You don't get it. For any casual browsing a graph means nothing. But for people putting a powerpoint together or doing hw or doing research this graph is useful. Imagine you get a comparison chart from your query (Google already does this for very very very limited comparison queries). If you get the raw data out of Wolframalpha that's even better. Instead of having a data scientist to write code to get the graph or imputing this into excel or words to get a graph, let WA do it for you. Hey here is another idea for innovators: instead of screenshot a graph but don't we have a graph importer in powerpoint?
We are just looking at 2D plot, there is nothing fancy about this graph but there are more fancy stuff you can build. A graph is a generic term in mathematics and I hope you know that. Why do we go through social graph and knowledge graph? Why not keep them behind a firewall? Why bother building a JS interpreter in Go? If you can build a machine that can compute anything (universal turning machine, well, I know there are NP problems but we can do our best to compute a subset of the computable - approximation), you can do a lot of crazy things. I think WA is nailing down how the future of computing in relation to life is going to be. Ask a question and gives you back the data to you in both representational and raw form.
If somehow we can contribute to WA's modules (we write our custom programs and WA can adopt them by means of marketplace - select to use this module, for example), then we can utilize WA powerful machinery to do our query and benefit the mass. This is where Open Source can make a big difference! Sure APIs are nice but you know, not everyone has time to manage another new website. If we can get paid to write modules and get commission share based on the number of users ... So on top of API, direct module marketplace IMHO is the game changing. This is why I like Google App Script and App Engine.
No you don't get it. It isn't sentient code. This isn't smart code. It's just plain old code that does plain old pattern matching like we've been doing for decades.
It isn't anything that hasn't been done before. It is just more of the same from WA - Hype and bullshit.
How exactly the work that WA is doing going to nail down the future of computing? This is crazy. I'm sick of the hype around WA. It's essentially just a search engine + mathematica at this point.
> It's essentially just a search engine + mathematica at this point.
Yeah and that integration is more than just 1+1. You'd actually think Google's search engine is entirely sentient code. I'd say half of the stuff we build is nothing more than some regex in the bottom and some string matching. You actually think WA is really just a system that understands some NLP and then sends the NLP strings to some Mathematica APIs?
> It isn't anything that hasn't been done before. It is just more of the same from WA - Hype and bullshit.
And half of the shit we see on HN has been done before. Quit your job because there is no innovation there. 90% of the security tool people build are nothing more than some stupid string comparison with some strings in the database. Very few is doing real sentient code.
I see nothing innovating about the way we browse website, the way we interact with technology or the way we build software today. We are still using browser. We are not automating the way we would like to be. Where are all the talking Siri integrated into our home?
WA is very different from Google search.
And if WA is good at dealing mathematical models, just wait and see what one could do with those APIs. You can't do this with Google easily.
sentient
ˈsɛnʃ(ə)nt/Submit
adjective
1. able to perceive or feel things.
From the query "dear google are you sentient?
Big Brother Google becomes sentient at last | RiskHeads
www.riskheads.org/big-brother-google-becomes-sentient-at-last/
by Adam Bishop - in 40 Google+ circles
Oct 25, 2011 - If you try the search above you'll notice you can view the
sources from which Google gleamed the data and also let them know if
they got it right.
Yeah, sure this is cool. We probably can see this from Yelp in a limited way, from twitter or from facbeook. Everyone who work on recommendation algorithm probably have an idea how to implement one. I don't see that being impressive.
We are just looking at 2D plot, there is nothing fancy about this graph but there are more fancy stuff you can build. A graph is a generic term in mathematics and I hope you know that. Why do we go through social graph and knowledge graph? Why not keep them behind a firewall? Why bother building a JS interpreter in Go? If you can build a machine that can compute anything (universal turning machine, well, I know there are NP problems but we can do our best to compute a subset of the computable - approximation), you can do a lot of crazy things. I think WA is nailing down how the future of computing in relation to life is going to be. Ask a question and gives you back the data to you in both representational and raw form.
Here are examples:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Mozilla%3F
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+https%3A%2F%2Fne...
If somehow we can contribute to WA's modules (we write our custom programs and WA can adopt them by means of marketplace - select to use this module, for example), then we can utilize WA powerful machinery to do our query and benefit the mass. This is where Open Source can make a big difference! Sure APIs are nice but you know, not everyone has time to manage another new website. If we can get paid to write modules and get commission share based on the number of users ... So on top of API, direct module marketplace IMHO is the game changing. This is why I like Google App Script and App Engine.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Facebook%3F