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Re: Re: Re: What happened to the

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg76149] Re: [mg75742] Re: [mg75673] Re: What happened to the
  • From: "Chris Chiasson" <chris at chiasson.name>
  • Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 05:47:53 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <acbec1a40705090303r4f2713dqd2bddd063a8e06d2@mail.gmail.com>

On 5/15/07, John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com> wrote:
> The privacy policy is here...
>
> http://www.wolfram.com/company/mathematicaprivacy.html
> http://www.wolfram.com/company/playerprivacy.html
>
> although we certainly should have mentioned this in-product.  That's our
> oversight, which we'll fix in the next incremental release by adding something
> to the About Box.

Thank you for your time. This clears up my questions.

P.S.

Given the following pieces of data, the Player and standard
Mathematica privacy pages were likely released on or about the 11th
(GMT). It would have been peculiar to direct people to an unavailable
privacy policy "in-product" at the time of launch, so I am not sure
that was the exact oversight.

At the time of this writing, the Mathematica (standard) privacy page
is neither in Google's cache nor its index, even though the page's
source doesn't contain any noindex or noarchive directives. The server
says the Mathematica (standard) privacy page was last modified on Fri,
11 May 2007 22:12:23 GMT. The Google cache for Wolfram's main
(company-wide) privacy page, dated May 11, 2007 19:49:53 GMT, doesn't
contain the hyperlinks to the Mathematica (standard) and Mathematica
Player privacy pages, while the most recent version of the page, from
Mon, 14 May 2007 14:32:05 GMT, does. The main privacy page is devoid
of nofollow directives. None of these pages are mentioned in the site
robots.txt.

Mathematica (standard) privacy page:
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 22:24:14 GMT
Server: Apache
Content-Language: en
Vary: Accept-Language
Content-Location: /company/mathematicaprivacy.en.html
Last-Modified: Fri, 11 May 2007 22:12:23 GMT

Wolfram main privacy page:
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 22:41:02 GMT
Server: Apache
Content-Language: en
Vary: Accept-Language
Content-Location: /company/privacypolicy.en.html
Last-Modified: Mon, 14 May 2007 14:32:05 GMT

I saved a copy of the Google cache of /company/privacypolicy.en.html
from May 11, 2007 19:49:53 GMT in case the old version is needed.

wolfram.com/robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /products/student/mathforstudents/download/
Disallow: /siteinfo/

On 5/15/07, John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com> wrote:
> The privacy policy is here...
>
> http://www.wolfram.com/company/mathematicaprivacy.html
> http://www.wolfram.com/company/playerprivacy.html
>
> although we certainly should have mentioned this in-product.  That's our
> oversight, which we'll fix in the next incremental release by adding something
> to the About Box.
>
> As for the information that's being logged, you can naturally expect that the
> same kind of information logged by virtually every web server on the planet is
> also being logged by us.  Aside from that, license and version information are
> sent.  These help make sure that our servers are secure and available for users,
> and that any data we serve is appropriate for the version of Mathematica making
> the request.
>
> If this at all concerns you, or if it violates any of your institution's
> Internet policies, keep in mind that you can always turn these features off in
> the Preferences dialog.  That stops all automatic Internet traffic, period,
> while user programs written to query the Internet will still function.  And
> there are no updating processes, Internet connections, or anything of the sort
> that happen when Mathematica is not running.
>
> Mathematica Internet requests are not frequent.  All the data you fetch are
> cached locally, so only the first request for any particular data hits the
> Wolfram server.  The only regular contact with our servers is the weekly contact
> to update the documentation index.  All other contacts happen the first time the
> data are specifically requested.  This includes individual documentation pages
> which have been updated by us and data used by functions such as
> FinancialData[], AstronomicalData[], etc.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> John Fultz
> jfultz at wolfram.com
> User Interface Group
> Wolfram Research, Inc.
>
>
> On Wed, 9 May 2007 05:03:51 -0500, Chris Chiasson wrote:
> > Is any information such as the following being sent, correlated and/or
> > recorded?
> >
> > time & date
> > documentation path
> > IP address of client
> > Internal`$CreationID
> > $LicenseID
> > $MachineID
> > $Version
> > $System
> > $UserName
> >
> > Is any of this information cross referenced with Wolfram's website
> > access logs/data, customer records, or other records?
> >
> > Some of this information falls under the category of personally
> > identifiable information, and it is important for users to know what
> > is being done with it, especially how it is being correlated,
> > analyzed, and disseminated (possibly to third parties).
> >
> > What is the privacy policy? What is the policy on notification of
> > changes to the policy? Etc...
> >
> > On 5/9/07, John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 8 May 2007 05:55:29 -0400 (EDT), David Bailey wrote:
> >>> Chris Chiasson wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 5/6/07, Barthelet, Luc <lucb at ea.com> wrote:
> >>>>> I am with Murray on this. I have not used the old interface for a
> >>>>> long time
> >>>>> now, and yes, at first I complained about not having it. The new
> >>>>> one
> >>>>> works
> >>>>> fine.
> >>>>> Plus :
> >>>>> 1) some of the tutorials are just fantastic!
> >>>>> 2) the help system is constantly updating from the online
> >>>>> connection
> >>>>> so it
> >>>>> gets better and better.
> >>>>> 3) the information is usually more relevant
> >>>>>
> >>>> How is the help system constantly updated? Is that mentioned in the
> >>>> software somewhere?
> >>>>
> >>> The help system is incomplete as usually installed, and acquires
> >>> additional information from the Wolfram website as required.
> >>>
> >>> David Bailey
> >>> http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk
> >>>
> >> Actually, the help system is complete as installed.  David is thinking
> >> of some
> >> of the beta versions where we didn't bundle all of the documentation,
> >> but all
> >> documentation did ship with the released 6.0 version.
> >>
> >> While I'm talking about this, I'll also address the questions people
> >> have asked
> >> about how the documentation gets its updates.  Mathematica downloads an
> >> index
> >> from a Wolfram server containing version information about all of the
> >> documentation files.  This is done at startup if the index hasn't been
> >> updated
> >> in more than a week.  Then, any individual files which the cached index
> >> indicates need to be updated will be loaded as you view them.
> >>
> >> You can control the updating system in the Internet Connectivity tab of
> >> the
> >> Preferences dialog.  You can use this dialog box to force an immediate
> >> update or
> >> to prevent update checks altogether.
> >>
> >> As of this moment, there are only a few documentation files on the
> >> server which
> >> are newer than the versions which were installed.
> >>
> >> Sincerely,
> >>
> >> John Fultz
> >> jfultz at wolfram.com
> >> User Interface Group
> >> Wolfram Research, Inc.
>
>
>
>


-- 
http://chris.chiasson.name/


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