How is this going to effect study material?  I notice the 6th edition of Shon Harris' AIO book isn't due out until November.

In my previous job, I worked for a company that provided pen testing, SE, risk assessment, audit, etc. services.  A SE test and an internal pen test were two very different products for us.  There were a couple of customers that felt they would get more out of a combination of the services and had us SE our way into a network connection before we could perform the pen test.  That was a very custom statement of work and I am sure they paid well for it though.

They are usually separated because most places want to either focus on fortifying their network based controls (pen test) or further developing their policies and procedures (SE).  It is very difficult to do both at the same time for a variety of reasons, especially if you don't have a large staff dedicated to information security.

This is my motivation.  I have always done this with everything else since I was a kid, why not malware too?

I have to admit though, finding a widespread vuln that was not previously known would be kind of a rush.  That would definitely get me hooked.

Yeah, I figured there was at least some overlap in the two.  It hasn't completely discouraged me because I still think I would be really good at it, but it has shown me how much work I have ahead of me. 

I just got my set a few weeks ago.  I bought a Master Lock to mess around with and without knowing anything, I popped it in about 20 minutes.  I ordered the Syngress book already and plan to get into it in a couple of weeks.

I was really interested in focusing on RE until I read this thread.  For some reason, I'm not disappointed because I feel like I learned so much from reading sil's posts.  I think I'll take some time to find and read the other 200 of them in the near future.

I'm too lazy to look into the geography of it, but I randomly remembered this from the one random business law class I had in college.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting

I am also looking forward to hearing about it.  I am scheduled to start it myself at the end of the year.