So hey, I totally get wanting passwords to be unguessable by others. But there's a line past which they become totally unguessable by the owners, which I think is the point at which it becomes ineffective.

Ooh - windchill in Chicago is now 9 degrees F.

Actuall temperature is 25 - it's just very windy.

But there's a line past which they become totally unguessable by the owners, which I think is the point at which it becomes ineffective.

What's the policy in question?

It was very windy in Simi yesterday. Made it feel mid 70s. Huh. It's not rained much this November. My first two Novembers come back to me as a whole lot of rain.

8 characters, one capital, one lowercase, one number, one non-alphanumeric.

Also, this new system my university has just implemented is a freaking nightmare.

tommyrot, the company that manufactures the Rabbit with Big Pointy Teeth plush also makes a "Gilly" plush.

Oh cool - I didn't realize they were the same company.

I have a similar password problem. It's easier to remember if you start it with an uppercase and end with a punctuation like Emi1y!

That's the same one we have at my office -- you just need a system. How often do you have to change them? Me, I do something like:

• pick a word you'll remember
• capitalise one letter of it
• put a period between two of the syllables
• replace one of the letters with a digit, and you can increment that digit if you have to change the password regularly

So I could end up with something like Am1lio.ration. Or whatever.

8 characters, one capital, one lowercase, one number, one non-alphanumeric.

One of my companies has this policy. But it can't be any longer than 8 letters, either. Mandatory password cycles result in a lot of swearing from me.

Yeah, I mean, I guess they're right, but it's still annoying. I have a string of numbers I liked to use (with letters interspersed, if need be), but it doesn't have enough different digits for the New Systems.