> How does one even respond to comments like that!
Something I struggle with on other internet forums, too. I try to tell myself that I'm not just writing to change the low-effort antagonist's mind, but for everyone else reading the thread, too.
Likewise. I've worked with some of my university's databases that have a field for SSN, but don't contain SSNs anymore. We now call them Structural Support Numbers, or something equally silly.
That keeps your data safe, but (and I'm guessing here) quite plausibly means filesystem writes may likely start failing, causing services on the affected server to start failing. If you need uptime during an earthquake, then that's not sufficient.
"When the computer is stable, the drive operates normally again."
So unless you install a drive that has its own motion detection on board the computer will simply quickly 'park' the drive and will allow it to resume operation without any issues when it has landed.
to be fair, AlephGarden did say during an earthquake. Telecoms, Hospitals, etc, perhaps wouldn't be happy with being out for the time taken for an earthquake to blow over. Plus aftershocks when damage control is in progress.
What's wrong with LaTeX (or extensions like XeTeX or LuaTeX)? Cursory searching pops up tools such as LaTeXML (http://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML) for converting from LaTeX to XML; not that I've used it, but it seems to have about a 60% success rate at converting arXiv papers [1]. That's still about 20,000 papers that don't build successfully, but it's a tool that could be improved.
What would you suggest as an alternative to LaTeX or Word?
I'm just curious; I use LaTeX regularly and think it works just fine.
I'm a big LaTeX fan, but the core typesetting engine is pretty heavily focused on print layout, so you'd have to restrict your macro subset to produce clean XML reliably. (You'd also have to see if you can produce JATS, the standard XML dialect for journal articles.)
I don't know of any good alternatives. LaTeX succeeded because of its excellent extensibility, so the core can be used to produce almost anything. I'd like to find similarly extensible tools that can cleanly produce XML as well as PDF. Maybe Pollen (http://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/) will be one.
There's also Scholarly Markdown (http://scholarlymarkdown.com/), but I suspect Markdown's lack of easy extensibility will doom it, since you'd have to write documents that fit narrowly into the features they provide. (What if you want a "remark" environment and they don't provide it?) reStructuredText is also an option, since it's built for extension, but it's not very well-known outside of Python circles.
| What programs do you get to have full control over for free?
How about we go through your own list of programs that your control panel gives access to?
* WordPress: Free and open source.
* Drupal: Same.
* Joomla: Same.
* Bulletin Board software: Same.
* PHP: Same.
* Python: Yup.
* Javascript: Same.
* OpenPGP: Also FOSS.
At least half of your bloody toolkit is stuff that developers can easily have full control over for free. Stuff that you're charging a prospective employee to use.
> As an aspiring mathematician, the thought of not using LaTeX for mathematics frightens me. The thought of using Word for mathematics terrifies me.
Why? You can type LaTeX into the Word equation editor -- a fact that is little-known in the math community.
The main problem with Word for mathematics is that you cannot automatically number equations! What good is it to type equations if you can't refer to "Equation 7" and have the reference update when a new equation is inserted? That makes it useless for math, physics, theoretical computer science, etc.
You can number equations. Just put a {SEQ Equation} field right of it, play with the half-broken styles/tables/tabs until it's sitting at the proper position. You'll be able to reference it with the usual cross-referencing tools.
On my particular version of Word I'll have to insert a "Caption" using the fscking-stupid-ribbon UI once and create a new counter "Equation" first, else you'll not be able to select a "Equation" in other parts of the dreaded UI.
Unfortunately, while the Eq. editor might understand LaTeX perfectly, nevertheless it will randomly thrash the font size and type whenever my colleague opens/edits/saves the document (at least the "new" font editor, the older "embedded OLE object" editor was broken in different ways).
And yes, I loathe Word and it's bastard cousins from the MS-Office-Suite with a passion and sometimes raging hate. Unfortunately there are things that money-earning demands to be made in those applications :-(
