Maximum Menu Depth is 9 in Drupal 6

I finally installed Drupal 6 tonight and came across something that nearly knocked me out. The maximum depth of the menu tree is 9 items?

Why wouldn't this number be configurable? My site is far past this since I do use Drupal to create a large directory. Who predetermined 9 layers of depth and why?

I've only found one link that said that it seems to have been an arbitrary decision so that the menutree wouldn't be too wide on a page. Well, I solved that problem long ago by throwing the menu tree out and using submenutree in Drupal 5.

So now it seems this depth was arbitrarily predetermined and there is no way in the admin settings to over-ride it meaning I will likely have to hack core to get this functionality.

Can someone tell me if I'm seeing this correctly?