> We've been seeing variations of the same article every week.
Time has come. Over the last few years there is more and more interest from goverments and private organizations to have relieable software that does not depend of foreign entities. Software sovereignty is becoming a necesity rather than a nice to have for both nations and enterprises.
> Excel, in particular, hasn't been unseated despite billions in investments from competitors over the years.
Excel, like many other technologies in the past can be disrupted. Like mane other commenters say, it won't come cheap. Saving costs shouldn't be the the goal here.
> Parity will happen someday, but it's at least a decade away.
This is the year of LibreOffice on the government? I'd love if you were right, but I doubt it. The chasm is enormous, and maybe you don't use Excel enough to realize it.
The chasm is enormous, but Calc doesn't need to implement 100% of Excel's functionality when most people - even business/power users - don't use all of its features.
What major commonly used features do you reckon Excel has that hasn't been implemented in LO Calc yet, that would be a deal-breaker for most businesses?
To my knowledge, Calc has implemented most of Excel's formulae (well over 500 in total count), so at least for typical spreadsheet functionality you wouldn't missing anything.
The biggest limitation I can think of is the limited support for VBA, but Microsoft have already announced VBA's deprecation[1], so no one should be relying on it even in MS World.
And whilst LO's own Basic scripting is... basic, it also supports rich scripting and full automation via Python and Javascript. It even has a full-fledged SDK for developing addins/extensions using a high-level language like C++/Java etc[2], so businesses who're dependent on some random proprietary excel COM addin or something could invest in development effort to port it over.
Heck, if businesses are so inclined, they could modify the LO source itself and build a custom version to add the features they want - that's the beauty of FOSS.
You don't use all it's feature, but if you need part of the 10% of features that Calc doesn't support, then your in a world of hurt.
When Calc gets the other 90% of the features Excel has, you also need to contend with word, Outlook, Visio and all the rest that Libre Office has a 0% solution for.
I support FLOSS... But pretending that anything else does enough for many orgs is delusional. There is work and pain to get through to even have a workable solution... And it won't be as good for a long while.
Massive cost savings are one of the bigger motivators... But that will be offset by the need for more internal staff.
I don't see why you would automatically be in "a world of hurt". Yes, you might be if you were to suddenly roll it out organisation wide without any testing, but no sane IT department would do that. This is why you have internal test groups and pilot groups. Once you identify the limitations, you scope out the missing features/issues, engage developers if need be, or look for alternate solutions. No one needs to get hurt.
No, but that's only because I hate Excel. But I'm sure developers who don't hate it but also appreciate FOSS solutions might be interested, if the pay is good.
Access = LibreOffice Base
Visio = LibreOffice Impress
Outlook = Schleswig-Holstein already switched successfully to Open-Xchange and Thunderbird, I've not heard of them running into any major issues with this setup.
I find that highly unlikely given how much commercial agreements with MS costs.
But if that's the case then they should either look for a different COTS solution, and/or change their business workflow.
And in the event even that is unfeasible, then just continue to keep a few windows machines (maybe convert them to VMs or VDIs for ease of maintenance) for the few users that can't be migrated.
No, I don't think LibreOffice is the answer. And I am with you here, I would love to be wrong. One issue is that it doesn't really work well online. The folks from Collabora[1] have done an amazing job at wrapping LibreOffice for the web and maybe that is a way to go?
As a sibling comment says you don't need to implement absolutely everything Excel does to _disrupt_ Excel. But you do need to provide a fantastic tool that is easy to use and solves 99% of the problems. If governments start putting their money were their mouth is I am very convinced we can create tools that supersede Excel, Word,...
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Nature C.> The retention of ancestral alphaproteobacterial pathways in some protist lineages reveals that the mitochondrion of the last eukaryotic common ancestor was more metabolically versatile than are the highly derived mitochondria that are found in most modern eukaryotes.
Press release> These findings suggest that the earliest eukaryotes were far more metabolically versatile than their modern descendants.
The ancestors of mitochondria were parasite bacteria, and they made a lot of proteins themself. (I don't know. Perhaps they changed host frequently? perhaps just in case the sucker dies? Perhaps to survive while they hunt a new host?)
Modern mitochondria lost many of these features because they relay on the host that is stable.
The mitochondria of this eukaryote are strange, because they (only partially?) lost one of these features to create one of the proteins. (I'm not sure. It looks like it's non functional, but some parts are still there? Perhaps they only do some steps and relay on the host eukaryote for the rest?)
So, when the ancestors of these eukaryote and the ancestors of most eukaryotes (including us) split, the mitochondria were still able to make this protein. Our mitochondria lost it completely, but their mitochondria only partially.
Suggested fix> These findings suggest that the *the mitochondria* of earliest eukaryotes were far more metabolically versatile than their modern descendants.
I don't think what this sentence says is surprising (but I'm not a biologist). Anyway, the paper is about a more subtle detail that is more interesting. It's about the mitochondria at the moment of the ancient split of the eukaryotes. Perhaps there is a better way to fake-edit the press release.
As and old physicist and a computer programmer these days, I am so jealous of the things you can build these days "vibe coding". That someone with moderate knowledge of programming can build these things is fascinating.
Now, on the physics part, I would like to "see" the phase transition that you have in 2D. I don't know if that is missing from this simulation or if I am not looking at it with the correct eyes.
Thank you! Your 2D version is great, I love seeing how different people approach this stuff. As for integrators, I currently only have Velocity Verlet and RK4 (can change in the advanced settings). I started with just Verlet, but to get some of the presets to behave properly I ended up needing RK4 as well. I’ve been thinking about adding adaptive methods next, but I'll take a look at the methods you've got listed too. Everything is still running in plain JS for now. I started moving some of the work into web workers but haven’t finished that part yet.
Symplectic integrators are the approach I used for some old galaxy simulations. Page 5 on the attached paper was my main reference, eq 22
https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0110585
I believe this is used in several academic codes for long term N-body calculations.
I'm not sure which ones are you talking about specifically. But there are some with some heavy symmettrical patterns indeed. To my eyes some are mesmerizing to watch.
The orbits are computed in real time, so yeah what you are seeing (modulo errors in my code is genuine)
There are some caveats though. Some orbits are periodic only in a rotating frame of reference.
EDIT: you can share the URL and I can see which orbits you are talking about
Time has come. Over the last few years there is more and more interest from goverments and private organizations to have relieable software that does not depend of foreign entities. Software sovereignty is becoming a necesity rather than a nice to have for both nations and enterprises.
> Excel, in particular, hasn't been unseated despite billions in investments from competitors over the years.
Excel, like many other technologies in the past can be disrupted. Like mane other commenters say, it won't come cheap. Saving costs shouldn't be the the goal here.
> Parity will happen someday, but it's at least a decade away.
Challenge accepted!
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