Slashdot Mirror
Open Source 'Sage' Takes Aim at High End Math Software
coondoggie writes "A new open source mathematics program is looking to push aside commercial software commonly used in mathematics education, in large government laboratories and in math-intensive research. The program's backers say the software, called Sage, can do anything from mapping a 12-dimensional object to calculating rainfall patterns under global warming."
Plus, its creators' heads can probably fit through normal-sized doorways.
but I thought Doc only just figured out the 4th.
Downloadable for Linux, Mac, and the other one:
http://sagemath.org/
As an international evil mastermind I have numerous plans which require advanced mathematical calculations and simulations to be performed (wiping out the human race, transmogrifying all kittens into war machines, etc - the usual kind of stuff).
I was wondering if the license of this software will allow me to achieve my goals without giving up my principles and secrets?
liqbase
I haven't had a chance to play around with this yet, but if it's as good a replacement for Mat* as R is for S+ and SAS, I'm quite happy to see it. I'm sad that I'll probably never be able to touch it unless I change my job as I've been told it would, quite literally, require an act of Congress to allow us to use anything other than SAS for our work. It will still be great to have access to a (hopefully) well documented library of algorithms that I can tear into, instead of trying to cobble together things that seem good to me at the time. Huzzah, hip hip, and all those fun things.
How does sage compares with other mathematics FLOSS like maxima, axiom and yacas? Another question is how come they opted to start a new project instead of contributing to other already established projects?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
yeah, but can it do pretty graphs? Everyone knows that's what people are looking for: pretty 3D graphs.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
The site is already very slow, so posting the actual links.
http://www.sagemath.org
http://sage.math.washington.edu/sage
http://modular.fas.harvard.edu/sage
http://www.opensourcemath.org/sage/
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/sage
http://sage.apcocoa.org
http://echidna.maths.usyd.edu.au/sage
http://sage.scipy.org/sage
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
"But if such a belief is true that "programs are mathematical algorithms" it should be provable."
Isn't it more a philosophical issue than a mathematics issue?
I think the difference may be execution vs. underlying operation. I'd say that software is an algorithm, but those that don't program it wouldn't know that.
The thing is...programs are algorithms at their core, but to the user...well, a UI makes all the difference. And often the UI is a product of creativity. I mean, take Google, for example. Visiting their page auto-focuses you to the search box. I find this *tiny* feature to be incredibly useful as I can leave my hands on the keyboard and continue typing, yet that's not something a computer program would have generated. The part that is exposed to the user requires creativity to conceptualize and implement. I don't think that should be completely free of any copyright restrictions.
Decent graphics software, apparently.
SAGE has been around for a long time. Will Stein's homepage seems to be down -- possibly slashdotted -- so I can't tell the exact date, but it's certainly been in existence at least since 2004.
I'd say yes.
.... calculate the slashdot effect.
This is just like GIMP trying to take on Photoshop. When you're a kid, Adobe prices seem so off-putting that you can't see why people wouldn't flock to the free alternative. When you're doing a real job involving print work, you simply don't think twice about paying Adobe for the required feature set, intuitive UI and better workflow.
So, kids will carry on pirating Adobe or paying a much reduced student price, then paying for it when they go into the real world; and the same goes for Maple, Matlab, Mathematica, or whatever.
Oh, yeah, the whole "open source" thing. Excepting core functionality, some of Mathematica and the majority of Maple is provided in source form. You can whine about needing peer review of implementation at all levels, but how many of you have inspected your CPU's microcode or circuit diagrams? At some point the line is drawn, and you combine a trust in the reputation of your vendor with the fact that usually you're prototyping and modelling. Things will be re-implemented and tested in many ways before your "final product" is out of the door (whether that's theoretical physics or an aeroplane).
I think a lot of us can agree that open source software like this should have been developed YEARS ago, so I'm glad to finally see a good alternative to MATLAB and Mathematica out, I was getting kind of tired of pirating my Mathematica software. Plus with the added benefit of being scripted in Python, I'm sure this project is going to take off like wildfire.
- Aetheral Research -
It includes maxima and a lot of other packages. It seems to me that Sage is an attempt to glue together the various existing free math packages using Python. I'm not sure what I think of it, it makes it somewhat confusing to get started with because it does so many different things.
sages goes in every field
posting anonymously for obvious reasons
You need to learn about the difference between copyright and patents.
There's a few left. Mainly the software for specialist things. CAD, graphics, audio, video.
Real video editing software, probably. Real finance software (corporate, not quicken!), real HR software - stuff that has to follow specific regulations on a schedule. And there really isn't a replacement for autocad that a mechanical or civil engineer, or an architect is going to run out and install. Medical applications would be difficult for some of the same reasons as the finance software. And real enterprise email/calendaring and the archiving/retention software to go with it. There aren't any open-source email packages that you could actually use to replace Exchange/GroupWise /Notes in a corporate, healthcare, government and even education. There are pieces, but nothing it would be worth your job to try to sell your organization on.
Blender is a user interface nightmare.
GIMP's no good for commercial artwork (Pantone swatches and CYMYK and whatnot)
I can't comment on Inkscape.
They're more "challenged" than a challenge to commercial programs.
Sage is interesting and has been around a while, but it isn't packaged by distros - probably because it requires lots of other programs (maxima etc) but modifies them all slightly.
Here is a full feature open source Visualization package. Though not quite the same as Sage, there are other options out there.
But I use Mathematica because it is full of functionality, fairly reliable, and has a very elegant programming paradigm. Also, as a student, it'll cost me $100-150, depending on where I live, for the lifetime of my studentship, assuming no site license; the kinds of business that run this software commercially really don't care too much about a $2500 license fee.
Free software isn't about price -- it is about freedom. One of the research groups at my university cannot use Mathematica since a few weeks because the license expired, and neither renewing the license nor contacting tech support has so far brought a solution.
Another no-go is that Mathematica 6 notebooks are not compatible with Mathematica 5 notebooks. Also, the unwillingness of Wolfram to timely fix bugs leading to wrong results is unacceptable. I could go on ranting like this, but recently I have completely switched to Maxima and have not regretted it.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Always sounded to me like saying that all works of literature are, are arrangements of words. And all words are public domain. The dictionary is prior art. So books shouldn't be copyrighted.
Algorithms IMHO are simply the words and sentences you use to make software, which is akin to a work of literature. At least it seems that way to me, anyways.
If we're going to beat software patents, it just seems like we should drop the algorithms argument because it seems a little flimsy.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It doesn't have to do with the boss. Certain industries require SAS. No, there's no way to hide the fact you didn't use SAS. You can do the work at first with another product, but you need to submit SAS code that allows others to reproduce results.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I am not personally involved with SAGE, but I know a little about it. Rather than being a totally new system in all respects (although there is certainly new code created for it) SAGE attempts to make use of the plethora of existing open source systems available already and provide a unified interaction environment for them. As it says above, SAGE takes aim at the functionality offered by commercial systems.
This is undeniably a practical approach that will benefit many research teams, and I am rooting for its success. My main concern with it is that by using a wide array of libraries/programs to cover broad functionality, it will become difficult to integrate results from one system into the computations of another. Different systems may make different default assumptions (sometimes very subtle ones) that other systems will not be aware of. Efforts like OPENMATH (http://www.openmath.org) that have attempted to define a protocol for exchange of mathematical information between systems have run into this before.
Unfortunately, any proper solution to that problem is likely to be even more work than re-implementing algorithms inside a single environment. A framework for a CAS that could handle such broad scope is a problem (Axiom probably comes the closest right now) so for problems that don't hit the more difficult situations SAGE will be very useful indeed, but it is something to bear in mind.
In the very long term, we need to integrate formal proof software concepts (ISABELLE, ACL2, COQ, etc.) with computer algebra systems in order to be able to trace any calculation back to its axiomatic roots at need - or, put another way, have the system be able to provide upon request correctness proofs of a result. There is a fair bit of literature on that and related topics, but it cannot be denied that the problem is an awesome one. In the meantime, SAGE is a very promising short term (practical) solution to real world problems.
SAGE's developers are also supporters of the idea of open source software in general, which is probably the most important aspect of the whole discussion: http://www.ams.org/notices/200710/tx071001279p.pdf
It may be argued that computers are not really an appropriate tool when truly "correct" mathematics must be relied upon. My response to that is that as problems of interest become ever more complex, limitations both of the human mind and the human life span will ultimately limit the problems we can solve unaided. The task for us now is to create a system we CAN trust to solve problems correctly, because someday we will have to trust it to solve problems we cannot handle. Some researchers would probably have a philosophical objection to that and define any problem human beings cannot solve and verify themselves as a problem where we will always be uncertain if it is really solved. The philosophical questions involved are fascinating for people who like that sort of thing. My take on it is such a system would be useful and is worth looking into.
SAGE is more pragmatic in its orientation, but that means for many (most?) people it is a project to watch and probably a product to use. Here's hoping they can build increased momentum!
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I don't think there are any FOSS spaceflight applications. Which is odd, I'd expect lots of people would be thrilled to be part of that.
Granted, the requirements for correctness are extreme. But I think open-source people could organize very good code reviews and tests. Properly organized, in the long run I think the risk of metric/imperial confusions, premature triggerings and the like would be much smaller with a FOSS approach.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Commercial software is IN INSELF a category that free software can not challenge. Because it's pretty hard to sell something and give it away for free at the same time...
Sage includes SciPy and NumPy so it can make use of all the functionality that they provide. While a majority of the developers are "pure" mathematicians, there has been a lot more interest / work on the numerical side of things as of late.
--Mike (a Sage developer )
This should be used in all free software, from Firefox to KDE and from bc to cp. The user should be able to have a more direct access to source code to encourage more people study it and hack it. If Firefox users could move their mouse over a button and right-click and select "view source" to see the actual source code generating the button or the called methods, perhaps more people would feel more inclined to contribute to free software.
At present, the two main math software packages are Maple and Mathematica. Mathematica is entirely closed source. With Maple, most of the source code can be viewed (though it is copyrighted and cannot be copied). This means that you can check the algorithms used in Maple, but not in Mathematica.
There are some packages that are called by Maple that are closed source. For example, Maple calls the NAG Numerical Libraries for a substantial amount of its numeric computations; the NAG routines are closed source, but they are widely agreed to be the best on the planet, and Maple decided to rely on them.
Sage is interesting, but its functionality is very limited. In the (very?) long term, though, Sage might well pose a challenge to Maple and Mathematica. But in the meantime, I expect to continue to use Maple.
Banking software for risk management like SunGard's Adaptiv (aka. Panorama). There are something like 4 commercial solutions worldwide and several in-house solutions developed by larger banks. .NET and are in fact a big reason for banks to switch to MS crapware.
The commercial packages are all based on Microsoft SQL server and
I'm told Blender's interface is only difficult until you climb the learning curve -then it starts to make sense and is very productive.
Quite often, an interface that is intuitive for a beginner is an untold frustration to an expert. It might even be argued that an interface that is too focused on beginners will tend to keep them beginners rather than rewarding increased learning.
I can't say from personal experience though - I've only done a couple simple models in Blender using very crude means. I found it acceptable, but clearly something you needed to spend time with to get the hang of. That's inherent in complex tasks.
The point here is not workflow or intuitive UI.
The point is, mathematics and other research rely more and more on computer algebra systems. Up to the point of including CAS code into proofs of theorems and other research paper. However the point of mathematical proof is that anyone with enough knowledge can follow it and verify it step by step. If commercial closed source software is part of mathematical proof, proof is becoming essentially unverifiable. Mathematical theorem become hostage of software owner. That is a step toward complete privatization of science.
On of the ugliest incident happens then owner of your favorite Mathematica Steven Wolfram claimed ownership of proof of CA rule 110 universalty and obtained a court order preventing researcer from the publishing the proof in the conference proceedings. To publish it as the Mathematica code in his books.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
SciPy/NumPy is a good alternative to MATLAB type stuff. It's no match for Maple, for example - and it's not trying to be. They serve different ends.
Beetle B.
Octave is part of Sage.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I highly agree.
/newtab buttons from my firefox interface and assigned the actions to my extra mousebuttons - it forced me to start using the shortcuts which now make me surf faster.
When I first started using the GIMP i despised it's interface, however MANY elements of it (combined with the focus on keyboard shortcuts) mean that I can work at a much faster pace now that I've "mastered" it.
The minimalistic interface approach is actually a great way to get productivity - thats why I've removed my back / forward
No kitty, this is my pot pie!
Luckily the vast majority of the companies, even the vast majority of the employment, falls in the small and medium enterprise segment. The less-than-ten-people businesses. There things work differently. And for those companies OSS is commonly good enough, and many fancy features are simply not used because they are too cumbersome. Like calendaring, I don't even use it for my personal work. Too inconvenient as it is tied to my computer.
One nice feature that Sage has is its web-based interface -- the Sage Notebook. This inteface was designed with the Google documents interface in mind in terms of sharing and collaborating on worksheets. The Sage notebook also provides a web-based interface to most every piece of math software out there (so long as you have it installed on your computer): Maple, Magma, Mathematica, Matlab, Axiom, Maxima, Octave, Macauly2, Singular, etc.. Or, in one workshhet, one can have one cell be a Mathematica cell while the next one be a Maple cell. This interface does not depend at all on the math functionality of Sage.
This is one area which could use some help from a web developers familiar with Python and AJAX -- a background in math is not needed at all. Eventually, we'd like to split off the interface into its own project since it pretty useful on its own.
--Mike
Took 5 seconds with google, mostly because I type slow and am on dialup
Nasa open source
Sadly yes, there is a type of very expensive commercial software who's market is unable to be challenged by free software.
That market is custom database design: it's where your company pays $10,000 per license of some "cutting-edge" VB6.0 front-end to a MS Access database file because it has been completely customized to their business model. They are rampant with bugs, bag programming procedures, and hidden [usually annual] costs.
Doesn't look like it's going anywhere either, until corporate purchasing mindsets evolve from "price = value".
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
I am a mathematician and shelling out a few hundred or even thousand bucks for software is not a problem. A problem is that there is that there is a gap in tools. There is one tool missing that would make math much more accessible. The tool an IDE. Most IDEs that exist for witting math are modeled after software development IDEs. But those do not at all parallel how mathematicians think or write. We end up with a lot of paper and books in higher math (post introductory undergrad level) that are written in plain text. Diagrams are very few and cross-references are often unintuitive. If there was a tool that allowed to write math as easily as code is written in vi (or emacs... please wait until Sunday morning for this flame war... that's what Sunday mornings are for), to create diagrams as easily as AutoCad creates mechanical drawings, that would realize that an item of text maybe best served with a commutative diagram (which it would immediately offer to draw) and that another part of the text is probably a bibliography reference, then math would be developed as well as software is. Basically, all the tools out there are still trying to give mathematicians the freedom to write anything that would write on paper. There is no tool that is really context-aware. If such a tool did exist, it would leave all the others in the dust. Cost would not matter. It would be to Mathematica what KDE is to Windows desktop. Perhaps, this is too much to ask for. Perhaps, a better start would be a language that captured the thought process of writing math the way that emacs captured the thought process of witting different types of text. And no TeX is not it. TeX only helps to typeset math to make it look pretty. It doesn't make witting math on a computer easier than witting it by hand.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I work in Europe, as a researcher, and two and three years ago, the Mathworks (the company behind Matlab) decided we weren't eligible to research/education prices anymore. They did the same with a bunch of other institutes (in Europe, I don't know about the US). We operate an experimental reactor, whose control is largely based on Matlab programs. Some of these were developed a long time and people left, or retired. There's a lot to be said about the way this was handled by our management, but that's the way it is. So, we had to admit we were screwed, having to pay the price. We met with the Mathworks representatives, and I have to say all I saw a bunch of arrogant jerks.
Anyway, since then, we've renewed our licences every year, and we've been looking for an alternative. We even tried to migrate the whole lab to Scilab but that didn't work out (mostly because of the limited capabilities of Scilab in scientific plotting and GUIs). Some of us use Python + Matplotlib (I'm a big fan), some (often the same people) use Octave. Although we've converted some individuals, we weren't able to find a software which could be used by everyone in the lab as a substitute to Matlab. This is frustrating, as the vast majority of people here use only a fraction of the capabilities of Matlab.
I for one, would be really happy if we had something to replace Matlab, be it Sage or whatever else...
I agree, and yes: I use this software. Albeit I use Blender badly..the rest I use extensively.
GIMP I can use like the back of my hand, replicating most work done in Photoshop..but every time I've tried to recommend it to a friend or co-worker: it ends in "this is too hard, I can't find anything". Alot of this could be blamed on new GIMP-users being so accustomed to Photoshop, but there is still a fair portion of blame on bad UI-design. I think I heard some time ago about a fork of GIMP specifically to create a more Photoshop-ish UI, but the name/link of it escapes me...anyone?
Inkscape is great, I have only 1 complaint, and that is it's inability to open native Adobe Illustrator file formats. Other than that, Inkscape is a truly top-notch vector graphics package.
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
One example that comes to mind is Scilab vs. Matlab. Scilab does everything my students need to do. On the other hand, the man pages are a nightmare if you aren't already a mathematician. If my students want to get some filter coefficients, Matlab is a lot friendlier and easier to use because the tools have a gui frontend.
If you're an expert, it doesn't matter whether you use FOSS or commercial. FOSS is often just as powerful. If you are clueful about math and programming, you don't need Photoshop or 3D-Studio. The problem is that most graphic artists shouldn't have to also have a math degree and a computer science degree.
Another example would be Ubuntu vs. Gentoo. It could be argued that Gentoo produces a much better installed system. On the other hand, it could also be argued that 99.99% of people are much better off with Ubuntu.
The success of Sage won't be determined by how powerful it is. As others have observed, it is largely a mashup of existing stuff. Its success will be determined by how easy it is to use. If someone can put together some decent documentation and a semi-intuitive UI, it will take off. Otherwise, I can't see much reason for most people to use it.
Theoretically no, but in reality probably yes.
There are some applications that are simply very difficult to make work in an open source or free software model. CAD software comes to mind immediately. Creating a CAD system is highly specialized, requires serious math skillz, and the end application is large and complicated (on par with operating systems or top tier database software) so a good team is required. There also are likely to be patent issues to work around as well. From a user's perspective changing CAD systems has VERY VERY high switching costs, require a LOT of training, and the user bases are quite small. Sure there are a few free/open-source CAD packages out there but they are toys compared with CATIA or ProEngineer or even AutoCAD. Don't get me wrong, lots of firms would love to not have to spend huge $ on an expensive 3D modeling package like CATIA. It costs a bloody fortune. But there just aren't enough programmers out there with the right skills and the itch to create a CAD package that will replace the commercial stuff any time soon.
Games seem to be another area where free software struggles to challenge commercial offerings. High development costs, small group of available programmers, requires artistic/creative skills not widely possessed by programmers, and other reasons besides.
Basically, the more specialized the software or the more artistic content required, the more difficult it seems to be to develop under a free model. Not impossible mind you, just more difficult; sometimes to the point where it is not practical even if it is theoretically possible.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Kitten are (...) impervious to all types of magic, including magic cast by flapjacks. Physical combat is ineffective againts them, so the only conceivable way to defeat a kitten is to trap it in a laundry basket.
Sources and further reading: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Kitten#Kitten_Feeding_Behaviour
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
The Mac PPC version seems to be amiss. During extraction, I noticed an .exe file (Wine routines?) but after completion, there was no Sage icon to click on, per the instructions. Might be a link to the wrong package?
I am so sick of people repeating that nonsense. Blender's interface is a JOY and a TREASURE.
May I ask what considerations were made with respect to the name? Give that Sage plc. manufactures accounting software, is this not liable to lead to legal problems, and possibly confusion?
Indeed, try looking at Maya's interface sometime. It is extremely clunky feeling. Even as a beginner, I liked blender's UI more.
Your criticisms stem from the inadequacies of the open source movement which casts aside software freedom in pursuit of a philosophy focused on developmental methodology. In fact you echo one of the points of that essay on how the two movements' philosophies differ irreconcilably: anyone who pushes aside software freedom will think a reliable and powerful non-free program is preferred to a less capable less reliable free program (free software being software we can choose to improve to make it reliable and powerful). If you were taking software freedom and social solidarity more seriously, you would realize how petty concerns about licensing costs are (free software advocates strongly push for making as much money as you can with free software) and how much more important it is to treat one's fellows as friends and neighbors. Part of this means not trapping your fellows into a monopoly for support, recognizing that no proprietor is truly interested in your project or your well-being as a user (except to the extent that leads to giving them more control), and that therefore settling for partial freedom is unwise.
And even within the meager realm of popularity (which is truly a secondary concern), we can see FLOSS is the primary choice on the server: email servers and web servers, for instance, are two major parts of what most people do on the Internet daily and they rely on FLOSS to make sure things are reliable. I see more people using OpenOffice.org and Firefox, among other desktop and client-side programs.
So no, pursuing software freedom respects the most important points. Free software addresses challenging and important considerations in society. A technocratic approach centered on development efficiency misses those points.
Digital Citizen
Quite often, an interface that is intuitive for a beginner is an untold frustration to an expert. It might even be argued that an interface that is too focused on beginners will tend to keep them beginners rather than rewarding increased learning. I've heard that a few times, and it's pretty much the defintion of a poor UI. Almost everything from the command-line to the most obscure submenu dialog is "effective" if you know exactly where to go and what buttons to push, and it "makes sense" only by familiarity. Apart from a few systems that just don't want to make complexity available (read: Gnome), most such systems can be used very effectively, if you can memorize fifty keyboard shortcuts or configure up your own shortcuts, favorites toolbar etc. Granted, you can't reduce away complexity but if you set users in front of your application, ask them to perform a task and they're all looking in the wrong place the UI sucks. No ifs or buts about it, that means it's not intuitive where the functionality is. And honestly... finding a way to let experts access advanced/obscure functions in an otherwise easy and intuitive interface is 2% of the job. Just admit you're too lazy to do the 98% of the job creating the easy and intuitive one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I knew they had a decent open source effort, just couldn't remember the URL off the top of my head, had to look it up again. Hopefully a little /. exposure will get them some more dev action, because, ya, FOSS is a good idea overall, space-or anything else.
3D parametric solid modeling. I.e., solidworks, pro/engineer, etc. I'm still waiting on a 'close to usable' open source alternative. And a Labview equivalent. OpenVI has started i think, but it's still pre-alpha
I think they should change the name.
Why don't people name software after dinosaurs? Come on t-rex, now how cool would that be :-D
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
You suggest optimizing for one quality of user interfaces- "discoverability". But that's certainly not the only user interface design objective. Asking about the user experience after the interface has been learned is quite appropriate, because that's the circumstance that the user will spend the vast majority of their time in, assuming they've stuck around past the learning phase.
The question of whether someone will stick around long enough to learn the software is less one of usability than it is one of marketability. I make no statement about the relative importance of usability and marketability.
I have the same problem with the name "sage" as I do with maxima: it is difficult to use google to find out what work other persons have done.
Results 1 - 10 of about 7,660,000 for maxima
Results 1 - 10 of about 8,890,000 for sage
Couldn't they have named it "famkserigj" or something unique? I never have this problem with Ogg Vorbis.
Your definition of a good interface is one that is easy and intuitive (98%) and then you contrast this to "advanced/obscure" expert functions (2%). You appear to define "effective" as "can be done by newbies without thinking". This bias is obvious in trying to link advanced with obscure. The best interface I've ever found for text editing, for example, is vim. It is certainly not easy and intuitive, but there is a systematic approach to the sequencing of keys (cw=change word, dw = delete word, 3dw deletes the next 3 words). Note that in terms of editing text, you can achieve a given sequence of characters using any text editor. So I'm not talking about "advanced/obscure" features so much as a way to do standard editing at an extremely fast rate. This is what makes someone who has spent the time mastering vi to say things like, "Oh my God, that will take you forever to do in notepad!"
It's still useful for people to know about it separately. Octave is in Debian and other distributions, SAGE is not.
The question of whether someone will stick around long enough to learn the software is less one of usability than it is one of marketability.
If they have the software downloaded and installed, the software was successfully marketed. If they don't stick around to use the software then that's a lack of usability. Blender has never kept me at my desk for more than a few minutes every time I've tried it. As far as me WANTING to know it, the desire is high (therefore it has been marketed properly.) The usability still sucks.
With all due respect, I've done CMYK separation in GIMP. No, it doesn't come with the default install, but it is too obvious an extension not to float around out there as a free download.
As far as I recall, all I did was google "gimp cmyk" or some such. Downloaded some gizmo that had to be placed into some directory. Had to download some profiles from Adobe or something. And then the rest "just worked". Total investment maybe 30 minutes of time.
Now when was the last time you tried to do something that wasn't built-in with a commercial piece of software and the fix was as easy as that?
As far as I can tell, that's where the value of F/OSS really lies. It's not the "price" (GIMP is only 'free' if your time is worthless) but the enormous flexibility that arises from letting anybody who cares modify (i.e. improve upon) the tool you're using.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Just stay away from iTunes or Quicktime, unless your diabolical scheme doesn't involve nuclear or chemical weapons. The kitten thing should be fine.
Houston, we got a problem here
"What is it Orion-3?"
We're trying to decelerate for lunar orbital insertion but when we try to fire the thrusters, a little box pops up that says "Null pointer dereference at 0x00045fe3342a"
"Wait, I'll check Sourceforge"
...
"Nope, looks like that's a new one. I submitted it through Bugzilla and changed the priority to '9'..."
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Not on Slashdot. We don't care. We don't like either one. So there...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
nt
That's my point. It IS hard to use, yet people still download and install it all the time. The marketing is doing its job, that has nothing to do with usability.
be challenged by free software? Games, for one. Where's the Free, polished alternative to or Smash Bros. or Fuzion Frenzy or Madden NFL (even with a Nonexistent Fictional League)? Why don't Free first-person shooters support four USB gamepads and a split screen, so that I don't have to buy three extra PCs for party guests?
It better have UI elements that are not frustrating to use and lots of good documentation, otherwise it's going down in the annals of time no matter if it can solve global warming. A Web-based product doing this? !? ... hopefully they've separated the domain logic from the UI and can map other UIs on top. That would help make it more ubiquitous.
I realize I don't have to hope -- I can look at the source code and this is a good thing.
But what is the goal of the marketing? To increase the consumption of bandwidth, or to put free software into actual use outside of an evaluation scenario? If a user downloads Blender, says "fuck it" after going through the first tutorial, and then goes and pirates something, what has anyone accomplished?
Blender is a UI for advanced users. It has very poor learnability, but I've heard it is a very good UI once you are used to it. I haven't seen any usability studies though, so it is just hearsay.
GIMP's no good for commercial artwork (Pantone swatches and CYMYK and whatnot)I have used GIMP for commercial work for years and it has been the best tool on the market for certain uses, especially large automated batch jobs that are beyond Graphics Converter. More recently, Pixelmator may have taken the title away from them, but to call GIMP "no good" in a commercial environment is just wrong. It is used a lot in certain segments, although it can't compete with Photoshop for one off photo touch-ups and that sort of thing.
I can't comment on Inkscape.Inkscape is pretty decent and a reasonable Illustrator replacement for many projects. The main drawbacks I have with it is for Visio type work it is not well suited, and support on the Mac (where realistically most pro graphic artists work) is very weak.
They're more "challenged" than a challenge to commercial programs.I disagree. Most of them are focused on different parts of the market than commercial competitors, but all of this software is probably the best for some uses.
Anyone know if any trouble is expected from The Sage Group over trademarks? (I.e. Sage 500, Sage Donations 50, etc.)
The Sage Group makes small to mid-market accounting solutions, and many of their products contain the name "Sage."
If this isn't a problem, can I make a cell modelling program and call it MicroSoft Modeller? (i.e. a micro-level modeller for soft tissue.)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why does it take 2 freakin Gig to install? What's in there, a high resolution feature-length documentary of the making of?
Since the Sage servers are being hit pretty hard, here are torrents for the files.
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-use_this_on_sage_dot_math-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-x86_64-Linux-debian.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian32-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian64-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-ppc-PowerMacintosh-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.5-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-rhel-32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15.tar.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-ubuntu32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
--Mike
I can't wait for this! Free the data, then free the tools!
There is F/OSS software being used in spaceflight. RTEMS is an Open Source RTOS that's being used in flight applications, for instance.
There ARE some practical issues, though..
1) flight software applications are usually not "ground up creations from scratch", but, rather, inherit a LOT of their code from previous go-arounds (it works, don't break it). That "known good code" might well be closed source
2) flight software might be subject to export controls and ITAR (i.e. it's a munition). The same software that might control a science probe to the moon could also control a re-entering ICBM warhead. (this is probably the biggest issue with releasing code)
3) In a schedule critical development, one might not to wait for a F/OSS developer to need to scratch that particular itch. So you have to pay a developer or contracting firm to develop the software. That firm may wish to use their (closed source) libraries, or might see some downstream profit potential from the development in other markets. That closed source profit potential might be orders of magnitude greater than what a space mission is willing to pay for the software.
4) Those F/OSS toilers in the bazaar might not want to work in the rigorous schedule and configuration control environment needed for flight-critical code development. Your Mars launch opportunity only comes once every 2 years or so.. no time to follow the latest interesting branch.
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-use_this_on_sage_dot_math-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.13-x86_64-Linux-debian.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian32-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-debian64-x86_64-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.4-ppc-PowerMacintosh-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-osx10.5-intel-i386-Darwin.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-rhel-32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15.tar.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-2.8.15-ubuntu32bit-i686-Linux.tar.gz.torrent
http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-vmware-2.8.15.zip.torrent
Also, see http://www.mwhansen.org/sage-torrents.html .
--Mike
...Abstractions.
And that Sage is not enough capable of handling above the subset it is intended for, to prove software is mathematical algorithms, as so many argue.
However, that doesn't mean algorithmic proof is not possible. Only that abstraction must be considered in the calculation proofs.
That is the question. What makes Matlab so great (for me at least) is that I can sit down and just work. I dont have to fight with the syntax. I dont have to fight with the documentation. What I dont like about Matlab is how closed off it is to other apps/libraries (the price is an issue too). A good, functional open source alternative could fix this.
However, I tried out Numpy/SciPy about a year ago and again about an hour ago after I saw this article. I was hoping Sage would provide an "intersection" of sorts for Numpy/SciPy/VTK/R/Octave/etc. At least, that was my major issue about a year ago. There was so much disconnect I spent more time reading documentation and Googling than anything else. Alas, today was the same thing all over again.
One of the most common things I do in Matlab is solve Ax=b. So I made my 'A' matrix (3x3), my 'b' vector (3x1) and tried a "linalg.solve(A,b)". No dice. I got 2 blocks of Python error messages (yes, I checked my matrix dimensions and made sure I was using Matrix and not an array). The "final" error was something about "an undefined shape attribute in my b vector". Uh... yeah. I played with it for about an hour or so and then deleted it.
What has been done so far has promise, I think. But it needs to mature a lot more. In its present state I was left slightly annoyed with trying unsuccessfully to do something as simple as least squares regression.
Again, this problem goes to the heart of the issue. I have to be able to focus on my work. Matlab has issues for sure. But when I dont know how to do something in Matlab, or I hit a snag, 90% of the time Im "back to work" in ~5-10 minutes max. I'll check it out again in a year or so. Until then, Im using Matlab. Sorry.
Small-to-medium generally tends to go up to the range of low hundreds. The less-than-ten people businesses won't account for a that large percentage of the total employment in most economies.
NX5 / solidworks is superior to autocad in basically a billion ways.
Autocad is nice for 2d sketches, and has 3d capability, but is behind the above two in a billion gazillion ways. If you could replicate even 1/10th of the features of NX5 with the powerful history editor you probably can get in on the ground level. It is the nicest thing to be able to swap in entirely different ideas on the same part during prototyping and FEA/CFD.
You are promoting reproducibility far beyond its practical reality. If an analysis program is shown to have severe defects, any paper whose analysis is tied to that package will come into disrepute, until either A) the analysis of the data presented is repeated with a different program (assuming the raw data remains available); or B) the whole experiment is repeated (possibly also bigger and better) and the conclusion is corroborated by independent research.
It would be nice to think that every research paper out there archives it's original data for all eternity, so that the analysis can be repeated by anyone who cares to do so at any point in the future, but this is not the world we presently live in.
In many cases, the raw data has privacy implications, and is quite a hassle to reliably and safely archive.
Science, in any case, does not depend upon reproducible analysis; it depends upon reproducible experimental protocols.
I am a huge believer that open source should set the precedent, where the data allows this, that the original data *is* archived, along with the tools of its analysis, so that past mistakes *can* be investigated at any point down the road. This doesn't come so much from the culture of science as you claim. It comes from the culture of openness and long-term accountability which tools like Sage promote.
Besides, in most cases it's a fiction that a calculation can be reproduced (by practical effort) at some distant point in the future. Platforms change, code experiences bit rot, essential libraries mysteriously vanish. TeX, in particular, is notable for bucking this trend, and not without a great deal of insularity in its design, which is the polar opposite of what Sage has set out to accomplish.
i've just installed it and the first thing i noticed is the google-docs/spreadsheed/notes-like interface. did they just copy it and removed the CSS or is there more behind? but anyway, would be very interesting to have google hosting this as an addition to their documents. online collaboration notebooks with that high level by them would be really interesting addition to their current stack of products (despite only interesting for a very small percentage of users, besides high school and college)!
...
and second the one big open source suite i'm missing is R (www.r-project.org) which would be a huge expansion in the field of statistics (data mining, analysis and so on) and visualization (ggplot2...)
Apple did some research years ago regarding using the mouse vs using keyboard shortcuts. As it turned out, people always tended to *think* using the keyboard was faster, but the clock showed that using the mouse was faster. The conclusion was that using the keyboard required active thinking ("what key do I press?" or in your vi example, "how many words do I need to delete? Three. Ok, that's 3 delete word, d, w, ok, '3dw'."), while the time spent moving the mouse to the menu (or selecting the three words and hitting 'delete') required little conscious thought, which made it feel like it took longer.
That's not to say the keyboard is always slower than the mouse, or anything like that. Just that the aversion to the GUI, or the reverence for the obscure-but-rational interface, is not borne out by experiment.
Sage makes me think of traditional turkey dressing. Mmmmm!
I'm somewhat familiar with the math programs noted. I'm very familiar with the statistics programs such as SAS and SPSS. The programs that require you to learn and use a scripting language do not get as much use in the lab, as opposed to those that have a GUI interface with most of the functions in pull-downs. SPSS has this benefit over SAS. Even better, SPSS records everything you do in its scripting langauge, in a log file. This permits you to cut and paste its (self-written) scripts, use search-and-replace to change the variable names as needed, and put together a script for analyzing a large number of similar things, without having to actually learn the language.
I had to learn SAS, strictly with its scripting langauge, as an undergrad. I never used it again. I got SPSS as a grad student, and when it came time to teach statistics, I taught it with SPSS. People had more trouble with the concepts than they did with the analyses, the opposite of the problems I and others encountered previously.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Yes, those are the ones I was alluding to.
Are you talking about applications that run on spacecraft, or astrodynamics programs like STK?
I would love to see an open-source STK alternative.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
However, just yesterday I needed to delete all but a few files (all similarly named). I'm immediately went to a GUI becuase my other option would have been to delete each one line by line or come up with some weird regex to match them.
They each have their benefits and I'm sure Apple's study showed the mouse was more advantageous for their goals and audience.
You got a point in there. Altho there are very good First-person shooter and rpg engines, there aren't any third-person 3D game engines that would allow us to make games like Castlevania LOI,Silent Hill, Prince of Persia, etc. etc. etc.
A framework like that would completely disrupt the game industry.
It's browser based, and you can try it online, so why are you asking?
Now, you come along and state that the keyboard is faster. You've never timed yourself (an assumption, but a fairly safe one). That makes your perception, at least, exactly that of the participants of the study. In other words, just *thinking* the keyboard is faster does not contradict the study. In fact, it's *exactly*in*line* with it.
Of course, that doesn't mean your perception isn't accurate. Just that it's been demonstrated that people tend to think the keyboard is faster, while it's been demonstrated that the opposite is, in fact, the case. It's only one study, however. I would be interested in more studies which target different aspects of computing. The keyboard does not always require "active thinking." I never said it did (hint: always, as alluded to above). Most keyboard shortcuts are muscle memory for me. That's probably part of the illusion. Muscle memory is things that you do automatically, without thinking (like typing on a keyboard, navigation in vi, etc). Things like deleting the next three words, or regex replacing, etc, are, by definition, *not* muscle memory. They can't be, simply because you have to build them in your mind each time. What you've really done, in most such cases, is remembered the keys to hit, but you can't just type them unconsciously (I'll grant "delete the next three words" if you were to type that a *lot* (I mean, that *exact* same key sequence, many times a day for many days), sort of like how you can type "the" without even realizing it once you've typed it so many times).
In general, aside from cut/copy/paste/print/close window/close program/switch task/switch program, most keyboard shortcuts are not muscle memory. They each have their benefits and I'm sure Apple's study showed the mouse was more advantageous for their goals and audience. That's a lame tact. It's always "implied" in such statements that Apple is trying to either promote the GUI, or is simply targeting computer newbies. This study was to find out how much the keyboard should be used in GUI programs over the mouse. In fact, I believe the Lisa made extensive use of keyboard shortcuts due exactly to the notion that this study, which came later, was meant to test.
Let's take it from the absurd angle: using the mouse for everything. Clearly, the keyboard is faster for typing words than the mouse would be. Some universal commands (mentioned above) are also *generally* faster, but the speed advantage isn't nearly as great. Once you start stacking commands together (vi, your file delete example), the mouse tends to be faster. During that transition, however, it's been found that the mouse actually becomes faster before it's perceived to be faster.
And to my original point. vi isn't faster than notepad *because* it uses the keyboard. It's faster *because* it can do more things automatically than notepad. If notepad used the exact same keyboard shortcuts and modality as vi *and* still allowed the use of the mouse, don't you think using notepad would be faster than vi, if for no other reason than for the things that the mouse can do (i.e., jump to a specific point in the text) would give it the edge?
and largely irrational distrust of any alternative offerings, whatever
the origin. Being "free" even adds greatly to the suspicion of FOSS within
their highly conventional outlook, wherein a high purchase price will naturally
equate with value. This kind of complacency represents as much a factor
in the rejection of FOSS as its putative inadequacy.
people who seldom "think twice" about purchasing commercial
software will tend to not "think twice" about much else, including their
own expertise and competency. I think your argument cuts both ways, but it a valuable contribution to this discussion. "You get what you pay for" is a popular yet narrow-minded view of the choices available to business and private consumers. One could argue equally that "you get more than what you give or share."
The point here is that a rational evaluation of resources should not be prejudiced by their source.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Speak not of what you do not know. I didn't say, "well defined ordering", I said, "well-ordered". A well-ordered set is a set in which every nonempty subset has a least element. The well-ordering theorem is equivalent to the axiom of choice, and to the Kuratowski-Zorn lemma.
What you meant to say, was that the complex numbers cannot be ordered in such a way that the ordering respects the standard metric on them. There are perfectly good orderings on the complex number. One might like "lexicographic" ordering, where a+bi < c+di if a < c or a = c and b < c. That's a great ordering. It just isn't useful for proving theorems that one might like, for example the squeeze theorem.
The mouse doesn't have enough buttons. You can't indicate quickly "search forward in this line to the next (or third) occurance of this letter", and you can't indicate quickly move down 3 lines. You can do these things *fast*, faster than you can reach the mouse. The mouse has to be delta_t_reachMouse + delta_t_doMenuCMD. If the key bindings allow you to finish the action before the delta_t_reachMouse, then the mouse can't be faster. Period. You also want to talk about actively considering the keys necessary. I grant you the mouse is more intuitive, and you can use it via invoking a different part of your brain. However, once you learn the key bindings, you don't think "how do i search", you just *do* it. I know key bindings that I can't explain, because I don't know exactly what they are until I go to use them. I have to put my hands out and see where they go. At that level, you are thinking about the edit and not the key strokes.
In regard to the Apple tests, I'd have to read them. I wonder if they were testing people who had serious experience with an application that is as well designed as the vi interface, or if they were testing newbies with something like notepad (where you can use key bindings to bring up menus, but there is no systematic way to sequence multiple cmds). Newbies will always be faster with a mouse. The question is, with training, could they increase their key stroke commands to a faster rate than one could train to be fast with a mouse. I'm not talking about advanced functionality (like regular expessions vs simple search) but in terms of 1) moving the cursor and 2) doing simple insertions and word changes.
If you've ever seen someone skilled at vi, the notion that a mouse could keep us is beyond comprehension. Its hard to follow the changes by eye, looking over their shoulder.
Vim *is* graphical in its X-windows mode. It *has* menus. A user could go to (and stay in ) insert mode, and cut and paste from the menu, and use vi as a simple text editor.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I haven't used Blender but 3d modeling is inherently difficult and you are going to have an inherently difficult time with it.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
There is a difference between "easy to use" and "easy to learn". Good old command line shell can be very easy to use, but not to learn. The old MacOS was very easy to learn, but not so easy to use in the long run for repetitive tasks.