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The Really Fair Scheduler
derrida writes "During the many threads discussing Ingo Molnar's recently merged Completely Fair Scheduler, Roman Zippel has repeatedly questioned the complexity of the new process scheduler. In a recent posting to the Linux Kernel mailing list he offered a simpler scheduler named the 'Really Fair Scheduler' saying, 'As I already tried to explain previously CFS has a considerable algorithmic and computational complexity. This patch should now make it clearer, why I could so easily skip over Ingo's long explanation of all the tricks CFS uses to keep the computational overhead low — I simply don't need them.'"
The lecturer is no native English speaker. So sometimes you have to replace the word 'base' with 'scheduler'. The clip shows deep insight into what Con Kolivas really feels is going on right now.
http://www.scene.org/redhound/AYB.swf/
So I'm in a stall at work, doing what I do, minding my own business. I hear the door open and some mountain of man with girth I can hear split the air around it canters past the stall, the floor screaming in agony as he takes one booming step after another into the stall next to mine. The sound of metal on denim screeches from a few feet away as an over-worked zipper is pulled down for what seems like forever. I can hear the dull flop of pants hitting the floor and the sickening crinkle of a positively planetary set of cheeks settling down onto the translucent wax paper of a seat cover.
I look down and see that the pale cerulean accordian once called a pair of jeans has snuck under the divider and into the floor of my stall. Just inches away from my foot is the screaming mouth of the left front pocket, edges frayed to tiny white strips like wispy teeth of some long-dead phantasm, doomed forever to a life of suffering and bondage as it looks out of the tattered denim from dull brass rivets. Hanging from this pocket is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen...his ID badge.
That's right, sitting on the floor staring up at me is a glossy picture of the mammoth in the next stall, blank expression seeming to stare into my very soul as a cacophony of dry, animal, grunts begin to issue from the next stall. The dull eyes of the ID badge taunt me as the bestial roars reach a crescendo and the sound of a splashdown fit for a space capsule fills my ears. The smell hits me then, my eyes transfixed on the half smile that seems to tell the story of this half-yeti's evil plans to subvert the world with the near-toxic levels of olfactory waste spilling into my stall.
To say the smell was swamp-like expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of swamps. This smell is like the great swamps of equatorial Pangeia, a festering hole of mud and rot that bakes in the sun in the fires when the world was young. The proto-swamp, from which all others sprang forth. In this smell I felt much like the dinosaurs, praying for blessed fiery death from the skies to free me from the agony of life. I believe I may have blacked out at this point.
I awake seconds later, the face staring into mine, to a sound I can barely describe. It is like someone has tied a subwoofer to flock of flying newts who flap their moist wings back and forth rapidly, the overarching bass note shattering their ears drums as they fall helplessly into a swimming pool full of tapioca pudding.
At this point I was finally done. I pulled my pants up with defeat in my eyes. Escape meant nothing anymore, my life had flashed before my eyes and some vital part of me had been ripped away in those few moments in the stall. I walked out of the stall, washing my hands while staring at what had once been my face in the mirror, eyes as dull as the brazen rivets of his jeans that told the story of a thousand other souls taken before they were ready. I walked out of the bathroom head down, ready to face this waking life a shattered and broken man.
Even now I stare into the world, unwilling to close my eyes lest the vision of the face flash once more before my eyes before death whispers its secret in my ear, taking my hand and leading me into the grey fields of eternity where I will forever wander, wondering always if life might have been different.