Hi,

I have downloaded the linux source code for version 0.0.1 from http://lxr.linux.no/.

I just wanted to get started on reading and trying to find out what each one of the files are doing. Where do I start off. I am not quiet comfortable in semaphores or operating system stuff like that.

Any help will be welcome.

Thanks.

Last week, I went for the ‘First Day First Show’, as any tamil film fan, to the release show of ‘Dasavatharam’ in Albert Theatre at 8. The film unveiled with Kamal speaking something on ‘Butterfly effect’ and ‘Chaos Theory’. From then, I wanted to know what are those terms and what significance they play in that film. In this post, I try to figure it out. I may not come out with the actual answer, but still a try.

What has Chaos Theory to do in the magnum opus Kamal starer ‘Dasavatharam’?

Before going into details of its implications, just for the sake of completeness, lets see what Chaos theory is? Wikipedia quotes it as

In mathematics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose state evolves with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

This is best explained as ‘Butterfly effect’. Imagine a butterfly flipping its wings. If a butterfly flipping its wings is a part of a system where a tornado is forming, and it happens that this butterfly flipping is an initial condition in the tornado formation, then according to chaos theory, this butterfly flipping its wings could have far reaching implications, such as to change the course of the tornado, say the direction. Though this may seem too odd, this is what the chaos theory says.

Coming to the discussion on how this fits in the movie, The film starts in the 12th century where a vaishnavite is tied to Lord Vishnu statue and drowned into the sea. In the world (system) and this event of drowning (butterfly flipping its wings) occurs well before the Tsunami hit India (tornado). According to the chaos theory, Kamal getting drowned occurred in the initial condition so that it created implications much latter so as to move the plates deep in the sea, causing a Tsunami on Dec 26, 2004. If the initial condition was something else than Kamal getting drowned, then the effect would have been different and a tsunami would not have occurred.

In the film, they show a buttefly fluttering after Govind (Kamal) delivers his speech, to explain the inspiration was drawn from the butterfly effect in the making of the film.

Hope I got it explained at least to some extent. I leave it open for discussion.

Recently I have been obsessed with getting a bicycle for myself. The reason behind this sudden attraction to the age old cycle is

1. I don’t know to ride a geared two-wheeler.
2. I am too lazy to walk.
3. No extra cost of fuel.

So, I and Soms, embarked on a mission to get a bicycle last Sunday. We had a cycle shop very near to our house in Kellys, Chennai. The cycle rate has also increased over the years. When my dad got me my first cycle, a Hercules MTB, it cost around 1800/-. The same model was not available. There were a lot of models to choose from. We stayed away from the ‘geared’ ones (Not because of my gear-o-mania with bikes, but because it cost a ransom). We settled on two nice ones from Hero and Hercules, two good companies making cycles.

One thing about the two cycles that we didn’t like was their height. I or Soms could not get our feets on the ground firmly, if we sat on the seat. There came a small boy (should be studying 7th standard) with his father. He was stubborn on getting the cycles we had chosen. He could not even get his legs on the pedals! From the conversation between the shop keeper and the boy’s father, we could find out that the boy had been pestering his dad for a ‘gear cycle’ for a long time, and he wanted it to show off to his school friends.

At last, we settled for Hercules Windracer retailing at Rs. 2700/-. It came with two months FREE service.

By this, we have pledged that we save earth by

1. not polluting the environment with smoke
2. conserving fuel usage by not using
3. making the earth greener.

So fellas, the take from this post is ‘Help save earth; as Rajesh and Soms’.