ObsessiveMathsFreak - Slashdot User

Submission + - Age Ratings For Books

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ObsessiveMathsFreak

on Tuesday August 19, 2008 @02:39PM

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "The BBC is reporting that books publishers are to introduce age ratings for children's books. The ratings system was proposed by The Publisher's Association, which asserts that 86% of adults surveyed welcomed age guidance. However book authors, including J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, are decidedly not pleased with the new scheme, claiming that older children, and adults, will be deterred by a booked labelled for younger readers. The Society of Authors has issued a stern rebuke against the publishers, and some author's have already signed the standard online petition against the scheme. While not wanting to sound too hyperbolic, I do feel that this scheme spells the end of western civilisation as we know it; They're censoring books now."

Submission + - Poll: Salutations and Valedictions in Emails

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ObsessiveMathsFreak

on Friday April 04, 2008 @02:20PM

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "When do you use salutations and valedictions in emails?

* Never
* Only when being formal
* All the time
* .sig suffices
* It's all in the header anyway
* Dear CowboyNeal"

Submission + - Call To Halt Donations To Stop Wikipedia Deletions 4

Submitted by

ObsessiveMathsFreak

on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @09:04PM

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "Howard Tayler, the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary fame, is calling on people not to donate money during the latest Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser, in protest at the "notability purges" taking place throughout Wikipedia, where articles are being removed en-masse by what many see as overzealous admins. The webcomic community in particular has long felt slighted by the application of Wikipedia's contentious Notability policy. Wikinews reporters have recently begun investigating this issue, but are the admins listening? Is Deletionism becoming a dominant ethos on Wikipedia? Are the right people holding the reigns?"

Submission + - Numerically Approximating The Wave Equation

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ObsessiveMathsFreak

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @12:32PM

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "I'm an applied mathematician who has recently needed to obtain good numerical approximations to the classic second order wave equation, preferably in three space dimensions. A lot of googling has not revealed much on what I had assumed would be a well studied problem. Most of the standard numerical methods, finite difference/finite element methods, don't seem to work very well in the case of variable wave speed at different points in the domain, which is exactly the case that I need. Are there any slashdotters working on numerically solving wave equation problems? What numerical methods do you use, and which programs do you find best suited to the task? How do you deal with stability issues, boundary/initial values and other pitfalls? Are there different methods for electromagnetic wave problems? Finally, when the numbers have all been crunched, how do you visualize your hard earned data?"

Submission + - Search Engine Spamming By Academic Publishers (blogsci.com)

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ObsessiveMathsFreak

on Friday August 03, 2007 @12:49PM

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "Pierre Far at BlogSci reports on how Academic Publishers are engaging search engine spamming, specifically cloaking. Search engines bots crawling the sites of Springer and Reed Elsevier are shown the entire academic articles, and excerpts are displayed to users. But when users click on the suggested link, they are shown a different page demanding payment for the opportunity to read the same article(~$40 per paper). Academics are beginning to gripe about this, and the theoretical physics community is debating the issue the N-Category Cafe Blog, where not a few academics are expressing their ire at the practice. With services like Live Search Academic and Google Scholar dependant on their cooperation, it seems unlikely that Academic Publishers will suffer the fate of BMW."

Submission + - Physicists Propose Tarot Cards To Auger LHC

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ObsessiveMathsFreak

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @09:26AM

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "Via Peter Woit's Blog Not Even Wrong, comes one of the most bizarre papers ever seen on the e-Print archive arXiv.org[Wiki-link]. Two mainstream physicists propose that the enormous energies and exotic Higgs particles that will be created at the Large Hadron Collider could create effects that will(will have been?) propagate backwards through time, enabling us to predict proper parameters for the LHC beforehand. They propose choosing from a shuffled deck of cards with various luminosity or beam energy parameters written on them, as well as a few cards with 'close LHC', just in case some terrible accident should occur. Tommaso Dorigo gives a detailed summary of the paper at his blog. Right now, I'm so glad I didn't choose theoretical physics as a career."

Submission + - Custom Key Labels

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ObsessiveMathsFreak

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @09:59AM

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes: "I used to use Latex for all my mathematical typesetting needs, but recently I've discovered Lyx and am using it with Bo Peng's great customised key bindings file. Mathematics typesetting has finally become easy and intuitive for me. Taking some inspiration from the APL Keyboard, what I'd really like to do now is come up with some custom key labels to go with the bindings file, so that mathematical symbols have the place on my keyboard they so richly deserve. Have many Slashdotters experimented with custom key labels? What are the options; low tech, high tech, homebrew, commercial? What are the processes involved, and the potential pitfalls? Are there any software programs to aid this process? (Oh, and I already know about the Optimus Keyboard)."

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