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Submission + - R 3.0.0 Released

Submitted by DaBombDotCom
DaBombDotCom writes: R, a popular software environment for statistical computing and graphics, version 3.0.0 codename "Masked Marvel" was released yesterday. From the announcement: "Major R releases have not previously marked great landslides in terms of new features. Rather, they represent that the codebase has developed to a new level of maturity. This is not going to be an exception to the rule. Version 3.0.0, as of this writing, contains only [one] really major new feature: The inclusion of long vectors (containing more than 2^31-1 elements!). More changes are likely to make it into the final release, but the main reason for having it as a new major release is that R over the last 8.5 years has reached a new level: we now have 64 bit support on all platforms, support for parallel processing, the Matrix package, and much more."

Comment Re:She's feeling abused? (Score 1) 230

by emok (#34751524) Attached to: Groklaw — Don't Go Home, Go Big

If you believe a company is "socially responsible", you've been duped
by its PR firm. Companies are responsible to society only insofar as
it increases their profits.

For a public corporation like Novell every decision is simply a matter
of short-term financial accounting. Impacts to public welfare,
environmental damage, working conditions, patriotism, human safety,
morality, etc. are relevant only if there is an anticipated financial
impact on the business. Corporations are legally obligated to
_maximize_ profits. Profit is the only motive. They can't just earn a
decent return, they must maximize.

If a single executive doesn't pursue maximum profit, his boss fires
him. If the top executives don't, the shareholders sue.

The classic example is the founding of the Dodge automotive company.
Essentially the Dodge Brothers collected the capital to expand their
business by suing Henry Ford for paying his workers well. The court
decided that Ford set wages too high and therefore had denied profits
that rightfully belonged to the shareholders. Since Ford was
notoriously fickle, there is some debate if he was actually
overpaying, but nonetheless the precedent was set that profits always
come first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company
Earth

Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar 635

Posted by samzenpus from the sunlight-is-free dept.
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Science

The Proton Just Got Smaller 289

Posted by samzenpus from the size-does-matter dept.
inflame writes "A new paper published in Nature has said that the proton may be smaller than we previously thought. The article states 'The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care. But the new measurements could mean that there is a gap in existing theories of quantum mechanics. "It's a very serious discrepancy," says Ingo Sick, a physicist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who has tried to reconcile the finding with four decades of previous measurements. "There is really something seriously wrong someplace."' Would this indicate new physics if proven?"

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