How many crackpots have there been there for each Ignaz Semmelweiss, though? Ignoring weird people pays off if it saves having having to spend time on their far-out theories, even if Ignaz was right as well as weird.

I personally think security has been spoiled by unrealistic advice. "Use PGP" is the worst, but it's not alone. A few years ago a mass-market device (tens of millions sold) asked me to enter my password three times within two minutes in order to carry out one single operation, and it demanded that the password be secure enough that I needed two kinds of mode-shift to enter it on that device's keyboard. Who takes that vendor's ideas about security seriously after experiencing shit like that?