You put it more eloquently than I could possibly do. Thanks.

While it may be true that older media are easier to recover data from, we mustn't forget that modern hard drives remap bad sectors. You cannot get to the remapped sectors from your OS, so you can't overwrite those. Therefore, there is a probability that classified, readable information exists on a hard disk drive if you have the proper tools. Physically destroying the disk is thus called for.

Actually, I think what is needed here is data management. Storing your data for a long time is one problem (which can be solved by re-storing your data on other, and, very important _the at that time newest format_ devices), the other problem is you need to re-store your data in the file formats du jour, ie import it in an application and save it in the then current file format.

If you're looking for help desk workers you may be right. For more intellectually demanding jobs, a PhD here or there might prove more beneficial.

I call this B.S. Most GUI applications have their own interface to configure them. You don't need to know that their configuration is stored in ~/.app-config or in the registry or whatever. Actually, if you're told to edit the windows registry because there's a problem you always get the warning 'Only do this if you know what you're doing', indicating Joe L. User does not need, repeat, does NOT need to do this. If you're talking about editing `server' configuration files I bloody hope you know what you are doing. It would be a shame if you mess up your companies' dns server.

You assume that governments will always act benignly. History shows they don't. You also assume that the presence of DNA and identifying the person whose DNA it is can solve all crimes. Well, if you think a bit about this for a second, you'll see this is wrong.