I think the single biggest problem with encrypting online backups is that it ties your backup right back to your local computer. If all the information on Amazon is encrypted with a key that is stored on your personal computer, you may as well have all the data on the personal computer in the first place, since your data goes *kaput* if you hard drive fails anyways.
This introduces the need for multiple storage sites for your key, which will presumably have the key in cleartext. All that Big Brother would need to do to get the data would be to figure out where else the key was stored, and use that to decrypt the data.
Any thoughts on this? Or is the best way to just use a long passphrase, store the key on the server, and hope that when you need to recover when your hard drive fails 2 years from now, you remember your long, hard-to-guess password...
It seems to me that this is just an attempt at "cheap education".
A startling fact is that the number of students pursuing engineering and science degrees and careers is shrinking greatly. At a time when other countries, such as India and China, are stepping up their national education in science and technology, the US is making budget cuts in education funding.
Now I don't consider myself a liberal...in fact, I am a moderate who leans in many ways toward the conservative side, but these budget cuts scare me. If we can't foster the brainpower today that will keep us competitive tomorrow, jobs will keep flowing to India. But this time, they won't be call center or grunt-programming jobs. They will be development jobs. Design job. Knowledge jobs. That is what really scares me.
This article, and this practice, seems like nothing but a smoke-and-mirrors trick to divert money from the real problem. You will inspire far more students to take up careers in science and engineering if you pay to hire good teachers (like those that I was fortunate enough to have) than by making Tom Cruise a rocket scientist. It may cost more, but the raw returns are much greater. This should be a supplement to widespread greater science and engineering funding, NOT a replacement. It would work much better that way -- to have students see it on TV as a catalyst, then go to school where their teachers make the subject interesting and fun.
First of all, I will say that I am as against Trusted Computing as the next guy on Slashdot. I think it is a terrible thing.
Unfortunately, I don't think Apple is going to have a choice in this matter. When the big media companies have seen TC and its "benefits" on the Wintel Vista boxes, they will demand it on Apple boxes. Since Apple doesn't currently have the *COMPUTER* marketshare to stand up to the MPAA/RIAA, on the COMPUTER (where video content will come), they will be unable to get any of the content that media companies will be comfortable releasing to a Trusted Vista box. Since Apple only has 5% market share, it won't hurt much to leave them out.
So why does Apple NEED that content? Simple. In recent years, Steve Jobs is taking steps to reinvent Apple as a media company. Not a media PRODUCTION company, but a company that makes media-centric equipment. The iPod now contributes far more than its fair share of profits to Apple's bottom line. Jobs has visions of Apple computers being the "hub" of a home media system. How can any of this POSSIBLY happen when the companies that control the content will not release it to non-DRMed Apples?
Jobs is a good negotiator -- that is clear from his dealings with music companies with iTunes. But there is NOTHING that the MPAA/RIAA is more afraid of than rampant piracy. They see it as bad now, but potentially MUCH worse when all those computers are connected to home TVs and stereos. The sad reality (for me, especially, as I would certainly get a non-TPMed Apple if it was the only "free" (as in speech) choice) is that it WILL happen sooner or later, because it would be a major stumbling block to Apple's foreseeable future as a media-delivery company.
I wouldn't go so far as to declare your unending love for him yet. While it is true that he is very pro-active in fighting for "the little guy" (read: his election base when the NY governor seat is up again this November), I wouldn't say that he is always the "knight in shining armor" that you make him out to be.
Here is an example of the sometimes dubious types of "fights for the little guy" that he wages against "big business":
Many people made thousands (millions!) of dollars in the 1998-2001 market boom. At that time, you'd have to be an idiot NOT to make money in the market. However, when the internet bubble burst, many people that made that money found that they had now LOST that money. Rather than tell the people "you got lucky but then your luck ran out", Spitzer effectively told them "you got rich in the late 90's because you were a genius; you lost it all because Wall Street cheated you" and prosecuted many very visible Wall Street figures accordingly. (Read the NY Times AND Wall Street Journal for a two-sided look at the issues...its clear in many cases that the defendants aren't such bad people) People who had done nothing outside of the code of ethics and the law now found themselves under fire because Spitzer wanted the average New Yorker to refer to him in Slashdot forums and elsewhere as "as close to a knight in shining armor that we'll find in his position".
Don't kid yourself -- Spitzer, like any other politician, has his own agendas. Just because he is prosecuting high-level people who are far enough from you that you can ignore the fabricated "charges" put out by a grandstanding politicial doesn't make it right.
That said, ALL of his efforts are not shady political maneuvers. Sometimes, he does get the bad guy, and I think that this may be one of those times.
Of course it will be the most important release since XP....for the xxAA
One of the biggest new "features" of longhorn (I steadfastly REFUSE to call it vista) is all the "trusted computing" software added to it. This is a major reason why I will likely never buy it: if I'm going to pay $30 for a digital movie, I would much rather have it on a DVD where I can play it wherever I want than a digital media file with so much DRM that I have to give my first born to get it to play on ONE computer, much less my 4 computers. And I can just forget linux, because obviously those FSF people are too inconsiderate to give us "features" like trusted computing.
I'm beginning to think Microsoft is just a patsy for the media companies with Longhorn. "Hey, come PAY for LESS rights with YOUR media!". I, for one, will not buy it, but many, many will since it comes on all new computers...
Slashdot Mirror
I think the single biggest problem with encrypting online backups is that it ties your backup right back to your local computer. If all the information on Amazon is encrypted with a key that is stored on your personal computer, you may as well have all the data on the personal computer in the first place, since your data goes *kaput* if you hard drive fails anyways.
This introduces the need for multiple storage sites for your key, which will presumably have the key in cleartext. All that Big Brother would need to do to get the data would be to figure out where else the key was stored, and use that to decrypt the data.
Any thoughts on this? Or is the best way to just use a long passphrase, store the key on the server, and hope that when you need to recover when your hard drive fails 2 years from now, you remember your long, hard-to-guess password...
Seems awkward to me...
It seems to me that this is just an attempt at "cheap education".
A startling fact is that the number of students pursuing engineering and science degrees and careers is shrinking greatly. At a time when other countries, such as India and China, are stepping up their national education in science and technology, the US is making budget cuts in education funding.
Now I don't consider myself a liberal...in fact, I am a moderate who leans in many ways toward the conservative side, but these budget cuts scare me. If we can't foster the brainpower today that will keep us competitive tomorrow, jobs will keep flowing to India. But this time, they won't be call center or grunt-programming jobs. They will be development jobs. Design job. Knowledge jobs. That is what really scares me.
This article, and this practice, seems like nothing but a smoke-and-mirrors trick to divert money from the real problem. You will inspire far more students to take up careers in science and engineering if you pay to hire good teachers (like those that I was fortunate enough to have) than by making Tom Cruise a rocket scientist. It may cost more, but the raw returns are much greater. This should be a supplement to widespread greater science and engineering funding, NOT a replacement. It would work much better that way -- to have students see it on TV as a catalyst, then go to school where their teachers make the subject interesting and fun.
First of all, I will say that I am as against Trusted Computing as the next guy on Slashdot. I think it is a terrible thing.
Unfortunately, I don't think Apple is going to have a choice in this matter. When the big media companies have seen TC and its "benefits" on the Wintel Vista boxes, they will demand it on Apple boxes. Since Apple doesn't currently have the *COMPUTER* marketshare to stand up to the MPAA/RIAA, on the COMPUTER (where video content will come), they will be unable to get any of the content that media companies will be comfortable releasing to a Trusted Vista box. Since Apple only has 5% market share, it won't hurt much to leave them out.
So why does Apple NEED that content? Simple. In recent years, Steve Jobs is taking steps to reinvent Apple as a media company. Not a media PRODUCTION company, but a company that makes media-centric equipment. The iPod now contributes far more than its fair share of profits to Apple's bottom line. Jobs has visions of Apple computers being the "hub" of a home media system. How can any of this POSSIBLY happen when the companies that control the content will not release it to non-DRMed Apples?
Jobs is a good negotiator -- that is clear from his dealings with music companies with iTunes. But there is NOTHING that the MPAA/RIAA is more afraid of than rampant piracy. They see it as bad now, but potentially MUCH worse when all those computers are connected to home TVs and stereos. The sad reality (for me, especially, as I would certainly get a non-TPMed Apple if it was the only "free" (as in speech) choice) is that it WILL happen sooner or later, because it would be a major stumbling block to Apple's foreseeable future as a media-delivery company.
I wouldn't go so far as to declare your unending love for him yet. While it is true that he is very pro-active in fighting for "the little guy" (read: his election base when the NY governor seat is up again this November), I wouldn't say that he is always the "knight in shining armor" that you make him out to be.
Here is an example of the sometimes dubious types of "fights for the little guy" that he wages against "big business":
Many people made thousands (millions!) of dollars in the 1998-2001 market boom. At that time, you'd have to be an idiot NOT to make money in the market. However, when the internet bubble burst, many people that made that money found that they had now LOST that money. Rather than tell the people "you got lucky but then your luck ran out", Spitzer effectively told them "you got rich in the late 90's because you were a genius; you lost it all because Wall Street cheated you" and prosecuted many very visible Wall Street figures accordingly. (Read the NY Times AND Wall Street Journal for a two-sided look at the issues...its clear in many cases that the defendants aren't such bad people) People who had done nothing outside of the code of ethics and the law now found themselves under fire because Spitzer wanted the average New Yorker to refer to him in Slashdot forums and elsewhere as "as close to a knight in shining armor that we'll find in his position".
Don't kid yourself -- Spitzer, like any other politician, has his own agendas. Just because he is prosecuting high-level people who are far enough from you that you can ignore the fabricated "charges" put out by a grandstanding politicial doesn't make it right.
That said, ALL of his efforts are not shady political maneuvers. Sometimes, he does get the bad guy, and I think that this may be one of those times.
Of course it will be the most important release since XP....for the xxAA
One of the biggest new "features" of longhorn (I steadfastly REFUSE to call it vista) is all the "trusted computing" software added to it. This is a major reason why I will likely never buy it: if I'm going to pay $30 for a digital movie, I would much rather have it on a DVD where I can play it wherever I want than a digital media file with so much DRM that I have to give my first born to get it to play on ONE computer, much less my 4 computers. And I can just forget linux, because obviously those FSF people are too inconsiderate to give us "features" like trusted computing.
I'm beginning to think Microsoft is just a patsy for the media companies with Longhorn. "Hey, come PAY for LESS rights with YOUR media!". I, for one, will not buy it, but many, many will since it comes on all new computers...