I prefer OpenID, and the lack of one stopped me from registering.

You can always provide options ( with/ without OpenID) for registration

Yeah.. openid still feels really funny to me even as a developer. I guess I should read up more on how it actually works (behind the scenes).

Screw it. I've implemented it many times and still don't prefer it myself. I like to be able to setup a new separate semi-anonymous account on each site I use.

If that's what you like then can't you just create a separate semi-anonymous openid for every site you use?

Yep, I feel the same way. I'm much more a fan of something like clickpass where I can bootstrap my signup with details already filled in.

I still haven't bothered to signup for Stackoverflow because of the OpenID requirement. If it has username/password it'd be done already.

Great news, myopenid is part of stackoverflow. Register with myopenid and use that to get into stackoverflow.

Okay, myopenid is really an independent entity, but just pretend they are part of the same company and it'll work out fine.

I too am not a huge fan of current implementation of OpenID. However, if you have a throwaway account on Yahoo or Google, it is trivially easy to signup on Stackoverflow.