31 October 2010

Sunlight

The deception of activity

The deception of stillness

30 October 2010

Lazy

if doing a certain task or spending effort does not result in a significant change in opinions of other people, to what extent will that task be done

who is most aware of the importance of a task or able to understand the quality of its execution (not the same)

24 October 2010

Idle thoughts V: "blanket"

It seems one of the reasons for attacking an email account is manipulation of trust, by masquerading as the original owner in need of urgent financial assistance.

This presents different problems than merely forgetting your password.


A 'slow' password. Infrequent use means difficulty in memorizing, but also less vulnerability to keylogging on public access to the Internet or other attack vectors. Can be recorded on a physical token. Only usable after certain events which are correlated with account compromise: change of account password, recovery methods, or the 'slow' password itself, depending on frequency of use of the account. The effort associated with avoiding compromise is offset by the greater value placed in the account by the individual, compared to the value of the account for the attacker. Recovery using the 'slow' password is not instant, and collisions lead to extension of lockout. The value of the account remains constant for the owner, while for an attacker the value of the account falls sharply as knowledge of the compromise permeates the trust network.

It seems that a network of accounts can avoid compromise by preventing the reading of new or all email messages after the 'slow' password has been used, so linked accounts which have been identified by exploitation of the compromised account can be protected. However, if the 'slow' password has also been compromised, the benefit to the account owner by retrieval of contacts and previous messages might offset the danger of this information being accessible to the attacker, once knowledge of the attack has already been spread.

The value is not the account itself, but rather information that others have about the owner of the account. This entry says the same thing in like four different ways ._.

16 October 2010

Paintings

I had a bag. A canvas bag that said "support the war effort" on a large image of a 1-cent stamp in green, the only colour used to decorate, with a large capacity and a zippable top. It was left outside a store while shopping half a year or so ago, filled with food, and was stolen. (for the second time possibly)

I think it cost about $10 to purchase. Now I can't find a replacement on the retailer it came from, out of 29 categories of bags and 74 brands none of them have a bag I want.

There was also a note of currency, which I used for a bookmark.


Is it more dangerous to lose a useful item which was purchased cheaply, than to lose one with a high cost?

02 October 2010

Esquel with peridot

Five and a half hours after understanding why incandescent lights are only 2% efficient, I now know why traffic lights are blue! (The other four colours being yellow, red, white, and black of course)

Wikipedia is terrible and unreliable and no one should use it since it allows anonymous editing. And apparently, fluorescent lighting is known to give people headaches and much worse but mixing lighting types even more so.

The whole concept of lighting temperatures or matching film type to spectral behavior of lighting is probably unfamiliar to many people using a display medium that does not depend on ambient lighting. Browser history 177 pages, all in the Wikimedia namespace or linked sites ._. Don't feel like talking about it