Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2013
From Schneier on Security
Various Schneier Audio and Video Talks and Interviews
News articles about me (or with good quotes by me).
My talk at the IETF Vancouver meeting on NSA and surveillance. I'm the first speaker after the administrivia.
Press articles about me and the IETF meeting.
Other video interviews…From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuromarketing Course
NeuroRelay reports on a free online neuromarketing course that may be of interest. Recall I had previous connections with startups in this area like Buyology Inc.. " ... The course will go through to the basic concepts of the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Coke Online Mag Succeeds
Coke has an online magazine. Why does one of the best known brands in the world need its own magazine? Not sure how this would work with much less known brands, but I like the characteristics they are requiring for articles…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Does Data Streams with Kinesis
Amazon, like may other players in the space, is now addressing the element of Big Data that looks at big dynamic of high speed, real time data streams. The legendary 'fire hose' of data produced by applications like Twitter…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at SAP Lava
From a SAP community blog. Was involved fairy early on with SAP's Business Objects data visualization play. We approved it for use in the enterprise. New is a redesign of SAP Lava that addresses visualization to support better…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmented Pixels Continued
Recently brought to my attention this augmented reality delivery company: Augmented Pixels (Formerly AR3D ) advertising, sales and entertainment implementations. With development offices in the Ukraine and Russia. Their…
From Schneier on Security
Security Tents
The US government sets up secure tents for the president and other officials to deal with classified material while traveling abroad.
Even when Obama travels to allied nations, aides quickly set up the security tent -- which…From CERIAS Blog
Thoughts—Some Random, Some Structured
On October 9th, 2013, I delivered one of the keynote addresses at the ISSA International Conference. I included a number of observations on computing, security, education, hacking, malware, women in computing, and the future …
From The Eponymous Pickle
10 Companies Who Control What You Buy
From Visual.ly: " .... According to this chart via Reddit, called "The Illusion of Choice," these corporations create a chain that begins at one of 10 super companies. You've heard of the biggest names, but it's amazing to…
From BLOG@CACM
HPC Every Day, Everywhere
This Saturday the world's largest, and most influential, conference on high performance computing opens in Denver. Over the next week new advances in supercomputing research will be presented, new products will be announced, …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Wins Book Scanning Case
In GigaOM: A long term suit against Google scanning and storing books. Have followed this for a long time. Finally decided in Google's favor, apparently using fair use arguments. " ... Google has won a resounding victory in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Time of Day Shopping
In PopAI: An area that we explored in our laboratory stores, but not in this predictive detail: " ... Dr Scott G. Dacko, an associate professor in marketing and strategic management at the UK Warwick Business School, published…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Data to Knowledge to Action: White House Announces Big Data Partnerships
On November 12, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) program held an event, Data to Knowledge to Action: Building New Partnerships, to …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Essentials of Business Analytics Book
A number of my colleagues at the University of Cincinnati have just come out with a new book on the delivery of business analytics entitled: Essentials of Business Analytics by Jeffrey D. Camm, James J. Cochran, Michael J. Fry…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Announces Watson on Internet
In the NYT: Delivered via the Internet. Now we await the interface needed for intelligent connections. " ... On Thursday IBM will announce that Watson, the computing system that beat all the humans on “Jeopardy!” two years…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Doing Code Right The Second Time
Last week I wrote a program. I wrote about it on this blog (Making Magic With Software) but only about what was visible to the user. This week I decided to show some of the code behind to my students as part of asking them to…
From Computational Complexity
Local Reductions
With the STOC deadline passing on Monday, now is a good time to look at the arXiv to see what has been posted since then. Hamid Jahanjou, Eric Miles and Emanuele Viola have a new paper, Local Reductions, that gives a new reduction…
From Schneier on Security
A Fraying of the Public/Private Surveillance Partnership
The public/private surveillance partnership between the NSA and corporate data collectors is starting to fray. The reason is sunlight. The publicity resulting from the Snowden documents has made companies think twice before allowing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
DARPA Learning Machines
New kinds of machine learning have been an emphasis of DARPA. In Wired, " ... The Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Online Professional Learning Communities for CS Teachers
Last week, the NSF brought together leaders of the CS10K effort to discuss potential online supports for teachers and students in computer science. Though the concept of "blended learning" is not new for either student learning…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Storytelling Nodes of New Technologies
If you have followed this space for a long time, you know I cover many technologies and their implications. Most of which I started looking at in the enterprise a long time ago. One person who was on a parallel track is colleague…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shapeshifting Touch Display
An example of virtual interaction. " ... The Tangible Media Group at MIT's Media Lab has unveiled a futuristic display made of atoms, not pixels. We live in an age of touch–screen interfaces, but what will the UIs of the future…
From Schneier on Security
Microsoft Retiring SHA-1 in 2016
I think this is a good move on Microsoft's part:
Microsoft is recommending that customers and CA's stop using SHA-1 for cryptographic applications, including use in SSL/TLS and code signing. Microsoft Security Advisory 2880823…From The Eponymous Pickle
Walmart v Amazon
The last battle? In Knowledge@Wharton. For dominance in retail. " ... In the retail realm, it’s a clash of the titans: Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, versus Amazon, the online giant that aspires to be “the everything…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
One Way to Study for Exams
For both my classes, I put together a study guide that included some general tips on studying as well as what topics to focus on. Since the general advice works for many classes, I figured I'd share it here. It's based on what…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blending Data is Good
It has been some time since I looked at the vendor Pentaho. Examined it for use in the enterprise. I noticed that they have something called the data blend of the week. I like the general concept, which is fundamental, we"…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
AmStatNews highlights CCC as Influential to the Research Community!
A post this week in AmStatNews, the membership magazine of the American Statistical Association, is a ringing endorsement of CCC’s activities: “On the topic of Big Data and the statistical science community’s contention that …
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Breaking New Ground: Robot Rings NASDAQ Closing Bell
On Tuesday, November 12, 2013, the first non-human rang the closing bell on the NASDAQ stock market. A robotic arm was selected to ring the bell to mark the launch of a new robotics stock index, ROBO-STOX, which is the first …
From The Eponymous Pickle
DB Pedia
Can a semi-structured text database like the Wikipedia be used to extract structured data? This is the goal of the DbPedia: " ... DBpedia is a crowd-sourced community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Georgia Tech on Wearable
What are the cultural and social aspects of wearable computing? A Ga Tech researcher addresses. While I agree this is an issue, you could, and some did make the case that people would not carry around devices and hold them…