Unless you are trying to switch to pascal-style strings instead of null-terminated ones you have limited ways to automatically check buffer overruns, just as you have limited ways to do garbage collecting or, for that matter, almost anything automagical with pointers. The compiler alone cannot enforce that policy, one could try to enforce it in the standard library or a framework. The difference between low and middle level languages and high level languages is the magic that happens behind the language. C has almost no magic, it just gives you the building blocks to do whatever you please.

I'd like a portable generator for my Android device of choice. Would that be Ok? I actually live in an area that can imagine the power grid not being there. Neighbours not far from my place still get some degree of technology. And that some degree means laptops, microwave ovens, satellite TV and air conditioner while being hundreds of miles from the closest power line. You might want to imagine the worst case scenario, but for me it's so unlikely I'd advise anyone to just learn how to cope without slashdot or facebook.
Also, you might want to prepare for the most likely cataclysm: the Internet of zero privacy and high levels of censorship and manipulation. How would you survive that?

Starting with one of the great great GP and TFA, knowing that space is vast, how would people survive separation from the Earth? Would any of you be ready for that?

Well if most of you fearing the apocalypse could delete some of the porn on your drive and save heavy amounts of books, blueprints and scientific articles humanity might have a chance of recovering from such a cataclysm faster. You see a lot of crappy shows on television about people training to fight zombies and learning how to grow mushrooms, fearing some sort of Mad Max scenario, but fail to imagine ways to save knowledge in a meaningful way.

So how long did XP without service pack have support? How about XP SP1? Linux kernel 2.4 has reached end of life, but with code available there might be patches made by individuals who need it. You are comparing a kernel with an operating system, if you wanted to beat the linux crowd ask them about any distribution individual release. I was pleased to find out that the last version of SuSE before being acquired by Novell still has some mirrors on the net.

Yeah, it's getting colder outside on the global scale. Just look out the window every winter. It's all the proof I need. This winter the snow excess here was a football field-size snowflake. Those damn alarmists don't know what they're saying, let's just wait and see how wrong they are.