found_drama

via… assorted!

• File under amusing: Law & Order Random Plot Generator… Hey! I think I’ve seen that one!

  A murdered college student is discovered by the river by a jogger. Lenny and Curtis initially pin the crime on a deadbeat father, but after a security camera is reviewed, they arrest a socialite woman. McCoy and Kincaid prosecute, but McCoy must use DNA evidence to win. The old DA takes a drink and says “That’s the way justice works.” An animated demon guest stars.

• File under maybe-too-cynical: Why is it that my initial reaction to reports of the new Korn video is: This is just another way to sell records to the would-be-disenchanted-if… No, I haven’t seen the video. No, I’m not going to think this one through. No, I’m not going to apologize for the gut-reaction. No, I’m not sure whether or not the sentiment is honest, inspired by popular opinion, or just a ploy.
• File under dope gear: Gizmodo reports on the Xoxide X-UFO cube case — and damn is it pretty!
• Filer under I-wanted-it-but-not-like-this?: I, Robot film!?
• File under DIY: Slashdot reports on rolling your own LCD picture frame … damn I want one! *ahem*
  

  A little pricey, but still a cool project (especially if you have some of the parts laying around).

After a few months of flirting w/ Apple’s implementation of the AES-128 encryption scheme (a.k.a. FileVault), I have decided to disable it and wait for the next release. Despite all of my paranoia and desire to keep assorted docs and records as secure as possible, it has req’d too many jumped hoops, headaches, hacks, kludges, experiments, work-arounds, and merry-go-rounds to be worth the supposed 149×10^12 years of security.

Basically, I’m exhausted of thinking that I had the system figured out in such a way that I use it w/ such-and-such a hack and live w/ it, only to find one other bug/feature that req’d more hoops, headaches, hacks, etc. Eventually you’ve read enough pro/con reviews and clever but complex hacks to last a lifetime. After all, while while keeping my financial statements and work docs encrypted is more than desirable (credit to zorka here) “I can imagine that encrypting one’s Music directory is a wee bit excessive.”

So w/o further ado: Apple’s FileVault To-Do List:

1. Choice between partial and total encryption. re: the complex/clever hack above; give the option to create a “secure” folder w/in the home folder or securing the entire home folder.
2. Improve OS X’s ability to talk to FileVault. Doing this might actually knock out the one above. The [en/de]crypt on-the-fly performance does very well (even on this G3 iBook) but the file system seems to have a hard time actually finding anything in the encrypted “sparse disk image”. Once mounted, my AppleScripts should be able to find the files that live along a given encrypted path.

Even just one of those two should solve most of the problems I had noted. In the meantime, better stick to strong passwords (since apparently that’s FileVault’s weak point anyway).

UPDATE: Let’s add a #3 to that list above. More accurately, let’s call it “1(b)”… Maybe a “secure” folder isn’t the answer. Maybe it’s being able to select which folders to encrypt and which to leave alone. Something more selective. E.g., encrypt “Home/Documents” but not “Home/Sites”, that sort of thing.