Slashdot Mirror
Crappy Passwords Very Common
KeatonMill writes "CNN released this story about passwords. Apparently, a group of UK psychologists did a study about password selection, and found that many passwords can be guessed if access to the subject's desk is allowed (the article gives an example of sports memoribilia representing sports-related passwords). According to the study, 50 percent of people use names of family members or pets as passwords."
The first Slashdot troll post investigation (again)
The last few months I have been doing some research into the trolling phenomenon on slashdot.org. In order to do this as thoroughly as possible, I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:
* More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up. Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices, even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
* Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably these Nazi Moderators think it's more important to burn a user's existing karma, to silence that individual for the future, than to use the moderation system for what it's meant for : identifying "good" and "bad" posts (Notice how nearly all oppressive governments in the past and present do the same thing : marking individuals as bad and untrustworthy because they have conflicting opinions, instead of engaging in a public discussion about these opinions)
* Once you have a karma of -4 or -5, your posts have a score of -1 by default. When this is the case, no-one bothers to mod you down anymore. This means a logged in user can keep on trolling as much as he (or she) likes, without risking a ban to post on slashdot. When trolling as an anonymous user, every post starts at score 0, and you will be modded down to -1 ON EVERY POST. When you are modded down a certain number of times in 24 hour, you cannot post anymore from your current IP for a day or so. So, for successful trolling, ALWAYS log in.
* A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever, funny, etc., and they are only modded down because they are offtopic. Now, on a news site like slashdot, where the number of different topics of discussion can be counted on 1 hand, I must say I quite like the distraction these posts offer. But no, when the topic is yet another minor version change of the Linux kernel, they only expect ooohs and aaahs about this great feat of engineering.
* Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found a poll, which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.
Feel free to use this information to your advantage. I thank you for your time.
This conclusion brings to mind the results of earlier studies that confirmed the following:
1) there are many people who get to the front of a long line at McDonald's and are still unable to decide what they want to eat.
2) many people, when given a choice between listening to Tiny Tim and Blues Traveller will in fact choose Tiny Tim.
3) a large portion of the population believes that Elvis is still alive in a bunker outside Las Vegas, and that he is in fact controlling world politics at the behest of the Area 51 aliens.
Sometimes, there's just no accounting for people. Bash them over the head with common sense, and they'll still go the other way.
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