I'm not entirely certain at what point someone found it a good idea to create services like snipurl, bit.ly, qurl, tinyurl, and others, but it has become apparent to me that everything people use them for is malicious.

Sure, the odd long URL is somewhat annoying (sites like slashdot use them for search engine optimization) but at least you know exactly what you're getting into. Shortened URLs from the above named services completely hide the destination address and you have to be crazy to click them.