The oldest known written texts are quite sophisticated and describe great cities and long ocean voyages, possibly based on events 14,000 years ago.
This great new discovery is younger than that. Is it really so surprising that lunar calenders existed in 10000BC, even in 'barbaric' places? We know that even the barbarians traveled quite widely and were exposed to other cultures.
Something else Invented In Scotland, then?
And the other world powers that have multicultural prime ministers and presidents are
The major cause of war/unrest in the world isn't skin color, it's religion. I'd be more interested in seeing an openly Atheist president than a black one but I'm not holding my breath on that happening in the USA anytime soon.
Mod parent up.
How the leader of one of the most warmongering nations on Earth got awarded a Nobel Peace Prize is beyond me.
This works pretty simply - when the phone hears the keyword it wakes up and starts listening for a query.
What if anybody says "NSA" or "Taliban" near it?
But as pointed out this is unnecessary and those PCs/disks could benefit a lot of needy people. Securely re-imaging a hard disk isn't difficult.
... for sensitive data, more passes is standard.
Somebody needs to question that standard. There's no credible evidence that data can be recovered after writing a single pass of random data.
Even if there was any evidence (and let's be clear, there isn't...), if anybody wants to spend that much money trying to recover data from machines bought randomly on eBay they should be encouraged to do so. The sooner they go bankrupt, the better.
Sigh.
OK, let's agree it more than 10 minutes.
Now can you address the actual point, which was: "It's not difficult to wipe hard drives in a time frame which is consistent with upgrading a room full of PCs."
Ok, let's agree it more than 10 minutes. Now can you address the actual point...?
(I should have known better than to put an actual number on slashdot...)
... mostly depending on the exact terms of the contract.
You know how I know you didn't read the article?
Formatting works perfectly well for data destruction.
(cue line of geeks with theories about why it isn't despite the fact that they can't come up with a single example of data recovery after formatting...)
How hard can it be for a government to make a CD stick which you insert in a PC which boots up and wipes the hard drive?
They could insert one in every PC before they remove it from the person's desk. It would take about ten minutes. If they're doing a roomful of PCs (as they mostly do) then by the time you got around to putting the CD in the last machine, the first one would be finished.
Because there was no actual "contract" requiring him to destroy them.
That's the real problem in this case - no contract. It's all all in TFA (if you can be bothered with such trivia).
If you read TFA you'll see there's no contract. The word "contractor" implies it but really they were just handed to a guy who crossed his heart and promised to do it before putting them on eBay.
OTOH, you're right that the NHS shouldn't be fined. The person who handed over the computers (presumably to a friend of his) needs jailing.
They shouldn't be fining themselves, they should be jailing the person responsible for handing them to the "unnamed contractor" (who was probably a friend).
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.
