I could not run the latest, greatest Ubuntu on my "not so old" laptop. I had to go back a version or two to get it stable. Now I know that it is not 100% the GUI - probably far from it - but I did have to upgrade or in my case "downgrade"

The reason is very simple. If you loan it to them then they can't turn around and sell the parts off to make money (fund raising) or decide its not worth the time and just throw it away or do anything that might destroy it. You will basically not get it back unless they say they no longer want it, then you find another museum who might want it.

No, but https://encrypted.google.com/ will. Not the best solution but hey, you let Google make money off of you and not your ISP.

The Gov't method for getting rid of devices - Disintergrator.

For personal use (i.e. free as in beer, and easy) I found that encrypting a drive is much faster than wiping a drive. Take Truecrypt and encrypt the drive with a very long passphrase - 60 to 64 characters. Some software allows you to wipe out the encryption key, basically making the drive a brick - which is a better option (with no key to crack it is almost impossible to recover).

Sure he does - he has many more tax lawyers and accountants then she does - DUH!

If Warren Buffet really wanted the rich to pay more then maybe he should pay all his back tax bills instead of fighting them in court. I mean, I am I the only person who thinks he's being a little bit more than hypocritical when he talks about *the rich* need to pay more taxes when he and his company have teams of accountants and lawyers fighting his tax bills on a regular basis?

Why not?
1. Use a Windows system
2. Do something like that
3. Boot up to DBAN
4. ???
5. Profit!

More like: "It's a Unix System, I know this custom program that they were onsite creating (with over a million line of code - for dramatic effect!) and still to this day are debugging, even though the devolopers are not 100% sure how it will act."

That's what I say now whenever asked about any program, no matter how complex or obscure it is as long as it's on Windows... "It's a Windows system... I know this".

Well, I thought my network was a zombie wasteland because all the clients were Windows machines, but actually it was just in Garland, TX.

No, that is just a false sense of security.

Usenet (news groups) that supports binaries with SSL. Several things about this. You are not sharing, just leeching. ISP can't see into the traffic and MAFIAA can't get you're IP address - unless they are running the Usenet. Thats the good. The bad - It's not free - not too expensive but still not free. Lots of viruses in exe files, however that can be mitigated.
The main advantage is that you are not sharing files. You just choose which ones you want to download. The *AA can't hit you for making them available (hence their bad accounting).

I was testing some packet captures one day and I was getting my ID/Pass from Outlook no problem (I mean it is plaintext, after all). I could not seem to get my wifes from her PC - I already know her ID/Pass (as she does mine) so no, I was not spying on her. I found the packets however, I hate to admit, it took a few minutes to realize the problem. She uses Thunderbird and I was using Outlook. Thunderbird uses base64 encoding which obfuscates the information by default (will revert to plaintext if base 64 is not accepted) and Outlook defaults to plain text. While this is not secure by any means since it is only encoded and not encrypted, but it is a step in the right direction. The whole point to this rambling is that many, or some, times there are protections in place, however you're only secure as the weakest link (in this case the end users software). The other take away is that Mozilla is more secure than M$ - and no, I didn't say they were secure, just a little more than the other guy.
Having said that, yeah, I agree more ISP are not really that secure. They are stuck in the mentality of "the traffic never leaves our network" so they think it is safe. I guess they have never heard of bad employees.

I still have my Personal Netware software we used for Doom (and Hexen, ROTT, etc). Speaking of Hexen - I had some good times turning people into chickens. I just can't seem to let go of that Personal Netware software, I have the box and everything (except the cables). I guess I could get my old PC's out and load my old Doom Diskettes and relive my old LAN party days (before there were actual "LAN Parties") I might have to dust off the old Axis and Allies game as well and go get a case of Dew.

WOW, let me guess... you never worked in IT (or any service position before). I would have to guess you're more on the sales side of things by your post (hint: point #2 gave it away).
I was going to reply to each of your points but after reading your 2nd point I realized it was not worth it as you would never be able to understand the logic behind corporate governance or IT security policies.
I will, however, leave you with the following since this would be as good a place as ever to try to get you started in the right direction.

No, it's the IT departments job to execute the policies dictated by the executive managment. This is done to better secure the environment.

Wrong again (unless you're in sales like you). Give them what they NEED to do their job.

You see things like many IT customers. "You're here to serve me". That is, of course, incorrect. IT is there to serve the business. Hate to tell you, but it really is about more than just you most of the time.

He used many...
Silence Dogood, Harry Meanwell, Alice Addertongue, Richard Saunders, and Timothy Turnstone to name a few.

You're correct, hashes aren't reversible. The only (and easier) way to do that would be to create a collision with hashes, that is find another password that creates the same hash.