Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2009
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuro Revolution Book
From the Lucid Systems blog, a short look at new book by Zack Lynch and Byron Laursen called The Neuro Revolution. To be released on July 21. Looks to be interesting, will read and review here. See also Lynch's blog. I am…
From CERIAS Blog
Beware SQL injections due to missing prepared statement support in libraries
Just because your library allows you to specify an SQL query and the data separately, doesn't mean that it's safe.
Imagine this scenario. You read that prepared statements are a good way to avoid SQL injection, because the …From CERIAS Blog
Beware SQL injections due to fake prepared statement support
So, you read that prepared statements are a good way to avoid SQL injection, because the database is told explicitly and separately what is the code and what is the data. You chose a database that supports prepared statements…
From BLOG@CACM
Lessons From Apollo
As we consider how to explain the necessity of long-term investment in science and technology research and development, as we teach a new generation of students, and as we seek to broaden the base of participation in computing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cloned Dogs
Although a bit off the usual topic here, I find this interesting. Dogs cloned from trained dogs are being used in a drug sniffing test. If successful, this would imply that some skills can be derived from cloned mammals, with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Networks Spill Your Secrets
Interesting piece on the security of social networks. And the full paper, Google authors.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Self Service Wine Kiosks
In Storefronbacktalk: Pennsylvania looks at self service wine kiosks with face recognition and integrated breathalyzer. I like trying new integrated kiosk sensors, but as nervous as US states are about alcohol sales, I don't…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Keeping Track of Your Knowledge
Just took another look at TheBrain, a graphical means of storing and manipulating your knowledge. A form of mind-map. Jerry Michalski introduced me to it. Explored it for applications in the enterprise years ago, but was not…
From Putting People First
Libraries turn page to thrive in digital age
The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada looks at the future of libraries: Long the subject of warnings that the Internet would spell their demise, public libraries are booming through new branches, more resources and more computers…
From Putting People First
The crowd is wise (when it
According to the New York Times, evidence suggests that crowdsourcing succeeds when it
From The Noisy Channel
Heading to SIGIR
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-07-18
No, this is not from The Onion. Big Brother did just demonstrate why Kindle is the worst…
From Putting People First
Technology for more than one language, please
Technological tools are not made for people who speak more than one language, and there are many of us: immigrants, travellers, polyglots, emerging market facilitators, people from smaller language communities … In fact, people…
From Putting People First
Book: Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction: Development Process (Series: Human Factors and Ergonomics) by Andrew Sears and Julie A. Jacko (Editors) CRC Press, March 2, 2009 Hardcover, 356 pages Amazon – Google Books Preview Hailed on first publication…
From Return 42;
Smalltalk-like Message Passing in JavaScript
Every time I am programming something in Objective-C, I just love the way the languages makes use of Smalltalk-like message passing. Also being able to send messages to nil or to forward messages to other objects has a huge impact…
From Putting People First
Creating one
Tyler Cowen (Wikipedia), a professor of economics at George Mason University, has written a thought-provoking piece for Fast Company, that is many ways highly complementary to our own KashKlash discussion on the future of value…
From CERIAS Blog
Other cybersecurity legislation in the U.S.
In response to my last post, several people have pointed out to me some other initiatives before Congress. Here are some brief comments on a few of them, based on what is available via the Thomas service. I am not going to provide…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Network for Researchers
Will Science 2.0 methods like these eliminate the need for research papers?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Orwellian act Removes Orwell Books
Apparently a number of electronic books were removed remotely from Kindle book readers after they were bought and paid for. Included Orwell titles. Thats an advantage of paper books I had not thought of. Tougher to raid every…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Determinants of faculty research productivity
Should you hire Ph.D. graduates from top schools in your country? Maybe not: The present analysis however dispels the notion that graduates of high-status doctoral programs in the discipline of information systems will become…
From Putting People First
Design ethnography: strategy for visual communications
Design ethnography: strategy for visual communications Leslie MacNeil Weber 2009 Graduate Thesis University of Washington Ethnography, a field of anthropological study and a research technique, helps visual communication designers…
From Putting People First
Financial Times podcasts on connected lives
The Financial Times analyses the implications of a connected planet in this series of roundtable discussions. Connected Lives: the debate – Part 1 Three experts (Suranga Chandratillake, CEO of Blinkx; Niall Murphy, co-founder…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Policy Highlights from Communications of the ACM - July 2009 (Vol. 52, No. 7)
Here are some items in the July issue of Communications of the ACM that have policy relevance. As always, much of the content in CACM is premium content, and free content one month may require a subscription or fee the next.…
From The Noisy Channel
In Defense Of Recall
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Second Leadership Cohort Workshop
We just finished up a trip to Chicago for the second Leadership Cohort workshop. Going back for the second time help us to solidify many of the ideas that we put into practice over the last year.
At this second CSTA Leadership…From Putting People First
Futures 2.0: rethinking the discipline
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang of The Institute for the Future has been working recently on a think-piece on what futures would look like if it started now: “If instead of starting during the Cold War, in the middle of enthusiasm for…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
A few things American academics should know
I sometimes get annoyed at Americans who seem to think that the rest of the world is modeled after them. Here are some things many American academics seem to take for granted:
Professors are paid for 9 months, the rest of their…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
What FriendFeed got wrong
Don’t you feel sometimes like your brain is running out of storage space? Myself, I am very forgetful. I always seek new tools to extend my brain. FriendFeed is a fantastic social networking site. It lets you integrate all of…
From Putting People First
Power in People
The [UK] Government’s drive to reform public services by giving more power back to the citizen was accelerated yesterday, with the publication of a new study of innovative public services from around the world. Drawing on more…
From Putting People First
Re-framing the problem: social interaction design
Social media expert and social interaction theorist Adrian Chan describes on Johnny Holland on what he means with ’social interaction design’ and on the role of frames of meaning, frames of experience, and frames as a concept…