On 01/ 2/11 04:31 PM, rjf wrote:
Wolfram has given you permission to do what they already gave you
permission to do.
I would tend to agree, but then there are are some words in the terms and
conditions would could be interpreted as now allowing this use. Personally I
tended to agree, but Alex Ghitta was of the impression that we were on dodgy
ground, and I don't think he was the only one. So
You can type in an expression (either directly to W|A or via a link)
and look at the answer. They can't stop you if you compare it to the
answer from Sage.
There was not total agreement on this.
You could use it in debugging some Sage code, perhaps. You knew that.
Of course, you
could also type the question in to Mathematica at UW.
The problem is not everyone has access to Mathematica. My experience at UCL was
that even with a site license, that allowed Mathematica to be installed on every
computer in the university, the vast majority of people do not have access to
it, since they or their department had not purchased a license from the university.
They have not given you permission to have a Sage benchmarking program
automatically send a query
to Wolfram Alpha
(a) in a regression-testing mode to see if the answers are (still) the
same, or
(b)to see if Wolfram Alpha will respond to some randomized input in
the same way as Sage.
No, I never asked for that anyway. I think that would be a most unreasonable
request.
The regression testing issue is not so much of a limitation since the
Wolfram answer shouldn't change,
and so it does not have to be resubmitted to Wolfram.
Indeed, this part is pointless, because all it requires is to run the
problem once through
Mathematica, where you don't need to have to deal with the Wolfram
Alpha website.
But as I stated, not everyone has access to Mathematica. I know of at least once
test in Sage which has been compared to Maple, and the answers were the same.
But many people do not have access to Maple. At least Wolfram Alpha gives the
ability to compare a result that anyone can do. Of course, in due course Wolfram
Alpha could change, the usage conditions change.
You save the
Mathematica answer in the comment in the Sage program, or perhaps in
some data file for
comparison later.
You only have to deal with Univ. Washington or some place that
installed Mathematica.
You need to have access to Mathematica, which is not the same thing as your
university having it installed.
The second part (randomized input) cannot be done with Wolfram Alpha
in any automated fashion,
but you probably knew that it would be at least impolite to do so.
Agreed.
Especially if it were set up so that
everyone who recompiled Sage also ran the tests which sent 100,000
random queries to Wolfram.
Yes, I was well aware of that. I made that comment a few hours ago. It would be
totally unacceptable.
But of course if you want to do something like this, you could run
stuff through Mathematica at UW.
So doing that part is pointless too.
Again, you are making the assumption that everyone has access to a copy of
Mathematica.
It seems to me the only kind of scenario in which this "permission"
helps anything is, say, if you are on
a desert island, and are writing/debugging new Sage code, and you have
internet access
to Wolfram|Alpha but not Mathematica at UW or anywhere else. Maybe
some kind of Chinese
censorship internet firewall thing?
You seem to have overlooked the possibility that you are in the middle of a big
city, but have no Mathematica license.
Their response doesn't actually change anything from what you already
had permission to do.
It clarifies things. One could argue that we are creating something that is
intended to replace or serve as an alternative to Wolfram|Alpha, which was the
issue raised here
http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/msg/1f8af294fbf40ccc?hl=en&;
It's clear that for some problems, using Sage is an alternative to using
Wolfram|Alpha.
Though it does surprise me that they bothered to respond.
They are in general more polite & constructive than you.
Perhaps to
reinforce the fact
that you don't have permission to do what they already forbid you from
doing?
The reasons are pretty immaterial. Their response has clarified the position,
which is all I wanted.
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Dave
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