Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2012
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 13 August 2012
Well it’s the middle of my vacation. Mostly I’m avoiding the Internet and email. Mostly. I’m not all that good at this vacation thing. In any case I do have a few links to share with you.
A teacher friend of mine, Peter Vogel…From The Eponymous Pickle
Conversation with Jun Lee of ReD
Former colleague Lou Killeffer has a conversation with Jun Lee of ReD Associates on design thinking, strategies of innovation and how human behavior and views are involved. Useful thoughts. " ... Jun cited technology as the
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Still not Paperless After all These Years.
Have you noticed we are still not in a paperless world? It was predicted years ago, but I still get paper mail receipts, notes, specification sheets, business cards and warnings. I can take pictures most anywhere now, so its…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Changes I Plan Make
Recently I read an article by Noa Gutow-Ellis a 10th grader in Houston, Texas:
http://www.teachthought.com/industry/what-makes-teachers-great-from-the-perspective-of-a-10th-grader/
that was highlighted on Twitter by Edutopia…From The Eponymous Pickle
Remote Updating Curiosity
I have been been following the exciting work of NASA in landing on Mars. In particular how a number aspects of the system have autonomy and how that influences the science work. Lessons for intelligence in enterprise workHere…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowd Sourcing Examples
A group of interesting examples of the use of Crowd Sourcing. I don't agree that Crowd Sourcing is always a smarter solution, but it should be considered. " ... The business case for crowdsourcing is simple: more heads are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
David Gelernter on the Internet School
In the WSJ: Good thoughts, I still like focusing the human touch, but lets use all the tools available: The Friendly, Neighborhood Internet School We have the technology, the people and the institutions we need to usher an…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Lockers
In Innovation Excellence: In some locations you can have your Amazon shipment delivered to a locker that you can access 24 hours a day. You are emailed a one time code to retrieve it. The idea would have been useful for a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strategic Leadership of Portfolio and Project Management
Soon to be published by a colleague: : Strategic Leadership of Portfolio and Project Management, byLaurence J. Laning and, Timothy J. Kloppenborg. Appears to be of general interest to the manager of the modern enterprise. I…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
“How Big Data Became So Big”;New York Times Cites CCC White Papers
In an article published on The New York Times’ website this afternoon, the newspaper’s technology writer Steve Lohr describes the history and evolution of “Big Data” — noting it’s “been a crossover year for Big Data — as a concept…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Speed and Innovation
Blocking speed blocks innovation. Often yes, but the the scale-speed of the innovation matters. Early speed to trim ideas, is usually good ... but once down the road you can place yourself into bad place more quickly with speed…
From Wild WebMink
Freedom To Create
Sometimes we think software freedom just applies to programmers, but its creative impact can be much broader. This animated video is pretty clever: While it’s called “Stop-Motion Excel”, if you look closely at the screen you’ll…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Individualized Pricing
The NYT discusses how and why people can be given individualized prices for goods. If course this has been done for a long time. Through promotions. Loyalty programs. Group buying. We are now getting much closer to being…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Swarming Drones
Boeing demonstrates swarming drones. Which reminds me of long ago projects that looked at how simple,uni-purpose, cheap and even disposable robotics could be used to perform relatively complex tasks by aggregating their efforts…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Dumpling Squid
The sex life of the dumpling squid.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From Schneier on Security
Termite Suicide Bombers
Some termites blow themselves up to expel invaders from their nest.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Seeking RAPID Proposals on Tsunami Debris Field Threats
Several directorates within the National Science Foundation (NSF) — including Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) — issued a Dear Colleague Letter this afternoon calling for proposals relating to the potential…
From BLOG@CACM
Computer Science Jobs and Education: Presentation Slides
Many of you have expressed the desire for a simple slide deck that you can use in various contexts to make the case for the need for increased computing enrollments in universities and K-12. We have one for you.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Deep Natural Language Analysis
Of Interest: Another DARPA example I have just examined. Automated, deep natural-language understanding technology may hold a solution for more efficiently processing text information. When processed at its most basic level…
From Wild WebMink
Influence vs Control
My article for InfoWorld this week considers three different projects – OmniOS (derived from Illumos, the new name given to OpenSolaris), GitHub and OpenStack – and finds different attitudes towards corporate control giving different…
From Schneier on Security
11-Year-Old Bypasses Airport Security
Sure, stories like this are great fun, but I don't think it's much of a security concern. Terrorists can't build a plot around random occasional security failures.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Public Sector TechBytes Series
From My Biased Coin
Distracting Videos
Jeff Erickson gets the blame for pointing out this amusing/disturbing video on counting. I feel like I should make it a background video before my undergraduate class one day. Catchy tune. My wife liked thisbackyard roller…
From The Eponymous Pickle
One Best Supply Chain Metric
In the Supply Chain Digest. David Schneider suggests that the one best supply chain metric is Operating Cash flow, or OCF. I admit I had to think about that one. A thoughtful proposition, good post. He explains ' ... "Operating…
From Schneier on Security
<i>Rolling Stone</i> Magazine Writes About Computer Security
It's a virus that plays AC/DC, so it makes sense. Surreal, though.
Another article.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
“If Xerox PARC Invented the PC, Google Invented the Internet”
An interesting article on Wired.com today, featuring Google computer scientists Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat: Time and again, we hear the story of Xerox PARC, the Silicon Valley research lab that developed just about every major…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A New Way To Solve Linear Equations
Impossible but true: a new approach to linear systems Prasad Raghavendra is an expert in many aspects of complexity theory, especially the foundations of approximation theory. He recently was a colleague at Georgia Tech, but…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Alumni Bookstore
Received:If you haven't already found it, take a look at the P&G Alumni Bookstore. Books published by your fellow alumni. Just go to the Book Directory tab on the P&G alumni website. Books by John Pepper, Meg Whitman, Norm Levy…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The Science Behind Curiosity
There’s been a lot written about NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory this week, in light of its successful landing on the surface of Mars early Monday morning — including the observation that today’s smartphones are about as smart…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Entity Analytics
On entity analytics. An explanatory video. "... If you haven’t heard IBM Fellow Jeff Jonas talk about how the right algorithm can help you figure out who’s who among a sea of data points, you’re missing out. The good news…