Especially since their utilities are already open source: http://www.ksplice.com/git/ksplice.git/ But ya, you're essentially paying for their subscription service. It would make a nice addition to RHEL subscriptions, I wouldn't be surprised if Red Hat acquired them.

Yep, silly article, the CPU intensive work is already in C++; the PHP code is mostly doing I/O. C++ won't make your memory/disks/network any faster. That's why they need all those servers.

Actually it's been more the other way around: a developer includes BSD code into his GPL-licensed project, makes improvements (knowing that his GPLed improvements are safe from non-FOSS software, and yes it does just work that way). Original BSD developer throws a public hissy fit because he can't use the new and improved code in his project. Funny how he didn't care when it was happening behind closed doors, but having the new code right under his nose was just too much.

Moral of the story, if you don't want people doing whatever with your code, don't choose a permissive license!

Isn't that why Google created the V8 JavaScript engine? It (just-in-time) compiles JavaScript to native machine code.

I'm surprised there was no mention of YouTube's Flashless HTML5 demo page. I think it's a bit more popular than Dailymotion.

Have a look at the book How to Design Programs, which was written with a pedagogical focus and is a great way to teach the fundamentals of programming and problem solving. It uses an excellent free programming environment which should make it easy for students to get started.

Nvidia could probably acquire AMD nowadays, seeing as how AMD hasn't been doing to well in the markets lately. Biggest roadblock might be getting approval for that merger since that would leave us with only one discrete GPU vendor to choose from.

This may not be what you're looking for, but when I was in high school I wrote a very simple ray casting game (a la Wolfenstein 3D), which makes good use of high school level math. Here's a tutorial for example: http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/raycast/ It definitely helped me get more interested in math, which is why I think showing how math is used in the real world is very useful (although writing video games probably won't interest everyone).

It's free to donate it and you know it actually gets put to good use rather than sitting in a blood bank. Plus I think you get some real life karma for it. Well either way, don't let the doctor discard it (like usually happens).

And even for those who must have a Windows GUI, TortoiseGit is currently being worked on.

Letting repositories sprout like mushrooms is a good thing, it will let your developers experiment with ideas they might have, things that they aren't sure would work yet but they want to try out anyways. In those scenarios, asking for permission and having to create an official branch in the central repo might be too big of a barrier, so they might work on it without the help of any version control which is bad but happens often with centralized VCS, or they'll just drop the idea altogether. And anyways, using something like svn won't stop people from sprouting their own repositories now that we have tools like git-svn which will allow you to clone an svn repo into a local git one.

The other big advantage is that when you start using a distributed VCS like git, the performance difference is so large that you find yourself using it a lot more. For example, you might notice that your developers start committing smaller atomic changes (rather than full days work at the end of the day) or they'll be more willing to create branches for different tasks because merging them back is easy in git and not so much in svn.

Also regarding your question about developers arguing who should merge with whom, a VCS isn't a replacement for communication. Git will allow developers to try out different ideas easier and allows easier offline collaboration, but at the end of the day, as the project lead you are responsible for what goes into the "official" repo and what doesn't. So you can still have a central place where releases are made (like your own local repo or one on a central server), but with git the development process is a lot more flexible.

See this page to understand why these things are not included by default. Essentially you are either complaining that you aren't getting something for free that requires royalties (or you don't agree with the current laws making the use of these technologies without paying royalties illegal). =) This is why many people try to use and promote the use of non-restricted formats.

All software has bugs. =) I don't think you're ever *forced* to upgrade your Linux kernel, but it's generally a good idea to keep up with minor updates to reduce security vulnerabilities and such. Are you sure you've never upgraded your Windows kernel? You've never ran Windows updates? I think you just don't know that you have. You're effectively complaining that Linux is more transparent about what it's doing. That's a good thing!

I'm not sure I understand this one... nvidia's drivers are closed, so you can't actually compile new drivers each time. If nvidia doesn't support the kernel you want to upgrade to, you are at their mercy, and I don't use nvidia cards for this reason, but I thought that nvidia generally kept up with the latest stable kernel versions. I assume you just had to add an external yum repository (like Livna)? Does Fedora not take care of upgrading the nvidia driver for you automatically then?

I agree with you that X is still behind in a lot of ways. There's a reason why Apple didn't use it when developing OS X. It's development had stagnated for a while, but it's been picking up steam again, so we'll see...

Yes won't argue with you there either, I think there's still a lot of room for improvement on the desktop side of things for Linux.

Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack