Messages

31

General Discussion / Re: Secure Web Download Token System

« on: January 30, 2012, 06:43:51 pm »

so I imagine I would store it in an SQL database, using PHP to execute the "if"s and "write"s? and if I were to store this data in its own SQL database, I imagine there wouldn't be anything important they could exploit?

32

General Discussion / Secure Web Download Token System

« on: January 30, 2012, 05:59:06 pm »

What's up dudes?

I'm looking to set up a secure download token system on our website by tonight for distributing a DVD download. Basically, tonight we will send to all the pre-orders, a download token embedded in a hyperlink that will only allow to download the DVD once. If they need to download it again, then they press a button that generates and emails them a new download token. The goal is to try and minimize sharing of this content until the physical release date in March.

Does anyone know much about this subject, ie do they have packages for this, or will I need to program it from scratch, and if so, which language is most ideal for me to program this in, and (@iago) what steps would I have to take to prevent vulnerabilities?

33

General Discussion / <obligatory-new-year's-resolutions-thread>

« on: December 29, 2011, 06:30:55 pm »

I'm still considering mine, but figured I'd start the thread anyways.

I feel like I succeeded in following through with my last year's resolutions.

release and tour on a new album.
base my self-worth less on other people's perception of me, and more upon my responsiveness to the moment.

34

General Discussion / @Rule: Bach's Cello Suites

« on: December 29, 2011, 03:55:35 pm »

Do you know of a definitive recording of Bach's Cello Suites, similar to Glenn Gould being the definitive performer of the Goldberg Variations?

35

General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: December 22, 2011, 07:53:11 pm »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb-rBbPectY

Covering one of my favorite Tool songs. Very excited to see them live in January, and greatly anticipating their next record.

36

General Discussion / Re: RIP hitchens

« on: December 20, 2011, 05:07:58 pm »

The message is complimentary in that he acted as a product of natural selection, not a missionary, carrying out the dirty deeds of natural selection, as you're seeming to suggest.

I'm not saying anything about Hitchens.  As I stated, until today, I'd never even heard of him.

I'm following this chain of thought:
* Sidoh posted that he liked Hitchens
* Sidoh then posted an image that was not disparaging to Hitchens, that described him as a product as natural selection.
* Therefore, Sidoh must like people who behave as products of natural selection and, by extension, products of natural selection.

I have no ulterior motive other than to find out if Sidoh is or is not a fan of products of natural selection.

Okay.

37

General Discussion / Re: RIP hitchens

« on: December 19, 2011, 04:41:27 pm »

The message is complimentary in that he acted as a product of natural selection, not a missionary, carrying out the dirty deeds of natural selection, as you're seeming to suggest.

38

General Discussion / Re: SD Card Data Recovery

« on: December 18, 2011, 02:55:05 pm »

That's likely as well. I gave them the benefit of any doubt.

Anyways, since I imagine these types of formatting mistakes happen more often than it should, this experience had me thinking about a possible solution for piecing together fragmented media files from a formatted drive.

The proposed program would piece back together the fragmented information with the following method:

• Based on my limited knowledge, I've assumed that a media file has a basic structure and syntax for it to be read and executed properly. For the sake of this thought experiment, I will call any file with this basic structure and syntax a 'solution'.
• The program would calculate all possible 'solutions' for the array of fragmented files.
  The more fragments, the more possible 'solutions'.
• (A more intelligent program could perhaps calculate another, smaller number of 'likely' solutions.)
• Depending on the user-input, the program would then render either all possible solutions, or all 'likely' solutions.
• The user would then sort through the solutions, and choose the correct solution.

Obviously, the program would require a specific algorithm for each codec, of each file-type.


Let me know if I was unclear in anyway.

39

General Discussion / Re: SD Card Data Recovery

« on: December 17, 2011, 07:14:44 pm »

Doesn't sound like you had a 'professional data recovery' company.

Based on my personal experience, they are not professionals. Though they have managed to build a data-recovery-empire in Arizona with over 37 store locations, probably by being professional "over 95%" of the time. My experience is apparently in the minority.

40

General Discussion / Re: SD Card Data Recovery

« on: December 17, 2011, 04:46:45 pm »

So after shopping around, I sent the SD card to a Data Doctors storefront in Arizona. The person I had spoken with seemed very optimistic, despite my very detailed description of the situation, and this provided me with hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. I later discovered this person participated as only a "middle-man" between myself and the "experts".

The diagnosis had cost a nonrefundable $90, and successful data recovery would cost an additional $210. I awaited three business days for a response.

The call I received was very unnerving. The "expert" had shared with me the results of the diagnosis, which were exactly equivalent with what I had independently discovered using free diagnosis software from the internet. (416 data chunks, 10 of which were recoverable pictures, the remaining were unrecoverable, fragmented video files).

What was most unnerving was that I had told the "middle-man" that I was very concerned the video files were truncated, and this "middle-man" didn't even know what truncated meant, but reassured me regardless that Data Doctors has over a 95% recovery rate.

I spoke with the "expert's" supervisor (to here on out be referred to as "super-expert"), and requested a refund for the nonrefundable diagnosis on the basis of the "middle-man's" ignorance of his own profession. The "super-expert" made a few fallible arguments that there was indeed a possibility to recover the data regardless of the original information I had presented to the "middle-man" (IE: that the file allocation table is sometimes recoverable, but really, this is only true if the partition table had been damaged and not formatted). The "super-expert" started talking in very long circles, apparently trying to confuse me with irrelevant technical jargon that would likely confuse his average customer. To avoid any further aggravation, I cut my losses of $90 and left to pick-up the SD card.

When I returned to the Data Doctors store front to pick up the SD card, the invoice stated, "data-recovery not possible due to low-level format". Really? Now they're claiming I did a low-level format? Fucking horseshit.



tl;dr:
Use Recuva (Windows only) to recover data from formatted partitions. (will not piece together fragmented files, but if the file-type is not complicated, it may be possible for you to piece it back together yourself)

Use TestDisk (All OSes) to fix damaged partition tables. (will not recover a formatted partition table)

Use a professional data recovery company ONLY IF your drive has been physically damaged or cannot be accessed by your computer, or if all else has failed and you have good reason to believe they can help you out.

41

General Discussion / Re: SD Card Data Recovery

« on: November 21, 2011, 12:44:13 pm »

If it were me in this scenario, I would just load a linux VM/livecd and use dd .

This is what I ended up doing with Knoppix, and it worked swimmingly.

But I still have the problem of recovering working videos. I called one professional data recovery company, and they were saying it's very unlikely to successfully recover video data. I'm going to call around a few places today, and even if it's unlikely, I'll send in the SD card anyways and hope for the best. I'll post any subsequent updates.

42

General Discussion / Re: SD Card Data Recovery

« on: November 17, 2011, 07:02:48 pm »

cool. Does anyone have any recommendations for a Windows equivalent? I'll probably run a search for one later tonight.

43

General Discussion / Re: SD Card Data Recovery

« on: November 17, 2011, 06:23:00 pm »

OT:  Hey Armin, come on AIM! (I'm on right now).

awww, I was on a plane back to the states by the time you posted this.

iago, what is a good program to use to make a bit-by-bit backup of the drive?

44

General Discussion / Re: SD Card Data Recovery

« on: November 15, 2011, 02:20:44 am »

DiskDigger was able to recover less data than Recuva, and has the same problem with opening the media. I tried two other recovery programs with similar lack-of-success.

Right now I'm lead to believe that Recuva had successfully recovered all of the important media, but just fudged the headers. I'm looking to obtain a working, non-recovered media file from his camera and use it as a reference to recover the header on the recovered media.

I'm also hoping that maybe with TestDisk I can somehow recover the old partition table, but I'm not sure if that's possible if the old partition table was formatted and not just corrupted.


Any other ideas?

45

General Discussion / SD Card Data Recovery

« on: November 14, 2011, 08:42:37 pm »

So a filmmaker buddy of mine accidentally formatted an SD card with his Canon 60D. On this card he had around 29GB of important footage that he hadn't backed up. From what I hear, SD card recovery is similar to any other recovery in the sense that when formatted, only the partition tables are overwritten and the actual data is left intact. luckily, my friend hadn't written any files onto the card after formatting.

So I ran a deep scan with the lovely program Recuva, and after an hour, it found all 29GB of 416 deleted jpg's, mov's and tif's. I recovered all of the files onto a separate external hard drive. The file sizes all seemed appropriate, and the image files worked 100%.

But none of the video files are able to be read by any video media program. VLC crashes, Final Cut imports a few minutes of "empty" video files filled with white noise, and none of my converting programs are able to load and convert the file to another format. The name of the files don't have any illegal characters in them that may confuse the media programs.

I'm in the process of using another program named Data LifeSaver to do a similar deep scan recovery process and hoping to have better success. I'll post an update on this soon.


Does anyone have any other ideas? Does anyone know much about paying for a professional data recovery service? As I said, the footage is of critical importance.