Your computer, you should have total control over it.

[methomps]

Originally Posted by Clarity

As a rule of thumb, I create as complicated a password as the given site will allow.

I wish I knew this a month ago when I dedicated myself to figuring out your password. There is 2 hours a day for 30 days of my life I'll never get back.

I was about to try your suggestion until I realized that I use several different computers.

But I will pass on this link to a couple people. Great thread, btw

[daddyphatsacs]

Ive got a question for you computer gurus.

On my wife's computer the CD drive isn't working. I will push the eject button and it will open, but when I stick a disk in there it won't read the disk. Sometimes the eject button will not even work. Anyhow, I checked to make sure the drive wasn't uninstalled, and it was not.

The crazy thing is that the disk drive was opening and closing for no reason a few months ago, which I thought was probably a virus. I ran several scans on it (although not with the best virus scanning software) and nothing surfaced. I have searched the web for information in regards to this, but have had no luck.

Any suggestions?

[BrutusMaximus]

Probably just the drive going bad. As a longshot though, try replacing the IDE cable on it, that could cause it not to read. If I had to put money on it though, I'd bet the drive is [censored]ting out.

[MililaniBuckeye]

Originally Posted by Clarity

...You could just as easily have it generate something of 8 characters, made up of just lower and upper-case letters, numbers, and basic symbols. Something like;

s6:ay$D(

That's 53 bits. Very secure. Less scary looking. You could even memorize those. I have about a dozen of them permanently engrained on my brain from past use, and would use those as a more secure alternative when I didn't use (and now I'm giving away old password habits, but it doesn't really matter) my rifle numbers from Parris Island and Camp LeJeune, or pistol number from Kaneohe Bay, which are only 24 bit in strength. Not so secure. Particularly since I used and re-used these everywhere for many years.

³ - To put that in perspective, we were generated passwords around 53-bit strength when working on DoD computers in ultra-secure SCIFs for NSA/SIGINT purposes. That was early 90's, I'm sure they use something stronger now (although 53 is pretty damn secure itself), but the point is that 508-bit is almost funny...

The Air Force is moving from a minimum 8-character password to 12-character password, requiring a minimum of 2-each of upper case, lower case, number digit, and special characters. And that's for just every day plain John and Jane Doe network users. I had just changed my old password to O$U37M!ch21 (easy to remember ) about two weeks prior, but had to change it again because it was only 11, and not 12, characters long. I was not happy.

[NJ-Buckeye]

Originally Posted by MililaniBuckeye

The Air Force is moving from a minimum 8-character password to 12-character password, requiring a minimum of 2-each of upper case, lower case, number digit, and special characters...

I can understand why they would do this.. but hopefully they have a very easy password reset because NO ONE will remember their passwords.. folks will start writing them down and pasting them to their desks again...

[sandgk]

Originally Posted by NJ-Buckeye

I can understand why they would do this.. but hopefully they have a very easy password reset because NO ONE will remember their passwords.. folks will start writing them down and pasting them to their desks again...

At our workplace we have to change the password every 2-3 months.
Password length is minimum 10, must contain mixed upp-lower, cannot have known word string in it, must contain at least one number and use at least one punctuation mark or character from Shift-Number range.

And it is hard to avoid falling into the following trap...

Devise a password meeting all the above criteria .. say a mnemonic with an inserted numerical character and one punctuation mark.

Then --

When the system asks for an updated password ...

Use the original string -- just substituting one punctuation mark (say a comma) for the original (say a backslash).

I know folks who do just this to create a new passsword. Always struck me as an invitation to a hacker with a talent for substitution ciphers. Always struck me the system should come back with -- too many characters in new password match old password!