Thanks, I did not know that. But to be clear, this does not create junction points... this is the "official" method that I reference. I don't want people cutting-and-pasting Users :)

I'm thinking (hoping?) that normal disk caching would take care of stuff like that. Honestly, I'd just use the supported method unless your SSD was very, very tiny. I use the junction point method because I wipe out the C: drive from time to time to avoid Windows cruft. Every so often I apply Windows updates and re-baseline.

Windows is a pain in the ass, but with some determination you can set everything up on the SSD and then use "junction points" from the rescue disk to connect to a Users directory on a big spinning drive. If you are willing to get about 90% of the way there with just conventional tools, you can just move the "My Documents, My Music, etc." type directories by right-clicking on them, selecting Properties, and then going to the Location tab. From there you can move them to the spinning disk. This is fine if you only have a few users on the PC, but can get very tedious with multiple users.

Not blood so much as the stem cells inside the blood. Isn't that right, Hack Man?

OK that could certainly be a problem. Time to shoot a few software patent lawyers and nail the bodies in the Reception rooms of computing science departments everywhere. Un-refridgerated. "To encourage the others"

Its uses the new H26 whatever codec and it has over 50 patents claimed. That is what licensing.

Hey! I held off with my "barista at Space-Starbucks" joke.

Nah, they're Blinglish.

What have licenses got to do with it? Unless you saw something in TFA which I didn't, it's Open Source, and Bellard has a solid history of liberal software licensing. Your images are yours. Other people's images, yes may be a problem. For user - submitted content, change your T&Cs to tell the users that all new content will be automatically converted into the new format. Make or get a tool to convert (incoming) JPEG images to the new format and tell your users to use it because the new format will load faster. Fairly rapidly - a few years there will only be a few hold outs. And they're your rump problem.

If you're running an archive site or service, then yes you've probably got a more complex problem.

Images from external tools. May be more of a question. But if this is a genuinely useful tool then your normal patching and upgrading should cover it before you're down to the rump of users.

For instance, many ICs are manufactured with depleted boron as a semiconductor dopant and in the borophosphosilicate glass insulating layer.

Since you're talking about isotopically purifying a material, that's going to be a damned sight more expensive than normal-isotope-mix boron. You've got the relatively large mass difference working on your side - 7.7% mass difference (borane) compared to (238+6*19)/(235+6*19) = 0.08% difference (UF6) - but you're still looking at a pretty big job. Even simple heavy water is thousands of times more expensive than normal reagent grade water (11.8% mass difference for D2O versus H2O).

I hadn't thought about the (relative) reactivity of 10B from a radiation-sensitivity point of view. But we've been using it to date the exposure of rock surfaces to the sky for a couple of decades now, and a damned useful tool for archaeological and geomorphological studies it is too. It's up there with thermoluminescence for dating fire damage.

We have near 100 of these in the field and while I've bench-powerfailed them to no avail, out in the real world they die due to fs corruption.

Hang on, let's get that straight : if you pull the power when they're on the bench, then they don't fail, but if they suffer a power fail in the field they do suffer corruption and freeze/ hang/ fail to boot?

Obviously you've tried this, but are you sure that you're pulling the power on the bench while they're in mid-write? Because if you're doing ostensibly the same thing in two circumstances, but with different results, then I'd have to wonder if you're actually doing THE SAME THING both on the bench and in the field.

The way you've described it, it shouldn't do that.

Are the field and lab conditions - e.g. temperature - also the same. I could see temperature having a significant effect on write speeds on (flash) memory. It sounds perplexing. And quite worrying if your troubleshooting isn't replicating something that seems so simple. I know that troubleshooting can be a real time-sink, but if you're getting lots of these fails then the time to service the fialed field modules must add up too.

Are the Pis also under the same load conditions - data-logging, streaming, whatever - on the bench as in the field?

Planned by beancounters, themselves hired by luvvies ; funded by sand-jockeys ; built on the Plains of Englandshire.

I'd rather boil my own head.

I for one want to meet Mrs. Bucket, ulp, sorry Bouquet ...

He's a builder and excellent folk-singer who lives and works in North Yorkshire. Answers to "Pete".

No, I'm not joking.

I had to have the programme explained to me, never having watched more than 30 seconds of the repellent waste of electrons, but once I'd seen enough to recognise the character traits of Bucket-gob (the original) and Mrs Bouquet (the fictional derivative), the comparison was obvious. One or other of the (original) script-writers lives in the same street.

Um, you have it backwards. Assad was the first Arab to sign a peace deal with Israel, and he was such a reliable ally of the US that he was allowed to build M1A1 tanks domestically. Gaddafi was a state sponsor of terrorism who was a total belligerent until Reagan ordered a bombing run.

But it matters not. When the revolution comes, we shall flee to the safe haven of Russia. Brother Putin will let us stay at his airport. I plan on taking a nuclear sub with me. It will be awkward to store at the airport, but the plan must be held.

The dead children will slow them down.