But he has pretensions towards being a respected visionary scientist. It's not impossible to have it both ways, but it's really, really difficult. (Especially when you've taken the work you did as a student at a public university and commercialized it without giving a penny to the university.)
I agree here. This fellow looks like he is good at self-aggrandizement to gather shekels shucking ultra expensive software. I don't like this giant list of pedigree either. Solve problems or help others solve problems. To be fair, mathematica helps others solve problems BUT:
The licensing model is extortionary, its rental software, and it even tries to limit the users by how many API calls are made per month.
Also as others have pointed out because it is black box software its not really auditable.
Mathematica itself is unique. Nothing combines the power of symbolic calculus with numerical computation in the same way. Your algorithms guy would probably be SOL without it, so don't diminish the uniqueness and power of that software. Nothing else comes close.
That having been said, Mathematica was already pretty much fully written as of 1991---I know because I used it. It was among the first to have exectuables for both Windows and Linux. And it worked fabulously. I wrote scientific articles using it as early as 1996 (and many people even earlier than myself).
Now, what you say about check cashing is valid---because, truth be told, Mathematica hasn't changed that much since 1991---it just has fancier graphics and more wrapper functions built around the core functionality, but the language and the structure of it is essentially the same. So yes, Wolfram has been resting on his laurels pretty much since 1995 or so and thinking himself some sort of prophet with his automaton science ravings.
It's not unknown for some great scientists to do inspired things in their youth and then proceed to fuck things up for the rest of their life. Newton was into alchemy and wanted to find Atlantis. Fred Hoyle figured out how stars cook the elements and then proceeded to support the now-defunct static model of the universe, where matter is created out of nowhere and quasar are shot out of nearby galaxies.
Why not open source wolfram alpha? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:0)
Because he runs a business not a hippy commune. Go away little freetard.
Re: (Score:2)
Because he runs a business not a hippy commune.
But he has pretensions towards being a respected visionary scientist. It's not impossible to have it both ways, but it's really, really difficult. (Especially when you've taken the work you did as a student at a public university and commercialized it without giving a penny to the university.)
Re: (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree here. This fellow looks like he is good at self-aggrandizement to gather shekels shucking ultra expensive software. I don't like this giant list of pedigree either. Solve problems or help others solve problems. To be fair, mathematica helps others solve problems BUT:
The licensing model is extortionary, its rental software, and it even tries to limit the users by how many API calls are made per month.
Also as others have pointed out because it is black box software its not really auditable.
I find a ma
Re:Why not open source wolfram alpha? (Score:2)
That having been said, Mathematica was already pretty much fully written as of 1991---I know because I used it. It was among the first to have exectuables for both Windows and Linux. And it worked fabulously. I wrote scientific articles using it as early as 1996 (and many people even earlier than myself).
Now, what you say about check cashing is valid---because, truth be told, Mathematica hasn't changed that much since 1991---it just has fancier graphics and more wrapper functions built around the core functionality, but the language and the structure of it is essentially the same. So yes, Wolfram has been resting on his laurels pretty much since 1995 or so and thinking himself some sort of prophet with his automaton science ravings.
It's not unknown for some great scientists to do inspired things in their youth and then proceed to fuck things up for the rest of their life. Newton was into alchemy and wanted to find Atlantis. Fred Hoyle figured out how stars cook the elements and then proceeded to support the now-defunct static model of the universe, where matter is created out of nowhere and quasar are shot out of nearby galaxies.