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Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords

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Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:

> It used to drive me crazy when people said of poor security practices
> that "they'd always done it like that". My response, depending on mood,
> was either "Well, you've always done it wrong, then", or, "we always
> used to put children up chimneys and die of typhoid and cholera from
> drinking water contaminated with our own shit. Do you want to carry on
> doing *that*, too??"


Sometimes there's a good explanation for "how we always done it",
albeit not always a reason to continue doing it.

In the 70s, I visited the "block shop" in Lunenburg, NS, where they
made tackle blocks with methods and gear that was a century or more
old -- everything from moby 4-sheave blocks for fishing gear to spiffy
little teak & stainless items for yachts.  Down in the cellar was a
blacksmith shop where they forged the eyebolts, hooks and other metal
parts.

When I was there, the smith was making hooks.  He split the end of a
1" dia. rod, bent the two ears of the split around a mandrel to
overlap and form an eye and forge-welded them together.  (Then the
other end was forged into the hook.)  I asked him why he was splitting
and welding to form the eye when just hot-punching the hole would have
been easier and given more predictable results.  "Stronger this way,
stronger this way." was all he had to say.

It was weeks later that it dawned on me that he had learned how to
forge hook eyes from his predecessor at the block shop, who had
learned it from his, etc. back to when the place was built.  And that
reached back to the days before Bessemer, open hearth and cheap steel,
the days when wrought iron was the article of commerce from which
"iron" things were made.  And he was absolutely right: Wrought iron
has a macroscopic grain structure similar to wood.  Punching a
load-bearing eye near the end of a piece of wrought iron predisposes
to failure similar to boring a hole near the end of a pine board and
then using it as a tension member. Splitting, wrapping and welding
(which you obviously can't do with wood) makes the grain run *around*
the eye.  The increase in strength and reliability far exceeds the
risk of possible defects in the forge weld.

So he was right, or rather, he had been right up to a point somewhere
between 1890 and 1910.

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada

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[Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-06-02 21:55 +0000
  Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2019-06-03 20:28 +0000
    Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-06-03 20:35 +0000
    Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2019-06-09 09:10 -0400
      Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2019-06-09 14:22 +0100
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-06-09 14:39 +0000
      Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2019-06-09 20:33 +0000
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) - 2019-06-10 11:22 -0500
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Kerry Imming <kcimming@pobox.com> - 2019-06-10 11:42 -0500
          Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-06-10 18:05 +0000
          Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2019-06-10 22:28 +0100
  Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> - 2019-06-11 16:42 +1000
    Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-11 09:39 +0000
      Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> - 2019-06-11 20:29 +1000
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-11 11:01 +0000
          Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your  passwords Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2019-06-11 17:18 -0300
            Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your  passwords Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2019-06-12 00:04 +0000
              Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your  passwords Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2019-06-12 01:49 -0300
              Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your  passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-12 08:49 +0000
            Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your  passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-12 08:57 +0000
      Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> - 2019-06-11 17:57 +0000
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-06-11 18:05 +0000
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-11 21:08 +0000
      Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2019-06-12 00:10 +0000
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-12 08:50 +0000
    Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-06-11 11:03 +0000
      Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> - 2019-06-11 21:55 +1000
        Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-11 15:30 +0000
          Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your  passwords Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2019-06-11 17:43 -0300
            Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your  passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-12 08:58 +0000
          Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2019-06-11 21:14 -0400
            Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-12 08:52 +0000
            Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> - 2019-06-15 11:45 +1000
              Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2019-06-15 15:46 -0400
    Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Kerry Imming <kcimming@pobox.com> - 2019-06-11 12:19 -0500
      Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-06-11 18:21 +0000
    Re: [Link Posting] Password expiration is dead, long live your passwords kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2019-06-11 21:12 -0400

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