I heard someone say "Watts per hour" on the news a few days ago. I'm still recovering.

If by "near-duplicate" you mean different files that were actually once the same image, sorting by "date modified" might give you satisfactory results. Of course, I'm making certain assumtions here about how the images were acquired and why there are multiple versions, and only you will know if this applies to your situation, but I would suspect that the older files would be of better quality.

I think the ideal result--and I'm not saying we're ready to do this--would be to have a secure, reliable "something you are" that would just work for everything.

So, you're suggesting to _deliberately_ type the wrong password? Are we to assume, then that you already know your correct password, but to make a point that it's IMPOSSIBLE to remember, you're going to temporarily disable your own access to a service AND add unnecessary work to someone else's day? You should suggest your "big idea" to your superiors. They'll love it.

I think that's the premise of the original post. A secure password is only secure if you can keep your yap shut and make sure no one is watching you. This doesn't seem like some new "holy crap" revelation, really. Phishing is a great way to steal credentials. IT does what it can to protect passwords from being guessed and to protect users from being convinced to reveal their passwords. Fun fact: IT people often have more passwords to remember than other users do. Why not ask how they keep track of their passwords? You'd be surprised how many of them can actually speak "human", and would likely be eager to provide a solution other than sticky notes.

"Devolution" is like "reverse racism". Really just evolution and racism (respectively).

Problem with that is, underground Russian coders seem to be the best at making robots that bypass CAPTCHAs, and this would be a similar project. If Russians solve a U.S. space-related problem, JFK would roll over in his grave.

Okay, smart guy. Then we just shatter the window. Perhaps with a loose knob of some sort. There's gotta be a way to get that window open!

I agree. Usually, what works for search engine optimization works well for storing a bunch of records for easy retrieval. Many folks in web dev believe that PDFs are not the most search-engine-friendly things in the world. Basically, you'd want something texty and meta-y and semantic for easy searches. I'm glad you beat me to it, because you obviously have real experience doing this. Doesn't sound very fun, but hey, wodder interns for?

I checked out some of the video responses. The OP's description of the collection as "a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman 'Showing my Apples', and other off-topic rants and unrelated videos" neglects to acknowledge that there ARE legitimate responses. That description also seems to suggest that the Obama administration is to blame for losers and sociopaths on YouTube (I always wondered who let them in!). If they were allowing text-based comments, they would probably be expected to read every last one of them. I'm guessing there would be a lot of them, and I wouldn't expect the quality of the responses to take a sudden leap when they only require half a second of forethought. It seems at some point that this turned into a discussion of dishonesty in the Obama administration. I don't see how that applies here. They're not exactly "pulling a fast one on us" by disabling comments. Most people would catch on when they try to reply and the form isn't there.

A problem with the name "FreeLegoPorn" is that it isn't immediately clear whether the content is provided by Lego. I know I wouldn't want my company name to have an implied relationship with pornography (unless I had a porn company).

I'll have to add "boioioioing" to my signature... purely for scientific purposes. Let's tell no one of your discovery.

Love the "Insightful" mod! What if I said "ba-ZING!"

As you say, Nielson has earned himself a reputation as a preeminent authority on the subject, but the decades of actual user experience data we can collect from the long-standing practice of password masking might serve as the grain of salt with which we take his observation. How many people have actually complained about password masking over the years? There are some users with less-than-ideal security practices, and masking is one small but significant way that an access credential can be protected. The user isn't the only one who stands to lose something if his or her password is compromised, and optional masking is likely to be disabled primarily by the very users who unknowingly benefit from it in the first place.

Dangit, I misspelled "ghetto" in my own post title. No, wait...