On 26 June 2012 12:56, Eric Kangas <eric.c.kan...@gmail.com> wrote: > I first started using Mathematica 5.8 before I bought my student edition of > 6.0 as a physics student at CWU.
There was no version 5.8 of Mathematica. To the best of my knowledge, the latest in the 5 series was 5.2 (probably with a 5.2.1 or similar with just bug fixes). > However I don't use it anymore, but still > have the windows drive that it is on just in case. I spent $90 for access to > that copy. I tried to start a fresh new copy, and was denied full access > since it was a different copy. Contact their support line. I've found them quite helpful - at least in moving the professional version. Also, when a licensed had expired, they renewed it for a month or two, expecting the uni to renew the license. > Which I think is completely wrong. I was then > forward to the sites pay page for access to version 8. From what I have seen > from the pictures, and read the information about version 8. I have noticed > that version 8 now has full access to wolfram alpha, Wolfram's giant > database, at an additional cost. Which I think is completely none scientist > of him for doing that. What makes you think you have to pay for the integration? I have not looked much, but http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/WolframAlphaIntegration.html mentions nothing about payment. > Access to any form of information should be free for > anyone. I disagree. If someone pays staff to collect information, there is no reason they should not sell itl Just look at all the scientific journals. Your uni might give you "free" access to al/most of them, it's only because they have paid for it. > Plus I take it that his coding is also proprietary? Yes. I see somewhere (forget where), that someone had asked Stephen Wolfram if he would open-source an early version. He said no, since he did not think it a good idea that someone used an old copy. Of course his real reason might be (probably is), very different. > There are a few > things that I have done on Mathematica that I can't do on sage at this time. > Which is keeping me from being able to publish my findings on some of my > projects I have done in College. Ask here, and perhaps someone knows a way of doing it > Since I didn't have access to a > professional version of Mathematica, and I am not a student at this time. I think that gives you the opportunity to upgrade to the pro version at a much reduced cost. > From what I have experience with the way Wolfram has his program setup he is > only in it for the money, and nothing else anymore. Was he EVER in it for any other reason? I suspect not. > Which I think will be > his downfall eventually as more and more people turn > to Sage, or any other > freeware program that is out there. What do any of you others think about > the future of Mathematica? I don't see Sage being a big threat to Mathematica, especially as William has said it is a waste of time trying a true native port to Windows. I tend to agree with him too. Whilst one has to mess around with VirtualBox rather than a true native port, I don't see Sage being a big threat. Symbolics in Mathematica, which is one of its strong points, are better than Sages. The other aspect is that there is no commercial paid support. As such, it is difficult to justify using in industry. Contrast that with open-source projects like Apache and Wireshark. I guess Mathematica must be commercially successful, but looking at the number of jobs requiring skills in Mathematica, I know it is very small. What there are seem to be mainly in the finance industry. In contrast, MATLAB seems far more useful toe learn, as a lot of jobs want MATLAB skills. Dave -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
