I don't mind some ads as long as they don't overlay the content. But in the last 1-2 years, annoying popups that cover up the content I'm interested in have become pretty common. Those are more like stickers on every page you have to pull off before you can read your $4.95 magazine.

For me that was the reason to finally install NoScript. And no, I don't believe in your social contract. By visiting a website, I don't promise to watch everything there. Things that get too annoying I will ignore, or tell my browser to ignore them for me.

But we are getting a bit off topic:
The article was about tracking by third party cookies, and the associated worries about privacy intrusion. In that I agree with Mozilla, and the new default is only what I have had for years.

Encrypted attachment. The mail body only contains the hint that the real data are in the attachment.

Of course, that won't help you if the recipient is not familiar with using encryption at all...

Fucking Slashdot ate my Euro signs :-(
The license costs are 3000 Euro per system.

To be exact, the product (as in mathematics) of the two curves is what makes the revenue. But in principle, you are correct.

But what I really wanted to write about is one of the edge cases:
The company I work for is on the verge of releasing a new product that comes with its own database server. The current software on that server is Windows Server and MS SQL Server, to the tune of â3000 per system in license fees.

Now product management would love to save those â3000, by using Linux and PostgreSQL instead. The counter-argument is that our service guys are barely proficient enough in the Windows world to handle the Microsoft system, and making them do maintenance on a Linux-based system would require some serious extra training first.

Personally I like the idea of giving Microsoft the finger on this, but it wouldn't be a painless transition :-/

There are plenty of published statistics for that. Short version:
VERY stable on the desktop, Windows is still over 90%. But they are badly outperformed in the market for mobile devices. While their market share has improved somewhat over the last year, it is still below 10%.

Microsoft's problem is that mobile is growing and desktop is stagnating => the things they are good at in terms of sales don't yield a growth anymore.

He had a logically valid response: You were not obliged to upgrade every year.

The "paid shill" is questionable though, I'd like some more evidence for that before calling people names.

Something like that has been tried and successfully perverted by the lobby in Germany.

"Highly qualified" employees who earned at least a (high) minimum salary could immigrate easier, with some prerequisites removed.
The system started out with a minimum salary of 100.000 Euro per year, which is a lot by German standards. It was self-evident that only really highly qualified employees would be hired for those positions.

Meanwhile, the minimum salary is 44.800 Euro and in some occupations only 34.900 Euro. Highly qualified positions my ass. Also, no thanks to our lobbyist whore chancelorette.

PC games are increasingly going multicore. Took them long enough, but now they are getting there. That is a major "application" in terms of usage share. Probably more usage share than the image processing one of my fellow posters mentioned.

Computers and robots are pretty fungible, and in the long term they tend to be cheaper than humans.

Impressive, but I wonder how much better it could be when CCP finally comes up with a multi-processor friendly architecture and replaces some more Python with C libraries.
A factor 10 seems possible, and then the same battle could run in real time :).

I think there is some confusion about concepts in your post.

SQL injection relies on sloppy programming where the developer forgot to sanitize the input. Obfuscating the code probably won't help as the hackers don't need to see it, they just try to dump their malicious SQL code into some input field.

A trojan or backdoor is by definition something created by the original developer of the software. He can, of course, put his malicious code in before obfuscation.

But GP has a point if he questions the wisdom of a 130 kW engine combined with a 22 kWh battery.
I think an 80kW engine would still offer enough power and be a bit cheaper.

Where did you get the statement that "this is to make sure the battery life is in sync with the vehicle's computer for delicate components"?

Sounds like an attempt of a marketroid to find a justification for shitty design. Components should either be designed to be not so delicate, or they should have their own DC/DC converter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-to-DC_converter) to turn the voltage from the battery into something palatable for them. Most of the computing stuff needs voltages lower than 12V anyway, so a DC/DC converter is needed in any case.

The Model S isn't cheap.
And while I personally think it looks good, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think aesthetics should not be on that list either way.

Seconded regarding "check image and backup". Only after you have successfully tested the restore process, you know that you actually have viable backups.

Also, think about the nature of your images. Are they easily migrated to another format, if the original hardware is no loger available?
For instance, I have encountered one or two floppy "imaging" programs that simply store the contents of all sectors on a 3.5" floppy into a 1.44MB binary file. Good for getting hidden information in seemingly unused sectors too, but if you need to access the information 20 years from now, there may be no more floppys to restore to.

Depending on your archiving goals, it may be better to copy the contents of the media to a directory on a larger medium.