[ariniaxia]

Oh, it's only you. I though Ned was back.

Ned

[Peretool]

The winners get to write the history Ecthy.

[Indessasp]

It seems like a good idea, but I doubt its abilities.

What they're aiming for is one of those holy grail type of things, i.e. a computer that can understand plain English queries and find, aggregate and manipulate the relevant information to get a reasonable answer.

They're going to have a lot of the common questions answered, but are going to fail miserably on any of the less common ones.

[netamargr]

That pop estimate gives a doubling time of 1262 years, assuming constant exponential growth.

What a silly underestimate.

[avodeinst]

The formatting and graphing of equations alone is well worth the bookmark.

[Hpdovoxm]

WOLFRAM(tm)!!!!!! "alpha"

[mygalinasoo]

What's really cool about this is the supercomputer they're using to do all of this. I think it's the 66th fastest in the world.

[VINPELA]

I'm more impressed with the wide variety in queries.

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/...n+red+sox+hits

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/...e-_*GivenName-

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/...+age+25+canada

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/...e-_*Satellite-

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/...980+dollars%29

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/...clipse+calgary

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integral+sec^3x

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=caffeine

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AGAGCTAGCTAGCT

http://www04.wolframalpha.com/input/...son%27s+nephew

[SetSnonejog]

It's only Segway if you were naive enough to get caught up in any hype.

I wasn't hyped about Segway, or this. I didn't even know what it was til yesterday. It's certifiably nifty, but I cannot fathom why anyone would expect more of it.

[dietpillxanaxaxx]

The formatting and graphing of equations alone is well worth the bookmark.

Unless you already have Mathematica installed :P

[Pwy9egVW]

It's only Segway if you were naive enough to get caught up in any hype.

Yes and no. I didn't buy the hype all that much, but the idea of a machine that gave answers (my expectations being completely separate from the hype) was really interesting...

...until I started putting in questions, and maybe 90% of them resulted in Alpha not knowing what to do with them. Mind you, these are questions like "largest american cities", "gettysburg address", "hank aaron home runs". I'll admit that maybe I'm not entering them in the right format for Mathematica to understand them, but being unable to process those is rather shameful.

I wasn't hyped about Segway, or this. I didn't even know what it was til yesterday. It's certifiably nifty, but I cannot fathom why anyone would expect more of it. The reason why I'm comparing it to Segway, though, is that all of the press kept clamoring and claiming that it would be the NEXT BIG THING, and it's clearly not.

[rozneesitcn]

Wolfram, at least for now, is not worth it. I've tried it twice now, and the thing gets the browser to hang until I force-close it through the task manager, as soon as it begins to search...

[Qahtwugc]

Wolframbeta should change, the first question I asked about life, the universe, and everything.

In my second question I asked what is six times nine.

JM

http://www62.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=meaning+of+life

[Lauramalina]

How old is that computer, and is it clean?

I had zero troubles with the site's rendering on my 8-year-old machine in Chrome and Opera over the weekend.

[feedcomnet]

Unless you already have Mathematica installed :P

Pretty damn expensive, last I saw.

[maonnjtip]

[quote]

[tobia]

Potential? That was screaming.

[WhonyGataxott]

Some of the computation possibilities are sophisticated. Here's a simple computation comparing US federal government spending (current expenditures) in relation to GDP.

http://www86.wolframalpha.com/input/...spending%2Fgdp

Shiny graph.

I'm starting to learn better how the engine interprets my requests in order to make my questions more sophisticated.

[Byxtysaaqwuz]

That pop estimate gives a doubling time of 1262 years, assuming constant exponential growth.

What a silly underestimate.

It's interesting how they must have arrived at this computation. See the Average Population Growth History section.

http://www86.wolframalpha.com/input/...ulation+growth

[RedImmik]

This thing doesn't know the meaning of liff.