"Difference needed in distillation steps between sugarcane and corn == zero."
Sugarcane ethanol is distillated 3 times. But I don't know how many times corn ethanol is distillated. Anyway, the distillation of a solution with a bigger concentration of ethanol uses less energy than one with bigger concentration of water.
"Very little processing is required to convert starches into sugars - one merely malts, or uses enzymatic processes directly."
Moiling sugarcane is easier tough. But that isn't probalty that important.
"It requires substantial energy input (above and beyond the bagasse) to make work."
If you are talking about the plant, you are wrong. Sugarcane etanol plants work with the energy extracted from the bagasse, and still sell some eletricity to the grid.
Now, if you are talking about the entire cycle, you are right. Sugarcane uses more energy in the form of fertilizer, tractor fuel, plant powering and transportation than there is on the bagasse.
"On paper they are quite close, but in the real world MS is hated. Why this is should be the first priority at MS"
I can spare MS the work... When Ubuntu fails, that is due to an error, and it doesn't call the user a pirate. When Windows fails to validate, that is dues to MS thinking the user is a pirate (and being quite verbal about it).
No, that is not an argument. Lack of power is an argument, as is the size of sensors. But it is not unfeasible because of control problems.
You hinks it is hard controlling an helicopter because you are slow. There is no reason for a machine to be as slow as we are, in fact, they tend to have reflexes on the order of thousands of times faster than we.
Also, depending on the design, it is quite viable to put a controler inside a firefly. With modern VLSI techniques, a very big (for our computer's standards) neural network is still very small, and still uses a tiny amount of power. Of course, such computer wouldn't be able to do anything else, and would take years to properly program, but it could very well controll a "bug".
When you are talking about Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc, yes, it is.
When talking about Windows, you have to clear all the way from browsers that execute arbitrary code from the web; files that execute automaticaly and the interface won't let you know beforehand; media that execute automaticaly, virus that spread trough text files, spreadsheets, images, video, etc; dialogs appearing all the time, trainning the user to agree to every one of them; And the list goes on...
One would need to configure KOffice to run with Gnome sound system. Yeah,./configure would do it, but it is pre-compiled. I don't know if it can be changed after compilation, probably can, but it is probably quite easyer and less prone to errors to simply install arts.
"It's crazy to me that people are still using plain old debian when Ubuntu does everything Debian does as well or better, it is basically a debian superset."
A more buggy superset.
But quite ok for a desktop, if you happen to like their defaults.
I am not contesting your overall knowledge on that area, but nanometer is nm, not nM (M is a SI prefixe, that stands for a 10^6 factor, m is an abreviation for meter). Your usage may be jargon of some knowledge area (or restricted to some geographical area), but is quite confusing.
"Even if it isn't object-oriented, that doesn't change the fact that everything else in the kernel only cares that default_wake_function tries to wake up a thread - it doesn't matter how it works on the inside. All the other parts know about is the sched.h header file."
Says somebody that, it seems, never tried that on real life.
Good luck with any functionality change in sched.c. And if you really want to mess with the scheduler, not thread wake up, I really desire you a lot of luck to keep the information you need without breaking any unrelated part of the kernel.
And it still wasn't enough. But I can't stop assuming that Microsoft just wasn't competent enough and next time it will be much easier with all the experience they gathered.
"Being selfish and not sharing is a social problem not a legal or technical problem IMO. As geeks we appreciate simplicity, reusability and elegance in our code, so why don't we all appreciate it in our licenses as well?"
And it seems that as geeks, we find it dificult to understand what a social problem is, and what laws and politics are for.
"The GPLv3, for the first time, departs from the "share and share alike" nature of the source code and attempts to dictate what hardware it should be allowed to run on and what hardware makers are allowed to do with the code they don't own"
Fixed it for you, but I uess that GPLv2 did the same.
"Also you'll often find chroot even on distros where there are no development tools to be found, which also encourages people to think that it's use goes beyond development."
It is also usefull for system administration... For things like mounting a disk that is the root of some other system and using it (from a live-CD, for example), or avoiding incompatibilities on your libraries (like what the Debian-i64 did at their begining).
What chroot is useless is for jailing a potentialy malign program. If it is not running as root, you simply doesn't need a jail, plain file permissions should be enough (and if they aren't, use another permission scheme). If it is running as root, the program can break it any time it want.
"Anyone who still trots out the old stupid chestnut "Windows is unstable" argument has either never used 2000 or XP, or is just lying in hopes of attracting attention..."
Funny, we still have to reboot our Windows servers around here every week. If not, weard things start to happen at random times. We still don't have to do that to our Solaris servers. (Linux enters into the Windows cycle, just for uniformity)
Or you consider something stable if it can stay on for a working day?
"While these experts may have biases, they also have one thing journalists lack entirely - intimate knowledge of the subject at hand."
Bias and knowledge are two facets of the same thing. One person can only not have a bias toward a subject if he/she has no knowledge at all about it. If you have any amount of knowledge you'll "leak" some of it when writting, and that is bias.
But what people expect from journalists is bias. they just must stay away from unethical bias, that is ignoring what the facts and your experience leads you to conclude and publishing something else.
That one didn't seem to cost a lot. But also didn't get very usefull results.
The number of interviwed developers is a joke (at least for supporting that conclusion). There is no information about how those developers were selected (or anything else, in fact there is no usefull information at TFA).
Slashdot Mirror
But does Linux really run on the kitchen sink?
Sugarcane ethanol is distillated 3 times. But I don't know how many times corn ethanol is distillated. Anyway, the distillation of a solution with a bigger concentration of ethanol uses less energy than one with bigger concentration of water.
Moiling sugarcane is easier tough. But that isn't probalty that important.
If you are talking about the plant, you are wrong. Sugarcane etanol plants work with the energy extracted from the bagasse, and still sell some eletricity to the grid.
Now, if you are talking about the entire cycle, you are right. Sugarcane uses more energy in the form of fertilizer, tractor fuel, plant powering and transportation than there is on the bagasse.
Or NT7...
I can spare MS the work... When Ubuntu fails, that is due to an error, and it doesn't call the user a pirate. When Windows fails to validate, that is dues to MS thinking the user is a pirate (and being quite verbal about it).
No, that is not an argument. Lack of power is an argument, as is the size of sensors. But it is not unfeasible because of control problems.
You hinks it is hard controlling an helicopter because you are slow. There is no reason for a machine to be as slow as we are, in fact, they tend to have reflexes on the order of thousands of times faster than we.
Also, depending on the design, it is quite viable to put a controler inside a firefly. With modern VLSI techniques, a very big (for our computer's standards) neural network is still very small, and still uses a tiny amount of power. Of course, such computer wouldn't be able to do anything else, and would take years to properly program, but it could very well controll a "bug".
When you are talking about Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc, yes, it is.
When talking about Windows, you have to clear all the way from browsers that execute arbitrary code from the web; files that execute automaticaly and the interface won't let you know beforehand; media that execute automaticaly, virus that spread trough text files, spreadsheets, images, video, etc; dialogs appearing all the time, trainning the user to agree to every one of them; And the list goes on...
One would need to configure KOffice to run with Gnome sound system. Yeah, ./configure would do it, but it is pre-compiled. I don't know if it can be changed after compilation, probably can, but it is probably quite easyer and less prone to errors to simply install arts.
Oh, came on... It installs on almost everything else. How'd one expect the GP to know the difference?
A more buggy superset.
But quite ok for a desktop, if you happen to like their defaults.
"...because face it, your old and busted way isn't working very well."
If that was a reason for changing things at our society, we'd be much better.
But paper is more expansive.
Standard video files used to work quite well before those flash player appeared.
I am not contesting your overall knowledge on that area, but nanometer is nm, not nM (M is a SI prefixe, that stands for a 10^6 factor, m is an abreviation for meter). Your usage may be jargon of some knowledge area (or restricted to some geographical area), but is quite confusing.
Says somebody that, it seems, never tried that on real life.
Good luck with any functionality change in sched.c. And if you really want to mess with the scheduler, not thread wake up, I really desire you a lot of luck to keep the information you need without breaking any unrelated part of the kernel.
Near all my software is arrogant, but I try to make it cluefull :)
And it still wasn't enough. But I can't stop assuming that Microsoft just wasn't competent enough and next time it will be much easier with all the experience they gathered.
And it seems that as geeks, we find it dificult to understand what a social problem is, and what laws and politics are for.
Wrong. Tivo is distributing Linux. The GPLv3 doesn't prohibit you from blocking your hardware in a way that you can't access it...
You just can't sell such configuration toghether with the code.
"The GPLv3, for the first time, departs from the "share and share alike" nature of the source code and attempts to dictate what hardware it should be allowed to run on and what hardware makers are allowed to do with the code they don't own"
Fixed it for you, but I uess that GPLv2 did the same.
How does that system differ from one where you su the deamon for some user that owns no files?
And, yes, one can break that set of precautions the same way one would break my precaution. And both were already done, and fixed, and done again...
Chroot can be very usefull if your deamon can be buggy and corrupt something, but it simply can't protect against an intentional attack.
It is also usefull for system administration... For things like mounting a disk that is the root of some other system and using it (from a live-CD, for example), or avoiding incompatibilities on your libraries (like what the Debian-i64 did at their begining).
What chroot is useless is for jailing a potentialy malign program. If it is not running as root, you simply doesn't need a jail, plain file permissions should be enough (and if they aren't, use another permission scheme). If it is running as root, the program can break it any time it want.
Funny, we still have to reboot our Windows servers around here every week. If not, weard things start to happen at random times. We still don't have to do that to our Solaris servers. (Linux enters into the Windows cycle, just for uniformity)
Or you consider something stable if it can stay on for a working day?
Bias and knowledge are two facets of the same thing. One person can only not have a bias toward a subject if he/she has no knowledge at all about it. If you have any amount of knowledge you'll "leak" some of it when writting, and that is bias.
But what people expect from journalists is bias. they just must stay away from unethical bias, that is ignoring what the facts and your experience leads you to conclude and publishing something else.
That one didn't seem to cost a lot. But also didn't get very usefull results.
The number of interviwed developers is a joke (at least for supporting that conclusion). There is no information about how those developers were selected (or anything else, in fact there is no usefull information at TFA).
No need to ask God. We've already had this situation, and we developed multi-plataform tools that took most problems of interoperability away.
But I can understand how, nowadays, somebody couldn't even know that multiplataform programming exists.