Linux Nikanth News (2)

After I posted Linux Nikanth News, the next LWN weekly edition's kernel page has Andrew Mortans reply to me as part of the Quotes of the week.

I was at the receiving end from the master for not writing good patch description. And I do not seem to have learned from it! :(

p.s: Earlier by mistake all of my posts were syndicated in planetsuse. Now it has been changed to aggregate posts with a specific label. Hopefully this post wont show up anywhere else other than in my blog. If you are seeing this elsewhere, please leave a comment.

Latest and greatest(untested)?!

Linus released

• 2.6.24 on January 24th 2008,
• 2.6.26 on July 13th, 2008, and
• 2.6.27 on October 9 2008
  

Here is when it reached the users

• Gentoo 2008.0 released on July 6, 2008 has linux 2.6.24 which was ~5.5 months old.

• Ubuntu 8.10 released on October 30th, 2008 has 2.6.27 which was ~0.6 months old.

• Fedora 10 released on 25 November 2008 has 2.6.27 which was ~1.5 months old.

• Opensuse 11.1 released on December 18th, 2008, has 2.6.27 wihch was roughly ~2.3 months old.

• Debian 5.0 released on February 14th, 2009 has 2.6.26 which was roughly ~7 months old.
  

Distros used by power-users seems to be always running slightly older version compared to the distros aimed at the layman! Yeah, but power users^Wdevelopers use the unstable/development/factory/head version of their favourite distro and not the released stable. But Ubuntu stable(!) is based on debian unstable! And debian stable is so outdated. opensuse seems to be quiet the latest but not straight from the unstable development snapshot.

p.s: I use only opensuse regularly among these distros. So any mis-information and bias is likely. ;)

Linux Nikanth News

I do not post many things related to computer science or what I do. So just to update some of my friends here are couple of LWN articles where I was mentioned.

I was mentioned for kreplace - hotpatching running kernel in Nov 24. And recently for the cgroup based oom killer controller Also note that both the projects were not merged in the Linus tree, at least not yet. ksplice is superior to kreplace and it seems to be on its way for inclusion, and user-space notification seems to be the preferred approach of oom killer control.

/me plans to blog more tech stuff soon

War for wealth

Back then kings sacrificed lives for wealth in the name of war... The war for wealth continues... powerless front-line soldiers...

A stitch in time saves nine, but is it time? stitches before time reduces the value and beauty of the cloth... hmm.. it doesn't! As the current fad is to wear clothes full of stitches! The share-holders are asking for it :(

Maths, Physics, Chemistry doubts

1. There was a fire-emergency drill yesterday in my office and now I have a doubt, "What is the coldest possible flame? And how much heat does it produce and its temperature?" The flame froma welding equipment is definitely hotter than the flame from candle, So how to have a 1 square inch of visible flame with least amount of energy released. Will it be the material that can be ignited at a lowest temperature? hmm may be the material the material that would continue to burn in the lowest temperature... so what it is? How much is the temp?
   

2. My roommate plays with Rubik cube a lot. And I saw an application that solves the rubik cube for your inputs. My question is what is the minimum no of faces required as input out of the total (9 x 6) 54 faces? Does the number change based on which faces?

3. What is the largest number possible with two 9s? A question on a poster in my office.
   

• 99

• 9^9 (But isnt using operator allowed? But exponent can be written without operators as superscript i.e., 9⁹)

• 9!^9! (But if you allow unary operators, I do not even need a second 9, i.e., ((9!)!)... == 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• I think 99 could be the answer without any opertators, but I would say it is a number with base-googol or may be base-infinity ;) [In base-infinity 99 would mean 9*infinity+9]
  

Please tell me whatever you think could be the answer.

dot dot dot...

Some random thoughts... don't think logically and connect them.

• Killing oneself is a crime.
• Protesting in public without permission and disturbing the public is a crime.
• Giving money is either a form of encouragement and acknowledging one's good work. Or it can be an aid, in case some one was unluckily affected, not due to a mistake of his own, but say by a natural calamity.
• M Karunanidhi gives 2 Lakh INR from people's money, to the person who committed suicide in front of a Government office to protest an issue in our neighboring country.
• Several other people are trying to commit suicide after the first one successfully killed himself to show their protest for war in Srilanka.
• Tamil Srilankans in Jafna are protesting against LTTE, not their Government.
• Connect the dots is a kid's fun way to learn drawing, where they connect the dots to get the whole picture. Adults do not usually enjoy them.