Expect successful lawsuits in Canada, where Privacy is a Constitutional Right, and eventually in the US by EU/UK and Canadian citizens protected against such actions by the EU/US and US/Canada Data Treaties.

(note: if you don't like that they have more rights in the US than you do, don't sign treaties giving them such rights next time)

I mean, if you were doing actual peer review, none of this would pass even a half-sentient peer's inpection.

This, so much this!

Seriously - If I don't do my job and my boss catches me playing online poker all day, should I attach a response to my HR writeup explaining that I have addressed my deficiency by rearranging my cube to make it harder for others to see my screen???


The problem here has nothing to do with people submitting fake papers, Springer. Rather, you need to stop hiring fake editors.

Look, requiring two on duty actually increases risk factors.

But, keep living in your paranoid 'safety' world, it won't work anyway.

Correct. Rational evaluation will lead you to this result.

We're not rational, because our genes (who drive our evolution and thus our minds) don't give a fuck if we survive or not, only if they survive. To them, your kid is more valuable then you are.

This is total bullshit, and dangerous at that.

Firstly, a lot of software out there still has password length limits, sometimes silently discarding additional characters. You will still need ordinary passwords now and then.

Secondly, no normal human will type a five, six or more words passphrase every time they want to unlock their screen. They will do it for three days while they're hyped on how secure they are now, and then it'll become something they hate, and then they'll change it back to "123".

Thirdly, this is a bit more tricky, the real world security of almost every password scheme I've come across in 15 years of IT security experience is several orders of magnitude lower than the mathematical assumption. Because we consistently forget to take the human factor into account. Maybe some extreme nerds will actually follow this guideline, more normal people will discard words they can't remember for words they can, change things "a little" for convenience, and generally sabotage the whole system without even realizing it. It's the same as with passwords, all over again. Yes, on paper, a password has on the order of 10^16 possible combinations. But in reality, taking into account how people actually choose passwords (even ignoring the whole "password" and "123456" problem!) the actual diversity is more on the order of 10^9. Same here. You think using dice removes the human factor. omg do you underestimate humans!

They are "not a bank" in the same way Uber is "not a taxi service". It's all down to avoiding regulations.

My bad.

This is right, but depends a lot on your threat scenario. For many applications where security really matters, both online and offline cracking are by far not the biggest risks.

In fact, they're ridiculous. I've given a couple presentations on password strength, and password meters are to password strength what the TSA is for air travel security - a better-than-nothing baseline approach that is mostly for show.

The problem is that we have nothing better to offer at this time, even though most security experts agree that passwords are a solution whose time is over.

Or maybe it would follow better moral reasoning. Ours is not perfect, it's just whatever evolution came up with that gave us the best species survival rates. That doesn't mean it's really the most ethical solution.
For example, in a post-feminist society, let's assume for arguments sake that gender discrimination has been overcome, wouldn't we also do away with "women and children first" - which is a suitable survival approach in a species fighting for survival in the african prairie, but hardly for the dominant species that already is overpopulated.

they all have to be funny, but in different ways. Which is why current Top Gear works.

(scene) We are on a deserted airplane runway in Iceland

A car races by - with The Stig in it.

It pulls up to a shiny outdoor hot springs.

Another car races by.

It has a dark complexioned youth driving it. He's dressed in tweed and wears glasses. Thin Brit style. He gets out.

A third car races by.

It has a young short guy in it. He's done up for a footy game. He gets out.

A fourth car races by.

It opens, and the words Top Gear: Mark II appear.

It's a young British woman of mixed Asian descent.

The crowd goes wild.

even I think American Top Gear is weak sauce.

Now Aussie Top Gear, that's alright, mate.

Actually, Top Gear popularized electric cars for most of the world, by giving them the cachet of "man, that's cool".

Nice try, though.

I see you're unfamiliar with gear heads.

Try to avoid European footy matches and rugger and crickets scrums, is my personal advice.