It makes sense in the long term, because the lines have to be taken care for, regardless of the direction of how the meters are spinning.

There will be blowback though. It is very easy to have several circuits in a house on battery power, and instead of using an inverter to backfeed the electric company, have a charge controller keep a battery bank charged and attach inverters to that for very clean, stable power. No, these won't run an A/C unless one has a disproportionately large solar array, but stuff like computers and other electronic items can be moved completely from mains power.

This might be a good thing though... less power that the utility company has to generate and route, although it would mean less power coming its way from people's houses.

Exclusivity works very well on consoles. Like HALO, for example. You won't be finding it anytime soon on the PS4.

So, having it tried on smartphones makes sense. If one side or the other does land a lot more exclusive games than the other, it can be something that can force the hand of a consumer, because their buds are playing the game, but they can't unless they upgrade phones.

The stakes are high for the long term.

Almost all games have fallen into that pit since 2011 and IAP became doable. Games that cost a few bucks and were very playable now are "free", but require numerous micropayments to be even playable. Want the same weapons/towers/birds that you had when you paid for the game in the pre-2011 version? That'll cost you, likely $10-20 total.

As a devil's advocate, assuming semis used completely mechanical systems, there would be other issues. All new cars depend on a series of embedded computers, and if those fry, the engine becomes deadweight and the vehicle becomes scrap metal. Fry a large amount of cars on major arteries in and out of metro areas, then the only way to get stuff in or out are airlifts.

No, an EMP blast wouldn't wipe humanity off the earth. However, people are herd animals and panic quite easily, and when they can't get their Doritos at the local grocery store, some will take it as an excuse to riot or just panic.

The Internet will survive. In fact, that is what its original purpose was... to be able to keep communication running in case of exactly this sort of thing. However, some cities likely will be never the same place they were beforehand.

If Heartbleed leads to subsequent intrusions, then the pricetag will definitely go into the ten digit range. If web services are patched, both external and internal [1], then it still will be expensive.

[1]: There are a lot of embedded devices that use OpenSSL, some may not be able to be updated, especially if they are used for constant production runs. All and all, if one factored in man-hours and opportunity costs, the factor is larger. Especially because the OpenSSL patches are not done yet, so even patched systems will need re-patched once a stable, "blessed" release is made.

Even the tinfoil-hatters I know were not predicting that many deaths in the first hour. In 3-4 days, this would be a different story because people would be re-enacting the Donner party in heavily populated areas once food trucks stopped coming... but in the first half-hour, there might be casualties like people in elevators, or a welding robot shutting down and dropping something heavy on a worker's noggin, but not these many in such short a time.

I feel like a survivalist stating this, but I think it is good to teach kids some skills that are not dependent on electricity, if only how not to be completely helpless during a power outage or a disaster:

One example is basic usage and care of a generator. It is surprising how few people don't get that there is a difference between a Harbor Freight special (which is an ET800 clone of a Yamaha model made in the early 19702), versus a Honda, Yamaha, or other quality generator with an inverter (or at the minimum active voltage regulation) that puts out clean power.

Another example, something simple as planting a garden or raising chickens. Skills that may not be needed all the time, but if something does happen, are worth having.

I have a Palm VII. It was fiddly, but it worked and works now (although no wireless anymore) as a great password manager that is offline and will always remain offline.

The device I have that I say has the best design for being timeless is the Palm V. It is one of those things that even 15 years later, it still looks relatively modern (other than the lack of a color screen.) It held up with daily use for years until smartphones caused the device and its charging cradle to wind up on the shelf for good.

I would say that my old HP48SX calculator with a card for additional functions still works and is useful. Engineering calculations are engineering calculations, and the tactile feel of the buttons is a lot more accurate than trying to use an emulator on a smartphone.

Just the small engineering touches showed outstanding build quality. For example, the card had an edge connector, but there was a sliding metal flap that kept the connector on a card shielded until it was inserted into the calculator.

I remember an early 1990s computer case for a generic 386 (back when we had hundreds of beige box makers.) It had multiple cam locks (Medeco or Ace, forgot which), as well as a keyswitch. It wasn't made out of tinfoil sheet metal as today's cases, the thickness had to be at least 1/8 of an inch. That case was used and reused by a friend of mine because it just worked without issue, and why waste something that well made.

I wouldn't mind going back to the days of repair rather than replace. Better off to pay twice as much for something and be able to maintain/expand/upgrade it than have it break or go obsolete and contribute to more landfill clutter.

People talk about bug free code. It is a matter of won't, not a matter of can't.

Sometimes, there are products out there which can be considered "finished". Done as in no extra features needed, and there are no bugs to be found. Simple utilities like /usr/bin/yes come to mind. More complex utilities can be honed to a reasonable degree of functionality (busybox comes to mind.)

The problem isn't the fact that secure or bug free software can't be made. It is that the procedures and processes to do this require resources, and most of the computer industry runs on the "it builds, ship it!" motto [1]. Unfortunately, with how the industry works, if a firm does do the policy of "we will ship it when we are ready", a competitor releasing an early beta of a similar utility will win the race/contracts. So, it is a race to the bottom.

[1]: The exception to this rule being malware, which is probably the most bug-free code written anywhere these days. It is lean, robust, does what it is purposed to do, and is constantly updated without a fuss.

I don't see tape being killed off until magnetic density in HDDs hits major diminishing returns. Even though there is only one tape drive maker these days (Quantum with the LTO line), they can keep advancing tape because the media has a lot more area than a HDD platter (or a stack of platters.) An average LTO-6 tape is 846 meters long, and that is a lot of space, even with factoring in the physical contact that the media has to go through.

It would be nice to see a consumer grade tape drive that can run from USB 3 or 3.1, especially if WORM cartridges were available, with media about 1TB native in capacity. Couple this with some decent backup software, and it would come in handy to mitigate data loss. Tape's advantage is that it is inexpensive, easily stored (drop a cartridge, and if there is no physical damage, it will still work), and can be set read-only in hardware.

I've wondered if a HDD maker could make archival grade hard disks, with media that can last 25 years or so. This might require multiple sets of read/write heads (similar to a drive that had two sets and could access different data sets at the same time independantly.) Couple that with a form factor that is easily grippable/manipulable by a robot, and that would replace both VTLs and real tape libraries.

I've seen a couple hard drives in laptops that present themselves to the BIOS as multiple volumes, although I don't know what brand they are (if someone does know the make/model, please enlighten me). One had a 32 GB SSD partition, then a 512 GB HDD partition. Unlike drives that have an 8GB cache, having two volumes allows the OS, swap, perhaps an application to sit on one volume while everything else is on the HDD.

As for the backup hard disk, that is a wise idea as the first level of defense. It can't hurt to have another means of backup just in case malware nails that drive, but having the backup drive will counter a number of "oops" issues (deleted files, etc.)

There is a balance. If you bend over too much and let them "do your job", there may be grave issues several months down the road.

The problem with that is the "it happened on your watch" statement that will be uttered come any calamities in the future. The patch they rejected that causes an outage later on won't fall on their heads. It will fall on the sysadmin's head. Even though it won't be the sysadmin's fault, they will get fired because management has to appear to do something, and the sysadmin was in the driver's seat.

One can't be a complete douchebag, but one can't just cede control over completely. If push comes to shove, it is better to get laid off because a H-1B is taking over than be fired for cause.

Another thing that might happen is that change management gets selectively enforced. One set of machines would be scrutinized where every change, even an addition of a drive to an array, would require a meeting and people signing off on the change, while the machines running a different OS would be able to be taken down, reinstalled, or otherwise modified at will without any paperwork needing to be done. (And vice versa.) Even SANs need to be documented because if someone puts both paths of a production box's MPIO links on the same drive controller, then reboots the controller, there will be Hell to pay.

Change management needs to be even across the board, be it SAN configurations, Windows, UNIX, router configurations, ASA rules, phone switch configs, VMWare configurations, and so on. If one group starts getting a free pass, then the whole system ends up being pointless come an outage that ends up being traced to undocumented changes in a part of the company that has gotten carte blanche.

Change management in even a SMB requires someone dedicated to the task of dealing with documenting changes. It requires a dedicated server, change management software, and someone who will maintain/backup/archive that. That server will be a PITA... until an outage happens and the fingers start pointing. Then, it can save a person their job.

Ideally, the change management software should allow people to put in their own changes. Say an admin is changing passwords or moving files from one filesystem to another. Might as well have a tool where items like that can be documented. Same with calls to a vendor for support, so later on, if something breaks, a simple search might come up with historical data.

All and all, a change management system is a good thing. However, it needs to be universally enforced with various grades of policies (emergency fixes can go on without approval, for example) for it to be of any good.