why is the nobody account password-protected?

From: Kevin Rodgers (ihs_4664_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/16/04 

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 10:26:50 -0600

On Solaris and GNU/Linux at least, the nobody account has a single
character password -- why? I think it'd make sense to allow any user
to `su nobody` to safely run risky commands without any priveleges. 

-- 
Kevin Rodgers