World: r3wp

Yesterday I discussed with my mom, whether the Earth's volume really 
is 50 times that of the Moon. Googling that doesn't give a precise 
answer, but typing "volume of the earth divided by the volume of 
the moon" gives an exact answer.

I tried maths and genetics:
   how many beans make five?
   har1

Google is still ahead for both those queries. So some work needed 
yet.

maxim, ask it what the highest point in Canada is.

I often talk to my spouse about the volume of the moon.

man I'm  ssssooooooo resisting sending some line with what you just 
wrote... hahahah

hmm... your keyboard and Steeve's has the same problem.

henrik, you are right,... when asked "where is the best porn"  it 
really doesn' know what to say...  ;-)

it doesn't even know what boobies are!

ask it what the volume of a D cup is ...

hhahaha

it's a computational engine ... not a search engine.

well it knows about a lot of stuff, its just a processing system. 
 you get definitive answers for alot of "Who is xxxx" for example.

its *not* just

It doesn't know about D but it does know about T

so, what does it really process?


in what ways does it fair better than regular search engine...? (pardon 
my ignorance here)

needs a lot of human input

well, give a sequence from the human genome ... and see what happens

and it really isnt a search engine. it doesn't refer to things, it 
gives them to you directly.

Its back end are absolute data, statistics and facts and all data 
is stored internally. it doesn't scour the web for information. I 
believe also it's engine is written in Mathematica.

it's basically a really fancy calculator.

I'll wait for the wolframbeta

for example "what is e"  give a lot of info... it even returns the 
codepoint for 2 encodings, and suggests that e is also part of math 
(with a hot link to it)

henrik it does scour the web... it integrated data within itself, 
using complex algorythms to find patterns and stuff.

that is what I read the first time I looked into it anyways

ok...here's something I tried...

A comparison between RIMM, AAPL and PALM
http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=RIMM%2C+AAPL%2C+PALM


But, doubt it will be useful...since history shows that we can't 
rely on modelling alone when it comes to the stock market (or any 
market)

From the FAQ:

Is Wolfram|Alpha a search engine?

No. It's a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by 
doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead 
of searching the web and returning links.

Does Wolfram|Alpha get its data from the web?

No. It comes from Wolfram|Alpha's internal knowledge base. Some of 
the data in that knowledge base is derived from official public or 
private websites, but most of it is from more systematic primary 
sources.

Where does Wolfram|Alpha's data come from?

Many different sources, combined and curated by the Wolfram|Alpha 
team. At the bottom of each relevant results page there's a "Source 
information" button, which provides background sources and references.

by using it a bit I realise that its not using very fancy NLP for 
the questions.

yes, some questions fail, even if they should make logical sense.

sometimes changing what, where or who gives the same replies, when 
they should be different.. so its probably using basic statistical 
based analysis, which doesn't understand the concepts.... where as 
current nlp systems really do understand the differences between 
places people and things.

It needs to loosen up a bit too:
   largest prime  ===> good answer
   smallest prime ===> confused wolfram

perhaps the people who coded it assumed that the persons asking the 
questions have the ability to understand the answers?

So, try and deal with the hard questions first and leave the easy 
stuff to google

I guess you should compare Wolfram Alpha to Spock in the beginning 
of the fourth Star Trek movie, where he's being tested by a computer. 
"How do you feel?" :-)

They should in fact just call it "Ask Mr. Spock".

You're not going to ruin the movie for us are you???

Not the new one. :-)

Gene Roddenbury or his estate executors might object ...

I can see why Carl says it's his favourite Star Trek movie. The computers 
that Spock uses are in fact Amiga 1000s. :-)

aw geez .. spoilers :(

The computer that Scotty uses to show transparent aluminum was originally 
going to be an Amiga, but Commodore would only provide a computer 
if they bought it. Apple was willing to loan them the Mac.
 <--- Commodore marketing in action.

someone lent them an Atari portfolio for Terminator

Reminds me of the START project at MIT.
http://start.csail.mit.edu/


Remember the strange hokus-pokus REBOL script, I wrote some years 
ago?

>> do http://www.fys.ku.dk/~niclasen/rebol/hokus-pokus.r
>> hokus-pokus "What is the highest point in Canada?"

Canada
highest point: Mount Logan 5,959 m

>> hokus-pokus "What is the volume of the Earth?"

The volume of Earth is 108.321  (1010 km3).

etc...

Other strange use:

>> hokus-pokus/quote "Hitchhiker"

Ford: [watching the Magrathean recording of Deep Thought] Is that 
it?
Zaphod: No, there's more. They go back.
Arthur: What, seven and a half million years later?
Zaphod: Yeah, they do.

>> hokus-pokus #00113f
== 0.17.63

>> hokus-pokus/translate "Yeah, they do." "en2de"

Ja, sie tun.

:-) I use this too little.

start is probably where wolfram got his idea from.

Surprising conclusion on Gregory Higley's blog?:

<....I’ve come to the realization that JavaScript is the language 
in common use that’s most akin to REBOL.>
http://blog.revolucent.net/2009/05/javascript-rebol.html

JavaScript is a strict subset of the R3 semantics, though there's 
hidden stuff that isn't hidden in REBOL, and particular implementations 
can include standard objects that have no analog in REBOL. There's 
no corresponding concept for JavaScript's objects in R2, but the 
R3 map! type is close enough.

The "hidden stuff" is the prototype message delegation, which can 
be done in REBOL explicitly.

On an implementtation level, JavaScript being compiled means that 
code really is code, rather than data for an interpreter. So JS is 
more like a subset of what R3 pretends to be, rather than what it 
is :)

Hmm, DOM (ok, not really what he means, but still vaguely similar):

	http://www.rebol.org/view-script.r?script=xml-dom.r
	http://www.ross-gill.com/r/qxml.html(slightly newer)