Excellent synopsis. I would like to add that as a whole it is hard to beat the speed of Fortran in scientific computing.
However if you are like most grad students (or even established scientists) and need to do a quick "back of the napkin" calculations for your thesis, I'd recommend iPython with numpy and matplotlib. It is no where near the speed of fortran, but you more than make up for it in how quickly you can throw a routine together and for one-time or very occasional use speed isn't really a factor. Also nothing prevents you from flushing out the algorithm and writing it in fortran, or even better write the computationally expensive operations in fortran and binding it to python ( I've seen to binding libraries for that purpose ).
Do not use Perl for this. I've been using Perl for 15-20 years, and I love it for "scripting", text processing, etc., but using it for scientific computing sounds like an exercise in masochism.
I use Perl (admittedly not by choice) for scientific computing and it is used daily to process very large files of raw instrument data. You can use NYTProf and Inline::C to make necessary speed improvements and the CPAN library is extensive.
If only we could down moderate submissions. Especially dangerously ignorant ones.
Also, of course, Professor Duane's sample includes people who talked to the police and were convicted, who were in fact guilty.
Believe it or not innocent people are found guilty. You may read the study performed by Ron Huff and Martin Killias, or search for the number of overturned convictions.
A Palm-based phone around the time the iPhone came out already was pretty much like an iPhone: same kind of launcher, same productivity apps, same kind of syncing, music player, online market, dock, sync cable, etc. The main difference between iPhone and the rest was not innovation or combination of features, it was appearance, design, and (a moderate increase in) usability.
No. They had low resolution displays and was pretty much an upgraded Palm Pilot with a cell phone built-in and a blackberry like keyboard that made life easier since graffiti required a stylus to input well. I had one. I also had to work with Nokia's offerings. There were absolutely no comparisons between these devices and the very first iPhone. The windows mobile version of the treo was a little nicer, but still had a low resolution display and had very little in common with the iPhone.
There is a reason the smart phone market didn't take off until the introduction of the iPhone.
But the innovations themselves largely came from Palm, Nokia, and a whole bunch of startups.
It's a difference between seeing the forest (a well designed product that people will use) instead of the collection of trees (stand alone features that didn't work well together).
The headline and the summary is a little misleading. The study doesn't actually show that piracy increases sales.
The submitter conflated three issues addressed in the study.
1) Making it easier to obtain authorized copies of digital music offset losses due to piracy. "Revenue from online sources including recorded music sales, streaming, online radio, subscriptions and other is increasing, both absolutely and as a percentage of overall revenue." The music industry remains healthy despite claims of huge losses due to piracy. The industry is learning to adapt by offering something other than the traditional buy-to-own model.
2) Independent artists are able to make money inside a inclusive collaborate digital culture. This challenges the assumptions that someone must have exclusive rights to music in order to make money. The authors talk about CreativeCommons and how SoundCloud is used to collaborate.
3) Prosecuting individuals for copyright enforcement isn't effective. "Targeting individual internet users is not likely to reverse the trend toward an online sharing culture, and there is an urgent need for independent verification of claims of harm to the creative industries as a result of individual copyright."
The authors make the following conclusion for responsible copyright enforcement:
"Broader ‘fair use/fair dealing’ provisions, proposals for private copying exceptions and aiming copyright enforcement and prosecution at infringing businesses instead of at citizens who share online is likely to have the desired effect of balancing the interests of the creative industries and citizens. When both can exploit the full potential of the internet, this will maximise innovative content creation for the benefit of all stakeholders."
I wonder how many people will argue that piracy is good based only on the misleading headline and not the actual contents of the study?
The only time I really care about people getting free cable is when they screw up my service by either messing up the physical connections or giving the cable company an excuse to scramble nonpremium channels forcing me to have a cable box in every room.
I'm not saying you don't have a concern. What I am saying is that the certification mentioned in the article has nothing to do with your concerns. The certification has everything to do with the government contracting services from Microsoft Azure, but has nothing to do with the security of non-governmental (more accurately non-US governmental) users.
Not to mention the cable company pays a franchise fee to the city for right of way use and may pay a fee to your electric company for usage of the pole.
It costs the cable company nothing for you to get free cable.
My last service call from my cable company indicates this isn't always true. I lost my paid cable signal (broadband) because a neighbor messed up some connections while attempting to get free cable.
Last I check the Nexus was a rebranded, unlocked, Samsung phone.
Check again, the current Nexus 4 is manufactured by LG Electronics. The first Nexus was made by HTC. The Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus were made by Samsung.
Futhermore, most of the common people, when they now say an "Android Phone", what they mean is a Samsung phone. That's the product they now associate with being the "Android Phone/Tablet". You'd be surprised how many don't get that LG, HTC, and others have the same "android" OS.
Citation? Nexus 4 is a very popular android phone made by LG. The "Droid" phones are manufactured by Motorola. The HTC One isn't doing bad either.
In fact I think it will be interesting to see what happens in a few years and if a couple players in the Android phone market drop out, after all I don't think the other Android venders make much money selling their devices, what will happen. At some point does Samsung decide they no longer need google and have the in house expertise to fork and maintain their own version of the OS?
I think Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and LG will continue dominate the phone market (squeezing out any potential newcomer). It's too early to give the award to Samsung. HTC is following Motorola's lead by concentrating on a single flagship line and Motorola is finally offering phones outside of Verizon in the US.
There are people who do otherwise why bother cheating on benchmarks?. Some people would use the benchmark to determine wether or not it's worth upgrading their phone. If their phone feels sluggish (and believe most older android phone do) which phone would they upgrade to that would be more responsive (despite the fact that benchmarks don't actually address responsiveness).
Are you implying that us android users wouldn't be "up in arms"? It affects us more. While apple sells two models of the iPhone, we have a multitude of android phones to choose from. Samsung messing with the benchmark has the potential to cause a customer to chose samsung over HTC, Google Nexus, or Motorola phone.
Again, you're calling deficit reduction a pork project? Let's focus on that a bit before you go off on some tangent. Thanks for trying to skirt the question but I'm not buying your bullshit.
It is not my fault that you can't understand the difference between "deficit reduction" and debt reduction. Please look up the term "fungible".
There is no bullshit involved here. Due to the fungibility of the general fund, "deficit reduction" frees up money to be spent on a project or to justify a tax break while in reality both of those are being financed and will have to be paid for eventually.
Straw man? There is no need for backdoors for governmental computing since oversight mechanisms are already in place. Back doors are for private entities which is outside this certification's scope.
Nice assumption based on my support of a bipartisan bill that actually states where the revenue will go instead of a version that allows continued budgeting tricks like making assumptions on incoming revenue to project the margin between money allocated and the self imposed debt ceiling. If anything the stereotypical liberal democrat would love "deficit reduction" revenue since it would allow them to justify large spending bills by offsetting the expense by over confident revenue projections from "deficit reduction" bills.
I'm for clearly defined spending goals and revenue allocations. I'm also for real debt reductions and not imaginary deficit reductions. If deficit reductions were real then congress would agree on a debt ceiling first THEN create a budget based on the money allocation. Instead they pass a budget knowing full well that in a few months time they'll be able to make more grandstanding gestures during the authorization to raise the debt ceiling.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle love "deficit reduction" bills because it makes them look good. In reality these bills are nothing more than tools to hide the every increasing expenditures by the government. The left use these bills to offset their spending and the right use these bills to offset their revenue reductions.
If you read the text of the bill the environmental issues are: abandoned well mediation, national parks maintenance backlog, abandoned mine reclamation, county school taxes based on royalties made from wells within their counties as well as some soda ash royalty payments, and they actually reduced the appropriations made by the energy independence and security act of 2007 by $6 million.
The bill still has some money destined for "deficit reduction" and some money for actual debt reduction. This was a bipartisan approved bill. The only language that I see related to pork projects like Solyndra is the $6 million defunding.
So now deficit reduction is a pork project but national parks aren't?
National parks have a fixed budget. For FY14 they only requested $2.6 billion dollars (an increase of $ 56.6 million dollars from last year). Even with this budget they had to lower their employment levels by 242 FTE (basically a labor force reduction of approximately 242 people). The NPS manages 84.4 million acres of protected lands spread across every state in the US. They existed since 1916 and their total operating budget is barely a blip on the radar inside a $3.8 trillion dollar budget. Since 42 national parks have or will soon have natural gas wells, it seems only fair that the national park system have some financial benefit from having to monitor these projects (Helium is extracted from natural gas, especially from states like Wyoming where the Grand Tetons are located).
Pork projects tend to be a short-term investment for the benefit of a very small region. Like a new bridge in Alaska, Light Industrial Zone (with only a single customer) in a southern state, a project to document the history of minority colleges in the deep south, or 22 very expensive fighter jets that the DOD says they don't need.
"Deficit reduction" actually means if we get 16 billion dollars of income from helium, we have 16 billion dollars to spend on anything we like before we reach that imaginary debt ceiling.
You didn't notice they used the term "deficit reduction" instead of "debt reduction". If it was for debt reduction then all the money would go towards the principal of debt already owed. This is not the case.
So he voted against a bill that earmarked the funds in favor for a version that uses the funds for "deficit reduction" which is political speak for money into my pork project. Funding is fungible and no one knows how to use smoke and mirrors to hide budgeting irregularities like a congress person.
At least he didn't waste anyone's time by filibustering it and then voting for it immediately afterwards.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent synopsis. I would like to add that as a whole it is hard to beat the speed of Fortran in scientific computing.
However if you are like most grad students (or even established scientists) and need to do a quick "back of the napkin" calculations for your thesis, I'd recommend iPython with numpy and matplotlib. It is no where near the speed of fortran, but you more than make up for it in how quickly you can throw a routine together and for one-time or very occasional use speed isn't really a factor. Also nothing prevents you from flushing out the algorithm and writing it in fortran, or even better write the computationally expensive operations in fortran and binding it to python ( I've seen to binding libraries for that purpose ).
I use Perl (admittedly not by choice) for scientific computing and it is used daily to process very large files of raw instrument data. You can use NYTProf and Inline::C to make necessary speed improvements and the CPAN library is extensive.
Personal comfort involves more than just temperature.
If only we could down moderate submissions. Especially dangerously ignorant ones.
Believe it or not innocent people are found guilty. You may read the study performed by Ron Huff and Martin Killias, or search for the number of overturned convictions.
No. They had low resolution displays and was pretty much an upgraded Palm Pilot with a cell phone built-in and a blackberry like keyboard that made life easier since graffiti required a stylus to input well. I had one. I also had to work with Nokia's offerings. There were absolutely no comparisons between these devices and the very first iPhone. The windows mobile version of the treo was a little nicer, but still had a low resolution display and had very little in common with the iPhone.
There is a reason the smart phone market didn't take off until the introduction of the iPhone.
It's a difference between seeing the forest (a well designed product that people will use) instead of the collection of trees (stand alone features that didn't work well together).
The headline and the summary is a little misleading. The study doesn't actually show that piracy increases sales.
The submitter conflated three issues addressed in the study.
1) Making it easier to obtain authorized copies of digital music offset losses due to piracy. "Revenue from online sources including recorded music sales, streaming, online radio, subscriptions and other is increasing, both absolutely and as a percentage of overall revenue." The music industry remains healthy despite claims of huge losses due to piracy. The industry is learning to adapt by offering something other than the traditional buy-to-own model.
2) Independent artists are able to make money inside a inclusive collaborate digital culture. This challenges the assumptions that someone must have exclusive rights to music in order to make money. The authors talk about CreativeCommons and how SoundCloud is used to collaborate.
3) Prosecuting individuals for copyright enforcement isn't effective. "Targeting individual internet users is not likely to reverse the trend toward an online sharing culture, and there is an urgent need for independent verification of claims of harm to the creative industries as a result of individual copyright."
The authors make the following conclusion for responsible copyright enforcement:
"Broader ‘fair use/fair dealing’ provisions, proposals for private copying exceptions and aiming copyright enforcement and prosecution at infringing businesses instead of at citizens who share online is likely to have the desired effect of balancing the interests of the creative industries and citizens. When both can exploit the full potential of the internet, this will maximise innovative content creation for the benefit of all stakeholders."
I wonder how many people will argue that piracy is good based only on the misleading headline and not the actual contents of the study?
The only time I really care about people getting free cable is when they screw up my service by either messing up the physical connections or giving the cable company an excuse to scramble nonpremium channels forcing me to have a cable box in every room.
I'm not saying you don't have a concern. What I am saying is that the certification mentioned in the article has nothing to do with your concerns. The certification has everything to do with the government contracting services from Microsoft Azure, but has nothing to do with the security of non-governmental (more accurately non-US governmental) users.
Not to mention the cable company pays a franchise fee to the city for right of way use and may pay a fee to your electric company for usage of the pole.
My last service call from my cable company indicates this isn't always true. I lost my paid cable signal (broadband) because a neighbor messed up some connections while attempting to get free cable.
That just means that no one can force you to subscribe to cable. It does not mean you have a right to get cable for free.
They may not have a right to make a profit, but they do have every right to protect their assets and to restrict access to their service.
I agree with your assessment.
Check again, the current Nexus 4 is manufactured by LG Electronics. The first Nexus was made by HTC. The Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus were made by Samsung.
Citation? Nexus 4 is a very popular android phone made by LG. The "Droid" phones are manufactured by Motorola. The HTC One isn't doing bad either.
I think Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and LG will continue dominate the phone market (squeezing out any potential newcomer). It's too early to give the award to Samsung. HTC is following Motorola's lead by concentrating on a single flagship line and Motorola is finally offering phones outside of Verizon in the US.
I personally don't.
There are people who do otherwise why bother cheating on benchmarks?. Some people would use the benchmark to determine wether or not it's worth upgrading their phone. If their phone feels sluggish (and believe most older android phone do) which phone would they upgrade to that would be more responsive (despite the fact that benchmarks don't actually address responsiveness).
Are you implying that us android users wouldn't be "up in arms"? It affects us more. While apple sells two models of the iPhone, we have a multitude of android phones to choose from. Samsung messing with the benchmark has the potential to cause a customer to chose samsung over HTC, Google Nexus, or Motorola phone.
It is not my fault that you can't understand the difference between "deficit reduction" and debt reduction. Please look up the term "fungible".
There is no bullshit involved here. Due to the fungibility of the general fund, "deficit reduction" frees up money to be spent on a project or to justify a tax break while in reality both of those are being financed and will have to be paid for eventually.
Straw man? There is no need for backdoors for governmental computing since oversight mechanisms are already in place. Back doors are for private entities which is outside this certification's scope.
Nice assumption based on my support of a bipartisan bill that actually states where the revenue will go instead of a version that allows continued budgeting tricks like making assumptions on incoming revenue to project the margin between money allocated and the self imposed debt ceiling. If anything the stereotypical liberal democrat would love "deficit reduction" revenue since it would allow them to justify large spending bills by offsetting the expense by over confident revenue projections from "deficit reduction" bills.
I'm for clearly defined spending goals and revenue allocations. I'm also for real debt reductions and not imaginary deficit reductions. If deficit reductions were real then congress would agree on a debt ceiling first THEN create a budget based on the money allocation. Instead they pass a budget knowing full well that in a few months time they'll be able to make more grandstanding gestures during the authorization to raise the debt ceiling.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle love "deficit reduction" bills because it makes them look good. In reality these bills are nothing more than tools to hide the every increasing expenditures by the government. The left use these bills to offset their spending and the right use these bills to offset their revenue reductions.
Since this certification is one step towards allowing government agencies to use Azure, your comment isn't relevant. No backdoor needed.
If you read the text of the bill the environmental issues are: abandoned well mediation, national parks maintenance backlog, abandoned mine reclamation, county school taxes based on royalties made from wells within their counties as well as some soda ash royalty payments, and they actually reduced the appropriations made by the energy independence and security act of 2007 by $6 million.
The bill still has some money destined for "deficit reduction" and some money for actual debt reduction. This was a bipartisan approved bill. The only language that I see related to pork projects like Solyndra is the $6 million defunding.
National parks have a fixed budget. For FY14 they only requested $2.6 billion dollars (an increase of $ 56.6 million dollars from last year). Even with this budget they had to lower their employment levels by 242 FTE (basically a labor force reduction of approximately 242 people). The NPS manages 84.4 million acres of protected lands spread across every state in the US. They existed since 1916 and their total operating budget is barely a blip on the radar inside a $3.8 trillion dollar budget. Since 42 national parks have or will soon have natural gas wells, it seems only fair that the national park system have some financial benefit from having to monitor these projects (Helium is extracted from natural gas, especially from states like Wyoming where the Grand Tetons are located).
Pork projects tend to be a short-term investment for the benefit of a very small region. Like a new bridge in Alaska, Light Industrial Zone (with only a single customer) in a southern state, a project to document the history of minority colleges in the deep south, or 22 very expensive fighter jets that the DOD says they don't need.
"Deficit reduction" actually means if we get 16 billion dollars of income from helium, we have 16 billion dollars to spend on anything we like before we reach that imaginary debt ceiling.
You didn't notice they used the term "deficit reduction" instead of "debt reduction". If it was for debt reduction then all the money would go towards the principal of debt already owed. This is not the case.
So he voted against a bill that earmarked the funds in favor for a version that uses the funds for "deficit reduction" which is political speak for money into my pork project. Funding is fungible and no one knows how to use smoke and mirrors to hide budgeting irregularities like a congress person.
At least he didn't waste anyone's time by filibustering it and then voting for it immediately afterwards.
I knew Emacs was released in 1985, but I didn't consider it because it was specific to Emacs.
Actually BSD licensed was published before GPLv1. 4.3BSD-Tahoe was released in 1988. A full year before RMS release his first GPL program.