January 2010 - Vol. 53 No. 1

Features

Opinion Editor's letter Jan 1 2010

More Debate, Please!

In this issue of Communications we have a debate that is quite a rarity in computing research: a technical debate. A…

Moshe Y. Vardi

Computing Applications

Communications Editor-in-Chief Moshe Vardi

Opinion Letters to the editor Jan 1 2010

Software Still As Much an Art As Science

C.A.R. Hoare's viewpoint "Retrospective: An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming" (Oct. 2009) reminded me of a saying …

CACM Staff

News In the Virtual Extension Jan 1 2010

In the Virtual Extension

Communications' Virtual Extension brings more quality articles to ACM members. These articles are now available in the ACM Digital Library.

CACM Staff

News ACM's FY09 annual report Jan 1 2010

ACM’s Annual Report

It's been an exhilarating first year as President of ACM. At the close of FY09, ACM stood as the largest educational and scientific computer society in the world.…

Wendy Hall

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM blog@CACM Jan 1 2010

Software Engineering, Smartphones and Health Systems, and Security Warnings

Software release cycles are usually long, measured in months, sometimes in years. Each of the stages—requirements, …

Greg Linden, Ruben Ortega, and Jason Hong

Computing Applications

Opinion CACM online Jan 1 2010

The Corollary of Empowerment

The unfilteredness of the Internet, while largely considered a plus, is taking some knocks. Abundant, easily accessible data …

David Roman

Computing Applications

News Jan 1 2010

Rebuilding For Eternity

Buildings collapse. Wind and rain beat them, temperatures cycle from freezing to blistering, and random strikes of …

Tom Geller

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Jan 1 2010

Amir Pnueli: Ahead of His Time

Remembering a legacy of practical and theoretical innovation.

Leah Hoffmann

Architecture and Hardware

1996 ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Amir Pnueli

News Jan 1 2010

Automated Translation of Indian Languages

India faces a daunting task trying to manually translate among 22 official languages, but assistance, in the form of advanced technology enabled by a lot of hard work, is…

Gary Anthes

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Jan 1 2010

New Search Challenges and Opportunities

If search engines can extract more meaning from text and better understand what people are looking for, the Web's resources could be accessed more effectively.

Neil Savage

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

University of Washington Professor Oren Etzioni

News Jan 1 2010

Future Internet Design Summit

The National Science Foundation's meeting on Internet architectures focused on designs related to emerging social and economic realities. The four-day, …

Kirk L. Kroeker

Architecture and Hardware

News Jan 1 2010

Robert Lovett Ashenhurst: 1929 – 2009

Former Communications editor-in-chief Robert L. Ashenhurst, who died last October at age 80, served ACM for 35 years with dedication, humor, and panache, according to…

Karen A. Frenkel

Computing Applications

News Jan 1 2010

ACM and India

ACM is in the process of establishing ACM India as a legal entity and will hold its first conference in late January. …

Samuel Greengard

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jan 1 2010

The Evolution of Platform Thinking

How platform adoption can be an important determinant of product and technological success.

Michael Cusumano

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jan 1 2010

In Praise of Bad Programmers

A tale illustrating the difference between individual and team skills.

Phillip G. Armour

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jan 1 2010

Unstandard Standardization: The Case of Biology

How applicable are the approaches adopted by information and communication technology standards-setting organizations to biological standards?

Arti Rai

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jan 1 2010

What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why?

Fundamental changes to computer science education are required to better address the needs of industry.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jan 1 2010

Great Computing Museums of the World (Part One)

The first of a two-part series highlighting several of the world's museums dedicated to preserving, exhibiting, and elucidating computing history.

William Aspray, Len Shustek, and Norbert Ryska

Computing Applications

Practice Jan 1 2010

Data in Flight

How streaming SQL technology can help solve the Web 2.0 data crunch.

Julian Hyde

Computing Applications

Practice Jan 1 2010

Other People’s Data

Companies have access to more types of external data than ever before. How can they integrate it most effectively?

Stephen Petschulat

Computing Applications

Practice Jan 1 2010

Triple-Parity RAID and Beyond

As hard-drive capacities continue to outpace their throughput, the time has come for a new level of RAID.

Adam Leventhal

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Jan 1 2010

MapReduce and Parallel DBMSs: Friends or Foes?

Parallel DBMSs excel at efficient querying of large data sets; MapReduce-style systems excel at complex analytics and ETL tasks. Neither is good at what the other does…

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Jan 1 2010

MapReduce: A Flexible Data Processing Tool

MapReduce advantages over parallel databases include storage-system independence and fine-grain fault tolerance for large jobs.

Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Review articles Jan 1 2010

Can Automated Agents Proficiently Negotiate With Humans?

Exciting research in the design of automated negotiators is making great progress.

Raz Lin and Sarit Kraus

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2010

Technical Perspective: Native Client: A Clever Alternative

Google's Native Client is an intriguing new system that allows untrusted x86 binaries to run safely on bare metal.

Dan Wallach

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2010

Native Client: A Sandbox For Portable, -Untrusted X86 Native Code

Native Client is a sandbox for untrusted x86 native code. It aims to give browser-based applications the computational performance of native applications without…

Computing Applications

detail of 'Barriers' by Claudia Markovich

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2010

Technical Perspective: Schema Mappings: Rules For Mixing Data

When you search for products on Amazon.com, you are seeing results from thousands of vendor databases that were developed before Amazon existed. Did you ever wonder how…

Alon Halevy

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2010

Structural Characterizations of Schema-Mapping Languages

Information integration is a key challenge faced by all major organizations, business and governmental ones alike. Two research …

Balder ten Cate and Phokion G. Kolaitis

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Last byte Jan 1 2010

Q&A: HP’s Running Man

Prith Banerjee discusses collaborating with universities, his startup experiences, and Hewlett-Packard Lab's approach to research and development.

Leah Hoffmann

Computing Applications