That is so strange to me. I don't think I've ever been to a place that didn't have central a/c (I was in Asia in winter, so I didn't notice it there).
My highscool not only didn't have A/C, but had the heat on all the time because it was necessary for the brothers who lived there to get hot water or something.
Kindle. Smallest, most minimal one. No touchscreen, no whispernet.
Does the minimal kindle have any real advantage over the Nook Simple? My nook supports epub format (which appears to be slightly more ubiquitous than .mobi on the ol' pirate bay) and is still small enough to fit in my jean pocket with some finagling. Also, electronic publishing is one area where I'm more than happy to support the second place competitor.
Yeah, I'd buy either the cheapest Nook or Kindle if I didn't already have my little $20 Pandigital I picked up a few weeks ago. The Kindle has the benefits of the free book lending from amazon but if you're just going to pirate them anyway then it shouldn't really matter.
Yeah, really good video camera is a key to college awesomeness in the era of YouTube.
Smartphone with awesome camera + 32GB MicroSD card = Win.
Much better off with a real HD camcorder.
Practicality, Scott. A college student is better off with a killer smartphone that can shoot 720p than an obsolete LG candybar and a wicked camcorder.
Kindle. Smallest, most minimal one. No touchscreen, no whispernet.
Does the minimal kindle have any real advantage over the Nook Simple? My nook supports epub format (which appears to be slightly more ubiquitous than .mobi on the ol' pirate bay) and is still small enough to fit in my jean pocket with some finagling. Also, electronic publishing is one area where I'm more than happy to support the second place competitor.
As a writer, with a daughter who also writes and is (self) published on Kindle, I can't help but make a frowny face at the piracy posts. :-(
The only ebook I ever pirated was a copy of The Gathering Storm because Harriet was being a ninny and delaying the ebook release by several months after the hardcover to appease the gods of NYT Best Seller. I bought the book and then downloaded a fan EPUB (which was quite excellently done, I must say, very professional and came out a week after the book.)
I pirate almost everything I read on my Kindle, but that's because I buy the dead tree editions as well. If you want me to stop pirating, work on getting publishers to package download codes with dead tree books like music companies do with vinyl.
Since when? I thought it only supported MOBI and PDF (and maybe a couple of other formats). Granted, there are free tools you can use to convert EPUB to MOBI (I used them when I created my grandpa's upcoming book in an EPUB editor to convert it to MOBI format for the Kindle and Kindle Store).
So this morning or last night I had a dream that the military police/secret service/some sort of government agency was after me. They raided my home accusing me of being a hacker. I had my computer password locked and what not.
So these government agents are trying to get my password from me. I'm resisting and telling them to go to hell. They are running some sort of password breaking program. This one smug young agent hands me a dollar and says to me, "I'll be that we crack your password within the hour."
I smugly reply back, "If you can crack my password, I'll give you blow job." He was taken aback by my comment and was intrigued. I then convinced him to remove my restraints so I could get up to use the restroom.
As I walk past the area in my home where they are trying to crack my password, I somehow walk to the computer trying to crack my password and attempt to break it. One of the other agents tells me that what I'm doing is futile because they detached the hard drives and put it in a separate container. (Yes, I know this makes no sense.)
So then I find the container and grab my hard drives run to my patio balcony and throw the hard drives hard to the ground, hoping they would break. The original agent who bet me the dollar smile and laughed at me. I then kicked him in the nuts and hopped over balcony to the ground.
I then grab the hard drives and run as fast as I can. For some magical happenstance, my hard drives become VHS tapes. I start pulling out the tape thinking that will destroy any evidence on the hard drives.
I'm running and running calling out for help as the agents chase after me. They eventually catch up and I wake up.
So tl:dr:
What's the most effective way other than having strong magnets to destroy hard drives?
So this morning or last night I had a dream that the military police/secret service/some sort of government agency was after me. They raided my home accusing me of being a hacker. I had my computer password locked and what not.
So these government agents are trying to get my password from me. I'm resisting and telling them to go to hell. They are running some sort of password breaking program. This one smug young agent hands me a dollar and says to me, "I'll be that we crack your password within the hour."
They don't even need your password to get the data unless you've encrypted the hard drive. However, if you encrypt the hard drive with a relatively long password, your data is effectively inaccessible without that password, and it can't easily be cracked, as long as you don't let them use a cold boot attack on you when they arrive.
As for erasing, it's actually pretty hard to do a good job of it in those conditions. In general, the easiest method is to use the inbuilt secure erase, which overwrites every individual bit of the drive with new (usually random) values, but it's not something you can do in a short amount of time or without a computer.
A powerful magnet is your best hope of quickly destroying much of the data, but you typically wouldn't have something like that around. Otherwise, decent alternatives are high heat (~700 degrees plus), chemical reactions (e.g. acid), and mechanical destruction (grinding down the surface of the platters is probably the most efficient of these).
They need to create a remote-triggered thermite pack that fits in an HD bay. Socialist Obama Gov'mint agents break down your door? Hit the red button to melt your PC.
I wonder how many hard drives a 9mm can got through before it stops.
Well, for a reference point, there's this: 17 HDDs with an armor piercing .50 BMG. You'd only destroy part of the data doing something like that, though.
EDIT: I had instructions here for destroying HD platters with concentrated base, but it's more trouble than I thought.
Instead, find a pool supply store and buy some hydrochloric acid. Pour this into a 25 gallon plastic bucket, and add the platters you want to destroy. Leave them to soak for a week. After that, get some pH test strips and add baking soda until the solution is around pH 7. Take your now-destroyed platters and make wind chimes. Pour your salt water down the sink.
Comments
The only ebook I ever pirated was a copy of The Gathering Storm because Harriet was being a ninny and delaying the ebook release by several months after the hardcover to appease the gods of NYT Best Seller. I bought the book and then downloaded a fan EPUB (which was quite excellently done, I must say, very professional and came out a week after the book.)
EDIT: nevermind, went with Kindle
So these government agents are trying to get my password from me. I'm resisting and telling them to go to hell. They are running some sort of password breaking program. This one smug young agent hands me a dollar and says to me, "I'll be that we crack your password within the hour."
I smugly reply back, "If you can crack my password, I'll give you blow job." He was taken aback by my comment and was intrigued. I then convinced him to remove my restraints so I could get up to use the restroom.
As I walk past the area in my home where they are trying to crack my password, I somehow walk to the computer trying to crack my password and attempt to break it. One of the other agents tells me that what I'm doing is futile because they detached the hard drives and put it in a separate container. (Yes, I know this makes no sense.)
So then I find the container and grab my hard drives run to my patio balcony and throw the hard drives hard to the ground, hoping they would break. The original agent who bet me the dollar smile and laughed at me. I then kicked him in the nuts and hopped over balcony to the ground.
I then grab the hard drives and run as fast as I can. For some magical happenstance, my hard drives become VHS tapes. I start pulling out the tape thinking that will destroy any evidence on the hard drives.
I'm running and running calling out for help as the agents chase after me. They eventually catch up and I wake up.
So tl:dr:
What's the most effective way other than having strong magnets to destroy hard drives?
As for erasing, it's actually pretty hard to do a good job of it in those conditions. In general, the easiest method is to use the inbuilt secure erase, which overwrites every individual bit of the drive with new (usually random) values, but it's not something you can do in a short amount of time or without a computer.
A powerful magnet is your best hope of quickly destroying much of the data, but you typically wouldn't have something like that around. Otherwise, decent alternatives are high heat (~700 degrees plus), chemical reactions (e.g. acid), and mechanical destruction (grinding down the surface of the platters is probably the most efficient of these).
17 HDDs with an armor piercing .50 BMG.
You'd only destroy part of the data doing something like that, though.
Instead, find a pool supply store and buy some hydrochloric acid. Pour this into a 25 gallon plastic bucket, and add the platters you want to destroy. Leave them to soak for a week. After that, get some pH test strips and add baking soda until the solution is around pH 7. Take your now-destroyed platters and make wind chimes. Pour your salt water down the sink.