From: hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil (Dan Hoey)
Newsgroups: sci.math.symbolic,sci.math,alt.uu.math.misc,misc.forsale
Subject: More lies and abuses from Weiguang Huang (was SIMTEL-20 symbolic...)
Date: 16 Dec 92 22:17:23 GMT
Followup-To: misc.forsale
Organization: Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC

When Charles Yeomans suggested that Weiguang Huang's advertisements
constituted commercial use of the net, Huang replied:

> I don't think so. Because I answered the question about SIMTEL20
> software posted by Li and SymbMath is not commerical.

There are four reasons I don't believe that reply.

First, Li asked how to get software from SIMTEL-20.  Huang's post did
not answer the question, it only told how to get Symbmath, not any of
the other software on SIMTEL-20.

Second, Li requested a response by email.  Not only did Huang post his
reply to the net, he added three other newsgroups in which the
question had not been asked.  That is not answering the question, it
is advertising.

Third, Li asked the question eight days before Huang answered it.
That is a little odd.  Usually, after a week the question has been
answered and there's no reason to answer it any more.  I suspect Huang
was only looking for an excuse to post his advertisement.  But that
eight-day gap is relatively mild by Huang's standards.  Last week he
posted an advertisement that was putatively in response to a request
for information posted in August!  Does anyone think he's concerned
that someone might have been waiting for his advertisement for three
months?  And on that one, he added four newsgroups that the question
wasn't asked on.  And he included the 30-line product announcement he
posted to seven newsgroups less than two weeks earlier.  Of course,
just in case your system might accidentally drop these gems, he puts a
six-month expiration date on them.  Go hire a billboard, Huang.

Fourth, Huang says Symbmath is not commercial.  That is an outright
lie.  The version available through FTP is the type of commercial
software misleadingly called ``shareware'', in which people are
permitted to use the software for free to see if it is useful to them,
but are required to pay money for continued use of the software.
Shareware is commercial software, it just relies on the honesty of the
user to collect the money.  And just in case anyone might be tempted
to use the shareware version of Symbmath without paying for it, Huang
has crippled it by taking out all but the most trivial uses. If you
want to do anything real with it, you'd better be prepared to pay up
front for the expensive version.

Huang's repeated, verbose, intentionally deceptive advertisements are
_precisely_ why advertising on the network is a bad thing.  If you
want to spend your news reading time wading through ads from every
parasite who thinks they can make a buck off Usenet readers, then
sending money to Huang is a great way of encouraging it.

In light of this, Huang's accusation of commercial use by Kate
Atherley of Maple Technical Support is a pathetic slander.  She
responded to a question asking which version of Maple would run on a
PC, and she answered it promptly and concisely, with a phone number
and net address in case anyone wanted to go looking for more details
or a sales pitch.

There are newsgroups in which advertisments are permitted, even
encouraged. One such is misc.forsale, to which I have directed
followups to this message.  Take the ads away from sci.math,
sci.math.symbolic, and all the other newsgroups in which
advertisements are not welcome.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil

[ In case anyone cares, I don't use Symbmath or Maple.  I occasionally
  use Mathematica, and I used to use Macsyma.  I have no connection
  with any of the companies that make symbolic mathematics software.
  But I read Usenet news, and I don't want to have to wade through ads
  from every advertiser who thinks they can make money off of readers
  of a particular newsgroup.  This post is an attempt to discourage
  advertisers from posting ads to noncommercial newsgroups.  It is not
  enough to ignore Huang, because his abuse of Usenet welcomes other
  parasites in these and other groups. ]