2010

This paper in PLoS One is fascinating (if heavily blogged already). Basically, BT let some researchers from MIT, Cornell, UCL, and their own R&D division have an anonymised slice through their call-detail record (CDR) pile, the database from which phone bills are calculated. The scientists filtered out all the numbers that only made or accepted…

Read More an infallible scheme for redesigning Britain

Bérube sez: So these days, when I talk to my scientist friends, I offer them a deal. I say: I’ll admit that you were right about the potential for science studies to go horribly wrong and give fuel to deeply ignorant and/or reactionary people. And in return, you’ll admit that I was right about the…

Read More Back to 2006

Yahoo! might be going to shut down del.icio.us, the link-sharing and bookmarking website it bought back in 2005 or thereabouts. (They might sell it, too.) This is awful – it’s one of the most useful things on the Web and it’s a key link in the production chain for everything I’ve written in the last…

Read More dis.gustin.ng

Oh yes, so the IBM ManyEyes people fixed their computer. I’ve got much more data now – I still need to do the four (key) departments that release in PDF format, and flush the existing stuff to replace the records with ones with standardised dates, but that should give you an idea. Hit the button…

Read More lobby