4 ms·

I think it's important to note that many queries on Wolfram Alpha are VERY heavyweight--I've had complex calculations and rendering take 30 seconds to a minute

I think it's important to note that many queries on Wolfram Alpha are VERY heavyweight--I've had complex calculations and rendering take 30 seconds to a minute to finish. It's not like Google where a query get a result in a few milliseconds. So while Terminology is not likely to be querying it with lots of formulas, I think the policy exists so a badly thought out automated querier can't accidentally put a huge load on Wolfram's engine.

troels 16y ago
I really don't think that is the case.
- troels 16y ago
  Just to qualify that, since apparently it wasn't clear. If their site is that prone to dos'ing, they would probably use something other than a tos to protect it with.
steveklabnik 16y ago
There's an easy technical solution to this: just block the freaking querier. Also, if they didn't render a result as an image, maybe it wouldn't take so freaking long...
- malnourish 16y ago
  Now, I am probably wrong but am asking this due to curiosity. Could they conceivably use HTML5 to render dynamically thus reducing resource/load cost? Edit: No to Now
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    I hope they don't try to sue me for this post. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+%2B+5 (oh noes!) gives an image containing '7'. They could just freaking put a 7. Granted, not all of their queries could be done this way, and some of those could indeed be done with canvas, for example. Dunno if those would be faster. But all of the numbers and tables could stand to just be numbers and tables. This is more of a gripe about copy/paste than performance, really: I'd imagine their calculations take a lot longer than making a .png
    - yesimahuman 16y ago
      Maybe it's a guard against common scraping?
    - malnourish 16y ago
      Makes sense. What if they output in LaTeX for more complex things, and there was a LaTeX plugin for browsers?
      - 27182818284 16y ago
        I've seen Chrome plugins and I know there are Greasemonkey scripts for automatically LaTeXing plain text on web pages. I don't think this is a viable solution for W|A, however.
      - imrehg 16y ago
        MathJax for the win :)
  - ars 16y ago
    The rendering is not the hard part - the mathematical calculation is.
- foljs 16y ago
  > Also, if they didn't render a result as an image, maybe it wouldn't take so freaking long... Parent got upvotes? Isn't HN is supposedly populated by technical people? Rendering the result as an image is trivial and fast in a modern server. I very seriously doubt this is the problem, instead of doing all the symbolic mathematical calculations in the first place... And, of course, the reason to render the result as an image is to have a consistent cross-(legacy)browser support for mathematical notation. Wikipedia renders mathematical formulas as embedded images too. No other solution (from MathML to Flash/Canvas etc renderers) is as widely supported (and none is as complete as Mathematica's math rendering engine).

troels 16y ago

I really don't think that is the case.

troels 16y ago
Just to qualify that, since apparently it wasn't clear. If their site is that prone to dos'ing, they would probably use something other than a tos to protect it with.

steveklabnik 16y ago

There's an easy technical solution to this: just block the freaking querier. Also, if they didn't render a result as an image, maybe it wouldn't take so freaking long...

malnourish 16y ago
Now, I am probably wrong but am asking this due to curiosity. Could they conceivably use HTML5 to render dynamically thus reducing resource/load cost? Edit: No to Now
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  I hope they don't try to sue me for this post. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+%2B+5 (oh noes!) gives an image containing '7'. They could just freaking put a 7. Granted, not all of their queries could be done this way, and some of those could indeed be done with canvas, for example. Dunno if those would be faster. But all of the numbers and tables could stand to just be numbers and tables. This is more of a gripe about copy/paste than performance, really: I'd imagine their calculations take a lot longer than making a .png
  - yesimahuman 16y ago
    Maybe it's a guard against common scraping?
  - malnourish 16y ago
    Makes sense. What if they output in LaTeX for more complex things, and there was a LaTeX plugin for browsers?
    - 27182818284 16y ago
      I've seen Chrome plugins and I know there are Greasemonkey scripts for automatically LaTeXing plain text on web pages. I don't think this is a viable solution for W|A, however.
    - imrehg 16y ago
      MathJax for the win :)
- ars 16y ago
  The rendering is not the hard part - the mathematical calculation is.
foljs 16y ago
> Also, if they didn't render a result as an image, maybe it wouldn't take so freaking long... Parent got upvotes? Isn't HN is supposedly populated by technical people? Rendering the result as an image is trivial and fast in a modern server. I very seriously doubt this is the problem, instead of doing all the symbolic mathematical calculations in the first place... And, of course, the reason to render the result as an image is to have a consistent cross-(legacy)browser support for mathematical notation. Wikipedia renders mathematical formulas as embedded images too. No other solution (from MathML to Flash/Canvas etc renderers) is as widely supported (and none is as complete as Mathematica's math rendering engine).