8 ms·

One of the differentiating factors of Wolfram|Alpha: Gone. Google's doesn't require a 250mb plugin to become interactive (just a webgl capable browser...). And

by sceaj 14y ago

One of the differentiating factors of Wolfram|Alpha: Gone. Google's doesn't require a 250mb plugin to become interactive (just a webgl capable browser...). And it seems to be about 8 times faster than W|A... W|A still does a lot of things other sites don't do, but it tends to be unusably slow, and inconsistent (running same query twice in a row will sometimes not give all of the same results). I figure the end is probably closer than one might expect for W|A. They don't seem to be moving quick enough to stay infront of the curve forever. Also, the site is becoming littered with obtrusive ads, and that's a pretty negative experience. (I also hear Wolfram's company may be struggling.) This should have been praise for Google's new tool, but it turned into a rant on Wolfram|Alpha... whoops.

smackfu 14y ago
Of course, since this is a Google result, it can just fail and say "3D charts require a web browser and system that support WebGL." Which is super useful to me.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I can't tell if you're being sarcastic about it being super useful. If you are, it seems easier still to download Chrome to do a 3d render then it is to buy WA pro and download an apparently enormous plugin to do the same render
  - nkassis 14y ago
    He might mean that this computer doesn't have a card/driver combo capable of running WebGL. This is actually fairly common from test Mozilla has carried out. Successfull WebGL context creation on Windows were bellow 70% (can't find the actual page with the real numbers right now). But Chrome now supports software rendering through swiftshaders which should help those people. I for one agree with you, even with the issue of webgl capable hardware is much better than having to deal with huge plugins. (I'm biased, I use WebGL for my current work).
    - drivebyacct2 14y ago
      I simply didn't understand. His post doesn't say anything about WebGL not being supported by his GPU specifically, though obviously that's a problem. I guess I don't know what he wants? Yes, if your browser and system isn't supported... what do you want? Do we expect Google to have to support every user, for every nonessential, nonrevenue-producing feature? Maybe I'm just missing something, but it seems I was punished for asking.
      - zokier 14y ago
        You were making unfounded assumptions (that enabling WebGL would be as trivial as installing Chrome) and at the same time ignored the fact that you get highly useful results from WA without any plugins or bleeding-edge tech. Having good fallbacks is important.
        drivebyacct2 14y ago
        Yikes. A lot of 'you' accusations there. >You were making unfounded assumptions (that enabling WebGL would be as trivial as installing Chrome) No, I made the point that installing Chrome is trivial and the message explicitly states that your system simply might not be capable. If that's the case, what is Google supposed to do? Just render an empty grid and make a "whah-wha" noise? >at the same time ignored the fact that you get highly useful results from WA without any plugins or bleeding-edge tech No I didn't. At all. I am not saying this is an "answer" or a competitor to WolframAlpha. This is a trivial feature that was thrown in. It's non-essential and I bet you'll never ever see Google pushing a browser plugin on any of their sites save for some existing exceptions (Talk). As you've noted, there are tons of places to go besides Google for a 3d graph. >Having good fallbacks is important. When it doesn't require confusing your user, or compromising standards to ask them to install a gargantuan plugin. edit: If the whole point of this was merely to clean up the error message or simply suppress it on unsupported browsers, then sure, but like I said, I genuinely just didn't understand the sarcasm, my apologies.
        Steko 14y ago
  - zargon 14y ago
    Ironically, I was using Chrome and got that error. Then I tried Firefox and it worked.
    - Achshar 14y ago
      its because in chrome webgl is currently disabled by default. you can turn it on on about:flgs IIRC. or try any other release channel. It worked for me in canary.
- hereonbusiness 14y ago
  I get the same using Chrome. It seems that there is no support for ATI/AMD cards on Linux: https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1220892 https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an... Firefox (11) has no such issues and renders just fine for me.
zanny 14y ago
Competition is good for both parties. Wolfram Alpha challenged Google to rethink what people search for to some degree, and Google's rigored performance should challenge Wolfram Alpha to become more performance aware and prevent them from taking too many features "premium". And in the end, it is a win / win for users. I am always happy when the insanely smart people at Google have hard things to implement like this than how to integrate the posts of my friends on Google+ into my search results for a unicode table.
- rbarooah 14y ago
  It's only a win-win if it doesn't do too much damage to wolfram alpha, although I guess if Google pushes too hard it will drive Wolfram to try to integrate more and more into Apple's ecosystem.
fferen 14y ago
Wolfram Alpha also seems to bail out when a mathematical expression exceeds a certain complexity, which makes it fairly useless for the only thing I want to use it for - evaluating hairy integrals and other long expressions. Or worse, it just "interprets" it as a part of my original expression and calculates that, as if I just typed out the rest of it because I enjoy typing random symbols. It seems like such a waste to fire up Mathematica every time but I haven't found any comparable online tools. I think W|A could have been a great tool for this kind of thing but instead it tried to cover every subject instead of doing one thing well.
- troyastorino 14y ago
  If you just type in the expression as Mathematica code, doesn't Wolfram Alpha evaluate it just as Mathematica would?
  - JoachimSchipper 14y ago
    Yes, but it times out rather quickly. Mathematica is much more powerful. (For those interested: the relevant syntax is Integrate[x^2, x] or Integrate[x^2, {x, 0, 1}] You can find more Mathematica at http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/Mathematica.html http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/Mathematica.h...; searching the Mathematica docs is often easier than figuring out which textual query Wolfram|Alpha understands.)
  - lemen 14y ago
    No not always. I've tried several times, but W|A pipes the input first trough the natural language processor. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=DateListPlot[++WeatherData[{%22NewYork%22%2C+%22NewYork%22%2C+%22UnitedStates%22}%2C++++%22Temperature%22%2C+{{2012%2C+3%2C+29}%2C+{2012%2C+3%2C+30}%2C+All}]%2C+Joined+-%3E+True http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=DateListPlot[++WeatherD...]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Karunamon 14y ago
The nail in the coffin for me on W|A was requiring a login in order to copy plain text results. (Even though the same data is copyable in the DOM, they actually go out of their way to obscure it!) I don't think people understand how noxious this registration-obession is, especially when you need utilize it to access basic functionality. I don't really go to W|A anymore unless there's something specifically math or statistics related that I'm looking for. That action killed any kind of casual use for me.

by sceaj 14y ago

smackfu 14y ago

Of course, since this is a Google result, it can just fail and say "3D charts require a web browser and system that support WebGL." Which is super useful to me.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic about it being super useful. If you are, it seems easier still to download Chrome to do a 3d render then it is to buy WA pro and download an apparently enormous plugin to do the same render
- nkassis 14y ago
  He might mean that this computer doesn't have a card/driver combo capable of running WebGL. This is actually fairly common from test Mozilla has carried out. Successfull WebGL context creation on Windows were bellow 70% (can't find the actual page with the real numbers right now). But Chrome now supports software rendering through swiftshaders which should help those people. I for one agree with you, even with the issue of webgl capable hardware is much better than having to deal with huge plugins. (I'm biased, I use WebGL for my current work).
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    I simply didn't understand. His post doesn't say anything about WebGL not being supported by his GPU specifically, though obviously that's a problem. I guess I don't know what he wants? Yes, if your browser and system isn't supported... what do you want? Do we expect Google to have to support every user, for every nonessential, nonrevenue-producing feature? Maybe I'm just missing something, but it seems I was punished for asking.
    - zokier 14y ago
      You were making unfounded assumptions (that enabling WebGL would be as trivial as installing Chrome) and at the same time ignored the fact that you get highly useful results from WA without any plugins or bleeding-edge tech. Having good fallbacks is important.
      - drivebyacct2 14y ago
        Yikes. A lot of 'you' accusations there. >You were making unfounded assumptions (that enabling WebGL would be as trivial as installing Chrome) No, I made the point that installing Chrome is trivial and the message explicitly states that your system simply might not be capable. If that's the case, what is Google supposed to do? Just render an empty grid and make a "whah-wha" noise? >at the same time ignored the fact that you get highly useful results from WA without any plugins or bleeding-edge tech No I didn't. At all. I am not saying this is an "answer" or a competitor to WolframAlpha. This is a trivial feature that was thrown in. It's non-essential and I bet you'll never ever see Google pushing a browser plugin on any of their sites save for some existing exceptions (Talk). As you've noted, there are tons of places to go besides Google for a 3d graph. >Having good fallbacks is important. When it doesn't require confusing your user, or compromising standards to ask them to install a gargantuan plugin. edit: If the whole point of this was merely to clean up the error message or simply suppress it on unsupported browsers, then sure, but like I said, I genuinely just didn't understand the sarcasm, my apologies.
        Steko 14y ago
- zargon 14y ago
  Ironically, I was using Chrome and got that error. Then I tried Firefox and it worked.
  - Achshar 14y ago
    its because in chrome webgl is currently disabled by default. you can turn it on on about:flgs IIRC. or try any other release channel. It worked for me in canary.
hereonbusiness 14y ago
I get the same using Chrome. It seems that there is no support for ATI/AMD cards on Linux: https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1220892 https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an... Firefox (11) has no such issues and renders just fine for me.

zanny 14y ago

Competition is good for both parties. Wolfram Alpha challenged Google to rethink what people search for to some degree, and Google's rigored performance should challenge Wolfram Alpha to become more performance aware and prevent them from taking too many features "premium". And in the end, it is a win / win for users. I am always happy when the insanely smart people at Google have hard things to implement like this than how to integrate the posts of my friends on Google+ into my search results for a unicode table.

rbarooah 14y ago
It's only a win-win if it doesn't do too much damage to wolfram alpha, although I guess if Google pushes too hard it will drive Wolfram to try to integrate more and more into Apple's ecosystem.

fferen 14y ago

Wolfram Alpha also seems to bail out when a mathematical expression exceeds a certain complexity, which makes it fairly useless for the only thing I want to use it for - evaluating hairy integrals and other long expressions. Or worse, it just "interprets" it as a part of my original expression and calculates that, as if I just typed out the rest of it because I enjoy typing random symbols. It seems like such a waste to fire up Mathematica every time but I haven't found any comparable online tools. I think W|A could have been a great tool for this kind of thing but instead it tried to cover every subject instead of doing one thing well.

troyastorino 14y ago
If you just type in the expression as Mathematica code, doesn't Wolfram Alpha evaluate it just as Mathematica would?
- JoachimSchipper 14y ago
  Yes, but it times out rather quickly. Mathematica is much more powerful. (For those interested: the relevant syntax is Integrate[x^2, x] or Integrate[x^2, {x, 0, 1}] You can find more Mathematica at http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/Mathematica.html http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/Mathematica.h...; searching the Mathematica docs is often easier than figuring out which textual query Wolfram|Alpha understands.)
- lemen 14y ago
  No not always. I've tried several times, but W|A pipes the input first trough the natural language processor. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=DateListPlot[++WeatherData[{%22NewYork%22%2C+%22NewYork%22%2C+%22UnitedStates%22}%2C++++%22Temperature%22%2C+{{2012%2C+3%2C+29}%2C+{2012%2C+3%2C+30}%2C+All}]%2C+Joined+-%3E+True http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=DateListPlot[++WeatherD...]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Karunamon 14y ago

The nail in the coffin for me on W|A was requiring a login in order to copy plain text results. (Even though the same data is copyable in the DOM, they actually go out of their way to obscure it!) I don't think people understand how noxious this registration-obession is, especially when you need utilize it to access basic functionality. I don't really go to W|A anymore unless there's something specifically math or statistics related that I'm looking for. That action killed any kind of casual use for me.