Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2011
From Computational Complexity
Probability
On Saturday, Terrence Fine gave a talk on probability at a workshop at Northwestern. Before the talk he asked who thought probability was subjective (an individual's belief in the chance of an event) or a frequentist (a probability…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Twilight of Email
GigaOm has a good piece on the end of email, now about 40 years old. Yes, it has become increasingly annoying. But its annoyance is created in large part by its volume in the modern world. I think it will continue to be adapted…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Don't Limit What You Know
A friend sends along a link out of of the HBR Blog network. Don't let What You Know Limit What you Can Imagine. You have to have effective ways to look outside, learn more, objectively analyze it and get it to the right people…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 5 December 2011
Happy Computer Science Education Week! Hope you are doing something fun and interesting to encourage students to study computer science this week. And maybe encouraging more schools to offer computer science education. I have…
From Schneier on Security
Carrier IQ Spyware
Spyware on many smart phones monitors your every action, including collecting individual keystrokes. The company that makes and runs this software on behalf of different carriers, Carrier IQ, freaked when a security researcher…
From The Noisy Channel
Jim Adler: The Accidental Chief Privacy Officer
Privacy is the third rail of the cloud. On one hand, the ease of sharing information and the power of analytics have produced extraordinary value for consumers, as well as great business models for companies that serve those…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Billion Prices
Once more I had cause to look at the Billion Prices project at MIT. A way to calibrate prices generally and in real time by region? Clever idea to syndicate this kind of data. " ...The Billion Prices Project is an academic…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brain as Computer Model
In the New Mexican: Chris Wood at the Santa Fe Institute suggests that in an application of bio-mimicry we could use the brain as a model for new kinds of computation. This has been tried before with neural nets. Though the…
From BLOG@CACM
Hadoop AllReduce and Terascale Learning
In a breakthrough last summer, we came up with the first learning algorithm I've seen that is provably faster than any future single machine learning algorithm.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innov8 for Health Competition
I see that the results of the Innov8 for health competition, held yesterday at the GE Aviation Learning Center, has posted the results in their blog. I got to see only a small part of the interaction but the interaction looked…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP to buy SuccessFactors for $3.4 Billion
The price seems to be high, but the idea is right. Enterprise company SAP is positioning itself for future work in Cloud applications.
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Creating a CS Presence at My School
When I started work at North Gwinnett High School a year and half ago, I was asked to teach two computer science courses: AP Computer Science and Computing in the Modern World. Budget cuts had me teaching 3 pre-engineering classes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Buyology is Forbes #71
I see that a company I have worked with, Buyology Inc, is in Forbes as one of the 100 most promising companies. It is at #71. " ... Founded in 2008, this marketing consultancy digs into the unconscious motivations that ultimately…
From My Biased Coin
The End (of the Semester) is Nigh
If you've missed it (which probably means you're not a theorist and/or a blog-reader), you should check out the (entertaining) controversies of the last week or two, starting with Oded's guest post on the decline of intellectual…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intelligent Solutions for Everyday Objects
A continuation of work by Microsoft on embedded intelligence for everyday objects ...
From The Eponymous Pickle
More Market Apps
Yet another supermarket App, here at Giant Eagle. Nothing very new. The usual assortment of promotions, information, coupons and shopping list. They are easy to develop and provide, and seem to becoming an expectation at least…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gaming and the Science of Expertise
In the SciAM Blog: How a game is being used to study the science of the development of expertise. Collaboration, multitasking and goal achievement.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Inspired Robot
It crawls on land.
From Schneier on Security
I Received an Honorary Doctorate
Last weekend, I received an honorary PhD from the University of Westminster, in London.
I have had mixed feelings about this since I was asked early this year. The best piece of advice I've read is: "It's a great honor, but…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Holds Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) Webinar
Earlier this afternoon,
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Printers and Setting Them on Fire
It's the kind of research result that screams hype, but online attacks that have physical-world consequences are fundamentally a different sort of threat. I suspect we'll learn more about what's actually possible in the coming…
From The Eponymous Pickle
FourSquare Check-ins
Some interesting statistics about Foursquare check ins at major retailers and fast food. Interesting that so many people are still checking in, but the percentage of total customers is still very small. After being intrigued…
From Putting People First
Welcome to the post-digital world
Simon Jenkins writes in The Guardian that the “smart money is moving from online towards ‘live experience’.” “The new magnetism of congregation seems universal. Every online service or forum promotes an event, an invitation,…
From Computational Complexity
Analysis of Boolean Functions blog/book (Guest post by Ryan O'Donnell)
(Guest post by Ryan O'Donnell)
Lance and Bill have graciously let me plug my recently begun book/blog project, analysis of boolean functions. I am writing a textbook on analysis of Boolean functions and serializing it on…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Who Knew Science and Dance Could Be So Closely Related?
So often we think of the arts and science as opposites. Many who are talented in one feel hopelessly lost in the other. But the two are more related than it might seem, sometimes in the most unexpected ways...Take last year's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Coke Embraces QR Codes
Yet another example of a company using QR codes in packaging and using them for a specific campaign. As more consumers learn to use them, this will evolve further. The scan statistics are interesting: " ... Aside from the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G and Teva Consumer Healthcare Partnership
I know I am late to this particular piece of information about Teva and P&G, but I am in the process of looking at it in more detail. Also Teva's press release.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
An interesting piece about the future of human computing in the print edition of The Economist
From Schneier on Security
Walls as Security Theater
Interesting essay on walls and their effects:
Walls, then, are built not for security, but for a sense of security. The distinction is important, as those who commission them know very well. What a wall satisfies is not so much…From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Business Analytics to Run the Global Enterprise
P&G has always been a numbers and modeling company, though there have been some attempts in recent years to move it sharply into a design direction. I think there are lots of opportunities to meld the two together. Here,…