There are two aspects to data security. The first is can anybody else gain access to make a copy. The NSA probably has backdoor access to Dropbox, as anybody who can guess your username and password (just like an open ssh server). So having a strong unique password is important (just like for your email account). Anything really important (like my bitcoin wallet) is encrypted locally with a strong password before being mirrored to Dropbox, but otherwise I don't believe the NSA would be a threat to my personal safety even if they did know the contents of my filesystem.

Dropbox acts as a real-time offsite backup. The security here is that if I lose my laptop (and local backup disks), then worst case I can simply buy a new laptop, download all my personal documents from Dropbox and start working again on the same file I was working on just before my laptop disappeared, with minimal lost work assuming I am connected to the internet (a local backup will miss all work since the last backup). Its worth having an occasional local backup solution as well, such as an Apple Time Machine, as a backup for the backup.

Dropbox also guards against file corruption. Usually this takes the form of "opps, I didn't mean to delete/overwrite that file". These will usually occur to files I am actively working on and the previous desired version of the file may have been written only minutes/hours ago. This includes programming files that have got yet been committed to version control. A daily backup won't help here, but Dropbox will (I just need to login to the website and click undelete or previous version).

So in short, Dropbox is a very convenient real-time offsite backup that can protect against both catastrophic data loss and individual file corruption. It even doubles as a basic automatic version control system for your filesystem. The bet is that that I won't lose my laptop at the same time the Dropbox servers suffer catastrophic data loss as I can always reupload my data if Dropbox loses all its data. The security risk is that you are potentially exposing your data to Dropbox, the NSA and anybody who can successfully guess your username/password.

Dropbox also offers a paid for "Rat Pack" feature that offers a version control backup since the beginning of time (or when you added Rat Pack)

Bang!

Of all the times not to have mod_points!

“Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest.” Thus the
Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must
rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and
who are the ruled?"

-Muad'Dib's Secret Message to the Landsraad from "Arrakis Awakening" by the
Princess Irulan

But once you have gone to the trouble of deciding to support a new language/market, such as China, the production cost of making translations available on all your offerings is virtually nil. In the code settings it's most likely a set of a parameter settings within a unified codebase. The language pack option suggests that apart from a little install space, its not a difficult change.

The core logic here is economics and profit maximization. Software has a high up front build cost, then a virtually zero marginal cost to produce future units. Copyright is a government enforced monopoly. Piracy is the non-monopoly free-market price of software based on its marginal cost of production (ie free, or simply the the cost of CD media plus retail markup).

Profit = (Price - MarginalCostPerUnit) * Quantity - InitialCosts

Assuming no piracy, For each individual there is a maximum price they would be willing to pay for the product before they would choose not to buy it, or to switch to something else. A business running a standardized Windows setup would, if forced, likely pay a very high price for more copies of Windows as long as its less than the cost of switching their entire setup. A chinaman with access to torrents is likely only to be willing to pay a small fee to "go legit".

The laws of Supply and Demand in market economics means the quantity is heavily dependent upon price for a given market. A lower market price means more people will find the market price less than the price they would be willing to pay, overall it can increase profit, but it comes at the cost of making less money on all the previous units sold (this is known as poisoning previous sales).

In a perfectly price discriminating market, everybody would be haggled up to the maximum price they would individually be willing to pay. This is not possible. But the average American has a far high disposable income than the average Chinese. Thus you maximize profit by selling to the rich Americans at the price they are willing to pay, and to the chinese at the price they are willing to pay, and make it very hard for the chinese to see their copies to the Americans.

This could be solved by a "paypal" like anonymous bitcoin transfer/laundering service.

You make your payment to the transfer service, and they make payment to the hooker using a random selection of coins from their collective "pool". There could be a few obfuscating transfers in the middle of the process, and possibly an apparently "respectable name" as the payment beneficiary. The transfer service would charge a commission of course.

All the wife/government would be able to trace is that payment was made to a known anonymous bitcoin transfer service... which still leaves the question of what are you hiding?

Of course you could always create a special one time throwaway bitcoin wallet for suspicious purchases. Do It Yourself Virtualized Pimping.

This works until the problems being solved for course credit become so complex/hard/boring/time-consuming that the number of participants drops to 0 and you have to decrease the course cost to negative figures just to get a handful of people to offer to enroll and complete the course... the eLance and vWorker universities are rather popular in developing nations... the StackOverflow university runs a similar model but they manage to run it on a revenue neutral basis to both sides

The one line summary of this article is: Command-Shift-T (or Ctrl-Shift-T) = Reopen Closed Tab (in some browsers)

The public transport network is optimized for cost... whats the cheapest network we can run whilst still being useable and affordable to poor people without cars

The private bus networks have a different optimization goal... employee productivity... employees have 24 hours a day and their time is valuable... sleep, travel, work, fun, family... save them time and effort in the morning... and most importantly give them wifi on the bus (which you don't get on plublic transport)... suddenly you have an extra hour of employee productivity for the price of a bus ticket

First Flight

The NSA in its role as spy agency is to be professionally paranoid

They have been tasked with protecting "national interest" against all the possible "unknown" threats in the big wide scary world... lack of effort or money is not their primary limiting factor

When faced with "unknowns" their primary method of response is "more data"... oh and we can't let anybody know what we know as that would simply produce more "unknown" threats... ie if people know we are spying on them and how... they might take countermeasures to stop us being able to spy on them... this is their job in being professionally paranoid

So the whole PRISIM thing seems to be a well funded version of the internet archive... with backdoor access to "private" information... that they can either do retrospective queries on... plus data mining and other analytics on... the last thing a spy wants to tell is boss is: sorry I missed that bit of information

The core problem is that while the American "empire" seems stable and secure... there is no such thing as 100% safety and security... and as history has shown the butterfly effect can be very powerful... their idea is that with 100% of all available information, they should be able to identify at least 99% of all surprises... but you can never have 100% information and you can never eliminate 100% of surprises

In part this is due to the inherent promise and expectation of first world civilization... that we live in a totally safe, fair and secure environment where everything follows the rules and there are no unexpected risks or surprises... this comes back to the argument of freedom vs security... and it seems the majority prefer the illusion of security to the true reality of freedom

It doesn't stop the device being striped down and sold for parts... but it does stop the device being using a working iPhone. This won't curb all thefts, but if you have effectively reduced the stealing payoff from a $600 iPhone to a $100 bag of parts, this makes the risk/reward payoff of breaking the law less inciting... possibly turning instant gratification of instant cash into more hassle than its actually worth.

Also a working iPhone is relatively easy to sell on ebay for easy cash. But a disabled device means having to go to extra effort to either strip the device down yourself and do multiple small sales for individual pieces, which assumes you actually know what you are doing. Or selling it to a commercial chop shop, where the very fact that it is disabled would be a potentual flag that it was stolen, so the chop shop would have to be willing to turn a blind eye which might further lower the market value.

Had to do a double take on that one, my first reading was

"Device Snuffs Out Signs of Life After Disasters"

False Lead