Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Smoke and Mirrors because RSA = broken already (Score 1) 84

there are a limited number of prime numbers currently known, roughly 2 billion

Totally wrong.

Look at just the approximate number of 2048-bit primes which is in the range [2^2047 ... 2^2048-1].

Approximate number of primes less than x is x/ln(x)

So, we have (2^2048-1)/ln(2^2048-1) - (2^2047-1)/ln(2^2047-1)

Which is ~ 1.14 x 10^613; a truly monstrous number.

Submission + - Do older I.T. workers doing end-user support find it gets harder with age? 2

Submitted by King_TJ
King_TJ writes: I've worked in I.T. for almost 30 years now in various capacities, from bench PC technician to web page designer, support specialist, network manager, and was self-employed for a while doing on-site service and consulting too. In all that time, I've always felt like I had a good handle on troubleshooting and problem-solving while providing good, friendly customer service at the same time. But recently, I've started feeling like there's just a little too much knowledge to keep straight in my brain. If I'm able to work on a project on my own terms, without interruptions or distractions? Sure, I can get almost anything figured out. But it's the stress of users needing immediate assistance with random problems, thrown out willy-nilly in the constant barrage of trouble tickets, that I'm starting to struggle with.

For example, just this morning, a user had a question about whether or not she should open an email about quarantined junk mail to actually look through it. I briefly noted a screen shot she attached that showed a typical MS Office quarantined email message and replied that she could absolutely view them at her discretion. (I also noted that I tend to ignore and delete those myself, unless I'm actually expecting a specific piece of email that I didn't receive — in case it was actually in the junk mail filter.) Well, that was the wrong answer, because that message was a nicely done phishing attempt; not a legit message — and she tried to sign in through it. Then, I had to do a mad scramble to change her password and help her get the new one working on her phone and computer. With more time to think about what happened, I'm realizing now that I should have known the email was fake because we recently made some changes to our Office 365 environment so junk mail is going directly into Junk folders in Outlook — and those types of messages aren't really coming in to people anymore. On top of that? We're trying to migrate people to using 2 factor authentication so I was instructed to get this user on it while I'm changing her account info. Makes sense, but I had to dig all over to find our document with instructions on how to do that too. I just couldn't remember where they told me they saved the thing, several weeks ago, when they talked about creating the new document in one of our weekly meetings. Am I just getting old and starting to lose it? Is everybody feeling this way about I.T. support these days? Are things just changing at too quick a pace for anyone to stay on top of it all?

I mean, in just the last few weeks, we've dealt with users failing to get their single sign-on passwords to work because something broke that only an upgrade to the latest build of Windows 10 corrected. We've had an office network go bezerk and randomly drop people's Internet access, ability to print, etc. — because one of the switches started intermittently failing under load. We've had online training to set up a new MDM solution, company-wide. And I had to single-handedly set up a new server running the latest version of vCenter for our ESXi servers. And all of that's while trying to get in some studying on the side to get my Security Plus cert., getting Macs with broken screens mailed out for service, a couple of new computers deployed, and accounts properly shut down for an employee who left, plus the usual grind of "mindless" tickets like requests to create new shared DropBox team folders for groups. It's a LOT to juggle, but I was pretty happy with my ability to keep all of it moving right along for years. Now — I'm starting to have doubts.

Comment Re:Biometrics are not passwords (Score 1) 300

by MrVictor (#55586615) Attached to: 10-Year-Old Boy Cracks the Face ID On Both Parents' IPhone X
The FBI are lying. They can 'crack' touchID. If the suspect is alive you can legally compel a fingerprint; if the suspect is dead (and the authorities didn't obliterate the suspect) all they have to do is go down to the morgue and open the device with the dead finger. This is all about a power-grab and the MSM is publishing anti-crypto propaganda to soften up the public's opinion.

Comment Re:Bugs du jour (Score 1) 147

The idea of Rust is cool but in real life it sucks

- Is a Mozilla creation -> strike one
- More articles written about it than there is code -> strike 2
- Unsafe Rust must be used extensively in any sizeable project which renders all proselytizing about memory safety moot -> strike 3

Slashdot Top Deals

Someday somebody has got to decide whether the typewriter is the machine, or the person who operates it.

Close