If a new version of Ubuntu could save my datacenter massive amounts of money via reduced power consumption, then I'd be an idiot if I didn't at least weigh the cost/benefit.

Did you read any of the stuff about how it's basically a VMWare competitor now, complete with the ability to migrate logical servers between hardware? I skimmed the article and I at least got that much.

You're trusting that the key hasn't changed.

How do you know your mother is really your mother? All you know is that she's (presumably) the same person who you've identified as your mother since you were born.

Linus made a one-time change because the old Linux version numbering scheme didn't match reality. 2.6.23 to 2.6.24 was a pretty big bump feature-wise but sounds like a trival patch. Under the new system, that would be 3.1 to 3.2. Isn't that what you're asking for--numbers which indicate how much has changed?

I'm not sure if it still happens, but I was very put off after upgrading from FF4 to FF5 and then a couple of days later being told that Mozilla "strongly recommends I upgrade to FireFox 6 beta". Strongly recommend I upgrade to a beta?

I don't mind the fast releases. But couldn't you call them version 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, etc? You're going against the grain of nearly every software project out there by bumping major versions so quickly.

How is a half-black, half-Latino teenager more politically correct than a white teenager?

Are you suggesting strlen() should return the number of UTF-8 characters, not the number of bytes? That's insane... the entire point of UTF-8 is that stuff like strlen() can treat it as a narrow string. If you want to have a function for returning the number of printable characters in a UTF-8 string, that's going to be a separate function, and isn't any easier or harder with sized strings v.s null-terminated strings.

The biggest reason to switch to 64-bit on Windows is to use more than 2GB of RAM (since 32-bit apps get a 2GB userspace / 2GB kernelspace virtual memory split). However on Windows 7 64-bit, apps marked as Large-Address-Aware get the full 4GB of virtual address space to themselves. The only 'disadvantage' is that you have to stop using any tricks which assume that the full range of pointer values won't be used; it's just a runtime flag stored in the executable which tells the OS to let it have the full 4GB if possible.

The one time I ported an app to 64-bit, memory use grew by around 50%. Maybe that's not typical. But for me it means I'm going to try my damndest to keep an app 32-bit using the LAA flag until I really truly need that 16PB address space.

It's not about stupidity. The labels are still the best way to get music and movies to a mass market. They add value, and they take profit. If they didn't, don't you think someone would come along and do it cheaper and better? There's no collusion going on here.

Labels sign hundreds of artists and lose money on 99% of them. It's a business model like any other, and one that's changing due to technology, but it's not illegal or immoral.

You are massively understating the impact Linux has had on the computing world.

It's ridiculous to assert that Git is anywhere near as important as Linux just because "version control systems have more staying power" and "someone else would've created a UNIX-like system for the PC". Git is quite nice but its impact is miniscule compared to Linux. Moreover, the revolutionary thing about Linux was its development model (which BSD didn't have) which is precisely what led to those revolutionary ideas in Git.

Do you know how fucked everything would have been if a half-dozen major financial institutions all failed at once?

Yes, banks make money and they're important to our economy. Get over it. Life without them is a lot worse. It makes sense to regulate them better so that they're less irreplacable, less likely to be exposed to risk, and easier to dismantle when things do go south. That's what we've been doing since 2008. It's ridiculously stupid to say we shouldn't have bailed them out. The bailouts of the banks and car manufacturers are basically making money; the big losses are in Fannie Mae and Freddic Mac.

Citigroup wasn't bailed out for their security expertise. Do you really think we'd be better off if we had let those banks fail?

I don't care that much about having an unlocked phone. I mostly want an unsubsidized phone. I'd like to buy a phone without the subsidy and then get a lower rate as a result, so that if I continue to use the phone after two years, I'm not continuing to pay the subsidy. The way it's set up now, you're wasting money with every monthly bill if you don't go buy a new phone as soon as you're able to.