In your post, I read an assumption that a physically secure password tracker implies secure passwords.

One advantage of password managers not captured with a physically secure password tracker is that you can employ more complex (including difficult to type?), changing passwords unique to each system. Some softare password managers do this for you automatically.

Physical security isn't the only attack vector on passwords.

Unfortunately, no one could repeat the study to validate the claims.

I agree, it's really quite graceful. The pirouette reminded me of figure ice skaters.

Link to a youtube video for those interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I just read a book called "The Windup Girl" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... by Paolo Bacigalupi where local environmental police was a major component of the plot.

I enjoyed the book enough to get "Pump Six and Other Stories", a collection of his short stories where I believe he will introduce some of the ideas fleshed out in "The Windup Girl."

I recently started reading A Deepness in the Sky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky ) by Vernon Vinge who briefly touches on this issue.

He speculates that eventually hardware will stabilize allowing code written over the period of centuries to still be used. He says that bugs in old code, (the original designer, coder, maintainer are dead) eventually cause more deaths than hazardous activities like space travel.

I can see how code that hasn't needed TLC for years but is still used extensively (i.e.in chains like awk and grep) could have an impact on computing for years to come.

Vinge also talks about how back doors created by the coders but forgotten over time might be rediscovered and lead to control and manipulation of massive systems that still use those old libraries.

what the internet has done to intellectual property is pit the little guys against entrenched dying large corporate machines. usually all the little guy can do is run and hide. but when its corporate machine versus corporate machine cast in the role usually occupied by the little guy, this is good because google can throw clout into a fight where the little guy can only hope to be popped like a zit. so precedents can fly out of this that can protect the little guy

Better slow downloads than meeting your new Swedish boyfriend in jail.

Even better, how about paying for your movies, games, and music? That way you can download them as fast as you like, and the government won't try to put you in jail even if they spy on you doing it!

I realise this is Slashdot, where "not getting busted for copyright infringement" is apparently categorised as a "right", so I'm probably about to be modded into oblivion -- but hey, that's life, isn't it?

I mean, where are the true believers now? Does anyone seriously think that western governments have any kind of moral credibility?

We wag our fingers at China for their actions in Tibet, but by any measure what they have done there is far more humane than what we have done in Iraq. We lecture Russia about corruption and they simply retort with examples of western corruption.

Who actually believes that our governments have any reason to exist anymore beyond their existence itself?

Wall Street has always been home to some of Sun's and IBM's largest corporate accounts. I don't doubt Linux and/or BSD can do the job that Solaris can in some cases (with caveats), but it will take years for that to happen. A "Linux stronghold" is misleading at best, TFA doesn't even support the claim.

And Linux will never replace mainframes. Nothing will.

At the risk of being modded troll, OO Calc will probably never replace Excel - other than Suns and big iron, corporate america runs on Microsoft Excel (not necessarily a good thing, but still).

OTOH, I know companies that are still running their websites and outward-facing interface systems on hardware and software that could be easily replaced by off-the shelf open source stuff, which will probably save them a lot of money.

The reason Eve can't just generate a new pad is because there are two methods of generating a photon and two methods of measuring a photon. Each method of generating a photon has a matched way of measuring it. If you use the matched measurement method you correctly get the bit Alice sent. If you use the incorrect method you get a random 0 or 1 no matter what bit Alice sent. Eve (and Bob too) has no way of telling which method Alice used. In quantum key distribution, after sending the photons, Alice would contact Bob over a different channel. They would tell which method they used, and if they used matching methods keep that bit. If they used different methods they would throw out the bit. If Eve regenerated the bits, she could not have used the same methods as Alice since she doesnt know which methods were used. So Alice and Bob's keys won't match up which will result in any information passed between them to be undecodable and they will know someone eavesdropped.

Quantum Key Distribution is, in its most naive form, still vulnerable to man in the middle attacks. It makes it a little more difficult because you must be able to intercept information on two different channels (the quantum channel and the classical electronic channel), but it is still doable. (There are, however, cryptographic methods of detecting man in the middle attacks, but thats a subject for another time).