Travel blog by Päivi & Santeri Kannisto

We visited China for the first time four years ago. Although we had expected some development, we were surprised. Everything was brand new, bigger, higher, and faster, in a word megalomaniac.

What makes passwords insecure? The answer is simple: because they are changed too seldom. If passwords were time-dependent and changing constantly, they would become less useful for crackers. Internet abounds with instructions how to select a good password. They tell you do’s and don’ts, but they all have one weakness in common. If the password is stolen, it doesn’t matter whether the password is good or bad, because it will be available for misuse until it has been changed. If part of the password changed for example depending on the time and date, the password would become useless for crackers.

We listened to an audio book called Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (1974). A friend had recommended it. We found the book rather confusing: a lot of fancy words and concepts but fundamentally nothing about nothing. Our MP3-player played the chapters accidentally in a random order making the book more challenging than it was meant to be. It attempted to discuss philosophy using Eastern concepts of Zen Buddhism like Eckhart Tolle in Power of Now (1997), also recommended by a friend, with the exception that Tolle uses mystical language of Indian gurus instead of Pirsig’s kitchen philosophy. Power of Now is pseudo-spiritual new age literature.