2009/7/23 rjf <fate...@gmail.com> > > > > Regarding Sage running on a server: some of the components may be > sufficiently general as to pose hazards in a server environment. For > example, Maxima can create and delete files, quickly fill up all > available memory, etc. I would guess that other components are also > hazardous. It seems to me that the only practical solution is to run > Sage in a virtual machine on the server, which may be costly. Is that > what is being proposed? Is that what UW Sage servers are doing?
First, I should stage I'm not a Sage user yet. My interest is using in on Solaris, hence I'm trying to sort that out. Anything Sage can do, unless it runs as root, which would be unwise, a norrmal user should be able to do it. All modern systems support quotas which block excessive disk useage. CPU resources can be limited too. I've exhaused memory and swap on a Sun with 8 GB running Mathematica. Creating huge files, deleting files, using tons of memory are all things any user program can do. IF a sage server run as user 'sage' means that user's foo and user bar have all their files owned by user 'sage' and all CPU resources are consumed by user 'sage' then that could be an issue. I don't know if it is, and I suspect it could be circumvented it if is. I don't really see that CPU and/or disk useage an issue like you do. > > If there is an instructor who is excited by a computer program (could > be one of the M's) he/she can introduce it into the course in some > way, sometimes. Evidence at Berkeley is that when that instructor is > not teaching the course, the computer stuff falls into disuse. > Students using Mathematica get it (essentially) free for their own > laptops at their dorm room. > Those that use it seem to be unconcerned about it being proprietary. > They are only occasionally concerned that it gets the answers wrong > sometimes. The solution to that is to make students aware that propriety systems (not just the M's) have very serious issues outside academia. Ask the students to take a look on jobsites and see how many jobs require Mathematica knowledge. Make them aware, that people that get it essentially for free at university will find a whole different situation when they move into employment.Obviously, if they get tenure at uni this is not such an issue, but it is when you move into the world outside university. I've hit this problem myself, which is why I expect to turn away from Mathematica, despite I do in fact like the program. After spending some time at uni where I had access to Mathematica, I took a job at Marconi Optical Components (now defunct). The only package I could use was Mathcad I think. Getting authorisation to spend £2000+ pounds on Mathematica, while I was the only user, would have been hard, despite I had a budget for half a milliion pounds for test equipment. I also worked in a hostpital - again Mathematica was not used. Whilst I'm not a fan of Microsof't office, at least it is widely used and there is a free version (OpenOffice). The same is not true of Mathematica. IMHO, if universities encourage the use of programs like Mathematica, they are doing their students a dis-service if they don't point out the downsides to using such software. For me personally, the downsides of using Mathematica have had little to do with backward compatibily, little to do with bugs, little to do with its rather strange interface, little to do with its poor support for debugging. The BIG problem in using Mathematica is that its use outside academia is very limited. Sure the WRI site will no doubt tell you its used in the top 500 companies on Nasdaq or wherever, but in practical terms, it's not widely used. I see a chart the other day on one of the WRI videos, showing Mathematica's biggest use is in enginnering. Well, I'm a 44-year old engineer, have worked for several companies and never seen it used. I used to teach on an MSc course some Mathematica 10 or so years ago. I never pointed this out to my students, as it never occured to me. When I was at uni, the propriety nature of Mathematica never entered into my head. > Any instructor who has been asked, after a particularly beautifully > delivered lecture/demonstration, "Will this be on the final?" > may have to say, oh, I guess not. You won't be using a computer > during the final. Do univeristies in the US have projects as part of degree courses? That is the time to be using advanced software - not in a final exam. Dave > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
