December 2004 - Vol. 47 No. 12

December 2004 issue cover image

Features

Opinion Editorial pointers Dec 1 2004

Editorial Pointers

For a vast number of netizens, the great attraction of the Internet is not in the discovery, but in being discovered. The Net provides a worldwide audience to each and every user—a truth as seductive as it is powerful and plentiful. Certainly the phenomenon of Weblogs, or blogging, reflects this fact. The ability the Net […]

Diane Crawford

Computing Applications

News News track Dec 1 2004

The DSL Forum, an international broadband consortium, told BBC News there were 78 million high-speed network subscribers worldwide at the end of June 2004; and expected the year-end total to reach 100 million. To appreciate the phenomenal recent growth rate, the consortium points out that four years ago there were only about one million subscribers […]

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

Opinion Forum Dec 1 2004

We were happy to see the special section on voting systems (Oct. 2004). However, like most of the recent interest in such systems in both research centers and in the popular press, it largely ignored usability. This represents a serious blind spot, especially since user interface design (as in the butterfly ballot), rather than security, […]

Diane Crawford

Computing Applications

Opinion Digital village Dec 1 2004

Wireless Infidelity Ii: Airjacking

Assessing the extent of the security risks involved in wireless networking technology by considering three possible scenarios demonstrating vulnerabilities.

Hal Berghel and Jacob Uecker

Computing Applications

Opinion Hot links Dec 1 2004

Top 10 Downloads from Acm’s Digital Library

Communications of the ACM Volume 47, Number 12 (2004), Pages 21-22 Hot links: Top 10 Downloads from ACM’s Digital Library Diane Crawford Table of Contents Tables Back to Top Tables Table. The Top 10 Most Popular Papers from ACM’s Refereed Journals and Conference Proceedings Downloaded in September 2004 Table. The 10 Most Popular Courses and […]

Diane Crawford

Computing Applications

Opinion President's letter Dec 1 2004

The Health of Research Conferences and the Dearth of Big Idea Papers

Research conferences are often the most desirable venues for presenting our research results. For academic computer scientists and engineers, preferring conferences over journals is so common that we even lobby administrators to ensure that conference papers can be viewed in the same light as journal papers in other fields [1]. Hence, the health of conferences […]

David A. Patterson

Computing Applications

Opinion Security watch Dec 1 2004

The Many Colors of Multimedia Security

Protection of artistic content from illegal distribution involves significant gray areas in terms of methods and laws.

Rebecca T. Mercuri

Computing Applications

Research and Advances The blogosphere Dec 1 2004

Weblogs are a relatively new form of mainstream personal communication, like instant messaging, email, cell phones, and Web pages. They're also a new voice for traditional mass-market newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters.

Andrew Rosenbloom

Computing Applications

Research and Advances The blogosphere Dec 1 2004

Structure and Evolution of Blogspace

A critical look at more than one million bloggers and the individual entries of some 25,000 blogs reveals blogger demographics, friendships, and activity patterns over time.

Ravi Kumar, Jasmine Novak, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Andrew Tomkins

Computing Applications

Research and Advances The blogosphere Dec 1 2004

Bloggers are driven to document their lives, provide commentary and opinions, express deeply felt emotions, articulate ideas through writing, and form and maintain community forums.

Bonnie A. Nardi, Diane J. Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, and Luke Swartz

Computing Applications

Research and Advances The blogosphere Dec 1 2004

Semantic Blogging and Decentralized Knowledge Management

Tapping into the structured metadata in snippets of information gives communities of interest effective access to their collective knowledge.

Steve Cayzer

Computing Applications

Research and Advances The blogosphere Dec 1 2004

How Blogging Software Reshapes the Online Community

Spurred by easy-to-use commercial software, blogging is less about creating links and references to sites and sources, and increasingly about bloggers' own comments and personal interests.

Rebecca Blood

Computing Applications

Research and Advances The blogosphere Dec 1 2004

Democracy and Filtering

The Web gives us the ability to filter out unwanted noise and to create our own personal echo chambers---but democracy itself means each of us should be exposed to new topics and contrary opinions.

Cass R. Sunstein

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint Dec 1 2004

Like It or Not, Web Services Are Distributed Objects

Despite the push to adopt Web services as the universal OO architecture, the Web services reliability model ignores many real-world issues routinely encountered by users.

Kenneth P. Birman

Architecture and Hardware

News Dec 1 2004

ACM Annual Report For Fy04

ACM’s global influence as a professional society to which the IT community turns for vital scientific information and professional leadership and guidance was never more evident than in FY04. And as I reflect on my two years as ACM’s president, I find the manner in which the Association has consistently and conscientiously responded to the […]

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Dec 1 2004

The Obstacles and Myths of -sability and Software Engineering

Avoiding the usability pitfalls involved in managing the software development life cycle.

Ahmed Seffah and Eduard Metzker

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Dec 1 2004

Using Choiceboards to Create Business Value

Choiceboards empower users while saving companies money---but the technology needs to be carefully tailored to provide the best customer experience.

Pratyush Bharati and Abhijit Chaudhury

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Dec 1 2004

Cyberaccess: Web Accessibility and Corporate America

Many corporate Web sites contain barriers to accessibility. Fortunately, removing these obstacles will prove both relatively simple and beneficial.

Eleanor T. Loiacono

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Dec 1 2004

Building Systems that -sers Want to use

User commitment is essential to the success of even the best-designed IT systems. And to make that connection successfully begins by examining the burning question: "Does IT matter?"

Yogesh Malhotra and Dennis F. Galletta

Computing Applications

Practice Dec 1 2004

Software Development Teams

Considering three software development team archetypes and their implications.

Steve Sawyer

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Dec 1 2004

E-Commerce and Tourism

Travel and tourism are illustrating how e-commerce can change the structure of an industry---and in the process create new business opportunities.

Hannes Werthner and Francesco Ricci

Computing Applications

Opinion Inside risks Dec 1 2004

Spamming, Phishing, Authentication, and Privacy

It isn’t news to most readers that email is becoming almost unusable. Unsolicited commercial email (spam) peddles a variety of dubious products, ranging from pharmaceuticals to abandoned bank accounts. The so-called "phishers” try to steal user names and passwords for online banking. And then, we have viruses, worms, and other malware. Although there are would-be […]

Steven M. Bellovin

Computing Applications

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