Even worse are websites/services that impose ridiculous character requirements (you must include 2 symbols, 3 numbers, 5 letters, 2.5 of which must be upper case and positioned at the prime number indices, oh and you have to change your password every 6 months) and then limit your password to 8-12 characters.

The way I remember passwords is by stringing together random English words with random special characters inserted throughout. This means most of them are 30-40 characters. I find these far easier to remember than my PayPal password, which is arbitrarily limited to a random collection of special characters that must be of length less than 12 (or whatever their ridiculously short limit is.)

If you truly care about the security of my account don't impose character limits.