No thanks. I get people reading over my shoulder all the damned time, and don't want 'em knowing my password.

I think an important thing is appearances too - an unmasked password appears to be less secure, and therefore might put people off.

Ditto this. Even though I know realistically that a password is probably no more or less securely stored if it was hidden from plain sight (after all, a lot of people actually write their passwords down on post-its and stuff if nobody is likely to be around their desk, which I think is fair enough within the home) I am always quite taken aback if a password is shown, as though it leads me to believe that the site owner hasn't really thought about security at all, however unfounded that thought ends up being. (After all, a hidden password might not be secured at all. There's no real way to judge. Use different passwords for everything, folks.)

I am not always using my own personal private computer in an isolated area. I used to use computers a lot at computer laboratories at school, college and university as well as public libraries and internet cafés and even on my laptop out and about. I would hate for anyone to be able to take a glance, and I think that becomes more and more likely as more people are moving about with their computers.

They still know the number of characters even with masking.
I especially like it in linux command line, that when I log in (using putty), nothing shows up when I type the password.

That said, like Jem said, unmasked passwords generate the impression that they are less secure. I don't get people looking over my shoulders when I type in passwords. Seeing as I'm in a tech related environment mostly, it's kind of like an unspoken rule of conduct for us to turn away while passwords are being typed.

I don't get how you guys have embarrassing passwords.. all of mine are 8+ chars of random letters and numbers.

I find random stuff more difficult to remember. I mean, at the moment I have trouble remembering my own mobile number. So I can see how embarrassing things might be easier to remember (and harder to guess for people) than random number/letter combinations.

I'd rather not have people see what I'm typing because many times I have my brother/mother/father over my shoulder and it would be very awkward to have them read my password. Though, like Jem and Amelie, I just have 14 random characters as each of my passwords that are stored in 1Password.

Just read this interesting article from A List Apart about Password Masking: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-problem-with-passwords/