Certainly ABI changes can be difficult to deal with, but personally I think it is better than keeping old code around like many close sourced systems end up having to do for compatibility purposes.

I've found that a good (not perfect) solution is to write an thin abstraction layer between the module and the kernel. The module pretty much only deals with the kernel through this layer, so if the kernel changes, you have a central place to apply updates (nvidia does this and it has worked very well).

In the end, it's a trade off and you can rest assured that distros will likely build with the BKL enabled for a few releases before phasing it out to avoid compatibility issues.

It's a fairly simple idea. In any place that two threads of execution (be them real threads or interrupts or whatever) could possibly access the same resource at the same time, locking must be used to ensure data integrity and proper operation of the code. The "Big Kernel Lock" is a system wide "stop the world" lock. This is a very easy way to make the code "correct" in the sense that it will work and not corrupt data. But the downside is that while this lock is held... everything else must wait. So you better not hold it for very long and while it is easy to get correct, it has pretty bad performance implications.

A better solution is a fine grained lock just for that resource, so the only threads of execution which need to wait are ones that are actually contending for that resource. The downside here is that it is much more complicated to get correct. So when implementing this, you have to be *very* careful that you got it right.

The BLK has been in the process of being removed and has been phased out of the vast majority of the kernel for a while, this change is simply enabling a build in which it doesn't even exist if you don't build any of the older drivers which don't use more fine grained locking.

Well the purpose for making Richard immortal was because Jacob wanted someone to be the middle man between him and normal people. Jacob asked Richard what he wanted, and Richard said "I want my wife back". Jacob said "I can't do that". Then Richard said "Then I want to never go to hell" (or something to that effect). Jacob still couldn't do that. So Richard finally said "Then I don't want to die!" Jacob said "I can do that". That's the why. The purpose was to give Richard what he wanted in exchange for his help. The only thing left is the "how" as in, what is the mechanism used to do it. Well, that's magic, no point in explaining such things. Adds nothing. If I told you, Jacob was a Genie, would that change the story at all? Probably not.

As for the polar bears. Sure there is a bit of unanswered questions as to why they were brought there. Do you think that knowing why the Dharma initiative brought them there would help the story? To be honest, at first I thought Walt created them because he has some special abilities on the island to make reality what he wants (simplest example is always winning backgammon) and he was reading a comic with a polar bear. The writers chose to make them come from the Dharma initiative. In the end, they were in like maybe 4 episodes. I know they were there because of Dharma. I honestly don't care why Dharma wanted them there. It doesn't add to the story.

Yes the Dharma initiative exist in the real world. Eloise Hawking worked in the "Lamp Post" Dharma station which she used to get the "Oceanic Six" back to the island.

Dharma Seal? probably something as simple as "they found it, marked it, maybe did some experiments, moved on." Not a whole lot of meaningful mystery here.

The whispers are explains in this last season *completely*. People who have done wrong are doomed to have there souls roam the island, whispering to the people. Michael directly says to Hurley that he is "stuck on the island and not allowed to leave" and that he was the whispering they'd be hearing recently. In an after show interview, the guy who plays Michael confirmed that.

Pregnancy, a true mystery. The only thing we know is that it must be related the event (the nuke or the release of energy) that caused the hatch to to be built. Since pregnancy was just fine before that event.

As for Ben, I don't know what to tell you. Everyone has a back story and Ben's involved working under Jacob's orders. Not really a mystery. It is another thing if you dislike that story.

Like I said, you just need to pay attention :-P.

There are plenty of unresolved mysteries, but you aren't picking many of them! Here's some truly unsolved mysteries:

- why does traveling to/from the island on certain heading cause time shifting?

- when returning to the island, why was the group split up through time. How did some of them get "teleported" off the plane?

- When and under what circumstances did Eloise leave the Island?

- How did she end up running the Lamp Post? I don't care, just curious.

- How did she know about Desmond's future events in 1996, as well as the man wearing red shoes' destiny?

There are MANY more. But like I said, the ones you are asking about HAVE been answered to a degree that satisfies the story. If you got some hocus-pocus explanation of how these things happened, most people would pick those apart and still be unsatisfied.

Some of the things on your list have been answered:

-Richard immortality: Jacob did that, we don't know how he did it, but do you really what the show to try to "explain magic"?
-Dharma initiative: just a bunch of scientists who found the island doing experiments because the island has some weird properties.
-Polar Bears: related to the dharma initiative. They were originally in the cages on the second island that kate and sawer were kept in. They eventually escaped or were let out. Remember, polar bears can swim...
-Egiptian Iconology: No answer, but it's spelled "Egyptian". I think this was simply a reference to how long ago the story being told began. But that's just my take, this was never really answered, but I feel an answer would have helped the story here.
-Original people (Jacob's mother people)/Jacob's stepmother: Jacob's mother drew black rock to the island (remember she said "there was only supposed to be one" meaning she was expecting a pregnant woman to have a baby, just not twins). Presumably she was looking for a replacement (she said "thank you" to the man in black when he killed her). We don't know how long she has been guarding the island, or if she is the first guardian. But how far back do we need to go? The story may have a bit of a recursive property to it (same story over and over again in different times and such). But I feel that they went back far enough to explain the story as far as it effects the main characters.

Some of the other stuff on your list falls into the category of "it was a way to tell the story". This is TV, not real life, so it's ok for the story to be fantastical or improbable. people having ESP, Jacob having "magic" powers, etc. All of these things really don't need to be answered to tell the story. Besides, if they did answer them, it would lead to one of 2 conclusions. 1) There would be more questions, since we talking about fiction, that could go on indefinitely. 2) The answers would be perceived as ridiculous. I think it's better to not explain things like this, just say they are special, have some abilities and tell the STORY.

Certainly there are plenty of unanswered questions in the story. And it is a little frustrating, but I would say you didn't do the greatest job of paying attention, since a 3rd of your list was trivial answered.

The answer is probably that hardware virtualization is simply easier to implement. MS wanted to get the feature out of the door and to customers. They probably expect that a large number of Windows 7 users are on newer hardware likely to have VT. Then later updated the software to support software based virtualization in order to allow it to function for more people.

Adding features (in this case software virtualization support) through updates is hardly newsworthy...

Why compromise and have the installer have a checkbox for "advanced tools?" 99% of people will blindly click next without checking it, they won't get it, the other 1% will actually read what is being asked of them and possibly install it.

Seems like it would be simple to include it without bloating things at all.

Any word on it being available on the other platforms MM9 was available for? I love MM9, but I'm not exactly gonna go and buy a Wii just to play MM10

Complete BS, PAE isn't a hack, in fact the way paging is done on x86-64 is designed very similarly to 32-bit with PAE, using an extra layer of indirection as PAE does. (Yes your 64-bit CPU actually likely has 48-bit's of **physical** memory).

Also, you are completely ignoring things like disk cache, which can massively improve system performance. Sure no **single** application will be able to use all of that memory, but the system as a whole can easily get that high if it has the RAM to work with.

For example, I have a Linux box with 4GB of RAM using a 32-bit with PAE kernel. Routinely after a few hours my disk cache is upwards of 3GB. The system is noticeably faster once the disk cache is populated vs immediately after startup.

Take a look at the Intel docs, PAE isn't a hack in any way.

How about converting the fleet to all electric (or at least hybrids). Having 14,000 cars producing less air pollution would likely significantly improve the air quality. In addition it would likely help with reducing building corrosion.