Wow what a dumb question obviously the OP has very little experience in dealing with real people, probably one of those code monkeys disconnected from the real world. Tune out of World of Warcraft, turn off your Xbox and think for a second:
If people could choose long passwords with special characters how could our customer support reps read them back to the users in case they loose it? How could they check them on the phone? Geez and people here are complaining they are valued less than a manager.
Actually his post was sarcastic (I think that's the word). Of course passwords should be hashed, and moreover they should not be read to customers over the phone.
