What's New

This page will always describe any additions and meaningful changes to GeodSoft.com. Visit this page first, and bookmark it, and not the "home" page, which almost never changes. What's New is the only page that should ever be retrieved on a periodic basis and that should be at most once a week. The most recent changes are always at the top.

February 7, 2014: The impact of salts on the time it takes to crack passwords has been made explicit in the Password Cracking Time Tables section of the Password Cracking Techniques page. A suggestion for how to determine the effect of using hash iteration control is provided.

February 1, 2014: The Password Cracking Study page has several revisions and additions. The "Types of Passwords" analyzed in the paper are linked to the corresponding dictionary files which often have quite different names.

January 30, 2014: The password cracking dictionaries used by Daniel Klein in his 1991 study are no longer available at their original locations. I've made local copies available from the password research page on which they are discussed and the password footnotes page.

January 27, 2014: Substantial revisions were made to the section Alternative Manual Passwords on the page titled Cracking "Good" PasswordsWith Custom Programmed Dictionaries.

January 24, 2014: Password Cracking Techniques has had a major rewrite and reorganiztion. More than 50% new content. Headings have been added to existing and relocated topics and new topics added, with headings. Cracking time tables have been updated using current data from real tools. New topics include the effect of hashing algorithms and cracking tools on cracking speed; the potentially massive impact of system administrator control over hashing iterations is examined; the fundamental role of salts in password security is discussed.

January 18, 2014: Bots, Bots, Bots: There bots and crawlers all over this site. There are so many it's hard to find the people in the logs. Many are not from public search engines in clear violation of the Terms of Use. I went through the January log and blocked every one that I found that violated the Terms of Use. I didn't just block specific IP addresses, I blocked the entire netblock of each ISP and company from which these bots and other banned behviour were coming. If you want to see the error page with a list of 35 blocked ISPs and companies, click here. You will need to use your browser's back button to return. If you are served by one of these companies, and are reading this page, it means they have multiple net blocks, and I only blocked the one from which the unwanted traffic was coming.

January 5,2014: The Myth of Electronic Publishing was written in 1999 and argued web developers and owners should use the most popular sites as a basis for emulation rather than sites that subjectively appealed to them based on appearance. I've updated it to summarize a page that is no longer readily available. I've replaced links to current sites that still exist but have no visual resemblence to the sites I wrote about, with partial screenshots of these sites as they existed in 1999. The original page spoke mostly about assoications and their members; I've generalized most of these references. I've tried to fix some awkward grammer and added new material at the bottom that talks about page load times in 2014 and gives a brief overview of the status of the top 10 sites I discussed in 1999 and how and what they are doing, or not doing in 2014. The original arguments remain unchanged as I believe they are as applicable now as when this article was first writen.

January 1, 2014: Terms of Use Updated all 2013s to 2014 and changed the version number. Made a few modest changes, mostly related to sites choosing to mirror GeodSoft pages.

December 31, 2012: Password Basics Made many small changes, adjustments, and additions. Most were to reference more contemporary products and technologies that were referred to.

December 19, 2013: Terms of Use: Made a number of modest adjustments, mostly trying to clarify items that may seem ambiguous and making explict several things that I think ought to be obvious but probably are not. I thought the cumulative changes warranted a change from version 2.0.01 to 2.1.00.

December 14, 2013: Updated the password cracking page. Most of the update was written more than a year ago, but I have not had update access to the site since about the time this and several other pages were updated. I've added a new crack time table to the page and new material on cracking developments since 2007. Hopefully I'll get the other pages up in the near future.

December 14, 2013: Crack time calculator I made a minor mod to this calculator. The big change is that I've introduced a universe as a new unit of time equal to 14 billion, 365 day years. This is part of the generated output and the new and updated crack time tables on the password cracking page. I've checked several top ranked units of time pages and no one seems to be using this as a measure or unit of time.

June 10, 2012: The Automated Password Generators page has been greatly expanded and updated. It includes 5 new sections: PWGen; Password Universe Size Versus Strength; Top 10,000 Passwords; More Programmed Dictionary Thoughts; and Which Accounts Can Cause Significant Damage. The State Department Passwords and First password.pl were extensively revised. U.S. Government Automated Password Generator received minor revisions.

May 30, 2012: Source for a Web based Password Generator: For the first time ever, I am making available the source code for a web based password generator with a liberal, BSD style, open source license. This is the older and simpler generator, but still moderately flexible as is. This is the same one that has been availabe since the GeodSoft web site went public.

It's not identical. I have removed all traces of the GeodSoft website style, format and navigation aids. It should be ready to drop into any web site and be customized to visually blend right it. It has a copyright notice and a statement that this version may be modified in accordance with the license in the source code. These 3 lines must remain visible and a block of comments including the very short license must be kept in the source but otherwise you can do anything you want with it.

The most important difference between the BSD style license I included and the GNU GPL that applies to Linux and most open source software projects, is you never have to share your code modifications or working product with anyone else. With the GNU GPL you always need to give back to the open source community, any enhancements you've made. With BSD style licenses what you make is yours. With a password generator, it lets you keep your intrincic password policies derived from the generator a trade or family secret. You may share if you wish, but there is no requirement that you do so.

It has seveal small functional enhancements. It has two additional, predefined combinations of user controllable options, not in the older one which still runs on GeodSoft.com. The default settings, the state depapartment style, better, and easy are identical to the settings at GeodSoft.com. Still better, and 2 new combintations, strong and stronger, plus hard, each get progressively a little stronger to at least partially deal with the increase in computer speeds over 12 years and the advances in cracking passwords that have ocurred, especially in the past 5 or so years.

In addition there is one documented logic upgrade to show how easy it is to start makeing changes beyond what can be done with configuration variables. This changes the 2 value switch, $addConsonants, into a three value variable that instead of just turning an option on or off, switches between adding no letters, or only consanants, or adding letters from the full alphabet. This adds a little diversity, and at the same time often makes it easier to pronounce. There are not many times that you get a password related change that makes a stronger password AND makes it easier to remember. I never thought of this when I was using this as my only online password generator because I was still heavily influenced by the State Department style passwords, and did not see the need for this strenght at that thime, over a decade ago.

There is currently a control constant that only allows 2 of possible 4 letters to be added to the password. It is documented how to change this to 1, 3 or 4, or to turn it into a user controlled web variable. The code needed to make a web variable and where it needs to go are clearly described.

I suggest paying particular attention to the strong, stronger, and hard variations as these are the passwords that have the length and character diversity to still be strong in today's more hostile cracking world. See below about the new password cracking caculations and the comments that I make on that page on recent developments in cracking tools. At least one of cracking tools now has a programmed dictionary generator that feeds the cracker, passwords made by another popular password generator. This one does not createat passwords that look like those from my generator. With some study I think my current password.pl could mimick these. Once the crackers can mimick one password generator, others will follow. The crackers will need to know who they are targeting and what password standards and tools they use. Of course if they can get the password hash file, they can likely get the rest of this. A generator that creates passwords over a huge universe of possible passwords is very much advantageous, as is the ability to easily and significantly change password styles with simple configuration changes. I don't believe any other password generator is as versatile as my pattern based generator.

Also look at the current pattern based password generator to get ideas for different password structures. As I discusss on my Cracking "Good" Passwords With Custom Programmed Dictionaries page, the most commonly suggested places to locate symbols almost invariably miss three perfectly good optons. Once passords get into the 11 - 14 character range there is nothing wrong with putting numeric strings of 3 to 5 characters, at the end, middle, or even beginning of passwords. The digit strings might start with one or two symbols or punctuation. Long numeric strings in short to medium length passwords are a bad idea. There is less character diversity among digits than any other character type than vowels, and if you include upper and lower case vowels, digits and vowels tie. If a cracker suspects long numeric strings in short passwords this can easily be put to use. The digit's small character set greatly reduce the total number of possible passwords to look at. With longer passwords 3 - 5 digits do not significantly weaken a password.

Perhaps the best characteristic of hashes is that they tell a cracker nothing about a password until he has the entire password. Even if somehow he knows the passwords at the site or on the targeted machine have only one digit and one sympbol or punctuation mark, until he finds the first password he probably does not know where these two characters may come. He may then focus his efforts on passwords of similar structure after finding the first. If this is not productuctive, he is back to brute force methods. He either has bad information, or the passwords at the site have varying structures. When working with two alpha strings and non letters, three locations are normally recommended. By far the most common is the middle separating the letters. Also one at the front and middle or middle and back are suggested. There seems to be a need to keep the words or alpha strings separate.

There is not. Running the alpha strings together may make them easier or harder to pronounce and remember and that will vary widely with the specific password and who is looking at them. Accept that two logically independent alpha strings, when created by generator logic can be just as useful together as apart, and you have three new ways to distribute non letters. All front, all end, or front and end. The number of possible structures just doubled.

Personally I tend to prefer two relatively short pronounceable pieces, or a longer psuedo word, with or without a second short pronounceable piece. Of course there should be mixed case included. I also want at least one and maybe several digits plus at least one punctuation and or symbol. I don't care if two alpha strings run together. What have I told you about my passwords. Nothing useable. I like pronounceable non dictionary alpha strings, of varying length, arranged to take advantage of all posssible non letter locations.

One of the reasons I've always used gets rather than posts on my web password generators is that you can find any combination of web selectable options, then bookmark that selection, so the next time you retrieve that page, you get your custom pattern. For most of GeodSoft.com's existence, there has not been an SSL option on the password generator. I, however, have always had a personal copy that I could run in complete security on my development site, normaly on my desktop. As long as I've had GeodSoft.com, I don't believe I have ever used a password that came from one of the displayed sample patterns. Each year or so I change to and entirely different password structure.

Some of this is not documented in the comments or elsewhere (unless you want to pick through my entire Good and Bad passords section which is about 80 printed pages), so you may want to bookmark this particular section. To make this simple, this section has been given the internal page anchor name of "webpassgen". Just click on this link https://geodsoft.com/whatsnew.htm#webpassgen, then bookmark this page and you will always come right back to this section, no matter how many entries are added above. If this page becomes whatwas4.htm, then you will need to update your bookmark, but hopefully by then you will be past needing to reference any documentation on GeodSoft.com.

May 30, 2012: Updated Terms of Use and Copyright: I've made many and major changes to the terms of use. Any one who has ever copyied, distributed, or published material from GeodSoft.com or is thinking about doing so needs to read the GeodSoft Publication License very carefully, multiple times.

For the VERY MANY off you who have stolen GeodSoft content over the years or have borrowed with some mimimal casual reference where it came from, my suggestion is that you run and hide as fast as you can. By that I mean take my content off your site as fast as you can. I've been following copright law since 1971. Unless you are an intellectual property lawyer, you probably don't know as much about copyright law as I do. I've worked with many lawyers; none have known as much about coyright law as I do. I've also followed contract law as it pertains to software and web sites. In Feb. 2007 I used the Terms of Use to place a shrinkwrap license around GeodSoft.com. If you used the site, you agreed to it's terms of use. If you copied or distributed anything from GeodSoft.com you agree fully to the GeodSoft Publication License. By looking at a web page, can the site authors hold you to something unreasonable; probably not. By copying and putting on your website copyrighted material, can you be held to a contract you never read. Absolutely.

My publication license has always had a slightly tricky set of clauses. First it could be updated at any time. Second if you did not abide by the letter of the license at the time you used my content, you agreed to whatever the most recent license says. Guess what the new license says. You agree to pay me one dollar per day per word ($2 if you have ads on your site), from the time you violated my license until we sign a binding contract that you will never again use my content. I'm hoping to get rich.

You also have agreed to pay all my legal, court and any other related expenes.

Actually I think I have everyone from late 2001. Pretty much the same reasoning applies but only to pages that I allowed to be copied, but that is just about everythihng but the CGI scripts (which cannot be copied). Unfortuantely (for me) there is a small ambiguity in the pre 2007 license. Because of one word it's possible to read it as meaning something other that the current license but I don't know what, and in the context of the full sentence, despite the unecessary word, I see no other plausible reading. Lawyers and judges can be awfully picky. Still, I hope to get even richer.

Why bother to take my stuff down now? Duh? Once a page is down, after a few weeks to months it will disappear from the search engines. When that happens how am I supposed to find you? Like I said hide. I'll be much more interested in anyone who thinks they can keep getting away with this with impunity. I've had pirated pages taken down, and a few years later they are back up. Not appreciated.

Now I want blood. Green blood. Money. I never made anything off this site. Now I think I can.

For those of you who are honest and have a desire to use any GeodSoft.com content on your site, my license is complex but far from impossible. The main thing is you have save a copy of the Termos of Use page and digitally sign it as well as put the right copyright notice on any material from my site. You have to understand the difference between mirroing a page as it looks on GeodSoft.com, and using it's unique contents in a different style.

You also should read the whatwas3.htm page on Terms of Use down to "Password Generator has gotten a few tweeks." You especially need to read this section if it's not entirely clear what I mean when I talk about digital signatures and digiatally signing a copy of the Terms of Use. If you cannot find, install, and use GnuPG (it's available for Windows, Macs, and all Unix variants) you can never legally copy a GeodSoft page for use on another site.

Actually that's not true. You can put the right copyright notice on and follow the other terms. If you don't digitally sign the Terms of Use as they exist at the time you first use my content, yor are agreeing to be bound by whatever Terns of Use and GeodSoft Publication License changes I may make in the future. As I've just shown, I could again, at some time in the future add a very unpleasant surprise. There is nothing that says it must be limited to people who have cheated me. I hope I'm a decent enough person I never do anything like that, but is that a risk you wish to take?

The Terms of Use section of whatwas3.htm covers the basics of digital signatures. Actually a better command than the suggested gpg --clearsign is "gpg -b" or "gpg --detach-sign" which mean the same thing on most systems. The --clearsign will work since an HTML document is text, but since the --clearsign wraps the HTML in its own headers, the page will no longer display as an HTML page and it will only be possible to read it as HTML source. The -b or --detach-sign option creates a completely separate signature file without touching the original "signed" file. It verifies just as easily but still works as an HTML document. I knew less about digital signatures in 2007. Neither file can be modified in any way. Save both to a CD or DVD, and veirfy on the optical media after it's made. AND WINDOWS USERS don't worry, there is a nice little GUI application with the Windows version so you never need to see a command line.

What are the other changes? Too many and not important enough to talk about. Just read the Terms of Use. And Please DO NOT send me any emails asing if you can use this or that from my site. Read the Terms. If after 3 tries there is something you don't understand, then write me and be sure your questions are very specific and let mey know you are very fmiliar with the Terms of Use.

May 28, 2012: Updated copyright notice on all pages: I finally got around to udating all pages with the current copyright notice from the Terms of Use and Copyright page. Just as I was finishing I found a "lost" page I'd written, but never quite finished or posted. As this will go in the Opinion secthion that has few subdirectories, it means the navigation aids will need to be updated on every page of the site. I groaned. I realized, even though I have a script that can standardize all ".htm" pages on the site in a single operation, it is still tedious to upload all the pages directory by directory. I thought about it and decided that I could write a script that would update all ".htm" pages and upload them as a single operation, in about the same amount of time as another site wide update. I have not written this yet, but will before I upload the recently found, "lost" page. In the future this should help avoid discrpencies between the Terms of Use and Copyright page and the copyright notices on the individual pages.

May 25, 2012: New Password Cracking Times Calculator: This new calculator allows you to enter, cracks or encryptons per second, one or more character set sizes, and lower and upper lengths of passwords to be calculated. The most useful part is being able to set the cracks per second. You can say I'm crazy and have way overestimated what a fast desktop can do, and this talk about hacker controlled networks is all fantasy and no one can really access more than 10 computers. You can then see what kind of password you need based on your assumptions.

If you are only interested in strong passwords you might eliminate all the character sets but 95, and if you know you will never use a space in a password, might change the 95 to 94. On the other hand, you may like pronounceable all lower case passwords and want to see what it will take to get the level of protection you think you need with such passwords. In this case you would enter 26 as the only character set size. You may think no password less than 8 or 9 charcters is even worth considering and up the lower limit so you don't see a bunch of irrelevnt data.

You might be very cautions and want no one, even NSA, to be able to crack your passwords. You can do some research into the power of the fastest computers available as well as distributed networks. I think it is a pretty good bet that whatever computer is fastest, NSA has several, or the equivallent of several. The USA used to spend more on defense than the next 20 some countries combined; in 2013 it was down to the next 5 or 6 contries combined. NSA occupies a special place in our defense and security system. Unlike the CIA they are not prevented from operating domestically. Unlike the FBI they are super high tech and very much into everything related to computers, networks, and electronic technology. It's quite reasonable to assume they have more computing power than any other agency, institution, or organazition in the world, and they are not about to tell anyone what that capacity is, and that probably includes the Congress and the President. Is it 4 orders of magnitude over my number? That is probabably way low. How about 6 or 8 or 10?

What are the best estimates as to how much computing power can be assembled by a single institution? If there is such an estimate, NSA is probably close. You can crank up the cracks per second until you reach something like the total estimated world wide computing power, at which point you finally have a number that is almost certainly way too high. I made a wild guestimate of world wide computing resources and came up with a number that is almost exactly 10 orders of magnitude over my single desktop number. If this number is at all close to reality, then we can probably cap NSA somewhere around 8 orders of magnitude, which would give them about 1% of all the world's computing power. Somewhere between 7 and 8?

I used the calculator with an 8 order of magnitude cracking speed increase, and a 94 character set, and came up with 5.67 centuries for a 13 character password and 53.3 millennia for a 14 character password. So I think 13 or 14 characters from the full 94 visible and typeable ASCII characters should be safe for the next few years. I'd be pretty comfortable with 12 characters and a 6 year crack time for most passwords. Besides avoiding anything that might resemble a dictionary or programable dictionary (the crackers would need a fair idea of what structure you might be using) attacks, I'd avoid passwords that started with an "!" (exclamation mark) or "e" (lower case e), which are respectively the first visible character in the ASCII collating sequence, and the by far most used character in the English language. (t, a, and o are the next three most common letters, assuming my analysis of 6 classic English novels is relevant; certainly examining contemporary non fiction would dramatically affect symbol and some punctuation frequency, but I'd bet the comma still wins by a large margin. It would probably change uppercase frequency, especially the over representation of "I" due to dialog.).

The point of the calculator is you can enter any number(s) which seems plausible to you to see what kind of passwords you need. Of course if you use a very high cracks per second number you will need long passwords. It has recently been brought to my attention that long passwords, 15 characters and up, do not need to be complicated. I've been convinced. Accordingly I've been working on my password evaluator. Hopefully more on that soon. Then I hope to focus on the password generator. I've already made some big changes there that I've not yet posted. Back to long passwords. Unless you have some extraordinary memory power, you cannot remember all your passwords, including the infrequently used ones. I don't even know how many active passwords I have, but I'd estimate well over 50 and maybe 100. So how do you securely record all your passwords?

I started to try to answer that and realized I was heading into an area where there would be passionate supporters of very different approaches. I will say this, any password stored on a network connected computer is at best, approximately as vulnerable as as the system's password file which may be quite vulnerable or pretty secure. Nearly everyone says never write a password on a piece of paper. I've said it elsewhere and will repeat it here, that is BS. No network hacker will ever get near that piece of paper. Now I fully agree that post-its or similar storage near your computer is very dangerous, especially in an office. On the other hand, an unlabled piece of paper in a filing cabinet, in a book on a bookshelf, in a local safe, or in your purse or wallet is a different matter. I think the last two are among the safest places in an office, a high quality physical safe is relatively safe anywhere (depending on who has access) and the others are pretty good in a home. Someone has to get into your house and have time to search it. If they are in your house illegally they are probably grabing your computer and other electronic goodies as well as any jewlery or silver or other physical valuables laying arournd. Passwords may not be your biggest concern when you get home and learn what's happened.

As long as you think it through, you are probably the best judge whether you can protect your passwords better on your PC (certainly more convenient with a variety of products) or in a physical location. Do you work in a cubicle or an office you can lock securely? If so does a cleaning crew have access at night? At home, do you have a large family with lots of friends who are constantly in and out, almost as if they lived there, or do you live quietly alone with few guests? If you honestly think about it, only you are likely to understand what kind of physical threats you face and how this might compare with the risks of a network intrusion.

May 24, 2012: Recalculated the Cracking Times Table on the Password Cracking Basics page: It's been 5 years since I last recalculated password cracking times. Computers have come a long way in 5 years. I don't believe you can buy a new computer with a single core processor anymore. When I started writing about passwords, multi-processor systems were limited to high end servers. Now I have a laptop with a fast Intel i7 processor that would be comparable to a supercomputer from I'm not sure when. It does'nt even get warm normally because I rarely push it to more than 5 - 10% of it's processing capability for more than a few seconds at a time.

When I last recalculated in 2007, I relied on information that was already dated. I increased my cracks per second on which all calculations depend by only 10 times for 7 years. That's well under the increase predicted by Moore's law. This time I used only Moore's law: processor speeds double every 18 months. The figure I came up with was a 256 times increase since 2000. I rounded this to 250. The new table uses a cracking rate 25 times higher than the one I published in 2007.

On the cracking front much more has changed since 2007 than processor speed. In 2007 I surveyed the cracking tools and saw nothting that appeared significantly different than 2001. Some tools were network ready but I think that was already true in 2001. This means a cracker can distribute the cracking calculations to every computer over which they have control. If they are using unused computers at night in a library, college computer lab, or business (which are often left on 24 hours a day) they can run them at full speed. If they are hacked computers which may be in use, they will want to use only part of the processor capablity so as not to alert a potential user on the machine. There are few problems that are better suited to distributed computing than cracking passwords.

The times I provided are for a single fast desktop. There is no way I can estimate how many computers any potential cracker may have availale. If the cracker is good and serious 100 is quite likely and a 1000 or more not unlikely. If you want to be safe think about reducing my listed cracking times by 1000 times or more. There should be a big difference for a password used on an infrequently used, throwaway email account and one used on a bank or other financial institution.

I don't think the introduction of multi core computers has in any way invalidated Moore's law but there has been an effect. Homes and businesses have upgraded to mid range computers that are now genenerally faster than they really need to be. There has been a huge increase in computing power in environments that have traditionally had very weak network security. I believe Microsoft has done a pretty good job on improving the security of its software, so home and small business computers are better protected than they were several years ago. On the other hand the attacker's tools, techniques, and processing power have also increased. There is little reason to think the average home or small business computer cannot be cracked by any knowlegeable and determined cracker.

On the cracking tool's side, they take full advantage of multi core machines now as well as networking. Perhaps the most important development on the cracking tool side is the introduction of programmed dictionaries which I first described in 2001. In 2007 I was surprised not to find any cracking tools using them. I figured user's password sophistication had not increased and the crackers saw no reason to spend time on these. Now at least one cracking tool is using a programmed dictionary to create passwords like those created by a popular pasword generator (not mine). Now that the cracking side has seen the benefit of programmed dictionaries, any password structure that can be described, can now be fed to a cracking tool. What have traditionally been very good, but not random passwords, are now coming into the sights of crackers.

Probably the biggest development on the cracking side is that it has changed from the province of dedicated hobbyists seeking recognition of peers to a mainstream crimanal activity. Virtuallly all financial transactions that were once done by physical interacton or phone, are now networked. It's ineveitable organized crime would follow where the money is, and is often easier to get than in the physical world and certainly with less risk. Criminals can operate out of Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, or South America, or anywhere where they might find lax computer laws and no extradition treaties with North America or Western European. They can hack networks of home and business computers to obtain massive computing resources, and attack any web site in the world that looks like a good target. There is a good chance if they are successful, their identities will not be learned and they will not be persued by legal authorities in the jurisdictions where the crimes were committed.

When creating passwords for various sites remember no one is really looking for your password (unless you are someone very special) but they are looking for all the passwords, or as many as they can get in a reasonable time. Someone who has gotten far enough to get the password file for a large financial institution is going to spend a lot of time on that file. I mean months with lots of compututing resources, such as a 1000 networked computers. If you want to keep people, masquerading as you, out of your accounts, you need really strong passwords. I'm talking about at least 12 characters from the entire 95 character keyboard set or 17 character lowercase letters. I've been convinced that that 15 character and longer passwords should be seriously considered. Because they are so much stronger than 12 character passwords, the rules for forming them can be much more relaxed, making them easier to remember and type.

With the access required to steal a password file, intruders could do much without any passwords, but the vulnerablity that let them in may not remain open. Getting valid passords gives them continued access. From your perspective, it looks a lot different if $10,000 dollars disappears from your account, and your bank has no record of the transaction, versus them having a record of "you" logging in, answereing a security question (because "you" logged in from an IP that is not your normal login IP), and transferring $10,000 to someone else. Until it is proven to be their security breech that was the cause of the problem, you're likely to find you are on the hook for the $10,000, because the bank's terms of use will almost surely say that you are responsible for anything that is done with your account and password.

February 28, 2012: I recently recieved a request to include the Computer Time Synchronization section in another work. I said OK as long as the Terms of Use were followed, but asked Why? When I wrote that section no computer that I knew of came with network time synchronization softare installed and active. Getting Windows and a mixture of Unix and Open source computers to synchronize time was not trivial. Today nearly all computers sold have time synchronization software installed and most have it on by default. Today there is little need for such a section. Products have come and gone. The options availble to ntpd on my primary Linux desktop are unrecognizable from those I described. As a result, I have reviewed the pages in that section, and placed a warning or note at the top of each page indicating that I belive the page may have obsolete information or still be relevant.

I have also rearranged the home page How-To sections based on what I think are most likely to be still relevant and up-to-date. Very dated sections like Time Synchronization are lowest.

February 28, 2012: I've removed the obsolete short section I posted in early Jan. 2010 on figure skating and Kim Yu Na.

- What Was New: Early 2007
- What Was New: Jan. 2001 - Nov. 2003
- What Was New: July - Dec. 2000
- What Was New: April - June 2000

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Copyright © 2000 - 2014 by George Shaffer. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in https://geodsoft.com/terms.htm (or https://geodsoft.com/cgi-bin/terms.pl). These terms are subject to change. Distribution is subject to the current terms, or at the choice of the distributor, those in an earlier, digitally signed electronic copy of https://geodsoft.com/terms.htm (or cgi-bin/terms.pl) from the time of the distribution. Distribution of substantively modified versions of GeodSoft content is prohibited without the explicit written permission of George Shaffer. Distribution of the work or derivatives of the work, in whole or in part, for commercial purposes is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained from George Shaffer. Distribution in accordance with these terms, for unrestricted and uncompensated public access, non profit, or internal company use is allowed.