Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2010
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Use Exceeds Google
An interesting result from Comscore: U.S. Web surfers are spending more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google, according to new data from researchers at comScore Inc.
From BLOG@CACM
Tell Me a Story: Join the Effort to Collect Teacher Stories
Sally Fincher wants your stories about being a teacher, every month for a year, to figure out how to improve teaching and learning.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Cephalopod Consciousness
"Three Arguments for the Consciousness of Cephalopods."
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP EcoHub
SAP has put out what they call the SAP EcoHub Newsletter. You can dive deep and find lots of interesting things there, but I wish they were clearer about what EcoHub was all about beyond a marketplace. In addition, they have…
From Schneier on Security
<i>The Onion</i> on National Security
"Smart, Qualified People Behind the Scenes Keeping America Safe: 'We Don't Exist'"
From The Eponymous Pickle
Publishing Decisions
In ReadwriteWeb some interesting questions are posed about how large, complex reference books will, or will not be physically published in the future. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) a stalwart element of every library,…
From Computational Complexity
A Mathematical Urban Legend
I have heard the following story many times in many versions:
A PhD student in Math at PRESTIGIOUS SCHOOL was defending his thesis which was in REALLY ABSTRACT AREA and BIG SHOT IN THAT AREA was in town and decided to go…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-09-10
A Peek Behind the Curtain of the Texas Antitrust Complaints against Google Fascinating and detailed analysis of the anti-trust complaints against Google. The conspiracy theories Pamela espouses are well-based. At the start of…
From BLOG@CACM
Why Do the U.K. and Sweden Take Computing Education Research More Seriously Than the U.S.?
The UK and Sweden are establishing research centers on Computing Education. Where's the USA?
From Schneier on Security
Problems with Twitter's OAuth Authentication System
Interesting case study.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Most Popular Posts From August
It turns out the be complicated to figure out what the most popular blog posts are for a particular month. There are two sets of data I look through. One set, from Feedburner, shows (in theory) the top number of posts read by…
From The Eponymous Pickle
ANOVA Testing in Excel
Did not know you could do Analysis of Variance, ANOVA, stat testing in Excel, but here is an outline of how to do it. Good explanation of the method and it's uses as well.
From Schneier on Security
Orange Balls as an Anti-Robbery Device
In Japan:
These balls full of orange paint are anti-theft devices. When someone robs a store, the clerk can throw the ball at the perp (or at the perp's feet) so they're easily identified after they escape.Seems to me the …
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Preparing for the New School Year
I usually devote a portion of my summer vacation preparing for the next school year. I use my summer break to attend at least one professional development workshop. This summer I was able to attend three: CS4HS, CS & IT…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuromarketing Movies
In Gizmodo, an article about how a number are using neuromarketing methods to predict how people react to movies. In particular the use of fMRI methods. It is very natural to examine new methods like these to look at very high…
From The Eponymous Pickle
John Cleese on Creativity
Some of you may have followed John Cleese's business videos. Here is new video excerpt on creativity. His presentations are always fun. From Presentation Zen: " ... One of the main problems for many of use today is that we are…
From Putting People First
Vodafone
The Future Agenda, sponsored by Vodafone, is a not-for-profit, cross-discipline programme which aims “to unite the best minds from around the globe to address the greatest challenges of the next decade”. “In doing so, it will…
From Schneier on Security
New German ID Card Hackable
From Wild WebMink
? Will Run And Run
FSF responds to Oracle v. Google and the threat of software patents “Google could have avoided all this by building Android on top of IcedTea, a GPL-covered Java implementation based on Sun’s original code, instead of an independent…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Videos from KYield
Mark Montgomery of Kyield has added some video clips, linked to below, to explain his impressive plans to support the knwoledge worker. "Videos
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
How I Wound Up in Computer Science
The Computer Science Women blog (http://www.compsciwoman.com/ and on Twitter @Compsciwoman) has been running a series of posts by women detailing how they found themselves in computer science. The posts have been interesting…
From Putting People First
Don Norman: Living with Complexity (book)
Living with Complexity Norman, Donald A MIT Press, October 2010 280 pages Amazon If only today
From The Noisy Channel
David Petrou Presents Google Goggles at NY Tech Meetup
Image recognition is one of those problems that has presented long-standing challenges to computer scientists, despite being taken for granted by science fiction writers. Google Goggles represents one of the most audacious efforts…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dashboard Solutions: Gartner Research
Via IBM/Cognos. Registration required, access here. Despite some of the criticism of the format, I think that the use of dashboard as a modular component of business intelligence is a very useful approach. Especially if there…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Decoding Words from Brain Signals
In the ACM and From the University of Utah: Scientists Decode Words from Brain Signals. A development that takes the granularity of understanding the brain to a lower and useful level. Also on the hardware side: " ... The study…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Changing Lights Turns off the Lights
Carpe Diem points us to the unintended consequences of green legislation. Incandescent bulbs will no longer be legal by 2014. The replacement CFLs are mostly manufactured in China. Jobs move overseas. More market manipulation…
From BLOG@CACM
Old Geeks Never Die, They Just Get Grumpier
With age comes wisdom, or so they say. But when we geeks age, does it make us wiser or just grumpier?
From Computational Complexity
The Rubik's Cube Conjecture PROVEN! (Do we care?)
In 1994 Fermat's last theorem was proven! In 2003 Poincare's conjecture was proven! In 2010 the Rubik Cube Conjecture was proven! That is, it was shown that the minimum number of moves needed to solve Rubik's Cube is 20 (itRubiks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retailnet Group in India
I recently had a conversation with Keith Anderson of the Retailnet Group. We worked with them a few years ago. He is now just back from India where he did an excellent examination of retail infrastructure there. Took a look at…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Many Careers?
Appropriate for post labor day. How many careers does the average person have in a lifetime? Seven is often mentioned, and I have used that approximation in an HR model. But what evidence exists for this number? In the Numbers…