A month from now one of the most contested U.S. presidential elections will be history. And it will make history. For in an effort to avoid another Florida 2000, an unprecedented wave of electronic voting systems will replace traditional lever machines and chad-producing punch cards. As a result, tens of millions of U.S. citizens will […]
Diane Crawford
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As Peter G. Neumann discussed in his "Inside Risks" column "Optimistic Optimization" (June 2004) there is clearly a problem in the IT industry involving the failure of developers to consider the long-term implications of their decisions. But is the issue more that developers fail to identify them up front or to identify them at all? […]
There is a growing faction of software developers dedicated to empowering end users with the tools to become, in fact, software developers. And if this thriving group fulfills this plan as envisioned, end users should never be aware of the new role they’ve assumed. The goal of end-user development (EUD) is to provide users the […]
The dictionary defines a myth as an unproved assertion about history, politics, or religious belief used as justification for social action. Peter J. Denning’s "The Profession of IT" column ("The Field of Programmers Myths," July 2004) extended this idea to include unproved assertions about computer science. Denning claimed the assumption "computer science equals programming" is […]
Tom Slewe and Mark Hoogenboom fairly accurately defined information security as it exists today in "Who Will Rob You on the Digital Highway?" (May 2004). They also inadvertently revealed what an incorrect, inconsistent, and incomplete folk art it is as well. Information security is akin to the practice of alchemy in ancient times when there […]
Every year around this time we take the opportunity to present some of the emerging trends and latest applications created by the vibrant fields surrounding graphics technologies. Part of this strategy is to provide some editorial coverage to complement the annual SIGGRAPH conference—surely one of ACM’s most globally renowned events. Each summer researchers, artists, software […]
In less than a decade, the Internet has become so ingrained in our daily lives that many of us would agree we could not imagine living without it. But is it truly indispensable? Hoffman et al. surveyed the domestication of the Net and found not only an astronomical rise in the number of users in […]
The special section "Homeland Security" (Mar. 2004) detailed external attacks on various computer systems but did not mention that threats also originate inside those systems. The 9/11 attackers, for instance, were trained to fly inside "the system" and allowed to board U.S. aircraft by that same system. Protecting U.S. computer systems requires Americans to assume […]
Wireless sensor networks—incorporating hundreds, even thousands, of tiny interconnected monitoring devices—are not only increasing in scope and function, but now interacting with environments that are physically remote, hostile, or inaccessible. With each pioneering application we move a bit closer to the vision of a pervasive globally embedded Internet. Sensor networks operate in a wholly different […]
I have found that LOC, as discussed in Phillip G. Armour’s "The Business of Software" column (Mar. 2004), is only weakly correlated with software functionality and complexity and not a useful metric for estimating system size. Systems with greater functionality generally have a greater LOC count, while the functionality-LOC relationship is overwhelmed by a number […]
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