I was actually the only member of the IT dept in the interviews for our Director of IT position some years back. I was also the only person involved in the process that was not on the existing executive management team.
I think a lot of it depends on who else is in the room. If there are any other department heads involved, note closely their interaction with YPNB (your potential new boss). I found that to be quite telling in that you see what is important to them, and if YPNB has any intelligence, they will pick up on what is expected of them and what the others are looking for. By being involved in this, I was able to pretty much garner what projects we would be working on during the first 6 months after he was hired.

As others have stated, HR or someone else may run the show. The only thing you might want to consider is this: if YPNB requests a laptop or projector for any type of presentation, hook it up, but do something wrong (leave a plug loose etc). See how YPNB reacts to the unexpected and how the interaction goes when either they or you "fix" the problem. I don't know of any other way to really get a read, because any questions from HR (or you) are likely to be met with "correct" answers.

Also, with the boss I ended up with, we had a laptop setup and he wanted to show something off a thumb drive. At that time, the NIC port was wide enough that you could put a USB drive in it. He did. And so I went to the laptop, noticed what he did, and quickly put it in a USB port without saying anything. He showed his stuff, and ended up getting hired. He was nervous about the interview, but was very gracious about the whole thing. He is still my boss today (6 years later) and while not perfect, we could have done a lot worse. He was a unanimous choice (they even let me vote).

So that's what did it? I can remember a time when HP stuff was rock solid. And then it seemed to go down hill both hardware and software (driver) wise (I mostly dealt with servers and printers).

I bought one, and only one, piece of hardware from Compaq...lesson learned with that piece of crap.

"or white collar crime is absurdly superior on a risk/reward basis compared to little people crime..."

Many years ago (so adjust for inflation) I had a friend of mine tell me that an attorney friend of his told him that if he ever stole/defrauded for less than a million, he was an idiot and would go to jail. If more than a million, call me and we will work something out. So, yes, the rules are different.

I agree completely...but they did at least make an effort:
From NYTimes story:

"...relied on Deloitte’s auditing of Autonomy’s financial statements. As part of the due diligence process for the deal, H.P. also hired KPMG to audit Deloitte’s work."

So how do you know in advance how many levels deep you need to go to get the truth? At some point you write it off to the inherent risk of doing a buy out.

FTA:

"Whitman said she regretted voting to approve the deal with Autonomy"

CEO, no. On the board that also approved the buy out, yes.

A safe bet when viewed through the prism of the Either/Or fallacy that is (in the US) our 2 party system of government. In fact, I would posit that you could combine the 2 fallacies and have a comprehesive explanation of why in the US we continue to shout about Ds and Rs while a small group of people continue to control all the money, to their benefit and at the expense of everyone else.

This would indictate, statistically speaking, that there are a large group of people that won't figure out either fallacy. So while not the best business plan, it is certainly not the worst either.

No line when I went in, very small line forming as I left (less than dozen people) No issues went smoothly.

Funny you should mention the 80s. My grandfather told me that there is a 30 year drought cycle. It is here now. It was here in the 80s when my uncle went broke trying to be a farmer, and according to my granfather they slept outside during the 50s because it was too damn hot to sleep in the house. That said, I don't think this possible drought cycle explains it all. I have no idea how much is natural and how much is man made.

As far as the article goes, the mention of Ky (where I live) and the current corn crops is accurate. Farms that usually get around 130 bushels/acre this year are producing about 30. Many corn crops aren't even being harvested because it is not worth it. The stalks can't even be used for feedstock for cows and chickens. Soybeans have been hurt, too, just not as bad as corn.

What you say is true, and your config certainly reduces the chances of being infrected. But the point that I am trying to make is that doesn't mean your PCs have NEVER been infected as you claimed in your original post. There is no way for you to know that solely on the basis of the preventative measures you mentioned.
And I don't mean to belabor the point, I have just always found it to be an interesting claim when someone says their PCs have never been infected but mention nothing of how they know...which would have to include client and network traffic analysis information. You cannot even make this claim with AV since as you point out there is malware that can pass AV checks.

Well yes, I understand that there are legitimate programs calling home as well.
My point being that there are enough exploits (IE, Adobe, Java based to name a few) that are drive by that it would be easy to end up with something and not even realize it. And then it is calling home, and you are pwned. And it is possible the only indication you would have would be anamalous network traffic. And while it is certainly true that it could go undetected by AV products, they do increase your chances of knowing something happened.

And on a side note, is it just me or has something similar to this level of screw up happened to just about every major AV vendor at this point?

And you also know that you would need to monitor both incoming and outgoing network traffic (at the router, not the client) to make sure nothing is calling home to a command server? Because you know that there is yucky stuff out there that is NOT obvious in any way other than network traffic monitoring?

That may be your hardware replacement schedule, but I doubt that is true for the masses. With ATT, you are eligible for a phone upgrade after 2 years. I think many people keep them longer once they find one they like, if for no other reason than to avoid having to "learn" a new phone.

On the PC side, it has been my experience that most people have computers older than 3 years. The Slashdot demographic is probably not indicative of the general population in this case. I would put the average age of a home PC at closer to the 5-7 year range. Same with corporate. Where I work, the main DB servers are on a 3 year refresh, as are the customer facing computers. Everything else is 5-7 years.

So while I agree with you that people will probably buy more smartphones than computers in their lifetime, I would not put the ratio at 3:1 nor would I expect a 3 year refresh cycle. Although I am sure the manufacturers would love it if the consumers did follow your schedule.