Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Number of interviews... (Score 1) 454

I always hated group projects in gen-ed classes in college.

I'm in my second semester of going back to school pursuing an engineering degree. So far, I've had a group project both semesters, and have had good experiences in both. They have both been in engineering classes, rather than gen-ed, which makes a lot of difference. The only downside is that I learned if the group project is a research paper, and the group consists of Kushal, Hatim, Stanislav, and Josh, it's going to be Josh that gets stuck doing all the final edits. Not to criticize the rest of the group; they're smart guys who did good work, but the writing needed a bit of cleanup by someone for whom English is their primary language.

In one of the earliest meetings for the group project this semester, one of the girls in the group said, "I always hated group projects in high school, because I always ended up being the smart one that got stuck doing all the work. I don't mind them now, because we're all 'the smart one'."

Comment Re:This was no AP. (Score 1) 339

Not even close. Looking at the other responses, I'm clearly not the only one who's thought of this joke.

My personal favorite SSID that I've seen was when I was eating at Buffalo Wild Wings. I went to connect my phone and saw their public hotspot, but someone nearby had set up one called "pubes in my bww". I'm assuming it was just some customer with a sense of humor, but I like to think it could also be either an unhappy neighbor or a semi-disgruntled staff member.

Comment Re:This was no AP. (Score 2) 339

... for a few dollars (or as others are pointing out "zero dollars", which a few dollars approaches asymptotic to zero) you can incite bureaucrats to attack the air traffic system.

Cheap phones in AP mode with maliciously-chosen SSIDs, randomly distributed at airports = instant DoS attack against the US air travel system.

Doesn't really seem like Al Quida's style, but I imagine people at Amtrack and Greyhound might be interested.

Comment Re:Oblig xkcd (Score 1) 220

Actually if you "stick to the story" there's only 50 dollar bills to choose from and once chosen it's eliminated from the set so 50*49*48*.... = 3*10^64 combinations. Less if any of the bills have identical last digits, which is likely due to the birthday paradox. And if they were just counted and put in an evidence bag most the bills are in the right order. If they count the ones, either in order or reverse order and the only thing you need to figure out is where a few fivers or tens go that's cryptologically pathetically weak. And if it did disappear down some pocket, well there goes your evidence that there actually was a pile of cash making up your password. Worst, the police will probably take this as gloating on your part by showing off your perfect yet obviously constructed get-out-of-jail free card. I think the good old "I don't recall" works better.

If the pile of cash disappears down some pocket, then when you are dragged to court to produce the password, you explain the password storage method to the judge, and the fact that no pile of cash was entered into evidence shows that evidence tampering occurred. Assuming you are in a legal jurisdiction where the rule of law holds any sway, this should get the case thrown out.

If you're in a jurisdiction where this doesn't apply, you're pretty much screwed anyway, (and it's all but guaranteed that your pile of cash disappeared into a pocket rather than the evidence locker.) Granted, in a no-rule-of-law jurisdiction, I'd recommend this method only for data you would literally rather die than give up. The Powers That Be aren't going to stop torturing you once you tell them about your password method, they'll keep torturing you hoping that you're lying and you really can produce the password if they push hard enough. At some point, you'll really wish you had a way to give them the password.

An obvious variation of this is to have a pile of cash that contains 48 bills, with a password constructed from the serials as described, plus something extra you have memorized and inserted in specific spots in the sequence. Then when dragged before the judge, you say that the password was from the serials of the 50 bills you had next to the computer. "What, there's only 48 now? Well, you can try the existing sequence and brute force the remaining digits, but since there are 2 bills missing, there's no way to know for certain where in the sequence to insert the missing digits for the brute force attempt, and since the stack was obviously tampered with, there's no guarantee that the remaining bills are in the original order."

Comment Re:Oblig xkcd (Score 1) 220

You are wrong about it being poorly implemented. The "encryption key" being printed on bills is the key here,
The acual password would naturally have nothing to do with the seriel numbers that would just make it needlessly complicated.

You could have only 45 bills and claim that originally there was 50. That would give you the chance to claim
corrupt investigators who ripped off the five $20 bills you had mixed in with your $1 bills. Not only
would it allow you to keep the password secret but also cast the investigating team in a bad light.
Tampering with the evidence and all that, the case might actually get thrown out of the court.

No one would steal your fortune cookies you know.

AC here actually gets the point of this method - you have plausible deniability - "I can't produce my password from memory because it was based on the pile of cash. A pile that is suspiciously smaller than it was before the raid."

Comment Re:Oh great (Score 1) 549

Which is why you make up your own phrase.

Forget making up your own phrase - just talk to a child under 8 for a little while. I guarantee they will say something completely random, totally memorable, and guaranteed not to show up in a phrase-based dictionary. Here's a sample of passwords I have used in the past that originated with my nephew - now 7.

I wanna be a squid when I grow up!
I'm a lizard in a swimsuit with a wedgie.
The backyard smells like a wombat
My grandma's stinking it up!

(The last one, by the way, was shouted when Grandma had taken him into a public bathroom with her. No relevance whatsoever to picking a secure password, but just take a couple of seconds to imagine walking past a public bathroom and overhearing a kid yelling that.)

Comment Re:Correlaton? (Score 1) 447

If you have a lot of people at a wedding where you are not spending a lot of money, those people are there because they care about you. That is a good thing.

If you spend a lot of money on a wedding that does not have a lot of guests, it indicates that appearances are very important to you. That is not a good thing.

Mod parent up!

For what it's worth, my wife and I have been married a bit over 15 years, dated a little over 3 years. We got married right out of college, and were therefore broke as heck. My parents paid for the rehearsal dinner, but the rest came out of our pockets. We spent somewhere around $2400, (not counting rings) with the photos making about a third of that. We had somewhere around 300 people at our wedding, which included a general invitation to everyone at the church we attended at the time. To fill in the rest of the data points, we attend church regularly, didn't live together prior to the wedding, and while I think my wife is hot, she certainly didn't marry me for my money. Oh, and we're still pretty broke.

Comment Re:Fails Physics Forever (AKA in vs out doesn't wo (Score 1) 986

Also, as pointed out by the article, if his Ecat worked as he claims, everyone would be dead within 10 minutes of starting the reactor, due to massive Gamma radiation leaks.

Oh, come on. Everyone knows Gamma radiation just gives people super powers. Rossi himself is the perfect example. He's been working with this device for so long, he has the superhuman ability to transform bullshit into attention.

Now that he's had a team of researchers spending a month examining this thing in a sorta-sciencey way, we should watch them for signs of super powers. I suspect they've gained the ability to smash their own credibility in one swift stroke.

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Working...