Why are there so many bad security products out there? It's not just that designing good security is hard -- although it is -- and it's not just that anyone can design a security product that he himself cannot break. Why do mediocre security products beat the good ones in the marketplace?

In 1970, American economist George Akerlof wrote a paper called "The Market for 'Lemons'" (abstract and article for pay here), which established asymmetrical information theory. He eventually won a Nobel Prize for his work, which looks at markets where the seller knows a lot more about the product than the buyer.

This is just yet another piece of proof that technology has infiltrated our lives on every level and those who chose to ignore it and bury their heads in the sand just make matters worse, not just for them, but for everyone involved. Ignorance should not be an excuse, especially where so many people in the technology field make special efforts that this information be available freely to anyone (open source software, copyleft, wikipedia, OLPC, MIT's open courseware, etc, etc).