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That really-small, really-cool Sony Vaio device comes to mind... or even an Apple iBook....

I've got one of those really-small really-cool Sony Vaio devices of which you speak (an sr27k which I got free after Sony borked my previous sr7k in the shop), and I must say I *really* like the thing. I've taken it to a bunch of classes, and my notes are a lot better because of it. I type a whole lot faster and more accurately than I can write, as I'm sure a lot of other people do - the keyboard on this thing is pretty conducive to fast typing, too.

As for equation entry, I realised after much puzzling that doing all that in Mathematica is the best way to do it. It took me a while to get good at it, but after I figured out all the keyboard shortcuts it got pretty easy. The real bonus is that I can actually decipher what I took down when I look at it an hour later.

On a side note, I'm planning on trading this laptop in on an iBook soon. This one is fantastic, but it's shiny-newness has worn off for me for some reason, and that's mostly what I'm interested in. :-)

I wonder if a company like wolfram would donate mathematica for an endevour like this. It's unrealistic to try and make money of third world developement.. and if the ultimate goal here is to move these countries out of the third world, getting them hooked on the product would be great for the future.

Many thanks. This is how the internet is supposed to work.
At last i find about Mandelbrot
Site bookmarked

Eric really got screwed by this ordeal. CRC now owns his life's works, and is basically using his life's continuing work as a means to profit because he signed a contract that he didn't read. After settling out of court, CRC now requires you to sign away your contributions to them so they can have further rights from the continuing development of Eric's life's work. This is wrong on so many levels.

The only appropriate, mature response is to inform the world. If every one of us takes some time and visits Eric's work, now back online for free via the internet, and gains some benefit from it, then it will do Eric justice. I'm NOT recommending contributing to CRC's wealth (i.e. DON'T BUY IT), but let all your peers and superiors know about the story. Give them the link: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/. Propagate the wealth of his knowledge, but don't support CRC in doing so. Let everyone in the academic world know loud and clear that CRC is a company out to stop the free and convenient exchange of information.

What Eric produced was a collection of information. What he wanted was for that information to be available offline for an affordable amount, and what CRC did was to trick Eric into letting them declare ownership of all future developments that Eric or the thousands of contributors added to Eric's life's work of collecting facts, and subsequently sue Eric for continuing its existence. Everyone on the planet should be touched by this story and the greed of the CRC corporation that tricked an information provider to give away all rights to develop information.

There are other things you can do. If you recently bought a CRC book, you can return it. If you have a website, make a page about the story. If you have used MathWorld, continue to do so online only. Promote MathWorld through awareness of the vast resources that Eric has gathered, but always tell people not to buy the book because the CRC publisher screwed over the source of the information. MathWorld was one of the greatest resources ever compiled, and the fact that CRC has claimed ownership over the entire work should anger each and every one of us. Especially Eric who created it, and the thousands of people who contributed to it. Spread the word by email, snail mail, telephone, IM, talk, groupware. Tell your politicians, teachers, professors, educators and students about the wonderful resources and how the CRC company got the collector of this vast amount of resources to sign it away to them, sued him, and how he didn't make any money off of 10 years worth of hard work. Make Quake clans with the name CRC Sucks or equivalent to remind yourself when you relax that CRC Sucks.

If we were to try to compile as complete a resource of Mathematical and Scientific knowledge as Eric did, it may take a long time, but I would recommend that if this were to be done, the organizer of such information create a disclosure agreement similar to the CRC agreement you have to "sign" when you submit to MathWorld, with the exception that you are copyrighting this information and reserving no rights. I'm no lawyer, and don't have the expertise to do this, but I bet that people from the Free Software Foundation do. Free as in speech, free as in beer. Let's contribute to an organization with the founding principle that the information we contribute is not our protected property, but rather, that the information is public knowledge. I'm just a recent college graduate/software engineer who feels terrible for Eric (his work helped me pass Differential Geometry), and wishes that we could do something as a whole.

Feel free to use any portion of this message that you see fit for any purpose.

-Anonymous "I sold my brain to a company, but this guy didn't, and we should spread awareness of CRC's foul play." Coward

(I'd like to keep my personal information private and free from spam. If that makes you take my comments less seriously, so be it.)

It sounds like he's whining to me.

He also says they never contributed anything. Um, sorry, but they paid him for it. If you build a car and sell it to somebody you don't then complain that "they never contributed to the creation", you were paid, they bought it, it's now their's, you have no more rights as you SOLD THEM.

It sounds like sour grapes to me. If I didn't want to sell all the rights he should have made sure that's what the contract said. He was not asked to sign the contract without reading it, he was given the contract, it said CRC gets XY and Z in exchange for $$$. He then irresponsibily agrees without checking what he's agreeing too. It's not like CRC put a gun to his head and said "sign RIGHT NOW without reading or else!".

Then he gets upset that they asked for damages. Hello? He did do something which he was PAID NOT TO DO! Let's see, you sign a contract that says "I will not do X so you will give me $$". You get $$ and you do X anyway. Who's in the wrong here?

You can see what he signed. It's in plain enough English that you don't need to be a lawyer to understand it

quote:
--

5. COPYRIGHT. The Author hereby expressly grants, transfers, and assigns to the Publisher full and exclusive rights to the Work, including, without limitation, the copyright in the Work, all revisions thereof, and the right to prepare translations and other derivative works based upon the Work in all forms and languages for the full term of copyright, and all renewals and extensions thereof, throughout the world. The Publisher's exclusive rights include, without limitation, the right to reproduce, publish, sell, and distribute copies of the Work, selections therefrom, and translations and other derivative Works based upon the Work, in print, audio-visual, electronic, or by any and all media now or hereafter known or devised, and the right to license or authorize others to do any or all of the foregoing throughout the world.

The Publisher will register copyright in the Work in the name of the Publisher in compliance with the United States Copyright Law. If the Publisher supplies artwork (including artwork for the cover of the Work), it may register copyright separately therein in a manner satisfactory to the Publisher.

--

He gave them ALL RIGHTS in ALL MEDIUMS. He even sold them rights to revisions!!! What did he get for that?

Read section 6 of the contract for his compensation.

Sorry but the a**hole here is really this guy for legally selling his rights to CRC in exchange for money and then reneging on the deal. And then having the gaul to try to frame it as CRC being the bad guy and convincing all of you guys that he's the innocent one.

Buy mathematica (wolfram's sweeet math proggy)

Purchase the second edition of the book, but NOT directly from CRC

write a positive testimonial in the guestbook to help their applications for funding.

Not only that, but the settlement requires contributors to make the same mistake that Eric unknowingly made in the first place (contribution permission form here).

Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the web site. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the web site unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form.

The short of it is, they caved to CRC and if you want to be a contributor, but retain all your rights, you can't be a contributor. 8^(

Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the web site. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the web site unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form.

The short of it is, they caved to CRC and if you want to be a contributor, but retain all your rights, you can't be a contributor. 8^(

Go check out this legal notice in lynx in an xterm with a really small font. :)

Continuing to purchase from CRC would be unthinkable, but as I read this, it appears that a boycott of CRC would actually result in Eric and friends just having to pay CRC more.
So either way CRC wins.

The story's been slashdotted... so here's a cut and paste of the story on the other end of the shiny direct link to Eric's Commentary. After reading this, I don't think I'll buy any more books from CRC... but I guess they're making Wolfram pay for the books they don't sell anyway, so this probably won't do any good.

Here it is:

What Happened to MathWorld

It is no secret that one consequence of the explosion in the popularity of the internet and related electronic technologies is that many battles will be fought over how information is created, stored, and accessed. It is equally clear that we all have a stake in how these battles are decided.

Below is an account of one such battle--the lawsuit served on me and Wolfram Research in the spring of 2000 by CRC Press, a publisher that generations of scientists used to know as the Chemical Rubber Company. This lawsuit was instigated by CRC Press after I had contracted with them to print and distribute a "snapshot" of my math web site in book form. My goal in recounting how that contract went awry is to give others an opportunity to learn less painfully what I have learned--especially about the deep cultural divide that appears to be opening up between most, but I hope not all, book publishers and their potential customers and authors. In particular, many publishers seem unable to understand a new generation for whom dynamic web sites are rapidly becoming a primary medium--sometimes co-equal with books, sometimes preferred over books--for gathering, extending, and sharing knowledge.

In this account, you will find links that will take you to extensive documents containing all you could possibly want to know (and probably more) about the lawsuit that took this web site off the internet for more than a year. What happened to MathWorld will happen again elsewhere. But I believe and hope that the lessons learned from my experience can reduce the frequency of such events in the future.

The following detailed summaries are extracted in part from an even more detailed exposition of the history of my web site contained in my affidavit in response to CRC's motion for an injunction against MathWorld.

How MathWorld Came to Be

I began collecting the material now found in MathWorld when I was in high school, and then continued the project as a college student in the late 1980s. As I collected them, I stored my notes on my state-of-the-art MacPlus personal computer and started sharing my collections of math and science facts with friends. "Eric's Treasure Trove of Mathematics," the predecessor site to MathWorld, first went online in 1995 when I was a graduate student in planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.

As the site became more widely known and used, dozens of contributors offered new entries. Hundreds of others from around the world offered technical advice, criticism, and kind messages. The web site was in a constant state of evolution. It was a hugely rewarding experience. The growing volume of comments and submissions from the diverse community of users made clear that what had started as a labor of love for me was becoming a major math and science resource for thousands, just as I had hoped.

The Book: A "Snapshot" of the Evolving Web Site

As the web site grew, I came to believe that a snapshot of its contents in printed form could be useful. I myself do not always have a computer at my fingertips. A book would also make the material accessible to pre-college educators and people less comfortable with (or without access to) the Internet. (For some of you it may require some imagination to conjure up the dark ages of 1995, when web browsers were in their infancy and email was hardly the mass phenomenon it has since become.)

Although new material was being added daily, I felt that the Treasure Trove had become comprehensive enough (and sufficiently polished, due in large part to helpful suggestions from critical readers) that a snapshot of it would constitute a useful reference book. So in February, 1996, I began seeking a publisher to print and market such a snapshot. I presented a nearly complete paper manuscript to several publishers of scientific and technical books, including CRC Press.

Tales of warm friendships between famous authors and their longtime editors are legendary. I imagined that publishers must have a natural interest in retaining the good will of their authors, especially authors of works likely to be revised and reissued in new editions. When CRC agreed to publish the book, I therefore gave limited scrutiny to the "boilerplate publishing contract" they provided--especially since my editor, Bob Stern, characterized the contract as "very straight forward and easily understood." Its language and terms were standard in the publishing business, he assured me. So I signed it.

Lesson #1. (Where have you heard this before?) Never sign a contract until you feel that you understand and agree with, or at least accept, every clause in it. If you are not sure of the meaning or implications of any phrase or provision, find a lawyer experienced in your kind of project and take her advice! (This Lesson to be read repeatedly and committed to memory.) Also consult with authors organizations and make use of helpful on-line resources such as Wilfred Hodges' mathematical copyright webpage, a public page devoted to copyright issues in mathematical publications.

CRC's contract defined the "Work" with which I was contracting them as "approximately 1400 camera-ready manuscript pages and includ[ing] approximately 1200 camera-ready illustrations to yield a completed work of approximately 1408 printed pages[.]" I understood this to mean that I was assigning to CRC the right to publish the typeset camera-ready text I had offered them.

The Web Site and Its Relationship to Book Sales

In late October or early November 1998, as the book adaptation neared final production, I received a phone call from Mr. Stern. Throughout this pre-publication period, my web site had been receiving a great deal of attention. I had posted on the web site an announcement of the imminent appearance of the CRC book; that announcement appeared to be generating a significant number of pre-release sales for the book. I thought things were going very well.

But now Mr. Stern was on the phone asking me to remove portions of the web site content in order to create greater incentives for online users to purchase the book.

I had always assumed that there would be at most a modest overlap between the set of people who were users of the web site, and the set of people who would want to own a printed reference book created by formatting a snapshot of the web site contents. It had been gratifying to discover that people in that intersection seemed enthusiastic about buying the book.

So I told Mr. Stern that I felt the web site was, on balance, creating sales for the book, not suppressing them. I was very reluctant to restrict free access to any contents of the web site.

However, in November 1998, against my better judgment, I began to comply with Mr. Stern's request. At first I did this by randomly choosing a set of letters of the alphabet each day and blocking all entries starting with those letters. That way, some inconvenience was introduced into use of the web site, but no material remained blocked for long.

From the start this struck me as a poor device for dealing with irresponsible internet users who might attempt to bulk-download large portions of on-line material. Taking arbitrary entries offline was inconveniencing all users who happened to need the blocked material. And happily, bulk downloading was an uncommon pattern of use according to my analysis of web site traffic.

If the problem was the user who wants to own a snapshot of the web site but, to avoid purchasing the CRC book, downloads major portions of the web site's content, then why not inconvenience only those exhibiting such patterns of use? So I began to improve my monitoring and access system. By mid-1999, I felt that the software I had written was able to detect and prevent attempts to download large bodies of material. So I removed the letter-based access restrictions altogether.

I was now morally certain that no online user could, in effect, get around CRC's rights to be sole provider of comprehensive snapshots of the web site. (In addition to the printed book, CRC had agreed to market a CD-ROM version--a snapshot with its own advantages and disadvantages compared to a book. I had prepared the CD-ROM; CRC duplicated it and promised to promote it.)

Eric Comes to Wolfram Research

In the meantime, a representative of Wolfram Research had invited me to visit its Champaign headquarters and speak about my mathematical web site. I traveled to Champaign in February 1999, presented my work, and shortly thereafter was delighted to be offered a position with Wolfram Research.

I had for some time admired Wolfram Research's support of long-term efforts to collect and disseminate mathematical knowledge on the internet through a collection of information-rich web sites. And I was enthusiastic about the possibility of working for what I knew to be the world's premier technical software company.

As my postdoctoral research at the University of Virginia neared completion, I purchased the "www.treasure-troves.com" domain name and moved my web pages from the university address at which it had resided to a commercial internet-hosting site. Throughout this period the math treasure trove was accessible to the public and free of charge.

I began work at Wolfram Research on June 1, 1999.

Stephen Wolfram and others suggested that the web site ought to give its users the ability to locate information based on a custom-tailored subject classification. A number of Wolfram Research staff joined me in developing an intuitive and powerful new graphical user interface that greatly enhanced the usefulness of the burgeoning content of the math web site.

In December 1999, Wolfram Research and I unveiled the enhanced web site, now renamed MathWorld and located at mathworld.wolfram.com.

CRC Fails to Promote the Book

When the book was first released, CRC promoted it with what I thought was some vigor. However, as the months passed I grew increasingly disappointed with their efforts. Less than a year after its release, the book ceased appearing in CRC mailings that I received, including special ones for its "Most Popular Math Titles."

I was also greatly disappointed that CRC had raised the price of the book twice within its first year, from the original $65, to $79.95, to $99.95. This seemed to undermine our original strategy of keeping the price low enough for students to afford.

And it appeared to me that CRC had done little to get the book into bookstores. In fact, to date, I have only seen the book carried in a single bookstore: the campus bookstore of my highly atypical alma mater, the California Institute of Technology.

Accordingly, on February 15, 2000, I sent a note to Mr. Stern:

"I've recently noticed a few signs which seem to indicate CRC is not doing an optimal job of publicizing the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Math. I was hoping you could reassure me: (1) I just got the CRC "Best of Math" flier. To my surprise, my encyclopedia is nowhere to be found. (2) amazon.com has been listing the book/CD-ROM combo as out of print and back-ordered for about 4 months now... Would it be possible to have someone contact amazon.com and find out why they think the combo is on back order? (3) I never heard back from you about the color direct mail flier which was supposed to go out promoting the [CD-ROM--erroneously written as "book" in the original] (and on which I sent you comments last summer). Do you know if it ever went out, or did the flier just get dropped?"

Later that day, I received a phone call from Mr. Stern. He told me that (1) because the encyclopedia had been out for two years now (actually, it had been out for less than 15 months), it was not considered a very high priority and hence may have been "overlooked" when creating the brochure; (2) CRC had decided to discontinue the CD/book bundle, though he could offer no reason for this decision; and (3) promotional fliers for the CD-ROM and bundle editions had never seen the light of day.

CRC Sues Eric and Wolfram Research

At the end of this conversation, Mr. Stern changed the topic. He told me that he had heard that my web site was now located at a Wolfram Research web address.

I told him that this was indeed true.

Mr. Stern said that something would have to be done about that.

I replied that I did not understand why the shift from the old web site to the MathWorld site should be a matter of any concern. Mr. Stern simply repeated that it was, and that he would have to inform his superiors at CRC. I did not know what to make of this, so I asked him to contact an attorney at Wolfram Research who I believed would be able to clear up any concerns.

On March 8, 2000, I was greatly surprised when, after returning from lunch, I was informed that a sheriff's deputy was waiting for me in the Wolfram Research lobby.

I was even more dismayed when he served me with a document naming me and my employer as defendants in a Federal copyright violation lawsuit.

This was my first and only communication from CRC since my conversation three weeks earlier with Mr. Stern. For the interested reader, here is a copy of the lawsuit filed by CRC. A complete list of case documents is also available, many of which make interesting reading and give a good feel for the attitude of CRC Press. A set of FAQs about the case is also available.

How the Tail Came to Wag the Dog

In their lawsuit, CRC claimed that the existence of the MathWorld web site "competes with and interferes and impairs with [sic] sales of the Concise Encyclopedia."

They sought monetary damages from Wolfram Research. From me, they sought "not less than the advance and all royalties earned by Weisstein"--everything, in short, that they had ever paid me!

Apparenly impervious to irony, CRC at the same time acknowledged in its own court filing that the book was the company's best-selling mathematics title! (This, one month after Mr. Stern had "explained" to me that my book was a back list item that I should not be surprised to see dropped from its promotional materials.)

Arguments that the web site was hurting sales of the book, in CRC's subsequent motion to force us to shut down the web site, were completely contrary to the facts as I knew them and as I had tried repeatedly to explain to Mr. Stern.

CRC claimed that "anyone can download MathWorld", and that MathWorld "supplants" or poses "a formidable threat" to the book. As explained above, I had taken steps to prevent large downloads; I knew from monitoring traffic at the web site that large downloads were in fact not happening.

And CRC also claimed, with a straight face, that " ...the public will suffer no injury from a preliminary injunction because the Encyclopedia will continue to be available without interruption, from CRC Press".

This argument, in particular, confirmed my worst fears that CRC's representatives had never understood the nature of my web site. They were blind to the interests of the thousands of you in our online community who had helped expand and improve it. They seemed completely oblivious of the fact that without you, there might not have been a book worth publishing.

Wolfram Research and I were confident that CRC's factual assertions about the web site had no merit. But the law takes copyright very seriously. Language in my contract with CRC (that I had never construed in the way that CRC now presented it) apparently persuaded the Court, on October 23, 2000, to grant CRC's injunction, perhaps to create a strong incentive for Wolfram Research and me to negotiate a settlement with CRC. (It was clear to all parties that that original contract had flaws; in such cases, the best approach is often for the disputants to reach an out-of-court settlement by writing a new, clarified, contract. In effect, that is what has, at long last, happened.)

I simply could not believe what was happening. The interests of thousands of enthusiastic users of the web site were about to be sacrificed to the misperceived commercial interests of the company I had brought in to provide a printed version to the comparatively few users who might want a book. What I had conceived as a minor side activity was threatening to destroy the core activity at which I had been working for more than a decade!

Some Comments about CRC Press LLC

As the shock wore off, Wolfram Research and my first instincts were to reason with CRC. We were certain, based on feedback from readers of the web site, that their assertions about it were unfounded, that in fact it was generating book sales for them, not suppressing sales.

But when we attempted to present these facts, we found that there was no one from CRC press even listening. During the course of these discussions, the heads of CRC's book publishing and electronic publishing divisions both left the company. We could not get anyone to listen to arguments actually focusing on the marketing of books. CRC responses were overwhelmingly legal and contractual. When facts entered at all, they were simply repeated assertions that we were certain would not stand up to reasonable scrutiny.

We wanted very much to negotiate a settlement that would allow us to bring the web site back. We proposed what we thought were attractive arrangements that would benefit both companies. Our proposals were ignored.

For months, I could not imagine why CRC was behaving as it was. Why would a technical publisher not listen to one of its best-selling authors, and to his employer, the world leader in mathematical computation? Why treat us, instead, in a way almost guaranteed to alienate us? It seemed insane!

I have had to conclude, to my sorrow, that CRC--perhaps like many other publishers in our era of wild corporate acquisitions and conglomerations--is no longer managed by people who understand and love books, authors, and readers.

The parent company of CRC, Information Holdings, Inc., appears unashamed to treat information as a commodity to be exploited for short-term bottom-line cash, with no concern for long-term strategic planning. The goal of the CRC representatives seemed to be monomaniacal: to squeeze from Wolfram Research and from me as much instant and short-term cash as possible, using the lawsuit as a lever.

How self-defeating in an era of rapid technological change! Apparently uninterested in looking forward, building good future business strategies, here are publishers focusing instead on how to squeeze greater quantities of immediate cash from old "properties."

I have come to realize how unusual it is to be working for a company that is run by people who still enjoy the core activities for which the company was founded. Very early in the lawsuit, a Wolfram Research response to the lawsuit mentioned that Wolfram Research has chosen to remain privately held in order to be free from the obligation to outside stockholders that appears so often to focus corporations inordinately on short-term financial results. Wolfram Research's principals believe that they can take the long and broad view of the corporation's mission, as they could not if they had to satisfy stock analysts and uninvolved stockholders.

The behavior of CRC's representatives this last year has been, for me, convincing evidence of the wisdom of Wolfram Research's strategy. The people at my company believe in what they do, make money doing it, and have fun along the way. I didn't see much fun being had among the CRC people we dealt with.

Settling the Case

We eventually concluded that there was no real business discussion possible. CRC was simply incapable of listening to or evaluating an actual business proposal. So we weighed the costs of continued litigation against the costs of giving CRC some of the cash for which it appeared so hungry. The cash approach won.

In addition to its "instant win," CRC will be paid annually for books they don't sell, according to a formula that both sides have accepted--although we continue to believe that any past or future failure to achieve projected sales is far more plausibly attributed to CRC's abysmal marketing efforts than to any abuse of the web site by people who want to have and hold snapshots of its contents. But in this life we do what we have to do--and what we are willing to do.

There are a few other consequences of the settlement which are of interest to MathWorld readers. The first is that a copyright statement "© 1999 CRC Press LLC" (in addition of the © 1999-2001 Wolfram Research, Inc. notice) now appears at the bottom of MathWorld entries that have a corresponding article in CRC's printed shapshot. Despite the fact the I (or volunteer contributors) wrote these entries, that CRC Press did nothing to support their creation or the creation of the web site in which they appear, and the fact that they existed in the website long before they ever appeared in the printed version, the tail has truly come to wave this dog, and this copyright statement will henceforth be a constant reminder of this fact.

Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the website. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the website unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form. This form is endorsed by neither Wolfram Research nor myself, but as part of the settlement agreement, we are required to ask contributors to sign it. Since our goal is and always has been to provide your contributions on-line to the worldwide math community, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or imposition this CRC-mandated form may cause you.

Thanks

After a draining personal ordeal lasting more than a year and during which the site was unavailable to readers, MathWorld is now back. We've even taken the opportunity to add a new streamlined graphical design, and also added a new feature in which important breaking mathematical news will be announced and described. I hope this will be useful to readers of the web site as a means for keeping tabs on what is happening in the mathematical sciences. Please feel free to contribute new results to news@mathworld.wolfram.com so I can pass the word along to others!

Wolfram Research and I have been and remain steadfastly committed to supporting the development of MathWorld. Wolfram Research has committed considerable resources to defend MathWorld against the threat of being permanently removed from the internet--an outcome CRC Press has repeatedly told us would suit it just fine. I am personally grateful for the support of Wolfram Research, and for the fact that MathWorld will not be relegated to an electronic trashheap. If you want to show your appreciation of the stand Wolfram Research is taking, please visit what I can do to help web page.

Finally, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks for your patience and support over this past year. I invite your continued partnership in my efforts to expand and improve MathWorld, as well as to support other efforts to gather and present educational information free of charge over the internet. Let's continue to together spread the wonder and beauty that is mathematics!

Regards,

Eric W. Weisstein
Encyclopedist
Wolfram Research, Inc.
November 6, 2001
Champaign, Illinois

Check out Eric Weisstein's ordeal.
There's a mirror here. My apologies, Eric

A short synonpsis might be: Eric spent from high school to present of his life creating this wonderful resource. One day he returns from lunch to find Sherif's Deputies waiting to serve him with a federal copyright violation lawsuit for publishing his work on the web. Now after more than a year of negotiations all of Mathworld belongs to CRC and Eric pays them so that he can continue working on it.

Print his story out and stick it in the CRC books of your local book stores.

Or contact CRC and tell them what you think.

CRC Press LLC Headquarters
2000 NW Corporate Blvd
Boca Raton,FL, USA 33431


Phone
1(800)272-7737 x6066
(561)994-0555
Fax -
1(800)374-3401
(561)989-9732

Haven't finished reading it yet, but it is pretty interesting so far. Shame the article submitter neglected to put this link in his story..

Jim and Janet Baker founded Dragon Systems in 1982. (Course they did eventually sell to Lernout and Hauspie.) Stephen Wolfram founded Wolfram Research in 1987. Stephen Wolfram is about to introduce his new book to the world that will revolutionize all of science. In essence, by founding his company he funded his own research and created the tools he needed to complete it. And these are examples just off the top of my head, I'm not saying they're anywhere near the best.

So does this mean Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics will be back up?

bash-2.04$

Would this tie in with mathworld? The site had to be shut down because a clause in the contract somehow gave CRC press rights to the website and not just a current snapshot of the site. More information is available on the site, especially in the faq.

Would this tie in with mathworld? The site had to be shut down because a clause in the contract somehow gave CRC press rights to the website and not just a current snapshot of the site. More information is available on the site, especially in the faq.

Yay Google!! Too bad their cached copies of MathWorld (mathworld.wolfram.com) are gone now...

Anyway, the number of tables you have depends greatly on the problem you are trying to tackle. If you've used SourceForge, you'll see that there is a whole lot of data displayed on each page. I would be more worried if he would have been able to get all of this from a single database query (could you imagine a table that would do that - yuch)

Actually, we do know the exact terms of the publishing contract: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/docs/WeissteinBookCon tract.html Looks like the problem is that he signed over copyright of the whole thing to CRC (see section 5).

Fresh from the FAQ:

Q: What's this about a lawsuit?
A: In March 2000, CRC Press LLC, a subsidiary of Information Holdings Inc., filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, claiming that the web site mathworld.wolfram.com violates their copyright in Eric Weisstein's CRC Concise Encylopedia of Mathematics published by CRC in November 1998.

Q: Why do they think the site violates their copyright?
A: Three and one-half years ago, Eric signed a book deal with CRC in which he agreed to provide printed, camera-ready pages for the encyclopedia. He thought he was selling them a printed snapshot of his existing web site, not the whole web site. CRC now claims that he sold them his whole web site, not just a printed book.

Q: So, did he sell them the web site or not?
A: Eric did not believe he was selling them his web site: he thought he was selling them the right to print a book and that he would be able to keep his web site up. If he had had more experience in the publishing industry, he would have insisted on a contract that made this crystal clear, but he didn't. Eric's contract, which is a standard boilerplate book contract that has probably been signed by many other CRC authors, does not give CRC explicit rights to the website. However, the court found that the contract is ambiguous on this point. What Eric intended to sell CRC is at the heart of this lawsuit.

Q: Doesn't the standard "right to reproduce in all media" clause cover the web site?
A: The web site is not based on or derived from the printed book: it existed for years beforehand. We believe and argue that the printed book is a derivative work. We don't dispute that CRC would have the right to put up a web site containing, for example, PDF files of the printed book. But we strongly object to the idea that their copyright in the printed book allows them to reach back and gain control of Eric's preexisting, ever-changing, collaborative internet community.

Q: Did Wolfram Research just cave in and yank the site to avoid trouble?
A: Absolutely not. We have kept the site up as long as we were able, but unfortunately CRC requested and was granted a preliminary injunction that orders us to take the site down until the case goes to trial. By direct order of the court, we had no choice and no alternative but to take it down.

Q: Isn't a lot more harm being caused by taking it down than leaving it up?
A: We respect the judge's well-reasoned opinion that the site should be taken down until the dispute is settled: he considered the evidence available to him in the legal record. He simply did not agree that the harm to the community at large would be enough to justify keeping the site available.

Not only was the Book of World Records a spinoff from the brewery, but so was Student's t distribution. (I shit you not.)

On a side note, I was about to link to Eric's Treasure Trove of Mathematics but it seems that CRC has shut them down.

That really really sucks, much more a trademark dispute over some stupid domain name. Content is where it's at.

Here are a few options to consider.

i) MathType. It's a souped up version of the free Equation editor. I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about it. Pros: You can still use Powerpoint. Cons: It costs money!

ii) Use LaTeX/LyX to create the slides (the seminar class works fairly well). Then convert the whole thing to pdf and display using the full screen feature of Acrobat Reader. If you're running LaTeX under Unix/Linux, remember to first generate the postscript with Type 1 fonts, or the pdf file will look awful on screen. Pros: Everything is free (except Acrobat distiller, and maybe you could use something like dvi2pdf or pdftex instead). Cons: You can't use snazzy Powerpoint effects, although acrobat will let you use some transitions effects between slides.

iii) Another untried solution: Mathematica. If you don't have Mathematica, you could try Publicon, which is essentially the Mathematica front-end being marketed separately as a technical publishing tool. Look here for some examples. This is another free solution.

Here are a few options to consider.

i) MathType. It's a souped up version of the free Equation editor. I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about it. Pros: You can still use Powerpoint. Cons: It costs money!

ii) Use LaTeX/LyX to create the slides (the seminar class works fairly well). Then convert the whole thing to pdf and display using the full screen feature of Acrobat Reader. If you're running LaTeX under Unix/Linux, remember to first generate the postscript with Type 1 fonts, or the pdf file will look awful on screen. Pros: Everything is free (except Acrobat distiller, and maybe you could use something like dvi2pdf or pdftex instead). Cons: You can't use snazzy Powerpoint effects, although acrobat will let you use some transitions effects between slides.

iii) Another untried solution: Mathematica. If you don't have Mathematica, you could try Publicon, which is essentially the Mathematica front-end being marketed separately as a technical publishing tool. Look here for some examples. This is another free solution.

Finally I'll be able to get a nice Menger sponge for the bath!

Above an average of about 40FPS, nobody notices anymore - they can't!

As others have mentioned, the top end is probably closer to 60fps than 40.

More important, though, is the headroom you get with a faster card. A game like Q3 has a standard deviation of about 7fps, which means over 15% of your frames are under 33fps, and about 3% are under 26fps. These are very noticeable slowdowns.

At 80fps mean, your standard deviation may jump to 14 fps (it's not a linear progression in real life, but for argument's sake...), 97% of your frames are at 52fps+, and 99.85% above 38fps. So it's smooth all the time, not just when you're standing around with nothing happening.

And that's why NVidia is still in business.

cheers,
mike

Above an average of about 40FPS, nobody notices anymore - they can't!

As others have mentioned, the top end is probably closer to 60fps than 40.

More important, though, is the headroom you get with a faster card. A game like Q3 has a standard deviation of about 7fps, which means over 15% of your frames are under 33fps, and about 3% are under 26fps. These are very noticeable slowdowns.

At 80fps mean, your standard deviation may jump to 14 fps (it's not a linear progression in real life, but for argument's sake...), 97% of your frames are at 52fps+, and 99.85% above 38fps. So it's smooth all the time, not just when you're standing around with nothing happening.

And that's why NVidia is still in business.

cheers,
mike

Like "Egon Spengler" of the Ghostbusters, but with an "I"---and say the "on" as "en"---then add states.

As far as what they are, I couldn't say, but it probably has something to do with the eigenvalues of a matrix describing the electron?

--8<--

Mathematica for Linux has existed for quite some time now. We used it at the last company I worked for. Check it out.

For example, if we showed a calculator to someone fifty years ago, they would have had no problem calling this device "intelligent" amazed at its problem solving ability (in math).

Multiplying all the primes below a certain number N, then adding one will either result in a new prime, or in a product of primes where at least one prime is greater than the largest prime in the original sequence. This is one of Euclid's theorems that proves that there are infinitely many primes.

BTW. 2*3*5*7*11*13 + 1 = 30031, which is non-prime because 30031 = 59 * 509.

SETI@Home uses Fast Fourier Transforms.

Fast Fourier Transforms on digitised samples can be done using large-integer or arbitrary-precision-number algorithms.

Therefore even Pentiums can do SETI@Home without generating errors.

One functional programming language (and, for that matter, procedural programming language and rule-based programming language) that receives quite a bit of use today is Mathematica. While it is possible to write FORTRAN-like Mathematica code, it is rarely advantageous to do so, and functional programming is generally a more efficient way to write code in Mathematica. (Prior to executing a Mathematica statement the code is parsed into an equivalent functional form anyway, with this functional equivalent being what is what is fed to the interpreter. If one writes functionally almost all of the extra stuff going on behind the scenes that can make Mathematica dog-slow may be avoided).

(* Using built-in Table[] function *)
arr = Table[ (i^2 - 4), {i,1,10} ];
(* Procedural *)
Do[ arr[[i]] = (i^2 - 4), {i,1,10} ];
(* Functional *)
arr = #^2 - 4 & /@ Range[ 1, 10 ];
(* Rule-based *)
arr = Range[ 1, 10 ] /. {i_ -> (i^2 - 4)};

I don't understand why people bother simulating nuclear reactions. Now, before you think i'm being facetious, let me explain. Nuclear physics is hard (as if you needed me to tell you that). Most of the theories as to how the fundamental interactions work are flawed. For example, the liquid drop type models (on which most current simulations are based) are incredibly simplistic. They don't even take into account the Pauli exclusion principle, instead relying on a fudge factor to ensure that their particles follow the Fermi-Dirac distribution.

Thus, my argument is: you're better off doing the experiment.

Ah, the joys of brainless audiophilia.

Learn something about the Nyquist criterion. Learn why (and how) an analog wavelength of a certain frequency is mathematically equivalent to a sampled waveform at twice the frequency.

There are problems with CDs; The frequency they chose for sampling (44.1kHz) gives a cutoff of 22050Hz, rather close to the 20kHz that is the _approximate_ top range of human hearing. Also, 16 bits of data turns out to be fairly borderline as well, and low-level jitter is a pretty tough nut to really crack.

At the same time, crosstalk is unheard of. The absolute noise floor is incredibly low. Tape stretch, surface noise, and so forth are nonexistent.

A casually thrown together CD will outperform an equally casually thrown together tape or record any day of the week. A very carefully created tape or record will beat that CD. (Mind you, the tape will only do so for a while--tape is an inherently unstable medium.) However, a very carefully recorded CD, even within the 44.1kHz/16bit limitations, will reproduce sound more accurately than any consumer format going.

Sorry for the long rant, but don't blame CDs for bad engineering, and DON'T blame the "evils" of digital sampling for bad CDs.

Some links:

A good definition

Another one, this time with more maths.

If forget where I first heard it (#) called an octothorpe, but it seems a much more satisfying and mysterious name than the bland "hash", "pound", and "sharp". Although, if if call # a sharp, you get to call #! shebang, and that it cool too...

Just so you don't think I am crazy and making up this octothorpe business...http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Octothorp e.html

After reading this article, I went to look things up at Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics (courtesy of the makers of the great but ridiculously overpriced Mathematica).

Anyway, here are some quotes from articles in mathworld related to the original article:

Stern-Brocot tree. "A special type of binary tree obtained by starting with the fractions 0/1 and 1/0 and iteratively inserting
(m+m')/(n+n') between each two adjacent fractions m/n and m'/n'. The result can be arranged in tree form as illustrated above. The Farey sequence Fn defines a subtree of the Stern-Brocot tree obtained by pruning off unwanted branches (Vardi 1991, Graham et al. 1994)."

Gear curve. "A curve resembling a gear with teeth given by the parametric equations x = r cos t, y = r sin t, where r = a + 1/b tanh [b sin (n t)]."

Phi, the golden ratio. "A number often encountered when taking the ratios of distances in simple geometric figures such as the pentagram, decagon and dodecagon. It is denoted [phi], or sometimes [tau] (which is an abbreviation of the Greek ``tome,'' meaning ``to cut''). [phi] is also known as the divine proportion, golden mean, and golden section and is a Pisot-Vijayaraghavan constant. It has surprising connections with continued fractions and the Euclidean algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor of two integers."

(Note: the above quotes from mathworld fall under the definition of "fair use". Please don't sue me!)

After reading this article, I went to look things up at Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics (courtesy of the makers of the great but ridiculously overpriced Mathematica).

Anyway, here are some quotes from articles in mathworld related to the original article:

Stern-Brocot tree. "A special type of binary tree obtained by starting with the fractions 0/1 and 1/0 and iteratively inserting
(m+m')/(n+n') between each two adjacent fractions m/n and m'/n'. The result can be arranged in tree form as illustrated above. The Farey sequence Fn defines a subtree of the Stern-Brocot tree obtained by pruning off unwanted branches (Vardi 1991, Graham et al. 1994)."

Gear curve. "A curve resembling a gear with teeth given by the parametric equations x = r cos t, y = r sin t, where r = a + 1/b tanh [b sin (n t)]."

Phi, the golden ratio. "A number often encountered when taking the ratios of distances in simple geometric figures such as the pentagram, decagon and dodecagon. It is denoted [phi], or sometimes [tau] (which is an abbreviation of the Greek ``tome,'' meaning ``to cut''). [phi] is also known as the divine proportion, golden mean, and golden section and is a Pisot-Vijayaraghavan constant. It has surprising connections with continued fractions and the Euclidean algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor of two integers."

(Note: the above quotes from mathworld fall under the definition of "fair use". Please don't sue me!)

After reading this article, I went to look things up at Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics (courtesy of the makers of the great but ridiculously overpriced Mathematica).

Anyway, here are some quotes from articles in mathworld related to the original article:

Stern-Brocot tree. "A special type of binary tree obtained by starting with the fractions 0/1 and 1/0 and iteratively inserting
(m+m')/(n+n') between each two adjacent fractions m/n and m'/n'. The result can be arranged in tree form as illustrated above. The Farey sequence Fn defines a subtree of the Stern-Brocot tree obtained by pruning off unwanted branches (Vardi 1991, Graham et al. 1994)."

Gear curve. "A curve resembling a gear with teeth given by the parametric equations x = r cos t, y = r sin t, where r = a + 1/b tanh [b sin (n t)]."

Phi, the golden ratio. "A number often encountered when taking the ratios of distances in simple geometric figures such as the pentagram, decagon and dodecagon. It is denoted [phi], or sometimes [tau] (which is an abbreviation of the Greek ``tome,'' meaning ``to cut''). [phi] is also known as the divine proportion, golden mean, and golden section and is a Pisot-Vijayaraghavan constant. It has surprising connections with continued fractions and the Euclidean algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor of two integers."

(Note: the above quotes from mathworld fall under the definition of "fair use". Please don't sue me!)

After reading this article, I went to look things up at Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics (courtesy of the makers of the great but ridiculously overpriced Mathematica).

Anyway, here are some quotes from articles in mathworld related to the original article:

Stern-Brocot tree. "A special type of binary tree obtained by starting with the fractions 0/1 and 1/0 and iteratively inserting
(m+m')/(n+n') between each two adjacent fractions m/n and m'/n'. The result can be arranged in tree form as illustrated above. The Farey sequence Fn defines a subtree of the Stern-Brocot tree obtained by pruning off unwanted branches (Vardi 1991, Graham et al. 1994)."

Gear curve. "A curve resembling a gear with teeth given by the parametric equations x = r cos t, y = r sin t, where r = a + 1/b tanh [b sin (n t)]."

Phi, the golden ratio. "A number often encountered when taking the ratios of distances in simple geometric figures such as the pentagram, decagon and dodecagon. It is denoted [phi], or sometimes [tau] (which is an abbreviation of the Greek ``tome,'' meaning ``to cut''). [phi] is also known as the divine proportion, golden mean, and golden section and is a Pisot-Vijayaraghavan constant. It has surprising connections with continued fractions and the Euclidean algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor of two integers."

(Note: the above quotes from mathworld fall under the definition of "fair use". Please don't sue me!)

I really don't care for their choices at all. A lot of them are more like general approaches than algorthms, and I'm not at all sure they are the most influential. I think they are supposed to be "the cleverest of the common fancy methods"

Simple algorithms for common problems are much more widely used, and have far more impact and influence, but try telling *them* that!

I hope these links help. (Warning: many are technical) If anyone has personal favorites that are less dry than many of these, please post!.

10. 1987: Fast Multipole Method. A breakthrough in dealing with the complexity of n-body calculations, applied in problems ranging from celestial mechanics to protein folding. [Overview] [A math/visual approach]

9. 1977: Integer Relation Detection. A fast method for spotting simple equations satisfied by collections of seemingly unrelated numbers. [Nice article with links]

8. 1965: Fast Fourier Transform. Perhaps the most ubiquitous algorithm in use today, it breaks down waveforms (like sound) into periodic components. Everyone knows this one (or should) [Part II of my personal favorite FFT and wavelet tutorial]

7. 1962: Quicksort Algorithms for Sorting. For the efficient handling of large databases. [Definition][Basic Method][Mathworld][More technical explanation][A lecture with animations and simulations]

6. 1959: QR Algorithm for Computing Eigenvalues. Another crucial matrix operation made swift and practical. [Math] [Algorithm

5. 1957: The Fortran Optimizing Compiler. Turns high-level code into efficient computer-readable code. (pretty much self-explanatory) [History and lots of info]

4. 1951: The Decompositional Approach to Matrix Computations. A suite of techniques for numerical linear algebra. [matrix decomposition theorem] [Strategies]

3. 1950: Krylov Subspace Iteration Method. A technique for rapidly solving the linear equations that abound in scientific computation. [History] [various Krylov subspace iterative methods]

2. 1947: Simplex Method for Linear Programming. An elegant solution to a common problem in planning and decision-making. [English} [Explanation with Java simulator] [An interactive teaching tool

1. 1946: The Metropolis Algorithm for Monte Carlo. Through the use of random processes, this algorithm offers an efficient way to stumble toward answers to problems that are too complicated to solve exactly. [English] [Code and Math] [Math explained]

I really don't care for their choices at all. A lot of them are more like general approaches than algorthms, and I'm not at all sure they are the most influential. I think they are supposed to be "the cleverest of the common fancy methods"

Simple algorithms for common problems are much more widely used, and have far more impact and influence, but try telling *them* that!

I hope these links help. (Warning: many are technical) If anyone has personal favorites that are less dry than many of these, please post!.

10. 1987: Fast Multipole Method. A breakthrough in dealing with the complexity of n-body calculations, applied in problems ranging from celestial mechanics to protein folding. [Overview] [A math/visual approach]

9. 1977: Integer Relation Detection. A fast method for spotting simple equations satisfied by collections of seemingly unrelated numbers. [Nice article with links]

8. 1965: Fast Fourier Transform. Perhaps the most ubiquitous algorithm in use today, it breaks down waveforms (like sound) into periodic components. Everyone knows this one (or should) [Part II of my personal favorite FFT and wavelet tutorial]

7. 1962: Quicksort Algorithms for Sorting. For the efficient handling of large databases. [Definition][Basic Method][Mathworld][More technical explanation][A lecture with animations and simulations]

6. 1959: QR Algorithm for Computing Eigenvalues. Another crucial matrix operation made swift and practical. [Math] [Algorithm

5. 1957: The Fortran Optimizing Compiler. Turns high-level code into efficient computer-readable code. (pretty much self-explanatory) [History and lots of info]

4. 1951: The Decompositional Approach to Matrix Computations. A suite of techniques for numerical linear algebra. [matrix decomposition theorem] [Strategies]

3. 1950: Krylov Subspace Iteration Method. A technique for rapidly solving the linear equations that abound in scientific computation. [History] [various Krylov subspace iterative methods]

2. 1947: Simplex Method for Linear Programming. An elegant solution to a common problem in planning and decision-making. [English} [Explanation with Java simulator] [An interactive teaching tool

1. 1946: The Metropolis Algorithm for Monte Carlo. Through the use of random processes, this algorithm offers an efficient way to stumble toward answers to problems that are too complicated to solve exactly. [English] [Code and Math] [Math explained]

--

Often the Riemann Hypothesis is called Artin's conjecture. Personally I think Riemann's name is overused in mathematical circles. Emil Artin was a much better clavichord player after all...

The big problem with chess is that the tree is VERY large- how big isn't known but estimates vary over a large range (see netchess and wolfram mathworld). There are certainly more chess positions than there are atoms in the universe, but the lines that lead to them are mostly worthless, so they don't matter and can be pruned away. Let's pick a tree size of 10^60-10^70 for arguments sake.

This is way beyond the scope of even distributed computing like SETI. It's usually reckoned that chess is unsolvable by brute force.

Normal computer techniques can handle about trees with about 10^20 positions or so, depending on how much hardware you can throw at it, and how long you wait.

However there are a couple of approaches that can reduce the exponent by a factor of 2 each in chess:

• Quantum computing
• Alpha-Beta pruning

As another poster noted, the current state of the art is 7 bits. You would need probably need 100s of thousands of bits to do chess. And the cycle time for current computers are measured in seconds rather than nanoseconds, but then again no optimisation for speed has been done AFAIK.

Finally it depends on the actual size of the chess tree. It may very well be there is a forced checkmate at say, move 40, in which case we would find it. But if there are only draws by repetition, under perfect play, the tree probably becomes impossibly large even with quantum computers.

Still, a search that said that there were no forced wins in say, the first 40 moves would be suggestive of a draw.

whereas fermat may or more likely may not have had a proof to his conjecture, i am fairly certain that you don't have such a proof.

after all, this is one of the four problems that Landau called unattackable. in fact, i almost think it's disingenuous of them to offer the prize for this particular problem. they know they're never gonna part with that cash.

cheers,

sh_

See Mathworld on the issue.

Could the size of the permutation be increased every once in a while and still maintain the properties of LCGs? With an infinite tape, a counter could be incremented with each generated number. When a multiple of a certain number (the period of the current permutation?) is reached, a larger permutation is used.

And what about other generators? There's a funny one called Cliff Random Number Generator that produces random floats, taking logs of numbers. With an infinite tape, you could take out these log calculations to arbitrary precision (again, decided by a counter) to get a sequence that never repeats itself. If you want to make the sequence truly unpredicatable, you could also reverse the bit order before generating each number, so that least significant bits become most significant. I don't know the math behind sequences of chopped-logged-swapped numbers, but I don't see why in principle a non-periodic sequence that appears random could be generated.

-----------------------------------------------

An Integer of the form N=2n, where n is an Integer. The even numbers are therefore ..., -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ...

If this is wrong, can you explain to me why 0 isn't even?