Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2010
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Policy Highlights from Communications of the ACM - June 2010 (Vol. 53, No. 6)
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
Google Celebrates Maps Mashups
Its only been five years since the launch of the Google Maps API. ReadWriteWeb celebrates with an article about it, and points to their map of mashups. Have now been involved with several applications that used Google maps, and…
From Schneier on Security
Data at Rest vs. Data in Motion
For a while now, I've pointed out that cryptography is singularly ill-suited to solve the major network security problems of today: denial-of-service attacks, website defacement, theft of credit card numbers, identity theft, …
From Putting People First
Interactions magazine on subtlety and change
The current issue of Interactions Magazine is generally on subtlety and change, writes co-editor-in-chief Jon Kolko: “There are some strange changes under way in our world. We constantly hear the refrain of the massive chaos…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Washing Away Bad Hair Days
In the Online WSJ: Wash Away Bad Hair Days - In the Lab as Procter & Gamble Tries to Figure Out Pantene, Fickle Shampoo Shoppers and Other Marketing Mysteries. ... Late in the article it is mentioned that they used neuromarketing…
From Schneier on Security
Cryptography Success Story
From Brazil: the moral, of course, is to choose a strong key and to encrypt the entire drive, not just key files.
From Putting People First
Goodbye to UXnet
For nearly three years, selected Putting People First posts — 837 to be precise — have also been published on the website of UXnet. Now that UXnet is being disbanded, the site will be archived and these posts will stay on the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Play and our Brain
Reexamining aspects of the interaction of work and play. Which brought me back to Stuart Brown's book: Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, and his site and blog.
From Wild WebMink
? Open Source Dynamics
The Lack Of A Billion Dollar Pureplay Open Source Software Company Shows The Market Is Working Properly “just as we shouldn’t worry about the lack of “billion dollar” pure play open source software firms, we should also not fall…
From Computational Complexity
Broader Impacts
Nicole Immorlica reports on the NSF CISE Broader Impacts Summit held last week in DC. We've all seen it. Most of us have even written one. I'm talking about that ``clearly marked paragraph'' in the summary page of each and …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cargill Starts Innovation Center
I am a long-time student of innovation centers, helping found one myself, and remember hearing of Cargill working in this area a few years ago. Now they are finally under way. The description seems to be what one might expect…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Procter Fosters Green Innovation
P&G Fostering green innovation: " ... Procter & Gamble has launched a major green-innovation campaign with a goal of selling $50 billion in sustainable products by 2012, says Len Sauers, P&G's vice president for global sustainability…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Precision Body Scanning
We tracked the idea of body scanning for some time, for product design applications like diapers. Its been seen in fitting Jeans and in some high fashion places. It does not seem to have taken off in general though. This article…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Releases Issue Brief on Military and Overseas Internet Voting
The U.S. Public Policy Council of the Association for Computing Machinery (USACM) has developed an issue brief on internet voting as it relates to military and overseas voters. This issue brief is part of a series, which includes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Panera Opens Pay as You Wish Store
This does not seem like it should work, our reaction to 'free' as it is, but the article claims it does, to be seen how much they replicate this.
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Getting the Hang of iPhone Development
I needed to learn how to develop for the iPhone since the projects I want to work on next will be games for the device. This task was somewhat daunting, given that I hadn't really even used a Mac before, let alone Objective-C…
From Schneier on Security
Space Terrorism
Space terrorism? Yes, space terrorism. This article, by someone at the European Space Policy Institute, hypes a terrorst threat I've never seen hyped before. The author waves a bunch of scare stories around, and then concludes…
From Computational Complexity
The P vs NP quiz Show. NP! NP! NP!
Some random thoughts about quiz shows.
THOUGHT ONE: There could be a quiz show based on P and NP. We all think that FINDING an answer is harder than VERIFYING an answer. We use this! The contestant gets a question (or perhaps…
From Wild WebMink
Open Core: Bad For Software Freedom
The open core model is being feted as the new default open source business model. But I assert it does not deliver and sustain the principle that delivers cost savings and flexibility to the customer – software freedom. As a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visualizing Latency
In the CACM:, technical but interesting, The last sentence is telling, if you have to explain it, is it a good visualization? Yes, the underlying technology you are explaining can be complex, so that could be a reason ... Not…
From Wild WebMink
? World and Universe
Openness, Radicalism, and Tolerance “Why isn
From Schneier on Security
Baby Terrorists
This, from Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas, is about as dumb as it gets:
I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they were looking at were terrorist cells overseas who had figured out how to game our…From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Magazine, Focus on Forecasting
The July/August issue of Analytics Magazine cover enterprise forecasting. A tricky area I spent much time working in. This magazine is always a practical place to look for real solutions. Here are just some of the articles: "…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
NoSQL or NoJoin?
Several major players built alternatives to conventional database systems: Google created BigTable, Amazon built Dynamo and Facebook initiated Cassandra. There are many other comparable open source initiatives such as ClouchDB…
From Computational Complexity
The Lefthanded Latino Lesbians in Algebraic Topology Workshop
There was a Women in Theory Workshop at Princeton From June 19-23. ***SORELLE***, who was there, has some intelligent and interesting things to say about it here.. I will, instead, offer up a question.
I was at a Ramsey…From The Eponymous Pickle
Who Are Your Twitter Followers?
GigaOhm does a good job providing a case study of how to best understand your Twitter followers. This starts to answer a question I have had recently: Just who are these 500 people who follow me? Unless you block, or set up a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Even the Tech Sophisticated get Phished
A cautionary tale about password use. Cory Doctorow gets Phished. Cory Doctorow: Persistence Pays Parasites
From The Eponymous Pickle
Private Label
UPI article on the increasing use of private label by cost conscious consumers. Useful statistics.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of June 28
July 1
Hearing:
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on using cloud computing for federal information technology needs. 10 a.m., 2154 Rayburn Building
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Do we have to make computer science cool again?
I have been told that once upon a time the ISTE conference (back when it was still called NECC) had a lot of computer science education content. That