Forgot your password?


Comment: The PC market has driven development (Score 2) 393

by AftanGustur (#45583803) Attached to: IDC: PC Shipments Decline Worse Than Forecasted, No Recovery Expected
This is sad news. the PC market has so far been the one who has driven development and innovation.

Want a bigger disk? Buy a bigger disk and put it in your PC!
Want more memory? Buy more memory and put it in your PC!
Want a faster CPU? Buy a faster CPU and put it in your PC!
Want a faster GPU to play games? Buy a faster graphics card and put it in your PC!

The rest of the market, phones, tablets and consoles is all "consumer packaged components" which are not replaceable or upgradeable.

The whole AMD/Intel war would not have happenbed without the PC.

Comment: The evolution of IT (Score 1) 465

by AftanGustur (#45553205) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Are Tech Job Requirements So Specific?
For the last 5-8 years there has been an ever increasing pressure on companies to "do more with less", "document operations" and "create procedures", i.e. to "streamline" all the "cost" centers of the organisation. IT is generally viewed as a "cost center" That is: costs money and does not create any output for the company.

This has led to a mindset where the whole of IT has been defined in terms of "projects" with inputs and outputs and companies want to "buy talent instead of careers" meaning that the company wants your work but not you as a person.

This has then led to companies running most things on "temporary staff" like consultants and contractors.

The effect this has had on IT is that knowledge about the infrastructure, systems, their quirks and how everything works together is not retained in the company and IT operations down to the little details are defined by non-IT people who think in terms of "procedures" "inputs" and "outputs".

So when you see something like "System administrator wanted, has to know XYZ operating system version 10,04 LTR, and the systems HPBS and VLSN" you can be sure that this requirement was written by a non-it person who thinks in terms of "inputs" to a problem.

Comment: Re:Willful or knowing violations (Score 5, Interesting) 165

by AftanGustur (#45253903) Attached to: NSA Chief Keith Alexander Takes His PRISM Pitch To YouTube

So, just involuntary and ignorant violations, then.

I see what you did here and more people should be doing this, listen to what words he uses and then think, "why is he using these words and could he be trying to sidestep the truth with the use of selected words."

Because that's that he is doing!

Comment: The problem with the Law (Score 1) 153

by AftanGustur (#43967013) Attached to: Google To Buy Waze For $1.3 Billion
Waze is actually illegal in France. If you get cough with a device that can alert you to police presence and the exact location of speed cameras, you will loose 6 points of your permit and get a € 1500 fine.

Yet, Waze is extremely popular in France (the French generally find this law to go against their "liberties").

This has worked up until now because the company that makes Waze does not have any business presence in France, and the French government cannot exercise any pressure against the Israeli company.

Google, on the other hand, does have a business presence in France so these "features" of Waze will likely disappear as soon as Google becomes the owner of the service.

Comment: Don't be Silly! (Score 1) 376

by AftanGustur (#42809781) Attached to: Economists Argue Patent System Should Be Abolished
The day that patents are abolished, the Chinese will flood the market with cheap copies of pretty much anything and it will be utter madness to spend large amounts of money on any R&D.

Sorry about there not being any effective antibiotics against antibiotics-resistant bacteria, but no one will ever develop them without being able to recover the R&D costs.

Comment: Re:MD5? Windoze XP? INSECURE LEGACY!! (Score 4, Informative) 330

by AftanGustur (#42191863) Attached to: New 25-GPU Monster Devours Strong Passwords In Minutes

Who gives a rat's ass about such golden oldies? It's been possible for the longest time to fairly quickly crack windoze passwords (if you have the file) and MD5 has been known to be insecure for quite some time already...

Yes and no.

LanMan hashes have been brute forceable for a long time but neither proper NTLM nor NTLM2 have, so hacker have had to "trick" clients into sending the LanMAN hash, or recovering it from the SAM file.

Another trick that is often used to secure the password is to simply not support LanMan.
one little known fact discovered by Urity of SecurityFriday.com is that if a password is fifteen characters or longer, Windows does not even store the LanMan hash correctly. This actually protects you from brute-force attacks against the weak algorithm used in those hashes. If your password is 15 characters or longer, Windows stores the constant AAD3B435B51404EEAAD3B435B51404EE as your LM hash, which is equivalent to a null password. And since your password is obviously not null, attempts to crack that hash will fail.

So, yes and no, security consious companies have been able to protect themselves from brute forceable passwords for over 10 years.
