Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by TweedHeads 6305 days ago
If there is only one answer to one factual question, why not have it already written and available like wikipedia?

Practically speaking, static content that doesn't change often is better served by models like wikipedia.

If Wolfram knows all the answers, write them all in static html for the world to use, search, browse, replicate and extend instead of stored on semantic databases or ethereal brains.

I am not pissing on their parade, I know the scientific work is commendable, but practically speaking it can't compete with more efficient models.

1 comments

> If there is only one answer to one factual question, why not have it already written and available like wikipedia?

Wikipedia isn't all that useful for storing all of the sums of integers.

In other words, you can't enumerate all of the questions that have one answer.

Google 2+2

Not to be a dickhead, I know what you mean.

Questions that involve some kind of processing power can be a good target for Wolfram, but then, how much marketable besides academia?

The answer to the population of X country/city/town = wikipedia, plus more facts you may be interested while doing your research paper.

Maybe I just need 10 different questions/implementations of such service to get it.

Couldn't you just do this:

askwolfram "What are all of the questions that will ever be asked?" | askwolfram "How do I format this answer for wikipedia?" > wikipedia.html