I'm curious: did anyone ever notice how Iran is a modern, safe country? Or did anyone ever give Chileans credit for ousting the American puppet, who was still facing war crimes charges at the time of his death...a man who looted the Chilean treasury in the time-honoured tradition of dictators everywhere?

Hmmm....food for thought. On second thought, don't think - let's just uncritically parrot what we read somewhere, because it MUST be right.

I guess setting up puppet governments in places like Iran and Chile doesn't count, as far as you're concerned? Or failing to do so, such as in the Bay of Pigs fiasco?

I always have to chuckle when I see comments like yours, made by Americans who are so blindingly ignorant of their own history.

I never have a goddamned moderator point when I really need one. You'd get it..."Insightful" or "Informative", not sure which.

Apparently several Winnipeg mosquitoes were observed slathering themselves with DEET and lying under the 417 nm to get a little colour on their underbellies.

A researcher who attempted to turn the light off was beaten badly, and is now reporting that several Goliath beetles used in another experiment now appear to be pregnant. Also the cat.

Remember back a few years ago, when Sony decided the best way to combat piracy was to install a rootkit on the machines of anybody who played one of their CD's?

I hope I can be forgiven for reminding them of a couple of good old adages. Adages like, "What goes around comes around", "Karma's a bitch", and "Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander".

And I hope they'll forgive me for my complete lack of sympathy.

It's not that simple, especially in the UK. Even in Canada, the truth isn't an absolute defense against libel.

I can't wait 'til the first time one of the people who's been shamed after being charged is found innocent in court. Unlike the US, England's courts take a very dim view of smearing someone's reputation unjustly.

I suspect a couple of nice, fat payouts in the wake of libel convictions will put a stop to this nonsense.

Thanks for the information. I guess I wasn't too clear on one thing, though: I do back up, but my work is such that if the last backup was an hour before, I lose an hour of work I won't get back, or even more.

And I'm one of those people who actually do require a lot of storage space...and have no desire to have it beyond my care and control. I do professional photography and video. Often, I have five or six versions of a photo on the go at once. I'll want to keep all of them, and any modifications I make...not so much colour correction as actual content...will probably proceed a lot further on two or three versions. I'm not an idiot about keeping my data drive defragged, and nothing goes on my boot drive (which is a 300G SCSI...you'd probably be surprised at how fast it is) except the OS, installed programs and stuff I'm actually working on. I have as little going on in the background as I can get away with. That means my security is cloud-based plus passive.

And I have to say, I've had lots better luck with hard drives than you. My machines are on 24-7, and I don't let my data drives sleep. I've never had one last less than 3 years. Most last easily twice that.

Any Congressman or televangelist.

I'm not the most tech savvy guy in the world, so I'm certainly willing to be corrected, but my major problem with SSD's is this: when they fail, they do so without warning, and in a way that makes even partial data recovery impossible for an average user. On the other hand, in the decades during which I've used HDD's, I've never once had one fail without giving me some kind of warning. The dying drive has either overheated, or started showing read/write errors, or made distressing noises (kind of like that death speech all the soon-to-be-croaked best buddies get to make in action movies). And I've even been able to recover at least some data from drives that were seriously screwed. The only failed SDD I ever dealt with simply didn't report on boot, and I never heard anything from it again. So to me, a big SSD just offers a better chance to lose everything all at once, minus whatever was saved in the last backup.

And then there's cost, of course. I just bought a 2TB HDD for eighty bucks. I know I won't be seeing any SDD's available at that capacity/price for a long, long time.

Right now, my ideal computer would have a mid-size SSD for the operating system and installed programs, and a big, fast HDD for most storage needs. And, of course, my external backup drive would use old-fashioned platters. I'll leave huge, relatively expensive SDD's for those whose need for speed is much greater than mine.

Why would you think I'm getting away from it? Unlike you, apparently, I get my information from a variety of sources. I don't need a tech-oriented site pointing me at non-tech current events I've already seen from three different perspectives.

Why is this on Slashdot?

"An anonymous reader sends this report from the Associated Press..."

"A reader who thinks he's anonymous sends this report from the Associated Press..."

There...fixed that for you. ;-)

...hookers will soon be blowing the cash as well as the customers?

I just can't get my head around the idea that somebody would take information vital to their needs and put it beyond reach, under the control of other people whose priorities probably don't match theirs.

What advantages are so overwhelming that they make this a sensible thing to do?