Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2012
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Happy Unbirthday To Turing
Happy 100th birthday to our great Machine Tools provider (src) Alan Turing was born 100 years ago yesterday. Hence today is his first unbirthday since his one hundred birthday. Per Wikipedia, an unbirthday is an event that can…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links
Well I am not at ISTE this year. Sorry to miss it but in the long run it worked out as I am taking care of some important family stuff this week. If you are there I hope you will say hi to any Microsoft people you run into. Soma…
From BLOG@CACM
Preparing Computing Students For the Designer Role
The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predictions for the next 10 years predicts lower-than-average growth in programming jobs, but dramatic growth in designer jobs. What are the implications for what and how we teach?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Signal and Noise
An excerpt from Nassim Taleb's forthcoming book: Antifragile. On order." ... When consuming information, we strive for more signal and less noise. Intuitively we feel like the more information we consume the more signal we…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
What We Think We Know
Half of my job revolves around conducting professional development for teachers. My colleagues and I have done our best to offer quality sessions that are customized to meet the needs of our audiences. And since many of us …
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on 3D Printing
Another good piece on the status of 3D printing and remote manufacturing in GigaOM. Some good examples of where it can be practically used. I still think its application is relatively limited.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Embedding Analytics
A description of recent IBM work in embedding analytical methods in decision making. In our own experience it was always a case of how analytical methods could be included as part of a decision to improve that decision. Making…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIH Director Describes
National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis S. Collins has penned a guest forum
From The Eponymous Pickle
Online Storefronts
Engadget asks what works. We examined this almost a decade ago. I thought about it for a real application. Was there a requirement, or any value in mimic-ing a real life storefront to make them work? I virtually watched as…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Evernote Acquires Penultimate for Handwriting
I see that the Evernote note-taking company has acquired the Penultimate handwriting capture system. More details here. I have used and enjoyed Evernote on tablets, phones and laptops for some time. I have not used handwriting…
From Computational Complexity
Alan Turing (1912-1954)
From The Eponymous Pickle
Badgeify Acquires Gamification
An interesting change among gamification vendors and underlying information organization. I have enjoyed and found useful the gamification.org wiki for examples in this technology. But this could likely make the result less…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Re-imagining Online Advertising
The documentary. Google re-imagines what online advertising will become in their project Brief. Interesting to see what they are up to, especially considering the kind of supporting data they have access to. " ... We…
From Wild WebMink
Whatever Happened To OpenSolaris?
Oracle probably thought they’d killed OpenSolaris after they bought Sun and focussed so many resources on Sun’s hardware business. But that sort of thinking would betray an ignorance of the reality of open source if it was true…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Maps Coordinate
New: Google mapping and location infrastructure, used to manage field crews. An analytics application.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Mutant Squid at the Queen's Jubilee
I think this is a parody, but you can never be sure.
Millions of Britons turned out for the Queen
From The Eponymous PickleCrowdsourcing Forest Monitoring
In Google Lat Long: Having been involved in several crowd sourcing efforts, its always good to see further and more complex examples. Mapping would seem to be an obvious application, when linked to alerting based on the data…
From Schneier on SecurityColbert Report on the Orangutan Cyberthreat
Very funny video expos
From Computer Science Teachers AssociationTaking Advantage of the Interest in Games
I am writing this at the Games, Learning and Society Conference (http://www.glsconference.org/2012/index.html) in Madison, Wisconsin. This is an interesting and useful conference from a CSTA point of view, but perhaps not one…
From The Eponymous PickleCoke's Holistic View
In Supermarket News:Coca-Cola is about 1
From Putting People FirstAnthropologist Gabriella Coleman Studying Hacker Culture
As a grad student in anthropology, Gabriella Coleman was warned that studying the culture of computer hackers would make it hard to get a job teaching in a university. She went ahead anyway, becoming one of the first academics…
From Schneier on SecurityEconomic Analysis of Bank Robberies
Yes, it's clever:
The basic problem is the average haul from a bank job: for the three-year period, it was only
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NPCricket, 400, and Complexity Theory
A random cross-section of our first 400 posts (src) Brian Lara remains the only cricket batsman to score 400 or more runs in one innings of a Test Match. In fact he scored exactly 400 not out, meaning in this case that he could…
From The Female Perspective of Computer ScienceMy STEMinist Profile
Back in April, I was featured on STEMinist and forgot to mention it here!Find out what my answers were to such questions as 'What inspired you to pursue a career in STEM?' and 'What is the coolest project you have worked on and…
From The Eponymous PickleVSN Strategies
I have just become involved in a new collaboration with James Tenser of VSN Strategies. " ... Consultant to the retail consumer products industry and author of books, blogs and analysis ... " . See also his interesting blog…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonComputer Science in the Common Core
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I really believe that we need more computer science in education long before university. The only national influence on getting any computer science often seems to be the Advanced…
From Schneier on SecurityFar-Fetched Scams Separate the Gullible from Everyone Else
Interesting conclusion by Cormac Herley, in this paper: "Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?"
Abstract: False positives cause many promising detection technologies to be unworkable in practice. Attackers, we…
From ApopheniaCFP: public-facing papers on Youth Movements / Youth Organizations
Scholars, researchers, & academics – we need your help!
From Putting People FirstThe Public Domain: Surveillance in Everyday Life
People create profiles on social network sites and Twitter accounts against the background of an audience. This paper by Alice Marwick argues that closely examining content created by others and looking at one
From Putting People FirstContext is key to making computers better conversationalists
When communicating, context is king. A breakthrough in modelling context in human communication could make computers better conversationalists, according to cognitive scientists at Stanford University. “[Michael] Frank, [head…