At 05:40 AM 3/6/2006, you wrote:
> > 30 characters is IMO total overkill. The root password on one of 
> the servers
> > I admin is 20, but other than that the longest password I use 
> regularly is 12
> > characters, and pronounceable.
>
>I forget exactly what the context was, but a local college mailing list where
>I used to work recently had a discussion about password lengths.  The gist
>was that at a certain length (?14 chars?), the password became exponentially
>more secure, as Windows used a different method to store/encode it.

If your password contains upper and lower case, punctuation and 
numbers, the possible number of combinations is quite large for a 
relatively short password. If you limit yourself to numbers only, or 
lower case alphabet characters, the password has to be much longer to 
achieve the same level of protection.

Keep smilin'

Art 

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