Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2011
From Computational Complexity
An application of Ramsey Theory to Proving Programs Terminate
B. Cook, Podelski, and Rybalchenko have done both practical and theoretical work on proving that programs terminate. They use Ramsey's Theorem (Yeah!). Jon Katz send me their paper. After some emails with them and others I wrote…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The Web is killing database systems
A typical enterprise computing architecture relies on databases, professionally managed by DBAs. Developers grow applications which all update or query the same databases. The value is not in the software per se, but in the data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google to Buy Motorola
We worked with Motorola and Symbol, a company it bought, to understand technology in retail. Now Google is buying Motorola for an estimated 12 Billion. Google and retail devices?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gesture Technology
Gestures are a way to have consumers interact with systems in retail. One of our areas of exploration was to understand this dynamic. The Canadian form GestureTek was one companies we worked with. I was reminded of theirGestureTek…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-08-15
Google's Real Names Policy Is Evil This policy is amazingly misguided – it's like Franco trying to stamp out Catalan by banning baby names not on the state list. (tags: Google Privacy identity) Is G+ actively blocking suspended…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A Robot That Bakes Cookies
Ever tried baking — yes, baking — and found it challenging? Well, try teaching it to a robot. That’s just what a group of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have done.
From Schneier on Security
New, Undeletable, Web Cookie
A couple of weeks ago Wired reported the discovery of a new, undeletable, web cookie:
Researchers at U.C. Berkeley have discovered that some of the net’s most popular sites are using a tracking service that can’t be evaded -…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 15 August 2011
I
From The Eponymous Pickle
MobileWorks: Mobile Human Sourcing Intelligence
From The Eponymous Pickle
If Berners-Lee Had Patented the Web
If Berners-Lee had sought and received a patent for the Web, it would just now be coming out of patent protection. The consequences of that? What does that tell us about the patent systems?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Windows Phone Development Training Online
SO you probably know that a new version of the Windows Phone software is coming very soon. If you are planning on teaching phone development you may also be thinking “I wonder how I can get some training on this?” Well you are…
From Wild WebMink
? Artist Sampler Is A Masterpiece
If you enjoy listening to good singer-songwriter music, chances are that you’ll love the sampler that Amazon.Com is giving away free this week (sadly the same sampler is
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The Turing Lecture
Leslie Valiant, the
From The Eponymous Pickle
Overview of Business Intelligence
A good semi technical overview of BI in CACM: " ... Business intelligence (BI) software is a collection of decision support technologies for the enterprise aimed at enabling knowledge workers such as…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Free Course Gives Rise to Interesting Questions
A colleague of mine, Sebastian Thrun, has decided that education should be free and open to all. Just over a week ago, he created a website:
http://www.ai-class.com/
and has already had several thousand people sign up for …From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamification Wiki
This looks to be a useful resource. About game mechanics and other resources.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Source Sensing
The Foresight Institute on Open Source Sensing. " ... Establishing standards now for current and near future widespread sensing based upon smart phones owned by individual members of the public will set precedence for considering…
From Schneier on Security
Interview with Me
Here's an interview with me from the Homeland Security News Wire.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Policy Highlights from Communications of the ACM
Below is a list of items with policy relevance from the June issue of Communications of the ACM. As always, much of the material in CACM is premium content, and free content one month may slip behind a pay wall the next. You…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How an Innovation Effort can get it Right, Mostly
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Intelligence Total Cost of Ownership
Mark Montgomery points me to a post on Boris Evelson's blog on Forrester's site regarding the total cost of BI ownership. Some very good comment interaction including some thoughts by Mark: " ... Let's not forget that buyer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Replacing Wi-Fi
LED lights can be flickered very quickly to transmit data. It could replace Wi-Fi under some conditions, though it does require line of sight or easily reflected situations, while radio frequencies can go through walls.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Engaging in Public Service
The three men in the image on the right have something in common: Rush Holt, who
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Painted on Canal Narrowboat
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Summer Recap: Comments on NSTIC Governance
Often things slow down in the summer, but that’s not been the case for USACM this year. We’ve been busy commenting on various government proposals related to computing and will post about that work over the next few days. The…
From Schneier on Security
<i>Liars and Outliers</i> Cover
My new book, Liars and Outliers, has a cover.
Publication is still scheduled for the end of February -- in time for the RSA Conference -- assuming I finish the manuscript in time.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sands Research on Neuromarketing
Sand's most recent newsletter on neuroscience methods covers a number of interesting papers and articles on the topic. If you have not read about neuromarketing or have not followed it recently, this is the time to catch up. …
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Summer Professional Development
This summer I was able to attend three Computer Science conferences this summer which were CS4HS:
http://www.cs4hs.com/participating-schools-2011.html
at two different locations and CS & IT:
http://www.csta.acm.org/ProfessionalDevelopment…From Schneier on Security
Rat that Applies Poison to its Fur
The African crested rat applies tree poison to its fur to make itself more deadly.
The researchers made their discovery after presenting a wild-caught crested rat with branches and roots of the Acokanthera tree, whose bark includes…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
UPDATE: Watson
A couple months ago, I blogged about David Ferrucci’s excellent