and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

I don't find it particularly surprising that, in this day and age of ubiquitous computing, people are getting fed up with passwords. We already have enough to memorize - from SSNs to PINs to umpteen telephone numbers (if you don't have a cellphone like me and therefore don't have everyone on speed dial). And now on top of it all we need to remember passwords for online banking, passwords for work computers, passwords for home computers, passwords to read the new york times online, passwords to get on blogger even! Cripes it's enough to make anyone cry out in frustration.

The older generation - you know, that more responsible and organized one you keep hearing about - they seem to try to handle it in a more physical way. Both my dad and my uncle have sheets of paper posted right next to their computer screens with upteen login/password pairs for thier various investment sites, web-banking, and tax stuff. I've seen this in a lot of different people's houses and although it's handy it certainly defeats the purpose of the passwords in the first place!

Then again, all my friends just memorize their passwords.. and by passwords I mean password. Singular. They just use the same one for everything from friendster to citibank. Again.. not quite secure.

Passwords, in general, are pretty flawed. They present a security model based on randomness but they are generated by humans who are trying to remember them and therefore are picking far from random sequences of alphanumerics. They choose birthdates and anniversaries. They choose pat names and girlfriend names and car names. In short, they pick very non-random sequences of alphanumerics.

bummer.

People tend to laugh at the sillyness of star trek type technology such as emerging thumb-print scans and retina imaging but perhaps we should check that guffaw. Maybe it's not such a bad idea. I'm unable to find the link right now but there has been recent mention of cheap and fairly affordable thumb-print security scanners for personal PCs. Perhaps PCs could incorporate this technology right into the keyboard in the future. PDA's with touch screen scanners. Cell phones with voice pattern checking. Cars with retinal checks.

Imagine never having to remember a password again.