<rant> I spawn new windows, and I like it. So stop your whining. It is no more of an usability sin than having to hit the back button numerous times because you forgot to right-click, control-click, shift-click or command-click. There is a valid logic behind opening a new window to display content that is located outside of your site. As a matter of fact it was one of Google's most requested feature, which is why they ultimately turned it into a preference. </rant>
Four Free Software fallacies. The article itself is somewhat superficial, but the comments below are quite interesting.