Not quite - modern magnetic drives still have tracks wider than the read-write head so that atomic-level alignment isn't necessary. There may be far less "overwrite" than there once was, but if a newly recorded track is not *perfectly* aligned with the last recording then there may well be several percent of the previously recorded track that remains unaltered (consider the worst case scenario case that the previous recording in this track was written at the smallest radius allowed by actuator tolerances, while this pass is at the maximum radius allowed). Now, recovering that data will probably require removing the platters and analyzing them with much higher resolution read heads, but it can be done.

I was more addressing the problems with flash though - in order to disguise degradation modern flash drives typically include more capacity than is addressable by the host system. Fill it to the brim so there are zero bytes free, and there's still several percent of the total drive capacity that is sitting unused in the reserve pool. The only way to overwrite that (barring a OS-accessible "secure wipe" command implemented on the drive) is to generate sufficient churn that the internal wear leveling algorithms cycle through every byte of the reserve capacity at least once. And since you probably don't know the exact algorithm used or wear levels of the drive to begin with, more is better - after all you have to tease out the most heavily used page currently sitting in the reserve.

Who gave you the idea that we have to significantly reduce our standards of living to combat global warming? Only the CO2 production causes problems, and there's lots of alternative energy technologies on the cusp of being truly cost competitive - if not for the vast direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry it would already be crumbling under the onslaught of cheaper alternatives.

Indeed. And how much more successful do you suppose their lobbyists will be in facilitating such rate increases if they have a good reputation to bank on? The worse their reputation the more people will protest against rate increases, thus increasing the political capital politicians will have to spend to pass them, which in turn will increase the size of the campaign contributions necessary to get them passed.

At some point it becomes more cost effective to run PR campaigns in hopes of increasing approval ratings and thus lowering the size of the necessary campaign contributions.

>Furthermore, the wear-leveling strategies used in flash mass storage devices negates any attempt to securely wipe them short of physical destruction.

Well, it confounds it at any rate. But completely filling the device's memory 33 times in a row is pretty likely to overwrite everything at least once or twice - even the hidden "failure reserve" space if it's included in the wear leveling (and if it's not, then it doesn't yet hold any sensitive data, so there's no problem). Guttmann's values may be irrelevant to today's storage media, but that many repeated rewrites of anything still mostly does the job.

I don't know that I'd trust it to wipe vital military secrets, but it should do a good enough job for most anything in the civilian realm.

>Why? Shareholder value?
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It seems simple enough to me: increased customer satisfaction (aka reputation in a captive market) means you can inflate your prices and/or reduce the quality of service with less backlash.

I can't think of any other reason a monopoly would care about it's reputation.

Electricity providers though, there I could see some motive. They are beginning to lose their monopoly with solar becoming a viable and cost-effective alternative in most places. If you can pay for ten years worth of electricity up front you can get the next 10-20 years after that free.

Clearly Tesla is guilty of producing an excessively dangerous armored land-missile and the industry should be regulated to mandate less indestructible vehicles ;-D

I would have thought the point is that, unrestrained, you would find yourself traveling at 200mph into a footwell that is suddenly no longer doing so. And, unlike the safety harness, the footwell isn't designed to decelerate you gently.

Ah, but time being circular we can treat the outcome we know will happen as having already happened, and thus conclude that it is not safe for me to enter the Tesla.

You're assuming the reasoning wasn't "We know you banned this with us in mind - so here's the bribes you were counting on us paying so we can do it anyway"

That's the rule that says the people with money and power get to write the laws, right? /sarc

Hey, we already send our children off to die to corporate interests in the Middle East, why not space? Hell, aside from the possible exception of WWI/II has this nation *ever* fought a war that wasn't well-aligned with powerful business interests?

Ah, but is it the man or the deserving that the past tense is referring to? Perhaps he deserved a good retirement 20 years ago,but has since become a world-champion puppy-kicker and is no longer deserving of it?

And no, I don't actually know enough about the guy to make any such assertion.

I suspect the prank take down obstruction was intentional, surely the publishers lobbying for the law realized it could otherwise be easily used against them. As for good faith, I think that comes down to interpretation. It should only take one reasonable judge smacking down a "good faith belief" in the infringement of a clearly non-infringing work to establish new precedent - say one of the many cases where a similar title was the only common element. Of course IANAL, so perhaps "good faith" clearly allows for inflicting hours or months of legal difficulties on someone without doing even 2 minutes of common-sense confirmation first, but there seems to be considerably overlap between the concepts of "good faith" and due diligence"

Actually, IIRC the DMCA *does* have penalties for false take-down notices, they're just never enforced. Make enough of a nuisance of yourself to the big players though and I imagine they'll make sure that changes.

Next time maybe we can try something that involves actual communism rather than just a communist banner carried by authoritarian thugs. Hint: if members of the government are living substantially better than the poorest members of society, it's not actually communism.