Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2012
From BLOG@CACM
Data Mining Product Reviews
When it comes to big data, one of the greatest things we can do as computer scientists creating products is to distill all the information down to what is important. Of course, the challenge with these sorts of problems always…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sports Analytics Blog
Paul Hare's blog: The Numbers Don't Lie: Statistical analysis of evidence in the world of sports. Moneyball and beyond.
From Putting People First
Beyond reliability: An ethnographic study of Wikipedia sources
Almost a year ago, Heather Ford was hired by Ushahidi to work as an ethnographic researcher on a project to understand how Wikipedians managed sources during breaking news events. Ushahidi cares a great deal about this kind of…
From Schneier on Security
Fake Irises Fool Scanners
We already know you can wear fake irises to fool a scanner into thinking you're not you, but this is the first fake iris you can use for impersonation: to fool a scanner into thinking you're someone else.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Technology and Snacks
In NYT Technology: Snack foods are a natural intersection place between social technology and people. This article addresses work underway and how retailers and manufacturers are participating. Also how consumer research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
No Plans for Analytics
CW article on how a survey shows most companies have no plans for big data analytics. I will go further to say that most companies have coherent plans for any analytics at all, beyond the most trivial overview. Lots of opportunities…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
In Letter, Bill Wulf Explains Why He Hasn’t “Un-Resigned”
Last month, we noted that eminent computer scientist Bill Wulf had taken the unprecedented step of resigning from the University of Virginia to protest the ousting of UVa president Teresa Sullivan by the university’s Board of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
American Don't Trust the Internet
Says a recent survey presented in Baseline. But they clearly use the Internet a great deal, even for very important decisions, when they should go elsewhere for advice.
From The Eponymous Pickle
How to Introduce Big Technology Change
Very Good piece from HBR on the rapid introduction of big technology change in the large enterprise, including some consumer package goods examples. We experienced this in particular during the rapid integration of Web technologies…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A Workshop on Next-Generational Financial Cyberinfrastructure
The following is a special contribution to this blog by Louiqa Raschid, a professor in the School of Business, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, and Center for Bioinformatics and Computational…
From Computational Complexity
A natural function with very odd properties
Last time I posted some questions. Today I post the answer that I know.
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Tool Disguised as a Power Strip
This is impressive:
The device has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi adapters, a cellular connection, dual Ethernet ports, and hacking and remote access tools that let security professionals test the network and call home to be remotely controlled…From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Register now for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing!
I'm really excited to be attending this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Baltimore, and I hope you'll consider going, too! Tomorrow is the last day for early bird prices, so register now!This year is a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Building Private Social Networks
An idea we experimented with. In particular as new hires come on board expecting to communicate broadly with a social network. This makes some good points about what they should look like to be used and also be useful for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Design Thinking and Storytelling
A favorite topic of mine: Elements of the design and its story place the design in a human context.
From Schneier on Security
Fear-Mongering at TED
This TED talk trots out the usual fear-mongering that technology leads to terrorism. The facts are basically correct, but there are no counterbalancing facts, and the conclusions all one-sided. I'm not impressed with the speaker's…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 30 July 2012
Over on the left here is a picture of a group of young women who visited Microsoft in Cambridge MA recently as part of Boston University’s Artemis Project. This is one of several groups of young people that we have hosted this…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of July 30
The Senate will consider cybersecurity legislation this week. Several amendments will be introduced and debated on the floor. July 31 Hearing: The Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The Internet is a product of the post-industrial age
The Internet is on fire with this question: who invented the Internet? A couple of weeks ago, the president of the USA said: Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictive Analytics in Police Work
An overview. Saw an IBM presentation on this earlier this year. All analytics can be used predictively, so the idea is not new. Simple block crime occurrence charts have been used for a long time. The ability to leverage…
From Computational Complexity
Six Questions about unnatrual and natural mathematical objects
Today (Monday) I pose some questions. In my next post (Tuesday) I will post the answersthat I know (some I do not). Some questions are a matter of opinionin terms of what you consider natural. Is there a subset of [0,1] that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technological Adoption and Economies
How historical technology adoptions have changed global economies. In HBS Working Knowledge. This has been known for a king time. Somewhat counter indicative at times. Some very extraordinary advances in technology have not…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Searchable Map of the Internet
In FlowingData: A very dense visualization of the Internet today. A visually intriguing viz, but also an example of many opportunities missed. As the article suggests, some of the dimensions included do not apparently have…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The Second Annual Robot Film Festival
Earlier this month, another huge crowd of roboticists, artists, and filmakers converged on Manhattan for the second annual Robot Film Festival, a daylong celebration of robots on film. Founded by Heather Knight of Marilyn Monrobot…
From Schneier on Security
Detroit Bomb Threats
There have been a few hoax bomb threats in Detroit recently (Windsor tunnel, US-Canada bridge, Tiger Stadium). The good news is that police learned; during the third one, they didn't close down the threatened location.
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Benford’s Law and Baseball
What distributions follow the knock of opportunity? Ted Hill is a Professor Emeritus in the Mathematics Department at Georgia Tech, and has two other affiliations. He graduated from West Point in 1966 where he roomed with General…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Organs on a Chip
We worked for some time with this kind of bio simulation capability that came from UCSD. Their BioNome Research Center now appears to be defunct. (Can anyone provide some information on that?) The object was to understand as…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Creation Myth and Reality of Innovation
Fascinating piece on innovation from PARC. Which remarks on Steve Job's famous visit to PARC labs for a demonstration of the 'windows' concept and mouse pointing and how it ended up in other places. And how such innovations…
From BLOG@CACM
Should Computer Scientists Change How They Publish?
One of the most popular panels at Snowbird was "Publication Models in Computing Research: Is a Change Needed? Are We Ready for a Change?"
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Necessity of Algebra
In the NYT. Making the case for eroding quantitative literacy. Even otherwise bright management is often mystified by simple math. So lets make that even more common? To make us fall even further behind the Germans, Russians…