Why not directly get a black whole? Apparently, some people think they’re not just the ultimate vacuum cleaner, but could also be used as some kind of universal supercomputer.

Scientist SPACE – Black holes: The ultimate quantum computers?

Nearly all of the information that falls into a black hole escapes back out, a controversial new study argues. The work suggests that black holes could one day be used as incredibly accurate quantum computers – if enormous theoretical and practical hurdles can first be overcome.

As this may still be a little out there, you may be interested to learn that some people seem to have managed to boot Windows XP on a Core Duo Imac. If someone at Apple is reading this, now I’m suddenly considering to buy one of your computers. Now I’m looking forward to using ILife ’07 for Windows Vista using an OS-X user interface.

Quite frankly, I think the most profitable thing Apple could do now that they realised the potential of selling cool hardware (through their Ipod experience) is to separate “OS-X the User Interface” entirely from “OS-X the operating system”, a move that would allow users to decide between a customized windows with an Apple GUI. On the hardware front it would allow to throw support behind an integration of their Unix based open source OS Darwin with Linux, all while offering the UI for Windows the base as well as other operating systems.

Imagine the possibilities. Selling much more hardware than before while – in the long run – giving people the ability to choose between the underlying system. The separation of user interface and operating system would allow Apple to remove a significant amount of the lock-in that Microsoft has been exploiting for more than a decade now.

The big if, of course, would be Microsoft’s attitude towards such an attempt. Apple’s switch to Intel CPUs has made the hardware world a whole lot more interesting, and that’s no small achievement.