Putting the Wolfram Language (and Mathematica) On Every Raspberry Pi

An anonymous reader writes "Working with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, effective immediately, there's a pilot release of the Wolfram Language — as well as Mathematica—that will soon be bundled as part of the standard system software for every Raspberry Pi computer. Quite soon the Wolfram Language is going to start showing up in lots of places, notably on the web and in the cloud."

Comments

Blatant Shill

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite soon the Wolfram Language is going to start showing up in lots of places, notably on the web and in the cloud

lol no. It's far more likely that this language will be ignored by practically everyone. Remember Arc?

Re:Blatant Shill

[mmell]

No. What's Arc?

(too lazy to google it)

Re:Blatant Shill

[ShanghaiBill]

No. What's Arc?

It is a Lisp dialect that nobody uses.

Re:Blatant Shill

[Yold]

Woah, can't believe anyone else knows about Arc. I was one of the unfortunate few that had to use it for a regression class in college. The language is used in the textbook Applied Regression including Computing Graphics. Since the professor also wrote the textbook and Arc has strong ties to my alma mater, I figured they just had blinders on since the rest of the statistics world was already using R.

If you are interested in trying this (awful) software out for yourself, it is available for download here http://www.stat.umn.edu/arc/software.html.

Re:Blatant Shill

[lee1]

That's an unrelated "arc".

bloat?

[Bootsy]

Why? I'm sure it's great, but...

Re:bloat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wolfram = English guy associated with english computing
Raspberry Pi = english project designed to teach children computing
Wolfram + Rasberry Pi = vehicle for english technology sector growth

Re:bloat?

[ebenupton]

Actually, we discard the AxPROT AXI signals as they leave the ARM complex, so it's not possible to distinguish between trusted and untrusted transactions at the memory controller. BCM2835 is actually one of the few ARM APs *not* to use TrustZone technology.

Re:bloat?

[Anonymous Coward]

The British Empire is long dead.

Not entirely, its former colonies still uses the imperial units.

Re:bloat?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they use units which are named like the imperial units, but slightly differ in size.

Re:bloat?

[Neuroelectronic]

>at the memory controller.

Of course, this is disregarding everything else about the TZ stack..

TIOBE

[tttonyyy]

I'll believe it when I see it here.

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Web AND Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the web a "cloud" in of itself?

Re:Web AND Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the web a "cloud" in of itself?

No, it is not.

Re:Web AND Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, one is hosted on someone else's server (or yours, should you so choose), whereas the other is hosted on someone else's server (or yours, should you so choose).

Re:Web AND Cloud?

[FatdogHaiku]

Isn't the web a "cloud" in of itself?

More like a layer of smog...

Re:Web AND Cloud?

[PhilHibbs]

The web is a kind of cloud, a limited subset of what cloud computing can do, but useful to mention specifically since so many peope are familiar with it.

Why not just release it for the home users too?

[RocketRabbit]

Why not just release Mathematica for the home users too? There are hundreds of millions of potential users out there who would love to have Mathematica for non-commercial use on their home computers. It would benefit Wolfram tremendously to have such a huge user base that knows his software, instead of just a fraction of anoraks that happen to work in universities or as engineers.

If it's the full Mathematica on Pi, though, I'd probably have to buy one just for that. The home version is several hundred bucks, which is too much for something that I'd just be puttering around with.

Re:Why not just release it for the home users too?

[Desler]

Yes we know. You already posted this.

Re:Why not just release it for the home users too?

[jones_supa]

He just wanted a larger user base for his comment by widely distributing it non-commercially.

Re:Why not just release it for the home users too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Stephen Wolfram, it would benefit you in the following way: suppose that children learned your language in their most formative years, they would naturally want to continue using it when they entered the workforce. Your license would be permissive for home use and restrictive for commercial use. Now, every company will be required to use Wolphram language or none of the adults trained in your language since childhood would work there. Then you sue any company that doesn't buy a license from you since they are obviously using it in violation of the license. You'll be a trillionaire!

That's a bold claim.

[dmomo]

Raspberry Pi comes with no operating system. There are a number of Linux builds, including the recommended Debian build, which could be made to include the free Raspberry Pi version of the Wolfram Language and Mathmatica. To claim "every Raspberry Pi" is a bit hyperbolic.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[Fwipp]

Looks like you're right. A few links deep found this: "Today, at the CBM education summit in New York, we announced a partnership with Wolfram Research to bundle a free copy of Mathematica and the Wolfram Language into future Raspbian images."

Re:That's a bold claim.

[Anonymous Coward]

From personal communication with him I can say Stephen Wolfram is all about making money. There is no need for a commercial language, no one cares. If a student license costs 500 dollars or more, people rather use R (a really shitty language, but on par with mathematica) or fight their way with python.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you go to the Raspberry Pi site there certainly are sets of "standard system software." So it's very possible it's not "hyperbolic" at all, maybe your interpretation of the statement is just extreme.*
 
* I know, I know... Slashdotters are never extreme in their interpretation of anything... sorry, my bad.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[ZankerH]

In my experience with university mathematics and engineering departments, students, TAs and anyone who can get away with it use pirated copies. For analytical maths, there's just nothing better than Mathematica.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[wiredlogic]

That will allow desktop users to have a ghetto Mathematica by running Raspbian in a VM.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[jklovanc]

maybe your interpretation of the statement is just extreme.

There is only one possible accurate interpretation of "every". That is the problem with using absolutes like "every". If they had said "many" or "most" then interpretation could be an issue.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[dmomo]

There's only one way to interpret "every" as far as I know. Sorry for wanting more accuracy in the articles I read.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[obarthelemy]

Every Raspi can run Raspbian at no extra cost. Splitting hairs much ?

Re:That's a bold claim.

[Baloroth]

Every Raspi can also run a build that does not have Wolfram or Mathematica. There is a difference between "can" and "is".

Yes, and neither TFA nor TFS claim "is". Beyond "is a part of the standard bundle", which will be true soon.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[CastrTroy]

You'd be much better off just buying a Raspberry Pi and connecting to it remotely from your desktop. Emulating an ARM processor on your desktop (most likely x86) would be many times slower than just running it on the Pi directly.

Re: That's a bold claim.

[mspohr]

TFA States it will be bundled as part of the standard operating system for the Raspberry Pi. It doesn't state it will be on every Pi.
basic reading comprehension.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[basecastula]

... might as well freely use the software that is maintained and updated regularly than fuss with getting pirated software to work, even if that amounts to less than a day of screwing around.

It is actually really easy, Run the linux install script, then run the key generator that has worked for previous version. Enter key and you are done.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[gweihir]

Unfortunately, Raspbian does _not_ come bundled with the Raspberry Pi, for the simple reason that the RPi comes without memory card. You are also completely free to use something else than Raspbian.

Re:That's a bold claim.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How much does ARM emulation on x86 suck these days? I wasn't able to dig up much in the way of hard benchmarks; but this not-especially-recent page, describing QEMU ARM emulation (I'd assume that being adopted as the Android SDK's ARM emulator likely led to some improvements being made; since 2008; but don't know), says that an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is about 20 percent faster than an NSLU2 (266MHz Xscale).

Given that the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is a relative antique, and the Pi is only a 700MHz ARM core of not particularly new design, a contemporary system might actually emulate the rPi faster than the real thing, with the added bonus of being able to emulate more RAM than the real boards ship with, and likely faster mass storage.

Power efficient, this strategy would not be; but fast, it just might.

Re: That's a bold claim.

[vikingpower]

There is no such fucking thing as a "standard operating system for the Raspberry Pi". That is fucking nonsense, as is all of TFA.

Re: That's a bold claim.

[mspohr]

Oh dear.
You do seem to have "issues".
Have you talked to your therapist?
Why do you fear Wolfram?
Has Mathematica intimidated you?
Are you afraid that Wolfram will take over your life?
Wolfram Mathematica and the Wolfram language will be included in the Raspbian distribution. Raspbian is the standard recommended distribution that most people install. There are other OS distributions, of course, such as XBMC for specialized uses.

Sample code

[Tablizer]

ego() ^ ego() ^ ego()

Re:Sample code

[Anonymous Coward]

Beginner's mistake --- you need square brackets for function calls. And Wolfram's ego is far too large to fit on a single line of sample code.

Clap for the Wolfram!

[theodp]

The Guess Who Clap for the Wolfman (Dutch T.V.)

Or, free Mathematica with $35 purchase of a Pi*

[strredwolf]

An offer of over $300 in value! Get yours now!

* Based on purchase of a Model B from direct authorized sellers. Does not include shipping or purchase at authorized resellers. Must be run from a Raspbery Pi computer board. Storage, display, keyboard, mouse, and power supply not included. Model A does not include Ethernet.

tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[Qubit]

Just in case you thought things might have changed:

As with Wolfram|Alpha on the web, the Wolfram Language (and Mathematica) on the Raspberry Pi are going to be free for anyone to use for personal purposes. (There’s also going to be a licensing mechanism for commercial uses, other Linux ARM systems, and so on.)

I give the RaspberryPi folks credit for making amazing and fun toy for children (that turns out to actually be a quite powerful and useful system for all ages, but shhhh, don't tell the kids! :-). I dearly wish that more of the RaspberryPI system could be Open Hardware, and love the fact that schoolchildren are getting their hands on their own computer that runs FOSS that they can program and tinker with and invent and dream.

But I dearly hope that the Foundation folks say "Thanks but no thanks" to this offer of crippleware. The platform should remain open to all, and putting something like this in a default install will perpetuate a system of haves and have-nots. If Wolfram wants to market this independently, then that is their perogative, but educational tools given to kids should be reuse- and remix-friendly.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[ebenupton]

I hope the Foundation folks say "Thank you, much appreciated", and let the kids decide.

That was pretty much what I spent the day saying. Atmosphere among the educators in the room when Conrad announced it this morning was pretty electric. If people don't like the fact that it's only free as in beer, there's always Sage.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[femtobyte]

Are kids always paragons of making thoughtful, long-term philosophical decisions? Give a kid something that, *today,* is free (as in beer) and easy to use, and they might not carefully balance the long-term repercussions of tying themselves to an incredibly expensive and proprietarily locked-down solution (instead of devoting their effort to getting over the learning curve of something far more valuable in the future). Part of an educational product/effort should be educating kids --- guiding them towards better choices, like embracing Freedom, than they'd make if fed only commercial propaganda from corporate "benefactors."

Do you also recommend, for good educational practice, that parents pack their kids' lunchbox to give them the choice of an apple or high-purity cocaine for a healthy snack, and "let the kids decide"?

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[Dan East]

There is no "default install". Raspberry Pis don't even come with SD cards. You download whatever OS image you want and extract it to your SD card, and there are many to choose from, both "official" and 3rd party.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[femtobyte]

If you consider the "software freedoms" of the Free Software movement to be entirely void of meaning, then that philosophical stance would seem just "new speak." Why do you think Free Software (as in Speech) does not provide real freedom not found in proprietary lock-in to free (temporarily, at least) as in beer? Do you not think that the Free Software environment produced around, e.g., the Gnu utilities and the Linux kernel has not contributed positively to society, and it is not worth fostering such goals and aspirations in future generations?

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[geminidomino]

(Not the GP)

Why do you think Free Software (as in Speech) does not provide real freedom not found in proprietary lock-in to free (temporarily, at least) as in beer?

Because, like most philosophical extremist propaganda, it relies on some strange redefinition of concepts.

To say "Free software" is "more free" than proprietary software: fine and dandy. No objections. But the FSF doesn't stop there.

The concept that "Free software" (as in copyleft) is more free than more permissive licenses (BSD, MIT, etc. just to name two) is contradictory from step 1. Both GPL software and Oracle software contain license clauses that say "You can use this software, but not in any way that we forbid." The GPL just happens to forbid a lot less, but more than the aforementioned non-copyleft licenses.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[femtobyte]

So you don't agree all the way with the FSF "extremist" position (which, I think, has repeatedly shown its value in countering the everyday anti-freedom extremism of corporate profiteers). However, "free" Mathematica isn't even anywhere near the "more permissive" free licenses; in general, Mathematica is a prime example of one of the most heavily locked-down, DRM'd, annoyingly-invasively-restrictively-licensed pieces of software out there. If you even think BSD/MIT-license style freedoms are valuable to encourage, then Mathematica is the wrong choice to hook young minds on.

  I ended up throwing away the "free" (academically site licensed) version of Mathematica on my computer after too many instances of being randomly locked out of my own work (requiring calls/emails/faxes to appease Mathematica's finicky licensing code). In that sense, Mathematica has been quite educational for me: it cemented the lesson to never trust locked-down proprietary software, no matter how slick and useful it might seem.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[geminidomino]

More valuable to encourage is software that works. In my limited experience (a couple of stats classes in college), R filled my needs as well as Mathematica, so I didn't need it and didn't use it. There's plenty of free software that just doesn't work worth crap (I'm looking at you, GIMP).

When you use your computer for your livelihood, rather than just some political statement, then philosophy comes far down the list of priorities (above it being "budget" and "does the shit work", for starters). Then there's FOSS that's "plenty good enough", and sometimes even "Best in class" (this is generally server-side) and I use many of those. But getting done the work done that I'm trying to do is more important than "encouraging" politics.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[femtobyte]

I use my computer for work (graduate level physics research) --- that's why I found proprietary software like Mathematica unacceptable. I can't have my research and calculations go *poof* because a licensing server coughed up a hairball. Being unable to share results with collaborators also makes anything I do *completely worthless.* My "political statement" is closely joined to the reality of getting work done, and knowing that everything I do isn't chained to the whim of some proprietary system. Experience has shown that building reliance on non-free systems is, in the long run, unacceptably dangerous for anything of importance. I use some non-free software for play; but, for anything that will screw me over if it stops working tomorrow (or when I want to dig out the results a decade from now), free software is the *only* responsible choice.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[geminidomino]

You're either confusing or conflating the software with the output. There is plenty of proprietary software that produces output in standard formats.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[geminidomino]

You probably also think America got less free when they forbade slavery. One more regulation, you no longer have the freedom to own slaves!

And people still wonder why the FSF isn't taken seriously?

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[hweimer]

The concept that "Free software" (as in copyleft) is more free than more permissive licenses (BSD, MIT, etc. just to name two) is contradictory from step 1.

The FSF considers permissive license to be free software. They do not consider copyleft licenses to be "more free" than permissive licenses. Please stop spreading false propaganda.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[femtobyte]

Standard formats are part of it --- but, often, by the time you've produced a "standard format" you've lost the ability to use whatever capabilities you were using the proprietary software for in the first place. Sure, I can dump my Mathematica notebook inputs to a text file, or make a PDF with all the pretty graphics --- at which point I've rendered the content useless from a functional point of view. A collaborator without their own Mathematica license can't run my algorithm over their own inputs from a PDF. My results will be useless if I come back a decade from now, and Mathematica is a defunct product (or just modified with no backwards support). There is also the issue I've repeatedly referred to above --- if proprietary software fails when you're right in the middle of working on something, you're boned (and probability of failure is often built-in to high end packages with elaborate and flakey DRM license-checking schemes). With Free Software, you can pop the hood and fix whatever's stuck to get moving again.

Yes, if you're just using the proprietary software as an ephemeral intermediate step, with no need to ever share or reproduce the results (... which is often a rather high priority for doing science ...), then it won't matter so much what software was used to produce some final result in a standard form. But, for scientific work, the end result --- the fact that my calculated answer is 5.73826(23) --- is usually worthless without also being able to share, explain, modify, and reproduce the whole process leading to the answer; a proprietary "black box" stage in the procedure is blatantly un-scientific. Software and the output are naturally "conflated" when integrity and communicability of the whole process leading to a result are important.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[david_thornley]

I'm curious where you concluded that the FSF and Gnu think GPL is more free than BSD. I did a lot of reading on the philosophy parts of gnu.org and don't remember encountering such a thing. There was a list of free licenses, and Stallman did classify them by copyleft and GPL compatibility, but that's all I remember.

Now, the FSF wants you to use GPLv3+ for all your sofware, but that's largely a strategic drive, not because it is freer. One idea of the Gnu project was to provide a large and very useful body of GPLed software, so that people would GPL their own stuff as part of using it. A large and very useful body of BSD code would be a very nice thing, but it wouldn't induce other people to make their software free.

Re:tl;dr - Still Proprietary Software

[Qubit]

I hope the Foundation folks say "Thank you, much appreciated", and let the kids decide.

That was pretty much what I spent the day saying.

Educators the world over have often decided to insulate and protect children from the gamut of choices available to them in the Real World(tm). I don't always agree with the extent to which we "protect" children, especially as they grow older and feel very limited by society's restrictions, but I believe some amount of guidance can be helpful.

Letting the children decide between Mathematica and alternatives sounds amazing to me, and I'm very appreciative that you proposed the idea.

Atmosphere among the educators in the room when Conrad announced it this morning was pretty electric.

What do these educators think about Sage and other alternatives to Mathematica? Do you think these educators are famiilar enough with the Pi system, Mathematica, and mathematics software alternatives such that they can explain the differences and pros/cons to their young charges?

If people don't like the fact that it's only free as in beer, there's always Sage.

Yes, there is Sage, but while Mathematica's efforts got a big boost with front page billing, I see nary an article about Sage Math on the RaspberryPi blog. Whereas you just "announced a partnership with Wolfram Research to bundle a free copy of Mathematica and the Wolfram Language into future Raspbian images" (the officially-built/recommended OS), I believe that Sage has never been included in these images.

If you do want to give schoolchildren a choice between the two of them, why not start by writing an article about Sage and putting it in the default install as well? Unlike Mathematica, children will be able to download and run Sage easily and for no fee on any Win/Mac/Linux computer accessible to them, which will allow them to start projects on the Pi and move to beefier hardware later, or start a project on a school computer and bring it home to their Pi.

If children are able to make an informed choice between Mathematica and Sage (or other alternatives), then I support their opportunity to do so. Computers and the software that lives upon them should be given to children to explore, investigate, break, and repair. To truly give our future generations an opportunity to see the beauty of hardware and code I believe we should allow them to tweak and fiddle with the frobs inside these complex systems. A closed-source package like Mathematica curtails the possibility of investigation and dampens the fires of curiosity and innovation that can be seen in children everywhere.

Give children a choice? Certainly. But make sure that our educators can provide our students with exploration limited only by one's own imagination.

Young Steve Jobs Could"ve Used This

[theodp]

STEVE JOBS: A FEW MEMORIES As Mathematica was being developed, we showed it to Steve Jobs quite often. He always claimed he didn"t understand the math of it (though I later learned from a good friend of mine who had known Steve in high school that Steve had definitely taken at least one calculus course). But he made all sorts of make it simpler" suggestions about the interface and the documentation.

breaking news / interesting

[rewindustry]

as i read this, said "language" is already available immediately, as i assume it's as open source as the raspy itself.
can someone point me to the source, please - i'd like to know what this is about, and the official site is acting very coy.
judging from all the ad hominem reactions, it certainly seems to have set some kind of cat amongst the pigeons, around here..

-- be aLert, your country needs Lerts.

There is no "standard system software" for the Pi.

[gweihir]

Unless you mean the boot-loader firmware running in the graphics hardware. After that you have a kernel of you choice and a RPi Linux distro (or something else that runs on it) of your choice.

Re: Why not just release it for the home users too

[geminidomino]

Which is exactly what he said, so how is that full of crap? $300 is too much for something he'd just putter around with.

Re:Real Pi is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

The real Pi was 3-4 seconds faster

This is a completely meaningless number, unless you tell us what one of the total times is.

Re:So? Will anyone use it?

[wonkey_monkey]

Yet another language I, whose opinion can be safely extrapolated to the entire of humanity, don't need...

FTFY.

Re:Real Pi is faster

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Interesting. I guess I've been really spoiled by how fast "emulation" is when it's really a fairly mature solution for shoveling as many x86 operations straight to the host CPU, unaltered, as is architecturally possible...

I don't think that I would have expected emulation to match one of the actually-competitive top of range ARM SoCs; but I figured that a comparatively antique ARM11 part might be within shooting range.

wolfram on the pi?

[spike hay]

I'm pretty sure his ego can't fit in 512 mb.