If you're worried about presentation and first impressions, I would be scared as hell of submitting a paper in.doc format, which is what a lot of these places require. Different versions of Word can't open up documents created in other versions of Word without screwing things up, and when you throw things like OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, LaTeX, and MS Works into the mix then you're really asking for trouble. How come they won't accept formats like PDF or PostScript that should render fine on any computer?
Flash memory chips aren't very big and can survive a lot of punishment. Unless you plan on melting it slag, you're probably better off wiping them than shredding them or smashing them.
I wouldn't worry about USB either, about the only thing that I can see as less likely to go away would be Ethernet. I'd be leary of lesser used connectors like eSata or Firewire, as I can see both of those in the "long gone and mostly forgotten" category in 30 years.
I think most people realize that they'll only ever use a small fraction of the data they keep around ever again. The problem is trying accurately predict which fraction is the fraction they are going to need again. So it's safest just to keep it all around, and with storage so cheap, why not?
The cheap storage also has another, compounding effect: People find it cheaper and easier just to keep everything rather than spending the time and effort to try to sort through it all.
Likewise, I've have a bunch of drives that have been sitting on a shelf, some for many years. I've never had a problem with stiction. Though what does happen is the drive will work fine for 1-2 days, then will crap out. Usually just enough time for me to get it set up with whatever project I'm doing, then I have to start all over again.
I would say store the drives in a cool, dry place. Try to remember to run them a few hours every few months. Replace them every 3-5 years whether you need to or not.
500 gigabytes is kind of a crazy amount of data. One way to get that much might be that he has a gigantic collection of mp3s, or possibly a moderately huge collection of music in a less lossy format. But then that's not critical personal data, it's just a music collection.
I have about that much in slides I have scanned into TIFF files, so it's not unreasonable. In my case, I'm not too worried about it, as it's stored on several computers, and a few external drives too, plus burned to a set of DVDs. Harddrives don't last forever, but if you have enough people storing the data on their computers and transferring it as they upgrade, there is going to be copies around.
They will reserve SSD's for only the most high end of PCs and laptops and then market them as 'extreme' or 'ultralight' and bump the price 2 or 3x times the bottom rung of corresponding devices. It's all about margin.
The PC market is too cut-throat for that. If some random PC manufacturer tried that, one of their competitors would simply undercut them and start selling the systems people want at a lower price. Apple is the only manufacturer that can (and does) successfully segment the market like that.
I would advise care with that route. If the rig cools the water down below the dewpoint in the room (which sounds likely) you'll get condensation in the computer.
You can generally install Microsoft operating systems on anything it will boot on, whether or not it actually meets the requiremets. I've put Vista on a P3's that was less than 800Mhz, and it ran fine (but sloooowly) which means that any 6 year old PC can run Vista, at least after installing some additional memory. I'm not sure what the minimum for Vista is - I've heard it requires SSE which puts the lower limit at 450Mhz which is the slowest P3. XP will install on any 5th generation CPU with at least 64MB of ram, including Pentium Overdrives which means that in theory you could install XP on an early 486 system built originally built in 1989.
On the other hand, Apple enforces all their minimum requirements in order to obsolete older hardware, so if the requirements are 867Mhz and you have 800Mhz then it will not install. Some of these requirements are rather silly (like you must have Firewire, and a Firewire expansion card does not count). There are ways around these, but it's annoying.
Uh...yeah. They are. You can run Leopard just fine on a 6 year old Mac just fine...why don't you try doing the same with Vista and a 6 year old PC, and get back to us.
Try the other way around. Take a 6 year-old Mac application and try to run it on a new Mac. It may run, it may not. The versions of OSX are different enough that if you try to mix-and-match too much stuff breaks. If it's a classic app, forget it as support has been totally cut off for those as of the Intel switchover. On the other hand, you can take an application written for Windows 3.0 15 years ago, and there's a pretty good chance it run just fine on Vista. It's the legacy applications that are important, for the most part I don't care about keeping legacy hardware up and running with the latest OS.
I would assume that 32bit will be around for the Mac for a while too. Even if Apple was to kill off support for PPC in the next release of OSX cutting off all the G4's, there's still the short stint they had with the 32bit Core Duo's immediately after the switchover.
Well, instead we're seeing bumps in the number of cores. We went from a single core processor to a dual core, a 100% bump, and now quad-core is becoming mainstream on mid to higher end desktop systems, which is another 100% bump over dual core. And there are sockets like LGA 775 and AM2 where it's possible to all the way from a single core to a quad core processor without having to change your motherboard.
Well, it could still be useful, as a lot of the supplies you are going to be sending into space are going to be bulk supplies that will survive high G's just fine like fuel, water, air, some foods, building materials like steel, and things like that.
It's an issue of stereotypes. You pretty much can't say that you drive a Prius/use a Mac/don't watch TV/eat organic food/own a firearm/whatever without people thinking "oh, one of THOSE types". Even here - I don't think you can mention here that you don't own a TV without someone posting a link to that Onion article, no matter what the context.
You also forgot the group of people who watch the game just so they have something to talk about the next day with their buddies aot the bar/at the watercooler at work etc.
People on there are also pretty flaky. My experience is that more than 50% of the time, they simply won't show up when they say they will. My theory is that when something is "free", people feel little obligation, so sometimes it's better to change a nominal price for something. Otherwise, there is always the curb. I find it easier to set stuff next to the dumpsters at my apartment after they are emptied. This will give them 2-3 days before the next pickup where people can see it and grab it if they want it. If no one grabs it after 2 days and it gets trashed I figure the item had little value to begin with.
Unless you live in a fucking ghetto, I don't think this concern is justified. It wouldn't be very smart to rob someone right outside your own house, particularly when the victim has your address. As far as burglars: unless you are selling drugs on Craigslist, I really doubt anything you put on there will interest them. Burglars are opportunistic, and will pick a house that looks like an easy target. They won't spend months researching Craigslist.
Who's to say they won't pick up on an opportunity from Craigslist? They will probably get a good look at your living room, they can make a quick inspection of your security system/locks when they come in the door, and they'll have a rough idea of your schedule from when you arranged the timing of the pick up.
Also don't forget that some criminals are just plain stupid.
There's a good chance it's just getting too hot. Apple likes to run their computers way too hot, and reliablity suffers. You could take it apart and try removing the excess thermal grease Apple put into many of the laptops of your vintage. Or get one of those laptop cooling pads with the fans in them to try to keep it cool. Or simply do your best to blow the dust out of it (that could be why it's getting worse over time, as the fans get more and more clogged). Or go into the power settings and see if it lets you clock down the processer and see if that helps.
WinCE is not a Windows derivative. It is a completely separate OS kernel that happens to have had a good deal of the Desktop's CRT and other APIs ported over to it some years back.
Of course WinCE is not a Windows derivative. It *is* Windows. What do you think the "Win" stands for?
It's my understanding that Windows never managed to get this working right, so a lot of MS guys probably prefer to avoid it.
Actually, Windows does a pretty decent job at it. That's why a 256MB machine running XP isn't all that bad despite being unspec'd on ram. The problem is that Windows isn't very good at it when it has tons of ram available. The main problems are:
1. It will page things out when the system is otherwise busy doing things, bogging it down with disk I/O. Possibly nessecary on a ram starved system, but if I already have gigs of ram available it should wait until it's idle or simply not do it at all.
2. It will page things out even when there is tons of ram available. If I have 2GB of ram and am using 600MB of it leaving 1.4GB open, is there really any need to page out 400MB of it just so I can have 1.8GB available? Nothing I run needs to grab that much ram that quickly, so there really isn't any point to the exercise (and thanks to Prefetch, Windows should know this).
3. It will use the available pages as disk cache. Once again, if you don't have much ram this isn't a bad thing. But if I have 2GB of ram and am using 1GB of it so I have 1GB left for the disk cache, is there really much of an advantage to paging out 500MB of what I'm using to have a 1.5GB disk cache?
The solution for a simple program like Notepad would be to just stuff the data into a temporary file somewhere, and then next time the computer is started just start notepad and open the data. From the user's perspective, it would simply come back up like it was when they shut it down. This could even be done for files that were saved but changed after they were saved (as opposed to either automatically discarding/saving the changes to the file or sitting forever at the "Save?" dialog).
The disadvantage to this is it could get annoying with non-trivial files, like a large photo or office document.
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If you're worried about presentation and first impressions, I would be scared as hell of submitting a paper in .doc format, which is what a lot of these places require. Different versions of Word can't open up documents created in other versions of Word without screwing things up, and when you throw things like OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, LaTeX, and MS Works into the mix then you're really asking for trouble. How come they won't accept formats like PDF or PostScript that should render fine on any computer?
Flash memory chips aren't very big and can survive a lot of punishment. Unless you plan on melting it slag, you're probably better off wiping them than shredding them or smashing them.
I wouldn't worry about USB either, about the only thing that I can see as less likely to go away would be Ethernet. I'd be leary of lesser used connectors like eSata or Firewire, as I can see both of those in the "long gone and mostly forgotten" category in 30 years.
I think most people realize that they'll only ever use a small fraction of the data they keep around ever again. The problem is trying accurately predict which fraction is the fraction they are going to need again. So it's safest just to keep it all around, and with storage so cheap, why not?
The cheap storage also has another, compounding effect: People find it cheaper and easier just to keep everything rather than spending the time and effort to try to sort through it all.
Likewise, I've have a bunch of drives that have been sitting on a shelf, some for many years. I've never had a problem with stiction. Though what does happen is the drive will work fine for 1-2 days, then will crap out. Usually just enough time for me to get it set up with whatever project I'm doing, then I have to start all over again.
I would say store the drives in a cool, dry place. Try to remember to run them a few hours every few months. Replace them every 3-5 years whether you need to or not.
500 gigabytes is kind of a crazy amount of data. One way to get that much might be that he has a gigantic collection of mp3s, or possibly a moderately huge collection of music in a less lossy format. But then that's not critical personal data, it's just a music collection.
I have about that much in slides I have scanned into TIFF files, so it's not unreasonable. In my case, I'm not too worried about it, as it's stored on several computers, and a few external drives too, plus burned to a set of DVDs. Harddrives don't last forever, but if you have enough people storing the data on their computers and transferring it as they upgrade, there is going to be copies around.
They will reserve SSD's for only the most high end of PCs and laptops and then market them as 'extreme' or 'ultralight' and bump the price 2 or 3x times the bottom rung of corresponding devices. It's all about margin.
The PC market is too cut-throat for that. If some random PC manufacturer tried that, one of their competitors would simply undercut them and start selling the systems people want at a lower price. Apple is the only manufacturer that can (and does) successfully segment the market like that.
I have a Thinkpad X60 tablet now and while sleep mostly works, I never know whether it's going to suspend to RAM or to disk.
Macs do the same thing though, including randomly waking up while suspended to RAM to write everything to disk.
I would advise care with that route. If the rig cools the water down below the dewpoint in the room (which sounds likely) you'll get condensation in the computer.
Then I guess I have been imagining lists like these:
http://www.macintouch.com/tigerreview/incompatibility.html
You can generally install Microsoft operating systems on anything it will boot on, whether or not it actually meets the requiremets. I've put Vista on a P3's that was less than 800Mhz, and it ran fine (but sloooowly) which means that any 6 year old PC can run Vista, at least after installing some additional memory. I'm not sure what the minimum for Vista is - I've heard it requires SSE which puts the lower limit at 450Mhz which is the slowest P3. XP will install on any 5th generation CPU with at least 64MB of ram, including Pentium Overdrives which means that in theory you could install XP on an early 486 system built originally built in 1989.
On the other hand, Apple enforces all their minimum requirements in order to obsolete older hardware, so if the requirements are 867Mhz and you have 800Mhz then it will not install. Some of these requirements are rather silly (like you must have Firewire, and a Firewire expansion card does not count). There are ways around these, but it's annoying.
Uh...yeah. They are. You can run Leopard just fine on a 6 year old Mac just fine...why don't you try doing the same with Vista and a 6 year old PC, and get back to us.
Try the other way around. Take a 6 year-old Mac application and try to run it on a new Mac. It may run, it may not. The versions of OSX are different enough that if you try to mix-and-match too much stuff breaks. If it's a classic app, forget it as support has been totally cut off for those as of the Intel switchover. On the other hand, you can take an application written for Windows 3.0 15 years ago, and there's a pretty good chance it run just fine on Vista. It's the legacy applications that are important, for the most part I don't care about keeping legacy hardware up and running with the latest OS.
I would assume that 32bit will be around for the Mac for a while too. Even if Apple was to kill off support for PPC in the next release of OSX cutting off all the G4's, there's still the short stint they had with the 32bit Core Duo's immediately after the switchover.
Well, instead we're seeing bumps in the number of cores. We went from a single core processor to a dual core, a 100% bump, and now quad-core is becoming mainstream on mid to higher end desktop systems, which is another 100% bump over dual core. And there are sockets like LGA 775 and AM2 where it's possible to all the way from a single core to a quad core processor without having to change your motherboard.
Well, it could still be useful, as a lot of the supplies you are going to be sending into space are going to be bulk supplies that will survive high G's just fine like fuel, water, air, some foods, building materials like steel, and things like that.
It's an issue of stereotypes. You pretty much can't say that you drive a Prius/use a Mac/don't watch TV/eat organic food/own a firearm/whatever without people thinking "oh, one of THOSE types". Even here - I don't think you can mention here that you don't own a TV without someone posting a link to that Onion article, no matter what the context.
You also forgot the group of people who watch the game just so they have something to talk about the next day with their buddies aot the bar/at the watercooler at work etc.
People on there are also pretty flaky. My experience is that more than 50% of the time, they simply won't show up when they say they will. My theory is that when something is "free", people feel little obligation, so sometimes it's better to change a nominal price for something. Otherwise, there is always the curb. I find it easier to set stuff next to the dumpsters at my apartment after they are emptied. This will give them 2-3 days before the next pickup where people can see it and grab it if they want it. If no one grabs it after 2 days and it gets trashed I figure the item had little value to begin with.
Unless you live in a fucking ghetto, I don't think this concern is justified. It wouldn't be very smart to rob someone right outside your own house, particularly when the victim has your address. As far as burglars: unless you are selling drugs on Craigslist, I really doubt anything you put on there will interest them. Burglars are opportunistic, and will pick a house that looks like an easy target. They won't spend months researching Craigslist.
Who's to say they won't pick up on an opportunity from Craigslist? They will probably get a good look at your living room, they can make a quick inspection of your security system/locks when they come in the door, and they'll have a rough idea of your schedule from when you arranged the timing of the pick up.
Also don't forget that some criminals are just plain stupid.
There's a good chance it's just getting too hot. Apple likes to run their computers way too hot, and reliablity suffers. You could take it apart and try removing the excess thermal grease Apple put into many of the laptops of your vintage. Or get one of those laptop cooling pads with the fans in them to try to keep it cool. Or simply do your best to blow the dust out of it (that could be why it's getting worse over time, as the fans get more and more clogged). Or go into the power settings and see if it lets you clock down the processer and see if that helps.
WinCE is not a Windows derivative. It is a completely separate OS kernel that happens to have had a good deal of the Desktop's CRT and other APIs ported over to it some years back.
Of course WinCE is not a Windows derivative. It *is* Windows. What do you think the "Win" stands for?
It's my understanding that Windows never managed to get this working right, so a lot of MS guys probably prefer to avoid it.
Actually, Windows does a pretty decent job at it. That's why a 256MB machine running XP isn't all that bad despite being unspec'd on ram. The problem is that Windows isn't very good at it when it has tons of ram available. The main problems are:
1. It will page things out when the system is otherwise busy doing things, bogging it down with disk I/O. Possibly nessecary on a ram starved system, but if I already have gigs of ram available it should wait until it's idle or simply not do it at all.
2. It will page things out even when there is tons of ram available. If I have 2GB of ram and am using 600MB of it leaving 1.4GB open, is there really any need to page out 400MB of it just so I can have 1.8GB available? Nothing I run needs to grab that much ram that quickly, so there really isn't any point to the exercise (and thanks to Prefetch, Windows should know this).
3. It will use the available pages as disk cache. Once again, if you don't have much ram this isn't a bad thing. But if I have 2GB of ram and am using 1GB of it so I have 1GB left for the disk cache, is there really much of an advantage to paging out 500MB of what I'm using to have a 1.5GB disk cache?
The solution for a simple program like Notepad would be to just stuff the data into a temporary file somewhere, and then next time the computer is started just start notepad and open the data. From the user's perspective, it would simply come back up like it was when they shut it down. This could even be done for files that were saved but changed after they were saved (as opposed to either automatically discarding/saving the changes to the file or sitting forever at the "Save?" dialog).
The disadvantage to this is it could get annoying with non-trivial files, like a large photo or office document.
Though I would expect no problems updating the Linux-based computer the parent linked to. It's the Hackintoshes you have to watch out with.
And I suppose when you get mowed down by a speeding car in the crosswalk, it's your fault for being in the road?