Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2008
From insideHPC
Green HPC in Scientific Computing
Twitter user erincollopy points us to this article at hpcprojects.com (a subsite of Scientific Computing World) on the greening of HPC HPC suppliers are addressing this problem on a number of fronts: at the chip level, at the…
From insideHPC
Rackable
Last week Rackable announced a new “data center enclosure” for your gear. You can slot in either AMD or Intel servers, but they’ll have to be Rackable’s, since they are made to hold the company’s half-depth servers MobiRack enclosures…
From insideHPC
Sun Compute Cluster part of new Rapid Solutions
Sun announced last week a new services offering tied to its hardware and designed to help customers get their installation done faster. Mostly this is done by pre-packaging solutions — this controls options and let’s Sun streamline…
From insideHPC
New computer memory possible with good old-fashioned pencil
Scientists at Rice have found a way to create a new kind of memory from a strip of graphene, the stuff that in bulk is called graphite, and drives No 2 pencils the world over Rice professor James Tour says that graphene memory…
From CSDiary
Merry Christmas!
The semester is over, but there is still enough work to do on various proposals, recommendation letters, and think pieces that I am in my office instead of at home watching the Steelers game. (Probably a good thing, since the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seeing 1859 Stereo
I enjoy discussions linking the history of a technology to its current state. This article looks at the stereographic technology of 1859 and how it relates to the cellphone technology of today. Also how you can experiment with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Behind the Way We Shop
National Public Radio (NPR) audio recording on Buyology/Neuromarketing: The Buyology Behind the Way We Shop
From Wild WebMink
Open Source Maturity
There's an interesting comment from 451 Group's Matthew Aslett on the five stages of community open source engagement that's worth reading. I've been using a model something like this for quite a while too. It's interesting to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Generating Power in Clothing
From Zhong Lin Wang's lab:Nano generator that can be grown over fibers.Generates energy by human movements.Ottilia Saxl, chief executive of the Institute of Nanotechnology, believes the technology could also find a use in healthcare…
From insideHPC
UCAR Releases VAPOR
UCAR has announced the latest release of the Visualization and Analysis Platform, or VAPOR application.
From insideHPC
CIBC Winter Workshop
Through the SCIRUN-USERS mailing list, Rob MacLeod announced the 2008/2009 Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing [CIBC] Winter Workshop: Boston Edition.
From Putting People First
Watch the video - Mobile Banking for Poor People: Pioneer Perspectives
Last week, the World Bank’s CGAP hosted a roundtable and webinar on the important topic of how mobile phone banking can deliver a range of financial services to poor people and change lives for the better (see also this blog…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blowing into your Cell Phone
There have been a number of keyboard instruments for the IP, so when I first read of a wind instrument app I thought ... how would that work? There is an Ocarina app. You blow into the mic, which is real genius. It converts…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Parsing CSV files is CPU bound: a C++ test case (Update 2)
I am continuing my fun saga to determine whether parsing CSV files is CPU bound or I/O bound. Recall that I posted some C++ code and reported that it took 96 seconds of process time to parse a given 2GB CSV file and just 27 seconds…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Image Search
Via Google Blogoscoped I see that Google Image search now has some new advanced options which lets you search for just clip art or line drawings. Also previously included a 'faces' category. Works well. Useful for looking…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Research Initiatives for the 21st Century
Today’s main message is: Check out http://www.cra.org/ccc/initiatives. Please! And tell your friends and colleagues! (Any reactions or suggestions can be posted here as comments on this article.) Now, the full story: The CCC’s…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Parsing CSV files is CPU bound: a C++ test case (Update 1)
(See update 2.) In a recent blog post, I said that parsing simple CSV files could be CPU bound. By parsing, I mean reading the data on disk and copying it into an array. I also strip the field values of spurious white space. You…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
ACM Urges Obama To Include Computer Science As A Core Component Of Science And Math Education
Yesterday President-Elect Obama announced his intention to nominate Arne Duncan for the Secretary of Education. Mr. Duncan is currently CEO of Chicago's school system. On the heels of this announcement, ACM's Education Policy…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast argmax in Python
In my post Computing argmax fast in Python, I reported that Python has no builtin function to compute argmax, the position of a maximal value. I provided one such function and asked people to improve my solution. Here are the…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The Synthese Recommender System
Andre Vellino has just opened his Synthese Recommender System: a recommender for journal articles. Andre works for one of the largest scientific libraries in the world (CISTI). You can read all about his project on his blog.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Parsing CSV files is CPU bound: a C++ test case
(These results were updated.) In Parsing text files is CPU bound, I claimed that I had a C++ test case proving that parsing CSV files could be CPU bound. By CPU bound, I mean that the overhead of taking each line, finding out…
From Wild WebMink
Link roundup to December 16
- Copyright extension is out of tune with reality
From Daniel Lemire's BlogWhy is the free market letting us down?
I often lean on the right politically. The idea that the free market will work is compelling. Free markets may be good at generating some form of wealth, but as we saw on the stock market, this wealth may turn out to be artificial…
From Wild WebMinkLink roundup to December 15
- FOSDEM Video RecordingsListing of videos of all the advertised talks at FOSDEM for the last few years. New Paper Shredder Actually Recycles Paper at the OfficeThis looks very interesting indeed, especially as it appears to beMore…
- Alpinisms: School Of Seven BellsCaptivating music in a style I can't quite pin down. Was sucked in by an interview and the track "Half Asleep" which is a free download from the band, check my Twitter stream for the link. Zimbabwe's…
- HearFromYourMPBritish? Sign up to hear from your MP about local issues, and to discuss them with other constituents. Did Coldplay copy Joe Satriani?Whether they consciously did or not, there's no denying the songs are blood relatives…
From Wild WebMink
Link Roundup to December 13
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Real World Learning in a Web Design Class
I started teaching web design to students when the World Wide Web started to explode in 1994. Back then my students used HTML and notepad to create the school's website. Web design tools have come a long way since then. So I …
From Wild WebMink
Link roundup to December 12
Linux - Stop holding our kids backThe teacher in this case has the tone of someone who tried religion once at college and now is an ardent atheist. Sadly, the campaigner has a tone that rather supports her prejudice. Breaking…
From Wild WebMink
Celebrating Anniversaries
This has been a time for anniversaries. It's been 25 years since Richard Stallman started the GNU Project, 40 years since Doug Engelbart demonstrated the future of computing at "the Mother of All Demos." Both of these are profoundly…
From Wild WebMink
Link Roundup to December 10
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
New Math and Science Study Shows Rising Elementary Math Scores, Significant Challenges
Yesterday the National Center for Education Statistics released the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). This study assesses math and science at the 4th and 8th grade levels. (Computer science concepts…