This month, we look at the evolutions unfolding in the worlds of hardware and software, both surely representing milestones in their respective spheres. We begin with a…
April 1999 - Vol. 42 No. 4
Features
The speed of light, which travels through empty space at about 186,171 miles per second—the highest speed anything can attain—has been slowed to 38 miles an hour by…
Practical Programmer: Inspections?Some Surprising Findings
"You can see a lot just by observing" —Attributed to Yogi Berra
Sharing Standards: IT Skills Standards
Skill standards provide IT workers and students with clear benchmarks leading to skilled, high-paying jobs.
Viewpoint: Taking the Lead in Licensing Software Engineers
It was inevitable. In the mid-1970s, the term "software engineering" became a permanent part of the computing lexicon. For instance, ACM started the Special…
ACM Digital Library Enhancements
As the new Executive Director and CEO of ACM, I am delighted to have this opportunity to share with you my excitement regarding some of the new initiatives and services…
Lessons from Open-Source Software Development
Open source is a term that has recently gained currency as a way to describe the tradition of open standards, shared source code, and collaborative development behind…
Linux today has millions of users, thousands of developers, and a growing market. It is used in embedded systems; it is used to control robotic devices; it has flown on…
The Origin of the Camel Lot in the Breakdown of the Bilingual -Unix
Approximately 12 years ago, the Unix programming universe consisted of two linguistic cultures. You either programmed in C, or you programmed in the shell (for some value…
Shared Leadership in the Apache Project
The Apache Project [1] is a collaborative software development effort aimed at creating and maintaining a robust, secure, efficient, extensible, and open-source…
Sooner or later, every successful open-source software package will have one or more profitable businesses associated with it. For example, the Linux operating system is…
Following the Path of Evolvable Hardware
Evolvable hardware (EHW) refers to one particular type of hardware whose architecture, structure, and functions change dynamically and autonomously in order to improve…
From Darwin to Darware: Why computer engineers have started listening to Mother (Nature).
Field-Programmable Gate Arrays
Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are integrated circuits, which constitute the “new kid in town” where digital hardware technology is concerned. An FPGA…
Evolvable Hardware Chips For Industrial Applications
Autonomous, dynamic, and suitable for a variety of real-world applications.
Hardware Evolution System AdAM
A brief explanation of AdAM, the Adaptive Architecture Methodology.
Experiments on Evolving Software Models of Analog Circuits
Analog circuits are of great importance in electronic system design since the world is fundamentally analog in nature. While the amount of digital design activity far…
Analysis of -Unconventional Evolved Electronics
Artificial evolution can produce bizarre circuits that work—but do we need to understand them?
Building Consumer Trust Online
How merchants can win back lost consumer trust in the interests of e-commerce sales.
GPS-Based Geographic Addressing, Routing, and Resource Discovery
The Global Positioning System can be used to give every terminal a geographic address for multicasting to and from recipients within specified geographical areas.
Top Management Toolbox For Managing Corporate IT
These checks and balances prevent project runaways and deliver systems that further corporate strategy and performance.
OO Distributed Programming Is Not Distributed OO Programming
Object-oriented distributed programming is fundamentally different from building mechanisms that hide remote invocations behind traditional, centralized abstractions. The…
Inside Risks: Just a Matter of Bandwidth
The previously incomprehensible increases in communication capacities now appearing almost daily may be enabling a quantum leap in one of the ultimately most promising,…
