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Fri 5 Dec, 2014 05:37 am
10,000 years passes, and the home has long since eroded back to the Earth of where it came. However the computer that was in the fallout shelter, built under the basement, is still in tact. It does not function, because all of the connections are degraded, and the recycled plastics have turned to dust after having lost their elasticity. The primary hard drive platters are melted from excessive heat at some point, and thus are not retrievable by any means. Yet you are able to retrieve the complete story of the owner of the computer from the machine. How can this be?
@DNA Thumbs drive,
I should have added, that you may phone a friend and use Ask Jeeves as well, if you so choose.
@DNA Thumbs drive,
DNA would tell you all about the biology of the user. All need are intact samples.
@DNA Thumbs drive,
What do you mean by "complete story"?
No computer can tell the complete story of it's owner. They can only tell the story of the owner's interaction with the computer.
@parados,
However if you want the story of the computer. There would be many ways to determine that.
@rosborne979,
yeh, with all the fingerprints and cat hair, the dna would show that my computer belongs to a Maine Coon.
DTD wrote: is still in tact. It does not function,
It's very nice on the computer's part to be so discerning as to have remained tactful.
However, it is oxymoronic as well.
The hard drive disks are made of silicon.
@bobsal u1553115,
No, they are not, Bob.
Wiki wrote:Platters are typically made using an aluminium or glass and ceramic substrate. In disk manufacturing, a thin coating is deposited on both sides of the substrate, mostly by a vacuum deposition process called magnetron sputtering.
After a while, they lose their molecular cohesion and decay.
Some are unreadable after only twenty years..
The owners diary was next to the computer. Instead of paper, the diary used carbon-fiber pages as the owner was wealthy. Instead on a pen or pencil, a special pen was developed that actually changed the color of the carbon-fiber so when the special pen was used the letters would appear as though written.
The diary contained all of the information one would need about the owner of the computer. There was a long dissolved USB cable attached from the diary to the computer as well.
@McGentrix,
However, if such a solution is to be taken into account, then the riddle statement is quite weak.
Quote:Yet you are able to retrieve the complete story of the owner of the computer from the machine.
@timur,
The USB cable made it part of the machine.
@McGentrix,
It is merely my opinion that this is splitting hairs..
@McGentrix,
Highly creative, and yes there was a diary, but it was digitized and on the computer. Another thing that you have correct is that for lack of a better example the computer owner was Bill Gates, so the computer system in question would actually have been a series of supercomputers with a million gigs of ram and drive space, and the bomb shelter was slightly better than the Pentagons would be.
So excellent response, but the answer still eludes.
@parados,
Yes a computer can tell the complete story of the owner, keeping in mind that this was Bill Gates computer........! Thus it was larger than the average house.
@rosborne979,
The question does not specify that the owners remains were there, this is a good guess but completely wrong. The information was in binary computer code.
@timur,
You will then learn something when the answer is revealed. If the riddle is quite weak, then it follows that it was already solved.....This is not the situation however.
@DNA Thumbs drive,
I'm waiting with bated breath..
@timur,
I do understand that there is no guarantee to you of a real answer forthcoming, but my riddle yesterday included the rotations of both the Earth around the Sun and the Sun around the galactic core. This answer is no less viable.
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