Posts by jackofshadows
66 posts • joined Friday 21st August 2009 13:02 GMT
Re: Google a "friend of the court"?
The reason that Apple's patents keep getting invalidated is that there is rather a large group of people here in the US (as am I) proving that Apple didn't invent any of it. With the exception of a design patent (rectangle with rounded corners as some call it), it's all prior art. Hell, all tech patents are heading this way, even having contests around finding prior art or other reasons for invalidating them. And just for reference, the reason that Apple keeps pushing for the new damages phase to get underway, rather that wait for appeals from the badly done first trial, is that these patents are going down like ten-pins.
I've been around IT for forty-three years now and aside from IBM or Xerox PARC way back when, there ain't much that's novel. And certainly damn little in software unless you go back to Knuth & co.
+1 All
A very nice adjunct to the article by all. Thank you.
Re: "still really don’t know the value proposition of ultrabooks"
I can't identify a value proposition here either, and I include everyone save the cheap end of the Android market (Nexus 7/10/whatever). Too damned easy to break, not much performance, and cost way too much. A laptop is a far better deal and can survive better. I could set up a cottage industry in this town fixing tablets, if I could get the parts.
If I could justify the expense I'd drop $1K, or so, on real VDI and just use throwaway tablets. Just need the server video card; I have the rest. It'd be even cooler to have it for the home, but that's blue-sky country. For now.
Re: Win8/Office365 driving customers away fromMicrosoft.
>> There is a My Computer and Windows Explorer in Windows 8, you do not need to look for it as its on the desktop.
>No there isn't.
Factually incorrect as I'm staring at both on the left side without even straining an eyeball. I've been using Windows since 1.0 (blech!), DOS and other operating systems long before ranging unto punch-cards, magnetic & paper-tape, even 132 column printed paper on mainframes (1970). I'm pretty sure I'm one of the last id10ts on earth that can properly operate a card-sorting machine. Change has been around me since day one. Since Windows came into the world, Windows 8 is the very first version that I haven't been itching to hack the desktop, let alone the internals of the OS, to fix to something more reasonable. I can safely say that it's going to be almost a joy to teach a novice since there are fewer ways to nuke yourself accidentally which wreckage I have to clean up far too often.
Obviously, if you are stuck in a rut, and it seems to be that XP is supposedly the one great desktop, apparently, then a successor will arise (yea ole invocations of the Year of Desktop Linux, oh my!) and Microsoft will have to figure out what to do NeXT. As if Windows 8 doesn't already share a lot with Job's NeXT which is why I happen to like it ;-).
You can shoot the messenger with down-votes, you can reap in tons of up-votes, but a screen shot demonstrates that Computer and Explorer are still there on the left on a stock Windows 8 Metro desktop..
[Think of the Metro interface as a two-dimensional dock. Now to teach it how to do tear-off menus! That ribbon along the bottom would be superfluous with a stylus or mouse then!]
Me? I'm stick with Windows 8 and kicking the tires on Server 2012 which looks mighty fine as well.
s/A Former Amiga Evangelist, btw.
Re: Show me an efficient system...
You have that one correct. How the security happens is going to be a break-point IMNSHO. I've been running my own CA since Windows Server 2003 Enterprise (in a VM no less) as I did not want that outside my control. And lo and behold, one of the main vectors of attack these days is the certificate chain by both criminal and national actors. Now we want to (re-)centralize the control plane, which is just as stupid as not having a heterogeneous network, subject to that same kind of attack.
It's a nice idea, it's the implementation(s) that are going to be nasty.
Been there, done that, burned the t-shirt.
My problem with your post is that I do not consider either Java nor other computer related skills the core competency with respect to the problem domain of Big Data. Long before I started professionally in a dozen engineering disciplines including every one of those that are IT related, I already had a solid background in mathematics, logics (not quite the same thing), computer science as well as statistics and probability theory. I had been teaching at the university as well as professionally consulting. At that time, mainframes were it for computing and I was frankly bored by the whole thing. After a solid stint in engineering, now boring, I gravitated into econo-/sociometrics, statistical, numerical, and scientific computing, as well as experimental design. Across every department they had. So I had returned to the fold, or more properly, the fold had become interesting again.
I'd have to spend a depressingly long time to come up with a list of all the computer languages I've used over my life and I'm only 52. Languages mean less than nothing once you have one decent one well understood. Being able to identify which may be suitable to the problems at hand, useful. Understanding architectures is actually more important in my not so humble opinion. A thorough grounding in algorithms and data-structures right up there. Statistical techniques, especially those in related fields (financials, econometrics, modern physics, &c. ad nauseum) equally important. Basically, while you'll want subject matter experts around that have perfect depth in, you'll also need people that interface between, the three groups.
Big Data is an awfully relative term. A rather useful book I read back in the '80's was "Large Problems, Small machines." The techniques described in it are just as apt today as they were back then, and they really haven't changed. Somehow saying billions rather than tens of thousands which was huge back then, seems to cause a sort of deer-in-the-headlights mental lock. None of the predictive analytic models I've developed as an adjunct to my actual jobs in very diverse fields (every college of study save the arts), were small. The challenge was to take existing, or technologically within near reach, hardware and address a problem.
I do have one problem with the article. Sometimes actually identifying what is causal and what is simple (probablistically) correlation is either impossible or meaningless. My first mentor, at the tender age of 14, made sure that I well understood that a predictive model can be strongly correlated and be predictively successful, but the actual causal mechanism be poorly explained or completely unexplainable. Yes, you should keep an eye on the predictions but don't lose an awful lot of sleep about it so long as it remains successful.
If I should return to the university again, highly possible since I've been retired for a while now, I'd like to bring more rigor to the medical (yes, medical) and social sciences. There's an awful lot of theory out there that doesn't bear strict scrutiny. Theory is fine. As I learned in engineering: "The Real World is the Real World and it loves biting you in the ass."
Re: Prosecution would be proof of idiocy..
I'm pretty sure our router participated. It was decommissioned yesterday but, yes, it was admin/admin and I had no say in the matter. You can have the most knowledgeable security people in the world but it doesn't do jack if management (CEO) sets an idiotic policy.
OTOH, policy set by the new manufacturer created the password from hell, and aside from typos, I'm loving it.
Posted in Data scientists: Do they even exist?
Econometrician anyone?
Econometricians have been coping with huge data sets for decades, with steadily added new data types, with steadily greater sizes of "huge" as computing power has increased, and with all the attendant problems associated with data collection, data cleaning, interpretation (mapping to data types), statistical techniques, and especially validating and creating models. I started, many decades ago, in statistics and computer science, made a detour into multiple fields of engineering, and in the early Nineties ended up in econometrics, statistical and scientific computing, and experimental design. The people are already out there and I'm quite sure they would absolutely love being lavished with tons of money and perhaps some stock options when they turn in usable, real-world, results. The problem is that the job description is, as usual, asking for absolutely the wrong people. There are, as dbbloke, pointed out, more than a few people out there with the real-world data-analytic chops to do the job as well. Again, they are writing job requirements (mandatory job titles) that don't match the people with the skills. They SHOULD be writing job descriptions based upon skill-sets. This has always been a problem as a new business specialization comes along.
Long before I studied econometrics, I already had experience in applying "big data" analytic techniques in fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, logistics (supply chain), financials, and eventually even epidemiology with an eye to (successfully) developing predictive analytics around those problem areas. However, my job "titles" never, ever, included it. I started in the 1974 on mainframes and moved along, in government, as the technology progressed. Now if you bother to read my evaluations, especially Accomplishments, it's a different story. All totally unrelated to my stated job, field systems engineer, but something I amused myself with while waiting for a call to arms (literally in my case). So, CIO's need to pull their noses out of the marketers cracks (you know which ones I'm talking about), list specific job skill-sets required, without reference to marketing hype, and think about exactly what business requirments they want to Meet and Accomplish. [Caps intended, of course.] Sheez, ya'd think they'd larn this by now, but No!
Re: An avoidable tragedy
I totally agree to a mission to Mars even with a zero chance of coming back. I still loathe the "bean-counters" that make these kind of decisions. Ask any of the people in the program, especially the ex-military, to undertake an extremely risky rescue mission and they'd almost certainly say "Hell yes." That's what we do when a mate is in trouble. Always. Still, the mission is worth the cost and I'd cheerfully pay it as well.
I made a deal...
I made a deal, perhaps with a devil, but a devil I know: Google. I explicitly use a Chrome based browser tied to one of my Google accounts and use the same account on my tablet (a Nexus 7) in order to obtain the level of service that would be provided by a personal assistant. Knowingly. Now if I do have issues with Google knowing about some online activity then it's a a very simple matter to use my other browser, which is so thoroughly locked down and anonymised it's not even funny, to do whatever searches using another, safer, search site at the cost of the searches not being as "relevant" in the sense of "knowing" my past history. An explicit exchange of service levels here.
I'm fairly certain the people that have not been around IT anywhere near as long as I have (over four decades) aren't aware of all the issues about security and information privacy. Here, expecially, we all seem to be quite aware as, generally, the audiences of the other tech' sites I monitor. The best we can do is try to "educate" others. I should point out that having a shrill or evangelical presentation turns off our potential audience. I've seen that personally as well as in discussions on the gadget focused sites. So to borrow a line from elsewhere, "easy does it." That's if you want "converts." [That's the problem with my brethren in the Linux community as well, aside from the issue of cussing out, and yelling RTFM at, n00bs. There n00bs, why alienate them!] It's a tough job, somebody's got to do it.
End of lecture.
Posted in Google Drives into web hosting
AWS has a free tier
AWS has had a free tier for while now, even S3, so I don't know what virtue a GDrive free HTML hosting has over it.
Not a novel attack at all
I wonder what took someone so long. I came up with this method well over ten years ago (calling it packetstorm with all of the cited features), and while I DO have a military background (none in cyberwarfare fwtw), it's not like it's hard to conceive. So either the Iranians haven't got their game face on or it really was cyberactivist.
I also wonder about my national leadership here. Usually we finish (frequently win) one war before we start, or become the receiving end, of another. I guess the people in Washington, D. C., like a challenge. If they keep this up, I'm going to have to seriously think about gearing up a defensive here. Getting caught in a cross-fire situation is a bitch.
Re: Expensive... heres something to try instead.
I hadn't thought that far into it and that sounds extremely cost friendly in comparison. I will say that Nexenta community version of ZFS immediately popped up in my mind on pretty much commodity hardware. Has for quite a while and I seem to recall they've already been certified for VMWare and Xen.
Re: Not about censorship... well not THAT censorship
You also missed how my country targets communications infrastructure during wartime (which is anytime now given the Global War on Terror") and the weaponization of cyberspace. I'm ex-military and well aware of the issues so I can "understand" why we wouldn't like having those options removed from our options. Still, we won't have a leg to stand on when someone does it to US.
I was already against the ITU regulating the internet for pretty much one reason. The power to tax. Currently the UN has to somewhat behave itself as we (the US being their #1 source of cash) have a habit of bitch-slapping them whenever we feel like they are misbehaving (which is most of the time). Should they ever have an independent source of income, no one will be able to pull their leash short. The rest of it is window dressing.
I also get the feeling, nothing factual I can point to, that this was the sweetener that the telecoms lobby has been dangling in front of them. I would bet at least some, if not a lionshare, of the funds would come from taxing the traffic originating from say Google or Netfix, properties that the telcos haven't managed to say moo to get milked properly. [Despite the fact that they already pay for numerous fat pipes already.} Something of not only rent-seeking but combined with regulatory-capture as well for the economists in the audience.
The backroom players really need to get a better game on for ITU2013 coming to a venue near none.
R&D
One could also make the argument that at least some of Google's capital expenditures, those associated with Android or future Android products/services, should be reflected as an extension of Samsung's.
Re: @David Webb 11:27
What concerns me is that the logo for my consultancy, a pear with a leaf, could be conceptually be mistaken if they really wanted to push it. Gee, fruit with a leaf, sue! Sounds crazy, but I'm seeing crazier stuff out of Cupertino everyday now.
I don't know why Julian is complaining. If I were someone on whichever government's bad side, I would absolutely love for monitoring of and by places like Facebook, Google, etc., as the very noise level would give some measure of concealment. Furthermore, that's almost certainly a direct drain on the budget that might be spent more effectively elsewhere. So, in the interest of all the other terrorists and would-be gadflies of the world, please just shut up!
Posted in Adobe's revenge on Steve Jobs: HTML5
Re: "Adobe for its proprietary approach to Flash."
Actually it was Macromedia, not "Micromedia." I had zero involvement with Flash as I am exactly the wrong person to pick in the artistic world. My involvement was with their Dreamweaver line which worked quite well and passed HTML validation with flying colors, unlike many other products I used at the time. After Adobe bought them, well that was the end of product use here as I was well aware of Adobe QA/QC problems.
Re: "Low yield rate"
Typically the small sample sizes you have aren't representative when you operate at scale. It's difficult to realize, without having experienced it, just how exactly many things can go wrong in process engineering.
If this goes on...
Until they forbid any visitations by humans in the future, no matter the form of transport, the problem will merely reestablish itself even discounting natural migration from other islands in the group. Despite any assurances to the contrary from anyone, where we go, M. and Mme. rat go as well, excepting space (we think). I know the shipboard procedures, having been on a ship for several years, and they still get on, and off, no matter what we do. Indeed, I've only seen one class of ship that doesn't have a rat problem: gas-turbine vessels due to high frequency turbine noise. I can't see anyone mandating that be a future requirement and it still doesn't address other vectors (aircraft, et al.). Keeping all humans out, period, does. Which ain't gonna (apologies) happen when eco-tourism brings in quite a chunk of change, let alone the pointy-head, grant-spending crowd.
Given successive iterations of the accidental (really? you knew it would happen) reintroduction and killing cycles, you will create a more successful rat on the islands as there is larger variation amongst other rat populations to select from in comparison to the existing, island-bound, population. You just have to hit the jackpot of one male and one female from the tail end of the genetic lottery to create not only a local headache but possibly a much larger headache in the rest of the world. I bet no one went down that event-chain, did they?
Don't get me wrong, this is probably the best approach and I've been to a lot of islands with this class of problem. Still, the follow-on consequences, especially the ramifications of continued human visitation by the very people that are the constituency for future visitations give me pause.
Re: You're holding it wrong?
Even if you normally run "Safe Mode Off", you'll probably need to double-check the setting is really off as mine returned to default "Moderate" due to it not picking up my login information (cookie). [And yes, I do allow Google to track everything I do, by design.]
Re: Maybe they should leave well alone.
Javascript definitely belongs to the keep it simple, small is beautiful, toss the code over the shoulder style which is what I learned back when Unix was born. Unfortunately, code and libraries, even chains of libraries, are being created and used to create large, multifaceted applications which was not the original intent. So things get extremely messy, which is what happens when the wrong collection of tools is used to get the job done. And it even works, for a while. What I see Anders doing is just what he has done all along, coming over and sorting through that toolbox to come up with a set of duller/safer tools that not too many people can hurt themselves or others with. He's rather good at that, even if I'm not exactly a fan of the product that results.
Short of scrapping the entire paradigm blessed in the form of HTML5+CSS3+Javascript(whatever), what can we do? Ever since I started with punch cards, the systems advance, achieve a towering level of complexity which few can deal with, and a new paradigm is advanced. Soap, lather, rinse, repeat. It'll probably happen even faster in this cycle than anyone can imagine.
So, kicking back with a half-ton of popcorn. This train wreck should be monumental.
Good luck
I wish him luck with that, although I don't expect a 'good result.' Giving the man the finger generally seems to annoy them no end and extra-legal means don't mean a thing to a US-based court judge so long as they are delivered in front of the bench.
Several problems here...
I see several problems here. First off is that DropBox, and to a lesser extent other solutions, are integrated into tablet and phone apps which is why they are being adopted quickly. Acronis is coming somewhat late to that game unless they're going to figure out a way around otherwise root access. As far as I've seen, phone and tablet users wouldn't know their phone's file system if it ran up and bit them. [The audience here is far from typical.]
As for the patent lawsuit, I suspect that either the parties will settle or Symantec will find out just how obvious their patent is to a practitioner in the field.
Re: This was predicted 25 years ago
FeRAM (core memory) was what immediately came to mind here as well. It also happens to be eminently stackable for that 3D touch. [I've been around long enough, forty years, so everything old becoming new again is "old-hat" (pun intended).] Spinning your storage media to ease access is wasteful in the context of power-saving electronics. We can afford refined access mechanisms in the form of nanoscale materials now. Now, about bringing back the vacuum tube (and yes, I read the article on nanoscale versions of them too ;-)...
Reflecting on Security
I wouldn't place the entire blame, actually very little, on Oracle nor Sun. Fundamentally it comes down to reflection and security contexts, especially the inheritance of security contexts. Inheritance, and their idiotic reliance on reflection to make things *easier*, is true of many (most?) software language designs today. Dump reflection, since dumping inheritance would be considered too extreme, would fix this. Then again, some people might have to really *think* about the class of problems that reflection was supposed to help with.
I've seen the languages come and go, quite often taken out of the game by, in relection (pun intended), a desired feature with major unintended consequences.
Re: Wait, what?
I don't consider your reaction Over-The-Top at all. If I'd have done the same back in the military, at the very least I'd be spending time in federal prison being guarded by a bunch of pissed-off Marines. Oh and getting buggered regularly. Frankly, it'd be nice to see the same in the civilian world but I won't hold my breath.
Far more likely...
... that they used one of those SDK's to punch out apps for all the device families and while the Surface version was barely tolerable, the rest were DOA. Although why they would believe you could develop for all the platforms from one code-base is beyond me. Oh wait, I've done that before using Visual Studio. My bad.
Re: No sweat ... the Japanese are digging a bloody big hole in ...
And Afghanistan (with whom the US just inked a treaty) just happens to be sitting on around a $1 trillion, or so, just right next door to China, not far from Vietnam. That'll buy a lot of tribal elders, and probably for a whole lot cheaper than Chinese party members.
Labor Markets
Actually China already participates in that labor market, except they call them political prisioners, not conscript labor. And pay zip penalties for playing there.
Re: Yes
Yes, a business method patent "... entirely depending upon your definition of small."
Re: Well, that's OK then
Paul, which begs the question of exactly who you *can* trust. In these days of terms that can be rewritten anywhere, anyplace, and it is up to the user to know. anywhere and anyplace, exactly what the current are without notification of changes, well let's just say that this is a sub-optimal solution to a long preexisting condition. We need to treat the disease. At gunpoint if necessary.
Re: Paranoia isn't just a sport, it's a way of life
Not quite.
"The good news is you're not paranoid. The bad news is you're not paranoid enough."
Re: I guess...
Who are you going to get to pass those laws? The same politicians who are already bought by the suits?
Posted in DIY virtual machines: Rigging up at home
reWin'98
I don't know if this is strictly applicable here, but way back when I had to remove all but one of my sticks of RAM to get '98 to completely installed let alone to run well. Anything over 512 MB would give it conniption fits. Once I installed the unofficial 98 SE SP Roll-up (it had all the official post '98 SE SP1 patches rolled in as well as some neat hacks/fixes) I could go to the full 1 GB or more. YMMV.
Like you...
Like you I've been in the VM game for quite a while. I first met it in the late '70's as a late teen. Started using it on my personal (non-IBM compatible) computers in the mid-'80's, and started using it on PC-compatibles in early beta-test versions of VMWare (ca. 2000). I've been playing with all the variants from everyone since then.
One of the first applications I used it for was a browser appliance. Go ahead and do a drive-by on my browser. Didn't matter since I never saved the browser state, just turned the VM off. Every session started from a golden image created on a disconnected machine. Then I got to thinking and started using VM's for my servers. Again, same thing. On detected hack, start working back to a non-hacked version, patch for signature/source, and back in business. Even bad patches from MS, or anyone else (virus updates anyone?) for that matter, just don't matter that much. Report it, restore the VM, move on.
Toss in having total (catastrophic) DR on top beyond just security issues, as you discuss using way off-site storage, is just icing on the cake. You are going to get a lot of flack, as I have experienced, from the various fanbois. They don't understand that this is just about doing away with being a sysadmin at home as well as at work. Been there, done that, burned the t-shirt.
Frankly, I'm more interested in which virtual appliances you've taken out, beaten up on, and how they worked out. I don't know of anyone whose taken them all out, but I'm sure you've got some helpful advice here. Be safe out there!
And therein lays the rub.
This is an epic fail by every engineer and security professional that has had anything to do with implementing the RFC's behind this. So much for the many-eyes approach. Perhaps it is time to do a serious review of all the implemented RFC's *before* we come up with more insecure crap?
Hmmm....
Non-obvious
A better perspective can be found in Wikipedia for this is indeed yet another example of the Prisoner's Dilemma (as are most things difficult to strategize). https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
Opportunity costs
In economics we talk about opportunity cost and while many people conflate it with monetary price; the two are not the same. Opportunity cost also includes time (which has a very real price in terms of income passed by), knowledge required, actual work (physical effort, travel distance to see the neighborhood duplicator, monetary price of travel, etc.) and, of course, financial price.
The problem here is that while the opportunity costs of duplicating, distributing, and 'consuming' media content has fallen dramatically due to the digital information revolution, the financial price has not similarly (dramatically) fallen. And the media organizations resist any further change in the status quo, resorting to lawsuits, unjust laws, and other enforcement actions, in an attempt to return to the markets of old.
If you look at the survey findings, you will readily find that where an _individual's_ opportunity costs are high in comparison to monetary prices, legal methods tend to predominate. Where low to actual prices (the teens and twenties), so-called piracy dominates.
Yet the media id10ts, including far too many of the press analyses, reject such a simple explanation and continue their insanity. Albert Einstein had a rather famous quote (directed at those deny the then new physics. And so it goes. I do hope the id10ts will have a chance to look back at their error as they are strung up, one by one, come the revolution.
[I won't live to see said revolution. You also have my apologies for such turgid writing.... Academic by birth, statistician/economist by inclination.]
re: FCC
>>I guess I actually got some "governmenting" for my tax dollars. God only knows what they'll screw up next week to make up for it.<<
And I can't give you enough votes for this, unfortunately Cassandra-like, prediction.
I know. They'll revise the net-nuetrality regulations to apply the wireless rules to the wired portion.
You're more than welcome...
You're more than welcome to be the first. Just as with you, I also have to wonder about the thinking going on at Oracle. They are so arrogant it's almost beyond belief.
Posted in WTF is... up with e-book pricing?
There are *some* costs associated with digital
I consistently see arguments comparing dead-tree costs but rarely, if ever, the costs of digital delivery. The publisher has costs for storage arrays, servers and the like as well as the costs of its network provider(s) and energy. While it is easy to argue that the publishing houses would pay all of these costs anyway to maintain a web presence I would love to get real numbers on both forms of publishing. [CO2 footprint data would be nice as well, but that's wishing for this econometrician] One thing that I haven't also yet seen brought up is the costs of returned dead-tree books. [Actually they aren't returned. The cover is ripped off and returned to the publisher and the contents chucked.] That isn't mentioned anywhere. Digital books do not have to front for that. Without real numbers all of this is speculation. Informed speculation I'll admit. I seriously doubt we'll ever see them though.
Posted in WTF is... up with e-book pricing?
I have an idea!
What we would need is a slightly commercialized SourceForge for publishing. The reason I say slightly commercialized is that authors that go this route should still get paid their normal royalty; whatever that is these days. This would also need some low amount to pay for hosting as I imagine this would get very popular, very quickly. Hopefully. (And there's the rub.)
Posted in WTF is... up with e-book pricing?
Baen and your local Library
For tohse that do not have to patience to download Baen books from their free library online, I''ve come across the occasional "Baen hardbound book that comes with a CD at our local branch library. It actually encouraged you to copy the CD and give to your friends. I've been a loyal Baen (print) reader since they first started up and every year they seem to do something nice for their loyal, and new, readers. Nice to see someone knows how to get, and keep, their readers.
Posted in The last storage array you will buy
Nice to see someone else pondering...
...the imponderables. I'm currently constructing a personal test-bed to experiment with different configurations here. The two aspects I'll be looking at, aside from sheer, raw MBps and IOps, will be what they've taken to calling BI (still the same thing I've been doing for forty years) and different aspects of virtualization (almost as long). Aside from the expense, my idea of fun.
I rather suspect that eventually we may see, for instance, drop in cards or even modules that the motherboard will treat as a type of RAM, really slooow RAM in some cases. [Still, even slow RAM with a fast processor and large cache(s) can kick ass.] I think I'm going to have to come up with my own system OS and software here since in my vision, I see Flash being the operating memory, Level 3 cache in the form of normal DRAM (the motherboard, processor, and RAM operate at the same data rate), Level 2 and Level 1 as normal. Basically, there is no "storage" per se except in the sense of backing up, porting, or uploaded elsewhere. Or you might just say there is no separation between memory and storage.
While IANAL...
I do know more than a bit about rules of evidence, privacy, and similar Constitutional issues (other countries, of course, have different rules). If you share information with a third party (Facebook friends, Everyone, and/or Facebook itself) there can be no expectation of privacy, or privilege for that matter (not that privilege applies in the case of Facebook). Deleted or not deleted is irrelevant. If it can be found anywhere, it can be used against you. Period.
While dropping a subpoena on Facebook is far easier from a tactical standpoint, the court could, and would if asked , drop a subpoena on all your friends, heck everyone that gets status updates and can view your photos, its all grist for the legal mill.
I don't know why this is an issue unless most everyone, and this does seem to be the case, has a very false idea of what privacy means. The precedents are quite old, hearkening back to English law.
There's the one solid hit in this discussion...
Yes, chain of custody is where the defense should attack this. I, for one, would like to have some definitive precedent on this given that computer forensics is still a legal minefield.
I'm not surprised at all.
Along with reading system logs, cleaning drives, and all the rest of the preventative maintenance that I do here weekly, I turn the search engines on myself in all the various personalities I use on the internet. That only makes good sense and also gives me a chance to find any repies that I may have missed during the week. [I do post a lot, but a couple of decades as a SysOp on CompuServe changes a sysadmin!]
They did.
If distributing music via the internet isn't an acknowledged form of publishing, I don't know what isn't! Ever here of Web Publishing? An accepted form of free press (unless you are a blogger who keeps scooping the supposed pro's) by mass media. That has to do with words and images but we also see videos and 'pod casts' as a form of publishing. Ergo, it should be acknowledged that distributing music (or video!) is also publishing.
BTW, I wonder when the term Pod-Cast will get its day in court?
Nations Acting Badly
Given past Russian behavior, namely more than willing to conduct attacks, cyber and/or physical, against neighboring states, are we willing to not only help polish their tools but to expose to their scrutiny our repertoire? Only an idiot in a think tank could come up with this. I wonder how much they got paid for this bit of fluff. Then again this isn't much better: "Develop an “ecosystem” of trusted identities through public key infrastructure framework developed by the ITU." Why develop them. To have them stolen? To be fraudulently used in the future? The head of the ITU has already proved he's clueless.
