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Comment: Re:That's a smidge under 4" for the entire state (Score 2) 330

by mseeger (#48615443) Attached to: 11 Trillion Gallons of Water Needed To End California Drought

In SI units, (40m^3 for 400.000km^2) it would be easier to calculate ;-).

The four inch or 10 centimeters are required in the aquifers in southern California.

First that is about 1/3 of the area. So we go to 30cm or 1 foot. That is still manageable.

Then we need to take into account that only a small part (optimistic: 25%) goes into the aquifers. That quadrupels it to 4 feet or 120cm. That is quite a lot.

To take that optimistic assumption, not too much must go into runoff and evaporation. So we need continuous light rain (1mm per day) with overcast sky.

In effect this means 4 years of continuous light rain.

Comment: Really bad advice (Score 4, Insightful) 230

by mseeger (#48595595) Attached to: Forbes Blasts Latests Windows 7 Patch as Malware

Several readers have pointed out that disabling automatic Windows Updates is bad advice, and while thatâ(TM)s a fair argument I have to disagree.

It is really a BAD advice. The average PC user is not an ops person. If an update bricks his PC, he will notice and can get help. If his PC is insecure, he will notice nothing and help (if ever) will be asked for much too late.

His arguments amount to one thing: avoid changes. Any change is a risk. But so is crossing the street. In the long run, a change-averse strategy will lead to worse results than the occasional botched change (exceptions apply, but those are rare). And the only way for the average user to do changes is to automate them.

Comment: Re:Something we need to take care off.... (Score 1) 83

by mseeger (#48497675) Attached to: Probe Into NSA Activity Reveals Germany Spying On Germans

My favorite solution would be by disbanding them. But that is not realistic.

The German version of the General Accounting Office does a pretty good job of spotting squandering. So a new oversight should be established based on their model. That focuses more on depth than width and a non-predictive cycling of topics.

Due to the nature of intelligence services, you will never get them really compliant (that's why I mentioned my favorite method), but you can curb them.

Comment: Something we need to take care off.... (Score 4, Interesting) 83

by mseeger (#48495989) Attached to: Probe Into NSA Activity Reveals Germany Spying On Germans

They (BND) created several new theories:

a) Space Theory: German law does not apply in space, so their satellites (or those from agencies of "friends") are not bound by the constitution.

b) Function Owner Theory: When someone is acting within his/her capacity as a function owner, he is no longer a person protected by the constitution.

c) The Meta Data Theory: Meta data does not contain privacy protected information.

Thanks to Snowden this mess came to light. This now needs to be cleaned up. All three approaches will be shot down, with or without the governments approval.ï

Most parliamentarians agree, that the intelligence services practically beg for a shorter leash. Power struggles and party politics will delay it, but they will get it.

Comment: Re:Negative (Score 1) 549

by mseeger (#48141649) Attached to: Password Security: Why the Horse Battery Staple Is Not Correct

If you choose 4 English, non-trivial words, you already have about 40bit of entropy. Searching only 1% of the namespace would take Trillions of tries.

To have those tries, the provider (not the user) must have already screwed up. The user cannot defend against screwups of the provider of the password protected service efficiently

"Hard to guess" is aimed at direct, human guessing. If I know you love "Sarah", so "Sarah4me" makes a bad password. That would be your screwup.

My primary goal is: burden the user only what naturally belongs in his domain. Trying to offload your security as a company to the users (e.g. to reduce costs) usually backfire.

Comment: Negative (Score 5, Insightful) 549

by mseeger (#48134255) Attached to: Password Security: Why the Horse Battery Staple Is Not Correct

Good, bad & ugly - Your password


A good password must have two properties:

1) It has been memorized by the user

But in most cases another requirement is thrown into the mix:


The password must be at least 8 characters long
The password must contain upper- and lower-case letters
The password must contain a number
The password must contain a non-alphanumeric character







- The password has been guessed by the attacker

How does having a complex password help you against these attacks?










Does this case justify all the negative impact?




I think we should focus on the first two requirements i started this comment with:

Choose a password you can remember

Use a password someone else does not associate with you
and (which is more important than complexity):











Comment: Too much (Score 1) 287

by mseeger (#47943351) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: What's In Your Home Datacenter?

Pure datacenter are: 2 firewalls, 1 Sun X2100, 1 QNAP NAS, 1 PC, 1 Raspberry, 1 VoIP-Gateway, 1 Homematic automation server, WLAN Controller
In the network: 5 mobile devices, 2 PC, 1 Notebook, BluRay-Player, 4 Audio Devices (Sonos), 2 Access Points, 2 USB-via-IP extender, Printer, Scanner, multiple IP-based sensors
