Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Midmarket Business and the Cloud: Reshaping the World of Business
Participated in this conference call yesterday. Reshaping the World of Business Nicely done. The speakers brought their experiences forward. I followed with a number of tweet and retweets at #SMB4cloud which were spread through…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Supply Chain is a Step to Profit
A key to increasing Profit. In Industry Week." ...Supply chain optimization and supplier management are important steps toward boosting profit. Companies can get more value from supplier relationships by negotiating lower costs…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Essential Hadoop Tools
Some essential Hadoop tools. An introductory slideshow, which is useful for the beginner. And a useful explanatory overview " ... .While many refer to the entire constellation of map and reduce tools as Hadoop, there's still…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Does Math Look Like in 3D?
In Wired: An early interest, probably the first thing I wrote about, long before blogs, always hoped there would be practical applications, but never found one. My first computer project was was doing projections of equations…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
June 27 Congressional Briefing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Aereo Decision
Tomorrow, the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee will hold a lunch briefing responsive to yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo, Inc.. The event is open to the public. Advance…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Microsoft Researchers Use Reconfigurable Hardware (FPGAs) to Accelerate Production Web Search
The following is a special contribution to this blog by by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Times they are a changing. In the 20th century many researchers and companies innovated…
From Schneier on Security
More on Hacking Team's Government Spying Software
Hacking Team is an Italian malware company that sells exploit tools to governments. Both Kaspersky Lab and Citizen Lab have published detailed reports on its capabilities against Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry smart…
From Computational Complexity
Computer Dating
My brother went through his old stuff cleaning out his apartment in New York and stumbled upon the 1981 computer dating questionnaire I wrote in high school. Forgive the dated and adolescent nature of the questions.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intel Capturing Mood
In CW: I have been introduced to some efforts by Intel in the retail interaction space, this has interesting applications in engagement and interaction. More in this blog on Intel.Intel's RealSense 3D tablet cameras will determine…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IARPA Seeking Brain-like Algorithms
In CACM: Interesting take. I am always skeptical when a requirement to be 'brain like', is included. It is an option, but not the only option, or even the best inspiration:" ... The U.S. Office of the Director of National…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Where are the Retail Data Scientists?
I would like to see more coverage in the retail data world. We had and still have many practitioners, just not called 'data scientists'. Some very good points on where the data is coming from and how it is being used today.
From The Eponymous Pickle
No Such Thing as Unstructured Data? Define it With Care.
Right, the term is broadly used. It really means in many cases 'not structured enough for the purpose at hand'. In a recent architecture project fo BI it meant 'not in a corporately managed database'. In other cases it means…
From Schneier on Security
Pepper Spray Drones
Coming soon to a protest near you: drones that fire pepper spray bullets. Desert Wolf's website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Solving Word Problems
We used this as a test problem while teaching textual language AI, has it progressed? At least from my very cursory look at the examples, yes. But is it good enough to be practical in natural language problems? At MIT:" ..…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Releases Toolkit to Highlight Investments
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently released a toolkit that describes NSF’s investment in fundamental research. It has infographics, fact sheets, brochures, and a video on NSF’s merit review process. One of the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stealing Data from Phones
In Wired: A disconcerting piece about how law enforcement and governments are gathering data directly from mobile phone. " ... Newly uncovered components of a digital surveillance tool used by more than 60 governments worldwide…
From BLOG@CACM
ACM-ICPC World Finals: St. Petersburg State University Wins!
St. Petersburg State University wins a thrilling ACM-ICPC World Finals, solving seven problems to win the contest on home soil in Ekaterinburg, Russia!
From Schneier on Security
Risks of Not Understanding a One-Way Function
New York City officials anonymized license plate data by hashing the individual plate numbers with MD5. (I know, they shouldn't have used MD5, but ignore that for a moment.) Because they didn't attach long random strings to the…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Information and Knowledge
The cartoon below by Hugh MacLeod is one of the most shared of his images on the Internet. I have to say I see something different in it every time I view it. Recently I saw it as showing the difference between teaching a programming…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Need a HoloDeck?
Via Metaio. " .... Metaio, the world leader in Augmented Reality (AR) software and solutions today revealed its 6D Holodeck technology that places virtual environments directly in the real world allowing smartphone users toVideo…
From Schneier on Security
Could Keith Alexander's Advice Possibly Be Worth $600K a Month?
Ex-NSA director Keith Alexander has his own consulting company: IronNet Cybersecurity Inc. His advice does not come cheap: Alexander offered to provide advice to Sifma for $1 million a month, according to two people briefed on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ad Agencies Want Innovations
In Adage: Ad agencies are now seeking more than just Ad ideas. For additional revenue streams " ... Ad Ideas? RFPs Morph Into Requests for Innovation, Products ... "
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cyber Defense Requires Culture
In CACM: Former NSA chief says culture not technology key to cyber defense. I really don't see our culture going that way. If anything a sense of personal responsibility is diminishing, edged that way by technology. Links…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Looking for Indoor GPS
A long time goal. Some of the research generally described here. Completely personalized navigation indoors is still not here. Coming to an office this morning it took fifteen minutes to get a Wifi connection. Useless for…
From BLOG@CACM
The ACM-ICPC World Finals: How to Watch from Home
Not traveling to Ekaterinburg for tomorrow's ACM-ICPC World Finals? Fear not!
From The Eponymous Pickle
Downside of Personalization
Interesting view. Via Linkedin. To what degree are we benefited versus being exploited? Most of this is obvious, but the measures of each are not there. I would like to see it better understood.
From Schneier on Security
Quadrennial Homeland Security Review
The second Quadrennial Homeland Security Review has been published by the Department of Homeland Security. At 100+ pages, I'm not going to be reading it, but I am curious if there's anything interesting in it....
From Schneier on Security
Defending Against Algorithm Substitution Attacks
Interesting paper: M. Bellare, K. Paterson, and P. Rogaway, "Security of Symmetric Encryption against Mass Surveillance." Abstract: Motivated by revelations concerning population-wide surveillance of encrypted communications,…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The More Languages Change The More They Stay The Same
One of the links in yesterday’s interesting links post was to a fun questionnaire for computer science people. Guess the Programming Language asks you to identify programming languages from a small snippet of code. two of the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wolfram Programming Cloud
Attended today the announcement of the Wolfram Programming Cloud. This embodies the ability to create public and private clouds using the Wolfram programming language. It uses the Wolfram Alpha AI and natural language capabilities…