The Great Ideas of Dr. Mortimer Adler

After reading my previous blog entry on Richard Feynman, one reader suggested picking up works of Dr. Mortimer Adler for my next non-storage related reading. Dr. Adler was a philosopher, professor, author and star of his own TV show.

After some research, I decided to get How to Think about The Great Ideas book from King County Library System. This book is a collection of transcripts from his TV show, The Great Ideas, aired in early 1950s. Guessing from how quickly my request for this book was fulfilled by library system, works of Richard Feynman seem to be more popular in Seattle region.

This week, I am focusing on reading this book instead of listening, reading and writing two cents in storage blogosphere. The Great Ideas book is very fascinating and some of the lessons are worth sharing on this blog.

Look for more from this book in coming days.


All the news about stormy conditions in Seattle region reminded me of this image of tree hanging on power cables. I captured this picture during last windstorm in Redmond.

Who has the best full disk encryption solution?

Last week, a ZDNet blog post mentioned that US federal government is conducting a contest to find the best full disk encryption product. The winner will become the preferred federal solution to address data loss issues from stolen or missing computers.

The who's who of storage and encryption industry like Seagate, CipherOptics, Credant, Decru, NetApp, McAfee and PointSec attended the industry briefing. Click here for RFP information on Data at Rest (DAR) Encryption program.

The RFP DAR Technical Requirements provides high level criteria for a DAR solution.

• FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing and signing
  
• Encrypt data on removable storage media/devices
  
• Single management console for Full Disk and File Encryption
  
• File compression and encryption in a single step
  
• Boot authentication

I wonder what are the different techniques for DAR encryption?

Online Data Storage Debate

Check out friendly debate with Jeremiah about prospects and challenges of online data storage services. Actually, we first started this discussion during my visit to HDS in September.

Jungledisk connects you to Amazon S3

Why I think future Online Data Storage companies will Pay You to Upload Data

Surely, Online storage services such as Amazon's S3 storage service can be a useful service as secondary storage or data I want to access on the road or data I want to share with others or data that has low value to me. But as primary storage and for my valuable data, I am skeptical.

Can you trust anyone else to store and protect your data?

I will cover more on this topic in my future blog posts. Few weeks ago, I was asked about my thoughts on this segment by an acquaintance in financial sector. I am just gearing up for a detailed analysis of online data storage opportunities.

Are you involved in online data storage service segment? If you are, I would like to get your perspective for my analysis and future blog posts. Interested, you know how to contact me. >>---------->


I am wearing Montsuki and Hakama, traditional Japanese clothing for formal occasions, in this picture.