My computer was hacked at that time, so the IP may be the same. At that time I tried to install Maple (but didn't finish the installation) and slightly released my firewall restrictions - it seems as if one of the opened ports was used. The credit cards numbers and other sensitive information was encrypted, and it seems OK at this time, but few opened applications, including Firefox with opened Mapleprimes page seem to be getting explored.

Anyway, I think that it was just a practical joke of one of my hacker friends, because none of actual damage was done.

Alec

Doug, 

Congratulations!

I used your PowerTools and a lot of other materials in my differential equations courses (when I used Maple in them), and they were very useful. Thank you!

Sorry for a delay with the congratulations - I was quite sick last week or so, and didn't visit this site.

Alec

And what is the answer? I got 2 solutions,

Digits:=100:
fsolve(f);
  0.74999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999\
        99999965372015751934958075434980986174

fsolve(f,x=0.751);
  0.75000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000\
        00000034627984248065041924565019013826

Alec

And what is the answer? I got 2 solutions,

Digits:=100:
fsolve(f);
  0.74999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999\
        99999965372015751934958075434980986174

fsolve(f,x=0.751);
  0.75000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000\
        00000034627984248065041924565019013826

Alec

OK, seems that you got it.

OK, seems that you got it.

It should be in standard Linear Algebra textbooks. For example, in 

Linear Algebra with Applications, by J.T. Scheick
Linear Algebra Done Right, by Axler
Advanced Linear Algebra, by Roman

I don't have them handy though, so I didn't actually check.

Alec

It should be in standard Linear Algebra textbooks. For example, in 

Linear Algebra with Applications, by J.T. Scheick
Linear Algebra Done Right, by Axler
Advanced Linear Algebra, by Roman

I don't have them handy though, so I didn't actually check.

Alec

He is an older guy now (probably, in his 80-s or 90-s)  and he certainly has nothing to do with Maple. He was quite surprised when I told him that Maple is using Arrays now instead of arrays.

Newertheless, Martin Gardner mentioned him a few times in his books (that's how I learned about him).

He is very active in the math-fun group (if you ever heard about that), which is not really very powerful, but still is quite influential (for various reasons), and he is a very good person in real lie (again as well as I can tell that). Try to contact him first before trashing his code publically on the Internet. (or he can, probably, thrash your life, too - just a joke :)

Alec

PS I am deleting all mentioning that I can thrash your life, too. Certainly, I can, but what is the point?

Alec

For me, there are so many (free) tools around there for plotting, and so many of them are supersedding of any of Maple possibilities by (I don'y know how to name that) a generation or two ahead, why anybody would use Maple for that?

Alec

For me, there are so many (free) tools around there for plotting, and so many of them are supersedding of any of Maple possibilities by (I don'y know how to name that) a generation or two ahead, why anybody would use Maple for that?

Alec

It's hard. I tried to explain that to Fred Lunnon - a brilliant mathematician and one of the first programmers out there - he started programming in 50s with the first IBM mainframes, whatever their names were (before 360) . Try to do that yourself - read his MapleGrumbles page in the Maple Wiki.

Whatever pagan (whoever he or she is - I have no idea) wrote about his page in his/her comment on the Maple wiki, is just ridiculous. It sounded similar to me like if somebody wrote that Don Knuth don't understand what TeX is (he wrote it, as well as Fred Lunnon is the closest thing that I know to the father of a lot of modern programming.)

Alec

Frankly, I don't understand you. What do you mean?

Alec

Edit: I think I understand - you meant that if somebody wiped out a contest of a wikipedia page, that doesn't mean that he or she is going to do that in other wikis?

Unfortunately, the history proves that the things don't work like that. In the olden days, there were people writing books and people collecting those books in libraries; and there were other people (vandals) burning books and destroying libraries. That's where the term (vandalism) come from.

At the beginning of Internet, they were called "deleters" - they couldn't create anything good themselves, but they logged in to other people's ftp sites and deleted everything they could there. I run ( administered) a few ftp sites at that time and was facing that problem daily. One of possible solutions that we found at that time was to share the information about "deleters" including IP address etc. between us, and act accordingly (blocking that IP address, or, say, running a distributed DoS attack in more serious cases.) It was absolutely necessary. They never stopped themselves (unless, for instance, their computer was completely destroyed.)

Nowadays, there is a similar situation with wikis - some people create wikis and others (vandals, or saboteurs) - delete whatever they can there. That never restricts to one place - if they did that in one place, they continue everywhere they can. That's how their sick perverted minds work. There are some other than blocking the IP address ways of dealing with that, but I chose the most soft measure - just blocking the IP address. It has appeared to be effective in this particular case (at least until now).

Alec

I didn;t try that, but such things as linalg:=LinearAlgebra etc, with replacing old functions with new ones with similar functionality should work - why not?

Alec

I don't exactly understand what you mean by points system. Perhaps, acer can answer that. I see him around. I am good, but acer is better.

Alec