Short Takes: Looking back at Mathematica
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By SD Times News Team
July 15, 2008 —
Looking back at Mathematica
June 23, 2008, was the 20th anniversary of the launch of Mathematica 1.0.
My first experience with Mathematica came in 1990, when I was editor of Miller Freeman's AI Expert magazine. I loved the software—it was incredible. It was very useful for developing and modeling artificial-intelligence techniques such as genetic algorithms, cellular automata and neutral networks, as well as general problem solving.
In mid-1991, Miller Freeman was approached by Addison-Wesley to see if we wanted to purchase The Mathematica Journal. I was asked if I was familiar with the technology... and responded enthusiastically. After the deal was done, I served as Editor and later Associate Publisher of the Journal.
Not only did we have a great team on the Journal (here’s a big shout-out for Troels Petersen, Peter Altenberg, Michele Anet, Roman Maeder and Bob Korsan), but I had the extreme pleasure of working closely with Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, as well as many other talented scientists. (Today, the Journal is published by Wolfram Research.)
Sadly, I haven't used Mathematica for more than a decade. It's not as much a lack of interest as a lack of time. My projects these days rarely require numerical and symbolic computation!
Trivia: I was the first kid on the block to have an Apple Macintosh Quadra 700, which was built around the then-phenomenal 25MHz 68040 processor; the excuse for buying it in late 1991 was to run Mathematica for the Journal. It’s astounding how much work we could get done on a platform that has less computing power than a modern smartphone.
— Alan Zeichick
No, PowerCinema, no!
Oh, “CyberLink PowerCinema has stopped working,” why do you haunt me so?
My laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium displays that error message repeatedly. I don’t know what that means, as I’m not playing any video at the time and my computer otherwise works fine. It’s no surprise that a researcher said that for each interruption, there is a “recovery period” to return to the original task that’s three times longer than the break itself. Thus, the second that it takes to click OK to make the message disappear turns into a four-second distraction, and for a reporter on deadline, that’s a problem.
It turns out that CyberLink is third-party software for viewing media on your Windows computer, including recording and playback of TV shows. I’m sure it’s a fine product and that the true fault is some OS glitch. Sorry to pile on about Vista, but if CyberLink were sending these messages, I think it’d more likely write “CyberLink PowerCinema is ready,” or “CyberLink PowerCinema will change your life.”
Maybe Vista craves attention. Maybe that’s why it also repeats “AC Power Adapter type cannot be determined.” If only I could reply: “It’s the power cord that came with the computer.”
— Robert Mullins
To Jerry, with love
Blogger Matt Honan’s DIY Yahoo Resignation Letter generator is hilarious. Not only does it embody the angst many Yahoo employees are experiencing with the management, it also manages to bring Mad Libs back into vogue. Take a glance at the page’s source code—it does what it says, and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang must be getting some interesting e-mails. Go ahead, Yahoos, and send Jerry some love.
— David Worthington
Users don't get the need for governance
When I was an IT manager a lifetime or two ago, the tension between the users and the domain experts was driven by a combination of fear and ignorance, and very little has changed over the years as far as I can tell.
But back in the day, the governance problem, such as it existed, was of groups of users who wanted to install their own pre-packaged applications. Today, the problem is that the users want to whip up custom applications first and tell IT later. Honestly, I’m not sure which situation is worse.
In the days when “mashup” referred to my favorite way of preparing potatoes, I’d have to put my foot down because the more adventurous users—who often seemed to have the least clue about what they were doing—were dead-set on installing software that fell into one of two categories. It either wouldn’t work at all in the environment I was tasked with building and keeping available, or it would require more of my group’s effort to set up and maintain than was sensible from a business standpoint.
Today, that’s generally not the case; only the worst code will take out a user’s machine, or heaven forbid, the network. No, today’s problem is that few users understand the perils of carelessly slapping together bits of applications or combining data from myriad sources. Again, it’s no longer a problem of whether or not something will work; it’s what the auditors will say. I’m just glad that it’s not my problem anymore.
— P.J. Connolly
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