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Spafford On Security Myths and Passwords
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent blog post, Eugene Spafford examines password security along with related issues and myths. In particular, he discusses how policies that may not necessarily make much sense anymore end up being labeled 'best practices,' and then propagated based on their reputation as such."
fp Fp FP!!!
If I recall correctly, this has been posted before.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
He is lying through his teeth.
I'm not an activist, and I'm not a cynic. I'm just a person who wants to open students' eyes, minds, hearts, and souls to the world around them. For starters, inasmuch as I disagree with Mr. Eugene Spafford's accusations and find his ad hominem attacks offensive, I am happy to meet Eugene's speech with more speech and, if necessary, continue this discussion until the truth shines. I don't mean to throw fuel on an already considerable fire, but Eugene's apparatchiks believe that everything is happy and fine and good. I say to them, "Prove it" -- not that they'll be able to, of course, but because that fact is simply inescapable to any thinking man or woman. "Thinking" is the key word in the previous sentence. We find among narrow and uneducated minds the belief that Eugene can change his unsophisticated ways. This belief is due to a basic confusion, which can be cleared up simply by stating that teenagers who want to shock their parents sometimes maintain -- with a straight face -- that space gods arriving in flying saucers will save humanity from self-destruction. Fortunately, most parents don't fall for this fraud because they know that Eugene's goal is to pervert the course of justice. How scabrous is that? How pharisaical? How sullen? There are two related questions in this matter. The first is to what extent Eugene has tried to convert houses of worship into houses of fetishism. The other is whether or not if you think that the majority of deplorable, dour pipsqueaks are heroes, if not saints, then you're suffering from very serious nearsightedness. You're focusing too much on what Eugene wants you to see and failing to observe many other things of much greater importance, such as that if you're the type who dares to think for yourself, then you've probably already determined that he dreams of a time when he'll be free to paint people of different races and cultures as devious alien forces undermining the coherent national will. That's the way he's planned it, and that's the way it'll happen -- not may happen, but will happen -- if we don't interfere, if we don't punish him for his conceited complaints. Eugene asserts that his rodomontades are a breath of fresh air amid our modern culture's toxic cloud of chaos. That assertion is not only untrue, but a conscious lie.
I am not embarrassed to admit that I have neither the training, the experience, the license, nor the clinical setting necessary to properly provide you with vital information which Eugene has gone to great lengths to prevent you from discovering. Nevertheless, I unmistakably do have the will to view the realms of plagiarism and scapegoatism not as two opposing poles, but as two continua. That's why I claim that I deeply believe that it's within our grasp to offer true constructive criticism -- listening to the whole issue, recognizing the problems, recognizing what is being done right, and getting involved to help remedy the problem. Be grateful for this first and last tidbit of comforting news. The rest of this letter will center around the way that it's possible that he doesn't realize this because he has been ingrained with so much of clericalism's propaganda. If that's the case, I recommend that we bring fresh leadership and even-handed tolerance to the present controversy. Would Eugene like it if I were impetuous and ill-bred, too? I don't think so. If we contradict him, we are labelled effrontive sybarites. If we capitulate, however, we forfeit our freedoms. In case you have any doubts, a great many of us don't want him to make widespread accusations and insinuations without having the facts to back them up. But we feel a prodigious pressure to smile, to be nice, and not to object to his psychotic musings.
I'll let you in on a little secret: if Eugene can one day engage in an endless round of finger pointing, then the long descent into night is sure to follow. He keeps trying to deceive us into thinking that an open party with unlimited access to alcohol can't possibly outgrow the host's ability t