Having fun with science and technology.
libquantum 0.9.1 released Posted: 2007-09-03 07:13
libquantum 0.9.1 has been released. The new release adds an interface for time-evolution of arbitrary Hamiltonians using a fourth-order Runge-Kutta algorithm. The license has been changed to GPLv3 and several bugs have been fixed. Further information can be found on the libquantum website.
Read Scientific Papers from Anywhere Posted: 2007-01-03 12:56
Accessing scientific papers online is great because it spares you the way to the library. Unfortunately, most journals make their articles available only to paying subscribers (contrary to Open Access). So if you want to read an article at home or while on a conference you have a problem. This posting shows you how to access it anyway just by clicking on the download link in a journal. Read more
OpenJDK in Debian Posted: 2008-07-29 12:02
Over a year after Sun's initial release of OpenJDK as free software, Debian successfully managed to build a version of OpenJDK using only free software. Apparently, the hard part was bootstrapping OpenJDK with the GNU Java compiler gcj. And it seems they did a very good job, as there are hardly any drawbacks compared to the proprietary version.
Nexuiz: Best First-Person Shooter Ever Posted: 2007-05-29 07:13
Okay, I promise I won't mention every article I write for OS Reviews on my blog, but here is an exception. I just put up an article about Nexuiz, which is definitely the best first-person shooter I've ever played. And of course it's free as in speech!
MS launching a Patent Ambush on Free Software? Posted: 2008-03-27 08:19
Yesterday, Microsoft and Milan-based Sourcesense announced they collaborate to contribute code to Apache POI, a Java library for manipulating Microsoft Office files. This collaboration has two possible consequences: either it will turn POI into the greatest patent laundry of all time, or it will help Microsoft to launch a patent ambush on the project. Feel free to decide which one is more likely.
Liberation Fonts Increase Document Interoperability Posted: 2008-06-24 06:33
Ever wondered why a Word document you received looks garbled when opening it in OpenOffice.org under GNU/Linux? Most likely, this is not a bug in OOo's conversion algorithms, but a problem of missing fonts. Most Word documents use fonts like "Arial" or "Times New Roman", which are copyrighted by Microsoft. While Microsoft used to distribute these so-called "core fonts" for non-Windows users, they no longer do so. There are still places where you can get them legally, but of course this is not a free-as-in-speech solution. Therefore, these fonts are not available by default in many GNU/Linux distros.
While the individual glyphs of a font can be copyrighted, their metrics (i.e., their spatial dimensions) cannot be, and therefore one can create a free set of fonts that look different than their proprietary counterparts, but otherwise behave the same when it comes to things like linebreaking, hyphenation, etc. Red Hat has done just that, and some time ago released the Liberation fonts.
However, due to licensing issues not all major GNU/Linux distros included the Liberation fonts. But after a long wait and the persistent work by several people these issues have finally been settled and the Liberation fonts have been accepted into the Debian archive. Other distros are expected to follow suit soon.
- Copyright 2006--2008 Hendrik Weimer. This document is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See the licensing terms for further details.