[conspire] Password permutations (was: Correction)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Texx (texxgadget at gmail.com):

> Re Ricks not explaining how he does his passwords:
> Indeed you should NOT tell us how you do it.

You betcha.  I could suggest various way to do passwords, but IMO 
people ought to work out what best suits them and their needs.


> On the third day, I forgot my password to the password manager.

Yeah, ouch.

Some things are so vital to not lose that they are best entrusted to
someone (a well-selected someone) in a sealed envelope that is to be
opened only in particular specified situations.

> Regarding Ricks & Pauls posts, I see a conflict.
> Is it number of pitibilities per digit to the power of the number of digits?
> Or is it number of digits to the power of the number of possibilities per
> digit?

I wasn't going to be a jerk and correct Paul's transposition of those
things.

Consider a password consisting of two lower-case letters from the
regular 26-letter Latin alphabet used for English.  (I'm being pedantic
on that point in part because I'm Norwegian-American.  The Norwegian and
Danish alphabets share a 29-letter alphabet that's like English's except
for three additional letters at the end.)

The first letter can be one of 26 choices.  The second letter can be one
of 26 choices.  The total number of password permutations is thus 26 ^ 2.

If there were _eight_ character slots in the password, and each could be
one of the 26 letters of the English-flavour Latin alphabet, then the
number of possible password permutations would be 26 ^ 8.

Und so weiter....