This is ridiculous. I've been using Fedora (since FC3 to Fedora 10) every day at work and at home and it's got nothing in common with an unstable distro.
I second that. If you add matplotlib and octave to this list, you can forget about Matlab altogether (unless you need some weird toolbox).
Personally, I've also been using xmgrace to prepare the figures for my papers for a long long time.
Finally, Fortran 90 (+ free libraries) for number crunching and I'd say you're all set.
Granted, but the GP point holds: you shouldn't need to tweak the options of your router to have this feature. I'll second his opinion: NetworkManager could use more flexibility.
FWIW, where I work, we operate a superconducting tokamak (Tore Supra) with Niobium-Titanium alloy coils, supercritical helium for cryogeny and pretty nasty magnetic fields everywhere. A quench occured when the machine was switched on the first time (in 1988), because of an identified defect in the superconducting wire. But since then, the magnet has been working flawlessly and the coolant, monitored in real time, never exhibited any kind of unexpected phenomenon.
Also, people have been constantly working on this stuff since then, with even larger currents (hence larger magnetic fields) and I think it's pretty safe to assume that the LHC is gonna be fine (at least this part of the machine).
If it ain't broken, don't fix it. I really don't understand why you would want to replace LaTeX. Sorry, but your points sound pretty weak to me: LaTeX does a pretty damn good job at placing figures automatically (and if you insist, you can always fiddle around with those "htbp" tags, but I find the default location to be generally fine), I never had any problem producing EPS or PDF figures, etc... Besides, if you've really been using it for years, like me, you should be used to its "complexity" (I'm sure I'm much faster with Emacs + LaTeX than people using MS Word or whatever...)
Really, I think you're gonna have a hell of a time finding any serious alternative out there, especially for this price. But then again, why would you ? Just because it's been around for so long ? Please...
I hear you but here, in France, you can't even use your own electricity. By law, you're obliged to sell it to the electricity company which, in return, is required to buy it at a pretty high price. I heard some people make big bucks out of this.
I used to have a Mac and I bought an iPod, too. Somehow, I got tired of the Mac and went back to Linux full time (I was using both). Let me tell you that I found my iPod was very much usable in Linux. All I had to do was reformat it with iTunes on a Windows PC, and although it still needs some polishing, gtkpod works just fine for me, both for podcasts and MP3s.
Sorry if I'm a bit vague, here, but IIRC, it's been formally proven that there is no simple proof to the Fermat theorem... So maybe he did have a "simple" proof but it couldn't have been right.
I'm pretty sure Fermilab found the Higgs on a few occaisions.
This sure is a bold assumption. Top-notch scientists work their butts off every day to extract minute deviations from statistics from gazillions of experiments that would point towards the possibility that the Higgs boson is here, but *you* are pretty sure... Care to give your reasons for being that affirmative ?
My institute (I work in a physics research lab in Europe) used to benefit from Research/Teaching prices. All of a sudden, Mathworks decided that we weren't eligibile anymore (along with a bunch of other similar labs), although there's no doubt we should qualify as a research & teaching institute. Since our main experiment (a fusion reactor) is largely dependendant on Matlab, needless to say we were screwed and we had to pay up. IIRC, our bill must have been multiplied by 5. Our lawyers threatened to sue them, but they chickened as soon as The Mathworks execs said there weren't afraid... (Tell me why we are paying to have lawyers, again ?)
Anyhow, there's no doubt that Matlab is a good product but the rogue attitude of their people makes me wish the few OS enthusiastics among us can keep on convincing more and more people to use Python (matplotlib), Octave and other alternatives. Sure, there are domains in which we won't be able to compete (I'm thinking about specific toolboxes) but most people here only use very basic capabilities of Matlab and with a little effort, they could use something else. It's just that most people are resilient and since they learned how to use Matlab, they don't see why they should adapt to something else (yeah, I find it weird that some scientists may think that way but hey, what can I do ?). Our management is reluctant to force them by, say, restricting the number of licences in our pool, which I can understand, I guess.
We've significantly reduced our Matlab usage, in the past few years and I'm optimistic we'll be able to keep on getting rid of Matlab almost entirely. So, if Octave can help us to do so by improving itself, I say keep on with the good work, guys !
The C64 was my third computer. I loved that thing. I was 9 when I got a CPM/Pet and was programming it within 6 months. Later I moved on to the venerable Vic-20. Then I got the PC that changed my life - the C64. The article got it right - no PC will ever elicit the same emotions that a C64 did for the owners of them of the time.
Not to rain on your parade: I feel pretty much the same about the Amstrad CPC 464 but quite frankly, I think this has more to do with me than with this intrisic value of the machine. I mean, like you, I was a kid a the time, excited by computers, electronics, physics, math... a true nerd. I have fond memories of this period, but I suspect this is essentially related to me, not to the quality of what I had. I mean, I'm sure (I hope) kids these days have their own toys they get excited about. And I sure hope they'll feel the same about this period of their lives when they grow up as I do when I think about the C64 or the CPC ! And if that wasn't the case, I'm afraid our societies are screwed....
I work in Europe, as a researcher, and two and three years ago, the Mathworks (the company behind Matlab) decided we weren't eligible to research/education prices anymore. They did the same with a bunch of other institutes (in Europe, I don't know about the US). We operate an experimental reactor, whose control is largely based on Matlab programs. Some of these were developed a long time and people left, or retired. There's a lot to be said about the way this was handled by our management, but that's the way it is. So, we had to admit we were screwed, having to pay the price. We met with the Mathworks representatives, and I have to say all I saw a bunch of arrogant jerks.
Anyway, since then, we've renewed our licences every year, and we've been looking for an alternative. We even tried to migrate the whole lab to Scilab but that didn't work out (mostly because of the limited capabilities of Scilab in scientific plotting and GUIs). Some of us use Python + Matplotlib (I'm a big fan), some (often the same people) use Octave. Although we've converted some individuals, we weren't able to find a software which could be used by everyone in the lab as a substitute to Matlab. This is frustrating, as the vast majority of people here use only a fraction of the capabilities of Matlab.
I for one, would be really happy if we had something to replace Matlab, be it Sage or whatever else...
8 Den som olovligen bereder sig tillgång till ett meddelande, som ett post- eller telebefordringsföretag förmedlar som postförsändelse eller telemeddelande, döms för brytande av post- eller telehemlighet till böter eller fängelse i högst två år.
Beautiful language, isn't it Marge ?
I dunno. I guess the article does sound a bit too sensationalist to be honest, but 1% still seems an awful lot to me. I work at a big scientific institute, and I don't think we throw 1% of our budget in parties. Or maybe I'm not invited...
As much as I like the idea, there are very serious obstacles to the concept of He3 fusion, besides the obvious issue of finding He3. Remember that the advantage of the D+He3->p+He4 reaction is that it does not produce neutrons. Well, even this isn't absolutely true because Tritium is also produced in the process and interacts with D to produce neutrons.
1) At first aneutronic fusion looks good, because the vessel doesn't have to withstand the dreadful 14MeV neutrons of "standard" D+T fusion reactions (which is a very serious issue for a potential future reactor). On the other hand, neutrons have the advantage that they penetrate the metals, so that the energy gets actually deposited in the volume of the metal surrounding the plasma. In D+He3 fusion, the wall surface has to be able to handle all the energy and as of today, there are no materials able to withstand such a thermal load, not by a long shot.
2) The cross section of the D+He3 reaction peaks at fuel temperatures much higher than the D+T reaction. This means that the ions will have to be much hotter (about 100keV, IIRC). Heating the fuel at these temperatures wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that the plasma is going to radiate like crazy, through bremsstrahlung and synchrotron radiation essentially. Calculations indicate that it's actually gonna immediately radiate all of its energy, a phenomenon known as thermal collapse.
There are other objections as well, but quite frankly, these two are nasty enough to keep looking at D+T for the moment, even though it's less clean and comes with problems of its own.
Slashdot Mirror
Geez... no Slashdot today for me.
This is ridiculous. I've been using Fedora (since FC3 to Fedora 10) every day at work and at home and it's got nothing in common with an unstable distro.
I second that. If you add matplotlib and octave to this list, you can forget about Matlab altogether (unless you need some weird toolbox).
Personally, I've also been using xmgrace to prepare the figures for my papers for a long long time.
Finally, Fortran 90 (+ free libraries) for number crunching and I'd say you're all set.
Granted, but the GP point holds: you shouldn't need to tweak the options of your router to have this feature. I'll second his opinion: NetworkManager could use more flexibility.
FWIW, where I work, we operate a superconducting tokamak (Tore Supra) with Niobium-Titanium alloy coils, supercritical helium for cryogeny and pretty nasty magnetic fields everywhere. A quench occured when the machine was switched on the first time (in 1988), because of an identified defect in the superconducting wire. But since then, the magnet has been working flawlessly and the coolant, monitored in real time, never exhibited any kind of unexpected phenomenon.
Also, people have been constantly working on this stuff since then, with even larger currents (hence larger magnetic fields) and I think it's pretty safe to assume that the LHC is gonna be fine (at least this part of the machine).
And exactly how would superman find it? Xray vision? How would he then know he found it?
Only on slashdot...
that is why we aren't all playing space invaders on our 2600
Speak for yourself, you insensitive clod !
If it ain't broken, don't fix it. I really don't understand why you would want to replace LaTeX. Sorry, but your points sound pretty weak to me: LaTeX does a pretty damn good job at placing figures automatically (and if you insist, you can always fiddle around with those "htbp" tags, but I find the default location to be generally fine), I never had any problem producing EPS or PDF figures, etc... Besides, if you've really been using it for years, like me, you should be used to its "complexity" (I'm sure I'm much faster with Emacs + LaTeX than people using MS Word or whatever...)
Really, I think you're gonna have a hell of a time finding any serious alternative out there, especially for this price. But then again, why would you ? Just because it's been around for so long ? Please...
All processes recognize emacs as their overlord.
Yeah, well, that's what I thought when I read your post, but you got modded "Insightful"... I guess that's good for your Karma.
I hear you but here, in France, you can't even use your own electricity. By law, you're obliged to sell it to the electricity company which, in return, is required to buy it at a pretty high price. I heard some people make big bucks out of this.
I used to have a Mac and I bought an iPod, too. Somehow, I got tired of the Mac and went back to Linux full time (I was using both). Let me tell you that I found my iPod was very much usable in Linux. All I had to do was reformat it with iTunes on a Windows PC, and although it still needs some polishing, gtkpod works just fine for me, both for podcasts and MP3s.
Sorry if I'm a bit vague, here, but IIRC, it's been formally proven that there is no simple proof to the Fermat theorem... So maybe he did have a "simple" proof but it couldn't have been right.
This sure is a bold assumption. Top-notch scientists work their butts off every day to extract minute deviations from statistics from gazillions of experiments that would point towards the possibility that the Higgs boson is here, but *you* are pretty sure... Care to give your reasons for being that affirmative ?
My institute (I work in a physics research lab in Europe) used to benefit from Research/Teaching prices. All of a sudden, Mathworks decided that we weren't eligibile anymore (along with a bunch of other similar labs), although there's no doubt we should qualify as a research & teaching institute. Since our main experiment (a fusion reactor) is largely dependendant on Matlab, needless to say we were screwed and we had to pay up. IIRC, our bill must have been multiplied by 5. Our lawyers threatened to sue them, but they chickened as soon as The Mathworks execs said there weren't afraid... (Tell me why we are paying to have lawyers, again ?)
Anyhow, there's no doubt that Matlab is a good product but the rogue attitude of their people makes me wish the few OS enthusiastics among us can keep on convincing more and more people to use Python (matplotlib), Octave and other alternatives. Sure, there are domains in which we won't be able to compete (I'm thinking about specific toolboxes) but most people here only use very basic capabilities of Matlab and with a little effort, they could use something else. It's just that most people are resilient and since they learned how to use Matlab, they don't see why they should adapt to something else (yeah, I find it weird that some scientists may think that way but hey, what can I do ?). Our management is reluctant to force them by, say, restricting the number of licences in our pool, which I can understand, I guess.
We've significantly reduced our Matlab usage, in the past few years and I'm optimistic we'll be able to keep on getting rid of Matlab almost entirely. So, if Octave can help us to do so by improving itself, I say keep on with the good work, guys !
Thanks for the info. Just out of sheer curiosity, what sparked your decision to migrate from Linux to BSD ?
Boy, I sure am glad that at my company, they force us to use Outlook Web Access to access our e-mail from home.
Oh wait...
Oh yeah, I'm sure they didn't think of that before they published their work...
Not to rain on your parade: I feel pretty much the same about the Amstrad CPC 464 but quite frankly, I think this has more to do with me than with this intrisic value of the machine. I mean, like you, I was a kid a the time, excited by computers, electronics, physics, math... a true nerd. I have fond memories of this period, but I suspect this is essentially related to me, not to the quality of what I had. I mean, I'm sure (I hope) kids these days have their own toys they get excited about. And I sure hope they'll feel the same about this period of their lives when they grow up as I do when I think about the C64 or the CPC ! And if that wasn't the case, I'm afraid our societies are screwed....
I work in Europe, as a researcher, and two and three years ago, the Mathworks (the company behind Matlab) decided we weren't eligible to research/education prices anymore. They did the same with a bunch of other institutes (in Europe, I don't know about the US). We operate an experimental reactor, whose control is largely based on Matlab programs. Some of these were developed a long time and people left, or retired. There's a lot to be said about the way this was handled by our management, but that's the way it is. So, we had to admit we were screwed, having to pay the price. We met with the Mathworks representatives, and I have to say all I saw a bunch of arrogant jerks.
Anyway, since then, we've renewed our licences every year, and we've been looking for an alternative. We even tried to migrate the whole lab to Scilab but that didn't work out (mostly because of the limited capabilities of Scilab in scientific plotting and GUIs). Some of us use Python + Matplotlib (I'm a big fan), some (often the same people) use Octave. Although we've converted some individuals, we weren't able to find a software which could be used by everyone in the lab as a substitute to Matlab. This is frustrating, as the vast majority of people here use only a fraction of the capabilities of Matlab.
I for one, would be really happy if we had something to replace Matlab, be it Sage or whatever else...
Beautiful language, isn't it Marge ?
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Personnaly, I find Graffiti, on Palms, awful. I can't imagine it being worse than that...
I dunno. I guess the article does sound a bit too sensationalist to be honest, but 1% still seems an awful lot to me. I work at a big scientific institute, and I don't think we throw 1% of our budget in parties. Or maybe I'm not invited...
As much as I like the idea, there are very serious obstacles to the concept of He3 fusion, besides the obvious issue of finding He3. Remember that the advantage of the D+He3->p+He4 reaction is that it does not produce neutrons. Well, even this isn't absolutely true because Tritium is also produced in the process and interacts with D to produce neutrons.
1) At first aneutronic fusion looks good, because the vessel doesn't have to withstand the dreadful 14MeV neutrons of "standard" D+T fusion reactions (which is a very serious issue for a potential future reactor). On the other hand, neutrons have the advantage that they penetrate the metals, so that the energy gets actually deposited in the volume of the metal surrounding the plasma. In D+He3 fusion, the wall surface has to be able to handle all the energy and as of today, there are no materials able to withstand such a thermal load, not by a long shot.
2) The cross section of the D+He3 reaction peaks at fuel temperatures much higher than the D+T reaction. This means that the ions will have to be much hotter (about 100keV, IIRC). Heating the fuel at these temperatures wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that the plasma is going to radiate like crazy, through bremsstrahlung and synchrotron radiation essentially. Calculations indicate that it's actually gonna immediately radiate all of its energy, a phenomenon known as thermal collapse.
There are other objections as well, but quite frankly, these two are nasty enough to keep looking at D+T for the moment, even though it's less clean and comes with problems of its own.
Seinfeld, is that you ?