I've deployed hundreds of enterprise Seagate drives over the last 5 years as they're my maker of choice. I stick to these as I trust Seatools. Overall the failure rate has been lower than expected, none failed prematurely and one was D.O.A - a 3TB drive. Whilst I haven't had cause to graph the failures, I'm pretty sure the failures are closer to random that bathtub.

You do realise that interfering mains "hum" isn't a pure sine wave? It is a varying complex wave which will comprise a family of harmonics at 50Hz (or 60Hz) intervals throughout the audio band. I would guess they look at the relative amplitude of these over time to compare with mains variations.

But I'm using Googles DNS 8.8.8.8 - who wouldn't?

I can see it and it has a link to a Pirate Bay proxy. Seems like the story is bullshit.

What makes me laugh is the changes that have occurred in artists illustrations of Neanderthals: Before dna connection made: Ugly, primitive - almost thuggish. After dna connection: Intelligent looking, caring for others - could almost be your old uncle... (not mine though;-)

My company bought 3 Linux powered boxes for a specific task. Being Nix-curious (had run RH at as my home setup several years earlier) I found I was able to look after the system and needed to, as our IT dept's interest ended at email and documents - and only if it had Microsoft as part of the name. We now choose 'Nix where possible because we can support it better. In 10 years the 'Nix area has grown to about 80 boxes dealing with big (TB) media files. We now move and process more data in a day than the rest of the company IT does in weeks.

Hmm, I am not fond of Unity, Metro or the "iPadded" Lion interfaces, but if I'd seen those first perhaps I would have preferred them. It could be said they are each "dumbed down" but it could equally be argued that they "remove unnecessary complexity". Ubuntu is the trendsetter of the Linux community. Trendsetters are listened to, and it seems that Suse have followed their lead. I have a choice of interfaces, so am an impartial observer. I'll be interested to see how things develop over the next year or two.

Remember when apple was in transition to x86? Apps were fat, containing binaries for both processor types. This seems to me the only way forward that stands a chance.

That's true with your own data, but consider the others' data. Few will get far with a complaint that an email attachment got removed due to the company "security policy". For an exception, consider a home user who has switched from MS Windows. A few positive on his archived files will bring a smile of satisfaction that he made the right decision.