August 2013 - Vol. 56 No. 8

Features

Opinion Letter from the Editors-in-Chief of <i>CACM</i> and <i>JACM</i> Aug 1 2013

Communications of the ACM has become known as the "flagship magazine of the ACM." While ACM has an impressive collection of other high-quality journals and magazines, the flagship is not leading the fleet!

Moshe Y. Vardi and Victor Vianu

Computing Applications

Opinion From the president Aug 1 2013

Computer Science Education – Revisited

ACM has been pursuing an initiative to make computer science acceptable as a core science along with mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry.

Vinton G. Cerf

Computing Applications

Opinion Letters to the Editor Aug 1 2013

Is Computing Science?

Peter J. Denning's "The Science in Computer Science" (May 2013) explored the ongoing dispute over scientific boundaries within computer science. However, the boundaries separating the sciences, and knowledge in general, have never been clear and definite.

CACM Staff

BLOG@CACM Aug 1 2013

Teaching Programming the Way It Works Outside the Classroom

Philip Guo offers programmers 'Opportunistic Programming' tips that typically are not shared in school.

Philip Guo

Computing Applications

News Aug 1 2013

A New Approach to Information Storage

Disk drives and solid-state drives have long served as the foundation for computer storage, but breakthroughs in molecular and DNA science could revolutionize the field.

Samuel Greengard

Architecture and Hardware

News Aug 1 2013

Patient, Heal Thyself

New handheld medical diagnostic tools promise more efficient, lower-cost healthcare — but at what price?

Alex Wright

Architecture and Hardware

News Aug 1 2013

Software Aims to Ensure Fairness in Crowdsourcing Projects

The debate rages on about whether crowdsourcing is a win-win for workers, as well as for employers.

Paul Hyman

Computing Applications

Opinion Emerging markets Aug 1 2013

Ultra-Low-Cost Computing and Developing Countries

Raspberry Pi and its potential in the "global South."

Richard Heeks and Andrew Robinson

Computing Applications

Opinion Economic and business dimensions Aug 1 2013

Money Models For MOOCs

Considering new business models for massive open online courses.

Chrysanthos Dellarocas and Marshall Van Alstyne

Computing Applications

Opinion Privacy and security Aug 1 2013

The Air Gap: SCADA's Enduring Security Myth

Attempting to use isolation as a security strategy for critical systems is unrealistic in an increasingly connected world.

Eric Byres

Computing Applications

Opinion Kode vicious Aug 1 2013

Cherry-Picking and the Scientific Method

Software is supposed be a part of computer science, and science demands proof.

George V. Neville-Neil

Computing Applications

Cherry-Picking and the Scientific Method, illustration

Opinion Education Aug 1 2013

Success in Introductory Programming: What Works?

How pair programming, peer instruction, and media computation have improved computer science education.

Leo Porter, Mark Guzdial, Charlie McDowell, and Beth Simon

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint Aug 1 2013

Overt Censorship: A Fatal Mistake?

Censorship of information often has the opposite effect by drawing attention to the censored material.

Jean-Loup Richet

Computing Applications

Practice Aug 1 2013

The Antifragile Organization

Embracing failure to improve resilience and maximize availability.

Ariel Tseitlin

Computing Applications

The Antifragile Organization, illustration

Practice Aug 1 2013

Best Practices on the Move: Building Web Apps For Mobile Devices

Which practices should be modified or avoided altogether by developers for the mobile Web?

Alex Nicolaou

Computing Applications

Practice Aug 1 2013

Rules For Mobile Performance Optimization

An overview of techniques to speed page loading.

Tammy Everts

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Aug 1 2013

Are We Free to Code the Law?

We should be, for the sake of millions of people with pressing legal needs.

Marc Lauritsen

Computing Applications

Are We Free to Code the Law?, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Aug 1 2013

How Productivity and Impact Differ Across Computer Science Subareas

How to understand evaluation criteria for CS researchers.

Jacques Wainer, Michael Eckmann, Siome Goldenstein, and Anderson Rocha

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Review articles Aug 1 2013

Evolutionary Robotics

Taking a biologically inspired approach to the design of autonomous, adaptive machines.

Josh C. Bongard

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Aug 1 2013

Technical Perspective: Every Graph Is Essentially Sparse

The following paper by Batson, Spielman, Srivastava, and Teng surveys one of the most important recent intellectual achievements of theoretical computer science, demonstrating that every weighted graph is close to a sparse graph.

Assaf Naor

Research and Advances Research highlights Aug 1 2013

Spectral Sparsification of Graphs: Theory and Algorithms

Graph sparsification is the approximation of an arbitrary graph by a sparse graph. We explain what it means for one graph to be a spectral approximation of another and review the development of algorithms for spectral sparsification.

Joshua Batson, Daniel A. Spielman, Nikhil Srivastava, and Shang-Hua Teng

Opinion Last byte Aug 1 2013

Puzzled: Wins in a Row

Each of these puzzles involves game-playing strategy. If you are sufficiently clever — and sufficiently unmotivated to work hard at being clever — you can solve them all without resorting to algebra.

Peter Winkler

Computing Applications

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