Tim: >> It's a hell of a long time since I did probabilities in high school >> maths, but if you just use letters instead of numbers, each position >> could be any of 26 characters (instead of 10 options) g: > or maybe they did not teach you correctly. ;-) > > and, it is really not a probability calculation. Nah, it's my memory. And, of course, not "probability" (which is what something else might be, based on what happened before, and not applicable to this situation), but combinations (how many possible combinations could there be). Which surely had to be 26 by 26 by 26, etc., for the number of characters used in the password. The first character could be anything from A to Z (26 choices), likewise with each subsequent character. It's a base-26 number, instead of base-10 decimal number. Anyway, bloody huge. -- tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp Linux 3.18.5-101.fc20.i686 #1 SMP Mon Feb 2 21:36:31 UTC 2015 i686 All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the public lists. George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org