What ever happened to your "don't be evil" mantra? Obviously you're dealing with a historically evil company, but don't stoop to their level.

No. Ever since that disaster (2 years ago?), prices decreased but they never returned to normal. It just seems like manufacturers never let the prices return to their normal rates after being forced to hike them up due to the floods. It's almost like they were given a second chance at re-pricing their goods after knowing what consumers were willing to pay.

As fatalexe said:

I recently used a USB drive as a boot-only type device to pull up the install screen, then installed all of the ports and packages over my network.

We can only hope. Recently HDD manufacturers seem to be coming up with any excuse possible to increase the price per unit and I could see them increasing the price just to lessen the blow of decreased sales.

That couldn't possibly be the reason!

Maybe Windows shouldn't have so many errors (even after a clean install).

XvT remake? yes please!

I don't know about you but I'd be shooting that thing with my PP7.... silenced.

You don't need a bachelor's degree to come up with any of this shit.

You are incorrect. FIPS validated products cannot use the password for key generation. Instead, they must use a random number generator to create the AES key (eg 256-bit key). They password is used to gain access to the key. So a short password can be used, yet you still get 256 bit encryption. As long as brute force password protection counter is also implemented in hardware and cannot be rolled back, you do not need very long passwords (eg. set a 3 try limit). Also, you should encrypt the random AES key with a SHA-256 hash of the password, so that the key isn't stored in the clear anywhere.

IronKey D200 and S200 models are validated to the much more demanding FIPS 140-2 Level 3. The products that are the subject of this hack are validated to Level 2. They are all in fact manufactured by SanDisk. Previous authors are correct, their architecture has serious design flaws. They are relying on the host PC to do password verification, and essentially using a static code to tell the device to unlock. Basically it's a back door to all of those affected SanDisk, Kingston and Verbatim devices. I will be posting an FAQ later today on the https://www.ironkey.com/ website describing the flaws and how IronKey's architecture does not have these issues. IronKey validates all passwords in hardware. We have password replay prevention and encrypted USB command channels. We also use a hash of the password to decrypt the data AES key, so it's cryptographically impossible to unlock an IronKey without the password. Finally, IronKeys store encryption keys and brute force counters in a hardened CryptoChip. The SanDisk, Kingston and Verbatim products store them in Flash memory, which isn't even part of their FIPS 140-2 security policy. Dave

That's the most depressing thing I've read on /. and I've read a lot of depressing things on /. and now that I think about it, that is somewhat depressing as well.

We used these in middle school gym class and that was 11 years ago. No big deal at all.

FYI, we still play it and hold regular events.

SWBFII is the closest recent game with space combat but it isn't a "space sim" like XvT or XWA. Myself and many other people have been trying to get LAG to publish a new "space sim" for a few years but apparently most people don't want to play games that involve joysticks these days.