June 2009 - Vol. 52 No. 6

Features

Opinion ACM-W letter Jun 1 2009

Computer science is no longer the hot, high-enrollment field it once was. While many suggestions have been made for increasing enrollments, it is unlikely that computer…

Elaine Weyuker

Computing Applications

Opinion Letters to the editor Jun 1 2009

Share the Threats

Othman El Moulat's comment (Apr. 2009) concerning the article "The Topology of Dark Networks"(Oct. 2008) that the views and articles in Communications should…

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM blog@CACM Jun 1 2009

Speech-Activated User Interfaces and Climbing Mt. Exascale

The Communications Web site, cacm.acm.org, features 13 bloggers in the BLOG@CACM community. In each issue of Communications, we'll publish excerpts from selected posts,…

Tessa Lau and Daniel Reed

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion CACM online Jun 1 2009

Making that Connection

The goal of holding readers' attention has made provocation a timeworn editorial strategy. Communications doesn't resort …

David Roman

Computing Applications

News Jun 1 2009

Micromedicine to the Rescue

Medical researchers have long dreamed of "magic bullets" that go directly where they are needed. Now micromedicine and nanotechnology are making a range of…

Don Monroe

Architecture and Hardware

News Jun 1 2009

Content Control

Entertainment businesses say digital rights management prevents the theft of their products, but access control technologies have been a uniform failure when it comes to…

Leah Hoffmann

Computing Applications

News Jun 1 2009

Autonomous Helicopters

Researchers are improving unmanned helicopters' capabilities to address regulatory requirements and commercial uses.

Gregory Goth

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

autonomous helicopter flying upside down

News Jun 1 2009

Looking Backward and Forward

CRA's Computing Community Consortium hosted a day-long symposium to discuss the important computing advances of the last several decades and how to sustain that track…

Bob Violino

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Viewpoints Jun 1 2009

Answering the Wrong Questions Is No Answer

Asking the wrong questions when building and deploying systems results in systems that cannot be sufficiently protected against the threats they face.

Eugene H. Spafford

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jun 1 2009

Reducing Risks of Implantable Medical Devices

The convergence of medicine with radio communication and Internet connectivity exposes implantable medical devices (IMDs) not only to safety and effectiveness risks, but…

Kevin Fu

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jun 1 2009

Beyond Computational Thinking

If we are not careful, our fascination with "computational thinking" may lead us back into the trap we are trying to escape.

Peter J. Denning

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

combined division symbol and question mark

Opinion Viewpoints Jun 1 2009

Why ‘Open Source’ Misses the Point of Free Software

Decoding the important differences in terminology, underlying philosophy, and value systems between two similar categories of software.

Richard Stallman

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Jun 1 2009

Kode Vicious: Obvious Truths

How to determine when to put the brakes on late-running projects and untested software patches.

George V. Neville-Neil

Computing Applications

Practice Jun 1 2009

Hard-Disk Drives: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

New drive technologies and increased capacities create new categories of failure modes that will influence system designs.

Jon Elerath

Architecture and Hardware

Practice Jun 1 2009

Network Front-End Processors, Yet Again

The history of NFE processors sheds light on the trade-offs involved in designing network stack software.

Mike O'Dell

Architecture and Hardware

Practice Jun 1 2009

Whither Sockets?

The pervasive and long-lasting sockets API has remained largely unchanged since 1982. How have developers worked around its inherent limitations and what is the future of…

George V. Neville-Neil

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Jun 1 2009

The Claremont Report on Database Research

Database research is expanding, with major efforts in system architecture, new languages, cloud services, mobile and virtual worlds, and interplay between structure and…

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Contributed articles Jun 1 2009

One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality

The vision is being overwhelmed by the reality of business, politics, logistics, and competing interests worldwide.

Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick, and Prakul Sharma

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Review articles Jun 1 2009

How Computer Science Serves the Developing World

Information and communication technology for development can greatly improve quality of life for the world's neediest people.

M. Bernardine Dias and Eric Brewer

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

robotics course at Ashesi University College in Ghana

Research and Advances Research highlights Jun 1 2009

Technical Perspective: Reframing Security For the Web

The web has brought exciting new functionality while simultaneously requiring new mechanisms to make it secure. We've …

Andrew Myers

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Jun 1 2009

Securing Frame Communication in Browsers

Many Web sites embed third-party content in frames, relying on the browser's security policy to protect against malicious content. However, frames provide insufficient…

Adam Barth, Collin Jackson, and John C. Mitchell

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Jun 1 2009

Technical Perspective: Software and Hardware Support For Deterministic Replay of Parallel Programs

Parallel programming has long been recognized as a difficult problem. This problem has recently taken on a sense of urgency: the long march of single-thread performance…

Norman P. Jouppi

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Jun 1 2009

Two Hardware-Based Approaches For Deterministic Multiprocessor Replay

Modern computer systems are inherently nondeterministic due to a variety of events that occur during an execution. The lack of repeatability that arises from this…

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Last byte Jun 1 2009

Puzzled: Solutions and Sources

Last month (May 2009, p. 112) we posed a trio of brain teasers, including one as yet unsolved, concerning relationships among numbers.

Peter Winkler

Opinion Last byte Jun 1 2009

Future Tense: Webmind Says Hello

Future Tense, one of the revolving features on this page, presents stories and essays from the intersection of computational science and technological speculation, their…

Robert J. Sawyer

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning