Agreed And it's even more strange doing this when not long ago "disable javascript" feature was removed.

Cmoon If you say smething like: "On a hunch, Candes applied an algorithm designed to clean up fuzzy images, expecting to see a slight improvement. .. What appeared on his computer screen instead was a perfectly rendered image...", your readers (at least me) expect to see this image and to hear about hunch-algorithm. Anyway, here (many clicks later) is original article - https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20131004-the-mathematical-shape-of-things-to-come/ (but still no pics)

We are talking about major company with lots of clients here. There shouldn't be big (or any at all) reward for finding holes in systems, owned by small companies with few clients. Analogically - there should be big rewards, if someone pointed out that e.g. bank has some physically weak spot underneath the building or some liquidity problems, that will definitely lead to bankruptcy. It is relevant how many people will be affected and how bad consequences will be.

Does this mean I'll be able to get ThinkPad for half a price?

Actually methods provided strongly resembles same that are used in NLP. Watch some of Darren Brown's shows and you'll see. :D For ex. look at one of the methods used - anchoring (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_neuro-linguistic_programming#Techniques)

That's the nature of man - mess up everything and then at the last possible moment do unnatural things to try making situation better. Ehh, I'm having dual feelings about this.. First impression after reading this - "ew, gross", but still, not saying it shouldn't be done.

I would recommend Debian. Stable, fast and clean look. Haven't had any problems on PC. On NB was issue with wifi, because of drivers. Mint is also good, because it is made to easier migrate from win. It looks like win and many things are quite intuitive. Though mint doesn't motivate you to use terminal ;D