I am a scientist whose job it is to do my research and publish it.
So am I (final year of M.Sc. Physics [Cantab]). As a matter of fact I now find it a lot easier to use pure LaTeX than any GUI tools. It is a matter of elementary scripting to directly include results from a program / experiment into the LaTeX source.
The same goes for other scientific tools like gnuplot. With a little scripting it can work automatically with LaTeX and the program results / experimental data to produce a neat report without any repeated cutting and pasting. And there are lots more scientific tools for UNIX which I have yet to try out.
All black holes emit Hawking radiation, eventually evaporating completely. I guess one line could be drawn at black holes that (depending of the environment) have equal rates of evaporation and sucking in matter.
Smaller black holes have a lower rate of sucking (M$ jokes welcome), but a higher rate of evaporation. Therefore large ones will continue to grow, and small ones will not last very long.
The mini black holes created in particle accelerators have very short lifetimes, comparable to that of other exotic particles.
With all due respect, LyX's primary function is to provide a gentle migration path from GUI typewriters like Word, to a real document production system called [La]TeX.
When I started using Linux, I first used LyX for a couple of projects. Fortunately I tried out 'pure' LaTeX (itself a set of macros for TeX) and found it so much better.
There are several GUI frontends to LaTeX, one being LyX, and you can only harness so much power of the actual system via those interfaces. It's like coding C++ via a point n' click interface. You will only realize the point of LaTeX when using it natively.
It is enough to have pairs of generic particles that are entangled. These can then be used to transfer the quantum wavefunction of, say, James Tiberius from that one place to the other. In addition you need a conventional information transfer link between the places. The important implications are:
You cannot beam faster than light.
The original quantum wavefunction is destroyed by the quantum measurement -> no cloning.
Aahh.. exactly. Wish I could symlink the same reply to multiple comments. Just wrote another reply stating there's very little difference (if at all) between scientists and hackers, while the media and the govt polarize them at different ends.
Now, it is easy to demonize "hackers" but it is harder to demonize scientists.
And if the government, media etc. had clue, they might realize those two are more or less the same thing...
The last chapter of Feynman's book 'What do you care what other people think' deals with openness as the key to integrity in science, and as I read it I couldn't help thinking about open source.
-- just another CERN hacker
Re:Try be inovative instead of just replicate ?
on
Linux on the Desktop
·
· Score: 2
Why dont we take the lead and provide new things instead ?:-)
Like the standard *nix tools?
IMHO it's not a question of desperately trying to invent something new. It's more about forgetting Windows as the desktop paradigm. In fact many of us know that an efficient workstation environment is not necessarily called 'desktop'.
\begin{rant}
[thinking of the new planned version of Enlightenment] I don't want a desktop environment, I don't want a fancy panel, I just want a window manager, dammit!
\end{rant}
As for thinking being outlawed, maybe you could give us an example?
That was just an extrapolation, and I sincerely hope we will never have the example.
The minority of which you speak is thinking all right, thinking about their OS and not their work! Wake up, TeknoHog, the important thing about work is getting it done, not the platform on which you do it. Microsoft has spent years studying and improving their user interface. Most people can sit down at a Windows machine and start working within minutes. That's WORKING, not tweaking, not recompiling, not reading the MAN pages. THAT'S why purchasing departments buy Microsoft products, not the freeware flavor of the day.
..the companies , on the other hand, can - and do- tell the "people" what they want, ans that is what MS has always done, in Linux is the otherway around: people think of what they want.
... ... And the minority, who is against the conventions of 'mainstream' will keep on using Linux.
The really sad thing is, that only the minority are thinking. In a democracy, the majority decides, and that's how you get a country where thinking is outlawed.
Microsoft will never "finish", and I hate to put it to you they make things easy, and in this world that is enough.
...
They care about sending and e-mail
Well somebody has to care about forwarding the mail via a number of servers which are mostly *nix.
We the open source advocates are not, I hope, competing with Windows as such. If people find that Windows is good enough for their desktop, let them use it. Some people, on the other hand, find that a *nix desktop suits their needs (e.g. sciehtific stuff) much better, and I can assure that happens from the number of Linux machines used here at CERN.
What I fear is the PHB attitude, which crudely goes like this: 'Windows runs on computers. Network servers and number crunching machines are computers. Let's put Windows on all of them.'
Say we're running at 2GHz, which allows a maximum time of 0.5 ns for an instruction. But if you use some simple instructions that only take 0.2 ns each, you'll be wasting 3/5 of your time waiting for the next cycle. With clockless computing you can move on to the next stage as quickly as you're done with the one before.
Of course there is some overhead. There has to be a system telling other parts of the computer when something is finished. But if that is a long enough stage (perhaps thousands of instructions) then it'll be faster overall.
I agree. If people want something like MS Office, let them use Windows. If they want something like UNIX, let them use Linux or some other UNIX they find right for the job.
I believe a lot of the open source movement's resources are wasted on efforts to duplicate the MS desktop idea. UNIX is IMHO better because it's not based on the same idea. I don't see the point about 'Linux trying to catch up with Windows' while I thought the whole point of what us geeks are doing is about alternatives.
Another thing I've already said a number of times before: You can't expect to be able to harness the power of *nix via a Windowsish interface. Power tools require a power interface. Would you let someone pilot a 757 via a bicycle's interface? Oh, I think someone already did...
I mean the conversion from a source code to binary. What goes on in the processor with the machine language is procedural. Higher-level procedural languages are essentially macros for assembly.
Maybe object-oriented programming isn't that much different, it is just a neat way of arranging the data and the functions. Ideas like encapsulation are important in any kind programming, you want to keep the interface stable even if the guts of a function changes. The difference to procedural code is then like that between a GUI and a command line: in the end the same task is performed by binary code. It's just that one of the interfaces is closer to the machine language, and hence _maybe_ more efficient.
This is exactly why the command line is so powerful. It is closer to the guts of computing than any GUI. The same goes for types of programming: is there any object-oriented hardware around? Didn't think so either.
Of course the combination of some sort of a GUI and command line is very powerful, having the best of both worlds. Even in a graphical environment you can do most things with the keyboard in a more efficient way. I don't understand fancy mice with wheels and all when the good ol' keyb does the scrolling just as well. That's literally reinventing the wheel.
What's interesting that in the 80s and early 90s people were quite happy to learn shortcuts in DOS applications; someone already mentioned WP5.1 being more efficient than Word. Then came the GUI and suddenly everything just had to be graphical, even many things that have nothing to do with graphics.
Speaking of IMs, I am more than happy with MICQ. That is IMHO the easiest and most natural interface to IM. The command line.
Agreed! I switched to using the left hand only after years of computing, in fact when I switched to Linux. I find it immensely powerful to have the left hand on the mouse, and the right on the arrow keys, for instance when browsing the web. I think one of the reasons I switched was the awkward feeling of holding the left hand on the arrows (right side of keyb) and the right on the mouse.
Right now I'm using the nipple thing on my laptop, and really the only way of accessing the arrow keys at the same time is to use the left hand for the nipple.
In the world of my dreams, there will be no encryption. Not for personal messages, but neither for movies or music. In that sense, I would support a ban on all encryption, but that would also mean essentially free distribution of all information.
The problem, of course, is that you cannot control the ban. There are already systems of encryption that convert terrorist messages into harmless looking chats. And encryption is like a weapon in the sense that the natural way to fight it is by using it yourself.
Well, I haven't checked the calculations, but even if this de-orbits Earth, it will return to its orbit when the people come down again. There's something called conservation of momentum to ensure this.
I think it's silly not to allow people to put their stories and their artwork and what is essentially their copyrighted material on the web where people can access it without the ability to tell people not to copy it.
People can only view artwork, listen to music etc. only after downloading the data. IE they have to get a copy of it anyway.. is there any clearer way of rephrasing 'Information wants to be free'?
It's like the hypothetical person with perfect memory and sufficient abilities who can reproduce a piece of music having once heard it. Is he committing a crime by having a good memory? If not, shouldn't normal mortals be allowed 'memory augmenting devices' like hard disk recording?
Information has no volition to be free or anything else, but its only natural state is that of freedom. But then again, as Nietzsche (or someone else, can't remember) put it, you don't love information enough it you disclose it to others...
Slashdot Mirror
So am I (final year of M.Sc. Physics [Cantab]). As a matter of fact I now find it a lot easier to use pure LaTeX than any GUI tools. It is a matter of elementary scripting to directly include results from a program / experiment into the LaTeX source.
The same goes for other scientific tools like gnuplot. With a little scripting it can work automatically with LaTeX and the program results / experimental data to produce a neat report without any repeated cutting and pasting. And there are lots more scientific tools for UNIX which I have yet to try out.
Smaller black holes have a lower rate of sucking (M$ jokes welcome), but a higher rate of evaporation. Therefore large ones will continue to grow, and small ones will not last very long. The mini black holes created in particle accelerators have very short lifetimes, comparable to that of other exotic particles.
(Disclaimer: IAAP)
When I started using Linux, I first used LyX for a couple of projects. Fortunately I tried out 'pure' LaTeX (itself a set of macros for TeX) and found it so much better.
There are several GUI frontends to LaTeX, one being LyX, and you can only harness so much power of the actual system via those interfaces. It's like coding C++ via a point n' click interface. You will only realize the point of LaTeX when using it natively.
If you think that's not nice, have a look at Bonsai Kittens.
It is enough to have pairs of generic particles that are entangled. These can then be used to transfer the quantum wavefunction of, say, James Tiberius from that one place to the other. In addition you need a conventional information transfer link between the places. The important implications are:
Agreed, but this isn't what the story was about.. and how would you go about enforcing the law against encryption?
"Look, no terrorist messages here. Just jpegs of pr0n."
Aahh.. exactly. Wish I could symlink the same reply to multiple comments. Just wrote another reply stating there's very little difference (if at all) between scientists and hackers, while the media and the govt polarize them at different ends.
And if the government, media etc. had clue, they might realize those two are more or less the same thing...
The last chapter of Feynman's book 'What do you care what other people think' deals with openness as the key to integrity in science, and as I read it I couldn't help thinking about open source.
-- just another CERN hacker
Like the standard *nix tools?
IMHO it's not a question of desperately trying to invent something new. It's more about forgetting Windows as the desktop paradigm. In fact many of us know that an efficient workstation environment is not necessarily called 'desktop'.
\begin{rant}
[thinking of the new planned version of Enlightenment] I don't want a desktop environment, I don't want a fancy panel, I just want a window manager, dammit!
\end{rant}
That was just an extrapolation, and I sincerely hope we will never have the example.
The minority of which you speak is thinking all right, thinking about their OS and not their work! Wake up, TeknoHog, the important thing about work is getting it done, not the platform on which you do it. Microsoft has spent years studying and improving their user interface. Most people can sit down at a Windows machine and start working within minutes. That's WORKING, not tweaking, not recompiling, not reading the MAN pages. THAT'S why purchasing departments buy Microsoft products, not the freeware flavor of the day.
Agreed, already wrote another comment on that.
In fact you sometimes have to tweak, recompile and RTFM just to get the job done. A good example of this is what /. did during the Tuesday news flood.
...
The really sad thing is, that only the minority are thinking. In a democracy, the majority decides, and that's how you get a country where thinking is outlawed.
...
They care about sending and e-mail
Well somebody has to care about forwarding the mail via a number of servers which are mostly *nix.
We the open source advocates are not, I hope, competing with Windows as such. If people find that Windows is good enough for their desktop, let them use it. Some people, on the other hand, find that a *nix desktop suits their needs (e.g. sciehtific stuff) much better, and I can assure that happens from the number of Linux machines used here at CERN.
What I fear is the PHB attitude, which crudely goes like this: 'Windows runs on computers. Network servers and number crunching machines are computers. Let's put Windows on all of them.'
Of course there is some overhead. There has to be a system telling other parts of the computer when something is finished. But if that is a long enough stage (perhaps thousands of instructions) then it'll be faster overall.
I believe a lot of the open source movement's resources are wasted on efforts to duplicate the MS desktop idea. UNIX is IMHO better because it's not based on the same idea. I don't see the point about 'Linux trying to catch up with Windows' while I thought the whole point of what us geeks are doing is about alternatives.
Another thing I've already said a number of times before: You can't expect to be able to harness the power of *nix via a Windowsish interface. Power tools require a power interface. Would you let someone pilot a 757 via a bicycle's interface? Oh, I think someone already did...
Maybe object-oriented programming isn't that much different, it is just a neat way of arranging the data and the functions. Ideas like encapsulation are important in any kind programming, you want to keep the interface stable even if the guts of a function changes. The difference to procedural code is then like that between a GUI and a command line: in the end the same task is performed by binary code. It's just that one of the interfaces is closer to the machine language, and hence _maybe_ more efficient.
Of course the combination of some sort of a GUI and command line is very powerful, having the best of both worlds. Even in a graphical environment you can do most things with the keyboard in a more efficient way. I don't understand fancy mice with wheels and all when the good ol' keyb does the scrolling just as well. That's literally reinventing the wheel.
What's interesting that in the 80s and early 90s people were quite happy to learn shortcuts in DOS applications; someone already mentioned WP5.1 being more efficient than Word. Then came the GUI and suddenly everything just had to be graphical, even many things that have nothing to do with graphics.
Speaking of IMs, I am more than happy with MICQ. That is IMHO the easiest and most natural interface to IM. The command line.
And it's not just the usual mourning but in fact a Score: 5, Funny.
Right now I'm using the nipple thing on my laptop, and really the only way of accessing the arrow keys at the same time is to use the left hand for the nipple.
The problem, of course, is that you cannot control the ban. There are already systems of encryption that convert terrorist messages into harmless looking chats. And encryption is like a weapon in the sense that the natural way to fight it is by using it yourself.
What happens is is called eval(). See this comment for more. ;-]
31 bits should be enough for everyone.
IIRC, the name is Percival Lowell.
Well, I haven't checked the calculations, but even if this de-orbits Earth, it will return to its orbit when the people come down again. There's something called conservation of momentum to ensure this.
Just because some GPL fanatics say stupid things, does it mean GPL is bad? Not seeing the logic here...
People can only view artwork, listen to music etc. only after downloading the data. IE they have to get a copy of it anyway.. is there any clearer way of rephrasing 'Information wants to be free'?
It's like the hypothetical person with perfect memory and sufficient abilities who can reproduce a piece of music having once heard it. Is he committing a crime by having a good memory? If not, shouldn't normal mortals be allowed 'memory augmenting devices' like hard disk recording?
Information has no volition to be free or anything else, but its only natural state is that of freedom. But then again, as Nietzsche (or someone else, can't remember) put it, you don't love information enough it you disclose it to others...