Raider of the Lost Vinyl

Raiders of the Lost Ark was — OMG — thirty years ago. By now, I think it is the years, and not just the mileage!

Before DVD’s with Dolby Digital, a small number of us had LaserDiscs with digital audio, but mostly there was VHS hi-fi, and before that VHS had linear track stereo. For decades prior to that, there were condensed audio versions of movies on records. My family had The Wizard of OZ on an LP that came out after the movie hit big on TV in the late 50’s. Raiders of the Lost Ark had the movie on a record, and you’ll find it on the audio player. What I like about this, besides the great sound, is how well the entire movie is told without visuals, in a third of its running time.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/May/Raiders_A.mp3,https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/May/Raiders_B.mp3|titles=Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Movie on Record Side A,Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Movie on Record Side B]

Note: Sapito — “Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip” — was an early appearance by Alfred “Doctor Octopus” Molina.

Perfect!_@#$%^&*()-=Passw0rds

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to keep up with Steve Gibson’s Security Now! podcasts. I’ve been doing that, and last week Gibson had a particularly valuable discussion on strong passwords. I’ll embed the part of the podcast of interest, called Password Haystacks.

[audio:http://media.grc.com/Padded-Passwords.mp3|titles=Security Now! with Steve Gibson]

Gibson offers an excellent method for coming up with your own, relatively short, passwords that are suitable for portable devices. He also has copy-and-paste passwords that offer the ultimate in security.