Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2014
From Computational Complexity
Losing the Middle
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at an Analytics Solutions Cloud Marketplace
The medium size business always needs help with choices. They need easy to make choices that are as inexpensive as possible, and link directly to their current infrastructure. That's what makes the choices less expensive and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Bayesian Methods to Find the Malaysian Airplane
Via the SAS Blog. Good example of predictive analytics with a not generally well known technique for Big Data practitioners. Set in a real world tactical problem. Good practical details. Have written about this method many…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tesco CEO on E-Commerce
Been looking at how retailers address e-commerce futures. Here a piece by the Tesco CEO on e-commerce. Not too unexpected." ... Tesco group chief executive Philip Clarke discusses the opportunities that exist at the intersection…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Machine Learning in Excel
Slide show on a number of techniques, including add-ons to Excel for machine learning. Not much detail, but informative about software I had not seen as yet.
From Schneier on Security
Seventh Movie-Plot Threat Contest Semifinalists
On April 1, I announced the Seventh Movie Plot Threat Contest: The NSA has won, but how did it do it? How did it use its ability to conduct ubiquitous surveillance, its massive data centers, and its advanced data analytics capabilities…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Rise of the All Data Enterprise
It has arrived, but many companies are discovering that putting all this data together is harder than you think. Not all is captured, or structured, or even fully understood. Beyond that the piece takes a look at Big Data…
From BLOG@CACM
What It Takes to Be a Successful High School Computer Science Teacher
We should not prepare high school CS teachers the way we prepare software developers. Successful CS teachers use different skills.
From Schneier on Security
Espionage vs. Surveillance
According to NSA documents published in Glenn Greenwald's new book No Place to Hide, we now know that the NSA spies on embassies and missions all over the world, including those of Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, the European Union…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USTR Annual Special 301 Report on Intellectual Property Rights
Piracy of devices, storage technologies, and mobile technologies is growing worldwide according to the USTR’s annual Special 301 Report on Intellectual Property Rights. The USTR also reports an increase in software and devices…
From The Eponymous Pickle
ExperienceOne Customer Engagement Solution
Just brought to my attention:IBM just released ExperienceOne - an analytics and automation-based customer engagement solution that ties together marketing, sales and service. Site. Have taken only a cursory look so far but…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Morphological Approaches to Engineering Design
A long time correspondent, Tom Ritchey, sends a note about an analytical approach that is little used in enterprise, but should be much better known. Using the structure, or morphology, of a business decision problem to improve…
From Schneier on Security
New Al Qaeda Encryption Software
The Web intelligence company Recorded Future is reporting -- picked up by the Wall Street Journal -- that al Qaeda is using new encryption software in the wake of the Snowden stories. I've been fielding press queries, asking…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Automatic Design: Learning from a Network
The connection between automated configuration and design. Here Cisco is talking about a technical network thing. I am not so much interested in how networks are designed. But I am interested in how design might be automated…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Python and Pi Helped Make Go Code Girl 2014 A Great Success
On the last two Saturdays of March, a group of high school girls came to both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa to learn about computer science and try their hand at coding. This was our second annual Go Codehere…
From Schneier on Security
Computer Forensics in Fiction
New television show -- CSI: Cyber. I hope they have some good technical advisers, but I doubt they do....
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
NEXP and the Next Generation
Saluting Alan Selman upon the occasion of his retirement Photos by Marty Kerker Alan Selman is retiring after a long and illustrious career, the longest part spent alongside me in Buffalo. He arrived in August 1990, a year after…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
NEXP and the Next Generation
Saluting Alan Selman upon the occasion of his retirement Photos by Marty Kerker Alan Selman is retiring after a long and illustrious career, the longest part spent alongside me in Buffalo. He arrived in August 1990, a year after…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tesco Plans a Smartphone
Retail giant Tesco plans to introduce an Android smartphone this year. In Retailwire. Most interesting part: " ... Tesco's smartphone, and the Hudl, will include a "T-button" to provide instant access to Tesco's digital…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Free Analytics Handbook, Part III
As I mentioned, this is less a handbook, and more a set of informative interviews of practitioners and promoters of the topic. Now Tristan Tao writes:" We are excited to share with you the final edition of The Data Analytics…
From CERIAS Blog
In Memorium: Wyatt Starnes
William Wyatt Starnes passed away unexpectedly on May 10th, 2014 at the age of 59. Wyatt was a serial entrepreneur, known for his work in computing — and especially cyber protection — as well as for his mentorship and public …
From CERIAS Blog
In Memorium: Wyatt Starnes
William Wyatt Starnes passed away unexpectedly on May 10th, 2014 at the age of 59. Wyatt was a serial entrepreneur, known for his work in computing — and especially cyber protection — as well as for his mentorship and public …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics for CPG
From Accenture. An interesting overview report with quite a bit of detail. Pointing to a recent study. No specific companies are mentioned, but I do know some of their connections. " ... Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drone with Oculus Support
IEEE Spectrum reports on a natural progression, the interaction of physical devices, like drones, and Augmented reality interfaces, like the Oculus Rift. display. The connection between our senses and mobile sensory devices…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Management Best Practices at GE
Have always been impressed in my occasional collaboration. Includes some interesting examples. " .... A fundamental challenge of any firm – especially a huge global company such as GE – is how to balance nurturing tomorrow’s…
From Schneier on Security
New NSA Snowden Documents
Glenn Greenwald's book, No Place to Hide, has been published today. There are about 100 pages of NSA documents on the book's website. I haven't gone through them yet. At a quick glance, only a few of them have been published…
From Schneier on Security
Steganography in Tweets
Clever, but make sure to heed the caveats in the final two paragraphs....
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Does moving to a better university make you a better researcher?
Deville et al. studied the performance of physics professors as they moved from one job to another. They found that moving to a lesser school lowered the impact of one’s research papers on average a tiny bit (by a fraction of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Understanding Faces and Consumer Behavior
Understanding consumer behavior by building on facial recognition software. Work that came out of MIT where we saw it being used to trap and classify emotional responses to products via a set of digital eye glasses. The first…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Home Appliances from LG
An area we examined for years. How could smart appliances be integrated into the home? And what are the implications for the large CPG company? A short look at how always innovative Korean appliance manufacturer LG is bringing…