

Wolfram Alpha doesn't "get it" - agiletortoise
http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3564424414/wolfram-alpha-doesnt-get-it
Full URL: http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3564424414/wolfram-alpha-doesnt-get-it
======
kbutler
The 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
Tweeting 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
Caching exists.

~~~
tptacek
"But queries shouldn't ever take 30 seconds". Ok then.

------
kragen
He 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.

~~~
raganwald
As 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.

~~~
jcarreiro
What is the difference between "linking" and "deep linking"? Whatever else W|A
is, it is a web server and it responds to my requests by sending me web pages.
Why does Wolfram get to decide for me which web browser I should use to view
those pages?

~~~
steveklabnik
People that don't understand what the web is, why it's important, or how it
works get mad when you link to

    
    
        http://www.something.com/ANYTHINGATALL
    

They think you should _only_ ever link to

    
    
        http://www.something.com/
    

If you couldn't tell by my first sentence, I find this idea repulsive.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking>

~~~
ludwigvan
On a slightly related note, what do you think about framing another site's
contents? The original article is closer to framing in this respect, i.e.
showing stuff in a UIWebView is more analogous to framing.

I am currently developing a content aggregator site, but haven't decided how
to link/display original articles. Should I be putting a frame at the top (or
display orignal content in an iframe?) so that users don't leave my site, or
should I directly link to the original article? I have strong suspicion that
doing the former would be unfair, but some sites like stumbleupon do it to
improve user experience.

~~~
steveklabnik
I strongly, strongly dislike stuff like the old Digg bar, or the Reddit bar.
I'm assuming that's what you're talking about?

    
    
        http://www.reddit.com/tb/fp3vz
    

If I'm looking at a page, I want the URL to be the URL of the page I'm looking
at. Feels quite scummy otherwise.

That said, feel free to do it, nobody can (or should) stop you.

~~~
Macha
On the desktop, I couldn't agree more. On a mobile device, its a handy
shortcut to the pages I will most likely visit next anyway.

------
bpodgursky
I 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.

~~~
steveklabnik
There'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
Now, 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
I 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

~~~
malnourish
Makes sense.

What if they output in LaTeX for more complex things, and there was a LaTeX
plugin for browsers?

~~~
27182818284
I've seen Chrome plugins and I know there are Greasemonkey scripts for
automatically LaTeXing plain text on web pages.

I don't think this is a viable solution for W|A, however.

------
lell
A 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.')

------
hsuma
The EFF has been doing some good work on TOS 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.

------
scott_s
Please submit full URLs only. We like to know where we are going.

~~~
agiletortoise
Sorry. For the record: [http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3564424414/wolfram-
alpha-...](http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3564424414/wolfram-alpha-doesnt-
get-it)

------
jrockway
I 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.

------
huhtenberg
These 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
Which 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
The built-in web browser that Apple includes with the iPhone also violates
this via its "bookmark" feature.

------
kenjackson
Why 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.

------
agiletortoise
UPDATE: Wolfram listens and changes policy

[http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3587122629/wolfram-
listen...](http://blog.agiletortoise.com/post/3587122629/wolfram-listens-and-
changes-policy)

------
iuguy
It 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/> 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.

------
Stormbringer
The 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.

------
clare
Not 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.

------
Vivtek
They've always been pretty rent-seeking.

------
jcarreiro
I 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.

------
jwr
Seems to me the author doesn't get it. Wolfram Alpha specifies terms of
service, which the author didn't read and subsequently violated.

~~~
jwr
I 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.

------
cldwalker
this 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>

------
dpcan
You 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.

~~~
dpcan
Lots 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.

~~~
derleth
Have you ever seen _The Big Lebowski_?

"You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."

~~~
javert
Please don't call people on Hacker News assholes, even by analogy.

I think you might be attempting to say something quite relevant without
intentionally calling the person an asshole, but if that's the case, you ought
to have explained it in your post.

~~~
scott_s
How about: there's a difference between _being right_ and _being polite_.

~~~
dpcan
How about explaining either way what you don't find polite or right?

~~~
scott_s
Note that I am not derleth.

