Anonymous Drunkard - Slashdot User

Comment Wiping the Hard Drive After Litigation (Score 5, Insightful) 470

by Anonymous Drunkard on Thursday May 07, 2009 @01:55PM (#27863549) Attached to: Court Sets Rules For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection

(c) any evidence that the hard-drive has been 'wiped' or erased since the initiation of the litigation.

Just curious: Let's say someone wanted to do just that - wipe or erase the hard drive since the initiation of the litigation.

Theoretically, couldn't a person just set the BIOS clock to a date and time prior to the legislation, do multiple shreds and formats on the HDD, reinstall the OS with the BIOS clock still 'in the past', and have it seem as though nothing changed since the initiation of the litigation?

It would seem to me that if the BIOS clock was set to a prior point, that everything else on the HDD would follow. The BIOS clock has no intuitive knowledge of time, it only knows what it's told.

All theoretical, of course. No one would actually do such a thing, of course...

Submission + - Court Sets Rules for RIAA Hard Drive Inspection (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @07:34PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In a Boston RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Court has issued a detailed protective order establishing strict protocols for the RIAA's requested inspection of the defendant's hard drive, in order to protect the defendant's privacy. The order (PDF) provides that the hard drive will be turned over to a computer forensics expert of the RIAA's choosing, for mirror imaging, but that only the forensics expert — and not the the plaintiffs or their attorneys — will be able to examine the mirror image. The forensics expert will then issue a report which will describe (a) any music files found on the drive, (b) any file-sharing information associated with each file, and any other records of file-sharing activity, and (c) any evidence that the hard-drive has been 'wiped' or erased since the initiation of the litigation. The expert will be precluded from examining 'any non-relevant files or data, including ...emails, word-processing documents, PDF documents, spreadsheet documents, image files, video files, or stored web-pages.'"

Comment Re:Sad sign on the status of comedy (Score 1) 132

by Anonymous Drunkard on Sunday January 25, 2009 @04:36PM (#26600743) Attached to: What, Me Worry? MAD Magazine Going Quarterly

For years, Mad Magazine was one of the last holdouts to not run ads, but now they do.

This is a popular conception, but not true. The MAD comic book took real advertising, as did MAD Magazine until the Spring of 1957. Because MAD also parodied ads, these were always marked with the words "REAL ADVERTISEMENT". If you have access to the CD or DVD "complete back issues of MAD" package, you'll see them.

I honestly don't remember whether the advertising was discontinued because it wasn't profitable enough, or because Bill Gaines felt it might be a conflict of interest considering he was spoofing ads in MAD, but advertising did not return until after Gaines passed away and MAD was brought firmly under the DC corporate umbrella.

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