… and a shout-out early in Stephen Colbert’s hilarious commencement address. Congratulations Barbara!  Watch Colbert’s remarks here.

I’ve been interacting with the international press quite a bit with the spate of disasters in Japan and here in the US. I’m thrilled with the “where are the robots?” questions for a couple of reasons. First, there’s the Sally Fields effect- they like robots! Finally, I was getting tired of hearing about the Terminator and robot uprisings. Second, I get to point that out that there is a set of land, sea, and marine vehicles sufficiently hardened to be of use- while putting in a pitch for the government to fund acquisition. (But no worries, these robots are the first generation and need lots of improvements and fundamental research […]

It’s unusual for computing research to be featured in an editorial in the New York Times, but it happened today:   An editorial in today’s New York Times follows up on an article ten days ago describing an end-to-end analysis of the spam value chain which determined that 95% of spam-advertised pharmaceutical, replica and software products are monetized using merchant services from just a handful of banks. The New York Times editorial states:  “The Times’s John Markoff reported that computer scientists at two University of California campuses have found another vulnerability:  spammers’ banks.  To track the flow of information, the researchers made hundreds of purchases.  Buying Viagra from the Pharmacy Express […]

Jeff Naughton, a top database researcher from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, has made available a superb keynote that he gave at the 26th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering.  It will be worth your time to read and think about Jeff’s slides – “We guarantee it!”

A bit of shameless self-promotion: I’ve been asked many questions about the Computing Community Consortium in the past year — and we’ve recently put together a two-page flyer that attempts to address the most common ones. Please click on the image to the right to open the PDF version — for what we hope is a quick read detailing the CCC’s history, objectives, and principal activities. And while we’re on the subject, a few shameless plugs: Below are key activities the CCC is leading right now. I encourage you to e-mail me if you’re interested in getting involved with, or participating in, any of these. Research Frontiers sessions at major […]

CCC Council chair Ed Lazowska is one of eight columnists featured in a New York Times “Room for Debate” essay series on education.  Lazowska says: “There are a few facts about education, employability and economic growth that we should keep in mind. “A balanced education serves you best … “The further out you are from college graduation, the less your success is attributable to the field in which you majored, and the more your success is attributable to a set of abilities imparted by any top-tier bachelor’s-level education … “But let us not fool ourselves about what fields offer job opportunities, create jobs for others and drive the economy … […]