Comments for Bites of Apple

Comment on Making your passwords better for less by Jon

Jon — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:48:05 +0000

Of your five rules of thumb, I like 1, 2, and 5, but I think the value of mixed-case and punctuation in passwords is overrated. In terms of bang-for-buck, if you’re going to invest more keystrokes, it’s better to spend them typing longer passwords rather than hitting the shift key. For example, “xyag9p7wzo” takes the same number of keystrokes as “Wd&eq9%” but most people could probably type the first example faster, and it is more secure because it is almost 50% longer, less vulnerable to brute-force. I’ll grant you that if the attacker *knows* I never use the shift key, it would allow for a slightly more efficient brute-force algorithm.

Of course, all of the above only applies for passwords that must be physically typed. If I’m using a password manager that transmits the stored passwords for me, then I’ll use the maximum allowable range of characters with full cryptographic randomness, for example https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

Comment on Gone is One-to-One, until next year by Bites of Apple » 10 Ways Apple Owned This Decade

Bites of Apple » 10 Ways Apple Owned This Decade — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:06:21 +0000

[...] One to One has its own limits, too, such as scheduling: the Apple Concierge Web site won’t let you book more than one session in advance. But even if you only used 10 visits out of 52 weeks, this would be a $9.90 consult. You can even bring your own laptop to train, and so take away more than just learning. You can finish a production. [...]

Comment on Work Windows in Parallel Security by Bruce Hobbs

Bruce Hobbs — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:42:22 +0000

Here’s the Virtual Box web site: http://www.virtualbox.org/

Comment on Work Windows in Parallel Security by Bruce Hobbs

Bruce Hobbs — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:58:58 +0000

I’ve been seeing and getting very good reports on an open-source alternative to Fusion and Parallels:

Comment on Suit up an iPhone for occupations and occasions by Bruce Hobbs

Bruce Hobbs — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:51:09 +0000

It’s admittedly very high-end, but I still love the case I picked up immediately after the iPhone was initially released and which I’m still using now with my iPhone 3G: . In black, of course.

Comment on Succeeding with a failed Superdrive solution by dulchinea

dulchinea — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:14:36 +0000

Thankfully Apple is replacing my flaky drive (MBP mid-2006) for free. Had it not fallen within the extended warranty I was definitely going to go for an external. The drive hasn’t died completely but is fickl enough that I relied on my PC at work to import music on my iPod.

Good to know it was a bad batch of drives and not that I broke it

Comment on VMWare virtualizer leaves open Windows virus-door by Alex from the Parallels Team

Alex from the Parallels Team — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:07:38 +0000

Parallels posted a new blog post addressing recent vmware exploitable issue and Parallels stance on virtualization security http://tr.im/jgF6

Comment on Succeeding with a failed Superdrive solution by apaju-irland.de

apaju-irland.de — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:36:31 +0000

I found your topic “Bites of Apple » Succeeding with a failed Superdrive solution” when i was searching for dvd cd storage units and it is really intresting for me. If its OK for you i would like to translate your topic and post it on my german blog about dvd cd storage units. I link back to your topic of course!

Comment on Newest Macs deliver biggest boost in smallest form by rseybold

rseybold — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:52:41 +0000

Yes, Bruce, thanks for pointing that out. I’d read the David Pogue NY Times column after Apple dropped Firewire altogether from the newest MacBooks; he railed at the dying light of Firewire, since now his older video cameras had no way to communicate directly with the newest Macs. Thank goodness Apple is preserving some sort of Firewire on the desktop models.

Comment on Newest Macs deliver biggest boost in smallest form by Bruce Hobbs

Bruce Hobbs — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:18:19 +0000

“To the regret of some, the Firewire 400 has no port on the new mini. Video users will have to upgrade their devices to use a new mini.”

Won’t a Firewire 400 to 800 adapter handle that?