Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2009
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-09-04
So many speculaitive stories out there, all full of half-correct opinions from people either with partial understanding or with a vested…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-09-04
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Gov 2.0: It
From The Eponymous PickleRevealing Slant in Mathematica
Jilyan Landon of Mathematica points me to a post in the Wolfram Blog. There something as mundane as an error message gives a hint to how well integrated Mathematica is. Reminds me of such arcane and now little-used languages…
From Computer Science Teachers AssociationAdvising Government on a New Key Piece of Legislation
In early August, the U.S. Department of Education released the proposed structure of the $4.5 billion Race to the Top Fund. In short, this fund will distribute billions to states for improving education in the K-12 space:
http…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACMLecture on Human-Computer Interaction and Public Policy
Event Date: September 21, 2009
The Washington DC Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, with support from the New America Foundation, will hold a lecture on "Current issues in Human-Computer Interaction and Public…
From The Noisy ChannelHCIR: Better Than Magic!
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in ComputingReaching Out and OutreachAmbassador: Mary Anne Egan, United States
There are several projects keeping me busy this year. First, the Student IMPACT alternative programming contest continues (www.cs.siena.edu/~maegan/impact). The template of a full day program for mathematically talented high…
From The Eponymous PickleInternet at 40
I was pleased to have been involved in some of the early use of the Internet in the testing of remote Darpanet systems. It about to be 40 years old. CW makes some interesting predictions about its future. 3D worlds and more…
From Daniel Lemire's BlogChanging your perspective: horizontal, vertical and hybrid data models
Data has natural layouts:
text is written from the first to the last word, database tables are written one row at a time, Google presents results one document at a time, the early recommender systems compared users to other…
From Schneier on SecuritySubpoenas as a Security Threat
Blog post from Ed Felten:
Usually when the threat model mentions subpoenas, the bigger threats in reality come from malicious intruders or insiders. The biggest risk in storing my documents on CloudCorp's servers is probably…
From My Biased CoinSODA list up
As announced everywhere, the list of SODA papers is up.
From The Eponymous PickleReboot Partners
Dean Debiase, formerly of TNS Media, has an interesting blog at Reboot Partners. ' ... which is a Strategic Execution and Market Expansion Advisory Group Helping Organizations Grow Globally ... '
From BLOG@CACMThe World Is Small
Not that many years ago international travel meant one was largely inaccessible to colleagues at home. Today, when my plane lands, I will turn on my smart phone, connect to the local GSM network and download queued messages.…
From The Eponymous PickleCultivate Your Talkers
In Small Business Trends. ' ... People use social media for a lot of things. Personally, I use it to be as loud as I possibly can. I know that probably sounds bad, but think about it: I want to use all the tools available to.…
From Computer Science Teachers AssociationTime For Another Paradigm Shift
Unstructured code (BASIC), structured code and procedural programming (Pascal), object-oriented code (C++ or Java). We've all been through one or more of these paradigm shifts. Each has had its own challenges which we have overcome…
From The Noisy ChannelAnother Project to Measure Twitter Influence
From The Eponymous PickleAnalyticsBridge
This newsletter and site were just brought to my attention. Created by Vincent Granville, his blog. Very good overview of predictive analytics, data mining, statistics and supporting and related topics. The current August newsletter…
From Schneier on Security"The Cult of Schneier"
If there's actually a cult out there, I want to hear about it. In an essay by that name, John Viega writes about the dangers of relying on Applied Cryptography to design cryptosystems:
But, after many years of evaluating the…
From Schneier on SecurityReal-World Access Control
Access control is difficult in an organizational setting. On one hand, every employee needs enough access to do his job. On the other hand, every time you give an employee more access, there's more risk: he could abuse that access…
From The Eponymous PickleCollaboration Tools at Procter and Cisco
A good overview of the use of collaboration tools in big enterprises.. Object to combine the intellectual property of the entire enterprise. Mostly about the low end IM, and high end telepresence. Little about knowledge management…
From Schneier on SecurityThe History of One-Time Pads and the Origins of SIGABA
Blog post from Steve Bellovin:
It is vital that the keystream values (a) be truly random and (b) never be reused. The Soviets got that wrong in the 1940s; as a result, the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service was able toA…
From The Eponymous PickleMost Important Math Problem of Our Time
In the CACM: The Status of the P Versus NP ProblemIt's one of the fundamental mathematical problems of our time, and its importance grows with the rise of powerful computers .I have worked an entire career around the status of…
From Computer Science Teachers AssociationWhat is CSTA?
The Computer Science Teachers Association has come a long way since its fledgling days after its founding in 2005.
The area I am most proud of is our membership. From the very beginning, CSTA has been about building community…
From Putting People FirstThe value of information
Oliver Reichenstein, a Tokyo-based information architect, explores the value of information: “While producing information costs money, information as such doesn
From Putting People FirstEva Hornecker on tangible interaction
Eva Hornecker explains on interaction-design.org the evolving concept of Tangible Interaction. “Broadly, Tangible Interaction encompasses user interfaces and interaction approaches that emphasize - tangibility and materiality…
From Putting People FirstExploring first-time internet use via mobiles in a South African women
Jonathan Donner, a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India, has submitted a paper — together with Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden — on first-time mobile internet use in South Africa…
From Putting People FirstDonald Norman on products as services and experiences
Donald Norman’s latest column for Interactions Magazine explores systems thinking and service design. “A product is actually a service. Although the designer, manufacturer, distributer, and seller may think it is a product, to…
From Putting People FirstExperientia
One of our staff members, senior designer Luca Troisi, worked previously in the yachting industry and has not forgotten those roots when he joined Experientia. Luca’s extensive and excellently written article explores what experience…
From The Noisy ChannelGreat Series of Posts on Medical Literature Search
From Return 42;Playing with Devver
Testing can be a pain. At least in Ruby on Rails. That is, not only writing tests can be tedious, but also running tests can consume sometimes ridiculous amounts of time. The former became more and more, well, fun over the time…