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 include [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Rants'
Why facebook is crap
October 1st, 2007 ·
Tags: Rants · The internet
Religion is evil
March 18th, 2007 · 1 Comment
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. That’s odd, given [...]
Worst paper awards
February 25th, 2007 ·
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 simply means [...]
Tags: Rants
Why sigcrap?
February 23rd, 2007 ·
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 [...]
Tags: Rants