Recordings on old audio tapes won't be worth much in another 20 years, and some are already too degraded to play.
Looks like the RIAA was right all along -- THAT's why you should rebuy all of your music, because soon your original license to listen will have vanished.
"The palest ink is better than the best memory" -- but not when the ink seperates from the paper!
Wait -- does that mean my 8-track RAID array is in danger!?!
At least model airplane enthusiasts understand that they are directing a rigid object at moderate speeds with (usually) open propellers rotating at high rpm.
But at least the (RC) airplane actually flies. If you lose an engine it still has some semblance of control. A drone has exactly the same flight capabilities as a helicopter... or a brick.
Of course if you lose contact with the device it's then flying on it's own -- and you better hope it's smarter than you are.
Just a harmless drone this time
I thought we were supposed to learn from our mistakes. And being human even understand how NOT to make them. Or am I expecting too much from adults?
Bribery is when an elected official supports your agenda because you pay them.
Campaign contributions are when you pay an elected official because they support your agenda.
Bribery is when you pay an elected official for actual results.
Campaign contributions are when you pay an elected official and HOPE to get some results
Voting is when you attempt to choose an elected official and then can gripe when he DOESN'T deliver results.
The first two have real and political ramifications; the latter has only good intentions.
more than a petabyte of stored data is accessible to anyone online with the knowledge of where and how to look for it.
(Readable sites and login-credentials) picts or it didn't happen.
On an on-topic item: I, too, worked for a company where the SOP was to run a NAS with over 12PB of storage and the default credentials were used "for support reasons." For the rounding-off-error area of 40TB I controlled I was finally able to extract a concession and change a single character of the password: an "o" to a "0".
At least it wasn't accessible on the internet. And that change kept anyone internally from logging into my section on the first try.
NSA got access to everything, blah blah. The NSA is our new overlord and conscience. So I'm contrarian here and curious: what did AT&T get out of this?
Or are they just happy they can listen in to phone calls again way back when the (actual) operators supported party-lines across multiple families and literally did the dialing for you?
-----
For those of you too young to remember: a party line was a single shared telephone line spread across multiple houses where anyone could pick up the phone and hear a conversation that another family was having -- that's how it was designed; no single line per each room in a house but a single line shared between disparate houses.
If someone was calling, the ringtone (a clapper striking a physical bell attached to the phone) was a different pattern for each house so the correct person would know to pick up.
Speed-dial? Touch-tones? Rotary? Dial-tone? No, you flashed the hook to get the attention of the mostly-present operator and verbally told them the name or number to dial for you.
I've got a phone like that hanging in the kitchen. Unattached and unused for decades, of course, until I give in and pay for the "Twilight Zone" option.
Simply add face recognition to the muffler, problem solved. "Yep, that was a pedestrian -- and we even know who."
But since it's Google, they'll probably do something higher-tech like measuring the reaction of the shock absorbers. And unlike their WiFi scanning, they've got two chances to get it right!
What? Why are you looking at me funny?
1: "My dog here has fleas and I'd like to kill them."
2: Opens the door and tosses the dog into the roaring furnace; slams door shut.
1: "WHAT did you just do? My dog is DEAD!"
2: "The fleas are dead; isn't that what you said you wanted?"
There is also a large portion that will be bored by the story by the time the truth comes out and wonder why we haven't moved past this. Attention spans run quite brief nowadays.
Agree. It's almost as if we're determined not to remember anything so as to not have to learn anything from it.
It's not a router, but I've got a Onkyo amplifier that has lots of lights and doodads and of course an off switch. And an associated off LIGHT that turns on when the unit itself is turned off, and vice versa.
It's among the stupidest things I've even seen. It does work correctly though, so I guess I'll give them that.
Where I used to work, there were a few short terms for idiots who ignored or violated security standards: CEO, CFO, Legal, etc. They'd pass all these security measures for protecting data, and then say, "Oh, but not for me."
One of them had they RSA keyfob security code statically set at "111111" because it was just too hard to type in the digits (or they changed too quickly, I forget which.)
He got written up in the security exception reports and such, but was high enough to be able to override it.
At least it wasn't the code to the planetary air shield generator: 12345.
The people in your TV set don't know they're living in a 2-dimensional universe; it's all 3D to them but obviously 2D to you. (Ignore LGs new curved TV screen -- that doesn't count.)
Now: you're living in a TV that someone ELSE is watching. (The FSM watches a separate channel on Each of His Noodly Appendages -- that solves the multiverse theory, too. And it's turtles all the way down, so FSM is also watching himself at the same time. [See? Science mixed with Religion is Truthful, Informative, AND Fun.] )
Just hope they don't hit the pause button to go get a sandwich. And Heaven forbid they change the channel! (But: how would you know?)
No, I don't understand it either. And until you can demonstrate an experiment that unambiguously demonstrates it, it's not science -- just guesswork.
Maybe they need two 5-year-olds to explain it all to them; that older 10 year old isn't working out so well.
How do you KNOW they are out of the system without flattening the entire infrastructure?
Because we turned off the latest version of the PC Anywhere and Carbon Copy boxes that didn't use passwords to login. How else could they have entered the system? (Don't ask about the VLC box, we're still trying to locate it.)
The rapist's comments in the documentary are pretty shocking... I suspect this perspective isn't unique to this one man and thus the government considers it an embarrassing reflection on the nation as a whole.
I just finished watching it (after DLing in case it disappears.) I find hints of "honor" and what I've heard about the Middle East and about Islam appearing as well.
a) woman should always be accompanied by members of their family when outside (in public), and b) need to cover themselves so that strangers won't lose control of their facilities (presumably by their penis.)
Are men so sexually animistic that they can't control themselves after seeing a boob? In this case it seems like the guys were out for an opportunistic "good time" and wanted to teach her a lesson for resisting.
Maybe the idea is that teenagers might be lacking in self-control and so you need to help them along. Completely blaming women and hiding them away does not solve the problem though. But maybe that is the exact procedure to keep the male leaders (family, town, precinct, area, state) in control.
Perp:
"A decent girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night."
"A girl is far more responsible for a rape than a boy." So: It's not my fault, she made me do it to her.
Lawyers:
"A woman means I immediately put the sex in his eyes."
"A female is just like a flower.. [that] always needs protection."
"In our society, we never allow our girls to come out from the house after 6:30 or 7:30 or 8:30 in the evening with any unknown person" "If very important, she should go outside BUT she should go with a [parental guardian]"
"The women are more precious than... a diamond. It is up to you how you want to keep that diamond in your hand."
"If my daughter/sister engaged in pre-marital activities, and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this [person] to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family I would put petrol on her and set her alight."
So: if you let your women out at night unaccompanied, they get what you deserve. And it almost sounds like they're living with wild animals roaming the streets. Well, maybe they (and we) are. Self-control, anyone?
Seems like there's also a hook to "terrorism" and "conforming to society will protect you" here, but I just can't place my finger on it quite yet. "Be somewhat afraid of the general population because they might not be civilized like you are" comes to mind.
Now, it's got to pray 5x a day. Does it get beheaded because its NTP server is out of sync? (And that looses it's terror slightly when you can simply attach it back again -- that is if it even has one.) Is it apostasy if you swap out a ROM? Does it get one shrink-wrapped virgin with 72 interchangeable parts, or 72 "no user serviceable parts inside"? Is it a sin if you don't agree to their EULA? What is this guy going to think about all of this?
And as long as I'm !PC here: "AIs running around with a reason to discriminate, hate, and kill folks that believe differently than they do." Sounds like ISIL absorbed some Apple/Microsoft/Google fanboys. Just think -- ACTUAL Flamewars! And just wait for the rabid liberal/conservative bots: we need to get this running first: XKCD virus aquarium vs an real-life one.
Yes, I know, it's nothing at all to joke about. But I'm an atheist living in the bible belt -- I've been scared for decades and these local people don't want to kill me, just convert me... if they don't ignore me to start with. ISIL wants to kill us both -- tEofEimF. And if I don't make jokes about it, I'd be a blithering idiot (... hmph, maybe it's not helping much after all.)
Instant web access can supplement, but it also can be an overused crutch that inhibits critical thinking and learning skills
DING! Do you want to passively just "know the answer" and probably forget it by the next time you query, or "understand the answer" by reasoning it out and having those save memory tracks (slightly) more available to you next time?
Even if I've completely overestimated "understanding it", you've had to spend more time actually thinking about it, so there is a better chance you'll remember it.
Really, my personal tin-foil take (and I know actually know, I'm just guessing from the reported results and my internal biases) is that the TC authors were "given an offer they couldn't refuse" and forced to hand over the control of the website and code signing keys to someone else.
THAT they did -- but they were not told NOT trash the brand beforehand. So in my happy little fantasy world they put that weird final notice and gleefully handed over the control keys to the code, knowing that no one would ever use any new code originating from it again. Thus complying with the letter of the law, if not quite the imposed spirit of it. (And then survived to tell the tale, or at least managed to survive the encounter. I hope.)
On a completely different topic, antagonizing people with guns is never a smart thing to do. But sometimes it is the right thing to do. Maybe we should ask Paul Revere or another American patriots from years past -- I hear they bothered men with guns a long time ago, too.
(I don't suppose we could give DC -- it's not a state -- back to the British and fund a new capital somewhere? I'd suggest somewhere in Washington State; that way we wouldn't have to change the stationary THAT much.)
I had a high-security scenario... [and] was happy enough that everything was traced back the sources enough to make me feel secure.
So you've compiled "everything" from source code? Then you're all good to go -- the code will be exactly what the compiler produced, but NOT necessarily what the source code actually says.
Huh? See Reflections on Trusting Trust, from back in the pre-NSA days where one special guy could easily log into any Unix system: "I could log into that system as any user."
[Backdoors are hard to find.] At this point with the exiting statement of the developers only a fool would trust Truecrypt with anything important.
Let's see: only a fool trusts things that actively lose data. (ie, bitrot, or email systems used by important people. If it's important, have 2+ independent copies)
So let's posit that TC is "sane", that it doesn't actively corrupt your data (Actual disk bitrot is another matter.)
Is it secure? (Ignoring keyloggers, CPU tampering, OS-file I/O interception, not to mention on-bus DMA controllers that have direct access to physical memory, and other out of band things? You could argue they need to detect this but they aren't an A/V vendor and you do halfway have to trust your hardware. Oh, visit CC PIN hacking via a IR camera to see your hardware "betray" you.)
Well, given a correct encryption key, things work correctly; given seemingly any incorrect key, things don't -- a very good start. So they need to protect the working in-memory key (because it's game-over if not.) They erase it if enough idle time has passed and try to keep it from being swapped out to disk. Process memory isolation is great, but in both cases the OS itself can do whatever it wants. So you have to trust the OS, at least a bit.
So, what everybody actually means: is the encryption secure? Can someone who doesn't know my password read my data due to stupid password handling, bad encryption routine choices (ROT-26), or leaky code of good routines? (Say perfect AES file encryption, but the unencrypted source file moved to the recycle bin, never mind about any corruptible buffer or stack overflows. [That's an example; TC doesn't encrypt single files.] ) Are there password collisions, ie password are actually case-insenstive? or silently truncated after 2 characters?
I suspect that you're (humans) the weakest link because of the XKCD wrench, an easily guessed password, or your likes/habits that could lead to your password. If you can't type your password it's not going to work, and you have to remember how to type it.
It seems to boil down to do you trust the vendor to act in good faith every step of the way? Let's see: -anonymous vendor, +access to source code that compiles to the released binary, +routine usage that makes sense, +updates over time, -weird final message. Personally, i trust them more than MS's native BitLocker, which is sane but has a (understandable) business-released AD key recovery function. (It's not your data but the companies, and they have keys to continue read it.) But is BL actually secure? Dunno, can't tell; we have to trust MS completely on that.
If it (TC v7.1) was good to use the day before sunset, it was good to the use day after too, until known problems arise or non-OS support kills it. But YMMV -- trust whom you see fit. So being curious: what are you using, if not TC?
How does a copyright encourage creativity in a dead person?
A brand new story by Dr Seuss is about to be published, and he's been dead for 2 decades -- just because you're dead doesn't mean you're just completely wasting away doing nothing.
Edgar Allen Poe might soon write another story from beyond the grave, perhaps assisted by a medium (such as: The Tell Tale Heart still Feeds My Slothful Grandson from Royalties.) Thus, we of the RRAA (Reading and Riting Association of America have to be prepared for this impending possibility and keep all of his works under exacting publishing control and lock-and-key. (If would be horrible if anyone could just talk about a raven(tm) anytime they wanted. Or, if there were people that somehow made a profit while watching or listening to the sound of other peoples beating hearts.... hey, waaaait....)
Personally, I'm more interested in if a medium channeling Walt Disney -- who would get the eventual rights? Disney (Mr), Disney (tm), or the medium(i)?
Slashdot Mirror
You think quantitative easing is the new normal ? ...you'd have to agree they should only be temporarily.
They're just as temporary as the patches *I* create. Until they blow up, and then they get a new temporary patch.
Than again, maybe Janet Yellen herself is temporary: one, Two
When I watched two, at first I thought she had gotten stage fright, then I decided she was just trying to concentrate or breathe.
So what? It's not the person, it's data ABOUT the person -- in other words, metadata.
And everyone knows that metadata isn't real data; that's why the government is busy collecting so much of it.
------
(Yes, I realize metadata would be where you actually found those fingerprints. But look-- soon you'll be able to find them everywhere!)
((And besides, I thought "privacy was dead, get over it."))
Recordings on old audio tapes won't be worth much in another 20 years, and some are already too degraded to play.
Looks like the RIAA was right all along -- THAT's why you should rebuy all of your music, because soon your original license to listen will have vanished.
"The palest ink is better than the best memory" -- but not when the ink seperates from the paper!
Wait -- does that mean my 8-track RAID array is in danger!?!
At least model airplane enthusiasts understand that they are directing a rigid object at moderate speeds with (usually) open propellers rotating at high rpm.
But at least the (RC) airplane actually flies. If you lose an engine it still has some semblance of control. A drone has exactly the same flight capabilities as a helicopter ... or a brick.
Of course if you lose contact with the device it's then flying on it's own -- and you better hope it's smarter than you are.
Just a harmless drone this time
I thought we were supposed to learn from our mistakes. And being human even understand how NOT to make them. Or am I expecting too much from adults?
... Never Mind.
Looking around at Politics
Bribery is when an elected official supports your agenda because you pay them.
Campaign contributions are when you pay an elected official because they support your agenda.
Bribery is when you pay an elected official for actual results.
Campaign contributions are when you pay an elected official and HOPE to get some results
Voting is when you attempt to choose an elected official and then can gripe when he DOESN'T deliver results.
The first two have real and political ramifications; the latter has only good intentions.
more than a petabyte of stored data is accessible to anyone online with the knowledge of where and how to look for it.
(Readable sites and login-credentials) picts or it didn't happen.
On an on-topic item: I, too, worked for a company where the SOP was to run a NAS with over 12PB of storage and the default credentials were used "for support reasons." For the rounding-off-error area of 40TB I controlled I was finally able to extract a concession and change a single character of the password: an "o" to a "0".
At least it wasn't accessible on the internet. And that change kept anyone internally from logging into my section on the first try.
NSA got access to everything, blah blah. The NSA is our new overlord and conscience. So I'm contrarian here and curious: what did AT&T get out of this?
Or are they just happy they can listen in to phone calls again way back when the (actual) operators supported party-lines across multiple families and literally did the dialing for you?
-----
For those of you too young to remember: a party line was a single shared telephone line spread across multiple houses where anyone could pick up the phone and hear a conversation that another family was having -- that's how it was designed; no single line per each room in a house but a single line shared between disparate houses.
If someone was calling, the ringtone (a clapper striking a physical bell attached to the phone) was a different pattern for each house so the correct person would know to pick up.
Speed-dial? Touch-tones? Rotary? Dial-tone? No, you flashed the hook to get the attention of the mostly-present operator and verbally told them the name or number to dial for you.
I've got a phone like that hanging in the kitchen. Unattached and unused for decades, of course, until I give in and pay for the "Twilight Zone" option.
Automated Real-Time Pedestrian Detection?
Simply add face recognition to the muffler, problem solved. " Yep , that was a pedestrian -- and we even know who."
But since it's Google, they'll probably do something higher-tech like measuring the reaction of the shock absorbers. And unlike their WiFi scanning, they've got two chances to get it right!
What? Why are you looking at me funny?
1: "My dog here has fleas and I'd like to kill them."
2: Opens the door and tosses the dog into the roaring furnace; slams door shut.
1: "WHAT did you just do? My dog is DEAD!"
2: "The fleas are dead; isn't that what you said you wanted?"
There is also a large portion that will be bored by the story by the time the truth comes out and wonder why we haven't moved past this. Attention spans run quite brief nowadays.
Agree. It's almost as if we're determined not to remember anything so as to not have to learn anything from it.
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
It's not a router, but I've got a Onkyo amplifier that has lots of lights and doodads and of course an off switch. And an associated off LIGHT that turns on when the unit itself is turned off, and vice versa.
It's among the stupidest things I've even seen. It does work correctly though, so I guess I'll give them that.
Where I used to work, there were a few short terms for idiots who ignored or violated security standards: CEO, CFO, Legal, etc. They'd pass all these security measures for protecting data, and then say, "Oh, but not for me."
One of them had they RSA keyfob security code statically set at "111111" because it was just too hard to type in the digits (or they changed too quickly, I forget which.)
He got written up in the security exception reports and such, but was high enough to be able to override it.
At least it wasn't the code to the planetary air shield generator: 12345.
to make ... apps just slightly more difficult ... and just slightly less worthwhile ... the government would have to go to extraordinary lengths.
Ahh, well there's your problem: you expect resource restrictions and common sense from government.
"the government would have to go to extraordinary lengths" Really!?! When has that ever stopped them from doing anything?
The people in your TV set don't know they're living in a 2-dimensional universe; it's all 3D to them but obviously 2D to you. (Ignore LGs new curved TV screen -- that doesn't count.)
Now: you're living in a TV that someone ELSE is watching. (The FSM watches a separate channel on Each of His Noodly Appendages -- that solves the multiverse theory, too. And it's turtles all the way down, so FSM is also watching himself at the same time. [See? Science mixed with Religion is Truthful, Informative, AND Fun.] )
Just hope they don't hit the pause button to go get a sandwich. And Heaven forbid they change the channel! (But: how would you know?)
No, I don't understand it either. And until you can demonstrate an experiment that unambiguously demonstrates it, it's not science -- just guesswork.
Maybe they need two 5-year-olds to explain it all to them; that older 10 year old isn't working out so well.
How do you KNOW they are out of the system without flattening the entire infrastructure?
Because we turned off the latest version of the PC Anywhere and Carbon Copy boxes that didn't use passwords to login. How else could they have entered the system? (Don't ask about the VLC box, we're still trying to locate it.)
The rapist's comments in the documentary are pretty shocking... I suspect this perspective isn't unique to this one man and thus the government considers it an embarrassing reflection on the nation as a whole.
I just finished watching it (after DLing in case it disappears.) I find hints of "honor" and what I've heard about the Middle East and about Islam appearing as well.
.. [that] always needs protection." ... a diamond. It is up to you how you want to keep that diamond in your hand."
a) woman should always be accompanied by members of their family when outside (in public), and
b) need to cover themselves so that strangers won't lose control of their facilities (presumably by their penis.)
Are men so sexually animistic that they can't control themselves after seeing a boob? In this case it seems like the guys were out for an opportunistic "good time" and wanted to teach her a lesson for resisting.
Maybe the idea is that teenagers might be lacking in self-control and so you need to help them along. Completely blaming women and hiding them away does not solve the problem though. But maybe that is the exact procedure to keep the male leaders (family, town, precinct, area, state) in control.
Perp:
"A decent girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night."
"A girl is far more responsible for a rape than a boy."
So: It's not my fault, she made me do it to her.
Lawyers:
"A woman means I immediately put the sex in his eyes."
"A female is just like a flower
"In our society, we never allow our girls to come out from the house after 6:30 or 7:30 or 8:30 in the evening with any unknown person" "If very important, she should go outside BUT she should go with a [parental guardian]"
"The women are more precious than
"If my daughter/sister engaged in pre-marital activities, and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this [person] to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family I would put petrol on her and set her alight."
So: if you let your women out at night unaccompanied, they get what you deserve. And it almost sounds like they're living with wild animals roaming the streets. Well, maybe they (and we) are. Self-control, anyone?
Seems like there's also a hook to "terrorism" and "conforming to society will protect you" here, but I just can't place my finger on it quite yet. "Be somewhat afraid of the general population because they might not be civilized like you are" comes to mind.
the junkie who thinks the most important thing in their life is their next fix.
I'd reply to this, but I have to check Facebook now. And refresh. Refresh. Duh, I forgot about twitter!
No it isn't. 100 participants is enough for 99% confidence with a plus/minus 5% confidence interval.
So you're saying they're 104% right? COOL.
I was suspect of that 100% top-limit anyway; I always thought THE AUTHORITIES were keeping the good stuff overflow for themselves.
Hey, this is great, for multiple reasons:
Trouble losing weight? Nooooo problem anymore!
Trying to sell black market organs? Forget all that nasty slicing and dicing; just grab the entire bag instead.
Lawsuit deniability: *I* didn't hold that gun on the bank teller. The hand in that body did. (probably only works for the first few lawsuits though.)
I guess they use Futurarama's Head-in-a-Jar while they're swapping heads?
Gives a whole new worry in the bar scene, though: "Hey girl, you've got a GREAT body." She frowns and squints back: "Why do you say that?"
So, let's boot up a Muslim AI.
... if they don't ignore me to start with. ISIL wants to kill us both -- tEofEimF. And if I don't make jokes about it, I'd be a blithering idiot (... hmph, maybe it's not helping much after all.)
Now, it's got to pray 5x a day. Does it get beheaded because its NTP server is out of sync? (And that looses it's terror slightly when you can simply attach it back again -- that is if it even has one.)
Is it apostasy if you swap out a ROM?
Does it get one shrink-wrapped virgin with 72 interchangeable parts, or 72 "no user serviceable parts inside"?
Is it a sin if you don't agree to their EULA?
What is this guy going to think about all of this?
And as long as I'm !PC here: "AIs running around with a reason to discriminate, hate, and kill folks that believe differently than they do." Sounds like ISIL absorbed some Apple/Microsoft/Google fanboys. Just think -- ACTUAL Flamewars! And just wait for the rabid liberal/conservative bots: we need to get this running first: XKCD virus aquarium vs an real-life one.
Yes, I know, it's nothing at all to joke about. But I'm an atheist living in the bible belt -- I've been scared for decades and these local people don't want to kill me, just convert me
In a related story, rest easy with that 45 under your pillow because you've won the war
But I have two pillows -- when is FedEx going to deliver my other 45?
and "focus on real problems"? What?? -- do you have ANY idea how uncomfortable it is to sleep on uneven pillows?
-----
Gun control is being able to hit your target.
Instant web access can supplement, but it also can be an overused crutch that inhibits critical thinking and learning skills
DING! Do you want to passively just "know the answer" and probably forget it by the next time you query, or "understand the answer" by reasoning it out and having those save memory tracks (slightly) more available to you next time?
Even if I've completely overestimated "understanding it", you've had to spend more time actually thinking about it, so there is a better chance you'll remember it.
we DON'T know if 7.1 was safe to use or not.
Isn't that kinda the point of a security audit?
Really, my personal tin-foil take (and I know actually know, I'm just guessing from the reported results and my internal biases) is that the TC authors were "given an offer they couldn't refuse" and forced to hand over the control of the website and code signing keys to someone else.
THAT they did -- but they were not told NOT trash the brand beforehand. So in my happy little fantasy world they put that weird final notice and gleefully handed over the control keys to the code, knowing that no one would ever use any new code originating from it again. Thus complying with the letter of the law, if not quite the imposed spirit of it. (And then survived to tell the tale, or at least managed to survive the encounter. I hope.)
On a completely different topic, antagonizing people with guns is never a smart thing to do. But sometimes it is the right thing to do. Maybe we should ask Paul Revere or another American patriots from years past -- I hear they bothered men with guns a long time ago, too.
(I don't suppose we could give DC -- it's not a state -- back to the British and fund a new capital somewhere? I'd suggest somewhere in Washington State; that way we wouldn't have to change the stationary THAT much.)
I had a high-security scenario ... [and] was happy enough that everything was traced back the sources enough to make me feel secure.
So you've compiled "everything" from source code? Then you're all good to go -- the code will be exactly what the compiler produced, but NOT necessarily what the source code actually says.
Huh? See Reflections on Trusting Trust, from back in the pre-NSA days where one special guy could easily log into any Unix system: "I could log into that system as any user."
He's not BSing or joking, either.
[Backdoors are hard to find.] At this point with the exiting statement of the developers only a fool would trust Truecrypt with anything important.
Let's see: only a fool trusts things that actively lose data. (ie, bitrot, or email systems used by important people. If it's important, have 2+ independent copies)
So let's posit that TC is "sane", that it doesn't actively corrupt your data (Actual disk bitrot is another matter.)
Is it secure? (Ignoring keyloggers, CPU tampering, OS-file I/O interception, not to mention on-bus DMA controllers that have direct access to physical memory, and other out of band things? You could argue they need to detect this but they aren't an A/V vendor and you do halfway have to trust your hardware. Oh, visit CC PIN hacking via a IR camera to see your hardware "betray" you.)
Well, given a correct encryption key, things work correctly; given seemingly any incorrect key, things don't -- a very good start. So they need to protect the working in-memory key (because it's game-over if not.) They erase it if enough idle time has passed and try to keep it from being swapped out to disk. Process memory isolation is great, but in both cases the OS itself can do whatever it wants. So you have to trust the OS, at least a bit.
So, what everybody actually means: is the encryption secure? Can someone who doesn't know my password read my data due to stupid password handling, bad encryption routine choices (ROT-26), or leaky code of good routines? (Say perfect AES file encryption, but the unencrypted source file moved to the recycle bin, never mind about any corruptible buffer or stack overflows. [That's an example; TC doesn't encrypt single files.] ) Are there password collisions, ie password are actually case-insenstive? or silently truncated after 2 characters?
I suspect that you're (humans) the weakest link because of the XKCD wrench, an easily guessed password, or your likes/habits that could lead to your password. If you can't type your password it's not going to work, and you have to remember how to type it.
It seems to boil down to do you trust the vendor to act in good faith every step of the way? Let's see: -anonymous vendor, +access to source code that compiles to the released binary, +routine usage that makes sense, +updates over time, -weird final message. Personally, i trust them more than MS's native BitLocker, which is sane but has a (understandable) business-released AD key recovery function. (It's not your data but the companies, and they have keys to continue read it.) But is BL actually secure? Dunno, can't tell; we have to trust MS completely on that.
If it (TC v7.1) was good to use the day before sunset, it was good to the use day after too, until known problems arise or non-OS support kills it. But YMMV -- trust whom you see fit. So being curious: what are you using, if not TC?
How does a copyright encourage creativity in a dead person?
A brand new story by Dr Seuss is about to be published, and he's been dead for 2 decades -- just because you're dead doesn't mean you're just completely wasting away doing nothing.
.... hey, waaaait....)
Edgar Allen Poe might soon write another story from beyond the grave, perhaps assisted by a medium (such as: The Tell Tale Heart still Feeds My Slothful Grandson from Royalties.) Thus, we of the RRAA (Reading and Riting Association of America have to be prepared for this impending possibility and keep all of his works under exacting publishing control and lock-and-key. (If would be horrible if anyone could just talk about a raven(tm) anytime they wanted. Or, if there were people that somehow made a profit while watching or listening to the sound of other peoples beating hearts
Personally, I'm more interested in if a medium channeling Walt Disney -- who would get the eventual rights? Disney (Mr), Disney (tm), or the medium(i)?