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
Is Internet Education the Answer
A friend sent me a link to this inforgraphic about Internet education. I have mixed feelings about all this. I am ok with distance learning – where the lecture is live and interactive just remote. I’ve done some of that andMultiplication…
From Computational Complexity
FCRC 2011. Part I of... maybe I, maybe more.
I do not log on at conferences so I came back to 400 emails. Exactly 400- not sure how I managed that. TODAY I am posting about a few things from FCRC, I may post more next week as I remember them. CCC finally no longer has…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
100,000 Views
A quick break from the usual sorts of posts in this space: The Computing Community Consortium launched this blog three years ago as a way to promote discussion — about research directions, funding programs, etc. — throughout…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The language interpreters are the new machines
Most Computer Science textbooks assume that algorithms are written directly into machine language for an idealized machine under a Von Neumann architecture. Alas, at best, these idealized models provide “ballpark” guidance to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Consmr Rates Package Goods
A new service, Consmr hopes to be the Yelp of Consumer Packaged Goods. The name is somewhat hard to follow. Also, how much rating is actually done for these types of cheap goods? More than you think, I know of several services…
From Schneier on Security
Status Report on the War on Photography
Worth reading: Morgan Leigh Manning, "Less than Picture Perfect: The Legal Relationship between Photographers' Rights and Law Enforcement," Tennessee Law Review, Vol. 78, p. 105, 2010.
Abstract: Threats to national security…From The Eponymous Pickle
Panopticon
Stephen Few looks at the data visualization vendor Panopticon. Took a brief look at them some time back, and they are certainly worth a closer examination. As he suggests, in the past they have mainly been working with Financials…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mismeasure of Man is UnBiased
In the NYT: Have read with great interest the books of Stephen J Gould for years. Now one of his most famous findings, in the Mismeasure of Man, turns out to be incorrect based on repeated modern measurements. Ironically flipping the…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Back in late April, the CCC announced a call for short videos describing exciting research and results in computer science — with the goal of communicating to undergraduates what computing research is all about. Today I’m pleased…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM's 100th Anniversary
In school I was offered a job working with IBM on disk drive analysis, but I went in another direction. In my first enterprise job I worked with their optimization software to locate plants and improve warehouse operation. they…
From Putting People First
Experientia wins Italian National Prize for Innovation in Services
Experientia wins Italian National Prize for Innovation in Services, sponsored by the Italian government and Confcommercio. The President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, awards the prize. Rome, Tuesday 14 June 2011 Today…
From Putting People First
Experientia vince il Premio Nazionale per l
Experientia vince la terza edizione del Premio Nazionale per l
From Schneier on Security
Yet Another Way to Evade TSA's Full-Body Scanners
Last night, at the Third EPIC Champion of Freedom Awards Dinner, we gave an award to Susie Castillo, whose blog post and video of her treatment in the hands of the TSA has inspired thousands to complain about the agency and their…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Analytics at IBM
In Technology Review: IBM researchers are working on systems that can analyze data to tell businesses eactly what action to take ...Visiting artificial intelligence again, twenty years later, but avoiding the term.
From Wild WebMink
? OpenOffice.Org and the LibreOffice Imperative
As expected, the Apache Software Foundation took the first steps to admitting the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache community, following Oracle’s IBM-designed proposal. It now faces a time of maturing and proving in Apache’s…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
US Kodu Cup Winners Announced (2011)
Yesterday the Unlimited Potential team announced the winners of the inaugural US Kodu Cup competition.
Today we are announcing the winners of the first U.S. Kodu Cup. It’s a competition that challenged kids across the United…From Wild WebMink
? New Cat
It was with huge sadness that we discovered last month that our cat Toby had died suddenly in a neighbour’s garden. He was in perfect condition. He had breakfast, went out to prowl in the sunshine and the next thing we knew was…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Learning Management System
A few weeks ago took a look at an example of a learning management system that had a social component. Here is another that was pointed out to me Interactyx: " ...Interactyx Limited provides social eLearning software solutions…
From My Biased Coin
NY Times on Computing
A couple of days ago there was a NY Times article on computing being cool (again), including a shout-out to Harvard's own CS 50 and of course the Social Network.Matt Welsh has a take on it, but please also look for my comment…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stanford Spatial History Project
Fascinating work at Stanford. Another example of how visualization can me used to organize and gain insight from very complex data. Always wanted to do this kind pattern discovery in the enterprise. Today we have the tools…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of June 13
June 14 Conference: The Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference takes place (continues through June 16) Georgetown University Law Center, 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. June 15 Hearing: The Commerce, Trade and…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
There’s a very timely story in today’s Boston Globe featuring the work of Michael Zink and his colleagues at UMass-Amherst, who are developing — with funding from the NSF — a better severe weather warning system that gives geographically…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IEEE Computer on Smart Cities
The June 2011 issue of IEEE Computer is devoted to the topic of Smart Cities. The individual articles are not online yet. The topic, pioneered by IBM, is instructional in that it shows how very large entities that naturally…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Information Literacy
The Information Literacy Blog highlights the first online issue of the Journal of Information Literacy. Which is "the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to identify, through whatever channel or medium, information…
From The Eponymous Pickle
LinkedIn's InMaps
I took a look at LinkedIn's InMaps visualization of my own business connection network when it first came out. A remarkable view of all those people. Nothing very surprising, A very big cluster around my long time enterprise…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Science of Retail Analytics
Rccently brought to my attention as part of a study looking at CPG analytics:Timestar Technologies, ... helps leading consumer packaged goods companies grow sales at retail with breakthrough analytics that optimize assortment…
From Schneier on Security
Why it's So Difficult to Trace Cyber-Attacks
I've been asked this question by countless reporters in the past couple of weeks. Here's a good explanation. Shorter answer: it's easy to spoof source destination, and it's easy to hijack unsuspecting middlemen and use them…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links Post 13 June 2011
I spent part of this weekend installing new kitchen cabinets. Not all of us computer geeks are afraid of hand tools and physical labor. On the other hand I
From BLOG@CACM
Long Live Incremental Research!
“Break through!” clamor the funding agencies, which scorn “incremental” research. Sure, every human being needs hype; in truth, though, almost all research—good research included—is incremental.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Paypal as an in Store Option
Indications that PayPal may be coming as an option in physical retail stores.