Security Is Inconvenient

If anyone has every told you security is convenient for you, they are lying. Security is very inconvenient. The more secure something is the more difficult and or expensive it is to use. it is much harder to support a group of people you force hard passwords on vs a group you let set a password to anything they want. You know I am right. People give lip service to wanting more security, and when they are given it they don’t like how hard it is to use whatever system you secured.

Take for example something I read a few months ago that said AOL was offering a secure ID like FOB for people to enhance the security on how they log onto their accounts. I have used Secure ID’s for years (i haven’t used it in years, but I have used them long ago, they are not new) and it is not some new wiz bang system. Will the masses use it? probably not unless they are forced to. Do you really think that (i always use my dad as the example) my dad would carry around a keychain secure id to just log into AOL? He would screw it up and get frustrated inside of a week.

Westchester county in NY is trying to legislate securing Wifi networks. In principle it is nice that the county is trying to protect citizens, but come on! Do you really think a person or small business that is ignorant enough to put up an unsecured WIFI network will be compelled to register with the county and secure the system just because there is a law saying it. Hello people this won’t do anything but piss people off and generate some revenue for the county. Like I said before, security is a myth. You cannot legislate the population into security compliance. If you could people in rural areas won’t still leave their houses unlocked and keys in the car!

This of course will be the problem going forward with everything becoming digital. The more secure you try to make something, the less mainstream it will become, but the more mainstream something becomes the more secure it needs to be to protect the public.

Imposing Personality

Do I have an imposing personality? I never thought so, but something someone said to me has got me thinking.  It was not said in a bad way or anything.  It was actually part of a conversation I was having with a friend, and it came up.  I always say that I am very quiet if I don’t know you, and if I do know you I won’t shut up!  I guess that can be said for my personal life and part of my professional one.  When I do start to think about how I handle things in the work environment, my friend may have a point.

More Great Mac Tools

While working on something today (i honestly can’t remember what), I got side tracked. I am so happy I did. I have been slowly playing with the unix shell and ports for my mac. Today I found a bunch of cool (and free) tools that make life and my job much easier. I am so loving the power of this Powerbook!

First I found Xutils‘ RDP Menu program. it lets me launch multiple windows remote desktop connections at a time. Microsoft should make that work out of the box, but at least 3rd party developers are doing it.

Rawr-jour is a cool utility that lets you browse all the Rendezvous Bonjour networking. it is really cool. If found it really easy to mount volumes on other mac’s.

The 2 products listed above are by far my favorite of the bunch, but I also found 2 SSH & Telnet connection managers that both seem really cool. Saves my lazy ass from typing in all those switch and firewall host names when I want to connect to them. I also found a random password generator, but I honestly think the one I have on my XP machine is much better. The difference is the mac one I have was free and I actually paid for the Windows based password generator.