April 2013 - Vol. 56 No. 4

Opinion From the president Apr 1 2013

Open Access

"Open access content" is a topic that has been widely discussed and, with the advent of the Internet and the Web along with "digital publishing," it has become an important touch-point for the research community.

Vinton G. Cerf

An Open Access Partnership

News Apr 1 2013

Searching for scholarly literature became far easier with search engines like Google or Google Scholar. And while it is far easier now to find targeted information, the quality of the results is less assured.

Scott E. Delman

Opinion Letters to the Editor Apr 1 2013

A Robot’s Roots

I would like to add a bit of etymological history concerning the word "robot" to Vinton G. Cerf's President's Letter "What's a Robot?" (Jan. 2013).

CACM Staff

Securing the Future of Computer Science; Reconsidering Analog Computing

BLOG@CACM Apr 1 2013

Mark Guzdial sees hope in computer science education efforts in the U.K. Daniel Reed suggests we should not be so quick to discard analog computing.

Mark Guzdial and Daniel Reed

News Apr 1 2013

Artificial Connections

Scientists at the Blue Brain Project are using supercomputers to simulate neural connections in a 3-D model of a slice of mammalian brain.

Nidhi Subbaraman

Inexact Design: Beyond Fault-Tolerance

News Apr 1 2013

In a new approach to making computers more efficient, called "inexact," "probabilistic," or "approximate" computing, errors are not avoided; they are welcomed. Some call it "living dangerously."

Gary Anthes

News Apr 1 2013

Looking Back at Big Data

As computational tools open up new ways of understanding history, historians and computer scientists are working together to explore the possibilities.

Leah Hoffmann

Are the Costs of ‘Free’ Too High in Online Education?

Opinion Technology strategy and management Apr 1 2013

Considering the economic implications as educational institutions expand online learning initiatives.

Michael A. Cusumano

Peacebuilding in a Networked World

2012 MIT symposium on The Future of Education

Opinion Emerging markets Apr 1 2013

Harnessing computing and communication technologies in fragile, conflict-stressed nations.

Michael L. Best

Opinion Kode vicious Apr 1 2013

Code Abuse

One programmer's extension is another programmer's abuse.

George V. Neville-Neil

Cyber-Victimization and Cybersecurity in China

Opinion Viewpoint Apr 1 2013

Seeking insights into cyberattacks associated with China.

Nir Kshetri

The Problem with Hands-Free Dashboard Cellphones

Opinion Viewpoint Apr 1 2013

Lawmakers misunderstand user experience of technology interface.

Robert Rosenberger

The Evolution of Web Development For Mobile Devices

Practice Apr 1 2013

Building websites that perform well on mobile devices remains a challenge.

Nicholas C. Zakas

How Fast Is Your Website?

The Evolution of Web Development for Mobile Devices, illustration

Practice Apr 1 2013

Website performance data has never been more readily available.

Patrick Meenan

FPGA Programming For the Masses

Practice Apr 1 2013

The programmability of FPGAs must improve if they are to be part of mainstream computing.

David F. Bacon, Rodric Rabbah, and Sunil Shukla

Why Computer Talents Become Computer Hackers

FPGA Programming for the Masses, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Apr 1 2013

Start with talent and skills driven by curiosity and hormones, constrained only by moral values and judgment.

Zhengchuan Xu, Qing Hu, and Chenghong Zhang

Offline Management in Virtualized Environments

Why Computer Talents Become Computer Hackers, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Apr 1 2013

How to run virtual machines together with physical machines, especially when sharing computational resources.

Nishant Thorat, Arvind Raghavendran, and Nigel Groves

Techniques and Applications For Sentiment Analysis

Research and Advances Review articles Apr 1 2013

The main applications and challenges of one of the hottest research areas in computer science.

Ronen Feldman

Technical Perspective: Understanding Pictures of Rooms

Techniques and Applications for Sentiment Analysis, illustration

Research and Advances Research highlights Apr 1 2013

The rich world is getting older, so we will see many efforts to build robots that can provide some in-home care for frail people. These robots will need computer programs that can see and understand rooms where people live.

David Forsyth

Discriminative Learning with Latent Variables For Cluttered Indoor Scene Understanding

Research and Advances Research highlights Apr 1 2013

We address the problem of understanding an indoor scene from a single image in terms of recovering the room geometry (floor, ceiling, and walls) and furniture layout.

Huayan Wang, Stephen Gould, and Daphne Roller

Future Tense: Modified Is the New Normal

Opinion Last byte Apr 1 2013

How I transcended the baseline for the sake of art and bioengineering.

Paul Di Filippo