Node.js is the server. Perl and PHP are rarely used as servers. Python's Twisted stuff resembles Node.js in many ways, I believe. Not domain expert, I'm sure someone corrects me shortly.

"try to teach everyone", yes, absolutely. Same way we try to teach everyone some arts and crafts: skills (using equipment), knowledge (knowing colors, notes, names of tools etc) and history (famous pieces and artists etc).

Not everybody will learn or remember much, but that's ok.

Umm... Actually carbon dioxide is pretty deadly. 10% carbon dioxide in breathing air starts to kill people, even if there's normal level of oxygen. And this can actually happen, for example in mines (this is why canaries were used, as they're more sensitive to high CO2 levels than humans). Carbon Dioxide can kill in exceptional but realistic concentrations, so it's not very far from being toxic.

Nah, /. is just dying.

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Quite an extermist, you are! But realistically, the best we can hope is manipulating the climate less. That's what the whole "fighting the anthropogenic climate change" gig is all about.

That's one point of having representatives, who can work on what needs to be sacrificed by everybody. A voter doesn't need to decide or even have knowledge to decide themselves. All they need to do is pick a candidate they think will do the best job at that (and everything else).

If you imagine quotes around first and second paragraphs, does that put the pompousness into different light? The style was indeed intentional, though I would not call it pompous.

About you setting up straw men about "writing everything from scratch". Nobody does that. By that criteria nobody in the world understands IT. If I really meant that as useful standard, wouldn't it be a humble admission, not arrogance?

You probably failed to read the last paragraph, or then I just wrote it too poorly to be understood.

That being said, I do understand how the browser, the OS, the ./ servers and databases, and the network in between work well enough, that none of it is a mystery to me. I think having this understanding is a good thing. I don't know if it is possible to have this understanding without being able to program at least a tiny bit. This sounds roughly analogous to being able to enjoy a good book vs. being able to write a good book (vs. just getting a movie made from the book...).

Hmm. If you can't read, you are restricted to looking at pictures. If there is someone to read for you, then you can hear the parts of text they choose to read for you, otherwise you are pretty much restricted to children's picture books. A lot of what happens in the world is simply a mystery to you.

If you can't program, you are restricted to using existing features in the way they are implemented. If there is someone to help you, then they can write a piece of code for you to do whatever mundane task (be it VBA, shell script, a feature or a complete application), otherwise you are pretty much restricted to clicking at links, icons and menus. A lot of what happens in the computer is a mystery to you.

Hmm. Not convinced, myself.

If you te going to make that much popcorn, you probably should not use microwave owen anyway. Use a kettle, it's cheaper, tastes better, and easier to get seasoning and butter just right.

I think Jupiter makes sure any highly elliptical orbit coming near Jupiter's orbit would not last too many orbits before having it's orbit radically changed, like happens with comets sooner or later if they survive long enough otherwise.

If they are detected by looking at how they herd the minor bodies in the outer solar system, then I think it is safe to say they are indeed planets.

Did the 4 core CPU have 1/4th of the transistor count of the 16 core CPU? Then I'd expect it to be much slower of course. Point of Linus was, a 4 core CPU with same transistor count (used for more cache, better out-of-order execution logic, more virtual registers, and so on), as 16 core CPU will be faster on almost every task. So cores beyond 4 (the number Linus threw as the ballpark count) make sense only, if you really can not spend any more transistors in making those 4 cores faster, but still have die space to spare.

Javascript is generally used in event driven manner, so it will perform quite well on a single core. Firefox having trouble loading multiple pages simultaneously should still be IO-bound, not CPU-bound, and if the engine has trouble, then it's an SW architecture problem where more cores will not really help.

Point of Linus was, taking a 6 core CPU, and replacing 2 cores with more cache and more transistors per core should make almost anything on Desktop run faster.