Theory symbolic computing (fwd)

[Richard B. Kreckel]

On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Dirk Kreimer wrote on list ginac-devel:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 06:03:41 +0300
> From: "Nazir S. Baaklini" <nsbaaklini at intracom.net.lb>
> To: dirk.kreimer at uni-mainz.de
> Subject: Theory symbolic computing
> 
> Professor Nazir S. Baaklini, Dhour el Choueir, Lebanon
> Theoretical Physicist and Symbolic Math Phys Programmer
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Dear Dr Kreimer,
> 
> I had recently developed a new Mathematica package which is 
> quite useful for transparent symbolic manipulations and 
> computations in theoretical physics, particularly classical 
> and quantum field theory, with several applications.
> 
> I invite you to have a look at anyone of the following equivalent
> homepages, which would introduce this package and related works. 
> 
> You would also be able to download freely several Mathematica
> notebooks that would illustrate the various uses of this new 
> program package.
> 
> http://webs.intracom.net.lb/nsbaaklini
> 
> http://www.nsbaaklini.homepage.com
> 
> For additional information and for email:

Incidentally, this mail was also received at least by Alex and myself,
beside being posted to sci.math.symbolic on UseNet!  Dirk, do you know
this guy?  Judging from his homepage he seems to be a slightly hyperactive
person without employment ("since several years he had been pursuing his
intensive study and research projects in his hometown (Dhour el Choueir,
Lebanon)").  His software continues the successful tradition of
VaporWare(tm) since all you can download are Mathematica notebooks that
demonstrate the usefulness of another mysterious package (qft3.m), which
I was unable to downloaded from anywhere.  Maybe this sentence found
in another context applies to it as well: "Interested viewers must request
copies of these from the author, sending an email, and may be charged for
some of them."  Hence, all his Mathematica-Notebooks are unusable---and I
am not talking about some of them being obviously syntactically broken.
If we insist having a look at them (qftdoc.fmn.nb) we find some rather
unexciting loop-integrals which evaluate to up to three Feynman- 
integrations, which seem to remain ultimately unevaluated.  I am not
impressed.

I suggest that we forget about this lunatic until he rethinks his
situation and chooses to share his knowledge.

ob-clever-quote-of-the-day: "Science, after all, is an Open-Source
enterprise." (Taken from "Open Sources", published by O'Reilly &
Associates.)

Sorry for the harsh words.

Regards
     -rbk.

PS: Maybe I will post something similar to sci.math.symbolic.
-- 
Richard Kreckel
<Richard.Kreckel at Uni-Mainz.DE>
<http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~kreckel/>