Surely this proves that 90 day password expiration policies encourage users to pick weaker passwords they can remember because they are having to change them all the time?
Would it have been so easily cracked if everyone had a 10+ character password that was truly strong, even if it was only changed once a year or never?
No, it wouldn't have been as easy. But this guy had basically unlimited access to the password database, so even if he had to use a brute force attack, it would only be a matter of time until he had all the passwords he needed. He shouldn't have had that access in the first place. That the agents he was working with didn't do something about it makes them culpable as well. If they felt that that was the only way to get things done, then the FBI either needs to seriously retrain its agents, or seriously revise its procedures, or both. Anyway you cut it, it was a failure of the FBI, not the contractor. He was paid to do a job there, and they seem to have given him at least implicit permission to do what he did in order to accomplish that job.
Wherever you've got that idea from, it's WRONG! The whole idea of having a system of laws to govern your country, is that it should be possible to know in advance about what is legal or not. Ideally these laws should also to some degree be the same that the majority of people think is "right".
If a crime has been committed anytime some "victim" claims to have become a "victim of a crime", it would be pretty hard for pretty much anyone not to commit crimes. Instead we have specific laws against things such as: removing a persons freedom, battering, violence, assault, rape, etc...
I think you misunderstand. I don't know what the laws in Australia are, but in many places, it's up to the victim whether they want to press charges against the offender. In some cases, depending on the crime, the state can bring their own case regardless. However, the victim is often the primary or only witness, and bringing a case can be a waste of time and money without their cooperation.
Is there supposed to be some kind of incentive for us to contribute to this effort? Will the info always be freely available? How can we be sure of that? What are they planning to do with the info? What is the business? Just selling ads? How do we know this isn't another Gracenote stunt? Why is this even posted here with so little info?
LOL. Are you talking about the old ones or the new ones? The old ones were good in their day, and I'm not a fan of the newer ones. Not a fan of the eastern RPGs in general really. Usually too linear and too many cutscenes. Not really very RPGish to me. Console ports of PC games almost always suck. They just don't tend to run as well on consoles, plus you miss out on all the mods and gameplay fixes that people put out that make the game much better. Oblivion wouldn't be half as good as it is now without the modders helping it out.
Oh hell no. I don't play MMO games. I mean good RPGs like the Baldur's Gate games, Planescape, Fallout 1 & 2, hell, even Neverwinter Nights was pretty good once the modders got to it. I'd include FPS/RPG hybrids as well, like the Elder Scrolls games, Deus Ex, Vampire: Bloodlines, System Shock, etc.
The other two genres are heavily dependent on positional input, which until the DS and Wii has been lacking on consoles.
I'll say that while the DS is kind of neat, it doesn't have anything that compares to Counter-Strike, Half-Life 2, Tribes, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with the Wii, and I may even pick one up, but it will be mostly to have something to play with my wife, and definitely not a PC game replacement.
Besides, most of the popular moddable FPS games (e.g. from Id and Epic) are ported to Linux.
I like UT2K4 a lot, and I am something of a Q3 fan too. If they had HL2 and Counter-Strike, I'd almost be willing to switch. But I'd still miss all the other games that never get ported. Linux only seems to get FPS games.:(
PC games are generally just better than console games, especially for a few of my favorite genres such as RPGs, RTSs, and FPSs. Consoles can't touch the PC on any of these, even before you include mod-ability (which is a big factor in RPGs and FPSs especially).
Have you considered growing up, stopping playing games and doing something productive with your free time? I can tell you - it's a lot more satisfying.
Have you considered growing up, stopping being a self-righteous prick berating people on/., and doing something productive with your free time? I can tell you - it's a lot more satisfying.
If you run Windows on a computer that needs to be secure...you have enough problems already and this will be just another in a LOOOOONG line of them.
That's garbage. A Windows box in a secure environment is as secure as it needs to be, and as long as proper security procedures are followed, everything is fine. If you work with secure info, then it doesn't matter what OS you're using, you don't connect it to an unsecure network.
If someone with less than good intentions ever gained access to wherever WGA connects there could be a very, very bad situation.
Good intentions or not, I don't like the fact that MS will have control over my PC. My PC will serve Microsoft's interests above my own. That doesn't sound like a good deal for me.
I wouldn't want to try and get into my house in the middle of the night. We have 11 dogs. Some of them are Chow mixes. If you've ever met a chow mix they are usually fiercely loyal one person dogs. Mine likes me. She tolerates the rest of the family.
A baseball bat might stop one of our dogs... But you're not going to get them all, and while the pack holds you back I have time to take whatever action I deem is necessary. If you want to shoot all of my dogs then very little I can do is going to stop you just killing me anyway... But you're not going to get into the house quietly, or get rid of the dogs without killing at least some of them.
So, do you (and your hypothetical friend) feel up to taking on a dog pack in the night?
Umm.. a Glock is a hell of a lot cheaper than a pack of dogs. And it won't puke/pee/crap on the carpet either;)
There is nothing with Geek Squad, in the same way there is nothing wrong with Taco Bell. Both provide a low quality product for a low cost.
Umm.. no. In my experience, and from what I've heard from others, the main difference between Geek Squad and Taco Bell is that Taco Bell might actually be able to fix your computer. And I'm not sure what sort of math you're using, but Geek Squad doesn't do anything for a low cost.
I've seen many times where it wasn't worth the *time* required to repair a Windows installation but I've never seen a Windows box trashed badly enough that the drive *needed* a reformat.
Not really a lot of difference. I'm sure pretty much anything can be fixed without a reinstall if you put enough time into it, but since that's prohibitive, especially when you're doing it as a business, there's effectively no difference between "needing a reinstall" and "a reinstall is the most efficient way to fix the problem." Unless the customer is willing to pay for you to spend the hours necessary to find and repair all the problems, then you pretty much have to reinstall.
If you're a dog person, a well trained attack dog will outperform a gun in a home invasion.
Sorry, but while a guard dog might be a nice option in addition to the gun, I wouldn't give up the gun in exchange for one. Dogs may be alert and a decently tough target, but they can still be pretty easily neutralized by a baseball bat, especially if there is more than one intruder. The problem is that the dog has to get up close an personal to do any damage. That's not the best idea really. Besides, I'd be pretty upset if someone killed or maimed my dog. I'd rather just defend my home myself.
If guns were less readily available then they couldn't be a) stolen or b) purchased illegally as easily. If you get rid of the supply then fewer of the remaining guns would be available to be used in violent crimes.
Ok, now ask me if I really care whether the big guy invading my home has a gun or a knife or a baseball bat that he wants to kill me with. I really don't care what weapon he has. I want the most effective weapon I can get for self-defense. That's a gun. Hands down.
If you removed 95% of guns from society then that remaining 5% would have to be responsible for all of the gun related crimes... Any dent that you can make in that 5% would also be a dent in gun related crimes...
First of all, there's absolutely no way to get rid of the guns. As long as there is a demand somewhere, anywhere, there will be plenty of guns available. We can't seem to prevent massive amounts of drugs from being brought into the country. Do you really think we can prevent guns from being brought in? Second, what do you believe people are going to use to protect themselves? Women should all be at the mercy of anyone who breaks into their home? Smaller guys are at the mercy of bigger guys who break in? The police can't and won't protect people, so we're all responsible for protecting ourselves. That's a simple fact of life.
Downloading Star Wars before it even films doesn't benefit society. I find that most slashdotters are of the 'I am too cheap to pay the artists for their music' camp.
If that was all this was about, then I'd agree with you. But it's not. It's about the copyright industry's repeated overreaching in their neverending quest to ensure that copyright lasts forever, and the public gets well and truly screwed out of what they are supposed to be getting out of the copyright bargain. They won't be satisfied until they've turned every media form into a DRM'd ad-fest. Now they even want us to pay for their efforts to screw us.
I really don't think any municipality relies on traffic violations as a source of income. The money goes mostly towards court costs. If handing out moving violation fines were to cause a decrease in other income sources, nobody would ever get a ticket, and that's just plain stupid. In many places, the police do not have enough time to do traffic, and they certainly would find the time if it was a reliable source of income.
I think you're mistaken. Some municipalities, mine included, do rely on traffic fines as a significant source of income. You DO NOT want to speed or break any traffic law, regardless of how petty it may be, in the municipality I live in. It is notorious for the number of tickets it hands out. The cops here are very sneaky, and very good at catching every little thing. This is not limited to moving violations either. They patrol the neighborhoods as well, and will ticket you for all sorts of infractions. The area has been growing quite a bit lately though, and I'm not sure how well a lot of the newcomers like this sort of thing. If enough people start complaining, they may have to tone it down a bit.
In any case, I think his kids would be understandably miffed to find out that they'll be expected to make their way as insurance adjusters, hardware store clerks, fast food chefs, etc, after an upbringing of affluence.
Well, part of that affluent upbringing would be that they had the opportunity to go to all the best schools, pretty much any school they could want. I would hope they aren't flipping burgers after that. Most people don't have those kinds of opportunities.
I don't want my kids to spend half of their lives gathering money to be able to spend the rest on matters which are more important than gathering money. What I wish for them is that they should be able to make decisions in life and professionally which are not compromises limited by piteous financial problems. I might not become a gazillionaire, still, I'll do what I can to make that happen. That doesn't mean I wouldn't donate, but that's a different question.
He made that statement in response to what Buffet said, which was definitely not that he wasn't giving his kids any money. They won't be anywhere near as rich as he is, but unless they are complete and utter morons, they'll never experience "piteous financial problems".
Hold on... Since when is the homoginized, processed, bleached and dary free material produced by the record companies culture?
Since it is jointly experienced by a large majority of the people.
The tail is waging the dog here... the entertanment producers have figured out how to tell us what to like, our "culture" does not reflect a greater truth about our humanity other than how it has been diminished.
Not exactly. They have figured out how to control what we readily have access to. I don't like at least half the crap that I hear on the radio. But there are only so many stations, and they only play what is popular (read: what the industry has paid to spam the radio with). Same goes for TV and movies, only moreso.
Having said that, I am a hypocrite, I have a modes music collection, I watch some TV and I enjoy movies. I at least try to form my own opinions about what to like and not like.
Not everything that gets put out there is crap, just most of it. I think most people form their own opinions about what they like or don't like. Different people have different tastes, which presumably accounts for the incomprehensible (to me) success of some TV shows lately. The problem is that they're only forming those opinions about the content that the entertainment industry chooses to distribute. Everything else is pretty much well under the radar. We generally only see what they decide to show us.
According to CNet [com.com]"Google will manage the free 300-kilobits-per-second Wi-Fi service, while EarthLink will offer the faster premium service of 1mbps for up to $20 a month." That sounds like pretty decent speeds, yes tech offers higher speeds but most people don't even have those speeds. At least in the US, most people still use dialup. Heck, I'm a subscriber to Earthlink cable and I don't know that I get 1MBPS. And definitely not at that price. Sometymes it doesn't seem that much faster than my old dialup. Heck if it were offered where I live, I'd get rid of my cable and go wireless at those prices and speeds.
I'm not disagreeing that the service speeds will be good. I was referring more to the speed of rollout of wireless across the country. Seems like it's going to take forever. Meanwhile, we still have to bend over for the local monopolies.
It does if you're a Republican and you've seen his voting record!
Yeah, he votes rather liberal. So do most Republicans judging by the size of the deficit. There's not more than a handful of true fiscal conservatives in Congress anymore. Now most Republicans are more concerned about buttsex than the nation's financial future. It's repulsive.
I'm not very confident in a group that's set to reform our copyright/patent system when they cannot even have enough common sense to realize that a name such as "The Pirate Party" is NOT going to be taken seriously here in the U.S. This time is investment is better spent on something that has somewhat of a chance in hell.
The hardest thing about getting 3rd party candidates elected is letting people know they exist. This name has a hell of a lot better chance of getting people's attention than just about any alternative name you could think of that still relates to their platform. I think they should go with it and hopefully people will figure out what they're about.
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No, it wouldn't have been as easy. But this guy had basically unlimited access to the password database, so even if he had to use a brute force attack, it would only be a matter of time until he had all the passwords he needed. He shouldn't have had that access in the first place. That the agents he was working with didn't do something about it makes them culpable as well. If they felt that that was the only way to get things done, then the FBI either needs to seriously retrain its agents, or seriously revise its procedures, or both. Anyway you cut it, it was a failure of the FBI, not the contractor. He was paid to do a job there, and they seem to have given him at least implicit permission to do what he did in order to accomplish that job.
If they know your password, then you probably shouldn't be working there.
I think you misunderstand. I don't know what the laws in Australia are, but in many places, it's up to the victim whether they want to press charges against the offender. In some cases, depending on the crime, the state can bring their own case regardless. However, the victim is often the primary or only witness, and bringing a case can be a waste of time and money without their cooperation.
So sue the parents for being idiots.
Is there supposed to be some kind of incentive for us to contribute to this effort? Will the info always be freely available? How can we be sure of that? What are they planning to do with the info? What is the business? Just selling ads? How do we know this isn't another Gracenote stunt? Why is this even posted here with so little info?
LOL. Are you talking about the old ones or the new ones? The old ones were good in their day, and I'm not a fan of the newer ones. Not a fan of the eastern RPGs in general really. Usually too linear and too many cutscenes. Not really very RPGish to me. Console ports of PC games almost always suck. They just don't tend to run as well on consoles, plus you miss out on all the mods and gameplay fixes that people put out that make the game much better. Oblivion wouldn't be half as good as it is now without the modders helping it out.
Oh hell no. I don't play MMO games. I mean good RPGs like the Baldur's Gate games, Planescape, Fallout 1 & 2, hell, even Neverwinter Nights was pretty good once the modders got to it. I'd include FPS/RPG hybrids as well, like the Elder Scrolls games, Deus Ex, Vampire: Bloodlines, System Shock, etc.
I'll say that while the DS is kind of neat, it doesn't have anything that compares to Counter-Strike, Half-Life 2, Tribes, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with the Wii, and I may even pick one up, but it will be mostly to have something to play with my wife, and definitely not a PC game replacement.
I like UT2K4 a lot, and I am something of a Q3 fan too. If they had HL2 and Counter-Strike, I'd almost be willing to switch. But I'd still miss all the other games that never get ported. Linux only seems to get FPS games.
PC games are generally just better than console games, especially for a few of my favorite genres such as RPGs, RTSs, and FPSs. Consoles can't touch the PC on any of these, even before you include mod-ability (which is a big factor in RPGs and FPSs especially).
Have you considered growing up, stopping being a self-righteous prick berating people on
That's garbage. A Windows box in a secure environment is as secure as it needs to be, and as long as proper security procedures are followed, everything is fine. If you work with secure info, then it doesn't matter what OS you're using, you don't connect it to an unsecure network.
Good intentions or not, I don't like the fact that MS will have control over my PC. My PC will serve Microsoft's interests above my own. That doesn't sound like a good deal for me.
Umm.. a Glock is a hell of a lot cheaper than a pack of dogs. And it won't puke/pee/crap on the carpet either
DOJ == "anti-trust dept."
Umm.. no. In my experience, and from what I've heard from others, the main difference between Geek Squad and Taco Bell is that Taco Bell might actually be able to fix your computer. And I'm not sure what sort of math you're using, but Geek Squad doesn't do anything for a low cost.
Not really a lot of difference. I'm sure pretty much anything can be fixed without a reinstall if you put enough time into it, but since that's prohibitive, especially when you're doing it as a business, there's effectively no difference between "needing a reinstall" and "a reinstall is the most efficient way to fix the problem." Unless the customer is willing to pay for you to spend the hours necessary to find and repair all the problems, then you pretty much have to reinstall.
Sorry, but while a guard dog might be a nice option in addition to the gun, I wouldn't give up the gun in exchange for one. Dogs may be alert and a decently tough target, but they can still be pretty easily neutralized by a baseball bat, especially if there is more than one intruder. The problem is that the dog has to get up close an personal to do any damage. That's not the best idea really. Besides, I'd be pretty upset if someone killed or maimed my dog. I'd rather just defend my home myself.
Ok, now ask me if I really care whether the big guy invading my home has a gun or a knife or a baseball bat that he wants to kill me with. I really don't care what weapon he has. I want the most effective weapon I can get for self-defense. That's a gun. Hands down.
First of all, there's absolutely no way to get rid of the guns. As long as there is a demand somewhere, anywhere, there will be plenty of guns available. We can't seem to prevent massive amounts of drugs from being brought into the country. Do you really think we can prevent guns from being brought in? Second, what do you believe people are going to use to protect themselves? Women should all be at the mercy of anyone who breaks into their home? Smaller guys are at the mercy of bigger guys who break in? The police can't and won't protect people, so we're all responsible for protecting ourselves. That's a simple fact of life.
If that was all this was about, then I'd agree with you. But it's not. It's about the copyright industry's repeated overreaching in their neverending quest to ensure that copyright lasts forever, and the public gets well and truly screwed out of what they are supposed to be getting out of the copyright bargain. They won't be satisfied until they've turned every media form into a DRM'd ad-fest. Now they even want us to pay for their efforts to screw us.
I think you're mistaken. Some municipalities, mine included, do rely on traffic fines as a significant source of income. You DO NOT want to speed or break any traffic law, regardless of how petty it may be, in the municipality I live in. It is notorious for the number of tickets it hands out. The cops here are very sneaky, and very good at catching every little thing. This is not limited to moving violations either. They patrol the neighborhoods as well, and will ticket you for all sorts of infractions. The area has been growing quite a bit lately though, and I'm not sure how well a lot of the newcomers like this sort of thing. If enough people start complaining, they may have to tone it down a bit.
Well, part of that affluent upbringing would be that they had the opportunity to go to all the best schools, pretty much any school they could want. I would hope they aren't flipping burgers after that. Most people don't have those kinds of opportunities.
He made that statement in response to what Buffet said, which was definitely not that he wasn't giving his kids any money. They won't be anywhere near as rich as he is, but unless they are complete and utter morons, they'll never experience "piteous financial problems".
Since it is jointly experienced by a large majority of the people.
Not exactly. They have figured out how to control what we readily have access to. I don't like at least half the crap that I hear on the radio. But there are only so many stations, and they only play what is popular (read: what the industry has paid to spam the radio with). Same goes for TV and movies, only moreso.
Not everything that gets put out there is crap, just most of it. I think most people form their own opinions about what they like or don't like. Different people have different tastes, which presumably accounts for the incomprehensible (to me) success of some TV shows lately. The problem is that they're only forming those opinions about the content that the entertainment industry chooses to distribute. Everything else is pretty much well under the radar. We generally only see what they decide to show us.
I'm not disagreeing that the service speeds will be good. I was referring more to the speed of rollout of wireless across the country. Seems like it's going to take forever. Meanwhile, we still have to bend over for the local monopolies.
Yeah, he votes rather liberal. So do most Republicans judging by the size of the deficit. There's not more than a handful of true fiscal conservatives in Congress anymore. Now most Republicans are more concerned about buttsex than the nation's financial future. It's repulsive.
The hardest thing about getting 3rd party candidates elected is letting people know they exist. This name has a hell of a lot better chance of getting people's attention than just about any alternative name you could think of that still relates to their platform. I think they should go with it and hopefully people will figure out what they're about.