Okay, so I read this article on Yahoo saying that hackers can guess your password by starting with the most common ones and working their way down, they can try every word in the dictionary, or they can use a powerful computer with a fast connection to try every possible character combination within the allowed range (and every website has requirements for a password which can serve to narrow down a hacker's parameters).

My question is, why is this possible?  It used to be, if you entered the wrong password three times, it sent up a red flag and you weren't allowed to try again for the entire day (which would be very detrimental to your character's health on Legend of the Red Dragon back then, or Mafia Wars now).

Imagine that.  We had the technology to stop brute-force attacks back in the days of BBSes, when the closest thing we had to dubstep was the screeching of your 14.4 modem.  (Actually, I can't tell the difference, but that's neither here nor there.)

With all the effort and money that goes into security, you'd think they could find a way to make that work in the age of IP spoofing and disabling cookies and whatnot.