Editing Talk:2700: Account Problems
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:Is TheusafBot ofline or something? Generally it handles this sort of stuff pretty well--[[User:Mapron01|Mapron01]] ([[User talk:Mapron01|talk]]) 01:44, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | :Is TheusafBot ofline or something? Generally it handles this sort of stuff pretty well--[[User:Mapron01|Mapron01]] ([[User talk:Mapron01|talk]]) 01:44, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
+ | ::Theusafaggotry couldn't code a bot properly if his life depended on it. <small> -- [[User:172.71.150.169|172.71.150.169]] ([[User talk:172.71.150.169|talk]]) <span style="color:grey; white-space:nowrap;">''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''</span></small> | ||
+ | :::Man, what a pathetic life you must have, that you need to call peopl faggot online and troll to get a shred of attention and entretainment --[[User:Mapron01|Mapron01]] ([[User talk:Mapron01|talk]]) 02:05, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
+ | ::::The fact you even think anyone would actually be insulted to be called that makes it even sadder. --[[User:Mapron01|Mapron01]] ([[User talk:Mapron01|talk]]) 02:17, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
+ | :::::The fact you're replying to yourself calling somebody a troll to say calling people names is sad is possibly the saddest thing in this discussion. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.176|172.71.142.176]] 04:33, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
::I'm pretty sure he is. [[User:Starstar|Starstar]] ([[User talk:Starstar|talk]]) 02:23, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ::I'm pretty sure he is. [[User:Starstar|Starstar]] ([[User talk:Starstar|talk]]) 02:23, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
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I wrote most of the current page after the first paragraph. It's a fairly sloppy first draft that could probably use some editing. Anyone who can should feel free to clean it up. Especially since the page is now protected (I'm not complaining; it was necessary) and so I can't edit it any more. [[User:Equites|Equites]] ([[User talk:Equites|talk]]) 05:57, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | I wrote most of the current page after the first paragraph. It's a fairly sloppy first draft that could probably use some editing. Anyone who can should feel free to clean it up. Especially since the page is now protected (I'm not complaining; it was necessary) and so I can't edit it any more. [[User:Equites|Equites]] ([[User talk:Equites|talk]]) 05:57, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
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Seems to be another Tech issue comic, its a tech issue with Cueball talking to Megan and the tech issue is extremely cursed. Should we add this one?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.22.98|162.158.22.98]] 06:00, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | Seems to be another Tech issue comic, its a tech issue with Cueball talking to Megan and the tech issue is extremely cursed. Should we add this one?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.22.98|162.158.22.98]] 06:00, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
"since there is no sequence of keys he could type that would result in a null terminator" ... I can type a NULL (ASCII 00) just fine in my editor on Linux (ctrl-v ctrl-@, the latter I type as ctrl-shift-2). However, I am not quite sure how to phrase this in the explanation without sounding like "Áctually! ...." [[User:henrikar|Henri]] | "since there is no sequence of keys he could type that would result in a null terminator" ... I can type a NULL (ASCII 00) just fine in my editor on Linux (ctrl-v ctrl-@, the latter I type as ctrl-shift-2). However, I am not quite sure how to phrase this in the explanation without sounding like "Áctually! ...." [[User:henrikar|Henri]] | ||
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The title text is likely a reference to [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/yqof9f/comment/ivrd9ur/ this reddit post]. [[User:Pb|Pb]] ([[User talk:Pb|talk]]) 07:06, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | The title text is likely a reference to [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/yqof9f/comment/ivrd9ur/ this reddit post]. [[User:Pb|Pb]] ([[User talk:Pb|talk]]) 07:06, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
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The only thing is I'm pretty sure it's not terribly difficult to enter a null string character, you just have to know what it is. On a PC with a keyboard that has a number pad, you can press Alt-[Number] to enter special characters using their ASCII code (Alt-65 will get "A", Alt-8 is backspace or delete, I forget which but I think BS, etc. MIGHT need leading zeroes to be 3 digits). The 0 to 31 codes - 32 is space, starting the normal characters - tend to have all the special characters, I think null string is 0? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:14, 20 November 2022 (UTC) | The only thing is I'm pretty sure it's not terribly difficult to enter a null string character, you just have to know what it is. On a PC with a keyboard that has a number pad, you can press Alt-[Number] to enter special characters using their ASCII code (Alt-65 will get "A", Alt-8 is backspace or delete, I forget which but I think BS, etc. MIGHT need leading zeroes to be 3 digits). The 0 to 31 codes - 32 is space, starting the normal characters - tend to have all the special characters, I think null string is 0? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:14, 20 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
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− | + | == Suggested rewrite == | |
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− | ' | + | Hi, I'd like to rewrite the explanation but can't because the page is protected. Can someone with edit access please apply my proposed rewrite below? (Base revision: [[Special:Permalink/299401]]). --[[User:Hddqsb|Hddqsb]] ([[User talk:Hddqsb|talk]]) 12:01, 19 November 2022 (UTC) |
− | + | :As Cueball is showing and handing over his laptop, I don't think the issue is about a website account (where he could probably do a password reset), but his local account on the laptop, of which he is now locked out, and hopes Poneytail can break into it? [[User:Ghen|ghen]] ([[User talk:Ghen|talk]]) 18:28, 19 November 2022 (UTC) | |
− | : | + | ::Good point, updated to avoid referring to "website" specifically. (Another possibility is that it is the password for some installed application.) --[[User:Hddqsb|Hddqsb]] ([[User talk:Hddqsb|talk]]) 07:17, 20 November 2022 (UTC) |
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− | + | [[Cueball]] asks [[Ponytail]] to help him because he can't log in to his account. Having attempted to fix [[:Category:Cueball Computer Problems|Cueball's tech issues]] in the past, Ponytail replies with dread. Cueball promises that "It's a normal problem this time", and Ponytail agrees to look at it. But then Cueball reveals that he has included a {{w|Null character|null string terminator character}} in his password when creating an account and now he can't log in. Ponytail responds in disbelief, and Cueball defends his actions by saying that the instructions said to use special characters. | |
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− | + | In computer systems, every {{w|Character (computing)|"character"}} (letter, digit, punctuation, etc.) is represented as an integer. For example the lowercase letter 'a' is represented as the number 97, and the digit '1' is represented as the number 49 (when using the {{w|ASCII}} character encoding). A {{w|String (computer science)|"string"}} refers to a sequence of characters, and can be used to store arbitrary text (for example names, messages, passwords). Strings can be arbitrarily long, so some mechanism must be used to record their length. One approach is to store the length explicitly; this representation is often called a {{w|String_(computer_science)#Length-prefixed|Pascal string}} (after the programming language {{w|Pascal}}, which uses this representation). Another approach is to mark the end of the string using a specific character, usually the {{w|null character}} (which is represented as the number 0); such strings are called {{w|null-terminated string}}s, and are used by the {{w|C (programming language)|C programming language}}. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. | |
− | + | A limitation of null-terminated strings is that they cannot be used to represent text containing embedded null characters. This is usually not a problem, because normal text never contains null characters. However, if somehow a null character were to end up in the middle of the string, it would cause problems: any code that uses that string would assume this null character marks the end of the string, so the string would effectively be truncated. | |
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− | + | Account registration systems often place requirements on passwords in an attempt to encourage users to pick stronger passwords. For example, they might ask that the password include at least one "special character" (such as <code>!@#$%^&*</code>). Cueball misunderstood this requirement as referring to characters such as the null character (which is more accurately referred to as a {{w|ASCII#Control_characters|control characters}}). Cueball managed to type the null character as part of his password somehow (on some systems it is possible to type the null character using {{w|Null_character#Representation|certain keyboard shortcuts}} such as <code>Ctrl</code>+<code>Space</code>, <code>Ctrl</code>+<code>@</code>, or <code>Ctrl</code>+<code>2</code>), but the software running the registration system was poorly written and could not cope with this – it allowed him to create an account with that password, but then when he tried to log in with the same password the system didn't accept it. | |
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− | :I | + | It's unclear how that particular situation might arise in real software, but here is a similar situation that can easily happen in practice: Suppose a website's registration form allows the user's new password to have up to 20 characters, but due to a programmer error the login page only accepts passwords with up to 18 characters. If the user picks a medium-length password (say with 12 characters), all is well. But if the user picks a password with 20 characters, they will be able to register but they won't be able to log in (which is what happened to Cueball). |
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+ | The title text describes a different situation, where a person's password is "simply" every Unicode character concatenated into a single string. {{w|Unicode}} is a standard for representing characters from many writing systems, and it has 149,186 characters[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Versions] as at the time of this comic (with new characters being added over time). A password consisting of all of those characters would be extremely long; it would be impractical to type by hand, and would be too long for pretty much all account registration systems. (A "codepoint" is the number assigned to a character, and {{w|UTF-8}} is a common encoding system for representing a Unicode codepoint as a sequence of {{w|byte}}s.) | ||
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+ | :There are also cases where page or application is updated with the expectation that old user accounts will still be working, but updated page no longer accepts same characters (or number of characters) than the old one, locking some people out. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 01:35, 20 November 2022 (UTC) | ||
+ | :: Good point. I don't think it's worth adding this to the explanation though ("keep it simple"). --[[User:Hddqsb|Hddqsb]] ([[User talk:Hddqsb|talk]]) 07:20, 20 November 2022 (UTC) |