Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD?
On Thu, Feb 07, 2013 at 11:06:36PM -0700, Steve Smith wrote: Nick - I recently read (probably in Russell's work or in one of the references it took me to (Tegmark?)) a quote that complexity is a quality, not a quantity (attributed to whom?). Could be me, but if so its been misquoted. I distinguish complexity as a quality versus complexity as a quantity in the paper Concept and Definition of Complexity*, which I originally wrote for an encyclopedia article, which was eventually canned when the editor gave up due to time pressures, and was later revived as a book chapter. *Almost all my papers are available in full text, linked from my website (see below). -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor
I'm not claiming that Windows has all the answers for all possible goals. What I am pointing out is that in the case of a quite non-trivial application there has been remarkable stability that has been missing from both Mac and Linux environments. I haven't seen Microsoft being given credit for this, and it's not unimportant. Clearly someone at Microsoft has thought it important that applications continue to work. Concerning graphics, with each new release of Ubuntu I find it easy or difficult to install a proprietary graphics driver without which even simple 3D can fail. As for the Mac, a couple years ago World of Warcraft was broken on the Macbook Pro for something like a year and a half because the graphics driver had been tweaked to cater to some iProgram, and there was no way to upgrade the driver, given the closed Mac environment. What I'm objecting to is the facile assumption in computer-savvy circles that obviously Windows and Microsoft are hopeless (roll the eyes). That's not the whole story. Bruce On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 11:22 PM, Marcus G. Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.comwrote: On 2/7/13 10:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: To repeat, Windows for my 3D graphics development purposes has been far more stable than either Mac or Ubuntu Linux. Windows is the biggest market for gamers. 3D innovation has historically always been first on WIndows. If all you want a computer to do is a fixed set of 2d and 3d graphics APIs, then, sure, use Windows. But performance and stability are only two dimensions. I care much more about flexibility than stability or graphics performance. For example, I want to use GPUs for accelerated computation. It is inappropriate in my situation to code using unportable (CUDA) or crudely simple APIs like OpenCL. That's no way to write complex, long-lived, maintainable software. It could be a way to write simple, static, scientific codes that perform on particular cards, if that's all you need to do. I want the possibility of *some* acceleration over generations of cards, not peak performance for one generation. AMD GPUs on Linux now have the driver bits (in Mesa, a free OpenGL) and compiler bits in LLVM (a free compiler). Together there's now the possibility of integrating real compilers with accelerator technology. On Windows, this kind of integration and experimentation is not possible. Now fast forward to the day this all just works. Someone writes a code using these compiler tools, but, oops there's a strange anomaly in a particular calculation. How do you fix it? Get your favorite bloggers to complain in a public setting?No thanks, I want direct control. That means source code. Marcus ==**== FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/**listinfo/friam_redfish.comhttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor
On 2/8/13 8:32 AM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: What I'm objecting to is the facile assumption in computer-savvy circles that obviously Windows and Microsoft are hopeless (roll the eyes). That's not the whole story. I agree with that. The operating system is solid, and the development tools are first rate. It's even possible to do functional programming on Windows with F#. I don't want to function in that world, but I can appreciate it is possible to. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor
Although it might seem that I would have a similar view as Bruce since we both support 3D graphics for educational purposes, my experience is exactly the opposite of Bruce's. I have to support thousands of mostly CS students and various professionals every year. Windows is an absolute nightmare for me to support with somewhat linux behind that. I have never had a problem on a Mac that wasn't my own error. Maybe the difference is that the majority of my users use C/C++. Incompatible versions of DirectX, changes in Visual Studio, coupled with driver issues from third party graphics boards and dealing with 32 and 64 bit architectures makes it almost impossible to give a single set of instructions on how to get an OpenGL program running. If I get someone going on a 32 bit build, that may not work for 64 bits on the same machine. We even had to add a line in one of our libraries that sets a single element of a small array to 0.0 because of a driver bug in an AMD driver. The problems with linux have usually been simpler to deal with, usually involving where each one puts the standard libraries or how they are named. I used to recommend and do my own development using linux under Windows but that got worse with problems of dealing with dynamic vs dynamic libraries. If I didn't have to do so much support for my textbook and was only doing my own work, then there would be some attraction to Windows such as the ability to access the latest hardware. Apple sometimes infuriates me by its slowness hand secrettness in keeping up with graphics standards but when they do upgrade, the software is correct and works across their hardware and versions of OSX.. Ed __ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Feb 8, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: I'm not claiming that Windows has all the answers for all possible goals. What I am pointing out is that in the case of a quite non-trivial application there has been remarkable stability that has been missing from both Mac and Linux environments. I haven't seen Microsoft being given credit for this, and it's not unimportant. Clearly someone at Microsoft has thought it important that applications continue to work. Concerning graphics, with each new release of Ubuntu I find it easy or difficult to install a proprietary graphics driver without which even simple 3D can fail. As for the Mac, a couple years ago World of Warcraft was broken on the Macbook Pro for something like a year and a half because the graphics driver had been tweaked to cater to some iProgram, and there was no way to upgrade the driver, given the closed Mac environment. What I'm objecting to is the facile assumption in computer-savvy circles that obviously Windows and Microsoft are hopeless (roll the eyes). That's not the whole story. Bruce On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 11:22 PM, Marcus G. Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: On 2/7/13 10:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: To repeat, Windows for my 3D graphics development purposes has been far more stable than either Mac or Ubuntu Linux. Windows is the biggest market for gamers. 3D innovation has historically always been first on WIndows. If all you want a computer to do is a fixed set of 2d and 3d graphics APIs, then, sure, use Windows. But performance and stability are only two dimensions. I care much more about flexibility than stability or graphics performance. For example, I want to use GPUs for accelerated computation. It is inappropriate in my situation to code using unportable (CUDA) or crudely simple APIs like OpenCL. That's no way to write complex, long-lived, maintainable software. It could be a way to write simple, static, scientific codes that perform on particular cards, if that's all you need to do. I want the possibility of *some* acceleration over generations of cards, not peak performance for one generation. AMD GPUs on Linux now have the driver bits (in Mesa, a free OpenGL) and compiler bits in LLVM (a free compiler). Together there's now the possibility of integrating real compilers with accelerator technology. On Windows, this kind of integration and experimentation is not possible. Now fast forward to the day this all just works. Someone writes a code using these compiler tools, but, oops there's a strange anomaly in a particular calculation. How do you fix it? Get your favorite bloggers to complain in a public setting?No thanks, I want direct control. That means source code. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at
Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor
The difference is indeed that users of VPython (not me!) have no involvement with C/C++, and no involvement with any kind of compiling. Almost all of the VPython C++ code is platform-independent, thanks to use of OpenGL, with no use of DirectX, and as I've said, the platform-dependent code (make a window, handle events) has been rock-solid for 12 years on all versions of Windows (7 of them). During that time there were repeated problems with Mac and Linux. Maybe another difference is that in your textbook, Ed, handling events is a rather minor issue, so that for example Carbon/Cocoa issues probably haven't mattered? Changes in the Visual Studio compiler have not been a problem until just a couple of months ago, when I had to do quite a bit of work to keep going. The problem is that one has to compile a C++ module for Python X.Y using the same compiler that was used to build that version of Python. In the case of 64-bit Python on Windows, that compiler is a rather old version of Visual Studio which required arcane edits of various Visual Studio configuration files on my machine. Bruce On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Edward Angel an...@cs.unm.edu wrote: Although it might seem that I would have a similar view as Bruce since we both support 3D graphics for educational purposes, my experience is exactly the opposite of Bruce's. I have to support thousands of mostly CS students and various professionals every year. Windows is an absolute nightmare for me to support with somewhat linux behind that. I have never had a problem on a Mac that wasn't my own error. Maybe the difference is that the majority of my users use C/C++. Incompatible versions of DirectX, changes in Visual Studio, coupled with driver issues from third party graphics boards and dealing with 32 and 64 bit architectures makes it almost impossible to give a single set of instructions on how to get an OpenGL program running. If I get someone going on a 32 bit build, that may not work for 64 bits on the same machine. We even had to add a line in one of our libraries that sets a single element of a small array to 0.0 because of a driver bug in an AMD driver. The problems with linux have usually been simpler to deal with, usually involving where each one puts the standard libraries or how they are named. I used to recommend and do my own development using linux under Windows but that got worse with problems of dealing with dynamic vs dynamic libraries. If I didn't have to do so much support for my textbook and was only doing my own work, then there would be some attraction to Windows such as the ability to access the latest hardware. Apple sometimes infuriates me by its slowness hand secrettness in keeping up with graphics standards but when they do upgrade, the software is correct and works across their hardware and versions of OSX.. Ed __ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Feb 8, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: I'm not claiming that Windows has all the answers for all possible goals. What I am pointing out is that in the case of a quite non-trivial application there has been remarkable stability that has been missing from both Mac and Linux environments. I haven't seen Microsoft being given credit for this, and it's not unimportant. Clearly someone at Microsoft has thought it important that applications continue to work. Concerning graphics, with each new release of Ubuntu I find it easy or difficult to install a proprietary graphics driver without which even simple 3D can fail. As for the Mac, a couple years ago World of Warcraft was broken on the Macbook Pro for something like a year and a half because the graphics driver had been tweaked to cater to some iProgram, and there was no way to upgrade the driver, given the closed Mac environment. What I'm objecting to is the facile assumption in computer-savvy circles that obviously Windows and Microsoft are hopeless (roll the eyes). That's not the whole story. Bruce On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 11:22 PM, Marcus G. Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.comwrote: On 2/7/13 10:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote: To repeat, Windows for my 3D graphics development purposes has been far more stable than either Mac or Ubuntu Linux. Windows is the biggest market for gamers. 3D innovation has historically always been first on WIndows. If all you want a computer to do is a fixed set of 2d and 3d graphics APIs, then, sure, use Windows. But performance and stability are only two dimensions. I care much more about flexibility than stability or graphics performance. For example, I want to use GPUs for accelerated computation. It is inappropriate in my situation to code using unportable
Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor
On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Bruce Sherwood bruce.sherw...@gmail.comwrote: In the case of 64-bit Python on Windows, that compiler is a rather old version of Visual Studio which required arcane edits of various Visual Studio configuration files on my machine. Bruce rolls eyes -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor
Edward Angel wrote at 02/08/2013 08:02 AM: Although it might seem that I would have a similar view as Bruce since we both support 3D graphics for educational purposes, my experience is exactly the opposite of Bruce's. [...] Perhaps it's my own abstraction run amok, but this whole discussion reminds me of the recent one about Doug's friends Dick and Bart: glen wrote at 01/15/2013 03:37 PM: I suspect Dick had methods he invented for his astrophysics and Bart invented methods for ... billing people. 8^) And I suspect they were competent with those tools. But I also suspect those tools did not translate well to non-astrophysicists or non-lawyers ... or perhaps even very many astrophysicists or very many lawyers. Forget complexity (kind or degree), the metric is universality. The more expressive a tool, the less likely any particular use case for the tool will apply across a large cohort. The less expressive a tool, the more likely a particular use case will translate, at least between commonly structured individuals. This discussion ranges over a very limited set of highly expressive tools. It makes complete sense that a particular use case for, say, a Mac would not translate between even very similar users. The beauty of on OS, a GUI, or a tightly coupled monolithically integrated toolchain is that it _limits_ the universality of the tool, thereby making it easier to translate any particular use case amongst the members of a cohort. If you're not in that cohort, well, tough luck for you ... You have to puncture the monolithic toolchain, the GUI, or the OS to get what you want. (E.g. Marcus' description of analyzing to the bottom.) You need a more expressive tool in order to formulate and satisfy your use case. If you're belligerent and want to retain the monolith, but coerce it into a suboptimal satisficing for your compromised use case, then you have to continually react to the slight changes in the toolchain. Your compromised use case (and its generating machinery) is _fragile_ to changes in context. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Windows Resource Monitor
It's interesting that what Owen recommends is currently part of the SANS 20 Critical Controls for Effective Cyber Defense. Critical Control #2 is Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Software. Wrapping this back around to complexity - Alan Paller and the SANS crowd frequently claim that implementing just the first four controls is enough to see a significant change in the state of a defended computer network system. I'm curious if there has ever been any work to show that seemingly simple security actions can have such a great effect. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.govmailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.govmailto:rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.govmailto:dopa...@doe.ic.gov (send NIPR reminder) On Feb 7, 2013, at 8:29 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: Just an observation: Things are Getting More Complicated .. when it comes to computing. I have two friends, both quite bright in terms of computing. One a PC, the other a Mac user. Both have what I call Rotten System Syndrom (RSS). It is NOT a PC vs Mac issue. Its just that things are getting way too complex. The cloud, backups, sluggish systems, how to uninstall apps, knowing what's on the computer, knowing whether or not there is a problem. It goes on and on. The same for Linux, Mac, Windows. I'd love to say: Oh, just get a Mac. Or Ubuntu. Or Windows 8. Nope. It all boils down to systems being so complicated that even experts have problems. My solution has been along the lines I mentioned to Nick earlier: in a phrase -- System Hygiene. So how do you keep your system clean and nice .. and not even need to do a clean install? There are several things that contribute to your system being healthy. The most important is: know what is on your system and being able to remove it when no longer needed. Nick hit one one right away: a system utility like the Task/System monitor he found. So rather than being a noob, Nick turned out to hit on the right issue right away. On my system, I always have the Activity Monitor running, and yes, as Josh mentioned, run purge often. So I can see visually what's up with the system. All the Big 3 have these, just look for performance monitor etc and you'll find it. Next: after understanding how your system is running, look at your disk. Again, all the Big 3 have something like Omni Disk Sweeper for the Mac: a program that lets you see, by size, where everything is on your disk. I had to scrape my Mini clean recently so that Time Machine (the incremental backup system) wouldn't fill up immediately. I found over (blush) 40GB! that I no longer needed! That's a lot of cruft. And I'm supposed to be hip. But no, cruft happens. So after (2 days believe it or not) of figuring out what needed to be done, I applied yet another tool available on all of the Big 3: an un-installer programmer. There were several available. I deleted a large amount of the 40GB blush that way. Amazing just how much TeX takes up on legacy systems. What next? Well, I still had WAY too much on my system to have a sane backup/TimeMachine strategy. DiskSweeper again. Man did I have a LOT of stuff I no longer needed. What to do? I chose a mixed strategy: - All working docs were put in the cloud. How? Dropbox for a lot of it. Music? Both Google Drive and iTunes Match. Again available for the B3. Whew, that was a lot. I had over 80GB music, and now it's all in the cloud, multiply backed up. Next photos. As mentioned earlier, Arc and Amazon storage helps there. Mail: IMAP/gmail .. that's solved (and now with 2-factor authentication). Movies? again, not too difficult. A larger dropbox might help but I decided on simply finding .torrent files, so that I can get lost movies in a few hours if needed, the rest on local storage (redundant, via a NAS, but really not needed) - Loose a lot of apps I really don't use. AppZapper was seriously busy for quite a while. And even then, I had to find out how to keep my /usr/local clean due to the mixed strategies of Linux/Unix systems for package management. So, no Nick, you are not odd having to figure out what to do. And you hit almost immediately on the important issue: how to monitor your system. What's running now and what's it doing? Check the net for what causes these odd daemons/services running. See if you can get by without that option. Find the cruft. Buy a disk or two for backup and pushing data not needed 24/7. It really is that simple: Things have gotten really complex as my two friends, Mac PC know. Decide on a strategy. Don't worry if its the best. It just has to satisfy your requirements. Follow a plan after deciding on the strategy. Don't be in a hurry, its not easy nor obvious. Do NOT think you are odd, noob, ignorant, weird, and so on. As I say, my two friends are very intelligent yet still
[FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
I do agree with Glen's analysis (Complexity/Universality/Expressivity) as far as I can follow it. I also agree with Marcus' (and Doug's) bottom line that when developing mission-critical applications (where understanding the details of the roundoff and other errors introduced at the language/compiler/OS/Machine level is significant) to run on uber-clusters or other big-iron (maybe hybrid CPU/GPU/CELL/??? clusters), Linux is the most obvious of choices (only?). Bruce's experience supporting a relatively small but significant toolset for a broad audience is also valid. The broadest audience for his type of work is naturally the largest installed base (Windows by a factor of 4?). I take him at his word when he says the toolset he cares about is more stable and/or easier for him to support on Windows. It seems plausable. I love my Macs because they demand very little of me as my own tech support. Mostly I just go through the list of things it wants to update for me and make a fairly uninformed guess as to which things I'm willing to risk being updated at any given time. 99% of the time that works out fine. When I need something outside the standard toolset, I find it Linux is somewhat more demanding of my attention to these details and Windows is a total mystery for me regarding what/when/how to update on a less granular basis than major OS releases. I deal with computers at several (roughly) hierarchical levels: Most of my time is spent with Applications via a Window-Mouse-Keyboard GUI. Those developed on/for/by religious adherents to various schools are generally identifiable as such... e.g. iTunes running on Windows looks a bit familiar to Mac folks and not so much to Winderz folks. AutoDesk products on *whatever* OS/Desktop have a distinctly Windows feel. Archaic UIs developed under Java or X/Motif, or with other old-school GUIs are also fairly recognizeable. This is not only in their visual motifs but also choices about system interface (how to browse and choose a file, etc.) I find this irritating and distracting but not overwhelming (usually). There is nothing in the universe I hate more than the single character '\' ! When it comes time to deal directly with the desktop manager and semi-opaquely the OS itself, things get a little hinkier. When I'm on Winderz (XP, 7, but not yet 8), I get bamboozled pretty easily trying to remember the assumptions and standard idioms for doing things. Whether it is running and understanding the Resource/Task manager or resetting the network or finding executable programs, I feel like a fish out of water. It is literally embarrassing for me to try to do *anything* on Windows with someone else watching. My first OS was not Unix but it was my first significant one. I learned it pretty well all the way from the bottom (scheduler, daemons, drivers, file system) to the top (shells) back in the BSD days. This means I tend to think in Unix when I deal with Winderz or OSuX (to be equally derisive on principle). It means when I run the GUI Winderz Resource Manager or the Apple Activity Manager I think of it in terms of %ps -eal | grep regex or %ps -ealx | sort field#. As *proud* as I am of my native language I *sure* don't expect others who didn't grow up in my homeland to learn these arcane utterances... for example, while I think Nick might be capable of understanding (and maybe even enjoy the elegance of) regular expressions, expecting him to do so to solve (what was the original problem?) feels a bit like taking him on a snipe hunt just for the fun of it. I have *no* experience developing for Winderz, all that .Net stuff, C#, etc. If using the OS/WM interface is painful, I find the system interface idioms equally painful and mistakes more expensive. If it weren't for tools like Java, JavaScript/HTML5/Flash, Processing, and best of all (for me) QT, then nothing I did would ever be seen on a Windows box. It is just too painful for me to contort my mind/touchtype-fingers, etc. to the alternate paradigm(s). This makes me *want* to say it is all *just wrong*... but that is a bit like being born into a fundamentally Christian culture (with or without overt/formal Christian beliefs) and therefore feeling (maybe in order of foreignness?) that Jewish/Muslim/Hindu/Jainist/Zoroastarian cultures are just wrong! OF COURSE they feel wrong, and in some cases, the more familiar, the more wrong... like the Uncanny Valley in CG special effects. It may be what drives Doug up the wall about Mormons. If they were further afield from the culture (if not the religion) he grew up in, they might not irritate him so much? I'm sure that all the Mac-heads out there who learned the ins and outs of MacOS before OSX were the wizards they claimed (postured) to be, and I suspect they had a bit of a time and pain retooling for OSX. I know a lot of people who grew up in Winderz who
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
I'm getting worried about myself, because I am not only starting to enjoy these wordy expostulations, I'm even beginning to look forward to them with a small degree of anticipation. Is FRIAM contagious? On to the fluffing (or larding, depending on your gender/preference): On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: There is nothing in the universe I hate more than the single character '\' ! Every time you say forward slash, a little bit of me dies. XKCD. It may be what drives Doug up the wall about Mormons. If they were further afield from the culture (if not the religion) he grew up in, they might not irritate him so much? Nope. I can, and do find practitioners of any and all religious skivvy cults objectionable, regardless of proximity, cultural or otherwise. Additional negative points for proselytizing tendencies. Pin-headed, slavish closed-mindedness is universally unappealing. Throw in religious skivvies, and it is even more so. Yuk. I'm sure that all the Mac-heads out there who learned the ins and outs of MacOS before OSX were the wizards they claimed (postured) to be, and I suspect they had a bit of a time and pain retooling for OSX. I know a lot of people who grew up in Winderz who jumped when Linux came out, and I suspect they too are relatively bilingual or more to the point, bicultural. Some (many?) here grew up (got their computer chops) after Windowed Desktops, cross-platform libraries and applications , Web Browsers, etc. normalized the user experience and to some extent the developers experience to the point that they *really* don't care which platform they are on. I would speculate that if I'd been in my teens or even 20's when all this became de-riguer, I too would be much more multi-cultural. But the fact is, I'm an old dog and new tricks aren't as easy or entertaining for me as they once were. I love to hate Winderz partly because it is the *most* foreign of the extant systems I have to use, but maybe more because it is sooo successful (popular) amongst the Muggles and the English Majors (as we techs like to say dismissively) and the Lawyers and the MBAs and ... all those I like to pretend to be better than (until I need some help from *their* specialties, of course)! My primary objection to M$ is their long, well-earned history of monopolistic business practice, and their embrace, devour, and kill, in that order methodology of taking out competition as part of their attempt to maintain market dominance. Plus, their advertising sucks. Oh, and that's the primary reason that I dislike The Other Evil Empire as well. The marketing approach, I mean, not the advertising. Also, I just don't like the Mac interface. Never have. - Old Dog I'm older than you, Stevie... Edward Angel wrote at 02/08/2013 08:02 AM: Although it might seem that I would have a similar view as Bruce since we both support 3D graphics for educational purposes, my experience is exactly the opposite of Bruce's. [...] Perhaps it's my own abstraction run amok, but this whole discussion reminds me of the recent one about Doug's friends Dick and Bart: glen wrote at 01/15/2013 03:37 PM: I suspect Dick had methods he invented for his astrophysics and Bart invented methods for ... billing people. 8^) And I suspect they were competent with those tools. But I also suspect those tools did not translate well to non-astrophysicists or non-lawyers ... or perhaps even very many astrophysicists or very many lawyers. Forget complexity (kind or degree), the metric is universality. The more expressive a tool, the less likely any particular use case for the tool will apply across a large cohort. The less expressive a tool, the more likely a particular use case will translate, at least between commonly structured individuals. This discussion ranges over a very limited set of highly expressive tools. It makes complete sense that a particular use case for, say, a Mac would not translate between even very similar users. The beauty of on OS, a GUI, or a tightly coupled monolithically integrated toolchain is that it _limits_ the universality of the tool, thereby making it easier to translate any particular use case amongst the members of a cohort. If you're not in that cohort, well, tough luck for you ... You have to puncture the monolithic toolchain, the GUI, or the OS to get what you want. (E.g. Marcus' description of analyzing to the bottom.) You need a more expressive tool in order to formulate and satisfy your use case. If you're belligerent and want to retain the monolith, but coerce it into a suboptimal satisficing for your compromised use case, then you have to continually react to the slight changes in the toolchain. Your compromised use case (and its generating machinery) is _fragile_ to changes in context. ==**== FRIAM Applied
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Steve Smith wrote at 02/08/2013 10:49 AM: There is nothing in the universe I hate more than the single character '\' ! Hate is a strong word. But I feel it when I have to SCP files with spaces in them ... which Microsoft and Apple people seem to be fond of. I think the most irritating thing to me is the assumption that a GUI is always more usable than the command line. Again, it comes down to expressiveness, I suppose. With the command line, I can go anywhere and do anything I want from anywhere. A GUI traps me in these little occult scopes from which escape is awkward, if even possible. Random access is good. If I want to be scoped, I'll do it myself, thank you very much. 8^) Which takes me back to the conversation we were having before. The command line (and tools like vbox) allows me to tunnel between subcultures quite nicely. I am very happy WINE exists. But it irks me in a way I can't describe. Reflectively, however, I should like WINE better than VBox... I guess I'm just confused. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Bruce's experience supporting a relatively small but significant toolset for a broad audience is also valid. The broadest audience for his type of work is naturally the largest installed base (Windows by a factor of 4?). I take him at his word when he says the toolset he cares about is more stable and/or easier for him to support on Windows. It seems plausable. VPython is an OpenGL based package. If VPython runs stably on Windows, it's no thanks to Microsoft, Microsoft has been doing its best to embrace, devour, and kill OpenGL since 1995. -- rec -- FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] WHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD?
All, When I first moved here, seven years ago, Owen set me down and eldered me concerning citizens like me who have no respect for threads, whereas, people like YOU, people who really are experienced with computers, see the importance of not bending threads But this is the worst gang of @##!@% thread benders I have ever had the misfortune to talk with. Thus, I now find myself in the unlikely role of the FRIAM thread fascist. Owen, you can pass me the Official Gavel, next time we meet. ANYWAY, thank you Glen for steering us back at least part toward the question I raised, which was about whether complexity and instability were related. Owen introduced what I would call the Jenga (quod googlet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga ) model of complexity - you keep adding stuff until it's so baroque the whole thing falls over when you touch it. But even tho I started the argument, I am not sure what is the operating definition of complexity we are working with. I have have two quite contradictory definitions floating around in my head: (1) the number of bits and pieces x the number of kinds of bits and pieces or (2)the number of organizational levels in the system. The two definitions work at cross purposes in my head because I think of heaps of stuff as being unstable and hierarchical systems as (usually) stable. Glen now introduces (with respect to programming languages) a new dimension, expressivity vs generality. I know j.s. about computer languages, but the metaphor of expressivity is intriguing to me, particularly when opposed to generality. Is the genetic code expressive or general? And how do they related to complexity. And what is YOUR working definition of complexity. N -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 10:24 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor Edward Angel wrote at 02/08/2013 08:02 AM: Although it might seem that I would have a similar view as Bruce since we both support 3D graphics for educational purposes, my experience is exactly the opposite of Bruce's. [...] Perhaps it's my own abstraction run amok, but this whole discussion reminds me of the recent one about Doug's friends Dick and Bart: glen wrote at 01/15/2013 03:37 PM: I suspect Dick had methods he invented for his astrophysics and Bart invented methods for ... billing people. 8^) And I suspect they were competent with those tools. But I also suspect those tools did not translate well to non-astrophysicists or non-lawyers ... or perhaps even very many astrophysicists or very many lawyers. Forget complexity (kind or degree), the metric is universality. The more expressive a tool, the less likely any particular use case for the tool will apply across a large cohort. The less expressive a tool, the more likely a particular use case will translate, at least between commonly structured individuals. This discussion ranges over a very limited set of highly expressive tools. It makes complete sense that a particular use case for, say, a Mac would not translate between even very similar users. The beauty of on OS, a GUI, or a tightly coupled monolithically integrated toolchain is that it _limits_ the universality of the tool, thereby making it easier to translate any particular use case amongst the members of a cohort. If you're not in that cohort, well, tough luck for you ... You have to puncture the monolithic toolchain, the GUI, or the OS to get what you want. (E.g. Marcus' description of analyzing to the bottom.) You need a more expressive tool in order to formulate and satisfy your use case. If you're belligerent and want to retain the monolith, but coerce it into a suboptimal satisficing for your compromised use case, then you have to continually react to the slight changes in the toolchain. Your compromised use case (and its generating machinery) is _fragile_ to changes in context. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] WHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD?
Nicholas Thompson wrote at 02/08/2013 11:44 AM: I have have two quite contradictory definitions floating around in my head: (1) the number of bits and pieces x the number of kinds of bits and pieces or (2)the number of organizational levels in the system. The two definitions work at cross purposes in my head because I think of heaps of stuff as being unstable and hierarchical systems as (usually) stable. I tend to shy away from any construct requiring the concept of levels, because it carries all sorts of hidden assumptions that severely bias the conversation. A more general concept is that of aspects, scopes, facets, foci, perspectives, etc. Instead of the simple ordering relation of or , we can use inside, outside, sibling, overlap/closure, and distance in all those relations. Glen now introduces (with respect to programming languages) a new dimension, expressivity vs generality. I know j.s. about computer languages, but the metaphor of expressivity is intriguing to me, particularly when opposed to generality. Is the genetic code expressive or general? And how do they related to complexity. And what is YOUR working definition of complexity. The thing about a gene is that it's a placeholder, a name, for the multifarious mechanisms that constitute the world around us. Then we come along with our dynamic but singular, focused attention and slice out a part of the observable muck around us. The artificial discreteness between any one gene and any other gene is imposed by that aspect, scope, or focus of attention. The extent to which there is a natural discreteness between the ambient muck (observABLE phenomena), a natural discreteness in the machine(s) that generate that ambient muck, is questionable. Moreover, the extent to which the discreteness of the muck maps to the discreteness of the machine(s) is questionable. FWIW, when I talk about complexity, I'm talking about these discretizations, of the generator, then generated, and the maps between the two. Expressivity applies to the generating machine(s). E.g. What's the smallest machine we can imagine that is capable of generating any given slice of ambient muck? Or, given any machine, how large is its generated phenotype? This is where I think complexity is useful. Complexity is the word we use to describe interesting maps between generators and the generated. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] What was it we were just saying about Microsloth?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/02/08/1516238/ms-targets-google-with-another-smear-campaign -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] IS: wHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? WAS: Windows Resource Monitor
It is indeed an eye-roller. But it's more a Python eye-roller than a Microsoft or Windows eye-roller. If I remember correctly, it was Owen who some months ago pointed out some unfortunate aspects of the Python ecology. On the one hand, Python is very open to adding modules written in compiled languages such as C++. However, for such foreign modules you have to use the same compiler that was used to build the target Python (and you have to prepare different versions for different versions of Python); you mostly don't have such problems with modules written in Python. I could in principle build Python myself from source, using any compiler I liked on Windows, but there are lots of downsides to that, especially that other people's compiled modules wouldn't work with my Python. For lots of reasons, VPython is built to go with official python.org releases. An additional complication is the break between Python 2.x and Python 3.x, which in order to clean up some stuff is deliberately (though mildly) incompatible with the 2.x series. For 64-bit Python built on wxPython I have to use the older Python 2.7 at the moment, because wxPython for Python 3.x hasn't yet been released -- a general annoying problem in the Python world, that modules lag Python. I guess for historical reasons, both the 32-bit and 64-bit Python 2.7 are built with the old 2008 version of Visual Studio, for which 64-bitness apparently wasn't fully developed, especially in the free version of the compiler that I use. So the Python module situation is Not Good. Bruce On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.netwrote: On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Bruce Sherwood bruce.sherw...@gmail.comwrote: In the case of 64-bit Python on Windows, that compiler is a rather old version of Visual Studio which required arcane edits of various Visual Studio configuration files on my machine. Bruce rolls eyes -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Roger wrote: VPython is an OpenGL based package. If VPython runs stably on Windows, it's no thanks to Microsoft, Microsoft has been doing its best to embrace, devour, and kill OpenGL since 1995. The kind of freedom OpenGL (or OpenCL) gives is the kind I don't want. It's the tunnel between worlds stuff that Glen talks about. I this sense, I applaud Microsoft for making it painful to do so. Those technologies make us the frog in the heating kettle. I want the one good world, not a dozen crappy ones. Marcus mail2web.com - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
So, Roger, you've just given additional, very compelling evidence for Microsoft incompetence! They weren't even able to kill OpenGL! Seriously though, the OpenGL piece hasn't been a problem on any platform except for Ubuntu, where off and on there's a serious problem with VPython users trying to install a competent graphics driver. The problems that have repeatedly come up for me with the Mac have had to do with operating system changes, and the problems on Ubuntu (other than graphics) have been broken libraries, in both cases in the part of the world having to do with creating a window and handling events. Bruce On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Roger Critchlow r...@elf.org wrote: On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:49 AM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Bruce's experience supporting a relatively small but significant toolset for a broad audience is also valid. The broadest audience for his type of work is naturally the largest installed base (Windows by a factor of 4?). I take him at his word when he says the toolset he cares about is more stable and/or easier for him to support on Windows. It seems plausable. VPython is an OpenGL based package. If VPython runs stably on Windows, it's no thanks to Microsoft, Microsoft has been doing its best to embrace, devour, and kill OpenGL since 1995. -- rec -- FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] What was it we were just saying about Microsloth?
Nice. Now how do I disable the behavior of Google of not revealing the raw underlying URLs for Copy/Link? My solution is to use Bing! Marcus myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft® Windows® and Linux web and application hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] What was it we were just saying about Microsloth?
Bing, who simply re-hosts Google's search results. One big happy family! :) On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 1:50 PM, mar...@snoutfarm.com mar...@snoutfarm.comwrote: Nice. Now how do I disable the behavior of Google of not revealing the raw underlying URLs for Copy/Link? My solution is to use Bing! Marcus myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft® Windows® and Linux web and application hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
It's hard to buy into that argument when it leaves us at the mercy of incompatible versions of Direct X and problems of dealing with third party drivers. In many ways, most the difficulties we experience started with and continue to be driven by the game world. For many years graphics and mathematical software was driven by the scientific community which valued stability and backward compatibility. When the market became dominated by game players who are willing to replace their entire systems every year, the business changed dramatically, not only in terms of the software but also in terms of the hardware. Ed __ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Feb 8, 2013, at 1:41 PM, mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: Roger wrote: VPython is an OpenGL based package. If VPython runs stably on Windows, it's no thanks to Microsoft, Microsoft has been doing its best to embrace, devour, and kill OpenGL since 1995. The kind of freedom OpenGL (or OpenCL) gives is the kind I don't want. It's the tunnel between worlds stuff that Glen talks about. I this sense, I applaud Microsoft for making it painful to do so. Those technologies make us the frog in the heating kettle. I want the one good world, not a dozen crappy ones. Marcus mail2web.com - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Elder Dog - I'm getting worried about myself, because I am not only starting to enjoy these wordy expostulations, I'm even beginning to look forward to them with a small degree of anticipation. Is FRIAM contagious? Yes... and you grow on the rest of us too! On to the fluffing (or larding, depending on your gender/preference): Incorrigible (rhymes with encourageable ?) Nope. I can, and do find practitioners of any and all religious skivvy cults objectionable, regardless of proximity, cultural or otherwise. Additional negative points for proselytizing tendencies. Pin-headed, slavish closed-mindedness is universally unappealing. Throw in religious skivvies, and it is even more so. Yuk. Does that include whitey-tighteys with cute little penguins printed on them ;^) ? - Old Dog I'm older than you, Stevie... I know... got any *new* tricks? (not an opening for a new tack of ribaldry!) My point (if I ever have one, and then not lost in the expansive expostulation) is primarily that these are religious wars and even the avowed athiests (proponents of non-commercial, open source, etc) are battling from a similar position to their hated rivals. - YungerDog FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Ed wrote: It's hard to buy into that argument when it leaves us at the mercy of incompatible versions of Direct X and problems of dealing with third party drivers. VMware and VirtualBox both have 3D acceleration layers... Marcus mail2web.com - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Glen - There is nothing in the universe I hate more than the single character '\' ! Hate is a strong word. Ok... hyperbole. But it does elicit physical reactions when I try to type it! Even here in e-mail '\' ouch! . But I feel it when I have to SCP files with spaces in them ... which Microsoft and Apple people seem to be fond of. Which we cope with using the hated '\' arghhh! to escape? Direct quote from man csh(1) `\' nullifies the special meaning of the following character, if it has any, notably `\' and `^'. I think the most irritating thing to me is the assumption that a GUI is always more usable than the command line. I love my command line (csh, bash, ...), even for text editing (vi:ex, sed), but I *rarely* suggest that anyone else would/should/could find it easier to learn than pretty much *any* WYSIWIG editor. GUIs, if reasonably designed, almost always provide a *much* lower threshold to entry than command lines. I'd hate to have to learn various Random access is good. If I want to be scoped, I'll do it myself, thank you very much. 8^) Anarcho-Libertarian? Which takes me back to the conversation we were having before. The command line (and tools like vbox) allows me to tunnel between subcultures quite nicely. I am very happy WINE exists. But it irks me in a way I can't describe. Reflectively, however, I should like WINE better than VBox... I guess I'm just confused. The myriad choices for cross-platform coping is amazing IMO, whether it is at the level of Cygwin (sorry Doug) or Virtual Machines or multi-boot, or even just the myriad cross-platform dev environments/apps/etc. - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Steve wrote: My point (if I ever have one, and then not lost in the expansive expostulation) is primarily that these are religious wars and even the avowed athiests (proponents of non-commercial, open source, etc) are battling from a similar position to their hated rivals. If you think that a corporation is the same kind of organization as a democracy.. Marcus mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://link.mail2web.com/mail2web FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
I want the one good world, not a dozen crappy ones. Marcus grin as do all religious zealots of all stripes from everywhere! /grin The ecology I live in is a swamp, a morass, a milieu... I understand why others might want the swamp drained and a condo custom built for them with all the amenities, but I embrace the swamp (for the most part). or at least wallow in it. - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Edward Angel wrote at 02/08/2013 12:57 PM: For many years graphics and mathematical software was driven by the scientific community which valued stability and backward compatibility. When the market became dominated by game players who are willing to replace their entire systems every year, the business changed dramatically, not only in terms of the software but also in terms of the hardware. Arg! You piqued me again. ;-) I know lots of gamers who don't merely value backward compatibility, they go to ungodly extremes to maintain old systems/games, port old games to new systems, build emulators for old games, etc. But my pique isn't to argue about whether gamers value backward compatibility. It's a common thread I've been pushing with regard to scientific modeling and simulation (MS). For better or worse, I've taken the stance that science using MS should be handled in the same way other science is handled. If you want to reproduce a result, you don't slice out the repeatability at some logically impermeable layer of compatibility. Instead, you keep (or reconstruct) the _machine_ that was used for the original research. To the extent that's not reasonable, then you run your experiments with an alternative machine and characterize how the variation introduced by the machine percolates into the variation in the results of the experiments. The pure (math, physics, first principles) perspective of coming up with _precise_ analogs for various machine parts is bizarre ... fine as a fetish/avocation but inappropriate as a vocation. Yes, I know this is antithetic to most compsci people ... portable code, universal turing machines, IEEE designed floating point representations, etc. But, to me, it makes the most sense. As (non-universal) computers further burrow themselves deep into our ecology, the concept of a logical abstraction layer makes less and less sense. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
The ecology I live in is a swamp, a morass, a milieu... The swamp will always form. You don't have to care about a swamp. Marcus mail2web LIVE Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Glen wrote: Instead, you keep (or reconstruct) the _machine_ that was used for the original research. To the extent that's not reasonable, then you run your experiments with an alternative machine and characterize how the variation introduced by the machine percolates into the variation in the results of the experiments. The value of forgetting... The constructive process of making the new version of the old machine makes the person/group re-examine a lot of issues that are worth re-examining, rather than taking as received wisdom. Marcus myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft® Windows® and Linux web and application hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
That list of CygWin library names that Marcus posted flashed me back to a very unpleasant experience that occurred in the mid-90's or so at LANL. We had a client who refused to run on anything but Windows boxes. And he wanted to run our Synthetic Population software. Which was designed to run on Linux systems. Guess who got the job of porting it to NT... --Doug The myriad choices for cross-platform coping is amazing IMO, whether it is at the level of Cygwin (sorry Doug) or Virtual Machines or multi-boot, or even just the myriad cross-platform dev environments/apps/etc. - Steve ==**== FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/**listinfo/friam_redfish.comhttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote at 02/08/2013 01:45 PM: The value of forgetting... The constructive process of making the new version of the old machine makes the person/group re-examine a lot of issues that are worth re-examining, rather than taking as received wisdom. And thank Cthulu, too. Otherwise I'd have to interpret my own tendency to lose and recreate things as incompetence. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] WHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD?
I probably should not pick such a nit, but all of Silicon Valley would haunt me for years. The term actually used there is civilian. I don't know exactly why it was became so popular in the 70's but I believe it is when it was first used relating to computing. Naturally it was used by the military derisively forever. Back to the show! -- Owen On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: All, When I first moved here, seven years ago, Owen set me down and eldered me concerning citizens like me who have no respect for threads, whereas, people like YOU, people who really are experienced with computers, see the importance of not bending threads But this is the worst gang of @##!@% thread benders I have ever had the misfortune to talk with. Thus, I now find myself in the unlikely role of the FRIAM thread fascist. Owen, you can pass me the Official Gavel, next time we meet. snip** FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
I have no problem with people following such an approach but for most of us in the scientific community it doesn't work. Consider two examples: mathematical software and graphics/GPU capabilities. Much of the mathematical software that is still crucial to many of us was developed back in the 50's and over the years has involved thousands of person-years of development. If that won't run on the latest hardware it is disastrous for most application users who cannot and should not have to go back and fix the libraries. The development of graphics hardware and software was originally driven by the scientific community. When graphics hardware moved to the chip level, games dominated because not only did the hardware become inexpensive but the game players were buying the software. The people represented on this list have gone from being major buyers of hardware and software to a very minor part of the revenue. If you look at the capabilities of GPUs, they are determined by what game players want. So, for example, those of us in the visualization community have to figure out how to use what we is available rather than having significant input into what will be available. If you want some further evidence, take a look at the membership of Kronos committees. The research and education communities are almost totally unrepresented on any of them and they are the ones that are setting the standards that will determine the next generation of hardware and software. Ed __ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Feb 8, 2013, at 2:19 PM, glen e. p. ropella wrote: Edward Angel wrote at 02/08/2013 12:57 PM: For many years graphics and mathematical software was driven by the scientific community which valued stability and backward compatibility. When the market became dominated by game players who are willing to replace their entire systems every year, the business changed dramatically, not only in terms of the software but also in terms of the hardware. Arg! You piqued me again. ;-) I know lots of gamers who don't merely value backward compatibility, they go to ungodly extremes to maintain old systems/games, port old games to new systems, build emulators for old games, etc. But my pique isn't to argue about whether gamers value backward compatibility. It's a common thread I've been pushing with regard to scientific modeling and simulation (MS). For better or worse, I've taken the stance that science using MS should be handled in the same way other science is handled. If you want to reproduce a result, you don't slice out the repeatability at some logically impermeable layer of compatibility. Instead, you keep (or reconstruct) the _machine_ that was used for the original research. To the extent that's not reasonable, then you run your experiments with an alternative machine and characterize how the variation introduced by the machine percolates into the variation in the results of the experiments. The pure (math, physics, first principles) perspective of coming up with _precise_ analogs for various machine parts is bizarre ... fine as a fetish/avocation but inappropriate as a vocation. Yes, I know this is antithetic to most compsci people ... portable code, universal turing machines, IEEE designed floating point representations, etc. But, to me, it makes the most sense. As (non-universal) computers further burrow themselves deep into our ecology, the concept of a logical abstraction layer makes less and less sense. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] Neckbeards
Since the previous topics briefly touched on aging software-type people, I thought I'd share this observation. Over on Android Police, http://www.androidpolice.com/ , which really seems to be the goto place to get current news about all aspects of Android, I've noticed that the average age of the readership appears to be about 12. Seriously. --Doug -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] WHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD?
In the UN we used the term civil society. Ah the vocabulary of silos. Enjoyed attending FRIAM again. Paul -Original Message- From: Owen Densmore o...@backspaces.net To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Sent: Fri, Feb 8, 2013 2:59 pm Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WHEN IS COMPLEXITY A GOOD? I probably should not pick such a nit, but all of Silicon Valley would haunt me for years. The term actually used there is civilian. I don't know exactly why it was became so popular in the 70's but I believe it is when it was first used relating to computing. Naturally it was used by the military derisively forever. Back to the show! -- Owen On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: All, When I first moved here, seven years ago, Owen set me down and eldered me concerning citizens like me who have no respect for threads, whereas, people like YOU, people who really are experienced with computers, see the importance of not bending threads But this is the worst gang of @##!@% thread benders I have ever had the misfortune to talk with. Thus, I now find myself in the unlikely role of the FRIAM thread fascist. Owen, you can pass me the Official Gavel, next time we meet. snip FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Ed wrote: If you want some further evidence, take a look at the membership of Kronos committees. The research and education communities are almost totally unrepresented on any of them and they are the ones that are setting the standards that will determine the next generation of hardware and software. Sure nVidia implements OpenCL, but they do it just to check the box off. Their real investment is in CUDA. I'd say they participate to just give the appearance of being good citizens in the standardization process. I claim for such a company the standards are pursued when they serve to fight a larger monopoly, and they get minimal investment when it doesn't serve their purposes. For example, for a while AMD used OpenCL to discriminate themselves from nVidia (the little guy in *that* example). If the research or education community want to influence GPU technology, they should step up and hack on Mesa. I think the reason that GPU vendors cling so tightly to their driver compiler software, is because their hardware is not _that_ complex. They don't want smaller players getting their fangs into their very profitable market. Marcus mail2web LIVE Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
I wrote: For example, for a while AMD used OpenCL to discriminate themselves from nVidia (the little guy in *that* example). To clarify, nVidia likes OpenGL - Microsoft is competitor with DirectX. Competitors are bad. AMD likes OpenCL - nVidia competitor with CUDA. Competitors are bad. nVidia doesn't invest OpenCL - No serious competitor to CUDA [etc] mail2web.com - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 01:47:08PM -0700, Bruce Sherwood wrote: So, Roger, you've just given additional, very compelling evidence for Microsoft incompetence! They weren't even able to kill OpenGL! Seriously though, the OpenGL piece hasn't been a problem on any platform except for Ubuntu, where off and on there's a serious problem with VPython users trying to install a competent graphics driver. The problems that have repeatedly come up for me with the Mac have had to do with operating system changes, and the problems on Ubuntu (other than graphics) have been broken libraries, in both cases in the part of the world having to do with creating a window and handling events. Bruce To add a data point to Bruce's, I'm prinicpally involved in a cross platform project called Minsky (http://minsky.sf.net). I found that the order of increasing problems was Linux, Windows, MacOSX. The code is essentially posix, although neutered down so that the MingW environment can build the code successfully. The platform independence is given by the TCL/Tk library. I was surprised that the Mac was so problematic. Part of the problem is that each and every Mac upgrade introduces different dependency layers - so for example, if I build on a 64 bit Mac, it won't run on a 32 bit version, or if I go to the trouble of doing a 32 bit build, how do I ensure all the requisite dynamic libraries are present. How do I know whether a user will have the library already there as part of the system, or need to provide a copy along with my release. The answer, after many permutations, and irate comments from my Mac users was to use VirtualBox virtual machines. I create one VM with just MacOSX as it comes on its install disk (which turns out to be a 32 bit OS), and another VM with just the above, plus the standard XCode install. Then I build the project on the latter, and test on the former. But there are also a host of other irritations. For example, you cannot specify an initial directory to open when opening a file (eg its nice to start from where you previous opened your files). This apparently is a feature, not a bug! Another one is its treatment of transparent buttons - turns out they're not so transparent after all, but are rendered in a shade of gray that is darker at the top, and lighter at the borrom. On the plus side, getting the Mac installer to work correctly took about half a day, compared with a full three days to get the equivalent stuff to work with WiX on Windows (M$ installer scripts were designed by a committee, I'm sure of it). The reason why Linux gets off so lightly? I don't even build binaries for Linux - I expect the Linux user to know how to run make, and to be sufficiently motivated to do so. I know that's not necessarily true, and getting builds into the diverse package managers out there would help takeup of my product, but at around 5-10% of my market, I'm not too concerned, provided that it is possible. The market share, according to my figures is 5-10% Linux, 20-25% Mac and 70-75% Windows. I have ocasionally seen Windows drop below 70%, but I think that was prior to Windows 7 adoption. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
The ecology I live in is a swamp, a morass, a milieu... Marcus noted: The swamp will always form. You don't have to care about a swamp. I think you mean you don't have to care *for* a swamp ? I agree, that is why I live in a swamp. I care for my tools but let the morass flourish. CP/M == Go Kart in a Washtub DOS == Bass Boat with weak outboard motor and a bent propeller Winderz 95 == Above with a fancy paintjob. Winderz 2K == add cooler full of Bud Light Winderz NT == add Doritos Winderz XP == add ice to the cooler Winderz 7 == add fresh paintjob and a piezo-electric cooling element for the cooler Winderz 8 == munno yet, more paint, add Coors Light? MacOS == Jetboat with an undersized motor, nice paintjob and a small bomb in the ice chest. BSD Unix == Airboat with *everything* built from parts found at the hardware store, complete blueprints included. AIX/IRIX/HPUX/Solaris/etc... Airboat with various custom parts, corporate paint job, and half of the blueprints locked in the glovebox (or just wrong), high priced mini-bar filled with stale-dated items, etc. OSX == Airboat with unibody Titanium hull, fresh paintjob (white, black, or gloss clearcoat), built-in double fridge with a variety of frosty beverages, a selection of fresh sushi and a selection of healthy snacks. Linux == Airboat after 20 years of DIY tinkering, bring your own damn snacks (Jolt Cola and Twinkies or a selection of fine wines and cheeses) Command Line tools == good set water sandals, cutoff shorts, fishing line and hook, multi-tool, locking blade knife, flint and steel, compass, iodine, salt tablets... A good thing to have along if you know how to use them. Otherwise probably just extra baggage. Marcus mail2web LIVE – Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Added to that, OpenCL was light years behind CUDA (at least that was the case two years ago, when I looked at it last). I can understand nVidia making sure their product is OpenCL compatible, but putting their RD into CUDA. To be quite honest, it is damn hard to get cutting edge RD into APIs designed by a committee, and that probably the way it should be. More reprehensible is their attitude towards the Open Source Nouveau driver, although that may have improved since Linus spat the dummy at them. On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 05:45:46PM -0500, mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: I wrote: For example, for a while AMD used OpenCL to discriminate themselves from nVidia (the little guy in *that* example). To clarify, nVidia likes OpenGL - Microsoft is competitor with DirectX. Competitors are bad. AMD likes OpenCL - nVidia competitor with CUDA. Competitors are bad. nVidia doesn't invest OpenCL - No serious competitor to CUDA [etc] mail2web.com - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Steve wrote: I agree, that is why I live in a swamp. I care for my tools but let the morass flourish. Ok, let me be concrete. Consider GNU Autoconf or CMAKE. They are just a part the morass, even though they aim to cope with it. They wouldn't exist but for the morass. Huge amounts of effort go into maintaining and using these tools, and really nothing inherently valuable comes of it. It would have all been unnecessary had it not been for the swamp people, like the client Doug mentioned. Stand for something, or fall for nothing man. Marcus mail2web.com - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
In response to Marcus: Of course they work that way. But they are far from monolithic. For example, Nvidia was the company that pushed OpenGL 3.0 to announce that starting with 3.1, a tremendous amount of functionality would be deprecated, thus rendering most existing OpenGL applications to the trash bin. Then other Nvidia people realized that was a terrible position pushed Open GL 3.2 and up to support both CORE and COMPATIBILITY profiles. In response to Russell: Cg was light years ahead of GLSL but GLSL overtook it and even though there are elements of Cg that are better than GLSL. GLSL is core to OpenGL and has evolved so it performs well. Cg is now pretty head. I would expect the same to happen with CUDA and OpenCL. What may be more relevant is WebGL and the soon to be released WebCL. In practice, the standards are less designed by committee than by a few members of the committees who put in infinite time. In many cases, this winds up to be far worse than design by committee. Most of the recent graphics standards come from the work of a few driver writers who have almost no contact with the application community. I've had discussions with Kronos at various meetings about the problem of their committees being dominated by a handful of large commercial players. Their attitude is that the research and educational communities can participate if they buy memberships (and that would imply having someone with the time to spend). Mesa is a viable alternative except that you are still stuck with the standard that comes out of Kronos. Ed __ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Feb 8, 2013, at 4:22 PM, Russell Standish wrote: Added to that, OpenCL was light years behind CUDA (at least that was the case two years ago, when I looked at it last). I can understand nVidia making sure their product is OpenCL compatible, but putting their RD into CUDA. To be quite honest, it is damn hard to get cutting edge RD into APIs designed by a committee, and that probably the way it should be. More reprehensible is their attitude towards the Open Source Nouveau driver, although that may have improved since Linus spat the dummy at them. On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 05:45:46PM -0500, mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: I wrote: For example, for a while AMD used OpenCL to discriminate themselves from nVidia (the little guy in *that* example). To clarify, nVidia likes OpenGL - Microsoft is competitor with DirectX. Competitors are bad. AMD likes OpenCL - nVidia competitor with CUDA. Competitors are bad. nVidia doesn't invest OpenCL - No serious competitor to CUDA [etc] mail2web.com - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
Ed wrote: Mesa is a viable alternative except that you are still stuck with the standard that comes out of Kronos. Mesa developers can add whatever extensions they want. What matters is what becomes popular with open source application developers. Users of Mesa could just decide like like OgreGL more than OpenGL and forget about the standard. Not that they would, but they could. At the end of the day Mesa developers just need to know how to tickle the hardware the right way. Consider the Gallium drivers underlying the OpenCL stuff in Mesa are patterned on Direct3D not OpenGL. So it's not like they are suddenly confused if OpenGL semantics are abused or vague. Marcus mail2web.com Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft® Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 04:40:54PM -0700, Edward Angel wrote: In response to Russell: Cg was light years ahead of GLSL but GLSL overtook it and even though there are elements of Cg that are better than GLSL. GLSL is core to OpenGL and has evolved so it performs well. Cg is now pretty head. I would expect the same to happen with CUDA and OpenCL. What may be more relevant is WebGL and the soon to be released WebCL. Of course things that are good in the proprietry RD version will eventually make it into the standard, in some form or other. Things that aren't so good are left to wither on the vine. As a user of technology, you need to make you choice dependent on needs. For instance, two years ago, my needs were well in advance of OpenCL, so I need to go with the proprietry solution, in the understanding that that work will need to be torn up and possibly rewritten using the standard library (if still needed). Of course, if you don't need to be bleeding edge, then going with a standard approach is more desirable for code longevity. I hoping to go back and revisit the CUDA/OpenCL issue again later this year, particularly now there's a new kid on the block in the form of Intel's MIC, which can be coded using OpenMP, a standard I'm well familiar with (and had its own story like the above, but in the 1990s). Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
[FRIAM] E-reading device
To me, it's debatable whether switching from hardcopy books to ebooks is a net environmental plus. However, living down here in Ecuador makes it a real pain in the butt to get hardcopies of technical books, especially in English. So far, I've been reading PDFs on my laptop, but the screen is too far from my face to really take advantage of its resolution. So, I'm considering either an iPad or some sort of Android tablet. A smaller form factor like Kindle Fire or Nexus 7 would be fine for material that can be reformatted on the fly, but I really prefer pre-formatted PDF ebooks. I'm afraid that a seven inch screen would be too small for most PDF ebooks. Does anyone here use a tablet to read PDFs? I'd appreciate hearing of your experiences. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] Two (and more) Cultures
In case this isn't a well-known tool, I'll mention that I've been pleased with Inno Setup (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php) for building installers for Windows. I've used it for many years. Bruce On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Russell Standish r.stand...@unsw.edu.auwrote: On the plus side, getting the Mac installer to work correctly took about half a day, compared with a full three days to get the equivalent stuff to work with WiX on Windows (M$ installer scripts were designed by a committee, I'm sure of it). FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
