Lets talk about passwords, Again. Mk III Mod 7a.

The evergreen topic, because most corporate IT I’ve worked with is now insisting on new passwords every 90 days. And people who use the same password with a rolling number at the end just grate on my nerves. Very smart people, some of them, but misguided.

Our latest requirement is 8 characters (can it be more? doesn’t say it can. Probably. Check it.)

Upper and lower case letters, numeric symbols (0-9), punctuation: :,.!(){}[]) and Special, ie Shift-Number: !@#$%^&*, etc.

So lets take my birthday, which I have never used for a password, and see what we can do:

October91956 – more than 8 characters, but that’s ok. Needs punctuation or specials or both.

I’ve read the starting with a capital letter and ending with a 4 digit number are so common that malefactors expect to find it. So lets not give them either.

()ctober9!(%^ – 4 out of 5, no capital letters, but lowers, a numeral, special and punctuation.

0ct()beRgIgsG isn’t bad

RoktuberIX56 isn’t bad either.

Remember to start with something you’ll never forget, that you can remember how you transformed, and that you can write a perfectly underestandible plain-text hint for and leave some where you can see it any day, without revealing a thing.

“Geologic Birthday” would be good for RoktuberIX56…

An example that pleased me: The difference between an abstract class and an interface, in Java:

Here’s the punch line:

In Java, Prussia can extend (“be a”) one of the super-classes, Holy, Roman or  Empire, but only one. Prussia can implement the other two as interfaces, but only with methods and fields uniquely its own. If Prussia is to be Holy, be Roman and be an Empire, the strictly hierarchical relationship of those three super-classes has to be worked out separately and in detail, in advance. I can only imagine Herr von Bismark would approve.

 

And the whole magilla:
1) What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class?

An abstract class defines data (fields) and member functions but may not, itself, be instantiated. Usually, some of the methods of an abstract class are abstract and expected to be supplied by a sub-class, but some of the methods are defined.  Unless they are final, they can be overridden, and they can always be overloaded. Private parts of an abstract super class, for example, data, are not available to a subclass, so access methods (public or protected) must be used by the subclass. An abstract superclass is “extended” by a subclass. A given subclass may only extend one super-class, but a super-class may extend another super-class, in a hierarchy. (This avoids the complexities/difficulties of multiple inheritance in C++)

An interface is a proper subset of an abstract class, but has a different scope and use. An interface has ONLY abstract member functions and static, final, fields, aka constants. Any subclass has to provide all the variable fields and code which implements an interface. The implementing class cannot override the interface’s member signatures – the signatures are what the interface *is*. It is possible to overload an interface’s signatures, adding or subtracting variables, changing return or variable types, but the overloads do not satisfy the requirements of the interface. The implementing class(s) must contain actual member functions to satisfy all of the signatures in the interface, because there is no default, no code in the interface.  As used above, a given class ‘implements’ an interface, it does not ‘extend’ it. These limitations to an interface allow a given class to implement more than one, which retains most of the utility of multiple inheritance without, as it were, opening Plethora’s bag. (grin)

For example: In Java, Prussia can extend (“be a”) one of the super-classes, Holy, Roman or  Empire, but only one. Prussia can implement the other two as interfaces with methods and fields uniquely its own. If Prussia is to be Holy, be Roman and be an Empire, the strictly hierarchical relationship of those three super-classes has to be worked out separately and in detail, in advance. I can only imagine Herr von Bismark would approve.