Blog 5 - Team Frednet

This is a very interesting approach to a sophisticated project. Team Frednet wants to send a lunar rover to the moon using less money by using the open source model. I think that this is an excellent idea! It gets people from all around the world together to work on it, creating a community of people with common interests.

This could eventually advance space exploration technology by opening communication lines between many different scientists and engineers that may never speak or write to each other otherwise.

It also inspires young people to study robotics and space exploration, getting them to think about these things from a young age.

Another great things is that it gets this project away from bloated, publicly funded groups like NASA which means they will find new ways to cut cost and maybe make future space travel cheaper.

Check out their site, who knows maybe you can help too!

Blog 6 - Linux Kernels

The newest linux kernel is 2.6.x. The 2 stands for the version, the .6 stands for a major revision and the .x is the minor revision. Linux uses an odd - even numbered system. The odd numbers stand for the lastest development revision which may have bugs in it and the even numbers stand for the latest stable revision. This means that version 2.5 evolved into 2.6 after all of the errors and bugs have been worked out. Now there is even a fourth number such as 2.6.8.1 which shows there was a very minor change. The reason behind this is to get the development versions out there so they can be worked on by more people to get the bugs out. If you are not a developer and want the most secure version you should always go for an even numbered version.