So, after much ado, its live: http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2009/12/16/office-2010-file-validation.aspx

Its what I've been working on for some time...

So I've been playing with proxy chaining recently and some have suggested just using TOR (or Freenet). I just wanted to point out that though TOR and FREENET do a decent job of making multi-hops automatic, you have to install software. So from a pure attacker's POV its not as useful. Though it might be a good starting point, it would be more difficult to use it in an attack.

From Schiener on Security - My Reaction to Eric Schmidt:

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Amen.

So I've had a need lately to convert MOV audio files to MP3. At first I searched for self contained solutions online and everything looked and worked like cr*p. So here's what I came up with...use VLC, then I put it in a powershell script.

Here's the commandline for VLC to do the work:

vlc -I dummy <INPUTFILE> ":sout=#transcode{acodec=mp3,ab=128,channels=6}:standard{access=file,mux=asf,dst=<OUTPUTFILE>}" vlc://quit

Then I just wrapped this around a "gci" on an input folder and viola! a script to convert a folder of MOV files to MP3

I've posted the full powershell script on the PoshCode site here: Convert-ToMP3.ps1

So most "techies" know that all things have a lifespan, electronics especially. So if you're not backing up your data, you will be soon (or loosing that data). My family recently had a 1TB USB external disk fail. Turns out that the "disk" was actually two 500GB disks RAID'ed together. After some investigation it turns out that DISK1 has hardware failures, and DISK2 is fine. But since its RAID'ed together none of the data on DISK2 is available. I could send it off to a Professional to have the disk repaired, but my estimates put that at about $1000 [$US]. So I came up with three solutions:

1. Use some kind of online backup service (Carbonite, Mozy, etc)
2. Use a local backup service / server (Windows Home Server, a *NIX SAN, etc)
3. Burn my data to DVD every month

Since I'm cheap and don't mind to work, I'm going for route #3.

If you have another suggestion, please let me know?