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Previously on "Who'd have thought it - A new search engine!"

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  • zara_backdog
    replied
    Just get Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. When I tried to advise them what they could do with me input - guess what?

    "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input"

    Leave a comment:


  • TheRefactornator
    replied
    Originally posted by Ardesco View Post
    Tried it and after watching it time out three times in a row I gave up.

    Waste of space!
    It really is a shame that the launch has been high profile and very unsuccessful. Perhaps wolfram have valid reasons (funding??) for raising the profile of the launch into the media spotlight but it's clearly an unusable service. The alpha -> beta -> production release lifecycle is not looking promising for this project, but I do hope it survives.

    I wouldn't call this a 'Google killer' because it has very different objectives, but it might give Google ideas (if they weren't already doing so) to go in the direction of wolfram killer. If they did, I would expect them to keep it quiet and at least implement a usable platform before launch.

    Leave a comment:


  • Ardesco
    replied
    Tried it and after watching it time out three times in a row I gave up.

    Waste of space!

    Leave a comment:


  • TheRefactornator
    replied
    If you can catch it when it's working, try sticking your real name into wolfram alpha - apparently I am equivalent to:
    • A small town in Oregon US or a Romanian City
    • A flight time of 10hrs 15 minutes or 5657 miles
    • 1005 or 11041 people
    • An elevation of 4186ft or 417ft
    ..very disappointing results for me..any tenuous link to Ghengis Khan would be much more satisfying.

    Leave a comment:


  • OwlHoot
    replied
    I've been using the freeby package sage for some symbolic calculations, and this product been coming on in leaps and bounds over the last four years and in many respects is now nipping at Wolfram Research's ankles.

    Perhaps that's one reason, along with the current economic climate, why Wolfram have slashed the price of their Mathematica package.

    Having forked out the required £200 or so for this (which a year ago would have been about £2000), I only hope it runs a bit faster than their new Alpha thingie does by the sound of it.

    Leave a comment:


  • lightng
    replied
    Maybe we should point newbies to it when they ask how do they get into contracting.

    I tried asking the noob question and got the reply "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

    I, on the other hand, have a small idea what they can do with their output.

    Leave a comment:


  • NickFitz
    replied
    Asking a reasonably straightforward question, I seldom manage to actually get a response from the server in a reasonable time (i.e. less than 30 seconds).

    On the rare occasion that I do get a response, it causes Safari to pop up its "A script is dicking about for too long" warning, which usually means something has got itself into an infinite loop or an infinite recursive descent. Cancelling the script allows it to display the page, saying it doesn't know what to do with my input.

    Disabling JavaScript and trying again leads to a page that just says:
    To see full output you need to enable Javascript in your browser

    Epic fail

    Leave a comment:


  • BrowneIssue
    replied
    I've rebooted & let wolframalpha have another go with my birthdate.

    It is interesting watching the page file size go up and down and make a pretty sawtooth graph in Task Manager.

    It would be even more interesting if it ever finished whatever it is doing.

    Leave a comment:


  • BrowneIssue
    replied
    Just tried www.wolframalpha.com

    Hmm. I entered my date of birth and my Firefox 3 on my Windows XP has been at 100% CPU ever since. It has been like that for about 10 minutes. Weird.

    So here I am on my reliable Windows ME machine...

    A search for "TEDDY BEAR" gives you Teddy McPherson.

    Enter my home town and it tells me about it. Fair enough.

    Enter today's date and it gives me the weather and sun motions for Leeds (only the other end of the country).

    Enter "CUP OF TEA" and get "I'm sorry Dave, I;m afraid I can't do that" which is mildly amusing.

    Enter "CUP OF COFFEE" and it goes away to interpret that. And I don;t think it's ever coming back.

    Enter "how far is it to the moon?" and it is dead spiffy.

    Enter "what is the speed of light in a vacuum?" and it suggests you try "the speed of light in a vacuum" which in turn is spiffy.

    "tell me something I don't already know" just points at the film "tell me something"

    "siege of vienna" - nothing. That's a shame; it was fairly important.

    "battle of hastings" took 3 minutes to come back with the date and the nobs involved.

    "battle of waterloo" ditto except it reckons only the French turned up. You'd never know this toy was a Merkin product, would you?

    "knob cheese" - that got it thinking. "Socket Error - Connection to Remote Host timed out"

    "carbonic acid" (very important stuff) - too slow. I'm dying of old age here.

    I have bunged in loads of others where it just says "I don't know what to do with your input".

    And my XP laptop is still at 100% CPU.

    I reckon it just goes to a room full of monkeys with Google & Wikipedia in front of them.

    Leave a comment:


  • BrowneIssue
    replied
    Originally posted by Bear View Post
    Dubbed a 'Google Killer'

    Wolfram Alpha
    This was advertised on the Chris Evans show earlier today around 5:30 ish.

    The Merkin representative said it is coming online within a couple of hours, at 7pm.

    So I have had a tab open pointing at them since then. Which says:

    "Friday, May 15, beginning at 7pm CST"

    That means it is 8 or 10 hours away (or 7 or 9 or 11 or something depending on how they do their summer time).

    It's going to be a crock of tulipe, isn't it?

    Leave a comment:


  • snaw
    replied
    Originally posted by The Lone Gunman View Post
    BTW I am a talking heads fan. That is a favourite song and I do not regard it as annoying in anyway.
    I like them to, I even like the song - it just has a tendency to circle in my head like Pogle in paris circling the champs eleysees roundabout trying to get off. If you get my drift ...

    Leave a comment:


  • Churchill
    replied
    Originally posted by Pogle View Post
    Oh YEES

    onto podi it goes - Thanks Brian
    it's sh!te!

    Leave a comment:


  • Pogle
    replied
    Originally posted by BrianSnail View Post
    Oh man! Thanks Bear!!! Now I'll be singing this all day...

    Psycho killer
    Quest que cest
    Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
    Run run run run run run run away
    Oh YEES

    onto podi it goes - Thanks Brian

    Leave a comment:


  • HairyArsedBloke
    replied
    Millions of web users have Google’s search engine as the homepage on their computer. It’s the first thing they see when they switch their machine on and their first port of call whenever they need to find the answer to a question.
    Now, that is sad.

    Leave a comment:


  • The Lone Gunman
    replied
    Originally posted by snaw View Post
    Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fackin hell, it's stuck in my head.
    This should sort that annoying repetative nonsense out.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cqa0...eature=related







    BTW I am a talking heads fan. That is a favourite song and I do not regard it as annoying in anyway.

    Leave a comment:

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