Too many people have bad passwords that can be guessed in a matter of minutes by a password cracker, which are available quite freely on the Internet, such as here. You don’t want to read another article about strong password best practices, so I’m going to make this easy and give you some cool tools to make them yourself.

Password Tips

Like I mentioned, I won’t bore you with the details on how to create better passwords. You can read about that elsewhere on the web, such as here, here and here. If all of the advice can be summed up in one sentence, it would be “A good password is one that cannot be easily guessed”.

The Password Strength Meter

This is the fun part. Most people I know absolutely hate figuring out a strong password, which is why they usually pick a weak password. Consider this: “rover” is a very weak password while “!3%y3^&S(r&34m!” is a strong password. Password cracking programs can guess “rover” in a couple of seconds. But how do you know when your password is strong?

SecurityStats.com has a tool that allows you to type in a password and it will tell you how strong or weak it is. Use the examples I gave above here on SecurityStats. Don’t worry, they won’t store your password but it is always a good idea to not send them your real password, just use one that is similar.

Strong Password Generators

But how do you come up with a strong password yourself? And what if you have multiple passwords for many sites, such as your credit cards, banks, leisure and travel sites, utilities, etc? There is a way to generate a strong password using a single master password and a secondary word, such as the site name. So for instance you could use “Stella500″ as your master password, and for each of your sites (such as banks) you could use the bank name. Go to Angel.net and type in “Stella500″ as the master password and “royalbank” as the site name. Click on Generate and the password it produces is “96e6c398″ which is a medium-strong password.

Another site is a French one that has 2 password generators. One gives you a password up to 8 characters only, and the second is more secure and gives you a longer password.

Using a master password of “Stella500″ and site name (also known as a parameter) of “royalbank”, go to their Regular Password Generator and punch in those values. The result is “GgXSwMY0″ which is a strong password, stronger than the Angel.net site’s generator. If you run those words through their Long Version Password Generator, you get “GgXSwMY0gIIrte+Dh526pG2gfP0″ which is the strongest and most difficult to guess of all of them.

Using these systems, you won’t have to remember or type in that long password, just remember your master password and site names, then you can go to the generator page and generate them. I don’t recommend letting Internet Explorer remember your passwords for you, since your computer can be stolen and the thief would have access to everything.

Where to Store Passwords?

Right about now you’re probably thinking how much work it would be to go to one of those sites and generate a password everytime you wanted to log into your bank account. You don’t have to do that; there is an easier way. You can store all the passwords in a secure database on your computer, and print them out if you like and file them away in a safe place. What kind of secure database?

There are programs that you can get free that will act as an electronic file cabinet to store your sensitive usernames and password information. They require one master password which allows you to get in. Without this master password, even if someone steals your computer they will not have access to your accounts.

The one that I would recommend is Password Safe which is an open source project and available at no cost. Another one which has been recommended to me although I haven’t used it is Oubliette.

Just remember that a strong password is the only thing between thieves and your money and personal data! Keep all of your data safe by using strong passwords.

This looks to be one of the biggest natural disasters in the history of the United States from where I am.

I’m not usually a very selfish person, nor do I claim to be very political but judging by the images bombarding the TV on the devastation encountered in the New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama area, I have something to ask.

Can someone explain to me why Americans are expected to provide aid to all victims of the world, but when it comes to a major disaster situated on our own soil, the rest of the World seems to sit back and watch us fend for ourselves?

If I were 20 years younger and didn’t have a family to provide for, I would be one of the first to volunteer to help out down south. This is why I am able to ask such a question.

I don’t see or even hear about the remote possibilty of help from surrounding nations, much less anyone from oversea’s sending the troops in to help us out.

Can someone tell me why?

UPDATE:

Hiddenpcmaster.

The United States Post Office allows you to request a hold on your postal mail through its Web site. Next time you are going out of town, just be sure to notify the USPS by 2am the day you would like to have the mail halted. Of course, you can submit requests ahead of time. The USPS will hold your mail from 3 to 30 days. (Note that online access to this service is restricted to certain zip codes.)

USPS Hold Mail Service

Goodnight NewOrleans, and GODSPEED.

Firefox address bar autocomplete

Here’s yet another Firefox feature that’s buried in about:config but which you won’t be able to live without once you enable it: Address autocomplete. While by default Firefox will show you previously-visited sites that start with whatever you’ve entered in the address bar, when you enable this setting it will fill it right in where you’re typing, so when the address you’re looking for floats to the top you can just press enter.

In order to enable autocomplete in the address bar, first enter about:config in the address bar. Then right-click anywhere on the list and select New > Boolean and create a preference called browser.urlbar.autoFill. Finally, double-click on the item you’ve just created to set it to true. That’s it!

If your yard is big enough, you can follow Jeremy Reid’s example and build a Backyard Roller Coaster.

I just finished watching the “40 Year Old Virgin” and I’m told that my sister in law “Shari” took her kids and my mother in law along to watch this movie!

OK…..this is not a movie to go to with your grandmother or small children. The language is filthy, the jokes are (very) crude, and the sex talk is about as graphic as you’ll find anywhere. What’s amazing, however, is that the movie is still a sweet love story and funny as hell!

Go see it, but leave the kids at grandma’s house.

When people discuss camera phones, the most frequent topic is their ability to violate someone else’s privacy. For example, maybe some creepy bastard carries a phone into a locker room and snaps pics of people changing clothes.

Less frequent is discussion of camera phones being used to bust criminals. Or, in this case, bust a different creepy bastard.

The photo and story, which I found via Boing Boing, was posted by a woman who rode the subway in New York City and caught some asshole staring at her and masturbating. The thumbnail’s a bit blurry, but if you click the All Sizes option right above the picture, there’s no question about what this guy’s doing.

I say good on her for posting it, especially after the first police officer she spoke to wasn’t interested. Now this dude’s face is all over the Internet, and I suspect it won’t be long before he’s identified, possibly by co-workers, friends, or family.

An analysis of the pros and cons of his being publicly humiliated can be found on Bruce Schneier’s blog. That post refers to a similar (but less creepy) case where a woman in a Seoul subway whose dog took a dump on the floor and she refused to clean it up. Someone snapped a picture of her, it blazed its way around the Internet, and she caught a ton of flak over it. (Side note: she even got her own Wikipedia entry — too funny.)

Now, there’s a big difference between refusing to clean up after your dog and flogging the bishop in public. This guy pretty much deserves whatever he gets, though I hope nobody’s dumb enough to resort to physical violence. Last I checked, vigilantism is still illegal. The photographer says the transit police are taking the matter a little more seriously, and I hope they get a hold of him first.

Putting aside the fact the guy may need some mental help (I tend to think it’s more likely he’s just a creepy asshole), he committed a crime and should do the time. Jail time, fines, whatever, just book his creepy ass. Second, it’s best they get a hold of him now before he gets bolder and tries rubbing up on people.

Or worse.

If nothing else, this incident may serve as a deterrent. He knows she took a picture, and now he’s going to be sweating the consequences. My bet is he’s either changed his routine or is avoiding the subway altogether. He’ll probably think twice before he spanks his monkey in public again, as it’s hard to say who else may be carrying a camera phone.

I’m going to try to keep an eye on this and see how it plays out.

Via http://www.mikeoliveri.com/

Google gets cooler every day. I found out today they’re launching a chat service and client called Google Talk, which is based on the open Jabber protocol. It will reportedly include both Instant Message and Voice over IP functionality, and integrates with Gmail.

I just added my Google Talk account (if you have a Gmail account, you’re already set up) to my GAIM client and it works like a charm.

The download is tiny (about 900k) and the install is so quick and easy you don’t even realize it’s finished yet. You sign in with your Gmail account and are immediately presented with your (momentarily empty) buddy list. There’s an Add Friend button, a “Search all contacts” field which searches both your Google Talk and Gmail contacts, and a drop-down under your name that lets you set your available/unavailable status and messages. There’s also an Inbox button which takes you to Gmail, plus Help and Settings.

Clicking on a friend in your buddy list will open an IM window for that person, and clicking on the phone icon to the right of their name will start a voice session. The buddy list allows you to rename contacts and tweak other settings, like whether Gmail-only contacts are shown. When you have multiple IM windows open, they show up in a neat sliding interface which you can dock to the buddy list, “roll up,” or tear away. The whole affair is the picture of simplicity and intuitiveness we’ve come to expect of Google, and is downright attractive to boot.

According to the people at Google, there’s a lot in store for Google Talk. Google is keenly interested in keeping the protocol open, and in fact you can access Google Talk’s servers with any Jabber-compatible client like Trillian, Gaim, Adium X, and iChat. (If you have one of these, I’m told you can connect using server talk.google.com and port 5222.) Google tells us that SIP support is coming soon and are in talks with Skype, AOL, and Yahoo! concerning interoperability.

Another big feature they’re working on is “joint search,” which would allow two or more Google Talk buddies using Google and surfing the web together. This would be a natural segue to the fabled Google Browser, but there is as yet no confirmation from Google.

Google also tells us that they don’t yet have solid plans on making money with the service, but plan on using it to drive users to Gmail.

If you need a Gmail account, drop me a line and I will hook you up with an invite.