Raw Matter

I set a harddisk password on my laptop, because if my Laptop is stolen, I care more about the data than about the laptop as such. But I'm wondering if this gives me real security (as in: only people like data recovery labs who actually disassemble the disk and run the platters against another disk's electronics can access my data) or if it gives me absolutely no security (as in short two clearly labeled pins to reset.) Anybody got some good resources on this?

Update: Daniel pointed me to an article on Heise titled At Your Disservice. It mostly speaks about the dangers of somebody maliciously setting a HD password as a DoS attack on your computer (an aspect I don't care about here), but also has a section answering my question. Data recovery professionals have indeed found ways to circumvent the password (and, since the data is not actually encrypted, the manufacturer has that knowledge anyway), so it's best to assume that blackhats have this knowledge, too. But since this knowledge seems to be not very widespread at the moment, I think the HD password is a good enough prevention against a non-targetted attack. And this is mostly what I care about here: somebody stealing my laptop as a laptop, not as a container of the data on it.

I always thought that Triumph over emacs looked more like this:

aptitude remove emacs

David Nusinov says:

when a prominent DD gets busy in his personal life, we don't say that his personal life is trying to kill Debian. Similarly, when a prominent DD gets hired somewhere and gets very busy and he doesn't have as much time for Debian, we don't say that the employer is trying to kill Debian.

Going to work for on a Debian derivative is a bit different from going away from Debian to spend time as a new father/mother, or working as a MSCE, or whatever. If things are done right (by the employee, by Debian, by the employer), work spent on Debian derivatives can benefit both Debian and the derivative. I believe this even happens in many cases.

One other point: Looking at the whole Dunc Tank debate, I guess hiring some people to work on Debian directly (which is just what I might do if I had spare cash in large amounts) wouldn't necessarily improve matters a lot, it'd just shift the debate (ah, he's trying to buy Debian...).

Myself, I'm not entirely sure if the existence of Ubuntu is good or bad for Debian. More attention to .deb-based distributions is a good thing, certainly (I was astonished to see in a local bookshop that Ubuntu and SuSE were the only boxed Linux versions you can buy. No Fedora, nor Mandrake, nor Xandros or any of the others.) OTOH it would certainly be nice if more people would use (and then report bugs and start to help fixing them) Debian itself. But I can't see this happening anytime soon with our community as it is now. And then there's the 'it's good enough for us' and 'we don't want no steenking newbies' lines of thought. While I don't agree with the first one, I admit that finding a compromise between a newbie-friendly and gadget filled system for desktop use and a rock-stable professional tool is not easy. Two different sets of install CDs might be worth a try.

ITP: retty says:

retty is a tiny tool that lets you attach processes running on other terminals. So you were running that mutt outside of screen at your home machine and now wanna check your mail? Attach it with retty, do whatever you want, detach it again and everything is as it was before. You don't have to run them all in screen just in case.

Daniel Jacobowitz analyzed the tool a bit:

What it seems to be doing is injecting code onto the stack which causes the target process to open your terminal and dup2 it onto stdout, stderr, et cetera. Interesting.

Interesting isn't really the word I'd use here. More like Eek! Incredibly ugly, but incredibly useful if it works reliably.

Antiamericanism is a more and more widespread feeling, not only in eastern countries, but also here in Europe. Despite all the admiration for the achievements of americans throughout history, I have to confess that I increasingly share that feeling. (I've blogged about the USA before, so you probably already know this.) Most recently:

Es häufen sich Klagen von Geschäftsreisenden über Zollbeamte, die Daten auf Mobilcomputern einsehen wollen. […] Regierungsbeamte haben das Recht, nicht nur das Reisegepäck, sondern auch elektronische Datenträger zu durchsuchen. Während es konkreter Verdachtsmomente und einer richterlichen Anordnung bedarf, damit Beamte private E-Mails oder vertrauliche Computerdateien lesen dürfen, [haben] Zöllner das Recht, die Computer auch unverdächtiger Reisender ohne Angabe von Gründen zu durchsuchen oder gar zu konfiszieren. [Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 10.11.2006, edited]

(Complaints of business travelers about customs officers, who want to investigate data on mobile computers are accumulating. […] Government officials have the right, to search not only the luggage, but also electronic Data media. While specific suspiciouns and judicial orders are required, for governement officials to read private emails or confidential computer files, customs officers have the right, to scan or even confiscate computers of any traveler without giving any reasons.)

This is not complaining about travel to China, Africa, Belorussia or whatever, but is a warning issued by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives about crossing the U.S. border. The ACTE is, by the way, an international organisation based in the U.S.A., so they should know.

After the ambiguous MS-Novell deal (Received a lot of bad press, but I'm still not so sure in the long term. It might be bad for Novell and SuSE, but it might be good for Free Software as a whole), here's a piece of news that is hopefully less beset with snares: Flash becomes more open: Adobe donates some code to the Mozilla foundation.

Now the only part that bothers me is that this likely means the Mozilla license will be used, which is AFAIK GPL-incompatible, which means that Konqueror will not get native flash in the foreseeable future now. Especially because I think that this move will cause work on the free flash player front (Gnash, and I believe there were others) to slow down.

Update: MJ Ray corrects me, thanks - Mozilla code is multi-licensed MPL, GPL, LGPL. So integrating in Konqueror is, in theory, no license problem.

Summary: Upgrading sucks. Nanoblogger upgrade from 3.1 to 3.3rc5 - upgrading the article database was quite fast, but the default template is completely changed (for the worse), so much fiddling to get a more or less sane look back. I'm still not thrilled, but at least I got rid of the fixed 840 pixel wide thing. Why do people always want to have web pages at a fixed width!?!?

I had to laugh when I read how much the economy will have to pay to upgrade to Windows Vista: in six bis European countries, 50000 IT jobs will be created by the launch of that new system. And here comes the punchline: It's Microsoft's own number, and they boast about it. Creating jobs is something good, isn't it?

Now imagine how many more IT jobs would be cretaed by switching everybody to Linux and OpenOffice.org. So, no more debate about TCO. It's all about how many jobs we can generate!

Joint press release from Novell and Microsoft. Took me by surprise, thanks for the link, Dani. Diagnosis: Microsoft is very afraid. It lost Massachusetts on the Office front, it lost München on the Desktop front (financially, both cases are no big deal. But they created quite a media stir.), and Xen is the big buzzword in the server rooms, while I can't even remember if Microsoft has a similar offering...

What will happen? Microsoft will remember that selling MS Office licenses, even if they run on their arch-enemy-OS, is better than not selling MS Office licenses. Dito for Xen. If played right, I think Novell might be in a very good position here. On the other hand, there are many, many companies who did business with Microsoft once and don't exist anymore. And probably Novell needs the money.

Disclaimer: I can call myself Industry Analyst if I want to. Others do, and probably know less than I. Others don't but know a lot more.

Update: After reading the coverage on Groklaw: Novell is a business, and it's their business decision. Maybe they end up as roadkill. And I'm not talking about the Linux market, but about Linux as a piece of software. And Microsoft officially investing in Linux technology (even with the goal to embrace and extend it) will still lead to wider Linux adaptation and the eventual breaking of the Microsoft monopoly.

With mixed feelings, I joined OpenBC recently. It is a good idea, but unfortunately there is absolutely nothing “open” in it. I'm starting to think that it would be nice to have such a platform, with the word open actually having some meaning.