Posts by Lucy Stewart
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Chris Waugh,
A polyglot's question: If the words in the 'random' string were each from a different language, with preferably each language unrelated, would that beat, or at least delay, the dictionary attacks?
Oh, sure. The more languages you use, the more difficult it gets. English has a large enough vocab that if you picked from the entire available vocabulary - which is more like 100,000 words - it'd be much more secure. If you picked, say, one word from Tagalog, Fijian, Swahili, and Russian, it wouldn't be cracked quickly. (And quick cracking does require a guess that this is the method you're using.)
But the whole premise behind the method is that it creates passwords that are easy to remember while still being secure. Using multiple languages or really obscure words, unless you're a polyglot and/or have an excellent memory, takes you right back to the original problem - secure password, hell to remember.
In all honesty, there are multiple methods of creating secure passwords and the trick is to pick the one that works for *your* memory. This one is just not as secure as presented, for the method presented.
-
Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Andrew E,
According to XKCD, you wouldn't be far off the pace if you did choose that as your password.
That meme has been going around for a while now. It sounds attractive, but it's not actually true - if you think of the individual words as units (which dictionary attacks allow) then the security of a string of words is pretty low, especially considering most people's active vocabulary (well under 40,000 words, and picking words that aren't part of your vocabulary defeats the purpose.)
A much safer tactic is something like picking the first letter of every word in the verse of a song you know well - it produces what is essentially a random* string of letters up to 30-40 characters long, and it's easily memorable. Chuck in a couple of numbers and capitals, and you're good.
All that said, it depends what you're using the password for; your bank account is a lot more of a concern than a news website, as long as you're not reusing the same password everywhere, which is probably the real main password security concern.
*Not actually random, because fewer letters start words, and languages have recognisable word patterns, but not the sort of non-random that's easy to discern.
-
Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Sacha,
Sure helps if you remember what monochrome command line interfaces were like; must mystify the young just like the wifi demo in Russell's story.
I'm juuuuuust old enough to really remember when having a computer with 256 colours was a Big Deal. I think there were a few computers running DOS at my school when I started. Apart from that...
The wifi demo still seems like a big deal when I think about it, though, That didn't really become a commonplace home thing (in houses that can afford it, anyhow) until relatively recently - kids would have to be fairly young to not remember when it was unusual.
-
Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Paul Campbell,
turns out they were all on allocation to Apple ….. who weren’t yet a player
I read a fairly convincing article a couple of months ago arguing that Apple's dominance in the "i" markets was largely due to their massive capital and the ability it gave them to buy up basically the entire world's output of promising technologies years in advance - which meant when their products came out everyone else was always left playing catch-up, especially on usability. Sounds like a pretty good example of it.
-
Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Sacha,
Quite. People seem to miss that the "i" prefix in Apple's products doesn't stand for "Jobs".
Maybe they're just fans of the original Roman alphabet.
-
Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to BlairMacca,
I hope thats a joke
ETA: Snap! It's certainly going to be the news of the year for *some* people, I think.
-
Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to recordari,
So you mean you don’t loathe National?
I was a die-hard National supporter from ages nine through, oooh, sixteen. Trufax.
-
Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to JLM,
We know what 2011 is going to be now - the year of the (zero damage, zero death) Washington Earthquake...
If it was meant for Washington, God's aim is, once again, terrible.
-
Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Volcanic eruptions are sometimes preceded by frequent shallow small earthquakes, presumably as magma moves beneath …
And sometimes there are no preceding earthquakes …
And sometimes there are earthquakes typical of an eruption without any actual eruption …
We are somewhat on a learning curve here
The other day I read a truly entertaining 1836 pamphlet for people considering settling in New Zealand, which informed them that "earthquakes are not known to occur in New Zealand".
There were, naturally, a number of other egregious flaws - particularly the bits about Maori - but that one was, um, special.
-
The year of not being able to go back.
It's mostly the Christchurch earthquake, and also my age, but I've never had a year before where it was quite so obvious that the future was not going to be quite like anyone had predicted. And, more bluntly, that the future of my childhood - we all have one of those, the way we thought the world was going to be when we were figuring out what we wanted to do in it - was definitely not going to happen. The only thing I'm sure about any more is that I have no idea what might happen next.