Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2013
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Teaching Problem Solving
One of the things we like to say learning computer science in general and programming in particular leads to is learning problem solving. It’s a nice theory and I’ve said it myself. It’s really more complicated than that of course…
From The Eponymous Pickle
US Moves to Become Top Global Energy Producer
From MJ Perry: A visualization and view of data about real markets in action. US Moving quickly to be top global energy producer. Not aided by, but often in despite of government investments, lack of investments, and over…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
What are the genuinely useful ideas in programming?
The software industry is probably the most dynamic and innovation of all industries. However, many people also try to convince us to adapt new ideas despite their dubious practical value. So what are the ideas that stick… ideas…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobile Consumer Behavior Visualized Simply
From POPAI: An infographic that Googe developed to illustrate mobile consumer behavior. The piece is low information, easy on your eyes, they say. Saving us from deep thoughts. With conclusions like: " ... Not only are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Self Service BI for Small Businesses
A number of approaches to bring self service business intelligence to the small to medium sized company.
From Schneier on Security
Developments in Microphone Technology
What's interesting is that this matchstick-sized microphone can be attached to drones.
Conventional microphones work when sound waves make a diaphragm move, creating an electrical signal. Microflown's sensor has no moving parts…From The Eponymous Pickle
More Testing of First Commercial Quantum Computer
In Wired, have followed for years. I know some of the founders. More testing of the D-Wave system, now being used by Lockheed, Google and NASA. There is still some skepticism about if the system qualifies as a quantum computer…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Confessions of an Elementary Computer Science Teacher
After teaching computer science and technology for over 13 years and not even reaching my forties, I started wondering how my teaching methods and style have changed throughout the years. I have written many anecdotal notes regarding…
From Schneier on Security
Is Cybersecurity a Profession?
A National Academy of Sciences panel says no:
Sticking to the quality control aspect of the report, professionalization, it says, has the potential to attract workers and establish long-term paths to improving the work force…From The Eponymous Pickle
ARHouse: Architectural Insertion App
A correspondent in the area of augmented reality has sent along a writeup on a newly developed App for delivering 3D architectural models in real spaces with new lighting clarity and context. The work of Augmented Pixels. …
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
CS Principles and the CS 10k Initiative / GHC13
As the opening keynote here at GHC reminded us, computer science has a supply problem. The number of people we need to create technology is increasing at a much faster rate than students taking computer science in schools. Exploring…
From Putting People First
Interaction-Ivrea, Arduino and Intel’s Galileo
Intel’s Arduino-compatible open-source Galileo development board was launched today in Italy at Rome’s Maker Faire. Rightfully so, as the initiative has such deep Italian roots. In 2004, a group of programmers, students and teachers…
From Putting People First
Dancing to silent algorithms
More and more, we live our lives according to the unknown auspices of machine codes, writes Frank Swain. “Our lives are influenced by technologies not simply as objects but invisible systems that surround us, and whose architecture…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Does Research with Recipes
In MIT Tech Review: Intelligence for research. The model of food recipe construction and how it might be applied to other questions. Again, in our own experimentation in this field, we used models of interaction, plus rule…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fast Approaching: Free Innovation and Design MOOC
Coming October 7! (Background and Video) Full Announcement in BrowserFREE University of Cincinnati Innovation ClassLearn from the leaders in design thinking.In this FREE seven-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), participants…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Changing Education
Good piece in Cisco blog on how education is changing. More than just MOOC. Easy inclusion of video is a big part of this. Just today had a connection with a colleague who is now considering an online certification to continue…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Spirit of Innovation Challenge
A new competitive event for students via this announcement from the CSTA mailing list.
>The Spirit of Innovation Challenge is an excellent way to help your students channel their creative thinking and demonstrate their knowledge…
From Schneier on Security
On Anonymous
Gabriella Coleman has published an interesting analysis of the hacker group Anonymous:
Abstract: Since 2010, digital direct action, including leaks, hacking and mass protest, has become a regular feature of political life on…From Computational Complexity
Celebrating Maths in Oxford
From The Eponymous Pickle
Monsanto Bets a $ Billion on Big Data Analytics
In Computerworld: The connections to micro weather forecasting and insurance are particularly interesting. This is another example of the large investments underway in analytics:" ... IDG News Service - Agribusiness giant…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
An Exciting First Day at GHC13
Today was our first full day in Minneapolis for this year's edition of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. It's so nice to live the conference through the eyes of the students I organized to get here, seeing
From My Biased Coin
Some Advice on Entrepreneurship from the AH meeting
At the Andreessen Horowitz academic round table (see past post), there was various advice, some of it contradictory, for professor-types interested in starting companies. I should start by saying that all of this is my interpretation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Glass Alternative in Japan
And yet more in the world of wearable devices, this from Japan: At least in its prototype this looks fairly clunky ...." ... This week at Ceatec, a technology trade show in Tokyo, Docomo showed off so-called wearable technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intel Wearables
Even Intel is doing wearables. On Intel's New Devices Group: Did not realize they were a player until I saw this: " ... When most people think about the future of mobility, they think of larger, possibly flexible mobile screens…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Mobility
In the Cisco Blog: Is it an disappearing act? I am inclined to think it will, like the phone, still be visible and mostly selective for some time. I do like the idea though: " ... As a mobile expert and thought leader, I’m…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowdsourcing Maps?
Waze, now part of Google maps, also made me thing of this, at least in outsourcing the metadata about the maps. Can maps be crowdsourced?
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Stealing Strategies
How constructive are strategy stealing proofs? David Gale was a famous mathematician and economist, who passed away just over five years ago. I had the honor of meeting him while I was on the faculty at Berkeley years ago; Gale…
From Schneier on Security
On Secrecy
"When everything is classified, then nothing is classified."
I should suppose that moral, political, and practical considerations would dictate that a very first principle of that wisdom would be an insistence upon avoidingJustice…From Schneier on Security
My TEDx Talk
I spoke at TEDxCambridge last month on security and power. Here's the video.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unilever New Product Development
" Unilever announces the launch of a research project with the University of Liverpool to develop the next generation of renewable chemicals from biomass to use in the manufacture of its home and personal care ranges.Fossil fuel…