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Comment It's not the combat training that is putting off (Score 1) 223

It's the whole rest. The uniforms... ok, they are kinda cool, but that's pretty much where the cool stuff ends.

Getting up at some time when normal people go to bed.
Calling someone "sir" whose IQ matches that of my last bowel movement.
Going through tourette-like spastic twitches every time such a pea-for-brain waltzes by.
The food. Not so much the content (as if any hacker cares just what he shovels into his body) but instead of eating when you're hungry you're eating when you're eating. Why kinda sense does that make?
Various daily/weekly/monthly routines without any rhyme or reason (like where that oversized colorful hanky is being pulled up on a pole and everyone's watching like they're waiting for God to blow his nose or something).

And that's just what I remember of my time in that insane clown posse.

Comment Re:The Mullet Wearing Facebook Generation of Press (Score 1) 223

What technical expertise of the "Facebook" generation are you talking about?

The "Facebook" generation has no more nor less technical expertise than any generation before. They just adapted to using some technology that previous generations did not have while growing up, i.e. when you have the most time to tinker and toy with something. That's akin to admiring how the 50s and 60s generations can easily handle TV shows and how well they understand movie plots. It's something they grew up with and something that older generations probably don't grasp as easily.

What sets that "Facebook" generation apart is that they are probably the first now where the content generation and distribution is bidirectional on a large scale. But such people always existed. It's just that until recently only very, very few were lucky enough to get a chance to actually broadcast.

Comment Re:Why not as civilians? (Score 1) 223

Erh... you're the effin' US Army. You go in, secure the whole contraption, ensure nobody but US troops is within a perimeter of, say, 100 miles, then send in the poindexters.

You needn't go clandestine, and since (as you said) there is no outside connection, there's zero risk that someone could be warned and would wipe the data you want. He could be warned, but had zero chance to do jack but to watch you examine the data.

This ain't a movie, and hacking doesn't mean getting your guru into the mainframe and buy him 5 minutes or 10 so he can find the one important clue so you can exfil. Hacking is, if anything, a quite time consuming process, long enough that the aforementioned strategy is probably your best bet in a scenario as you describe it.

Comment Re:This is why "biometric" authentication is usele (Score 1) 80

Still, for an attacker adding a second "what you know" part doesn't change the game. Look at it from an attacker's point of view. When he can browbeat you into handing over your credentials, it matters not whether he has to listen to one word or two. When he can trick you into handing them over (e.g. via keylogger), it matters not whether it's one word or two.

And even if he has to employ brute force it matters little, for however complicated it may be to brute force two words m and n letters long, it is just as easy or hard to brute force a word m+n letters long.

As for remembering, is it harder to remember "username" and "password" or "usernamepassword"? It's the same. You just don't press return in between them.

For all practical reasons the amount of "passwords" you have does not matter. Their total length does, at least when it comes to a brute force attack, but whether you split that length up in 1, 2 or n-1 "passwords" matters not.

Comment Re:This is why "biometric" authentication is usele (Score 1) 80

It's the same deal with a nonphysical attack. How is 8 letters username + 8 letters password harder or easier to crack than a 16 letters password? Even provided that both username and password WERE secret, which they usually are not, you don't gain security by splitting up a X-bit key into two keys Y and Z that have together a length of len(X). It is the same attack complexity. How are the two tokens "username" and "password" harder or easier to brute force than the one token "usernamepassword"?

The point is that the user name, the part that makes up the identity of the authorization process, is NOT part of the authentication. Your username identifies you. It does nothing else. It's not even secret, mostly because it CANNOT be under nearly all circumstances. As soon as other users have to interact with you in some way, they need some token to address you by. And while it is possible to come up with elaborate schemes how to keep that username secret, they all have some flaw at some point.

The username is also not something the server can use to verify anything because it is your claim, your proposition, rather than something it can verify. You claim that you are user abcd. That's basically what you say when you log in. You make a claim. That by itself does not add anything to security. It is just something you claim to be. You might have noticed that when you log in, your username is also not hidden in the input mask, unlike your password. Because it simply is not a security secret. It is just a claim. You claim to be that user.

To verify that this claim is genuine the server will want something from you that allows him to authenticate this claim. Your password. If you want to make that password longer, go ahead. Yes, that would actually increase security against brute force attacks (not against keylogging, but against brute force attempts). But adding further passwords does not add any security. Either I can brute force them all, in which case there is no gain from having more instead of longer passwords, or I can keylog them all, in which case it matters little whether I have to record one or seven passwords.

Comment Way to kill a perfectly good conspiracy story (Score 1) 197

That's not fair, ok? Taking away our toy after we spent so many years explaining how THEY keep us in the dark and how THEY cover up everything, then come out with a perfectly reasonable explanation. But it's all just a plot! Plans within plans within plans. They just SAY that it was their now-no-longer-secret planes to make us think that they did hide something, that they had some good reason for it and now we're supposed to believe them telling us the truth just because it is rationally sane and makes perfect sense? PAH! Since when did this have any room in conspiracy!

The truth is out there. Far, far out there. And I'm NOT paranoid! Because if you are, THEY will notice it!

Comment Re:What about UFOs in US Airspace? (Score 2) 197

Take a moment to think. Where would you conduct test flights? Over foreign soil where you not only won't have the aid of the local authorities in your "there is nothing to see here" coverup when the crate croaks and goes down prematurely but won't even get your ass expensive toy back to find out just WHY it broke apart in mid air?

Comment Their main problem is being Google (Score 1) 386

I would love to have a head mounted display. What's not to like about it? Augmented reality, great!

But ... from a company whose business model relies on harvesting any and all information about anyone and everyone? Would I want a device that can, by its very nature, record everything I see, everyone I interact with, every place I go, made by a company that has a business model that is based on collecting all this? No thanks.

Google's problem is not that they're ahead of the curve and that they're so bleeding edge that nobody wants their gadgets. Their problem is that they're Google.

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