I think not many would take efforts to find that out.

I help administer a lab of ~20 computers with Ubuntu NIS/NFS setup. Although many users are comfortable with linux, not many are inquisitive enough to tweak around with settings.
e.g.,
1. Most users dont know how to change default programs to open a file. Say default acroread to open pdf files. This can be done by right click on any pdf file ->properties->open with and choose from radio button options
2. Many dont know about the keyboard shortcuts CTRL+L for direct access to firefox address bar and CTRL+K for search bar
3. Although many users prefer Thunderbird for emails, they are unaware of setting it as the default email client from System->Preferences->PreferredApplications
so on and so forth.

Hence, I think, defaults do matter.

Its strange that you find this acceptable. Please tell me that you were looking for sarcassm there.

TFA talks about at least two patents being asserted by IBM for which they have pledged not to assert as recently as in 2005. Now, as a matter of good faith I think it does not matter whether IBM said it in 2005 or 1905.

My advice to IBM would be --- "If you dont mean it... dont say it"

A very interesting link. Thanks :-)

However, this 'hole in the roof, bottle' method will not work in modern structures with concrete roofs and more importantly when there are more than one floors in a building.

The article points to a interesting way of lighting a room by sunlight captured at a distant spot. This may not completely replace the traditional lighting because of concerns like lighting on cloudy days and during the evening and night hours. But, this can definitely help in reducing energy consumption. Again, as many readers have already pointed out, the website is thin on details and the important thing to know would be the total cost of ownership of such a system and the lighting capacity of such a system on an average i.e. replace how many bulbs etc.

numbers from the base-2 series
128 = 2^7
256 = 2^8
512 = 2^9

Yet, the telecom industry wanted to latch on to the binary 128kbps, 256kbps, and 512kbps connections when they could have been easily 100kbps, 200kbps and 500kbps ?

Exactly. Dont give in to the mistakes of HDD manufacturers and legalize their wrong advertising.

Doesn't pint/quart/gallon differ according to geography. Pint, Gallon and so on.

They should just use the correct prefix. i.e., base-2 for anything related to the file-system and computers.

Hard disk stores files, which have bytes which are basically base-2. Size of files, and one block of data is also in base-2. All file systems structures are in base-2 units. Most of the things that are exposed to the user on a hard disk "must" be in the same units. i.e., in base-2. Now, the hard disk manufacturers decided to go for SI notation for monetary gains as they could sell larger capacity drives (in Megabytes and Gigabytes) whereas the users expect to be storing files which are in Mebi and Gibibytes. Why fix the wrong thing. Instead, report everything in the "correct" units.

Thanks for the comparison. Now there is a new problem. The new font uses more space and hence resulting in more wastage of paper! Although there might be a valid argument saying 30% saving of ink is more desirable as compared to 1 extra line every 8 lines.

All of this even if we ignore the fact that people print so many emails that a change of font is going to result in tangible savings. The article mentions the cost of ink per gallon. It would have been interesting to know the total ink consumption in gallons irrespective of the matter printed.

As per my personal experience as a grad student. I have printed only 5-10 emails in many years as compared to many many technical papers.

Dell denies having discussed this thing at all.

1) If someone really wants to get to the data, then backing up just the home directory and deleting it wont be of much help. Undelete / Recovery tools will be able to read the data anyways unless you spend significant effort in safe/secure delete of the /home partition.

2) Best option to ensure security of the data would be remove the hard disk before sending it in for repairs. But, the service center gets the option blame it on software (OS/Driver problem) and not the touchpad hardware.

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Backup using rsync:
This preserves almost all the meta info that you ask for. Ensure the external 1TB hard drive has an ext3 formatted partition. Linux file names are case-sensitive, FAT32 / NTFS partitions are not and may lead to problems.
Command: rsync -az /home/yourname /media/1TB/backup
Make sure when you press tab to auto-complete the commands, the trailing slash is not added (i.e., avoid /home/yourname/). For more details see man rsync

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Ensure that no new unwanted stuff has entered the system (virus/trojan).
Make an image of the entire hard disk using disk image tools and store the disk image on the external hard disk. Once you get the laptop back, restore the disk image. You will need a linux live CD while restoring. Lookup for dd image restore

What would be lovely is if I could get tax credits for committing to open products that further help mankind in my spare time!