I'm not sure if it's still the same there, but when I was an intern for IBM, some twenty years ago, it was policy. Secure your work area at night. All floppies and documents, memo pads, etc., in locked drawers when you leave, PCs and terminals shut down and locked. (Accessing a PC from home was not really practical in most cases, and those PC-class boxes that would be meaningful to access from home had locks that weren't part of the power switch. Not that a screwdriver and the knowledge of where to apply the alligator clips couldn't defeat the locks, but that cleaning staff would generally have to be pretty motivated to do things like that, and the really confidential stuff was subject to stricter controls.
Cleaning was contracted out, as I recall, and even if it weren't, it would be hard to hold the cleaning crew to non-disclosure.
Open source solves a lot of that, of course. So does a little dose of reality about where a company's value really lies.
(Speaking of patents, the engineers who know how to implement the patents are much more valuable than the patents to everyone except the lawyers.)
But if it were really intended as a secure place to leave running electronics, it would need a dehumidifier and a stronger lock than your usual lockable fridge.
I know, I know, a different enhancement problem set from the target of silicone enhancements. But I prefer the more natural sort of enhancement, myself.
But the health issues of silicone and asbestos and the like do raise a question to me about graphene and other carbon filament materials.
"No, Jim, you aren't going to escape her that easily."
The second thought, "Hey, McLane, what's this idea of having my tax money finance your retirement?"
Then I read the article. Lay down some infrastructure first. Maybe send a couple, not just a loner. Maybe send follow-up flights so it isn't just having a cheap control unit for the data collecting hardware. It really is not such a ridiculous idea. When my wife dragged me back to Japan with her, I knew I might not be returning to the States, for instance.
However, one concern I would have, were I (young enough) to be considered, what happens if there's a war down here after I leave? Would (for example) the Chinese give me subtle hints that they would be canceling my budget unless I declared my loyalty to them? (Yeah, I know. That was the plot of a sci-fi novel I read in junior high.)
There are a lot of non-technical problems hiding in this plan.
so maybe the LDP isn't going to be on its way out for very long.
I see no news in Japan of the mess electronic voting has made in the USA, just vague references to the foolish Americans not being able to get it right, and the Japanese vendors of course aren't making the same mistakes as Diebold.
DSL and/or Puppy, really. Many of them really didn't need the new hardware in the first place.
Microsoft should settle by giving them free live CDs for all the above, customized to "Vista compatible" machines, and with GPL-compatible drivers for all the hardware.
Shoot, SuSE is even already mostly there. By the time the first arguments are scheduled in this suit, MS could be ready with an OS that would allow them to settle out-of-court.
All the problems solved. These guys could be the testbed for Microsoft's replacement OS for Vista this year, if Microsoft could really quit its emotional dependency on the illusion of lock-in.
(Did my wife put something strange in the water she boiled the rice in this morning?)
Well, pretty soon, as we see take-up of ODF, people will start seeing what simple tagged text will buy them. Without all the hassles of complicated programs trying to do syntax checks against grammar.
When that happens, Microsoft could, if the managers had any imagination, make enough money to stay alive by opening their specs and selling services to large corporations building custom programs to strip the MSOffice formatting crud and replace it with simple tags calculated by the format vs. department practices.
I mean, he's the guy who put Apple in bed with iNTEL for pseudo-UWB when real UWB was available without the necessity of a switch.
When the real story gets out on what happened with the switch,...
And Apple could have been on the leading edge of yet two more curves, if Jobs vision hadn't failed -- low power consumption and mesh networking. Make that three, since the UWB could have been as hard to tap as a physical wire.
So bent on getting the processing power of a G5 into a notebook when it isn't necessary to have that much power in most notebooks. Dual G4 at 500MHz is plenty for most users.
And arbitrarily holding the clock rates on the G4 models down so the iNTEL core CraPUs would look good.
and the interesting thing is that the author seems to be aware of that fact. (But maybe not of how it impacts his current thesis.)
Anyway, yeah, 20th century media provided an awful lot of nominal employment, but the jury is still out on how much value they provided. Kind of like Microsoft provided an awful lot of software, but the jury is now reporting on how much real work that software actually did/does. You can sell snake oil for a while, but eventually you find that you have polluted your own market.
But the thing is, when you can get a copy of any manufactured good you want dirt cheap, what good is money? Money is our proxy for value. If nothing has value, how can any proxy function? So, people who believe that value is generated by rarity will look for things that are rare, and this guy found several things that are rare even when everything tangible is copiable.
He kind of alludes to the fact that these eight things have been the actual source of value all along. But he seems to ignore that they all point back the way we have come -- back away from WalMart, back away from centralization. And when you step back away from centralization, you realize, we don't need need any big provider of employment.
All we needed was communication, and the people we were entrusting our communication (not the telephone company, although they did sometimes try) have, for the most part, held our communication for ransom.
We don't need big farming, either. (Nothing sucks the nutrition out of a crop faster than mass producing it.) We can actually produce sufficient food if we produce it locally, in most places. If we can keep unrestrained communication networks, we can produce our own food in the morning, be doctors, scientists, artisans, technicians, teachers, etc., in the afternoon, and philosophers in the evenings. Kind of like what Marx said, but not with the revolutions he assumed were necessary. (Not sure which way is bloodier, but that's a rant for another day.)
And we no longer need the proxy. If my neighbor gets sick, I and some other neighbors go answer his need without insurance money, just because we know that, when he's well, he will be making desks and cabinets and such in his afternoons. If I need a certain kind of desk, I go visit that neighbor (after he's well) and we draw out some plans, and he helps me work out the parts I don't know how to do.
When we can communicate about real value (because no one is holding things for ransom anymore), we no longer need the proxy. And we know longer need others to employee us or be employed by us.
Well, now that I get a chance to get online, I'll point out that singular seems wrong, and so does lived (past tense) in Utah (as opposed to a much broader area), so I would tend to say I'm not sure what you're talking about. Thus, no opinion.
But, as far as your "complete lack of evidence" is concerned, you have no evidence because you interpret what evidence there is differently.
Also, there are some things in life that have to be taken, for a time, on faith. For instance, sure, you can prove that 8 times 9 is 72, but when the teacher says there is a purpose to memorizing the multiplication tables, well, let's see --
Some children find the multiplication tables inherently interesting and don't need a reason.
Some children are willing to take it on faith that the teacher knows what he is talking about and memorize them in spite of not being able to see any particular evidence that there is meaning in this game. Eventually, they get their evidence, and if they have memorized the tables, it tends to be easier to understand (see) the evidence than it would be if they don't.
(And some people, when I bring up this analogy, get upset, as if I am insulting them. Oh, well.)
I think you're confused. A temple is not where Mormons live, or even where most of us spend a lot of time, relatively speaking. Weekly meetings are held in relatively ordinary chapels. Also, temples usually serve between 60,000 and 150,000 members of the church.
I know you're asking how others portray us, but here are one or two sources of how we want others to perceive us. From my perspective, it's more or less accurate, depending on the members in question and other issues of context.
credit card numbers, passwords, bank account numbers,...
You may have clean on-line habits, I may have clean on-line habits. There are an awful lot of people around who don't.
That one percent of data is a killer.
And, by the way, some of us don't hand our credit card to waitresses, etc., although the point is somewhat valid. Agreements the employer makes don't always filter down to the staff. But there may be no agreement at all with the recycler. Even if there is some law requiring recyclers to treat personal data with the same circumspection as, say, large amounts of cash found in discarded make-up cases (a real case where I live), it's harder to trace the recycler.
But, no, the hypothesis about the computer-wiz kid is not far-fetched. I pick up drives from unknown sources. My son is one junior-high (middle school) course away from being able to take a hard drive apart and put it back together. I've worked for companies that take on the disposal of customers' old machines, and I've seen hard drives of the some model come from two different sources, and I might work for such companies again before my son either loses his interest in computers or leaves the nest.
That a particular circumstance sounds worse than the plot of a really bad movie proves nothing about the probability of it actually occurring.
The universe doesn't cleanly divide into your objects and subjects. It's not as misdirecting as the concept that God, in order to be perfect, must be entirely passive (a concept not limited to ancient Greek philosophy), but from my point of view, it looks like a false partition.
However, it's actually one of the axioms that often seems to be hidden in arguments about what Jesus meant when he quoted one of David's Psalms, "... ye are gods." The fear that ordinary men might figure out that the do, in fact, have some of the attributes of gods, leads to strenuous logical acrobatics.
Why use terms that have been burdened with all sorts of stray semantics? If we are too strict with that, of course, we would be unable to use any words at all. But it really isn't necessary to appeal to the absurd.
Just want to give a few fellow geeks an opportunity to consider that you wouldn't really have to argue against God to reject false concepts about the collection of principles (entity, being, influence, whatever) by which the universe was made, and be which it is still governed.
(Could I say that you don't really have to argue with the devil when he claims to be God? Just leave the devil to argue with himself and go on about your business.)
Maybe Einstein was simply comfortable with a God who is not interested in controlling what we do.
A guy named Joseph Smith was also comfortable with a God who is not continually keeping humans from doing stupid things or otherwise controlling what we do, but he claimed to have met God.
I don't think Einstein was being clever about hiding his beliefs. I think he was just refusing to side with people that claimed they knew everything about the entity that created the universe, whether on the "religious" side of their debate or on the "atheist" side. Admitted, I'm making assumptions in saying so, but my assumptions seem to put less burden on his words.
I'm not going to claim Einstein believed the way I believe (and I haven't really described the way I believe). I just think his answer was "None of the above." when asked to take sides in a debate he didn't consider meaningful.
I think this sums up the average atheist's argument against God:
There's certainly some appeal to the idea of a deity sniggering in the sky, laughing at how stupid we are, but whatever its aesthetic appeal, I don't find it very convincing.
The universe was not the way I thought it ought to have been, so God must be sniggering at me, therefore I must either be angry with God or I must not believe in God.
No chance that maybe I just should, for instance, have studied harder for the test. Can't be a geek and be unsure of myself.
He was talking about destroying ostensibly dead drives, I think. Otherwise, there's no reason to question whether the salvager has a working drive of the same model to swap the platters into.
But, think this through. If anyone is likely to have a drive of the same model as the drive you're throwing out, who else than the salvager? And do salvagers ever have kids? Maybe even kids with a healthy curiosity?
"Mom, can I go dig in your dead drive bin?"
"Sure."
And the kid pulls two identical looking drives out.
"Cool. I wonder if they're both broken the same way. If I swap the platters, maybe I can get one working drive."
Long odds? Depends on whether the drive died at about the same time as a bunch of other drives of the same model as to whether the odds are long or short, but even if the odds are long, remember that a salvager tends to see a lot of drives, enough that long odds aren't so long.
Something that would be less unlikely, maybe your controller is not so great. Or maybe your power supply is a little unsteady with an older, power hungry drive. But the salvager probably keeps a few good controllers and power supplies for her own use. That drive that looks bad to you may well be readable when plugged into a different power supply and controller combination.
If your imagination still needs a little prompting, consider this. Your company has it's CA server in a locked closet, like it should. The drive apparently dies, but it was actually that the controller needed re-seating. The admin before you thinks a dead drive is no security threat and tosses it in the recycle bin. He gets transferred or traded or quits and you get moved into the job. You don't know what's in the bin, but he says on his way out, no, nothing in there is important.
So, for some reason, the salvager or his kid plugs that drive in and, lo and behold, they have your private keys. They're nice, and they call you up and tell you, but you still have to go to the trouble of invalidating and replacing those keys. And who knows what goes down before the keys are properly invalidated at all the clients?
Long odds, but not worth the risk. If the drive seems to be dead and you personally can't guarantee that the drive doesn't have that n% of data that is actually sensitive anywhere on it, behave responsibly and make sure the data is not readable. Bulk erasers by themselves can't be guaranteed to do the job so it's safer to use both electromagnetic and physical destruction techniques.
It's a bad idea to ever put sensitive data on hard drives, but until we solve the middleman problems and commonly have reliable stand-alone hardware tokens to hold the keys, and so forth, it's better to get into the habit of being safe.
Slashdot Mirror
heh.
I'm not sure if it's still the same there, but when I was an intern for IBM, some twenty years ago, it was policy. Secure your work area at night. All floppies and documents, memo pads, etc., in locked drawers when you leave, PCs and terminals shut down and locked. (Accessing a PC from home was not really practical in most cases, and those PC-class boxes that would be meaningful to access from home had locks that weren't part of the power switch. Not that a screwdriver and the knowledge of where to apply the alligator clips couldn't defeat the locks, but that cleaning staff would generally have to be pretty motivated to do things like that, and the really confidential stuff was subject to stricter controls.
Cleaning was contracted out, as I recall, and even if it weren't, it would be hard to hold the cleaning crew to non-disclosure.
Open source solves a lot of that, of course. So does a little dose of reality about where a company's value really lies.
(Speaking of patents, the engineers who know how to implement the patents are much more valuable than the patents to everyone except the lawyers.)
Lockable mini fridge for the cubicle.
Okay, not so new.
But if it were really intended as a secure place to leave running electronics, it would need a dehumidifier and a stronger lock than your usual lockable fridge.
Well?
...)
I'm not buying anything with an iNTEL cpu, myself.
(Not buying anything at all until I get a real job, but,
Maybe it makes a great negligee?
I know, I know, a different enhancement problem set from the target of silicone enhancements. But I prefer the more natural sort of enhancement, myself.
But the health issues of silicone and asbestos and the like do raise a question to me about graphene and other carbon filament materials.
"No, Jim, you aren't going to escape her that easily."
The second thought, "Hey, McLane, what's this idea of having my tax money finance your retirement?"
Then I read the article. Lay down some infrastructure first. Maybe send a couple, not just a loner. Maybe send follow-up flights so it isn't just having a cheap control unit for the data collecting hardware. It really is not such a ridiculous idea. When my wife dragged me back to Japan with her, I knew I might not be returning to the States, for instance.
However, one concern I would have, were I (young enough) to be considered, what happens if there's a war down here after I leave? Would (for example) the Chinese give me subtle hints that they would be canceling my budget unless I declared my loyalty to them? (Yeah, I know. That was the plot of a sci-fi novel I read in junior high.)
There are a lot of non-technical problems hiding in this plan.
joudanzuki
so maybe the LDP isn't going to be on its way out for very long.
I see no news in Japan of the mess electronic voting has made in the USA, just vague references to the foolish Americans not being able to get it right, and the Japanese vendors of course aren't making the same mistakes as Diebold.
(Oh? Where was the paper trail, even?)
a common mistake, but something you should know.
so the solution is ...
Ubuntu
Red Hat
Cent OS
SuSE (of course)
DSL and/or Puppy, really. Many of them really didn't need the new hardware in the first place.
Microsoft should settle by giving them free live CDs for all the above, customized to "Vista compatible" machines, and with GPL-compatible drivers for all the hardware.
Shoot, SuSE is even already mostly there. By the time the first arguments are scheduled in this suit, MS could be ready with an OS that would allow them to settle out-of-court.
All the problems solved. These guys could be the testbed for Microsoft's replacement OS for Vista this year, if Microsoft could really quit its emotional dependency on the illusion of lock-in.
(Did my wife put something strange in the water she boiled the rice in this morning?)
joudanzuki
Hmm.
Well, pretty soon, as we see take-up of ODF, people will start seeing what simple tagged text will buy them. Without all the hassles of complicated programs trying to do syntax checks against grammar.
When that happens, Microsoft could, if the managers had any imagination, make enough money to stay alive by opening their specs and selling services to large corporations building custom programs to strip the MSOffice formatting crud and replace it with simple tags calculated by the format vs. department practices.
joudanzuki
I mean, he's the guy who put Apple in bed with iNTEL for pseudo-UWB when real UWB was available without the necessity of a switch.
...
...
When the real story gets out on what happened with the switch,
And Apple could have been on the leading edge of yet two more curves, if Jobs vision hadn't failed -- low power consumption and mesh networking. Make that three, since the UWB could have been as hard to tap as a physical wire.
So bent on getting the processing power of a G5 into a notebook when it isn't necessary to have that much power in most notebooks. Dual G4 at 500MHz is plenty for most users.
And arbitrarily holding the clock rates on the G4 models down so the iNTEL core CraPUs would look good.
When the real story gets out on the switch
and the interesting thing is that the author seems to be aware of that fact. (But maybe not of how it impacts his current thesis.)
Anyway, yeah, 20th century media provided an awful lot of nominal employment, but the jury is still out on how much value they provided. Kind of like Microsoft provided an awful lot of software, but the jury is now reporting on how much real work that software actually did/does. You can sell snake oil for a while, but eventually you find that you have polluted your own market.
But the thing is, when you can get a copy of any manufactured good you want dirt cheap, what good is money? Money is our proxy for value. If nothing has value, how can any proxy function? So, people who believe that value is generated by rarity will look for things that are rare, and this guy found several things that are rare even when everything tangible is copiable.
He kind of alludes to the fact that these eight things have been the actual source of value all along. But he seems to ignore that they all point back the way we have come -- back away from WalMart, back away from centralization. And when you step back away from centralization, you realize, we don't need need any big provider of employment.
All we needed was communication, and the people we were entrusting our communication (not the telephone company, although they did sometimes try) have, for the most part, held our communication for ransom.
We don't need big farming, either. (Nothing sucks the nutrition out of a crop faster than mass producing it.) We can actually produce sufficient food if we produce it locally, in most places. If we can keep unrestrained communication networks, we can produce our own food in the morning, be doctors, scientists, artisans, technicians, teachers, etc., in the afternoon, and philosophers in the evenings. Kind of like what Marx said, but not with the revolutions he assumed were necessary. (Not sure which way is bloodier, but that's a rant for another day.)
And we no longer need the proxy. If my neighbor gets sick, I and some other neighbors go answer his need without insurance money, just because we know that, when he's well, he will be making desks and cabinets and such in his afternoons. If I need a certain kind of desk, I go visit that neighbor (after he's well) and we draw out some plans, and he helps me work out the parts I don't know how to do.
When we can communicate about real value (because no one is holding things for ransom anymore), we no longer need the proxy. And we know longer need others to employee us or be employed by us.
Well, now that I get a chance to get online, I'll point out that singular seems wrong, and so does lived (past tense) in Utah (as opposed to a much broader area), so I would tend to say I'm not sure what you're talking about. Thus, no opinion.
But, as far as your "complete lack of evidence" is concerned, you have no evidence because you interpret what evidence there is differently.
Also, there are some things in life that have to be taken, for a time, on faith. For instance, sure, you can prove that 8 times 9 is 72, but when the teacher says there is a purpose to memorizing the multiplication tables, well, let's see --
Some children find the multiplication tables inherently interesting and don't need a reason.
Some children are willing to take it on faith that the teacher knows what he is talking about and memorize them in spite of not being able to see any particular evidence that there is meaning in this game. Eventually, they get their evidence, and if they have memorized the tables, it tends to be easier to understand (see) the evidence than it would be if they don't.
(And some people, when I bring up this analogy, get upset, as if I am insulting them. Oh, well.)
joudanzuki
Speaking of admitting you don't know, you could learn a bit more about what you criticize before you criticize it.
Or am I being too critical of your grammar?
As a Mormon, one of the worst political possibilities I can think of is voting for someone just because he is Mormon.
I think you're confused. A temple is not where Mormons live, or even where most of us spend a lot of time, relatively speaking. Weekly meetings are held in relatively ordinary chapels. Also, temples usually serve between 60,000 and 150,000 members of the church.
I know you're asking how others portray us, but here are one or two sources of how we want others to perceive us. From my perspective, it's more or less accurate, depending on the members in question and other issues of context.
We aren't really all exactly the same, you know.
But a lot of my fellow Mormons don't seem to really listen to the lyrics, so who knows?
credit card numbers, passwords, bank account numbers, ...
You may have clean on-line habits, I may have clean on-line habits. There are an awful lot of people around who don't.
That one percent of data is a killer.
And, by the way, some of us don't hand our credit card to waitresses, etc., although the point is somewhat valid. Agreements the employer makes don't always filter down to the staff. But there may be no agreement at all with the recycler. Even if there is some law requiring recyclers to treat personal data with the same circumspection as, say, large amounts of cash found in discarded make-up cases (a real case where I live), it's harder to trace the recycler.
But, no, the hypothesis about the computer-wiz kid is not far-fetched. I pick up drives from unknown sources. My son is one junior-high (middle school) course away from being able to take a hard drive apart and put it back together. I've worked for companies that take on the disposal of customers' old machines, and I've seen hard drives of the some model come from two different sources, and I might work for such companies again before my son either loses his interest in computers or leaves the nest.
That a particular circumstance sounds worse than the plot of a really bad movie proves nothing about the probability of it actually occurring.
The universe doesn't cleanly divide into your objects and subjects. It's not as misdirecting as the concept that God, in order to be perfect, must be entirely passive (a concept not limited to ancient Greek philosophy), but from my point of view, it looks like a false partition.
However, it's actually one of the axioms that often seems to be hidden in arguments about what Jesus meant when he quoted one of David's Psalms, "... ye are gods." The fear that ordinary men might figure out that the do, in fact, have some of the attributes of gods, leads to strenuous logical acrobatics.
Why use terms that have been burdened with all sorts of stray semantics? If we are too strict with that, of course, we would be unable to use any words at all. But it really isn't necessary to appeal to the absurd.
Just want to give a few fellow geeks an opportunity to consider that you wouldn't really have to argue against God to reject false concepts about the collection of principles (entity, being, influence, whatever) by which the universe was made, and be which it is still governed.
(Could I say that you don't really have to argue with the devil when he claims to be God? Just leave the devil to argue with himself and go on about your business.)
Maybe Einstein was simply comfortable with a God who is not interested in controlling what we do.
A guy named Joseph Smith was also comfortable with a God who is not continually keeping humans from doing stupid things or otherwise controlling what we do, but he claimed to have met God.
I don't think Einstein was being clever about hiding his beliefs. I think he was just refusing to side with people that claimed they knew everything about the entity that created the universe, whether on the "religious" side of their debate or on the "atheist" side. Admitted, I'm making assumptions in saying so, but my assumptions seem to put less burden on his words.
I'm not going to claim Einstein believed the way I believe (and I haven't really described the way I believe). I just think his answer was "None of the above." when asked to take sides in a debate he didn't consider meaningful.
I think this sums up the average atheist's argument against God:
The universe was not the way I thought it ought to have been, so God must be sniggering at me, therefore I must either be angry with God or I must not believe in God.
No chance that maybe I just should, for instance, have studied harder for the test. Can't be a geek and be unsure of myself.
"Follow the laws of physics or they will torture you forever." Your physics professor.
It's not the question of whether the illusion is real.
It's how much of the illusion of reality which you experience is based on axioms, which, if shifted, alter the meaning of the proof.
The doorknob turns, the door opens. Therefore, I am God.
The fist connects. I go down. Therefore, the other guy is God.
A much more sensible conclusion in both cases is "god", but our hubris, fear, and lack of patience push the capitalization.
("God" == that entity which is currently in charge, "god" is an entity which can be in charge of some small domain.)
There is a lot of logical fallacy in this discussion. Like, for instance, hypothesis contrary to fact.
Until and unless teleportation becomes a reality, we can imagine many things which no one can disprove.
He was talking about destroying ostensibly dead drives, I think. Otherwise, there's no reason to question whether the salvager has a working drive of the same model to swap the platters into.
But, think this through. If anyone is likely to have a drive of the same model as the drive you're throwing out, who else than the salvager? And do salvagers ever have kids? Maybe even kids with a healthy curiosity?
"Mom, can I go dig in your dead drive bin?"
"Sure."
And the kid pulls two identical looking drives out.
"Cool. I wonder if they're both broken the same way. If I swap the platters, maybe I can get one working drive."
Long odds? Depends on whether the drive died at about the same time as a bunch of other drives of the same model as to whether the odds are long or short, but even if the odds are long, remember that a salvager tends to see a lot of drives, enough that long odds aren't so long.
Something that would be less unlikely, maybe your controller is not so great. Or maybe your power supply is a little unsteady with an older, power hungry drive. But the salvager probably keeps a few good controllers and power supplies for her own use. That drive that looks bad to you may well be readable when plugged into a different power supply and controller combination.
If your imagination still needs a little prompting, consider this. Your company has it's CA server in a locked closet, like it should. The drive apparently dies, but it was actually that the controller needed re-seating. The admin before you thinks a dead drive is no security threat and tosses it in the recycle bin. He gets transferred or traded or quits and you get moved into the job. You don't know what's in the bin, but he says on his way out, no, nothing in there is important.
So, for some reason, the salvager or his kid plugs that drive in and, lo and behold, they have your private keys. They're nice, and they call you up and tell you, but you still have to go to the trouble of invalidating and replacing those keys. And who knows what goes down before the keys are properly invalidated at all the clients?
Long odds, but not worth the risk. If the drive seems to be dead and you personally can't guarantee that the drive doesn't have that n% of data that is actually sensitive anywhere on it, behave responsibly and make sure the data is not readable. Bulk erasers by themselves can't be guaranteed to do the job so it's safer to use both electromagnetic and physical destruction techniques.
It's a bad idea to ever put sensitive data on hard drives, but until we solve the middleman problems and commonly have reliable stand-alone hardware tokens to hold the keys, and so forth, it's better to get into the habit of being safe.