Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2010
From Computational Complexity
HW policies: PROS and CONS
The last blog entry had lots of good comments about different HW policies. I enumerate them and say PROS and CONS Hard Deadline. PRO- uniform, no favoritism, can post HW Solutions or go over HW in class as soon as it is handed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IdeaConnection
I had a conversation with IdeaConnection recently. Have been getting their newsletter for some time and it is informative. See their writup on open innovation.
From My Biased Coin
EC Papers Up
The list of accepted papers for EC is up. I'm happy to say that our Swoopo paper made the list. I was surprised in the acceptance letter to find that there were 45 acceptances out of 136 papers -- an acceptance rate of about…
From Schneier on Security
Guide to Microsoft Police Forensic Services
The "Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook (U.S. Domestic Version)" (also can be found here, here, and here) outlines exactly what Microsoft will do upon police request. Here's a good summary of what's…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Arrays of Controls
Over the weekend for the second time in about three weeks a teacher asked my about creating arrays of controls in Visual basic .NET. Interestingly enough both teachers were interested in doing this to create a Jeopardy styleNow…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predict Marketing ROI with Next-Gen Planning Tools
I repeat this invitation. We worked with Thinkvine in the enterprise and remain impressed with their work.March 18, 2010 | 2 p.m. ET | Duration: 1 HourRegister Now Can you predict marketing ROI before spending a dime? Marketing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Startup Visa
In the World Flattener: Sammy Haroon posts about Startup Visa to USA. Always provocative. -
From The Eponymous Pickle
Power from Nanotubes
From research at MIT: Big power from tiny wires: New discovery shows carbon nanotubes can produce powerful waves that could be harnessed for new energy systems.-
From The Eponymous Pickle
Statistics and Behavioral Modeling
Intriguing article, by Steve Miller. I have now dealt with these 'two cultures' a number of times in various enterprises. This article and the included link are worth the read ... about the application of traditional statistics…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Phone Lip-Reading
Can you have a phone read your lips and interpret what you say? Silent verbal communications. Research in that area.-
From Schneier on Security
Google in <i>The Onion</i>
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA
From Wild WebMinkSundown
After nearly 10 years, I've now left Sun. Thanks to everyone for following my blog for all these years. Please follow my new blog, Wild Webmink, where I have posted a career retrospective.
From Computer Science Teachers AssociationMarketing Computer Science Courses
I joked as I left work on Friday that it was "my day of shame". I am responsible for recruiting students for a government-funded course that offers MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) and MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT…
From Schneier on SecurityEating a Flash Drive
How not to destroy evidence:
In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service…
From Daniel Lemire's BlogLanguage, Mathematics and Programming
Even if you have extensive training in Mathematics, the average Mathematics paper is undistinguishable from the ramblings of a madman. Many of these papers seek to solve narrow problems. And yet, we respect Mathematicians. Software…
From Computational ComplexityA HW policy- MORAL due date.
This semester I am using the following HW policy. HW is due on Tuesday. However, your dog died! Hence you get an extension to Thursday. That is, for all people in the class I assume you have a quasi-legit reason to ask forcan…
From Putting People FirstEthnography informs text-free UI for illiterate people
Indrani Medhi, an Associate Researcher at Microsoft Research India where she works in the Technology for Emerging Markets team, designed a text free user interface for illiterate populations. “A student of design, Medhi has developed…
From The Eponymous PickleLessons from a Restaurant App
Well stated, I like simple apps with a recognizable and uniform interface. Because mobile often means we don't have the time to learn a new user interface on the fly ... again. Three lessons from the Chipotle iPhone appHow centralization…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACMHill Tech Happenings, Week of March 8
March 10
Hearing:
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on U.S. cyberspace policy and foreign policy (rescheduled from February 10). 10 a.m., 2172 Rayburn Building
The House Science and Technology Committee…
From Schneier on SecurityDe-Anonymizing Social Network Users
Interesting paper: "A Practical Attack to De-Anonymize Social Network Users."
Abstract. Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Xing have been reporting exponential growth rates. These sites have millions of…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonInteresting Links 8 March 2010
From My Biased CoinCarousel (NSDI Paper)
The "final version" for our NSDI paper, Carousel: Scalable Logging for Intrusion Prevention Systems, is now up.Here's the main idea. In IPS systems, the logger can get overwhelmed during an attack. Bad sources (with other related…
From The Eponymous PickleMicro Industries
Micro Industries is a company that does some very innovative work in the area of retail signage. We worked with them in the innovation centers. They now have a Facebook site worth taking a look at. Particularly interesting…
From The Noisy ChannelGoogle and Transparency
Let me preface this post with a clear disclaimer: I work at Google, but the views I express on this blog are my own personal views. Last week, Google head of webspam Matt Cutts posted a full-throated defense of Google’s transparency…
From The Eponymous PickleDo School Libraries Need Books?
A debate in the NYT: I am the patron of a regional library that just relocated to a new modern building. There are fewer shelves of books now. There is an enormous room full of computer screens. Very convenient for me, yet likely…
From CERIAS BlogMaking the CWE Top 25, 2010 Edition
As last year, I was glad to be able to participate in the making of the CWE Top 25. The 2010 Edition has been more systematically and methodically produced than last year's. We adjusted the level of abstraction of the entries…
From The Eponymous PickleBrowse Popular Science
You can now browse online the last 137 years of the magazine Popular Science for free. A good view of previous times. Pretty outrageous predictions at times, I note especially those about the soon to be common personal robotics…
From The Noisy ChannelNot All Queries Are Created Equal
A topic with which I developed an obsession in my last few years at Endeca is understanding how to predict query difficulty and performance–performance in the information retrieval sense meaning results quality, not computational…
From The Noisy ChannelHCIR 2010: A Pre-Announcement
We’re gearing up to officially announce the HCIR 2010 workshop, but I wanted to give folks here a heads up, as well as to put out a call for a volunteer. The Fourth Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval…
From The Eponymous PickleHand Touchscreen
Body acoustics can turn hand into a tochscreen. Work at Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft produces a system called Skinput.