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Re: Mathematica Wish-List

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg44234] Re: [mg44214] Mathematica Wish-List
  • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
  • Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 03:34:18 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <200310281053.FAA25761@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I find your comments strange. First of all, Mathematica is all the time 
being developed. Version 5 was released recently. It has lots of new 
features. The features you are suggesting do not seem any more 
expensive than the many others that have been implemented. If there is 
enough demand for them the chances are they too will be seen in a 
future version. I for one  only care for your number 2 (although not 
that much for my Mathematica rarely crashes). I don't care at all about 
the linux Front End (since I do not use linux) but I do want to see a 
64 bit version of Mathematica for MacOS X (now that the era of 64 bit 
computing on the Mac has begun) and I would also greatly appreciate a 
Cocoa FrontEnd for Mac OS X. But actually continued kernel development 
is even more important.

There is not question, I think, of any government subsidy for 
Mathematica. For one, WRI's competitors would not like it. Also Steven 
Wolfram has spoken on several occasions of his preference for free 
market unsubsidized competition. In any case, a government contract is 
not a subsidy if it is obtained in an open and fair competition. I 
believe that Wolfram Research has some pretty large government 
contracts.

Andrzej Kozlowski
Yokohama, Japan
http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~akoz/




On 28 Oct 2003, at 19:53, Steven T. Hatton wrote:

> There are a few features/improvements I would like to see in 
> Mathematica.
> Some of them are 'nice to have', a few are features which I really
> believe /should/ be available. In the following I will attempt to 
> indicate
> which are more important to me. I'm running on Linux.
>
> An OOP package. (nice to have)
>
> A better crash recovery facility whereby the most recent state of the
> notebook can be recovered. (This is _very_ important.)
>
> A better front end on Unix/Linux - ditch motif. (I hate motif! But 
> that's
> personal)
>
> There are other features I'd like to see, but these are the most 
> important i
> can come up with.  I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on these, 
> as
> well as what other features would be good to have.
>
> I understand that Mathematica doesn't have the income of Microsoft, and
> features such as these are expensive to produce.  One thing I will say 
> to
> that is the following: I used to work at a DoD research center that 
> did one
> of the earliest roll-outs of Windows NT in a full enterprise 
> environment.
> Before NT was up to the task, the government poured huge amounts of 
> money
> into Microsoft's coffers by buying licenses, they/we also provided an
> incredible amount of beta testing and product feedback for free.
>
> Now Mathematica may not be as potentially ubiquitous as Windows NT, 
> but the
> value a product such as Mathematica adds to the overall long-term
> production potential of society is huge. Am I suggesting the government
> should subsidize Mathematica development? Well...yes.
> -- 
> "Philosophy is written in this grand book, The Universe. ... But the 
> book
> cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the 
> language...
> in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, 
> ...;
> without which wanders about in a dark labyrinth."   The Lion of Gaul
>
>
>


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