Prelim Bloopers




Passwords

The vast majority of people are honest and well-meaning. But there is a significant minority of people who are not. This majority always needs to be protected from this minority. In the physical world we have fences, walls, locks, and security systems. In the virtual world of the Internet we have passwords. But passwords are clumsy and weak. And as we do more and more via the Internet, we need more and more passwords, and just keeping track of them has become a nightmare. Few, if any, of us can remember dozens or hundreds of passwords, especially when the increasing need for strong passwords results in ever-lengthening, non-intuitive combinations of numbers and upper and lower case letters. A far better solution would be hardware dongles, but the giant organizations (which actually would benefit the most from the far better security) continue to resist switching over because of the cost and effort required.