Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Sourcing the Internet of Things
In ReadWriteWeb: An overview piece about setting standards for the IoT, and how those standards should be open sourced. Agree, have been through this with the same (and related) RFID work. The article makes a good case of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future Software Will be Cognitive
Will the next generation of software be cognitive? Good piece in Forrester. I am a keen student of the reasons for the partial success and failures of AI as advisory systems in it's previous wave. Plan to continue to watch…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF CISE Funding Opportunities
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computing & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) has a number of new funding opportunities. National Robotics Initiative (NSF 15-505) Full Proposal Due: January 14, …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stream Data Processing
In Infoq:The demand for stream processing is increasing a lot these days. The reason is that often processing big volumes of data is not enough. Data has to be processed fast, so that a firm can react to changing business conditions…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
DCL From NSF Director Dr. France Córdova
The following is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) by Director Dr. France A. Córdova. October 16, 2014 Dear Colleague, In light of the recent emergence of the lethal Ebola virus in the US, the National…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking a Video Poker Machine
Kevin Poulsen has written an interesting story about two people who successfully exploited a bug in a popular video poker machine....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Supply and Demand of Data Scientists
Bruce Langos, COO of Teradata gave a spirited talk today in the atrium of Wright State University today on the nature of the data scientist. The talk was also transmitted to some area high schools. The emphasis of the talk…
From The Eponymous Pickle
3D Printing Your Big Data for Understanding
In Technology Review: Fascinating idea. As 3D printing becomes cheaper, you can quickly create a 3D physical data representation. (You can add more 'Ds' with indicators like color or shape). We did this for displaying real spaces…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Help Me Win Surface Pro 3s for My School
OK so the good news is that I am one of 15 finalists to win 15 Surface Pro's for my favorite school. The winners are chosen by community voting, so please vote for my mix at https://mix.office.com/Gallery/Category/vote Mine is…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Heading Into Midterms, USACM Re-emphasizes Role Of Technology In Elections
With mid-term Congressional elections fast approaching, USACM released a statement to emphasize the importance of voting technology in elections. It echoes past statements from USACM on voting, including its 2013 remarks to…
From Putting People First
What human-centered design means for financial inclusion
What Human-Centered Design Means for Financial Inclusion Yanina Seltzer, Claudia McKay 16 October 2014, 126 pages Interactive publication Download pdf CGAP has released today a 126 report entitled “Insights into Action – What…
From Putting People First
Push, pull or nudge
“Push, pull or nudge” was the title of a 2.5 hour workshop (video here) at the 5th European Conference on Public Communication held today in Brussels. The workshop explored the potential of concepts such as design thinking, choice…
From Computational Complexity
The Curious Case of NP and NEXP
NP (nondeterministic polynomial time) and NEXP (nondeterministic exponential time) are provably different classes by the nondeterministic time hierarchy. No surprise, given exponentially more time we expect to solve more problems…
From Putting People First
Position Open – Experientia Communications Officer: writer, proofreader & editor
Experientia, the Turin-based User Experience Consultancy, is looking for a native English speaking Communications Officer to work in their Turin, Italy office. The company is specialised in interaction design, ethnographic research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobility Foundation of Digital Enterprise
In Baseline: Becoming more true. It is now an expectation that we have access anytime and anywhere. With the right data to support our decisions. " ... Some industry experts view mobility as the foundation of the digitalIt's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mashing up Docs and Spreadsheets
In CWorld: I thought this was being done generally, but this is a better way it seems." ... Instead of building a suite of separate productivity apps, a la Microsoft Office, Quip plans to have a single "canvas" where it willThus…
From BLOG@CACM
Satya Nadella and Grace Hopper
Thoughts about Satya Nadella's comments at the Grace Hopper Conference.
From Schneier on Security
NSA Classification ECI = Exceptionally Controlled Information
ECI is a classification above Top Secret. It's for things that are so sensitive they're basically not written down, like the names of companies whose cryptography has been deliberately weakened by the NSA, or the names of agents…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Focuses On Roadmap In Cybersecurity Framework Comments
As part of its work on the Cybersecurity Framework (Framework), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) sought comments from stakeholders on their experiences with it. USACM has followed the development of…
From BLOG@CACM
I Have Seen the Future…
…At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and the future of computing is women.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thinking about SuperIntelligence
Brought to my attention, a new book: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick BostromWill be reading. They write:" ... Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in generalThe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Demonstration of AI Using Quantum Computing
When we first visited quantum computing we suggested that some AI applications, like image analysis, would be good candidates for the technique. Now this has come to pass. In Slashdot: " ... Machine learning algorithmsOriginal…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Towards Big Data Computing at Extreme-Scales
Periodically the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will highlight former CI Fellows to showcase their current research. The following was submitted by Dr. Ioan Raicu. Former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Computing …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Automatic Storytelling
Storytelling is a recent topic. Normally a thing that people do. To what degree can it be automated with a cognitive system? The idea has been around for a long time, we thought of using it to outline advertisements. ItSome…
From Putting People First
With Electronic Medical Records, doctors read when they should talk
And this can have tragic consequences. Like Ebola death tragic. Abigail Zuger, M.D., shares her own experience: “We do not really know whether dysfunctional software contributed to last month’s debacle in a Dallas emergency room…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Idea vs Implementation–Using What We Learn
You’re at a great conference and you are hearing all sorts of great ideas. It’s exciting! You hear about tools and techniques that are working wonders in the presenter’s school or in the schools the researcher or vendor repeats…
From Schneier on Security
DEA Sets Up Fake Facebook Page in Woman's Name
This is a creepy story. A woman has her phone seized by the Drug Enforcement Agency and gives them permission to look at her phone. Without her knowledge or consent, they steal photos off of the phone (the article says they were…
From Schneier on Security
FOXACID Operations Manual
A few days ago, I saw this tweet: "Just a reminder that it is now *a full year* since Schneier cited it, and the FOXACID ops manual remains unpublished." It's true. The citation is this: According to a top-secret operational…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Slideshare Apps Update
New Slideshare apps are available for Android and IOS. Impressed by the new interface. Better display. Slideshare provides a good way to access and utilize consistently and simply packaged knowledge. Now has the ability…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cardboard VR
Google develops a cardboard VR viewer (Technical)." ... The Cardboard project aims at developing inexpensive virtual reality (VR) tools to allow everyone to enjoy VR in a simple, fun, and natural way. The VR Toolkit enables developers…