Depends wether you can get a job quickly enough.. If you go straight into work instead of taking out several years studying then you will build experience sooner. Of course the situation is different for everyone.

A lot of sites with tough password policies are too self important... Most of the things i'm signed up to online i don't particularly care if they get cracked, and so use weak and easily remembered passwords for them if possible.

Requiring the site name in the password is stupid, anyone launching a brute force attack will simply take that (and any other policy requirements) into account, eg if you know the password policy requires mixed case and minimum length of 8 then you don't need to try all lowercase passwords or anything shorter than 8.

Similarly locking out after a number of guesses is dangerous, that means an attacker who doesn't know your password can still cause a denial of service against your account, and its utterly ineffective against most brute force attacks as they will go after a huge number of usernames using a small number of passwords rather than the other way round.

How are liability laws not government regulation?

Most of the safety mechanisms in todays cars are transparent to the user and do not inconvenience them in any way...

A few KB saved by an end user on a high speed connection isn't much, but...
A few KB multiplied by millions of users accessing a single site soon adds up.
And it's also of benefit to those on slow or metered connections.

Development is a fixed cost which remains the same irrespective of how many copies the game sells...

And this is largely why games and software in general are moving towards a free model. Publishers always got greedy, and would continue charging high prices long after the development costs were recovered resulting in extremely high profit margins, and this creates resentment among the customers.

Other things like DRM schemes also create resentment, there are plenty of angry customers who paid full price for a game only to be unable to play it, or have to find a cracked version. This usually causes people to go directly for the cracked version and skip the broken paid version. Where a game is distributed free there is no reason to try and discourage copying (the opposite infact), and if a user downloads a free game only to find it doesn't work they will usually just delete it and forget about it rather than feeling sore about the loss of what to many people is a significant amount of money.

And finally software moves towards a free model because it can... Hardware and services require not only up front development costs, but also ongoing costs for every unit sold whereas software can be infinitely replicated. A lot of software can also be reused, there are lots of ready made game engines out there including free ones and most publishers will reuse code and other assets from one game to the next.

The problem is that hardcore gamers are a niche, these freemium games attract a much large audience and are therefore far more profitable.
Also consider multiplayer games, the more players you have the more attractive the game looks, having the game available for free will bring in a lot more players.

Only GnuTLS is not a default part of Linux, its an optional library used by some packages... Most packages seem to use OpenSSL instead, some offer a choice at compile time but most distros build for openssl by default.

How does regulation help if someone breaks into your house and steals a big pile of USD that you keep under your bed?
That's basically what's happened with bitcoin, organisations not taking due diligence with their coins and having them stolen.

A tamper coating like that will get gradually damaged just through normal wear and tear...

The constant threat of lawsuits is extremely damaging to society as a whole.. Not just in the workplace, but everywhere. People file lawsuits for all kinds of stupid things, like tripping over a loose paving stone or scolding themselves on a cup of coffee.

What ever happened to personal responsibility?

Everyone now has to pay, not just the cost of the lawsuits but the cost of organisations trying to cover their asses to reduce the number of lawsuits. This results in higher prices, higher taxes, and a much higher risk of your job being outsourced to asia where companies don't have to pay for these risks.

Working as a team cuts both ways... If the owners of the company are busy playing golf and rolling around in cash while the low level employees are on minimum wage while being watched and lorded over then it certainly doesn't feel like a team. If you treat employees well then they will feel some level of loyalty to the company and are far more likely to work harder.

And on another matter, regular breaks are key... You can't concentrate on the same thing for hours on end, especially something which is mundane... Someone who *appears* to be working non stop is probably doing so far less efficiently, making more mistakes and having their mind constantly wandering to other subjects because their slave masters can't see what they're thinking about.

Most of us have cellphones which we can use to make personal calls and even access the internet...

Secure your internal network too, don't rely solely on your border devices... All it takes is one pinhole and you're totally screwed.
Treat every device as if it was directly connected to the internet, use secure protocols, disable unnecessary features and choose wisely when buying devices. If you then want to hide these devices behind a firewall *as well* then more power to you, but never rely totally on a firewall because eventually they will fail you one way or another.