Interesting interview with one of my favorite computer security writers, especially (to me) the part about how he handles passwords: Q: How do you remember all of your passwords? A: I can’t. No one can; there are simply too many. But I have a few strategies. One, I choose the same password for all low-security …
Continue reading ‘“Bruce Schneier Blazes Through Your Questions”’ »
These gift boxes, with fake products advertised on the outside, are priceless: Awake to your next fire calm and refreshed with DigiPliance’s Peaceful Progression Smoke Alarm. Choose the perfect way for your family to wake up—from the peaceful sounds of the rainforest, to the celebration of Dixieland jazz, or the hot pulse of the Caribbean—because …
An interesting idea, but it’ll never fly. Presidential hopefuls aren’t even allowed to participate in unscripted debates anymore, everything has to be carefully coordinated by their handlers and PR people.
At the end of the previous entry in this series, I mentioned that there were still some things that made the backup system I’d developed less than optimal: The backup files aren’t compressed; Backups should always be read-only, even when the media is mounted, so it’s a lot harder for a virus or user-error to …
As mentioned a couple weeks ago, I recently picked up a new piece of hardware, a 1TB MyBook World Edition II. It’s a network-attached external hard drive that turned out to be a full-fledged headless Linux box. I’ve been wanting to change my backup setup to go to it instead of the CygWin ssh server …
The CMAA probably seemed like a good idea in 1954, providing only wholesome American values to impressionable young minds. But new research suggests that, while the main idea behind it (limiting the exposure of young minds to violence) was correct, the implementation was way off the mark: The findings, which are reported in the Journal …
Continue reading ‘“TV, film and game violence seen as a threat”’ »
This “Virgin Mary USB Flash drive” is just ridiculous. “Plug her in and ‘she comes to life, her red LED heart starts to beat — in passive state slowly, quicker whilst connecting or saving data’ […]” Thanks, but I’ll take a USB Rocket Launcher instead. (Oh darn, it looks like it’s Windows-only.)
“Cyber Monday” is apparently the new name for the Monday after Thanksgiving, when workers return to the office and start Christmas shoping online from their work computers. It’s apparently growing in importance, as the traditional “Black Friday” (when stores supposedly “climb into the black,” or start making a profit for their fiscal year) loses ground. …
Continue reading ‘Forget “Black Friday,” start watching “Cyber Monday”’ »
My first computer was a used TI-99/4a, given to me as a gift on my twelfth birthday, just after Texas Instruments abandoned it. It was a wonderful little device, despite the quickly-outgrown 16K of memory. One of the best things about it (besides the hardware speech synthesizer module that I got with it) was that …
Continue reading ‘“Phoenix hijacks Windows boot with instant-on”’ »
I always got an odd look when I told people that I enjoyed watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. Something along the lines of “you’d admit to that, voluntarily?” I also really enjoyed the Firefly series, and the Serenity movie that capped it off. So I was interested to read about creator Joss …
Continue reading ‘“Buffy mastermind returns with new TV series”’ »