Encryption is ALWAYS breakable by brute force. Question is how long does it take? Seconds? Hours? Months? Years? Decades? This is usually determined by key sizes. The longer the key, the longer it takes to brute force. (generally)

I suppose if you don't want to feed his ego... But if you just don't want to fatten Oracle's wallet, MySQL is good in the GPL form...

So, riddle me this batman... If you store the key on the device and read it automatically on boot, how's that protect you? Or are you saying that it's on an external device so I now have to keep the "key" around to boot my phone? One offers zero protection, the other consumers will hate.

See this is what usually happens...The consumer doesn't want two devices to manage, they want one. We implement strong encryption using long keys, then we store these keys someplace "on the device" and protect them with a 4 digit pin. Consumers demand it. So we've really reduced the protection level of all that nifty encryption to that of a 4 digit encryption key.

Sort of like what happened to WEP.... It used good encryption (in fact we STILL use the same encryption for the most part) it just bungled the key management side of things to make it useable by consumers. (OK, they did some other stuff wrong too, but the problem was key management..)

So, I'm not saying that having a "boot key" device, simiar to an RSA token isn't a bad idea, I'm saying that most users won't stand for having something separate from their phone that they need to power it on, nor will they suffer though entering sufficiently long and complex passwords.

I thought this was about ON THE HANDSET encryption?

Which leads you to the key hiding problem.... Keys need to be plain text to be used, so they are in memory when you have a device that is encrypted. Which leads you to the problem of how to get a sufficiently complex key into the device on boot? Providing keys is where most crypto systems start to break down, and people do stupid stuff like reduce everything to a 4 digit pin or some such nonsense...

That's what MySQL is for...

Apparently not, just replaced with two of her minions. She's still going to be there doing "product development" or some such. My guess is the two minions will take the fall for Ellison's mistakes.

The best two programmers I know both didn't have college degrees at all... But that doesn't mean I would recommend those desiring such a career to forget the technical education a CS degree gives you. Both of the programmers I know expressed to me that they wish they had actually done the college degree because like it or not, not having the degree does put a considerable limitation on where you can work and thus can put limits on your earning power. Go to school, get the degree. Better yet, the masters or Phd...

And likely not well paid.

Seizure of property perhaps. Unjustified seizure of property, not so often. I've only heard of ONE case myself where the seizure was found to be unjustified.

So are you claiming that some people just let the property go when it wasn't a justified seizure? Can you produce examples? I'm sure there are organizations that would be happy to fund the legal bills to get their property back as what you suggest is a violation of the 5th amendment.

Oh I understand the issue just fine. But, they have to have a minimum level of proof to do the seizure and they also have to defend the action in court if/when the property owner objects. A judge will rip them a new one if they don't come up with justification and the property owner objects. There are checks and balances here.

Like I said to another poster. This unlawful seizure has only happened in a handful of cases over the last decade, and those where corrected by the courts, property returned and officers involved appropriately disciplined.

The original story reads like this happens every day. Sorry, that's not true. It doesn't happen once a week, or once a month even. For the vanishingly few cases where police forces are actively looking for things to seize, you lower your personal risk by not LOOKING like someone who's stuff they can get their hands on easily. Thus my advice to be careful of appearances.

Look, many TV programs have tried and failed to document this happening since the law was passed. 20/20 came about as close as anybody, but all they really caught on camera was a questionable traffic stop and a whole lot of people who where claiming to be innocent but had serious credibility issues. If the press cannot find and document this, it's NOT happening with any frequency that should be concerning.

If you choose to look like you might be doing something illegal, best figure on being more interesting to those who are charged with preventing crime. So it's up to you. If you want to be stopped and questioned more often, go ahead.

No., I'm saying that doesn't happen. It's only happened a handful of times, EVER, and the courts fixed it.

If it happens to you, hire a lawyer, get your stuff back.

Come on, don't fall for this stuff. It's not like we are a police state (yet).

Be reasonable, don't do things that make you look like you are hauling drugs (Including not actually doing it), and things will be OK. Where I get that a foreign national might have a bit more to worry about, especially one driving a car with foreign plates, but remember, all they can get from you is the car and what you are carrying, and that requires that they actually have some level of proof that illegal activity was going on.

Unless you are incredibility stupid, or actually doing something illegal, you have nothing to fear from 99.999% of law enforcement, and for that 0.001% of the time there is a risk, there isn't much you can do anyway. But you have the same things at home I'll bet.

Linux on the desktop this year!

We need the power they said, it will be fine they said, don't worry they said.

The citizens of Chernobyl