On Monday 03 May 2010, Rodger Donaldson wrote: > On Sun, May 02, 2010 at 11:20:04AM -0700, Alan Ackerman wrote: > > OK, I will display my ignorance and ask. What is "Entropy" in Linux? > > I know a little bit about entropy in the second and third laws of > > thermodynamics. But I don't see what that has to do with Linux. > > Wikipedia actually has a a decent overview (and a horribly in-depth > discussion): > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_entropy > > "In layman's terms, information entropy is the same as randomness. A > string of random letters along the lines of "fHJZXpVVbuqKbaazaaw" can > be said to have high information entropy, in other words large amounts > of entropy:" > > And this gem: > > "The inspiration for adopting the word entropy in information theory > came from the close resemblance between Shannon's formula and very > similar known formulae from thermodynamics." > > http://www.merrymeet.com/jon/usingrandom.html is quite an interesting > read, too.
And for how Shannon's work can lead to a Theory of Everything see an interesting review in The Economist: http://www.economist.com/culture/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15949137 HTH -Robin -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Robin Atwood. "Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there ain't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst" from "Mandalay" by Rudyard Kipling ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
