The Sword and Laser discussion

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Alif the Unseen
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AtU: Technology Annoyances
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Given this situation, I can understand Alif not wanting to trust his data is secure if he doesn't have it near him at all times. If he keeps backups in a physical place, say with his friends at Radio Sheikh, they could be raided by the State when he's not there, and then his whole operation is compromised and he soon has State goons after him. If he keeps backups in the cloud, he runs the risk that hackers--whether criminal rivals or government agencies--will eventually crack them and his operation is compromised again. But if he keeps everything on hardware he has in his own room, if he suspects any trouble, he can physically cut connections or grab the hardware and run away.
As for his internet reliability, well, it's possible a Gulf petro-state like the UAE or Qatar (which Alif's city seems to resemble) has better internet service than New York City.


If your computer is under destructive attack, the shredding program can continue to run without a network connection. If your computer is under an unknown type of attack, assuming it's destructive gives you the most options for future recovery. A tremendous amount of damage can be done while you are deciding what to do about it.

Yes and it's way cheaper too. Check out this page of UK prices.
http://www.money.co.uk/broadband.htm
Note that is you already have cable then you are already paying the line rental fee. So the cost of 16mb download speed is less that $5 in most cases. Sky gives you 50mb for $15.



At least, that's how I understood it. I'm not exactly an expert on these things.

Yeah, that part had me thinking too. Out of all the computer-y stuff, that was the thing that bothered me the most. And I have a comp sci degree and work as a network/system admin

The first thing that annoyed me was something that constantly annoys me in television/movies. Why when someone gets into his system does he pull the plug on the whole system and not just kill his network connection?
And slightly related to this is the fact that he's running all of this just off his home computer and network. I live in NYC and my internet connection occasionally goes down for a few hours, this would seem like a problem for him, but and I would think that he should have some sort of offsite backup that is running so that if his computer crashes or loses network or his house catches on fire the protection keeps going and logging what's going on.
Overall I'm enjoying the book, but this kind of stuff just pulls me out of the story.