Crave

We first caught a glimpse of the Maxtor Black Armor back in January at CES 2008. Since then, we've been excited to get it into our labs for testing to see if it measures up to the rest of the market. After a few months of waiting, we finally got it and...not so much.

The Black Armor's No. 1 concern is data security. Like a little digital lockbox, everything inside the hard drive is protected by 128-bit government grade encryption that's built into the hardware itself, rendering the drive useless in the wrong hands. The owner sets a username and password, and only he or she can access the drive. Furthermore, a convenient "traveler" mode prevents thieves from completely wiping out your data. Only the host, at their home computer, has the permission to format the drive.

But the Black Armor isn't cheap in comparison to other externals out there. It's $150 and you only get 160GB, which factors out to 81 cents per GB--far more than the industry standard. In fact, in the same CES report, we also debuted a 320GB Toshiba drive for just $250.

Take a look at our full review of the Maxtor Black Armor hard drive for a more detailed description of this drive.

(Credit: IWantOneOfThose.com)

All good things must come to an end. Eventually, your co-workers will become immune to your flying toy antics, and you'll need to come up with some other way to irritate them. So here's the answer you've been looking for: the black helicopter.

This way, not only can you buzz them at will, but you can also prey on their paranoid tendencies at the same time--the best of all conspiratorial worlds. The "Black Ghost," as first seen on Coolest-Gadgets, has "full altitude and directional control," which is a good thing because it'll need it when the other cubicle dwellers come after it to retaliate.

Stephen Colbert

(Credit: Comedy Central)

On October 16, Stephen Colbert announced that he is seeking the presidential nomination from both the Republican and Democratic parties in his home state of South Carolina. Though Colbert has never asserted he is serious (he recently told students at Columbia University, "I don't actually want to win, I just want to f**k with people."), his candidacy continues to be covered by just about every media outlet you can think of. Some people fully support his run for president whereas others are less than excited about turning the U.S. into a Colbert Nation.

While it's interesting that Colbert continues to garner coverage for his bid on the White House, what fascinates me is the level of support his campaign has generated. It's clear that many Americans are frustrated with the state of politics and their voting options; this is the reason that less than one third of voters stated they would definitely vote against Stephen Colbert for President in a Rasmussen poll, and six percent said they'd definitely vote for him despite the fact that he's a Democrat with no political experience who plays a caricature of Bill O'Reilly on television.

Of course, this is actually the same story that made its way through the theater last year in the Robin Williams vehicle, Man of the Year. In the film Williams is more Stewart than he is Colbert, but the premise is the same, a late-night political satirist decides to run for president and manages to gather far more support than anyone expected. He actually winds up getting elected in the movie due to a technical glitch, but surrenders his victory after learning his success was only made possible through computer error.

It's unlikely that Diebold will deliver Colbert the win, or that he will even make it onto the national ballot, but the success he's already achieved in his campaign is indicative of the same hunger for a real alternative that Man of the Year tapped into. As the New York Times reports on their blog The Caucus, the Facebook group 1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert has already eclipsed their stated goal and left Barrack Obama in the dust. Obama has the second most popular Facebook group amongst the presidential contenders but hasn't even accrued 400,000 supporters in the 8 months the group has been active.

Jon Friedman at MarketWatch has suggested that Colbert's campaign is nothing more than an attempt to bolster sales of his new book. Friedman argues that, "The clever host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" is holding the usually clear-eyed media in the palm of his hand and bringing out the worst in some star-struck journalists who should know better," but Allison Kilkenny at The Huffington Post sees things differently:

This is the root of all that is wrong with American politics. It's the "you can't win, so sit down" attitude. Supporters of this philosophy forget that runners don't necessarily have to win to shape public opinion. Victories are won with ideas, and true leaders possess the vision and wisdom to know that sometimes revolutions happen gradually.

Sometimes, revolutions begin with one person standing up and saying: "I know you don't take me seriously. I know I'm the clown in the room, but damnit, I'm trying anyway."

I tend to agree with Kilkenny. It often feels as if a politician's influence can be bought and sold like a commodity on the stock market (Colbert himself alluded to this when he announced that his campaign would be sponsored by Dorritos), and this tends to be true at both the national and local level. Colbert and other also ran candidates are doing what they can to shed light on this sordid system we call politics. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford professor and the author of Free Culture has been working to eradicate political corruption not as candidates, but as an expert on culture and a beacon in the academic community, and he's not the only one working to build alternatives to the current system.

There's obviously a long way to go before we can develop something that is truly representative of the will of the people, of all people, but it's encouraging to know that people are working on it. The classic saying is true: democracy is not a spectator sport; with the advent of the internet and Web 2.0, I'm hopeful that we can begin moving toward direct democracy and a system that isn't governed by the economic influence of special interests and the political elite.

In the words of John Lennon, "You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

Here's to Stephen Colbert, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and every other person, who has ever run for office knowing their odds of being elected are a long shot, at best, but are committed to making a change in whatever capacity they are able: good luck and never, never, give up!

(Credit: EADS)

Aerospace giant European Aeronautic Defence and Space has introduced a "hacker-proof" encryption technology that it claims will revolutionize Internet security and bring "cryptography into the 21st century."

The system, called "Ectocryp," was developed for military and business applications by researchers and engineers at EADS' Defence and Security Systems division in Newport, South Wales. The team relied on technology developed by the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters, sister agency to the NSA and formerly known as Government Code and Cypher School, of German Enigma fame.

The system owes its success to the "lightning speed with which the 'keys' needed to enter the computer systems can be scrambled and reformatted," reports the Telegraph. "Just when a hacker thinks he or she has broken the code, the code changes." (See related video.) The system is the first "Top Secret, Eyes Only" High Assurance Internet Protocol Encryptor (PDF) device in the U.K., according to the company.

How secure is it? Send your most excellent and sensitive Ectocryped data around the globe, and "all the computer technology in the world cannot break it," EADS sales manager Gordon Duncan boasted to the Telegraph.

Note to hackers of the Peeps Liberation Army: The gauntlet is officially down.

Apparently even dire warnings about the threat of snooping by American spies aren't enough to keep some top French government officials from nursing CrackBerry addictions on the sly.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

According to a report to be published in Wednesday's edition of the French newspaper Le Monde, bureaucrats continue to lament--and in some cases, quietly ignore--a warning dispatched 18 months ago from the head of France's national defense agency. Reissued recently, the notice reportedly bars certain categories of government officials from using their Research in Motion BlackBerries to circulate sensitive government information.

French security officials are still working on finding an alternative tool, but it hasn't been easy, the story said.

Meanwhile, an unnamed member of the prime minister's cabinet admitted that after one failed attempt at replacing the devices with something else, certain people have opted to continue using the smartphones "in secret." A secretary to one cabinet minister griped that it has become necessary for officials to "relearn" how to cope with older technologies.

Alain Juillet, a senior official in charge of economic intelligence for the French government, justified the plan by saying the BlackBerry poses "a problem of data security."

The rules came about because some of the main BlackBerry mail servers reside in the United States, where French security officials fear the messages are vulnerable to being swept up and perused by none other than the National Security Agency, according to the Le Monde report.

"The risks of interception are real," Juillet was quoted as saying.

Restrictions on BlackBerry use aren't unique to France. The Australian government also prohibits agencies from using the devices to transmit confidential, secret or top secret information--or with systems that involve such categories of data.