News from Planet OS-88: 2008

Unix - Linux - Distro related jokes

ROTFL! There are some really kickass comics from KDE forums:
http://forum.kde.org/best-unix-linux-distro-related-jokes-t-19993.html
Enjoy :D

[SOLUTION] Google Treasure Hunt - Primes

Here comes the II. quest from Google Treasure Hunt. Maybe it sounds very simple, and algorithm what we've (Szakál Károly (ftnkaresz /at gmail /dot com) and I) used isn't so difficult, but after 3 hours of hard-coding, what we got? A full stack error with 2GB RAM. ;)

Find the smallest number that can be expressed as
the sum of 3 consecutive prime numbers,
the sum of 9 consecutive prime numbers,
the sum of 253 consecutive prime numbers,
the sum of 781 consecutive prime numbers,
and is itself a prime number.

For example, 41 is the smallest prime number that can be expressed as
the sum of 3 consecutive primes (11 + 13 + 17 = 41) and
the sum of 6 consecutive primes (2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 = 41).

Recursion is very bad thing in programming. It isn't requires deeper analysis of problems, there is enough to make good type definitions, a good algorithm with some recursive calls and return statement and finally there recursion will solve the problem for you. Okay! :)
The main goal of Data Structure and Algorithms is how to solve problems without recursive calls, and how to avoid the whole recursion.
The first solution made without recursion in programming language C. The main part of this program is an infinite while loop, what terminates itself if the right prime sum found:


while(1) {
     switch (r) {
      case 0: result=PrimSum(previousPrime,1063,&previousPrime);
              ix=0;
              nextPrime=2;
              r=sum(nextPrime,1063,result);
              break;
      case 1: ix++;
              if (!(ix<5)) { return 0; }
              nextPrime=2;
              r=sum(nextPrime,array[ix],result);
              break;
      case 2: r=sum(nextPrime=NextPrim(nextPrime),array[ix],result);
              break;
     }
 }

Finally, our number is: 6304483.

The full sorce code:


#include 
#include 
#include 
//4355977//d9062d
const int array[]={1063,309,183,137,5};
int ix=0;

int nPrimSum(int,int);
int PrimSum(int,int,int*);
int isPrime(int);
int sum(int,int,int);
int NextPrim(int);

int main()
{int result, r=0;
 int previousPrime=2, nextPrime=2;

while(1) {
     switch (r) {
      case 0: result=PrimSum(previousPrime,1063,&previousPrime);
              ix=0;
              nextPrime=2;
              r=sum(nextPrime,1063,result);
              break;
      case 1: ix++;
              if (!(ix < 5)) { return 0; }
              nextPrime=2;
              r=sum(nextPrime,array[ix],result);
              break;
      case 2: r=sum(nextPrime=NextPrim(nextPrime),array[ix],result);
              break;
     } //switch
 } //while

    return 0;
}
int isPrime(int xx) {
    double i;
    double a=sqrt(xx);

    for(i=2; i<=a; i++) {
        if (!(xx%((int)i))) return 0;
    }
    return 1;
}


int NextPrim(int pr) {
int i;
    for(i=pr+1; !(isPrime(i)); i++);
    return i;
}

int PrimSum(int min, int step, int *ePrim) {
int i,ret;
    for(i=min; !(isPrime(ret=nPrimSum(i,step))); i=NextPrim(i))
        ;
    *ePrim=NextPrim(i);
    return ret;
}

int nPrimSum(int min, int step) {
int i=0;
int numb=min, summ=0;

    while (i < step) {
      if (isPrime(numb)) {
            summ+=numb;
            i++;
      }
      numb++;
    }

    return summ;
}
//----------------------------------------------------

int sum(int min, int step, int sum_n) {
 int i=0;
 int numb=min, summ=0;

    while (i < step) {
      if (isPrime(numb)) {
            summ+=numb;
            i++;
      }
      numb++;
    }

    if (summ==sum_n) return 1;
    if (summ    if (summ>sum_n) { return 0; }
}

Hacking Google Image Search

I've just found and interesting thread on http://forums.opensuse.org/ about Google's image search. :)
So, to get started go to Google's site, and click to image search. Search for something popular (flowers, cars). When the pictures are displayed paste this code into your browsers address bar:

javascript:R= 0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI= document.images ; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i < DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math. sin(R*x1+ i*x2+x3)* x4+x5; DIS.top=Math. cos(R*y1+ i*y2+y3)* y4+y5}R++ }setInterval('A()',5); void(0)

Enjoy! :)

[SOLUTION] Google Treasure Hunt - Robot

Okay! Let's solve this programming problem without writing a single line of code. :)
A robot is located at the top-left corner of a 60 x 31 grid:

The robot can only move either down or right at any point in time. The robot is trying to reach the bottom-right corner of the grid.

Our robot can 30 times to step down and 59 times to step right, because it is staying on the first block (1, 1).
We can write down his way from location (1, 1) to location (60, 31) like this:
R - right, D - down.
RDRDDDRDDRDDRD......RDRRRDDDRDRD.
The only question is: how many different (unique) arrays we have from 59 R and 30 D?
Fill out a row with 59 R:
RRRRRRRRR........RRRRRRRRRRRR......RRRRRRRRRR and take 30 D to random places without repeating an already existing array. On more mathematical language, number of unique arrays (unique permutations) with length 59+30 from 30 D is exactly:

Comments are welcome! ;)

Gimp 3.0 RC

More Photoshopis for Photoshopers. But it's still Gimp. :)
There was a little discussion about Gimp, and his user-unfriendly attributes. Here i found this picture about 3.0 Release Candidate. The UI looks better... IMHO it is more professional. What do you think?

Another neerd test

I am nerdier than 87% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to find out!

Try out and take a comment with your scores. ;)

Google Treasure Hunt

Hi again here! First, sorry I have a couple of TODOs in the past few weeks around the university, tests, exams, etc. I have a lot of new things in my mind what I want to share with you. :) Are you heard about Google Treasure Hunt? An interesting programming challenge. The problems are not so easy, you need to find out a lot of things, not just the algorithms. We have two problems solved, I'll post here the solutions in the next few days. Maybe you can use it to something, or start your own Treasure Hunt account with two already solved problems. :)

Okay, let's get started. Here is the first question (maybe the shortest).

"A robot is located at the top-left corner of a 60 x 31 grid. The robot can only move either down or right at any point in time. The robot is trying to reach the bottom-right corner of the grid.
How many possible unique paths are there?
(Note: Answer must be an exact, decimal representation of the number.)"

ps.: If you have some mathematical background and one calculator then without writing a single line of code you can solve this problem in 5 minutes.
Good luck. Good Hunting. :)

Exposition about CERN and the LHC

My blog readers are probably discovered that I'm finished the blogging about the LHC. Yeah, it's broken, and they are fixing it at least for next spring. Nothing happens. My Google alert is reporting the same news on every day.
Here in Novi Sad, the Faculty of Science never sleeps! :) Some Students from The Department of Physics made an interesting exposition about CERN and the LHC. We heard a lot of new things and I saw some exclusive pictures about the collider, because one of our students was there together with a couple of another students from other countries.

From Exposition about CERN and the LHC

Microsoft Sinegija 2008 - Novi Sad

I haven't blogged since September. There is a lot of things what I have to say (write).
So, at last week I was on the Microsoft Sinergija 2008 in Novi Sad. Motto of this year was: “Where IT all comes together.” :) The program was very interesting, and it contained presentations boot for users, and programmers. Performers on the last day:
Cluster team from Kragujevac – Serbia. They was last year in Egypt on the final competition of Imagine Cup. Their application (FEAT) is based on social platform (Facebook). With this application you can report ecological event in your environment. They made also a markup language, EcoML and a Facebook addon for reporting these events. You can see more pictures in my Picasa gallery about their presentation.

From Microsoft Sinergija 2008

SMOR team from Serbia. They win the Serbian final on Imagine Cup twice in a row. With their applications LightsON and DriveON. DriveON is a car/traffic simulator program.. Driving experience is close to the realty. They made it with 6 projectors, some DirectX, C# and other stuff. It was very impressive.

Project Gemini. Also from Serbia. Project Gemini is an addon for Microsoft Excel. The core of this application is the SharePoint. It is a big server with 1/2TB memory, with a hundreds of processors for servicing users. Once if the user is connected to this SharePoint he can download a huge sized databases within a 4-5 seconds. They are using very extreme and fast compression. I never saw this before. On a laptop they are retrieved one table from some database with 23.000.000.000 rows within these 4-5 seconds. Yeah, It sounds impossible. :)
After these great presentations we have some dinner down in the Hall, ...and I've got a Microsoft badge yey! :)

Level +

The summer has been ended. I have a lot of fun with my friends & family, with my project, with openSUSE and KDE, thanks for everyone. From October 6.
I'm starting with the second year on my faculty, and I have only one exam left from the first year, yey! This year (mostly summer) was full with tech/science related events. First of all, the Large Hadron Collider, and his shut down after two weeks from the the first start...
I'm very happy to see, that KDE community is growing with every single day, together with openSUSE community. My project is heading forward too, after my summer exams I'm improved it a little bit, implemented some new features, fixed some bugs, etc, etc. If anyone interested in database-browsing with Java style, then visit the projects site: http://yami.googlecode.com/. The new Slipknot album All Hope Is Gone is out, and I'm very satisfied with, that's the music what I need ;).
Tomorrow I'll move to my second city Novi Sad, to start my studies. I hope, my second year on the faculty will be great, as this summer was. Thanks for all readers and visitor for following my blog, next time I'll be back with some tech related. :)

Our Nightmare

Maybe you have already heard about software patents. Tree years ago this attempt has been stopped, but... We need to "fight" for our rights and freedom again. Take a look to the site, and help us to stop the software patents!
http://stopsoftwarepatents.org/. The lawyers have no idea, what they are doing:

Though they face a groundswell of interest in stopping software patents their typical excuse is: "We don't grant software patents, we don't really know what software patents are." or "Why exclude software?" or "We just execute the law.".
http://stopsoftwarepatents.org/

Some quotes about the software patents:

"Software patents are hindering innovation. Patents should be granted when there is real innovation and real investment in innovation." —Niklas Zennström, CEO, Skype, Silicon.com

"Let me make my position on the patentability of software clear. I believe that software per se should not be allowed patent protection. […] We take this position because it is the best policy for maintaining a healthy software industry, where innovation can prosper." —Douglas Brotz, Adobe Systems, Inc.

"The Company believes that existing copyright law and available trade secret protections, as opposed to patent law, are better suited to protecting computer software developments." —Oracle Corporation

Large Hadron Collider malfunction and pizza defrosting?!

Our collider has been faced with several problems, during this week. The past week was full with hacker attacks, this week is to malfunction. Last Thursday the transformers of LHC that enables the cooling down of the instrument to the operating temperature (-273 Celsius degrees) broke down. They are replaced, but the LHC will be able to continue the testing in a few weeks. :(

I found a great video what explains, what exactly the Large Hadron Collider does:

Another interesting thing is that the discussion between the lead scientists is not the quest for the mysterious particle but how to defrost a pizza! :) A good way to show and explain for the everyday peoples, how is the LHC powerful. So if the energy of beam is 10 trillion watts, it will take just 30 nanosecond (billionths of a second) to defrost a pizza. Take care! While you are defrosting your pizza the beam need to circulate over the pizza. In the another case the beam would drill into your pizza.
Read the full story about defrosting here.

Quick Galaxy Dictionary for Dummyes

Guide to the Galaxy

CERN
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, located near Geneva on the Swiss-French border.

PARTICLE
An object which is sub-atomic – smaller than an atom – and has a definite mass and charge.

HADRON
A particle with mass, made up of smaller units called quarks that are bound together.

LHC CERN’s Large Hadron Collider that has been under development for 20 years.

PARTICLE ACCELERATOR
A machine used to accelerate streams of particles in a defined direction at high speeds.

COLLIDER
An accelerator in which two beams travelling in opposite directions are steered together to induce high-energy collisions between particles.

HIGGS BOSON
A theoretical particle which is thought to give matter its mass, known as the “God particle.”

The LHC should confirm whether it exists.

Source:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/south-wales-news/cynon-valley/2008/09/18/cynon-scientist-at-the-helm-of-the-big-bang-experiment-91466-21826441/

LHC owning in media

It became very famous within a short time. I'm a little bit disappointed with IT technicians work in LHC... In the last week there was a lot of news about hacking, attacking LHC's computer system, control panel, and website. Yeah, because it's famous, and dangerous. But, generally, why?! I mean, there is machine with over 9 billion $, it explorers your life, my life, our life, and they are attacking it. I think(hope) they want to point over the security bugs of their system. In this way this is OK. Even better when a "good" hacker replaces your website's banner with: you are hacked or something, or when a "bad" hacker playing with LHC's control panel. So you can start to fear. :)

Have some fun:

In the news you can read about the first black-hole created by the LHC. Yeah, it is a financial black-hole, with his 10 billion $. :)

...Large Hadron Collider has created a financial black hole so big that all the economies of the west will collapse into a deep depression that will make 1929's Black Tuesday look like a very trivial thing indeed...

Clifford Rutley

Read here the full story.

Black Tuesday:
The main bank companies are said to everyone, that their money is loosing from it's value with every single day. So, what the peoples did? They are grabbed out all of their money from these banks. What the banks did? They are called back their debts, and taxes from the peoples. It's worked exactly, as they are planned it. That was the world's biggest robbery.

For an everyday people like me, this week was more media-related than scientific. Sad :(

LHC

Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex.

It collides the opposing beams of protons with very high kinetic energy. The world's largest particle accelerator is used to explorer the limitations and the critical values of the Standard Model of particle physics. The LHC was built by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), near to Geneva (Switzerland). Map.

Why is the LCH so interesting for us?
With experimenting we can collect new informations about our world, we can get answers for the most annoying questions from physic. The collected data can be used in many ways, example in other sciences, like physic, chemic, medicine.

September 10, 9:00 AM. The beams were started and circulated over the LHC, and the first high energy collision is planned to October 21.

Nowadays the Large Hadron Collider become very famous, together with some paranoias about destroying the world, making black holes and, ... destroying the world, or simply destroying anything. As CERN reported, LHC is safe for testing, and will not endanger our planet. You can read more about the Safety of the Large Hadron Collider.

I'll try to track as fast as I can the major changes, news with LHC. If you want to read the latest informations add Google Alert by clicking here.

And of course if you are paranoiac, check the world's status at http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ :)

Some good news

KDE 4.1.1 is out!
The most important changes:

Significant performance, interaction and rendering correctness improvements in KHTML and Konqueror, KDE's webbrowser
User interaction, rendering and stability fixes in Plasma, the KDE4 desktop shell
PDF backend fixes in the document viewer Okular
Fixes in Gwenview, the image viewer's thumbnailing, more robust retrieval and display of images with broken metadata
Stability and interaction fixes in KMail

Kudos for the developers and for the community. KDE 4 is changed significantly since <4.0. The new Plasma technology is fast and very useful. At this time it has some screen corruptions with my GeForce Go 6100 card, but they are caused by nVidia's driver. Good news: nVidia is hiring programmers for linux driver development :).

More about KDE 4.1.1.

Chrome

Blehh... I was offline for more than 7 days. True nightmare.
There was some important changes in the open-source world, example Google's web-browser.

Chrome is another web-browser in the browsers war. It has tabs, like Mozilla, quick dial like Opera, and the other similar properties... As you can read on KDE related blogs, some things are missing from the announcement, example: they mention Apple's WebKit, Mozilla's Firefox but nothing about KDE/KHTML. Google is known about their great web-services, Gmail, Blogger, Google search, Picassa, iGoogle, my guess is that they have more complex plans than a new web-browser, maybe a platform or an operating system... And finally I've found some unfamiliar things in Terms of Service:

... By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. ...

Read more about this.
So, at this time Chrome have - at my browsers list. I hope they'll change the terms in future.

Geek Quiz

I've just made one Geek Quiz. Glad to hear - I'm not so geek. ;)

59% Geek

New results from 2008-12-06 :)

66% Geek

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

Kalzium

The truth is: Hmmm... I don't like chemic.
"I don't like chemic." - Just to clear out: I can say a lot of bad things about chemic instead of "I don't like". :)
I have studied it in elementary and in secondary school. Chemic was my nightmare.
Today I'm wanted to find some useful(free&linux) application about it,to my friend. After a quick search of the openSuse repositories somewhere in "Education" finally I found: Kalzium.

This program rocks. I'm browsed these molecular somethings for 30 minutes. I'm solved some functions (randomly of course), built some models, explored boiling/freezing point, etc. You can make even a 3D Rendering of molecular model. :0

If you have some experience in chemic you must to try it! It's amazing.

You can read more/download Kalzium from KDE - Education portal. http://edu.kde.org/kalzium/
BTW visit the Education portal, maybe you can find something useful about other sciences.

openSuse Promo DVD rocks!

Yesterday I've got my openSuse 11.0 promo DVD-s!
- The DVD cover rocks! -
They are with booth KDE and Gnome Desktop Environments. You can use them as Live DVD (without install - you can try out the system directly from your PC's memory), and you can install it.
You can order from Live DVDs here.

ACPI problem solved

Finally, my ACPI problem has been solved by an openSuse Guru on http://forums.opensuse.org.
You can read our discussion about here. I've got 181 views until now :)
So, running from battery is amazing thing, especially in my situation. I'm not used my ACPI functions (like battery, CPU frequencies) after openSuse 10.3 release (about >1 years years).

The Future of Video Games

Face recognition, high-quality animations - The End of Real Actors?!

For the full story visit this link:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/007483.html

Blue Screen of Death in Beijing - poor micro$oft

Beijing has decided to us "some stable" environment for the Olympics Games.
Yeah, of course, the winner is : micro$oft. As they said:

"Reports from China suggest that Microsoft's Silverlight is delivering exceptional streaming video for NBC's Olympic coverage. "

"The Olympics decided to use XP instead of Vista because it's more stable."

"Unfortunately, Microsoft also had the shame of the Blue Screen of Death afflict the opening ceremonies, with the BSoD up on the big screen for more than two hours during the ceremony."

Here is the link for the international tragedy. ROTFL.

I Feel Good...

The picture was taken on Sunday. Time for relaxing, and for Party! Linux, Java, Math, Beer, Coffee, Cookies.
I Feel Good...

Your OWN KERNEL.

Nowadays Linux distributions are coming with a built in and precompiled kernel. They are: making the connection between your hardware and software, controlling softwares and resources on your PC/Laptop, they doing everything what is must-to-be for your system.
They have some positive and negative side-effects.
Generally the Linux "newbies" are happy with the precompiled kernel - no command line, no work, everything is up and running automatically. Nice! And you save a lot of time. But! You can compile kernel for your own requirements.
Positive side-effects of the own compiled kernel are:

it may works faster then the precompiled
you can save a lot of memory by unloading processes what you don't need
you are getting complete control of your system
it is cool

Actually there are no negative side-effects, just some requirements. You need to know how to work under command line, how to compile, etc.
So i don't want to waste your time, here is the link for the best/easiest kernel compiling how-to what I ever read.
It has been written by snake1990, thanks a lot, open-source be with you!
How to compile your own Linux kernel for openSUSE.

The realy _first_ post

Hi there!
Lets get started with (b)logging. :)
You can read some things about me and my interests on the sidebar now. :)
The most important areas will be:

open-source development
open-source platforms
web development

If you are interested, visit again my blog, comment.. If you have some experience in Java visit my project: yami. Yeah, it is fully open-source! :) , and of course if you want to join to the project, do it, contact to me!
So, that was my first post, I hope it look so good in Blogger :).

News from Planet OS-88