January 2011 - Vol. 54 No. 1

Features

Opinion Jan 1 2011

My initiation into the computing-research community was a workshop on "Logic and Databases" in 1979. I was the only graduate student attending the workshop. In spite of the informality of the event I was quite in awe of the senior researchers who attended.

Moshe Y. Vardi

Computing Applications

Opinion Letters to the editor Jan 1 2011

To Change the World, Take a Chance

Some of what Constantine Dovrolis said in the Point/Counterpoint "Future Internet Architecture: Clean-Slate Versus Evolutionary Research" (Sept. 2010) made sense. But I found his "pragmatic vision" argument neither pragmatic nor visionary.

CACM Staff

News Jan 1 2011

In the Virtual Extension

To ensure the timely publication of articles, Communications created the Virtual Extension to expand the page limitations of the print edition by bringing readers the same high-quality articles in an online-only format.

News Jan 1 2011

ACM’s Annual Report

It has truly been a banner year for ACM. We firmly established ACM hubs in Europe, India, and China after years of exhaustive efforts to expand the Association's global reach. And, ACM membership ended the year at another all-time high.

Wendy Hall

BLOG@CACM Jan 1 2011

Smart Career Advice; Laptops as a Classroom Distraction

Jack Rosenberger shares Patty Azzarello's life lessons about advancing in the workplace. Judy Robertson discusses students' in-class usage of laptops.

Jack Rosenberger and Judy Robertson

Computing Applications

Opinion CACM online Jan 1 2011

Scholarly Publishing Model Needs an Update

Science demands an overhaul of the well-established system of peer-review in scholarly communication. The current system is outmoded, inefficient, and slow. The only question is how!

David Roman

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Jan 1 2011

Nonlinear Systems Made Easy

Pablo Parrilo has discovered a new approach to convex optimization that creates order out of chaos in complex nonlinear systems.

Gary Anthes

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Jan 1 2011

The Touchy Subject of Haptics

After more than 20 years of research and development, are haptic interfaces finally getting ready to enter the computing mainstream?

Alex Wright

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Jan 1 2011

India’s Elephantine Effort

An ambitious biometric ID project in the world's second most populous nation aims to relieve poverty, but faces many hurdles.

Marina Krakovsky

Computing Applications

News Jan 1 2011

EMET Prize and Other Awards

Edward Felten, David Harel, Sarit Kraus and others are honored for their contributions to computer science, technology, and electronic freedom and innovation.

Jack Rosenberger

Computing Applications

Opinion The business of software Jan 1 2011

Don’t Bring Me a Good Idea

You want to know how to get my attention?" Jason Kalich asked the audience rhetorically. "First off, don't bring me a good idea—I've already got plenty of good ideas."

Phillip G. Armour

Computing Applications

Opinion Law and technology Jan 1 2011

Google AdWords and European Trademark Law

Is Google violating trademark law by operating its AdWords system?

Stefan Bechtold

Computing Applications

Opinion Technology strategy and management Jan 1 2011

Reflections on the Toyota Debacle

A look in the rearview mirror reveals system and process blind spots.

Michael A. Cusumano

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint Jan 1 2011

Cloud Computing Privacy Concerns on Our Doorstep

Privacy and confidentiality issues in cloud-based conference management systems reflect more universal themes.

Mark D. Ryan

Computing Applications

News Interview Jan 1 2011

An Interview with Frances E. Allen

Frances E. Allen, recipient of the 2006 ACM A.M. Turing Award, reflects on her career.

Guy L. Steele

Architecture and Hardware

Practice Jan 1 2011

Collaboration in System Administration

For sysadmins, solving problems usually involves collaborating with others. How can we make it more effective?

Eben M. Haber, Eser Kandogan, and Paul P. Maglio

Computing Applications

Practice Jan 1 2011

UX Design and Agile: A Natural Fit?

Talking with Julian Gosper, Jean-Luc Agathos, Richard Rutter, and Terry Coatta.

Computing Applications

Jean-Luc Agathos, Terry Coatta, Julian Gosper, and Richard Rutter

Practice Jan 1 2011

Virtualization: Blessing or Curse?

Managing virtualization at a large scale is fraught with hidden challenges.

Evangelos Kotsovinos

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Jan 1 2011

Follow the Intellectual Property

How companies pay programmers when they move jobs and the related IP rights to offshore taxhavens.

Gio Wiederhold

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Contributed articles Jan 1 2011

Using Simple Abstraction to Reinvent Computing For Parallelism

The ICE abstraction may take CS from serial (single-core) computing to effective parallel (many-core) computing.

Uzi Vishkin

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Review article Jan 1 2011

A Firm Foundation For Private Data Analysis

What does it mean to preserve privacy?

Cynthia Dwork

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2011

Technical Perspective: Sora Promises Lasting Impact

The objective of Sora is to build a software defined radio that combines the performance and fidelity of hardware platforms with the programmability and flexibility of general-purpose processors.

Dina Katabi

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2011

Sora: High-Performance Software Radio Using General-Purpose Multi-Core Processors

Sora, a fully programmable software radio platform on commodity PC architectures, combines the performance and fidelity of hardware software-defined radio platforms with the programmability and flexibility of general-purpose processor SDR platforms.

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2011

Technical Perspective: Multipath, A New Control Architecture For the Internet

Multipath transmission for the Internet—that is, allowing users to send some of their packets along one path and others along different paths—is an elegant solution still looking for the right problem.

Damon Wischik

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Jan 1 2011

Path Selection and Multipath Congestion Control

This paper studies data transfers under two classes of multipath control, coordinated control where the rates over the paths are determined as a function of all paths, and uncoordinated control where the rates are determined independently over each path.

Peter Key, Laurent Massoulié, and Don Towsley

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Last byte Jan 1 2011

Q&A: A Journey of Discovery

Ed Lazowska discusses his heady undergraduate days at Brown University, teaching, eScience, and being chair of the Computing Community Consortium.

Dennis McCafferty

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints: Virtual extension Jan 1 2011

The Ephemeral Legion: Producing an Expert Cyber-Security Work Force from Thin Air

Seeking to improve the educational mechanisms for efficiently training large numbers of information security workers.

Michael E. Locasto, Anup K. Ghosh, Sushil Jajodia, and Angelos Stavrou

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Contributed articles: Virtual extension Jan 1 2011

On the Move, Wirelessly Connected to the World

How to experience real-world landmarks through a wave, gaze, location coordinates, or touch, prompting delivery of useful digital information.

Peter Fröhlich, Antti Oulasvirta, Matthias Baldauf, and Antti Nurminen

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles: Virtual extension Jan 1 2011

OpenSocial: An Enabler For Social Applications on the Web

Building on the OpenSocial API suite, developers can create applications that are interoperable within the context of different social networks.

Matthias Häsel

Computing Applications

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