Hi Mathematica is touring South Africa. http://www.wolfram.com/events/southafrica2010/ I expect their presentation to be very professional.
Reviving an old topic since Mathematica is visiting our Free Software supporting institute www.aims.ac.za on Monday. It happens to be the first day of a 3-week course on SAGE! I would like to send the students some articles to read and to be informed on my main objections * proprietary software in general, and blackbox routines for scientific/research/academic use specifically http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2010/08/overflow.html * the price of the software http://www.wolfram.com/events/southafrica2010/ $139.95 even for students. I'm not sure I can convey how astronomical that amount to almost all African students. Worse, when they want to start a small business after completing their studies, the price jumps more than tenfold. * vendor lock-in in general, specifically in scientific research http://www.arachnoid.com/sage/ * the controversial Mr Wolfram as a scientific role model http://chem.tufts.edu/science/Shermer/E-Skeptic/SkepticsOnWolfram.html * the technical comparisons, for those who discard ethical issues http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support/browse_thread/thread/7fe76a4025f7ac56/06a803e9bf060ad3?lnk=gst&q=mathematica+elements#06a803e9bf060ad3 Does anyone have anything to add, especially updating the last point above, as the blistering speed of SAGE development surely have solved some of those weaknesses. I find the plotting perfectly adequate. regards, Jan -- .~. /V\ Jan Groenewald /( )\ www.aims.ac.za ^^-^^ -- 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
