Thermal Noise

What is the point ?

Do we solve problems to understand techniques better ?
or
Do we understand techniques to solve problems better ?

Why should Epiphanies always result in cyclic, stoical and pointless rumination ?

Update: You really don’t want to miss clicking on the second link

Netbeans users on Solaris and Linux, who hate, detest and despise the horrible looking default Java UI, ought to add this line to ~/.bash_profile

alias netbeans=’/opt/netbeans/bin/netbeans -laf com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel’

Update: Netbeans 6.0 users should type “–laf” instead “-laf” (Two hyphens before ‘laf’ instead of one)

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From D.E. Knuth’s famous letter to the United States Patent and Trademark Office:

“
I am told that the courts are trying to make a distinction between mathematical algorithms and nonmathematical algorithms. To a computer scientist, this makes no sense, because every algorithm is as mathematical as anything could be. An algorithm is an abstract concept unrelated to physical laws of the universe.

Nor is it possible to distinguish between “numerical” and “nonnumerical” algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information. All data are numbers, and all numbers are data. Mathematicians work much more with symbolic entities than with numbers.

Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416. It’s like the medieval church ruling that the sun revolves about the earth. Man-made laws can be significantly helpful but not when they contradict fundamental truths.
“

In those words of eloquent truth,
Beat Frost he did, Master Knuth.

Here is an example of how incredibly powerful DTrace can be. I had to solve a problem where a nice high-level overview of the code flow in a single threaded userland application would save me some pain the backside. Lo and Behold, Dtrace - The Universal Hammer for every nail.

Here is a simple visual call graph generator using 5 lines of DTrace combined with the outstanding Graphviz graphics library.

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India appears in the Top 10 of the Top500 supercomputers list for the first time: http://top500.org/site/systems/2838

EKA, is a Linux cluster of Clovertown based Intel Xeon systems connected via Infiniband. Congratulations to Tata Sons and HP !

Quite shamefully, Solaris runs on only two of the Top500 supercomputers. Blame it on the pathetic HPC userspace and community when compared to Linux !

This is a totally absorbing book by Stephen Levy- “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution” (There is an online copy whose legality is unclear)

You should definitely read the book if you find these kinds of stories fasinating