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.

You're right. You're definitely on to something there. And while we're making sure that a professional real estate photographer with his reputation on the line is not to be trusted with a three and a half pound quadcopter, we should be even MORE restrictive of the OTHER dangerous stuff that's moving around our homes and communities. Like, pre-occupied 19 year olds driving cars. Like large dogs on cheap leashes. Like idiots on mountain bikes hopping curbs and cutting through read lights. Definitely start with the Evil Drones, but please don't stop there! There are so many dangers! Oh, definitely don't forget steak knives and riding lawnmowers.

Never mind the tiny number of people shooting a few real estate stills from treetop level. How do you know that the many, many thousands of people who are flying around for fun are being safe? But the FAA (so far) is honoring congress's mandate that hobbyists be left alone, even though they just said that hobbyists flying FPV style are no longer allowed. Regardless, the hobby drone market has hundreds of thousands of customers. There might be a few hundred people shooting real estate. Can you explain why you think it's a good thing to hurt them, but not to care about all sorts of reckless hobby newbies (just search on YouTube)? Please be specific.

How do you know that your neighor, who just had a ready-to-fly quad dropped off by UPS and who's in the air 30 minutes later, is safe? Really. How do you know? And why do you think that people who are doing it professionally, with their businesses and reputations on the line, are more dangerous than a 12 year old kid next door who's on his third quad having crashed the first two in spectacular fashion? How do you know? Please be specific. Because the FAA thinkks the 12 year old kid is fine, but the person who takes great care to avoid endangering their real estate business liability coverage while shooting the occasional photo should be stopped. An odd thing for you to support.

If by that you mean that clearly written words in the English language have no actual meaning, then sure, I guess. If you mean that the Constitution, and the countless supporting documents and correspondence written to, between and about its authors and the large groups of representatives that agreed on its purpose and amendments to it were just setting us with something that had no actual meaning, then sure. But that's BS, and you know it.

The Constitution makes no such distinctions between one tool and the next. But of course the people who wrote it were very clear that there were some tools that some people would - given a period of power in the congress - try to deny to the public, and so they added amendment that explicitly reminded the government that it cannot act in those areas. The Constitution is built around the concept that the government's powers over what you may or may not do it inherently limited to the things that are enumerated therein, and generally prohibited otherwise, with the states having all such other authority. This isn't a matter of "perspective," and it isn't true for certain tools, and false for other tools. If you think that "drones" (but not, say, chain saws) should be singled out for capricious bans by the federal government despite laws recently passed by the congress explicitly to the contrary, then you're completely missing the point.

Semantic games like that show how completely unserious you are.

A matter decided upon, legislatively. at the municipal, county, and (rarely) state level. Not by capricious extra-legal, counter-constitutional fiat from a political appointee of the White House, as in the case at hand.

Because the FAA, by federal statute (passed by congress, which is made up of representatives of all of the states), is granted that regulatory authority. There is legal precedence for their authority over everything that flies in the air, right down to an inch above the ground. Which doesn't mean that their position on this stuff isn't incredibly absurd. But it's their turf.

Why should the FAA, which is part of the Obama administration, feel any urge whatsoever to enforce or obey laws passed by congress? We have ample precedent of him using the pen and phone about which he so regularly boasts to simply do what he wants anyway, even in direct contradiction of plain language in the laws he swore to uphold. Any expectation that the chief executive of the administration will be asking his immediate (appointed, by him) subordinate (the Secretary of Transportation) to instruct HIS subordinate (Huerta, the director of the FAA) to actually comply with the law, is laughable. The administration takes laws (like their own favorite, the ACA), and completely ignores hard-wired dates and other requirements as it suits them for political leverage with the portion of the voters to whom they pander. Happily, that particular instance is about to be challenged in a civil suit coming out of congress - that's very good news.

We just need another suit, along the same lines, requiring the administration's law breaking at the agency level in the FAA to be discussed in the bright sunshine of court. Something you'd think that the "most transparent administration in history" would applaud, right? Yeah.

You have your entire concept of liberty, and of the constitution, exactly backwards.

Should every new concept, innovation, invention, tool, technique, strategy, and technology be prohibited by default? What the hell is wrong with you? If I come up with a clever new way of slicing deli meat, should I be prohibited from using it or showing someone else how to use it until I've sufficiently begged an un-elected, un-accountable agency bureaucrat to allow me to use it?

And in the case at hand, picture two people standing right next to each other. Each has their hands on the controls of a 4-pound plastic quadcopter carrying a GoPro. Each takes off, sends the little machine up to 45 feet above the same house. Each of them use the device to record the condition of the houses's gutters, sparing somebody a couple hours of putting up a dangerous extension ladder a dozen times. Each of them get the job done in minutes, and land their little quad back down in the driveway right next to each other. You think that one of those two people should be banned from what the both just did, but the other should not. Why? Be very specific.

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.

Stumble/dollar is one of the best descriptions I've ever heard to rate drugs, just FYI. ;)