Opinion Departments
The ACM Code of Ethics: A Call to Action
The ACM Committee on Professional Ethics is updating the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Here I reflect on how those changes motivate a call to action for the profession.
December 2016 - Vol. 59 No. 12
Features
Opinion Departments
Making a Positive Impact: Updating the ACM Code of Ethics
The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct describes what brings us together as a profession. As members of the ACM we have all consented to the Code; that consent underlies the conscience of our profession and is the foundation for our shared expectations of each other.
Is email ever private? It seems clear that we need standards and agreements to protect email while in transit between mail transfer agents and between users and transfer agents.
Opinion Letters to the editor
Reclaim the Lost Promise of the Semantic Web
I was eager to learn about the latest developments in the Semantic Web as explored in "A New Look at the Semantic Web" (Sept. 2016), but by the end I had the impression the entire vision of a Semantic Web was somehow at risk.
ICER 2016, and Star Trek at 50
Mark Guzdial reports on promising papers, and Daniel Reed recalls a television show that continues to inspire innovation.
Genetic engineering promises to revolutionize everything from agriculture and biofuels to medicine and food safety.
Containers Push Toward the Mayfly Server
The container revolution represents a large-scale shift in thinking about multitasking systems.
Can We Trust Autonomous Weapons?
Nations consider using defense systems that can make their own lethal decisions.
Opinion The profession of IT
Do you get stuck when it is time to learn something new? Read this.
Opinion Broadening participation
Mentoring Female Assistant Professors Enhances Their Success
A randomized controlled trial validates many of the practices used to retain women in academia.
Opinion Viewpoint
(Mis)Managing Parallel Computing Research Through EU Project Funding
Considering the possible negative long-term effects of EU projects on European scientific culture.
Applying functional programming principles to distributed computing projects.
React: Facebook's Functional Turn on Writing Javascript
A discussion with Pete Hunt, Paul O'Shannessy, Dave Smith, and Terry Coatta
Industrial-Scale Agile: From Craft to Engineering
Essence is instrumental in moving software development toward a true engineering discipline.
Research and Advances Contributed articles
Interactive Visualization of 3D Scanned Mummies at Public Venues
A full-body virtual autopsy of an ancient Egyptian mummy showed visitors he was likely murdered.
Research and Advances Contributed articles
Creating Connection with Autonomous Facial Animation
Biologically based computational modeling promises virtual characters capable of face-to-face human interaction.
Research and Advances Review articles
Anticipating Policy and Social Implications of Named Data Networking
Considering the social impact of a proposed future Internet architecture.
Research and Advances Review articles
Mathematical Foundations For Social Computing
Social computing benefits from mathematical foundations, but research has barely scratched the surface.
Research and Advances Research highlights
Technical Perspective: The Chemistry of Software-Defined Batteries
A time-tested principle in computer systems design is to use an interface to separate an abstraction from its implementation. "Software-Defined Batteries" represents a convergence of these two evolutionary threads.
Research and Advances Research highlights
In this paper, we present a new hardware-software system, called Software Defined Battery, which allows system designers to integrate batteries of different chemistries.
Research and Advances Research highlights
Technical Perspective: 3D Image Editing Made Easy
The authors of "Extracting 3D Objects from Photographs Using 3-Sweep" present an important step toward achieving 3D editing.
Research and Advances Research highlights
Extracting 3D Objects from Photographs Using 3-Sweep
We introduce an interactive technique to extract and manipulate simple 3D shapes in a single photograph.
Opinion Last byte
Takeo Kanede, recipient of the 2016 Kyoto prize for advanced technology for pioneering contributions to computer vision and robotics, sees respect as an important part of quality of life technology initiatives.
