
I can see Chrome OS as a field solution where the hardware is cheap enough to be throw away. The fact that in a pinch, a techie could bump it up on Ubuntu to have the extra features at a cost of speed would make it a nice plus. I know people that break a laptop a year because of how they handle it when off the desktop. They can't switch down to netbook or other device because they need the visual real estate of a good sized screen.
The first piece of logic on a one way trip is make it work or die. Survival is a strong motivator both for those being sent and for those who are gambling with the lives of others. If the odds of success are good, then I don't have a problem with it. This level of decision making happens daily with medical issues of "operator or die in xx months."
The second piece of logic is that every-thing that goes stays. Modular tech design and repurposing could provide additional resources that would take longer/multiple trips.
Last piece of logic to a one way trip. If planned with a minimum survival date (meaning if all guesses were wrong, it all fails, you are stuck with no way back) that does not exceed the time for a second trip, then it is not a complete do-or-die. It becomes a do-or-pray that the next trip does not have any delays. (Ok, that weakens the first motivator)
In a late braking story, Joe the Spider has just begun the first satellite-to-satellite web hookup. Gone are the days of brick-and-mortar, WWW 3.0 is silk.
Go Mighty Joe.
While I personally am not a Mac Server Admin, as a Linux Admin, I have from time to time attempted to help a friend whose business is running Mac Servers. It seems like OSx is designed to be so overly userfriendly that it is crippled in many areas, sort of like the logic used during one of KDE's major upgrades (take away interface configs because the choices make it too confusing for some...). The simplest example I can think for OSx vs. *nix is user account creation. Things may have changed since I last poked my head in the OSx world, but the last time I looked, GUI was your only option. GUI for 100+ accounts is the kiss of death in time consumption compared to a command line script.
I would be thrilled if OSx were a superset relative to *nix. As-is, I can do what I need developmentally on a $599 win/linux/bsd notebook. I might look at a Mac Mini if they update it to a real memory and hd level.
So, EMI becomes the first major label to make the DRM-free jump. Personally, while I see it as a good thing from different angles (customer: music can be played on any software/player, reseller: Apple makes more money because people will come to them to buy DRM-free tunes, supplier: EMI makes more money from the higher per-song price, artists: still get screwed) I don't see it as jumping for joy news. I'm not much of an au
Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.