One scenario that I worry about with cloud providers is exactly this. The provider goes bankrupt, sells all data to someone else, and they now have all the servers and can use the container information, free, clear, with nothing the clients of the former cloud provider able to do about it legally, barring copyright violations.

Both Borders and RS both show a lesson -- yes, there is a privacy policy with company "A", but when the servers get under the ownership of a new company, that policy is out the window, and the data can be used for anything that the new owners desire. Multi-TB torrent? Perfectly legal.

If a cloud provider changes hands, I can see a new company digging through data just to extort people. Say they find a sex toy maker's customer list on a server. They can then send out a note that all customers of this maker will have their named published unless they "buy into" a privacy policy (removing the name from the list) for the low price of $99.99. Since the new company 100% owns the data, free and clear, this is perfectly legal.

http://goo.gl/z8ti3D

From a root command line, you can do:

vdc cryptfs changepw newpass

(where newpass is your new password for the dm-crypt volume... which is your /data partition.)

There is also apps that do this as well, but you need root.

Of course, when you change your screen lock PIN, it will change the boot password, but that is a given.

Those are some good suggestions. I might add a few myself:

1: If your device is rooted, you can separate the password that unlocks the /data partition from the PIN that unlocks the screen. This way, you have 4-5 digits that are quickly typed in... but if a thief decides to reboot the phone or power it off, they are facing the 20-30+ character passphrase... and most newer Android ROMs only allow 30 guesses before they do an erase.

2: Enable encryption of the /data partition. This is worth mentioning.

3: There is an app that will detect if the power button is pressed six times quickly, and send out a duress code. Forgot the name, but might be worth having.

4: Some ROMs will do some form of encryption on the SD card. If not, you can get an EncFS app, or BoxCryptor (which is a commercial/subscription version that uses EncFS as its base.)

5: Consider a backup program like Titanium Backup which uses a very reliable encryption mechanism (it uses a passphrase for a private key, and uses a public key for backups), and can save the encrypted backups to a cloud provider.

6: Consider a utility that requires a PIN to access some apps. For example, the app for a terminal and other rooted apps on my Android phone is PIN protected, FB and other apps are under another PIN, etc... so if a bad guy gets the phone while its unlocked, they might have access to the Web browser, but not the other parts. If they reboot the phone, they are faced with a very long /data encryption password as stated in #1.

That's not the point.

Terrorism isn't about making the statement "We can hurt easy targets". It's about the statement "we can hurt any target."

The World Trade Center was a giant building. With control of a plane, it would have been easy to hit. The terrorist aspect is that the hijackers interrupted a regular normal daily routine to commit their chosen atrocity. Now, it's doxing. ISIS is claiming that they have supporters in the US who are willing to kill anyone with a name and an address.

Sure, they've picked a few soldiers now, but the subtext is that their targets could be anyone. A few articles later on the front page, there's discussion of video gamers calling in SWAT raids. 4Chan makes a point of identifying anyone for any reason for the fun of it. Anyone paying enough attention to understand what ISIS is threatening today knows that they could end up a target next week, and it's probably too late to scrub their records from public systems. There is no defense against the doxing, and if ISIS really does have a hidden network of bogeymen in the United States, there's nowhere to hide.

That's the real message ISIS is saying here: You could be next if you piss us off. Bow in fear, praise our particular flavor of deity, surrender all of your free will to our self-interested leader, and so on and so forth.

Your "gut feeling" is also often wrong, but you don't notice because of your confirmation bias.

The paranoia's adorable, but here in the real world, everything I do is a balance between risk and reward.

Sure, our data could be sold off, but that's what contract lawyers are for, just like any other business deal. Sure, I risk a malevolent company holding my data hostage, but even at increased prices, it's still cheaper than handling the data myself. Sure, I could be using the same rack a terrorist uses, but he could also be renting office space in the same building we use.

My company could, of course, buy its own building, own its own servers, manage all of its own data, and run all of its own processing... and then promptly go bankrupt, because the cost to do that is too high for the extremely limited benefit.

Well, yes...

The problem is that we don't know what the problems will be. Today, Network neutrality is the hot-button issue the FCC is finally forced to deal with, but tomorrow, who knows? Maybe we'll have to have regulations on compliance (or not) with encryption-busting wiretaps, DNS hijacking, advertisement injection, or something completely different.It's taken long enough for the FCC to move on this that we've already had a few cases of effective extortion by an ISP, and maybe those issues will be even more problematic.

The solution, then, is to bring the FCC in as an advocate for the American citizen, since that's pretty much the government's primary job. This establishes a process where the FCC can say "You're not breaking rules now, but you're getting really close" and give the ISPs a chance to avoid sinking investment capital into systems that will be outlawed as soon as people notice. Cooperating with regulators, especially by asking permission rather than forgiveness, is also a great way to reduce future penalties if the FCC's policies do turn against them.

If the ISPs' new business models don't piss off the FCC, then they don't have to worry about new regulation in the short term. Only ISPs with predatory business models to hide should be worried.

Not quite the same ring to it...

The upside is that my problems are now someone else's problems.

I no longer need to manage my long-term backups for my team's projects. They go off to a cloud provider, and if we really need something, we can get it back, and I don't have to worry about keeping tapes or disks around, and I don't have to be the one going through the library to find some old media. Data is encrypted prior to archival, so privacy isn't really a big deal.

I no longer have to worry about constant availability. If my local servers go down for a few minutes, maybe a user will notice. If they're down for an hour, I'll probably get an annoyed email, but I will get that email because our constant-availability services are hosted elsewhere.

Now, I do still have local servers to manage. I do still keep a decent number of nines, and I do still make my nightly backups, but I don't need to be managing every aspect of every problem. I can push that responsibility elsewhere, and make my workload more manageable without bringing on significantly more risk.

I have read about mandatory voting in other countries... what can happen is that in elections that people really don't care about, they wind up voting for Mickey Mouse, the FSM, or some other character just for kicks.

However, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and maybe it might be a wise idea to at least get people to the polls somehow, even if they just play Tetris with the checkboxes on the voting machines, just to get rid of voter apathy.

The hybrid didn't have that much towing capacity, I think it was 3500 to 5000 pounds.

The 1/2, 3/4, and 1 ton truck designations tend to be there for name only, and to deal with some municipal codes (where a 3/4 ton and heavier is a "commercial vehicle", and a 1/2 ton can be a POV.)

However, with most of the truck lines, the 1/2 ton is a different model, and the 3/4 and 1 ton are very similar. For example, the difference between a F-250 and a F-350 from Ford is a leaf spring in the rear and a different GVWR/GCVWR.

The reason for the separation is that 1/2 ton trucks are popular sellers in the US, so for automakers to keep up with CAFE standards, they are made to save weight and MPG, as well as make an attempt at general hauling/pulling.

3/4 and one ton pickups get less MPG... but because they are generally built for commercial/farm use, they tend to be better at constant towing, carrying loads, or both. For example, if one wants to have a truck camper, there are almost zero models (other than tent-tops) available for half-ton models, while a 3/4 to one ton has a fairly wide range of choices, from a basic model to one with three sides, movie chair seating, and a dry bath.

I think part of it is a Robin Hood type of mystique. Someone anonymous having something that bypasses the establishment, similar to being able to sneak on the King's grounds and hunt deer without being drawn and quartered as a poacher... but Robin Hood is most often a myth, and most often, it could be someone like O'Brian from "1984" looking to see who dissents... or a mercenary who would then turn right around and hand the people with the deer to the Sheriff for a reward.

BitCoin does have its place. Right now, it is still in its "cool" stage so it gets used for everything... similar to how radioactive substances were put in bath water and soaps until people realized they got cancer and other unpleasant things by doing so.

GM has tried a decent hybrid system on their 1500 Silverados.

Where a hybrid system would be very usable, would be on the heavier duty pickups like the 3/4 and one ton models:

First, electric motors provide their best torque at near 0 RPM, which is quite useful.

Second, on a rural jobsite, if a PSW inverter is available, this would allow the truck to completely replace a generator in the field. Just plug the welder, saw, or other tools into that and use the onboard battery for that, perhaps running the IC engine to keep everything topped off.

Third, for farms, it might be economical to have the trucks charge and run on batteries, as it saves on fuel.

My question: Would we see this technology being used on the heavier duty series of pickups?

I've found 8.1 not that bad. BitLocker can be used to protect the startup drive without a TPM needed, chkdsk can be run on a drive without needing to be dismounted, Storage Spaces, ReFS, and deduplication are quite nice features. Even running BitLocker on drives without needing a key protector is useful, since a format command zeroes out the master volume keys, making data virtually impossible to retrieve. Plus, Hyper-V is a decent hypervisor (tier 1 hypervisors are relatively rare... especially ones which let you use the computer's main console for daily work.)

Only complaint I have is that 8.1 needs the same backup utility that Windows Server 2012R2 has. Technically both are wbadmin utilities, but the server version is extremely useful.

The ironic thing is that MS has nothing to lose. If they get pirates paying yuan for licenses, MS has a net gain.

MS will always make their numbers. If they fail in every other venture, they just do a price hike for their enterprise software, and they have more than made up for the losses. Most big businesses have made the move in the past five years from SPARC/POWER/PA-RISC equipment to commodity x86 machines, then from hardware to virtualization and VM farms... so it is highly unlikely there would be a move away from MS even if they double their prices for all customers.

A friend of mine tried that idea with another service. When he got nailed while on vacation, instead of the bank saying, "sorry, no funds" and stopping transactions, the bank still allowed it and added a hefty NSF charge onto each transaction. Even more of a kicker was the fact that he was out on vacation and didn't realize the negative quad-digit balance until he got back... and by that time, he got stuck in Chex Systems's database, which means you are pretty much fscked credit-wise (or even trying to get a savings account) for seven years.