SaaS is popular, as it is cheaper than hosting the application in house. The issues around where the data is stored are well known. The stakeholders and decision makers don't care, as the overall cost is lower. Running open source software in house would only be more expensive. Folks tend to run this software because it is free, as in $$$, and don't customize it for the most part. It is used the same way a Microsoft product would be used, it just costs less. Nobody thinks about the support issues until it is too late.

I dropped cable TV, and had to pickup both Youtube TV, and Direct TV Now so that I could get Viacom (Comedy Central) and the Discovery properties.
DirectTV Now has dropped Viacom for new subscribers, but I am still grandfathered in.

With this announcement, I can drop Direct TV Now. I don't watch Comedy Central enough to justify the charge. YouTube TV delivers a better image than Direct TV Now, as well as has a better DVR capability.

In my area, Comcast measures your data usage by how much data they send to you from their datacenter. This would include DOS attacks, monitoring traffic from Comcast.. My monthly logs often differ from Comcasts, sometimes by as much as 10x, as much of this traffic is rejected by my gateway. None of my other utilities get away with this sort of monitoring. It is based on what I consume, not what they send. If the water pipe breaks on their side of my meter, that is their problem. Comcast makes it mine. I have only exceeded the cap once, by their records. Twice in 12 months triggers the extra fees.

I have had fitbits, three generations of apple watch, and the Garmin Fenix 5X. Check out the Garmin products. They tie in with the apple health applications. Excellent battery life. I can get 10 days out of it fairly easily just doing smart watch sort of things. If I use the GPS tracking, battery gets cut to around 36 hours of use. Apple has trained me to do a nightly recharge, so that is no big deal.

Wisdom is a product of time and experience. Both of which have been constantly and consistently devalued by corporations seeking a quick profit.

More platters yields more heads. More components to fail. This will increase failure rates for these drives at a given capacity over a similar capacity 3.5" drive with a lower platter count.

Spinning media is still hard to beat on price. Desktop 7200 RPM drives are at $.03/GB. "Enterprise" 7200 RPM SATA at volume is between $.03/GB and $0.05GB. Cheap SSD is around $0.60/GB to $1.20/GB.

A lot of data is still cold. At volume, this price difference matters a lot.

I took an unlocked Nokia 1520 from AT&T, to T-Mobile, to Consumer Cellular.
Originally, on AT&T, I could not make it through a complete day on a single charge. Took it off the charger at 4:30AM. Battery was dead by 3pm.
Took phone to t-mobile. Off charger at 4:30AM, phone still had a quarter charge left at 10:30PM when I plugged it back in.
Now on Consumer Cellular. Same phone. AT&T is the service provider to Consumer Cellular. Battery is not making it through the day again.

Usage patterns are similar through all three carriers. I did not do any rigorous scientific tests on this. This is observational usage data.

I have never met a successful manager of a software development team who did not have a technical background. I have even met a few liberal arts majors who learned to develop software on their own. They had passion, they achieved a technical background on their own.
I have met plenty of unsuccessful software development managers that do not have a technical background.
I waste 6 hours of my day, on average, dealing with non technical managers of technical teams. Much time wasted explaining the technical aspects of their own teams to them so I can get them to do what they should have known to do in the first place.
I do not understand how someone can be passionate about a technology construction, and not be technical. These folks should chase their passions somewhere else.
The best managers that I have had, and that I deal with now, are former EE's, CE's, CS types with development experience that went on into higher management ranks.
You spend more time figuring out strategy, and less time bogged down on trivial matters that are obvious to the greenest of college hires.

This is just a great example of responsible journalism. Now the criminals know exactly where to go to get firearms that will never be traced back to them.

A more important reason to pay for this SKU is so that the bean counters at Dell see that there is money in selling computers with open source software.
Dell is a spreadsheet run organization. If the SKU doesn't do the volume, or make money, they don't do another version of the SKU.

Getting the Windows version and loading your own build is shooting the movement in the foot.

I see a lot of criticism of Windows 8, but I don't see a lot of folks that have actually tried to use it with a touch screen device.
I have played with the all in ones and touch screen tablets at the Microsoft store. As much as a cringe when a co-worker touches my monitor, I think there is something to this adaption of the tablet interface. I actually like the live data features of the icons, I get information without going into the apps. I get that this is a new take on the old widget concept.

I would not count Microsoft out.

Recreational drugs serve more as a device to cope with Management than they do for any other aspects of developing code.

I don't expect public sector reviews to be any less unbiased than they are in the private sector. If your boss doesn't like you / writes a bad review, it is in your best interested to find a boss that does. Public sector employees are not exempt from this workplace reality.

.... check out how long it has been since Congress has passed a budget...

The climate science debate has two important components to it. This issue focuses on one component, and that is the anti-science attack on climate science. This has the same source of ignorance and zealotry that has challenged teaching evolution in the classroom. This is a stand of religious based ignorance against science. I have not met anyone who understands the scientific process who challenges the theory of evolution. I am using the scientific definition of theory, which is an operating model, and not the "theory is not a fact" arguement that my religious friends pick up.

The second component to climate science is that there are some great issues of modern science and society that can be taught here. To not teach this in the classroom is missing out on a real opportunity to teach critical thinking that children can get passionate about.

You can teach about data collection, and how this can be a source for controversy.
You can teach about computer modeling and statistical analysis. What these tools are great for, and where they fall short.
Plenty to teach about weather vs. climate, and what the climate means for other systems on the planet.
Lab experiements on basic components of the atmosphere, and why they don't always translate to the actual model of the world.
You can teach the ethics of how to prioritze science against society and economic concerns.

Lots more stuff that I am not getting in to.

My point being, this is another area where zealotry is screwing up a great opportunity to train the next generation of scientists.