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Comment: Re:Sure (Score 1) 578

by srpape (#31348508) Attached to: Write Bits Directly Onto a Hard Drive Platter?

Supposedly, with modern hard drives, the need for repeatedly overwriting data is gone.

A single pass with /dev/zero should make the drive unrecoverable. There was a whole challenge about it, though it's now ended and was never accepted.

From http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=79982

Q. What is this?

A. A challenge to confirm whether or not a professional, established data recovery firm can recover data from a hard drive that has been overwritten with zeros once. We used the 32 year-old Unix dd command using /dev/zero as input to overwrite the drive. Three data recover companies were contacted. All three are listed on this page. Two companies declined to review the drive immediately upon hearing the phrase 'dd', the third declined to review the drive after we spoke to second level phone support and they asked if the dd command had actually completed (good question). Here is their response... paraphrased from a phone conversation:

"According to our Unix team, there is less than a zero percent chance of data recovery after that dd command. The drive itself has been overwritten in a very fundamental manner. However, if for legal reasons you need to demonstrate that an effort is being made to recover some or all of the data, go ahead and send it in and we'll certainly make an effort, but again, from what you've told us, our engineers are certain that we cannot recover data from the drive. We'll email you a quote."

Comment: Re:Enough sensationalism already. (Score 2, Funny) 364

by srpape (#31237812) Attached to: PA School Defends Web-Cam Spying As Security Measure, Denies Misuse

In high school, I was suspended from using any of the computers in the school for half a year.

The reason? The librarian saw me type "dir" at a DOS prompt. I was accused of "hacking".

The principal told me I shouldn't be using "dir" because it gets me into "directories".


+ - The blind shall see again, but when?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Restoring hearing with cochlea implants that replace the inner ear with an electronic version has become standard procedure for many types of deafness. Now it looks like the same thing might happen for many types of blindness. With five national labs funded by DoE Department of Energy (DoE), this third generation artificial retina promises to enable the blind to see again soon. Already it has been successful in over a dozen test patients, but at resolutions too low for doing much more than proving the concept. However, if the DoE can perfect this larger version of an artificial retina, then the company Second Sight promises to commercialize the implant, aiming for VGA resolution within the decade."

Comment: Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score 1) 368

by srpape (#31077464) Attached to: KDE 4.4 Released Alongside Website Redesign

I think it's under the Settings menu, something about saving to default.

I'd be more specific but I don't have it in front of me here..

Here's some people with the same window size problem, and some possible solutions:

