“Bruce Schneier Blazes Through Your Questions”

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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 applications. There are several Web sites where I pay for access, and I have the same password for all of them. Two, I write my passwords down. There’s this rampant myth that you shouldn’t write your passwords down. My advice is exactly the opposite. We already know how to secure small bits of paper. Write your passwords down on a small bit of paper, and put it with all of your other valuable small bits of paper: in your wallet. And three, I store my passwords in a program I designed called Password Safe. It’s is a small application — Windows only, sorry — that encrypts and secures all your passwords.

I use KeePassX for the same thing, just in case, but I need certain passwords so often that I’ve learned how to memorize them. I’m surprised that Mr. Schneier hasn’t done the same.

“Gotcha Gift Boxes”

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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 a fire doesn’t have to be a disaster.

I want all my Christmas presents in these from now on. 🙂

Secure Remote Backups, Part III

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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 damage one of them;
  • Data on hard drives is subject to bit-rot if it’s not re-written occasionally, and the current designs can’t even detect that, let alone prevent or fix it;
  • If the network goes down while a backup is being written, the backup volume will be damaged, maybe irretrievably;
  • If the hardware is stolen or destroyed by a disaster at the office, all the data is lost.

Only off-site backups can prevent the last problem, but there’s a fairly easy solution to the rest: the ZFS file system. Continue reading ‘Secure Remote Backups, Part III’ »

Secure Remote Backups, Part II

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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 on my office desktop machine. That wouldn’t be too difficult since I’ve already got it running an ssh server, except for one thing: I need to ensure that the backups are properly encrypted, so that if someone breaks into the office and makes off with the hardware, they won’t also have access to all my personal and business files as well. Continue reading ‘Secure Remote Backups, Part II’ »

“TV, film and game violence seen as a threat”

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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 of Adolescent Health, support earlier research which showed that children who watch violent television shows and who identify with the characters and believe they are real are more likely to be aggressive as adults.

It’s obvious even a child that comic-book supervillains are no more real than the superheros that they’re invented to oppose. And the whole ban on Dracula, Frankenstein, and zombies was ridiculous to begin with.

Parents, trust that your children have a little common sense, please!

Forget “Black Friday,” start watching “Cyber Monday”

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“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.

We’ll see how this plays out over the next few years, but I suspect it’s going to continue. The Internet has made it possible for anyone to easily obtain just about any information, and a lot of time-honored industries are discovering that they can no longer rely on the ignorance of the masses to charge a ridiculous markup on their products.

“Phoenix hijacks Windows boot with instant-on”

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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 when you turned it on, it was instantly ready to do your bidding. You might have to load a program first, which involved a cassette tape drive, a lot of electronic wailing, and enough time to play a game on our Sears-branded “TeleGames” Atari 2600 clone, but that was a small price to pay.

I’ve never really gotten used to the DOS/Windows/etcetera concept of having to load the operating system from external storage. It makes sense when OSes are regularly updated, but it always seemed to me that there was no reason why the computer couldn’t instantly be ready when we turned them on.

It seems that I’m not the only one who misses those days. 🙂

“Buffy mastermind returns with new TV series”

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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 Whedon’s new project Dollhouse as well. It sounds intriguing, and I look forward to seeing it.