Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2015
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Thoughts on #ISTE2015 Tuesday
Today was about the conversations. I was able to connect with a number of the people I respect and admire who I communicate with online most of the year. One of the conversations was with Vinnie Vrotny who is one of the people…
From Schneier on Security
Twitter Followers: Please Use the Correct Feed
The official Twitter feed for my blog is @schneierblog. The account @Bruce_Schneier also mirrors my blog, but it is not mine. I have nothing to do with it, and I don't know who owns it. Normally I wouldn't mind, but the unofficial…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The History and Future of Operations
Good thoughts, in the end it is the operation of a process to get something done better! Or even at all, to create value. Recall that the original term 'Operations Research', also meant this.In he HBR, by Marco IansitiIt’s…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Executive's Guide to Machine Learning
We did machine learning at Procter & Gamble starting in the mid 80s, and they continue today. This is a nice mostly non tech overview for execs I could have used most any of those years, with anyone interested in learning. via…
From insideHPC
SuperMUC Upgraded to 6.8 Petaflops
On Monday, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) celebrated the expansion of their SuperMUC cluster. Now in production mode, the 6.8 Petaflop "Phase 2" supercomputer is powered by over 241,000 Intel processor cores.
The post…From insideHPC
South Africa’s CHPC Builds a Better Infrastructure with Altair PBS Works
At the Centre for High-Performance Computing (CHPC) in South Africa, the mission is to enable cutting-edge research by supporting the highest levels of HPC available. That means ensuring researchers – who often are not experienced…
From insideHPC
Slidecast: DDN Strategic Vision for High Performance Storage
"For more than a decade, DDN’s innovative, proven technology has been at the forefront of solving big data storage challenges in the world’s largest and most demanding environments,” said Molly Rector, CMO and EVP of Product …
From insideHPC
DDN Boosts Object Storage with WOS 360 2.0
Today DataDirect Networks announced the latest release of its advanced WOS object storage platform. WOS 360 2.0 includes a new, low-cost capacity node, increased efficiency and an OpenStack Swift API.
The post DDN Boosts Object…From The Eponymous Pickle
Re Thinking the Database
Can the Database be made fundamentally easier to work with? Democratizing its power. In SiliconAngle:" ... Databases aren’t for everyone. They’re incredibly complex things to work with, and generally only those with the requisite…
From Schneier on Security
Tracking the Psychological Effects of the 9/11 Attacks
Interesting research from 2012: "The Dynamics of Evolving Beliefs, Concerns, Emotions, and Behavioral Avoidance Following 9/11: A Longitudinal Analysis of Representative Archival Samples": Abstract: September 11 created a natural…
From insideHPC
Solar Superstorms Documentary Powered by Blue Waters
A new high-resolution science documentary about the dynamics of the Sun will feature data-driven supercomputer visualizations produced by NCSA. Narrated by Benedict Cumberbach, Solar Superstorms debuts June 30 at the Louisiana…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reading Minds is not the Same as Reading Words
In Cognition and Culture: Practical, technical and philosophical thoughts. Cultural difference, and no evidence we have cracked the neural memory code of the brain. Pointers to long study of the topic.
From Writing
Ping-Play: Big Pipe Streaming for the Play Framework
I’ve just open sourced a library called ping-play which brings BigPipe streaming to the Play Framework. It includes tools for a) splitting your pages up into small “pagelets”, which makes it easier to maintain large websites…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cisco Announces six Pillars of IOT
Cisco unveils 15 products, six pillars to address the growing complexity of the internet of things deploymentsIn ComputerWeekly: " .....Networking kingpin Cisco has moved to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the internet…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Thoughts on #ISTE2015 Monday
ISTE is huge. I mean really huge. There are something like 20,000 people here in Philadelphia. There are a lot people here I want to see and talk to. I was able to connect with a bunch of them on Monday. Very lucky in some cases…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innovation Addiction and Confused Consumers
In RetailWire, by Tom Ryan:A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble's CEO, believes that the continual push by retailers for more product innovation is leading to an overload of choices for shoppers."I don't think the shopper or consumer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robots, Sensors and Math at Penn
Good, non technical article, have posted about the GRASP Laboratory here before." ... Last March seven researchers from the University of Pennsylvania landed in Dayton, Ohio for two days of meetings at the Air Force ResearchAmong…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Contract Guardian: Advances in Compliance Management
Just heard from my friend John Reuter. He and his group have developed the Contract Guardian system for contract management. Suitable for companies large and small. Used by many companies today. We had discussions about…
From Schneier on Security
TEMPEST Attack
There's a new paper on a low-cost TEMPEST attack against PC cryptography: We demonstrate the extraction of secret decryption keys from laptop computers, by nonintrusively measuring electromagnetic emanations for a few seconds…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
WATCH Talk- The CHERI Processor: Revisiting the Hardware-Software Interface for Security
The next WATCH talk, called The CHERI Processor: Revisiting the Hardware-Software Interface for Security is Monday July 6, 2015 from Noon-1pm EST. The presenter is Dr Robert N.M. Watson. Robert is a University Lecturer in Systems…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Earth Features Added
It has been some time since I have used Google Earth for business purposes. But we did make it useful for some interesting applications. Now (Surprise) it is ten years old, and some new features are being added. Specifically…
From The Eponymous Pickle
My Costco Self Checkout Observations
I see that our local Costco has recently removed their self checkout systems. That they were doing this has been reported for some time. We experimented with these systems for some years, looking for possible marketing angles…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Event Readiness Service for Demand
Interesting analytics effort. We are all, in effect, thinking about how to react to events in our enterprise context. Demand is a big example, but not the only one. Response to these events needs to be prioritized. Analytics…
From insideHPC
Addressing Climate Change Uncertainties with Petascale Computing
"This collaborative research between the University of Illinois, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the University of Maryland is aimed at using the Blue Waters petascale resources to address key uncertainties …
From insideHPC
Trends in HPC Leading to Exascale
Over at the Altair Blog, Bill Nitzburg has started a series of posts looking at the road to Exascale. He starts by looking back at the trends that have lead us to this point, concluding that Exascale infrastructure will require…
From insideHPC
Peter V. Coveney to Keynote ISC Cloud & Big Data
Today the ISC Cloud & Big Data conference announced that Professor Peter V. Coveney from University College London will be their keynote speaker. Coveney will discuss the current state-of-the-art in the development of personalized…
From Schneier on Security
Migrating from SHA-1 to SHA-2
Here's a comprehensive document on migrating from SHA-1 to SHA-2 in Active Directory certificates....
From insideHPC
Radio Free HPC Previews ISC 2015
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team previews the ISC 2015 conference, which takes place July 12-16 in Frankfurt, Germany. In addition to a great technical program, the conference will feature an exhibition, tutorials, workshops…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 29 June 2015
I’m at ISTE in I’ve already connected with a few old friends and hope to connect with many more. If you are also at ISTE I hope you’ll track me down. I’m attending as many CS related sessions as I can. For links this week I have…
From Computational Complexity
When do we care about small improvements?
A while back complexity blog, Shtetl-optimized , and GLL all blogged about the improved matrix mult algorithms (Complexityblog: here, Shtetl-optimized: here, GLL here) of Stothers/Williams. It may have been on other theorya…