If that subject makes you want to run for the hills, then you and I can hang out.
Another way to look at it is that we need people like Stephen Wolfram around.
Here’s his latest project. Plug in stuff and get stuff back.
[Link found on boingboing]
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It isn’t the computation that’s interesting here, but rather the parsing of the input. Once you know what the user wants, calculating (for instance) what mph equals 50 kph is trivial. I tried a bunch of inputs, and got mixed results. Sometimes the engine is great at guessing what the input means, other times not so much. For instance, I tried variations on the “standard lapse rate of temperature by altitude” and kept getting “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” It’s a clever ap, but of course not fully cooked. Much better than Ask Jeeves, anyway.