Comments on: Test driving the Wolfram Alpha

By: greg

greg — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:01:50 +0000

Awesome read. Glad you got to give the engine a spin to see what it could do. So many people seem hellbent to label this as the Google killer, which it clearly won’t be. I wrote up a little piece yesterday attempting to show why it’s not the case: http://www.sagerock.com/blog/wolframalpha-not-google-killer/

By: Mickey K

Mickey K — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:24:12 +0000

Oh, look:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/10/2154258

By: isaac32767

isaac32767 — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:41:07 +0000

Iddo Friedberg : @isaac32767 Read #8

I wasn't asking how he got the PDFs.

By: Iddo Friedberg

Iddo Friedberg — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:18:04 +0000

@B$

W|A strength seems to be mainly in computable data, (and you can actually compare more than two things, but they have to be in the same category). So the first one does not work because it does not deliver computable data, and the second doesn’t work because W|A seems to think you want to compare “pope” (a name) with “Israel” (a country).

Things that do work: “tides in Boston, October 2005″; “first powered flight” (but NOT “First flight”, NLP still lacking here), “First steam engine” (but NOT “first {steam|steam powered} ship”); “Vitamin A in 250g sweet potato”; “mass earth/mass moon” (81.33 in case you were wondering).

By: rat

rat — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:49:06 +0000

Thank you for your review which I enjoyed reading
5th 3rd bancorp.

By: B$

B$ — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:46:14 +0000

I thought the point of WA was to handle more natural language searching. I was disappointed to see all these examples that just name two things and have it spit out some comparisons (although the plant examples were cool). It’s supposed to be about answering questions. How about “Who wrote the pilot episode for the original star trek series?” or “How many times has the pope visited israel?”

By: Iddo Friedberg

Iddo Friedberg — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:30:55 +0000

@isaac32767 Read #8

By: isaac32767

isaac32767 — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:05:56 +0000

name : Why are you posting screenshots in pdf form?

My first thought was that he didn't want the time or hassle of doing screen captures. But I notice that the PDFs are generated by Mathematica. Thought he didn't have a license?

By: Joeyd

Joeyd — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:24:42 +0000

It was the final question by Asimov, not answered.

By: BearOfNH

BearOfNH — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:06:20 +0000

@JoeyD
In the 1950s there was a scifi story about “Answerer”, a computer that could answer questions. Somebody asked it how to reverse entropy. Answerer worked on the problem for a long, long time — long after humanity ceased to exist and the Universe started to go dark. Finally it solved the problem. And Answerer said “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light…

Eerie how that thread appeared so quickly 50+ years later.