In fact, the database raises more questions than it answers.

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Earlier this week Google introduced us to its Knowledge Graph, a 500 million plus fact-filled database that it has developed from its own research and its acquisition of MetaWeb Technologies.

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It identified 159 documents that were placed in the production database notwithstanding the fact that it had designated them as privileged.

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In fact, in the USDA nutrient database, instant oatmeal possesses the same nutritional profile as regular or quick-cooking oatmeal.

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Design of the stolen-phone database is complicated by the fact that the carriers use very different cellphone technologies.

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So, Autodesk opted for a customised Systran system which translates search results into French, Spanish, German or Italian. (Support for Japanese is in the works.) By analysing the documents in Autodesk's database, and exploiting the fact that they are written in a consistent style, it was possible to tune the translation system to produce far more accurate results.

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In fact, many companies amass an enormous, searchable database of slides for anyone in the organization to access.

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Mullenweg countered with the fact that all Web applications must either store their database credentials in plain text or keep a plaintext decryption key around somewhere.

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Similarly, what should a patient make of the fact that one of his or her treating physicians appears on the database at all?

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In fact, the New America Foundation where I work has maintained a public database of these attacks since early 2010.

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The problem is that, as Roberta Wohlstetter pointed out half a century ago in her study of Pearl Harbor, separating out the really important signals from all the "noise" in the system is only easy to do after the fact, particularly when the U.S. government has now assembled a database of an astonishing number of 700, 000 individuals it suspects of ties to terrorism.

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The company split itself in two, one half publishing the magazine and the other managing the mainframe database of content that powered the magazine (and eventually, on-screen listings.) Benefitting, perhaps, from the fact that the content of the magazine was highly structured (and repetitive) to begin with, the database part of the company set out to abstract the ongoing production of the listings from their printed form.

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