[18:01] fakalin: hey
\n[18:01] fakalin: did you try wolfram alpha
\n[18:02] me: waht
\n[18:02] fakalin: what
\n[18:02] fakalin: jeez you’re out of touch
\n[18:02] fakalin: http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/
\n
\n[18:04] me: what is this
\n[18:04] me: i don’t get it
\n[18:04] fakalin: what’s it like living under a rock
\n[18:04] fakalin: ask it something
\n[18:04] fakalin: anything
\n[18:04] me: it’s down
\n[18:04] fakalin: oh
\n[18:04] fakalin: lol
\n[18:04] fakalin: read up on it
\n[18:06] me: but what’s the idea, these are all pre computed?
\n[18:06] fakalin: here it comes
\n[18:06] fakalin: HERE IT COMES
\n[18:06] fakalin: http:\/\/lmgtfy.com\/?q=wolfram+alpha
\n[18:08] me: hmm
\n[18:08] me: but what does this have to do with the web
\n[18:09] fakalin: um
\n[18:09] me: except that the users are “on the web”
\n[18:09] fakalin: the fact that you can use it using this thing called a ‘web browser’
\n[18:09] me: that’s weak
\n[18:09] me: i’m asking this because it is compared to google
\n[18:09] fakalin: it’s useful for some things i guess
\n[18:10] me: that’s a weak statement
\n[18:10] fakalin: you’re weak
\n[18:10] me: in fact it can’t get waker
\n[18:10] me: weaker
\n[18:12] me: \u201cAlpha does not answer natural language queries — you have to ask questions in a particular syntax, or various forms of abbreviated notation.\u201d
\n[18:12] me: ok
\n[18:13] me: \u201cand it computes answers, it doesn’t merely look them up in a big database.\u201d
\n[18:13] me: i don’t see a clear distinction
\n[18:13] me: even SQL can compute
\n[18:13] fakalin: it’s basically a bunch of expert systems
\n[18:13] fakalin: lol
\n[18:13] fakalin: so your argument is ‘even sql can do stuff’
\n[18:14] me: i’m quoting an article
\n[18:15] me: not impressed
\n[18:15] fakalin: yawn
\n[18:15] me: wolfman is overreaching
\n[18:15] me: again
\n[18:15] me: \u201cStephen showed me many interesting examples — for example, Wolfram Alpha was able to solve novel numeric sequencing problems, calculus problems, and could answer questions about the human genome too.\u201d
\n[18:16] me: this sounds like mathematica
\n[18:16] fakalin: no shit sherlock
\n[18:16] me: but then
\n[18:16] fakalin: it’s like mathematica on the web with some added modules
\n[18:16] me: “It was also able to compute answers to questions about many other kinds of topics (cooking, people, economics, etc.). ”
\n[18:16] me: see, this is too vague\\
\n[18:16] fakalin: you’re too vague
\n[18:16] me: i guess i’ll have to wait for it to resurrect
\n[18:16] me: and try myself
\n[18:16] fakalin: keep trying
\n[18:16] fakalin: it just came out yesterday
\n[18:16] fakalin: sometimes it works
\n[18:17] me: haha
\n[18:18] me: i’d like to see ONE example where something non trivial in a non-scientific field is “computed”
\n[18:21] me: ok
\n[18:22] me: anagrams
\n[18:22] me: that’s one example i guess
\n[18:22] fakalin: lol what
\n[18:22] me: and maybe decoding stuff
\n[18:22] fakalin: what are you blathering about
\n[18:22] me: an example of computing a non scientific topic
\n[18:22] fakalin: who cares about that
\n[18:22] fakalin: you and your straw men
\n[18:22] me: lol
\n[18:22] fakalin: unit conversions nigga
\n[18:23] me: that’s mat
\n[18:23] me: math
\n[18:23] fakalin: lol
\n[18:23] fakalin: news flash
\n[18:23] fakalin: computers can do math
\n[18:23] me: dude, i know that
\n[18:23] me: that’s mathematica
\n[18:23] me: i’m trying to figure out how this wolframalpha is new
\n[18:23] fakalin: simple
\n[18:23] me: the thing is, if you know the word “anagram”, you can find an anagramming tool
\n[18:23] fakalin: find a website on the internet like it
\n[18:24] me: sure, it’s more convenient
\n[18:24] me: but it’s not a one stop shop
\n[18:24] me: which google is
\n[18:24] me: like i said, you can find an “anagramming” tool
\n[18:24] me: if you want to do anagrams
\n[18:24] me: same with just about any other “tagged” computation type
\n[18:25] me: it’d be more interesting if wolfram alpha computes things for which tools haven’t been built ….
\n[18:25] me: this is a bit problematic
\n[18:26] me: see, google can work because everybody writes in some language it indexes
\n[18:26] me: however, on the web, people do not write computational tools solely in mathematica
\n[18:26] me: if they did, then wolfram alpha can just glom onto all of those
\n[18:26] me: but as is, they only have wolfram researchers to write stuff
\n[18:30] fakalin: lol
\n[18:30] me: you see my point though, right?
\n[18:31] fakalin: that wolfram alpha just packages things together and offers nothing new?
\n[18:31] fakalin: could say the same about google
\n[18:31] fakalin: you just like shitting on new things
\n[18:31] fakalin: communist hates change
\n[18:32] me: i’m saying wolfram alpha is like yahoo
\n[18:32] me: unlike google
\n[18:33] fakalin: except yahoo sux
\n[18:33] fakalin: lolzz
\n[18:33] me: my point is, they depend on experts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[18:01] fakalin: hey [18:01] fakalin: did you try wolfram alpha [18:02] me: waht [18:02] fakalin: what [18:02] fakalin: jeez you’re out of touch [18:02] fakalin: http:\/\/www.wolframalpha.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[838,839,837,840,336,836,843,841,842,1847],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-article-18","tag-expert-systems","tag-human-genome","tag-lol","tag-math","tag-natural-language-queries","tag-non","tag-sql","tag-web","tag-wolfram"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.yhuang.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}