Because there's no enterprise management behind Truecrypt, which pretty much eliminates it. I haven't looked at BitLocker for a while, but I seem to recall it had its share of issues as well. I've used Safeboot, and its not terrible.

Regardless, its not as simple as saying, "here, install this".

First, anti-malware tools (like MSE) don't wait until after the infection occurs. For a piece of malware ot infect something (lets say you open an email with a trojan or some other malware), before anything happens, the tool scans the email. The malicious code doesn't have a chance to run before it is scanned. Now, to detect the malware, it does rely on definitions which come from previously seen malware.

FIM and HIDS on the other hand do wait until after the infection and then tells you about it later.

Now McAfee has a tool (and I cant' think of the name... Artimus maybe) that instead of relying on definitions, looks at what the code is going to do and tries to determine from there if its malware. For example it might let an executable designed to update core components of Windows run if the code is signed by MS, but if there's no signature, it would prevent it. However, its certainly not free.

As for the article you linked, its not talking about the casual web surfer. Its talking about advanced adversaries with resources behind them and more or less directed attacks. Anti-malware tools like MSE are going to be relatively useless in these situations.

Not only is it a reasonably good anti-malware tool, its the least intrusive one I've ever used, both as far as annoying popups and abusing system resources. My first download on any new Windows install.

But who is writing the exams? If its all self taught people, then you're in a self-reinforcing stereo type situation.

Certs are an indicator that someone can learn information in a formal setting. There are benefits to this over someone who learned as they went, from a book, or from a website. How do you know they actually know industry standards, best practices, and are going to give you a quality product at the end of the day.

That's not to say that everybody with a certificate is the best candidate, that's as far from the truth as the reverse. I've held several certificates over the last number of years, some I've renewed (GIAC) and some I have (various MS certificates), based on what position I'm in. If someone shows me that they hold a GIAC certification, I'm going to move them to the "interview/test" pile assuming they have some working experience as well. If they don't, I'm going to study their resume a bit closer before I make that decision.

Assuming I could get new skin that is more resistant to sun burns than what I was born with.

As others have said, quit.
I quit after about 15 years of smoking. I took up running and feel great. I run about 30-40K per week, and have undone most of the damage I caused by smoking. Running shoes and even the technical shorts and shirts are far cheaper than smoking as well :)

Perhaps you should try eating some fruits and vegetables as well.

Lets look at the possible number of passwords (so we're talking about a brute force attempt on the hashed password).

Blizzard's setup is not case sensitive, and they disallow a significant number of special characters. Lets say they have 40 possible values for each. A good password setup should have around 75 (or more).

So lets see how many possible values there are for a 7 character password in each setup:
Blizzard 4.456764032636319e+34
Good: 1.6883055225799413e+64

That's quite a difference. Lets see how many characters it would take in a Blizzard password to get into the same ballpark. Turns out its 37 which gives: 1.9782022283855447e+64

So, I guess a restricted character set is okay, if you go with REALLY long passwords.

(I used the password calculator at http://www.csgnetwork.com/optionspossiblecalc.html with 4 for a minimum length to determine those numbers).

That's all fine and dandy until you realize that Blizzard doesn't differentiate case in passwords. They either covert them all to upper or lower case, not sure which. The forums were alive with this recently. So, all of a sudden brute forcing isn't so tough, especially when they also only allow a reduced set of special characters.

FTA: "In another case, the judges found that movie theatres shouldn't be charged for the music that's part of a soundtrack. The court ruled that a “soundtrack” that accompanies a movie is not the same as the Copyright Board’s definition of a “sound recording” because the soundtrack is meant to be part of the movie and includes preexisting sound recordings. And finally, the court ruled that performance royalties do not need to be collected for music used in downloaded video games." So the industry wanted to charge movie theatres extra because of the music in the movie? Shouldn't that have been deal with long before when the production company (or whoever) got permission to include the song? Same thing for video games. Did they actually expect consumers to buy a game for $x and then later get charged $y for the music in the game?

http://www.builditsolarblog.com/2012/07/cooling-without-power.html

I do like living in Saskatchewan... No DST, though there's a significant portion of the population that think we're backwards for not changing our clocks twice a year.

Exactly this.

There are plenty of better certifications out there to judge if a candidate has at least some professional training and experience with IT security.

Can anyone explain a bit about how this drug works? I understand CF is caused be a genetic "error", but is this an exon skipping drug (similar to what they're working on with muscular dystrophy) or is this something different?

I live is SE Saskatchewan. This winter is hardly a fair example (its been very warm here with the exception of the past week). However, even in an average winter, we would rarely see as cold as -25C as a high for more than a few days in a row. So what this says to me, is even though I thought the opposite, the Volt may actually be a reasonable car here. Even if its not the most efficient choice during the extreme cold, we're talking maybe less than a week on average in any give year that it drops below those temperatures. That means, that >98% of the time, this is the most efficient choice of vehicle in these climates.