I wonder if Gleason of other preservationists have considered building functional replicas of the missing panels. Doing so would be the first step is bringing the relics to life again as a functioning computer.

Of course, that would not be the end of the project:

But perhaps a workable project to restore ENIAC to working order could inspire the re-discovery of such knowledge. Often of technical knowledge thought to be lost is not really lost, just misplaced. Somebody knows or knows who knows but they need to be inspired to come forward or follow up on their hunch.

"take it or leave it" works just fine for shoes, hotels, electronic equipment and most everything else we exchange money for. The key is you need enough competition that "leave it" becomes a real, practical choice.

Despite appearances, there is no "jet" or "rocket" engine. It is a pair of ducted fans driven by a four cylinder gasoline engine.

It isn't a pack either. The weight of the machine is borne by a large frame that the pilot steps onto.

It is really an odd sort of helicopter. It looks really cool and it is much more compact than a normal helicopter but it is not a jet-pack.

Oh, you mean wing warping? Now where have I see this before?

I expect to live just long enough to be told "we can not extend life and health substantially, possibly indefinitely, but not for anyone already as old as you"

Or maybe not. Given that I expect it will take 20 years from the big breakthrough to a practical treatment and I'm already 46, I should be seeing signs already that the research is getting close.

What would be the point? You need a rather large, well aimed antenna to reliably receive broadcast TV as anyone who has tried to use "rabbit ears" can tell you. Even the largest phablet is not large enough for such an antenna and no one will want to aim it at the tower.

Vs "thought language" which is likely to be unique to each individual. At least with spoken languages there are strong incentives to iron out the differences so that a different people in a group can communicate. And still there is continuous drift. In the history of human kind, there has been no incentive or even influence to make internal thoughts compatible.

Well, yes, but that happens to everyone in the launch business, including SpaceX. Doing it on production launch is not good for business though.

The Z3 Compact is no exception. It has a 4.6" screen, making it much closer in size to to the 4.95" Nexus 5 than the 3.5" Iphone 4 that is the usual benchmark for a small phone. It also has a screen resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. That's not bad but it is definitely cut down from the 1080 x 1920 pixels of the full size Z3.

The other mini's are worse, of course, but the Z3 Compact is the not the savior of small phone aficionados.

While the Nexus 5 is not as enormous as the Nexus 6, it is anything but small.

Which is the chief problem with the various "mini" models available today. Not a one is actually a small, well featured phone. They are simply old and/or reduced spec phones every bit as big as the first wave of large phones.

You are expecting Slashdotters to be tuned into the Microsoft rumor mill? Why? Windows is something other people use and care about. I think the last time I (indirectly) gave Microsoft a dime was 2010 when I bought a net book bundled with XP.

It's actually in hex, you see, and Microsoft is going to win the versioning war by going exponential. It will become obvious in the version after that when 0x10 (16) is followed by 0x20 (32) but by then it will be too late for the competition to catch up!

They were considering using 2^x -1 to get past the "never trust an even number" rule but a summer intern pointed out that "Microsoft Windows F" might be tough sell.

And, as long as Google is forcing the OEM's to pre-load Google apps, why don't they force all apps to be deletable?

When space gets tight (and this time will always come), I should be able to delete any app I am not using.

What a strange statement.

1) The star in question was a pulsar, not a red dwarf.
2) Red dwarfs while small for stars are still much bigger than planets.
3) Exoplanets have been found around red dwarfs
4) Pulsars are the remains of large stars.

You don't even have to combine different forms of lethality, just combine lethality with ease of propagation. Airborne ebola, anyone?