I agree. The public needs to have access to these journal articles. Now that I've left academia I don't even have free access to the articles that I wrote myself. (of course I kept the PDFs but if I ever lose them I'd have to pay $40 for every article that I wrote). It really does hold back progress.

Personally I switched from Matlab to python with spyder as the GUI interface and I'll never look back.

Most of those jobs are for "application engineers" and not developers. An application engineer is a little like tech support and a little like sales. They will work closely with existing customers to make Matlab work for their customers application and they'll also try to upsell new features.

Octave wouldn't have the same type of support structure but might have similar numbers of man power contributing to the development.

The JAS at the beginning of the designation stands for the Swedish words for Fighter, Attack and Reconnaissance. It's a true multi-role fighter. The F/A designation means the SH is supposed be a Fighter and Attack aircraft but, considering its larger size, it's more Attack than Fighter. Don't waste your time with the Reconnaisance on the SH.

It has been pointed out that it is designed to operate from short fields, mostly just short stretches of roadway. Most US fighters would have a problem with that. The SH would definitely have a problem with that. Yes, it has longer range, but it's also considerably heavier.

Since Sweden requires a year of military service from all citizens, much of their enlisted military is made up of people who won't be around long enough to do six-month- or year-long training programs. The Gripen is designed so that a squadron of them can be maintained by a handful of experienced sergeants and a large bunch of barely-trained grunts. That means the maintenance tasks have to be kept relatively simple. Parts replacement has to be relatively easy, assuming the people wielding the wrenches are at least competent mechanics, not necessarily aerospace mechanics.

Also, the engine supplied with it is a modified version of a licensed GE engine design. Good luck vetoing the shipment of those engines to other countries. The plane can take armaments from a variety of countries. So, they are not dependent on good trade relations with the US.

Finally, yes, local industries stand to benefit from an influx of "fresh blood" from SAAB. I suspect they've already absorbed most of what they can get from Boeing. So, in terms of helping the local industrial base, the Gripen is a better choice.

My wife and I have both worked from home, using a 3G Verizon link which might, occasionally, approach 1 mb/s. And yes, that's megabit, not megabyte, per second. Typical behavior was more like 1/2 megabit / second. Implement the following, in order, to get by comfortably.

1. #1 yes, get a cloud server. Do the big upload/download thing from there. I use rsync to move the "deltas" between my home systems and the cloud system, which allows me to avoid big uploads/downloads from/to my home system. If I need to actually modify a big file, sometimes I do a VNC-over-SSH to the cloud server and run GIMP or whatever in the cloud, so I don't actually have to download it. So long as the latency is decent, you can do this pretty effectively.
2. #2 yes, get a good router. One which will allow you to prioritize connections. I have a CradlePoint MBR-1000. It does this. That way, connectivity to the office VPN or the cloud server takes priority over whatever else is going on.
3. #3 yes, get a local, personal server which can do caching DNS. This will reduce the latency on most everything else. It is hard to overstate just how big a difference this makes.
4. #4 have that personal server do a caching web proxy. Much surfing has the same stuff (CSS, images, javascript, etc.) from one page to the next. Also, wireless tends to have a higher error rate, so downloading stuff tends to result in lots of packet retries. Browsers don't like that; they can do it, but it tends to disrupt everything. The caching web proxy handles that transparently so the browser just sees a pause, when a packet has an error, then a burst of data when the following, non-errored packets and the retried, error-free packet come out of the proxy in order. Meanwhile, the browser kept downloading everything else it needed and running smoothly. This also works very nicely if you have multiple machines running some Linux distro which need to be updated. The first machine to do the update may have to wait for slow downloads, but additional machines will get files from the cache, making them screaming fast to update.

I had an old Cobalt RAQ2 which did the 3rd and 4th items. It died, recently, so I'm looking at a QNAP box, which runs a version of Debian. It can do the caching DNS, but it might not be up to the caching web proxy. We've definitely noticed a difference with the 3rd and 4th items out of commission.

Translate to french and then we'll let the OP nitpick your grammar.

Give me a tablet with a Tiling Window Manager, so I can have multiple apps on-screen at the same time, with voice recognition that works and I'm gone. I would, no longer, have any need for a desktop or laptop computer.

I would like some more screen real-estate, though. A 7-inch tablet just doesn't cut it for me, and my eyes are too old to handle uber-high-resolution on a small screen.

Ubuntu already has the tiling window manager, but Android and iPad do not. And the voice recognition stuff is using desktop equipment. Yes, tablets are getting very interesting but they aren't ready to replace the desktop just yet. Another 12-18 months, though, you may be right.

For those with abnormally high levels of glucose in your blood, you're not just an all-you-can-eat buffet on legs. You have the dessert bar thrown in, too.

I have a VM running on a cloud server which has a full Linux install, Java, Eclipse and Android dev libraries. That way, I don't have to stick with one, particular laptop or desktop machine when I want to play with it. So long as the machine I'm physically using can handle SSH and X-windows and has a reasonably fast connection to the Internet, I'm good.

Also, most computers can be booted from a Linux Live CD, hit the VM and let me do what I want to do without actually installing anything on said computer. So, if I'm visiting my dad, who's running Windoze, I can still play with my VM.

Finally, using VirtualBox to run WinXP to VPN into the office, on a host machine running Linux, works quite well. If you want to check something on the Internet WITHOUT the VPN trying to route it through the company's proxy server, fire up the browser directly on the host machine, outside of the VM. If you want to hit stuff on the company network, fire up the browser inside the VM.

I foresee a day when more and more people are doing the latter one. Any virus infections on the host machine will have to be very intelligent to infect the VM, and vice versa. And, heaven help you if you ever end up in a situation where you need to log onto multiple VPNs at the same time. Different VMs, different VPNs, one host to rule them all.

At a prior gig, there was free soda. It was mostly Coke/Pepsi, which I didn't care for. I wanted some Code Red. I found out who did the buying. I found out that she was part Norwegian. I brought in a plate full of Kransekake (ring-shaped, Norwegian marzipan cookies; I have the recipe and I've made them before). I waved 'em under her nose. Her eyes lit up. "Repeat after me: we're going to get some Code Red in the soda cooler." She repeated it. I left the cookies. Later that week, Code Red appeared in the cooler.

A little social engineering goes a long way.

I agree. The impression that I have from Fisker is that their product was not well engineered compared to competitors like Tesla. The Fisker Karma looked nice but they did have quality problems. Using lithium-ion batteries from A123 was one of their mistakes (even before bankruptacy, A123 had problems).