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 Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Skateboards
Great designs..
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Launches Undergraduate Summer Research Listing Site
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is unveiling a new website today allowing researchers to advertise undergraduate summer research positions and students to find such opportunities. These listings will appear from a link…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Do we need patents?
Whenever I suggest that patents are harmful, people point to the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated. Marketing a new drug is a lengthy and expensive process. Moreover, drugs are subject…
From Schneier on Security
Time to Patch Your HP Printers
It's a serious vulnerability. Note that this is the research that was mistakenly reported as allowing hackers to set your printer on fire.
Here's a list of all the printers affected.
From Wild WebMink
MPL v2 As A Force For Unity
Mozilla released a new version of the Mozilla Public License this week. I think it’s a very positive development for open source globally – read why over on ComputerWorldUK.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Kinect for FRC 2012
Tomorrow is the official kickoff for the FIRST Robotics Competition. One of the things that means is that today is a day of workshops at FIRST Place in Manchester NH. I started my day here by presenting a 45 minute workshop on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Planning for Big Data
Good overview. Yes, as the article says, Big data is more than just about analytics. But I believe that everything has an analytical element. In most cases that element resides in the mind of the decision maker, but the leverage…
From Computational Complexity
Starting the Year with Turing
This week I was in Boston for the Joint Math Meeting, a combined meeting of the AMS, MAA and a couple of other three-letter math societies with 7000 of my closest math buddies. This is the main American meeting of mathematicians…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF to Hold Webinar on Smart Health & Wellbeing Program
As we’ve previously reported
From Schneier on Security
Improving the Security of Four-Digit PINs on Cell Phones
The author of this article notices that it's often easy to guess a cell phone PIN because of smudge marks on the screen. Those smudge marks indicate the four PIN digits, so an attacker knows that the PIN is one of 24 possible…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Semantic Rules for Determining Social Interests
In ReadwriteWeb. Google acquires IBM technology that determines personal social interests. Even a flow chart is included. I took a look at a similar idea that leveraged content analysis years ago. It's fun to see where others…
From Wild WebMink
Ask the US President to veto SOPA and PIPA
I know from the statistics that many of the people who read this are in the USA. Apologies to everyone else, but I’d like to ask all my US readers to take a look at the minimalist petition on the White House e-petitions site…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AlixPartners
I was recently introduced to AlixPartners, a group that uses analytical and executive expertise to solves business problems. " ... Our service expertise reaches across four main disciplines:
From Schneier on Security
<i>Liars and Outliers</i> News
The Liars and Outliers webpage is live. On it you can find links to order both paper and e-book copies from a variety of online retailers, and signed copies directly from me. I've also posted the jacket copy, the table of contents…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Computer Scientist Appears on America's Got Talent
Inaccurate stereotypes about what computer scientists look and act like abound. Our students see them in popular media and hear about them from friends and family. The good news is that if we look a little bit we can find a wealth…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictive Trade Planning in the Cloud
Press Release:Unilever Selects DemandTec for Predictive Trade Planning in the Cloud Global consumer goods leader drives more effective retail trade plans with predictive analytics
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
CS & IT 2012
Back in the end of November I posted the call for proposals for the 12th Annual Computer Science & Information Technology Conference. Did you see it? Have you been thinking about a proposal? have you submitted a proposal yet?…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
There’s a
From Schneier on Security
Newly Released Papers from NSA Journals
The papers are old, but they have just been released under FOIA.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Analytic Metrics
A simple view of Google Analytics metrics. Useful guide, especially for beginners in Web analytic methods.
From The Eponymous Pickle
People Centric Sensing
The rise of people-centric sensing. Another example of how data gathering is increasing. " ... Technological advances in sensing, computation, storage, and communications will turn the near-ubiquitous mobile phone into a global…
From Wild WebMink
? Foxes Have Holes
The UK’s Minister of Agriculture thinks that the law against hunting foxes is impossible to enforce and should therefore be repealed. I wonder how he and his government colleagues feel about impossible-to-enforce laws against…
From Schneier on Security
Sending Coded Messages with Postage Stamps
The history of coded messages in postage-stamp placement. I wonder how prevalent this actually was. My guess is that it was more a clever idea than an actual signaling system. And I notice that a lot of the code systems don't…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Last March, we noted that the National Science Foundation (NSF), together with 7 other international funders, was launching the second round of an international grant competition designed to spur cutting-edge research in the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Control Algorithm
An Algorithm that estimates who is in control based on speech patterns. Sounds obvious, but there are likely subtle semantic details involved.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Microsoft Bliink 2012 Illinois Web Design Competition
Registration for the Microsoft Bliink 2012 Illinois Web Design Competition is now open.
Bliink (http://bit.ly/Bliink) is open to Illinois students ages 13-19 participating in teams of two to four.
This year
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Poor State of US Public Domain Laws
Techdirt Post on how public domain laws are preventing access to works that should surely be available to all by now. A situation that needs to be corrected soon.
From The Eponymous Pickle
US to Become Paperless?
Polls say no. we examined this for years. Paper will always be here, but in reduced amounts. I think tablets will push the gap closer than it had been.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Are you a gold prospector, or a construction worker?
Most work is akin to construction jobs: you work until the house is built. You just have to keep the servers running day after day. You keep writing code day after day. You teach another class. The only risk you take is that…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Is It Smart to Use Smart Phones
While not the latest trend, I find that more of the teachers in one district I serve are using 'smart' phones among their educational tools for learning. One teacher in particular, has found some success reaching students in…