You might think from my earlier blogs that I don't spend all that much time on the Internet.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I write this blog on Google Docs, so I can work on it wherever and whenever.  I have a Google Chrome browser up at all times with seven Google services always open.  I have Firefox up at all times to handle RSS feeds and Google searches.  I regularly seek information from the three sources of all knowledge (Google, Wikipedia and YouTube).  Take my browsers away and I stumble upon this Earth.

Internal IT departments faced almost no competition in the mainframe era and most of the client/server era.   This inevitably led to problems as competition was introduced and at least some backlash from their previously captive audience.  This is not unique to IT people, but just look around to other examples such as the 1983 breakup of the AT&T monopoly or the introduction of significant foreign competition in the steel and automobile industries.  Initial efforts attempted to put the world back to the "good old days", then moved on to casting as much fear, uncertainty and doubt on the newcomers and finally reducing prices to hold back the flood waters.  None address the fundamental lack of skills and perspective required to survive.

There is a light at the end of the password tunnel.  The only question is when will the endless craziness of longer and more complex passwords finally be tamed, for surely, either by reason or futility, it will end.

Surely you've seen the current craze, eight character passwords containing a combination of lowercase, uppercase, numbers and special characters.  Let's say for the sake of argument that this is truly needed and worth every bit of aggravation.  How long will it last?  The basic math says about 10 years, given that  Moore's Law holds and computing gets one-half as expensive every eighteen months, and that there are about 80 possible characters to choose from when building a password.   To keep the same relative immunity, in 10 years it will take a 9 character password, in 20 years a 10 character passwords, etc., until such time that users revolt, or hopefully, start to question why in this world of marvelous technological innovation they must increasingly carry the security burden.