I graduated from the University of Minnesota with an engineering degree (in 4 years). I also participated in the 4-year guarantee. My friend who also did the 4-year guarantee program there was getting screwed on classes. He was not getting the classes he needed to graduate in the 4 year time frame. He brought up that the 4-year guarantee said that the university would do everything to get him in the classes or pay for the added classes. He was told in no uncertain terms that the 4-year guarantee and a dollar would get him a cup of coffee. So I wouldn't put much stock in the guarantee and the U of MN living up to it.
I also remember a semester where they conveniently scheduled two classes that were needed to complete the 4-year guarantee schedule on top of one another so you couldn't take the both classes you needed to be on the 4-year guarantee. When I brought this up to the under-grad advisor he had to double check it and then he was perplexed. And said that he had just blindly told all the people he had seen previous to me to just follow the schedule. Of course you learn quickly that the advisors don't really care much and that you are on your own for the most part.
I played a game in school to pass time in class where one person would write down a name of a place on a map. The next person would write down another place on a map starting with the last letter of the previous word. After a while I started to realize that a lot of the words on (at least) maps have a high probability of ending with a certain subset of the lettters.
I think you could create a certain weighting on letters to help crack the password that would be created in a manner like this. Just off the top of my head I would think letters like 'n', 'y', 's', and 'e' would be weighted highly for the end letters. To make this method stronger I would try to find a way to incorporate numbers and other characters into the password.
Not knowing anything about Infinium Labs, I wonder how they are going to be able to make a go of this new console. M$ is selling the XBox hardware at a loss in hopes of getting the money back in game sales. For Infinium to make the price point to make this console fly in the consumer realm they are probably going to have to take a HUGE losses on the sale of hardware. Plus they have to pay royalties to M$ for WinXP on each box which M$ atleast doesn't have to do. I don't know how big of a company Infinium Labs is, but I would guess they don't have the capital to get this system off the launching pad so the subscription can start making the money back.
I see this as going the way of Indrema.
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I graduated from the University of Minnesota with an engineering degree (in 4 years). I also participated in the 4-year guarantee. My friend who also did the 4-year guarantee program there was getting screwed on classes. He was not getting the classes he needed to graduate in the 4 year time frame. He brought up that the 4-year guarantee said that the university would do everything to get him in the classes or pay for the added classes. He was told in no uncertain terms that the 4-year guarantee and a dollar would get him a cup of coffee. So I wouldn't put much stock in the guarantee and the U of MN living up to it.
I also remember a semester where they conveniently scheduled two classes that were needed to complete the 4-year guarantee schedule on top of one another so you couldn't take the both classes you needed to be on the 4-year guarantee. When I brought this up to the under-grad advisor he had to double check it and then he was perplexed. And said that he had just blindly told all the people he had seen previous to me to just follow the schedule. Of course you learn quickly that the advisors don't really care much and that you are on your own for the most part.
I think that Chuck Wollery could give you some advice.
I played a game in school to pass time in class where one person would write down a name of a place on a map. The next person would write down another place on a map starting with the last letter of the previous word. After a while I started to realize that a lot of the words on (at least) maps have a high probability of ending with a certain subset of the lettters.
I think you could create a certain weighting on letters to help crack the password that would be created in a manner like this. Just off the top of my head I would think letters like 'n', 'y', 's', and 'e' would be weighted highly for the end letters. To make this method stronger I would try to find a way to incorporate numbers and other characters into the password.
Not knowing anything about Infinium Labs, I wonder how they are going to be able to make a go of this new console. M$ is selling the XBox hardware at a loss in hopes of getting the money back in game sales. For Infinium to make the price point to make this console fly in the consumer realm they are probably going to have to take a HUGE losses on the sale of hardware. Plus they have to pay royalties to M$ for WinXP on each box which M$ atleast doesn't have to do. I don't know how big of a company Infinium Labs is, but I would guess they don't have the capital to get this system off the launching pad so the subscription can start making the money back. I see this as going the way of Indrema.