See, this is where it goes all sideways.

I have a 44 year old truck. I get the collecting cars thing. I understand the collecting old guns thing. I get the being creative and building your own furniture thing. But he's not collecting old computers and keeping them alive. He's making a copy of the old machine using a new one, that acts somewhat like (but will never behave exactly like) the old one. The guy's creating yet another emulator using an ARM processor board.

Car analogy again: my truck has the original engine castings. It's basically an 1970 LT1 engine, tuned for truck use, which makes it doubly cool; but, it's still the original castings. It's still carbureted. It still has the mechanical voltage regulator. It's as original as I can make it, reasonably speaking (the A/C may need to be upgraded because R-12 is damned hard to find and expensive). If he wanted to do it right, he'd start with an actual C64 or at least with a 6510 processor, which might require he make one...

OK, I learned on the Apple ][, PET, VIC-20 (all 6502's) and a C64 (6510) as well... I also owned a Tandy CoCo (6809). And I remember how things were back then... But what's the point of all this nostalgic development effort to recreate the old machine, again? Hell, there are emulators that run on Linux that would work fine on the Raspberry Pi. Unless you're trying to recover some fundamentally necessary data or program, I just don't see the point. Move on man... Move on.

Go back and look at history... People fighting with flint-locks and percussion cap black powder muzzle-loaders often had to resort to the sword (or the bayonet) once the enemy was within a few feet. You just don't have time to reload...

Intelligence is part of it. Immediately after the "event" that results in an apocalypse, skills you currently possess will be the ones that help you survive. Being intelligent means you can learn new skills, once you have the time; but, first you have to survive.

I missed something that others have mentioned... People need water, food, shelter, warm clothing... Meeting those basic needs will be the first and foremost in importance. I missed clothing. Anyone with knitting, weaving and sewing skills will be important to post apocalyptic survival. the scientists and engineers will only be important initially in support of meeting those needs; the rest follows later (building and fixing things).

post apocalypse, the most important profession is going to be farmer. People got to eat. Skilled trades will be in demand, post apocalypse as before: carpenters, bricklayers and blacksmiths, for example. People need shelter and safety. After that, scientists or engineers who can make things happen, build things, fix things...

Since I work for an automotive OEM.... When this is done, there is an Engineering Change Order documenting the change and why it was implemented. We don't change anything without first getting the approval of the customer; and, invariably they will want all the relevant DV and PV testing redone. Huge effort and pain. All of this is well documented and nothing ships until we have final approval from the customer.

The part number may not change; but, the part revision level will. PN 123456 RevA will become PN 123456 RevB. We treat it as the "same" part number but will only ship the latest revision once we have customer approval. As for tracking, I don't know how our customers tracks the change internally; but, I can tell you which batch, serial number, and date code the new revision started shipping.

Because each one is a custom, hand-made part that probably went through an extensive measurement process in a QA lab prior to each assembly step and after it was completed.

IAA physicist and it's partially the ionization of the air being compressed as the mach 7 projectile leaves the bore, and it's partially plasma from the armature that vaporizes as the massive current pulse pushes though it.

I don't know whether to be happy that another science fiction article has become science fact; or, horrified at the future capability it represents. I know someone in a back room is wondering, "How large will this scale and still be viable inside the atmosphere?"

It's this kind of thick headed stupidity, where the Republican party has allowed ultra-right wing nuts to take control of the party, that has caused me to stop voting in the center choosing candidates based on their resume and experience. Now I'm voting an all Democratic ticket simply because I'm tired of all the bull crap. While I don't agree with everything the Democrats do and I think sometimes their spending habits need to be reigned in, they're not trying to kill this country by cutting the bottom out from under it.

It won't go down like that.... It'll be more like

.

scientist: Oh no! there's a 5 km asteroid going to hit us in 150 days."

Politician: How do I know you're right? You've been wrong in the past. Earth has never been hit by an asteroid, not in my lifetime or the lifetime of my father's father's father. I don't believe you."

one week later

Scientist: We've projected the orbit and can confirm with 99.99% certainty the asteroid will strike the Earth on the west coast of Africa in 139 days at exactly 10:43pm EST. It's 4.2 km and when it strikes it will be a civilization ending event, killing a projected 83% of the human population unless you fund the rocket we need to stop it.

Politician: So, you're not 100% certain? And you're saying it might strike Africa. And I thought you said it was only 5 km. Now you're saying it's 4.2km. You all don't even know how big this thing is... How much is the rocket going to cost? Do you have any idea what percentage of the U.S. GDP that is!? That's U.S. taxpayer money you're talking about. I think you might be wrong about the collision. You all were wrong about that asteroid... Apo something, right? Why should we agree to spend American taxpayer's money to stop a rock that may strike Africa. That's on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, half a world away. You scientists just don't know what you're talking about with your heads in the clouds looking at your stars all the time. You need to get down to Earth with the rest of us regular folks and do something useful.

I've had that conversation... other guy: "Why doesn't it work" me: "Because you're code is running at over 100 MIPS and you didn't pause for even 50 milliseconds to wait for the device to set the valve..." "never mind waiting for flow to start. And you really shouldn't assume anything, go back to double check the system state before launching the next step in the process." Application programmer meets the physical world of control systems programming.

Many of the EU bans were put in place before the crops were available and there was data to work from. It was what we call a knee-jerk reaction. Most of the studies have found no issues with GMO foods.

I'm all for the balanced opinion. Not everyone is going to agree... However, you can't have a "balanced opinion" if members of the committee are completely ignorant of what they're making decisions about and rather than put effort into learning and understanding, they spend all their time denigrating and belittling.