Computer viruses in space!!

How about ...

a Commodore 64, or better yet, a Vic 20. An Amiga might work as well.

Cancel or Allow

In my nightmares I see images of popups saying "The ISS is falling out of orbit. Click here for more information". Followed by some astronaut action and another message, "The Thrust System requires your approval to 'Fire booster rockets', do you wish to Cancel or Allow"

Then "Exception in booster.dll -> fire() is a pure virtual call" followed by "Rocket Service has stopped responding." and a bit later "Rocket Service has stopped unexpectedly, Windows is finding a solution to this problem". Mouse freezes, sirens go off and a shotting star is seen above central Europe.

Come off it!

If we ran the space station off of the MacOS, Steve Jobs would demand the right to build it (the space station, that is) exclusively. It would do all the basic stuff very easily, but if the astronauts wanted to do anything exotic (such as what the Apollo 13 astronauts had to do to save their lives), they would be outta luck. In order to get something like that done, the astronauts would have to import a Mac lifer from earth.

If it ran off of Linux, well, lots of people would have their spoon in the broth, to be sure, but it would sure be buggy broth! Oh, the bugs would get fixed quickly, but would you want to be in a space suit out there in the vacuum of space, dependent upon code that numerous persons have tinkered with in their off-hours? I wouldn't.

And Mr. Farnum, you've really bought into the Apple propaganda that says Macs cannot be infected by malware. (Sigh) Macs just haven't gained enough market share yet to make them big enough targets to interest hacker malcontents. I expect that to change as Apple absorbs more of the market. Ditto for Linux, though that may take a bit longer.

It's all that martian pr0n

It's all that martian pr0n they've been downloading!