Password Hell...Again!

Passwords are, without a doubt, a convenient derivation from the security device from ancient times: token showing.  Yes, in very old civilizations, to recognize a member of a particular clan, a token had to be shown.

Tokens, however, were not safe; one can lose the object and, therefore, be taken as an intruder and a potential menace (with all the undesirable consequences for the person).

Thus, it was only logical to substitute the material object by a coded word that, as everyone knows, has the particularity that it is sometimes difficult to remember...especially if you have many passwords to remember and financial institutions ask you to change them at least once a month.

In my multi-boot ZaReason Strata, I have seven different Linux distros.  Somehow I managed to remember the different user and root passwords for each one of them until I updated OpenMandriva Lx 2014.1 to 2014.2 (the Scion).  Maybe because of stress, or aging, or whatever reason, the password for OpenMandriva Lx 2014.2 would not stick to my memory.  I had to reinstall the Scion twice because I forgot the user password and ended up locked out from my account.

Well, I just finished reinstalling it AGAIN.  Yes, that makes it three times.   The funny thing is that, the former two times, I was sure to have chosen a password that I could remember easily.  It seems that it was easier to forget it.

Then I read this comic strip.

I tested this human-friendly method and it really works!  Simple and effective.

One can but imagine the future problems if they actually substitute passwords with facial gestures, secret taps on touch surfaces, or biometrics.  Scary.