- Data Recovery - probably the most extreme case of data recovery has been demonstrated this week when NASA managed to recover 99% of the data from a shuttle Columbia hard disk that fell to Earth in 2003. The entire contents of the tests on the HD were recovered. It's a Seagate drive, if you care to know, and the details, as well as some gory HD images can be found here.
- Would you like some Mesh with that? - while Mesh, the new Microsoft initiative to consolidate data got its share of headlines (read this and this for a good summary of the technology), and got me to join the beta, Joel's take on the technology, it's predecessors and it's inventors (or should I say "re-inventors"?) put it all in focus for me.
Apparently, the same idea makes the same rounds every 3-4 years. Recommended reading for anyone who'll ever manage a software project, with genius developers. - Ubuntu 8 is out - as you could probably tell by the banner on the right, unless you read my posts on an RSS reader. Looks Ok so far - nothing to write home about. Except for a new feature called Wubi, that allows you to test and play with Ubuntu from within Windows. That's right, no need to install, use a VM or even reboot. Play with it and see if you like it, or as they say "try before you get it for free".
- Sad day for democracy - the Us appeals court, in a 3-0 decision, allows border control agents to search laptops' contents without cause or warrant. Yep, it appears that providing democracy is a zero-sum game: to "provide" it abroad, Americans have to give it up at home. What it means is that if you have any private, corporate, or sensitive data on your laptop - get it off there before entering the US, unless your fine with sharing your girlfriends pics with the nice guys at border control. Read more here.
- News Corp hires a hacker to sabotage its competitor, DISH networks - in a very strange development during the trial, a hacker admitted he was hired by NC to develop a device that will crack DISH's algorithms, and flood the market with it. The effort to close the gap was supposed to have cost DISH close to $1 billion. Is this the future of corporate war, or the present? Read more here
- Online fraud reached 20% a year - according to the FBI, 1 in 5 transactions occuring over the web is fraudulent. Scary. Read more here.
“Whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.” - Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (inventor of the microscope) |
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Technological Digest XIII
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5:56 PM
After a long delay, here's the digest. Bear in mind, some items may be a bit stale - I just keep collecting them.
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Several years ago I attended a technical conference where a District Attorney in California pointed out that the US government (in line with other nation state governments) reserved the right to inspect without warrant at a port of entry, and that furthermore a computer with access to the internet could be considered a "port of entry". Thus, all internet connected computers could be searched without warrant by the US government. The DA said that the DAs were trying to bring a case to court involving child pornography downloaded from the internet, so they could establish a precedent for searching internet connected computers, but every time someone was caught with this contraband downloaded from the internet, they pleaded guilty. Searching a computer physically brought to a port of entry is not that much of an extension of traditional nation state rights, compared to what the DAs were looking to do.
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