Test Driving the Wolfram Alpha

SilverMind writes in to note a blog entry at Byte Size Biology describing in detail a few hours spent with Wolfram Alpha (which we have discussed before). "After playing around with Wolfram Alpha for a few hours, I can safely say the following: it's different, it's incomplete, it's idiosyncratic, and it's funky cool. And no, it will not dethrone Google, nor does it aim to do so."

Comments

Needs a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell am I supposed to "Wolfram Alpha" something? No one will ever say that.

Re:Needs a better name

[Anonymous Coward]

A suitable portmanteau may emerge. Wolfa? Walpha? Wralph?

Which Wolfram Alpha

[russotto]

Is it Wolfram Alpha V, or Wolfram Alpha VI? That's vitally important!

Re:Which Wolfram Alpha

[h4rdc0d3]

It is a reference to a pair of planets named in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Seti Alpha V and Seti Alpha VI.

I won't explain any more in case you have not seen the movie, though if you haven't, what are you doing in here? How did you get past security? ;)

Re:Video of Alpha in action

[Hurricane78]

Use Qalculate!, and define your own units. :)

Oh, and remember to define "B" as byte and "b" as bit, or you might end up with somethingsomething megabarns of memory. ^^

Re:Not A Search Engine

[Hurricane78]

For those of you who aren't gonna RTFA, I would like to...

tl;dr. ;)

Alpha?

[Znooptree]

When Google get their hands on this, it will be Wolfram Beta forever.

Ruby does this already...

[jonaskoelker]

Ruby can do this already:

$ echo 'printf("%d\n", (6*9).to_s(13));' | ruby

Re:Video of Alpha in action

[abundance]

I'm from Italy and I can report that youtube has not yet implemented rickroll protection for my country