http://www.quantenblog.net Hendrik Weimer's Quantenblog en-US Wed, 05 May 2010 19:41:59 UT 120 http://www.quantenblog.net/images/logo.png http://www.quantenblog.net Hendrik Weimer's Quantenblog http://www.quantenblog.net/free-software/google-chrome-debian Google's Chrome browser has been accepted in Debian under the unbranded Chromium name. Currently, it's in the experimental distribution, but as it does not depend on other stuff from experimental, installation is not a big problem. Now I can finally get serious with Web Sockets programming! Read more Wed, 05 May 2010 19:41:59 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/misc/airspace-closure-deaths The ongoing closure of European airspace due to volcanic ash after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption may already have claimed the lives of dozens of travelers without a single plane being crashed. The problem is that travelers are forced to seek alternative transportation, which typically are less safe than flying. Read more Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:30:55 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/physics/quantum-computer-music I spent some time playing around with libquantum, the free quantum simulation library, and created two musical compositions that represent the inner workings of a quantum computer. So if you'd like to know what a quantum computer sounds like, here's your chance! Read more Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:55:05 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/physics/rydberg-quantum-simulator A universal quantum simulator would be something quite useful to have, as it allows to simulate the behavior of any quantum-mechanical system efficiently. We have been able to show that one can build such a device with strongly interacting Rydberg atoms, as reported in our paper having just appeared in Nature physics. Read more Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:20:49 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/misc/eucalyptus-plantation-brazil In recent days, you might have seen web adverts for investing into Brazilian eucalyptus plantations, even on technically oriented sites. While the investment may sound financially attractive it presumably involves several ethical hazards. Read more Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:40:49 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/free-software/openoffice-market-share The guys at Webmasterpro have published a study that analyzes the install base of various office packages among German users. While Microsoft Office comes out top (72%), open source rival OpenOffice is already installed on 21.5% of all PCs and growing. Read more Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:33:18 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/security/microsoft-malware-bailout With the economic crisis still being in full effect, Germany wants to throw government money at another industry giant. However, this time it is not an ailing car manufacturer, but the software producer Microsoft. The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) plans to team up with internet service providers (ISPs) to establish a call center helping malware-troubled Windows users. Read more Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:18:53 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/free-software/psfrag-inkscape When preparing figures for papers or other scientific content I routinely use PSfrag for inserting LaTeX commands. Sometimes I would like to edit the result with Inkscape to add some fancy stuff, but unfortunately most of the time Inkscape cannot open the created EPS file. I have written a short guide describing how to finally get it to work. Read more Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:35:10 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/free-software/us-copyright-international Recently on debian-legal someone asked whether you may freely distribute works created by a US government entity in other countries than the US. Well, I've asked a guy working on international copyright law, and unfortunately the answer was "no". Even though these works do not enjoy copyright protection in the US, they are still protected in other countries. Read more Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:52:43 UT http://www.quantenblog.net/physics/qinf I have dropped Mathematica in favor of Maxima some time ago in order to escape from obscure bugs remaining unfixed and licensing troubles, and have not regretted it since. Now I just came across Qinf, which is a free (as in GPLv2) quantum information suite for Maxima. While the package is still under development it already contains quite a lot useful functions like partial traces, entropy calculation, operator expansion. So if you use Qinf instead of another package relying on a proprietary CAS, you can prevent your code from being trapped. Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:17:20 UT