On 11/17/05, Steven T. Hatton
On Thursday 17 November 2005 02:35 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Wolfram (the man) is an egotistical
I have that impression. I don't believe his contributions to science are quite as unique as he would like to believe. He should certainly tip his hat to Douglas R. Hofstadter. Nonetheless, Mathematica is an amazing product. I really don't know if any of the other computer algebra systems are anything like it. He has full room to be proud of his accomplishments.
tyrant who mistreats, abuses and exploits the programmers and mathematicians he hires. Switch to an alternative. Putting money in his pocket is far worse than feeding Billy boy or any of his hired guns.
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) regards Geza