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 Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Barbecued Squid -- New Summer Favorite
In the UK, barbecued squid is in:
Sales of squid have tripled in recent months due to the growing popularity of Mediterranean food and the rise of the Dukan diet, as calamari looks set to become the barbecue hit of the summer…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Turing Award Winner's Presentation on K-12 CS
I just got back from attending ITiCSE (http://www.iticse12.org.il/htmls/home.aspx) a computer science education conference that is similar to SIGCSE, except that it is held in the summer in Europe/Asia. It was a fantastic conference…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Science Courses
And more R courses for data visualization and analytics. In this case it is more about new methods being made available that will soon be in the toolbox of the data scientist. See in particular, notes about new data visualization…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Customer Rewards Programs
The latest on customer rewards programs from Progressive Grocer. The overall return on investment has been increasing. The sophistication of the methods to focus on returns seems to be paying off.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Post CS & IT 2012 Thoughts
The first part of this week was spent in Irvine CA for the 2012 CS & IT Conference. It
From Computational Complexity
North Carolina tries to legislate science
(I will post on CCC 2012 next week. I am still recovering from Jet Lag and going through 472 emails that piled up on 2.5 weeks, of which 22 were relevent.) You may have heard the story about the state of Indiana Pi bill: In…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CISE Releases Solicitations for Core Programs
The
From Schneier on Security
Hacking BMW's Remote Keyless Entry System
It turns out to be surprisingingly easy:
The owner, who posted the video at 1addicts.com, suspects the thieves broke the glass to access the BMW's on-board diagnostics port (OBD) in the footwell of the car, then used a special…From The Eponymous Pickle
Georgia R School Opens
AnalyticsBridge posts the particulars about the online 'Georgia R School', available for as little as $110. The R stat and visualization package is becoming increasingly popular for applications, many students are coming out…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nielsen Launches Innovation Lab
Nielsen launches ad effectiveness innovation lab. " ... The Nielsen Innovation Lab will incorporate assets from across the Nielsen group, along with external resources
From My Biased Coin
MMDS
I'm hanging out at MMDS -- the Workshop on Algorithms for Modern Massive Datasets at Stanford. The crowd is surprisingly huge, with a greater number of people in "adjacent" areas (math/statistics/machine learning) and industry…
From Schneier on Security
All-or-Nothing Access Control for Mobile Phones
This paper looks at access control for mobile phones. Basically, it's all or nothing: either you have a password that protects everything, or you have no password and protect nothing. The authors argue that there should be …
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Stanford Student's PhD Memoir Worth Reading
Philip Guo's Ph.D. Memoirs have spread like wildfire, and for good reason. His well written short book offers a fascinating look into life as a grad student at Stanford while offering some really valuable advice for those of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Eye Tracking in the Aisle
In the WSJ: Continued advanced usage of eye tracking to understand the shopping consumer. Some very interesting detail is included in this article. " .... companies likeProcter & Gamble Co.,Unilever PLC and Kimberly-Clark…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CSTA's Annual Conference Raises Questions
This blog entry was originally posted by Doug Peterson at his blog http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/old-and-new-dogs-new-tricks/ and is used with his permission.
The Computer Science Teachers Association recently posted…From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Makes Recommendations On Continuity Of E-Government
One of the consequences of the recent East Coast storm was that several cloud computing services were knocked off line for several hours. As government services and information make greater use of the web and cloud services,…
From Putting People First
Field notes from global tech ethnographer Tricia Wang
A sociologist, ethnographer, and corporate consultant who studies global technology use among migrants, low-income people, youth, and others on society
From Schneier on Security
Dropped USB Sticks in Parking Lot as Actual Attack Vector
For years, it's been a clever trick to drop USB sticks in parking lots of unsuspecting businesses, and track how many people plug them into computers. I have long argued that the problem isn't that people are plugging the sticks…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
We’ve previously
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unilever Partners with Facebook for Safe Water
In Consumer Goods Technology: Safe water approaches seem to be coming popular for large consumer goods companies. Admirable effort, and the Facebook connection is worth looking at." ... Unilever, through the Unilever Foundation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on Disappearing Checkout Lines
From Kioskmarketplace: This reminds me of the considerable work we did in our retail lab well before the emergence of the smartphone. Kiosks were the rage, and we were loaned several to use them in the aisle, mostly for prepared…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ideaconnection Blog
Check out the IdeaConnection blog. They are writing about Amway and Open Innovation. " ... Since 2005, global consumer goods company Amway has launched 17 high-impact products in 55 markets and generated more than $700 million…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kraft and Fly Garage in Latin America
In Adage: Kraft doing innovation via Fly Garage for Latin America, with some similar goals to other innovation centers that I have worked with. " ... Making the Trident brand fun was the mission when Kraft Latin America's Maria…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Giants Known For Small Things
How small results can be extremely important By permission of Paul Helm, artist—source Johannes Brahms is one of the “Three B’s” of music, along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. Yet among pieces of music one…
From Schneier on Security
Petition the U.S. Government to Force the TSA to Follow the Law
In July 2011, a federal appeals court ruled that the Transportation Security Administration had to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking on its policy of using "Advanced Imaging Technology" for primary screening…
From Wild WebMink
Even The ITU Is Worried
A press release at the end of last week disclosed the ITU is worried about the epidemic of patent litigation and the abuse of RAND terms on patents by industry vendors. Of course, they think the answer is more discipline and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
DARPA Seeks Radical Data Analysis
I had long ago involvement with DARPA, and now am involved with a major proposal to them, they are building up their large scale data involvement. An example: Military Transformers: 20 Innovative Defense Technologies (click…
From Schneier on Security
Cryptanalyze the Agrippa Code
William Gibson's Grippa Code is available for cryptanalysis. Break the code, win a prize.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Magazine: Crowdsourcing, Forecasting, Time series
The July-August Issue of Analytics Mag is out. Lots of useful coverage:Margit Zwemer from Kaggle.com, in this issue's cover story, introduces us to research as a competitive sport. Crowdsourcing the full analytics value chain…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
I don’t get invited to parties very often. That is, in part, because I cultivate aggressively critical thinking. My wife will testify that I am doubter, an annoying skeptic. When I apply myself to global warming, I get called…