No idea if he's actually the one that came up with this idea (and I generally don't like his writing), but I am surprised no one has mentioned the approach that Farhad Manjoo outlines in this Slate article. Basically, you come up with a phrase about each website/system and then type the acronym for that phrase. For example, for Bank of America, "I can't believe that quote from the head of the subprime mortgage division" becomes Icbt"fthotsmd.

It doesn't generate the most secure passwords possible (it's hard to come up with phrases that use symbols or multiple capitalized words), but its a pretty good way to create (and remember!) a unique password for each system.

As an aside, I am still flabbergasted that Citibank's student loan system will not let you have a password longer than eight characters. It occurs to me every time I login.

The age difference is actually more or less explained for everyone. McCoy is a significantly older recruit for whom Star Fleet is a second career. Kirk doesn't appear to be as old as McCoy, but he screwed around for some time before joining up, and his youth as a captain can be attributed to being the greatest thing since sliced bread. Scotty had enough of a "career" in Star Fleet for him to be a bit older (although the actor doesn't look old enough). Chekov is exactly 17, so he could easily be 15-20 years younger than McCoy and 10 younger than Kirk/Scotty. Sulu is the hardest, since he doesn't look as young as Chekov. In fact he looks just about Kirk's age, but we get no back story for him, so it's possible he was a bit older when he enlisted.

Generally, on the list of plot holes, I would put their age differences toward the bottom, way behind the weak plot behind the crisis driving the movie, "Red Matter", and Kirk and old-Spock finding each other randomly on a frozen moon. (In fact, the little thing that really bugged me was that the second "monster" on that moon continued to pursue Kirk instead of eating the significantly larger mammal that had been pursuing Kirk.)

It's pretty hard to take this article seriously considering the number of glaring copy errors. If the authors couldn't be bothered to reread what they wrote, how much time did they put into researching and considering the list itself?

And some people learn a single rule and never learn that it is not universal. Grammar school, elementary school, middle school, and high school are all compound nouns. Some compound nouns are widely hyphenated, some are not, and some are widely accepted written either way. Here's a more-complicated-but-more-useful set of rules for when to use a hyphen. :), But as its author notes, the rules are in flux.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion as to how fast we should collectively permit our language to (d)evolve. But when your going too be an grammar-Nazi, its important that you did it write.

The "lot of people" you deride for dropping the hyphen include the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. It's time to ease up on the attitude or go join a community that speaks exclusively Middle English--excuse me, "Middle-English".