Backblaze tested the slower and cheaper STBD6000100, not the ST6000NM0024.

For their tests they note that the WD Red uses slightly less energy (which is important to them, when they have racks full of the drives) and also because it can lay down 1TB a day MORE than the Seagate. Again, a slightly different workload than most of us.

For them, the extra cost and power of the higher spec Seagate aren't worth it.

In summary: essentially equal performance (go to SSD if you need speed); essentially equal cost; slight edge on power to WD;

For reliability, no failures or pre-failures in 3 months of 24/7 operation.

Indeed. "Strong" is not a well understood concept. People often confuse it with hard, or tough or stiff.

I can thoroughly recommend The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don't Fall through the Floor by J.E. Gordon, which even has a positive review by Bill Gates.

Finding something that is:

• Hard
• Tough
• Light
• Cheap
• Transparent

is challenging. Sapphire gets a pass for Hard and a (mostly) Transparent.

I have an old mechanical watch. It requires winding once every two days, so I wind it every day. No big deal. BUT, it takes a few (10, 15) seconds to wind the watch. Can I charge the Apple Watch in under a minute? While wearing it?

Winding a mechanical watch and charging a cellphone/smartwatch are not quite as comparable as other posters have been making out.

MS #1: It's going to be called Windows U+122BA
MS #1: What?
MS #1: Windows SE
MS #2: "Es Ee"?

MS #1: Sumerian Edition.
MS #2: Why!?
MS #1: Well, Slashdot doesn't do unicode properly, so they can't say mean things about it.
MS #2: Who cares what Slashdot says about Windows?
MS #1: Philistine!
MS #2: No, that's Windows PE.
MS #1: ?
MS #2: Philistine Edition, a.k.a. Phone Edition.

Through inheritance (isn't OOP a wonderful thing?).

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12. And the UDHR was ratified in June 1992 and signed into law by Pres. Bush.

The constitution provides for the process, which has been followed.

Of course, one might cynically note many other actions that appear to be against the law, yet go unprosecuted; or indeed laws that conflict with international obligations as established by treaty, or laws that conflict with the constitution.

(Yes, I know parent was being rhetorical).

It may also be to a company's financial advantage to guard their customers' data in this way, and I don't mean that it will get them more customers.

The cost of complying with requests for this sort of data is not zero, and may in fact be considerable. The Agencies may do it at their own cost, but you can bet they really want the cost out of their own budgets and into someone else's.

If a company really has no way to deliver the information, impossibilium nulla obligatio (no legal obligation to do the impossible), they have no compliance costs.

Well, that didn't take long.

Brian W. Aldiss wrote a story about this many years ago.

Woody Allen

Apparently they were fairly awful creatures—flocks of a few million birds blackening the skies, decimating crops and crapping on everything.

Couldn't we direct our sympathies to a more like-able creature? Wooly mammoths or great awks, perhaps?

Because the thought of a few million woolly mammoths blackening the skies, decimating crops and crapping on everything is even more terrifying.

True. The NSA, as a government agency, is obliged to follow the rules, in spirit as well as letter. Well said.

Ah, yes, "The ends justify the means". The trouble with that is that the means determine the end. If your means are corrupt, lawless and arbitrary, just what sort of outcome do you expect?

I believe this has been discussed previously: Matthew 7:16, 1 Samuel 24:13, Matthew 12:33, Luke 6:43, James 3:12

Or roughly 100 knot seconds.

Right now, voting for someone named Malcolm Peter Brian Telescope Adrian Umbrella Stand Jasper Wednesday Stoatgobbler John Raw Vegetable Arthur Norman Michael Featherstone SmithNorthgot Edwards Harris MasonFrampton Jones Fruitbat Gilbert 'We'll keep a welcome in the' Williams If I Could Walk That Way Jenkin Tiger-draws Pratt Thompson 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' Darcy Carter Pussycat 'Don't Sleep In The Subway' Barton Mannering Smith could only be an improvement.

You're with the NSA, right?