Comment If it's not documented, it didn't happen. (Score 1) 115
I try to use email as much as possible. People forget what was said, or remember things in different ways. The nice thing about email -- or any recorded communication -- is that you have a history of who said what, when.
Comment Re:Or they'll just implement censorship. (Score 1) 308
That is essentially what all ISPs want when they say they want to sell "fast lanes" on the internet. It's censorship. I'm just saying, give them what they want and then hold them criminally liable for anything illegal that gets through: pirated material, objectionable content, etc. No filter is perfect, and when the execs start landing in prison they'll change their tune soon enough.
Comment We can end this nonsense today. (Score 4, Interesting) 308
Seems to me that if ISPs want to selectively favor content, they should be held responsible for *any* content passing through their systems. Start throwing their execs in prison for distributing whatever illegal material passes through, and watch how fast they scramble to be classified as common carriers.
Comment Re:Your taxes at work (Score 5, Funny) 501
What happens if somebody decides to fill it with water?
One can only hope.
Comment Re:Could we be so lucky? (Score 1) 235
And here I thought he was just being punny.
Comment Re:Only if you can't get addresses (Score 4, Interesting) 574
For the hosting providers then fun really starts when you can't get a public IPv4 for your new webserver, that'll be fun. There's no NAT workaround for that, some european hosting providers are already feeling the crunch in their IPv4 blocks, you can only host so many servers. So what can you do? Jack up the prices ofcourse, isn't the free market wonderful!
This. This is why IPv4 will stick around for decades to come. There is too much profit potential in it, and IPv6 costs too much money to implement.
Submission + - Popular nerd news website attempts to destroy its user base, and itself (slashdot.org)
Traf-O-Data-Hater writes: Popular nerd news site http://slashdot.org/ wants to drive its community to other tech sites. News at 11.
Comment I've seen this one before (Score 5, Funny) 463
This seems to be the standard way to make inconvenient records disappear.
http://youtu.be/hZEvA8BCoBw
Comment Re:Using encryption is the better option (Score 1) 128
This is why I have little use for cloud storage. Encryption is best thought of as a delay mechanism.
Comment Pearson (Score 4, Interesting) 663
Is this the same Pearson that designs and administers tests for IT and other professional certifications? If so, it would explain a lot. The ones I've taken seem to be designed not to test your skills in the subject matter, so much as to test your capacity to parse bad English and to solve trick questions. It's horrifying to think that we are subjecting first graders to this crap.
Comment Don't trust the cloud, period. (Score 4, Insightful) 217
If your data is worth encrypting, do you really want it in the cloud at all? The internet never forgets. Given the rapid advances in both raw compute power and cryptography, something that takes unimaginably long to brute force today, might be trivial to crack in just a few years.
Submission + - Brute force resistant storage?
C3ntaur writes: "Hey Cipherheads and Cryptogeeks,
I have decided to get serious about off site backups. Naturally, I don't want my data to be readable by prying eyes, so I'm encrypting it. I've done some research, and it's obvious that passwords suck. If my encrypted data is not physically in my possession — it could be in the cloud, at a friend's house, in a safe deposit box, or whatever — then all an attacker needs is enough time to crack it. Worse, the time during which an attack might be detected is only however long it takes to make a copy. After obtaining that copy they can spend all the time they need to crack it.
According to Wikipedia, "As of 2011, commercial products are available that claim the ability to test up to 2,800,000,000 passwords per second...Such a device can crack a 10 letter single-case password in one day." Passwords really suck.
OK, so I need to use a much stronger key to protect the encrypted data. This is not difficult, a few hundred randomly-generated characters is more than enough. But it's also more than I can commit to memory so I have to store THAT somewhere safe, too. Did I mention the application is an off site backup? The idea being, of course, that if the primary copy of my data is destroyed I have something I can recover from. So I need to store the key somewhere that's not likely to be involved in any event that takes out my primary data. Something that fits in my wallet, perhaps, so it's in my physical control. But wallets can be stolen, and if Evil Attacker is reading this he'll know just where to look for my key file.
So I believe (and apparently so do many others in the industry) that a good solution has two factors: something I have (the key file) combined with something I know (a... password). If I store my key file on something that's password protected then I have two-factor protection.
But passwords suck. What I really need is a key file storage device that can resist a brute force attack. I've heard of smart cards and USB devices that use built-in hardware encryption and will wipe their keys after some number of failed attempts. I imagine even they can be defeated in a sufficiently-equipped lab, but really, I'm not that important or interesting.
Are these devices all they're hyped up to be? What other solutions should I consider?"
I have decided to get serious about off site backups. Naturally, I don't want my data to be readable by prying eyes, so I'm encrypting it. I've done some research, and it's obvious that passwords suck. If my encrypted data is not physically in my possession — it could be in the cloud, at a friend's house, in a safe deposit box, or whatever — then all an attacker needs is enough time to crack it. Worse, the time during which an attack might be detected is only however long it takes to make a copy. After obtaining that copy they can spend all the time they need to crack it.
According to Wikipedia, "As of 2011, commercial products are available that claim the ability to test up to 2,800,000,000 passwords per second...Such a device can crack a 10 letter single-case password in one day." Passwords really suck.
OK, so I need to use a much stronger key to protect the encrypted data. This is not difficult, a few hundred randomly-generated characters is more than enough. But it's also more than I can commit to memory so I have to store THAT somewhere safe, too. Did I mention the application is an off site backup? The idea being, of course, that if the primary copy of my data is destroyed I have something I can recover from. So I need to store the key somewhere that's not likely to be involved in any event that takes out my primary data. Something that fits in my wallet, perhaps, so it's in my physical control. But wallets can be stolen, and if Evil Attacker is reading this he'll know just where to look for my key file.
So I believe (and apparently so do many others in the industry) that a good solution has two factors: something I have (the key file) combined with something I know (a... password). If I store my key file on something that's password protected then I have two-factor protection.
But passwords suck. What I really need is a key file storage device that can resist a brute force attack. I've heard of smart cards and USB devices that use built-in hardware encryption and will wipe their keys after some number of failed attempts. I imagine even they can be defeated in a sufficiently-equipped lab, but really, I'm not that important or interesting.
Are these devices all they're hyped up to be? What other solutions should I consider?"
Submission + - Google wants to be a wireless carrier (bgr.com)
zacharye writes: Google has already conquered the software side of smartphones and now the technology giant is reportedly in talks to take over the air waves. A report on Thursday claims that Google has held talks with satellite television provider Dish Network regarding the possibility of a venture that would see Google launch its own cellular network and compete directly with the likes of Verizon and AT&T...
Comment Re:But ... (Score 2) 846
...you should no longer have to pay school taxes since you never used the government school.
Wrong. Society as a whole benefits from public education. Children who grow up and have no marketable skills will become a drain on society. Worse, they won't have the understanding to make intelligent choices at the ballot box. If you want a democracy, you want good public education.
