- Computers
-
I am currently trying to switch from linux to mac OSX. On occasion, I am trying to note down how the mac switch is going.
Much free software is now better than the best commercial software. Free
software often works best under the linux operating system, but almost
everything now works also under windows. Right now, my favorite is ubuntu.
- Try the free Mozilla web browser, such as Firefox.
- Try the free Office suite, such as openoffice.
- Try perl, a superb programming language.
- Try R, a superb statistical programming and graphing language.
- Try ctan and get pdflatex, which is a typesetting language that generates superb pdf.
- Try Putty ssh, a small clean secure shell for windows.
- Try tight vnc, a remote control software package.
- Try Web ssh written in Java.
- Try emacs, still the best text-editor (not word processor!).
- Try lame, the best mp3 encoder.
If you think this free software is all amateurish child's play,
realize that computer companies like google and yahoo are mostly
running free software. In fairness, free software still falls short
when it comes to media related files---windows media, apple aac,
realplayer, dvd playing, etc. (free software does very well with mp3
files, though.) as to other drawbacks, linux is confusing when it
comes to cut-and-paste across applications, and printing is still too
finicky. Apple OS-X offers a much prettier interface. Windows offers
more and often (but not always) better device support---and much
better gaming support. IMHO, linux is for work, windows is for games
and multimedia.
- Intellectual Property and Free Speech
-
- Background:
- I believe I own no stolen
music or movies. I pay for the music and the DVDs I own. I spend a good
deal of money every year on media, and I own reasonably high-end equipment,
including HDTV sets. I believe that intellectual property rights are good
if they discourage free copying. I believe that intellectual property
rights are bad if they discourage likely reinvention.
- Save the Movie Industry From Itself:
- Who
wants a movie format that [a] may work on one player/TV combination, but not
another; [b] will never allow copying a movie to a user's media PC or ipod;
[c] will allow its publishers to yank authorization at their discretion at
any time in the future (and possibly disable the player, too!); [d] costs
twice as much for a movie?
Welcome to Blu-ray or HD-DVD. Yes, these
new movie formats provide better quality than ordinary DVD, although good
upscaling DVD players, like the OPPO
DV-980H, can get consumers halfway there. So here is my prediction:
Ordinary consumers will prefer DVDs. MP3's have shown that consumers prefer
convenience over quality.
(PS: Despite what the MPAA claims, these are
primarily business model enablers, not piracy preventers. See, a good
commercial pirate in China can set up a rig with a digital camera that
photographs just about every pixel of a playing movie from an LCD screen in
perfect accuracy. Fortunately, most consumers still prefer legal
DVD's---and they still sell well, even though their copy protection has been
completely broken.)
- Copyright:
- Few people realize how troubling
the world is becoming. The Right To
Read was written by Stallman in 1997, and seems visionary. But there is
a big immediate problem already here. There are at least 60-100 million
criminals in the United States today---everyone who has ever downloaded a
file that was copyrighted. Each is exposed to enough liability to bankrupt
them. The RIAA will now proceed to collect, one individual at a time.
(Stop buying CDs!) Another problem to day is the DMCA, which prohibits
reverse engineering of all kinds, including computer programs. Computer
programs can only really compete if one can try to read the file formats of
its earlier competitor. This is how Microsoft Word stole WordPerfect users,
how Microsoft Excel stole Lotus 1-2-3 users, etc. Alas, the DMCA will
prevent this in the future. Software and business model patents are truly
awful. There are also many other related issues of importance. A brave new
world is upon us. Please join the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, and post a similar notice on your own website.
- Copyright:
- Oops. I had thought that my
concern with copyright violations was academic, but it appears that I am
rather exposed myself: "Infringement
Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap" shows pretty clearly that
I am violating the law every day, too, although I have always been very
conscientious not downloading copyrighted music or movies illegally. Yikes.
We need sanity in this arena---laws that create reasonable fees for
innocuous and small-scale violations, and reasonable penalties for obviously
non-innocuous infringement.
PS: Personal Opinion: I am much less
anti-copyright than filesharing networks, and perhaps even the EFF or GNU. I
am in favor of appropriate "watermarking" of copyrighted materials to
identify original purchasers, and of "phone-home computer code" embedded in
copyrighted material. In exchange, I favor no use restrictions for
those end users having purchased copyrighted material and if a "phone-home"
identifies an illegal user, such a user should first receive the opportunity
to pay an ordinary price for the content, before he/she becomes criminally
liable (or civilly liable for multi-thousand dollar fees).
- Free Speech?
- Images of Mohammed offend
Muslims. Therefore, should we restrain from all depictions of Mohammed?
(What should we do with museum pieces of ancient Islamic art?) If we want
to reduce free speech in order not to give offense, should we outlaw or take
actions again the burning of the
American flag? Could this offend many Americans, just as images of
Mohammed offend many muslims? (And what about images of Jesus or God, the
latter similarly prohibited for Jews.) Should we weigh one person being
seriously offended worse than another person being seriously offended?
Short Reviews
A Short Test Review of OmniPage 16 Pro OCR Software.
Computer Related Resources
- ssh automatic keys. Basically, copy the local-client id_dsa.pub into the authorized_keys file on the destination-server.
- texlive-install-postscript-font.zip
- Works
under linux.
- MiniWiki.tgz
- A very small wiki bolt-on
to existing web pages.
- lmnh.R
- A small extended class to add
normalized [n] coefficients and White heteroskedasticity [h] adjusted
T-stats to the ordinary lm class.
- gettex.zip
- allows extraction of all
latex macros with a given name with basic support for nesting.
- bstfiles/
- All .bst style files for bibtex.
- colornames.sty
- latex color names
equivalent to the HTML names.
- latexhelpindex.html
- helps to
create an automatic index for a latex document. the user supplies only the
first incidence of the word; further occurances are automatically included.
- reflabel.html
- diagnostics to determine
multiple and missing labels/references.
- webbib
- system to create ipo and cascades
web pages.
- addmacros2tex.pl
- adds
\curwdate{}, \curwdatetime{}, \curfile{}, and \system[command]{% }% to
(La-)TeX files. will soon be obsoleted by a new feature of texlive that will
allow one to use real pipes. so, you will be able to do
\def\system#1{\input "|#1" }
\system{ls -l \curfile} % you must keep \curfile
Hooray!
- badenclosures.pl
- standalone imap
client which notifies senders of microsoft office files that these files are
proprietary and generally unreadable.
- Screen Calculations
- For a 16:9 screen,
width = 16/Sqrt(337) = 0.87*diagonal,
height= 9/Sqrt(337) = 0.49*diagonal
area = 0.427*diagonal^2
Thus, widths are
| Diagonal | Width | Height | Area | dpi@1920x1080 |
|---|
| 17 inch | 14.82 inch | 8.334 | 123.5 | 130 |
| 19 inch | 16.56 inch | 9.315 | 154.3 | 116 |
| 20 inch | 17.43 inch | 9.805 | 170.9 | 110 |
| 21 inch | 18.30 inch | 10.30 | 188.4 | 105 |
| 23 inch | 20.05 inch | 11.28 | 226.0 | 96 |
| 24 inch | 20.92 inch | 11.77 | 246.1 | 92 |
| 30 inch | 26.15 inch | 14.71 | 384.6 | 73 |
| 37 inch | 32.25 inch | 18.14 | 585.0 | 60 |
| 42 inch | 36.61 inch | 20.59 | 753.8 | 52 |
| 50 inch | 43.58 inch | 24.51 | 1,068.2 | 44 |
| 60 inch | 52.29 inch | 29.42 | 1,538.3 | 37 |
| 72 inch | 62.75 inch | 35.30 | 2,215.1 | 31 |
| 100 inch | 83.67 inch | 47.07 | 3,938.0 | 23 |
The 30 inch dual-link computer monitors (like the DELL 3007, the HP LP3065,
or the Apple Cinema Display 30) at 2560x1600 in 16:10 format have a width of
25 inches, and a screen resolution of 100dpi. A 30 inch monitor with a
resolution of 1280x720 (1366x768) has a resolution of 49dpi (52).
For a 16:10 screen, the area translation formulas are
width = 8/Sqrt(89) = 0.85*diagonal,
height= 5/Sqrt(89) = 0.53*diagonal
area = 0.45*diagonal^2
Mathematica
How to convince Mathematica that all symbols are real during simplifications:
In[1]:= Unprotect[Simplify]
Out[1]= {Simplify}
In[2]:= Simplify[p_]:=
Simplify[p,
And@@Map[Function[s,ToExpression[s,InputForm,Element[#,Reals]&]],
Names["Global`*"]]]
A latex-emacs reference and label checker
...written in perl, can be found here.
Linux CD Burning
Long Explanation: here.
- Make sure that ide-scsi is a command-line option at boot time.
- use x-cdroast. it can blank CD's in master tracks, create session/image.
-
mkisofs -a -A Application-Description -f -J
-r -V USERNAME -o /tmp/USERNAME.iso PATH_TO_DIRECTORY
-
cdrecord fs=12m speed=4 PATH_TO_ISO
Linux kernel installation notes
Note: bunzip2 uncompresses .bz2 files.
- obtain the most recent tar ball from kernel.org. unpack it in /usr/src.
the rest of this note refers to the newest version number "latest".
- relink linux to point to the newest source tree:
$ ln -s -f /usr/src/linux-newest /usr/src/linux
- apply patches to bring it up to the most recent release.
$ cd /usr/src/
$ patch -p0 < patches
- configure the kernel by running:
$ make menuconfig
Eliminate as many drivers as possible. They often create problems later on.
- compile the kernel by running:
$ make dep; make clean; make bzImage ; make modules ; make modules_install
watch carefully for errors. typically, you will need to eliminate more modules in order
to get a kernel where there are no dependency or compile problems at the final step.
- install the kernel:
$ cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-latest
and its system map (for resolution of symbols to the modules)
$ cp /usr/src/linux/System.map /boot/System.map-latest
and create an initial ram disk for booting
$ cd /boot; /sbin/mkinitrd initrd-latest latest
remember to replace latest with your new kernel version.
- edit grub (the LILO replacement):
$ emacs /boot/grub/menu.lst
Advice: change the name of the kernel each time, so that you are certain on reboot that
you have properly reconfigured grub for the revised version.
$ sh /boot/grub/install.sh
installs the menu.lst file. (Do not forget to add "hdc=ide-scsi" as an
option after your kernel, or you will not be able to use your IDE CD writer
later.
Other linux notes
- start gnome via xinit /usr/bin/startgnome.
Most used programs