sexta-feira, 20 de fevereiro de 2015

The 50 greatest classical music recordings of all time

The 50 greatest recordings of all time

The must-have performances on disc

Fonte: http://www.classical-music.com/article/50-greatest-recordings-all-time

24 September 2013 - 9:18am

Submitted by EDavis

Each month at BBC Music Magazine we receive hundreds of recordings, and hundreds of thousands have been made since the advent of recorded sound. But which are the greatest, the ones that no collection should be without? We asked the BBC Music critics to vote on the top 50 recordings of all time. And here are the results… To read more about each recording click on the title of the disc or the cover image.

1. Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelung

‘Very nice,’ sneered a rival producer, hearing that Decca were embarking on the Ring. ‘But of course you’ll never sell any.’ To him it was just an obscure, prestige project. But at a stroke – Donner’s awesome hammerstroke in Rheingold, to be precise, the loudest sound then recorded – Decca’s new venture was to galvanise classical recording, and begin a new era…

2. Beethoven's Symphonies Nos 5 & 7

The reclusive Carlos Kleiber – voted the most inspiring conductor of all time in a poll of eminent current practitioners in BBC Music’s April 2011 issue – was a rare visitor to the recording studio. But his LP of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic, issued in 1975, was recognised as a classic…

3. Britten: War Requiem

‘I thought Mozart and Verdi had said it all: I was wrong.’ So spoke the usually sceptical Ernst Roth, Britten’s publisher, after the momentous 1962 premiere of the War Requiem at the consecration of Coventry Cathedral…

4. JS Bach: Goldberg Variations

Given this is now such a historic landmark, it seems strange to recall that executives at Columbia had misgivings about Glenn Gould recording the Goldberg Variations…

5. Puccini: Tosca

It was the legendary recording producer Walter Legge who brought the 29-year-old Maria Callas to the EMI stable in 1953, thereafter recording with her between two and four operas each year until the end of the decade…

6. Elgar: Cello Concerto

Some say it’s the red-hot personality, others that it’s the du Pré-Barenboim love story, still others that the tragic emotions evoked in the music foreshadow the tragedy that later befell the performer…

7. Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

This superlative recording, made in London in 1952 and never out of the catalogue, was the first complete one of Tristan und Isolde, and contains several lengthy passages from the love duet in Act II and Tristan’s delirium in Act III that many lovers of the work had never heard before…

8. Ravel/Berlioz: Shéhérazade/Nuits d'été

Escapism is what Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Berlioz’s Nuits d’été and have in common. Régine Crespin knew that, which is why her performance of these two song cycles practically seems to exist out of time and space…

9. Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos 4-6

At the height of the Cold War, the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under its legendary principal conductor Evgeny Mravinsky visited Britain in September 1960, giving sensational concerts in Edinburgh and London which drew ecstatic responses from both press and public…

10. Gershwin: Porgy and Bess

Glyndebourne’s production of Porgy and Bess in 1986 confirmed the work’s status not merely as Gershwin’s masterpiece, but as one of the great operas…

11. JS Bach: Cello Suites

It was a chance discovery in a Catalan junkshop that ultimately led to the making of one of the 20th century’s truly great recordings…

12. Beethoven: Late String Quartets

It’s nearly 80 years since the Busch Quartet made their legendary recordings of Beethoven’s Late String Quartets, and it’s frequently stated that they have never been bettered…

13. Janáček: Kátya Kabanová

Released in 1977, in the years when Decca was at the height of its powers as an independent label, this recording opened up new dimensions in Janáček performance, and its success launched Charles Mackerras’s complete cycle of the operas that was to follow…

14. Art of the Prima Donna

This ambitious set of 16 arias associated with past coloratura legends came out in 1960 at the beginning of Sutherland’s career as an international recording star…

15. Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas

Artur Schnabel was the first pianist to record the complete Beethoven Sonatas, undertaking the mammoth project for the Beethoven Society in the early 1930s…

16. Hildegard von Bingen: A Feather on the Breath of God

This was the 1981 disc, from Christopher Page’s pioneering Gothic Voices group and the incomparably pure-voiced Emma Kirkby, that launched interest in the medieval visionary and composer Hildegard von Bingen…

17. Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610

John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir have had a long and special relationship with the Vespers of 1610 going all the way back to their groundbreaking recording of the mid-1970s…

18. Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 4; Ravel: Piano Concerto

Reclusive Italian virtuoso pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli remained a notoriously reluctant recording artist, feeling unable to commit his performances to disc for fear that they would not match his self-imposed high standards…

19. Chopin: Sonata No. 3 etc

‘Argerich plays Chopin’ is the emphasis on a recording where the interpreter sometimes comes before the composer, but this brilliant disc deserves its legendary appellation…

20. Mozart: Complete Piano Concertos

In the 1960s, while still in his twenties, Daniel Barenboim joined forces with the English Chamber Orchestra to record a groundbreaking set of the complete Mozart Piano Concertos, conducting from the keyboard…

To find out which recordings featured from 21-50 click on the pictures below

"El botón de nácar" de Patricio Guzmán é premiado no Festival de Berlim

"El botón de nácar" de Patricio Guzmán é premiado no Festival de Berlim

Fonte: http://antrocine.blogspot.com.br/2015/02/el-boton-de-nacar-de-patricio-guzman-e.html

O filme El botón de nácar, do chileno Patricio Guzmán, recebeu ontem o Prêmio do Jurado Ecumênico da Berlinale, um dos prêmios independentes que se outorgam no festival, este evento é a ante-sala aos Ursos de Ouro que se entregarão em noite de gala.

O documentário de Guzmán trata dos desaparecidos lançados ao mar pela ditadura de Augusto Pinochet, assim como do genocídio infligido às comunidades indígenas pelo colonialismo e está entre os favoritos para os prêmios oficiais da Berlinale.

Por sua parte, o filme Histoire de Judas de Rabah Ameur-Zaï- meches, levou o prêmio na categoria de Forum. Na categoria Panorama, a palma foi pra Ned Rifle, de Hal Hartley.

Também foi premiada pelos jurados independentes Victoria, do alemão Sebastian Schipper e interpretada pela espanhola Laia Costa, que recebeu o prêmio "Guild" de criação artística cinematográfica e o dos leitores do jornal berlinês Berliner Morgenpost.

Por sua parte, o filme brasileiro Que horas ela Volta, de Anna Muylaert, obteve o prêmio da Confederação de Cinemas de Arte e Ensaio (CICAE) na seção Panorama.

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Autobiografia escrita por ex-escravo que viveu no Brasil

Historiadores traduzem única autobiografia escrita por ex-escravo que viveu no Brasil

Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, nascido no Norte da África no início do século XIX, trabalhou no país antes de fugir em Nova York

por Leonardo Vieira

27/11/2014

Fontes:

http://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/historia/historiadores-traduzem-unica-autobiografia-escrita-por-ex-escravo-que-viveu-no-brasil-14671795

http://www.fabiocampana.com.br/2014/11/historiadores-traduzem-unica-autobiografia-de-ex-escravo-que-viveu-no-brasil/

http://braintercultural.blogspot.com.br/2015/02/a-posteriori.html

Que aqueles ‘indivíduos humanitários’ que são a favor da escravidão se coloquem no lugar do escravo no porão barulhento de um navio negreiro, apenas por uma viagem da África à América, sem sequer experimentar mais que isso dos horrores da escravidão: se não saírem abolicionistas convictos, então não tenho mais nada a dizer a favor da abolição.”

As palavras são de Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, ex-escravo nascido no Norte da África no início do século XIX e que trabalhou no Brasil antes de fugir das amarras da servidão em Nova York, em 1847. O trecho consta do livro “An interesting narrative. Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua” (“Uma interessante narrativa: biografia de Mahommah G. Baquaqua”, em tradução livre), lançado assim mesmo, em inglês, pelo próprio ex-escravo, em Detroit, no ano de 1854, em plena campanha abolicionista nos EUA. A obra jamais foi traduzida para o português, permanecendo desconhecida do público brasileiro.

No entanto, com apoio do Ministério da Cultura e do Consulado do Canadá, o professor pernambucano Bruno Véras, de 26 anos, resolveu se debruçar sobre o documento, ajudado por outros dois pesquisadores. Ele viajou ao Canadá, onde buscou vestígios de Baquaqua e consultou os originais do livro, cuja primeira edição em português deve ser lançada no Brasil até o fim do ano que vem.
– Baquaqua sempre foi um personagem que me intrigou. Ele escreveu a única autobiografia de um africano escravizado em terras brasileiras. Nos EUA e na Inglaterra existem vários desses relatos, que tinham uma função abolicionista. No Brasil, só um. E, apesar disso, Baquaqua não é conhecido em nossa História nem em nossos livros didáticos – conta Véras.

Os historiadores Paul Lovejoy e Robin Law, por exemplo, republicaram o livro nos anos 2000, ainda no idioma de Shakespeare. Segundo consta dos registros da edição original, parte da obra foi ditada para o escritor Samuel Moore, responsável também por editar a história do escravo.

> Assista abaixo às duas partes do vídeo-documentário:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9FZF9j4UHQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4f244nJyzQ

DUAS VEZES ESCRAVIZADO

A trajetória extraordinária desse personagem começa nos anos 1820, em Dijougou, onde hoje é o Norte do Benim. Filho de um proeminente comerciante, o pequeno Mahommah Baquaqua estudou em uma escola islâmica para ter acesso ao Corão, adquirindo conhecimentos de leitura e de matemática. Suas habilidades logo lhe permitiram atuar em importantes rotas comerciais que ligavam o então califado de Socoto e o extinto Império Ashanti, que rivalizavam no tráfico de escravos e no domínio de regiões da África Ocidental.

Baquaqua foi preso e feito escravo pelos Ashanti enquanto vendia grãos, noz de cola e outras especiarias para o front de guerra. Mesmo sendo recomprado e libertado pelo seu irmão, acabou novamente detido pouco tempo depois por tentar roubar e ingerir bebida alcoólica perto de Dijougou, algo próximo a um pecado capital para uma localidade dominada pelo Islã.

Baquaqua não pôde contar com a sorte daquela vez. Novamente escravizado, foi levado para a cidade litorânea de Uidá, importante porto de onde saía grade parte dos cativos destinados ao Novo Mundo. É a partir desse ponto que a autobiografia ganha seus contornos mais emocionantes:

“Quando estávamos prontos para embarcar (para as Américas), fomos acorrentados uns aos outros e amarrados com cordas pelo pescoço e, assim, arrastados para a beira-mar. Uma espécie de festa foi realizada em terra firme naquele dia. Não estava ciente de que essa seria minha última festa na África. Feliz de mim que não sabia”, escreveu o escravo.

Se, antes, os brasileiros tinham conhecimento do ambiente de um navio negreiro por meio das descrições de historiadores ou de famosos poemas como o de Castro Alves, agora poderão ter um relato vivo de uma testemunha de um dos piores capítulos da História da humanidade:

“Fomos arremessados, nus, porão adentro, os homens apinhados de um lado, e as mulheres de outro. O porão era tão baixo que não podíamos ficar de pé, éramos obrigados a nos agachar ou nos sentar no chão. Noite e dia eram iguais para nós, o sono nos sendo negado devido ao confinamento de nossos corpos.”
Comida e bebida eram escassos na viagem, havendo dias em que os escravos não ingeriam absolutamente nada. “Houve um pobre companheiro que ficou tão desesperado pela sede que tentou apanhar a faca do homem que nos trazia água. Foi levado ao convés, e eu nunca mais soube o que lhe aconteceu. Suponho que tenha sido jogado ao mar”, conta Baquaqua.

Pernambuco foi o destino do navio que levava nosso personagem, que desembarcou em 1845. De início, foi levado para uma lavoura nos arredores de Olinda, onde conheceu a dureza da escravidão brasileira: “o fazendeiro tinha grande quantidade de escravos, e não demorou muito para que eu presenciasse ele empregando livremente seu chicote contra um rapaz. Essa cena causou-me uma impressão profunda, pois, é claro, imaginei que em breve seria o meu destino”.

Baquaqua tratou da violência do senhor, chamando-o de “tirano”. Trabalhando como padeiro, o escravo inicialmente prestava os serviços com dedicação, mas ao ver que seu “patrão” nunca ficava satisfeito, entregou-se às bebidas e evitou o serviço. Acabou revendido para outro comerciante, desta vez no Rio de Janeiro.

“Meus companheiros não eram tão constantes quanto eu, sendo muito dados à bebida e, por isso, eram menos rentáveis para o senhor. Aproveitei disso para procurar elevar-me em sua opinião, sendo muito prestativo e obediente, mas tudo em vão; fizesse o que fizesse, descobri que servia a um tirano e nada parecia satisfazê-lo. Então comecei a beber como os outros e, assim, éramos todos da mesma laia, mau senhor, maus escravos.”

Na capital do Império, devido aos seus conhecimentos de matemática e literatura, o escravo atuou dentro de um navio especializado no comércio de charque entre o Rio Grande do Sul e a Corte.

Mas foi uma encomenda de café para Nova York que mudou sua vida completamente. Naquela época, os estados do Norte dos Estados Unidos já tinham abolido a escravidão, fato que não passou despercebido por Baquaqua. “A primeira palavra que meus dois companheiros e eu aprendemos em inglês foi F-R-E-E (L-I-V-R-E); ela nos foi ensinada por um inglês a bordo e, oh!, quantas e quantas vezes eu a repeti.”

Baquaqua tentou fugir do navio ao desembarcar em Nova York, mas logo acabou preso. Com a ajuda de abolicionistas locais, o escravo conseguiu escapar da prisão e rumou para o Haiti. Ficou por lá durante dois anos, período em que se converteu ao cristianismo, ingressando na Igreja Batista Abolicionista. De volta aos Estados Unidos, em 1850, o já liberto africano frequentou aulas de inglês por três anos no Central College, numa localidade então conhecida como MacGrawville, hoje parte de Nova York.

RELATO SIMILAR AO DE FILME QUE GANHOU OSCAR

Mas foi em Detroit que Baquaqua publicou seu livro, numa tentativa de arrecadar fundos para a campanha abolicionista. A autobiografia – chave do seu engajamento na luta abolicionista (que o levou até mesmo à inglesa Liverpool, em 1857, último lugar onde se teve notícia de Baquaqua) – é contemporânea e guarda similaridade com a de Solomon Northup. Americano nascido livre e escravizado no Sul dos Estados Unidos, ele teve sua obra adaptada para o cinema em 2013, com o título “Doze anos de escravidão”. O filme americano venceu o Oscar em três categorias, inclusive a de melhor longa-metragem.

– O contexto em que o livro de Solomon Northup foi publicado é o mesmo do de Baquaqua. Abolicionistas incentivavam ex-escravos a escrever relatos do cativeiro e mobilizar a opinião pública. Nada melhor do que o próprio escravo para contar como era a escravidão – afirmou Véras, que também trabalha para lançar um site somente sobre o ex-escravo, reunindo vídeos, fotos e arquivos de época.

Essa fascinante história também virou tema de um pequeno documentário em 2012, produzido por pesquisadores da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), em parceria com professores da rede de ensino do estado. Paulo Alexandre, conhecido nacionalmente por reproduzir os principais acontecimentos da Segunda Guerra Mundial no Facebook, foi um dos que participaram da produção.

Segundo ele, o personagem pode ser trabalhado em sala de aula como uma história de superação e de luta contra os estereótipos em torno do escravo:

– Meus alunos ficam impressionados quando lhes conto sobre Baquaqua, pois todos tinham aquela velha ideia de escravo submisso, aquele indivíduo sem nome nem identidade, que só sabia apanhar e trabalhar. Ninguém imagina que ele poderia ser uma pessoa inteligente, empreendedora, que consegue a liberdade a partir do próprio esforço.

Como armazenar arquivos com segurança na Nuvem [ Safer Cloud Storage ]

Securing Dropbox: 6 Steps To Take For Safer Cloud Storage

Fonte: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/securing-dropbox-6-steps-to-take-for-safer-cloud-storage/

If you use Dropbox, you may be in for some startling news. Despite the fact that Dropbox was the first to bring cloud storage to the masses, it’s widely accepted that Dropbox is no longer the best of its class. One big drawback is that the vanilla Dropbox isn’t very secure, which can be problematic if you’re storing private or sensitive data on your account. But don’t give up on Dropbox yet! With a bit of effort, you can make it more secure.
Keep in mind that this talk of security is in the context of account security so that no one else can intercept or hack into your files. As far as the NSA and the PRISM project are concerned, it’s highly doubtful that any of the following steps will prove effective as that’s an issue more core to the Internet than Dropbox itself.

Two-Step Authentication

Last year, Dropbox implemented the ability to use two-factor authentication, a type of log in method that involves more than just a password. As the name implies, this form of log in requires at least two independent steps to verify that you indeed have access to an account. Dropbox’s two-step authentication requires you to enter a password, then Dropbox sends a verification code to your phone.
dropbox-twostep-authentication

To enable two-step authentication in Dropbox:

Log into your account normally.
Click on your account name at the top right and select Settings.
Click on the Security tab.
Under Account sign in, find Two-step verification and click Enable.
Follow the instructions to set it up!

Enable Email Notifications

Ads by Google

Email notifications can be a pain, especially when they’re sent out more frequently than spam, but in this case I think you can make an exception. If you enable the feature, Dropbox will shoot you an email whenever a new device or a new app is connected to your Dropbox account. This feature could come in handy if someone tries to tamper with your account by making some sort of rogue connection to view or pull data.
Of course, in most cases, the one making a connection would need permission from your account to connect in the first place, which means they could probably disable the notifications before making their move. However, they could always forget, which means you’ll be notified if someone tries to do something sketchy.

Enable Selective Sync

Selective Sync is a feature of Dropbox that allows you to select which folders you want to keep synced with your account. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? For the most part, Selective Sync isn’t so much a security feature as it is a convenience and organizational feature, but it can be used to minimize exposure.
For example, say you keep your desktop, your laptop, and your tablet synced with Dropbox. If all of your devices were 100% synced all the time, then what would happen if your laptop or tablet were stolen? The thief would have access to every file. However, if your laptop only keeps a particular folder synced and your tablet only keeps a different folder synced, the thief would only have access to whatever is kept synced on that device.
Combining the Selective Sync feature with the Unlink Device feature (mentioned below), you can minimize accidental exposure of files in these kinds of situations.

Unlink Extraneous Devices and Apps

Whenever a device or app makes a connection to your account, Dropbox tracks it. Under the Security tab of the Settings page, you can view a list of all devices and apps that currently have permission to access your Dropbox account. This is, of course, very useful when you want to cut off someone’s access since they can’t reconnect without your account credentials.
This can come in handy with Selective Sync. Say your laptop syncs with a particularly sensitive folder but it was stolen while you were in the café bathroom. You could drive home, log onto Dropbox, and unlink your laptop from your account, which cuts off the thief from accessing any more data. They’ll still have whatever local files are on the laptop, but at least you can cut your losses here.

Use an Encryption App

Perhaps the strongest way to improve your Dropbox account’s security is to start using a third-party encryption app. What’s that, you ask? It’s a program that will keep your files encrypted on the fly without requiring you to do much of anything. Encryption is good because even if someone happens to intercept or hack into your account, they’ll still need to decrypt the files which won’t be too easy.
Fortunately, you have a few options to choose from. BoxCryptor (our review) might be the most well-known for Dropbox, but Viivo is an alternative that looks good. A more general encryption solution that works well with Dropbox is TrueCrypt, though it has a bit of a steeper learning curve than the previous two apps. However, once you learn it, you’ll find that it’s pretty powerful. Check out our TrueCrypt guide if you want to delve deeper.

Use a Stronger Password

We’ve all heard it time and time again, but the safest practice still remains to use unique passwords for all of your accounts and to make sure those passwords are strong. Dropbox is no exception. In fact, using a universal and stagnant password is one of the most common security mistakes you could make and you leave yourself vulnerable by doing so.

Conclusion

Again, Dropbox isn’t the most secure cloud storage service out there. We’ve written about secure alternatives to Dropbox before, but for those of you who wish to stay with Dropbox for whatever reason (I’m still a Dropbox user), the tips above will help you maximize your account’s security. In the future, we can only hope that Dropbox continues to implement increased security measures.

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TrueCrypt User’s Guide : Secure Your Private Files

Fonte: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-lockdown-secure-your-files-with-truecrypt/

To really keep your data safe, you need to encrypt it. Not sure how to start? You need to read our TrueCrypt user manual by Lachlan Roy, and learn how to use TrueCrypt encryption software.
Encryption is used all the time, often without you even realising it. Whenever you buy something online and make a transaction, all your details are heavily encrypted until they reach the other end, making sure that no third party could be listening in. If you use instant messaging programs it is possible to create an encryption tunnel to ensure that only you and the person you’re talking to can see the messages.
Enjoy!
§1–Introduction
§2–What is encryption?
§3–What is TrueCrypt?
§4–Installing and Using TrueCrypt
§5–Other Good Security Habits
§6–Conclusion

1. Introduction

The Changing Laptop Market

Your laptop has been stolen.
You left it there for just a second and there were plenty of people around, but you came back and it was gone. It takes a moment to sink in.
It’s gone.
First comes the initial shock, then the disbelief. Maybe I just put it down by the chair so that it was out of the way… Nope. It’s not there either. It’s been taken.
“Damn”, you think. “I’m not getting that back.” But it’s not that bad. It was an old laptop, faithful but due for retirement.
But then it hits you.
My email account.
My bank details.
My personal details, and the details of all my friends and family.
The financial reports for my business. The pictures of my family.

I’ve got them all backed up, but that’s not the problem here. They’re out there in the wild, now. Who knows where they could end up and who could see them? Who knows how that information could be exploited? What am I going to do?
The world shrinks around you as you realise the enormity of what has just happened. If only you’d encrypted your data.

2. What is encryption?

Encryption is the process of protecting data by using an algorithm to scramble it. The data is unintelligible, undetectable, unreadable and irretrievable unless a key is used to reverse the encryption, or decrypt, the data.
Encryption is used all the time, often without you even realising it. Whenever you buy something online and make a transaction, all your details are heavily encrypted until they reach the other end, making sure that no third party could be listening in. If you use instant messaging programs it is possible to create an encryption tunnel to ensure that only you and the person you’re talking to can see the messages.
In this manual we’ll be talking about local file encryption – that is, encrypting files on a hard drive (or encrypting the entire hard drive; more on that later). The files are safe as long as they are kept in the encrypted area.

2.1 What do I need encryption for?

If you have files that you don’t want (or can’t afford) anyone else to see, then you have a use for file encryption. Its entire purpose is to keep files hidden and safe.

2.2 Advantages of encryption

The biggest advantage of encrypting your files is the knowledge that your data will be safe if your computer is stolen. As soon as your computer is turned off you’ll know that all your files are inaccessible, and may in fact be locked earlier depending on the type and level of encryption that you use (more on that later).
When you sell your computer (or dispose of it by other means), it’s always a good idea to make sure that your data is securely erased to prevent the recovery of deleted files by whoever comes across the computer next.
The great thing about data encryption is that, without the key for decryption, the data appears as random noise. Unless the person happens to know the decryption key (which is highly unlikely), you might as well have already securely erased the drive.

2.3 Disadvantages of encryption

Unfortunately, encryption’s strength is also its weakness. Encryption is great at keeping people without the decryption key out. The problem: if you’ve forgotten the password that includes you too. Once that data is encrypted and you lose the key you might as well have securely deleted the files, and you’re not getting them back.
While it’s nowhere as dire as losing the files forever, another disadvantage of encryption is that you will lose some read/write performance when working with encrypted files (that is, opening files, saving them and/or moving them around). While this decrease is imperceptible when working with a few small files, working with thousands of tiny files or a few really big ones will take significantly longer as each file is decrypted before it can be used.
Thankfully, TrueCrypt supports parallelization (splitting data between the multiple cores of most recent processors), which means that in even these circumstances the drops in performance are minimized.

3. What is TrueCrypt?

TrueCrypt is a free, cross-platform program (meaning that it works in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux distributions including Ubuntu) that you can use to encrypt your data. It is classified as „On The Fly Encryption’ (OTFE) software, which basically means that it encrypts and decrypts files as you access and modify them and that all files within the area of encryption are available as soon as you enter the key.

3.1 Different types of encryption

There are three main types of encryption, each with a different level of technical difficulty to implement and with its own advantages and disadvantages. We’ll be taking a look at each of them and eventually finding out how to set each one up.

3.2 Virtual encrypted disk

The virtual encrypted disk (VED) is the quickest and easiest type of encryption to set up. It works by creating a file of a specified size that can then be mounted. Basically, it acts just like an external hard drive. When you unmount the VED the files inside are invisible – only the VED file itself is visible and appears as random data when analysed at the hardware level.
Using a virtual encrypted disk has a couple of downsides. The first is that, because the file is its own discrete file that is stored in a folder like any other file, it can be quite conspicuous and stand out easily. It is also easy to accidentally delete the file and all the files in it. However, being a separate file also has the advantage that it can be moved around easily.
The other main disadvantage of a virtual encryption disk is that you must choose how large you want it to be when you create the file. This file cannot be resized easily and takes up the entire amount of space straight away, which can be troublesome if you make it too big or too small to begin with. Too large, and you’ll be wasting hard drive space; too small, and you’ll run out of room when you go to store more documents.
If you’re using Windows it’s possible to create a dynamic VED; that is, one that starts small and only increases in size as you add files to it. However, a dynamic VED is much slower than a standard one, is no longer cross-platform and is a lot easier to detect than it would be otherwise.

3.3 Partition/drive encryption

Partition/drive encryption covers an entire drive (or one of its partitions, if your drive happens to be divided up). It’s a little more complicated to set up than a VED, but it has its own rewards. For example, as the encryption covers the entire hard drive it is arguably less conspicuous while casually browsing files, and it is a lot harder to accidentally delete your important files. You also don’t need to worry about the size of a virtual drive, as the entire partition is encrypted.
The big downfall of encrypting the entire drive is that it takes a very long time to set up, mainly because TrueCrypt has to create random data and write it to the entire hard drive. The other thing to bear in mind is that because you’re encrypting the whole drive you won’t be able to use any of it without the key. If you lose your password then you won’t be able to use the drive without losing everything.

3.4 System encryption

The last main form of encryption goes one step further than encrypting your data – it encrypts the entire operating system and all the data on that partition with it, requiring you to enter your password before you get to the operating system (this is known as pre-boot authentication). However, this particular type of encryption through TrueCrypt is only compatible with Windows. Never fear, though! Mac OS X and most Linux distributions have some form of system encryption built in to the operating system itself, so they just require you to turn it on in the system preferences.
System encryption is the most secure, but it also has the most at stake. If you lose your password, you’ll not only lose access to your encrypted data, but to your applications and the rest of your computer, too. This is fine if you have another operating system on a separate drive or partition to fall back on (or if you have a Linux Live CD), but if you don’t you’ll be stuck without your computer. Either way you’ll be forced to erase everything on the drive and reinstall everything from scratch.
This isn’t a problem so long as you write down your password in a couple of places so that you don’t forget it, but it’s definitely worth bearing in mind.
The other thing to take into account is that encrypting the operating system is by far the most complex encryption type so will take a lot longer than the others to set up and is more likely to have something go wrong. This would most likely entail the TrueCrypt Boot Loader (which comes up before you boot Windows and is where you enter your password to decrypt the system) becoming damaged and failing to load (and locking you out of the system).
With this in mind TrueCrypt requires you to create a rescue disc that you can use to decrypt your installation in case something goes wrong.

3.5 Which type of encryption is best for me?

The vast majority of users will want to use either the virtual encrypted disk or encrypt a whole drive or partition. Which one is “better” depends on how much you want to encrypt. If you only have a couple of GB or less of sensitive data there’s little point in encrypting an entire drive, especially as it makes it a lot harder to move the encrypted data around.
There are very few scenarios in which encrypting the entire operating system is the recommended choice, considering the number of things that could go wrong and the consequences if the password is lost. If you’re working with data sensitive enough to require the entire operating system to be encrypted then the chances are you aren’t setting it up yourself.
To summarise: you’re probably best off using a virtual encrypted disk unless you either have a lot of sensitive data or a very small drive/partition, in which case you might as well encrypt the whole thing.

4. Installing and Using TrueCrypt

4.1 Downloading TrueCrypt

The first thing you’ll want to do is go to the TrueCrypt download page at http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads, and choose the download for the operating system that you’re using.
Each platform has a slightly different installer. For Windows you download an .exe file that is the actual installer. For OS X you download a .dmg image file that you mount to reveal the installer file (which is a .pkg file). For Linux you need to choose either the 32-bit or 64-bit version (if you don’t know what this is, download the 32-bit one). This will download a .tar.gz file (which is just like a .zip file) which contains the installer file which you can extract and then run.

4.2 Installing TrueCrypt

The process of installing TrueCrypt is very similar for Windows and OS X and is just a case of following the instructions on each screen. It’s just like installing any other application, so you shouldn’t have any problems.
If you’re using Linux then the process is a little different, but it is still very straightforward. Once you’ve extracted the installer somewhere (your desktop, for example), you’ll see this:

When you double click on it, you’ll be met with this dialog box:

Obviously you want to run it, so click on “Run”.
After that you’ll be met with a black and white installer that looks like this:

Just follow the prompts as you would with a normal installer. The only thing that needs mentioning is that you’ll see this and probably get confused for a second:

Relax, it’s not uninstalling the program as soon as you’ve installed it! That’s just telling you what you need to do if you want to uninstall TrueCrypt later. Click okay and then you’ll see this, which shows that you’ve installed TrueCrypt properly:

That’s it! You can find TrueCrypt in the Applications menu under Accessories:

4.3 Creating a virtual encrypted disk

Regardless of what platform you’re using, when you open up TrueCrypt for the first time you’ll see this window (although in Ubuntu and Mac OS X the drives are simply numbers and not drive letters like they are here):

The first thing we want to do is create a new Virtual Encryption Disk, so we’ll click on “Create Volume”. This will start the TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard, which will guide us through the steps we need to create the VED.
The wizard looks like this:

We want to create an encrypted file container, so we’ll select this option and then click on “Next”. Then we’ll make sure that “Standard Truecrypt volume” is selected and then click on “Next” again.

It is possible to create a hidden TrueCrypt volume but there are very few reasons why you would want to make one (that is, unless you’re likely to be subject to extortion for the files you’re hiding!). If you want to know more you can read the documentation for hidden volumes on the TrueCrypt website.

Next we’re asked to select a location and a name for the VED. Here I’ve called it “Virtual Encryption Disk” and just stored it in the “My Documents” folder. Then it’s time to click “Next” again!

We don’t need to worry about any of the encryption options – even the defaults are plenty secure enough for our needs! The defaults should be “AES” and “RIPEMD-160” for the respective drop down menus, but it doesn’t really matter either way. To the next step!
Now we’re going to choose how much space we want to allocate to our VED. I’ve chosen to give 250MB to this one:

After clicking on “Next” yet again, it’s time to choose the password for our VED. The length our password needs to be depends on how secure we need to be, but we need to be able to remember it! I’ve chosen a 9 character complex password (more on that later), which should be more than secure enough for the data that I’ll be storing in it.

An error will pop up if the password is less than 20 characters long; don’t worry about it, and just continue. Onwards!

The next screen is where we format the volume and generate the encryption keys for the VED. TrueCrypt uses the movement of our mouse to help increase the cryptographic strength of the keys, so make sure to move your mouse randomly over the window for a while before clicking on “Format”. When it’s finished you’ll see this dialog box pop up:

That’s it! Your VED is ready to go. The next step is to mount it, but we’ll talk about that a bit later on.

4.4 Encrypting a drive or partition

Just like creating a VED, the first step is to click on “New Volume” in the main TrueCrypt window. However, instead of selecting “Create an encrypted file container”, we’ll be selecting “Encrypt a non-system partition/drive” before clicking on the “Next” button.

While it’s possible to create a hidden volume, we’ll just be making a standard encrypted volume this time. Make sure “Standard TrueCrypt volume” is selected and then click on “Next” again.

Now we need to choose the partition that we wish to format. I have a virtual drive that I created for this example, so I’ll select that:

After that we need to choose how we create the volume. This basically boils down to whether you already have data on the drive that you want to encrypt or whether it’s been freshly made. I’ve already got some files on this partition, so I’ve selected the “Encrypt partition in place” option.

Next up is to choose the encryption options. Just like with the VED we don’t really need to change any of these settings since they’ll be more than secure enough for what we’re using them for. Just click “Next” to move on.

Now it’s time to choose a new password. Again, there’s no point in having a ridiculously long password if you can’t remember it (more on that in the „Selecting good passwords’ section below). Once you’ve entered and confirmed a password, click on “Next” again.

Here we’re generating the keys for the encryption. Moving the mouse randomly in the window makes the keys stronger, so make sure to do that before clicking “Next”!

If there’s data that you’ve deleted from the drive that you want to be unrecoverable, you’ll want to choose a wipe mode that overwrites the raw data. In this case there’s nothing to overwrite so I’ll choose the option with no overwriting, but if there’s data you want to hide then you’ll probably want to choose the 3-pass option. There are also 7-pass and 35-pass options but these would take far too long to be worthwhile.

Now we’re up to the final stage – just hit “Encrypt”! You’ll get a dialog box that reminds you that you won’t be able to access the data at all until the entire drive has finished encrypting. There’s also a warning that if your computer shuts down for any reason without giving it a chance to pause then you’ll almost certainly corrupt some of the data that you’re copying over (if you are). Even if you’re not, you’ll also have to start the encryption process again from scratch.
Go get a cup of coffee – this is going to take a while. Once you’ve finished encrypting the drive you’ll have a few more dialog boxes pop up to give you some important instructions with regard to mounting the drive.
Once you’ve taken those on board, you’ll be greeted with the last window:

4.5 Mounting and dismounting encrypted disks

Mounting an encrypted disk is fairly straightforward. First we’ll look at mounting a VED. In the main window we’ll click on “Select File…” and select the VED that we created earlier. We’re then asked to enter the password for the archive. It’ll look a little like this:

That’s it! Once we enter the password and click “OK”, the drive will be mounted and will look just like any other hard drive:

Mounting an encrypted partition is even easier – all we need to do is click on “Auto- Mount Devices” at the bottom of the window, which will give us a dialog box to enter in the password of the encrypted partition. When we click “OK” it’ll be mounted as a drive in the same way as the VED:

When you’re finished working with the files, just go back to the main TrueCrypt window and click on “Dismount All”.

5. Other Good Security Habits

5.1 Selecting good passwords

It’s very important that you choose good passwords to keep everything secure. There are a few things to keep in mind when selecting passwords to use. The first thing may seem obvious, but it needs to be said: make sure you use different passwords for everything! It doesn’t matter how secure your password is; if you use the same password for everything and somebody manages to learn it, they’ll have access to your entire digital life. That’s not fun.
Secondly, your password actually needs to be secure. Setting your password as “password” or the name of your cat may be easy to remember, but they’re also the first things that somebody trying to access your data is going to try.
A good password is one that is easy to remember but hard to guess or crack. This means that you can one of two routes:
• Go for a really, really long password. For example, the password “TheRainInSpainStaysMainlyInThePlain” is 35 characters long – long enough that no hacker is going to be able to figure it out and trying to crack it by brute force (using a computer to go through all the possible combinations) would take far too long. The only problem is that some websites or programs may set a limit to how many characters you can use.
• Go for a complex password. These should still contain at least 8 characters but includes upper and lower case characters, numbers and symbols to make the number of possible combinations for a shorter password much larger. “nES+=3ux” is an example of a complex password.
I personally prefer the complex route, as it’s faster to type. “But Lachlan!” I hear you say, “How am I ever going to come up with a random password with symbols and numbers in it, let alone remember it?”
When I need a new password I’ll usually come up with a sentence that is easy to remember, for example “All for one and one for all”. Then I’ll take the first letter of each word – “afoaofa”. Right now it’s not a complex password, but we’ll get there.
Next we can change the “a” for “and” to an “&” sign. This gives us “afo&ofa”. Now we need a number or two. The number 4 looks like an upper case “A”, so we can change one of them out, and we can change the word “one” for “1”. Doing that we end up with “afo&1f4”. Starting to look better, isn’t it?
If we make the first “a” a capital (like at the start of sentence), and add in a couple of punctuation marks at the start and end of the password we end up with something like “!Afo&1f4?”. Have fun trying to crack that! It’s still pretty easy to remember, though:
All for one and one for all -> !Afo&1f4?
If you’re not feeling particularly creative you can always use an online password generator; I’ve personally found pctools.com’s password generator to be the best. Regardless of what password you use or how you come up with it, it’s a good idea to test the strength of your password; passwordmeter.com is great for that.

5.2 Locking your computer and logging out of services

It goes without saying that a password is pointless if it’s not being used. Your computer may be protected by an awesome password that stops people from logging in. But what happens if you log in and then walk away for your computer for a while? Anybody could sit down and get at any of your files (unless you’ve got them in a virtual encrypted disk, that is!)
The quick and easy solution to this is to lock your computer whenever you leave it and go elsewhere. If you use Windows you can press the “Windows” key + L to lock your screen; if you’re using Ubuntu, you can press “Ctrl”+“Alt”+L.
If you’re using a Mac there’s no keyboard shortcut, but it’s still possible to lock your screen. There are a couple of ways you can do this:

5.3 Screensaver Lock

Simply go to System Preferences, click on “Security”, then select the first option: “Require password after sleep or screen saver begins”. You can select a period of time before the password is required ranging from an immediate lock up to 4 hours. If you want to lock the screen quickly you can then set one of your “hot corners” to start your screensaver. The setting for this is under “Exposé” in System Preferences.

5.4 Login Window

Alternatively, you can go to System Preferences and then click on “Accounts”. Next, select “Login Options” towards the bottom of the window and select “Show fast user switching menu”. This puts an icon or your username in the menu bar. You can click on this and then click on “Login Window…” to lock your screen.
You can also set the screen to lock after coming out of the screensaver on the other operating systems – the option is usually under the screensaver settings.
This is all well and good if you’re using your own computer, but what if you’re using a friend’s computer, or a public one?
Just make sure that you don’t tell the browser to remember any of your passwords and that you log out when you’re finished. That way there’s no chance that somebody can get access to your data without you knowing about it!

6. Conclusion

Your laptop has been stolen.
You left it there for just a second and there were plenty of people around, but you came back and it was gone. It takes a moment to sink in.
It’s gone.
First comes the initial shock, then the disbelief. Maybe I just put it down by the chair so that it was out of the way… Nope. It’s not there either. It’s been taken.
“Damn”, you think. “I’m not getting that back.” But it’s not that bad. It was an old laptop, faithful but due for retirement.
But then it hits you.
My email account.
My bank details.
My personal details, and the details of all my friends and family.
The financial reports for my business.
The pictures of my family.
I’ve got them all backed up, but that’s not the problem here. They’re out there in the wild, now. Who knows where they could end up and who could see them? Who knows how that information could be exploited?
But hang on a second. All my business files are in a virtual encrypted disk and the rest is on the second partition that I encrypted, and I locked my screen before I put it down. Even if they do manage to get past my 15 character complex password, they’re not going to be able to get at my personal data.
I guess it’s not so bad after all.
Thank goodness I encrypted my data!