Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [software]

Software is the term applied to any set of instructions carried out automatically by a computer. The most familiar type of software is a software application, which is a set of instructions, or a number of instructions sets used together, designed to meet a particular need or related set of needs (e.g. a document editor, a movie player, a website browser, etc.)

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Does a webpage with a black background save energy?

Blackle is a search engine that claims to save energy because it uses a black background. Is there any evidence to back up their claim that a website using a black background will save energy, and if so, how much energy will be saved?
user1936
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Is closed-source code more secure than open-source?

My computing teacher told us that closed source software is more secure than open source software, because with open source "anyone can modify it and put stuff in." This is why they do not want to use open source alternatives for learning to…
Thomas O
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Are there more open jobs than available developers?

A recent Stack Overflow blog post claims that: With nearly five open jobs for every available software developer, the need for qualified technical talent is higher than ever. I have seen this claim repeated many times, with different numbers…
psr
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Is this a photo of Margaret Hamilton standing next to Apollo Project code that she wrote?

The image below is widely circulated on Facebook: The caption says: Margaret Hamilton, lead software engineer of the Apollo Project, stands next to the code she wrote by hand and that was used to take humanity to the moon. [1969] Is it true…
JonathanReez
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Is DRM effective?

Reddit is all abuzz about DRM, piracy and all related topics. I don't really know much about the details in the technology here, but people were throwing around statements like these (all pulled from the same thread): DRM would only affect pirates…
MrHen
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Does WordPress power 27% of the Internet?

According to the front page of WordPress.com (screenshot, in case the page changes): WordPress powers 27% of the internet. Unfortunately no source is provided for that statement. Is this number true?
JonathanReez
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Did COBOL have 250 billion lines of code and 1 million programmers, as late as 2009?

In 2009 COBOL turned 50 years old. It got some publicity with claims, which I find rather hard to believe: "Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting" article in the Guardian. According to David Stephenson, the UK manager for the software provider Micro…
vartec
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Do professional software developers write an average of 10 lines of code per day?

In the 1975 software project management book, The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Fred Brooks states that, no matter the programming language chosen, a professional developer will write an average 10 lines of code (LoC) per…
travisbartley
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Can acts of IP piracy be more beneficial than harmful?

There are several claims that piracy of Intellectual Property (IP) can help sales more than it hurts them. For example, Edmund McMillan of Team Meat states in an interview at IGN: McMillen believes that the more people who steal his games, the…
Sonny Ordell
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Was NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter lost because engineering teams used different measuring units?

I read in a book that NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on September 23, 1999, at a cost of $125 million, because one engineering team used metric units, while another one used inches for a key spacecraft operation. Was it really a conversion…
splattne
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Do software patents stifle creativity?

Is there any evidence to support the claim that software patents stifle creativity and put many people at risk of legal action? If necessary refer to some background reading: Seriously think about it. Every time you write code -- even a brand…
going
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Airplane software crash caused by zero/negative altitude at Dead Sea

I've been told anecdotes like this several times on the interviews. Interviewers used this story as an argument in favor of defensive software development. Here is an explanation from one of the numerous occurrences on the web: This story was told…
default locale
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Is the source of the phrase "smoke test" electronic hardware testing?

As an electronics engineer I always knew that smoke test originated from the moment you connect a new circuit to power for the first time and see the smoke doesn't come out. Wikipedia agrees with that In Lessons Learned in Software Testing, Cem…
Rsf
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Does talking to a rubber duck improve programmer performance when debugging?

In software engineering (especially XP) there is a commonly held belief that talking to a rubber duck will improve performance when debugging problematic code. This technique is referenced in multiple places from well-respected blogs such as Coding…
combinatorics
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Did the Windows XP CD include Microsoft Bob?

Microsoft employee Raymond Chen says that an encrypted copy of Microsoft Bob is included on the Windows XP CD to take up space. But Windows XP doesn't take up the entire CD; there is a lot of free space remaining. Is the story true?
user8342
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