How about this failsafe:
Once Iran is confident that they can take control of all our drone aircraft, we put in a small yield bomb of some sort with a multi-hour delay. The delay timer is started once the lock between the drone and the US transmitter is broken. A few hours is probably enough to get the aircraft back to their base where they start dismantling it and *boom*.

And we can have the drones refuel at a remote automated location, so only maintenance is the only time a user would have to get close to the explosive. (Aircraft crews work with potentially armed bombs all the time, so it's not that big of a problem to surmount.)

If you're an American tax payer as I am, the only ones laughing will be the contractors...

"Oh, you want a secured and encrypted command and control signal too? That's another $2Billion and about 3 years for the proof of concept..."

Dan

How's the "Native Client" a big step when we've already seen the Javascript PC Emulator:

        http://bellard.org/jslinux/

I guess a Chrome browser pulling up that page, the Javascript PC Emulator booting X to run Chrome to run a Native Client PC emulator would be a neat hack...

Dan

Wow, I'm impressed. The first sign of self-monitoring I've seen on Slashdot in a long time!

I sincerely wish more people would actually apologize like Sancho when they have an inkling they might have gone over the line.

You've restored my faith in the Slashdot community a bit.

Dan

Which is sad really. It was a dual-processor system - a Zilog Z80 and an Intel 8080 CPU. When it ran CP/M the Z80 did everything, but when it ran MS-DOS the 8080 was the primary CPU and the Z80 handled the IO.

The architecture was even better thought through and didn't break up the RAM like the IBM PC did (hence the 640K "limit"). I remember booting my Rainbow 100B and getting 720KB of usable RAM without trying very hard.

Sadly, the only real games that got ported to it were the Zork line of Infocom games, and a few DEC written graphical games. (Anyone remember "SCRAM"? Probably not the most marketable game since the objective was to descend to the lowest level of a failing nuclear reactor and "scram it" to keep it from going critical...)

Ken, you have no idea how much your "little company" got me started in computers. Thank you!

Dan

Since we're talking about discoveries that may lead to faster computers, these are the solutions it may use:
  * Texas A&M Research Brings Racetrack Memory a Bit Closer -> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/12/01/0552254/Texas-AampM-Research-Brings-Racetrack-Memory-a-Bit-Closer
  * SanDisk, Nikon and Sony Develop 500MB/sec 2TB Flash CardSanDisk, Nikon and Sony Develop 500MB/sec 2TB Flash Card -> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/12/01/1322255/SanDisk-Nikon-and-Sony-Develop-500MBsec-2TB-Flash-Card

My great-grandchildren will have screaming fast cell phones!

Dan

Great, now I know I'm even WORSE at solving it than ever...

Dan

...and with the price of flash memory so low, it would be pretty easy to hide a little digital camera to snap photos of the person as they put the card in and/or stood in front of the machine. It would be easy to download those too and if they saw a few with the manager and a customer standing and pointing at the machine they would know that the gig was up and to just walk away.

I'm really thinking the cash idea is the way to go from now on. :-(

Dan

At most gas stations the price setting is done remotely from inside the building (probably along with the big digital sign price too).

Dan

Seconded. Just a year ago I upgraded from my 4+ year old laptop with a 17" 1920x1200 resolution screen (LOVED IT!) to a new 18" laptop with 1920x1080. I thought I wouldn't notice those missing 120 lines...boy was I wrong.

My only options at the time (taking other requirements into consideration) were to drop down to a 16" screen (and missing some other features), or go up to this laptop that's trying to be a portable home-theatre system...and that's the crux of this problem.

The display industry is so facinated on the HDTV aspect that they think EVERYTHING needs to max out at 1920x1080, or the cinema spec of 16:9. My wifes new desktop came with a 1600x900 screen and it really sucks. With all the menubars that IE and Firefox insist on putting at the top, and then the big taskbar at the bottom you end up having a narrow band to read in. Add in the fact that most sites put adds down the left and right sides, and the effective usable resolution of the screen is about 640x480.

And don't get me started on the "glossy" screens that are standard today...yech.

Dan

Now they can give those birds a rest!

Dan