64, 65. Whatever it takes.

I support a legacy app that was written back in the 1990s. It originally ran under VxWorks with custom hardware, variously 68k and PowerPC.

The first port I did was to Solaris. No byte-order issues and I kept the 32 bit ABI. It worked well.

When the Powers That Be decided to ditch Sun hardware and Solaris in favour of x86 and Linux I ported it to Linux. Parts of the code weren't byte-order clean, but I worked through them. The code is heavily 32 bit dependent and I never did create a viable 64 bit version (I tried, believe me...), so it runs on our last 32 bit server in the data center. The service it supports is slowly dying so there's no business case to spend any more time or money on it. If the business case existed I'd apply what I've learned in the meantime and rewrite it from scratch anyway.

The Linux port was initially unstable. It would run for a random time, hours to weeks, then two threads would deadlock. After a couple of years of letting it run and watching it crash I traced the deadlock to an "optimization" that didn't actually do anything, with an if statement that had about a one in a trillion chance of going the wrong way. I removed the optimization and the application has been running fine ever since.

...laura

This is what I fear. I'm just not certain whose source will be "leaking" into whose kernel. Or why, if Linux devs (Linus) have decided up to this point _not_ to adopt a standard C construct, it is now considered to be a good idea.

Are we developing Linux using the Cut-N-Paste culture of Stack Overflow?

Now explain how the noblemen is doing the herdsmen a kindness by charging them rent.

Also, in NYC, explain the chronically vacant commercial space (hint, no rent control).

As a step toward application portability between Microsoft apps and Linux systems, maybe. But that seems to be more at the library level. But who out there is suggesting that we need to splice Microsoft stuff (drivers, etc.) directly into the Linux kernel?

On the other hand, it could help in porting systemd to Windows.

They impound vehicles here for excessive speeding, IIRC 40km/h over, still see people excessively speeding. The problem, as you said, is the odds of getting caught are low enough that people still speed excessively even with the higher fines, and the cost of impoundment, which adds up.

They impound cars for excessive speeding (IIRC, 40km/h over) here, never heard a politician even talk about less penalties for speeding. Higher speed limits yes.

True, but there are all sorts of things that we could do, but we don't because, well because we just don't. There are a number of things that come to mind. One is that novel solutions to problems often come from someone scratching an itch. The problem is, they have to notice the itch in the first place, but the problem domain of, well, basically saving the Earth, is broad and it is hard to see the forest for the trees. The problems to solve for space exploration can be much more focused, and I think that does actually tend to drive people towards developing solutions that can then be applied to broader problems. In other words, for invention usually specific to general seems to work better than general to specific. There is also the matter of drive. Not that drive does not exist for researchers working to deal with environmental issues, but still there might be a tendency for the space fanatic to also be able to maintain better focus. Overall, even if what is developed is never used in space at all, I think that working towards the space-focused form of these technologies might actually bear fruit that can be highly useful here on Earth.

There are already enough dependencies between food and energy production without intentionally making the problem worse.

Science? Really? There's a lot of soft-brained, unscientific and technophilic pseudo-religion in the article.

Let's work with the argument's load-bearing phrase, "exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit."

There are so many things to criticise in that single statement of bias. Suffice it to say there's a good case to be made that "provincial domesticity and tribalism are prevalent inherited traits in humans", without emotional appeals to a "spirit" not in evidence.

Some of the technologies that would enable space exploration could also help us with the goal of repairing our biosphere though. Among our issues here on Earth is our reliance on fossil fuels. Hydrocarbons for energy make little sense pretty much everywhere we might go in space, however. All that energy storage potential for hydrocarbons is completely reliant on a massive supply of free oxygen being there for the taking. That means that basically all technology used for space either needs to not burn fossil fuels, or use systems with self-contained oxidizers. So those technologies are potentially useful for Earth. Beyond that, nearly everything you might do in space is more resource constrained than Earth, so you need to find methods of re-using the same methods over and over. Reclaiming wastewater and turning into fresh water again, recycling, scrubbing and replenishing atmospheric gases, etc. One interesting area is growing crops in limited space and with limited or no light. A more compact, direct way to grow food could massively reduce the area needed for farming on Earth and reduce the environmental cost. Processes to make steel and produce other metals in space, or to produce concrete in space could greatly reduce the energy waste and pollution of the versions of those methods used on Earth. Methods for local in situ manufacture of more goods would reduce the environmental cost of transporting those goods such long distances.
Basically, self-sustaining space exploration would involve the development of a whole host of technologies that would also help back on Earth. Space exploration and mitigating damage to/repairing the biosphere are not necessarily mutually incompatible goals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

Or Costco.

BZZZT!

I was talking about commercial space, not residential. The residential space tends to get rented.

Given the current state of the art, there's not even a guarantee that the real harm won't show up in the 2nd or even 3rd generation. Not all state of the art modifications prove to be stable.