Re: Wolfram|Alpha Lookup Tool for Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg100037] Re: Wolfram|Alpha Lookup Tool for Mathematica
- From: dbreiss at gmail.com
- Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 01:45:47 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <gum0br$q3a$1@smc.vnet.net> <gv0gra$a6f$1@smc.vnet.net>
On May 20, 11:59 pm, AES <sieg... at stanford.edu> wrote: > In article <gv0gra$a6... at smc.vnet.net>, > mark mcclure <mcmcc... at unca.edu> wrote: > > > On May 16, 5:17 am, David Reiss <dbre... at gmail.com> wrote: > > > With the release of Wolfram|Alpha I have created a small tool that > > > allows you to send a query to Wolfram|Alpha directly from > > > Mathematica. > > > Unfortunately, this is clearly against the terms of use: > >http://www.wolframalpha.com/termsofuse.html > > Wolfram|Alpha may or may not be one of the greatest computer tools to > emerge in our time (to be quite honest, I'm frankly hoping it's not). > > But this "Terms of Us" document, circa 3000 words long and containing I > believe it's nine links leading to God knows how many additional words > of similar legalese, has to be among the nuttiest, or looniest, > documents appearing on the web in some time. > > And it's this general looniness, also exhibited in other recent Terms of > Use on Wolfram websites, not to mention in other broader policies, that > makes me express the unfriendly hope I did above. Ah, "The Law," ... gotta love it, gotta hate it. ...how many of us have read any of the hundreds of license agreements that we've agreed to? It really is a jungle out there. I think though, that one of the ways this all works is as a framework for setting the precedents for defending egregious violations of a company's intellectual property rights. But indeed the wording of these documents (not the WRI one in specific, but more generally) makes one feel (i.e., the emotional response) offended. So one has to balance this against the actual human interactions with a company, as well as the quality (and, yes, possible restrictiveness) of the services that they are providing. I myself tend to react strongly to these things (the legal agreements) and then need to reorient myself with this perspective when making a judgement on a company... ...just my thoughts... --David