Asymmetrical Information

My "hot Jane Galt action" occurs when I read the initial post AND all the comments and then choose whether to comment or not. Instapundit is great, but it is no substitute for the (usually) reasoned discourse I find on this (Megan & Mindles's) website.

So maybe we can post comments here to the articles that Megan writes about on Instapundit?

But there's no place to comment on Instapundit. Anyway, at my place of business the assistant payroll clerk handles such matters that regard employee's wage rates, SSI numbers, addresses, numbers of exemptions, etc and thus has a very hackable computer. In fact, I can't think of anyone who doesn't deal with some kind of information that must be secure. Accounts Receivable clerk: customer's names, addresses, terms of sales, banking info (including transfer codes) etc, etc. The engineers? Much proprietary info. Inventory management? Thieves would love to fiddle with these files. And don't get me started on what the Admin Assistants have on their computers: every letter written by an executive for one thing. Security experts will tell you your greatest source of exploits is internal. Listen to me ramble, suffice it to say we do security audits at our company and any payroll clerk who tries to hide a password in the x-y-z section of the rolodex or under the mouse pad or behind a picture (we know all the tricks) will be found out and given a talking to.

No comments there. Argh! But we love you enough that we'll read you there anyway, even if we can't talk back to you, Jane.

But where did you choose to camp? North-South Lake?

But what about taking a number you already have, such as a SSN or driver's license or child's birthday and do a simple transposition or reversal of numbers and then always use that as your password? I use a fairly simple password I use on everything that is not critical to me; i.e., does not involve my money or my job, but allows me access to different web sites that for some reason insist on a password. For instance, my password to get into the on-line NYTimes is the same as my password to get into the on-line WSJ. I simply don't see where these passwords are protecting me at all.

I had some combinations when I was on active duty that I simply had to write down because I didn't use them enough to memorize them. I wrote them on a document that I had anyways and that I carried in my wallet, but I wrote them in a transposed form and in a place that did not make them appear to be combinations. It would have been clear to someone who looked at that particular document that the numbers really didn't belong there, and the document did refer to me by name, but they would have had no way of knowing that they were combinations (but they could have guessed) but they wouldn't have known what the combinations were to, nor would thay have had access to where the combinations were used. But they served to provide me with the combinations when I needed to use them.

But the point of the Microsoft guy is that it is better to have different passwords for everything even if you have to write them down than it is to have the same password for everything and not write it down. Justin, what are your thoughts on that?

My preferred way of remembering a complex password is to make an easily remembered sentence and using to first initials of each word and any puctuation as the password. For example, "My brother David lives at 456 Edge St. in Red Bank, N.J." becomes
MbDla456ES.iRB,N.J.. Easy to remember and unbreakable!

I use the method Steve describes. Once, I had the password IhmjbM.Ciajacdd! (I hate my job because Mr. Cason is a jerk and can drop dead!) At least it made me feel good to log in in the morning.

Jane,

It is, to my mind, substantially less safe to have a user's password written on their computer, or taped in their desk (two favourite tricks I spent a great deal of time discouraging), than to have it be a five-letter word.

Your mind is forgetting to factor in today's ubiquitous connectivity. For anything machine or service that is potentially connected to the internet, a strong password makes for much harder brute-force password cracking. Meanwhile, the written password document in your desk drawer (that you could actually lock when leaving your office) can be at least somewhat secure from outside attackers.

I dislike Insty but given the responses here I can assume what you posted. I just use old addresses that were (or are) important to me. If I need to use a non-alpha/numeric character I gennerally punctuate the address. so:

1050 North Mills Avenue becomes 1050NMa? (college address)
520 Palmer Avenue becomes (520Palm!) (grandparents)
402 East 11th Street, Apt. 4F becomes 402E11st#4F
(husband's old bachlor pad)

easy to remember and hard to hack. (obviously I am not using any of those now)

I don't do Instapundit. His legalistic terms of use are a bunch of hooey. I look forward to Jane's return here.

P.S. Do I really have to mail him that affidavit now?

Y'all should enable comments on your postings and liven that place up a bit, it's been pretty dead the last few couple of years.

Tomorrowist, I never noticed his terms of use until you mentioned them. After reading them I don't know whether to scratch my butt or giggle; they sound almost like a parody. Do you think they are meant to be taken seriously? I really can't tell.

Instantputty is more of a linking blog (although Glenn does attach a brief comment to most entries). Are you planning to follow that same linker format?

So I go over to Instapundit looking for the promised "hot Jane Galt action", and couldn't find a single photo gallery or mpeg. Very disappointing. ;)

Re passwords, Isaac Asimov once wrote a short story in which a fourteen-letter safe combination was the initial letters of the fourteen lines of a sonnet. For me, as a classical musician, it's easier: I just pick a favorite piece, reduce the composer's name to initials or otherwise abbreviate it, and throw in the cataloguing information (opus number, or D., or K., or Hob., or BWV, or Wq., or RV, or Sz., or whatever), and there you are. As long as I can remember the piece, I have the code.

Welcome home, Discovery! [Shuddering sigh of relief]

Now will someone please ground that little fleet and get working on some new craft? Please? Watching takeoffs and landings is taking years off my life. Not to mention the lives of the brave folk on them.

I just read Instapundit's Terms of Use, and think they're actually pretty good. They are there for one big, huge reason, and one little reason. The little reason is to get credit for his own comments (the copyright issue). The big, huge reason is that there are a *lot* of nutbars out there that will sue at the drop of a hat, and the terms of use are designed to discourage that as comprehensively as possible. Sure, it seems a bit ridiculous, but as a lawyer I can understand what those terms are for.

Hot Jane Galt on Instapundit action!

For such a good thing, really, that phrase is just so wrong, on so many levels...

I felt dirty just typing it.

Dirty - but HOT!

Who reads the Terms of Service on any site? Instapundit's are mostly, if not entirely, intended as a joke, IMO.
Really, by simply reading the site I am agreeing to something? It's absurd, and would not stand up in court.

In the words of Babu Bhat: You say "I'm guest-blogging at Instapundit this week . . . but most of your hot Jane Galt action will be over at Insty's" but there is no 'hot Jane Galt action' at Insty's . . . where is 'hot Jane Galt action' . . . there is none . . . you are a very bad person, a very, very bad person.

(apologies to Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld)

Who is Jane Galt?
Is "hot Jane Galt action" the same as hot Megan McArdle action? Can the answer be found in a long winded tome popular among our Libertarian friends? Will we ever know or is such knowledge too precious for any but the most privileged?

Prescott, I don't think you will find any answers in "Atlas Shrugged". Maybe some questions like: "Who reads this stuff"? Even Megan has rejected objectivism (with tears and loathing), unfortunately she is stuck with "Jane Galt" -a name she chose on a whim-in the same way that Gerber is stuck with that ugly baby . She tore her pictures of Ayn Rand from her wall and threw them as large paper airplanes from her window. And she shredded her copy of "The Fountainhead" and used it as liner for the cage of her pet rat, Lester.

That's a step down; the Instapundit web site has become a joke. It's become one line entertainment designed to drive traffic. What happened to meaningful commentary?

Instapundit (on that very rare occasion when he actually writes something himself these days) has also, unfortunately, become another whiny conservative. We don't care if Glenn Reynolds does play guitar; he's just not cool.

For more on Instapundit's decline see our post Truth and Lies: Blog for A Better America: Apology To Larry the Conservative.

Re: the online arms race... The WSJ account thingy that you describe has a very simple techno solution -- the second time that a particular username tries to log in, rather than denying the log in, terminate the first log in. So you leave your WSJ account logged in at home, go to work and log in again. Then the home login becomes unresponsive. Then you go home at the end of the day and find it unresponsive. You say "Oh, yeah, that's right" and log off at home and immediately log back in. If you didn't log off at work, then that session stops responding. Next morning, you head to work, log off and log right back on. Lather, rinse, repeat...

See, a simple technical solution to the problem. The WSJ gets what it wants (only one person can use the account at a time) while you get want you paid for (the ability to read the WSJ from wherever you happen to be even if you forgot to log off your other session).

Maybe it will even happen (but we're talking about the WSJ here -- the folks who are so busy kissing Bill Gates' backside that they have never noticed how goofy their web site looks when displayed with one of the web browsers which won't email your credit card info to Russian organized crime gangs...)

cathy :-)

Jane has got her game back. And then some.

Truth and Lies: Blog for A Better America - Miserable Investment Bankers: God Help Us We're Linking to the InstaPundit

Great post this morining about boring investment banking jobs, Jane. Whenever I hear people snidely remark about salespeople who make large commissions, I often wonder if they have any idea how numbingly repetitive many sales positions are, and how grindingly difficult it can be to maintain a high performance in such tasks, particularly when a person is subjected to so much rejection and inconsiderate treatment. A person who goes out and sells a few million dollars in insurance, or some other non-sexy product or service, has endured a huge amount of abuse and very boring repetition, and has likely more than earned every last dime. Sure, there are some sales jobs which can become pretty easy money-makers, ususally in an industry which lacks a competition, but these circumstances are much shorter-lived than they used to be.

Is it just me, or is rmg the ONLY person commenting on this site who leaves "see my incredibly lengthy, well thought out post on the subject" at the bottom of his comments? Does every sneeze of a blogger require an explanation? See my fantastic post:

Truth and the suckups who use it: When bloggers sneeze - the cyber tissue.

Strike my earlier comment, there is hot action at Instapundit and lots of it. Jane "more than just your average Insta-link monkey" Galt is posting and linking like crazy. Given publishing schedules, I guess it makes sense that Friday would be her most active blogday of the work week. Now to make the week complete, she should post an Insta-recipe before she sings off as co-guest blogger.

MB

About the two straight men getting married to each other: I've been saying this for years. If gay men and lesbians can get married (not that they can now, necessarily, but they will eventually) why can't two straight people? Like Megan said there is more to love that sexual intercourse. Who is to say that long time single male (or female) friends don't have a special, however non-sexual, love for one another. Hear me out, there is method to my madness. As was hinted at in the article there are financial reasons for two to be as one. Lower married tax rates for one. More importantly, being able to sign on to your spouse's group health insurance plan is another. Is this a trick to get benefits? Who will know, its no ones business what I do with my friend or how I really feel about him or where I like to touch him. If he works for UPS and has incredible health coverage and I am self-employed, sign me up dammit. I'll even buy him a ring if need be.

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