[mma] Bug list for mathematica? / Censorship in MathGroup
From: Marcus Stollsteimer (marcus314_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 06/11/04
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Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:06:17 +0200
Hi,
this post did not make it to MathGroup, so I'd like to try here.
My original post (from about 2 weeks ago) was "moderated away",
oops..., sorry, I mean the moderator took the trouble to answer
it personally.
I sent the below reply both to the NG and to the moderator, and
up to now it neither appeared in MathGroup nor did I get an
answer from the moderator :(
Regards,
Marcus
......................................
Message-ID: <40B70BA7.20306@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 11:51:35 +0200
From: Marcus Stollsteimer <marcus314@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica
To: steve@smc.vnet.net
Subject: Re: Bug list for mathematica?
Dear Steven,
first, thank you for taking the time in replying to my post.
But I already know that WRI does not maintain such a list,
I was looking for an 'unofficial' site.
What's wrong with discussing this in the group?
Of course, tech support is very helpful, but from personal
experience I must say that the effort in exactly locating the
problem, finding a simple, reproducible example, composing a
message (I'm a slow writer...), etc., is often a waste of time.
Only to illustrate, here some samples from typical
replies I got from mma technical support:
- When I run this in 5.0.1 it gives the correct answers. [...]
you should upgrade to 5.0.1 and see if that fixes things.
- This is a known problem that has been fixed in the most recent
release of mathlm (5.0.1.0)
- This problem has been fixed. You may either download a
5.0 binary that fixes the problem here: [...]
- Our developers are aware of this problem.
It has been fixed in a future release of Mathematica.
Please don't misunderstand me, I really think the support team
*is* doing a great job, and the answers are always coming very fast.
And what about the poor users that do not have premier service?
The NG is a terrific resource, too, but it can be really slow
(e.g., the Eigensystem[] problem needed about 6 days to be resolved).
I just think a list could save a lot of time,
both for the user *and* for the support team.
Best regards,
Marcus
> Subject: Re: Bug list for mathematica?
> From: "Steven M. Christensen" <steve@smc.vnet.net>
> Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 08:09:47 -0400 (EDT)
> To: marcus314@yahoo.com
>
> To: marcus314@yahoo.com
> CC: steve@smc.vnet.net
>
>
> Over the years, this issue has been brought up many times in
> various ways. The simple answer is that WRI is not going
> to publish a bug list. How many commercial software vendors with
> thousands of customers using many levels of a given piece of
> software on many different kinds of computers do you know that
> do this?
>
> I work with many hundreds of open source software products that do
> have open bug lists and those lists are often mostly useless to the
> general user. Many bug reports are contradictory or just wrong.
> Even bugs fixes reported by the people who write the code only
> apply in some cases and fail in others. Some even introduce new
> bugs.
>
> Your best bet is to simply post your bug or question to WRI
> or if you don't get a reasonable response from them in a given
> time, post it to the list with a clear statement of what you
> are doing and what your problem is. Or if you just have doubts
> about a function or piece of code, send that in. With thousands
> of users on this list, many of them brilliant expers, you are
> likely to find a solution to your problems.
>
> Steve Christensen
> Moderator
>
>
>> To: comp-soft-sys-math-mathematica@moderators.isc.org
>> From: Marcus Stollsteimer <marcus314@yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Bug list for mathematica?
>> Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 12:26:30 +0200
>>
>> Hello NG,
>>
>> this question was triggered again by the recent thread
>> "Eigensystem: different solution ..."; an earlier query
>> to support didn't result in a satisfactory answer...
>>
>> So: is there a place where I can find a bug list for mathematica,
>> and (technical) information on new minor releases?
>> There seems to exist no official information from Wolfram
>> (see the reply from support below).
>>
>> IMO, that's a Big shortcoming on the side of Wolfram.
>> As far as I understand it, they *try* to inform me about
>> fixed bugs, but only when *I* previously reported them...
>> (they don't even maintain a list internally?!?)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Marcus
>>
>>
>> support@wolfram.com wrote (2004/03/30):
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > In general as errors of the sort you were experiencing are
>> > reported to us we send them to the developers and corrections are
>> > implemented. We do not maintain a list of corrections as they are
>> > made and so it is not possible to post them where users might
>> > find them. If you have premier service we try to let you know
>> > when a new version has been released which corrects any errors
>> > you have reported, but as of now that is the only mechanism we
>> > have for informing people of updates.
>> >
>> > Sincerely,
>> > ...
-- The truth is rarely pure and never simple. -- Oscar Wilde
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