At work we have a PC Board component inserter robot that runs off a PDP-8. Programmed with paper tape. Yes. Paper tape. OK, well, plastic punched tape. There is a short stack of 'spare' PDP-8 rack units sitting in the crib just waiting for a failure. But you know what ? Digital Equipment made some rugged machines.

And in my old job in the defense industry we used a surplus Nike-Ajax missile radar, that was run off a synchro computer. I designed a digital interface to run it off a Z-80 processor.

One industry that died with direct PC sales (Yes, you Mikey Dell) was the entire Value Added Reseller industry. There are a few still around, but the serried ranks of 'experts' went poof. This can be equated with the attempts to bypass the Auto Dealership model by Tesla.

I encourage this. The idea that consumers are too stupid to buy cars without expert assistance is as dumb as the idea that consumers needed help to buy complicated computers.

Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte (Systems, Applications, and Products).

www.sap.com

Basically it's one of the two the largest Enterprise Resource Planning software companies in the world. Oracle is the other one. And since most SAP systems are run inside a highly protected corporate network, the self-promoting hysteria from this article is so much bullcrap.

SAP can send and receive email. Your guys should know that. It's a sucky 1990's email system, but it works.

Disclaimer... I'm one of those 'SAP Guys' and have been doing it for a decade and a half.

Since anti satellite technology is quite mature and tested, anyone who thinks that such a system would not have the equivalent of a few dozen nuclear shotguns permanently parked near it is... clueless. Of course the effect of having to destroy that would effectively make Earth orbit a no-go zone for decades until someone started sending up sweeper robots.

Properly shielded equipment uses different methods to 'break the cage'. It's been many decades, but some of the heavily shielded designs I did in the 80's involved opto-isolators. Yes, that's right. Want to avoid radiating information ? Use light.

Keep in mind that the structure of the faraday cage depends on the frequency of the data being transmitted. It does not have to be unbreakable tin foil. Properly sized metal mesh will also do the job. Just ask anyone who tries to get a Wifi signal through an old wall with expanded metal lath and plaster.

Yep. Ditto. I still recall one young smartass demonstrating to our boss that he could display what was on the Boss's computer monitor from about 30 feet away with an antenna and a circuit he built with a breadboard.

A faraday cage IS the only way to protect against this with 100% reliability.

The implied assumption in the article and in the commentary indicates a deliberate misdirection or a simple understanding of the accounting principles involved in how a business accounts for a BAD DECISION. Every business has the ability to use this 'loophole'. But it's not a 'loophole'. It's a simple recognition that a capital purchase that turns out to not be a good deal should have the loss (cost of the purchase price minus the fair market value of the asset) amortized over the book life of the asset against the income produced by the asset.

Kids, this is basic accounting 301 (Intermediate management accounting). Most accountants will tell you that having good will on your books means you made a dumb decision at some point, and paid more than something was worth. The title SHOULD read:

"Ballmer pays twice what Basketball team is worse, can't write it off immediately, has to wait 15 years."

Because I BUILT my first personal computer in 1976. This involved individual IC's, a wire wrap board, making my own PC boards for power and display, lots of soldering, switches to load and store programs, and LED's. 6502 processor and 1,000 bits of RAM, baby ! I mock anyone who thinks that plugging in a few parts is 'building a computer'.

I keep an encrypted online database of my passwords. Sort of. I use a 'modular' password. One word is different, the other is always the same. So in my will I have the same word (and it's l33t combinations) written down, along with the address of the database. So anyone dealing after my death will know ALL my codes. My wife of 30+ years also keeps a copy of it, and knows the super secret codes.

I started this after being in a coma, and my wife having to deal with my PDA bleeping about meetings to her until the battery died. Which made her cry even more.

Good approach. Making a mortal enemy of the outgoing sysop, or simply his object of scorn, will screw you badly.

Other than to say "you're screwed", the big step is to also ramp up the professionalism and start building a better system governance policy and documentation process. The best way to explain that to management is to ask "Do you fail the Hit By a Bus Test? ".... If your key administrators are hit by a bus, will your systems go dark ?

A stylish wearable using 'cloud' functionality for processsing and storage, with haptic and voice input, and visual / voice output with beyond retina image quality that is projected into both eyes in a maskable area while using optical comparison to detect the ability of my eye to see it (avoiding bifocals, etc..) and projecting what Is actually in front of me based on eye position so I don't fall on my butt.

I'm so right hand dominant that, when I shattered my right arm, my wife was the first to notice it (docs in the ER did not... I had a traumatic brain injury and in a coma... you do the fatality inducing stuff first). I was flailing around with my left hand only. They pooh poohed it. She said "You don't understand. He's so right handed that you could cut his left hand off and he wouldn't notice for hours and hours.) .