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 My Biased Coin
Honor Codes?
A further interesting question that has come out of the as-of-yet alleged cheating scandal at Harvard is whether Harvard should have an honor code. The question is particularly interesting since Harvard attempted to institute…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: "The Seasick Squid"
A fable.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
High School Trig Is Powerful
Trying to cheat a decision problem Leopold Kronecker proved many great theorems, including one on Diophantine Approximation theory. This is the theory of how closely real numbers can be approximated by rational numbers . It has…
From My Biased Coin
Max Flows in O(nm) Time by Orlin
Just saw Suresh point to this talk (and paper) about a new result for max flows in O(nm) time by James Orlin. I'm listening to the talk he has on line this afternoon, but it seems buzzworthy and I hadn't heard about it, so I…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Design vs Functionality
An interesting view. With the obvious example of smartphones converging on a rectangular design. " ... In a pre-iPhone age, mobile phones came in all shapes and sizes. Remember the clamshell, candy bar, swivel, backflip,…
From Schneier on Security
Conversation about <i>Liars and Outliers</i> on The WELL
I'm on The WELL right now -- for the next week or so -- discussing my new book with anyone who wants to participate.
I'm also at Dragon*Con this weekend in Atlanta.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart uses Semantic Search
It is likely we will continue to see more efforts like this in retail, the claim for immediate improvement is particularly interesting: " ... Walmart like many online businesses sees the search engine as a key element in boosting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Improving Packaging Through Collaboration
In Innovation Excellence: General Mills example of using open innovation by working closely with suppliers, increasingly common in industry today.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
“Tech Jobs Are All Across America”
The Bay Area Council Economic Institute (BACEI) is out with a new report that integrates data from multiple sources, including the biennial Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers we featured here several months ago, and presents…
From Wild WebMink
App.Net Ignores Software Freedom
Plenty of “open”, “ad-free” and even “free” is mentioned in various places, of course. But I took a good look at App.Net and found the concepts of software freedom – as well as any expression of them in open source – seriously…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Computer Controversies For Fun and Discussion
I love a good discussion. Pros and cons and honest and hopefully friendly discussion of issue with different opinions make for good learning experiences. One of the things I would like to do should I ever get a full-time advanced…
From Putting People First
The new multi-screen world: understanding cross-platform consumer behavior
Google published yesterday a research report on how consumers use different devices together and navigating the new multi-screen world. They set out to learn not just how much of our media consumption happens on screens, but…
From Putting People First
The best interface is no interface
Golden Krishna of Cooper argues that it’s time for us to move beyond screen-based thinking. “Because when we think in screens, we design based upon a model that is inherently unnatural, inhumane, and has diminishing returns.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Analytics
New book by a long time colleague: Business Analytics: Methods Models and Decisions. by James R EvansThis book provides readers with the fundamental concepts and tools needed to understand the emerging role of business analytics…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A U.S.-Israel Collaboration in Computer Science
The National Science Foundation (NSF), together with the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), today announced the U.S.-Israel Collaboration in Computer Science (USICCS), which seeks to support collaborative…
From My Biased Coin
Academic Dishonesty Cases
I have a bunch of half-written blog posts, none of which I have felt pressed to finish, so the blog has languished over the summer. But then, something has come up worth writing about.The Harvard Gazette has an article up about…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Membership Benefits
CSTA has recently produced a brand –new Members Benefit brochure. If you have not received a copy, you can access it by clicking on the Membership Information tab on the CSTA website.
Or- if, like me, you are terribly busy…From The Eponymous Pickle
Measuring Supply Chain Performance
A very good piece on the topic. Deals with the strategic, operational and especially financial aspects of the problem. If we can't measure we can hardly improve. And usual visuals to understand the problem. Note also the links…
From The Eponymous Pickle
BOI Solutions: Groundbreaking Business Intelligence Delivery
Newly brought to by attention again. The excellent and unique work done by BOI Systems." ... Procter & Gamble’s groundbreaking Business Sphere environments enable rapid response to changes in the marketplace and uncover newBusiness…
From The Noisy Channel
Panos Ipeirotis talking at LinkedIn about Crowdsourcing!
Sharing knowledge is part of our core culture at LinkedIn, whether it’s through hackdays or contributions to open-source projects. We actively participate in academic conferences, such as KDD, SIGIR, RecSys, and CIKM, as well…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Bit by Bit: A Young Woman's Guide to Entering and Succeeding in High Tech Careers
A new book all about high tech careers for women has finally found its way onto Amazon! I was interviewed for this book (Bit by Bit: A Young Woman's Guide to Entering and Succeeding in High Tech Careers), along with many other…
From Schneier on Security
The Psychological Effects of Terrorism
Shelly C. McArdle, Heather Rosoff, Richard S. John (2012), "The Dynamics of Evolving Beliefs, Concerns Emotions, and Behavioral Avoidance Following 9/11: A Longitudinal Analysis of Representative Archival Samples," Risk Analysis…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Why Stores Stock Items that Don't Sell
Correspondent Byron Sharp sends along this informative link:If you have ever wondered why stores are willing to stock many items that barely sell....Professor Byron Sharp, Director Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, University of South…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ask Fewer Questions
Michael Schrage talks about a fundamental tool of our industry: Asking questions. Sometimes its verbal, sometimes via an email or a store survey. It happens a lot. I have frequently been horrified by the length and numbing…
From Computational Complexity
The Net or the Jet
I spent the first half of my life in the jet age but not in the Internet age. I could fly anywhere in the world but the fastest way to get a research paper to another scientist was to bring the paper on the plane with me. One…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Promoting Technology-Mediated Social Participation with a Summer Social Webshop
The following is a special contribution to this blog by Jenny Korn, a Ph.D. student in communications at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Korn was one of the participants of last week’s 2012 Summer Social Webshop on Technology…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Cloud Fundamentals Video Series
The Trustworthy Computing group has been recording a series on Cloud computing fundamentals. The series (some 25 videos) wraps up this week with a series finale. There are a lot of issues with cloud computing including privacy…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Choosing Social Network Models
From Wharton: An extensive piece on the topic. " ... Recent downturns in the stock price of several social media companies -- several of which debuted to much fanfare -- may be due, in part, to investor worry over whether these…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Issues New Solicitation for Sustainability (SEES) Fellows
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a solicitation for its Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) Fellows program, paving the way for funding a second cohort of recent Ph.D.s who wish to pursue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Connect and Development Opportunities: Unstructured Data
I just received a list of needs from P&G's Connect and Development outreach via P&G's alumni network that may be of interest to this group. The all have elements of the use of unstructured data, typically textual data. Here…