Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4570 mails)

["Steven T. Hatton" <hattons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 17 November 2005 03:36 pm, Geza Giedke wrote:
> On 11/17/05, Steven T. Hatton <hattons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Can you provide substance to this accusation?  All human beings have
> > faults. One, or even a few episodes of bad behavior do not a tyrant make.
> >  I may be knocking on his door soon.
>
> not that I'd want to subscribe to OP's characterization, but
> the epsiode of a related in the following review of Wolfram's "A New
> Kind of Science" (treatment by the author of one of his students, who,
> it seems, proved the  most important theorem in ANKoS) is (to say the
> least) not nice.
>
> http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/
> (The review is worth reading, too, IMHO)

There seem to be a good number of allegations in the review which are 
unsubstantiated.  I don't know the details of Cook's work. Nor do I know 
anything about the law suit.  It may be the case that Wolfram was more 
concerned with protecting the marketability of Mathematica than his own 
glory.  I find the notion that a person could hold a patten on a theorem in 
mathematics pattenly absurd.  

I have ANKoS, and have read some of the introductory material, as well as 
thumbed through it.  I agree that he has a large estimation of the importance 
of his own work.  I suspect there is much of worth in the book, even if there 
is less there that is original than he contends there to be.

The author of the review has certainly ground an axe with Wolfram's name on it 
for some time.  I find the title of the review "A Rare Blend of Monster 
Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity" indicative of the seriousness 
with which I should take it's allegations.

Steven