Great article. I acquired a couple of old lappies for free recently and put xubuntu on one of them. Works fine. I figure I get about as good performance and functionality as the new low-power notebooks just by recycling the old stuff. »

If you want to really get philosophically wayout, read about the . For this subject (using the results of complex optimization algorithms) it's the old junk science issue. People with either minimal understanding of a new technology, or deliberately misusing a technology, can present incorrect or misleading answers with lots of pseudo-scientific facade. Ignorant and devious people have always been with us. As a numerical modeler in the earth sciences I'm more concerned about the brittleness or sensitivity of the optimized solutions. How much does the output change with small changes in input parameters? Often somewhat less efficient solutions are much less brittle, a worthwhile tradeoff. »