[ianterrell]

A salted, hashed (with a slow hash function) strong (long, random, large character set) password, will take hundreds, thousands, or millions of years (average case) to crack with brute force.

It's only technically "buying some time." In reality it's keeping it completely secure.

And what use would a hacker have attacking a whole database full of them? It would take too long to do it, even with less secure passwords. It takes your fruit out of the "low hanging" category, which is a bit of security in itself.