We could either rotate the crew in suspension[...]
I just had this image of a NASA lab where a bunch of frozen astronauts are affixed to motors and spun, with one of the NASA scientists looking on and saying to another: "You know, I think we're doing it wrong."
Actually, even non-adapted pathogens can do damage. I did some research into skin fungi when I thought I might have one. Human-adapted ones can thrive on your skin causing very slight symptoms. Animal skin fungi can infect humans as well, causing noticeable immune reactions that can kill off the fungus without external aid.
But then there's the real fun part - soil fungus can also infect human skin. Not being adapted at all, some of them cause a fierce immune reaction that can leave scars. So, in a way, these are actually the worst infections.
Your immune system can fight off non-adapted organisms but that doesn't mean you're immune to damage from an infection. Nobody knows what a potential Mars bug would do to a human unless someone manages to get himself infected.
What about languages that go from right to left like Hebrew and Arabic?
What about them? The URL is still encoded exactly the same; it's just displayed differently in the browser. Of course that would require that LTR and RTL characters aren't combined but someone already suggested that domain names should only be allowed to contain characters from one alphabet (more or less; for example there are special Unicode code points for Latin letters used in Japanese text).
It's not out yet, but the Pandora (which runs on a TI OMAP 3530) mentions in its tech specs that the battery life is expected to be 10+ hours with a 4000 mAh battery. Given that the Pandora is mainly used for games, emulation and multimedia (so it's likely to be under heavy load much of the time), that sounds great. And at least the devs think that the figure they give is likely.
Netbooks are likely to have a bigger screen (the Pandora's is 4.3") but they also have more space for a battery and casual users aren't likely to constantly put them under load. So yeah, 12+ hours do appear realistic at the moment - at least for a device without an HDD that mostly sees casual use.
One of my routers is set up to support any combination of WPA, WPA2, TKIP and AES (the weaker ones for compatibility, the stronger ones because it supports them). The other one only supports WPA+TKIP but it works and thus won't be replaced unless WPA+TKIP security devolves quite a bit farther.
"Defective by design" refers to planned obsolescence. You mean "the design is defective", which certainly applies. PDF is a nice format but I wish Adobe would stop pretending they can write a PDF reader.
Actually, from what I've seen during my school time (in Germany, admittedly), you get mobbed for not attempting to fit in (I'm not talking "unusual interests" but rather "consistent erratic behavior"), for being disliked by the wrong people (it really sucks when someone who hates you is popular enough to create a bad image for you out of thin aur) or for simply being an easy target. Because there's always someone like that.
Think of a device with a 16-hour uptime. Under load. With uptimes like that we're approaching the same kind of "needs to be recharged once a week" territory non-smart mobile phones reside in. In short: Netbooks actually become mobile devices instead of computers that happen to have a very good USP built in.
If you're cool with dropping the 300 USD you could also get a Pandora (essentially what you described plus game controls, touchscreen, WLAN and Bluetooth in a clamshell roughly the size of a first-gen Nintendo DS). They're currently preparing for the first mass-production run and preorders for the second batch should start somewhere within the next to or three months.
If you're interested, check out http://openpandora.org/. If you're not, you could try to get in touch with the OP devs and find out where they source their screens - however, their source might not work for you as they might only sell in bulk.
Disclaimer: I'm not directly affiliated with OpenPandora but I did preorder a Pandora.
And here I was hoping that they'd come up with the Dhrystone bridge, the SPECint bridge and the 3DMark bridge. Although the latter one would be useless anyway as NVidia employees would always rate too high.
* While the Mark's symbol was "DEM", the form "DM" was used by most Germans until shorty before the Euro changeover. At least that's what I can still piece together; it's pretty hard to find any useful information about the two forms - possibly because "dem" is a German article form and thus completely useless as a search term.
Lets try to recall this. 30 years ago the dollar was worth 2 german marks. The ratio mark to euro is fixed 2:1. The euro is worth 1,5 dollars.Thats a factor of 6 (or 6% annuall loss for the dollar, average over 30 years).The dollar has been on a constant decline, with just short periods behaving differently.
Your math's off.
30 years ago 1 USD = 2 DM.
At the time of the changeover 1 EUR = 2 DEM*.
Now 1 EUR = 1.5 USD (= 3 DEM).
Thus 1 USD_then = 1.5 USD_now. You applied the DEM:EUR exchange rate the wrong way around. Still, from a European's point of view the Dollar is delightfully weak. Delightfully because it means that the USA are great for bargain hunting - evidence for that would be the time when some NYC storeowners tried to capitalize on the sudden influx of affluent tourists by accepting Euros.
A DVD-R uses a dye that fades over time.
A DVD-RW has a metallic layer that lasts longer.
DVD-RWs are still not terribly good long-term storage media (we haven't yet developed those for home users storing appreciable amounts of data), but they're definitely superior to DVD-Rs.
Incendescents aren't that extravagant if you use decent halogen incendescents. Halogen lamps are more efficient (about 60% more light/Watt) and last much longer than regular ones. Since CFLs are too annoying and LEDs don't deliver yet, halogen incandescent is what I currently prefer. Works well.
Actually, this does fit in with what the GP said - we can't tell without a reasonable investigation but nobody has the faintest clue how to actually investigate God's existence. (Well, apart from the people who deem a thought experiment a thorough investigation.)
There are places like that. For instance, standard High German is virtually identical to the Hannover dialect. Being from Lower Saxony* I find it very slightly sad that my area doesn't have much of an accent. We're 100 km north of Hannover so our language is colored ever so slightly but if I want to get any noticeable local color I have to mix in Low German, which is a different language altogether. Which I don't really speak.
* For all non-German readers: Hannover is the capital of Lower Saxony.
However, Apple didn't hold a monopoly while having an abysmal track record in things like security or doing what the software is supposed to do (I'm looking at you, IE). I mean, Microsoft held their monopolies for years while Windows and IE were the butt of jokes made even by rather nontechnical users.
Well, it did in the RC and the GGP's post sounded like it still does. And yes, I did run into it (my primary "HDD" being a 1 GiB flash drive didn't quite appeal to the Win 7 installer). Essentially, the installer insisted that only the first partition on the first HDD in the system can be a system partition and since there are no system partitions, Windows can't be installed. The only way to get Win 7 onto the system was to change the SATA device order in the BIOS.
This did strike me as peculiar as it meant that the Win 7 installer is less capable than the Win XP one, which is perfectly happy to install anywhere as long as it can write to the MBR. I assumed it to be an artifact of theOS not being fully tested yet.
If they have since fixed the installer and the GGP has a differnet problem, just disregard my post.
Have the net-installer be fat. That way people can just download one ISO without having to worry about whether it's compatible with their system. The installer determines which architecture it runs on (optionally fine-tunable so you can install IA32 on an AMD64 system) and automagically fetches the correct packages from the server.
For regular installation CDs/DVDs this is a bit trickier but one could either include multiple package trees (space-intensive) or have all packages on the disc be fat and strip them down to the appropriate architecture(s) upon installation (less space-intensive but slower).
By all means, still offer architecture-specific installation media but do offer universal ISOs so people can just toss the OS on without having to worry about what architecture they have. Remember, desktop Linux is something considered worthwile and asking nontechnical users to decide whether they want installation media for IA32, AMD64 or maybe PPC64 is not beginner-friendly. Assuming that IA32 is correct might backfire, too, as ARM netbooks are beginning to appear on the market.
If Linux distros want to impress the casual user, "much easier to install than Windows 7" would be a good way to start.
The fact that you can go to the website of your distro of choice and be presented with a list of one dozen different installation DVDs, two of which actually run on your system. Granted, unified installers could be done without fat binaries, but far binaries allow it to be done more elegantly.
I'm not even asking for the installed system to be fat. Just have the installer be fat and carry multiple package trees for the various architectures the disc supports. In the case of a net installer, there is really no excuse for more than one version of the CD as it doesn't even carry any platform-specific packages.
Actually, they wouldn't get very far. Most servers would still be unaffected because they either run neither Windows nor Wine or run Windows but don't receive patches at day 0 because of testing. So if we take "the internet" to mean "websites", they get 10-20% at most.
As for the clients: If they do infect 70% of all Windows PCs with a worm that then spreads to the other 30% that would only destroy Windows as nobody would trust them anymore. In the short term many Windows computers would fail - until two hours later when people are finished reinstalling Windows. The computers could become reinfected but it'd take the virus companies two or three days at most to develop effective countermeasures. Anyone with some kind of live-CD lying around would be back in the net within minutes.
The only way for this worm to keep computers off the net would be to damage the hardware - which is fairly difficult to do nowadays. Plus, all new PCs people buy would probably be sold with either a) the effective countermeasures preinstalled or b) a Linux live-CD bundled in so people can use the net while the AV companies do their work.
Macs and Linux boxes would be largely unaffected. Yes, you could write specific attacks but that would a) mean that Microsoft will immediately get killed over this (having a worm in your update system is possibly an accident; simultaneously having the worm and a bad Office update from that very same system attempt to compromise all non-Windows PCs is most likely not) and b) not be very successful - OS X isn't particularly hardened but many Linux distros come with SELinux enabled by default.
I'd expect maybe 10% of all servers and 80% of all home computers to fail in the short term with most users being back online within a week. The much larger damage would be done to Microsoft as they would be blanketed in lawsuits/prosecuted and customer trust would hit zero. Apple and every commercial desktop Linux vendor would come out as the winners.
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I just had this image of a NASA lab where a bunch of frozen astronauts are affixed to motors and spun, with one of the NASA scientists looking on and saying to another: "You know, I think we're doing it wrong."
Because driving for a walk defeats the purpose.
Social conventions. I'm expected to order something.
Because there isn't much else I can do with it.
I don't need one; I already have enough of them.
Because this large watertight hole I made keeps retaining the water I put in.
Because that's what the blueprint I made said.
You're awfully inquisitive, you know that?
Actually, even non-adapted pathogens can do damage. I did some research into skin fungi when I thought I might have one. Human-adapted ones can thrive on your skin causing very slight symptoms. Animal skin fungi can infect humans as well, causing noticeable immune reactions that can kill off the fungus without external aid.
But then there's the real fun part - soil fungus can also infect human skin. Not being adapted at all, some of them cause a fierce immune reaction that can leave scars. So, in a way, these are actually the worst infections.
Your immune system can fight off non-adapted organisms but that doesn't mean you're immune to damage from an infection. Nobody knows what a potential Mars bug would do to a human unless someone manages to get himself infected.
"Dozens Dead Due To Missile Defense System's Faulty Firmware". That headline has the advantage of conveying exactly the wrong image.
What about them? The URL is still encoded exactly the same; it's just displayed differently in the browser. Of course that would require that LTR and RTL characters aren't combined but someone already suggested that domain names should only be allowed to contain characters from one alphabet (more or less; for example there are special Unicode code points for Latin letters used in Japanese text).
It's not out yet, but the Pandora (which runs on a TI OMAP 3530) mentions in its tech specs that the battery life is expected to be 10+ hours with a 4000 mAh battery. Given that the Pandora is mainly used for games, emulation and multimedia (so it's likely to be under heavy load much of the time), that sounds great. And at least the devs think that the figure they give is likely.
Netbooks are likely to have a bigger screen (the Pandora's is 4.3") but they also have more space for a battery and casual users aren't likely to constantly put them under load. So yeah, 12+ hours do appear realistic at the moment - at least for a device without an HDD that mostly sees casual use.
One of my routers is set up to support any combination of WPA, WPA2, TKIP and AES (the weaker ones for compatibility, the stronger ones because it supports them). The other one only supports WPA+TKIP but it works and thus won't be replaced unless WPA+TKIP security devolves quite a bit farther.
"Defective by design" refers to planned obsolescence. You mean "the design is defective", which certainly applies. PDF is a nice format but I wish Adobe would stop pretending they can write a PDF reader.
Actually, from what I've seen during my school time (in Germany, admittedly), you get mobbed for not attempting to fit in (I'm not talking "unusual interests" but rather "consistent erratic behavior"), for being disliked by the wrong people (it really sucks when someone who hates you is popular enough to create a bad image for you out of thin aur) or for simply being an easy target. Because there's always someone like that.
Interests didn't really matter.
Think of a device with a 16-hour uptime. Under load. With uptimes like that we're approaching the same kind of "needs to be recharged once a week" territory non-smart mobile phones reside in. In short: Netbooks actually become mobile devices instead of computers that happen to have a very good USP built in.
If you're cool with dropping the 300 USD you could also get a Pandora (essentially what you described plus game controls, touchscreen, WLAN and Bluetooth in a clamshell roughly the size of a first-gen Nintendo DS). They're currently preparing for the first mass-production run and preorders for the second batch should start somewhere within the next to or three months.
If you're interested, check out http://openpandora.org/. If you're not, you could try to get in touch with the OP devs and find out where they source their screens - however, their source might not work for you as they might only sell in bulk.
Disclaimer: I'm not directly affiliated with OpenPandora but I did preorder a Pandora.
And here I was hoping that they'd come up with the Dhrystone bridge, the SPECint bridge and the 3DMark bridge. Although the latter one would be useless anyway as NVidia employees would always rate too high.
* While the Mark's symbol was "DEM", the form "DM" was used by most Germans until shorty before the Euro changeover. At least that's what I can still piece together; it's pretty hard to find any useful information about the two forms - possibly because "dem" is a German article form and thus completely useless as a search term.
Your math's off.
30 years ago 1 USD = 2 DM.
At the time of the changeover 1 EUR = 2 DEM*.
Now 1 EUR = 1.5 USD (= 3 DEM).
Thus 1 USD_then = 1.5 USD_now. You applied the DEM:EUR exchange rate the wrong way around. Still, from a European's point of view the Dollar is delightfully weak. Delightfully because it means that the USA are great for bargain hunting - evidence for that would be the time when some NYC storeowners tried to capitalize on the sudden influx of affluent tourists by accepting Euros.
Good thing he doesn't use one, then.
A DVD-R uses a dye that fades over time.
A DVD-RW has a metallic layer that lasts longer.
DVD-RWs are still not terribly good long-term storage media (we haven't yet developed those for home users storing appreciable amounts of data), but they're definitely superior to DVD-Rs.
Incendescents aren't that extravagant if you use decent halogen incendescents. Halogen lamps are more efficient (about 60% more light/Watt) and last much longer than regular ones. Since CFLs are too annoying and LEDs don't deliver yet, halogen incandescent is what I currently prefer. Works well.
The "death of Geocities" discussion is three stories over.
Actually, this does fit in with what the GP said - we can't tell without a reasonable investigation but nobody has the faintest clue how to actually investigate God's existence. (Well, apart from the people who deem a thought experiment a thorough investigation.)
There are places like that. For instance, standard High German is virtually identical to the Hannover dialect. Being from Lower Saxony* I find it very slightly sad that my area doesn't have much of an accent. We're 100 km north of Hannover so our language is colored ever so slightly but if I want to get any noticeable local color I have to mix in Low German, which is a different language altogether. Which I don't really speak.
* For all non-German readers: Hannover is the capital of Lower Saxony.
But, you know, it could've been, like, totally worse.
However, Apple didn't hold a monopoly while having an abysmal track record in things like security or doing what the software is supposed to do (I'm looking at you, IE). I mean, Microsoft held their monopolies for years while Windows and IE were the butt of jokes made even by rather nontechnical users.
Well, it did in the RC and the GGP's post sounded like it still does. And yes, I did run into it (my primary "HDD" being a 1 GiB flash drive didn't quite appeal to the Win 7 installer). Essentially, the installer insisted that only the first partition on the first HDD in the system can be a system partition and since there are no system partitions, Windows can't be installed. The only way to get Win 7 onto the system was to change the SATA device order in the BIOS.
This did strike me as peculiar as it meant that the Win 7 installer is less capable than the Win XP one, which is perfectly happy to install anywhere as long as it can write to the MBR. I assumed it to be an artifact of theOS not being fully tested yet.
If they have since fixed the installer and the GGP has a differnet problem, just disregard my post.
Have the net-installer be fat. That way people can just download one ISO without having to worry about whether it's compatible with their system. The installer determines which architecture it runs on (optionally fine-tunable so you can install IA32 on an AMD64 system) and automagically fetches the correct packages from the server.
For regular installation CDs/DVDs this is a bit trickier but one could either include multiple package trees (space-intensive) or have all packages on the disc be fat and strip them down to the appropriate architecture(s) upon installation (less space-intensive but slower).
By all means, still offer architecture-specific installation media but do offer universal ISOs so people can just toss the OS on without having to worry about what architecture they have. Remember, desktop Linux is something considered worthwile and asking nontechnical users to decide whether they want installation media for IA32, AMD64 or maybe PPC64 is not beginner-friendly. Assuming that IA32 is correct might backfire, too, as ARM netbooks are beginning to appear on the market.
If Linux distros want to impress the casual user, "much easier to install than Windows 7" would be a good way to start.
The fact that you can go to the website of your distro of choice and be presented with a list of one dozen different installation DVDs, two of which actually run on your system. Granted, unified installers could be done without fat binaries, but far binaries allow it to be done more elegantly.
I'm not even asking for the installed system to be fat. Just have the installer be fat and carry multiple package trees for the various architectures the disc supports. In the case of a net installer, there is really no excuse for more than one version of the CD as it doesn't even carry any platform-specific packages.
Actually, they wouldn't get very far. Most servers would still be unaffected because they either run neither Windows nor Wine or run Windows but don't receive patches at day 0 because of testing. So if we take "the internet" to mean "websites", they get 10-20% at most.
As for the clients: If they do infect 70% of all Windows PCs with a worm that then spreads to the other 30% that would only destroy Windows as nobody would trust them anymore. In the short term many Windows computers would fail - until two hours later when people are finished reinstalling Windows. The computers could become reinfected but it'd take the virus companies two or three days at most to develop effective countermeasures. Anyone with some kind of live-CD lying around would be back in the net within minutes.
The only way for this worm to keep computers off the net would be to damage the hardware - which is fairly difficult to do nowadays. Plus, all new PCs people buy would probably be sold with either a) the effective countermeasures preinstalled or b) a Linux live-CD bundled in so people can use the net while the AV companies do their work.
Macs and Linux boxes would be largely unaffected. Yes, you could write specific attacks but that would a) mean that Microsoft will immediately get killed over this (having a worm in your update system is possibly an accident; simultaneously having the worm and a bad Office update from that very same system attempt to compromise all non-Windows PCs is most likely not) and b) not be very successful - OS X isn't particularly hardened but many Linux distros come with SELinux enabled by default.
I'd expect maybe 10% of all servers and 80% of all home computers to fail in the short term with most users being back online within a week. The much larger damage would be done to Microsoft as they would be blanketed in lawsuits/prosecuted and customer trust would hit zero. Apple and every commercial desktop Linux vendor would come out as the winners.