Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2011
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Would You Like to Pilot a New Game Development Course?
Would you like to pilot a new game development course (or two) in your school? With free curriculum and software? Microsoft is starting a new XNA online community group and curriculum pilot program that features:
Free software…From BLOG@CACM
On the Importance of Replication in HCI and Social Computing Research
How does replication of experiments and systems move HCI research forward? Wouldn't replication simply waste valuable researcher energy that might be better spent on actually creating new novel ideas or systems? This essay …
From BLOG@CACM
Why Don't Languages Support Multimedia All the Way Down?
It's a hallmark of CS thinking, to be able to shift levels of abstraction down to the bytes. Why do programming languages make this so hard to teach students?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brilliance by Fulcruum
Seen at the recent Continuous Web meetings: A new online magazine by Fulcruum Publishing called Brilliance. The Premiere issue of June 1 is called: Escaping the Echo Chamber of Noise and Nonsense. Articles include: Why Being…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visirule: Logic Programming
In the heady AI/Knowledge Systems days of the 90s we wrote dozens of rule based systems that contained thousands of rules. These were designed to capture and reproduce the knowledge of corporate experts. Maybe even run the company…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Today I attended a panel discussion on “The Role of the Cloud in the Smart Grid”, sponsored by Microsoft’s Innovation & Policy Center and the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign (DESC).
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Policy Highlights from Communications of the ACM
Below is a list of items with policy relevance from the March 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. You…
From Schneier on Security
My Next Book: Title and Cover
As my regular readers already know, I'm in the process of writing my next book. It's a book about why security exists: specifically, how a group of people protects itself from individuals within that group. My working title…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Clorox Shares Green Data with an App
The increased focus of Apps is revealing. Note also the integration of UPC code scanning. Here Clorox shares their green data on a smartphone App. " .... Clorox last week announced that it had developed a mobile application…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
What Were They Thinking? The Important of Feedback
Asking for honest, anonymous feedback can be scary. Really scary. But over the years, I've learned that the benefits of getting real feedback far outweigh the possibility that you'll get slammed. Feedback really does matter.…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
DARPA Soliciting Innovative Research Proposals
Late last month, DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O) issued a solicitation calling for research proposals that “investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems.” Among…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Wal-Mart Case
A reasoned and understandable explanation of the Wal-Mart discrimination case supreme court ruling. Lots of corporate implications.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Test Drive Your Competitors
A good article in the Harvard Blogs on really knowing you competitors by using, not just casually experiencing their products. Doing that does not imply disloyalty. In our innovation center retail spaces we included competitive…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-06-21
Disastrous Implications of New Apple Patent for Blocking Cellphone Video – storify.com What an amazingly dangerous world Apple are exploring here. The scope for abuse, together with the quantisation of analogue freedoms, makes…
From Schneier on Security
The Problem with Cyber-crime Surveys
Good paper: "Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys," Dinei Florêncio and Cormac Herley, Microsoft Research.
Abstract: Much of the information we have on cyber-crime losses is derived from surveys. We examine some of the difficulties…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Microsoft at ISTE 2011
As I promised yesterday, here is more information about Microsoft at ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia. First off the good stuff. OK well the stuff that means the most to me
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Award Winning Keynoters at CSTA's Annual CS&IT Conference 2011
This year, CSTA
From Wild WebMink
? Bitly and Spam Links
I was interested last week to discover that, unknown to me, the link shortening service bit.ly was displaying a warning message when anyone clicked on one link I had shortened with them. The link was to a controversial but entirely…
From Schneier on Security
The Life Cycle of Cryptographic Hash Functions
Nice chart.
From Computational Complexity
I am conducing a NEW POLL on P vs NP
In 2002 I did a poll that appeared as SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 36 on what people thought of P vs NP. See here.
That article is now linked to on Wikipedia and (much to my surprise) has come to be the AUTHORITY…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Beyond the Bounce Rate
A post in the blog at Catalyst Online. Brought to my attention this week. Honestly I have not heard the measure of the 'bounce rate' used very often in the enterprise. Still always considered it to be an important measure…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Using Technology to Reinvent Math Education
What subject do high school students dislike the most? My bet is math — it’s confusing, abstract, and requires meticulous attention to detail. But at it’s heart, math is an exciting tool to grapple with otherwise unsolvable problems…
From BLOG@CACM
Research in Agile Development Practices
Recent research in Agile development practices has identified that self-organizing teams spontaneously assume some previously unclassified roles and practices to make themselves successful.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Meaningful Play
A good Google talk on meaningful play. Sebstian Deterding - Serious Play: Getting Gamification Right. And Prof. Jesse Schell's talk at DICE on the future of games. Both good resources. Via Karen Hillis-Skipper, Ipsos
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of June 20
Cybersecurity appears to be the word for committees this week. June 21 Hearing: The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on cybersecurity in the financial sector. 10 a.m., 538 Dirksen Building…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictive Analytical Medical tests
Algorithms for real time data analysis for predictive diagnosis. Again this was an early application of artificial intelligence. As suggested this requires that the data has to be available and correct.
From Putting People First
Individual and networked privacy
Danah Boyd, researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, posted the crib of her recent Personal Democracy Forum talk on networked privacy. “Our contemporary ideas…
From Putting People First
Book: ethnography and the corporate encounter
Ethnography and The Corporate Encounter Reflections on Research in and of Corporations Edited by Melissa Cefkin Berghahn Books 2010, 262 pages Businesses and other organizations are increasingly hiring anthropologists and other…
From Schneier on Security
RAND Corporation on Trusted Traveler
Current aviation security procedures screen all passengers uniformly. Varying the
…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 20 June 2011
This time next week I will be in Philadelphia for ISTE. I