Ha! if only. Ah, the memories of "first post", ad infinitum.

I've used Matlab for 10 years. I do not enjoy its syntax, but it's fast at what it does (matrix math) and has a huge library of tools built in that are also quite fast. It's also very cheap for academics, which is why it has such a stronghold there. People who say "switch to C or Python" for huge immediate speedups rarely know what they are talking about - they only projects I know of that tried that found that their code (again, matrix heavy) ran slower, not faster. With a lot of optimizing and the right libraries, yes, it is possible. But for most Matlab users their time is mostly spent developing, so that would be a poor tradeoff.

It's much more pleasurable to write or read python (or lisp (or smalltalk)) code, but you lose the kitchen sink. Here's a quick example: printf. Yes, it's ugly. And takes a little while to learn. But, it's very good at formatting text, and has all the options you need, want, or will ever want. Well, matlab is a language filled with printf style functions for every kind of data visualization you could want.

That said, TFA sounds like a load of crap. Anybody in google want to share what really goes on? I'm sure it depends a lot on which group you are in - machine vision and AI surely use a lot of matlab, whereas search probably never heard of it.

If you think java is a potential replacement for Matlab, then I doubt you know much about Matlab.

That's a nice theory, but none of the primary literature I've read on this topic, or review articles, have ever suggested that it was misdirection. Perhaps that's how your prof justified his behavior, but I don't think it is what most Dr's think they are doing.

Clever!! I do wonder what good use they could be put too, though :-) Nicotine is actually a pretty fantastic insecticide, though there is some concern about the bees.

I would argue that we never really knew that fat was bad for us - it was a hypothesis that got converted into policy before the empirical evidence that could have lead to actual knowledge was ever collected.

About as many studies find a decrease in blood pressure with increased salt intake as the reverse. So the number that find the high salt=high bp link isn't really that informative.

The link between salt and blood pressure is pretty clearly not the one your Dr. tells you, and this has been known for a really long time. Even the first study to show the "link" turns out to be bunk science:

http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~...

More recent meta studies have shown that about as many papers find a positive link as a negative link between blood pressure and salt - yes, eating more salt can lower your blood pressure (or, more likely, it's all just noise). Look it up on Pubmed if you want to read all the details. It's a good skill: you'll quickly learn more than your Dr. does about any topic of real concern to you, unless your Dr. is a specialist or obscenely good at his job.

What's sad is that simple to understand explanations that lead to simple to follow prescriptions (ie eat less salt) tend to stick around way longer than the scientific consensus behind them.

It's called home schooling. And often there isn't that much schooling going on, and yet the kids do way better than in public school. A low bar, I know.

That sounds like a lot of overhead for a problem that seems unlikely. I've used lots of multi-user linux boxes over the years and never noticed that a few bad users ruined the experience for everybody else. If it's really an issue, think of it instead as a learning opportunity - post concise instructions on proper lab utilization and how to use top, etc to check if somebody else is the reason why the machine you are using is slow. Then let users police each other.

I find the Economist to be much higher info density than any other print magazine I've looked at recently. Not a long list I admit, but still I'm shocked you would say it's low density. Maybe you just aren't interested in the content.

Meanwhile 7 seems a good bit less stable and rough around the edges. Haven't tried 8, but all signs point to it being much worse.

Having switched to Win7 for my home machine and still using XP at work, I have lots of opportunities to compare and contrast the two oses. 7 brings a few small improvements in the start menu and windows explorer, and some minor bugs. The improvements are not nearly enough to justify the time and cost to upgrade machines that work just fine. If WinXp was still supported I'd guess we would still see 30% of PCs running it for years and years after today. Even more if it were still sold.

Seems like a lot to me. I tend to think that (1) it could have been done a lot cheaper (wireless?) and (2) if in fact it had to cost that much, then the money probably could have been spent better.