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
Another QUANTUMINSERT Attack Example
Der Speigel is reporting that the GCHQ used QUANTUMINSERT to direct users to fake LinkedIn and Slashdot pages run by -- this code name is not in the article -- FOXACID servers. There's not a lot technically new in the article…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Google Code-in 2013
This went out to the CSTA Member mailing list tonight. Thought it was worth sharing.
Beginning Monday, November 18th, 13-17 year old pre-university students from around the world can register and start competing in GoogleSince…
From The Eponymous Pickle
2013 Business Intelligence Symposium
Register now to attend the 2013 Business Intelligence Symposium offered through the Center for Business Analytics in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati and sponsored by LÛCRUM. The 2013 Business…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Life is short: pick good ideas!
Some of us work hard to generate new ideas. All of us train on how to implement ideas. But our days look like this: I have 100 ideas. I write down 50 of them. The rest are forgotten. I think seriously 10 ideas. I test informally…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Millennials and Shopper Marketing
In Smartblogs: The rise of the omni-channel shopper in the millennial. The link below is also of interest and new to me." ... The Coca-Cola Company sponsors this blog post and leverages proprietary insights to create world-class…
From Schneier on Security
Cryptographic Blunders Revealed by Adobe's Password Leak
Adobe lost 150 million customer passwords. Even worse, they had a pretty dumb cryptographic hash system protecting those passwords.
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Drives Internet Traffic?
Mostly Netflix and Youtube. Not surprising, being heavily used video resources. While I am a litte surprised at this: " ... Meanwhile, peer-to-peer file sharing -- services like BitTorrent and eDonkey that use a peer-to-peer…
From Computational Complexity
Four answers to the Recip problem
In my last post I asked you to solve the following question which was from the Maryland Math Competition: The inequalities 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/6 = 1 and 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/7 + 1/42 = 1 express 1 as a sum of three (resp. four) reciprocals…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cyc, the Enterprise and Wikipedia
Recent research had me take a look back on the Cyc project, which we had examined during our AI explorations. We talked to Lenat's Cycorp. The system promised to encode common sense knowledge relationships and make it available…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Multi Modal Drones
In Wired: As you might expect, the primary uses here are military. " ... This Drone Can Fly, Swim, Drive, and Hop Its Way Through a Mission .. " But it points to the direction of automated travel. Automated data gathering.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Enterprise Architecture
Thinking Future architecture. " ... Doing Enterprise Architecture is different from managing other type of IT or business project, as it includes from abstract level, logical level to physical level work, perhaps it’s easy to…
From Schneier on Security
Bizarre Online Gambling Movie-Plot Threat
This article argues that online gambling is a strategic national threat because terrorists could use it to launder money.
The Harper demonstration showed the technology and techniques that terror and crime organizations could…From Computer Science Teachers Association
New Resources to Support a New Perspective
There has been a lot of excitement lately in the news about the importance of teaching students to code, but in the midst of all the excitement, many students, parents and teachers have been turning to single dimension solutions…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The Hour of Code – CSEdWeek on steroids!
Code.org is putting CSEdWeek on steroids this year! My department, like many of yours, has traditionally run a programming contest and an open house in conjunction with Computer Science Education Week – the week of Grace Murray…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House OSTP “Big Data” event – webcast Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET, 10 a.m. PT
Check out the webcast of the White House OSTP “Big Data” event, November 12, 2013 beginning at 1 p.m. ET, 10 a.m. PT. Webcast here: http://live.science360.gov/1/ Agenda (pdf) is linked from that page, but also here: http://tinyurl…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobile Apps Drive Smart Homes
In GigaOM: Expectes 21.5 million in US and Europe by 2017. The definition is still somewhat uncertain. We continue to experiment with the idea, after starting in 2001, to see how it might influence CPG product demand. As…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Science Books
Vincent Granville posts a good list of more than 100 data science, analytics, big data and visualization books. With links to further commentary and access. Nicely done and useful. Continually updated.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Pollution on the Rise
In ClickZ: Cleansing data. As we start to mine all the easy big data we are uncovering more difficult layers we will need to better understand. What are the challenges and the first approaches we should use?
From Computational Complexity
A problem on Receiprocals
(I thought I had posted this a while back but I can't find it in past blogs so I think I did not. I DID post a diff problem on reciprocals.) Here is the question I graded a while back on a Maryland Math Olympiad.I request that…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of November 11
November 12 Hearing: The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a confirmation hearing on multiple nominees, including the Associate Director for Science at the Office of Science and Technology Policy…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Real Humans in the Loop
Have you noticed? Real humans are entering the App loop. ' ... Google Helpouts and Amazon's Mayday are changing everything ... " . Its long been my contention that people, properly leveraged, are a powerful add in for delivering…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Comments on this Blog
Repeating my policy. Readership is up and Spam is increasing. All comments are moderated. I cannot read or approve anonymous comments without prior approval. I cannot approve any comment that is not substantive to the message…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Johnson & Johnson Brand Tracking
Looking for a different measure. Portfolio oriented. " ... Johnson & Johnson is moving to a unified methodology for tracking some of its “mega brands”, global strategic insights VP Brenda Armstead said at a recent conference…
From The Eponymous Pickle
McKinsey on Enhancing Application Development
Always of interest. But does this mean we can have less technical people involved? This has long been a goal, but is not really happening. Its still a very technical thing." ... Enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of…
From Schneier on Security
Dan Geer Explains the Government Surveillance Mentality
This talk by Dan Geer explains the NSA mindset of "collect everything":
I previously worked for a data protection company. Our product was, and I believe still is, the most thorough on the market. By "thorough" I mean theThe…From Putting People First
[Book] Mapping Design Research
![[Book] Mapping Design Research](/system/assets/0000/1953/030209_Vanderbeeken_Mark_250.small_square.jpg?1476779420&1260281963)
Mapping Design Research Edited by Simon Grand and Wolfgang Jonas Birkhauser 2012, 256 pages [Amazon link] [Sample chapter] An authoritative and scientifically based collection of 18 international texts since 1960 that mirrors…
From Putting People First
Two new reports by ARUP
Designing with Data The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and ARUP have released Designing with Data: Shaping Our Future Cities, a new report that explores the massive potential role that data could have in the planning…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 11 November 2013
It’s Veteran’s Day in the US and most schools are closed. We’re remembering and honoring our nations veterans. I’m remembering my late father who was a combat veteran of World War II and later served for many years as a NavyBTW…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Artafact and Serious Games for Customer Insight
Brought to my attention, an AMA Webcast on November 19, 2013 at 12 noon CST: By Research company Artafact. (who is providing the gaming expertise)" ... How can you use gaming techniques to gain valuable customer insights? In…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grasp Robotics Laboratory at Penn
Brought to my attention, new things ongoing at the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Robot swarms that fly and cooperate. See an exciting video on their quadrotor swarms. I had previously mentioned here our own,…