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New Company Seeks to Bring Semantic Context To Numbers
A new company, True#, is seeking to bring extensive semantic context to numbers to give them obvious meanings just as certain words have obvious meanings to most readers. "Most of us can probably recognize 3.14159 and the conceptual baggage it carries, but how many of us would recognize 58.44? (That's a mole of sodium chloride, in grams, for the curious.) And the response that would work for words — look it up — doesn't work so conveniently for numbers. Only one of the top-10 hits in Google refers to salt, and Bing fails entirely (though it does offer 'Women's Sexy Mini Skirts by VENUS'). Clearly, we haven't figured out how to make the Web work for numbers in the same way it does for words."
1337 returns EXACTLY what I expected.
...it returns "number of years it will take before True# turns a profit."
I'm seriously confused how many companies will jump at this -- and why someone like Google won't just do it for free? Couldn't you use Google Base for something like this?
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Only one of the top-10 hits in Google refers to salt, and Bing fails entirely (though it does offer "Women's Sexy Mini Skirts by VENUS").
Bing seems far superior to my hormon^W^Wme.
So, put in the (numerical) answer and it gives you the question?
Thank God Douglass Adams didn't know about this.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
For the number 420, Wikipedia's Cannabis information page comes up #1 in both google and bing.
1. Eleventeen
2. 867-5309
3. 451
4. 1999
5. a gazillion
6. THIS MANY (holding up three fingers)
7. infinity minus one
8. approximately
9. 9/11 (may already be taken)
10. Top ten
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
When I searched "1234" on google and bing, the top results are about that Feist song. Thank goodness it doesn't mention anything about it being my root admin password and my luggage combination--hey! Where did my bag go? It was just here, and why is there a sudden spike in my internet tra#%^W&*s%!$AF{:
---[CONNECTION LOST]---
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Maybe Bing learns from previous searches.
...by google!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The weight of a mole of sodium varies by location. In most of the universe the weight of anything is almost zero.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm sure you've heard the one about the linguist who was walking across campus with his girlfriend when they saw six descriptivists beating up a prescriptivist. She turned to him in horror and asked, "Aren't you going to help?"
"No," he replied, "I think six is enough."
Wolphram Alpha calls it 58.4
so much for significant figures.
You only get significant figures from significant search engines.