Linux and Formula One

Formula One motor racing is no longer about famous car marques, its about precise science and using technology to shave another fraction of a second off a lap time, and Linux is playing a pivotal role in helping the race teams achieve this.

As a technical sport motor racing demands of its participants a close understanding of the technologies that can help them. F1 motor racing is probably second only to the aerospace industry in the application of aerodynamic simulation and wind tunnel technology. It is a testament to the rapid advance of Linux in high performance computing that most teams in Formula 1 have been using Linux systems in their aerodynamic and engine workshops for a number of years.

“Formula One is a product excellence business that’s all about innovation and technology,” says Jonathan Neale, the managing director of McLaren Racing. “We’re competing for first place in an environment where the difference between first and tenth is about 0.6 seconds, so we’re constantly seeking fractions of a second in performance improvement. On average we’ll make a change to the car every 20 minutes during the course of a season, and to do that, simulation is vital in making efficient changes to the car.” Back in the factory, McLaren uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis running on Linux on SGI Altix high performance computers to simulate and predict the car’s behaviour.

Motor racing wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time those daring young men diced with death and each other in their flying machines, with little more than grease blown overalls, a loose flying-helmet, oil-splattered goggles and a V8 engine between them and the oncoming road. The skill of the driver was everything.

Times have changed. Modern motor racing in the 21st century is a team sport, and the difference in performance between the front of the grid and the also rans is measured in hundredths of a second. Every year the cars get faster, the lap records come down, and the drivers and cars reach new limits of endurance and performance, despite a regular tightening of the rules for the sake of safety and increased competitiveness. Every new rule that is imposed to slow the cars down or level the playing field becomes a challenge for the designers, to readjust the vital balance of weight, material, power, downforce, grip, and traction.

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Shutdown Day 2008 is your opportunity to be part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the Internet. The idea behind Shutdown Day is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day on Saturday 3rd May 2008.

I think we can all agree that being asked to go without your computer for a day is a big ask, especially if you’re addicted to e-mail, IM’ing, surfing the web. But if you could find some other interesting activities to do for just a day other than sitting at your PC, you may discover something about yourself and your priorities.

Here’s a youtube video they produced, pitching the event:

Daniel Terdiman wrote on the “geek gestalt” blog at CNET, “I’m sitting here, reading my morning e-mail and what pops up but a press release for a new dating site that purports to be ‘exclusively for intelligent people.’ Called, wonder of wonders, IntelligentPeople.com, the site says that to sign up you must first ‘pass the IQ test required for admission.’” Terdiman continued, “Well, snark aside, this is an interesting notion, this dating site for smarties. I suppose it’s no surprise. After all, there are plenty of affinity networks out there already, social networks for people who went to this college, or who play that game or who like to dress up as giraffes. So why not throw dating and high IQs into the exclusivity mix? Of course, as anyone who’s ever dated a smart person knows, intelligence isn’t any kind of guarantee of a good date. Sure, smart people generally prefer to date other smart people because it probably makes for better conversation, and the potential earning power is greater. On the other hand, would you really want to date someone who would be inclined to limit their partner trolling to a site that restricts anyone who doesn’t pass an IQ test? Perhaps this was actually someone’s clever notion of how to wall off a really annoying demographic from the rest of the dating pool.”

Quoting from itnews

“A new dating site caters exclusively for “intelligent” people and requires potential members to pass an IQ test in order to sign up.

Mensa restricts membership to the top two per cent of the IQ bracket, but IntelligentPeople.com will include the top 15 per cent.

The site’s developers said that people with an IQ in this range are “highly intelligent” and communicate and interact best with other intelligent people. IntelligentPeople.com hopes to give these people the opportunity to meet and form relationships with similar individuals, regardless of location, education and social status.
“Intelligent people usually want a partner who is also intelligent. Everyone wants someone they can talk to,” said Trine Jensen, founder of IntelligentPeople.com. At general dating sites you have to spend time and energy sorting profiles to find the ones that match your criteria. At IntelligentPeople.com we already make that sorting for you.”

The IQ test required for admission is a multiple choice, pattern recognition test consisting of black and white images and is designed to test intelligence while minimising cultural or educational biases. The site also has a more general community section designed to help members meet other people with high IQs, find a business partner or make new friends.”

Here’s a neat poster to help you visualize all of the top-level domains in the world…

At the end of every URL and email address is a top-level domain (TLD). Although .com is the world’s most popular TLD, it is far from alone. There are more than 260 TLDs in use around the world, most of which are country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). The Country Codes of the World map includes 245 country codes, which encompasses all United Nations countries as well as numerous islands and territories. Each two-digit code is aligned over the country it represents and is color coded with the legend below for quick and easy reference

Link, they’re $30 each plus shipping

Source: BoingBoing

It is one of those catchy heading you deliberately create to grab attention. (So is the case with the latest Microsoft Architecture Journal). I strongly recommend budding architects to read this article. I believe this is one artifact (the Architecture Journal) that MS churns out that carries unbiased views.

“The role of an architect in software development has come under attack of late. On software projects, the title Architect is often ambiguously defined and the value provided by architects is not easily quantifiable. The perception that architects live in an “ivory tower” disassociated from the realities of delivering a software solution contributes to some of the animosity toward those of us with the title.

This article presents a defense of the practice of architecture in software development. It defines the qualities of an effective architect and describes the skills required to succeed in this profession. The article examines widely held perceptions of architects and some of the mistakes that architects make which contribute to negative perceptions. Ultimately, the intent is to show the value good architects bring to a software development effort.”

We do need Architect, if only everyone understood and agreed on what an architect does.

What do architects really do? What are their roles and responsibilities?

1. Defining the architecture of the system
All the usual technical activities associated with design. Understanding requirements, qualities, extracting architecturally-significant requirements, making choices, synthesizing a solution, exploring alternatives, validating them, etc.; For certain challenging prototyping activities, the architects may have to use the services of software developers and testers.
2. Maintaining the architectural integrity of the system
Through regular reviews, writing guidelines, etc. and presenting the architecture to various parties, at different levels of abstraction and technical depth.
3. Assessing technical risks
These role is in support of project management, but on very technical risks, managers may not have the expertise to identify and
4. Working out risk mitigation strategies/approaches
5. Participation in project planning
6. Proposing order and content of development iterations
For many effort estimation aspects, or for the partition of work across multiples team, managers need the assistance of architects.
7. Consulting with design, implementation, and integration teams
Because of their technical expertise, architects are drawn into problem-solving and fire-fighting activities that are beyond solving strictly architectural issues.
8. Assisting product marketing and future product definitions
The architects have insights into what is feasible, doable, or science fiction and their presence in a product definition or marketing team maybe very effective. As you see, beyond item #1, many activities involve some other party: project management for example, and are not merely focused around the architecture, the design, the architectural prototype.

We need also to keep in mind that the good architects should bring a good mix between domain knowledge, software development expertise, and communication skills. Once we identify (and possibly refine) the long list of what we expect the architects to be doing, the next question is: how do we keep a good balance between all these activities. How do we avoid the temptation to always, day after day, week after week, solve the most urgent problem, or the most interesting problem, or extinguish the latest fire? (The squeaky wheel syndrome) Or conversely bring forward the question: do we have the right people with the right expertise in our current software architecture

Your thoughts? Please share your comments!

References

Kruchten, P. (1999). The software architect, and the software architecture team. In P. Donohue (Ed.), Software architecture (pp. 565-583). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers

“Going green” doesn’t have to be a daunting task that means sweeping life changes. Simple things can make a difference.

The contents of this list might not be new, but they bear repeating. Sometimes it takes a few reminders for things take root.

• CHANGE YOUR LIGHT
  If every household in the United State replaced one regular light bulb with one of those new compact fluorescent bulbs, the pollution reduction would be equivalent to removing one million cars from the road.Don’t like the color of light? Use these bulbs for closets, laundry rooms and other places where it won’t irk you as much.

• TURN OFF COMPUTERS AT NIGHT
  By turning off your computer instead of leaving it in sleep mode, you can save 40 watt-hours per day. That adds up to 4 cents a day, or $14 per year. If you don’t want to wait for your computer to start up, set it to turn on automatically a few minutes before you get to work, or boot up while you’re pouring your morning cup ‘o joe.

• DON’T RINSE
  Skip rinsing dishes before using your dishwasher and save up to 20 gallons of water each load. Plus, you’re saving time and the energy used to heat the additional water.

• DO NOT PRE-HEAT THE OVEN
  Unless you are making bread or pastries of some sort, don’t pre-heat the oven. Just turn it on when you put the dish in. Also, when checking on your food, look through the oven window instead of opening the door.

• RECYCLE GLASS
  Recycled glass reduces related air pollution by 20 percent and related water pollution by 50 percent. If it isn’t recycled it can take a million years to decompose.

• DIAPER WITH A CONSCIENCE
  By the time a child is toilet trained, a parent will change between 5,000 and 8,000 diapers, adding up to approximately 3.5 million tons of waste in U.S. landfills each year. Whether you choose cloth or a more environmentally-friendly disposable, you’re making a choice that has a much gentler impact on our planet.

• HANG DRY
  Get a clothesline or rack to dry your clothes by the air. Your wardrobe will maintain color and fit, and you’ll save money.Your favorite t-shirt will last longer too.

• GO VEGETARIAN ONCE A WEEK
  One less meat-based meal a week helps the planet and your diet. For example: It requires 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. You will also also save some trees. For each hamburger that originated from animals raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest have been destroyed.

• WASH IN COLD OR WARM
  If all the households in the U.S. switched from hot-hot cycle to warm-cold, we could save the energy comparable to 100,000 barrels of oil a day.Only launder when you have a full load.

• USE ONE LESS PAPER NAPKIN
  During an average year, an American uses approximately 2,200 napkins—around six each day. If everyone in the U.S. used one less napkin a day, more than a billion pounds of napkins could be saved from landfills each year.

• USE BOTH SIDES OF PAPER
  American businesses throw away 21 million tons of paper every year, equal to 175 pounds per office worker. For a quick and easy way to halve this, set your printer’s default option to print double-sided (duplex printing). And when you’re finished with your documents, don’t forget to take them to the recycling bin.

• RECYCLE NEWSPAPER
  There are 63 million newspapers printed each day in the U.S. Of these, 44 million, or about 69%, of them will be thrown away. Recycling just the Sunday papers would save more than half a million trees every week.

• WRAP CREATIVELY
  ou can reuse gift bags, bows and event paper, but you can also make something unique by using old maps, cloth or even newspaper. Flip a paper grocery bag inside out and give your child stamps or markers to create their own wrapping paper that’s environmentally friendly and extra special for the recipient.

• RETHINK BOTTLED WATER
  Nearly 90% of plastic water bottles are not recycled, instead taking thousands of years to decompose. Buy a reusable container and fill it with tap water, a great choice for the environment, your wallet, and possibly your health. The EPA’s standards for tap water are more stringent than the FDA’s standards for bottled water.

• BAN BATHTIME!
  Have a no-bath week, and take showers instead. Baths require almost twice as much water. Not only will you reduce water consumption, but the energy costs associated with heating the water.

• BRUSH WITHOUT RUNNING
  ou’ve heard this one before, but maybe you still do it. You’ll conserve up to five gallons per day if you stop. Daily savings in the U.S. alone could add up to 1.5 billion gallons–more water than folks use in the Big Apple.

• SHOWER WITH YOUR PARTNER
  Sneak in a shower with your loved one to start the day with some zest that doesn’t come in a bar. Not only have you made a wise choice for the environment, but you may notice some other added…um…benefits.

• TAKE A SHORTER SHOWER
  Every two minutes you save on your shower can conserve more than ten gallons of water. If everyone in the country saved just one gallon from their daily shower, over the course of the year it would equal twice the amount of freshwater withdrawn from the Great Lakes every day.

• PLANT A TREE
  It’s good for the air, the land, can shade your house and save on cooling (plant on the west side of your home), and they can also improve the value of your property.Make it meaningful for the whole family and plant a tree every year for each member.

• USE YOUR CRUISE CONTROL
  You paid for those extra buttons in your car, so put them to work! When using cruise control your vehicle could get up to 15% better mileage. Considering today’s gasoline prices, this is a boon not only for the environment but your budget as well.

• SECOND-HAND DOESN’T MEAN SECOND-BEST
  Consider buying items from a second-hand store. Toys, bicycles, roller blades, and other age and size-specific items are quickly outgrown. Second hand stores often sell these items in excellent condition since they are used for such a short period of time, and will generally buy them back when you no longer need them.

• BUY LOCAL
  Consider the amount of pollution created to get your food from the farm to your table. Whenever possible, buy from local farmers or farmers’ markets, supporting your local economy and reducing the amount of greenhouse gas created when products are flown or trucked in.

• ADJUST YOUR THERMOSTAT
  Adjust your thermostat one degree higher in the summer and one degree cooler in the winter. Each degree celsius less will save about 10% on your energy use! In addition, invest in a programmable thermostat which allows you to regulate temperature based on the times you are at home or away.

• INVEST IN YOUR OWN COFFEE CUP
  If you start every morning with a steamy cup, a quick tabulation can show you that the waste is piling up. Invest in a reusable cup, which not only cuts down on waste, but keeps your beverage hot for a much longer time. Most coffee shops will happily fill your own cup, and many even offer you a discount in exchange!

• BATCH ERRANDS
  Feel like you spend your whole week trying to catch up with the errands? Take a few moments once a week to make a list of all the errands that need to get done, and see if you can batch them into one trip. Not only will you be saving gasoline, but you might find yourself with much better time-management skills.

• TURN OFF LIGHTS
  Always turn off incandescent bulbs when you leave a room. Fluorescent bulbs are more affected by the number of times it is switched on and off, so turn them off when you leave a room for 15 minutes or more. You’ll save energy on the bulb itself, but also on cooling costs, as lights contribute heat to a room.

• GREENER LAWN CARE
  If you must water your lawn, do it early in the morning before any moisture is lost to evaporation. Have a few weeds? Spot treat them with vinegar. Not sure if you should rake? Normal clippings act as a natural fertilizer, let them be. If you’ve waited too long, rake by hand — it’s excellent exercise.

• PICNIC WITH A MARKER
  Some time in between the artichoke dip and the coleslaw, you lost track of your cup, and now there are a sea of matching cups on the table, one of which might be yours. The next time you picnic, set out permanent marker next to disposable dinnerware so guests can mark their cup and everyone will only use one.

• RECYCLE OLD CELL PHONES
  The average cell phone lasts around 18 months, which means 130 million phones will be retired each year. If they go into landfills, the phones and their batteries introduce toxic substances into our environment. There are plenty of reputable programs where you can recycle your phone, many which benefit noble causes.

• MAINTAIN YOUR VEHICLE
  Not only are you extending the life of your vehicle, but you are creating less pollution and saving gas. A properly maintained vehicle, clean air filters, and inflated tires can greatly improve your vehicle’s performance. And it might not hurt to clean out the trunk—all that extra weight could be costing you at the pump.

• RECYCLE UNWANTED WIRE HANGERS
  Wire hangers are generally made of steel, which is often not accepted by some recycling programs. So what do you do with them? Most dry cleaners will accept them back to reuse or recycle.

• CHOOSE GLASS BOTTLES OVER ALUMINUM CANS
  The energy required to produce a single 12 oz. aluminum can from virgin ore is enough to produce nearly two new 12 oz. glass bottles. So the next time you buy a six-pack of beer, opt for glass bottles over aluminum cans. The manufacturing energy conserved could power your television through two Sunday NFL games.

• TELECOMMUTE
  See if you can work out an arrangement with your employer that you work from home for some portion of the week. Not only will you save money and gasoline, and you get to work in your pajamas!

• KEEP YOUR FIREPLACE DAMPER CLOSED
  Keeping the damper open (when you’re not using your fireplace) is like keeping a 48-inch window wide open during the winter; it allows warm air to go right up the chimney. This can add up to hundreds of dollars each winter in energy loss.

• CUT DOWN ON JUNK MAIL
  Feel like you need to lose a few pounds? It might be your junk mail that’s weighing you down. The average American receives 40 pounds of junk mail each year, destroying 100 millions trees. There are many services that can help reduce the clutter in your mailbox, saving trees and the precious space on your countertops.

• CHOOSE MATCHES OVER LIGHTERS
  Most lighters are made out of plastic and filled with butane fuel, both petroleum products. Since most lighters are considered “disposable,” over 1.5 billion end up in landfills each year. When choosing matches, pick cardboard over wood. Wood matches come from trees, whereas most cardboard matches are made from recycled paper.

• LET YOUR FINGERS DO THE WALKING—ONLINE
  Consider if you really need a paper phone book. If not, call to stop phone book delivery and use an online directory instead. Some estimate that telephone books make up almost ten percent of waste at dump sites. And if you still receive the book, don’t forget to recycle your old volumes.

• GIVE IT AWAY
  Before you throw something away, think about if someone else might need it. Either donate to a charitable organization or post it on a web site designed to connect people and things, such as Freecycle.com.

• GO TO A CAR WASH
  Professional car washes are often more efficient with water consumption. If everyone in the U.S. who washes their car themselves took just one visit to the car wash we could save nearly 8.7 billion gallons of water.

• PLASTIC BAGS SUCK
  Each year the U.S. uses 84 billion plastic bags, a significant portion of the 500 billion used worldwide. They are not biodegradable, and are making their way into our oceans, and subsequently, the food chain. Stronger, reusable bags are an inexpensive and readily available option.

• FLY WITH AN E-TICKET
  The cost of processing a paper ticket is approximately $10, while processing an e-ticket costs only $1. In the near future, e-tickets will be the only option, saving the airline industry $3 billion a year. In addition to financial savings, the shear amount of paper eliminated by this process is commendable.

• DOWNLOAD YOUR SOFTWARE
  Most software comes on a compact disc, and more than thirty billion compact discs of all types are sold annually. That’s a huge amount of waste, not to mention the associated packaging. Another bonus to downloading your software is that it’s often available for download at a later date when you upgrade to a new computer or are attempting to recover from a crash.

• STOP YOUR ANSWERING MACHINE
  Answering machines use energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And when they break, they’re just one more thing that goes into the landfill. If all answering machines in U.S. homes were eventually replaced by voice mail services, the annual energy savings would total nearly two billion kilowatt-hours.

• SKIP THE COFFEE STIRRER
  Each year, Americans throw away 138 billion straws and stirrers, enough to make a giant straw statue—twenty times taller than the Statue of Liberty! But skipping the stirrer doesn’t mean drinking your coffee black. Simply put your sugar and cream in first, and then pour in the coffee, and it should be well mixed.

• FIND A BETTER WAY TO BREAK THE ICE
  When a big winter storm heads our way, most of us use some sort of ice melter to treat steps and sidewalks. While this makes the sidewalks safer for people, it may pose a hazard for pets who might ingest these products. Rock salt and salt-based ice-melting products can cause health problems as well as contaminate wells and drinking water. Look for a pet-safe deicer, readily available in many stores.

• USE COTTON SWABS WITH A PAPERBOARD SPINDLE
  Some brands of cotton swabs have a paperboard spindle while others are made of plastic. If 10% of U.S. households switched to a paperboard spindle, the petroleum energy saved per year would be equivalent to over 150,000 gallons of gasoline.

• PAY BILLS ONLINE
  By some estimates, if all households in the U.S. paid their bills online and received electronic statements instead of paper, we’d save 18.5 million trees every year, 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and 1.7 billion pounds of solid waste.

• STOP PAPER BANK STATEMENTS
  Some banks will pay you a dollar or donate money on your behalf when you cancel the monthly paper statements you get in the mail. If every household took advantage of online bank statements, the money saved could send more than seventeen thousand recent high school graduates to a public university for a year.

• USE RECHARGABLE BATTERIES
  Each year 15 billion batteries produced and sold and most of them are disposable alkaline batteries. Only a fraction of those are recycled. Buy a charger and a few sets of rechargeable batteries. Although it requires an upfront investment, it is one that should pay off in no time. And on Christmas morning when all the stores are closed? You’ll be fully stocked.

• SHARE!
  Take what you’ve learned, and pass the knowledge on to others. If every person you know could take one small step toward being greener, the collective effort could be phenomenal.

Link by Link: He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work). A professor has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a given subject, turn them into books, printed on demand or delivered digitally.

Philip M. Parker has written some sophisticated software for auto-assembling books about various technical subjects, and has “written” more than 200,000 of them. He claims he’s going to do romance novels next:
Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one. ..

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”

Perusing a work like the outlook for bathmat sales in India, a reader would be hard pressed to find an actual sentence that was “written” by the computer. If you were to open a book, you would find a title page, a detailed table of contents, and many, many pages of graphics with introductory boilerplate that is adjusted for the content and genre.

Link