Do you want to be safe in your dealings online, and you already know not to make your password “password,” use the same password on every site, and all the other password security tips?  Well, researchers at Georgia Tech have decided that when it comes to passwords, 12 characters are far superior to 8.  They say that the era of the 12-character password will soon be upon us, if it’s not already.

When using an array of computers running powerful graphic cards, it took the team an average of two hours to crack an 8-character password.  Using the same powerful (yet not Cray-level powerful) arrays, a 12-character password would take 17,134 years to hack into.  Unless, of course, you do something foolish like pick a 12-letter word from the dictionary for your password.

There’s always the problem of remembering your 12-character password, but if you want to be secure, you’d best be as secure as possible.

There’s no real magical solution to the problem of online security.  You can change your password monthly, use completely random combinations of characters, and every other security tip you can think of, and your information is only as secure as the servers on which it is stored.  Your safety really depends on the safety precautions taken by everyone else in the information chain, so if you feel comfortable with your 8-character password, stick with it.

One of the most dangerous things you can do online is also the thing everyone does pretty much all the time.  Your searching habits can put you in danger, especially if you search for things involving celebrities and screen-savers, celebrities and pictures, or celebrities and downloads.  Because so many of us search for things online without thinking about the ramifications of clicking on those links, virus makers, hijackers, hackers, and scammers love to sneak their malware behind celebrity names, and Cameron Diaz is the most dangerous celebrity to search for online.

That’s right, despite not having a hit movie since Charlie’s Angels 2, Ms. Diaz tops McAfee’s most dangerous celebrity search list, beating out A-listers like Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, sex symbols like Jessica Biel, and TV mega-star Anna Paquin.  A search for Cameron Diaz has a ten percent chance of directing your computer towards some sort of malware-plagued website!  Eesh!

It’s just a sign of the growing sophistication of those that want to steal your information, says McAfee security researcher Dave Marcus.  While ”consumers are getting smarter about searching online … cybercriminals are getting sneakier in their techniques,” he said, adding:  ”Now they’re hiding malicious content in ‘tiny’ places like shortened URLs that can spread virally in social networking sites and Twitter, instead of on websites and downloads.”

As always, be careful what you click on, because you never really know what’s on the other end.  Unless, of course, you use AVG, which will parse through your search results and warn you of potential malware-infected websites.  Oh yeah, it’s also free, unlike McAfee’s crapware.

Make sure you turn closed-captioning on for this video.  Believe me, it’s worth it to see the world’s first music video told entirely via Zombie Sign Language (an offshoot of American Sign Language).  That’s what makes this particular version of Re:  Your Brains, an awesome surprise and brilliantly funny.

(I’m well aware I’ve used videos of the song way too much here; sue me, I like it.)

This is one of many ASL music videos from Youtube user CaptainValor.  They’re all really good, from what I’ve seen.  This one is just above and beyond the call of duty, even for an interpretation!  Stephen Torrence is incredible at this gig, seriously.  I’d love to learn ASL, after I finish learning the guitar and piano and slight-of-hand.

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay was looking to save green and go green, but they couldn’t afford to make any big changes.  After all, when you’re trying to save money, it’s not the best idea to spend money.  However, as energy-saving lightbulbs show, there are small changes you can do that will add up to big savings.  In the case of UW-GB, there was one brilliant idea that school director of computing Diane Blohowiak came up with:  change fonts.

The school was using Arial font for its various reports and school email system.  By swapping out from Arial to Century Gothic, a similar-looking font, the school saves 30% on ink per page printed.  Given that a gallon of printer ink works out to be about $10,000, that’s some savings that can add up quickly for Wisconsin-Green Bay’s pocket book.

Merely by changing the default font for the school email system, they’ve saved some real money.  Plus, I think Century Gothic is a little easier to read; then again, I’m a font snob.  Have you tried this sort of small change to save a little on your printing bills?

After using things for a long enough time, you start to get into a routine.  Be it a good routine, or a bad one, a lot of people are creatures of habit who generally do the same stuff again and again, even if it’s not exactly the best way to do things.  For those of us who are creatures of habit, our bad habits are hard to break.  Fortunately, PC World has a great list of tools and tips designed to banish seven bad tech habits.

Among the bad habits listed, the worst one (that other people do) is having a cluttered desktop.  I cannot stand that.  I have, right now eight icons on my desktop, with about four of them I use on a daily basis and about four of them I use often enough to keep them on there.  For example, once a month or so, I’ll go into my dad’s desktop computer and remove all the junk from his desktop.  I don’t use a desktop manager like Stardock’s Fences, I just make a desktop folder and drop all the assorted junk into it.

I also tend to put my desktop into sleep mode when I’m going away somewhere, which is also probably bad.  Even though I do it on purpose, I should probably go ahead and shut all the way down to shave off a few watts of energy usage.  I could also stand to break my reliance on the mouse to launch my programs, while I’m at it.

Tell me, what are some of your bad computing habits?

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.