Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2010
From Wild WebMink
? On the term
I’ve been having a number of conversations in e-mail on the subject of open core business models. The problem that keeps coming up is that there are a range of behaviours exhibited, some of which are acceptable to pragmatists…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Walking Around in Proteins
Walking inside your data. I had a conversation with a guy from IBM about this kind of approach. He implemented a data walkaround in Second Life.Virtual Reality System Puts Researchers Inside Protein Structures University of…
From BLOG@CACM
In Vivo, In Vitro, In Silico
These “grand challenges” of systems biology encompass almost every aspect of modern computing, from numerical and symbolic methods through data management and analytics to extraordinarily high-performance computing platforms.
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Buys Metaweb
In GigaOM: Google makes a big semantic acquisiton, buys Metaweb. " ... San Francisco-based Metaweb was founded by the widely admired Thinking Machines founder Danny Hillis ... In addition to the free Freebase, Metaweb offers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tableau Momentum Builds
I have now used Tableau Software's easy to use data visualization system for several years for a number of projects. It's a good approach to explore if you plan to do quick alternative visualizations and get them to people quickly…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Symbol for the Rupee
Mark Perry reports on the development of a symbol for the Indian Rupee, from a competitive market for currency design.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Michael Osofsky on Innovation
Just brought to my attention: Michael Osofsky's blog musings on innovation, practice and theory. It is on my read.
From Computer Science Teachers Association
More Attendee Reflections on CS&IT
This blog piece is posted with the permission of H
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Hawaiian Bobtail Squid
Symbiotic relationship between the Hawaiian bobtail squid and bioluminescent bacteria, with bonus security implications.
From Schneier on Security
Skype's Cryptography Reverse-Engineered
Someone claims to have reverse-engineered Skype's proprietary encryption protocols, and has published pieces of it.
If the crypto is good, this is less of a big deal than you might think. Good cryptography is designed to be…From Putting People First
Google knows your desires before you do
Google attempts to return relevant search results in the blink of an eye. But in future it could go one better, delivering search results to its users even before they know that they want the information, writes Paul Marks in…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Little Orphan Computer Science
The never ending debate over where Computer Science fits in the curriculum continues. Mark Guzdial asks why computer science is not in the latest set of STEM standards from the National Academes of Science (What are we? Chopped…
From Computational Complexity
How I Find Homework Problems
What do you get out of this paragraph (from Charlie Stross' The Atrocity Archives via Daniel Lemire) The [Turing] theorem is a hack on discrete number theory that simultaneously disproves the Church-Turing hypothesis (wave if…
From My Biased Coin
Facebook Movie Preview
It's nice to see Harvard finally getting some recognition in the mainstream media, with the upcoming Facebook/Zuckerburg movie the Social Network (based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A New Kind of Teacher
Last Saturday, the New York Times Magazine published the fourth installment in its “Smarter Than You Think” series, this one titled “Students, Meet your New Teacher, Mr. Robot.” The article highlights the use of robots as teachers…
From Putting People First
Content Strategy questions and answers
Content strategy is becoming a hot topic (and one I am greatly interested in). Last year, Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic published the book Content Strategy. In her own words, it “offers a pretty straightforward approach…
From Schneier on Security
The NSA's Perfect Citizen
In what creepy back room do they come up with these names?
The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running suchThe…From Wild WebMink
? OpenSolaris Governance
You may have seen some of the news reporting of the OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) meeting that was held last Monday (I am an elected member of the Board). At a meeting with an unusually large number of community observers…
From Wild WebMink
? United
I’m heading to California en route to OSCON (where I’ll be speaking on Wednesday at 5:20pm about open source continuity – use code os10fos to get a 20% discount if you’ve still to buy your ticket). I just got a voicemail from…
From The Eponymous Pickle
ESRI BAO Demographic App
I am a big proponent of delivering visualizations of complex data on mobile devices. Why not have it on hand where you need it? Likely fully armed with data about where you are? Think of the tough tasks of someone analyzing the…
From Apophenia
First, I commend Facebook for taking child safety seriously. When I was working with them as part of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, I was always impressed by their concern. I think that there’s a mistaken belief…
From The Eponymous Pickle
User Behavior in Social Media
Blinq Media white paper executive outline and email request for the whole thing: User Behaviors in Online Social Network Applications Present Untapped Marketing Advantage " ... The paper "User Behaviors in Online Social Network…
From Schneier on Security
Russian Intelligence Gets Source Code to Windows 7
I don't think this is a good idea.
From Computational Complexity
Sparse problems in NP thought to not be in P
(This post is similar to this old post. I am posting this anyway since when I first posted I made fundamental mistake. I fixed it the point I was trying to make get lost.)
About once a semester I get asked
What are the And…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Peter Lee Joins Microsoft Research
Peter Lee, a past member of the CCC Council and the PI of the first CIFellows Project, today was named the Managing Director of Microsoft Research Redmond, effective this fall. In joining Microsoft Research, Peter departs DARPA…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Paro: Helping dementia patients
Last week Amy Harmon wrote the third installment of the awesome New York Times Magazine series
From Schneier on Security
Random Numbers from Quantum Noise
Not that we need more ways to get random numbers, but the research is interesting.
From Putting People First
University and Cyberspace conference videos online
A few weeks ago the Communia conference University and Cyberspace took place here in Torino, Italy, with a focus on “reshaping knowledge institutions for the networked age”. Speakers included Massimo Banzi, Joy Ito, David Orban…
From My Biased Coin
Arxiv Paper: Heapable Sequences and Subsequences
I haven't been blogging much; consider me on extended vacation. It's helping me prepare for giving up the blog soonish. But I thought I'd mention our newly posted arxiv paper Heapable Sequences and Subsequences. I mentioned…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft's Virtual Human
In the BBC: All sorts of interesting implications in cinema, storytelling, marketing and games. We will soon be at a place where the real and artificial are no longer noticeable. Artificial intelligence is a key component. Includes…