E-Musings Mon Immorata

How Boring Am I Be? Ooh the sting! Of being accused of boring writing. It hurts so much! Thou wounded me because it is true. I've been depressed and this' tainted the journal. But no longer. Enjoy! Microsoft Research (don't diss their efforts cos' we all benefit from their work) has been researching (what else) how to improve on visual password recognition using computer-generated inkblots. The current research is based on people thinking of something specific for a 'blot. Then you take the first and last character of the word association to make the first 2 characters of the password. The article I read had 9 separate computer-generated images to generate a 18-character password. Maybe I'm unique. But I think more research is needed. Because every time I looked at the 'blots, I though of something new. Not a good sign when your password depends on it! Hey, just in: Do your Windows passwords consist of letters and numbers. If yes, beware because Philippe Oechslin, a senior research assistant and lecturer at the Cryptography and Security Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) has found a way to speed up cracking alphanumeric Windows passwords. Using this technique you can reduce code breaking from 101 seconds to an average of 13.6 seconds! If you are looking for solutions to Windows woes (what legends are now made of :), look no further than Jim Eshelman's Aumha.Org site that's full of tips, articles, tweaks, links to software downloads (including Jim's list of the best freeware available), and even a forum whose moderators include MVPs (Microsoft Valued Professionals: nominated by their peers). Give him a visit. There's also a new Mozilla build. But I've tired of downloading and testing. As they all are about the same. Bar minor tweaks. Zone Alarm 3.7.202 Free edition too has been released. I haven't had a chance (or a free PC) to test this on. But recent experiences at work with the Pro version have not been happy. Part of my company's continued Web access problems have been traced to an over-aggressive firewall that blocks everything not explicitly given permission to proceed: hard when its running on a near-unattended server. Plus the website blocking is a great idea. But tends to take a rather blanket view and there no way to edit listed sites. I'm quite happy with my free Avast anti-virus. Yes, it's a bitch to configure the mail scanning. And the Home version doesn't let you disable services permanently either. So I'm saddled with Outlook/Exchange scanning even though I use neither. But when compared to AVG it's as good, if not better than PC-Cillin, Norton and VirusScan. And don't download AntiVir Personal Edition just yet. There are reports that this free anti-virus program's download may itself be infected with a virus! Some early adopters report finding the Liberty virus in the avewin32.dll file. There's no mention on the company web site, only stress on how "Made In Germany" is a mark of quality! And finally for the programmers in our midst. Came across Readthefuckingmanual: a (somewhat) complete programming resource. I really love the title. Wish I'd been so bold too. You can find links to content on ASP, ASP.NET, IIS, Javascript, PERL (Win32), PHP, SQL, VB Script (VBS), and Windows Scripting Host (WSH), as well as programmer resources and a forum.