Yikes!
Apologies if that was over the top. I guess the chisanbop comment did
not properly convey the hyperbole, and hence humor, I was trying to
achieve. Hopefully my comments can still be taken as the constructive
criticism they were intended to be.
James
On Oct 26, 2008, at 4:57 PM, Gerard Bricogne wrote:
> Dear James,
>
> I am rather surprised and disappointed to find such an
> intemperate,
> ill-judged and almost slanderous statement from you, especially in a
> posting
> to a bulletin board that is intended for the sharing of experience
> and good
> will and to which you have been such a regular and valued contributor.
>
> To deal with slander first: Global phasing has been operating
> for over
> 10 years without ever being, or intending to be, anyone's chance to
> "just
> try and make a buck". We develop our software thank to a mix of
> funding that
> does include industrial sponsors, but we distribute it free of
> charge to
> academic users (since 2002 we have issued over 3500 licence keys for
> SHARP
> to academic users). We even give support to academic users, and
> spare no
> pains in doing so, as many users can testify: this is not exactly
> the most
> lucrative occupation if one is looking to make a buck. Global
> Phasing's
> staff consists of eight scientists, plus one part-time person to
> keep the
> books and get the annual accounts audited. The company has never had
> any
> investors, and spends all its income on scientists' salaries and
> running
> costs. Perhaps the ".com" suffix has acquired a bad smell in other
> parts of
> the world, but in this case your insinuations are badly misguided.
>
> If you have had difficulties installing software from us, a more
> constructive form of feedback would be to write to us at sharp-
> develop or
> buster-develop (both @globalphasing.com) and explain the nature of
> those
> difficulties. We have often found that the worst problems occur when
> people,
> instead of writing to us, start to try and hack the scripts
> themselves and
> end up tying themselves in inextricable knots. One of your remarks
> seems to
> want to imply that we have taken a perverse pleasure in making
> installations
> difficult. It is true that we still carry a legacy from earlier days
> when
> some of our sponsors wanted to be able to distribute jobs over
> heterogeneous
> clusters of machines and to view the results from any other machine
> on that
> network, while most users today just want to run everything on one
> machine.
> Our installation procedures have kept evolving to become simpler and
> more
> robust, although the need to link up with several third-party
> packages makes
> it hard to suppress complexity entirely. If you happen to have
> constructive
> suggestions to make in this direction, we will be only too happy to
> listen
> to them and will do our best to make use of them. We do have,
> however, to
> weigh up how much time to devote to these issues, vs. how much to
> developing
> and implementing new methods.
>
> I hope you will take the time to write to either of the mailing
> lists I
> indicated above to explain what simplifications you would like to
> see in our
> current installation procedures, and look forward to reading them.
>
>
> With best wishes,
>
> Gerard.
>
>
> --
> On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 01:40:35AM -0700, James Stroud wrote:
>> The info at
>>
>> http://www.globalphasing.com/buster/installation/index.html#requirements
>>
>> will give you some hints about whether it will be successful on OS
>> X. As
>> per the Global Phasing modus operandi, any instruction involving
>> installation of their software is muddled in riddle and ambiguity.
>> They
>> have made an art of making their software difficult to install. I
>> guess the
>> philosophy is that if you can somehow get their software installed,
>> then
>> you have earned your phase information. Personally, I'd rather
>> solve my
>> structure with using chisanbop and a pencil than attempt to install
>> Global
>> Phasing software.
>>
>> Speaking from experience, this is my 2c. Apologies if I hurt anyone's
>> feelings who are "just trying to make a buck".
>>
>> James
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Oct 24, 2008, at 9:39 AM, jacques-philippe colletier wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everydoby,
>>> I`d like to know if there is a version of BUSTER-TNT available on
>>> MacOSX ?
>>> Anyone knows ?
>>>
>>>
>>> *****************************************
>>> Dr. Jacques-Philippe Colletier
>>> UCLA / DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
>>> 90095 Los Angeles, CA, USA
>>> *****************************************
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> *****************************************
>>
>> --
>> James Stroud
>> UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
>> Box 951570
>> Los Angeles, CA 90095
>>
>> http://www.jamesstroud.com
>
> --
>
> ===============================================================
> * *
> * Gerard Bricogne [log in to unmask] *
> * *
> * Global Phasing Ltd. *
> * Sheraton House, Castle Park Tel: +44-(0)1223-353033 *
> * Cambridge CB3 0AX, UK Fax: +44-(0)1223-366889 *
> * *
> ===============================================================
--
James Stroud
UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics
Box 951570
Los Angeles, CA 90095
http://www.jamesstroud.com
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