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R 3.0.0 Released
DaBombDotCom writes "R, a popular software environment for statistical computing and graphics, version 3.0.0 codename "Masked Marvel" was released. From the announcement: 'Major R releases have not previously marked great landslides in terms of new features. Rather, they represent that the codebase has developed to a new level of maturity. This is not going to be an exception to the rule. Version 3.0.0, as of this writing, contains only [one] really major new feature: The inclusion of long vectors (containing more than 2^31-1 elements!). More changes are likely to make it into the final release, but the main reason for having it as a new major release is that R over the last 8.5 years has reached a new level: we now have 64 bit support on all platforms, support for parallel processing, the Matrix package, and much more.'"
One of my favorite Sci-Fi theories (along with "krakens went extinct because we overfished their prey during the whaling days") was in a short story wherein God was finding it difficult to continue to create laws of the universe that rationally explained things that were either "left over" during Creation or "just pretty". We are NOT supposed to be able to prove God exists because of some obvious miracle (cue both the Christians that don't understand anything about their own religion and the fans of HHG), so there must be mathematically sound explanations for cosmic phenomena. Quasars were apparently a big mistake, and even God's having trouble with the whole dark matter/dark energy thing, the acceleration of cosmic expansion, the matter/antimatter imbalance, and now we have to have microlensing to explain a twinkling star.
Anyone out there remember the title/author of the story?