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Does it add up to more than a hill of beans?

Michael Pincher

I've just sat in front of Wolfram - the new computational knowledge engine. It took twenty minutes to find a reasonable use for me. I'm a Scrabble nut - it's got a good anagram finder for a possible seven letter word from the tiles you're holding - Byron Newman Beware!

For the techie it can get information about an IP address or a URL, find a port assignment, compute a data transfer time, look up a Unicode character, compute display characteristics from pixel count as well as a host of other useful stuff from Demographic stats to Astrophysics.

It's answer to the tongue twister "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?" was a reasonable "A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood."

And to "How many strings to my bow"?

|  b  |  m  |  o  |  w  |  y  |   bebo  |  my  |  ow  |  y   |   bo  |  bow  |  my   |  y b  |   bow  |  my b  |  y do  |  my do  |  y bow  |  my bow

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Comments (1)

Rebecca Froley:

I like your style! And, indeed, Wolfram's. Reminds me of the pre-programmed responses to clever-clogs questions in old Infocom games... Not sure how it got 'bebo' or 'do' as strings from 'my bow' though...

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on May 18, 2009 11:40 AM.

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