Just read the news that last week Ferrari concluded the final deal
with FIA for the year 2008 through 10.
I just wish it will be Alonso who takes over from Schume, whenever the
time comes. The end of the daced will be lot interesting then.
On a related note, last weeks meeting was total desaster, only Ferrari
turned uup all other nine teams simply chose not to show up, ha ha ha
!!! :-))
Read more about that here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/4217409.stm
Can't wait for F1 2005 to begin.
--
BAIN
Monday, January 31, 2005
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Kontact is cool....
Today I managed to set up my colinux kmail IMAP/exchange account. Just minutes
after that i got a meeting request from my collegue, and to my pleasent
surprize the request was now followed by Accept, Reject link.
This must be newest addition to Kontact, the request was an ms exchange
request. To make things clearer i closed the kmail and fired up kontact. And
from that i opened up my inbox and clicked on accept. And hurra!! a new
meeting was added to Kalendar.
So this makes aditya's KMAIL/Calendar how to obsolete i guess.
This is knoppix 3.7 kontact 1.0.1 kmail 1.7.1
after that i got a meeting request from my collegue, and to my pleasent
surprize the request was now followed by Accept, Reject link.
This must be newest addition to Kontact, the request was an ms exchange
request. To make things clearer i closed the kmail and fired up kontact. And
from that i opened up my inbox and clicked on accept. And hurra!! a new
meeting was added to Kalendar.
So this makes aditya's KMAIL/Calendar how to obsolete i guess.
This is knoppix 3.7 kontact 1.0.1 kmail 1.7.1
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Fighting the patents threat.
I was just thinking (again). The main argument made during the petents
debate is that only the big companies get to have the large petant
portfolios. And with that they get secure cover using crossliscencing
arragements. In effect nobody can sue them because they can counter
sue them right back.
And the small little individual developer is left stranded. He might
barely be able to get one or two patents but getting 500 of them
isn't possible.
But i have a solution. Why not each of the OSS groups start filing for
patents. This will definately generate a large collective patent pool.
Time and again we have seen OSS tends to be lot more innovative and
radical than anything else.
And then each OSS groups should get together under some umbrella
group. This way anyone belonging to this group will have not just
access but the pseudo ownership of all thep patents.
So if somebody sues an OSS company for some stupid patent like jpeg or
mp3 decoder. They counter sue with everything they got. That will
basically mean about 1000 or so out of million or so at their
dispence. Microsoft will never even think about claiming any software
as their inteelctual property.
Big OSS players like Novel, IBM and Sun can kickstart this by
extending their current patents pledges to this umbrela group.
debate is that only the big companies get to have the large petant
portfolios. And with that they get secure cover using crossliscencing
arragements. In effect nobody can sue them because they can counter
sue them right back.
And the small little individual developer is left stranded. He might
barely be able to get one or two patents but getting 500 of them
isn't possible.
But i have a solution. Why not each of the OSS groups start filing for
patents. This will definately generate a large collective patent pool.
Time and again we have seen OSS tends to be lot more innovative and
radical than anything else.
And then each OSS groups should get together under some umbrella
group. This way anyone belonging to this group will have not just
access but the pseudo ownership of all thep patents.
So if somebody sues an OSS company for some stupid patent like jpeg or
mp3 decoder. They counter sue with everything they got. That will
basically mean about 1000 or so out of million or so at their
dispence. Microsoft will never even think about claiming any software
as their inteelctual property.
Big OSS players like Novel, IBM and Sun can kickstart this by
extending their current patents pledges to this umbrela group.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Coincidence
Just after one day of my post on memory, This article"Making Memories Stick"[scientific american] shows up on slashdot.
It quite covertly supports my thoughts , i think...
It quite covertly supports my thoughts , i think...
Swappiness or forgetfullness?
I was just thinking about the linux vm swappiness algorithm. High
swappiness has a bad effect on some systems and although the kernel vm
is very well tuned these days the solution is more practical and not
theorotical. In extreme cases the situation _could_ render system
unusable for atleast few seconds.
Neways so i was just trying to fugire out what will be a theorotical
way to prevent swap thrash or atleast its ill effects. So that i will
be garunteed of responsiveness at all times. I kept bumping into
endless loops and complex algorithms.High complexity would defeat the
purpose of making things responsive. Then it struck me. I should just
use a watch dog and just halt the things if i try to use too old pages
and make it artificially costly to have things swapped in based on
thier last swapped in timestamp and total use count. (this is not a
discussion about the algo per say, after a little thought i did reach
a conclusion that this is as impractical as other hundred or so ideas
i have,)
What struck me the most is the human memory like behaviour this end
algo will emmulate. The more the memory is accessed the more hot it
will become. The less it is used the colder it will be and longer it
will take to recall it and eventually some memory will be just too
hard to recall. It will be still there and theorotically it will be
recallable if the system goes blank for enough time.But it will be
impossible to recall it if system is not totally relaxed . Is that how
our brain works? Think about it. Its exact behaviour we encounter.
Sometimes things just can't be recalled no matter how much you try.
Then suddenly after waking up or after a relaxing bath you recall
them. So may be our brains just work like the modified swapping VM.
Preventing swap thrash by denying the recall unless enough resources
are available. Allowing critical and interactive things to be always
hot and responsive.
Another implication is that we never forget anything we just lock it
out and we might train ourselves to do it volunterily. Sort of hacking
out the brain's vm. All we have to do is to make it expensive to
recall something. One very easy and wellknown way is time. Don't think
about it for long time and you are done. But there might be other
quicker ways. Like associating long banks of information with one
thing. Just associate too much info to the things you want to forget
and it will become expensive enough that you will not recall it even
if you want it to.
It should work other way round. A common technique used to keep things
hot is to associate the thing you want to remember with already hot
memory meaning never to be swapped out. But to make it long term one
of the ways could be remembering things in bits. Rather than storing
large pices glued together split it up and try to remember each bit
separately. The swap cost will be drmamatically reduced and so will
the recallability. (important note here: the practial pc swap is more
efficient when there are large data swaps, mainly becasue of the
characterstics of the storage media i.e. harddisks seek times. I
beleive brain has random access or some sort of radix scalable
indexing so that effect won't be applicable)
So what do you think??
Heh i can't even remember what the first line said as i have scrlled
passed it :(. May be some VM's are just bad no matter what.
swappiness has a bad effect on some systems and although the kernel vm
is very well tuned these days the solution is more practical and not
theorotical. In extreme cases the situation _could_ render system
unusable for atleast few seconds.
Neways so i was just trying to fugire out what will be a theorotical
way to prevent swap thrash or atleast its ill effects. So that i will
be garunteed of responsiveness at all times. I kept bumping into
endless loops and complex algorithms.High complexity would defeat the
purpose of making things responsive. Then it struck me. I should just
use a watch dog and just halt the things if i try to use too old pages
and make it artificially costly to have things swapped in based on
thier last swapped in timestamp and total use count. (this is not a
discussion about the algo per say, after a little thought i did reach
a conclusion that this is as impractical as other hundred or so ideas
i have,)
What struck me the most is the human memory like behaviour this end
algo will emmulate. The more the memory is accessed the more hot it
will become. The less it is used the colder it will be and longer it
will take to recall it and eventually some memory will be just too
hard to recall. It will be still there and theorotically it will be
recallable if the system goes blank for enough time.But it will be
impossible to recall it if system is not totally relaxed . Is that how
our brain works? Think about it. Its exact behaviour we encounter.
Sometimes things just can't be recalled no matter how much you try.
Then suddenly after waking up or after a relaxing bath you recall
them. So may be our brains just work like the modified swapping VM.
Preventing swap thrash by denying the recall unless enough resources
are available. Allowing critical and interactive things to be always
hot and responsive.
Another implication is that we never forget anything we just lock it
out and we might train ourselves to do it volunterily. Sort of hacking
out the brain's vm. All we have to do is to make it expensive to
recall something. One very easy and wellknown way is time. Don't think
about it for long time and you are done. But there might be other
quicker ways. Like associating long banks of information with one
thing. Just associate too much info to the things you want to forget
and it will become expensive enough that you will not recall it even
if you want it to.
It should work other way round. A common technique used to keep things
hot is to associate the thing you want to remember with already hot
memory meaning never to be swapped out. But to make it long term one
of the ways could be remembering things in bits. Rather than storing
large pices glued together split it up and try to remember each bit
separately. The swap cost will be drmamatically reduced and so will
the recallability. (important note here: the practial pc swap is more
efficient when there are large data swaps, mainly becasue of the
characterstics of the storage media i.e. harddisks seek times. I
beleive brain has random access or some sort of radix scalable
indexing so that effect won't be applicable)
So what do you think??
Heh i can't even remember what the first line said as i have scrlled
passed it :(. May be some VM's are just bad no matter what.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
KNOPPIX + CoLinux howto
Following a long battle to get some kind of modern linux system
installed on my work pc, i succeeded in installing CoLinux with KNOPPIX
rootfs.
This is a short description of steps involved which can be treated as
a crude HOWTO
Software to be downloaded
1.Colinux latest release from colinux.org.
2.KNOPPIIX ISO image or a CD.
3.QEMU for windows,you can get it at freeoszoo.org. (needed if you don't have a CD and don't want to burn one then you will also need or for some reason can't boot from the cd.)
4. Cygwin + X (or any other x server for windows)
You will also need atleast 2000 MB of harddisk space on windows
partion _and_ atleast 512 MB more for swap image.
Also please read the documentation available on coLinux site before you begin.
TODO : add links
STEP 1: prepare KNOPPIX rootfs image.
The single large problem with running knoppix with colinux is that
colinux kernel does not contain the cloop modules. cloop is the
module used by KNOPPIX to compress its root file system. This makes it
impossible to mount the KNOPPIX fs directly under coLinux.
So you will need to get the rootfs decompressed first before you can
use it under coLinux.
There are two ways of doing this.
1. If you have the cd and can boot into it.
a. Just boot into knoppix and be root.
b. Mount a windows drive
c. use dd to copy /dev/cloop0 to to knoppix_rootfs.img on you disk
dd if=/dev/cloop0 of=knoppix_rootfs.img
the img will be about 2000MB so be sure you have enough space.
d.Once the copying is done you will have to loopmount the image.
mkdir /mnt/rootfs
mount -o loop knoppix_rootfs.img /mnt/rootfs
e. go to /mnt/rootfs/dev directoy and add follwing devices
mknod /mnt/rootfs/dev/cobd0 b 117 0
mknod /mnt/rootfs/dev/cobd1 b 117 1
mknod /mnt/rootfs/dev/cobd2 b 117 2
f. go to /mnt/rootfs/etc and edit fstab to add following entries
/dev/cobd0 / auto defaults 0 0
/dev/cobd1 none swap defaults 0 0
remove any other entries for '/' and swap
g. unmount /mnt/rootfs
2. If you don't have the cd or you can't boot into it
a. Get the ISO or rip the cd into an ISO
b. install QEMU from freeoszoo.org
c. Configure QEMU to mount the knoppix iso as cdrom (instructions can
be found at freeos zoo.org)
d. Create an empty file of 2000MBs, you might use something else from
windows world, i used cygwin dd to do that
dd if=/dev/null of=knoppix_rootfs.img count=4000 bs=512
e. Configure QEMU to mount the empty rootfs as hda.
f. Fire up qemu this should boot into knoppix cd.
g. Boot knoppix 3 to go directly to commandline.
h. once booted make sure you are root and the copy /dev/cloop0 to /dev/hda
dd if=/dev/cloop0 of=/dev/hda
i. Once the copying is done mount /dev/hda onto /mnt/hda
j. go to /mnt/hda/dev and create following nodes
mknod /mnt/hda/dev/cobd0 b 117 0
mknod /mnt/hda/dev/cobd1 b 117 1
mknod /mnt/hda/dev/cobd2 b 117 2
k. go to /mnt/hda/etc and edit fstab to add following entries
/dev/cobd0 / auto defaults 0 0
/dev/cobd1 none swap defaults 0 0
remove any other entries for '/' and swap
l. unmount /mnt/hda
Thats it, this will get you to boot knoppix over colinux.
Running Colinux
1.Install Colinux using the setup programm.
2.Make sure you have the N/W driver installed.
3. Install some kind of X server, best one to use is cygwin X
4. Change your configuration file to point to the rootfs we created
5. create a 512 MB file to be used as swap.
6. Change your configuration file to point to the swap we created
Important part is to match the cobd numbers to the ones we entered in /etc
Also make sure you passing
My config looks like this,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<colinux>
<!-- This line needs to point to your root file system.
For example change "root_fs" to the name of the Debian image.
Inside coLinux it will be /dev/cobd0 -->
<block_device index="0" path="\DosDevices\d:\scratch.img"
enabled="true" />
<!-- This line can specify a swap file if you wish, or an additional
image file, it will /dev/cobd1. Additional block_devices can
be specified in the same manner by increasing the index -->
<block_device index="1" path="\DosDevices\c:\swap_device"
enabled="true" />
<!-- bootparams allows you to pass kernel boot parameters -->
<bootparams>root=/dev/cobd0 lang=en 3</bootparams>
<!-- image allows you to specify the kernel to boot -->
<image path="vmlinux" />
<!-- this line allows you to specify the amount of memory available
to coLinux -->
<memory size="64" />
<!-- This allows you to modify networking parameters, see the README
or website for more information -->
<network index="0" type="tap" />
</colinux>
Thats it done fireup Colinux
This should boot into knoppix root shell
There is one glitch here, the hwsetup will screwup and lots of errors
will be output for not finding modules, ignore them for a while
The hwsetup will keep outputing gree blocks on console,
type
killall -KILL hwsetup
And you will have stable prompt.
Not first thing to do is edit /etc/fstab and remove some errornous
things appended and restore it to point to right '/' and swap devices
i.e. /dev/cobd0 /dev/cobd1 in our case
Rest of the things will be setup correctly,
Give
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.197 up
to start communicating with X server
set DISPLAY and then give startkde you should have a kde session started on your
windows x server.
export DISPLAY=192.168.0.1:0 (assuming the address given to windows pc is .1)
startkde
Problems:
The knoppix is not properly installed on the system but is just
copied, this leaves lots of settings undone, most annoyingly the
permissions are set only for root and knoppix user. If you try to use
a normal user you will have to constantly fiddle with permissions to
get things working.
The solution is to install the knoppix to the disk image instead of
copying it. But in my case the knoppix installer won't install to an
image file for unkown reasons.
installed on my work pc, i succeeded in installing CoLinux with KNOPPIX
rootfs.
This is a short description of steps involved which can be treated as
a crude HOWTO
Software to be downloaded
1.Colinux latest release from colinux.org.
2.KNOPPIIX ISO image or a CD.
3.QEMU for windows,you can get it at freeoszoo.org. (needed if you don't have a CD and don't want to burn one then you will also need or for some reason can't boot from the cd.)
4. Cygwin + X (or any other x server for windows)
You will also need atleast 2000 MB of harddisk space on windows
partion _and_ atleast 512 MB more for swap image.
Also please read the documentation available on coLinux site before you begin.
TODO : add links
STEP 1: prepare KNOPPIX rootfs image.
The single large problem with running knoppix with colinux is that
colinux kernel does not contain the cloop modules. cloop is the
module used by KNOPPIX to compress its root file system. This makes it
impossible to mount the KNOPPIX fs directly under coLinux.
So you will need to get the rootfs decompressed first before you can
use it under coLinux.
There are two ways of doing this.
1. If you have the cd and can boot into it.
a. Just boot into knoppix and be root.
b. Mount a windows drive
c. use dd to copy /dev/cloop0 to to knoppix_rootfs.img on you disk
dd if=/dev/cloop0 of=knoppix_rootfs.img
the img will be about 2000MB so be sure you have enough space.
d.Once the copying is done you will have to loopmount the image.
mkdir /mnt/rootfs
mount -o loop knoppix_rootfs.img /mnt/rootfs
e. go to /mnt/rootfs/dev directoy and add follwing devices
mknod /mnt/rootfs/dev/cobd0 b 117 0
mknod /mnt/rootfs/dev/cobd1 b 117 1
mknod /mnt/rootfs/dev/cobd2 b 117 2
f. go to /mnt/rootfs/etc and edit fstab to add following entries
/dev/cobd0 / auto defaults 0 0
/dev/cobd1 none swap defaults 0 0
remove any other entries for '/' and swap
g. unmount /mnt/rootfs
2. If you don't have the cd or you can't boot into it
a. Get the ISO or rip the cd into an ISO
b. install QEMU from freeoszoo.org
c. Configure QEMU to mount the knoppix iso as cdrom (instructions can
be found at freeos zoo.org)
d. Create an empty file of 2000MBs, you might use something else from
windows world, i used cygwin dd to do that
dd if=/dev/null of=knoppix_rootfs.img count=4000 bs=512
e. Configure QEMU to mount the empty rootfs as hda.
f. Fire up qemu this should boot into knoppix cd.
g. Boot knoppix 3 to go directly to commandline.
h. once booted make sure you are root and the copy /dev/cloop0 to /dev/hda
dd if=/dev/cloop0 of=/dev/hda
i. Once the copying is done mount /dev/hda onto /mnt/hda
j. go to /mnt/hda/dev and create following nodes
mknod /mnt/hda/dev/cobd0 b 117 0
mknod /mnt/hda/dev/cobd1 b 117 1
mknod /mnt/hda/dev/cobd2 b 117 2
k. go to /mnt/hda/etc and edit fstab to add following entries
/dev/cobd0 / auto defaults 0 0
/dev/cobd1 none swap defaults 0 0
remove any other entries for '/' and swap
l. unmount /mnt/hda
Thats it, this will get you to boot knoppix over colinux.
Running Colinux
1.Install Colinux using the setup programm.
2.Make sure you have the N/W driver installed.
3. Install some kind of X server, best one to use is cygwin X
4. Change your configuration file to point to the rootfs we created
5. create a 512 MB file to be used as swap.
6. Change your configuration file to point to the swap we created
Important part is to match the cobd numbers to the ones we entered in /etc
Also make sure you passing
My config looks like this,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<colinux>
<!-- This line needs to point to your root file system.
For example change "root_fs" to the name of the Debian image.
Inside coLinux it will be /dev/cobd0 -->
<block_device index="0" path="\DosDevices\d:\scratch.img"
enabled="true" />
<!-- This line can specify a swap file if you wish, or an additional
image file, it will /dev/cobd1. Additional block_devices can
be specified in the same manner by increasing the index -->
<block_device index="1" path="\DosDevices\c:\swap_device"
enabled="true" />
<!-- bootparams allows you to pass kernel boot parameters -->
<bootparams>root=/dev/cobd0 lang=en 3</bootparams>
<!-- image allows you to specify the kernel to boot -->
<image path="vmlinux" />
<!-- this line allows you to specify the amount of memory available
to coLinux -->
<memory size="64" />
<!-- This allows you to modify networking parameters, see the README
or website for more information -->
<network index="0" type="tap" />
</colinux>
Thats it done fireup Colinux
This should boot into knoppix root shell
There is one glitch here, the hwsetup will screwup and lots of errors
will be output for not finding modules, ignore them for a while
The hwsetup will keep outputing gree blocks on console,
type
killall -KILL hwsetup
And you will have stable prompt.
Not first thing to do is edit /etc/fstab and remove some errornous
things appended and restore it to point to right '/' and swap devices
i.e. /dev/cobd0 /dev/cobd1 in our case
Rest of the things will be setup correctly,
Give
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.197 up
to start communicating with X server
set DISPLAY and then give startkde you should have a kde session started on your
windows x server.
startkde
Problems:
The knoppix is not properly installed on the system but is just
copied, this leaves lots of settings undone, most annoyingly the
permissions are set only for root and knoppix user. If you try to use
a normal user you will have to constantly fiddle with permissions to
get things working.
The solution is to install the knoppix to the disk image instead of
copying it. But in my case the knoppix installer won't install to an
image file for unkown reasons.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
The glass should be half empty
I was wondering, why do they call people who see as the galss being
half full as optimistic? In my view it should be exactly opposite. The
people who see the glass as half full are actually missing out on the
potential of the glass to accomodate the whole double of the water it
already has. Any one who is having a glass half filled is just going
to sit there and not do anything about it cause, hey! he _has_ a glass
half _full_. So basically if we have more and more people who see the
glass as half full, the economy will just go on degrading, inflation
will drop down, and bascially everything will come to a grounding
halt. And besides economics such an attitude will hamper social growth
as well. Half a freedom is never a freedom but then again with half
full people may be no one will notice.
So basically i think seeing a glass as half full is being passimist.
Seeing that the glass is half empty, seeing the potential to grow,
acknowledging that there exists a problem, in the end casuing the
problem to be solved and not just sit there it is true optimism.
But then again i have many other weird opinions too....
half full as optimistic? In my view it should be exactly opposite. The
people who see the glass as half full are actually missing out on the
potential of the glass to accomodate the whole double of the water it
already has. Any one who is having a glass half filled is just going
to sit there and not do anything about it cause, hey! he _has_ a glass
half _full_. So basically if we have more and more people who see the
glass as half full, the economy will just go on degrading, inflation
will drop down, and bascially everything will come to a grounding
halt. And besides economics such an attitude will hamper social growth
as well. Half a freedom is never a freedom but then again with half
full people may be no one will notice.
So basically i think seeing a glass as half full is being passimist.
Seeing that the glass is half empty, seeing the potential to grow,
acknowledging that there exists a problem, in the end casuing the
problem to be solved and not just sit there it is true optimism.
But then again i have many other weird opinions too....
Cool mail to blog feature
I have never used mail to blog feature before. Gosh this is convinient......
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