A page for randomness

The Gentoo Linux operating system is a Linux distribution based on the Portage package management system. The development project and its products are named after the Gentoo penguin. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, flexible, and optimized for the user’s machine. Packages are normally built from source code, continuing the tradition of the ports collection, although for convenience, some large software packages are also available as precompiled binaries for various architectures.

Read more: Gentoo Linux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An apparently scientific argument is said to be not even wrong if it is based on assumptions that are known to be incorrect, or alternatively theories which cannot possibly be falsified or used to predict anything. The phrase was coined by the early quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colourful objections to incorrect or sloppy thinking. Peierls (1960) writes of Pauli, “… a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly ‘That’s not right. It’s not even wrong’”.

Statements that are not even wrong may be well-formed but not refer to anything physical (as in “Souls are immortal”, because the noun “soul” is not well-defined in terms of experimental results), or may be mere word salad that appears to be devoid of meaning (as in some of the Time Cube writings).

The phrase “not even wrong” is often used to describe pseudoscience or bad science. It is considered mildly derogatory.

The phrase has also come to mean science that is well-meaning and based on the current scientific knowledge, but that cannot be used for prediction and cannot be falsified. Such theories are non-scientific, even when they are speaking in scientific language. The phrase has been applied to aspects of the super string theory of physics on the grounds that, although elegant mathematically, it does not provide predictions or tests.

Source: Not even wrong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scientology doctrine states that a person who has achieved the state of Operating Thetan is essentially a being able to operate free of the encumbrances of the material universe. This state is represented by a symbol consisting of the letters OT with the T inside the O and each of the points of the T ending at the O’s circumference.The secrets of attaining the Operating Thetan states are taught in a series of courses called “levels”, numbered with Roman numerals and starting at OT I. Operating Thetan levels up to OT VIII have been released by the Church of Scientology. Hubbard claimed to have written OT levels up to OT XV.

After having removed one’s own reactive mind and thus attaining the state of Clear, one may then go on to the levels above OT III which were later replaced by New Era Dianetics for OTs. L. Ron Hubbard wrote on September 15, 1978: “There is a special handling for OTs who have been run on Dianetics since Clear. It is called ‘NED for OTs’.”

The Fishman Affidavit contains much text from the old versions of the Operating Thetan levels. The versions of OT I to OT VII in the Fishman Affidavit are considered authentic as the Church of Scientology has brought copyright lawsuits over their release on the Internet.

Note that the claimed OT VIII in Fishman, which refers to Jesus as “a lover of young men and boys”, is not considered authentic — not only has the Church stated it is inauthentic and not brought suit over it, but ex-members who reached OT VIII have come forward and concurred. The Church claimed it as a copyright violation in the suit against Arnaldo Lerma, but later said this was an error. Fishman stated that he had obtained his copy of OT VIII from a different source than his copies of the other OT Levels, purchased from a fellow Scientologist.

Operating Thetan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An E-meter is an electronic device manufactured by the Church of Scientology at their Gold Base production facility. It is used as an aid by Dianetics and Scientology counselors and counselors-in-training in some forms of auditing, the application of the techniques of Dianetics and Scientology to another or to oneself for the express purpose of addressing spiritual issues. The device is formally known as the Hubbard Electrometer.

A 1971 ruling of the United States District Court, District of Columbia (333 F. Supp. 357), specifically stated, “The E-meter has no proven usefulness in the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease, nor is it medically or scientifically capable of improving any bodily function.”

The E-meter measures changes in the electrical resistance of the human body by inducing a tiny electrical current through the body. The device’s primary component is an electrical measuring instrument called a Wheatstone bridge, functioning much like a galvanometer, that indicates changes in the subject’s resistance. According to Scientology doctrine, the resistance corresponds to the “mental mass and energy” of the subject’s mind, which change when the subject thinks of particular mental images (engrams). These concepts have no recognition among scientists outside of Scientology; the action of the E-meter is more commonly attributed to galvanic skin response, an effect used in polygraph tests.

E-meter sessions are conducted by church employees known as auditors. Scientology materials traditionally refer to the subject as the “preclear”, although auditors continue to use the meter well beyond the clear level. The preclear holds a pair of cylindrical electrodes (”cans”) connected to the meter while the auditor asks the preclear a series of questions and notes both the verbal response and the activity of the meter. Auditor training describes many types of needle movements, with each having their own special significance.

The meter has two control dials. The larger dial, known as the “tone arm”, adjusts the meter bias, while the smaller one controls the gain. Auditors manipulate the tone arm during an auditing session to keep the E-meter needle on a marked reference point.

E-meter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

US ‘doomed’ if creationist president elected: scientists

A day after ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee finished first in the opening round to choose a Republican candidate for the White House, scientists warned Americans against electing a leader who doubts evolution.

“The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming,” University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn told reporters at the launch of a book on evolution by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

“I would worry that a president who didn’t believe in the evolution arguments wouldn’t believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin,” added Omenn, who was part of a panel of experts at the launch of “Science, Evolution and Creationism.”

Former Arkansas governor Huckabee said in a debate in May that he did not believe in evolution.

A poll conducted last year showed that two-thirds of Americans believe in creationism, or the theory that God created humans at a single point in time, while 53 percent believe that humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life — the theory of evolution.

Around a quarter of Americans said they believe in both.

The evolution versus creationism debate has crept into school classrooms and politics, where it is mainly conservative Republicans who espouse the non-scientific belief.

“If our country starts to behave irrationally whereas all the other countries coming up and chasing us (to take over as the world leaders in science and technology) behaving rationally, we are doomed,” Omenn said.

The book targets teachers and the general public, and presents in simple terms the current scientific understanding of evolution and the importance of teaching it in the science classroom.

A day after his win in Iowa, Huckabee, toned down his anti-evolution stance, saying in a television interview that the question of whether to teach creationism in schools was “not an issue for our president.”

Omenn and the other scientists and teachers on the panel at the book launch were more categorical, saying creationism has no place in science classrooms.

“Scientific inquiry is not about accepting on faith a statement or scriptural passage. It’s about exploring nature, so there really is not any place in the science classroom for creationism or intelligent design creationism,” said Omenn.

“We don’t teach astrology as an alternative to astronomy, or witchcraft as an alternative to medicine,” said Francisco Ayala, a professor of biological sciences at the University of California, Irvine.

“We must understand the difference between what is and is not science. We must not teach creationism as an alternative to evolution,” he said.

ML (programming language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ML is often referred to as an impure functional language, because it permits side-effects, and therefore imperative programming, unlike purely functional programming languages such as Haskell. Features of ML include a call-by-value evaluation strategy, first class functions, automatic memory management through garbage collection, parametric polymorphism, static typing, type inference, algebraic data types, pattern matching, and exception handling. Unlike Haskell, ML uses eager evaluation, which means that all subexpressions are always evaluated. One result of this is that you cannot use infinite lists per se. However, lazy evaluation and hence infinite lists can be simulated, through use of anonymous functions. Today there are several languages in the ML family; the two major dialects are Standard ML and Caml, but others exist, including F# - an open research project that targets the Microsoft .NET platform. Ideas from ML have influenced numerous other languages, such as Haskell, Cyclone, and Nemerle. ML’s strengths are mostly applied in language design and manipulation (compilers, analyzers, theorem provers), but it is a general-purpose language also used in bioinformatics, financial systems, and applications including a genealogical database, a peer-to-peer client/server program, etc. [edit]

Speed trap - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term speed trap can refer to a point where a speed limit is strictly enforced by police. It may also refer to locations where a speed camera is posted.[1] Alternately, the term may also refer to a speed limit that is enforced by timing how long a vehicle takes to transverse a measured distance. Cities or road sections become known as speed traps where police have a reputation for writing an unusually high number of traffic tickets, especially speeding tickets. Sometimes the posted speed limits are not easily seen; in other places, the limits might be set excessively low. In many of these uses, the term speed trap connotes speed limit enforcement for purposes of ticket revenue or traffic deterrence instead of safety.

Speed traps have been used since the beginning of the 20th century as a means to enforce speed limits, and Britain’s Automobile Association was set up specifically to notify members of such speed traps.[2] More modern examples of speed traps include their usage in the town of Big Cabin, Oklahoma, which raised three-fourths of its revenue from traffic citations, and a significant percentage of that was related to a section of highway where the speed limit dropped from 55 mph to 45 mph.[citation needed] The state of Oklahoma enacted a law in 2004 that penalizes towns where the citation revenue exceeds 50% of the annual budget.[3]

In California traffic law, evidence obtained from speed traps (as specifically defined, see “Speed trap” in California traffic law) is not admissible. Photo enforcement systems for traffic signals may measure vehicle speeds to set the beginning of the yellow signal indication phase. Some courts have ruled that this is not a speed trap.

Radar detector detector - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A radar detector detector (RDD) is a device used by police in areas where radar detectors are declared illegal.

Because radar detectors are built around a superheterodyne receiver, which has a local oscillator that radiates slightly, it is possible to build a radar detector-detector which detects such emissions (usually the frequency of the radar type being detected, plus about 10 MHz for the intermediate frequency). Some police radar guns are equipped with such a device. VG-2 Interceptor was the first device developed for this purpose, current technology uses the Spectre III (Stalcar in Australia). [1] This form of electronic warfare cuts both ways and since detector-detectors use a similar superheterodyne receiver, many early “stealth” radar detectors are equipped with a radar detector-detector-detector circuit, which shuts down the main radar receiver when the detector-detector’s signal is sensed, thus preventing detection by such equipment. This technique borrows from ELINT surveillance countermeasures. In the early 1990s, BEL-Tronics, Inc. of Ontario, Canada (where radar detector use is prohibited) found that merely the local oscillator frequency of the detector could be modified out of the range of the VG-2 Interceptor. This resulted in a wave of detector manufacturers changing their local oscillator frequency. Today, practically every radar detector on the market is immune to the VG-2 Interceptor[citation needed].

The Spectre III detects every radar detector certified for operation in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission as of December 2004. Currently, the only radar detector able to defeat all radar detector detectors (RDD) is the Beltronics STI Driver. [1]

However, as radar detector detectors are based on the same principle, some radar detectors can detect the detector detectors, and shut down the primary receiver, evading detection by the police equipment.

[edit]

NeXT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
NeXT Software, Inc. (formerly NeXT Computer, Inc.) was a computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets.

NeXT was founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs after his resignation from Apple Computer. In addition to its hardware, NeXT developed the NEXTSTEP operating system, later retooled as a programming environment capable of running on several different operating systems, most notably Solaris. This put NEXTSTEP in direct competition with Windows NT and Cairo, a vaporware object-oriented version of Windows NT. In 1993, NeXT withdrew from the hardware business and, on December 20, 1996, was bought by Apple for US$400 million.[2] Parts of NeXT’s software were later used as the foundation for Mac OS X.[3]

Rhapsody (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rhapsody was the code name given to Apple Computer’s next-generation operating system during the period of its development between Apple’s purchase of NeXT in late 1996 and the announcement of Mac OS X in 1998. It consisted primarily of the OPENSTEP operating system ported to the PowerMac along with new graphics in the GUI to make it appear more Mac-like. Several existing Mac OS technologies were also ported to Rhapsody, including QuickTime and AppleSearch. Rhapsody could also run a selection of existing Mac OS programs through the “Blue Box” emulation layer. Compared to OS X, Rhapsody’s Blue Box was “noticeable” as it opened a Classic like program (OS X’s is “invisible”) and there was no Carbon to help port existing Mac software to the new OS without the Blue Box.
Rhapsody was first demonstrated at the 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). There were two subsequent Developer Releases for computers with Intel x86 or PowerPC processors. The full version was intended for release in spring of 1998. At the 1998 MacWorld Expo in New York, Steve Jobs announced that Rhapsody would be released as Mac OS X Server 1.0 (which shipped in 1999). Its code base was forked into Darwin, the open source underpinnings of Mac OS X.

Voyager 1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 733-kilogram robotic space probe of the outer solar system and beyond, launched September 5, 1977, and is currently operational. It visited Jupiter and Saturn and was the first probe to provide detailed images of the moons of these planets.

Voyager 1 is the farthest man-made object from Earth, traveling away from both the Earth and the Sun at a relatively faster speed than any other probe. Though its sister-craft, Voyager 2, was launched 1 month earlier, Voyager 2 will never pass Voyager 1. Neither will the New Horizons mission to Pluto, despite being launched from Earth at a faster speed than both Voyager craft. During its lifetime Voyager 1 has benefited from a number of gravity assisted speed boosts.[1]

As of July 6, 2007, Voyager 1 is over 15.44 terameters (15.44×1012 meters, or 15.44×109 km, 103.2 AU, or 9.6 billion miles) from the Sun, and has thus entered the heliosheath, the termination shock region between the solar system and interstellar space, a vast area where the Sun’s influence gives way to the other bodies in the galaxy. If Voyager 1 is still functioning when it finally passes the heliopause, scientists will get their first direct measurements of the conditions in the interstellar medium. At this distance, signals from Voyager 1 take more than thirteen hours to reach its control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a joint project of NASA and Caltech near Pasadena, California. Voyager 1 is on a hyperbolic trajectory and has achieved escape velocity, meaning that its orbit will not return to the inner solar system. Along with Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, New Horizons, and Voyager 2, Voyager 1 is an interstellar probe.

Voyager 1 had as its primary targets the planets Jupiter and Saturn and their associated moons and rings; its current mission is the detection of the heliopause and particle measurements of solar wind and the interstellar medium. Both Voyager probes are powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which have far outlasted their originally intended lifespan, and are now expected to continue to generate enough power to keep communicating with Earth until at least around the year 2020.

Year 2038 problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The year 2038 problem may cause some computer software to fail before or in the year 2038. The problem affects programs that use the POSIX time representation, which represents system time as the number of seconds (ignoring leap seconds) since January 1, 1970. This representation is standard in Unix-like operating systems and also affects software written for most other operating systems because of the broad deployment of C. On most 32-bit systems, the time_t data type used to store this second count is a signed 32-bit integer. The latest time that can be represented in this format, following the POSIX standard, is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038. Times beyond this moment will “wrap around” and be represented internally as a negative number, and cause programs to fail, since they will see these times not as being in 2038 but rather in 1901. Erroneous calculations and decisions may therefore result.

“Year 2038″ is frequently abbreviated to “Y2038″, “Y2K38″, or “Y2.038K” in software professionals’ jargon.

make - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computer programming, make is a utility for automatically building large applications. Files specifying instructions for make are called Makefiles. make is most commonly used in C/C projects, but in principle it can be used with almost any compiled language.

The basic tool for building an application from source code is the compiler. make is a separate, higher-level utility which tells the compiler which source code files to process. It tracks which ones have changed since the last time the project was built and invokes the compiler on only the components that depend on those files. Although in principle one could always just write a simple shell script to recompile everything at every build, in large projects this would consume a prohibitive amount of time. Thus, a makefile can be seen as a kind of advanced shell script which tracks dependencies instead of following a fixed sequence of steps.

Today, programmers increasingly rely on Integrated Development Environments and language-specific compiler features to manage the build process for them instead of manually specifying dependencies in makefiles. However, make remains widely used, especially in Unix-based platforms.

Lake Charles, Louisiana - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
tribes are known to have lived in the area of modern Lake Charles, the first European people, of French, Spanish, English, and Dutch descent, arrived in the 1760s. At the time, the area was covered with dense pine and baldcypress forests. Oral tradition holds that Jean Lafitte frequented Contraband Bayou and the lake before and after the War of 1812.

M. and Mme. LeBleu of Bordeaux, France were the first recorded Europeans to settle the area around 1781. The area they settled is now known as the LeBleu Settlement. Charles Sallier married LeBleu’s daughter, Catherine. The Salliers built their home on the shell beach where Lake Charles now stands. Afterwards, the lake became known as “Charlie’s lake.” By 1860 this area was called “Charles Town.” Many of Charles Sallier’s descendants are buried in Sallier Cemetery, near St. Patrick’s Hospital.

The Rio Hondo, which flowed through Lake Charles, was later called Quelqueshue, an Indian term meaning “Crying Eagle,” and still later, Calcasieu. On March 7, 1861, Lake Charles was incorporated as the town of Charleston, Louisiana.

The growth of the city was fairly slow until Captain Daniel Goos, a Frisian by birth, came in 1855. Goos established a lumber mill and schooner dock, now called Goosport, and promoted a profitable trade with Texas and Mexican ports by sending his schooner down-river into the Gulf of Mexico. Until the arrival of Goos, a man named Jacob Ryan dominated the lumber industry. Between 1817 and 1855, the timber provided by Longleaf Pines and Baldcypress remained the primary industry.

Jacob Ryan convinced the state government to move the parish seat to Lake Charles from its former location at Marion, which was about 8 miles upriver. Later that year, Ryan and Samuel Kirby transferred the parish courthouse and jail by barge to Lake Charles, which was at that time still called Charleston. Six years after the city was incorporated, dissatisfaction over the name Charleston arose. On March 16, 1867, Charleston, Louisiana, was incorporated into the town of Lake Charles.

By the time of the U.S. Civil War, many English and northeastern Americans, along with a large influx of continental Europeans and Jewish people, had come to settle the area. Attitudes toward slavery in Lake Charles were mixed as slavery was secondary to business interests. Fewer than 5% of the population were slaves. The citizenry finally became involved in the war, and young men of local families went to serve the Confederacy.

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Pinnacle Entertainment opened their first riverboat casino in the Lake Charles area in May 2005. The name of the resort, L’Auberge du Lac, comes from the French for “The Lake’s Inn.” The casino includes an 18-hole, championship golf course designed by Tom Fazio, several dining venues, a spa and salon, a pool area complete with lazy river, and several retail stores. It employs over 2000 citizens.

Lake Charles suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Rita, which struck the town early September 24, 2005. On September 22, Mayor Randy Roach ordered a mandatory evacuation of Lake Charles, and approximately 90% of the residents evacuated prior to the storm. Evacuees were asked not to return for 48 hours, due to the wind damage and flooding. There was extensive damage to the city’s electrical grid as some areas took as long as three weeks to restore power. Many apartment residents had to be evicted because of the mold caused by the hurricane.

As part of the city’s recovery from Hurricane Rita, elected officials proposed a plan to renovate the downtown area to make it more pedestrian-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing. Charrettes were held presenting architectural concept drawings and ideas of what downtown Lake Charles could look like in future years. Of primary concern was quality and affordable housing to help revitalize the area, and at the same time provide more housing for the housing shortage in the last few years. A parish-wide ballot initiative to increase sales and property taxes for 20 years to fund this proposal and numerous local road projects was rejected by taxpayers on July 15, 2006.

On June 20, 2006 a Citgo Petroleum Plant located in Westlake released between 15,000 and 18,000 barrels of oil into the Calcasieu Ship Channel. The United States Coast Guard was called in to contain the spilled oil which flowed down the Calcasieu River; closures of many waterways included the Calcasieu River Channel and one mile of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. The Port of Lake Charles remained closed for some time after the disaster due to contamination.^[1]

Oil prices surged to over $74 per barrel in part due to the Citgo spillage. The Calcasieu Refining Co., which normally processes 765,000 barrels a day, was at low levels weeks after the accident.^[2]

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of 2000, there were 71,757 people, 27,974 households, and 18,015 families residing in the city. The population density was 689.7/km² (1,786.6/mi²). There were 31,429 housing units at an average density of 302.1/km² (782.5/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was:

• 50.23% White
• 46.82% African American
• 0.23% Native American
• 1.07% Asian
• 0.03% Pacific Islander
• 0.47% from other races
• 1.15% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.40% of the population.

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A substantial portion of the population affiliates itself with Judaism. Notably, there is an atheist group as well. Particular elements of Voodoo are recognizable in the area; namely, Hoodoo, as one can spot jars filled with animal organs placed around graves and hanging from trees in the pauper cemetery on Broad Street.

This is my webhost…

DreamHost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DreamHost is a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar. It is the web hosting branch of New Dream Network, LLC, founded in April 1996 by four undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, and now hosts over 400,000 domain names (19th-ranked[1] web host in the world) on a network of Linux-based servers.

DreamHost is also an ICANN-accredited domain registrar. It used to operate the .la country code top-level domain, the country code for Laos which is being marketed as a domain for Los Angeles. It stopped operating it in February 2006 because it reportedly received very few customers.

Emacs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Commands

From the Unix shell, a file can be opened for editing by typing “emacs [filename]“. If the filename you entered does not exist a file will be created with that name. For example “emacs xorg.conf” will edit the xorg.conf file in the current directory, if it exists. However, Emacs documentation recommends starting Emacs without a file name, to avoid the bad habit of starting a separate Emacs for each file you edit. Visiting all files in a single Emacs process is the way to get the full benefit of Emacs.

In the normal editing mode, Emacs behaves just like other text editors: the character keys (a, b, c, 1, 2, 3, etc.) insert the corresponding characters, the arrow keys move the editing point, backspace deletes text, and so forth. Other commands are invoked with modified keystrokes, pressing the control key and/or the meta key/alt key in conjunction with a regular key. Every editing command is actually a call to a function in the Emacs Lisp environment. Even a command as simple as typing a to insert the character a involves calling a function–in this case, self-insert-command.

Some of the basic commands are shown below. More can be found at List of Emacs commands. The control key [Ctrl] is denoted by a capital C, and the meta or alt [Alt] key by a capital M.

Delta encoding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Delta encoding is a way of storing or transmitting data in the form of differences between sequential data rather than complete files. Delta encoding is sometimes called delta compression, particularly where archival histories of changes are required (e.g., in software projects).

The differences are recorded in discrete files called “deltas” or “diffs”, after the Unix file comparison utility, diff. Because changes are often small (only 2% total size on average), delta encoding greatly reduces data redundancy. Collections of unique deltas are substantially more space-efficient than their non-encoded equivalents.

(Delta encoding should not be confused with Elias delta coding).

Perhaps the simplest example is storing values of bytes as differences (deltas) between sequential values, rather than the values themselves. So, instead of 2, 4, 6, 9, 7, we would store 2, 2, 2, 3, -2. This is not very useful when used alone, but it can help further compression of data in which sequential values occur often. IFF 8SVX sound format applies this encoding to raw sound data before applying compression to it. Unfortunately, not even all 8-bit sound samples compress better when delta encoded, and the usability of delta encoding is even smaller for 16-bit and better samples. Therefore, compression algorithms often choose to delta encode only when the compression is better than without. However, in video compression delta frames can considerably reduce frame size, and are used in virtually every video compression codec.

Concurrent Versions System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CVS uses client-server architecture: a server stores the current version(s) of the project and its history, and clients connect to the server in order to check-out a complete copy of the project, work on this copy and then later check-in their changes. Typically, client and server connect over a LAN or over the Internet, but client and server may both run on the same machine if CVS has the task of keeping track of the version history of a project with only local developers. The server software normally runs on Unix (although at least CVSNT server supports various flavors of Windows and Unix), while CVS clients may run on any major operating-system platform.

Several developers may work on the same project concurrently, each one editing files within their own working copy of the project, and sending (or checking in) their modifications to the server. To avoid the possibility of people stepping on each other’s toes, the server will only accept changes made to the most recent version of a file. Developers are therefore expected to keep their working copy up-to-date by incorporating other people’s changes on a regular basis. This task is mostly handled automatically by the CVS client, requiring manual intervention only when a conflict arises between a checked-in modification and the yet-unchecked local version of a file.

If the check-in operation succeeds, then the version numbers of all files involved automatically increment, and the CVS server writes a user-supplied description line, the date and the author’s name to its log files. CVS can also run external, user-specified log processing scripts following each commit. These scripts are installed by an entry in CVS’s loginfo file, which can trigger email notification, or convert the log data into a web-based format.

Clients can also compare different versions of files, request a complete history of changes, or check-out a historical snapshot of the project as of a given date or as of a revision number. Many open-source projects allow “anonymous read access”, a feature that was pioneered by OpenBSD. This means that clients may check-out and compare versions with either a blank or simple published password (e.g “anoncvs”); only the check-in of changes requires a personal account and password in these scenarios.

Clients can also use the “update” command in order to bring their local copies up-to-date with the newest version on the server. This eliminates the need for repeated downloading of the whole project.

CVS can also maintain different “branches” of a project. For instance, a released version of the software project may form one branch, used for bug fixes, while a version under current development, with major changes and new features, forms a separate branch.

CVS uses delta compression for efficient storage of different versions of the same file. The implementation favours files with many lines (usually text files) - in extreme cases individual copies of each version are stored rather than a delta.

Monolithic kernel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A monolithic kernel defines a high-level virtual interface over computer hardware, with a set of primitives or system calls to implement operating system services such as process management, concurrency, and memory management in several modules that run in supervisor mode.

Even if every module servicing these operations is separate from the whole, the code integration is very tight and difficult to do correctly, and, since all the modules run in the same address space, a bug in one module can bring down the whole system. However, when the implementation is complete and trustworthy, the tight internal integration of components allows the low-level features of the underlying system to be effectively utilized, making a good monolithic kernel highly efficient. In a monolithic kernel, all the processes such as the filesystem management run in an area called the kernel mode.

More modern monolithic kernels such as Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris can load executable modules at runtime, allowing easy extension of the kernel’s capabilities as required, while helping to keep the amount of code running in kernelspace to a minimum. Nevertheless, this feature must not be confused with the hybrid kernel architecture.

Superman (1978 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Superman (also known as Superman: The Movie) is a 1978 superhero film based on the fictional DC Comics character Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Richard Donner directed the film, which stars Christopher Reeve as Superman, as well as Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Marlon Brando (who was given top-billed credit), Ned Beatty, Valerie Perrine, Glenn Ford and Jackie Cooper. The film depicts the origin story of the character from being infant Kal-El of Krypton, to his teenage days in Smallville. In addition he takes up the secret identity of mild mannered reporter Clark Kent in Metropolis, and falling in love with Lois Lane. To make conflicts even more is the villainous Lex Luthor, who sets a dire plot that will ultimately face consequences for Superman

The film was initially conceived as far back as 1973 by Alexander Salkind, his son Ilya and fellow partner Pierre Spengler. The project went through various directors (most notably Guy Hamilton) and scripts by Mario Puzo, David Newman with wife Leslie, and Robert Benton before given the directorial job to Richard Donner, who brought in Tom Mankiewicz for further rewrite work. Locations during the shoot included Shepperton Studios, Canada, New York City and New Mexico. Due to the film’s excessive budget, tensions rose between Donner and the Salkinds, to which it was decided to finish filming Superman while Superman II was already 80% finished. This would eventually give birth to Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.

Superman was released to positive reviews and a box office success. Some critics found analogies similar to Jesus, which Mankiewicz claims were set purposely as he himself finds the character to be a symbol of Christ. It was this film that sparked and inspired the birth of modern comic book movies with its use of high-budget special effects in comparison to the low-budget films, serials and TV series’ that had been produced before.

Sudoku - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sudoku (数独, sūdoku?) listen (help·info) is a logic-based number placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9, only one time each (that is, exclusively). The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid.

Completed Sudoku puzzles are a type of Latin square, with an additional constraint on the contents of individual regions. Leonhard Euler is sometimes incorrectly cited as the source of the puzzle, based on his work with Latin squares.[1]

The modern puzzle was invented by an American architect, Howard Garns, in 1979 and published by Dell Magazines under the name “Number Place”.[2] It became popular in Japan in 1986, after it was published by Nikoli and given the name Sudoku, meaning single number. [3] It became an international hit in 2005.

Latin square - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Latin square is an n × n table filled with n different symbols in such a way that each symbol occurs exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. Here is an example:
begin{bmatrix} 1 & 2 & 3 \ 2 & 3 & 1 \ 3 & 1 & 2 \ end{bmatrix}

Latin squares occur as the multiplication tables (Cayley tables) of quasigroups. They have applications in the design of experiments and in error correcting codes.

The name Latin square originates from Leonhard Euler, who used Latin characters as symbols.

A Latin square is said to be reduced (also, normalized or in standard form) if its first row and first column are in natural order. For example, the Latin square above is reduced because both its first row and its first column are 1,2,3 (rather than 3,1,2 or any other order). We can make any Latin square reduced by permuting (reordering) the rows and columns.

Freon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Freon is DuPont’s trade name for its odorless, colorless, nonflammable, and noncorrosive chlorofluorocarbon and hydrochlorofluorocarbon refrigerants, which are used in air conditioning and refrigeration systems. Freon is also used as an inhalant drug for its intoxicating properties.

[edit] History

They were initially developed in the early 20th century as an alternative to the toxic gases that were previously used as refrigerants, such as ammonia, chloromethane, and sulfur dioxide. Freon, in this case dichlorodifluoromethane, was invented by Thomas Midgley, Jr. with co-inventor Charles Kettering.[1] Each Freon is designated by a number; for instance, Freon-11 is trichlorofluoromethane, while Freon-12 is dichlorodifluoromethane. In the 1990s, most uses of Freon were phased out due to the negative effects that chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons have on the Earth’s ozone layer.

David Shore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
is a Canadian-born writer, best known for his work writing and producing in television. A former lawyer, Shore became known for his work on Family Law and NYPD Blue. Shore also produced many episodes of the hit cult television series Due South, before creating a show of his own, House, M. D.

Hugh Laurie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE (born 11 June 1959) is an English actor, comedian, writer, and musician. Laurie reached fame in the United Kingdom as one half of the Fry and Laurie double act, with friend and comedy partner Stephen Fry. Since 2004 he has become known to international audiences as Gregory House, protagonist in the American television drama, House.

Compact Cassette - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. Although it was originally intended as a medium for dictation, improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications.[1] Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. Between the early 1960s and early 2000s, the cassette was one of the two most common formats for prerecorded music, first alongside the LP and later the Compact Disc.[2] The word cassette is a French word meaning “little box.”

Compact Cassettes consist of two miniature spools, between which a magnetic tape is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second pair when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette or by having the machine itself change the direction of tape movement (”auto-reverse”).

Data compression - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computer science and information theory, data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits (or other information-bearing units) than an unencoded representation would use through use of specific encoding schemes. For example, this article could be encoded with fewer bits if one were to accept the convention that the word “compression” be encoded as “comp.” One popular instance of compression with which many computer users are familiar is the ZIP file format, which, as well as providing compression, acts as an archiver, storing many files in a single output file.

As with any communication, compressed data communication only works when both the sender and receiver of the information understand the encoding scheme. For example, this text makes sense only if the receiver understands that it is intended to be interpreted as characters representing the English language. Similarly, compressed data can only be understood if the decoding method is known by the receiver.

Compression is useful because it helps reduce the consumption of expensive resources, such as hard disk space or transmission bandwidth. On the downside, compressed data must be decompressed to be used, and this extra processing may be detrimental to some applications. For instance, a compression scheme for video may require expensive hardware for the video to be decompressed fast enough to be viewed as it’s being decompressed (the option of decompressing the video in full before watching it may be inconvenient, and requires storage space for the decompressed video). The design of data compression schemes therefore involves trade-offs among various factors, including the degree of compression, the amount of distortion introduced (if using a lossy compression scheme), and the computational resources required to compress and uncompress the data.

FM broadcasting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
FM broadcasting is a broadcast technology invented by Edwin Howard Armstrong that uses frequency modulation (FM) to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio.

MP3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is an audio encoding format.

It uses a lossy compression algorithm that is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. An MP3 digital file created using the mid-range bitrate setting of 128 kbit/s results in a file that is typically about 1/10th the size of the digital data found on an audio CD.

MP3 is an audio-specific format. It was invented by a team of European engineers at Philips, CCETT (Centre commun d’études de télévision et télécommunications), IRT and Fraunhofer Society, who worked in the framework of the EUREKA 147 DAB digital radio research program, and it became an ISO/IEC standard in 1991. The compression works by removing certain parts of sound that are deemed beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people. It provides a representation of pulse-code modulation — encoding audio in much less space than straightforward methods, by using psychoacoustic models to discard components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner. This is quite different from the principles used by, say, JPEG, an image compression format, which are purely frequency domain based.

Monosodium glutamate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monosodium glutamate, sodium glutamate, flavour enhancer 621, EU food additive code: E621, HS code: 29224220 (IUPAC name 2-aminopentanedioic acid. Also known as 2-aminoglutaric acid), commonly known as MSG, Ajinomoto, Vetsin, or Accent, is a sodium salt of glutamic acid. MSG is a food additive and it is commonly marketed as a “flavour enhancer”.

Although traditional Asian cuisine uses flavour-enhancing ingredients which contain high concentrations of MSG, it was not isolated until 1907. MSG was subsequently patented by the Japanese Ajinomoto Corporation in 1909. In its pure form, it appears as a white crystalline powder; when dissolved in water (or saliva) it rapidly dissociates into sodium cations and glutamate anions (glutamate is the anionic form of glutamic acid, a naturally occurring amino acid).