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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Software Engineering Need Not Be Difficult, Jeffrey Carver, George Thiruvathukal
Software Engineering Need Not Be Difficult, Jeffrey Carver, George Thiruvathukal
George K. Thiruvathukal
"Progress in scientific research is dependent on the quality and accessibility of software at all levels" (the overall premise of the workshop). We argue that true progress depends on embracing the best traditional--and emergent-- practices in software engineering, especially agile practices that intersect with the tradition of software engineering. Software engineering as practiced today is more than the stereotypical monolithic lifecycle processes (e.g. waterfall, spiral, etc.) that historically have impeded progress for small/medium sized development efforts. In addition, the discipline and practice of software engineering includes software quality (with an established tradition of software metrics). Software processes can be …
Gentoo Linux: The Next Generation Of Linux, George K. Thiruvathukal
Gentoo Linux: The Next Generation Of Linux, George K. Thiruvathukal
George K. Thiruvathukal
One of the reasons scientific programmers love Linux is its less-is-more philosophy. We can configure it to be anything from a desktop replacement with USB port support to a blade in a large SMP compute engine to a powerful Web server. Although Linux's market penetration in these various sectors remains to be seen, plenty of people are pumping resources into the Linux world. In this article, I?ll explain why Gentoo Linux (www.gentoolinux.org) is a good choice for scientists, and how its structure gives us the flexibility and ease of management we need.
Home Networking, George K. Thiruvathukal
Home Networking, George K. Thiruvathukal
George K. Thiruvathukal
My coeditors (Paul Dubois and Konstantin Läufer) and I are among a growing number of individuals who install and maintain a home computer network. When Paul and I first discussed the idea of writing an article about the subject several months ago, my first thought was that you--our cherished readers-might consider this whole notion so trivial as to not be worthy of a column that focuses mostly on scientific programming and software development topics. But based on the realization that we three computer scientists devote a significant part of our time to network and system administration, it almost goes without …
A Virtual Computing Laboratory, Joseph P. Kaylor, George K. Thiruvathukal
A Virtual Computing Laboratory, Joseph P. Kaylor, George K. Thiruvathukal
George K. Thiruvathukal
Many institutions choose to do periodic imaging of computers, which is both painstaking and limiting in terms of keeping software up to date. The authors describe an approach that builds on existing virtualization technologies.
Putting A Slug To Work, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Ryohei Nishimura, Carlos Ramirez Martinez-Eiroa
Putting A Slug To Work, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Ryohei Nishimura, Carlos Ramirez Martinez-Eiroa
George K. Thiruvathukal
In this article, the authors explore various uses of inexpensive embedded Linux devices such as the Linksys NSLU2 ("slug"). Embedded computing is a topic of growing interest. Although novel architectures such as cell processors, graphics processors (GPUs), and FPGAs are growing in popularity, conventional microproessor designs such as Intel's Xscale (ARM) and Atom pack a punch in a small footprint, not to mention being widely supported by commodity operating system and development tools. We're convinced that this entire space is a tool worth keeping in the scientific programmer's and software developer's toolchests.