Early Risers.

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

 

Either way, the argument that longer passwords impart more password security, rather than non-alphabetic characters, holds.

 

 

From a probability perspective it does, but any system that allows unlimited password retries is a piece of sh!it that should no longer be in use, IMHO .  For instance, my bank kicks me out after three failed attempts (don't ask me how I know).

 

I always use obscure user ID's for sensitive sites like banks. I never use anything as obvious as first initial plus surname. Unfortunately some institutions muck that up by accepting an email address as a user ID.

[AndyID]

Shona was giving us the evil eye so we braved the elephants and did the Paw Patrol. Before we got half-way round the circuit she stopped dead and tried to go back to the house!

 

Just slightly wet with occasional sleet here but the snow was lying a bit on the North side of town. It's supposed to get colder tonight. We might wake up to some snow on the ground.

 

[Barry O]

6 hours ago, 81C said:

Don't have a flu jab it always made me ill idiot quack said it had no live cultures in it, I said what as that got to do with a flu jab making me ill, bloody thicko.

I just hope you never need the assistance of a medical Doctor! I would never say the ones I know are idiots or thickos.

Each to their own.

 

But the flu jab has evolved with time. When I first got them (from my company to keep me safe in winter) when they knocked you sideways up to the latest ones which do have mild repercussions (if it doesn't then it isn not working)  but do work well.

 

My major complaint today was with the OAPs demanding they were seen first rather than wait like everyone else was.

Baz

[Barry O]

Mike, our nearest Tesco is pharmacy less. I shall wait...

And with that..

 

Goodnight all!

Baz

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well we only had one guest spend the day with us, as Evie had been ill for most of the night and so she stayed at home. Anyway, Ava and I made a tea loaf which she thoroughly enjoyed, especially when she got to try a piece once it had cooled down. Vickie and Ian came round mid afternoon and picked her up and stayed for about 30 minutes. Most of the time was spent discussing their wedding next week, which seems to have suddenly come round very quickly. 

 

Whilst Ava and I were in the kitchen baking, the doorbell went and it was the drawer runners I’d ordered on Thursday, I wast expecting them until Monday or Tuesday, so it now means I can carry on with its construction tomorrow. 

 

Goodnight all

[The Lurker]

Greetings all. Just finishing a glass of wine and thought I would check in. Great to catch up on the wheelmen of Carshalton - although sorry to hear about the effects of the arthritis- and also to hear from Peter BB.

 

and for those that wonder, I am using my phone to post. I assume that’s why I was given a company one  

[Tony_S]

I am using my phone at the moment too. My iPad is processing an update. The Apple logo has reappeared. It must be working. 

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all.

[JohnDMJ]

 

4 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

 

 

Bit of a semantic conversation but Andy is correct. ASCII has 95 printable characters if you count Space, 94 if you don't.

Wikipedia:

"Extended ASCII" and "Unicode" are perhaps more relevant to the password conversation than pure "ASCII". For example, the "£" character does not technically exist in ASCII but does in ISO646. Extended ASCII uses eight bits.

 

Either way, the argument that longer passwords impart more password security, rather than non-alphabetic characters, holds.

 

LEGO's latest minifig series contains a figure called "programmer". ASCII fans can decipher her tee shirt.

Printable or not, they have the potential of being used in passwords, do they not?

 

BTW, just throwing some Octal around, like LEGO 107 151 162 154!

3 hours ago, newbryford said:

 

Just found a way around the rude word filter.

 

01100011 01101111 01100011 01101011 00100001

 

 

 

Maybe there's some bull associated with that. 63 6F 63 6B & 62 75 6C 6C?

 

There are 10 kinds of people in the World, those who understand Binary and those who don't!

Edited September 28, 2019 by JohnDMJ

[Gwiwer]

10 hours ago, JohnDMJ said:

 

Just back from said show; didn't see you but had a good chat with Chris at Kernow and several other exhibitors, traders and punters. I had hoped to offer you a lift back to Ford for steel-on-steel traction back home, but...

A very good show, I thought, and both larger and busier than my previous visits. I too spent a while chatting with Chris though as ever he and Sam were busy busy. The show bargain triple-pack of cement wagons for under £30 was just one of the items I came away with. At that price I can afford to take them along to Twickenham & District MRC for a weathering demo and it won’t matter if they end up looking a mess!   

 

I spent most of my time giving meal-break relief on the SEG/NSERS sales stand as I had previously arranged. 

 

A kind thought, John, to have offered a lift back to steel-on-steel but I had family business to attend to later for which my sister provided transport. 

 

The bus replacement of the Brighton - Littlehampton route was a shambles to put it politely. An utter raised cockerel would be nearer the mark.  The NR app suggested a bus every ten minutes serving all stops and one every half hour making fewer stops. Arriving in the holding pens (“queuing system” would be too good) at Brighton there was a bus loading. For Shoreham and Littlehampton only. Not even Worthing???  Then next bus was only going to Portslade. Nowhere else. The “bus controller” who looked as though he should have still been at school had no idea when buses were coming nor where they were going. I waited over half an hour. A bus arrived labelled “Littlehampton all stations” but “controller” assured us it wad not going to Littlehampton. Finally a bus appeared labelled “Brighton all stations” which the driver assured us was in fact going to Worthing. 

 

The queue by this time was stretching back out of sight. I reckoned over 200 were left behind when the bus pulled out. Arriving at Hove we were already full but beseiged by an angry mob of 100 or more. The same story repeated at every stop. We set a few down at Portslade where two Brighton bound buses were both full, were about to leave perhaps 150 behind and were surrounded by irate passengers banging on windscreens and driver’s windows trying to get on. 

 

It didn’t help that the bus timings were hopelessly unrealistic. One cannot drive a bus through Brighton traffic and reach Hove in 7 minutes for example. It didn’t help that Shoreham level crossing had failed booms-down meaning buses were making three-point turns in the main street to divert. And it didn’t help that the controller, when I finally reached Worthing and enquired about a bus to Durrington, replied with “Where’s that mate?  I’m from Potters Bar. Never been here in my life”. 

 

And we wonder why bus replacements have a bad reputation. On this occasion it was thoroughly deserved. 

 

Returning was not much easier. Again the semi-fast buses NR advertised just didn’t exist meaning I missed the required train at Brighton waiting a further 30 minutes. 

 

Finally arrived home Upon the Hill weary and frustrated.  

 

Now it is time for extended eyelid inspection. 

 

G’night all 

[AndyID]

27 minutes ago, JohnDMJ said:

 

Printable or not, they have the potential of being used in passwords, do they not?

 

 

That will largely depend on the OS and the website's application code. Most websites seem to restrict characters in passwords to the upper and lower case alphabet, numerals and punctuation/special characters. On a US PC keyboard that allows for 94 unique characters without using ALT and CONTROL. Things could be a lot different for other languages.

 

I worked for a company in the UK that made typesetting equipment. We made custom keyboards that could have as many as 256 keys, and some of them actually did.

 

[JohnDMJ]

45 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

A kind thought, John, to have offered a lift back to steel-on-steel but I had family business to attend to later for which my sister provided transport. 

 

 Glad you had a good day and enjoyed the show. Sorry to hear about the traumas of the bus replacement service(?) though.

 

My suggested station for departure (trains via the Arun Valley or Havant both operating) was, in effect, a double-edged sword! I had in mind to show you where the other 30ish non-shop employees 'work'! I guess that another opportunity will arise one Saturday or Sunday.

[BR60103]

I have some password variants which depend on the characters the system demands/tolerates.

No letters.

must have letters and numbers.

must have upper and lower and numbers

do and special characters

must be over/under certain length.

 

My crib sheet is full of locomotive names.

 

[TheQ]

Mooring awl struggling with the tablet computer on large fuzzy text as I've left my glasses upstairs and I don't want to go up and disturb everyone.  Having to scan pages bit by bit. 

This tablet is a phone or would be if I popped a cover off and inserted a c

SIM card.  .

 

Our company machines give us  5 attempts to log in then you"re locked out for 15 minutes.  Unfortunately there are 4 different access passwords needed for different sections of the net.  Also once logged in you can only get into permitted folders relevant to your job. 

 

Ben decided he would sleep in his cage,  in fact he's gone back there now.  He could have used the bed room floor as he's done before.. 

I think I might hit the snooze button.  By for now... 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

7 hours ago, AndyID said:

... any system that allows unlimited password retries is a piece of sh!it that should no longer be in use, IMHO.  For instance, my bank kicks me out after three failed attempts (don't ask me how I know).

 

39 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Our company machines give us  5 attempts to log in then you"re locked out for 15 minutes.  Unfortunately there are 4 different access passwords needed for different sections of the net.  Also once logged in you can only get into permitted folders relevant to your job. 

Once acquired, my company* adopted the acquiring company's 40 day password update policy - with a requirement for unique passwords every 40 days. At one point (about two years ago) I changed my password as required, but must have spelled it differently than I intended and "muscle-memory" typed the password verification. I then called the IT help desk to have it reset. This was all shortly before 8:00am when I was due to host an online meeting.

 

* Or the company I can call "my company" until Tuesday.

 

The help desk had recently instituted a policy where, to be helped, you had to provide your employee number, irrespective of the fact that I was calling from the telephone in my office - which required badge access and a key to enter.  I was flustered and frustrated and of course had forgotten my employee number. I totally lost it with the IT guy (after he helpfully suggested that I could look up my employee number on the corporate intranet.) I reminded him how difficult this can be if one is not logged in. All this led to his manager communicating with my manager (including a recording) regarding my frustrated selection of salty adjectives and verbs.

 

Unrelated to my experience, the policy is now relaxed to 90 days.

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

Weird weather today. We were promised a wet and soggy day. Most of the day enjoyed bright sunshine - with plenty of dark bellied, dramatic clouds around and about. After running errands I decided the grass by the kerb was dry enough to mow. As soon as I got the mower out large rain drops started to fall, but they never got together as a team and stopped as quickly as they began - after I gave the verge a very quick trim.

 

Late this afternoon bright, warm sunshine bathed the front of the house while the back of the house looked out on very dark storm clouds with thunder and lightning. It was quite eerie. Eventually the wind picked up and storm clouds moved over the house and produced some sporadic heavy rain.

 

Reportedly snow is accumulating heavily in the mountain passes. Outside it is cool (8°C) and currently dry. 

[AndyID]

3 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

 

adopted the acquiring company's 40 day password update policy

 

I've been a victim of a similar policy. I'm pretty sure it was invented by some idiot in HR, probably the same one that created the annual review form.

 

It's completely pointless because everyone just adds a number that they increment every forty days.

[AndyID]

I've wondered if the answer might be real-time handwriting analysis. You have a pen with accelerometers (X,Y,Z). The system tells you to write a random word or phrase and it analyses the way you are writing it to determine if it's you or not. I think the snag is that our writing style can vary quite a bit depending on our emotional state, but with the computing power available these days it might be practical.

 

There could be a system that works that way already. I do know someone at BT patented the pen and the random challenge idea quite a while ago.

 

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by AndyID
typhoo

[JohnDMJ]

Still on passwords, my so-called smart phone occasionally decides that my fingerprint is inadequate proof that I am who I am and asks me to type my password!!!!!

 

To whom can I give my fingerprint?

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

It is her indoors birthday today. I have made her a mugatea, delivered some presents and cards and shall be taking her and youngest Herbert out for lunch.

Dr Eldest Herbert's photo is facing the wall as he booked another "appointment" for lunch...silly boy!

 

Have as great aday/evenibg/night as you can!

Very positive thoughts to all who ail!

Baz

[TheQ]

Yes our company system is a change the password every six weeks so we all just up the number. 

Our it went over to only accepting tasks via their on line site in Holland..  So when our network is down in the uk how do we contact them?  Answers direct to them, not on a postcard, please... 

 

It's soggy outside not so good patrolling Ben across the field when I've only brought good shoes. 

 

 

 

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Raining with pour here and set to continue like that throughout the day.

Happy Birthday to Mrs Baz. There is also a birthday here today and tea, cards and some presents have been delivered to The Boss. More to come later when we see the rest of the family for celebrations and a meal.

Because of this I won't have time to watch any rugby today so will have to rely on recordings later.

Have a good one,

Bob.

Edited September 29, 2019 by grandadbob

[Barry O]

Happy Birthday Mrs GDB. Having met the lady in person I can only say how lucky you are with your lady GDB.

Baz

 

 

[Barry O]

Currently cut off from the rest of Britain!

Roads are closee around here for a cycle race. Apparently its a world championship race but not much info seen around here. Result.. a set of 3 people waiting to watch!

Doh!

Baz