Special Interest Group on CRAP

I somehow ended up with a machine with Windows Vista on it. Ok, it was a mistake. I know that now.
When you get a new machine, one thing you have to do is go back and reinstall all those things that make a machine usable. Since I work on computer science research, [...]

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My wife handed me a newspaper article saying how to opt out from direct marketing lists, and how to opt out from preapproved credit offers. These have single-handedly created a market for personal shredders, and I’m tired of filling up landfills. When I went to the web site of the Direct Marketing Association*, [...]

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There is a crying need for a button on most consumer electronics these days. I call it the “FUCK YOU” button.

I’ll offer a few examples:

You put a DVD into your DVD player, but none of the buttons on the remote will function until you finish watching the promotions, the FBI copyright warning, and the [...]

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I recently went to buy a dock for my iPod, to try and play music from the iPod through my stereo system. I read a bunch of reviews of devices, and opted to purchase a Keyspace Tuneview through Amazon. Step 1 is realizing that you aren’t purchasing it through Amazon, but that’s typical [...]

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That title is a phrase that cannot be constructed in American politics. We somehow seem to have forgotten the meaning of “religious freedom”. Romney has a press conference to explain why a member of the fourth largest christian sect in the United States is qualified to be president in light of his unorthodox [...]

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Over the years we’ve all seen technological trends come and go (I’m old so I’ve seen more come and go than some others). I regard Facebook as one of these fads that will fade quickly.
As a mathematician I have been interested in the study of random graphs that arise from social phenomena. Examples [...]

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Some people are shocked when they hear me say this. That’s because they don’t like to have something they believe in called evil. When I say that religion is evil, I don’t mean that religion has no value whatsoever. I mean that the net world effect from religion is to promote evil. [...]

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Having been on many program committees in my career, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need a worst paper award in addition to a best paper award. Let’s think about this - if a conference has a 10% acceptance rate, it doesn’t mean that these 10% papers are necessarily important papers. It [...]

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You’re probably wondering what SIGCRAP is. It’s not a special interest group of ACM. It’s a play on words that was motivated by my recent thoughts on the nature of academic publishing, and the role of professional societies.
I’m a researcher in computer science, and I’ve been a member of several professional societies during my [...]

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