Most Common Passwords
blog.jimmyr.com
blog.jimmyr.com
> 6. 123456, 123, 123123, 01234 and other retarded combinations
I dated a girl whose brother came down with a high fever when he was young, and he became mentally retarded and stayed on the development level of a young boy his whole life before dying in his early 20's. I'd always colloquially used "retard" and "retarded" the way I used "fag" and "homo" in high school - y'know, it was what the other kids did. Things "sucked", and teachers were "retarded", and things like that.
Anyway, one time I asked her how to translate "retarded" into her language, and she kind of froze and said, "I don't know." I'd never seen her unhappy quite like that, and only realized why later. That made me think - was it cutting her to the bone every time I casually dropped a "The airport baggage people must be retarded" or some such?
There's got to be a million synonyms for really stupid people doing really stupid things, so it wasn't too hard to cut down my use of the word. I still get it wrong sometimes, but maybe worth five seconds of thinking about.
Off-topic here, but I'm curious for my own family.
From what I've read on fever phobia, it seems like what most people consider a high fever really is normal and no reason to panic like we're used to doing[1]. In this girl's brother's case, I wonder how high that fever really was (and how old he was) in order for it to have affected him like that.
[1] Or have nurses on the 24/7 pediatrician line yell at you to rush to the nearest ER, only to get charged $400+ for Tylenol.
What got me was a simple infection in a tooth. It didn't hurt, so I didn't realize that it was bad. Besides, I was incredibly tired from being "burnt out" which was destroying my life... Let me just say that I'll never see non-functional people in a workplace in the same way. Shudder.
(Yes, totally off-topic. :-)
(It certainly has cut back on my life expectancy, too.)
But I shouldn't complain. Bacteria infections over a long time might attack the heart or the spine.
The good part is that I sat down and thought "It seems I can't take stress badly or that I start doing things before I'm really healthy. It should help if I do things I love, so I'll try to do that." The right decision, for the wrong reason.
Not to mention, $400 for peace of mind is pretty cheap, and would probably buy me a decade or two of ulcer-free living.
My backup hope is that my children love gruel.
My point is with your statement, "to avoid the risk of my child becoming retarded." Since when does a high fever cause brain damage or whatever? It seems to me that unless you're burning at over 106°F (or 104°F for children maybe) there shouldn't be much to worry about. Just try to alleviate the fever at home (unless it constantly persists that high over a day or something).
From what I remember, if your kids fever ever gets over 39/100.4 (obviously if they're a baby or infant you should call your own doctor for any fever and follow their orders) you should call your family doctor, keep them cool (cold clothes and such, nothing severe) to keep them cool and do what the doctor says. Over 40/104 (and this is what my mum did to me, she's a nurse) she kept a cold bath and had me sit in it for 5 minutes or so, before laying down in bed with cold clothes and IIRC sometimes even ice packs to keep the fever dipping under the 40's. Over night my fever broke and stayed below 40 and my family doctor said I'd be fine. She even said, the only reason she kept me out of hospital was because doctors treat a fever with everything but cold until it's a last resort. I wasn't a particularly happy kid having been dunked in a cold bath all night, but I'd certainly have been more uncomfortable for a lot longer in hospital, but I had a nurse with over 20 years of experience (a considerable amount more experience than the junior doctors they leave on staff at 3am).
Personally I believe, a paediatrician shouldn't have got into the job if he didn't expect panicked phone calls all hours of the night. So anyone with a half-decent paediatrician and concerns, I'd say call away. The bastards get paid way too much and if they don't want to deal with their patients complaining they should have become a mortician.
Edit: and by the way, this has nothing to do with being considerate, as a human being, to another human being.
As a factual matter, I'll agree with you that the attempt to replace such terms as "degenerate" (a term I heard in a movie about politics when I was young, having no idea at first what the term meant) with terms with more favorable connotations such as "gay" often fail if the underlying societal prejudice is strong. (The term "gay" currently does seem to be transforming from a term of voluntary self-designation to a term of derision.)
But a writer still has the choice of using the least offensive term available to the writer, for whatever that is worth. And I think there is a legitimate underlying factual distinction between being "retarded" (physiologically incapable of thinking as a normal adult does) and being "stupid" (perhaps being too lazy to apply adult thought to important issues).
It's interesting that the nitpickers usually pick on informal language (slang) because that's where language is least encumbered by preconception. To try to reform society by purging usage is like telling characters on TV that they ought to do things differently: the show finished production before you even knew about it (and oh yeah, the characters can't hear you).
Language is marvelously protean. New currents and wellsprings are bubbling up all the time. They're considered ignorant and incorrect until they achieve critical mass. There's nothing to be gained, unless one has the ego of a schoolmistress, from moralizing about this. (On the other hand, I'd say there's a good deal to be gained by stripping down official language in the way that Orwell is known for.) Although I shouldn't be so hard on these people; they make great comedy possible.
By the way, you touched on a hobby horse of mine. The word "gay" is such a fascinating case. It's shifting its meaning again, from "homosexual" to "lame". The sensitive cultural critics behind South Park captured this perfectly in their line, "this is gayer than sex with men". What's fascinating is that this is happening just as our society is becoming tolerant of homosexuals at an astounding historical pace. It's as if the straight world is striking the following bargain: "you can get married, but we get the word 'gay'".
I think The Simpsons beat them to that one: "You kissed a girl! That is so gay!" (said to Nelson Muntz by one of the other bullies)
Also, having sex with men doesn't necessarily make you gay. :-P
Good find re the Simpsons! I will remember that one.
Edit: what I love about those two lines is that not only are they equally brilliant, they are brilliant in a way that captures the difference between the two shows.
Kinda like if might be awkward if you referred to software that wasn't fully functional as "crippleware" in front of a friend that had polio.
It's curious though that some similar words are acceptable. Nobody complains about "lame" or "dumb", even though there are people with those precise medical conditions. Nor does describing something as "brain dead" seem to arouse this reaction. And it's fine to call something "crazy" or "mad", or say that an organisation is "schizophrenic", etc etc.
It's amazing the effect that typing GetANewJob repeatedly had...
(Yes, I got one)
also, i have a payphone and jolt cola. god, i can't wait.
Dancing and drinking and enjoyment all around, I hope.
Wait, is this sarcasm?
It's ridiculously bad practice. Using lots of weak different passwords is probably better than using one strong password for everything.
Remember, that password is only strong until someone pulls it out of a database that has it stored in plain text. After that, you might as well be using "password".
1) Doesn't matter, it's fairly weak and I use it for spammy stuff.
2) It matters, I use it for accounts I care about, but nothing that would ruin my life. It's strong, but it's used in a couple places.
3) Banks, etc -- these all get can't-crack-it-in-1000-years passwords that are all different.
I have them written down long hand, but I think the chance of an arbitrary burglar making it through my dog, alarm system, up stairs to my office, then ignoring my 5 monitors and 3 nice computers in favor of a nondescript stack of papers on a book shelf, then getting away with said papers, and using them to break into my bank accounts seems kind of far fetched. Call me crazy.
Why do people insist on having short (<12 chars) overly complicated passwords? The passphrase: "totallysecretpasswordthatyoullneverguess" (or other similarly-long phrase) serves as a much more secure pass-phrase than the hodgepodge of non-alphanumeric characters people suggest that good passwords are and is far easier to remember. The only impediment to decent passphrases are services that limit how many characters your password can be.
I don't understand sites that have serious length limitations on passwords. I recall Amex had an 8 character limit last year when I had an account with them.
Passphrases + randomly generated passwords via KeePass or Password Safe is the way I go.
allinurl:passwd.txt site:.com
"Because of retarted script kiddy teenagers and nigerians that fancy themselves hackers using prebuilt trojan software"
- It was not necessary to single out Nigerians and I'm not sure what it added to your great piece on common passwords.
Just about the worst password advice someone could possibly give. Hack someone's password once, and you've got access to all their accounts everywhere.