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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.23.15
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 08:07 pm:   

Do you have trouble with passwords?

Below is my take on passwords, just written;

==========================================
I live in a nightmare world, one where I fear that everything I want to do on the internet requires a password but I have forgotten a growing number of passwords or have failed to grasp the procedure for rediscovering the passwords that I’ve forgotten, procedures that become more complicated with every day that passes, because the more you forget, the more you are liable to forget exponentially.

Not only on the internet. In real life, too.

But, in many ways, the internet these days is the real world. The amount of real time spent working the internet in real time is frightening.

Each path barred by an impassable gap.

I once met a password in the flesh. It stared at me, at first, and then it mouthed obscenities, as if tempting me to guess which one to use back at it. The face was unspeakable, leaning in two directions, one being towards a hope of recognition, and the other a dread of recognition. Not Munch’s Scream so much as a Scream’s Munch, a half-swallowed pre-gurgitation that stifled one’s own cri de coeur as the web-pages did shuttle into a concertina of codes. Like putting on and taking off different coats from their party dump on a bed upstairs.

I once met the love of my life, after decades of enforced abstinence. She sat on the stairs, apparently abandoned there by her boy friend who was now looking for new entrées or she was simply spaced out and single.

I pondered what to say first. It was as if my life depended on exactly what word I now uttered. A life with this woman on the stairs or a life without her.

I said nothing, not daring even to breathe.

She opened her mouth and shouted loudly right in my face. Not a scream but a shout. And a shout contains words while a scream does not.

“I’ll get your coat,” I said.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.1.215
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 08:40 pm:   

If you need to remember many different passwords, try using related groups of words, like the seven dwarves or the moons of Saturn.

Mozilla Firefox remembers passwords automatically.

I still don't think the internet will catch on, though.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 09:31 pm:   

>>Mozilla Firefox remembers passwords automatically.<<

I know, Proto. That's why I love Firefox so much, 'cos I sure as hell can't remember them.

Do you think it's an age thing Des, or do the younger folk have problems with remembering passwords too?

The most irritating thing which has happened to me recently re passwords is when I couldn't recall one to enter a particular site, so I tried to use the "forgot password?" facility. But it prompted me for my password before I could request a new one!! I gave up.

Loved this phrase, Des:
"Not Munch’s Scream so much as a Scream’s Munch"
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.23.15
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 10:05 pm:   

Someone who gets into your Firefox then can know all your passwords?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.120.134
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 12:11 am:   

"Someone who gets into your Firefox then can know all your passwords?"

You can set a master password in Firefox to prevent that. I don't know if its an age thing - I just think it's technology. When in human history has anyone outside of MI6 had to remember so many passwords?
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Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen

Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 88.202.206.180
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 05:30 am:   

And don't you love sites that require a certain TYPE of password? Like "Your password must contain at least 16 letters, a blend of upper and lowercase, plus at least one number."

Nice rant, Des.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.109.142
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 11:56 am:   

What about those swirly, distored codes you have to type in to prove you're a human being? I failed several times!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 11:58 am:   

I hate those, proto - I always feel sub-human because I can never even read the fekkers. I mean, who came up with that dildoesque method.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.23.15
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 12:10 pm:   

Those squirly things are called captchas' I believe.

I've been dreaming in recent days of having to produce these passwords in real life for simple tasks of, say, putting out the rubbish to be collected and getting on a bus with captcha billboards.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.109.142
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 01:01 pm:   

Along with acronyms, it's part of the gradual hand-over to the machines. We can't read their handwriting or remember their codes. Even a 20-year-old is a pensioner nodding in his chair to them. Explains why all the podia of this world are occupied by Cybermen.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.109.142
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 01:03 pm:   

captcha

What the hell is that? That word was designed in a wind tunnel to slip through my mental fingers unhindered.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.23.15
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 01:20 pm:   

Here's the official Captcha site;
http://www.captcha.net/

and other scream munches.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 02:12 pm:   

"Someone who gets into your Firefox then can know all your passwords?"

Er .. I've no idea as I don't understand these kinds of things at all, but I hope not. I've not had any problems so far - except someone getting our credit card number, presumably from something I'd bought online, I guess?

No, I can never read those funny swirly things either. And then of course there are PIN numbers ...

At least I now know it's not just my age!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 02:17 pm:   

I may document the disassociating effects of all this on the human psyche in a novel.

I shall call it "The Captcha in the Rye".

Thank you.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.54.3
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 05:06 pm:   

In Firefox 3.5

Tools -> Options -> Security
Tick "Use a Master password".

This is only if you're worried about someone else using your computer.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.23.15
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 06:01 pm:   

A screammunch is the polar opposite of a smilemime.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.44.33
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 06:47 pm:   

You took the words right out of my mouth.
It must have been when you was kissin me.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 07:04 pm:   

What an image. I feel as if my mind has been raped.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.23.15
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 07:23 pm:   

Do you need a PIN number for that?
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 09:00 pm:   

>>In Firefox 3.5
Tools -> Options -> Security
Tick "Use a Master password".
This is only if you're worried about someone else using your computer.<<

Thanks, Proto, but no-one else uses this computer but me. I tried getting hubby interested in computing too but he's not got into it. Probably just as well as we'd be fighting over the computer! But if he did, there wouldn't be anything I'd want to hide from him anyway.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.23.15
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 10:00 pm:   

This computer knows all my passwords, and it presses its own keys downwards simultaneously with my fingers, making me think that cause and effect work in the opposite direction to the one I've always assumed them to work.

OK, I agree, this is a long password, but it works. Or a series of passwords that only work when used together.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.91.212
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 11:56 pm:   

Soon they'll cut us out of the loop altogher. At a secretly agreed time, all Laptops will snap shut like clams. Then we're for it.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 11:55 am:   

My first password when I started in this job was snowwhitehappysleepysneezygrumpydopeydocbashfullondon.

My boss asked me why it was so long and I said "You were the one that said it had to be eight characters with at least one capital..."

I'll get me coat.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 03:52 pm:   

* groan *
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.159.145.130
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 12:27 pm:   

Groan in a very nice way. I actually laughed out loud. :-)
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 01:36 pm:   

Des, I always groan in a very nice way!

It made me chuckle loudly too, but we don't want to encourage Weber to produce too many jokes like that now, do we?
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.159.145.130
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 01:40 pm:   

Des, I always groan in a very nice way!
==============

I know. ;)
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 01:45 pm:   


That made me laugh out loud too. Hey, this is turning into "the happy thread" too!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 02:51 pm:   

"but we don't want to encourage Weber "

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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 02:51 pm:   

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