Which is why unique is the most important quality of a password. People that did that are yawning while they change this one password and go about their day.

I stopped purchasing or renting disc based media. Buying a digital copy from Amazon or Google is easier. Watching it on any device I own is also easier. Physical media is just annoying. And no, I'm not worried about Amazon or Google disappearing any time soon. Certainly not before bluerays are obsolete and everyone is buying their collection over again anyway.

A good ad blocker in your browser will be more effective in the long run than any AV software you install. Couple that with the common sense to not download and run every piece of crap you see on the internet and your computer will be fine. Every instance of an infection I've seen involved the person breaking one of those two simple rules.

I setup EMET for all programs that hit the network, always use an ad blocker in my browser, and keep google's malware site warning turned on. If something is advanced enough to bypass all of that then it is probably advanced enough for me to not realize I have it anyway. Ignorance is bliss.

I'll ask you the same question I ask everyone else who seems to be highly concerned about companies knowing things about them. Why does it bother you?

I use Google for pretty much everything. I'm a Google Apps for Business customer and have been very pleased with the services they provide. Their products work well and the uptime/cost ratio is excellent. I'm assuming their ads are still nonintrusive but honestly I wouldn't know as I use adblockers with rather strict rulesets so I never see any of them.

Do they know a metric crapton about who I am and what I do? Sure. Why should I care about this? How does Google knowing what videos games I play or what books I read matter to me in my day to day activities? So they know I played Skyrim a lot and which bands I listen to. Who cares? Everyone who matters in my life already knows all of that anyway. Why panic because Google knows it too?

http://adblockplus.org/en/

I don't see a single ad on space.com. But yes, the never citing sources thing is annoying.

Some hard drive platters are glass/ceramic rather than aluminium. You don't want to open them up and jab a screwdriver through them unless cleaning up little bits of glass is your idea of a good time. And as I said before, they aren't encrypted due to paranoia so I don't really care what the DoD or NSA do.

I encrypt everything not because I'm paranoid or have anything super secret but because it is easier to dispose of old hard drives. When I replace a drive I simply throw the old one away. I don't have to spend any time wondering if there was anything on there I needed to wipe. I don't have to spend any time worrying about how to wipe a broken drive.

If they really want more users then they should add profile support to Google Apps so the metric crap-ton of people who ALREADY PAY THEM MONEY can use Google+.

That is my problem as well. I pay Google money every month for a business account and yet we are the only group that can't make a profile or use Google+. It is almost like they don't really want to succeed.

Others have posted on what to do with your current problem. Now that you see how annoying it can be may I suggest full hard drive encryption from now on. Then when you want to get rid of the drive you just throw it away.

Maybe you should read the relevant articles first.