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Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

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Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#31

Those of you interested in Silicon Valley trivia might note that the name Mathematica was suggested by someone named Steven Jobs: http://reference.wolfram.com/legacy/v1/contents/acknowledgme... The name is a little misleading though, as the later releases have shown Mathematica to be a great general symbolic manipulation program not just for, say, Calculus homework, but Wolfram had already used the name SMP, and the…

I always believed, that it was a shameless borrowing (as do "great artist") of Macsyma -- living on free as Maxima.

Octave, Scilab and python driven C++ (e.g. Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software, ATLAS) can do just as good, if not the same or better. If you know what you are doing (which would be a must, anyway).

ps: Steven's book is full of spin, so I guess some of them would also make it to his website and vice-versa: this is called marketing and propaganda...

Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

researchers work in universities, almost all of which have site-wide licenses. Site-wide licenses for mathematica also start to approach reason. Its doubtful that that many researchers will have to pirate it.

Universities in a lot of countries do not have budgets that can deal with even $1000 a seat.

I can confirm this. We have a site-wide license for Matlab, but not for Mathematica. Educational version of Mathematica 7 would cost me my two monthly salaries - therefore I will pirate it.

Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities in a lot of countries do not have budgets that can deal with even $1000 a seat.

I can confirm this. We have a site-wide license for Matlab, but not for Mathematica. Educational version of Mathematica 7 would cost me my two monthly salaries - therefore I will pirate it.

I didn't buy any, but from my point of view, Mathematica is priced just a bit lower than Matlab.

Matlab quotes me $1900 for a single common license: http://www.mathworks.com/store/loginSubmitGuest.do while Mathematica is $1750: http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/

How much does site license for Matlab cost you?

Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#34

While I will probably never use mathematica, due to its breathtaking price, one can only wonder how many researchers the world over simply pirate it. I also doubt we will ever see Wolfram willing to set the price at a level that normal human beings can afford. Perhaps a client-server version that does all its computing back at Wolfram's servers, would give them the confidence to dabble with a sane price point...

It's not a matter of "dabbling" or "sanity", it's a matter of making a niche product that takes a lot of very qualified people years of work. The market for individual consumers that would buy Mathematica is tiny. You might as well wonder why SAP don't "dabble" with a "sane" price point for R/3 for home users to balance their chequebooks.

Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#35
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to think that the singularity, if it is coming, will produce this profound qualitative shift in human existence. And at the same time mean absolutely nothing in the face of a problem such as this.

shrugs I have the feeling that if anything like the 'singularity' happens, it will feel fairly normal to the participants. There are many things today that would seem completely 'sci-fi' to people even a few decades ago. But we're still going to be resource and physics constrained, unless society changes our conscious enough that memes and genes won't still end up in an endless hunt for exponential growth.

Genes? Where we're going there are no genes.

Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#37
post #34

While I will probably never use mathematica, due to its breathtaking price, one can only wonder how many researchers the world over simply pirate it. I also doubt we will ever see Wolfram willing to set the price at a level that normal human beings can afford. Perhaps a client-server version that does all its computing back at Wolfram's servers, would give them the confidence to dabble with a sane price point...

It's not a matter of "dabbling" or "sanity", it's a matter of making a niche product that takes a lot of very qualified people years of work. The market for individual consumers that would buy Mathematica is tiny. You might as well wonder why SAP don't "dabble" with a "sane" price point for R/3 for home users to balance their chequebooks.

I'm not completely convinced. I'd love to use Mathematica for modeling some of the stuff that we're doing, but no way I'm going to drop $4000 on it (the price where I live). $500 and I'd do it immediately.

Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learn things sometimes... do I qualify? (seriously though, I'm not a student. 2 credits at Johns Hopkins, right down the street, are about the same price as Mathematica)

Go take that class at Johns Hopkins, then click on this link: http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathforstudents - $139.95 for a fully functional student version. You can also get a semester version for $44.95. "Note: Mathematica for Students is intended for students enrolled in accredited academic institutions and is for use on a student's own personal computer."

Of course, $139 is far too high for a student.

Re: Mathematica 7.0 Released Today

#40
post #33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm this. We have a site-wide license for Matlab, but not for Mathematica. Educational version of Mathematica 7 would cost me my two monthly salaries - therefore I will pirate it.

I didn't buy any, but from my point of view, Mathematica is priced just a bit lower than Matlab. Matlab quotes me $1900 for a single common license: http://www.mathworks.com/store/loginSubmitGuest.do while Mathematica is $1750: http://store.wolfram.com/view/app/mathematica/ How much does site license for Matlab cost you?

I got Matlab student version 4 years ago for around $140.
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