Remember that Microsoft password thing I was griping about ...

... last month?

Dan Goodin at Ars Techica has an article on this policy, which was until recently a "secret policy." (You'll recall I thought silently dropping the excess characters was reasonable, but I am persuaded that it's not such a good idea. So, if you're still using Hotmail, for example, and you thought your super-long password or passphrase was helping to keep you secure, you might want to rethink.