Do you really think that all the oil has drained back in just the 1 minute you're waiting for the light to turn green?

The oldest file that I don't need to restore (but can obviously restore in case my disk crashes) dates from April 1, 1992.

The oldest file that I can restore easily, will most likely be from the summer of 1989. That would be the original source file of a public domain program that I wrote at that time (released first in the early nineties, but I have the complete history all the way back to 1989 on backup). But I also might still have a LaTeX copy of my master's thesis from earlier that year hidden somewhere.

The oldest file that I can restore at all, must date from about 1987. This, however, requires me to dig up a working DOS machine (doable, because my father still has one of those dinosaurs - now unused, but still booting if needed).

So what? Lots of people have had operations. Are you going to open up all of them on the spot, just to see what's inside?

Well,... I learned to read when entering school at age 6 - the usual age here in Belgium back in the early 70s. But within a few months I thought my sister how to read as well. She was only 4 at that time

I'm an adult (45) and I send and receive tens of SMS per day from myself to myself as part of a product testing effort that I'm involved in. Does that count as well? ;-)

Now this is a valid & valuable remark (as opposed to those who keep saying the obvious "business is social" without adding anything truly meaningful).

Having said that - and having thought this over a bit - I'm not on /. for the networking, and even not so much for the comments. I'm here because /. acts as a newsfeed to me. This is also reflected in my relatively low number of posts for someone who has been here since before UIDs were even introduced.

Tell me something new. I'm on purpose making the explicit distinction because I'm trying to make an actual point with my original post, instead of just being pedantic for the sake of it.

Same time as before: zero.

For clarity, I am present on LinkedIn and actively use that to track former business contacts, but I consider that to be a professional network, not a social one. This also implies that on LinkedIn I refuse connections from people who I do not know from past face-to-face business experience and that I exclude those who I would not be willing to recommend for some business related opportunity.

For the same reason, I do not accept requests to join all the other networks out there, even from people that I do linked up with on LinkedIn. One well crafted profile and network is worth a million times more than 10 crappy ones.

Nah. Only 3 digits matter. Especially those below 510.

Easy & simple, you say? It shows that you don't have a girlfriend... ;-)

Actually, the Belgian Order of the Crown is a nice example of what I meant. I'm a knight in that order myself, but that does not imply a "title of nobility".

For clarity for those who do not get it yet: The word "knight" has a double meaning. When used on its own, it is indeed a title of nobility and in some countries - such as Belgium - each year a few people are still made knights or higher (mostly with a non-hereditary title) as a sign of recognition for exceptional services. When used in an expression such as "Knight of ", it is nothing more than one of several ranks that exist withing that order, but does not imply nobility. And as I mentioned in my earlier mail, these "knight of ..." awards are much easier to get than real nobility titles.

For starters, he's a German national and hence the US Constitution is not relevant.

Next, he was not granted a title of nobility. He was given a medal that in other certain countries would rank equivalent to the knight level in a typical order of chivalry.

On top of that, being a member of an order of chivalry is not equivalent to being a member of the nobility. I should know, as I'm myself a knight in a Belgian order of chivalry. Just about any Belgian army officer (reserves included) who has been active for long enough is a knight in one or more such orders. That does not make them nobility.

If you consider unknown Belgian awards to be too obscure to be a reference, look at the famous "Knights Cross of the Iron Cross", so well known that it is often just referred to as "The Knights Cross". This award - in its various gradations - is very well known for being the most desirable award anyone in the WWII German armed forces could receive. But rest assured that winning one did not imply any title of nobility being granted by mr. H. who, in fact, despised the old German nobility. Besides, from a legal point of view nobility was abolished in Germany in 1919.

My oldest living true computer is an HP laptop that just passed into the "6-10" category last month. It still gets booted each weekend and sometimes also in between. The oldest computing device that I still use would be my HP 15C. That beast became mine in the autumn of 1983. Those things simply are indestructible...

The youngest computer that I own and use daily - the one on which I'm typing this - is an HP desktop from 2005. It has been down only for a few hours in total since I first booted it. The youngest one that I use daily - but do not own myself - is a 2007 Dell provided by my employer. This one is to be replaced in December (end of lease), but I'd rather keep it because I've already seen the new ones and I really don't like them. I guess that even for an IT professional, the true usefulness over installing ever more compute power is declining...

The above also exhibits what has always been my personal purchase policy with respect to computers. When I do decide to invest, I get myself a top-of-the-line machine designed for the professional market, which I then use for 6 years at a minimum before wasting more money. The PC that lasted longest so far was in almost daily use for just under 10 years. And still it didn't break, it just became too slow. In fact, the CRT that came with that box was only replaced last month, after almost 15 years of loyal service. R.I.P.

I have a USB stick on which the flash chip separated itself from the PCB (after many years of (ab)use). I really like the housing of that thing, so I actually broke open another free stick that I had laying about and moved the electronics into the old housing. As an added benefit, I can now hold 1GB iso the old 256MB.

Any civilization that is sufficiently advanced to travel between two stars (as an entire civilization), and does so, will implicitly be able to use energy from the star very efficiently (think of a Dyson sphere). If you have a ship large enough to keep all your people, with a stable ecosystem that can get you from one star to another, what the hell do you need a planet for?! And if you can use the star directly, how hard is it to find a star that doesn't have any inhabited planets? Furthermore, what would be the problem with leaving the teeny Earth in orbit while you use the rest of the energy emitted by the Sun? Earth can barely cast a shadow on the Moon, and the Moon is close, and in the orbital plane. Why would you even think of using the orbital plane, which is full of asteroids and stuff? (I would go between Mercury and Venus, with an orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane)

The second case is the case of a civilization that sends out colonies. The same arguments as before apply. These colonists would have a ship that carried them for a long time between stars. They can obviously eat very little, or sleep for long times, so they would have no reasonable motive for staying and killing humans, when they can easily set off for another star. It's pretty obvious to me they wouldn't really need a terraformed planet.

It's true that I don't see the need for world peace before sending explorers to other stars. What I see is that most likely the societies that get tired of war will get off their planet, and go to the satelites of a nearby gas giant to live in peace. From there, they can silently grow enough to start visiting other stars, while the idiots back home are busy choosing between Muhammed and Christ.

I sincerely don't see a reason for us to fear aliens. Intelligent machines would be dangerous, in the sense that they could reasonably argue that their energy requirements are less than ours, and it wouldn't make sense to give resources to the race that is less efficient. But they would have no reason to let us live in constant numbers (what, isn't it enough to have two kids per family?), or even grow a little as they grow, because if we do create intelligent machines, they will most likely have moral values that are close to ours (otherwise we pull the plug before linking them to a robot body. It's called survival, and any animal life would do it).