FOSS meets ENG

Techkriti brings back fond memories. Techkriti is the annual technology fest at IIT-Kanpur (y'no the place where they figured out how to decide if a number is prime in a theoretically fast way).

That was one fabulous event I actively took part in during my undergrad days. A perfect mix of all kinds of technology. I was there in its early days of infancy; if I remember correctly the first prize for the software contest in my first year there went to a graphical calculator program in Tcl/Tk. By the time I left it was hugely popular and there participants from all over India. I was one of the organizers for Tech Olympiad in my final year. It was equally fun to come up with challenging problems where various concepts tie in together. The participants loved it.

This year Techkriti is even more exciting. I read in the news and blogs about how FOSS is catching up in the subcontinent. This time they are organizing a FOSS event for Techkriti, probably for the first time. I am hoping the event becomes a success, though the schedule page is a bit empty now. Beagle Xesam adapter author Arun and Web interface dude Nirbheek are among its organizers, so I am sure I will get first hand information about all the exciting things that will happen (how about a hackfest for Dashboard ;-).
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I will end with two simple brain-stormers.

The first one is of mathematical type, my favourite: Show that any 5 consequtive numbers will always contain some number which is prime to the other 4 numbers.

The second one relates to programming (somewhat), my hobby. You are given two arrays A1 of size m+n and A2 of size n where only the first m slots of A1 are filled with sorted integers (increasing order) and all the slots of A2 are filed with sorted integers (increasing order). You goal is to merge the two arrays into A1, in linear time (no block array copying or other tricks) but (here is the twist) using no extra space (i.e. no placeholder variable to hold temporary values).

Good luck!