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Math

7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators 289

Posted by timothy from the open-in-tabs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function. However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more. Occasionally, the calculator tool provided with an operating system did not engender any confidence. The classic example being the calculator shipped with Windows 3.1 which could not even reliably subtract two numbers. Rest assured, the calculators listed below are of precision quality."
Medicine

Startup Tests Drugs Aimed at Autism 171

Posted by kdawson from the whose-x-you-callin'-fragile dept.
An anonymous reader sends in this link from Technology Review about a startup company testing drugs that may help those with autism-spectrum disorders — even adults. "Seaside Therapeutics, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, is testing two compounds for the treatment of fragile X syndrome, a rare, inherited form of intellectual disability linked to autism. The treatments have emerged from molecular studies of animal models that mirror the genetic mutations seen in humans. Researchers hope that the drugs, which are designed to correct abnormalities at the connections between neurons, will ultimately prove effective in other forms of autism spectrum disorders. ... The company is funded almost entirely by an undisclosed family investment of $60 million, with $6 million from the National Institutes of Health. [A spokesman] says that Seaside has enough funding to take its compounds through clinical testing and approval."
Programming

Steve Bourne Talks About the History of Sh 232

Posted by CmdrTaco from the dear-steve-tyvm-xoxo dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Bourne, the creator of the Bourne shell, or sh, talks about its history as the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7. Bourne worked on the shell in 1975 and said the process took no more than 6 months. Sh aimed to improve on the Thompson shell. 'I did change the shell so that command scripts could be used as filters. In the original shell this was not really feasible because the standard input for the executing script was the script itself. This change caused quite a disruption to the way people were used to working. I added variables, control flow and command substitution. The case statement allowed strings to be easily matched so that commands could decode their arguments and make decisions based on that. The for loop allowed iteration over a set of strings that were either explicit or by default the arguments that the command was given. I also added an additional quoting mechanism so that you could do variable substitutions within quotes. It was a significant redesign with some of the original flavor of the Thompson shell still there. Also I eliminated goto in favour of flow control primitives like if and for. This was also considered rather radical departure from the existing practice. Command substitution was something else I added because that gives you very general mechanism to do string processing; it allows you to get strings back from commands and use them as the text of the script as if you had typed it directly. I think this was a new idea that I, at least, had not seen in scripting languages, except perhaps LISP,' he says."

Comment Probably too much for one post... (Score 1) 702

by liebeskind (#25669569) Attached to: (Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks?
(Please excuse the terrible way that I have to post this - normally the comments are above the command, but slashdot was freaking out...) Here is my .vimrc file:
:com Openvimrc :tabnew ~/.vimrc " custom command to edit the _vimrc file from anywhere
:nnoremap <C-J> 5j " custom key mapping: CTRL-J -> move down 5 lines
:nnoremap <C-K> 5k " custom key mapping: CTRL-K -> move up 5 lines
:nmap <C-t> :tabnew<cr> " custom key mapping: CTRL-T -> open new tab
:nmap <C-tab> :tabnext<cr> " custom key mapping: CTRL-TAB -> move to next tab
:nmap <C-S-tab> :tabprevious<cr> " custom key mapping: CTRL-SHIFT-TAB -> move to previous tab
:autocmd BufEnter * lcd %:p:h " auto set the current working directory to be the same as the buffer's
:filetype on " toggle filetype detection
:filetype plugin on " toggle filetype plugins
:set number " turn on line numbering
:set tabstop=4 " indentation level
:set expandtab " convert tab key to spaces
:set shiftwidth=4 " indent/outdent
:set shiftround " always indent/outdent to nearest tabstop
:syntax on " turn on syntax highlighting
:au BufWinEnter * let w:m1=matchadd('ErrorMsg','\%81v.*',-1) " lines that are > 80 characters are error highlighted by default
:com SetLengthWarning :let w:m1=matchadd('ErrorMsg','\%81v.*',-1) " custom command to set > 80 character highlighting
:com UnsetLengthWarning :call matchdelete(w:m1) " custom command to unset > 80 character highlighting
:set backspace=indent,eol,start " allow backspace over everything
:set noerrorbells visualbell t_vb= " kill the bells
if has("gui_running") " gui specific properties
:set guioptions-=T " hide the GUI toolbar
:set guioptions-=m " hide the GUI menu
:colorscheme inkpot " set the color scheme
:set guifont=Anonymous:h13 " set the GUI font
:set lines=46 columns=100 " set the window size
else " cterm specific properties
:colorscheme default " set the color scheme
:hi LineNr ctermfg=red " set line numbering color to red
endif
(END)
There are some things to note. There are some commands in my .vimrc which will highlight text that has crossed the 80 character threshold. In order for those commands to work, vim7.2 or greater must be installed. Also, tab support was not added until vim7.0 I think. My gvim font is from http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html>. If you want some excellent colorschemes, check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/>. Finally, I just discovered this a couple of days ago http://technotales.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/like-slime-for-vim/>: an awesome vim trick to use with irb.

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