Does this mean I'll get arrested from now on for cheating people out of money when playing Monopoly?

Unless you're intimately familiar with the tasks undertaken by GCHQ analysts such as the one this test is recruiting for, I think it's hard to say for sure whether the test was, in fact, good or bad. The thinking behind why some elements of the test were designed the way they were may not be immediately obvious. Having said that, I do wonder whether GCHQ would put their best minds to task working on devising a top rate recruitment puzzle. With the current international climate, combined the the current economic climate, I'd hazard a guess that their time is rather precious ;)

If a company requires compliance with certain information security standards, then they should be checking these things prior to signing up. If it's not clear on their website, then a quick question sent to their sales staff should clear it up. If that doesn't clear it up, then I'd be concerned just because I'm not getting decent answers from their sales staff. I tend to contact sales staff and fire a bunch of questions at them anyway, just to get an initial idea of whether their service will be any good. If their sales staff know their stuff, then there's a chance the support staff might too. A good pre-sales experience doesn't necessarily mean post-purchase service will be up to scratch, but if they're poor at answering my pre-sales questions, then that usually means they're crossed off my list.

Money. His autobiography goes on sale on Monday. Nothing like a few controversial quotes to stir up some hype and get people queuing like they're waiting to buy an iPhone 4S.

Usually I'd attempt to explain why an article is just a load of rubbish from someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, but today I think I'll just leave it at that. Come on Slashdot!

You completely missed my point. Yes, it's starting to head downward, but do you really believe that > 40% is just power users and their buddies? That was the original claim and the one I was responding to. Perhaps my use of the word 'momentum' in that context was a bad idea. My point was that Firefox has gained a following amongst your average internet users, and a figure of > 40% reflects that. My previous posts base their whole argument around the fact that Firefox's usage is on a downward trend, so what's your point?

And as for giving enterprise the middle finger... Did you not see my link regarding extended support releases? Maybe a temporary middle finger at best. They had to make some hard decisions regarding priority to get things sorted, and quick. It's refreshing to see a company brave enough to take big decisions like that.

I'd have to disagree. Firefox has reached a level of penetration beyond it being used by power users and their friends and family. It has a momentum of it's own. The figures for Firefox usage alone tell you that. I have loads of friends who use Firefox on recommendation from a friend who wasn't a power user. Sure, the seeds were sewn by power users, but the recommendation is third or fourth hand now. It's got to the point where a lot of people use it because it's 'cool'. 'Oh yeah, don't use that Internet Explorer, it's rubbish. Use Firefox.' Half these people don't even know why it's 'better', they're just following the fashion. The actual reasons for switching have been lost somewhere along the chain. It's the sheep principle in action.

This idea that there's either power users or 'grandma' is silly. It's not 'grandma', it's everyone, of any age, that wants to use a computer as a tool and not as an intellectual pursuit. If Firefox wishes to maintain it's market share, it's these people it needs to please, and that means taking some cues from Chrome. Power users are _not_ Firefox's core market anymore. That was a long time ago.

I'm a power user and I haven't been chased away. Besides, I think a lot of people on here need to be realistic. Sorry, but Mozilla doesn't care about you as much as they do the average non-techie user.

It may have been a controversial decision, but IMHO a brave and necessary one for Firefox's long term survival. Mozilla are keenly aware that they've been outdone in a number of areas by Chrome. Their market share is decreasing and it'll take time to slow the momentum even if they come out with some big improvements. Their old release cycle could well have meant the improvements needed to bring Firefox back into the game would have been too late. Firefox wasn't ready for the switch, unlike Chrome that was built from the ground up with rapid release in mind. Trouble is, I don't think they could afford to wait until it was. My guess is that Mozilla were well aware that the new rapid release cycle would (a) cause people pain when it comes to outdated extensions, and (b) annoy enterprise IT departments. They just saw what great things Chrome are doing, together with their falling market share, and decided that the couldn't afford to wait until they could solve these problems before moving to a rapid release cycle. Enterprise users and users with lots of extensions are in the minority when it comes to Firefox. There's no doubt in my mind that a browser with a slow release cycle is going to loose out to a browser like Chrome in the long term, all other things being equal. Remember I'm talking mainstream here. Not enterprise users, or geeks.

Yes, the regular update cycles are going to piss of a few enterprise types for obvious and very valid reasons. But let's face it, the enterprise is definitely not Firefox's core market. Faced with having to make some tough decisions in an attempt to ensure Firefox's survival, enterprise users were put to one side. The right decision in my opinion bearing in mind the urgency implied by falling market share. However, Mozilla is hearing enterprise concerns and is proposing what they would call 'Extended Support Releases,' which are basically the same concept as Ubuntu's LTS (Long Term Support) releases. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:Proposal for details. I've thought this was a good idea since the start, and I have a feeling Mozilla knew all along was something they were eventually going to have to do.

Mozilla have said they're well aware of the incompatible extensions issue and plan to get on top of it. I also get the impression they want to follow Chrome in hiding version info and pushing out updates without any user intervention. Both in my opinion important if you want to have a rapid release cycle without seriously annoying users. For the vast majority of users, I think pushing updates without confirmation is a good thing. Most people really don't care about having maximum control over exactly what gets installed on their machine. They just want something that works well and stays secure. Trouble is they don't appreciate that means regular updates. Much better to do it for them in my opinion.

I wouldn't call 'pre-alpha', 'almost a reality'.

Confirmation of the results of an experiment by an independent party is standard practice in the scientific community. Without it, the findings wouldn't even be considered completely valid! Nothing to see here...

You have 2500 'friends'? Do you know them all by name?

Well, generally when you're starting your computer up, you're waiting for it to get to a usable state so you can get some useful work (and I use the term loosely) done with it. When you're shutting down, you don't tend to care as much about how long it's going to take. Granted, there's still situations when you might care, but it's not like startup when you almost always do. If someone said to me, "I can make it so that your computer always starts up instantly. There's one catch though, it'll be added on to the time your computer takes to shut down." I'd say, "Sure, I'll take it!"

Also, as others have pointed out, it's only a kernel image that's written to disk, which is considerably smaller than the usual hibernation file. I get the impression it won't take anywhere near as long.