Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2010
From Schneier on Security
CRB Check Backlash
Against stupid CRB checks:
Last January, Annabel Hayter, chairwoman of Gloucester Cathedral Flower Guild, received an email saying that she and her 60 fellow flower arrangers would have to undergo a CRB check. CRB stands for…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 13 December 2010
Did you do anything special for Computer Science Education week last week? The one thing I did was to host a group of about 40 students from Easthampton (MA) high school at the Microsoft offices in Cambridge (MA). I talked a …
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The Rise of Scientific Journalism
Dissidents from the Wikileaks have founded a competing organization called OpenLeaks. This new organization would differ from Wikileaks in two important ways: (1) it would be less centered on one character (such as Wikileaks’…
From Wild WebMink
Mary Oliver Poetry Reading
I was delighted to have found a video of my favourite poet Mary Oliver reading her own poetry at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on August 4, 2001. The video is also available for download, and there is also a video…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An RFID Turntable
The well known design company IDEO, who helped us construct innovation spaces, has designed a turntable (remember those?) style platform that reads a card with an RFID chip in it to play (stream) music. Explained further and…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CIFellows Descend on Washington
Despite the bad weather affecting travel across much of the nation,
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ant Algorithms
New work on the use of biologically inspired methods. Here the problem is finding shortest paths in busy networks. The inspiration is how ants can find their way in complex and changing mazes. The efficiently solution of this…
From The Eponymous Pickle
HP Gives up on BI
In an intriguing development HP has backed off of their business intelligence and analytics efforts. I have visited HP labs a number of times and was always impressed my their work in analytics. We tested several examples in…
From Wild WebMink
? White Waves
The new Mixed Tape compilation is available – 10 free tracks awaiting download. Most of them got 3 stars in the Webmink Rating System but your taste may vary, and
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Media Resources
A good list of social media resources from Mashable. Good for those that want to expand their understanding of social methods.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Signals Online
Intriguing essay in Batelle's Searchblog: Signal, Curation, Discovery. On a number of themes in the search industry, the current players and directions being explored. The Web sometimes seems like it expands randomly and erratically…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Generated QR codes from Google
Its pretty old news that Google has it's own URL shortener. called goo.gl It is perhaps also old news that you can also use this shortener to create a 2-D QR code. This came up in a conversation today about simple barcode…
From The Noisy Channel
First Week
It’s hardly surprising, at least in retrospect, that location-based social networking company Foursquare was founded (twice!) in New York City. Where else (at least in the United States) are there so many people with so many…
From Wild WebMink
? Cloud Correction
@webminkSimon Phipps Try adding "as long as you don't breach the terms of service – according to our sole judgement" to the end of any cloud computing pitch. about 15 hours ago via webRetweetReply
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-12-11
WikiLeaks: Stop the crackdown As I said in the "Voltaire Moment" article I posted here yesterday, the attacks on our collective freedom resulting from Wikileaks need opposing whatever we think of Wikileaks. This Avaaz petition…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Carbonara: the Possibilities Behind Exotic Carbon Structures
I got late to this article in the Futurist, which extols the continuing possibilities, boosted by discoveries in nanotechnology, and the annoying delays in their realization: " .... Observers have been waiting for carbon nanotubes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Decision Analysis Software Survey
A little late, but OR/MS does an excellent survey of decision analysis software every year. If you are interested in the topic, take a look here. " ... Dennis Buede wrote,
From Wild WebMink
? Voltaire Moment Article Available
My article asserting that we need to stand up for Wikileaks’ ability to exist even if we don’t like Wikileaks is now available in the Essays area.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Glowing Squid
Recent research. And an older video.
From Schneier on Security
New TSA Security Test
I experienced a new TSA security check at Phoenix Airport last Thursday. The agent took my over-three-ounce bottle of saline, put a drop of it on a white cardboard strip, and then put a drop of another liquid on top of that.…
From Michael Nielsen
10th Anniversary Edition of
I’m pleased to say that a 10th anniversary edition of my book with Ike Chuang on quantum computing has just been released by Cambridge University Press (Amazon link). Apart from expressing some authorial pleasure, the point of…
From Schneier on Security
NIST Announces SHA-3 Finalists (Skein is One of Them)
Yesterday, NIST announced the five hash functions to advance to the third (and final) round in the SHA-3 selection process: BLAKE, Grøstl, JH, Keccak, and Skein. Not really a surprise; my predictions -- which I did not publish…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Don
There’s been lots of coverage elsewhere, but just a reminder that it’s
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Open Library
There are millions of books free for the e-reading out there. Most pay reading services include them as well for free. Now the Open Library has introduced a new e-reader devoted to free books. This includes improved reading…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Copying and Pasting Your Interests
I wrote about Tynt before, but this article made it clearer about what it is doing ... Find out more about what people really care about.
From Wild WebMink
? Non-Centralised Infrastructure
After discovering BitCoin (where such a large number of people were kind enough to send small donations to 1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3 that I’m now considering paying for my VoIP with it)
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
PCAST Releases Health IT Report
The President
From Wild WebMink
? Apache Quits The JCP
The ASF Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee The Apache Software Foundation quits Java’s governing body claiming that “[the] JCP is not an open specification process … Java specifications are proprietary technology that must…
From Schneier on Security
Alternate Scanning Technologies
Iscon uses infrared light rather than X-rays. I have no idea how well it works.
And Rapiscan has a new patent:
Abstract: The present invention is directed towards an X-ray people screening system capable of rapidly screening…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Does learning have to stop when the last bell rings?
We have this tendency to think that learning at school takes place only between the opening and closing bells of the