mikek@fred.colorado.edu (Mike Kranzdorf) (09/17/90)
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 90 03:37:36 GMT-0600
From: james@visual2.tamu.edu (James Saxon)
Message-Id: <9009160937.AA25939@visual2.tamu.edu>
To: mikek@boulder.colorado.edu
*** Subject: Mactivation Documentation
I was going to post this to the net but I figured I'd let you do it if
you feel it's necessary.
If you're going to give out the bloody program, you might as well have
just stuck in the decent readable documentation because nobody in their
right mind is going to pay $5.00 for it. It's really a cheap move and
if you don't replace the ftp file you might just lose all your business
because, I like many others just started playing with the package. I
don't see any macros for learning repetitive things and so I was going
to give up because I don't want to spend all day trying to figure out
how to not switch from the mouse to the keyboard trying to set the
layer outputs for everything... And then I'm certainly not going to
turn to an unformatted Geneva document just to prove that the program
is not very powerful...
So you can decide what you want do do but I suggest not making everybody
pissed off at you.
---
I sincerely apologize if my original posting gave the impression that I
was trying to make money from this. Mactivation, along with all the
documentation, has been available via ftp for over 3 years now. Since I
recently had to switch ftp machines here, I thought I would save some
bandwidth and post a smaller copy (in fact this was suggested by several
people). Downloading these things over a 1200 baud modem is very slow.
The point of documentation in this case is to be able to use the program,
and I still think a text file does fine. The $5 request was not for
prettier docs, but for the disk, the postage, and my time. I get plenty
of letters saying "Thank you for letting me avoid ftp", and that was the
idea. The $5 actually started as an alternative for people who didn't want to
bother sending me a disk and a self addressed stamped envelope, which
used to be part of my offer. However, I got too many 5 1/4" disks and
unstamped envelopes, so I dropped that option this round.
---
I am presently collecting NN software for a class that my professor is
teaching here at A&M and will keep your program around for the students
but I warn them about the users manual. :-0 And while this isn't a
contest, your program will be competing with the Rochester Connectionist
Simulator, SFINX, DESCARTES, and a bunch more... Lucky I don't have
MacBrain... which if you haven't seen, you should. Of course, that's
$1000, but the manual's free.
---
If you think you're getting MacBrain for free or a Mac
version of the Rochester Simulator, then don't bother downloading Mactivation.
You will be dissapointed. I wrote Mactivation for myself, and it is not
supported by a company or a university. It's not for research, it's an
introduction which can be used to teach some basics. (Actually you can do
research, but only on the effects of low-level parameters on small nets.
As a point of interest, my research involved making optical neural nets
out of spatial light modulators, and these parameters were important
while the ability to make large or complex nets was not.)
---
James Saxon
Scientific Visualization Laboratory
Texas A&M University
james@#visual2.tamu.edu
---
***The end result of this is that I will post a new copy complete with
the Word docs. I am not a proficient telecommunicator though, so it
may take a week or so. I apologize for the delay.
--mike kranzdorf
internet: mikek@boulder.colorado.edu
uucp:{ncar|nbires}!boulder!mikek
AppleLink: oblio