HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-04-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015. PAGE 5.
Betcha I can tell you what your computer
password is. It’s 12345, right? No?
Then it’s got to be PASSWORD.
Wrong again? Say, you’re wilier than the
average computer user.
Seriously. The two most common passwords
in North America, for the second year running,
are 12345 and the even less challenging
PASSWORD.
What does this tell us? That people are
stupid? I don’t think so – I think it tells us that
people are annoyed and ticked off at the
ridiculous computer protocol that compels us
to commit strings of meaningless numbers,
letters and symbols to memory in order to gain
access to stuff on our own machines.
That’s why some people all but ignore the
ritual by using the simplest passwords they can
think of. (Some disgruntled users are a little
more inventive – the third, fourth and fifth
most popular passwords are LETMEIN,
BASEBALL AND QWERTY.)
Of course it’s not just your laptop or your
tablet anymore. You need passwords for an
increasing number of everyday gadgets –
thermostats, car consoles, access to your own
front door, not to mention password-protected
programs like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
And those passwords need to be increasingly
cryptic. Experts advise us they should be at
least 15 characters long and include a mix of
lower and uppercase letters, numbers and
symbols, but no recognizable words. Got a
good one? Great – now you need to change it.
Every month. Oh yeah – and you’ll need
different passwords for everything on your
devices that needs to be ‘safe’ from Russian
cyberhackers, domestic thieves and, oh yes –
CSIS.
How many different passwords? Five years
ago, according to LastPass, a company that
makes password-storage software, most
people averaged about 21 passwords. Today,
the number is up to 81. Let me repeat that: the
number of passwords used by the average
customer is 81.
And here’s the kicker: Even the trickiest
ones aren’t worth diddly-squat.
Mat Honan could tell you all about
that. A while back, hackers digitally
eviscerated him in less than an hour. They
burrowed into the guts of his iPhone, iPad and
MacBook, stole every file and document he
owned and deleted every photo he’d ever put
on his computer. Naturally they discovered his
bank accounts, credit card numbers and other
personal data on the way.
Was Honan careless? Not really. His
passwords were all strong, consisting of
random numbers, letters and symbols, as
recommended. But we don’t call them
computer ‘viruses’ for no reason. Once a
hacker has a morsel of information about you,
he can link it to pretty much everything you’ve
ever put on your laptop. Honan figures all he
needs is your name, the city you were born in
plus 20 minutes and a $4 investment in a
crooked foreign website.
And then he will own you – lock, stock and
PayPal account.
But that’s not the direction he’s taken.
Instead he’s written a book called Kill The
Password.
Millions of computer users are adopting an
even simpler philosophy. We could call it
“Screw the Password”. They are using
intentionally lame passwords like 12345 and
LETMEIN because they accept the fact that
hackers are too cunning and sophisticated to
fool and that the entire idea of online security
is a joke.
These people are trying to pass as small fry
in the digital ocean, hoping that the sharks and
barracudas will ignore them and go after
bigger fish.
Screw the password. This could be the start
of something big. Maybe we’ll cut back on
storing our intangible valuables – sensitive
data, personal photos, private thoughts – on
crummy unreliable electronic gizmos and go
back to keeping them where we used to store
them. You know – in our heads.
Perhaps we’ll stop exposing our
vulnerabilities on digital venues where we
can’t even begin to guess the size or nature of
the audience.
Maybe – just for a few minutes a day – we’ll
put aside our iPods and Androids and
BlackBerrys and Macs to take a look at the
actual world and the real people around us.
Possibly – just possibly – we’ll even get a
life.
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Seventy-two million dollars may seem
like a lot of money but when you’re
dealing with major corporations and
ventures, it can seem like it isn’t really all that
much.
However, with $72 million, the Indian
Space Research Organisation was able
to not only launch a spacecraft but also
manage to get it into orbit around Mars. How
does that stack up? Well the North American
Space Agency has put billions into similar
projects.
But that number, $72 million, happens to be
just north of what the Toronto Maple Leafs
paid out to their players in 2014.
I’m picking on the Leafs here, but, really, I
could point to any Canadian team. The Toronto
Blue Jays paid substantially more than $72
million to their players last season.
There is a group of people in India who, for
the same amount of money we pay a team of
professional athletes, built, launched and
successfully steered a spacecraft to a foreign
planet.
To me, that’s mind-blowing.
This all occurred over the past couple of
years. It was launched in November of 2013
and, late last year, successfully achieved orbit
around Mars.
The probe contains instruments for detecting
methane gas (which is typically attributed to
living beings) in the relatively thin atmosphere
of the red planet, special sensors to test the
atmosphere, a camera and a special thermal
detection apparatus to determine the presence
and quantity of minerals on the planet.
If they find definitive proof of life or any
scientific advancement at all, it means the
nation, which is the fourth body to reach
Earth’s neighbouring planet (behind Russia,
the United States and the European Space
Agency), will have achieved this feat for less
than the cost of the three most expensive
residential properties in Toronto combined
($28.8 million, $25 million and $19.8 million
as of February).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that
India faces many problems feeding the
people in the nation and that money could have
been spent in far more humane ways and if that
is the takeaway some people get from the
story, I think that is a completely legitimate
concern.
That said, people spend far more money on
far less important things than broadening
humanity’s understanding of the universe. So
while I won’t give India a pass on this, I will
say I’m happier with that than, say, the
millions of dollars spent on antique vehicles
every year.
Heck, Boeing 737 jets, one of the most
popular commercial airline vehicles in the
world, sell for between $51.5 and $87 million
according to 2009 reports. That means there
are commercial planes out there travelling
(at most, according to several sources
regarding the longest non-stop flights)
13,805 kilometres over a 17 hour flight from
Dallas in the United States to Sydney,
Australia. India’s spacecraft went 225,300,000
kilometres for $72 million. That means that
plane could make that 17-hour flight every day
for 40 years and still have travelled about 25
million kilometres less and the maintenance
wouldn’t cost as much (plus I have to
imagine the meals on a spaceship would
be better than airline food, or at least in pill
form). Of course, those planes usually make
the return trip, so maybe that isn’t an apples-
to-apples comparison.
In all seriousness though, this kind of
turned what I knew about space travel on its
ear.
If we can reach Mars for $72 million, why
can’t we have some kind of permanent lunar
colony? If we took even a portion of the
defense budgets from around the world and
focused them on extending humanity’s reach
to the stars, we could reach the moon
permanently in my lifetime. Maybe we could
even start reaching beyond that if we employed
the thrifty practices of the Indian Space
Research Organisation.
We could develop new technologies,
visit strange new worlds and races and maybe,
just maybe, find some of the cures that have
eluded medical science somewhere in the
galaxy.
For once though, the staggering implications
aren’t what is keeping my mind reeling, it’s
just the sheer happiness that, for the first time
in my life, I feel like reaching space is within
my grasp.
Maybe it will take a decade or two, but, if
we’re currently at a pro sports team’s wages to
get to Mars, it can’t be long until it’s a mere
$100,000 to see the moon.
I suppose I could criticize how much we
pay these athletes, but bargain-basement space
travel is really far more interesting. So why,
then, did I point out that the Maple Leafs paid
approximately $68 million in player salaries,
bonus and benefits last year?
Well, it’s a joke.
For $72 million India can put a spacecraft in
orbit around Mars. For nearly that same
amount of money the Leafs couldn’t even land
in the playoffs. Maybe folks in Toronto and
Maple Leaf fans should start investing in space
travel.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Taking a stand
In school, you’re taught how to do a lot of
things. Depending on your path, you’re
also taught the un-doing of many things.
There are too many examples to name where
Class A teaches you Lesson X, but further on
down the road in Class B, you need to learn
Lesson Y, which requires you to forget
everything you learned in Lesson X.
Here are two quick examples from my life.
In several years of secondary school,
through various stages of English classes, I,
like many others, was taught how to write the
perfect essay – introduction paragraphs,
subject paragraphs and a conclusion, all with a
thesis and a lot of comparing and contrasting.
When I went to college and began to learn
the tools of the trade of journalism, the first
thing I was told was to forget everything I
learned about writing an essay, because writing
a news story is essentially the exact opposite.
Further into my college career came the
second example. When you’re taught to write a
news story, the first thing you’re told to strip
from your writing is anything that could be
considered your opinion. Every fact has to be
attributed to someone and every quote has to
come out of a mouth that isn’t yours. In short,
a good news story should be about the
facts and the information, not about who wrote
it.
Then, we had an opinion writing class that
endeavoured to teach us to inject our opinion
back into our writing for things like columns
and editorials.
As you can see, sometimes to know
something, you need to unlearn something
else.
In February, I wrote a column entitled “No
Straight Line” that essentially discussed the
unenviable position in which the members of
the Brussels Agricultural Society find
themselves in regards to partnering the
Brussels Fall Fair with the 2017 International
Plowing Match (IPM).
It’s a tough decision and there is no clear
answer. There are many pros and just as many
cons and on May 6, members will vote to
determine the fate of that potential partnership.
Well, just as I have been taught (and un-
taught) to do, I’m going to give my opinion – I
think it’s a good idea.
After watching IPM Chair Jacquie Bishop’s
presentation so many times that I no longer
had to take notes (I ran the PowerPoint for her
at one presentation), I have faith that the 2017
is going to be a huge event for this community
and furthermore that it’s in the right hands. To
be a part of that is something that I feel
Agricultural Society members should jump at
(as evidenced by the fact that a number of
other fall fairs are eager to partner if Brussels
decides it doesn’t want to).
Sure, it’s going to cost a little more and it’s
going to be a very different fair from those of
years past, but those involved have a chance to
do a few things very, very well to an audience
they could only dream of.
A number of society members have already
spoken in favour of the partnership. To them, it
only makes sense and you can count me in
with that group for what my opinion’s worth.
Compromises will have to be made, but at
the end of the day, an opportunity like this for
two events with such rich histories is too good
to pass up.
They always say that fortune favours the
bold and perhaps there’s a reason it’s never
been tried before. It won’t be easy, but in my
mind, Brussels and Walton are just the two
communities to pull this off.
Other Views
What would you do with $72m?
Password? Try a little harder than that