Inflight information
These last airline restrictions spell marvels for the software industry! Seriously.
I was reading last night the blog of DarcyLabMistress (and for those interested in who she is you might want to remember Kevin Mitnick), and reading her and her readers' considerations on how to fly in this era of fear and increased surveillance; the main question was: would you put your electronics in your luggage, allowing it to be destroyed, searched and seized arbitrarily?
2) If you are required to place such electronic equipment in checked baggage, would it have a significant negative impact on your willingness to fly?
3) Do you mainly fly for business or pleasure?
DarcyLabMistress background allows her to consider this very real scenario from a professional and personal point of view, and she is naturally unwilling to submit her electronic information in the hands of TSA and baggage handlers; the least risk you can expect from that is delayed equipment; the most, some unwarranted search and seizure using the latest Presidential powers.
The readers' answers reflect that: nobody is willing to put their electronic information in the hands of TSA and baggage handlers, and from this highly unscientific poll, a lot of people are wary of putting their files, if anything, at risk of loss.
And that finally brings me to the starting of this post: putting your info on the web. A few years back, you could put your backups in Xdrive, but mainly, that was slow, expensive and cumbersome; you depended on the availability of a fast connection, on the fickleness of the local firewall, and it was not practical, restricted to only a few megas.
Now we have googlemail and its oodles of storage, what has prompted those remote storage services to offer faster and bigger repositories. We have virtual productivity software, and good encryption and security devices easily available.
I can imagine thus going to a clients presentation and sitting at their machine, USBing securely my passwords and encrypted environment with a keychain previously fedexed, or using a one time only password or shared space, downloading the standard format app that I am demoing, and leaving afterwards with just a paper under my arm. Not more hauling heavy electronics.
I can also see people carrying an image DVD and installing it in a loaner laptop previous to a conference, and a company making sure that all WiFis, signals, applications etc. work in the new machine, the perfect rental pc for the weary traveler that is not allowed to travel with their beloved machine: you simply download some imaging software, which creates the DVD image, and you recreate that on the company machine, right there at their counter in the airport, next to Hertz and Avis.
On leaving, the same software creates a differential image to you, and you yourself get to erase the whole thing with a powerful industrial magnet.
Laptops are commodities already. What is interesting is the info.
Technorati: security, web3.0, trends