Skip to content →

Tag: google

tiger balm

I still
havent received my Tiger-package but got a bit panicky because it is
released as a DVD and at least one of our recent iMacs (the older ones
do not even have build in firewire, let alone enough RAM) cannot read
DVDs. That’s not a major problem as one can always send the DVD back and
ask for CDs instead (and wait even longer) or you can follow this trick (using
Firewire target disk mode). Jan suggested another
approach : make the DVD into a _dmg image_, connect an iPod,
erase with DiskUtility its hard disk and use the _Restore_ option
of DiskUtility to copy the dmg onto it. Then choose the iPod as StartUp
Disk and restart and everything works nicely.

As he went through the
trouble of setting up his iPod, I merely borrowed it and did an
Archive/Install of Tiger on the redundant iMac.All went well and
afterwards you can hardly see the difference with Panther except in the
top right corner where there is the _SpotLight_ icon (a feature I
do like and will use often) and in the lower left corner the
_Dashboard_ icon (a feature which still has to convince me).

Anyway, I wanted to check out as quickly as possible a comment (also
from jan)
that there is a new _Tiger only_ version of TexShop out
which syncs nicely between the PDF-file and the source. As it requires
some extra packages using i-Installer I took the opportunity
to update my TeX-system.

As they predict bad weather for the
rest of the weekend I thought “well, why not just begin the
Panther/Tiger switch on my _iBook_ using the iPod trick as well”.
But first I wanted to backup the latest Tiger+TeX version using
_Carbon Copy Cloner_. Over the last year this has become such a
routine operation (backing up to a slick _Porsche_ designed 250Gb
HD) that I was quite surprised that the computer halted after typing in
the super-user password. Forcing CCC to quit and restarting didn’t solve
the problem so it was time to do a Google on “Carbon Copy Cloner Tiger”
to find out that other (quicker) people had already experienced the
same.

As making a bootable backup is crucial for me I had to
find a way round this and fortunately found the Tiger balm
post. Here’s the hack :

– go to the Applications folder

open Terminal and type sudo open
– drag CCC to
the Terminal-window
– type return and provide superuser
password
– open CCC and fill in Source and Target disks as
usual
– it works!

Rumours are that
Mike Bombich will rewrite CCC shortly to fix this problem. Let’s just
hope that I don’t find too many other applications behaving unexpectedly
(in the 2 hours I’m onto Tiger I also found _Remote Desktop_ not
to work at all but then it’s an old 1.2 version so maybe Apple took this
chance to force people to upgrade (and pay heavily) as they seem to do
with hardware (someone should come up with a way to get the first
generation iMacs onto Tiger!)

Leave a Comment

Jacobian update 2

Yesterday
a comment was made to the Jacobian update post saying :

The
newest thing I heard was that the proof unfortunately was incorrect at
some point – The jacobian conjecture strikes again..?? Comment by Stefan
12/6/2004 @ 4:16 pm

Clearly I was intrigued and I
asked for more information but (so far) got no reply. Some people
approach me for the latest on this issue (I don’t know a thing about the
‘proof’ but if you do a Google on Carolyn Dean Jacobian this weblog turns up third on
the list and therefore people assume I have to know something…)
so I did try to find out what was going on. I emailed Harm Derksen who is
in Ann Arbor _and_ an expert on polynomial automorphisms, so if
someone knew something about the status of the proof, he definitely
would be the right person. Harm replied instantly, unfortunately with
sad news : it seems that the announced seminar on Carolyn’s proof is
canceled because an error has been found… For the moment at
least, the Jacobian conjecture seems to be entirely open again in two
variables (of course most people expect it to be false in three or more
variables).

Leave a Comment

google scholar


Yet another great Google service : Google Scholar. Just type in a name
(for example mine) and you will get a
list of all his/her publications which are listed on the net. A
printable version of the paper if possible, a reference if not. In the
first case it even lists all versions available on the net. But even in
the latter case it has an extremely useful link next to it “Cited
by somany” which gives all references to the paper Google can
find. Clearly, it also finds all papers posted on the arXiv but the
great additional value is that you no longer have to search departmental
or personal webpages yourself. If you want to find out more about this
service, read the about page.

Leave a Comment