You wouldn't have to worry about that. The debris would still be in a low earth orbit (or at the very least) an orbit that crosses its current orbit, so the debris would all come back down to Earth in short order.
I'm assuming the main reason that shooting it down isn't being talked about is because if you hit it, the end result would be just breaking it apart, and the components that would survive re-entry would be not be broken up and thus would still survive re-entry. The only difference is that instead of coming down all at once with the debris confined to one area, instead you'd have debris coming down over a longer period of time, and hitting everywhere in the path. So they're probably going take the approx. 75% chance it'll just hit the ocean rather than the almost certain chance that if they break it up that some piece will come down on land.
For pleasure, probably not as much, except perhaps as a novelty as you mentioned.
For transportation, however, it would be great. Don't have to worry about bad weather - granted not as big of an issue in LA, but in the midwest, don't have to worry about snow and ice in the winter, or hot and humid days in the summer - presumably the temperature in the tunnels would be relatively constant probably around 60 degrees or so. For biking, the tunnels would be relatively level with no steep hills which would also be nice.
I've never understood why places that are really far north (or south) bother with DST. I can kind of see why from about 30 to 60 degrees from the equator, but once you get close enough to the poles the difference in daylight between winter and summer is so extreme what's the point of shifting your clocks around by an hour twice a year?
The only people I know are shift workers. If a factory runs 24/7, then you get three shifts of 8 hours. Though it tends to be more like 7-3 for first shift than 9-5.
Office workers have been 9 hour shifts with an unpaid hour lunch for a long time now.
There definitely are (or at least were) converters like that available. The advantage is it's a lot easier to just step the voltage than it is to convert the frequency. But you had to be mindful of what you plugged into it, of course. Basically anything with a mains-driven motor was not going to work right, as well as clocks like your dad had. These converters were most useful for things like your pre-switching power supply laptop, which didn't care about 50 Hz or 60 Hz, but the 120V-only power supply would fry if you gave it 240V.
Nowadays, such converters are less common, because most devices have switching power supplies that can handle both voltages and frequencies and therefore a simple plug adapter will do. Or they have a motor in them then and they need both the voltage and frequency changed. There isn't as much use for a converter that can only step the voltage but not convert the frequency.
That's also why those clocks will generally only run a day or two off of a 9V battery. Meanwhile, a quartz clock could run off the same battery for decades - or at least until the battery goes bad.
I've got a couple of those clocks too and they are extremely accurate. I basically only have to mess with them if the power goes out, or the twice a year DST crap.
I've seen some vehicles that hide the backup camera screen in the (partially silvered) rearview mirror. Seems like a good solution - you can't see the screen when its not on, and when it is on it's actually located in a decent spot - as opposed to the middle of the dashboard which is stupid.
With that said, I'm guessing almost everyone is going to have bright glowing rectangle in the center of car now.
I'm pretty sure you are on the right track with the screen, though the method they seem to be using is to make the the screen go all the way out the edge of the device, making them exceptionally fragile and prone for breaking should the device be dropped. Don't forget that the device also needs to be extremely thin, and made out of highly polished metal and/or plastic with no grip as to be as slippery as possible.
Of course, you can always buy a case, but another advantage to having the screen go all the way to the edge is that it also makes it harder to create a case that can adequately protect it without covering part the of screen.
The power usage isn't nearly as big of a deal as you make it out to be. Even taking the 130 W P4 versus a modern system at 30 W, that's only an $100 a year if you leave it on 24/7. Which is a bit crazy - I would either figure out if the computer really needs to be on 24/7, and if it really does, consider replacing it. If you run it 8 hours a day, now it's an extra $33 a year. Now you're probably looking at a decade for the replacement to pay for itself. If it's used even less, the payback time is probably longer than the replacement is reasonably expected to last, so I would say you're firmly in the "if it still works and does the job, just keep using it" category.
If you are that worried about energy usage I would look at your appliances, HVAC system, insulation, quality of your windows, etc. before fretting about whether a computer uses 60 W or 30 W.
Most of those devices like don't even handle the RS232 standard that well either. Granted, they can generally do fine with how almost all RS232 devices are actually implemented. However, for example RS232 standard allows for the voltage level to be up to +/- 15 V, and if you manage to find some weirdo device that actually uses something like a 12 V signalling level, good luck trying to find something that can talk to it that's not ancient.
On the other hand, you would have no problems using whatever version of Linux you were using back in 1996, and if you had to, you could even modify it.
One of the problems I have seen with equipment running something like Windows XP is that Microsoft will not sell or license Windows XP anymore (outside of a MSDN subscription) which means that if you need to replace the computer, even if you can procure some new hardware that's compatible with Windows XP you can't actually buy a license from Microsoft to install Windows XP on it (legally). At least with Linux, licensing for old versions of Linux is not a concern.
Microsoft no longer does individual updates for Windows 7 and 8.1, and now does monthly roll-up updates where you can't pick and choose and therefore get everything. Therefore, if you don't want to have telemetry in Windows 7 your only option is to disable updates and basically run an unpatched version of Windows 7 from 2016.
Well, if you're going to argue that, I could just as easily claim Windows NT is a derivative of OS/2, which pushes the date for Windows NT back to 1987.
Also, technically Linux is not an OS, it's a kernel. The oldest Linux-based OS (that is still around) is Slackware which dates back to 1993. The BSD kernel, of course, is much older than that.
Apparently they make adapters to use N64 controllers over USB. Not that the N64 controller is a great controller, but Nintendo's quality is far better than just about anything else today.
Have you considered leaving the servers unpatched? In order to actually be affected, you would need to allow people to run arbitrary code on the servers. So it comes down to what the the servers do. It's a threat to desktop PCs because that's an actual use case if you browser the web with Javascript enabled, but if the servers are just serving up content they should, in theory, be fine.
Of course, if you're doing something like hosting other people's websites or something like then you should probably patch.
IE is present in every version of supported version of Windows, and is actively maintained and being patched. It's still popular enough that most websites make sure they work with it.
Not that I advocate using it, but unlike Edge it generally works.
Even without ad blockers, is your friend's business model even really viable? I just don't see any money in online advertising. Is your friend really going to get enough money from his website to support himself and create the content from the website from just ads? At best, I would expect the ads might net him a few extra dollars a month, maybe if he was lucky it might pay the hosting costs.
Of course, the real money is in infecting computers, cryptocurrency miners, ransomware, scareware, and other scams, which is exactly why one should be using an ad-blocker.
Just because it's a mature technology doesn't mean its "dead". Are hammers dead? The basic hammer really hasn't really changed in decades. Or how about cotton shirts? Not a lot of innovation there. Or firearms? The most popular designs are decades old. There are newer designs, but really for the most part they are just minor variations of existing designs. Strapping a $3 laser pointer on the barrel (marked up to hundreds of dollars) really doesn't count.
Now 8-tracks? Those are dead - no one is making new 8-tracks, and no one is making new 8-track players. The cassette tape is nearly there, but the hipsters have managed to keep it alive, barely. But I wouldn't call vinyl "dead".
Atom is pretty nifty, but even without the development plugins its already as bloated as a full-blown IDE. It's basically written in Javascript, and runs on top of Chromium. Which is all kinds of crazy.
Though I suppose I shouldn't say too much, after trying to learn how to use vimscript.
Which will always manage to occur at about 4 AM, for some reason.
What I want to know is that why in my smoke alarms, which are mains powered with a battery backup, that the battery still only lasts about a year? I'm half-convinced it actually runs off the battery, and only uses the mains power to light up the little LED indicator. Otherwise, if the power doesn't go out, the battery should last a very long time.
There are some that lobby for DST. Retailers believe that people are more likely to go out shopping after work if it's not dark out (this is more of a brick & mortar thing though - I have to wonder if the big online shopping giants believe the opposite?). Golf courses are in favor of it, as well the folks that make your backyard BBQ.
If I had my way though, they wouldn't lose out as we'd abolish DST, then shift our schedules up by 1 hour, essentially permanent DST. Or actual permanent DST if people find that more appealing than moving everything up by an hour.
In the US, most office workers get two Mondays off a year as holidays (Memorial Day and Labor Day) but there are no regular holidays that fall on a Friday that get a day off of work. This may not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that many office workers only get 6 or so holidays a year. So by absorbing Friday into the weekend instead of Monday, you get 2 extra days off a year
A surprising number of those clocks, for whatever reason, ignored the DST bit and instead had the DST dates hard-coded in. So of course, Dubya's idiotic DST change broke all those clocks. You could still use them if you didn't mind mucking around with the time zone setting twice every spring and twice again every fall. Perhaps all those clocks made their way down to Mexico?
You could also use some other excuse for your phone going offline, like:
1. Go to movie theater and buy ticket. Be sure to use a credit card so they'll see you bought a ticket 2. Go into movie and turn off phone 3. Leave the theater 4. You now have a couple of hours to go to a covert meeting or whatever 5. Go back to the theater when the movie is supposed to end 6. Power phone back on right outside of theater 7. ???? 8. Profit!
One issue is that most people probably don't actually power off their phone for the movies but rather just put it on silent, but it might be plausible enough to work.
Slashdot Mirror
You wouldn't have to worry about that. The debris would still be in a low earth orbit (or at the very least) an orbit that crosses its current orbit, so the debris would all come back down to Earth in short order.
I'm assuming the main reason that shooting it down isn't being talked about is because if you hit it, the end result would be just breaking it apart, and the components that would survive re-entry would be not be broken up and thus would still survive re-entry. The only difference is that instead of coming down all at once with the debris confined to one area, instead you'd have debris coming down over a longer period of time, and hitting everywhere in the path. So they're probably going take the approx. 75% chance it'll just hit the ocean rather than the almost certain chance that if they break it up that some piece will come down on land.
For pleasure, probably not as much, except perhaps as a novelty as you mentioned.
For transportation, however, it would be great. Don't have to worry about bad weather - granted not as big of an issue in LA, but in the midwest, don't have to worry about snow and ice in the winter, or hot and humid days in the summer - presumably the temperature in the tunnels would be relatively constant probably around 60 degrees or so. For biking, the tunnels would be relatively level with no steep hills which would also be nice.
I've never understood why places that are really far north (or south) bother with DST. I can kind of see why from about 30 to 60 degrees from the equator, but once you get close enough to the poles the difference in daylight between winter and summer is so extreme what's the point of shifting your clocks around by an hour twice a year?
The only people I know are shift workers. If a factory runs 24/7, then you get three shifts of 8 hours. Though it tends to be more like 7-3 for first shift than 9-5.
Office workers have been 9 hour shifts with an unpaid hour lunch for a long time now.
There definitely are (or at least were) converters like that available. The advantage is it's a lot easier to just step the voltage than it is to convert the frequency. But you had to be mindful of what you plugged into it, of course. Basically anything with a mains-driven motor was not going to work right, as well as clocks like your dad had. These converters were most useful for things like your pre-switching power supply laptop, which didn't care about 50 Hz or 60 Hz, but the 120V-only power supply would fry if you gave it 240V.
Nowadays, such converters are less common, because most devices have switching power supplies that can handle both voltages and frequencies and therefore a simple plug adapter will do. Or they have a motor in them then and they need both the voltage and frequency changed. There isn't as much use for a converter that can only step the voltage but not convert the frequency.
That's also why those clocks will generally only run a day or two off of a 9V battery. Meanwhile, a quartz clock could run off the same battery for decades - or at least until the battery goes bad.
I've got a couple of those clocks too and they are extremely accurate. I basically only have to mess with them if the power goes out, or the twice a year DST crap.
I've seen some vehicles that hide the backup camera screen in the (partially silvered) rearview mirror. Seems like a good solution - you can't see the screen when its not on, and when it is on it's actually located in a decent spot - as opposed to the middle of the dashboard which is stupid.
With that said, I'm guessing almost everyone is going to have bright glowing rectangle in the center of car now.
It would have to be something that's basically unchanged since the 90's and comes in a very low spec.
My guess is a Chevy Express cargo van.
I'm pretty sure you are on the right track with the screen, though the method they seem to be using is to make the the screen go all the way out the edge of the device, making them exceptionally fragile and prone for breaking should the device be dropped. Don't forget that the device also needs to be extremely thin, and made out of highly polished metal and/or plastic with no grip as to be as slippery as possible.
Of course, you can always buy a case, but another advantage to having the screen go all the way to the edge is that it also makes it harder to create a case that can adequately protect it without covering part the of screen.
The power usage isn't nearly as big of a deal as you make it out to be. Even taking the 130 W P4 versus a modern system at 30 W, that's only an $100 a year if you leave it on 24/7. Which is a bit crazy - I would either figure out if the computer really needs to be on 24/7, and if it really does, consider replacing it. If you run it 8 hours a day, now it's an extra $33 a year. Now you're probably looking at a decade for the replacement to pay for itself. If it's used even less, the payback time is probably longer than the replacement is reasonably expected to last, so I would say you're firmly in the "if it still works and does the job, just keep using it" category.
If you are that worried about energy usage I would look at your appliances, HVAC system, insulation, quality of your windows, etc. before fretting about whether a computer uses 60 W or 30 W.
Most of those devices like don't even handle the RS232 standard that well either. Granted, they can generally do fine with how almost all RS232 devices are actually implemented. However, for example RS232 standard allows for the voltage level to be up to +/- 15 V, and if you manage to find some weirdo device that actually uses something like a 12 V signalling level, good luck trying to find something that can talk to it that's not ancient.
On the other hand, you would have no problems using whatever version of Linux you were using back in 1996, and if you had to, you could even modify it.
One of the problems I have seen with equipment running something like Windows XP is that Microsoft will not sell or license Windows XP anymore (outside of a MSDN subscription) which means that if you need to replace the computer, even if you can procure some new hardware that's compatible with Windows XP you can't actually buy a license from Microsoft to install Windows XP on it (legally). At least with Linux, licensing for old versions of Linux is not a concern.
Microsoft no longer does individual updates for Windows 7 and 8.1, and now does monthly roll-up updates where you can't pick and choose and therefore get everything. Therefore, if you don't want to have telemetry in Windows 7 your only option is to disable updates and basically run an unpatched version of Windows 7 from 2016.
Well, if you're going to argue that, I could just as easily claim Windows NT is a derivative of OS/2, which pushes the date for Windows NT back to 1987.
Also, technically Linux is not an OS, it's a kernel. The oldest Linux-based OS (that is still around) is Slackware which dates back to 1993. The BSD kernel, of course, is much older than that.
Apparently they make adapters to use N64 controllers over USB. Not that the N64 controller is a great controller, but Nintendo's quality is far better than just about anything else today.
Have you considered leaving the servers unpatched? In order to actually be affected, you would need to allow people to run arbitrary code on the servers. So it comes down to what the the servers do. It's a threat to desktop PCs because that's an actual use case if you browser the web with Javascript enabled, but if the servers are just serving up content they should, in theory, be fine.
Of course, if you're doing something like hosting other people's websites or something like then you should probably patch.
IE is present in every version of supported version of Windows, and is actively maintained and being patched. It's still popular enough that most websites make sure they work with it.
Not that I advocate using it, but unlike Edge it generally works.
Even without ad blockers, is your friend's business model even really viable? I just don't see any money in online advertising. Is your friend really going to get enough money from his website to support himself and create the content from the website from just ads? At best, I would expect the ads might net him a few extra dollars a month, maybe if he was lucky it might pay the hosting costs.
Of course, the real money is in infecting computers, cryptocurrency miners, ransomware, scareware, and other scams, which is exactly why one should be using an ad-blocker.
Just because it's a mature technology doesn't mean its "dead". Are hammers dead? The basic hammer really hasn't really changed in decades. Or how about cotton shirts? Not a lot of innovation there. Or firearms? The most popular designs are decades old. There are newer designs, but really for the most part they are just minor variations of existing designs. Strapping a $3 laser pointer on the barrel (marked up to hundreds of dollars) really doesn't count.
Now 8-tracks? Those are dead - no one is making new 8-tracks, and no one is making new 8-track players. The cassette tape is nearly there, but the hipsters have managed to keep it alive, barely. But I wouldn't call vinyl "dead".
Atom is pretty nifty, but even without the development plugins its already as bloated as a full-blown IDE. It's basically written in Javascript, and runs on top of Chromium. Which is all kinds of crazy.
Though I suppose I shouldn't say too much, after trying to learn how to use vimscript.
Which will always manage to occur at about 4 AM, for some reason.
What I want to know is that why in my smoke alarms, which are mains powered with a battery backup, that the battery still only lasts about a year? I'm half-convinced it actually runs off the battery, and only uses the mains power to light up the little LED indicator. Otherwise, if the power doesn't go out, the battery should last a very long time.
There are some that lobby for DST. Retailers believe that people are more likely to go out shopping after work if it's not dark out (this is more of a brick & mortar thing though - I have to wonder if the big online shopping giants believe the opposite?). Golf courses are in favor of it, as well the folks that make your backyard BBQ.
If I had my way though, they wouldn't lose out as we'd abolish DST, then shift our schedules up by 1 hour, essentially permanent DST. Or actual permanent DST if people find that more appealing than moving everything up by an hour.
In the US, most office workers get two Mondays off a year as holidays (Memorial Day and Labor Day) but there are no regular holidays that fall on a Friday that get a day off of work. This may not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that many office workers only get 6 or so holidays a year. So by absorbing Friday into the weekend instead of Monday, you get 2 extra days off a year
A surprising number of those clocks, for whatever reason, ignored the DST bit and instead had the DST dates hard-coded in. So of course, Dubya's idiotic DST change broke all those clocks. You could still use them if you didn't mind mucking around with the time zone setting twice every spring and twice again every fall. Perhaps all those clocks made their way down to Mexico?
You could also use some other excuse for your phone going offline, like:
1. Go to movie theater and buy ticket. Be sure to use a credit card so they'll see you bought a ticket
2. Go into movie and turn off phone
3. Leave the theater
4. You now have a couple of hours to go to a covert meeting or whatever
5. Go back to the theater when the movie is supposed to end
6. Power phone back on right outside of theater
7. ????
8. Profit!
One issue is that most people probably don't actually power off their phone for the movies but rather just put it on silent, but it might be plausible enough to work.