Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2009
From Schneier on Security
The Doghouse: Privacy Inside
I'm just going to quote without comment:
About the file: the text message file encrypted with a symmetric key combine 3 modes 1st changing the original text with random (white noise) and PHR (Pure Human Randomness) shuffle…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Squared is Improved
I mentioned my look at Google's look at structured data some time ago. They have recently announced some improvements. Not much like WolframAlpha, but sort of a table extract search. A few quick looks shows far less in theWolframAlpha…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A View from the 2009 European Computer Science Summit
Your faithful correspondent recently participated in the European Computer Science Summit 2009, the annual meeting of Informatics Europe (Paris, 8-9 October; http://www.informatics-europe.org/). Informatics Europe was created…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Less is More: Private Label Implications?
Simplification strategies in retail.. " ... The Nielsen Co.
From Wild WebMink
? Harmonising Principle and Pragmatism
While Matt's point has a certain populist charm, I don't agree with him that software freedom has no place on the business agenda. The key values…
From Schneier on Security
David Dittrich on Criminal Malware
Good essay: "Malware to crimeware: How far have they gone, and how do we catch up?" ;login:, August 2009:
I have survived over a decade of advances in delivery of malware. Over this period, attackers have shifted to using complex…From Computational Complexity
Dagstuhl Day One
The talks Monday were after my own heart. The day started with relativization: The always entertaining Scott Aaronson talked on his approach to get an oracle where BQP is not in the polynomial-time hierarchy. He gets some partial…
From My Biased Coin
SOSP congratulations
One conference I've never had a paper in -- though I'd like to someday -- is SOSP, the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, one of the flagship conferences in systems. A friend pinged me from there today, so I went toQuincy…
From Putting People First
10/GUI, a new multitouch interface concept
MG Siegler writes on ReadWriteWeb about the fact that desktop touch screens don
From Putting People First
On the difference between personalisation and customisation
What’s the difference between personalization and customization? Are consumers really in control? Do brands (and designers) want them to be? Nick de la Mare of Creativity considers curation and the myth and reality of control…
From BLOG@CACM
Introductory Computer Science Lessons--Take Heart!
A discussion of Mark Guzdial's post about why our approach to teaching novice CS students is wrong.
From Putting People First
Philips Design and ABN AMRO create emotion mirroring system for online traders
Philips Design and ABN AMRO
From Putting People First
TalkTalk launches Digital Anthropology Report
Yesterday TalkTalk, the UK broadband division of Carphone Warehouse, launched the Digital Anthropology Report
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Working With Industry Helps Researchers?
Is it a good idea for an academic researcher to work with industry R&D projects? Yes, in small doses: We find that university-industry relations exercise a positive effect on university scientific productivity only when (…) these…
From The Noisy Channel
Structured Search Is On The Table
Freebase. Wolfram Alpha. Google Squared. I hesitate to declare a trend, but there does seem to be a growing interest in more structured approaches to information seeking.
From Return 42;
Testing for Superclass With Shoulda
While I was refactoring a hand full of commonly used methods from a few controllers into a superclass, I was looking for a way to test that these controllers are actually inheriting from the new superclass and I won't mess up…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of October 12
October 13
Meeting: The Election Assistance Commission is holding a roundtable discussion on research on assistive voting technologies. 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Kellogg Conference Center, Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Avenue N.E.,…From The Eponymous Pickle
Public Domain E-Reads
There are now over 18,000 public domain (free) reads for the Kindle online. In addition Sony eBook readers can access Google's massive collection of scanned public domain works. Nice direction for mobile accessible texts. I…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drawing Fewer Clicks
Short NYT piece on the Comscore study/ May mean we have to start looking at online very differently:'... A recent study, by the research firm comScore, has found that the proportion of American Internet users clicking on display…
From Schneier on Security
Wi-fi Blocking Paint
I wrote about this in 2004. This is an improved product:
While paints blocking lower frequencies have been available for some time, Mr Ohkoshi's technology is the first to absorb frequencies transmitting at 100GHz (gigahertz)…From Computer Science Teachers Association
The Benefits of Using Paired Programming
Have you tried pair programming yet in your classroom? I started using it in my classroom five years ago and will never go back to the one computer per student model. In my classroom, students are randomly paired for a lab…
From Computational Complexity
The Molly Solution
This week Bill and I are both at the Dagstuhl Workshop on Algebraic Methods in Computation Complexity. I'll try to cover some of the talks and discussions on the blog and on Twitter.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Chart Understanding Versus Complexity
Continuing the topic of chart simplicity and understanding, Junk Charts looks at four charts of economic data and how they can be compared for impact and understanding. Has some useful links to other resources that I am exploring…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-10-12
"Microsoft was upgrading their SAN (Storage Area Network aka the thing that stores all your data) and had hired Hitachi to come in and do it for them. Typically …
From Schneier on Security
Using Wi-fi to "See" Through Walls
From Putting People First
Bringing internet video services to the living room TV set
More details are emerging about Project Canvas, the ambitious joint venture by the BBC, ITV, Five and BT to bring internet video services such as the iPlayer from the bedroom PC to the living-room TV set, reports Tim Bradshaw…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Examples of Visualization
A number of interesting visualizations of data. The original piece is 50 great examples of data visualization. There is no doubt that these are colorful, finely crafted and complex. They are worth looking at as examples of how…
From Putting People First
Our ever evolving online communication patterns
Both the Wall Street Journal and Techcrunch devote extensive space today to our ever evolving online communication patterns. The Wall Street Journal looks at how a shift towards a new generation of services like Twitter and Facebook…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuromarketing Ethics
In Forbes an interesting piece on bioethics and neuroscience topics: Is My Mind Mine?. The author Paul Root Wolpe, .... is editor of the American Journal of Bioethics--Neuroscience, and is past president of the American Society…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Make it About the Customer
In the NYT Magazine: Faster Slow Food, by Mark Bittman. I read his blog. As a foodie and cook myself and a rampant technologist, this brings my two great obsessions together. Its also about online shopping and foodie robotics…