Do the new Mac Pros have an impressive design? Yes.
Do power users need a tiny machine? No.
Do power users want external thunderbolt devices for everything not crammed into the case? I doubt it; I certainly wouldn't.

The old Mac Pro case (and the G5 case it's based on) are nice designs. The new Mac Pro design is cool, but unnecessary at best. I'd rather have a tower with space for internal drives, PCI Express slots, etc. All Apple had to do was upgrade the damn processor and motherboard in the old Mac Pro, and everything would be fine.

(Granted, I'm no longer an Apple user; I just roll my own desktops and put linux on them. Now, back to Newegg to look at high-end parts I can't really afford...)

It's odd that proponents of the free market (with its "invisible hand") can reject evolution -- suggesting that only intelligent design (or straight up creationism) can explain how life got this way. The market and evolution are both amazing examples of "survival of the fittest"; why not accept the same mechanism/explanation for both?

IAAPGS

FWIW, while Cell and Nature are both owned by private companies, Science is run by a non-profit (the American Association for the Advancement of Science), and articles in science are made freely available two years after publication.

Having read his manifesto, I don't think his issue with with corporate publishers per se. His issue is with the culture of judging the quality of work by the prestige of the journal it was published in. That allows journals to further exploit the process; they have a large incentive to publish flashy research rather than quality research, because flashy research gets more citations -- thus making the journal more prestigious.

While I agree this is a flawed system, I'm not convinced that open-access journals are the solution; there are already more prestigious open access journals -- like Physical Review X and the New Journal of Physics (both of which are run by non-profits with prestigious, closed-access journals).

To some extent, you need both flash and quality research. I'm sure someone could do quality research on the physics of navel lint trapping, but pretty much no one would care; the research isn't interesting, and it wouldn't be worth the effort to peer review. So, for better or worse, I don't think the flashy factor will or should totally go away, although I agree it should be reduced.

That said, I am a fan of open-access journals, but I need something to publish first. I guess I should get back to research and stop wasting time with Slashdot posts....

There's nothing wrong with not knowing something important; the sin is not lifting a finger to find the fact out -- e.g. people seemingly incapable of typing a name into wikipedia and reading the first paragraph (and then whining about it in the comments instead in hopes someone will spoon-feed it to them). Those are the people who need to get lost.

I should add that this is definitely the best shot we have at dealing with software patents.

It's clear that, because of corporate interests, the legislative branch won't really fix things. (Although it sounds like a few congresscritters have their heads screwed on straight, they're definitely in the minority.)

The executive branch doesn't have the authority to fix things, and it probably wouldn't even if it could. (See the current FFC chair.)

The judicial branch is the least corruptible branch of the federal government; the important judges have life appointments, so they don't have to run for reelection, and they're not total morons either -- unlike many politicians. (Say what you will about lawyers and law school, but graduating from Harvard, Yale, or Columbia law school is a valid not-a-total-moron test.)

Here's to hoping...

I'd give them somewhat more credit than that. They definitely made the right call in Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics (ruling that genes couldn't be patented), even though they had no knowledge about biology.

The fact that they're willing to hear this case makes me somewhat optimistic; if they truly didn't understand or care about software patents, they wouldn't have gotten involved. The worst they can do is maintain the status quo, which is what would happen if they didn't intervene.

This isn't a question, but I wanted to note that Slashdot linked to her work back in January 2005 (the Minty MP3 player -- a DIY MP3 player in an altoids tin) -- before her company existed and had $10M a year in sales:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/05/01/15/1828200/build-your-own-mp3-player

That was a real eye-opener for me. I previously had no idea that a hobbyist could make something like that; I figured it was only the domain of giant companies with huge teams of engineers.

Anyhow, I've been playing with microcontrollers ever since. Thank you Limor!

If you really want to do heavy lifting, you can't beat Fortran. Just stay away from Fortran 77; it's a hot mess. Fortran 90 and later are much easier to use, and they're supported by the main compilers: gfortran and ifortran.

ifortran is Intel's Fortran compiler. It's the fastest out there, and it runs on Windows and Linux. Furthermore, you can get it as a free download for some types of academic use. (Search around intel's website -- it's hard to find.) That said, I usually use gfortran -- which is free and open source -- on linux. See http://www.polyhedron.com/compare0html for a compiler comparison.

If you use Fortran, it's very easy to use OpenMP to do multiprocessing and make use of all those cores. OpenMP is supported by the main compilers.

If you're doing lighter work, SciPy/NumPy works fine; I use it a fair amount if maximum performance isn't essential. However, I can't speak to its multiprocessing ability.

Look at the pictures in TFA; these aren't phone touchpads. You shouldn't be losing your center with these.

Gee, I remember the good old days where there was at most one computer in a house; if someone -- such as a younger sibling -- was using it to play a game, you had to kick them off to play a different game. If you were kind, you gave them a few minutes to wrap up and save.

I don't see what's different here. Now quit whining and get off my lawn.

Speaking as someone who's done a little work in stylometry, I'm sure that it's a lot easier to make your work look like it's not yours than it is to make your work look like a specific different person's. I haven't looked at this project, but I'm guessing that it'll do the former. If I made software that could do the latter, then I'd be loudly advertising that fact, or I'd keep silent and make use of it...

Are there people dying in Panama for lack of water? Are you proposing to transport water from Panama to the Sudan? Sounds like an amazingly good idea since it's super efficient to transport water large distances... Also, news flash, this new canal will be using fresh water -- from Lake Nicaragua -- in the same way as the Panama canal!

Math is a big field, and -- if you like computers -- some discrete math subfield might click with you. Even if it seems much different than differential equations, math is a very interconnect field, and having a foothold in one area might help you with others; proofs and problem solving work the same way everywhere. Differential equations might be easier afterwards.

Many schools have a discrete math survey course, and much of it is directly relevant to programming. I'd start there.

However, if you can't handle that class, then you should reconsider your major.

FWIW, I'm under the impression that most continuous math (calculus, differential equations, etc.) isn't directly useful for most programming. (Although, speaking as a physics grad student who spend a lot of time writing simulations, there are certainly programming applications for continuous math.)

Apparently new Science articles are behind a paywall for 1 year; then they available for free (although you have to register with the site).

To be fair, the journal Science is run by a non-profit, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I think it's still behind a paywall, but I have less problem funding a non-profit that way.