Data protection firm Imperva analyzed the hacked password details from website RockYou.com, and they have released the results of their information.  As it turns out, most people get hacked because they use the most brain-dead simple combinations possible for their passwords.  I mean, just take a look at the 10 most-hacked passwords.

To steal a snippet from the brilliant Mel Brooks movie Spaceballs:

[King Roland has given in to Dark Helmet's threats, and is telling him the combination to the "air shield"]

Roland: One.
Dark Helmet: One.
Colonel Sandurz: One.

Roland: Two.
Dark Helmet: Two.
Colonel Sandurz: Two.

Roland: Three.
Dark Helmet: Three.
Colonel Sandurz: Three.

Roland: Four.
Dark Helmet: Four.
Colonel Sandurz: Four.

Roland: Five.
Dark Helmet: Five.
Colonel Sandurz: Five.

Dark Helmet: So the combination is… one, two, three, four, five? That’s the stupidest combination I’ve ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

Also stupid are passwords like “password” and “princess.”  Definitely don’t use “qwerty,” either.  To be safe, you need to have a password 8 letters or longer in length (rather than 6), use a random combination of letters and numbers (rather than a single dictionary word and a date), and use special characters when possible.  Odds are you know all that, and still refuse not to do it.

It’s that time of year again.  It’s time to buy that person in your life some sort of electronic device that you don’t really understand.  Don’t you love staring blankly at rack after rack of expensive electronic geegaw, having no idea what might work, what might be useful, and what the cool gift of the year is?  I know I do!

However, if you want to know what you’re buying before buying it, I’d like to recommend Engadget’s Holiday Gift Guide.  So far all they’ve covered are cell phones and e-book readers, but I can tell you right now that the e-book reader is going to be a hot item this year, so that’s a great place to start shopping for the nerd in your life.  It’s new technology, but it’s been around just long enough and has enough corporate muscle behind it for you to be sure you’ll get a few years out of your Kindle or Nook.

There are lots of little rules and laws that you and I (mostly I) probably break every day.  Some of them shouldn’t be against the law.  Some of them are broken accidentally.  Few or none of them are laws in the criminal sense.  Here’s a list of 17 ways you might be breaking the law.  In fact, I might have just broken the law by not altering the title of that article enough before throwing up the link to it.  Who knows?

For example, is it kosher that I used a photo I got off the Switched website to promote the awesome article on Switched?  Since I’m hosting it on the Shaktronics bandwidth, and not their bandwidth, and because I properly attributed the image, it should be okay under Fair Use doctrine.  When in doubt, I pillage Wikipedia, where everything is supposedly free for use under the Creative Commons.  Those images are okay to use.  Flickr can also be a great source of photographs for blog posts, website graphics, and the like.

Generally, it boils down to giving proper credit, paying attention to your local laws, and generally not being a jerk.  If you can handle that, you’ll probably be okay in your online adventure.

It’s been a tough week for me at my day job.  I’ve been wrestling with viruses, buffer overruns, and all kinds of other computer maintenance issues, and I’ve spent a lot of time in our server closet with the IT department in an effort to figure out what’s going on.  Some of our computers were hit with Conficker, our local file server was hit with some other virus, and it’s been a general mess that’s tested the limits of my geek toolbox.  Things were rough enough that I’ve been convinced I need a bigger geek toolbox, and Popgadget passed along a great link to 64 tricks every geek should know.

Some of these things I knew about (like reading 1337 at normal speed and where 127.0.0.1 is), and some of these things I’ve always wanted to do (make my own computer cleaning kit on a USB drive and run a flash-drive OS).  However, some of them were totally new to me, and are going to be very useful once I master them.  It’s a great list of information, from the fun trick to the absolutely crucial need-to-know stuff.

Rest assured, if I ever need glasses and I ever break those glasses, I will definitely solder them together again thanks to this list.  Just remind me to let the solder cool down before I put the glasses back on, okay?

Google's been troublesome all the way around lately.  First there's the GMail outages and continued technical difficulties, and now there's a phishing scam circulating around Google Talk.  Here's what to watch out for and what to avoid.

Basically, like I tell my parents all the time, most of the stuff people link you or send you in emails isn't worth downloading.  If someone sends you a TinyURL link to some site called ViddyHo, then it's probably not the smartest idea to give that site your Google login information.  If you have, change your username and password immediately!  (You should actually change your username and password on a regular basis anyway, but I don't need to tell you that.)

I have friends who, wisely, ask me "What is that?" any time I send them a link to anything.  Generally, I'll tell them either what it is or to shut up and click it.  Either way, they always know it's me on the other end and not some phishing scheme that's taken over my computer.  Most phishing schemes aren't rude enough to tell you to shut up.

If you're like me (and we'll say that you are), one of the hardest things about changing computers is having to get used to an entirely new operating system.  For example, the leap from Windows 98 to Windows XP wasn't a huge leap, but there were enough changes that it had a bit of a learning curve.  Plus I hated the default new XP theme, so there was that issue as well. 

Having upgraded to Vista not too long ago, one of the few complaints I have is the start menu that requires me to click and scroll to browse my complete list of programs.  I'm sure there's a way I can change it back to the old way, but I'm too lazy to look it up.  Besides, it's a new operating system, I should embrace the newness of it.  After all, it is a lot less cluttered visually, and less intimidating than the old gigantic stack of names.

Something that might have helped me get ready for the transition would be to tweak the default UI of Windows to look less like XP and more like Vista.  That way you can learn (and appreciate) the quirks of the new design.  In that spirit, PC World has a great guide for users looking to make their current Vista or XP machine look and perform more like the upcoming Windows 7.  While it won't make Vista perform like the supposedly faster 7, it'll add some of the functional changes and ease of use 7 is being praised for. 

If you'd rather just test Windows 7 directly (and I'm sorely tempted), you can find out how to download it and become a beta tester here.  You only have until February 10, so you'd best hurry! 

Buying video games for people, especially kids, is one of the hardest things you can possibly do.  How do you know a game is any good until you play it?  How can you know what to buy if you don’t know what’s good?  The process is such a tiresome, painful affair that generally I avoid giving anyone video games for gifts unless I know they’re awesome games from firsthand experience.  Because I rarely if ever play games until OTHER people tell me they’re great, that means I don’t buy anyone any video games.  I can only imagine how bad it might be for parents or grandparents who want to buy kids games but don’t play games themselves.

Well, the folks at Crispy Gamer have a great guide for buying games for kids this holiday season, either your kids or someone else’s kids.  It’s got a little language in it, mostly in the title, but the advice is invaluable, so I share it anyway.  Seriously, this is GREAT advice.  It took me a long time and a lot of wasted money to learn most of these rules.  Ignore the naughty language and read it. 

You’ll be glad you did.

Are you going to be braving Black Friday to pick up a gift for your favorite geek?  Whenever you’re going into a chaotic situation, and this WILL be chaos, you need to have a battle plan.  Know what you’re going for, know where it is, and know where the next stop on your route might be.  Joystiq has you covered with their Black Friday roundup.

They have coverage for both real world and online stores:  Amazon, NewEgg, Circuit City, Best Buy, Walmart, Game Stop, Toys R Us, Target, and they even have a best-of section!  If you’re gonna go out there, and I’m seriously considering it, it’s best to have a list and get it done as quickly as possible.  Accomplices always help. 

I work with my hands all day long.  For eight hours a day, I manipulate a keyboard at work.  Then I come home and write blog articles, play video games, chat online, and try to relax.  I probably log hundreds of thousands of words typed in a day, and that doesn’t even include the hand movements required to play video games effectively or my occasional attempts to play the guitar.  Long story short, that’s a whole lot of finger movement. 

Fortunately, those of us who depend on our hands for fun and for profit can still get some use out of The Life Hackery article about five ways to avoid Nintenditis.  Some of these I never would have thought of even trying, and some I use every day!  I’m definitely going to try the handkerchief trick… I wonder if it would work for keyboard use, too.

One of the problems with the daily commute to the office is that, for most of us, we’re stuck somewhere we don’t want to be around people we might not even really like.  Even if you do like your job, you have to admit that your cubicle is probably pretty drab.  However, there are things that can be done about that blandness, and they involve things you might already be interested in.

The LifeHackery has 13 cool ideas to personalize your office or cube. 

As loath as I am to decorate my cube and possibly give away too much about myself or offend folks at work, if I had my own office?  You’d better believe I’d have some horror and sci-fi movie posters up there, and probably some action figures on my desk, too!  I think I’m mostly hesitant to put down roots at my current location any deeper than I already have.  Or maybe I know that I don’t like dusting my work station, and thus wouldn’t want to dust my toys, either.