Wolfram Mathematica

12:39 AM

@Oleksandr, nope, the pawn shop still has my computer, and I admittedly am having a spot of trouble raising the money needed to get it back. If you notice, most of my last few answers were only written on weekends, and that is only because a kind friend lets me borrow his computer with an old Mathematica installation on weekends.

It's nice, but the commute's a bitch. I will try to look into the site you mentioned. I should say this: the interest has gone pretty steep, but I don't believe those guys at the shop know or understand that the contents are way more important than their valuation of the computer. *sigh*.

@hYPotenuser, long story short, you're writing a Polish notation interpreter?

Oleksandr R.

@Guesswhoitis. yes, I had suspected that might be the case. Otherwise it would be as well to abandon the computer and get another one. Well, think about setting up the funding drive, if you can face it. Hopefully we can at least help you get your data back.

Guess who it is.

@chuy, that'll put a crimp on Whitespace programs.

Thanks for the kindness, @Oleksandr. :) I'll look at that site and report back.

Oleksandr R.

Maybe you can somehow relinquish the computer (and thus not pay the full interest) but come to an agreement to retrieve the contents of the disk?

Guess who it is.

Ah, tried that; unfortunately they're not keen on letting me even touch the thing until I hand them money.

Oleksandr R.

Sure, I expect you would have to pay. But maybe you can pay a nominal amount for access and then say you are happy to let them keep the computer.

Guess who it is.

12:53 AM

Nah, they want the whole hog along with the interest. Unfortunately, the interest has been increasing at a faster rate than the rate I am able to save money.

(SE's last delivery a few weeks ago through FedEx also kind of set me back a bit on the fund.)

Oleksandr R.

Sorry to hear that. Just to note that there are other crowdfunding websites. I just mentioned gofundme as one that I had heard of before and that operates in many countries. I don't know how banks operate where you are, whether it is possible to deposit into a local account, and what fees will apply in that case.

With some crowdfunding websites, such as Kickstarter, you either reach your goal amount or you get nothing. I think you would probably want to avoid those!

Mr.Wizard

@OleksandrR. Yes, it appears to work perfectly! Thanks again for you continued efforts on this.

Guess who it is.

The (admittedly) cursory research I've done on this is that all the sites do take a small fee for every contribution, so a donor will effectively have to account for said fee and the actual amount s/he wanted to donate.

Pickett

@OleksandrR. Unfortunately: "Supported countries and currencies include: United States of America ($USD), United Kingdom (£GBP), Canada ($CAD), Australia ($AUD), and some European Union countries that use the Euro as their official currency (€EUR)."

Guess who it is.

But I believe I haven't ever seen gofundme, so thanks for the pointer.

Ah, that's a crimper. Paypal as it looks is also not tenable; for some reason when I registered, there was no option to make the account a receiving account unless I had a business license or something. Eep.

Oleksandr R.

1:11 AM

@Guesswhoitis. Here is another possibility: gogetfunding.com. I cannot vouch for them in any way, but it specifically mentions your location. Most other sites do not want to operate anywhere outside of EU and USA/Canada

hYPotenuser

@Guesswhoitis. Sorry to hear about your situation =/ Long story rather short, yes, I'm writing an interpreter for Smallish Polish Mathematica With Syntactic Goodies.

Oleksandr R.

Paypal requirements for gogetfunding:

Your PayPal account needs to meet the following five criteria:

Your PayPal account needs to be verified (bank account added)
Your email address must be confirmed (link in confirmation email needs to be clicked)
You must have a PayPal Business account or PayPal Premier account to accept donations via credit cards without forcing donors to login / register at PayPal. Business accounts are designed for individuals in addition to businesses, charities and more.
Your account must be capable of accepting the currency you've chosen.

So, it seems you can still receive, but people must log in to PayPal itself to send in that case.

Guess who it is.

The gogetfunding's mobile site looks screwed here, so I will have to look at that later on a proper computer…

Oleksandr R.

@Mr.Wizard great! Well, it only works on version 10, as it would seem. I compiled against LibraryLink version 3 headers, so it doesn't load on version 9. But never mind.

@Guesswhoitis. if it all becomes too difficult because of your location, we can potentially do it in a more favorable location. In that case it would of course be necessary to verify that international bank transfers are possible and not too costly before starting the fundraising effort.

Guess who it is.

At the very least, I still have a bank account, though it has seen better days…

Oleksandr R.

1:18 AM

@Mr.Wizard this is perhaps another argument for using VC++ 10 rather than GCC, despite the extremely large installation size.

Guess who it is.

I'll visit the bank after work; hopefully they're still open at that time.

halirutan

@Guesswhoitis. May I ask a question? At the place where you live, how much worth are 100 US$ for you?

For instance how much food do you get for this?

Or how much percentage of the average monthly income is this?

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries.jsp

It seems that the value of $100 in terms of goods is similar to about 50% more than in the USA, and the ability of someone to get the equivalent of $100 is about 50% less (or they have to work twice as hard to do so)

halirutan

@OleksandrR. hmm, the are pretty impressive numbers..

Guess who it is.

Lessee…according to the current exchange rate, my average daily cost of living comes to about $ 8.00; so a $ 100 amount should keep me sheltered and fed for almost two weeks, maybe more if I reduce to bare essentials.

…and now I don't know how to feel after converting my current monthly salary to its equivalent dollar amount. :o

halirutan

1:36 AM

@Guesswhoitis. 8$ is about what I have to pay for my lunch :( One lunch, on one particular day and not in a restaurant.

Guess who it is.

That'd be a fancy restaurant with a dress code here, @halirutan, for that amount. :D

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan it is a similar case, I think, for many developing countries. I went to W. Africa twice last year. Things are not cheap by any means (especially fuel, which is about the same as here), but people earn so little. When you fuel the car, you have to hand over practically a small book of banknotes.

halirutan

@Guesswhoitis. It's unbelievable how much I could help a friend on the other side of the world by sending the money I spare when eating the lunchbox my wife makes me and by not going to the asian diner for some days.

2

@OleksandrR. I know this one because we have friends in Hungary. They earn nothing, but have comparable prices for food. They have 3 little girls and one of the things I did when we visited them was going to buy a big bunch of fruits like bananas, oranges, mangoes, etc and make a big salad from it. They could never afford something like this.

And it breaks my heart when I'm at home and you take all those damn things for granted.

Guess who it is.

Funny story: when I visited Japan, it took me quite a while to get used to yen amounts, as they are numerically quite high even though the equivalent dollar amount was actually reasonable. It felt weird handing money in bunches, tho.

halirutan

@Guesswhoitis. Yes, it was the same here when you went to Czech Republic.

Guess who it is.

1:46 AM

Probably the only splurging I ever really did was to buy books at a used-book store; some of the answers you've seen from me over the years would not have been written if I never got to buy those books.

halirutan

@Guesswhoitis. And could you order something online? Like on Amazon? And the delivery service brings this?

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan do you have Intel compilers/MKL installed? If not, then can you compile ilian's code here, or not?

halirutan

Oh my, I sound really stupid but I have no idea how life is where you live.

Guess who it is.

Nah, never owned a credit card in my whole life @halirutan; I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. :)

halirutan

@Guesswhoitis. Although I have one, I never use it either. It's more the US guys that like them.

Guess who it is.

1:50 AM

But the one time I needed something on Amazon, I paid a friend the exact amount for the item plus a small percentage for his trouble of using a credit card.

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan in UK/EU, bank cards usually provide Visa/Mastercard etc. service even if they are not actually credit cards. I think this is normally not the case in other countries.

halirutan

@OleksandrR. I have, but it is currently not recognized by MMA.

@OleksandrR. Yeah. I guess some people have credit cards, but the good old bank account rules: You have the money, you can buy something.

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan what I mean is, often bank cards are ATM cards only. They cannot be used in shops or online, unlike what we are used to in Europe where our cards all work this way.

halirutan

@OleksandrR. Ah.. OK. Didn't know that

Guess who it is.

Yes, my ATM card is precisely like that; only for the machines and nothing more.

Mr.Wizard

1:56 AM

@Guess If you don't mind (re)stating publicly, how much are you supposed to pay to get your computer back? I can't believe you're still dealing with this. :-(

Guess who it is.

Some of the high-end supermarkets allow you to pay with your ATM, but I've never been able to afford whatever it is they're selling at those supermarkets. :D

@Mr. Wizard, maybe I'll just reveal that as soon as I get an actual working account on one of those funding sites.

Mr.Wizard

@Guesswhoitis. Ah, OK. I'm still waiting to chip in.

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan so, did the code compile (and more importantly, link) correctly? On Windows I just get a linker error, which is exactly what I expect without the MKL libs.

halirutan

@OleksandrR. Yep:

Import["http://goo.gl/NaH6rM"]["http://i.stack.imgur.com/2AUar.png"]

Guess who it is.

Gotta get back to work; thanks, you guys.

Oleksandr R.

2:11 AM

@halirutan you are cheating! Try compiling with GCC and without using the MKL you have on your system and see how it works then ;)

halirutan

@OleksandrR. Ah, I thought you wanted me to specifically use the Intel compiler

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan ilian says it works on Linux regardless of this. I find it hard to believe unless you are using the Intel compiler, in which case I expected it should work.

By the way, you are missing a definition! SEDecodeImageAndPrint[img_Image] := CellPrint @@ SEDecodeImage[img]

halirutan

@OleksandrR. yeah... I know. So many construction sites at the moment

@OleksandrR. It still works

Oleksandr R.

@halirutan I only noticed this because I have internet access disabled in Mathematica and so had to do it manually. In this case it does not work that straightforwardly. :)

halirutan

@OleksandrR. I guessed that you first make a virus check and that you have everything turned off :-) That took you so long..

My virus comes in one of the next things I upload..

when you expect it the least :-)

baaam

Oleksandr R.

2:18 AM

@halirutan most of the time was because I was totally confused that copy from the web browser and paste into Mma did not work (it produced a mostly black image that could not be decoded). Instead it seems that saving the image is the way to go.

Okay, I should go to sleep. Goodnight!

halirutan

@OleksandrR. Good night

Kuba

12:27 PM

@all should I expect that an empty string is such a problematic thing?

ExportString[#, "MathML"] &@StyleBox["", FontColor -> Red]

Jun-Goo Kwak

12:46 PM

Hi, does anyone know how to import just specific pods from Wolfram|Alpha?

Meta

1

Q: Complex analysis tags

I recently became aware of the fact that we have these overlapping tags: complex complex-analysis The complex (211 questions) covers complex analysis as well as all aspects of complex numbers. The complex-analysis (37 questions) seems self-explanatory to me; about half are also tagged complex...

rcollyer

@Kuba don't use StyleBox which it apparently doesn't know how to process. Use Style, instead.

<math xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML'>
 <ms mathcolor='#FF0000'></ms>
</math>

All, crazy thought time. Thinking about JIT compilation last night, I was wondering if it would be better to off-load compilation onto a ScheduledTask, so the compilation could run asynchronously. Once it returns, start using the compiled version of the function. Provided it worked, I could see a couple of advantages. Primarily, the user would still be able to continue to work while a potentially slow compile was going on, and once it was done, it could "seamlessly" speed things up. Thoughts?

Kuba

@rcollyer that's not mine. it's a leftover from heavily used notebook.

@rcollyer there was something edited but the style was probably left there by FE.

@rcollyer StyleBox["1", FontColor -> Red] this will be correctly exported

Michael Hale

1:07 PM

@Jun-GooKwak Click the + sign on the right of the pod you want and click "computable data". Then it will generate a WolframAlpha call that extracts just that result.

rcollyer

@Kuba I'll report the issue, it should not blow up like that.

Kuba

@rcollyer thanks :)

rcollyer

any thoughts about my random thought from last night?

Kuba

@rcollyer which thought?

rcollyer

24 mins ago, by rcollyer

All, crazy thought time. Thinking about JIT compilation last night, I was wondering if it would be better to off-load compilation onto a ScheduledTask, so the compilation could run asynchronously. Once it returns, start using the compiled version of the function. Provided it worked, I could see a couple of advantages. Primarily, the user would still be able to continue to work while a potentially slow compile was going on, and once it was done, it could "seamlessly" speed things up. Thoughts?

the one you actually linked to. :P

Guess who it is.

1:24 PM

Wouldn't that create a race condition?

rcollyer

it might, so it would have to carefully managed on when/how the compiled code was incorporated

how to do that? I haven't played with it, yet, so I don't know.

I guess it depends on if Set/SetDelayed were to act atomically, or not. If they do, great, no problem; if they don't (likely), then the change would need to be wrapped in a CriticalSection.

Kuba

@rcollyer scheduled task alone won't be a solution. You'd have to manage kernels more carefully and share definitions.

@rcollyer or have I missed something?

rcollyer

@Guesswhoitis. But, I don't think that's needed, if the asynchronous part only did the compilation, then the original thread can check if its done, etc.

Jun-Goo Kwak

@MichaelHale Hi Michael. I apologize but I'm having a little trouble finding the + sign on Wolfram|Alpha.

rcollyer

@Kuba I don't know if a ScheduledTask runs in the same kernel, or not. If not, then yes, a merge of some kind would be required.

Kuba

1:30 PM

@rcollyer

Guess who it is.

@rcollyer, could work…

Kuba

RunScheduledTask[Print["startlongpause"]; Pause[5];
 Print["stoplongpause"];, {1}]
Do[
 Print@DateString[]; Pause[1];,
 {5}
 ]

rcollyer

@Kuba yes, the print outs are sent elsewhere.

Definitely will require some thought. But, I thought I'd run it by others who spent more time doing parallel calcs then I do.

Michael Hale

@Jun-GooKwak

Jun-Goo Kwak

@MichaelHale Thank you so much.

Kuba

1:36 PM

@rcollyer I don't have much experience with such topics but I find this interesting. Maybe it's worth posting a question?

Jun-Goo Kwak

@MichaelHale It seems Mathematica produces calls that lead to missing data interestingly.

Michael Hale

@Jun-GooKwak Yeah, I've noticed that. Hopefully the consistency between Wolfram|Alpha, W|A imports, and *Data paclets improves in the future.

rcollyer

@Kuba definitely thinking about it. There is some question on how asynchronous this is, though:

doneQ = False;
task = RunScheduledTask[
  Print["startlongpause"];
  Pause[5];
  doneQ = True;
  Print["stoplongpause"];, {1}]
Do[
 If[! doneQ,
  	Print@DateString[],
  	Print@"Done!"
  ]; Pause[1];, {5}]

Guess who it is.

@Jun, online calls can be hit-or-miss at times.

Jun-Goo Kwak

@Guesswhoitis. @MichaelHale Oh alright. Thanks for the info.

rcollyer

1:40 PM

Might have to use ParallelSubmit, or something like that. Then, sharing definitions becomes "interesting."

oh well, back to work.

Meta

2:15 PM

0

Q: What's behind false question characterisations such as this one?

Questions: How may I eliminate a gap appearing in a surface drawn with ParametricPlot3D? How may I avoid ParametricPlot3D clipping? Both have been characterised as off-topic on the grounds of having a "simple mistake such as a trivial syntax error, incorrect capitalization, spelling mistake, o...

discussion

Meta

2:39 PM

0

Q: What's behind false off-topic charges like these?

Questions: How may I eliminate a gap appearing in a surface drawn with ParametricPlot3D? How may I avoid ParametricPlot3D clipping? Both questions have been characterised as "easily found in the documentation" despite that this does not make the question off-topic under the rules mathematica.s...

discussion

Wolfram Blog

7:12 PM

Wolfram Blog: Over the Moon for Guinness World Records’ Diamond Anniversary

posted on July 29, 2015 by Jenna Giuffrida

For the record, let’s start here. Next month, Guinness World Records will officially celebrate its 60th anniversary as the leading authority on “record-breaking achievement.” A long-cherished favorite for holiday gifting and the coffee table, Guinness World Records not only provides a unique collection of knowledge but also encourages people to challenge the application of tho…

Michael E2

@Mr.Wizard I cannot reproduce a crash, from 10.0.0 to 10.2 (Mac). It's poorly written code that does a continual-update loop. I have had issues with plotting in such circs., but in post-beta V10, it's been primarily with 3D plotting usually without Manipulate. I don't really understand the upvotes. Maybe it just works on a Mac.

Meta

8:33 PM

0

Q: What's behind false merging of duplicates such as here?

The alleged duplicates being What's behind false question characterisations such as this one? and What's behind false off-topic charges like these? One about false off-topic charges and the other about false characterisations as "simple mistake". Different questions falsely characterised as "...

discussion

Meta

10:18 PM

0

Q: Is the wolfram-programming-cloud tag appropriate for a question that is specific to the WPC?

I ask because: All my questions here arise from my use of WPC, and accordingly initially I tagged them wolfram-programming-cloud. I use no other WL platform and have no idea whether the questioned behaviour is shared by other platforms. People have repeatedly removed that tag saying e.g. "your ...

discussion

Murta

11:17 PM

Can someone reproduce this bug with V10.2: mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/89483

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@Guesswhoitis. how about western uni on?

halirutan

@Murta Murta, can you give me a link to the documentation where Replace in Associations is shown? Remember, associations are atoms and structural replacement is not supposed to work. If it does, it is a feature

The question is, why don't you use something like this instead

ass["date"] = toISOdate /@ ass["date"];

Murta

11:55 PM

@Halirutan it's a nested structure, where the key "date" is present inside another keys.

halirutan

@Murta So you are using replace because you want to change something deep inside the structure?

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