Actually, you bring up an excellent point. I actually meant to refer to external memory systems. The speed of light is an absolute barrier which obviates the physical placement of a very high performance system. I can't imagine any replacement for an on-chip cache. But memristors, phase change memory and magnetoresistive external memory systems have made me hopeful. How exactly files would be stored in such a system and booting I think would create some interesting new retrieval and storage solutions.

Since computers began we have had hierarchal memory systems. Cache is the most expensive, but the fastest. DRAM is much cheaper slower and denser, but also volatile. Flash is faster than rotating media, slower than DRAM, but non-vloatile. It also has the drawback of limited programming cycles. Magnetic media is very dense, non-vloatile and slow. It is also mechanicly delicate. There are new technologies being developed that are both fast, dense, and non-volatile. With a fast enough, cheap and non-volatile memroy system, you would not need cache, RAM or disk. You could use on unified memory system. This is where I think many syustems are going. Windows, Linux, or OSX have nothing to do with it. Though they will all be greatly impacted.

You could go nuclear and avoid so much of it's proliferation and disposal drawbacks by going with liquid flouride thorium reactors (LFTR's). But then again, if you wanted to create a big government pie-in-the-sky "make work" project, you could pursue fusion. Oh yeah, they're already doing that.

I think the two are converging somewhat. eBook readers aren't as powerful or versatile. I need another gadget like I need a hole in the head too. But if I must, I would get a tablet. If money was no object, I would go with a retina iPad. But the Android tablets are catching up fast. Cheaper too. I look at an eBook reader as a crippled tablet.

OK. I have poster's regret. Can I delete this now? ;-)

The government would save alot of time and money if they scheduled their solar exploation craft to go at night. I'm just sayin.

Another big point missed in the movie is that the Space Shuttle is only capable of going to Low Earth Orbit. Bruce Willis wouldn't have even been able to get the bomb there even if it was big enough.

The QT Toolkit from Nokia is what underlies KDE. KDE is the most Windows like interface for Linux and BSD. With all the ports to Linux in the works, Microsoft could slow this down if they bought Nokia and changed the license terms of QT. Oracle bought Sun and then changed the license to Open Office. Whereas Open Office had been gaining acceptance and support, Oracle's modification of the license changed halted the inertia Open Office had been gaining.

Microsoft cannot stop the inevitable mass adaptation of desktop Linux, but they can stall it by modifying the terms of the QT license. It's been a long time coming, but it will happen.

Nokia has been a huge supporter of Windows for mobile phones. Microsoft has tried harder than anybody has without making any progress with their own phones. Remember the "Kin"? If Microsoft intends to continue trying, they'll have to keep Nokia's patent portfolio away from the other mobile phone manufacturers. Microsoft needs to buy Nokia for this very purpose.

Because misery loves company.

There are people replying about how freedom will be affected negatively as if true freedom were some academic absolute. If you have absolute freedom, then you have anarchy. In an anarchial system, nobody is then free. The OS and source code should be free in Linux. The choice of the user to decide what he chooses to pay for or not should also be free. But this means relative freedom. Why are people even asking this question? Geez.

Some of the belligerent and rude comments on /. get to me sometimes. But I would rather have freedom of speech and hear the unvarnished truth than require proper etiquette. I think we might see more politeness and get lied to more often if real names were required.