Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2011
From Computational Complexity
All the news that fit to tweet
The Daily Shows Slogan used to be When news break we fix it! This raises the question: When does breaking news actually break?
From Wild WebMink
Open Source Procurement and Copyright
Legacy procurement rules that try to demand custom copyright licenses and the assignment of new copyright to your company could be costing you dearly. They could be preventing you getting the freedoms open source brings, and…
From Wild WebMink
? New Things
News in (Very) Brief – Open Enterprise Despite all his instincts as a journalist telling him otherwise, Glyn is experimenting with link posts – take a look and give him feedback on how to do it better! TradeMark Policy – The…
From Schneier on Security
ATM Skimmer on Bank Door Lock
This is a clever development in ATM skimming technology. It's a skimmer that attaches to the ATM-room door lock, not the ATM itself. Combined with a hidden camera, it's an ATM skimmer that requires no modification to the ATM…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
To Hack or Not to Hack
The other day I solved a problem in a slightly out of the box way. That is to say that it worked but its not the sort of solution you will see recommended by anyone as
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Policy Highlights from Communications of the ACM - November 2010 (Vol. 53, No. 11)
Below is a list of items with policy relevance from the November issue of Communications of the ACM. As always, much of the material in CACM is premium content, and free content one month may slip behind a pay wall the next.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Replacements for the Newspaper
If you put text and pictures on a pad device is this a replacement for a newspaper? The roll out of The Daily is an attempt at making this work. GigaOM discusses this. In one sense yes, it brings essentially limitless content…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Who is in Charge of Analytics?
I have started to see corporate explorations of this topic. In a number of experiments we started to build executive information systems (EIS) to try to change the definition of the user. The issue of who was responsible for…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CRA Launches Effort to Understand Opinions About Recent PostDoc Surge
The Computing Research Association — the umbrella organization of the CCC — today launched an effort to engage the computing research community in a conversation about PostDocs, at a time when a growing number of recent PhDs…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Responds to Department of Commerce Online Privacy Report
Last month the Internet Policy Task Force (a Commerce Department group drawing on expertise from the Patent and Trademark Office, the International Trade Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking HTTP Status Codes
One website can learn if you're logged into other websites.
When you visit my website, I can automatically and silently determine if you're logged into Facebook, Twitter, GMail and Digg. There are almost certainly thousands …From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Save the Date - Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference 2011
The Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference (CFP) will take place this year June 14 through the 16th in Washington D.C. ACM is one of the conference sponsors.
This year's theme is "The Future is Now." The CFP, the 21st,…From The Eponymous Pickle
Buyology Inc Releases NeuroTypes
I see that the neuromarketing firm Buyology Inc has released their Neurotype approach, applying it to determine the ranking of the most desired brands for men and women in the US. For full disclosure, I have done consulting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Developing Mobile Apps
Interesting piece in Computerworld:Escape the App Store: 4 ways to create smartphone Web apps By Peter Wayner" So you want to get your software in the hands of the hundreds of millions of smartphone users around the world. Perhaps…
From Wild WebMink
? Learning Opportunities
On WebM again: freedom, quality, patents The arguments made against WebM video by H.264 advocates turn out to be at best wildly exaggerated and at worst baseless slander, according to this excellent (and data-backed) article…
From Schneier on Security
Kip Hawley Comments on the Domodedovo Airport Bombing
This is the first piece of writing I've seen from Kip Hawley since he left the TSA in 2009. It's mostly generalities and platitudes.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Prototypes from Microsoft Education Labs
Microsoft Education Labs is a sort of technology playground for the Microsoft Education Products group. They have a blog and other pages to share ideas and have discussions about ideas for technology in education for example…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wikipedia Now 10 Years Old, and it Works
Everyone has problems with the Wikipedia, now over ten years old, but it does work and it is often the place to go first for encyclopedia style information. With all it's flaws, it works.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Comments on Proposed Web Accessibility Rules
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990, and did not address the Internet. However, the Department of Justice established, most notably through a case involving Target, established that the ADA provisions…
From Wild WebMink
? The Open-By-Rule Governance Benchmark
With Oracle’s OpenJDK Project about to announce new community governance, many people have asked what I look for in good open source project and community governance. My personal benchmark is over on ComputerWorldUK today – take…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Shelf Life of Great Ideas
In VentureBeat/Entrepreneur Corner: Some interesting startup lessons and ideas. These are the kinds of ideas that aim to set the stage, and are to a large degree, not directly usefulin getting things done. " ... advises would…
From Schneier on Security
Me on Color-Coded Terrorist Threat Levels
I wrote an op-ed for CNN.com on the demise of the color-coded terrorist theat level system. It's nothing I haven't said before, so I won't reprint it here.
The best thing about the system was the jokes it inspired late-night…From Wild WebMink
? Rebooting Procurement
European Commission consults on the modernisation of the European Public Procurement Market The European Commission’s consultation is in progress until April. It would be very good indeed for as many open source advocates as…
From Wild WebMink
? Sirius News
When we started last year, it was thrilling to see how many companies responded when we asked who would be interested in reselling ForgeRock subscriptions, consulting on the projects and delivering training. Over eighty former…
From Putting People First
New encyclopedia on interactive design, usability and user experience
The people behind Interaction-Design.org introduced a new type of top-quality and free encyclopedia dealing with Interactive Design, Usability, and User Experience. It has taken the opposite approach of Wikipedia and crowd-sourcing…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Recursive Loops
Last week I wrote about loops and how some students seem to have trouble with them. On the link to it from Facebook one friend of mine asked
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Network Connector from IBM
I have talked to IBM several times about their development of social connectivity software. What I saw, developed for internal use, was impressive. Now they have announced a solution for the enterprise. " ... IBM is hoping…