Re: SafeBoot BROKEN

In article <7PudnRaQpps6J4rcRVn->
"_Vanguard_" <do-not-email@reply-to-group> wrote:
>
> And he is a child that thinks the recipient is responsible for
> merchandise damaged during shipment rather than collecting on the
> insurance and moving on. Safeboot, a software maker, is not going to
> build multi-million dollar clean rooms and man them with staff to
> recover data off his damaged drive, nor will Safeboot send the drive to,
> say, Ontrack, and incur the costs of that data recovery - when Safeboot
> wasn't responsible for the damage. If the OP didn't insure it then he
> chose to take the risk, and he lost.

The drives were fully insured, however, postal insurance covers only
the replacement cost of the drives, not the cost of recovery of the
data on those drives.

Given the rate of depreciation of such hardware, given the rate of
technological advances and declining prices, three or four year old
drives would essentially be valueless and unrecoverable. Because of
this policy, monies spent on insurance were wasted.

Good thought though, but a dead end. Since the drives were well
packed in a tight fitting divided box, well wrapped with paper to
seal out moisture, and in perfect condition when mailed, but both
were not working, one not at all and the other with much data
destroyed, it is not logical or believable that both drives could be
damaged in mailing, one perhaps, but not both, absent some sort of
intentional destruction as retribution for insisting that the company
recover the data because of its flawed product.

With all due respect, you don't have the facts; your conjecture in
defense of this company, given that you don't have the facts,
suggests some other motivation; perhaps you just like to defend the
status quo because it allows you to identify with the power elite,
perhaps it makes you feel like a capitalistic businessman, perhaps it
makes you feel important to attempt to affect or to project some
authority in such matters, who knows.

What is obvious, though, is that your defense of this company only
speaks to your internal state and your needs for identification and
power, and not at all to the facts of the controversy at hand.

Since you appear to be enamored of Control Break International's
products, I am considering posting all of them on an offshore web
page for ftp download; nothing fancy, just simple and efficient. If
and when I do that, I will post and email the url to you and to your
couple of compatriots so that you may own all of their products free
of charge. If you and your friends like their products so much,
then you should have them all free of charge to use as is your
pleasure.

I would never use their products myself, but I would be happy to
distribute them, fully operational, to all who are interested, free
of any charge, my gift to you.

starwars

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starwars wrote:
>> say, Ontrack, and incur the costs of that data recovery - when Safeboot
>> wasn't responsible for the damage. If the OP didn't insure it then he
>> chose to take the risk, and he lost.

Thus the importance of always having backups of important data was at last
made clear to the OP.

>Good thought though, but a dead end. Since the drives were well
>packed in a tight fitting divided box, well wrapped with paper to
>seal out moisture, and in perfect condition when mailed, but both

You consider an antistatic bag, a sheet of cardboard and some brown paper
to be good packaging for a harddrive? Also, one can hardly claim drives
that old could possibly be in "perfect condition".

>were not working, one not at all and the other with much data
>destroyed, it is not logical or believable that both drives could be
>damaged in mailing, one perhaps, but not both, absent some sort of
>intentional destruction as retribution for insisting that the company
>recover the data because of its flawed product.

It would be a lot easier for them to refuse receiving the drives at all, or
insist on a retainer to be paid in advance before attempting any recovery.
Most companies charge enough to make a profit on people that incorrectly
use their product and need help correcting their mistakes afterwards.



- --
Frode

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On Mon, 16 Aug 2004, starwars <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]>
wrote:
>In article <7PudnRaQpps6J4rcRVn->
>"_Vanguard_" <do-not-email@reply-to-group> wrote:
>>
>> And he is a child that thinks the recipient is responsible for
>> merchandise damaged during shipment rather than collecting on the
>> insurance and moving on. Safeboot, a software maker, is not going to
>> build multi-million dollar clean rooms and man them with staff to
>> recover data off his damaged drive, nor will Safeboot send the drive to,
>> say, Ontrack, and incur the costs of that data recovery - when Safeboot
>> wasn't responsible for the damage. If the OP didn't insure it then he
>> chose to take the risk, and he lost.
>
> The drives were fully insured, however, postal insurance covers only
>the replacement cost of the drives, not the cost of recovery of the
>data on those drives.
>
> Given the rate of depreciation of such hardware, given the rate of
>technological advances and declining prices, three or four year old
>drives would essentially be valueless and unrecoverable. Because of
>this policy, monies spent on insurance were wasted.
>
> Good thought though, but a dead end. Since the drives were well
>packed in a tight fitting divided box, well wrapped with paper to
>seal out moisture, and in perfect condition when mailed, but both
>were not working, one not at all and the other with much data
>destroyed, it is not logical or believable that both drives could be
>damaged in mailing, one perhaps, but not both, absent some sort of
>intentional destruction as retribution for insisting that the company
>recover the data because of its flawed product.
>
> With all due respect, you don't have the facts; your conjecture in
>defense of this company, given that you don't have the facts,
>suggests some other motivation; perhaps you just like to defend the
>status quo because it allows you to identify with the power elite,
>perhaps it makes you feel like a capitalistic businessman, perhaps it
>makes you feel important to attempt to affect or to project some
>authority in such matters, who knows.
>
> What is obvious, though, is that your defense of this company only
>speaks to your internal state and your needs for identification and
>power, and not at all to the facts of the controversy at hand.
>
> Since you appear to be enamored of Control Break International's
>products, I am considering posting all of them on an offshore web
>page for ftp download; nothing fancy, just simple and efficient. If
>and when I do that, I will post and email the url to you and to your
>couple of compatriots so that you may own all of their products free
>of charge. If you and your friends like their products so much,
>then you should have them all free of charge to use as is your
>pleasure.
>
> I would never use their products myself, but I would be happy to
>distribute them, fully operational, to all who are interested, free
>of any charge, my gift to you.

You were foolish to not have your data backed up to start with and now you
sound like a vindictive asshole who's trying to blame anyone but himself
for your own stupidity.

Go ahead and waste your time with an ftp. Anyone that wants to steal these
products can already get them from a warez group anyway.

Stupid **** happens to stupid people because of their stupidity. "Stupid is
as stupid does," my momma used to always say.

"starwars" <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]>
wrote in news: elinux.net:
> In article <7PudnRaQpps6J4rcRVn->
> "_Vanguard_" <do-not-email@reply-to-group> wrote:
>
> The drives were fully insured, however, postal insurance covers only
> the replacement cost of the drives, not the cost of recovery of the
> data on those drives.
>
> Given the rate of depreciation of such hardware, given the rate of
> technological advances and declining prices, three or four year old
> drives would essentially be valueless and unrecoverable. Because of
> this policy, monies spent on insurance were wasted.
>
> Good thought though, but a dead end. Since the drives were well
> packed in a tight fitting divided box, well wrapped with paper to
> seal out moisture, and in perfect condition when mailed, but both
> were not working, one not at all and the other with much data
> destroyed, it is not logical or believable that both drives could be
> damaged in mailing, one perhaps, but not both, absent some sort of
> intentional destruction as retribution for insisting that the company
> recover the data because of its flawed product.
>
> With all due respect, you don't have the facts; your conjecture in
> defense of this company, given that you don't have the facts,
> suggests some other motivation; perhaps you just like to defend the
> status quo because it allows you to identify with the power elite,
> perhaps it makes you feel like a capitalistic businessman, perhaps it
> makes you feel important to attempt to affect or to project some
> authority in such matters, who knows.
>
> What is obvious, though, is that your defense of this company only
> speaks to your internal state and your needs for identification and
> power, and not at all to the facts of the controversy at hand.
>
> Since you appear to be enamored of Control Break International's
> products, I am considering posting all of them on an offshore web
> page for ftp download; nothing fancy, just simple and efficient. If
> and when I do that, I will post and email the url to you and to your
> couple of compatriots so that you may own all of their products free
> of charge. If you and your friends like their products so much,
> then you should have them all free of charge to use as is your
> pleasure.
>
> I would never use their products myself, but I would be happy to
> distribute them, fully operational, to all who are interested, free
> of any charge, my gift to you.

Insurance covers what you CLAIM is the value of the item. Perhaps the
shipper only provides coverage for *replacement* value of the physical
object but that doesn't preclude buying extra insurance (using a
different shipper) with its commensurate increased cost. Just because
you went minimal with insurance wasn't their fault, it was yours, and
yet your statement shows that you claimed your drive and all on it was
worthless to you because you never insured it at all. The value of the
physical hard drive was not important; if it were, you would've just
bought another replacement drive or reformatted and FIXMBR'ed your old
one. It was the data that was important. If the carrier you used does
not provide insurance beyond the physical replacement value of the item
then use another carrier/shipper that will, or get separate insurance to
cover the data independent of the shipper. If you don't value your
data, no one else will, either. According to you, Safeboot - or to
whomever you supposedly shipped the drive(s) - should even reimburse you
should your drives have been lost and never received by them. The
recipient is not responsible for anything you ship to them for what
happens to it while in transit. That's for what you paid the carrier.
If you don't want to pay the price of having someone else insure your
data (which only equates to money and not the data) then you should
consider providing your own insurance - in the form of backups!

Actually I'm surprised that Safeboot even bothered to offer to recover
the data from your drives. I doubt they have the resources available
of, say, Ontrack to provide a high probability of extracting your data.
All they probably could do is undo whatever their software did in the
MBR and to decrypt your files (presuming you didn't corrupt the file
system or files sometime after the product's install). If the drive was
physically damaged, that would be impossible for them and you would then
have to send the drive(s) to Ontrack (who could get the data from the
platters but then give it to you to then send to Safeboot to decrypt).
Can you provide a copy of the contract, terms of service, guarantee,
end-user license, or support policy that was included with Solo so *we*
know exactly what they DO cover regarding implementation and use of
their product. You'll probably find it covers their butt more than it
does yours. Even Microsoft doesn't guarantee that formulae in Excel
actually work. After you get through all the legalese, you'll probably
find it equates to "use at your own risk" (which is innately tied to
your level of expertise).

Regardless that Safeboot was installed and implemented, this has it
usurp the bootstrap code in the MBR to password protect the encrypted
contents of the disk. How does that prevent you from saving a disk
image of the partitions on the drive? I doubt Safeboot ****s around
with the partition table in the MBR, so any drive imaging program
(DriveImage, Ghost, BingIt NG) should be able to save an image of the
partitions. Just be sure they are *physical* drive images that read
sectors rather than open files (e.g., with Ghost, you must use the /IA
command-line parameter to backup in "raw" mode while images created by
DriveImage are physical sector-read images). They may not save the MBR,
however, so you will need another utility to save a backup of the MBR
that goes with the drive image. Powerquest has a free download of their
MBR backup tool, BingIt NG has one, there is MBRtool, and others.
Again, it depends on your expertise in using these products and knowing
what they will and will not do. If you were sending out the original
contracts for a job or the original deed to your home through the mail
regardless of whomever was the carrier, and even if they could be
replaced sometime later, don't you think that you would first make
[notarized] copies for yourself in case they got lost or damaged in
transit?

As far as defending Safeboot, no, I'm not defending them. I'm
ridiculing you. There is a big difference. You expect others to pay
for your mistakes. That it happened to be Safeboot you attacked due to
your ineptitude or ignorance is irrelevant. I don't care nor use
cracked or pirated software, and shareware gets paid for if I use it
beyond its trial period. I'm sure around your work that you think it is
okay to pilfer from the company supply cabinet when you need pens,
paper, and other supplies for school. I realize that morality for many
people is adaptive rather than logical, especially if the fear of
getting caught (i.e., punishment) is minimal. I figure you deserve to
get mistreated if you use a cracked copy to purloin software in which
its code may have been deliberately infected or altered. Consider the
source and then consider if you really want what they offer. Are those
that provide downloads of cracked software or cracks for them any more
moral than those that proliferate viruses? Nope. You can keep your
infected cracked copy. No thanks.

In fact, and since they dropped the Solo version of their product (at
$59) and now only offer their Pro version (for which I can't get a price
from their web site), I'll probably look to other security products,
like DriveCrypt or maybe even PGP freeware if it is sufficient for my
needs at the time, but I'll damn well make backups before the install
and even continue to do so after the install. Even for far less severe
changes, like installing MS Office, I'll do a drive image before and
after. By eliminating SafeBoot Solo, and if their Pro version is
significantly priced higher than was their Solo version, then they have
pushed me out of using their product for personal use. They choose to
retarget the audience for their products, probably to ensure a higher
level of expected expertise by their customers, and I might not be in
that targeted audience due to the greater personal out-of-pocket price
of their Pro product.

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:45:26 -0500, in article
<9budnfWafK16gbzcRVn->, "Vanguardx" <see_signature>
wrote:

>
>As far as defending Safeboot, no, I'm not defending them. I'm
>ridiculing you.

As is everybody that has replied to this idiot!

Unfortunately, due the OP's obvious stupidity he/she is unable to see
that and assumes everybody is defending Safeboot, rather than pointing
out his/her own dumb****edness.

(Nice, well reasoned post BTW)