Tue 25th Aug 2009 @ 22:37 2009: Luca Badoer

Luca Badoer (the driver who most rues the FIA's tendency to abbreviate driver names to the first three characters of the surname, so Lewis Hamilton is labelled HAM, Rubens Barichello is labelled BAR, etc) is now confirmed to be Ferrari's second driver at Spa this weekend.

So - you didn't do very well at the circuit the drivers seem to find a dull place to drive. So we'll put you in the car for what is quite possibly the best drivers' circuit of the season. I'm sure you'll do better than 17/20 there, Luca. Good luck!

Mon 24th Aug 2009 @ 22:08 2009: Free delivery on orders over £25 when collecting in store

I heard about Asda offering this.

Now it seems they've stopped, but 3 other places are offering free delivery - when collecting in store.



Have I missed something here?

Thu 20th Aug 2009 @ 22:24 2009: Linux Contributors

A recent study of Linux kernel (not userspace) contributions makes for an interesting read.

Greg KH, one of the three coauthors (and a Novell/SuSE developer), pointedly mentioned not so long ago, that Canonical don't give much back to the Linux kernel that they so enjoy the popularity of. I suspect that they give more to projects such as Gnome, than RedHat or IBM do - they have a different focus.

It is interesting to read different reports on these findings.

The Register wrote Linux: More contributors, more code - A lot more than just Linus Torvalds, choosing to emphasise that Torvalds' own contributions have dropped out of some of the statistics, though it is acknowledged that Torvalds' role these days is more that of a coordinator ("benevolant dictator") than code writer.

Computerworld went for Who Writes Linux? - Big Business, putting their emphasis on the fact "Linux isn't written by lonely nerds hiding out in their parents' basements. It's written by people working for major companies."

In other news - most Cheddar Cheese is not made in the Cheddar Gorge; there is only one company in Cheddar making Cheddar Cheese.
So what?

I would be very surprised if anybody involved in IT seriously held the view that most (or any?) Linux kernel development work was done in "parents' basements" in the first place.

It is interesting to note how many non-commercial contributions there are, though; 18.2% of changes are from contributors who actively stated that they are not doing the work on behalf of any corporation, and a further 7.6% were "unknown".
After that, RedHat claimed 12.3%, IBM and Novell 7.6% each, Intel 5.3%, "Consultant" 2.5%, and Oracle 2.4%.
That's on the 2.6.11-2.6.30 timescale; from 2.6.24-2.6.30, we see an increase of individual contributors. "None" goes from 18.2% to 21.1%, RedHat drop to 12.0%, IBM and Novell drop to 6.3% and 6.1% respectively; Intel grow to 6.0%, "Unknown" drop to 4.2%, and Oracle grow to 3.1%. The report notes that better research has helped to reduce the amount of "unknown" contributions.

It is interesting to see how much RedHat and Novell (the two major financial beneficiaries of Linux) contribute to the kernel.

There has been controversy over Canonical's (Ubuntu's) lack of contribution, but they are far more focussed on the user experience; it would be strange if they put more Linux Kernel code back than the Debian distribution upon which Ubuntu is based.

It would be interesting to know how many of the "None" and "Unknown" are working on behalf of a particular distribution. Presumably many of them are working on Debian or similar less "official" distributions. Others will be working for the benefit of the community, to scratch their own itch, or to improve their skills and/or CV.

Tue 18th Aug 2009 @ 16:13 2009: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to apologize for the prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death

The Register is reporting on a petition for a posthumous apology to Alan Turing

Alan Turing was the greatest computer scientist ever born in Britain. He laid the foundations of computing, helped break the Nazi Enigma code and told us how to tell whether a machine could think.

He was also gay. He was prosecuted for being gay, chemically castrated as a 'cure', and took his own life, aged 41.

The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing for his treatment and recognize that his work created much of the world we live in and saved us from Nazi Germany. And an apology would recognize the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended this man's life and career.

Sun 9th Aug 2009 @ 23:53 2009: McLaren "lessons learned"

McLaren have posted a series of 4 5-minute YouTube posts on Turning MP4-24 into a grand prix winner. A fairly humble set of articles, going over how they have addressed the situation of their initial poor performance for the first half of the season, back up to finally winning their first (possibly only?) race of 2009.