Open Source Alternative to Commercial Software

http://downloadpedia.org/Open_Source_Alternative_to_Commercial_Software

My Ubuntu Sytem borke :(

I spent a scary night yesterday trying to fix my Ubuntu installation. I was a victim for the bug related to libc6. The problem is that after updating the system, the new libc6 package was broken and it rendered the system in a total mess :((

Almost every single application is depending on the standard C library (glibc/libc6/GNU C Library). The fact that the libc6 is not functioning means the system is now totally unstable! Error message of the sort 'null pointer reference' began to show everywhere. I can't start any kind of terminal. Even logging into the Virtual Consoles failed and just thrown some 0x777FFD... addresses on me. I had no access to any package manager and I cannot undo the buggy installation. Even starting a browser to search for the problem failed! I had no other option but to restart and login using a liveCD.

After a lot of searching for the problem, I came across this bug description.
I have learnt a lot :)

To break the normal boot process you need to boot with the kernel option:
break=bottom

This puts you into the initial ram filesystem prompt (initramfs) just before starting the init-bottom scripts

To unpack a .deb archive:
ar -x *.deb

This leaves you with two tarball control.tar.gz and data.tar.gz. I used this to unpack the libc6 deb archive by hand and copy the necessary data.tar.gz files into their correct locations; thus replacing the buggy libc6 installation with a correct installation.

When you 'chroot' into your Ubuntu installation and get the message: 'Unable to execute /bin/bash: Permission Denied'. And even 'chroot /path/to/your/rfs /usr/sbin/apt-get' fails for the same reason. Then most probably the 'ld*' files in /lib/ and /sbin/ldconfig are not give the execute permission.
'chmod +x /lib/ld*' and 'chmod +x /sbin/ldconfig' corrected the problem.

Notice that ld* is the dynamic link loader and is needed by almost every executable file in your system. Also, 'ldconfig' is needed by dpkg, apt, aptitude and all package managers to be able to process your packaging system.

Imperas

Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) portal

http://imperas.demonweb.co.uk/

Best Free Software

Best Free Software ;-)
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2260070,00.asp

Probability ABC

Nice Quote from:
http://blogs.jhu.edu/sukye/2008/probability-abc/

``A priori probability is the probability estimate prior to receiving new information.

Posterior probability is a revised probability that takes into account new available information. For example, let there be two urns, urn A having 5 black balls and 10 red balls and urn B having 10 black balls and 5 red balls. Now if an urn is selected at random, the probability that urn A is chosen is 0.5. This is the a priori probability. If we are given an additional piece of information that a ball was drawn at random from the selected urn, and that ball was black, what is the probability that the chosen urn is urn A? Posterior probability takes into account this additional information and revises the probability downward from 0.5 to 0.333 according to Bayes’ theorem, because a black ball is more probable from urn B than urn A.

Bayes’ Theorem:
Bayes theorem is a formula for revising a priori probabilities after receiving new information. The revised probabilities are called posterior probabilities. For example, consider the probability that you will develop a specific cancer in the next year. An estimate of this probability based on general population data would be a prior estimate; a revised (posterior) estimate would be based on both on the population data and the results of a specific test for cancer.
The best way to understand the terms is to look at an example. Consider a screening test for intestinal tumors. Let Ai = A1 = the event “tumor present”, “B” the event “screening test positive” and “A2″ the event “tumor not present” with no further A’s.
If you have a tumor, the screening test has an 85% chance of catching it — P(B|A1) = .85. However, it also has a 10% chance of falsely indicating “tumor present” when there is no tumor P(B|A2) = .10. The probability of a person having a tumor is .02 P(A1) = .02.
If the screening test is positive, what is the probability that you have a tumor?
.02*.85/(.02*.85+.98*.10)
= .017/(.017+ .098)
= .148''

Take a look here:
http://www.jhu.edu/nthakor/

My Ubuntu :)

I'm currently using this server for my Ubuntu Hardy Heron upgrades:

ftp://ftpserv.tudelft.nl/pub/Linux/archive.ubuntu.com/

Survive for 18 seconds ;-)

http://www.iol.ie/~dluby/escape.htm

My 1st Post

This is a post, so that posts are not empty ;-)