Category Archives: Software

Thunderbird 3 – finally with tabs

As I could now get an update for my quicktext plugin, I finally switched to Thunderbird 3. I like the new clean interface and the immediate access to many folders.

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The only question that I have – is there any way to force the “new email window” into a tab?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

Internet neutrality

A new Science paper is worried about internet neutrality:

… Researchers who support “network neutrality” have become worried that the Internet may lose its innovative edge. They are concerned that control could be shifting from the edges of the Internet toward the service providers at the center, which would allow the providers to have “gatekeeper” capacity and would contradict the Internet’s “end-to-end” principle . This core tenet states that control over information flows should take place, to the extent possible, at the end points of the network…

While politicians are still debating on that issue, Continue reading Internet neutrality

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

Crantastic

As I am currently in London, here comes only a quick link for all R users. It goes to crantastic, a community site for R packages where you can search for, review and tag CRAN packages.
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Yea, yea.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

Vanish

Finally, here is a technical solution to a proposal that I made here earlier

Ok, we are aware that recovery is always possible with cut & paste into other applications or printing a text -so we may better think about some watermarked graphics. “Don’t ever say anything on e-mail or text messaging that you don’t want to come back and bite you.”

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

Do computer games lead to aggression?

We had a lunch discussion on that topic this week – of course, investigating the computer of a person running amok will reveal some (Counterstrike type) games due to his isolation. But such games are also on million of othercomputers who do not run riot and who get relaxed by playing games.
Nevertheless I read this week about the aggressive behaviour of teens who were not allowed to play the whole night World of Warcraft. So, there seems to be clear links Continue reading Do computer games lead to aggression?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

P≤0.0069 in election results

Too many “7” digits were found for candidate A in a study of the presidential election results.

This method is closely related to Benford’s Law. A highly significant (p ~ 0.0007) excess of vote counts for candidate K that start with the digit 7 is found (41 observed, 21.2–22 expected).

I have to admit that I heard for the first time of the Newcomb-Benford’s Law (NBL)…

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

Please, send always an ics file in the attachment

as it is rather time consuming to type in all appointments.
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Appointments can be exported from outlook (win XP) abd ical (Mac OS X) just by drag and drop to your favorite mail program. It is just one click here on the attachment to import the date here (Lufthansa already knows that but you may use this hint in your company to get the inventor award). BTW The screenshot shows another neat idea of integrating dynamic Doodle feeds.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

What is the best logistic model?

I have never heard a formal lecture answering this question even after many years in epidemiology. It should be parsimonious of course to avoid too many missings but seems largely a subjective approach to keep or drop a variable. It was therefore quite helpful to find now an online lecture that exemplifies a sound approach – check out unc.edu/courses/2006spring. I already used anova to compare models (at least since my move from SAS to R) while using AIC is something that I am adding now to my toolbox. Continue reading What is the best logistic model?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

Mac OS X running Sigmaplot

screenshotI haven’t found any replacement yet for Sigmaplot that is offered only as a native Windows application. Even buying a copy of Aabel didn’t bring me back the fast and intuitive plotting capabilities. Running Sigmaplot under Parallels is a pain using too much of the system ressources while Crossover failed to start up even after following these step-by-step instructions. Finally, with Crossover 8, it seems that a win98 bottle can run Sigmaplot 9!

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026

Science flies

Still in the spirit of the last few posts, here comes something exciting: sciflies.org aims at

We look forward to receiving your application for funding of initial proof-of-concept STEM research projects in the range of $5,000 to $12,000. To participate in this unique online grassroots-funded opportunity, please complete the questionnaire about your project, including details of its possible outcome/impact and profiles of the researchers or research team.

but, sorry, I have to warn you – the website does NOT save your project – it took me 20 minutes to figure that out.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 24.08.2026