patrick.net

Mine screen name screams that "Dan" was taken at the time I registered.

Because I was tired of having to make new accounts for every damned blog and website on the planet. The question on my mind was, Why can't I Just be Me, without an account?

Unique names are just plain stupid. If everyone had to name their child different from any other child that has ever existed, all reproduction would have to stop. It would simply take too long to find an untaken name. I have literally punched in 12 or more random characters into a username field on some sites and gotten the message "fsdjoiewhvnisla" is already taken.

I propose a new system. Use email/pwd for credentials and let any person pick any name. Display both the name and the auto-increment ID field of your user table. It's not hard to distinguish "Luke Skywalker (157321)" from "Luke Skywalker (6234102)". There, you have non-conflicting user display names without having people to pick unique names. IDs are unique; names are not.

Also, password requirements piss me off. Adding a capital letter or number requirement makes a password less secure not more. If I know the password rules require a capital letter and a digit, I can crack passwords more easily. Using just lower case letters, an eight-character password has 26^8 possible values or 2.1 * 10^11 possibilities. Add the two password rules stated above and the fact that most people will capitalize the first letter and add a digit to the last letter and the number of combinations I need to try to crack most people's passwords is reduced to 26 + 26^6 + 10 or 3.1 * 10^8. You literally remove two orders of magnitude, or 99.9%, of possible combinations in order to add 36 more combinations. 36 is a pretty damn small number compared to 209,135,980,352. The total reduction by forcing those two roles is a factor of a thousand. Those rules literally make it a thousand times easier to crack most people's passwords.

Just require longer passwords and let the user use any Unicode character, especially any that appear on the keyboard. You'll have much better security and fewer frustrated users.

YesYNot stands for yes why not. When I was younger and was vacationing with a group of Dutch people, it struck me that this particular group was generally willing to try new things and 'go for it' even if they might not succeed. This username is a reminder to answer questions with the response "yes, why not?"

I love the movie Revenge of the Nerds.

Dan8267 says

the number of combinations I need to try to crack most people's passwords is reduced to 26 + 26^6 + 10 or 3.1 * 10^8. You literally remove two orders of magnitude, or 99.9%, of possible combinations in order to add 36 more combinations. 36 is a pretty damn small number compared to 209,135,980,352. The total reduction by forcing those two roles is a factor of a thousand. Those rules literally make it a thousand times easier to crack most people's passwords.

Hummm.... Interesting math. I would have thought there is a multiplication of cases as in: 26 * 26^6 * 10 therefore not losing an order of magnitude, but also adding the possibility of mixing capital/lower case and numbers: (26 * 2 + 10)^8.
Most hackers wouldn't attempt all combinations anyway. They'd just go for Welcome1.

My twins are my "two turtledoves."

Heraclitusstudent says

They'd just go for Welcome1.

or password
or changeme

I fear I may have just inadvertently given out my bank login information.

turtledove says

My twins are my "two turtledoves."

Based on the maturity level of the board, you might want to clarify what you mean by 'my twins.'

They Live - the politician.

"The feeling is definitely there,

It's a new morning in America,

The old cynicism is gone,

We have faith in our leaders,

We're optimistic as to what becomes of it all,

It really boils down to our ability to accept,

- There are no limits,"

YesYNot says

Based on the maturity level of the board, you might want to clarify what you mean by 'my twins.'

Thank you for pointing that out! What if someone actually thought I meant children? That could have been embarrassing.

And now we know why the twins need the twins.

Poor Hubby, he doesn't get the spare.

Ceffer says

Poor Hubby, he doesn't get the spare.

No worries there. He got them back before I was even released for "normal activities" after the C-section. Turns out... Breast feeding just isn't one of my gifts. I would pump for an hour and get like two ounces. If the kids had to depend on me entirely for their nutritional needs, they would have starved to death. So after a month of waiting for something to change... I gave up and decided that formula isn't poison. So, the girls were back in biz before my six week post-op follow-up..

Is that really you? You and your twins are adorable.

one of the shocks of becoming a parent was discovering how sweet human breast milk is. not metaphorically, but literally, as in sugar.

the linea nigra thing was also quite surprising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linea_nigra

Heraclitusstudent says

Interesting math. I would have thought there is a multiplication of cases as in: 26 * 26^6 * 10 therefore not losing an order of magnitude

My bad. I had a brain fart. You are right. It should be multiplication. Still, it reduces the number of combinations thus making a brute force algorithm find matching passwords faster. Certainly, it's still not worth the frustration given that simply requiring longer passwords works exponentially better and is far less burdensome on end users.

Ceffer says

Is that really you? You and your twins are adorable.

Tis me. You are very kind. It was our first photo after a VERY long afternoon and night (born at 1:30 AM). They are my little turtledoves.

one of the shocks of becoming a parent was discovering how sweet human breast milk is. not metaphorically, but literally, as in sugar.

Why does human breast milk give us the heebee-geebies? It seems like such a disgusting idea to taste human breast milk... But why is that weirder than drinking cow's milk? I tasted it... but my taste buds shut down because I couldn't get the ick-factor out of my mind. So I don't really recall the taste... which is a shame, because I won't likely have another chance.

lol, it's fun to freak people out by mentioning the taste of human milk. didn't drink much but had to try it, just because.

another weird fact: that stuff is alive. has white blood cells in it, fights germs, keeps way longer than store-bought cow milk at room temperature.

In the dead tongue of an ancient, savage but now extinct people, Ceffer was the expletive for ASSHOLE!

It indicates a temporary condition where a crab's shell has recently molted, and the new one has not calcified yet.
I didn't pick it. It picked me.

YesYNot says

What does your screen name mean, and why did you pick it?

turtledove says

I couldn't get the ick-factor out of my mind. So I don't really recall the taste...

Why ick factor? Babies drink it.
If anything drinking a cow's raw body fluid is disgusting.

I've tasted my wife's milk on several occasions. Patrick is right, it's really sweet.

I picked my screen name a long time ago. To me, the character named Quigley embodied all the virtues and faults I strive for, so there you have it.

Heraclitusstudent says

factor? Babies drink it.

If anything drinking a cow's raw body fluid is disgusting.

That was precisely my point. It makes no sense, at all. Yet, if someone handed me a glass of human breast milk alongside my cookies, I'd feel weird about drinking it and opt, instead, for cow's milk. But cow's milk is just as weird if not weirder. Other species aren't milk fed by animals outside their own species, yet we do it by choice.