Our IT guy has been hounding us to make better choices for login passwords into the company information system. More characters, digits, and the use of mixed case is recommended. Like many people, I have accounts in diverse systems that are not connected. Not every system gives me a choice of login names and passwords. Eventually one ends up with a variety of codewords that one has to keep straight. Soon it becomes a little burdensome.
There is a website that purports to provide random character strings. It is Random.org. The operator of the site is a lecturer in computer science at Trinity College and uses atmospheric noise from a group of radios to capture random events that are somehow translated into character strings.
If you need strings of random digits, there is von Neumann’s middle square method. It can be done on a calculator. While it is hard to guarantee that there isn’t some kind of periodicity, von Neumann felt this method suited his needs.
I wonder to what extent the shaky state of internet security depends on the structure and prevalence of Microsoft code? I have no idea.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Have you tried a password manager? Most usually have a built in password generator too.
I founded an online password manager, PassPack, but *any* program will help you out:
http://www.passpack.com
Let me know if you have any questions. Cheers!
Tara Kelly
Thanks Tara, I’ll have a look at it.
I’ve actually used “chemical passwords.” What I mean is that I’ll pick some compound or ion and the formula will be the password.
Case in point. Ages ago, I used calcium phosphate as a password. So that was “Ca3-PO42.” Letters, numbers, symbols, and good length. Nowadays, I usually put some of the numbers into uppercase and throw in a + or * somewhere. But it’s much easier to remember a chemical than a random string and it’s almost as good.
Man! That is clever. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t think of it. Thanks for the idea.
@gaussling — Great.
@Geoff — that IS pretty clever. Not unlike what David over at Significant Figures is doing. How do you remember which chemical compound you chose for which site?
@Tara — Fortunately, I only have somewhere around 5-6 passwords and then the Mac OS X keychain (or password manager as you describe above). So it’s easy enough to remember a few compounds and have a hard, secure password for my keychain.
I do try to pick compounds associated with the site. For example, I tend to pick platinum, silver, or gold compounds for banks or stockbrokers.
Just this morning I switched to a chemical equation. Not only can I remember it, but I can picture it.
@Geoff – Sounds like a good system. I just hope you don’t really use those exact compounds for your bank .. otherwise you just gave away your passwords 😉