I'm using a 12" iBook right now, and it's the best computer I've ever used (and I've used PCs with MS-DOS, Windows 3.1-XP, Amiga, Solaris, HP-UX...).
The engineering quality is fantastic -- far better than any PC I've seen, and the software/hardware integration is wonderful -- you won't achieve this on Windows or Linux.
Things just work. There are no configuration or set-up hassles (install a WiFi card -- it just woorks; plug in a digital camera -- it just works; plug in the printer -- it just works).
You get the best UI around at the moment, plus an Open Source UNIX OS, and all the UNIX tools you'd get or want on Linux (SSH, Perl, Apache...). You can run GNOME, KDE etc. X windows....
Please don't buy a PC. The PC hardware definition is so outdated and poor, and compatibility is awful.
I'm never going back to the PC if I can help it. Apple make wonderful machines.
I just submitted the following via the Bug Button:
This is a feature request.
I like the new browser. Congrats on producing a very decent looking browser for OS X.
My feature request is for Tabbed browsing (a la Opera, Chimera, Mozilla, Konqueror etc); other suggestions are given below.
The lack of this feature is a "show-stopper" for me -- I'm afraid I'll be using Chimera until Safari has tabs.
They make browsing a much more managable experience -- I typically have between 3 and 10 tabs open -- having 10 browser windows would make using the OS X (or any!) desktop unmanagable.
Also of real use are Mouse Gestures (a la Opera). I can easily use Cocoa Gestures in Safari, but such technology should probably be part of the browser, if not the OS.
I would also like to see a feature in Safari that Opera has: One can define a new CSS of one's own, and if viewing a page that is unreadable/unsightly/etc., a button can be pressed to swap the page's style with the one specified in your own CSS file. This is obviously a feature that is for "Power Users" only, but I think that Apple has attracted a lot of power users by adopting an OSS model for OS X, and you need to cater to us! It should be pretty easy to put a GUI in place to let regular users define their own styles.
My third worry about Safari is that it uses the brushed metal LookAndFeel. My understanding of this L&F is that it shoould be used when the application takes on the functionality of everyday items (such as DVD players etc.). Although a browser is a piece of everyday software, I don't thinnk it is sensible to pollute the 'everyday item' methaphor that the brushed metal L&F represents.
Good luck with Safari in the future.
Let's hope that tabs, mouse gestures and a user-definable CSS feature become a standard browser feature.
I was a tester on Ericsson's first smart phone project.
Although they approached the problem of enabling easy translation of displayed strings by using resource files, etc (this was enabled by the Symbion OS, which strongly encourages such practice), we ran into two major problems:
1. Buffer over/underruns -- if a programmer had created a string (e.g., menu), they would allocate four characters to store that string, but often the German equivalent would be, say, 50 characters, which would cause a crash.
2. The smart phone had a relatively small screen (compared to a PC). The UI designers were working in English and designed the entire UI using English words. They didn't pay enough attention to the fact that translation would be required. For languages that tend to have longer words than English (e.g. German), this caused significant problems. These translations wouldn't fit in the allocated space, and the screen would be cluttered with text.
It would be nice to see software engineers working on UI toolkits to take problems like this into account. Ideally, applications (and GUI toolkits) should be designed in a language-neutral way. Application programmers, who typically think in terms of logic and who strive for elegance, aren't really the best sort of people to be considering language translation. It would be desirable for GUI toolkits to degrade gracefully when presented with text that doesn't fit the UI design and which does not let programmers make the buffer over/underrun mistake. It would seem likely that such a framework exists, but it doesn't seem to be ubiquitous.
I'm from the UK, and I have just got back from my first visit to the US (Florida). I was *amazed* that so few people riding motorcycles wear helmets. Here in the UK, wearing crash-helmets is mandatory. OK, the weather in Florida is hot, even in the Winter, but we get similar temperatures in the summer here and people still wear the helmets.
It was funny: I rented a bicycle, and got a few jeers from beery idiots because I was wearing a cycle helmet -- what's with a culture like that??
If people won't even wear a crash-helmet, are they going to wear one of these air bags?
As previous posters have said, electronic equipment should not emit radition, nor accept radiation. In most western countries, this is part of law.
If your speakers are accepting radiation, then chances are they may well be a source of unwanted radiation too.
I'm suprised that Sony would have such a design flaw, so I think the problem is specific to the actual speakers you have -- i.e. my guess is that they are broken.
As a non-US citizen, it both amazes and shocks me how much US law and Microsoft dictate the rights of those outside the US. Examples include:
1) Finding it very difficult to watch encrypted DVDs on non-proprietary operating systems such as Linux due to laws such as the DMCA. Although there are projects that exist outside the US that let me do this (for example the excellent VLC project), many Linux distributions do not come readily set up to be able to play encrypted DVDs.
2) Attempts to apply laws such as the DMCA outside the US (such as the case of Dmitry Sklyarov).
3) Proposals to pass laws requiring computer equipment to include DRM (digital rights management) hardware, such as that used in Microsoft's Palladium project. This has severe implications for both freedom of information, privacy, and free/open source operating systems and software. If the US were to pass such a law the rest of the world would be very likely to end up using the same technology, even though no such law may exist elsewhere in the world.
Essentially, the main problems I see are about freedom -- the rights of the individual, to use their computer hardware and software in ways they want to, must be protected as a form of free speech.
Yes, copyright theft is illegal, but just because I can break the law doesn't mean I will break the law. By electronically limiting the things people can do, huge power could be handed over to large corporations who themselves have very poor legal records (such as Microsoft).
In my opinion, if freedom is taken away from computer users we will be limited to viewing BigCorporation's approved content. Technological innovation in the US will be stunted and the US will slip behind other countries with more liberal technology laws. This will affect not only the US economy, but those of other developed countries.
Well, the three big maths/numerics platforms (Mathematica, Matlab and Maple) are all available for Linux, but you do, of course, have to pay for them:-)
I think the moral of the story here is that not all Linux software is free (either in cost, or in Freedom). And that's OK.
There are many companies that *sell* products or services who are putting a lot of money (read time, testing, development, advocacy etc.) into the open source community, and this will only continue if they make money from the community.
Of course, we'd all love it if we could get math/numerical software of the calibre of the above systems for free, but the truth is that we can't (yet).
There are a couple of open source equivalents (Octave and Maxima are two exaples), but their quality is far from that of the above products.
(That is not to say that all open source software is of lesser quality than 'commercial' software.)
One of the great things about the open source community is that there is a lot of great software that is free (in both senses), but there is (increasingly) a range of 'commercial' software that is available.
So one can be a casual user of Octave and get by without paying for an expensive license, but for those of us who need a product of a higher quality, with printed manuals and technical support (etc.), it is great that this software is available if we want to spend our money on it. And, of course, that we have a broad range of choices.
I'm in the UK, and we have a pretty good service. There are several providers and a range of business models (e.g. pay as you go, pay monthly by contract etc.). Typically, one gets a free phone with a new contract (or you pay a top-up to get a shinier phone), and this is reflected in the price of calls.
Contracts tend to be for one year, rather than two (as some slashdotters have pointed out is the situation in the US), so if you get a bum deal you can change it reasonably quickly. We also have a culture whereby the public won't stand for poor service, and there are familiar ways in which to complain about such problems.
The network availability is also very high, even in densely populated areas. There have only been a few times when I have not been able to make a call because the network is busy.
That is not to say that the network coverage is wonderful -- there are places out in the countryside where I cannot get any network coverage.
I think the single major factor in our sucessful cell phone environment is the size of the country. The UK is about the size of a medium-sized US state, and we have about 60 million people in the country. Therefore a single company can cover the entire country (they are not reliant on partnerships with other companies in different areas), and can do so in a relatively short amount of time (the network can be established and upgraded easily).
The main problem facing the UK in terms of mobile telecoms is the adoption of 3G technologies. The spectrum allocated to such technologies was auctioned off by the government a few years ago, and a furious bidding war resulted in these slices of the spectrum going for tens of billions of pounds -- a huge amount of money -- which will have to be recouped by the telcos, and finally the customer. So we are facing a situation where the 'call' prices on 3G technologies is so expensive that the average person can't afford to use it.
I used to work for a company who designed vending machines, and they were involved in the Mondex scheme.
This was a really exciting idea:
i) Cash was to be carried on smart cards the same size as credit cards. Cash could be moved from the user's bank account to the card, or between individuals, by a range of technologies.
ii) Users would have a wallet, which was a small electronic device, just larger than the card. This let the users view how much cash their card had on it, and also had a simple calculator (doubling as a method of authenticating the owner of the card) with currency conversion built in.
iii) Payments could be made at point of sale by handing the card over and entering a PIN to authorise the cash transaction.
iv) Payments could be made remotely via telephone (this was all pre-WWW) by using special home telephones that had card readers built in. Again, payment authorisation was by PIN.
v) The name and other details of the owner of a particular card were encoded on it, so that lost cards could be returned to banks for sending back to the owners. People who found cards could not use the cash stored on it, or see how much cash was stored on it, and would be given a small reward for returning lost cards.
The scheme was trialled in a reasonably large UK town. Supermarkets and other stores etc. were set up with the infrastructure, people were given cards, wallets and telephones, and instructed to go about their business as normal, but using the digital cash.
Unfortunately, the scheme did not work. People did not understand the central concept behind the idea: Cash is an abstract idea -- it isn't really the coins and bank notes that we pass around -- these are just tokens, and electronic tokens could be used instead. The people of the town thought these cards were just credit cards and didn't understand the fundamental difference.
It is a real shame, as the idea was quite elegant in my opinion, and would have made for a much more secure, interoperable, convenient, private and manageable currency system.
I guess it is the average person's poor education and lack of deep thought about everyday things that scuppers such ideas. As technologists we can think up some truly wonderful, grounbreaking ideas, but in the end we need to convince the regular public about these ideas. But often, the everyday public don't really want to have to think.
I have just read a particularly readable introduction: The Manual for the Matlab Wavelet Toolbox.
I presume that you have to buy the toolbox from The Mathworks, but if you are a Matlab user and want to get into using wavelets (and their variants), this would be a very good first step!
The first couple of chapters give an "idiot's guide" to wavelets, and then things build up from there. The book includes examples of how to use the Wavelet Toolbox for both 1-D (e.g. time series) and 2-D (e.g. image) signals, case studies, a section on the more advanced topics (here's where you find the maths) and a function reference for the software included in the toolbox. There's plenty of nice diagrams and graphs to aid understanding.
Even if you don't intend to use Matlab, this book is worth reading as a general introduction. If you are in an academic environment, your library may have a copy, or perhaps some IT library/book dump somewhere.
For Matlab users, don't forget to check out the homepages of researchers currently developing wavelet-based techniques -- they are often very happy to let you have some code to play with.
I don't think you can fairly compare the two systems given that you changed two varibales (the OS *and* the computer's job).
I would imagine that, given you redeployed the PC as a server, this would account for the extra load, and hence the CPU burning up, not Linux magically using the CPU all the time.
Q: Which would you prefer, an OS that used your system resources efficiently (i.e. when they are needed), or one that drove your hardware at 100% all the time?
I'm not saying that Linux is better than Windows in this respect, or vice versa, I'm just trying to point out the flawed comparison.
Everyone in my university received an "invite" to a trailer that M$ are dragging around to plug the wonders of.Net.
The head of dept. wants everyone to use M$ products (specifically Windows and Visual Studio), but pretty much all the good work coming out of my research dept. is done under UNIX of one form or another (usually Linux, but there are some Sun Stations around).
All the computers in shared clusters for undergrads are Windoze machines. Very few are UNIX boxes.
That said, I think universities are vital in educating a workforce in the use of UNIX and specifically open source OSes: 1) Unis often have little money, hence "free" software would be attractive. 2) Historically, most Profs grew up on UNIX. 3) Unis are often the comms centre for the region -- most of that stuff is done on UNIX, so there are UNIX support people around. 4) Unis are usually at the cutting edge of computing, so while Mom and Pop are just getting used to IE6 and the web, Unis are starting to experiment with GRID services, and M$ don't yet have any money to make from Mom and Pop, or most businesses, from such things, so they stick to making simple stuff even simpler for the morons.
I've seen one Uni here in the UK where it was Linux throughout the clusters, and they all ran wonderfully. It was a lovely sight.
If I had my choice, I'd use Max OS X *all* the time -- best of both worlds.
When I studied physics (aged 16-18), our teacher came into the class and said he had a demo for us. He said that before each demonstration or experiment, teachers had to assess the demo for health and safety purposes -- and that "today's demo will be neither healthy nor safe".
He went on to connect about 450V AC across a glass rod, suspended by clamps above a wooden lab desk cover.
The glass rod became quite hot and then started to give off light -- a very white light -- and after a few mins the glass melted and broke the circuit.
I guess this was demonstrating the continuum between conductors and insulators, and electron excitation/relaxation and light emission, along with the material properties of glass (i.e. to get white light you would require electrons of a range of energy levels to drop state and emit photons of a broad range of frequencies -- hence you can conclude something about the atoms in the glass).
There is no point paying $20,000 and discovering that your algorithm is flawed. Good science (i.e. establishing that your method does indeed do what you think) needs peer review -- you need people to act as Devil's advocates.
But putting your algorithm in the public domain does not mean that you can't make money from it. There is money to be made in consulting services -- and you will know your algorithm better than anyone. If your algorithm is what you say it is, there will be banks and online stores that may be willing to pay good money for you to consult on encryption.
One of the movements that seems to be picking up speed is the 'open' culture -- who trusts an OS to which the source code is closed, who trusts an algorithm that no one has really tested?
My gut feeling is that your algorithm is flawed -- most of these things have holes or other significant disadvantages. You won't see them because this is your "baby". But you need other people to test if your method is flawed.
In any case, it's unlikely that you can sell the farm and put your feet up. You'll need to keep working in some way, and if encryption is your thing, why not work in that sector?
The best thing to do is seek professional advice. See if there are business incubation initiatives or a VC culture in your area and speak to them, but remember to play your cards close to your chest until you are sure where you stand. Read about other encryption algorithms, who invented them, what they are doing now etc.
I bought an iBook about two months ago, and below is a review of the machine. I jusst bashed out the review, so my apologies for the poor structure etc.
I am a PhD student, and I wanted a laptop for the following reasons:
1. To write papers and my thesis on, using LaTeX. 2. To watch movies on if I'm travelling to/from meetings and conferences. 3. To surf the web and send/receive email. 4. To edit code. I didn't want to actually run my code on the laptop, becasuse my experiments often take several days to complete on a high-end PC. 5. To 'log in' to my work machine to check if code is running, channge settings, get a file etc. My work machine runs Windows (sigh), so the laptop has to talk to that remotely. 6. To use on the uni's network, and use my 'home' account (in this case a Windows account). 7. To drive projectors, for presentations at conferences.
I'll focus my review on the above, but first I'll talk about the reasons I picked an Apple.
Laptops are expensive. But in my line of work (OK, I'm a student, stop that sniggering at the back...), I need a computer that I can use when I'm running an experiment on my main machine. It helps to be able to write code/papers on a laptop, so I can sit in front of the TV, or at my girlfriend's place, or in a coffee house.
I originally wanted a Dell, so I could install Linux, but there are problems with this: 1. Linux isn't supported by Dell. 2. Drivers for laptops often come out ages after a new laptop has rolled off production (if at all), and their quality varies. So there's no guarantee that Linux will work and be stable on a laptop. I accept that desktops are another matter -- I have RH7.3 on my home Dell desktop running fine. 3. Dell's aren't cheap. 4. I don't really want to have to pay for a MS OS that comes pre-installed if I'll never use it.
A friend told me about a TiBook that his work colleague has and how wonderful it was. I started checking out the apple.com website, and became quite interested in OS X. Then I saw a colleague's iBook. That convinced me. I could do everything i wanted on the iBook. I bought one.
Firstly, the price of the iBook was cheaper than a similarly-specced machine. It's a 700MHz G3 (which I reckon gives similar performance to a 1GHz Celeron) with 256MB of RAM and a 16MB 3D graphics card. The screen is a 12" 1024x768 TFT LCD. I opted for the CD-ROM version, rather than the DVD-CD/RW combo option because of price (I already have a CD/RW on myn desktop, and I'll discuss the DVD/movie watching later). Apple give an educational discount, which means that the machine cost me just under £1200 (UK Pounds) and that included a 3 year warranty (also discounted). At the time, I could have bought an entry-level Dell laptop, without the 3 year warranty, with a similar spec (but perhaps a DVD drive, and definitely a larger screen (well, in terms of inches, the number of pixels would be the same)).
The first iBook arrived dead. It didn't work. The Apple helpline people were friendly and efficient, and ordered me a replacement, which arrived just over a week later. Although this was a bummer, the Apple helpline people sounded amazed that this happened, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that my experience was unusual.
When the second one arrived, I was amazed. The design is flawless. There isn't a laptop (or desktop) in the PC world that is as well designed as the iBook. The screen, although seemingly small, is wonderful. It allows the laptop to be small, but you still get the full 1024x768 pixels at 24bit colour -- because the pixels are smaller than those on a 14" screen at the same 1024x768, text and graphics look much nicer -- I have to look very closely to see the pixels. The screen has a well-designed hinge that has the effect of taking the screen away from you when you open the computer -- not like PC laptops that just have a simple hinge. The ports are nicely arranged. The speakers are adequate. The machine has no fan to cool the processor (Apple select chips properly, instead of doing an intel and designing chips that they can write a big number next to and rely on people's stupidity to buy the 1GHz PC because it will be "faster" than the 700MHz Apple [I used to be a chip designer, so I know what the right thing to do is]).
The battery life is amazing (I keep using that word). I can work for 4 hours on a single charge, listening to music (though not spinning the CD). Sometimes for 5 hours.
When you close the lid, the machine sleeps. When you open it it wakes up, often before the lid is fully open. Because of this (and the excellent reliability of the OS), I have shut down/rebooted less than 10 times since getting the machine. uptime tells me that the machine has been up for 6 days (I have never had the whole OS crash on me). Show me a PC laptop that has been up for 6 days! When the iBook sleeps, a white light snoozes from inside the machine, gently pulsating -- this shows evidence of good design: PC laptops use horrid LEDs chopped into their sides without any thought. This excellent level of design is carried throughout the iBook.
But the real test is whether I can do all those things I wanted to.
1. To write papers and my thesis on, using LaTeX.
Yes. There is a free LaTeX distribution called TeXShop which is excellent.
2. To watch movies on if I'm travelling to/from meetings and conferences.
Obviously the DVD-equipped models allow movie-watching, but what about my CD only iBook? Well, there is a free movie player called VLC that will play MPEG files, DVDs and VCDs. I can easily rip a DVD to VCD, and then play that.
[Note: I am only ripping DVDs that I own a copy of -- I do not advocate breaking copyright laws. Those in the US may be limited by the DMCA (write to your representatives, people!).]
3. To surf the web and send/receive email.
Yep. The bundled IE5 is a bit crap, but Opera just released their beta of Opera6 for Mac OSX. I am currently using Mozilla for both web (with their mouse gestures plugin!) and mail. It's fine.
4. To edit code. I didn't want to actually run my code on the laptop, becasuse my experiments often take several days to complete on a high-end PC.
A little trickier. I have yet to find a really good text editor under OS X that I like. I use jEdit on the PC (an excellent Java-based text editor), but even though this is available for OS X (and even gets the OS X widgets), it is a little slow. I guess this is a JVM efficiency thing.
I have used Fink to download XEmacs and NEdit for X windows (OS X ships with an X server, and OroborosX is a Window manager that gives your X windows the look and feel of OS X), but I don't really like these. NEdit isn't as powerful as jEdit, and XEmacs is just weird, as a former PC user, but maybe I'll keep trying.
On the code front, OS X ships with Project Builder, an excellent IDE for application development on the Mac, which IMHO is better than MS Visual Studio. Since moving onto the Mac I've gotten back into C/C++ development. It should be easy to write UNIX apps that can then be compiled on Linux and other Unices.
Because OS X is UNIX, there are loads of apps and libraries out there just waiting to go.
5. To 'log in' to my work machine to check if code is running, channge settings, get a file etc. My work machine runs Windows (sigh), so the laptop has to talk to that remotely.
I used to use the Remote Desktop feature of MS's Netmeeting. Now I use VNC and the OS X VNCThing client to access my Windows desktop.
6. To use on the uni's network, and use my 'home' account (in this case a Windows account).
Yep. Easy. I can't print over the uni's network yet, but then I haven't really tried very hard. I understand printing in OS X 10.2 Jaguar is better. I could probably easily print from the command line, but this is a bit 1970's for me.
7. To drive projectors, for presentations at conferences.
Yep. Easy. Plug and go.
There's only the text editor that's the sticking point, but maybe someone will reply to this post with a suggestion.
Other nice things about OS X: * Aqua. Lovely. It looks wonderful -- the anti-aliasing is much better than in WinXP. Although KDE and GNOME are fine projects, Aqua is much better IMHO. * Being able to use one spell-checker in every OS X app. * Built-in speech synthesis -- I can get the iBook to read me stuff on the web as I work on something else. * Speech recognition -- I can tell the Chess game where I want to move my pieces! * More than the one button mouse. I sometimes use an optical MS Wheelmouse, and it works fine without needing to install drivers. Left-mouse, right-mouse, and the wheel all work fine (even in many X-windows apps). * "It just works". It's one of apple's mottos, and they're right. It does just work.
In conclusion, the iBook is the best computer I ever used (and I've used most major computers from the days of 8-bit processors and most major OSs). If Apple keep up their good work, I will never go back to a PC again.
I think you have to make a mental seperation between the *hardware* (the wings, the motors used to make the wings rotate and flap), and the *software* (use to control the motors).
The software just runs on some sort of computer somewhere (this could be a microcontroller [a small, simple, low power processor, of the kind you'd find in a VCR, microwave oven etc.] or in a PC or Workstation sitting on the lab bench, connected to the experimental rig via some cabling). The computer is used to control the hardware. The computer solves the optimisation problem, trying out different solutions on the rig. So the *robot* is a combination of hardware and software, and it really doesn't matter where the software runs, so long as it can control the hardware.
To the layman, this may appear as if there's some kind of cheat going on ("Yeah, but it's a PC controlling the robot, so something's rotten in Denmark, right?"). But all you have to realise is that you embed the computer in the hardware, and you have the 'robot'.
In effect, what is described in the above post this *exactly* what's going on in the experiment. It just doesn't look that way.
> You forget... The robot had wings... In this case, the robot's god put them there.
In a sense, yes. In nature, the 'robot' is an animal, and it evolves its body at the same time as evolving the 'circuitry' in its brain to control the body (given one is a subset of the other). There really is no difference between a GA that finds an optimal physical configuration (i.e. the robot's body) and a GA that find an optimal way of controlling that physical configuration. The researchers decided to focus on the latter question (i.e. for simplicity; this doesn't invalidate their efforts). I'm sure you'd find stuff in the GA literature about using GAs to design physical entities (I like to use the "Designing a Training Shoe" analogy when explaining GAs to people).
>as even we humans learned to assist the limitations of your body
Yes we did, through evolving a highly sophisticated brain (it says here...), we can build wrist watches to help us tell the time etc. Again, a GA mechanism at play.
>Trial and error is an excellent learning tool, look at how much toddlers rely on it... I cry I get food, etc.
I don't know too much about child psychology, but the machine-learning model of this is the Neural Network. Associations that are useful get strengthened (and hence get a chance of becoming part of the solution), whilst those that are not die off -- so we have a "survival of the fittest" situation again.
There are lots of posts from people who don't really get what these guys did. I don't think they made a particularly amazing achievement, but many slashdotters out there don't seem to understand the science behind the achievement (the Reuters article was awful, second hand from New Scientist, which is often poor on presenting the basics).
What the researchers did was to build a robot that had wings and motors for manipulating them. These could be controlled by a computer. But instead of writing an explicit program telling the robot how to fly, they got the robot to learn how to fly. They did this using some sort of Genetic Algorithm.
Basically, what a GA does is to generate a large population of possible solutions to the problem, then evaluate how good each one is (i.e. measure the lift each one creates in this example) and then to breed good solutions to create successive generations of possible solutions which are (hopefully) better than the previous generations.
Then, once some criterion is met (for example, once the average fitness of your population doesn't change much for several generations), you then select the best solution found so far as being your answer.
In mathematical terms, GAs are stochastic methods of optimising a function; they are typically used when solving the problem using an analytic method would be problematic (i.e. it would take too long etc.).
So it's not really surprising the robot learned to 'fly' -- the researchers just managed to find an optimal sequence of instructions to send to the wings.
The next step would be to get a robot to learn how to hover without the aid of the stabilising poles; then fly from one location to the other; then fly in a straight line in the presence of varying wind etc.
What the research does do is to lend credence to the argument that insects and birds could have evolved, rather than having been 'designed' by some sort of a God.
I had a similar experience: I used to work as a programmer at a small company, but found the actual job I was doing quite different to what I signed up for (due to financial pressures I was shipped offsite and used as a tester, doing monkey work, or I spent a lot of time writing training courses). The level of pay and training I was getting were less than I was promised. I was going nowhere.
I've been studying for a PhD for two years now. Although I get a hell of a lot less money (about 1/3 of my old salary), I'm a lot happier. The academic environment is very supportive and enabling, I'm always learning, I have complete freedom to work as and when I want/need. The people I work with are enlightened, intelligent and socially-aware people, versus the moneygrabbing, selfish and stupid people one often encounters in industry. Assuming I'm lucky enough to be able to make a career in academia, there's no way I'd go back to industry.
That said, although I'm researching a topic that has direct impact on a significant public health issue, I don't feel like I am achieving something amazing. Science is about a whole bunch of people doing quality research in a methodical way, and then every once in a while a 'genius'-type coming along and drawing lots of research together and marking a milestone in the field. The important thing in science is to contribute, and not to worry too much if you are not that genius.
If you need to see the fruits of your labour, then maybe science isn't for you.
But working in an academic environment is far nicer than working in an industrial one (in my experience).
Spreadsheets aren't designed to be used in Scientific Computing (they are more suited to financial applications) -- there are other tools for the job that are explicitly designed for that purpose.
I use Matlab, and although it has some niggling features, it is a good product. It is, however, expensive. GNU Octave is similar to Matlab, but it isn't as feature rich or as well tested. I haven't used Mathematica or Maple, but I hear these are also fine pieces of software.
In terms of a GUI, Matlab does have a GUI, but most of the interaction with the system is by typing commands (such as "mean(x)" which computes the mean of the values in x), or by writing files containing sequences of such commands (i.e. programming). It is very easy to learn the basics.
In scientific computing, GUIs aren't really "where its at" -- get over it, you'll be pleased you made the effort. That said, Matlab has a very easy to use feature that allows you to put together GUIs, so that you can make user interaction with your program easier (e.g. if you wanted to get an expert radiologist annotate a set of medical images and store and process the results using your program, this could be put together very quickly and easily -- there are, obviously, many other applications!).
Try and get some demos of Matlab, Mathematica and Maple, devote a day to each to do some tutorials, and see which one you like best.
OK, this topic's a bit dead, but I have to comment on this:
No. I don't work for an OEM, and I don't hold any stock in Dell (or anyone else, sadly...).
I'm a computer science researcher. Although it may be frowned upon here, I want a computer to do a job with -- I put reliability above most other things; if my PC dies, I want to be back working with it ASAP; I don't want to waste time messing about with it myself. I have better things to do with my life.
If one wants to self-build to learn something, then fine. If you want a reliable system to use on a day-to-day basis, my advice is to buy from someone like Dell (or IBM or...) and get a warranty that will ensure you won't be without the thing for too long *when* it dies.
On the price/performance issue, I really don't think you save anything by building your own machine. Good components are more expensive than poor components. If you want a top-spec PC, it'll cost you. If you want a cheap PC, you'll pay the price in performace. The advantage of getting someone else to build you a PC is that you are pretty much guaranteed a PC delivered to your door that works, has been thoroughly tested, and is backed by a warranty. Yes, it will be more expensive; you are paying for the peace of mind.
... unless you want to do it for the experience of building a PC as an end in itself.
If you want a computer to *use*, as opposed to spending you time tweaking and fixing and being without a PC when you have problems, then you should buy one from a reputable PC manufacturer.
I have built my own PC. I'm not some dork who knows nothing about computers or electronics, I have a degree in Electronic Systems Engineering and 2 years of commercial expereince designing electronic systems from the silicon right up to the system level.
I ended up with a PC that was unstable. The problem I found was that, although each component I bought came with a warranty, there was no *system level* support -- the component manufacturers blamed each other -- and the store I bought the stuff from didn't want to know me once I had paid the money and walked out the door.
What I wanted was a reliable, high spec machine, at low cost. What I got was a turkey. You get what you pay for. If you want to tinker and can live with days or weeks or months of being without your PC as you tinker, or get someone else to, or try to convince some hardware manufacturer to give you a replacement part, then go ahead and self-build -- it will be cheaper. If you want a system to use and you want to rely on it, go to someone like Dell (they let you spec out your machine online to your own tastes).
Most important lesson I've learned: Buy a decent warranty. It won't be the cheapest option, but it will be the best.
In the end I went to Dell and bought a top-end workstation with a 3 year on-site next day warranty. I've been really happy with that bought system, and am secure in the knowledge that, should it fail, I can get a Dell guy out the next day to fix it.
Another option would be find a *really good* small company that will build your machine to spec, and who will offer you a decent support contract. Then trust what they recommend to you. But finding said company won't be easy.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy the 12" iBook (or the 12" PowerBook).
I'm using a 12" iBook right now, and it's the best computer I've ever used (and I've used PCs with MS-DOS, Windows 3.1-XP, Amiga, Solaris, HP-UX...).
The engineering quality is fantastic -- far better than any PC I've seen, and the software/hardware integration is wonderful -- you won't achieve this on Windows or Linux.
Things just work. There are no configuration or set-up hassles (install a WiFi card -- it just woorks; plug in a digital camera -- it just works; plug in the printer -- it just works).
You get the best UI around at the moment, plus an Open Source UNIX OS, and all the UNIX tools you'd get or want on Linux (SSH, Perl, Apache...). You can run GNOME, KDE etc. X windows....
Please don't buy a PC. The PC hardware definition is so outdated and poor, and compatibility is awful.
I'm never going back to the PC if I can help it. Apple make wonderful machines.
This is a feature request.
I like the new browser. Congrats on producing a very decent looking browser for OS X.
My feature request is for Tabbed browsing (a la Opera, Chimera, Mozilla, Konqueror etc); other suggestions are given below.
The lack of this feature is a "show-stopper" for me -- I'm afraid I'll be using Chimera until Safari has tabs.
They make browsing a much more managable experience -- I typically have between 3 and 10 tabs open -- having 10 browser windows would make using the OS X (or any!) desktop unmanagable.
Also of real use are Mouse Gestures (a la Opera). I can easily use Cocoa Gestures in Safari, but such technology should probably be part of the browser, if not the OS.I would also like to see a feature in Safari that Opera has: One can define a new CSS of one's own, and if viewing a page that is unreadable/unsightly/etc., a button can be pressed to swap the page's style with the one specified in your own CSS file. This is obviously a feature that is for "Power Users" only, but I think that Apple has attracted a lot of power users by adopting an OSS model for OS X, and you need to cater to us! It should be pretty easy to put a GUI in place to let regular users define their own styles.
My third worry about Safari is that it uses the brushed metal LookAndFeel. My understanding of this L&F is that it shoould be used when the application takes on the functionality of everyday items (such as DVD players etc.). Although a browser is a piece of everyday software, I don't thinnk it is sensible to pollute the 'everyday item' methaphor that the brushed metal L&F represents.
Good luck with Safari in the future.
Let's hope that tabs, mouse gestures and a user-definable CSS feature become a standard browser feature.
I was a tester on Ericsson's first smart phone project.
Although they approached the problem of enabling easy translation of displayed strings by using resource files, etc (this was enabled by the Symbion OS, which strongly encourages such practice), we ran into two major problems:
1. Buffer over/underruns -- if a programmer had created a string (e.g., menu), they would allocate four characters to store that string, but often the German equivalent would be, say, 50 characters, which would cause a crash.
2. The smart phone had a relatively small screen (compared to a PC). The UI designers were working in English and designed the entire UI using English words. They didn't pay enough attention to the fact that translation would be required. For languages that tend to have longer words than English (e.g. German), this caused significant problems. These translations wouldn't fit in the allocated space, and the screen would be cluttered with text.
It would be nice to see software engineers working on UI toolkits to take problems like this into account. Ideally, applications (and GUI toolkits) should be designed in a language-neutral way. Application programmers, who typically think in terms of logic and who strive for elegance, aren't really the best sort of people to be considering language translation. It would be desirable for GUI toolkits to degrade gracefully when presented with text that doesn't fit the UI design and which does not let programmers make the buffer over/underrun mistake. It would seem likely that such a framework exists, but it doesn't seem to be ubiquitous.
I'm from the UK, and I have just got back from my first visit to the US (Florida). I was *amazed* that so few people riding motorcycles wear helmets. Here in the UK, wearing crash-helmets is mandatory. OK, the weather in Florida is hot, even in the Winter, but we get similar temperatures in the summer here and people still wear the helmets.
It was funny: I rented a bicycle, and got a few jeers from beery idiots because I was wearing a cycle helmet -- what's with a culture like that??
If people won't even wear a crash-helmet, are they going to wear one of these air bags?
This shouldn't happen.
As previous posters have said, electronic equipment should not emit radition, nor accept radiation. In most western countries, this is part of law.
If your speakers are accepting radiation, then chances are they may well be a source of unwanted radiation too.
I'm suprised that Sony would have such a design flaw, so I think the problem is specific to the actual speakers you have -- i.e. my guess is that they are broken.
Take them back for either exchange or refund.
... great for stealing commercial secrets...
1) Finding it very difficult to watch encrypted DVDs on non-proprietary operating systems such as Linux due to laws such as the DMCA. Although there are projects that exist outside the US that let me do this (for example the excellent VLC project), many Linux distributions do not come readily set up to be able to play encrypted DVDs.
2) Attempts to apply laws such as the DMCA outside the US (such as the case of Dmitry Sklyarov).
3) Proposals to pass laws requiring computer equipment to include DRM (digital rights management) hardware, such as that used in Microsoft's Palladium project. This has severe implications for both freedom of information, privacy, and free/open source operating systems and software. If the US were to pass such a law the rest of the world would be very likely to end up using the same technology, even though no such law may exist elsewhere in the world.
Essentially, the main problems I see are about freedom -- the rights of the individual, to use their computer hardware and software in ways they want to, must be protected as a form of free speech.
Yes, copyright theft is illegal, but just because I can break the law doesn't mean I will break the law. By electronically limiting the things people can do, huge power could be handed over to large corporations who themselves have very poor legal records (such as Microsoft).
In my opinion, if freedom is taken away from computer users we will be limited to viewing BigCorporation's approved content. Technological innovation in the US will be stunted and the US will slip behind other countries with more liberal technology laws. This will affect not only the US economy, but those of other developed countries.
Well, the three big maths/numerics platforms (Mathematica, Matlab and Maple) are all available for Linux, but you do, of course, have to pay for them :-)
I think the moral of the story here is that not all Linux software is free (either in cost, or in Freedom). And that's OK.
There are many companies that *sell* products or services who are putting a lot of money (read time, testing, development, advocacy etc.) into the open source community, and this will only continue if they make money from the community.
Of course, we'd all love it if we could get math/numerical software of the calibre of the above systems for free, but the truth is that we can't (yet).
There are a couple of open source equivalents (Octave and Maxima are two exaples), but their quality is far from that of the above products.
(That is not to say that all open source software is of lesser quality than 'commercial' software.)
One of the great things about the open source community is that there is a lot of great software that is free (in both senses), but there is (increasingly) a range of 'commercial' software that is available.
So one can be a casual user of Octave and get by without paying for an expensive license, but for those of us who need a product of a higher quality, with printed manuals and technical support (etc.), it is great that this software is available if we want to spend our money on it. And, of course, that we have a broad range of choices.
I'm in the UK, and we have a pretty good service. There are several providers and a range of business models (e.g. pay as you go, pay monthly by contract etc.). Typically, one gets a free phone with a new contract (or you pay a top-up to get a shinier phone), and this is reflected in the price of calls.
Contracts tend to be for one year, rather than two (as some slashdotters have pointed out is the situation in the US), so if you get a bum deal you can change it reasonably quickly. We also have a culture whereby the public won't stand for poor service, and there are familiar ways in which to complain about such problems.
The network availability is also very high, even in densely populated areas. There have only been a few times when I have not been able to make a call because the network is busy.
That is not to say that the network coverage is wonderful -- there are places out in the countryside where I cannot get any network coverage.
I think the single major factor in our sucessful cell phone environment is the size of the country. The UK is about the size of a medium-sized US state, and we have about 60 million people in the country. Therefore a single company can cover the entire country (they are not reliant on partnerships with other companies in different areas), and can do so in a relatively short amount of time (the network can be established and upgraded easily).
The main problem facing the UK in terms of mobile telecoms is the adoption of 3G technologies. The spectrum allocated to such technologies was auctioned off by the government a few years ago, and a furious bidding war resulted in these slices of the spectrum going for tens of billions of pounds -- a huge amount of money -- which will have to be recouped by the telcos, and finally the customer. So we are facing a situation where the 'call' prices on 3G technologies is so expensive that the average person can't afford to use it.
I used to work for a company who designed vending machines, and they were involved in the Mondex scheme.
This was a really exciting idea:
i) Cash was to be carried on smart cards the same size as credit cards. Cash could be moved from the user's bank account to the card, or between individuals, by a range of technologies.
ii) Users would have a wallet, which was a small electronic device, just larger than the card. This let the users view how much cash their card had on it, and also had a simple calculator (doubling as a method of authenticating the owner of the card) with currency conversion built in.
iii) Payments could be made at point of sale by handing the card over and entering a PIN to authorise the cash transaction.
iv) Payments could be made remotely via telephone (this was all pre-WWW) by using special home telephones that had card readers built in. Again, payment authorisation was by PIN.
v) The name and other details of the owner of a particular card were encoded on it, so that lost cards could be returned to banks for sending back to the owners. People who found cards could not use the cash stored on it, or see how much cash was stored on it, and would be given a small reward for returning lost cards.
The scheme was trialled in a reasonably large UK town. Supermarkets and other stores etc. were set up with the infrastructure, people were given cards, wallets and telephones, and instructed to go about their business as normal, but using the digital cash.
Unfortunately, the scheme did not work. People did not understand the central concept behind the idea: Cash is an abstract idea -- it isn't really the coins and bank notes that we pass around -- these are just tokens, and electronic tokens could be used instead. The people of the town thought these cards were just credit cards and didn't understand the fundamental difference.
It is a real shame, as the idea was quite elegant in my opinion, and would have made for a much more secure, interoperable, convenient, private and manageable currency system.
I guess it is the average person's poor education and lack of deep thought about everyday things that scuppers such ideas. As technologists we can think up some truly wonderful, grounbreaking ideas, but in the end we need to convince the regular public about these ideas. But often, the everyday public don't really want to have to think.
I presume that you have to buy the toolbox from The Mathworks, but if you are a Matlab user and want to get into using wavelets (and their variants), this would be a very good first step!
The first couple of chapters give an "idiot's guide" to wavelets, and then things build up from there. The book includes examples of how to use the Wavelet Toolbox for both 1-D (e.g. time series) and 2-D (e.g. image) signals, case studies, a section on the more advanced topics (here's where you find the maths) and a function reference for the software included in the toolbox. There's plenty of nice diagrams and graphs to aid understanding.
Even if you don't intend to use Matlab, this book is worth reading as a general introduction. If you are in an academic environment, your library may have a copy, or perhaps some IT library/book dump somewhere.
For Matlab users, don't forget to check out the homepages of researchers currently developing wavelet-based techniques -- they are often very happy to let you have some code to play with.
Have fun!
I don't think you can fairly compare the two systems given that you changed two varibales (the OS *and* the computer's job).
I would imagine that, given you redeployed the PC as a server, this would account for the extra load, and hence the CPU burning up, not Linux magically using the CPU all the time.
Q: Which would you prefer, an OS that used your system resources efficiently (i.e. when they are needed), or one that drove your hardware at 100% all the time?
I'm not saying that Linux is better than Windows in this respect, or vice versa, I'm just trying to point out the flawed comparison.
Everyone in my university received an "invite" to a trailer that M$ are dragging around to plug the wonders of .Net.
The head of dept. wants everyone to use M$ products (specifically Windows and Visual Studio), but pretty much all the good work coming out of my research dept. is done under UNIX of one form or another (usually Linux, but there are some Sun Stations around).
All the computers in shared clusters for undergrads are Windoze machines. Very few are UNIX boxes.
That said, I think universities are vital in educating a workforce in the use of UNIX and specifically open source OSes:
1) Unis often have little money, hence "free" software would be attractive.
2) Historically, most Profs grew up on UNIX.
3) Unis are often the comms centre for the region -- most of that stuff is done on UNIX, so there are UNIX support people around.
4) Unis are usually at the cutting edge of computing, so while Mom and Pop are just getting used to IE6 and the web, Unis are starting to experiment with GRID services, and M$ don't yet have any money to make from Mom and Pop, or most businesses, from such things, so they stick to making simple stuff even simpler for the morons.
I've seen one Uni here in the UK where it was Linux throughout the clusters, and they all ran wonderfully. It was a lovely sight.
If I had my choice, I'd use Max OS X *all* the time -- best of both worlds.
When I studied physics (aged 16-18), our teacher came into the class and said he had a demo for us. He said that before each demonstration or experiment, teachers had to assess the demo for health and safety purposes -- and that "today's demo will be neither healthy nor safe".
He went on to connect about 450V AC across a glass rod, suspended by clamps above a wooden lab desk cover.
The glass rod became quite hot and then started to give off light -- a very white light -- and after a few mins the glass melted and broke the circuit.
I guess this was demonstrating the continuum between conductors and insulators, and electron excitation/relaxation and light emission, along with the material properties of glass (i.e. to get white light you would require electrons of a range of energy levels to drop state and emit photons of a broad range of frequencies -- hence you can conclude something about the atoms in the glass).
It was very cool.
There is no point paying $20,000 and discovering that your algorithm is flawed. Good science (i.e. establishing that your method does indeed do what you think) needs peer review -- you need people to act as Devil's advocates.
But putting your algorithm in the public domain does not mean that you can't make money from it. There is money to be made in consulting services -- and you will know your algorithm better than anyone. If your algorithm is what you say it is, there will be banks and online stores that may be willing to pay good money for you to consult on encryption.
One of the movements that seems to be picking up speed is the 'open' culture -- who trusts an OS to which the source code is closed, who trusts an algorithm that no one has really tested?
My gut feeling is that your algorithm is flawed -- most of these things have holes or other significant disadvantages. You won't see them because this is your "baby". But you need other people to test if your method is flawed.
In any case, it's unlikely that you can sell the farm and put your feet up. You'll need to keep working in some way, and if encryption is your thing, why not work in that sector?
The best thing to do is seek professional advice. See if there are business incubation initiatives or a VC culture in your area and speak to them, but remember to play your cards close to your chest until you are sure where you stand. Read about other encryption algorithms, who invented them, what they are doing now etc.
In any case, good luck.
Thanks -- I'll try BBEdit.
Hi
I bought an iBook about two months ago, and below is a review of the machine. I jusst bashed out the review, so my apologies for the poor structure etc.
I am a PhD student, and I wanted a laptop for the following reasons:
1. To write papers and my thesis on, using LaTeX.
2. To watch movies on if I'm travelling to/from meetings and conferences.
3. To surf the web and send/receive email.
4. To edit code. I didn't want to actually run my code on the laptop, becasuse my experiments often take several days to complete on a high-end PC.
5. To 'log in' to my work machine to check if code is running, channge settings, get a file etc. My work machine runs Windows (sigh), so the laptop has to talk to that remotely.
6. To use on the uni's network, and use my 'home' account (in this case a Windows account).
7. To drive projectors, for presentations at conferences.
I'll focus my review on the above, but first I'll talk about the reasons I picked an Apple.
Laptops are expensive. But in my line of work (OK, I'm a student, stop that sniggering at the back...), I need a computer that I can use when I'm running an experiment on my main machine. It helps to be able to write code/papers on a laptop, so I can sit in front of the TV, or at my girlfriend's place, or in a coffee house.
I originally wanted a Dell, so I could install Linux, but there are problems with this:
1. Linux isn't supported by Dell.
2. Drivers for laptops often come out ages after a new laptop has rolled off production (if at all), and their quality varies. So there's no guarantee that Linux will work and be stable on a laptop. I accept that desktops are another matter -- I have RH7.3 on my home Dell desktop running fine.
3. Dell's aren't cheap.
4. I don't really want to have to pay for a MS OS that comes pre-installed if I'll never use it.
A friend told me about a TiBook that his work colleague has and how wonderful it was. I started checking out the apple.com website, and became quite interested in OS X. Then I saw a colleague's iBook. That convinced me. I could do everything i wanted on the iBook. I bought one.
Firstly, the price of the iBook was cheaper than a similarly-specced machine. It's a 700MHz G3 (which I reckon gives similar performance to a 1GHz Celeron) with 256MB of RAM and a 16MB 3D graphics card. The screen is a 12" 1024x768 TFT LCD. I opted for the CD-ROM version, rather than the DVD-CD/RW combo option because of price (I already have a CD/RW on myn desktop, and I'll discuss the DVD/movie watching later). Apple give an educational discount, which means that the machine cost me just under £1200 (UK Pounds) and that included a 3 year warranty (also discounted). At the time, I could have bought an entry-level Dell laptop, without the 3 year warranty, with a similar spec (but perhaps a DVD drive, and definitely a larger screen (well, in terms of inches, the number of pixels would be the same)).
The first iBook arrived dead. It didn't work. The Apple helpline people were friendly and efficient, and ordered me a replacement, which arrived just over a week later. Although this was a bummer, the Apple helpline people sounded amazed that this happened, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that my experience was unusual.
When the second one arrived, I was amazed. The design is flawless. There isn't a laptop (or desktop) in the PC world that is as well designed as the iBook. The screen, although seemingly small, is wonderful. It allows the laptop to be small, but you still get the full 1024x768 pixels at 24bit colour -- because the pixels are smaller than those on a 14" screen at the same 1024x768, text and graphics look much nicer -- I have to look very closely to see the pixels. The screen has a well-designed hinge that has the effect of taking the screen away from you when you open the computer -- not like PC laptops that just have a simple hinge. The ports are nicely arranged. The speakers are adequate. The machine has no fan to cool the processor (Apple select chips properly, instead of doing an intel and designing chips that they can write a big number next to and rely on people's stupidity to buy the 1GHz PC because it will be "faster" than the 700MHz Apple [I used to be a chip designer, so I know what the right thing to do is]).
The battery life is amazing (I keep using that word). I can work for 4 hours on a single charge, listening to music (though not spinning the CD). Sometimes for 5 hours.
When you close the lid, the machine sleeps. When you open it it wakes up, often before the lid is fully open. Because of this (and the excellent reliability of the OS), I have shut down/rebooted less than 10 times since getting the machine. uptime tells me that the machine has been up for 6 days (I have never had the whole OS crash on me). Show me a PC laptop that has been up for 6 days! When the iBook sleeps, a white light snoozes from inside the machine, gently pulsating -- this shows evidence of good design: PC laptops use horrid LEDs chopped into their sides without any thought. This excellent level of design is carried throughout the iBook.
But the real test is whether I can do all those things I wanted to.
1. To write papers and my thesis on, using LaTeX.
Yes. There is a free LaTeX distribution called TeXShop which is excellent.
2. To watch movies on if I'm travelling to/from meetings and conferences.
Obviously the DVD-equipped models allow movie-watching, but what about my CD only iBook? Well, there is a free movie player called VLC that will play MPEG files, DVDs and VCDs. I can easily rip a DVD to VCD, and then play that.
[Note: I am only ripping DVDs that I own a copy of -- I do not advocate breaking copyright laws. Those in the US may be limited by the DMCA (write to your representatives, people!).]
3. To surf the web and send/receive email.
Yep. The bundled IE5 is a bit crap, but Opera just released their beta of Opera6 for Mac OSX. I am currently using Mozilla for both web (with their mouse gestures plugin!) and mail. It's fine.
4. To edit code. I didn't want to actually run my code on the laptop, becasuse my experiments often take several days to complete on a high-end PC.
A little trickier. I have yet to find a really good text editor under OS X that I like. I use jEdit on the PC (an excellent Java-based text editor), but even though this is available for OS X (and even gets the OS X widgets), it is a little slow. I guess this is a JVM efficiency thing.
I have used Fink to download XEmacs and NEdit for X windows (OS X ships with an X server, and OroborosX is a Window manager that gives your X windows the look and feel of OS X), but I don't really like these. NEdit isn't as powerful as jEdit, and XEmacs is just weird, as a former PC user, but maybe I'll keep trying.
On the code front, OS X ships with Project Builder, an excellent IDE for application development on the Mac, which IMHO is better than MS Visual Studio. Since moving onto the Mac I've gotten back into C/C++ development. It should be easy to write UNIX apps that can then be compiled on Linux and other Unices.
Because OS X is UNIX, there are loads of apps and libraries out there just waiting to go.
5. To 'log in' to my work machine to check if code is running, channge settings, get a file etc. My work machine runs Windows (sigh), so the laptop has to talk to that remotely.
I used to use the Remote Desktop feature of MS's Netmeeting. Now I use VNC and the OS X VNCThing client to access my Windows desktop.
6. To use on the uni's network, and use my 'home' account (in this case a Windows account).
Yep. Easy. I can't print over the uni's network yet, but then I haven't really tried very hard. I understand printing in OS X 10.2 Jaguar is better. I could probably easily print from the command line, but this is a bit 1970's for me.
7. To drive projectors, for presentations at conferences.
Yep. Easy. Plug and go.
There's only the text editor that's the sticking point, but maybe someone will reply to this post with a suggestion.
Other nice things about OS X:
* Aqua. Lovely. It looks wonderful -- the anti-aliasing is much better than in WinXP. Although KDE and GNOME are fine projects, Aqua is much better IMHO.
* Being able to use one spell-checker in every OS X app.
* Built-in speech synthesis -- I can get the iBook to read me stuff on the web as I work on something else.
* Speech recognition -- I can tell the Chess game where I want to move my pieces!
* More than the one button mouse. I sometimes use an optical MS Wheelmouse, and it works fine without needing to install drivers. Left-mouse, right-mouse, and the wheel all work fine (even in many X-windows apps).
* "It just works". It's one of apple's mottos, and they're right. It does just work.
In conclusion, the iBook is the best computer I ever used (and I've used most major computers from the days of 8-bit processors and most major OSs). If Apple keep up their good work, I will never go back to a PC again.
The software just runs on some sort of computer somewhere (this could be a microcontroller [a small, simple, low power processor, of the kind you'd find in a VCR, microwave oven etc.] or in a PC or Workstation sitting on the lab bench, connected to the experimental rig via some cabling). The computer is used to control the hardware. The computer solves the optimisation problem, trying out different solutions on the rig. So the *robot* is a combination of hardware and software, and it really doesn't matter where the software runs, so long as it can control the hardware.
To the layman, this may appear as if there's some kind of cheat going on ("Yeah, but it's a PC controlling the robot, so something's rotten in Denmark, right?"). But all you have to realise is that you embed the computer in the hardware, and you have the 'robot'.
In effect, what is described in the above post this *exactly* what's going on in the experiment. It just doesn't look that way.
I'm not a GA researcher, so I'm sure there's at least one error in my posts on this topic.
In a sense, yes. In nature, the 'robot' is an animal, and it evolves its body at the same time as evolving the 'circuitry' in its brain to control the body (given one is a subset of the other). There really is no difference between a GA that finds an optimal physical configuration (i.e. the robot's body) and a GA that find an optimal way of controlling that physical configuration. The researchers decided to focus on the latter question (i.e. for simplicity; this doesn't invalidate their efforts). I'm sure you'd find stuff in the GA literature about using GAs to design physical entities (I like to use the "Designing a Training Shoe" analogy when explaining GAs to people).
>as even we humans learned to assist the limitations of your body
Yes we did, through evolving a highly sophisticated brain (it says here...), we can build wrist watches to help us tell the time etc. Again, a GA mechanism at play.
>Trial and error is an excellent learning tool, look at how much toddlers rely on it... I cry I get food, etc.
I don't know too much about child psychology, but the machine-learning model of this is the Neural Network. Associations that are useful get strengthened (and hence get a chance of becoming part of the solution), whilst those that are not die off -- so we have a "survival of the fittest" situation again.
What the researchers did was to build a robot that had wings and motors for manipulating them. These could be controlled by a computer. But instead of writing an explicit program telling the robot how to fly, they got the robot to learn how to fly. They did this using some sort of Genetic Algorithm.
Basically, what a GA does is to generate a large population of possible solutions to the problem, then evaluate how good each one is (i.e. measure the lift each one creates in this example) and then to breed good solutions to create successive generations of possible solutions which are (hopefully) better than the previous generations.
Then, once some criterion is met (for example, once the average fitness of your population doesn't change much for several generations), you then select the best solution found so far as being your answer.
In mathematical terms, GAs are stochastic methods of optimising a function; they are typically used when solving the problem using an analytic method would be problematic (i.e. it would take too long etc.).
So it's not really surprising the robot learned to 'fly' -- the researchers just managed to find an optimal sequence of instructions to send to the wings.
The next step would be to get a robot to learn how to hover without the aid of the stabilising poles; then fly from one location to the other; then fly in a straight line in the presence of varying wind etc.
What the research does do is to lend credence to the argument that insects and birds could have evolved, rather than having been 'designed' by some sort of a God.
I had a similar experience: I used to work as a programmer at a small company, but found the actual job I was doing quite different to what I signed up for (due to financial pressures I was shipped offsite and used as a tester, doing monkey work, or I spent a lot of time writing training courses). The level of pay and training I was getting were less than I was promised. I was going nowhere.
I've been studying for a PhD for two years now. Although I get a hell of a lot less money (about 1/3 of my old salary), I'm a lot happier. The academic environment is very supportive and enabling, I'm always learning, I have complete freedom to work as and when I want/need. The people I work with are enlightened, intelligent and socially-aware people, versus the moneygrabbing, selfish and stupid people one often encounters in industry. Assuming I'm lucky enough to be able to make a career in academia, there's no way I'd go back to industry.
That said, although I'm researching a topic that has direct impact on a significant public health issue, I don't feel like I am achieving something amazing. Science is about a whole bunch of people doing quality research in a methodical way, and then every once in a while a 'genius'-type coming along and drawing lots of research together and marking a milestone in the field. The important thing in science is to contribute, and not to worry too much if you are not that genius.
If you need to see the fruits of your labour, then maybe science isn't for you.
But working in an academic environment is far nicer than working in an industrial one (in my experience).
Spreadsheets aren't designed to be used in Scientific Computing (they are more suited to financial applications) -- there are other tools for the job that are explicitly designed for that purpose.
I use Matlab, and although it has some niggling features, it is a good product. It is, however, expensive. GNU Octave is similar to Matlab, but it isn't as feature rich or as well tested. I haven't used Mathematica or Maple, but I hear these are also fine pieces of software.
In terms of a GUI, Matlab does have a GUI, but most of the interaction with the system is by typing commands (such as "mean(x)" which computes the mean of the values in x), or by writing files containing sequences of such commands (i.e. programming). It is very easy to learn the basics.
In scientific computing, GUIs aren't really "where its at" -- get over it, you'll be pleased you made the effort. That said, Matlab has a very easy to use feature that allows you to put together GUIs, so that you can make user interaction with your program easier (e.g. if you wanted to get an expert radiologist annotate a set of medical images and store and process the results using your program, this could be put together very quickly and easily -- there are, obviously, many other applications!).
Try and get some demos of Matlab, Mathematica and Maple, devote a day to each to do some tutorials, and see which one you like best.
OK, this topic's a bit dead, but I have to comment on this:
No. I don't work for an OEM, and I don't hold any stock in Dell (or anyone else, sadly...).
I'm a computer science researcher. Although it may be frowned upon here, I want a computer to do a job with -- I put reliability above most other things; if my PC dies, I want to be back working with it ASAP; I don't want to waste time messing about with it myself. I have better things to do with my life.
If one wants to self-build to learn something, then fine. If you want a reliable system to use on a day-to-day basis, my advice is to buy from someone like Dell (or IBM or...) and get a warranty that will ensure you won't be without the thing for too long *when* it dies.
On the price/performance issue, I really don't think you save anything by building your own machine. Good components are more expensive than poor components. If you want a top-spec PC, it'll cost you. If you want a cheap PC, you'll pay the price in performace. The advantage of getting someone else to build you a PC is that you are pretty much guaranteed a PC delivered to your door that works, has been thoroughly tested, and is backed by a warranty. Yes, it will be more expensive; you are paying for the peace of mind.
... unless you want to do it for the experience of building a PC as an end in itself.
If you want a computer to *use*, as opposed to spending you time tweaking and fixing and being without a PC when you have problems, then you should buy one from a reputable PC manufacturer.
I have built my own PC. I'm not some dork who knows nothing about computers or electronics, I have a degree in Electronic Systems Engineering and 2 years of commercial expereince designing electronic systems from the silicon right up to the system level.
I ended up with a PC that was unstable. The problem I found was that, although each component I bought came with a warranty, there was no *system level* support -- the component manufacturers blamed each other -- and the store I bought the stuff from didn't want to know me once I had paid the money and walked out the door.
What I wanted was a reliable, high spec machine, at low cost. What I got was a turkey. You get what you pay for. If you want to tinker and can live with days or weeks or months of being without your PC as you tinker, or get someone else to, or try to convince some hardware manufacturer to give you a replacement part, then go ahead and self-build -- it will be cheaper. If you want a system to use and you want to rely on it, go to someone like Dell (they let you spec out your machine online to your own tastes).
Most important lesson I've learned: Buy a decent warranty. It won't be the cheapest option, but it will be the best.
In the end I went to Dell and bought a top-end workstation with a 3 year on-site next day warranty. I've been really happy with that bought system, and am secure in the knowledge that, should it fail, I can get a Dell guy out the next day to fix it.
Another option would be find a *really good* small company that will build your machine to spec, and who will offer you a decent support contract. Then trust what they recommend to you. But finding said company won't be easy.