Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2012
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NAE Names 2012 Draper, Gordon Prize Winners
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
From Schneier on Security
The Continued Militarization of the U.S. Police
The state of Texas gets an armed PT boat.
I guess armed drones weren't enough for them.
From Wild WebMink
This TED video from Clay Shirky is a clear, accessible and compelling explanation of what’s wrong with SOPA and PIPA and why the fight won’t be if we either defeat them (another bill will be proposed) or neuter them and they…
From Schneier on Security
<i>The Onion</i> on Facebook
Funny news video on Facebook and the CIA.
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Second Economy: a Neural Model
Aspen Root Systems and a neural system for a second economy. By W Brian Arthur, who we worked with at the Santa Fe Institute and applied in the enterprise. It is all about better understanding complexity. Many real world…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Algorithms That Changed the Future
Being a long time practitioner of the practice of developing and applying algorithms, I found this book to be very interesting: Nine Algorithms that Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas that Drive Today's Computers. by…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Turbo Tax Goes Mobile
Intuit reports that their flagship Turbo Tax package, which I have used for years, is now available on iPhone, iPad and Android. The package can be used to both prepare and file taxes. Nice development as we increasingly go…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Odor Destroying Robotics
In IEEE Spectrum: An interesting idea. Deoderants for the home applied by autonomous agents? Over complicating the idea, but worth understanding. Perhaps in retail applications.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Managing Brand and Corporate Reputation
A conversation reminded me again of the company Neputation, who's technical people I had the chance to talk to recently. Impressive methods being used to address the problem, beyond just doing lots of Web searches. at the marketing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Air Force Social Radar
The idea of air force social radar sounds much like neuromarketing efforts underway today, but some more seriousness involved. Reading minds all the way down to the intent level is still some time away. Thoughts like those…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Surgical Robots, Sensor Wristbands Advancing Health, Energy
Over the last year, we’ve described many opportunities at the intersection of computing and healthcare as well as computing and sustainability — and there are a couple great examples in the press this week. Researchers at the…
From Schneier on Security
Using False Alarms to Disable Security
I wrote about this technique in Beyond Fear:
Beginning Sunday evening, the robbers intentionally set off the gallery's alarm system several times without entering the building, according to police. The security staffers on…From Wild WebMink
SOPA, PIPA and Open Source
SOPA and PIPA, the poorly conceived draft legislation currently being considered in the USA, sparked a worldwide protest yesterday. I think they would also be bad for open source, and I explain why over on ComputerWorldUK.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wolfram Educational Portal
The Beta of the Wolfram Educational Portal has been released. Great effort. " ... We are happy to announce the launch of the free Beta version of the Wolfram Education Portal. The portal comes equipped with a dynamic and interactive…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Two New Imagine Cup Challenges for 2012
The Imagine Cup just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Today two more challenges were announced via the Imagine Cup blog (Microsoft Announces Windows Metro Style App and Kinect Fun Labs Challenges for Imagine Cup 2012). One challenge…
From Wild WebMink
OSI Opposes SOPA and PIPA
I was pleased to be able to send OSI’s sign-on to the civil society letter protesting the bad laws being considered by the US legislature at present. You can read more about it on my OSI blog.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cool BI Innovations
In TDWI: Some expected examples that are worth reviewing. I think much more can be said here. Some of the innovations will take considerable evolving to be useful.
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Past and Future
Some notes on AI, Past and Future, in the ACM. Another favorite topic. Most recently I have seen some of the IBM Watson work, which nicely brings expertise based systems back to life.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Gaming
I continue to be intrigued by the use of game dynamics as part of user engagement. Did a number of related projects in the enterprise: Here some further thoughts in Innovation Excellence." ... The Future Of Gaming report presents…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Statement on SOPA and PROTECT IP
This week, as opposing views on the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act, or PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA
From The Eponymous Pickle
Disjunctive Mapping of Consumers
From Informs: A presentation on Advances in understanding human behavior: Disjunctive mapping. Exploring further.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gap Analysis
Good post on the topic by the Burghard Group. " ... Gap Analysis is an assessment tool to help a place (community, region, state) compare its current economic success with its future potential. The summary document prepared…
From Schneier on Security
Tor Opsec
Good operational security guide to Tor.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Consumers Want More Communications from Retailers
Not that much of a surprise, providing the communication is truly useful. " ... according to the IBM Institute for Business Value 2011 Retail Industry Study, released today at the National Retail Federation's NRF Annual Convention…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Marketing via a Virtual Pinboard
A simple and clever approach. Using a virtual pinboard metaphor to market and promote a site. The enabling site is called Pinterest, which I had not heard of before. Key may be to include images that are engaging enough…
From Computational Complexity
How important are the Fib numbers in math? in Nature? In History of Math books?
The following quotes is from In the book Algebra in Ancient and Modern Times by V.S. Varadarajan.
Fibonacci numbers thus grow very fast with N, indeed in geometric progression. This is often called exponential growth. They …From Apophenia
We need to talk about piracy (but we must stop SOPA first)
Much to my happiness, the internets are in a frenzy about the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (aka SOPA). Congress is currently in recess, but the House announced a hearing on the potential impact to the Domain Name Service on January…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Software Quality in the Global Supply Chain
In ECommerce Times: Part of a conversation I have been having recently on supply chain design. How is the right data brought together in the quantities required to support the analytics required? " ... Successful processes…
From The Noisy Channel
Guided Exploration: Faceted Search, Backwards
Information Scent In the early 1990s, PARC researchers Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card developed the theory of information scent (more generally, information foraging) to evaluate user interfaces in terms of how well users can…
From Schneier on Security
The Importance of Good Backups
Thankfully, this doesn't happen very often:
A US man who had been convicted on a second-degree murder charge will get a new trial after a computer virus destroyed transcripts of court proceedings.