Funny, that. My experience with USPS has been nothing but positive when shipping parcels overseas. UPS on the other hand has managed to turn one 50 kg oscilloscope into a mangled heap of aluminium and steel and losing another one in transit. Both were sent to me, not by me - I would not use UPS if there were any other option which fortunately there is. UPS also grossly overcharges for package delivery and has the gall to suggest that I drive 60 km to their depot to come and get a shipment (I live in the countryside in Sweden). USPS connects to the Swedish mail carrier which gives me the option of either getting parcels at the nearest supermarket or to get it delivered at home at no extra cost.
but I don't think it makes sense to say that Hollywood is "the customer" when I buy a copy of Windows.
Hollywood is the customer all right. It just happens to be so that you (or, to be more precise, your disposable income) are the product being sold by Microsoft to Hollywood. And through sheer genious of marketing they have succeeded in getting the product (you) to pay for the privilege of being sold.
Quite simple, really. P2P is decentralised. Decentralised means hard to control. Hard to control means there are things going on outside of these control freaks' sphere of influence. This is bad, in their eyes. They want to control not just what was and what is but also what will be. If P2P is allowed to spread without check they are afraid to lose control over all of the former. In Dutch (my native language) there is a saying: "wie een hond wil slaan vindt altijd wel een stok". Literally translated this means 'those who want to hit a dog will always find a stick'. If you want to do evil you will always find a pretense.
Do you leave your computer on at night? Turn it off, or at least put it in standby. My system, at idle, draws about 600w, when it's in standby it drops to about 30w. That's a HUGE savings on a month or yearly basis.
Sounds to me like you are in need of a new computer. 600W idle consumption? 30W standby? Strange, that, when my main machines (IBM Thinkpad T23's) consume ~30W active, ~1W standby. My server - which is always on - uses about 20W peak and can be (and has been on occasion, eg. while paddling the Yukon) solar-powered. It is based on an old Virgin Webplayer with a 200 MHz Geode processor, and runs web/mail (with spam filtering)/file services. Is it super-fast? No, not really. It does keep up though, which is enough. It is also totally quiet, no cooling fans needed. And it is/was cheap...
I do not play games. If I wanted to I'd have to get something newer and more power hungry (which in itself seems backwards, newer machines should be less power-hungry, not more...) but I do use these machines for large software projects. But at 600W idle I hope you're designing fusion reactors or something similar, otherwise it sounds rather excessive...
No, that would read more like 'maws', the a with ring (å) sounds like a short o as in 'forgive'. The long o (oo) sound in Swedish is used for the 'u' as in 'underbar' (oontherbawr (the 'a' is a long a, here approximated with 'aw'. Swedish also does not use the slashed o (ø), that would be Norwegian and Danish. In Sweden they use ö instead...
Open the drive, look at the solder connections to the USB plug. You'll probably find they have come loose as solder joints are not really up to much physical abuse. Resolder them with a fine-tipped 15W iron (to be bought for a few $local_currency_units at the hardware store) and, for good measure, glue down the metal shield of the USB connector. Your USB gadget will probably work again, and keep working for a long time. If it doesn't, rinse and repeat. If you really want to make sure these things don't happen just use and USB extension cord and plug the thing into that.
Oh, and try walking or biking to work in Wisconsin in February.
I ride my bike from our farm to the bus stop year round. Not in Wisconsin but in Sweden (Europe) but snow is snow, right? Unpaved roads are unpaved roads? I also bring my 3yr old daughter to daycare on the back of the bike (with studded tires in wintertime).
Of course the difference is that the bus stop is no more than 3 km from my door... and buses run on a regular hourly schedule. And people actually use them.
It is not all rosy though as I'm currently contemplating going off-grid because the state-sanctioned monopoly powerline-owner (Vattenfall) keeps on ratcheting its power transmission prices up so that we pay quite a bit more for getting electricity delivered than for the actual power used...
(not to hijack this thread but has anyone out there built something like this wind generator?)
One small correction: the Swedish word 'robot' translates to 'missile'... so the technology has its origin in seeker heads for missiles, not "in seeker for robots.". In other words, finally all that weapons research leads to something constructive instead of destructive...
To me it feels like Microsoft has passed 'peak Windows' and should work on a graceful decline of the Windows platform instead of yet another pie-in-the-sky version which does not add anything computer users are really asking for, and takes whatever hardware performance increases have been made for its own purposes.
Windows as a platform is being phased out. It will be replaced by something network-based, focused on network-delivered services but offering local processing and storage capacity. You can fill in your own favourite buzzword here, be it 'Web something.zero' or some virtual machine which runs everywhere, or the next great API to rule the world after Win32 or whatever. Main thing is that development strategies are no longer geared towards heavy and relatively static Windows PC's but towards flexible networked clients.
Sure, we've heard the same before, 'the network is the computer' and more like that. This time around 'the network' actually is getting close to be up to the job. Never mind that a substantial part of the actual processing still will take place on the client device (in one of those 'run everywhere' dialects, something not platform-specific), the main premise is that future development will not target 'the operating environment known as Windows' but instead targets 'the client environment available via the network'.
At least that is how I see it, and have been doing it for the last few years...
I'm using 1.1 and 1.2 GHz T23's as my main machines... for software development. This has several advantages: the machines are cheap rugged, have excellent keyboards, are light and fast enough to run mainstream Linux distributions. You won't see them run fancy 3D stuff with their S3 SuperSavage controllers but for the rest these machines are still up to the job.
The main advantage of using an older generation machine for software development is of course that if it runs well on these machines it should run fabulous on current hardware.
While it may be true (and it *better be true*) that untrusted zones can not directly touch local devices the question still remains why there is any processing being done on data from a lower-trust zone *inside* a higher-trust zone. That is the wrong approach. Had they formatted the document to be printed inside the lower-trust zone and handed a formatted document to the higher-trust zone (in whatever format is used to print documents: metafile, postscript, etc) to be printed this problem would not have occurred. That is, given that the print spooler does not goof up with the data to be printed of course...
If you already use NoScript you don't really need Flashblock as NoScript contains similar functionality. Just tell it to always block flash (also on trusted sites) and you will be presented with a flash-free page. Should you want to see the flash content you just click it - just like you would in Flashblock. The only missing part is that NoScript does not yet have a whitelist for plugin content. As flash (on Linux or also elsewhere?) is currently somewhat broken (version 9.0.115.0 of the flash plugin crashes when playing a second (or third or fourth or... flash movie, bug has been reported many times, Adobe does not seem to be interested...) this does not bother me in the least. One less plugin means one less part to break the browser...
Also off-topic but still indicative of the discrepancy between personal and commercial interests: we're running a Virgin Webplayer here as server. It handles SMTP (in/out, with spamfilters) and IMAP mail (internal only), a webserver (running lighttpd with bells & whistles), ssh, some internal NFSv4 shares, etc. Last year I upgraded memory on the machine all the way from 64MB (some of which is taken by the framebuffer) to a whopping 128MB. It contains a built-in 2.5" HD and hooks up to the net through an external USB ethernet device.
The Webplayer has a 200 MHz Geode GXLV processor... probably comparable to a 166 MHz Pentium I. It runs Debian GNU/Linux (mostly Sid) and rarely needs attention. Next service stop I'll replace the drive for something bigger but that's about it. Could I use a faster machine? Sure I could. Should it ever blow its magic smoke I'll replace it with an old notebook. Power consumption is minimal (I ran it of solar power for a few months while paddling the Yukon in Canada/Alaska), noise is more or less absent, who could ask for less?
Funny that. In my part of Europe (The Netherlands and now Sweden) AM was, and to a certain level still is alive and kicking. Advantages of AM over FM are the longer range and lower power requirements. Now that I live in Sweden I sometimes listen to Dutch radio. Not on FM of course as that does not reach much further than the horizon. AM all the way... literally, from The Netherlands to Sweden, some 1300 km.
Replying to my own posting here: Garden Networks' GTunnel works with wine on Linux so if you don't feel like setting up a Tor node and don't want to hunt for anonymizing proxies on the web you can use that instead. If you add the Switchproxy or (preconfigured for GTunnel etc.) GProxy extension to Firefox you can switch between your normal net connection (with or without proxy) and the anonymizer.
I posted something on Groklaw which might be of interest here as well, especially for those of you who (like me) live behind 'the wall'... I now have to resort to anonymous proxies to get to 'normal' web content because of some commercial dispute between common carriers...
This posting comes to you through an anonymizing proxy. Not because
I'm
somewhere behind the Great Firewall of China or on the Microsoft campus
in
Redmond... but because Ibiblio's carrier (Cogent) has decided it does not
want
to peer with TeliaSonera anymore. So they blocked
all
traffic coming from or destined to TeliaSonera. When they found out
that
those pesky routers did what they were designed to do - route traffic
around
damaged nodes - they advertised some cheap routes and subsequently
dropped
traffic, thereby sealing the leaks. Leaving me, and many with me,
without access
to a substantial part of the internet. OK, everyone who can not
reach Groklaw,
please post here:-)
As I am actually posting here it is
clear that there
are ways around these commercial blockades, just as there are
ways around
political blockades [1]. Anonymizing proxy servers can be
used by
those hit by Cogent's last temper trantum until either Cogent and
TeliaSonera
make up or (preferrably) traffic is routed around Cogent.
If
this type of
behaviour is to be the future for the commercialised internet the
need for
services like those provided by Garden
Networks or the Tor Project will
grow.
But the real
question of course is whether this type of behaviour should
be tolerated from a
carrier. It essentially boils down to censorship, something
which is not allowed
in a common carrier as far as I know. If they had just
refused to peer with
TeliaSonera they would be in the right. Now that they
actively attract and
subsequently drop traffic they have crossed a line. If I
were to be a Cogent
customer I would seriously consider to move my business
elsewhere or at least
consider to relegate Cogent to the role of backup carrier.
So Ibiblio, if you
are reading this message from behind the
wall...
[1]as
predicted in many a cyberpunk novel the
differences between politics and
commerce continue to dwindle until they are all
but
indiscernible...
OK, that explains a lot. Wonder why Telia did not notify its customers (me amongst them) as stated in that article? Also wonder what - apart from expensive multihoming - could be done to thwart these divide-and-conquer tactics by Cogent con sorte? Using a non-Telia-hosted proxy for now...
OK, offtopic but still related to this posting: Groklaw has been unreachable for me for a few days now. Google's last cached page is from saturday march 15. Trying to reach groklaw.net through coral (groklaw.net.nyud.net) cache does not work. Using netcraft to test for reachability results in a timeout. In other words, what happened and how come you seem to be able to reach the site? Are you able to reach the site at all? Are you able to reach ibiblio.org which hosts Groklaw? I am not. My location is Sweden, connected to the net through Telia. Am I up sh*t creek, did the servers burn down, did someone with a backhoe do something nasty, did Microsoft DDoS ibiblio to keep them from reporting on OhnOXML? Inquiring minds want to know...
they don't break down as stubbornly as machines (and can be used as dog chow)
I can tell you're not living with a horse vet like I do... nor do you have horses yourself like we do... otherwise you'd see that horses are among the most fickle creatures ever to be kept by humans. Murphy is an optimist when it comes to horses: give a horse something to hurt itself on and it will. Keep some horses together and soon you'll see that some of them eat to much and develop laminitis (hoof wall shear) while others don't get to eat enough and soon resemble the Grim Reaper's skin-and-bone nag. Ride them and they'll need regular shoeing and/or hoof care otherwise you'll soon have more dog chow than you can chow. And when it comes to that, even if you were inclined to have your dogs eat your horses you'll probably find that those horses have been treated with some medicine one time in their lives which makes it illegal for them to be used for animal or human consumption - at least that's the way it is here in Europe. So if you plan to use genetically modified horses may I suggest crossing them with a wolverine or some other creature with better healing capacities?
...an old XP box (Dell GX620, ~ 3 GHz processor with 1 GByte of RAM) and
...a ~ 2GHz processor and 2 GBytes of RAM... are good examples to show that Vista is capable of running on 'minimal HW'. This is anything but minimal hardware and should be more than capable of handling any modern operating system without any problems whatsoever. The mere fact that RAM has gotten dirt cheap does not mean you suddenly can declare a gigabyte of RAM as 'minimal', nor does a processor with a clock speed of more than a gigahertz qualify for minimality. Even though you might be able to order something more capable from the net at a whim there are many who can not do so for whatever reason. A more reasonable definition of a 'minimal system' would be something which technically can run a modern OS by virtue of running a supported processor architecture but compromises on other factors: memory capacity, speed, extensibility, storage, etc. These compromises may be caused by age, specific needs (low power consumption, survivability in hostile environment, etc.), compatibility or just accessibility - if you can not get at the system you can not expand it either.
Now those systems you quoted happen to be more powerful than anything I have, and I live in a first world country (Sweden) and work with computers for a living. The majority of systems I see around me have lower specs than those you quoted as being 'minimal'. None of them have Vista on them. When I order new systems which are intended to be used in a Microsoft environment I order them with XP. Vista is not on the radar and given the inroads made by free software it looks more and more like it won't show up either. Why spend more for something which does less?
Personally, I can deal with spam a lot easier than I can deal with junk mail
Junk mail is easy. Just get a wood-burning stove and start the fire with it. If it were not for the obvious environmental negatives (both related to burning the glossy crap they throw in my mailbox as well as the transport and manufacture costs) I'd just put my address on every crap mailer's list I can find to find my winters' supply of fuel delivered for free by the mailman. Use a briquette compactor to turn the crap into nice bricks which burn for hours. Have enough people do this and the junk mailers will give up. As would the environment around those houses which are heated with everything from Yves Rocher to Franklin Mint...
I'd guess that any object with a magnesium outer shell and frame would burn quite nicely once it enters the athmosphere. So anything sensitive which would be better off burned than in 'enemy' hands could be encased in magnesium which has the benefit of being light, strong and flammable...
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, that. My experience with USPS has been nothing but positive when shipping parcels overseas. UPS on the other hand has managed to turn one 50 kg oscilloscope into a mangled heap of aluminium and steel and losing another one in transit. Both were sent to me, not by me - I would not use UPS if there were any other option which fortunately there is. UPS also grossly overcharges for package delivery and has the gall to suggest that I drive 60 km to their depot to come and get a shipment (I live in the countryside in Sweden). USPS connects to the Swedish mail carrier which gives me the option of either getting parcels at the nearest supermarket or to get it delivered at home at no extra cost.
Hollywood is the customer all right. It just happens to be so that you (or, to be more precise, your disposable income) are the product being sold by Microsoft to Hollywood. And through sheer genious of marketing they have succeeded in getting the product (you) to pay for the privilege of being sold.
Quite simple, really. P2P is decentralised. Decentralised means hard to control. Hard to control means there are things going on outside of these control freaks' sphere of influence. This is bad, in their eyes. They want to control not just what was and what is but also what will be. If P2P is allowed to spread without check they are afraid to lose control over all of the former. In Dutch (my native language) there is a saying: "wie een hond wil slaan vindt altijd wel een stok". Literally translated this means 'those who want to hit a dog will always find a stick'. If you want to do evil you will always find a pretense.
Sounds to me like you are in need of a new computer. 600W idle consumption? 30W standby? Strange, that, when my main machines (IBM Thinkpad T23's) consume ~30W active, ~1W standby. My server - which is always on - uses about 20W peak and can be (and has been on occasion, eg. while paddling the Yukon) solar-powered. It is based on an old Virgin Webplayer with a 200 MHz Geode processor, and runs web/mail (with spam filtering)/file services. Is it super-fast? No, not really. It does keep up though, which is enough. It is also totally quiet, no cooling fans needed. And it is/was cheap...
I do not play games. If I wanted to I'd have to get something newer and more power hungry (which in itself seems backwards, newer machines should be less power-hungry, not more...) but I do use these machines for large software projects. But at 600W idle I hope you're designing fusion reactors or something similar, otherwise it sounds rather excessive...
No, that would read more like 'maws', the a with ring (å) sounds like a short o as in 'forgive'. The long o (oo) sound in Swedish is used for the 'u' as in 'underbar' (oontherbawr (the 'a' is a long a, here approximated with 'aw'. Swedish also does not use the slashed o (ø), that would be Norwegian and Danish. In Sweden they use ö instead...
Open the drive, look at the solder connections to the USB plug. You'll probably find they have come loose as solder joints are not really up to much physical abuse. Resolder them with a fine-tipped 15W iron (to be bought for a few $local_currency_units at the hardware store) and, for good measure, glue down the metal shield of the USB connector. Your USB gadget will probably work again, and keep working for a long time. If it doesn't, rinse and repeat. If you really want to make sure these things don't happen just use and USB extension cord and plug the thing into that.
I ride my bike from our farm to the bus stop year round. Not in Wisconsin but in Sweden (Europe) but snow is snow, right? Unpaved roads are unpaved roads? I also bring my 3yr old daughter to daycare on the back of the bike (with studded tires in wintertime).
Of course the difference is that the bus stop is no more than 3 km from my door... and buses run on a regular hourly schedule. And people actually use them.
It is not all rosy though as I'm currently contemplating going off-grid because the state-sanctioned monopoly powerline-owner (Vattenfall) keeps on ratcheting its power transmission prices up so that we pay quite a bit more for getting electricity delivered than for the actual power used...
(not to hijack this thread but has anyone out there built something like this wind generator?)
One small correction: the Swedish word 'robot' translates to 'missile'... so the technology has its origin in seeker heads for missiles, not "in seeker for robots.". In other words, finally all that weapons research leads to something constructive instead of destructive...
...while in the Republic of the US the chickens vote on which of the 2 foxes gets to eat them.
To me it feels like Microsoft has passed 'peak Windows' and should work on a graceful decline of the Windows platform instead of yet another pie-in-the-sky version which does not add anything computer users are really asking for, and takes whatever hardware performance increases have been made for its own purposes.
Windows as a platform is being phased out. It will be replaced by something network-based, focused on network-delivered services but offering local processing and storage capacity. You can fill in your own favourite buzzword here, be it 'Web something.zero' or some virtual machine which runs everywhere, or the next great API to rule the world after Win32 or whatever. Main thing is that development strategies are no longer geared towards heavy and relatively static Windows PC's but towards flexible networked clients.
Sure, we've heard the same before, 'the network is the computer' and more like that. This time around 'the network' actually is getting close to be up to the job. Never mind that a substantial part of the actual processing still will take place on the client device (in one of those 'run everywhere' dialects, something not platform-specific), the main premise is that future development will not target 'the operating environment known as Windows' but instead targets 'the client environment available via the network'.
At least that is how I see it, and have been doing it for the last few years...
I'm using 1.1 and 1.2 GHz T23's as my main machines... for software development. This has several advantages: the machines are cheap rugged, have excellent keyboards, are light and fast enough to run mainstream Linux distributions. You won't see them run fancy 3D stuff with their S3 SuperSavage controllers but for the rest these machines are still up to the job.
The main advantage of using an older generation machine for software development is of course that if it runs well on these machines it should run fabulous on current hardware.
While it may be true (and it *better be true*) that untrusted zones can not directly touch local devices the question still remains why there is any processing being done on data from a lower-trust zone *inside* a higher-trust zone. That is the wrong approach. Had they formatted the document to be printed inside the lower-trust zone and handed a formatted document to the higher-trust zone (in whatever format is used to print documents: metafile, postscript, etc) to be printed this problem would not have occurred. That is, given that the print spooler does not goof up with the data to be printed of course...
If you already use NoScript you don't really need Flashblock as NoScript contains similar functionality. Just tell it to always block flash (also on trusted sites) and you will be presented with a flash-free page. Should you want to see the flash content you just click it - just like you would in Flashblock. The only missing part is that NoScript does not yet have a whitelist for plugin content. As flash (on Linux or also elsewhere?) is currently somewhat broken (version 9.0.115.0 of the flash plugin crashes when playing a second (or third or fourth or ... flash movie, bug has been reported many times, Adobe does not seem to be interested...) this does not bother me in the least. One less plugin means one less part to break the browser...
Who do you trust when everyone's a crook?
The Webplayer has a 200 MHz Geode GXLV processor... probably comparable to a 166 MHz Pentium I. It runs Debian GNU/Linux (mostly Sid) and rarely needs attention. Next service stop I'll replace the drive for something bigger but that's about it. Could I use a faster machine? Sure I could. Should it ever blow its magic smoke I'll replace it with an old notebook. Power consumption is minimal (I ran it of solar power for a few months while paddling the Yukon in Canada/Alaska), noise is more or less absent, who could ask for less?
Funny that. In my part of Europe (The Netherlands and now Sweden) AM was, and to a certain level still is alive and kicking. Advantages of AM over FM are the longer range and lower power requirements. Now that I live in Sweden I sometimes listen to Dutch radio. Not on FM of course as that does not reach much further than the horizon. AM all the way... literally, from The Netherlands to Sweden, some 1300 km.
Replying to my own posting here: Garden Networks' GTunnel works with wine on Linux so if you don't feel like setting up a Tor node and don't want to hunt for anonymizing proxies on the web you can use that instead. If you add the Switchproxy or (preconfigured for GTunnel etc.) GProxy extension to Firefox you can switch between your normal net connection (with or without proxy) and the anonymizer.
from Groklaw:
This posting comes to you through an anonymizing proxy. Not because I'm somewhere behind the Great Firewall of China or on the Microsoft campus in Redmond... but because Ibiblio's carrier (Cogent) has decided it does not want to peer with TeliaSonera anymore. So they blocked all traffic coming from or destined to TeliaSonera. When they found out that those pesky routers did what they were designed to do - route traffic around damaged nodes - they advertised some cheap routes and subsequently dropped traffic, thereby sealing the leaks. Leaving me, and many with me, without access to a substantial part of the internet. OK, everyone who can not reach Groklaw, please post here :-)
As I am actually posting here it is clear that there are ways around these commercial blockades, just as there are ways around political blockades [1]. Anonymizing proxy servers can be used by those hit by Cogent's last temper trantum until either Cogent and TeliaSonera make up or (preferrably) traffic is routed around Cogent.
If this type of behaviour is to be the future for the commercialised internet the need for services like those provided by Garden Networks or the Tor Project will grow. But the real question of course is whether this type of behaviour should be tolerated from a carrier. It essentially boils down to censorship, something which is not allowed in a common carrier as far as I know. If they had just refused to peer with TeliaSonera they would be in the right. Now that they actively attract and subsequently drop traffic they have crossed a line. If I were to be a Cogent customer I would seriously consider to move my business elsewhere or at least consider to relegate Cogent to the role of backup carrier. So Ibiblio, if you are reading this message from behind the wall...
[1]as predicted in many a cyberpunk novel the differences between politics and commerce continue to dwindle until they are all but indiscernible...
OK, that explains a lot. Wonder why Telia did not notify its customers (me amongst them) as stated in that article? Also wonder what - apart from expensive multihoming - could be done to thwart these divide-and-conquer tactics by Cogent con sorte? Using a non-Telia-hosted proxy for now...
OK, offtopic but still related to this posting: Groklaw has been unreachable for me for a few days now. Google's last cached page is from saturday march 15. Trying to reach groklaw.net through coral (groklaw.net.nyud.net) cache does not work. Using netcraft to test for reachability results in a timeout. In other words, what happened and how come you seem to be able to reach the site? Are you able to reach the site at all? Are you able to reach ibiblio.org which hosts Groklaw? I am not. My location is Sweden, connected to the net through Telia. Am I up sh*t creek, did the servers burn down, did someone with a backhoe do something nasty, did Microsoft DDoS ibiblio to keep them from reporting on OhnOXML? Inquiring minds want to know...
I can tell you're not living with a horse vet like I do... nor do you have horses yourself like we do... otherwise you'd see that horses are among the most fickle creatures ever to be kept by humans. Murphy is an optimist when it comes to horses: give a horse something to hurt itself on and it will. Keep some horses together and soon you'll see that some of them eat to much and develop laminitis (hoof wall shear) while others don't get to eat enough and soon resemble the Grim Reaper's skin-and-bone nag. Ride them and they'll need regular shoeing and/or hoof care otherwise you'll soon have more dog chow than you can chow. And when it comes to that, even if you were inclined to have your dogs eat your horses you'll probably find that those horses have been treated with some medicine one time in their lives which makes it illegal for them to be used for animal or human consumption - at least that's the way it is here in Europe. So if you plan to use genetically modified horses may I suggest crossing them with a wolverine or some other creature with better healing capacities?
Bicycles are a better alternative...
...an old XP box (Dell GX620, ~ 3 GHz processor with 1 GByte of RAM) and
...a ~ 2GHz processor and 2 GBytes of RAM... are good examples to show that Vista is capable of running on 'minimal HW'. This is anything but minimal hardware and should be more than capable of handling any modern operating system without any problems whatsoever. The mere fact that RAM has gotten dirt cheap does not mean you suddenly can declare a gigabyte of RAM as 'minimal', nor does a processor with a clock speed of more than a gigahertz qualify for minimality. Even though you might be able to order something more capable from the net at a whim there are many who can not do so for whatever reason. A more reasonable definition of a 'minimal system' would be something which technically can run a modern OS by virtue of running a supported processor architecture but compromises on other factors: memory capacity, speed, extensibility, storage, etc. These compromises may be caused by age, specific needs (low power consumption, survivability in hostile environment, etc.), compatibility or just accessibility - if you can not get at the system you can not expand it either.Now those systems you quoted happen to be more powerful than anything I have, and I live in a first world country (Sweden) and work with computers for a living. The majority of systems I see around me have lower specs than those you quoted as being 'minimal'. None of them have Vista on them. When I order new systems which are intended to be used in a Microsoft environment I order them with XP. Vista is not on the radar and given the inroads made by free software it looks more and more like it won't show up either. Why spend more for something which does less?
Junk mail is easy. Just get a wood-burning stove and start the fire with it. If it were not for the obvious environmental negatives (both related to burning the glossy crap they throw in my mailbox as well as the transport and manufacture costs) I'd just put my address on every crap mailer's list I can find to find my winters' supply of fuel delivered for free by the mailman. Use a briquette compactor to turn the crap into nice bricks which burn for hours. Have enough people do this and the junk mailers will give up. As would the environment around those houses which are heated with everything from Yves Rocher to Franklin Mint...
I'd guess that any object with a magnesium outer shell and frame would burn quite nicely once it enters the athmosphere. So anything sensitive which would be better off burned than in 'enemy' hands could be encased in magnesium which has the benefit of being light, strong and flammable...