i think the story gives the answer already, but it of course depends whether the company can carry the loss

40 to 41 Gb of space needed for an operating system to run a tablet. Sorry microsoft, but here is where I jump off. I am not sure what fancy operating system you build here, but 40 Gb just is a bit to excesive. There must be a way to bring this back a lot! To answer the question: YES!

And I should login first before I hit post!

Not sure how it is in the USA, but here in the Netherlands this is basically a nogo for corporations. By Dutch law a contract can never , ever go above the law and starting a lawsuit is a basic right by law. There is even a real danger for the corporation in questions that having such a clause in he contract invalidates the whole contract and the transaction falls back to "standard" terms. maybe i am a bit optimistic here but would this principle not also apply in any country, include the US of A?

Headshot!

This guy is proposing something using one of the most powerfull images / analogies we have as his inspiration. Yes , the design might be horrible, and there are a lot of reasons why some elements of his proposal would not work, frankly speaking we don't know! There are also a lot of the elements would work! If you look at his roadmap he is proposing 11 years of research and within those 11 years technologies are proposed, prototypes build etc, etc, etc. Then there is the moment of final ship design, not before! What he is envisioning is a huge platform (the amount of room we have will make it possible to use this for all kinds of things) which we can use to really explore our solar system and use the industry and momentum that this creates to get a sustainable program of the ground which will make us an true spacefaring species. He is not saying we should leap ahead and only do this when we have the 1G drive or when the Warp drive is invented. He is saying we should start with what we already are capable off and learn from it. Any argument that we have other problems which we as humanity should solve first (hunger, desease, war) are all true, but that would mean everybody should also stop doing other things, like going on vacation and buying this just to big car, etc, etc. Just think about how many launch sites we would need to get te stuff to build this Enterprise up there and where these launchsites are best located. Also think about how many jobs this creates and inventions it requires and what that does to solve te forementioned problems. There is nothing more powerfull then a common goal I for one applaud the effort he put in here and he gets my vote. I sincerely think that we as humans should make the trip. Other proposals like sending probes is like watching a football match on the television. Yes it is very exciting and maybe cheaper, but it is no where near the experience you get by actually being in the stadium! (when his website is back up a.k.a. can handle the load again i am going to read further on what his thoughts are)

Reading this something came to mind. This satelite/probe/spacecraft would be the first spacecraft earth has build that would be equiped with a kinetic weapon...... Only one remark here: COOL!

Seconded here also: I have an airport extreme screwed to the wall in my power closet (where all the electrical stuff, phone and television comes into my house) and it has been running flawlessly for the last 3 years. I had to do two reboots in two years and for the rest it just works. And I am streaming video over it from my Readynass, doing timemachine backups, routing (slowely I admit) my storage for Imovie over it (to the readynass), connect to the corporate network and use it to surf the internet. Basically anything Microsoft and Apple can throw at it and it still works.

Yes you are (sorry can't help myself. Just need to rub it in.). Correction: :s/\$/4 Yours just replaced the end of the line with a 4 (effectively adding it to the end of the line)

Actually there is. There is a ASAP method, not sure if it is from SAP, but i think it was. It is a method to "quickly" implement SAP. Guess they did not use it here.

While finding te story very interesting, there is no real solution at the end of it. In one or two sentences: what would facebook have to hoose as the database and then : why that option , or weigh the alternatives.

And we are complaining about gasprices down here, wonder if my creditcard will max out to fill up?

I would take 20 Xb0x360 devices and hook them up to some playstations which will have USB disks attached to them. Each and every one of the Xb0X 360 devices I would equip with a Kinect device (linux drives are there) and I would programm me a virtual keyboard. Missing USB ports can easily be soldered onto the motherboards of the Playstations Then I would change the office layout so everybody has their own cubical in which they can standup an do their minority report moves to handle their day to day tasks (You will have to write some software for that). Anything more, just ask. And now seriously Please approach this from a user/business perspective. What does the company need to do their business?. And then look at the support structure of each standard solution. If the support people know linux, then do linux. If the users know Windows, Then give them windows. If the companies customers and suppliers work with linux/osx/windows thats another pointer. There is shitload of standard stuff out there which will do the job just brilliantly. No need to bother /. with this!