Relevance of C/C++ in today's computing

A question mostly asked by fresh graduates is "C/C++ are still being used"? The answer is "Yes of course", C/C++ are still being widely used. Many open source projects are done using C/C++. Modern computing scene would be very different if C/C++ were not there... For example

1. Asterisk the open source PBX is written using plain old C language.
2. Maya, a top notch 3D animation suite is written using C++.
3. Postgres, leading open source DBMS which competes to Oracle is done using C.

C is considered the language of choice for writing Operating Systems. All Linux based operating systems are written using C. Microsoft Windows is written using C/C++. They (folks @ Redmond) tried to write Windows Vista using C#, but failed miserably.
C is known as "Mother of all programming languages". C/C++ are primarily used to write mission critical software, when we need high speed and smaller memory foot prints.I agree that we are living in an internet age, languages lis PHP/ASP.Net/Ruby on Rails are everywhere these days. But does anybody think, what is the engine powering these languages? The web-server which executes PHP code, the browser which displays CSS/HTML and dances around with AJAX, Adobe's Flash things, and many more are all done using C/C++.
Sometimes I think, I will do a detailed workshop titled "The Real Power of C/C++". I'm pretty ambitious in this regards, and I'll surely tell the world about "the happening"...