blog' OR 1=1; --

GTA Ubiquity

2008-05-02T15:11:00.001-04:00

Xbox Live domination:

The Mitchell Report

2007-12-13T15:23:00.000-05:00

From the Mitchell Report [6.5MB PDF], page 219:

When the Boston Red Sox were considering acquiring Gagné, a Red Sox official made specific inquiries about Gagné’s possible use of steroids. In a November 1, 2006 email to a Red Sox scout, general manager Theo Epstein asked, "Have you done any digging on Gagne? I know the Dodgers think he was a steroid guy. Maybe so. What do you hear on his medical?" The scout, Mark Delpiano, responded,

Some digging on Gagne and steroids IS the issue. Has had a checkered medical past throughout career including minor leagues. Lacks the poise and commitment to stay healthy, maintain body and re invent self. What made him a tenacious closer was the max effort plus stuff . . . Mentality without the plus weapons and without steroid help probably creates a large risk in bounce back durability and ability to throw average while allowing the changeup to play as it once did . . . Personally, durability (or lack of) will follow Gagne . . .

Unbelievable that we traded Kason Gabbard and two minor league outfielders for him after that.

Kitten pictures are up

2007-11-01T20:58:00.001-04:00

These are the kittens on Day 2. We still haven't named them, but we're getting to know them, and they're acclimating to their new home faster than we expected. In a couple of days, I think they'll be ready to explore the living room. And they are both female.

I also have a newfound appreciation for fast lenses. It was hard enough taking pictures without a flash and without any natural light. They would have come out terrible if not for this 50mm prime (thanks Eugene).

The whole album is available now.

Kittens!

2007-11-01T09:21:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we brought home a new pair of kittens! One of them is an all black DSH female, and the other is a brown mackerel tabby with white socks. We thought that one was male, but the medical sheet says female. Hard to tell at this age without veterinary training, I guess. It also says DLH, but I'm thinking this is a DSH cat. They're not from the same litter, so the mackerel is two weeks older than the black one, but it's the shy one all the same. No names yet; we need a couple days to learn their personalities.

We set up the guest bathroom as a safe room, and are confining the kittens there until they're ready [PDF] to explore a little more of the apartment. And since it's been 13 years since I last had kittens, I've been brushing up on training and kitten care by plowing through a couple books. Though, one of the authors goes a little overboard. I mean, homemade meals?

I think it's great that we brought home a black cat on Halloween.

More to follow!

Postparty Depression

2007-10-28T11:27:00.000-04:00

I've seen some pretty weird day-after-a-party away messages before, but this one takes the cake:

If you're missing one of the following items, please contact me:

1) A Digital Camera
2) A Make Up bag
3) Handcuffs?
4) An Indian Headress
5) A Plastic thing that looks alarmingly phallic

Forcing the Location Bar to Display in Firefox

2007-10-23T17:15:00.000-04:00

Do you drive at night with your headlights off? Probably not. But many people do it on the Internet all the time.

Have you ever noticed how some popup windows seem to hide all the toolbars you're used to seeing in your web browser? That's because JavaScript's window.open() method gives developers a great deal of control over the look of their new window. Sometimes this feature is used correctly by a website to provide a clean interface, but it can be used maliciously as well.

For example, let's say that on a certain bank's website, clicking Login opens a new window for you to check your balance, make transfers, and pay bills. The popup code hides the address bar to make the user experience more sleek. Now suppose the website gets hacked, and the attacker changes the popup code to point to his web server. The login prompt looks exactly the same, but now your password is being sent to a criminal instead of to the bank. Congratulations, you're broke.

Popup with menu and location bar removed.

Internet Explorer turned this on by default in version 7. Users can disable it through the program's settings if they choose, but websites can't force it to hide under the default settings. This is a good thing, and I'm surprised Firefox hasn't followed suit.

You can enable this feature manually in Firefox by opening a new tab and typing about:config in the location bar. This is the command and control center of Firefox, and it's possible to break things if you're reckless, so click with care. The filter bar at the top of the page lets you quickly navigate the hundreds of internal Firefox settings. You are looking for dom.disable_window_open_feature.location. I found that just typing location narrowed the list down enough to find it. Double click on the entry in the list so the Value becomes true. That's it.

Other components you can force to always display.

Now when you open a popup, the URL will always display, even if the web developer intended to disable it.

The location bar will always display now.

The additional security of knowing where you are more than outweighs the drawback of a slightly messier user interface.

Don't drive at night with your lights off.

Blog Action Day: Recycling Your Old Electronics

2007-10-15T12:00:00.000-04:00

This post is part of Blog Action Day, a movement where over 20,000 blogs committed to post about the environment on October 15, 2007.

Why Recycle?
Despite their simple, sleek exteriors, modern electronics actually contain several dozen different substances. Many of these materials are toxic or carcinogenic, including significant amounts of:

Lead
Mercury
Cadmium
Polychlorinated biphenyls (carcinogenic)

Most electronics are thrown out and enter the solid waste system when they are no longer useful. A 40 pound computer monitor can contain over 2 pounds of lead! It's so bad that electronics account for 70% of all toxic waste in the United States.

Recycling prevents these toxins from affecting the environment, and also allows manufacturers to reuse materials. Lead, tin, copper, aluminum, iron, zinc, gold, mercury, silicon, nickel, cadmium, and lithium can all be extracted from recycled electronics, purified, and reused.

Governments are starting to increase recycling by doing what they do best: legislation. In Maine, all televisions and computer monitors must now be recycled. California has started assessing an Electronic Waste Recycling Fee on devices with screens and monitors. In September 2006, the European Union declared that rechargeable batteries become hazardous waste when discarded. More regulations and incentives are sure to follow.

How Recycling is Done
First, huge stockpiles of electronic waste are gathered together.

The parts are ground and reground until all that's left are tons of e-dust.

This guy melts it all down. What a pal!

And with the magic of extractive metallurgy, the various metals are isolated and turned into ingots! This one is amateur.

The metals are then sold for profit. I can't source it, but I heard that a computer motherboard has about $1.25 of recyclable metals in it, and it takes about 80 cents to extract them.

How to Recycle
Today's consumers are more scrutinizing than they ever have been, and companies know this. In recent years, most of the major computer manufacturers have adopted recycling practices that make it easy, and often free, for consumers to get rid of old equipment cleanly. Look for the icon in this post for solutions that won't cost you a cent.

Computers and Computer Equipment

Dell – Of all the major computer manufacturers, Dell's recycling program is the most comprehensive. They will accept any Dell-branded equipment for free, at any time, and pay shipping. After filling out a form online, a prepaid DHL waybill can be printed out, and DHL will come straight to your doorstep to pick up the boxes. It's that easy! Dell also allows you to recycle non-Dell equipment for free when you purchase a Dell computer. The shipping waybills are automatically included in the packing for the new computer, and you can just reuse that same box.
HP/Compaq – HP's recycling program is straightforward, but not free. They charge between $13-$34 per item, and you can order the waybills online. I quoted a standard PC, monitor, and inket printer in 3 separate boxes at $59.
Sony – Sony will allow you to return an old Sony notebook computer to them in exchange for store credit, but the age of the laptop affects the amount of the refund. The company has also partnered with Waste Management to accept Sony electronics at any of its dropoff locations (PDF) at no charge. This sounds like it would also include Sony televisions. It was disappointing that I couldn't find any recycling information directly from Sony's online store.
Toshiba – Although it is advertised as a recycling program, Toshiba's solution is just a glorified trade-in program through the logistics contractor DealTree. If you have decent, working equipment to trade in, you can get a refund on the purchase of a new Toshiba computer, but the website is so clunky I'm surprised they even bother. Older equipment with "no trade-in value" is accepted for the price of shipping.
Gateway – Like Toshiba, Gateway contracts with DealTree to trade in old Gateway-branded equipment. Same difficult interface, and you must provide a proof of purchase for each item you trade in.
Lenovo/IBM – For $30, Lenovo will give you a single shipping label. By the description, they somehow expect you to fit a PC, monitor, keyboard, and printer into a single 26" cube box. Good luck.
Apple – Apple will pay shipping to trade in of any brand old computer and/or monitor with the purchase of new Apple one. You print a confirmation email and take the boxed equipment to an authorized FedEx shipping location. The company also offers 10% off any new iPod when you recycle your old one. Finally, all Apple stores will recycle iPods and all brands of cell phones at no cost.

Printer Ink and Toner
Printer waste was the first type of equipment that many manufacturers recycled, and today almost all inkjet and toner cartridges can be recycled. Most of the time, the packaging for new cartridges comes with either an prepaid envelope or prepaid shipping label. For small inkjet cartridges, you simply put the old cartridge in the envelope, seal it, and throw it in the mailbox. For laser toners, peel the label and slap it on the outside of the toner box. You'll also have to find a pickup location for the courier.

HP – Most inkjet cartridges come with a prepaid USPS envelope in the box, and most laser toners, fuser kits, and transfer kits come with prepaid UPS labels. You can also order prepaid collection boxes that hold many cartridges from their website.
Epson – There is a recycling program for general equipment like printers and scanners, but it costs $10 per item. There doesn't appear to be any support for recycling printer cartridges. At least one third party has attempted to recycle Epson ink cartridges without success.
Canon – Canon has recycled 110,000 tons of copier toner cartridges since 1990, but they don't accept regular inkjet or laser toner cartridges. A Canon account is also required.
Dell – All Dell-labeled equipment is free to recycle, and printer supplies are no different. Inkjet cartridges come with prepaid envelopes, and prepaid waybills for laser toner can be printed from Dell's website.
Lexmark – Like HP, both inkjet and laser toner cartridges come with prepaid envelopes or labels, and you can request free additional envelopes and labels online. You can also ship them old Lexmark printers with no additional fee; you provide the shipping in that case.

Cell Phones and Rechargeable Batteries
This one is easy. The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) is a non-profit organization that runs a program called Call2Recycle™, which collects old cell phones and rechargeable batteries at no cost to the consumer. Simply drop any cell phone, Ni-Cd, Ni-MH, Li-ion, or small sealed lead battery in a drop box. The RBRC has managed to place 30,000 free drop boxes nationwide by partnering with major chains, including:

Best Buy
Circuit City
The Home Depot
Lowe's
Office Depot
OfficeMax
RadioShack
Sears
Staples
Target

Enter your zip code in their drop off site locator to find a participating location near you.

Other Options
If you have old equipment from a manufacturer with a poor recycling policy, all hope is not lost! Staples has a program called Staples Soul, which accepts any brand of computer equipment at all Staples stores for a small fee. Each large piece of equipment (computer, monitor, laptop, printer, fax machine, etc.) costs $10 to drop off. Accessories like keyboards, mice, and speakers are free. At this price, a standard computer with monitor and printer would cost $30 total to recycle, with no shipping hassle.

State of the Industry
Overall, it's a mixed bag. Some companies really get it, and offer free and easy recycling, while others have merely paid lip service to the environment. Dell's policy is head and shoulders over the competition, with free recycling of all Dell-branded equipment, free recycling of any equipment with the purchase of a Dell computer, and online shipping label printing. Apple's policy comes close, too. In the printer space, Dell, HP, and Lexmark have great practices. The RBRC has cell phones and batteries covered. And Staples' cheap and simple service covers all the rest.

Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo, Canon, and Epson should take a lesson from these examples and clean up their acts. It should be free whenever possible, and it has to be easy. Anything less is just patronizing the consumer, and promoting a useless policy with hollow words.

Large corporations don't do anything unless there is money in it. Dell and Apple have realized that spending a little more on their recycling program is offset by the boost it gives their corporate image, resulting in more sales. Corporations, especially public ones, can't really be blamed for this, so an extra push is needed to encourage more complete recycling programs from them. This is where the government comes in.

I predict that over the next few years, we will see:

More legislation mandating electronics recycling.
Tax incentives and/or penalties to promote better recycling programs by companies.

We'll see what happens. For now, vote with your dollars.

Trending your Google Search Habits

2007-10-12T16:11:00.000-04:00

I recently stumbled upon Google Web History, which uses the Google Toolbar to record and make your every move on the web searchable by you (if you desire). Alternatively, it can be set to just record your Google search history.

That's cool, especially because you can delete individual searches and visits from your history if you don't want them to show up. But the most interesting feature to me is the Trends feature. In addition to showing your most common queries, sites, and pages, it also aggregates your history by month, day of the week, and hour of the day.

Here at work, our flagship product is a web application, and our traffic logger can also calculate these statistics, so I decided to overlay them (N ~ 8.5M) against my own Google search history (N ~ 6K). The two series are normalized to have the same total area.

As you can see, I do the vast majority of my searches during the week. This is for a few reasons:

I use Google extensively for my job.
I use my computer less on the weekend.
I rarely work over the weekend (thankfully).

What about the hourly breakdown (all times US/Eastern):

This one is a bit more interesting. The blue series shows usage peaks during the late morning and early afternoon, with the typical lunch break in the middle. Our customers are entirely within the United States, and almost everyone is done using our site by 6PM EST. The overnight tails are primarily internal use from our Asia operations.

I'm not exactly an early riser, and usually my day begins by responding to email, so there is a significant lag between our site's activity and my own Googling. There is definitely a lunch break in my sample, but I think the jaggedness of the midday is more due to sampling error than anything else. The drop at 20 (8 PM) is probably because I usually have a later dinner. Then the activity picks back up.

I wonder what I searched for at 6 AM? Wait, Google can tell me! Turns out most of my crack-of-dawn searches are for WBZ and maps: must have been traffic reports and driving directions for early departures.

What's in your search history?

Troubleshootize

2007-10-08T15:59:00.000-04:00

It's nice to see companies with a sense of humor. This one is from Feedburner:

Also, this rotating text:

This button from Technorati:

Reverse /. Effect

2007-09-13T15:19:00.001-04:00

On September 8, Slashdot posted a front-page article pleading for more volunteers to join the pool.ntp.org project. It worked:

This is the first time I've ever seen the /. effect actually lower the load on servers!

China's solution to food safety? Capital punishment.

2007-07-10T17:35:00.000-04:00

China just executed its former chief of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu. He was convicted of dereliction of duty and taking bribes to approve unsafe goods. Yes, he was corrupt and deserved to go to prison, but execution? The sentence was set on May 29 (2007) and he was executed just 42 days later.

The Chinese government is worried about their ability to export food and drugs, and they should be, given that they put antifreeze in toothpaste because it costs less than other, non-toxic sweeteners. Recently, they also exported snacks tainted with salmonella.

But seriously... do they really think swift executions are going to give them good press? Especially considering the West's already critical opinion of human rights in the PROC?

The iPhone is overrated

2007-06-27T10:16:00.000-04:00

The amount of press the iPhone is getting is absurd. The phone is horrendously incomplete for the price. The iPhone has none of the following (from Gizmodo):

Songs as Ringtones
Games
Flash support
Instant Messaging
Picture messages (MMS)
Video recording
Voice recognition or voice dialing
Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)
3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)
GPS
A real keyboard
Removable battery
Expandable Storage
Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)

It also:

Only works with AT&T Wireless (Cingular)
Can't be sold without a contract

They want you to pay $499 for this thing. That's half a grand. I don't think so. Hats off to them for creating such a pre-release craze, though. It's so bad you can bet on its success. There are 20 to 1 odds someone gets trampled trying to get an iPhone.

[Update 7/11]: Will it blend? Yes, it will.

New CNN.com

2007-06-25T17:26:00.001-04:00

CNN.com is going to update their website this coming weekend. I stumbled upon their beta site yesterday and was planning to write a design commentary today, but the beta is over and the page now redirects to their web design blog. Oh well.

Apparently it's been up since the beginning of June, and a number of sites have already reviewed it. At the time I am writing this, there is still a guided tour available, too.

I really like the new design. The overall look has been simplified and streamlined, and there is a more consistent use of color across the site. Gone are the gradients galore in menus and buttons. Distinct sections of the pages are more clearly defined as well. From a technology standpoint, the site makes heavy use of Ajax and cleanly integrates video into the site, a step up from their old pop-up solution, which was just awful. Video will also be entirely free now (though ad-crippled).

Users will be able to customize their pages somewhat, but only in regards to localization... at first. The compartmentalization of the various page components hints that they might be moving toward a more Yahoo-like portal environment.

CNN's approach to the creation of the new site is also encouraging. The beta was plastered with feedback links, and the blog actively sought comments from users. Though not exactly collaborative design, for such a high-profile site like CNN.com to actively solicit user feedback is a good sign of things to come.

[Update 6/30]: It went live today. The front page was so intuitive, I didn't even realize it had been refreshed for a minute!

Italia

2007-06-24T10:44:00.000-04:00

We're going to Italy this August! In a tradition that is almost never broken, one must embark on a Bar Trip shortly after finishing the Bar exam, before starting a full time job. We've always wanted to visit Italy, and a family member gave us the tour catalog that does guided tours all over the world.

So, we took the plunge. It's 3 nights each in Rome, Florence, and Venice. The tour company is handy because they take care of your airfare, hotels, transportation, and a bunch of tours. They also give you a fair amount of downtime, for relaxing or touring on your own.

Jason is going to photoblog his trip to Europe, so I guess when we go I'll put a photoblog here.

Your tax dollars at work

2007-06-22T14:43:00.000-04:00

Fun facts about people running the country:

Scott Charbo, the Chief Information Officer of the Department of Homeland Security, has a Masters in plant science*. In his 2 years as CIO, he has racked up almost $6 billion in IT expenditures. The DHS sustained over 800 IT security breaches during that time.
Dick Cheney's office tried to dissolve the Information Security Oversight Office, a division of the National Archives. The office is charged with auditing the classification and declassification of information by the government. Cheney's office feels that it is exempt from this executive order, and when challenged by the office, Cheney tried to eliminate it. The initiative was established by Clinton and amended by Bush in 2003.

* No hate to plant science majors, but the CIO of DHS should have a more applicable education.

Photoshop doesn't want you to exit

2007-06-21T17:18:00.001-04:00

What is wrong with this menu?

Worried About Rats?

2005-12-13T17:42:00.000-05:00

From PCConnection.com:

"Worried about rats nibbling on your computer component cables? Need to get that computer off the floor but it won't mount into your rack or cabinet. This aluminum equipment shelf mounts into the aluminum distribution rack and those dirty rats won't get near your high-end equipment. The Belkin black vented Equipment Shelf (19"W x 14"D) is a single sided equipment shelf used with the Aluminum Distribution Rack to support equipment that cannot be mounted."

FlightAware.com

2005-12-12T10:44:00.000-05:00

Take a look at FlightAware.com. The live tracking is interesting, but I thought the time lapse animation was totally awesome (QuickTime required).

Deciphering Viruses

2005-12-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

I read a great post on F-Secure's weblog about Old skool virus fighting. It's a bit technical, but it explains a great deal about how viruses used to be written, and the methods to triage, identify, catalog, and write removal tools for malicious software.

Much of the article is applicable to modern software.

Baba Yetu

2005-11-16T13:47:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I got around to firing up Civilization IV and playing it some. My impression of the game is for another time; today is about the title theme, Baba Yetu.

I couldn't tell what language it was at first, but after a few times through I decided it must be Swahili or a similar language. Now I don't know very much about Swahili at all, but I was able to pick out the phrase "baba yetu" from the lyrics, and googled it.

(I just realized I didn't capitalize "googled". Is it becoming as ubiquitous as xerox, kleenex, and internet?)

It turns out that "Baba Yetu" is Swahili for "Our Father", and that the entire song is the Lord's Prayer, slightly rearranged for musical continuity. Wow. I found the actual prayer on Wikisource and the song lyrics (in both Swahili and English) on civfanatics.com. Those people are nuts, by the way.

The music itself is beautiful. It begins with tribal instrumental and vocal overtones, but the soft cymbal sweep and C-C-a-FG chord progression foreshadow something more culturally mixed. And as if my thoughts alone created action, the moment I sensed this, so it was. The second repetition of the chorus fills in the aural palette with a rich vocal harmony and beating percussion that offsets the tribal portion magnificently. Right then, the sun rises over Europe, Africa, and Middle Asia on the title screen.

As the verses progress, more and more modern instruments add their part to the whole, starting with simple strings and leading to more complicated brass timbres. The evolution mirrors, to some degree, the progression of our music and technology as a world. Quite fitting for Civilization.

The instrumentation is not the only part of the song that evolves. In the B part, careful listeners will recognize the a-F-C-G pattern that is so pervasive in modern music. I thought that was a nice touch.

Maybe I read into it too much. Even without any interpretation, the piece is exquisite. It's the perfect opener for Civilization IV.

Avian Flu

2005-11-07T17:06:00.000-05:00

A lot of people have been worried about the Avian Flu virus recently. I find this rather silly. This is what happens when people let the media replace science. There's nothing new about this concept, by the way (great article; you should read the whole thing).

The media is what really makes it so bad. While it's uncommon for CNN to stoop to fear mongering, take a look at the title of this article: "WHO: Human flu pandemic inevitable". Wow. Inevitable? This just in: "Astronomer: Sun Decaying to Black Hole Inevitable!"

How about "CDC: Mutated Rhinovirus Strains Found", otherwise worded as "Human Cold Virus Mutates All the Time and Each Cold You Ever Get is Typically a Freshly Mutated Strain".

Sometimes, irresponsible media can be worse than most people imagine. The media prey on people's most recent fears. Remember when some woman was arrested for bringing nail clippers onto a plane? Remember all the media hype about it? Were nail clippers ever a security risk? Of course not. No more than a sharpened pencil is. Last I checked, they still allowed sharpened pencils on airplanes.

Here's a great article about Avian Flu, written by a much better author than myself. Watch out for that Klebsiella bacteria!

The First REAL Projector?

2005-10-20T11:04:00.000-04:00

Finally. A projector that does things a projector should.

From the website: "As the worldÂs first automatic projector sporting a footprint smaller than a sheet of paper, the LT35 is bright, powerful and packed with technological innovations way ahead of its time. This little powerhouse does everything for automatically including start-up, focus, keystone correction and cool down."

I've been saying for a while that projectors are not user friendly. When a $50 camera can autofocus, you would expect that a $2000 projector would also. Unfortunately, we have become brainwashed consumers and buy buy buy anyway, without regard to quality requirements like this. Hopefully it will also scan all inputs simultaneously. There's no excuse for taking 20 seconds to acquire a signal.

What are you reading?

2005-10-19T13:23:00.000-04:00

Okay, me first.

Joel on Software
Originally a weblog only, Joel Spolsky writes about the various challenges of software development. He talks about issues like Unicode, scheduling, project management, entrepreneurship, and the like. I don't agree with everything he says, and I wouldn't make it required reading at any organization, but there are definitely some good reads in there. I found the humor... ok. A worthwhile read.
$16.49 on Amazon.com

Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
Crypto legend Bruce Schneier's definitive Applied Cryptography is the tome for understanding crypto. But the book led people to believe that encryption solves all the world's security problems. This book clarifies that misconception. It takes a step back and explains what security really is: risk management. What, exactly, are we trying to secure, from whom, and for what purpose? Those are the quintessential questions, not "Which file extensions should we block?". It's designed to be read from beginning to end, so it's not a reference, and it takes a while to get though.

It's easy enough to read for a non-technical person, too. Biggest downside was that Schneier couldn't help but plug his company, but it doesn't interfere too much. A great read for IT folk and anyone who wants to know what computer security is really all about.
$12.21 on Amazon.com

What useful (non-fiction) books are you reading?

Mousepad Attacks and How to Beat Them

2005-10-13T17:18:00.000-04:00

It’s 8:55 AM. You sit down at your desk with your Dunkin’ Donuts Turbo Ice Latte (with Splenda, not sugar), and start checking your email. The first one reads:

Dear valued employee,

Effective immediately, all passwords must be at least 12 characters long, contain no vowels, and contain at least 5 symbol characters. We think this is more secure. All current passwords will expire at 5PM. We appreciate you continued cooperation in keeping our company a secure place to work.

Thank you,
IT Team

Riiiight … next email. You go about your normal business, writing memos you hope nobody reads, sorting all your files by color, or whatever it is people do at work during the day. Five o’clock rolls around and, suddenly, your applications close and you see a big prompt: “PLEASE CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD:”.

“So they weren’t just pulling my leg,” you think. “Oh well... what was that requirement again? FIVE symbols?” Oh, a password generation button. That makes it easy!

xX@`5m,2’p9QL{_;

Oh sure, that’s easy to remember. How about a mnemonic? You heard that makes remembering passwords easier. “xenophobic Xylophones money backtick...” No, that won’t work. You’ve got it! Write it on a Post-It and stick it to the monitor! But, hmm, that doesn’t seem very safe. What if someone just walks by and reads it? You have sensitive data on this computer. Plus, that’s against corporate policy and you could get in trouble.

Aha! Write it on a Post-It, and then stick it to the bottom of your mousepad! Nobody will look there. Plus, you can discretely check it without anyone noticing that you wrote down the password. Problem solved.

* * *

Let’s back up and look at what just happened. Somebody decided that four number passwords were not secure because they were too easy to guess (I claim that this is debatable but that argument is for another time). In order to be secure, they argue, passwords must be X length and have Y characteristics. This makes them harder to break. It also makes them much harder to remember.

Security is not a technology problem. Security is a people problem.

People can’t, and shouldn’t be expected to remember long, random passwords with symbols in them. Maybe given practice, someone could eventually remember one password. But people are expected to remember dozens of these. Ideally, one for each account that they have. Your eBay password should be different from your Bank of America password, etc. Personally, I have at least 30 online accounts that I need to keep track of, probably more that I don’t even remember. And I’m expected to remember that many different passwords?

I don’t think so.

What to do? I could have one password and use it for everything. But is that a good idea? What if someone watches me type it? What if an evil librarian reads my password as I log into librarybooks-r-us.com and then uses it to wire money from my bank account? Clearly I don’t want the same password for everything.

I could write down all my accounts with the corresponding user names and passwords, and keep it in my wallet. This is not a bad idea. Most people are pretty careful about protecting their wallets. If your wallet is stolen, some badguy somewhere now has your ATM card, credit card, and a whole lot of identification about you. Maybe your health insurance number is the same as your social security number. Congratulations, thief, you can now register credit cards in the victim’s name.

You can cancel your credit card, invalidate your ATM card, and get a replacement driver’s license. But what about all those passwords? You might not even remember what the accounts even are, let alone their passwords. Here’s a trick: swap the last and first letters of the password when you actually go to type it in. So if your password was really “abcdefg”, you would write down “gbcdefa” on your cheat sheet, and not tell anybody your little secret. That’s a very simple way to encrypt your passwords (as long as they don’t know how to unscramble the code).

Even with a garbled cheat sheet, though, it’s still going to be annoying to type in xX@`5m,2’p9QL{_; every time you want to log in to librarybooks-r-us.com. That’s going to take at least 20 seconds to type in unless you’re a very fluent typist. If only there were a program out there that would let you:

Store all your passwords, for any system, on the computer
Prevent anyone from stealing or viewing the list of passwords
Save you the time of typing the passwords in

Oh yeah, one more thing... 4. I don’t want to pay anything for it.

I bet you can guess what I’m about to say next. Password Safe is a free tool from Counterpane Systems (i.e. Bruce Schneier) that does just that. It allows you to type in the user name and password for any system, and it remembers them all. You can name each account/password pair and create groups of accounts. For example, separate groups for “Personal” and “Work”.

That covers requirement 1. For requirement 2, the entire list of accounts is encrypted by one master password. This becomes the one password that you have to remember. This is a good one to scramble and put in your wallet.

For requirement 3, you simply double click on an account, and the password is placed in the computer’s clipboard. Now you can simply paste it into the password field. This allows you to securely log in without even remembering the password. You wouldn’t want a list of all the passwords exposed when someone was watching you over your shoulder.

And yes, it’s free.

Here’s where to get it: http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

In the beginning...

2005-10-11T18:20:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my mind.

This journey will take you through depths of thought and contemplation of somebody else... me. Much of what you see you may not understand or care about. And that will be too bad. Please refrain from throwing any foreign objects from the vehicle during the ride. It might give me a headache.

All sentences are to be preceeded with "In my opinion,"

Some things I will not make this blog:

A list of whines and complaints. I'll throw them in when I think they might be interesting to someone else, such as "Be careful buying milk from Store 24. I opened a fresh gallon to find that it was in fact primer paint."
A list of links to other places without any interesting insights or comments.
Politically or socially correct.
"Here's an itinerary of everything I did today. And yesterday. And the day before."

If I repeat offend on any of the above, feel free to smack me. That's enough for now, I'll come back when I have something interesting to share.