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 U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Data Breach and P2P Bills Pass House Committee
The House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up two bills this morning addressing concerns over the use of consumers' personal information and the potential exposure of that data through the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) programs…
From Schneier on Security
Immediacy Affects Risk Assessments
New experiment demonstrates what we already knew:
That's because people tend to view their immediate emotions, such as their perceptions of threats or risks, as more intense and important than their previous emotions. In one…From Computational Complexity
The Journal Manifesto
Some people say that for-profit journals do not currently serve our community well. Some even think they cannot do so. Others think they are doing a fine job as is (I don't know any such people but surely they must exist). Inot…
From BLOG@CACM
Designing Effective Warnings
Computer security warnings are something we all see everyday, but many people find them annoying and ignore them. What are better ways of designing warnings?
From The Noisy Channel
A Museum of Mathematics
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-09-30
From Schneier on Security
The Doghouse: Crypteto
Crypteto has a 49,152-bit symmetric key:
The most important issue of any encryption product is the 'bit key strength'. To date the strongest known algorithm has a 448-bit key. Crypteto now offers a 49,152-bit key. This means…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Communications Tool to Roll
The long awaited Google Wave tool is about to roll to early users. ' ... designed to consolidate features from e-mail, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, multimedia management and document sharing. Using social networking-like…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Counting Shoppers Thermally
From Storefrontbacktalk. Video based tracking systems continue to evolve: ' ... Many retail stores rely on customer-counting systems triggered by body heat despite the fact that (as proven by the case of roasted chickens being…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Antivirus
Microsoft is now offering a basic free antivirus capability for its operating systems. This could start some tussles with other offerings.-
From The Noisy Channel
Privacy, Pseudonymity, and Copyright
From Putting People First
Herkko Hietanen: The social future of television
Herkko Hietanen of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology tells his audience at the Berkman Center that
From Schneier on Security
The Problem of Vague Laws
The average American commits three felonies a day: the title of a new book by Harvey Silverglate. More specifically, the problem is the intersection of vague laws and fast-moving technology:
Technology moves so quickly we can…From Computational Complexity
The IT Rules
My family has discovered a British Series, the IT Crowd, about two techies in a corporate IT department. An American version never got past the pilot phase.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Mining Software
A new blog which describes data mining software. I see that it covers SPSS Clementine, which has since been renamed PASW Modeler. SPSS has since been bought by IBM. We used Clementine for several applications to categorize data…
From Wild WebMink
? Understanding Motivation
"It's human nature to think in simple dichotomies: Free Software - GNU - GPL vs. Open Source - BSD License. But I would argue that there are three corners to this…
From Schneier on Security
Predicting Characteristics of People by the Company they Keep
Turns out "gaydar" can be automated:
Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person's online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with…From My Biased Coin
Blog Posts of the Day
A blog post worth reading is Mihai Patrascu's post on, essentially, coming in second, if only for the chance to play armchair psychologist and try to deconstruct Mihai based on his blog posts. Of particular interest to me was…
From The Noisy Channel
Ethics of Blogging: Webcast Now Available
From The Eponymous Pickle
Buy and Sell Data
Infochimps is a site that says it will allow you to buy and sell data. A curious idea with some shaky potential issues. How will they be able to assure the validity of the data? They are still in the early stages and I was unable…
From Putting People First
Deconstructing mobiles for development
Katrin Verclas of MobileActive is launching a new series on “deconstructing mobiles for development”. Mobile tech as a tool for social development is making the front pages in 2009. They are hyped as panathea for global issues…
From Putting People First
Exploring little worlds with Nokia
The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design is on a roll. After an intensive workshop with Intel (featured in Worldchanging), now they embarked on an exploration with Nokia (featured in Fast Company). And obviously all online…
From Schneier on Security
Unauthentication
In computer security, a lot of effort is spent on the authentication problem. Whether it's passwords, secure tokens, secret questions, image mnemonics, or something else, engineers are continually coming up with more complicated…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Political Action in Kanasa
If you've read a recent piece I co-wrote in Communications of the ACM (membership required), you know that the States largely drive education decisions in the US. Because of this, our community has to play "wack-a-mole" when …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Picturing an Uncertain World
In the midst of reading Howard Wainer's Picturing the Uncertain World. This Amazon link has a 'look inside'. Have read two of his recent books. See his site for more information about his work. His mixes easily digestible statistics…
From Computational Complexity
Debunking Proofs
One of the comments of the last post asked my (or someones) opinion on the proofs floating around that P=NP or P\ne NP.
As a grad student I used to read these until I found the mistake or until it was incomprehensible,…From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuro Information Act
Neuro-information non-discrimination act signed. Consider the implications for biometric data gathering and use.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of September 28
September 30
Hearing: The Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on cyberbullying and other safety issues. 3 p.m. 2141 Rayburn Building
UPDATE: Markup added
…From BLOG@CACM
CS Education in the States
Decisions about whether there is computer science in the classroom are largely state-based. The most recent example is the State of Kansas, which is moving to remove computing courses from the content students are required to…
From Wild WebMink
? Children Today