Actually, I forgot to mention something in my first post, which shows that other users are also affected by Microsoft's overestimation of their demand. The reason is that the utility must pay the same amount to all generators. It starts with cheap sources, like wind, nuclear, and hydro, then adds on more and more expensive generation, such as coal, natural gas, etc. Microsoft overestimating its demand will cause the utility to turn on their next cheapest generator, which will be more expensive than all the generators already turned on. However, it must then pay the new price to all the previous generators as well. Also, when they run the electricity market, it's the typical demand vs supply curve (see http://www.mikeonads.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/supply_demand_11.JPG), meaning that because the price of electricity just went up, some guy just lost his bid to be powered. (Technically, it's the independent system operator (ISO) that runs the market, and the utility collects the fine for the ISO, but that's not important here.)

I work in the power industry, so I can tell you that this is not necessarily the utility's fault. It is often the case that it costs utilities EXTRA when large industrial/commercial (ie non residential) consumers UNDER-consume. For example, if you tell the utility you want X megawatts of power the next day, they will bring on extra coal generation to meet that load, which is considered base load, while using cheap wind to fill in the peaking load. However, if you suddenly decide you only need half of that power, the utility can not switch off that extra coal generation, because coal plants have long ramp up and ramp down times. So since the utility can't turn off the coal, it has to turn off the wind. However, due to other contracts, the utility often still has to pay the wind generators the same amount, as if they were still buying electricity from them. So now suddenly the utility is stuck with extra costs of having to burn extra coal, while at the same time wasting the cheap wind power. This is the reason for the fines for underconsumption. This is also the reason why sometimes, on a windy day, you see wind turbines not moving--it is not the utility being stupid. The real culprits here are the people at Microsoft responsible for estimating how much power their servers will require, so that they can draft contract that better matches their actual electricity needs.

According to Apple, this phenomenon is due to the fact that shoppers are actually trying to buy Apple products, but are mistaking Samsung products for them.

Why not store data redundantly in several different formats? You could use flash, HDD, and DVD. That will increase your chances that at least one will work. Or, you could store it online, and just put the password on a piece of paper in the chest.