Does Windows have that?

Sometimes I wonder, on seeing some wonderful new feature in Linux, whether Windows possesses the same feature. The feature this time, was dynamic ticks, that headline grabbing, gut-wrenching (atleast for 2.6.21) patch that allows Linux to save a lot more power than your Windows laptops. Or does it? I mean, if Windows has that feature, then Linux has just "caught up", and I can't claim advantage.

Thanks to Kernel Comparison: Linux vs Windows -- whose motto is "Everything you wanted to know about your kernel, (but were afraid to ask)" -- I now know that Windows does not support dynamic ticks.

Useful reference that.

An Open Source Google Base

I think Google Base is far too good an idea to see only an implementation from Google, accessible only through their APIs.

Is there an open source clone?

Or wanna build one? *grin*

At the very least, it'd require the following components:

1. A frontend to convert and store the XML data into the backend. See the "* Feeds" reference documentation for the formats.
   
2. A query engine to understand and execute the URL query syntax. At high-speeds. This is the hard part. See also: Query Lang Specification.
   
3. A mechanism to store data in such a way to enable high-speed lookups as well as support all those different types of data. This is the very hard part, in my humble opinion.

Think of it, at a minimum, as a way of putting an URL query mechanism to an existing database like PostgreSQL. We could probably take it from there.

What's the use? Well, the web could do with a database service that can do everything Google Base can, but without any Google-specific idiosyncracies. Plus, it'd be compatible with Google Base!

Unlike most of my projects, this one is not so well thought out, as you can probably see from the fact that I don't even have a name for this project yet. Suggestions?

Why FOSS is Better, Yet another Case Study

Recently developers at Intel released a tool called PowerTOP. For users familiar with top on Unix systems, this tool is similar, except it displays information on programs that are "waking" up the CPU often. What does this mean? To cut a long story short, it means you can now identify which programs are interrupting a CPU's sleep, and determine if that interruption could have been handled in a better way, letting the CPU sleep longer. That way, battery power could be saved.

Why is this tool a good example of Free Software at work? Not only did the developers create this tool, they also identified many free/open source software programs where things could be done better. Because the source was available, they were even able to make patches -- or modifications -- available so that battery life was extended by "an hour or more!" This is amazing. Imagine doing this on your insert-favorite-proprietary-operating-system here. It'd take years for the OS vendor to get it, then the programmers to get it, and then for them to get together and do it.

Why is this on my blog? I use liferea, a feed reader that manages my RSS feeds, and the latest release has this cryptic changelog: "This release decreases CPU power consumption for laptop users". My life is already better, thanks to PowerTOP.

Oh yeah, bonszai says, "Thank you, Intel!"

Summer Surprise

This is a PicoPeta Simputer...you are assimilated!


blob version 2.0.5-pre2 for PicoPeta Simputer

Copyright (C) 1999 2000 2001 Jan-Derk Bakker and Erik Mouw

Simputer platform Copyright (C) 2002 Vivek K S, PicoPeta Simputers Pvt. Ltd.

blob comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; read the GNU GPL for details.

This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it

under certain conditions; read the GNU GPL for details.

Memory map:

  0x01000000 @ 0xc0000000 (16 MB)

  0x01000000 @ 0xc8000000 (16 MB)

Loading blob from flash . done

Loading kernel from flash ... done

Autoboot in progress, press any key to stop ..

Starting kernel ...


Uncompressing Linux............................................ done, booting the kernel.


Simputer login: root
[root@Simputer /dev]$cat /proc/cpuinfo /proc/meminfo
Processor       : Intel StrongARM-1110 rev 8 (v4l)
BogoMIPS        : 127.38

Features        : swp half 26bit fastmult

Hardware        : Picopeta-Simputer
Revision        : 0000
Serial          : 0000000000000000
        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  31494144 19243008 12251136        0  1429504  9195520
Swap:        0        0        0
MemTotal:        30756 kB
MemFree:         11964 kB
MemShared:           0 kB
Buffers:          1396 kB
Cached:           8980 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB

Active:           3452 kB
Inactive:        11716 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:        30756 kB
LowFree:         11964 kB
SwapTotal:           0 kB
SwapFree:            0 kB

[root@Simputer /dev]$

Saturday, May 12.