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Things that piss you off that shouldn't


AVFCforever1991

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Not sure if this appears on the news much in Britain, but it's pretty big over here. Protests are sprouting up all over China over Japan's claim to a chain of islands (called Senkaku I think, Diaoyu by the Chinese). Now I'm all for free speech but some of the vitriol appearing on those protest placards are quite worrying, and utterly, utterly insane. These are the 2nd and 3rd biggest economies in the world, and both are economically closely intertwined with each other, god knows what financial chaos would result from an armed conflict, should the tension result in one.

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We're seeing it over here alright Legov. I see that Japanese businesses in China are being attacked too. Fairly standard stuff, sadly. I think the world is just generally an angrier place these days and any excuse to kick off is fair game to most. I wonder how many of those Chinese protestors could find Senkaku on a map.

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Going back to Chindie's post,

the amount of passwords I (and the average person these days I suppose) needs.

You're supposed to not have the same password for anything, and you're supposed to not write them down for security, and they're supposed to be a random combination of letters and numbers.

How could anyone possibly remember all of their passwords in that situation?

Anybody whose standard advice for password security includes not writing them down doesn't know what they're talking about.

Arnold Reinhold"]

This is a very important question. Most experts say never write down your passphrase under any circumstances. This approach comes from military doctrine, but military crypto systems are designed in such a way that one person forgetting a passphrase is not a calamity.

I believe most people are more afraid of forgetting their own passphrase than they are of having it stolen. As a result they tend to pick passphrases that are far too weak. I actually did a small survey on this question and the results support my view. See http://world.std.com/~reinhold/passphrase.survey.asc

Also many people need multiple passphrases for different programs and needs. Remembering them all can be difficult, particularly those that are used infrequently. For most people it is better to pick strong passphrases, write them down and keep them in a very safe place. There may be legal advantages to memorizing your key, however.

In short: following the advice to not write down your passwords/passphrases means that you're going to choose passes that are easy to guess or bruteforce. Forcing people to choose difficult to remember passes and having them not write them down means that you're going to have a lot more "forgot pass" incidents and a lot more reset requests, which makes a social engineering attack easier to execute (because pass resets are so common and several nines of them are innocuous, the systems and authorities who track those systems will not scrutinize the reset requests).

Choosing a difficult to guess (i.e. with sufficient entropy) pass and writing it down if necessary is probably more secure than any other practical alternative.

Diceware is a good way of creating passphrases with sufficient entropy; the passphrases are also easy to remember.

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I think the world is just generally an angrier place these days and any excuse to kick off is fair game to most

Not so sure about that. Compared to medieval times - hell, compared to 50 years ago - the world is more benign these days. Violence rates are down, IINM wars are less common as well. It's all relative of course - the fact that there is less anger and violence doesn't mean that the shit that does exist shouldn't be reduced in intensity even further.

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I just mean the man on the street. Right through society. It would take a long diatribe to explain but even simple things like road behaviour. Even using your car horn properly these days will probably get a few middle fingers and a barrage of abuse. Twenty years ago a street fight was usually over when one guy hit the deck. Now it's an invitation to dance on his head and that's presuming someone didn't have a knife. Society has become angrier from what I've seen and people are a lot less friendly. I dunno where it's going, but I hope it slows down.

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No I'm with BoF here, the 'have it now' attitude definitely leading to far more passive aggressiveness. It's a problem of fuckwits feeling 'Entitled' to stuff. They aren't, well beyond maybe basic accomodation and essential welfare.

Just realising I'm writing this after a post on piracy in which I admit not having the patience to wait for tv shows to come out on dvd. Hmm :oops:

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We're angrier because we're less violent.

Yeah, but the protesters, they aren't just complaining, some of them are talking about starting a war*. In this case, the anger isn't keep violent tendencies in check, it's going hand-in-hand with them.

*Might be figurative language, but if so they certainly don't make it obvious.

Edit: It's (imo) quite obviously an issue of nationalism, that I think has nothing to do with the petty examples of anger BOF mentioned. Nationalism has been around for a century, if not longer (not going to get into that debate now) - protests like these certainly are not a new phenomenon, so even if people are generally getting angrier, I doubt the main factor is something that has come up in the last few decades.

FWIW, nationalism - this sort of unthinking, impulsive and destructive nationalism anyway - feels to me so incongruous with the fact that we live in the 21st century.

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We're seeing it over here alright Legov. I see that Japanese businesses in China are being attacked too. Fairly standard stuff, sadly. I think the world is just generally an angrier place these days and any excuse to kick off is fair game to most. I wonder how many of those Chinese protestors could find Senkaku on a map.
I wonder how many Brits could have found the Falklands/Malvinas on a map before 1982?
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I wonder how many Brits could have found the Falklands/Malvinas on a map before 1982?

Absolutely. But were they marching down the streets setting fire to British based Argentinian companies though? Or was it one of those wars that kind of happened on the news and had no tangible impact on the streets?

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I wonder how many Brits could have found the Falklands/Malvinas on a map before 1982?

Absolutely. But were they marching down the streets setting fire to British based Argentinian companies though? Or was it one of those wars that kind of happened on the news and had no tangible impact on the streets?

Yeah, pretty much the latter. We are British, you know! We only riot when we are asked to pay poll tax, or we want to steal shit, innit? :winkold:

The anti-Argie thing only really manifested itself in the tabloids and in football.

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Yes, the news items on TV here have been bandying around the word "war" (if only in reference to the China/Japan war of the 30s & 40s).

Some of the placards I do find worrying, as I've said. I read Chinese (albeit not very well these days), so I understand what's written on the protest signs, and there's a lot of vitriol and threats of violence.

Even the Taiwanese and the Hong Kongers are up in arms (figuratively speaking) about it, a little surprising given that they have their own differences with the mainland government.

I wonder how many of my relatives are on the Chinese side of the issue here, wouldn't be surprised to find out that that were so.

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Sticking with Vettel for the fantasy season and then finally selling him now after getting fed up with his performances - and then he tops both practice sessions. Granted, nothing's proven until Sunday but he's just doing it to annoy me :P

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Yes, the news items on TV here have been bandying around the word "war" (if only in reference to the China/Japan war of the 30s & 40s).

Even the Taiwanese and the Hong Kongers are up in arms (figuratively speaking)

You've just given me a fantastic idea about how to get them all to see sense and make peace.

We should gatecrash the protests and start crowd surfing.

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