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 Daniel Lemire's Blog
Toward author-centric science
Too many research papers in Computer Science are nonsense: they convey no worthy message. Yet, they pass a Turing test of sort: at a glance, they are indistinguishable from interesting research papers. In fact, they are designed…
From Schneier on Security
The Exaggerated Fears of Cyber-War
Good article, which basically says that our policies are based more on fear than on reality.
On cyber-terrorism:
So why is there so much concern about
From Wild WebMinkSun's Bloggers' License
As a follow-up to my posting on Monday about the new co-ownership license Sun has offered to all the bloggers on blogs.sun.com, I thought it would be good to post a link to the FAQ site and to the license itself (PDF). One interesting…
From The Eponymous PicklePressure to Limit Behavioral Targeting
Comments on a recent NY Times article. I see the point, this is a common startup direction. Clearly more balance needs to be had between targeting and privacy concerns. Thee potential commercial value is high.
From My Biased CoinESA Plans
I'll be headed to ESA this weekend. My talk is first thing Monday morning, so I'll be there sometime Sunday. If anyone wants to get together for dinner Sunday, drop me a line. And if you know any can't-miss dining experiences…
From The Eponymous PickleGMail Outage
I experienced the Gmail outage here in NYC yesterday. I agree with several pundits that there was no easy way to tell what was going on. Had to go to a number of social sources and ask my colleagues, invoking the time-honored…
From Putting People FirstThe architect of experience
Paula Wallace, president of the Savannah College of Art and Design, interviews Peter Fossick, who is the coordinator of a new program in service design at the college. “Everything is moving toward service design. Design is becoming…
From Putting People FirstThe rise of the super fakes
What happens when a large % of your target market wants your brand cachet but is happy with a decent-enough quality fake? Nokia
From Putting People FirstHow mobile is connecting people to what matters
Via Dina Mehta, founder and managing director of Mosoci India, I found out about Progress, a highly interesting new website set up by Nokia and Lonely Planet: “The Progress Project is the initiative set up by Nokia and Lonely…
From Putting People FirstExperientia helps Helsinki reduce carbon emissions
Helsinki, Finland
From The Eponymous PickleWal-Mart E-Commerce Changes
Wal-Mart appears to be expanding and changing their e-commerce operational presence: E-Commerce says: ' ... Wal-Mart is taking a page from Amazon's playbook, partnering with third parties to offer their goods for sale on its…
From Computer Science Teachers AssociationAssessing Impact in Computing Education
I spend much of my time thinking about reforming computer science education in Los Angeles. My goal is to make computer science courses accessible and engaging for students who have not traditionally participated in computing…
From Schneier on SecurityHacking Swine Flu
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACMACM Comments on Reach for the Top Education Fund
The Association for Computing Machinery recently submitted comments (PDF) on the Race to the Top Fund, an Education Department program set up to address some of its obligations under the economic stimulus legislation. The Fund…
From The Eponymous PickleAI a Dangerous Dream?
Interview with Noel Sharkey. The robotics expert, formerly a player in artificial intelligence, suggests that AI is a dangerous dream. I don't think it is a dream, it is inevitable. It can be dangerous, like any form of progress…
From Return 42;ICFP 2009 and Functional Programming in the Real World
Today the proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on functional programming (ICFP) have been uploaded to the ACM digital library. Next to the expected amount of highly interesting, and theoretical papers,…
From Schneier on SecurityMatthew Weigman
Fascinating story of a 16-year-old blind phone phreaker.
One afternoon, not long after Proulx was swatted, Weigman came home to find his mother talking to what sounded like a middle-aged male. The man introduced himself as Special…
From My Biased CoinITA, Polaris
At some point, I spent some time at ITA Software, a company I like for many reasons. (First, I like their flight fare-finding and selection interfaces -- which many major airlines and travel sites are based on. I use QPX but…
From Daniel Lemire's BlogWhy I am not publishing in PLoS One, yet
PLoS One is a new peer-reviewed journal (2006) with many interesting features:
The board includes many respected Computer Scientists: Ananth Grama, Johan Bollen, Josh C. Bongard, Robert P. Futrelle, etc. It is the largest Open…