Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Concept Map about Mapping
A map to describe mapping methods. A frequently used approach in our enterprise, I still use the idea often in consulting, now nicely facilitated by portable tablets. Let the description begin, always a great place to start…
From The Eponymous Pickle
PC Dominance Over
Gartner makes some comments on this and it is covered in Computerworld. Not unexpected. My own observation over the holidays in the home , and waiting in airports shows that the tablets have become near ubiquitous and are being…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Book Generation
In ReadwriteWeb: More detail on Phil Parker's econometric book generation algorithms. That are said to be generating millons of books that are sold on Amazon. This reminds me of a methodology called 'content analysis', which…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shadow IT
In CIO Dashboard: A term I had not specifically heard of. Though the world of Bring your own device (BYOD) has been in action for some time. A survey of CIOs says that some 30% of IT used in business is procured outside of…
From Putting People First
A sustainable building promotes pro-environmental behavior
A Sustainable Building Promotes Pro-Environmental Behavior: An Observational Study on Food Disposal by Wu DW, DiGiacomo A, Kingstone A PLoS ONE 8(1): e53856. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0053856 – January 2013 In order to develop…
From Putting People First
Experientia® Prisma kitchen in Interni Annual Cucina 2012
The Interni Annual Cucina 2012 is out, and this year’s monograph features Experientia’s Prisma design for Toncelli Kitchens. The Prisma was the 2012 flagship kitchen in Toncelli’s presentation at Eurocucina 2012 – the International…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Where Do Domestic Ph.D. Students in CS Come From?
The CRA’s Education Committee has published a new report in the January 2013 edition of Computing Research News on the Baccalaureate Origins of Domestic Ph.D. Students in Computing Fields. If you would like receive CRN via email…
From Schneier on Security
Lexical Warfare
This essay, which uses the suicide of Aaron Swartz as a jumping off point for how the term "hactivist" has been manipulated by various powers, has this to say about "lexical warfare":
I believe the debate itself is far broader…From BLOG@CACM
Who Earned First Computer Science Ph.D.?
Guest blogger Ralph L. London describes his efforts to provide a more accurate historical record of the first computer science Ph.D.s in the United States.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
XML for databases: a dead idea
One of my colleagues is teaching an artificial intelligence class. In his class, he uses old videos where experts from the early eighties make predictions about where AI is going. These experts come from the best schools such…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mindmeld
Brought to my attention from Expectlabs.com. Their system called MindMeld, initially designed to be delivered to the iPad, that will monitor conversations and construct tasks based its understanding of the interaction. An…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Should we be Worried about?
What scientific issues should be we worried about? The Edge asked for contributions and received these suggestions, from well known scientists in many fields.
From Schneier on Security
Anti-Surveillance Clothing
It's both an art project and a practical clothing line.
...Harvey's line of "Stealth Wear" clothing includes an "anti-drone hoodie" that uses metalized material designed to counter thermal imaging used by drones to spot people…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computer Science Postdocs — Best Practices Guide
The following is an article published in the January 2013 edition of Computing Research News. If you would like receive CRN via email, you can sign up here. Computer Science Postdocs: Best Practices By Anita Jones, University…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hack the Kitchen?
In Mashable: Campbell Soup offers prize to develop meal planning App. I like the idea of delivering suggestions based one taste, meal history, budget, time available, pantry, etc. With minimal loading of data. An integration…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Midsize Business in the Cloud
IBM Tools helping midsize businesses work in the cloud. An article brought to my attention from Information Management. " ... IBM unveiled social business software designed to help enterprises collaborate easily and securely…
From Computational Complexity
paperfree?- we are not there yet
Last time I taught I had to decide if I would HAND OUT the HW or just say its posted (NOTE- I post it in any case.) This may seem old fashion but I think there is some psychological value to actually giving someone a piece of…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How I learned mathematics (as a kid)
As I reported elsewhere, I technically failed kindergarten. For example, one of the test we had to pass was the memorization of our home phone number. I refused to learn it. My mother, a teacher, was embarrassed. We also had…
From updated sporadically at best
Should You Learn Scala?
It depends on what you want to accomplish*, but the answer is probably yes.By way of background, Scala is a programming language originally developed at the Swiss university EPFL in an attempt to apply recent innovations in programming…
From updated sporadically at best
Upgrading to Scala 2.10.0
Scala 2.10.0 came out recently. It has many nice features I haven't used yet, for instance type tags, and production versions of many nice features that I was already using, for instance type Dynamic, implicit conversions, and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
UC Data Visualization Day
Reading with pleasure Stephen Few's book "Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten", Second Edition. It was good to see that Stephen Few will be speaking at the University of Cincinnati on Thursday January…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Securing the Internet of Things
In Wired: We are looking forward to leveraging the data generated by the internet of things. New trasparency in supply chain analysis, social behavior and transactional interaction. But what are the security implications for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
HP's Big Data Analytics
Attending this on Wednesday at 9 AM in Cincinnati. More information. Lets meet there. " ... Are you interested in gaining insight into your business faster than ever before? Learn how AdvizeX, HP-Vertica and Cloudera areThis…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Big Data
Gib Bassett provides a note by Mark Zielinski on the value of big data social data. " ... Since late 2011, the market research industry and market research technology in general has been very focused on the coming rise of “big…
From Schneier on Security
The Origins of War
Philosophy professor David Livingstone Smith on the origins of war.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 14 January 2013
half way through January. How’s it going so far? Been interesting for me so far. Hope to have some news about my future plans soon as well. For now, always looking for interesting resources, articles, events, and what not for…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The Crown Game Affair
What constitutes evidence of cheating? src Faye Dunaway is an Academy Award-winning actress who co-starred with the late Steve McQueen in the 1968 movie “The Thomas Crown Affair.” She plays a freelance insurance fraud investigator…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
On Allowing Boys Into a Girls' Camp
Today I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel about engaging girls in STEM at Actua's annual conference. I offered my perspective on computer science outreach in particular, drawing on 5+ years of experience. One question…
From Apophenia
processing the loss of Aaron Swartz
The last 24 hours have been an emotional roller coaster. I woke up yesterday to find that a friend of mine – Aaron Swartz – had taken his life. My Twitter feed went into mourning – shock, sadness, anger, revenge. I spent the…
From My Biased Coin
Aaron Swartz : Links
If you haven't done so already, today is a good day to reflect upon the life of Aaron Swartz. If you haven't heard of him or need background, you can always start with his Wikipedia page. After that, I'd recommend reading the…