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Archive for December, 2009

Computational Journalism – Already Here but Not Obviously So

Posted in Computers, computer science, data mining, decision theory, journalism, tagged , , , , on December 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

In my early discussions and presentations regarding Wolfram|Alpha I often used Computational Journalism as the initial non-engineering use case.   Most folks weren’t quite sure what I meant initially by Computational Journalism until I explained how, as a toe in the water step, one could easily and automatically enhance articles and features with generated knowledge and [...]

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Death and Taxes – a What Is Man Follow Up

Posted in analysis of behavior, taxes, tagged , , , , , , on December 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

This article on estate taxes came across my email inbox today, from WSJ: Under current laws in effect until the end of this year, the size of the exemption is $3.5 million per individual or up to $7 million per couple. The tax is slated to disappear entirely on Jan 1. But estate planning in [...]

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What is Man?

Posted in analysis of behavior, anthropology, brain, human rights, science, truth, tagged , , , , on December 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

This question, and its variants, might be the most common question asked in literature, storytelling, laws, history and philosophy (less so in daily conversations!).  This question defies an answer not because it is too complicated or out of our reach.  There is no such thing as Man (with a capital “M”), so the question is [...]

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Op-Ed Calling for Search Neutrality is Grossly Unimaginative

Posted in advertising, business strategy, google, tagged , , , on December 29, 2009 | 1 Comment »

As Google grows bigger and deeper the op-eds and various critics are calling for hard core scrutiny and even regulation. The latest piece I’ve come across is this rather drab call for “search neutrality” in the New York Times. Without search neutrality rules to constrain Google’s competitive advantage, we may be heading toward a bleakly [...]

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Facebook Infrastructure – Number of Servers @Facebook and more

Posted in business strategy, computation, computer science, data mining, social networks, software, tagged , , , , on December 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

If been asked many times about the size of Facebook’s infrastructure.  Folks love to get a gauge of how much hardware/bandwidth is required to run high trafficked sites. Here’s a recent report of the set up. Read the details there.  In short, 30,000 or so servers with tons of optimizations to networking, mysql, PHP, web [...]

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Are Insurgencies Predictable?

Posted in analysis of behavior, decision theory, science, war, tagged , , , , on December 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Seemingly random attacks and a shadowy, mysterious enemy are the hallmarks of insurgent wars, such as those being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many social scientists, as well as the military, hold that, like conventional civil wars, these conflicts can’t be understood without considering local factors such as geography and politics. But a mathematical model [...]

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Interesting / Fun on Cantor’s Diagonalization Proof

Posted in education, mathematics, tagged , , , , , on December 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

I really like this post on Good Math, Bad Math. Beyond being mildly humorous in that cranky math person non-funny kinda way, it touches on lots of my favorite subjects: enumeration, Cantor, classic proofs, cranky math people. The catch – and it’s a huge catch – is that the tree defines a representation, not an [...]

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Software and Media Company Formula for Keeping It Real

Posted in business strategy, data mining, decision theory, economics, tagged , , , , , , , on December 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

I find simple equations sometimes help frame an opportunity. In the case of software and media companies I have a very basic formula to gauge an opportunity that goes something like this… M = Maximum possible number of users (consumers or members) a business could capture if they had 100% of the market C = [...]

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