New evidence was released in the DOJ vs Google case. The judge for the case called this evidence "embarrassing" to Google.
It's a bad headline. There's no a complete sentence here. "DOJ vs. Google evidence release" is a noun phrase ("release" here is used as a noun), modified by the clause "that judge calls embarrassing exhibit". In that clause, "judge" is the subject, "calls" is the verb, "that" is the direct object, and "embarrassing exhibit" is an object compliment, which refers to the same thing as "that". So basically we just have a big noun phrase.
So put more simply, what you're saying is that the reader can tell by the context. When the writer says "this begs the question", if that phrase is followed by an actual question, the reader knows the writer is using it in the newer sense. If it isn't, the reader knows the writer meant it in the older, logical fallacy sense. I understand that. My claim that it makes it harder still stands. The reader must use context to determine meaning when he didn't have to before.
It does make sense. "Begging the question" is a term of art from philosophy meaning to assume the thing you set out to prove--e.g. God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible must be right because it is the literal word of God.
This shift towards using the phrase to mean "raise the question" makes it harder for a writer to tag a claim as being guilty of that particular logical fallacy.
But your first point is right: language changes, and we have to accept new usages, even bad ones.
exactly correct. The question is not: "was software bloated in the 90s". It's: "given that hardware capability increased in by several orders of magnitude, did software quality/speed see a similar increase?" The answer is a resounding no. It would be like moving from a tricycle to a supersonic car and somehow taking longer to get from point a to point b.