Thanks for the welcome. I was actually the 3rd member to register here too (on September 10th 2005). I stumbled upon this site when it was still an empty shell under construction, that was even before registering at CSP. At that stage I didn't know that both domains belong to don.

From what I understand, "Mary had a little lamb" is not a password cracking method, but rather a manner in which passwords can be composed. The idea is to take the abbreviation of the first letters of a well known song or poem an use it as a password. For example the password derived from Mary had a little lamb would be Mhall. While the password is not quite a complex password it is some-what obscure and obviously not a dictionary word, while on the other hand is still easy for users to remember because of the association to the song or poem.

Obviously you could compose a list of the first lines of many well known songs and add them in to the dictionary to use in a dictionary attack.

If my explanation is wrong, could someone please correct me.

Yes, I've discovered it here. I've actually decided to give it a go. I've become a bit dissappointed with Kubuntu, because I've come across some irritating bugs that just won't go away, and with the Knoppix live CD it works fine.

I'll install the Knoppix 4.0.2 on my hard drive using the "sudo knoppix-installer" command from one CD, and then install the tools from my Knoppix-STD 0.1 CD using the "apt-cdrom add" command. If all goes well I'll stick with the Knoppix, if not I'll revert back to Kubuntu.

Almost everyone at work including me uses Kubuntu (install version). As far as live CD's are concerned I must agree with mitchmcse and vote for Knoppix. It's really easy to use and very intuitive. It' s shame it only comes as a live disk, though one of my colleagues recomended installing a raw Linux kernel, and copying on top of that all the programs, desktop, features, shell, tools etc. from the Knoppix disk. 
Another one of my colleagues swears by Whax and refuses to hear about anything else.

Regarding Don's comments about VMware, or rather continuing on from them, VMware have ready made open source appliances. Check it out here. You would never be able to get something like this from Virtual PC, because it's a Microsoft product, and for them consent to have open source software virtually installed on their OS would be like fraternising with the devil.