That's actually not *entirely* true... humans haven't been making artificially modulated RF for a millennium yet, but artificial sources of EM (remember, *light* is EM) have existed practically as long as any form of civilization has. Cities are visible from space. Much less so when they're lit by candles and fireplaces than when they're lit by all the myriad electric sources found in modern cities, and there's a nearly-incomprehensible difference between LEO "from space" and interstellar "from space", of course. It also wouldn't tell the aliens anything about us (even if they had the sensors to detect those tiny motes of firelight, and distinguish them from natural sources) other than that we'd invented fire. Still, that's a lot, in some ways.

Are you counting Firefox with or without Firebug? Feature-wise, Firebug is still pretty much the gold standard... but it's dog-slow even without turning on the optional stuff that makes it even slower, and it's a third-party aftermarket install. Firefox's built-in dev tools have gotten better in the last few builds, but (as you noted) are still well behind IE11 (or Chrome). I haven't tried Edge yet.

Good question. IE has had ad-blocking and tracking protection (same feature, Tracking Protection Lists just can also be used to block ads) for a few versions now, and I think there's actually a legit AdBlock Plus extension for IE (haven't tried it). On the other hand, Edge is supposed to be super-minimalist, and I'm not sure if it'll support any kind of browser add-in (at least, initially). Tracking Protection and TPLs like IE9-11 have had is harder to say (I haven't tried it yet).

Worst case you can always use a HOSTS file, but of course you can also just use a non-Microsoft browser.

Pilot wouldn't have needed to. Dragon 2 has automatic abort capabilities (even when unmanned). It would have separated from the second stage - probably firing its SuperDraco thrusters - and then automatically deployed parachutes once it was a safe distance away.

Dragon 1 doesn't have the SuperDracos (only the much smaller Draco attitude control thrusters) so it wouldn't have been able to put as much distance between itself and the booster, but from the video and the telemetry it looks like the capsule survived the (accidental) separation anyhow. It could have deployed its parachutes and probably survived the landing, but it wasn't programmed to do so. They have added it to the Dragon 1 programming now though.

Failures that occur high enough to land under parachutes, slow enough to get away from the inevitable explosion without heavy rockets, and early enough in flight that there's no time to manually enable the landing sequence are... really, really rare in rocketry. Usually you either fail at liftoff (see Orbital's last attempt to launch Antares), fail rapidly and catastrophically during liftoff (any number of examples), or fail once in orbit (often, though not always, at stage separation). In orbit you have time to make a decision and send orders. On the launchpad you can't land safely (without abort rockets). In midair you *usually* can't get away in time (without abort rockets). This was an exception to the "in midair" usual failure case; there were nine seconds from beginning of the failure to loss of vehicle, and in fact the capsule had already tumbled free (and probably *could* have used its ACS thrusters to put some extra distance between itself and the booster.

One thought, though: what about, in the case of a pre-separation second-stage failure, executing MECO 1 (Main Engine Cut Off, when the Falcon 9 first stage kills its rockets) early and doing an emergency stage separation? Normally there's no point - the first stage on most launch vehicles has no purpose if the launch fails and nowhere to go even if it separates safely - but the Falcon 9 first stage is designed for reusability. Emergency MECO, separate the stages, use the ACS and/or grid fins to steer clear of the second stage, and then fire up the main engines again and aim for the droneship or other landing pad. You'd need to be quick about it, and it might still not work, but if it does you've saved a booster worth $70,000,000 USD. Well, that and demonstrated the first successful first stage recovery ever, but assuming that becomes as routine as Musk wants it to be...

Actually, it would have been super cool if the first successful recovery of the first stage had been an emergency abort!

Not necessarily. Sometimes companies intentionally order small numbers for their initial run of a product. If it doesn't sell well, they waste less money. If it sells well, they can spin the "can't keep them on the shelf; backordered for months!" story. That kind of thing actually *increases* appeal; the handful of people who buy something other than that company's product when they can't get it immediately are overwhelmed by the number of people who wouldn't have bought such a product at all until they heard how in-demand it was (must mean it's great, right?).

Simple marketing trick.

Gaaaaah why do people keep recommending this *STUPID* approach? DO NOT block update servers! If you're going to do that, do yourself *and* the rest of us a favor and just disconnect your computer altogether...

Here: https://technet.microsoft.com/... Microsoft's own documentation, years old and still valid, explaining how to control all aspects of Windows Update with simple registry changes. Yes, it's annoying that they removed the brain-dead-easy UI for doing so, but the problem with brain-dead-easy UIs that allow making bad decisions is that brain-dead people will use them.

I view this kind of thing as a shibboleth for "are you sufficiently competent to administrate your own computer?". It's amazing and horrifying how many people in this thread have failed that. Did *any* of you try typing "windows update registry" into a browser search box, for example?

That's an abysmally stupid way to do this (then you never get updates) compared to the many superior alternatives, many of which were posted in this discussion...

but yes, you could do that. You could also just disconnect your machine from the Internet altogether, which in terms of overall utility is probably better than leaving it connected but unpatched.

Or, you could, you know, not be a *complete* idiot and use the clearly-explained steps for controlling this behavior ( https://technet.microsoft.com/... ) even if you want to be a *minor* idiot and run "Windows n00b edition". Or you could run an edition of Windows targeted at people who actually have a hope in hell of correctly administrating their own Internet-connected machine.

Yep. In fact, you're even more correct than you realize...
1) Microsoft has done this before! Windows RT has the same "no option to not update" behavior. As you say, they just removed the UI for changing the automatic update options, but the update service still runs exactly the same way including respecting the same registry keys.
2) No need to go find anything! Microsoft has already documented it all for you, listing what registry keys and values do what, and what the valid values are. https://technet.microsoft.com/... (scroll down to the Automatic Updates section).

Manual control over a ton of security stuff, like advanced firewall configuration and user account privileges. Encrypting File System and BitLocker. The ability to join domains. Support for Remote Desktop server (though still limited to one interactive session active at a time unless you go all the way to Server).

I'm sure there's other stuff, that's just the things I notice most are missing from Home.

Windows does actually support snapshots. Volume Shadow Copies are snapshots - either diffs or full images - and you can create or restore them at pretty much any time. Updates, driver installs, and major product installs all trigger creation automatically. "System Restore" uses these snapshots. The restore duration is definitely perceptible, but - while I don't know its time complexity - it doesn't take very long (less than a minute?)

There's an arguably even easier option: take control of Windows (Automatic) Update behavior by tweaking a single registry key. Here, Microsoft will even tell you which one and what the settings mean:
https://technet.microsoft.com/... (scroll down for the automatic update options).
You can also, as Hairyfeet mentioned above, disable the WU service except when you want to manually run it, but that's definitely not ideal because you *should* promptly install most updates. The registry change lets you select "Notify me of updates / download them, but let me choose when to install", and it works even on OS editions that have removed that option from the UI. It's like a really easy "I'm not completely incompetent at Windows administration" test...

With that said, the AC has a point about the advantages of using Pro editions of Windows. One of the big differentiators is transparent encryption; Home editions don't have any built-in support for encrypting data at rest, so if your laptop gets stolen attackers can take anything on the hard drive. My girlfriend has been dealing with the aftermath of this for a few weeks now (as if having her computer stolen wasn't bad enough), with constant attempts at various kinds of identity theft. It sucks. Encrypt your shit!
While Pro editions of Windows have had Encrypting File System for ages, it is per-file (or per-directory) and depends on you having a really strong password, since attackers can still pull the SAM and mount an offline attack. Since Win8 (for Pro; Vista and Win7 had it in Enterprise and Ultimate too) there's also BitLocker full volume encryption. I really wish Microsoft would make this available on all installs - they did for RT and phone, but not for PCs - but it's worth the upgrade to Pro. I also wish they would make it easier to use BitLocker without a TPM - it's entirely possible, you just need to change a setting most people don't even know exists, much less know how to find - but again, this is totally worth doing if you don't have a TPM.

Plus all the behind-the-scenes improvements made in Win8.x (high-entropy ASLR, RAM page combining, etc.), support for modern hardware (not just DX12, but also things like native USB3 support), and user-facing improvements (vastly improved multi-monitor support, settings and such synchronization across machines, etc.). Hell, some people even like some of the Store apps (and with Win10 bringing the ability to run them windowed on the desktop - as should have been possible from the start - a large part of the reasons to *not* use them goes away).

This approach works, but generally it's better to just modify the behavior into "download but don't install (yet)". That's just a single registry change away. This isn't even the first time that Microsoft has tried to do this, but nobody (Microsoft included) remembers anything about Windows RT... Anyhow, just because the UI for delaying or manually installing updates was removed doesn't mean the functionality to do so was (it's still present in higher editions, after all). RT had the same behavior, and it was easily changed. Microsoft even tells you how! https://technet.microsoft.com/... (scroll down to the "Automatic Updates" section).

Controlling updates has always been a trivial registry value (a single integer). Just because they're removing the option in the UI for "let me choose when to install updates" doesn't mean they're actually going to force you to install them, just to demonstrate that you have non-trivial Windows administration skill. Considering how often I've wished for an "I'm not an idiot" option for most operating systems, Windows included (though on Linux you can usually get it by just making the right choice of distro), I'm OK with this.

For the record, Windows RT 8.0 - released three years ago - had this same behavior (no UI for delaying updates, configured to install them automatically). It was trivial to fix it then (and the mechanism was immediately found), and I doubt it'll be any different this time.

Don't give me any shit about "but what if granny can't defer a borked update that will blow up her machine...?". Granny has never been able to do that. She either installs all updates and on rare occasion "there's something wrong with the computer", or never installs them and gets hosed by malware until it blows up her computer.

Oh, FFS it's even documented by Microsoft. Scroll down to the "Automatic Update configuration options".
https://technet.microsoft.com/...