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 Schneier on Security
Use of Social Media by ISIS
Here are two articles about how effectively the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) -- the militant group that has just taken over half of Iraq -- is using social media. Its dedicated Android app, that automatically tweets…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies (Cyberlearning)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) recently posted a new solicitation for the Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies (Cyberlearning) program. The …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Curse of Dimensionality
Nicely done piece on classification using multiple features, the dilemma of dimensionality. I will not use the word curse here. It can be a challenge of course.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Things We Argue About
I shared the image below on my Facebook page last week. As I write this there are ten “Likes” and nineteen comments from my friends. Over how curly braces should be formatted? Yes. Computer science people will disagree on almost…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
What are you doing this summer?
The school year is ending soon. For some it is over. AP CS teachers are happy the AP exam is over and many of them are looking forward to the AP CS reading. Others are shaking their heads at the very idea of people being happy…
From The Eponymous Pickle
88 Percent of Shoppers Webroom
Some useful statistics in Retailwire. " .... The act of webrooming, or the process of researching products online then buying them in store, has become the new norm for today's connected consumers. In fact, 88 percent of shoppers…
From Schneier on Security
The State of Cyberinsurance
Good essay on the current state of cyberinsurance. So where does that leave the growing cyber insurance industry as it tries to figure out what losses it should cover and appropriate premiums and deductibles? One implication…
From Computational Complexity
Ref/info request for an obvious approach to GI
Talking about Graphi Isom with some students they came up with the following idea which is certainly not new; however, I couldn't quite find much about it on the web. ALG(G,H): Let G(0,1) and H(0,1) be the usual adacency matrix…
From My Biased Coin
Sad News: Berthold Vöcking
I have just seen the news that Berthold Vöcking passed away. For those who didn't know him, Berthold was an oustanding researcher in algorithms. We had several shared interests and were of a similar age; I always enjoyed his…
From The Eponymous Pickle
MediaCrossing and Advanced Programmatic Ad Buying
Happened on former collaborator William Lederer and MediaCrossing. They have created a short animated infographic that does an excellent job of demonstrating both the power, value and speed of the idea. That further integrates…
From Schneier on Security
Falsifying Evidence on a Smart Phone
Here's a way to plant false evidence -- call records, locations, etc -- on your smart phone. I have no idea how good this will be. Presumably it will be an arms race between programs like this and programs that harvest data from…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Difficulty of Robot Challenges
In CWorld: Robots have been able to do some very impressive things lately. But it is often hard to make them do specific tasks that human can do autonomously. In a recent challenge: " ... NASA officials and roboticists were…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computer Science as a Science
In CACM: It has been suggested that Computer Science is more a technology than a Science, and not rigorous enough to be a 'Math'. Is that worth arguing about? Is that a harmful distinction?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet as Revolution in Business
Thomas Malone .... In Technology Review: " .... an excerpt from Thomas W. Malone’s 2004 book, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life. Malone, theWe…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 16 June 2014
School is out! Well after lunch today school is over for the year for me and my school. I’ll miss the kids over the summer but I’m ready for a break. I plan to work on my curriculum over the summer though. I’ll be blogging about…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Honor Thy Fathers Correctly
Partly a rant from today’s New York Times source—note the “\cdots” Aryabhata is often called the father of Indian mathematics, and can be regarded as the progenitor of many modern features of mathematics. He completed his short…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Remote Sensors for Pulse and Beathing
In the MIT News: I would expected this could have been done remotely for some time, but it can be difficult. Has any work been done for blood pressure, which would be seem to be yet more difficult? See the wireless center,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Architecture of Work
A favorite topic that we dabbled with in innovation spaces. Is the starting piece of the quote below still correct? Reviewing, in the WSJ: " .... How you work depends in large part on the spaces in which you work. This big theme…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Models for the Data Economy
Just finished Business Models for the Data Economy by Q. Ethan McCallum and Ken Gleason amzn.to/Hd67f6 A free book/paper. " ... You're sitting on a pile of interesting data. How do you transform that into money? It's easy …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Driving Talent for Innovation
How do you build talent to drive innovation? Some insightful thought here. Spurred by an APQC survey.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Taking over the Public Sector
Not a trend I have generally seen, but perhaps in Australia, here reported in the Guardian. " ... Big data: how predictive analytics is taking over the public sector From predicting emergency department admissions to identifying…
From Putting People First
Behaviour change presentations at Nudgestock event
On 6 June OgilvyChange, the specialist behavioural sciences practice of Ogilvy & Mather UK, hosted the second edition of Nudgestock, the “largest gathering of behavioural experts in the world”. The one day event on May 24 saw…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Machines
Just completed this book. And had a conversation with Steve Hamm, one of the authors. A very good, most nicely non technical introduction to work at IBM research that led to Watson. Over the years have had a number of connections…
From The Eponymous Pickle
HP Claims New Computer Architecture
In BusWeek: The Machine, they call it. Admit had not seen this, but intriguing. But sounds like its different implementations of the parts, rather than a new design. Have spent some time with HP Labs." ... That’s what they…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Establishing Your Moral Structure via Video Games
Edward Snowden makes the claim. It should be interesting to see what this moral structure actually looks like. Speculated on in the piece. " ... What is the morality learned from video games? I'm afraid of the new generations…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
I Am Not a Bug
The term "undocumented feature" is a humorous term for something that was not planned in software. OH for sure there can be features added to a product that are not documented. Easter eggs are a notable example. But generally…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Building Proximity Applications with iBeacon
New book, available in early pre edit form. Building Proximity Applications with iBeacon - O'Reilly " ... Information on pinpoint locations can be extremely useful for mobile application developers, but that precise level…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Found in Canadian Squid
This is not good news. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From Schneier on Security
"Erotica Written By Someone With An Appropriate Sense of Privacy"
Funny....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Viewing the Needs of the CIO
On the needs of the CIO. I say just often just making sense of data, process and business. as the effectively work together.