Open Source Software For Experimental Physics? 250

Posted by kdawson on Friday January 30, 2009 @02:23PM from the open-like-science dept.

jmizrahi writes "I've recently started working in experimental physics. Quite a few programs are used in the lab for assorted purposes — Labview, Igor, Inventor, Eagle, to name just a few. They are all proprietary. This seems to be standard practice, which surprised me. Does anybody know of any open source software intended for scientific research? Does anybody work in a lab that makes an effort to use open source software?"

Comment Re:The things you have to go through.. (Score 2, Interesting) 303

by twowoot4u on Monday January 26, 2009 @02:23PM (#26610033) Attached to: AMD Phenom II Overclocked To 6.5GHz

Now if only they had set the cpuID bis to 'Genuine Intel' http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/atom-nano-review.ars/6 they probably could have reached 70k!

Comment Re:Choice to the user (Score 1) 650

by twowoot4u on Monday January 26, 2009 @12:35PM (#26608373) Attached to: EU Could Force Bundling Firefox With Windows

I think they already tried this, read about the Vista fiasco. I think there are 20 different 'distributions' of vista, each offered by various vendors at various prices. They are all pretty much the same thing, unless you are talking about Vista Ultimate, which has fantasticly awesome extra content that never was released.

Comment Re:And What of the Others? (Score 1) 650

by twowoot4u on Monday January 26, 2009 @12:33PM (#26608343) Attached to: EU Could Force Bundling Firefox With Windows

Its not necessarily the sheer fact that windows ships with IE pre-installed, its the supposition that Windows cannot function properly without IE because it serves a core function of the OS. That is what was claimed ages ago, and that is where it treads on thin ice with respect to monopoly laws.

Comment Re:As for preservation (Score 1) 465

by twowoot4u on Saturday January 24, 2009 @06:34PM (#26593007) Attached to: Long-Term PC Preservation Project?

Don't hard drives need atmospheres?

Comment Re:The Money Quote (Score 1) 228

by twowoot4u on Thursday January 22, 2009 @01:26PM (#26561867) Attached to: Generational Windows Multicore Performance Tests

Wrong! The real solution is to put more stress on the hardware vendors to both improve their driver support, as well as make faster hardware to run these 'more powerful' OS's. The faster your CPU is the better it should handle the DRM hooks, right? :D

Comment Re:Time for a dirt nap (Score 1) 5

by twowoot4u on Thursday January 08, 2009 @02:17PM (#26374639) Attached to: Woman Banned From Driving Until The Year 3000

Maybe in 1000 years GM can make a car profitable.

Highly doubtful! But maybe in 1000 years, we'll have computers that can run Crysis!

Comment Re:semi-OT: Lugaru isn't working on current distro (Score 2) 283

by twowoot4u on Monday January 05, 2009 @11:17AM (#26329983) Attached to: Why Game Developers Should Support OS X and Linux

The game and modern versions of SDL don't like each other.

As with many great Linux ports, icculus maintains the Linux version.

Older bug report New bug report

*yawn* I almost got my hopes up: open /dev/[sound/]dsp: Device or resource busy open /dev/[sound/]dsp: Device or resource busy open /dev/[sound/]dsp: Device or resource busy Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL Parachute Deployed)

Comment Re:OGL vs DirectX (Score 1) 283

by twowoot4u on Monday January 05, 2009 @11:12AM (#26329941) Attached to: Why Game Developers Should Support OS X and Linux

Neither of which matters -- if your game only runs on the very latest, $500 worth of SLI goodness, with more RAM on the video card than a computer had two years ago, you're targeting a much smaller audience than Linux or OS X users.

You missed the part about the interweb media ONLY covering those titles that have the biggest wow factor and can only (sometimes) run on the latest and greatest card, even if the gameplay actually is subpar at best.

Google Sorts 1 Petabyte In 6 Hours 166

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 23, 2008 @12:53PM from the sort-of-fast dept.

krewemaynard writes "Google has announced that they were able to sort one petabyte of data in 6 hours and 2 minutes across 4,000 computers. According to the Google Blog, '... to put this amount in perspective, it is 12 times the amount of archived web data in the US Library of Congress as of May 2008. In comparison, consider that the aggregate size of data processed by all instances of MapReduce at Google was on average 20PB per day in January 2008.' The technology making this possible is MapReduce 'a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets.' We discussed it a few months ago. Google has also posted a video from their Technology RoundTable discussing MapReduce."

Three Downloadable Expansions Announced For Final Fantasy XI 51

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 23, 2008 @06:10AM from the three-is-better-than-one-right dept.

Square Enix has announced plans to release three expansion chapters to Final Fantasy XI. Their blog post provided some details about the new content: "The first installment, A Crystalline Prophecy — Ode of Life Bestowing, is slated for release for all languages and platforms in Spring of next year. Subsequent installments will then follow, being released in intervals of every few months. These expansions packages will only be available through online purchase via PlayOnline. The projected cost for each installment is around $10.00. ... Up until now, expansion packs have generally been developed from a perspective of 'lateral expansion,' focusing namely on the introduction of new areas. These three new expansions, however, will deepen the storylines running through pre-existing areas by ushering in all-new plots and intrigues. While not necessarily containing as much content as traditional expansions, these episodic scenarios are designed to take anywhere from one to two months to complete."

Submission + - Klausner sues iPhone for $360M over voicemail

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Tuesday December 04, 2007 @01:27AM

Stony Stevenson writes: Klausner Technologies said on Monday the company had filed a $360 million suit against Apple and AT&T over voicemail patents that Klausner claims the Apple iPhone infringes. New York-based Klausner said the lawsuit also names Comcast, Cablevision Systems and eBay's Skype as infringing its patent for "visual voicemail." The plaintiff seeks an additional US$300 million from the three. The suit alleges asserts that the defendants' Internet-based voicemail products and services violate a Klausner patent. It seeks damages and future royalties estimated at $300 million, according to the press release.