HAPPY  JULY  BIRTHDAYS !

 July 22nd…..HAPPY ANNIVERSARY JOE & SHERRIE FUSCONE!

               and HAPPY ANNIVERSARY JOHN & PATTI FUSCONE! 

provided by

Land a Government Job Now

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

wd 40 Andrew Burrow…

flickr.com

July 25, 2009

WD-40: Strange Facts and Myths

LiveScience.com robert Roy Britt,editorial Director

 
livescience.com

– Fri Jul 24, 2:55 pm ET

John S. Barry, the man “who masterminded the spread of WD-40,” as The New York Times puts it, has died at age 84. The product he promoted is more popular than an iPod.

WD-40 can be found in 4 out of 5 American households, the company claims. Its ingredients are a secret, and it has generated its share of myths and strange applications over the years.

Barry didn’t invent the stuff. “Norm Larsen, founder of Rocket Chemical Company, is considered the original founder of WD-40,” according to wd40.com.

Larsen aimed to develop a line of rust-prevention solvents and degreasers for use in the aerospace industry. He succeeded at the goal, Water Displacement, on the 40th attempt, hence the name.

“Convair, an aerospace contractor, first used WD-40 to protect the outer skin of the Atlas Missile from rust and corrosion,” according to the web site.

A few years later the company made an aerosol spray version and the rest, as they say, is history.

WD-40 does not contain fish oil, contrary to a popular myth, nor does it contain silicone, kerosene, water, wax, graphite, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

And WD-40 won’t cure arthritis, despite another odd myth (Windex, however, cures everything, if you believe the Dad in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding“).

It has been put to these uses, the company says: A bus driver in Asia used WD-40 to remove a python, which had coiled itself around the undercarriage of his bus; police officers used WD-40 to remove a naked burglar trapped in an air conditioning vent.

The product has never needed a Billy Mays; as the ShamWow guy might say, WD-40 sells itself. I’ll certainly vouch for it, having once owned a ‘56 Ford pickup and later a ‘66 Mustang, neither of which could not be worked on without a squirt here and there to loosen rusty old nuts and screws.

The company also says it’ll remove gum. I have an 8-year-old, and a pair of reading glasses sitting in the back seat of the car, on which to test that later today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Slate

    July 24, 2009

Fix Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords

in Five MinutesA foolproof technique

to secure your computer, e-mail,

and bank account.

By Farhad Manjoo

 Posted Friday, July 24, 2009, at 7:05 AM ET

  

It’s tempting to blame the victim.

 

In May, a twentysomething French hacker broke into several Twitter employees’ e-mail accounts and stole a trove of meeting notes, strategy documents, and other confidential scribbles. The hacker eventually gave the stash to TechCrunch, which has since published notes from meetings in which Twitter execs discussed their very lofty goals. (The company wants to be the first Web service to reach 1 billion users.) How’d the hacker get all this stuff? Like a lot of tech startups, Twitter runs without paper—much of the company’s discussions take place in e-mail and over shared Google documents. All of these corporate secrets are kept secure with a very thin wall of protection: the employees’ passwords, which the intruder managed to guess because some people at Twitter used the same passwords for many different sites. In other words, Twitter had it coming. The trouble is, so do the rest of us.

Your passwords aren’t very secure. Even if you think they are, they probably aren’t. Do you use the same or similar passwords for several different important sites? If you don’t, pat yourself on the back; if you do, you’re not alone—one recent survey found that half of people online use the same password for all the sites they visit. Do you change your passwords often? Probably not; more than 90 percent don’t. If one of your accounts falls to a hacker, will he find enough to get into your other accounts? For a scare, try this: Search your e-mail for some of your own passwords. You’ll probably find a lot of them, either because you’ve e-mailed them to yourself or because some Web sites send along your password when you register or when you tell them you’ve forgotten it. If an attacker manages to get into your e-mail, he’ll have an easy time accessing your bank account, your social networking sites, and your fantasy baseball roster. That’s exactly what happened at Twitter. (Here’s my detailed explanation of how Twitter got compromised.)

Everyone knows it’s bad to use the same password for different sites. People do it anyway because remembering different passwords is annoying. Remembering different difficult passwords is even more annoying. Eric Thompson, the founder of AccessData, a technology forensics company that makes password-guessing software, says that most passwords follow a pattern. First, people choose a readable word as a base for the password—not necessarily something in Webster’s but something that is pronounceable in English. Then, when pressed to add a numeral or symbol to make the password more secure, most people add a 1 or ! to the end of that word. Thompson’s software, which uses a “brute force” technique that tries thousands of passwords until it guesses yours correctly, can easily suss out such common passwords. When it incorporates your computer’s Web history in its algorithm—all your ramblings on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere—Thompson’s software can come up with a list of passwords that is highly likely to include yours. (He doesn’t use it for nefarious ends; AccessData usually guesses passwords under the direction of a court order, for military purposes, or when companies get locked out of their own systems—”systems administrator gets hit by a bus on the way to work,” Thompson says by way of example.)

Security expert Bruce Schneier writes about passwords often, and he distills Thompson’s findings into a few rules: Choose a password that doesn’t contain a readable word. Mix upper and lower case. Use a number or symbol in the middle of the word, not on the end. Don’t just use 1 or !, and don’t use symbols as replacements for letters, such as @ for a lowercase A—password-guessing software can see through that trick. And of course, create unique passwords for your different sites.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

0720-30349-607-0726