This is irrelevant - plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and welders are all vocational jobs. There is no four-year degree equivalent that puts them in the same work. Hence, there is ONLY blue-collar jobs to compare. There is no white collar data to compare to it - otherwise I suspect that the white collar side would be paid more.

A lot of their issues have always contained some kind of explicit cartoon - this time they are just taking it to another degree.

Yes, he has fallen into the classic "if people are downloading it, they must not be buying it, and thus I must be losing sales."

As we have discussed time and again, a download != a lost sale. The problem with that logic is that it assumes the downloader would have paid for it if it were not available for download. This is a false premise. As an example, for college, I am told that I need to buy expensive textbooks. If they are available for download, I will download them. Otherwise I simply don't purchase them.... ever. A download does not equal a lost sale in this case because I was simply never, ever, going to pay money for it.

This is precisely what I was getting at. The only reason that these things came from DoD research was because DoD was the only one with enough money to fund said research. Spend the same money on another organization and you would have come out with the same product, just with a different research name slapped on it.

I am a big supporter of getting back into a R&D based funding operation. And I don't mean we should be R&Ding war tools, we should be developing better telecommunications tools, better healthcare tools, better computers for both business and consumer, better cars, better planes, better boats, better shipping technology... everything. There is no reason that America shouldn't be the world leader in all of these things.

No doubt, but like the scammers of yore, if you attach a consequence for not listening (you lose all your data, or you expose your private data, etc) and tell them that there are few outlets to lean on, they will listen - eventually.

Like I mention in a lower reply, if people want to be ignorant and think that someone will always make it good again, thats their problem, not mine.

The question becomes: is she addicted to the game, or to the people she consoles on the game?

Furthermore, if we define addiction to be using your hobbies to remove stress or feelings of doubt, then people who build model trains must be addicted, people who go boating must be addicted, people who jog must be addicted.

Furthermore, this "study" says nothing for people beyond the age of 18. University is a different place, its more aggressive and its more intense. It assumes people can take charge of their own life. I don't believe that, even if people payed attention in high school, they would learn the skills they needed to succeed in college. As a matter of fact, if you look at college drop-out rates, I am sure they will support my hypothesis. College is as much about learning life as it is learning job skills.

Finally, I play a lot of WoW and still succeed in college just fine. I don't see how she could be so different considering shes in her last year there and its probably not her first year playing WoW.

Seems like a logical fallacy here. It assumes we have tried to educate users, which I don't really feel we have. Anti-virus companies WANT users to remain uneducated, because if they become educated that will put most AV companies out of the job. So, I disagree that education can't work because we haven't even tried. I never learned about safe internet techniques in school, or at work, or anywhere... it was something I had to learn on my own.

When we start aggressively educating people, and THAT fails, then we can talk.

These problems are beyond the scope of botnet research. SQL exploits are a completely different animal than botnets. A botnet is a fairly sophisticated piece of code that requires the host to download some file for it to plant itself in the system. If users are aware of the fact that downloading files that are not trustworthy and most people didn't do it, botnets would cease to exist. Botnets rely on a majority of people being stupid, and if we can get the majority to be smart, than botnets would be a thing of the past.

Ignorance is really no excuse. If people are going to be ignorant, than leave it to them to work out their own solutions. Why should I pay money (likely tax dollars) so people get to be more ignorant about computers? Knowledge is power when it comes to defending yourself on the internet, and if people took like 30 minutes to learn about safe procedures and obvious warning signs then all of this would be moot. If people don't want to invest this kind of time, that's their problem, not mine.

Teach users to be safe on the internet and not download any old thing that pops up on the screen... seems cheaper and easier than waging an all out witch hunt on botnet admins.

Even if I assume that the study is true (which I don't) lets look at what kids are up against:

Studying, homework, school, and teachers.
vs.
Playing video games on the internet with friends.

Which would you have picked when you were 8-18 years old? I know what choice I would have made (actually, the choice I did make). Kids don't really think out into the future and realize that their choices have long-term effects, especially at the age of 8. You can't expect them to understand the need to study to get good grades to go to school. Furthermore, lulz @ high school... who cares. Just make it out of that shit and you are straight. High school is a joke and colleges know it.