Soap Box:
Start, and maintain a notes file on your computer, and learn how to save that
file onto a floppy, in a form that you can take it to any machine and readily
read your notes. By that I mean, if you use a wordprocessor, and that
wordprocessor saves the file out in some proprietary format that can only be
read by your machine find some other tool, perhaps a simple DOS text editor,
or Learn Linux, the point is I want this data that you create in learning
this course, to transcend the current generation of computers, and software.
Simple ASCII text will always be supported, atleast for any english system.
You should learn to save your critical files, first in simple ASCII, and then
if you wish to include the proprietary formatting, under a different
subdirectory on the floppy, go ahead. The reason I state this so
emphatically, is that all computer operating systems eventually crash, yes
contrary to what you may have heard, even Linux goes down once in a while,
although that's quite rare, if you have backups of your critical stuff, in a
form that can be read anywhere, eg. not dependent on some proprietary
software, that goes out of business tomorrow, and when you get the new version
of what ever Operating System comes out next year, you find that you can't buy
brand X and all of your custom formatted critical data is useless junk. If you
take this approach now while you have the choice, your reward will be a
lifetime of information that you never have to carry around in your brain.
This can be incredibly empowering, the computer is now serving as an extension
of your brain. Some would argue, that this opens you up to privacy invasion,
hey, if someone get's hold of your files, they own you. If that is a concern,
learn how to use encryption, there are many programs available on the net,
some good some not so good, but if you choose to encrpyt, be sure you can
decrypt tomorrow! Meaning, make sure the encryption program is Open Source
and that you have a copy of the source code, even if you can't read C or Perl,
or haven't clue how to write DOS Batch files, someone, somewhere, should the
need arise, can get your encryption program running on what ever computer
tomorrow brings, assuming you saved the Source Code. In any case, any fear
of loosing your privacy, should not be used as an excuse for failing to take
and maintain adequate notes. To add to this issue, you may have heard of
Court Orders requiring people to hand over the password to their encrypted
files. Steagonography eliminates this threat, it stops it cold! You have
mp3 music, and jpeg image files on your system, right? What Steagonagraphy
does, is sprinkle into one or more of these files of your choice, in such
a way as not to degrade the quality of the sound, or the image, they do this
by replacing noise, with, encrypted data. The result is a perfectly usable
sound, or picture file, that has data embedded in it, that only becomes
visible with the encryption key. And here's the best part, such a file, in
the hands of an intruder, yields no clue, that any secret data is embedded
inside it. So if you don't tell anyone that Hard_Days_Night.mp3 contains
secret hidden data, there is no way they can detect that it does, and thus
even if you are ordered to surrender crypto keys, if you fail to mention
the key that unlocks that file, they can't prove it holds any encrypted
info. You simply say what key, I don't see any key, you must be imagining
things, that's just an illegal copy of the Beatles Hard Days Night, and
nothing more.