Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2012
From Wild WebMink
Magnetic North
We saw
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thinking About Risk
In the WSJ Numbers Guy: Absolute vs Relative risk. An important difference that is often misunderstood.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Eyes
It seems that the huge eyes of the giant squid are optimized to see sperm whales.
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Bear 71: The National Film Board of Canada's Interactive Narrative
How do you get people to care about the diminishing natural habitat of wildlife in Banff National Park and surrounding area? Telling an emotional story from the point of view of a resident bear helps, but The National Film Board…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
FTC Launches New Technology Blog
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today launched a new blog — Tech @ FTC –
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Predictive Analytics Software from IBM
CIO Insights Reports reports about new Predictive Analytic Software and services from IBM. I have thirty years of experience with the use of analytical methods to improve company decision making. Analytical methods are fundamental…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIST: $2.6 Million for Novel Semiconductor Research
On Tuesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced a solicitation
From The Eponymous Pickle
KC to Market in a Digital World
About how Kimberly Clark plans to market in a digital world. Semantics or a key subtlety?" .. Spurring growth for such brands as Huggies, Cottonelle and Scott remains a priority. Mr. Sirkin will also concentrate on K-C's "lean…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Putting Smarts in the Smart Grid
In CACM: I visited and presented at GE's Smart Grid Center in Atlanta last year. They are doing some very impressive things and presenting the results to industry partners. Still, there is considerable challenge to contribute…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Spotfire Social
I was an early user of Spotfire, now Tibco Spotfire. An impressive package for deep data visualization and delivery. They have added a number of social features in recent versions. An interesting idea, but does not by itself…
From Computational Complexity
David Waltz (1943-2012)
From Wild WebMink
? Will mobile devices trigger the year of the Linux desktop?
The enterprise IT world is coming to grips with a new buzz-TLA; “BYOD”. It stands for Bring Your Own Device and considers the way employees are bringing their own laptops, tables and smart-phones to work and using them in the
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The Wall Street Journal
From Schneier on Security
<i>The Economist</i> Debate on Airplane Security
On The Economist website, I am currently debating Kip Hawley on airplane security. On Tuesday we posted our initial statements, and today (London time) we posted our rebuttals. We have one more round to go.
I've set it up…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Getting Ready For Windows 8
Like almost everyone at Microsoft I have been hard at work getting ready for Windows 8. I
From The Noisy Channel
Claudia Perlich: Tech Talk on Real-Time Bidding Optimization
Conventional wisdom holds that physical compliments are counter-productive as pick-up lines. Indeed, a dating site did some analysis showing a negative correlation between such compliments and the probability of a positive response…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Lifebrowser Lets You Explore Your Past
Clever idea, from Microsoft, that could have application for mining important aspects of corporate history for training: ... " Prototype software called Lifebrowser uses artificial intelligence to help you revisit important events…
From Computational Complexity
A Busy Time of The Year
It's spring break week at Northwestern so life is supposed to be quiet. No such luck. Endre Szemer
From The Eponymous Pickle
I am Available
Every now and then I pop in here to remind people that I am a consultant. I get many queries from my writing in this blog. I have just had two large projects end, so I am indicating the availability of my time in the coming…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Flexibility and Creativity in Teaching
Hack Education has an interesting interview with Laura Blankenship, a computer science teacher in Pennsylvania. I think it's great the flexibility Laura demonstrates - when Scratch wasn't working for her students, she switched…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retail Analytics of Tomorrow
SymphontyIRI and GMA are starting a project on identifying the analytics of tomorrow. " ... GMA is working with research firm SymphonyIRI on Analytics2020, a global survey focused on defining the elements necessary for success…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing for Disaster Management Visioning
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), together with the National Science Foundation (NSF), is co-sponsoring a limited-participation visioning workshop on computing for disaster management. Led by Robin Murphy (Texas A&M University)…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Do we need copyright?
The concept of property is a social construction. Animals, such as cats, can own a piece of food, or a territory, but only as long as they are able to personally maintain a credible threat of violence. And animals can only defend…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fizzback Customer Feedback Channel
Eurostar experiments with Customer Feedback"When considering their options, Haynes and his team trialled a system from Fizzback, a UK start-up that was acquired by Israeli software vendor NICE Systems last year, which allowed…
From Schneier on Security
Can the NSA Break AES?
In an excellent article in Wired, James Bamford talks about the NSA's codebreaking capability.
According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its …From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The DARPA Challenge That Didn
Earlier this month, we highlighted the
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Analytics Roadmap
From AnalyticsBridge: An interesting paper that addresses the process. Somewhat overplayed in my opinion, but it is worth a look for alternatives to design choices.
From Schneier on Security
Another <i>Liars and Outliers</i> Excerpt
IT World published an excerpt from Chapter 4.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tide Thefts Rampant
This saw considerable press a few weeks ago. The P&G detergent Tide being used as a 'currency' for criminals. And becoming the object of theft. Not because it can be used as a chemical basis of controlled substances, but…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Preventing Support Agent Burnout
Using game dynamics to prevent support agent burnout. A reasonable area of application since it includes tiresome tasks, but is it reasonably scalable?