Archive for October, 2009

As we all know Carbonite is dirt cheap and although I have issues with it nor would I recommend it there are clearly a large number of people that do. Recently however there has been a growing voice of concern with statements in Carbonite’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy which has reached the general masses.

“Carbonite may disclose your Personal Information to third parties if we believe that such action is necessary to (1) comply with a law, regulation, or governmental or judicial warrant, rule, or order; (2) protect and defend the rights or property of Carbonite; (3) enforce the Carbonite Terms and Conditions of Use and/or this Privacy Policy. Carbonite may also provide access to your Backup Data to government authorities if Carbonite suspects or believes that the data contain child pornography or other prohibited data, or that the data or the Carbonite Products or Services are being used for illegal purposes. Carbonite will provide access to your Backup Data to your surviving spouse and/or your executor upon presentation of a death certificate and identification which Carbonite reasonably believes to be valid and sufficient, or in response to a court order, warrant, subpoena or other judicial or administrative legal process.”

http://www.carbonite.com/privacy/

The above statement that Carbonite can and will provide access to stored, encrypted, data is an obvious concern but could also violate Federal regulations on data security. For example the only way I can see how a medical office can store data to an online service is if they can show there is no possible path to that data becoming compromised. With eSecureBackups we are secure in the belief that all data is encrypted locally with a key only the local computer (keyfile) or user knows.

Your pass phrase is encrypted twice before it is stored on the server to prevent anyone but you from recovering the stored pass phrase. The system is designed so that recovering a pass phrase requires action from two people: the person that created the key and a senior level server technician. Neither person can recover the pass phrase without the cooperation of the other person. The system is also designed so that only the creator of the pass phrase can view the pass phrase once it is recovered. Data blocks are compressed, encrypted with AES-256-bit and your private pass phrase, digitally signed for integrity verification upon restore, and tagged with multiple strong checksums to provide data integrity assurance. The encrypted data is then encrypted again as it enters the Internet, until it reaches one of the secure data centers.

Per the Carbonite paragraph they are clearly saying they have the ability to bypass encryption. If data can be accessed by a third party either through legal warrant or nefarious act then the requirements of HIPAA or PCI would prevent use of such services by most businesses. With eSecureBackups the Pass Phrase is wrapped twice using only data known to the end user as one of those protections. With the use of specific questions and answers known only to the end user the Pass Phrase cannot be recovered and without the Pass Phrase the data cannot be decrypted.

Bottom line just because a service says your data is secure or encrypted it is still up to the end user to do some basic checking to see how the process is designed to work, does work and how any potential regulatory needs may apply. Also for the true security geek or totally paranoid there is nothing preventing you from encrypting your data manually by way of a third party application such as TrueCypt prior to using an online service.

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Former Governor Easley had his day before the North Carolina State Board Of Elections and the results could lead to Easley joining the long list of NC jailbird politicians. From House Speaker Jim Black to former Whip Frank Ballance or former Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps the list of political figures in this state that have been sent to the big house is growing daily.

The State Board Of Elections found former Governor Easley� guilty of not reporting campaign use of private jets and submitted there findings and evidence to the Wake County District Attorney for further investigation. The board fined Easley $100,000 and suggested that campaign finance laws were violated. Furthermore there are ongoing state and Federal investigations into Easley for a land deal and attempts to hide campaign uses of private jets.

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What an excellent title to a blog, unfortunately it’s not mine but from The Silicon Valley Watcher. The topic of the post was a recent event hosted by Google called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. This two day event brought together 200 of the nation’s top thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy, and policy to create and act upon a breakthrough strategy for scaling-up effective models of teaching and learning for children. The forum will showcase cutting edge research, proven and promising models to challenge decision-makers in key sectors to help "refresh and reboot" American global leadership in education.

For those who don’t know the history of Google the co-founder Sergey Brin dropped out of Stanford to start Google and is now the 26th richest man in the world. Both of Brin’s parents were well educated with his father being a mathematics professor.� Brin followed his fathers interest in mathematics but also was interested in computer science and was in the graduate computer science program before he dropped out. He is quoted from this event as saying:

"It’s important for students to be put in touch with real-world problems," Brin said. "The curriculum should include computer science. Mathematics should include statistics. The curriculums should really adjust."

So far they have not posted a recording of the event but hopefully that will be forthcoming.

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It appears former CEO William Rodgers has signed away any interest he has in PACE Airlines. In unconfirmed reports Lee Booth has taken what assets were left, primarily FAA Certifications down to a building in Burlington. Former V.P. Stuart Carnie was quoted as saying Rodgers has signed over his interest in the company last week to undisclosed “investors” but all fingers point to Lee Booth. It has been posted on other sites that Booth was the primary investor in PACE near the end and has a history in the aviation field from his ownership of Taylorcraft, a small personal aircraft company he moved to Greensboro back in 1988. Of course rumors abound however the general belief is that Rodgers sold part of PACE to Booth back in September and it was the ownership by Booth that kept an interested party in Dallas from assuming PACE as a whole. The party or group in Dallas wanted 100% ownership and Booth either didn’t want out or wanted more for the assets causing the deal to fall through.

Stuart Carnie further went on to say he had revoked his interest in Rodger’s bond resulting in William Rodgers being rebooked into Forsyth County jail where he remains. This Post has been edited at the request of a person claiming to be Harlan Cobert and due to the content of that email request it is within reason to believe such request was made by him. Until such time as the objection that was raised is shown to be factual by verifiable reference any reference to that issue will be removed from this thread and site.

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So Mayor Joines has told Dell he expects them to repay some 26.5 Million Dollars in direct payments and expenses linked to bring Dell to North Carolina and in theory it appears Dell has agreed in their reply letter. Of course this does not include any of the cost associated with road projects completed for Dell, wine and dines that surely took place, travel by city and county officials, etc, etc.

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Well there was a little rain in the morning which did reduce the crowds some as well as chasing away a few vendors but overall Lexington put on another good show. I took a few videos I will load over the coming days but here’s one I put up today. The Band Of Oz did a nice long set of various Beach and Dance tunes which of brought out the Shaggers however the “Cupid Shuffle” was a hit with more than a dozen showing off their moves.

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Second version uploaded with an overdub of the audio.

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This is pretty sad to see Dell charge two different prices for the same product or service.

On the Dell Business site go select a Dell Inspiron 15 and at a base price of $659 it cost $100 to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional from Windows 7 Home Premium:

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If however you select a Vostro 220 based priced at $419 and want to upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional it’s $70. imageThe difference is the Vostro runs x86 or a 32 bit OS and the Inpiron x64 or a 64 bit OS for which Microsoft does not charge a difference.image

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These guys have been sending out postal notifications for years and the number of people that have asked me if this is legitimate or if they need to pay this “bill” is probably topping 100. Well I guess those stamps cost to much or they are concerned with Mail Fraud as they now appear to be sending them via email.

Basically this boils down to some outfit using a third party mailbox store in N.Y. is charging nearly 10X the going rate for Domain Renewals for which they say they will also submit your website to the various search engines. The “SCAM” is this clearly looks like a bill and unless you read the fine print your likely to think it is a bill.

By accepting this offer, you agree not to hold DN liable for any part. Note that THIS IS NOT A BILL. This is a solicitation.� You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated unless you accept this offer. The information in this letter contains confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the DN.� This information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. There is no pre-existing relationship between DN and the domain mentioned above.� This notice is not in any part associated with a continuation of services for domain registration.� Search engine submission is an optional service that you can use as a part of your website optimization and alone may not increase the traffic to your site.

Please note the “This is not a bill”, “this is a solicitation” and “your under no obligation to pay” which was taken from the very small print at the bottom of the “Notice”. Folks don’t be fooled with this junk mail if it shows up either in your postal mailbox or your email.

To have a little fun and thanks to Google we can see that 47-47 36th Street, Long Island City, NY is the office of MyUSABox, a questionable re-mailing service. With further thanks to Google here’s the offices of “Domain Services”, NOT! Of course the return email address on this email was an anonymous Hotmail account as well as the unsubscribe email listed. The fax number as well is likely just a service but gives us a great way to see what others are saying about this SCAM, 646-385-7542. It is also likely that the return mail is being forwarded to Canada or other country then being re-mailed again as at one time they operated from Thornhill, ON address which is a UPS store.��

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Domain Notification

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