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Wolfram Alpha doesn't "get it"
Full URL: http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3564424414/wolfram-alpha-doesnt-get-it
- scott_s 16y agoPlease submit full URLs only. We like to know where we are going.
- agiletortoise 16y agoSorry. For the record: http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3564424414/wolfram-alpha-doesnt-get-it http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3564424414/wolfram-alpha-...
- joelhaus 16y ago[off-topic] Assuming it was a shortened link, Twitter's new interface solved this issue by dynamically generating title="" tags that display the full URL on:hover. Anyone aware of a good solution for this? Shortener API's + An open source script?
- kragen 16y agoHe says they are "totally within their rights", but he is wrong. He's making links to their web pages. They are not "totally within their rights" to try to forbid that.
- torme 16y agoNot being combative, just genuinely curious, but how is this not legal? If it's part of their ToS it seems like it would be enforcable.
- alextgordon 16y agoYou can put "Users may not breathe while using this website" in your ToS but that doesn't make it enforceable. A ToS has to have some basis in law.
- torme 16y agoOk... again, not trying to be combative but: a) This still doesn't really answer my question. b) Would it be illegal to put up a website and say that essentially no one can use it? Aside from some exceptions like discrimination, ToS's define how you can use a tool, which is exactly what they were doing. Is there some law stating that if you host a website, you must allow users to link to it in any way they like?
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago>Is there some law stating that if you host a website, you must allow users to link to it in any way they like? None that I know of specifically - however putting a website up is an implicit contract allowing normal web usage (for credits: now define normal and enforce that contract).
- kragen 16y agoI don't think you have to bring implicit contracts into it. If I walk down the street and someone's shadow falls on me, I simply don't have a cause of action against them. If someone looks at me, I don't have a cause of action against them. If someone calls my name on the street, I don't have a cause of action against them. (Barring extraordinary circumstances, of course.) You don't need to invent theories about how I'm entering into an implicit contract with the whole world by going out on the street, among whose terms are that people may allow their shadows to fall on me and look at me. It's simply that no tort is created by looking at a person or linking to a web page. There's no law granting exclusive rights in URLs unless they're copyrightable.
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoI like your example but I don't think that a web page is like a person in public space. As you say their is no tort generally in approaching someone in the street but it is possible that a legal barrier has been erected and so an uninformed observer can't assume that no infringing/illegal activity is being undertaken (think exclusion orders, stalker laws, anti-social behaviour orders and the like; I think these are reasonably common across jurisdictions). In the case of a website a copyright to that site is automatically created when the work itself is created - this is true in the vast majority of countries at least. Being able to view the site by making a temporary copy in your computer's cache is not clearly non-infringing. Someone aiding the creation of an infringing work can be acting tortuously in "contributory infringement" and hence linking to a website could, strictly, be tortuous. Applying common sense by assuming an implicit contract avoids the need to concern oneself with such apparent infringing actions.
- JonnieCache 16y agoAre you sure of that? If so, you posses more certainty than most judiciaries/legislatures. It's a vexed and fraught issue. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_hyperlinking_and_framing# https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Copyright_asp...
- kragen 16y agoThere may be cases where linking violates copyright (Total News seems reasonable, although that's really probably more of a trademark issue), but I think the main problem is that most judiciaries and legislatures are a bit unclear on how the internet works. However, I'm also in a better position than judiciaries and legislatures, since I'm talking about right and wrong, not legal and illegal.
- JonnieCache 16y agoAh OK. I was thinking of rights in the sense of "rights enshrined in law," as in "European Convention on Human Rights," rather than what is ethically or morally right.
- raganwald 16y agoAs I read this, he's not making links to their web pages. He's deep linking to their content and displaying it within what appears to be a custom browser. While there is plenty of debate about the propriety of deep linking and whether sites have the right to bar deep linking, displaying content within a custom browser is analogous to 'framing' content without permission, and framing content a no-no. Creating deep links to their content would be launching Mobile Safari with their content in it. Now, it could be that after he talks to them and they have a look at his app, they decide that yes, he's framing their content but he does so in a manner they feel is in their best interests and is compatible with their business model as they see it. In which case, they will give him written permission to do so.
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- kragen 16y agoI'm dubious about this idea that web site owners have the right to dictate which web browsers their users are permitted to use to access their site, but it's certainly more colorable than a complaint about launching Mobile Safari with their page. It could be passing off, if nothing else.
- raganwald 16y agoI know, it's hard to draw a nice objective line in the sand. A general-purpose browser with a new UI, for example, ought to be allowed without requiring permission from anyone. On the other hand, what if I write an iOS app just for getting answers from Wolfram|Alpha that displays the content using Webkit? I could certainly understand Wolfram arguing this kind of thing requires permission. I'm curious about DuckDuckGo's use of Wolfram|Alpha content. There's an example of framing content and deep linking together. I assume they have permission or an army of lawyers?
- hsuma 16y agoThe EFF has been doing some good work on TOS abuse. https://www.eff.org/issues/terms-of-abuse https://www.eff.org/issues/terms-of-abuse I'm sure they would be interested because this linking policy is absurd. There is no way a practice like this would be 'illegal' anywhere but on Apple's app store where I imagine Wolfram Alpha holds at least a little sway.
- kenjackson 16y agoWhy doesn't Wolfram just block this? It would be a little bit of work, A naive solution is to use short-lived cookies. But there are more sophisticated means to ensure that users get to the result page via a query.
- phillijw 16y agoDevelopers are expensive
- Vivtek 16y agoThey've always been pretty rent-seeking.
- jwr 16y agoSeems to me the author doesn't get it. Wolfram Alpha specifies terms of service, which the author didn't read and subsequently violated.
- jwr 16y agoI find it amusing that people downvote my comment. I guess it is much more rewarding to upvote overinflated stories about how Evil Wolfram Alpha "Doesn't Get It" (often without reading the story, I suspect). Makes for better drama. Frankly, I would much rather read about a 2-bit adder implemented using 36 555 timers.
- powellc 16y agoWhat a recursive failure to read the story. You accuse others of down-voting for not reading the story, and yet you seem also to have not read the story. The author admits to having not read the ToS completely. His issue (and the title of his post) is that Wolfram actively enforcing a ToS limiting use except by a human+web browser just doesn't get the internet. And that, my friend, is true no matter how you slice it. Prohibiting links with search queries embedded in them is anti- the philosophy of the internet. It may work for a top-heavy, externally funded project like Wolfram (who's bread and butter is a desktop app), but would cause a massive failure for a web app trying to turn a profit.
- runningdogx 16y agoYou read every ToS for every service/product you use? Community and social standards often trump legalese. For instance, most absurd restrictions in apartment rental agreements are not enforceable. In this case, linking to another site, no matter how "deep" the link is, is common practice. If WA really doesn't like it, they can prevent it by checking the referrer, or going even further by adding a pseudorandom token to their query page, switched every 5 minutes and valid for an hour or a day, and redirecting deep links which don't have a valid token. Of course, doing that would probably kill some traffic they like, so they have a silly, selectively-enforced and probably unenforceable ToS clause instead. I don't see any reason why such provisions need to be enforced legally, since they can be enforced technologically in most cases. Expanding the law because of laziness is a horrible precedent.
- dpcan 16y agoYou break the rules, you pay the consequences. Ignorance is NOT an excuse. He's "in his situation" (edit) with Wolfram because he didn't do his due-diligence and contact them first before linking to them in his app. EDIT: He seems to understand this, and admits that he "goofed", yes.
- treeface 16y agoWhere does it say he's mad at them? All he's saying is that this policy isn't very web-friendly.
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- dpcan 16y agoLots of down-votes, but no replies. I can't figure out if the down votes are proving that I'm right or if I totally missed something.
- raganwald 16y agoOr perhaps your point is couched in a way that antagonizes people for some reason? You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
- Andrewski 16y agoAre there really adults reading hacker news with skins thin enough to be offended by his post? Perhaps e have a lot of web-monkeys who have a business plan to deep-link? Sheesh.
- raganwald 16y agoAntagonises means "in opposition to" or more commonly "to incur the dislike of." Offends means something else entirely. Writing can easily incur people's dislike without offending them personally. For example, on most forums, excessive use of all caps will antagonise people even if they agree with what is written. And with that, I'm done with this thread.
- huhtenberg 16y agoThese ToS clauses protect their paid iPhone app from being replicated in the browser, which is pretty much exactly what you did. So it is effectively you who didn't get it :)
- zephjc 16y agoWhich gets to the root of the Wolfram's real issue with it: If you go to wolframalpha.com on an iOS device, you are shown an ad for their $1.99 app (which you can ignore and continue to the mobile version of their site). If you go straight to a query, it bypasses this. The O.P.'s app bypasses their ad, and Wolfram doesn't like that.
- jrockway 16y agoThe built-in web browser that Apple includes with the iPhone also violates this via its "bookmark" feature.
- jcarreiro 16y agoI am not a Terminology user, and I do have the Alpha app on my iPhone. But I still think this is foolishness on the part of Wolfram. I am more likely to use W|A if I can click on a button and jump straight to the page I want, then if I need to switch apps myself and retype my query.
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- bpodgursky 16y agoI think it's important to note that many queries on Wolfram Alpha are VERY heavyweight--I've had complex calculations and rendering take 30 seconds to a minute to finish. It's not like Google where a query get a result in a few milliseconds. So while Terminology is not likely to be querying it with lots of formulas, I think the policy exists so a badly thought out automated querier can't accidentally put a huge load on Wolfram's engine.
- troels 16y agoI really don't think that is the case.
- troels 16y agoJust to qualify that, since apparently it wasn't clear. If their site is that prone to dos'ing, they would probably use something other than a tos to protect it with.
- steveklabnik 16y agoThere's an easy technical solution to this: just block the freaking querier. Also, if they didn't render a result as an image, maybe it wouldn't take so freaking long...
- malnourish 16y agoNow, I am probably wrong but am asking this due to curiosity. Could they conceivably use HTML5 to render dynamically thus reducing resource/load cost? Edit: No to Now
- steveklabnik 16y agoI hope they don't try to sue me for this post. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+%2B+5 (oh noes!) gives an image containing '7'. They could just freaking put a 7. Granted, not all of their queries could be done this way, and some of those could indeed be done with canvas, for example. Dunno if those would be faster. But all of the numbers and tables could stand to just be numbers and tables. This is more of a gripe about copy/paste than performance, really: I'd imagine their calculations take a lot longer than making a .png
- cldwalker 16y agothis isn't surprising considering this is the same company that took over a year to release a free api: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126037 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126037
- kbutler 16y agoThe problem with the Wolfram Alpha terms of service is that they forbid natural, common uses of the web site. "The Wolfram|Alpha service may be used only by a human being using a conventional web browser to manually enter queries one at a time." Think for a minute what that forbids. Generating links programmatically, yes. Tweeting links? Yes. Emailing a URL? yes. Bookmarks? Oh, yeah... Enforceability of the ToS aside, I think the original author is correct: that phrase in the Terms of Use shows that Wolfram|Alpha doesn't "get" the way the web works. Or at least they give too much free reign to lawyers who don't get it.
- tptacek 16y agoTweeting a link seems like a good example of a "common sense use of the website" that could bring it to its knees if some queries take 30+ seconds to complete.
- perlgeek 16y agoCaching exists.
- dasil003 16y agoIf WA lived up to its promise—which it doesn't, not by a long shot—then 30 seconds would definitely be an acceptable wait for the perfect answer. I don't see how it would bring anything to its knees? Why should the latency propagate? Just need a loading page, problem solved.
- mc32 16y ago>The problem with the Wolfram Alpha terms of service is that they forbid natural, common uses of the web site. It seems that that only applies to general circumstance usage. That is, it appears, once can enter into arrangements with W|A to allow non-human usage of website. To prove, just search for "calories in apples", for example in Bing or Google search.
- clare 16y agoNot in defense of Wolfram Alpha, I'm just curious if W|A does this out of concern of possible degeneration effect on their search accuracy caused by programmed search queries? For a human user of W|A, he will construct the query with certain syntax, and further drill down the search query with W|A's recommendations. W|A may very well monitor the pattern of user search queries to optimize their search algorithm. It is possible that programmed search queries, especially coming from a third party application where users do not use the W|A like syntax, may "pollute" the usage pattern for W|A and affect their algorithm's efficiency. Just my 2 cents.
- lell 16y agoA lot of people in this thread are concerned about the TOS and whether or not it is enforceable. But did anyone notice that he claims wolfram served apple a DCMA notice for the app? That law was supposed to be for copyrighted artwork. Aren't wolfram alpha, and other sort of dynamic procedural output from websites more of a service than an artwork (or a 'work' as it is probably termed in the DMCA? It seems a bit pretentious to refer to the output of something like wolfram, google, etc. as a 'work.' I could see a website in it's entirety as a 'work.' But the output of a service doesn't strike me as a 'work.')
- jrockway 16y agoI am sure with infinite money on both sides, if this were litigated, the OP would win. You have the right to write a computer program that sends an HTTP request to a site, even if the site's ToU say that you can't. After all, you can send a request without having ever read or seen the ToU. The server should simply refuse to reply if the user has not agreed to the terms of use. Apple will do what Wolfram says, but that's because Apple is acting in its best financial interests (30% of $1.99 for WA's app), not because Apple is legally bound to not distribute an app that links to Wolfram Apple.
- Stormbringer 16y agoThe problem is twofold: (1) semantics (fun for the whole family!) what does deep linking mean in this context? We all say deep linking is bad, but to some the pre-populated query isn't deep linking, but to others it is. (2) one of the (entirely sensible) things the Wolfram Alpha guys seem to be saying is "please don't hook bots up to us". Now no doubt some will bluster and say that if it is there in public they have a right to consume all the bandwidth and resources - after all if they didn't want people to do that they should just [insert complex but fragile technological solution that would quickly fail or be worked around]. As it happens, what this guy was doing falls into that category of automated client. So on the basis of either one of those (if you squint real hard) I can see Wolfram Alpha's point of view.
- iuguy 16y agoIt seems to me that agile tortoise doesn't "get it". Regardless of Wolfram Alpha's licence, it's Wolfram's decision as to what you can and can't do. That was made clear in the licence. The bottom line is that Agile Tortoise didn't study the licence hard enough, if he had he would've seen that Wolfram Alpha wasn't the right fit for his tool. If he'd have looked further he'd have probably seen that http://duckduckgo.com/ http://duckduckgo.com/ has an API that he may well have been able to use to get the same results. Instead he may now have to modify his software and probably resubmit it to Apple for review. Measure twice, cut once. This applies as much to software licensing as carpentry.
- agiletortoise 16y agoUPDATE: Wolfram listens and changes policy http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3587122629/wolfram-listens-and-changes-policy http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3587122629/wolfram-listen...