice.
FalconI use OpenOffice entirely, whereas the majority of everyone I know insist that they "need" MS Office. So I will try to say to them that for schoolwork/writing letters, OO.o has everything they need, but without the price tag. I will then go on to say that it can save the MSOffice formats, so there won't be any compatibility issues, and that there's barely any difference in the interface, so it's not like they've got to learn a new piece of software. yet somehow, they still end up spending £200 on MSOffice.
Owning a Mac I use NeoOffice the native Mac port of OpenOffice. I've downloaded and read MS Office docs, including Office 2007 .docx files and tables or charts, without trouble, that is until last week. Last week someone emailed me a document that could not be properly viewed, I'm still waiting to hear back from them after writing them about that. However NeoOffice has 2.2.3 out now yet my version is 2.1. So maybe the new version can open it.
FalconIf OSX is dead then why is it gaining market share?
When people realize that one doent need a 200$ operating system to take care of most tasks, they will switch.
Does that explain why people are switching to Macs? Leopard costs $130, a family pack of for 5 Macs cost $200, while the 10 client license for OSX Server cost $500 and for unlimited clients it's $1000.
Acer, Dell, IBM, Asus, and the rest of the gang will make sure of that.
Yea, Micheal Dell has said he'd love to be able to sale Dells with OSX preinstalled. While I'd love to run OSX on most any PC when Apple licensed Mac clones before, they lost money. This was while John Scully was CEO of Apple. But when Apple brought Steve Jobs back he looked at the books and saw Apple was bleeding because of the licensing so he ended it.
Also, if you think about it, because Apple designs the hardware and software inhouse they are able to make sure it "just works". Once third parties can install OSX on their own PCs you can kiss that reputation goodbye.
FalconOnly an american could list those as bad things.... *sigh*...
Strict gun control is hitting the target when you shoot. As for gun violence, all Europe has to do is look in Europe, specifically Switzerland. All able bodied males are required to have a firearm yet crimes used with firearms are lower than in the US, where most "able bodied" males don't have firearms. It's not availability of firearms, it's more the culture; whereas Switzerland has a culture of peace, and money, the US has one of "the Wild West".
FalconI had not considered the idea of creating an actual random key and sending it to a 'central' database for retrieval by the evil-doer.
I hadn't thought of it myself, not directly, instead I got the idea from a post further up in the discussion about TFA. Prior to this I thought something along the lines that the encrypting virus could generate some sort of key then when the owner of the hostaged documents paid they'd then be given a way to send the key the to the hostage taker who could then use it to look up the decryption key. It works out similarly but my way requires extra steps.
Sigh, think I'll need to backup more often...
I know I do, however even after losing about 500GB of docs, I still haven't done a full backup in almost 1 year. And what happened to my PC another reason why backups should be made. The PC had Linux preinstalled and though I hadn't had it a year I started having trouble so I took it into the shop. They told me the mobo had to be replaced, then after it was the tech called and said Linux had to be reinstalled. I have no idea why, unless the mobo replacement was different than the one it replaced. I had two HDDs installed, the original 40GB one and a second 750GB that was setup as the users' home directory. I specifically gave instructions not to format or reformat the second drive but to make it the users' directory. The tech though set installation on autopilot which did format the drive. Now I want to unformat it so I can recover the docs, but I keep putting it off.
FalconThen again, if the encryption key is 'random', how does the decryptor know ?
Maybe the virus can create a signature or message that's sent to the creep, who can then use it to look up the key that will decrypt the docs. If someone's computer was contaminated I'd think there's a good possibility there's no firewall. And if there isn't one it can then contact another computer over the net, perhaps one that's part of a spam or botnet. It could then pass along the encryption key.
IF someone was willing to pay for the decryptor and he actually received said piece of software, and it actually works (if...if...if... ), I surely hope he will send a copy to the major anti-virus companies and relevant OSS forums so they can reverse-engineer the thing.
While decryption could be a separate software program, it could aslo be part of the original virus. Either way I don't think it would help, unless there's an err in it. People have had access to the code of encryption programs, such as GnuPGP, and I don't think it has dune them much good.
FalconInstead of all of these AV vendors spending (between them) thousands of man-hours to find holes so they could reverse-engineer a way to decrypt such files, maybe they should create a multi-company "decryption slush fund". This fund would be there to buy decryption keys from virus authors
Unless the virus authors are idiots and stupid they wouldn't use the same decryption key for every infection.
A $1 million ransom would even catch the attention of Nigerian authorities
Why would this catch Nigerian authorities attention? They're already swimming in billions of petrodollars.
FalconBackup's not even necessary... modern file systems will let you roll back to the previous version of a file.
Hardware does fail, in the past 10 years I've had to replace 6 harddisk drives. Two failed within the first year, so they were still under warranty. I don't recall or know the manufacturer of them, but the other 4 were Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital.
And I bet most users don't even care loosing a file.
I certainly did. I had a 750GB HDD for a second drive that held the user documents, and it had less than 200GB of free space left. The PC died so I took it in, it was still under warranty. The techs said the mobo had to be replaced, and Linux reinstalled, it came with Linux preinstalled. I specifically told the tech not to format the second drive but to set it as the user's home directory. I found how after bringing it home it was reformatted anyway. Now as I didn't have backups, it would have taken more than 100 disks to backup everything using DVD disks and I couldn't afford an external drive at the tyme, I haven't used the drive since then and want to use an unformat and recover program to save the data.
FalconSeriously - any business worth a damn is going to have backups (the ones that don't? they kinda deserve it IMHO...)
This doesn't just affect businesses with IT departments, it also affects individuals and small businesses that can't afford IT. I've talked to a number of people who didn't understand that they needed backups, and some were otherwise intelligent.
Home users have CD/DVD-R's, external disk backups, stuff stashed across multiple machines
CD/DVD media can fail, I've bought some movies on DVD I had to return because they would not play. Some movies played once but wouldn't play again, not even in a second player. Here's a discussion on Photo.net about "gold" archival DVDs, which are specifically made to last a long tyme. Here's an article by PC World asking "Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span?" I doubt many people have networks at home either. External HDDs are ok if you copy your backups, store 2 or more disks in different places, then test and replace them occasionally. Actually that what some people use their iPods for, external backups.
Falcon2 different sites, but admittedly in the same large city. Tested each year new ones are added to the vault. Every 10 years they will be 'refreshed' with a duplicate of the original. ( either in the same format, or newer if one exists by then, such as moving floppies to tape, or old emerald tapes to DVD )
Ok, how many people go through with all this though, keeping multiple copies of backups stored in different places? I imagine in industries like banking and medicine they'll have pretty stringent backup plans but I don't think many others will. I've been wrong before and I may be wrong here though.
FalconMoney can be traced, easily (don't believe what they say about Western Union). This is a great way to track down and capture the people who are spreading the virus.
I don't think it's as easy to trace money as you think. The extorter could have you wire transfer the money to a bank in the Caymans, which will then automatically transfer it to one in Russia, and with more transfers the money could end up in India. There a nobody could pick the money up from the bank and deposit it in another bank.
If money was so easy to trace then I'd think there wouldn't be many, if any, drug kingpins.
Falconunless it's also randomizing the keys the first time they sell a decrypter (assuming they actually do and don't just take your money) the anti-virus companies will get their hands on it and plug that into the 'clean' function for this virus.
I don't know how it works but I'd think a miscreant virus writer would use different keys and not the same key for each PC infected.
FalconThat is why i have a yearly backup that goes off site and is NEVER discarded.
Do you test the backups? Do you keep copies, and store them in different locations, of the backups?
FalconSure, you don't save every daily incremental, but you need to keep permanent copies of full backups on, say, a monthly basis. Permanent as in: you're not too cheap to overwrite them when you run out of room. Otherwise you're not really backing your stuff up.
Backups are not forever, media fails as does hardware. The best thing to do is to make and keep multiple copies of backups, on different media or hardware. And if you have a lot of data, that may mean a number of external hdds. Then as new technology comes along transferring old backups to new media or hardware. Here's a story about a "Computer Tech Accidentally Erases Info on Alaska's $38 Billion Oil Fund". No problem they thought, they had a backup. The backup, tape, had 9 months of data yet it was unreadable, it linked to a Physorg.com article but articles "expires 15 days after original publication date."
Falconin Nigeria?
There are real banks in Nigeria, owned by the ruling ethnic group, that's where the billions of dollars from oil goes. The rulers get their money while those who live where the oil comes from, the Niger Delta, have to fight for scraps.
Falcon