Fwd: About SAGE

[William Stein]

Hi,

I occasionally get emails like the one below. There's no way I have the
time or inclination to burn and mail out DVD's of Sage to people. Does
anybody:

(1) want to volunteer to do this sort of thing in exchange for some
"shipping and handling fees"; then all such requests get
refereed to you, or

(2) Is there some dot-com that does something like this for a fee?
It seems like the sort of thing that would make for a dot-com
business model.

-- William

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:...
Date: Dec 23, 2007 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: About SAGE
To: William Stein <wst...@gmail.com>

Dear Prof. Stein,

I am looking forward to meeting you after Jan. 10th. I
would really appreciate if you could send me a DVD of
SAGE to my home address. I will be happy to pay for
the postage. Please let me know. Here is my home
address:

Thanks in advance.

Pacha
====================================================

--- William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 22, 2007 11:59 AM, Pacha Nambi
> <pacha...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Dear Prof. Stein,
> >
> > I read last night an article at the MAA website
> about
> > SAGE. I want to state that what you and your
> students
> > are doing is fantastic. I downloaded the program
> last
> > night, and going to test it out.
> >
> > I have used 'Mathematica' for about a year now.
> > However, its is too expensive for student use.
> >
> > I live near UW and would like to the campus and
> chat
> > with you. Is that possible?
>
> I won't be back in Seattle until Jan 10. Could you
> contact
> me again around then? We could definitely meet.
>
> -- William
>
> >
> > I teach (chemistry and computer classes) at local
> > community colleges in the Seattle area.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Pacha Nambi
> >
> > (206) 363-9416 (home phone)
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> William Stein
> Associate Professor of Mathematics
> University of Washington
> http://wstein.org
>

--
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[David Joyner]

On Dec 27, 2007 3:40 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I occasionally get emails like the one below. There's no way I have the
> time or inclination to burn and mail out DVD's of Sage to people. Does
> anybody:
>
> (1) want to volunteer to do this sort of thing in exchange for some
> "shipping and handling fees"; then all such requests get
> refereed to you, or
>
> (2) Is there some dot-com that does something like this for a fee?

Maybe lulu does:
http://www.lulu.com/en/help/disc_faq
Apparently, It has to be set up first and I don't know how easy it is to
upgrade to a new version.

[William Stein]

On Dec 27, 2007 5:58 AM, David Joyner <wdjo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 27, 2007 3:40 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I occasionally get emails like the one below. There's no way I have the
> > time or inclination to burn and mail out DVD's of Sage to people. Does
> > anybody:
> >
> > (1) want to volunteer to do this sort of thing in exchange for some
> > "shipping and handling fees"; then all such requests get
> > refereed to you, or
> >
> > (2) Is there some dot-com that does something like this for a fee?
>
>
>
>
> Maybe lulu does:
> http://www.lulu.com/en/help/disc_faq
> Apparently, It has to be set up first and I don't know how easy it is to
> upgrade to a new version.

This looks excellent. Basically you upload an iso of the data dvd, and
they burn and ship it on demand for < $10/copy. This is perfect. I could
just do this once every time we have a major release. I can add a few
dollars on each DVD, to pay whoever actually does the work of putting
together the ISO, updating it, etc.

David -- many thanks for tracking this down.

-- William

[Robert Bradshaw]

This does look perfect. Once this is set up, creating and uploading
the iso should be a trivial task (done via a script), and if the
artwork remained the same for all double-point releases that should
be easy too, so I don't think a couple of dollars is worth the hassle
of collecting and re-distributing it. I'll volunteer to set it up
(though until 2.9.2 I'm going to be focusing on the 3d stuff).

- Robert

[William Stein]

On Dec 28, 2007 6:16 PM, Robert Bradshaw <robe...@math.washington.edu> wrote:
> This does look perfect. Once this is set up, creating and uploading
> the iso should be a trivial task (done via a script), and if the
> artwork remained the same for all double-point releases that should
> be easy too, so I don't think a couple of dollars is worth the hassle
> of collecting and re-distributing it. I'll volunteer to set it up

Thanks! I'm really glad you'll take charge for doing this, and that you think
you can make it so easy that no payment will be necessary.

The DVD should contain:
(1) The SAGE HTML/PDF, etc., documentation
(2) Source tarball
(3) All the latest binaries and the vmware image.

> (though until 2.9.2 I'm going to be focusing on the 3d stuff).

Thanks!

- William

[Robert Bradshaw]

You can now by a hard copy of the Sage tutorial at http://
www.lulu.com/content/1932117

I will be publishing a DVD there too as soon as I can get the iso to
upload.

- Robert

[William Stein]

On Jan 25, 2008 1:35 AM, Robert Bradshaw <robe...@math.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> You can now by a hard copy of the Sage tutorial at http://
> www.lulu.com/content/1932117
>
> I will be publishing a DVD there too as soon as I can get the iso to
> upload.

Thanks. I added a link here:
http://sagemath.org/documentation.html

William

[David Joyner]

Thanks.
I tested this by buying a copy online on the 25th. It was printed 3
days later and just
arrived, carefully packaged, today. Printing quality and binding look good.
No complaints.

[Robert Bradshaw]

Thanks for the report, glad it looks good. I ran into some technical
difficulties with the DVD, but they're sorting them out.

- Robert

[Robert Bradshaw]

FYI, in the less than a month that it's been available, 22 people
have purchased the (physical) Sage DVD from Lulu.

On Jan 30, 2008, at 12:40 PM, David Joyner wrote:
>