Forbes on passwords

Wandering through the web (but not necessarily figuring it out as I went along) I ran across a slide show in Forbes on the subject of passwords, with what seems to me mostly reasonable advice.  Some highlights, mostly common-sense stuff that bears repeating:

• Change important passwords frequently and don't reuse them
• Use different passwords for different purposes.
• Important passwords (e.g., for bank accounts) should be unique. 
• Less important accounts can share passwords, but be aware that if one account is compromised you should consider all of them compromised.
• Don't choose a password that's ever appeared elsewhere.  This rules out memorable phrases like "We the people of the United States of America".
• Passwords should contain nothing personally associated with you (basically a version of the previous item).
• Password managers may be useful.  The advantage is you can use random gibberish and the manager will remember it for you.  The disadvantage is that if the master password is ever cracked, you're completely hosed.
• Use HTTPS when logging in.  HTTPS encrypts all connections and uses digital certificates to ensure that you're really talking to whom you think you are (just exactly how secure this system is is a whole other can of worms, but for now let's assume it's basically OK). You can tell if you are because web sites with it start with "https://" instead of "http://" and browsers now indicate whether you have a secure connection
• Don't type your password into anyone else's machine.
• Assume that a public WiFi access point is just that, public (the actual slide says to avoid it entirely).  If you're not using an encrypted connection of some sort (HTTPS, SSH, a VPN or such) assume that anyone can see your network traffic, including passwords you type when you log in.  Also assume that any random person can see anything that's publicly shared on your computer (another fine can-o-worms).
• Don't depend on passwords generated by web sites or random software.  Even if everything's on the up-and-up, it's very easy to get password generation wrong, typically by using a weak random number generator (see this post for more on generating passwords).
• Archive your important passwords in case of catastrophe, for example by writing them down on a piece of paper and storing it in a safe deposit box that can be opened in an emergency.
• In general, if you're going to record a password somewhere, do it on a physical medium separate from your computer (see disadvantage of password managers, above).

There are also a few items that don't seem actively harmful, but probably don't help greatly either

• When replacing letters with numbers and such, use non-obvious numbers, e.g., r7place instead of r3place.  This will add a few bits of entropy, which is good, but not really good enough on its own.  If your base word is in a dictionary of 500,000 words and you replace up to three characters with one of 15 replacements, you have about 30 bits of entropy, which is not that much.
• Add a number to the end of sentence-based passwords "for extra uniqueness".  Adding a number adds about three bits of entropy.  Meh.
• Scramble a password when writing it down.  This will make it harder, but not impossible, for someone who finds your written password to figure out the actual password, but it will also make it harder for you to come up with the actual password at two in the morning when you discover you don't quite remember how you scrambled it and the Very Important Site locks out accounts with more than three login failures.  Of course, you could write down how you scrambled it ...
• Deliberately misspelling words can make passwords more secure.  Yes, but not very much more secure.
• Use a sentence with lots of words, and include punctuation.  In theory this can work, but in practice people come up with much-less-than-random-words, particularly if the sentence actually makes sense.  Also, surprisingly many systems get indigestion if you try to use a long password.