Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tesco and Giraffe
A UK Correspondent RJ writes:A new Tesco development, sounds almost like they are planning Tesco malls!"...Supermarket group Tesco has bought the restaurant chain Giraffe for £48.6m. The move will see the supermarket open Giraffe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Survey of Statistical Package
A short survey of statistical packages in use by OR professionals.by Vincent Granville in Analytic Bridge.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Explore Data with Excel
A good introductory review. There are still lots of groups that use Excel exclusively for manipulating data. Now an add-in that addresses the further exploration of data. Especially the conversion of data for explorative…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
No-Go Theorems
How far does no-go go? Simon Kochen is the Henry Burchard Fine Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. He wrote a PhD thesis on ultrafilters at Princeton in 1959 under Alonzo Church, and supervised the thesis on bounded…
From My Biased Coin
Turing Award : Goldwasser and Micali
Got in the office this morning and heard about the latest Turing Award: Congrats to Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali! (Press release.)
From Schneier on Security
Security Theater on the Wells Fargo Website
Click on the "Establishing secure connection" link at the top of this page. It's a Wells Fargo page that displays a progress bar with a bunch of security phrases -- "Establishing Secure Connection," "Sending credentials," "Building…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Client Composite Background
A document that contains links to a number of blog posts that represent my major work and client relationships. Still in draft, but provides a good starting point for understanding of my skills and background. Feel free…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
2012 ACM Turing Award Recipients Announced
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali, are recipients of the 2012 A.M. Turing Award. Their innovations became the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Team Smartphone Use Soars
Useful PEW statistics about Teen smartphone use. Again the expectation that the future will be mobile, local and very personal. We need to be ready for that.
From Putting People First
Design and public services
Design and Public Services is the second publication in the UK Design Commission‘s ‘Restarting Britain’ series. The first set out the strategic importance of design education as a driver of economic renewal and growth. This 64…
From Putting People First
methods@manchester: research methods in the social sciences
methods@manchester is a website created by the University of Manchester to highlight and explain research methods in the social sciences. Many sections come with lecture videos and reading lists. Readers will be particularly…
From Putting People First
No to NoUI
‘The best design is invisible’ is the interaction design phrase of the moment. Design and technology will ‘disappear’, become ‘invisible’, and the ‘best interface is no interface’… A cluster of thinking which Timo Arnall calls…
From Putting People First
Will mobile education arrive in the developing world
(As if it hasn’t already). In developing countries, where smartphones and dependable cellular networks are still scarce, it’s been difficult to gauge the real impact of the mobile education movement. But with the combination…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Body Imaging: Poikos
Stan Dyck sends along a link to Poikos, " ... Poikos means 3D body measurement, on any device, in seconds. Thanks for dropping by. After a successful closed beta period last year, we’ve opened our platform to developers world…
From Computational Complexity
Turing Award to Shafi and Silvio
The 2012 ACM Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science, will be given to MIT cryptographers Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali. From the press release: Working together, they pioneered the field of provable security…
From Apophenia
thank you SXSW
Last night, I was inducted into the SXSW-Interactive Hall of Fame in a whirlwind awards ceremony. I only had a flash of a moment to reflect so I want to take a moment here to provide greater context and appreciation to all who…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Best-seller Lists
It turns out that you can buy a position for your book on best-seller lists.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Lecturing or Conversing
I was reading one of those articles about Bill Gates talking about education again. I should stop that. The man is a genius in many areas but education is not one of them. He was talking about recording the best lecturers again…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Consumers Want More Information
In POPAI: Also a discussion of standards, which ultimately gets you to comparable information. Accessing an extended package, like using a barcode reader, or image recognition, is one approach. But its availability is not universal…
From Computational Complexity
What if they gave an exam and nobody came?
A professor tells the class that he will use the highest grade to set the curve. The students all conspire to NOT take the exam, so the highest score is 0, so they should all get A's. If you were the prof what would you do? …
From Schneier on Security
Cisco IP Phone Hack
All current Cisco IP phones, including the ones seen on desks in the White House and aboard Air Force One, have a vulnerability that allows hackers to take complete control of the devices.
From My Biased Coin
A Second Life for our Groupon Paper
Groupon has been in the news lately -- something about their CEO leaving, I hear. And Giorgos Zervas has been out giving talks. (He's a great speaker. You should invite him to your next related workshop or conference.) The…
From My Biased Coin
The Press
Harvard's name, obviously, still sells newspapers. The "e-mailgate" scandal of the past few days has been appearing everywhere. I was contacted multiple times from various news organizations over the weekend and yesterday -…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF CISE Directorate Launches Search Committee for CCF Division Director
The following was submitted by Farnam Jahanian, NSF Assistant Director for CISE. Dear Colleagues, CISE is pleased to announce the formation of a search committee for the Director of the Division of Computing and Communication…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Forget the Tech
Its to easy too just see the technology. You still have to implement good ideas with it. Marc Pritchard, P&G's Global Brand Building Officer speaks about this in New Orleans.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Algorithms and Humans in Big Data Decisions
A good overview. Certainly you want to make automatic anything you can. Algorithms are rules for doing that. It can be cheaper and faster than using a human interaction. However, today it is still common to have a human…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Real Time Sales Support and Data
The idea of real time sales support has emerged in recent conversations. E-Commerce Times article on the subject. What kind of sales support is key to a particular domain. And how fast is the real time need of that area? Also…
From Schneier on Security
"The Logic of Surveillance"
Interesting essay:
Surveillance is part of the system of control. "The more surveillance, the more control" is the majority belief amongst the ruling elites. Automated surveillance requires fewer "watchers", and since the[…From Putting People First
Book: Instruments de Design Management [French]
For French readers: Instruments de design management – Théories et cas pratiques Cabirio Cautela, Francesco Zurlo, Kamel Ben Youssef, Stéphane Magne Préface : Gilles Rougon Editeur : De Boeck 2012 Comment se développe un processus…
From Putting People First
Book: Service Design – From Insight to Implementation
Service Design – From Insight to Implementation by Andy Polaine, Lavrans Løvlie & Ben Reason Rosenfeld Media – March 2013 (book will be published tomorrow) We have unsatisfactory experiences when we use banks, buses, health services…