Make a master password, or a just a few main ones....

I've been converting all my passwords to just a few select ones. It makes password management SOOOO much better

I agree. The worst, imo, are the ones that are generated for you using some long string of characters that are impossible for my aging brain to memorize.

User names are almost as bad. I had to make over eight different tries on one site just to come up with one that wasn't in use according to the site. I ended up using a suggested one.  Registering at a site can be such a pain that I often just pass on it.

I keep all my "frivolous" passwords (I have about 10, all with different requirements) in a single text file on my desktop. This is then encrypted and locked with a single password that is a long (as passwords go) but easy to remember sentence.

The future is Win8!!!!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/12/16/signing-in-with-a-picture-password.aspx

I wish that encryption keys were more common for everyday passwords. I have a password list for every account. I always use the maximum digit limit and generate a totally random code. Then I can just copy and paste any password. Much better that using actual words. 

God tell me about it, password for Target (for the life of me I change it everytime because I forget when I need to use the site for my pay, time off, education leave, etc...!), for 2 schools (I have to change once a year for both), too many websites to efing remember, I got hacked once on eve online and now I worry about changing my passwords every other year! AH!

http://xkcd.com/936/

Enough said

Anyone get that security key thing for SWOTOR?

I have it.  I don't know if it has protected me or not, but I did have a strange thing happen.  I went to log in one day, and my password didn't work any more.  I changed it and checked, nothing on my account seemed to have been altered.  Just strange...

That was an interesting MSDN article, but the tech is of no use to those of us will little or no use for touch interfaces.

Re the OP, I'm a serious civil libertarian and loathe the general trend we have towards being ever more documented and tracked by public and private information systems. But I've had a strong parallel sentiment to Brad's when I deal with online teaching. 

Some elder Stardockian (the Doc?) posted something a while ago about a funky transparent keyboard with no moving parts. That made me think of the possibility of a keyboard that could scan fingerprints constantly to confirm when a new user began typing. Until fingerprint faking tools get widespread and cheap, I'd be ready to trust a biometric system like that to verify that people doing work in my online classes are the same people who are registered for the course.

I don't know what I would do without LastPass.

I don't know most of my passwords anymore.  Super secure!

It's usable with a mouse as well, there's really no difference on the input method.

I despise passwords. What I really want is something like SSH, where instead of a password I paste or upload a block of text to the website, and then uses a private key file on my USB drive to authenticate me to the website. 

I'd settle for all sites supporting OpenID though.

I caught that; just wasn't clear about my (outdated? primitive? stupid?) bias for (old-fashioned?) keyboards. Grabbing a mouse slows me down more often than not, but then I touch-type, often over 100wpm... 

Never thought to explore the long-password potential of whole sentences the way that Scoutdog suggested; those might be handy for a while for us 'touch-disinterested' folks. But when I'm feeling lazy and ready to ignore my concerns about civil society, those biometric options seem much more attractive than playing with pictures. Dogs can recognize us by smell--maybe it's not too long till hardware can do the same.

I don't know - smell is so intensive that in the animal world, only a maximum of 3-5 different smells can be detected by any organism at one time.  Even food critics aren't that much better.