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Video When Your Data Absolutely, Positively has to be Destroyed (Video) 295

Here's a corporate motto for you: "Destroying data since 1959." Timothy ran into a company called Garner Products (which doesn't use that motto as far as we know), at a security conference. While most exhibitors were busily preserving or encrypting data one way or another, Garner was not only destroying data but delighting in it. And yes, they've really been doing this since 1959; they started out degaussing broadcast cartridges so broadcasters could re-use them without worrying about old cue tones creeping into new recordings. Now, you might ask, "Instead of spending $9,000 or more to render hard drives useless, couldn't you just use a $24 sledge hammer? And have the fun of destroying something physical as a free bonus?" Yes, you could. You'd get healthy exercise as well, and if you only wanted to destroy the data on the hard drives, so what? New drives are cheap these days. But some government agencies and financial institutions require degaussing before the physical destruction (and Garner has machines that do physical destruction, too -- which is how they deal with SSDs). Garner Products President Ron Stofan says in the interview that their destruction process is more certain than shooting a hard drive with a .45. But neither he nor Tim demonstrated a shooting vs. degaussing test for us, so we remain skeptical.

Comment Why not both! (Score 1) 380

VPS is great for hosting websites, off site backup, etc.

Home server is great as a NAS, keeping all your movies, music in a central place. Fast large backups - eg save that entire video project.

So maybe the answer is to have a home server which backs stuff up. Then at a slower rate it can back stuff up on the VPS.
(Doesn't the pogoplug work something like this.)

Comment Re:more challenging...practicality. (Score 2) 44

I dislike gesture UIs. Not just because they are new. The main reason is that if you are a newbie there are no hints about what to do. With shortcut keys you could always use the menus instead if you don't know the keystrokes. But Windows, Blackberry, Android, iPhone, all have different gestures its easy to get lost if you use more than one platform.

Comment Re:Else ifs - yuck (Score 1) 399

Probably for a small number of tests else-if is faster (and easier). But when the number of tests is larger I would think switch() would be faster.
(switches us a jump table.) I agree timing is the only way to tell. If you are checking all possible values of a enum using a switch is pretty.

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