A few days ago, 4.5-year-old Eric and I went shopping to a local Staples store. The boy has been using computers for half his life, and enjoys trying out the others on display. He was foiled by all the Vista log-on screens that asked for a sales guy password.

Well, he was not foiled for long. As he poked around the logon window, he came across the helpful “password hint” popup, into which the store staff had helpfully placed some text. Eric said “let’s try that!”, typed it in, and of course it turned out to be the real cleartext password. He poked around the broken-into machine a bit then moved on.

I reported both of us to the nearby cashier, as criminal and accomplice.