naked capitalism

dearieme says:

The Goldman sob story tweaks the old heart-strings, eh? Poor wee lambs. What better use for mountains of taxpayers’ cash?

Dan Duncan says:

On Wolfram and Google:

Wolfram Alpha comes from the same guy who in 2003 said he was “going to revolutionize science”. In fact, his “seminal” work was humbly called, “A New Kind Of Science”.

Extraordinary claims of “changing everything” appear to be quite ordinary when coming from Stephen Wolfram.

Yes, WA appears to be an impressive achievement, but even the article itself expressly asserts that WA is “not a threat to Google”. [It's about 2/3 in to the article. Can't miss it.]

Even beyond the “fact” that this answer engine won’t be of much use in a fuzzy search—like “What’s the best place for a honeymoon”…it has a real problem because the notion of “fact” is itself very fuzzy and quite slippery.

Personally, I think Google is the most over-rated over-hyped piece of garbage on the planet. I’d love to see a new standard…but it’s not going to be from WA.

Google is overrun with advertisers. It’s like watching network television with 3 minutes of programming and 27 minutes of commercials.

If you want to see a potentially compelling alternative to Google then check out http://www.kosmix.com. This is a site that makes sense and in many ways is already superior to google. And it’s young, so it’s more interested in providing a compelling content/info, than in milking affiliate advertising.

Walker says:

Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big TechCrunch (hat tip Ed). If this works, it is a major threat to Google. Stay tuned.

This is likely to be crap. It has already been discussed on Ars Technica.

As a poster above said, Wolfram burnt a lot of credibility on A New Kind of Science. He overhyped it as this breakthrough in science and mathematics. The reviews where brutal. The AMS said that it was more Baghavad Gita than Principia. Another review said “A New Kind of Science has interesting and new ideas. Unfortunately, everything that it is interesting is not new, and everything that is new is not interesting.”

Speaking of the poster above…

Google is overrun with advertisers. It’s like watching network television with 3 minutes of programming and 27 minutes of commercials.

Except that on a TV, advertising cannot be ignored and actually detracts from your “productivity” (e.g. time watching TV). Do you honestly feel that the advertising on Google is intrusive enough that it affects your search productivity?

Anonymous says:

“If this works, it is a major threat to Google. Stay tuned.

If you’re going to comment you might want to read the article first.

artichoke says:

From the G20 pre-meeting, the Europeans are beating on the Americans to keep bailing out the “American” banks.

It’s true Americans are in no position to borrow. So we wonder “why bail them out”?

But the Europeans and Asians don’t have it as bad as we do. Life is normal in China. Life is pretty normal in Germany. People are not really losing jobs. People are not up to their eyeballs in debt. People are ready to borrow and spend.

They want our banks to lend them the money on good terms. They want us to bail out our banks so they can use them.

Don says:

From Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/innovationNews/idUSTRE52G0L120090317?sp=true

“(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) is asking investors in its $15 billion private equity fund for approval to shift much of its remaining uninvested money into distressed debt, the Financial Times reported on its website late on Monday.”

And:

“In recent months, many private equity firms have quietly shifted their focus to buying debt at a discount as they are unable to pay for acquisitions with cheap flexible debt as they could during the boom years, according to the paper.”

I wonder how they can do that?

Don the libertarian Democrat

MyLessThanPrimeBeef says:

Say you and your Japanese robot (or should that be robotess? Any feminists here?) made love last night. So, that becomes an indisputable ‘fact.’ Now, I would be interested in how Wolfram Alpha’s gadget of new science would handle a factual query to the robotess such as, ‘Do you really love me?’

Better yet, I would really be curious about its response to ‘That was just a one night stand. Nothing more. Now, please leave me alone. Don’t block the door. Let me go!!!!’

Moopheus says:

said Janet Hanson, … “No one saw the entire thing collapsing.”

Wow. So basically GS employees ran their personal finances the way they ran the business. Using this year’s bonus to pay the taxes on last year’s bonus? And then they end it with “hoocoodanode?” Yeesh. And we’re supposed to believe these folks had some kind of talent that was justifying the bonuses? They wanted us to trust them with OUR money? F that. I freelance, and when I get a check from a client, part of it goes right into a separate account for taxes, as soon as I deposit it. If these geniuses couldn’t figure out how to do that, then what the hell are we bailing them out for?

donna says:

Oh, and we were doing natural language and expert systems in the early 80s. Yeah, it’s old stuff. Fun to see the kids picking up on this stuff again, though.

The fun part is combining it with Mathematica — that could be cool.

Who knows, someone is eventually going to get expert systems right. Unlike those idiots on Wall Street. ;^)

brushes9 says:

donna,

Thanks for pointing out ad-blocking add-ons.

But, how does AI weigh competing noun-verb input in human discourse to approximate the role human emotions (feelings) play in this process called life?

Emotion is at the basis of meaning, not logic.

This failure by AI researchers is why AI has barely moved an inch since the 1980’s.

Show me a computer that can bleed and you may peak my interest in AI.

But, my heart goes out to all the spin-off technology that AI research has produced.

Now, can you make the diabetic, check-out stiff running the cash register at the local box-store obsolete to really get this party started..:)?

ruetheday says:

Now it turns out that 11 of the AIG folks receiving RETENTION bonuses no longer even work for AIG. What a crock.

Yves Smith says:

Folks, I said “if it works” re Wolfram, which is a big caveat. Second, the article itself says that it expects Google to be surprised by Wolfram Alpha.

I have been hired often to advise on tech deals even though I am not a technologist. One thing I find almost without exception is tech people are not good at judging how mere mortals will react to a new product. They project what they think is cool or useful, and have a lot of trouble identifying with normal Joe and Jane users.

The operative paragraph is here:

I think the folks at Google will be surprised by Wolfram Alpha, and they will probably want to own it, but not because it risks cutting into their core search engine traffic. Instead, it will be because it opens up an entirely new field of potential traffic around questions, answers and computations that you can’t do on Google today.

I don’t agree with that assessment, and I use Google a lot. Yes, it will increase the “market” for searches. But IF this tool does what it says, I would do a considerable portion of searches I now do on Google on Wolfram. It’s naive to think this is primarily additive. Google is very hit or miss, I find it either delivers what you want on the first page or two or is useless.

But the caveat is IF this tech delivers on its promises, and I made that caveat.

Anonymous says:

Cat’s and dogs lay down together! Surely this is a sign of the end!

Cathryn Mataga says:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvEkXJ0kxpA