Is it possible to put a password on an archive of any type that can be set to expire and have that expiration date hold up if you send it to someone else you may well be using some other OS?

This interests me because I could have use for such a thing if I wanted to send something to someone but didn't want them to simply pass the archive on to a bunch of other people without having to open it and then repack it.

Why would this come up? That is kind of still a question in my mind. Was a passing thought that I just can't seem to find information on that I really understand. So just call it curiosity. At least for now.

Not that is practically enforceable. If it can be decrypted at all, they could just replicate your data in an archive that doesn't self-destruct.

The only way to truly accomplish this is by either giving them air-gapped hardware that you then take back once you're finished showing them whatever you want, or by having trustworthy friends who will voluntarily destroy whatever you give them after they look at it.

sheybey wrote:

Not that is practically enforceable. If it can be decrypted at all, they could just replicate your data in an archive that doesn't self-destruct.

The only way to truly accomplish this is by either giving them air-gapped hardware that you then take back once you're finished showing them whatever you want, or by having trustworthy friends who will voluntarily destroy whatever you give them after they look at it.

I understand that. Just got wondering if I created an archive that had a time limit on the password if that limit would stand up after emailing the thing. Just can't seem to understand how that would work at all. But it is what seemed, on a rather dodgy site that I can't even remember, to be suggested as a good idea. All I remember is that it was when I first started using Ubuntu in 98 or maybe a bit later in 99 and was looking into password protected archives.

Was one of the lines of research that helped me learn to sort out sites that actually knew more than I did from those that were well written by people with little or no knowledge of the actual subject. The internet is full of such sites on just about any subject you can think of.

You can find some really, really bad advice from townies turned "homesteaders" on raising and using livestock. Dairy cow screeds are highly amusing to people that actually know something about the critters.

Blacksmithing comes and goes in popularity on the internet. Really is lot of good info out there about it. But what most people want is a simple solution to complex procedures and there are a lot of people that will tell you, at length, about some short cut twaddle. Some is just plain dangerous. The rest will give you a result that may be better than one you dream up on your own. (hint really don't quench red hot steel in motor oil - particularly with any portion of your body above said oil - is pretty flammable- popular with Smiths that teach as a demonstration of how to burn things down - or just for a fun way to get rid of used motor oil when finished with some joint project with a bunch of beer drinking Smiths).

Auto repair "advice" is also quite amusing on a lot of sites.

Had trouble sleeping the other night and it popped into my head for some reason.

If it would then it would be good for one thing I can think of. Irritating the piss out of people mainly.

Obviously anyone opening the thing and saving whatever is in it would then have the stuff for any use they wanted.

The only way I can think this would be possible is by using technologies like flash or java.
Either way, like Sam stated, it is highly impractical as it requires the archive to be an executable (so you will have to code to get it working) and it is depending on the used technology being installed on the destination machine.

Great. That is a load off my mind.

Doesn't take much to be a heavy load.

ranchhand wrote:

But what most people want is a simple solution to complex procedures and there are a lot of people that will tell you, at length, about some short cut twaddle. Some is just plain dangerous.

That is really well put, and pretty much universally applicable. Is true for pretty much anything you do with your hands from cooking to building nuclear reactors, over medicine and health care, through relationships between people, all the way to politics. 😉

How do you do politics with your hands?

And then how would you be politically correct with your hands?

Leppie wrote:

How do you do politics with your hands?

Ok, I've taken a comma out of that sentence, so it is hopefully less ambigous. Smartarse.

And then how would you be politically correct with your hands?

That's easy: pinch both women and men on the bum. 😀

Hmm, not sure about pinching people on the bum...

There's some really gross folks out there.

True. 😁