First rant of the year, let's do this motherfuckers...
Okay so, just as I was logging in to Windows 7 64 (yeah, I'm one of the cool kids now...) this morning, I noticed the word "Password" in dim gray (grey? wtf is the difference anyway, who's the asshole that made up two spellings for the same damn color...) letters sitting there right before I typed in my password, which is always there, but for some reason it caught my eye today.
So... why the fuck do we call them passwords? Let's take a look at the word "password".
password [pas-wurd, pahs-]
–noun
| 1. | a secret word or expression used by authorized persons to prove their right to access, information, etc. |
| 2. | a word or other string of characters, sometimes kept secret or confidential, that must be supplied by a user in order to gain full or partial access to a multiuser computer system or its data resources. |
Okay, so by definition, there you have it (source: dictionary.com). But, it still doesn't fucking make sense Password. Since when is meowmeow69 a word? Or 666bustanut? Or Colt45? (and two zig-zags, baby that's all we need)
In case you haven't noticed, the restrictions on passwords are getting tighter for pretty much any website, which is bullshit. Back in the nineties/early 2000 (yeah we had internet then, barely), you could use "Bob" as a password (although most had to be six letters). Now, your password MUST be at least 8 letters, MUST have a number, and sometimes MUST have a CAPITAL letter as well (this is more rare, but mark my word (and my word is good - look at my Ads rant), one day it will be required everywhere - and as anal as these people that make these rules are, they'll make it so that that capital letter can NOT be the first letter of the password). And you know what else sucks, a lot of times when making a password, you have to fill out a fucking CAPTCHA as well! So what happens if you fuck up the CAPTCHA while setting your password? The page resets and clears the password field, making you type that fucker in (twice, mind you!) again and hope you get a CAPTCHA that you don't need a degree in graphic arts to be able to read.
So anyway, I got a bit sidetracked, but the main point is why the fuck do we call them passwords, when currently, most of them aren't allowed to be actual words? They have to be words + numbers. Why don't we call them passkeys? Or passcodes? Yeah, passcodes... that would be better and make more sense.
ENTER PASSCODE: PEN1S
ERROR: Passcode is too short.
"FUCK!"
Isn't that so much better than password? If one day Bill Gates woke up and was like "You know what, Boots is right... *snaps fingers, a developer runs in 'Yes Massa?'* "Password is out. It's Passcode now. Change it." and they pushed out a Windows update that changed only that one word at the login screen (assuming you have a password set), you know within a month nearly every website and game in the world would follow suit. Except maybe those F2P MMO's that spew out of Aeria and Nexon (and a slew of others)... It may take them some time to catch up.