Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer tells the gripping story of how Xerox invented the personal-computing technology in the 1970s, and then "miscalculated and mishandled" the opportunity to fully exploit it.
March 2011 - Vol. 54 No. 3
Features
Opinion Letters to the editor
In "Regulating the Information Gatekeepers" (Nov. 2010), Patrick Vogl and Michael Barrett said a counterargument against the regulation of search-engine bias is that "Search results are free speech and therefore cannot be regulated." I'm astounded that anyone could seriously make such a counterargument.
Communications created the Virtual Extension (VE) to expand the page limitations of the print edition by bringing readers the same high-quality articles in an online-only format. VE articles are available in their entirety to ACM members via the Digital Library.
Scientists, Engineers, and Computer Science; Industry and Research Groups
Mark Guzdial discusses what scientists and engineers should know about computer science, such as Alan Kay's "Triple Whammy." Greg Linden writes about industry's different approaches to research and how to organize researchers in a company.
Opinion CACM online
The list of add-on features for Communications' Web site began to take form shortly after the site was launched two years ago, and was a starting point for revisions now under way. A streamlined and improved site will be available later this year.
Outreach programs and usability improvements are drawing many researchers to grid computing from disciplines that have not traditionally used such resources.
Researchers are mining Twitter's vast flow of data to measure public sentiment, follow political activity, and detect earthquakes and flu outbreaks.
A presidential report asserts the value of U.S. government investments in the cross-agency Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program and specifies areas needing greater focus.
The device may revolutionize data storage, replacing flash memory and perhaps even disks. Whether they can be reliably and cheaply manufactured, though, is an open question.
Gary Chapman, Technologist: 1952 – 2010
He raised important public issues, such as the impact of computers and the Internet on society, and encouraged social responsibility for computer professionals.
Opinion Legally speaking
Do You Own the Software You Buy?
Examining the fine print concerning your rights in your copies of purchased software.
Opinion The profession of IT
Professionals overwhelmed with information glut can find hope from new insights about time management.
Opinion Broadening participation
A Program Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: The BPC Alliances
Changing the trajectory of participation in computing for students at various stages of development.
Opinion Viewpoint
Computer and Information Science and Engineering: One Discipline, Many Specialties
Mathematics is no longer the only foundation for computing and information research and education in academia.
Testable System Administration
As we progress into an information age, humans will need to work less like the machines they use and embrace knowledge-based approaches. That means exploiting simple automation that leaves us unencumbered to discover patterns and make decisions.
National Internet Defense – Small States on the Skirmish Line
Despite the global and borderless nature of the Internet's underlying protocols and driving philosophy, there are significant ways in which it remains substantively territorial.
B.Y.O.C (1,342 Times and Counting)
Why can't we all use standard libraries for commonly needed algorithms?
Research and Advances Contributed articles
Compose "dream tools" from continuously evolving bundles of software to make sense of complex scientific data sets.
Research and Advances Contributed articles
Understanding Scam Victims: Seven Principles For Systems Security
Effective countermeasures depend on first understanding how users naturally fall victim to fraudsters.
Research and Advances Review articles
Data Structures in the Multicore Age
The advent of multicore processors as the standard computing platform will force major changes in software design.
Research and Advances Research highlights
Technical Perspective: Concerto For Violin and Markov Model
In the opening of Sibelius' Violin Concerto, a soloist plays delicately. The orchestra responds in kind. As the piece progresses, soloist and orchestra alternatively perform the main motifs in increasing measures of power and virtuosity, leading to a stirring resolution.
Research and Advances Research highlights
A system for musical accompaniment is presented in which a computer-driven orchestra follows and learns from a soloist in a concerto-like setting. The system's connections with machine learning are highlighted, showing current weaknesses and new possible directions.
Research and Advances Research highlights
The Internet is increasingly a platform for online services running on rack after rack of servers. With the advent of large data centers, the study of the networks that interconnect these servers has become an important topic to researchers and practitioners alike.
Research and Advances Research highlights
VL2: A Scalable and Flexible Data Center Network
VL2 is a practical network architecture that scales to support huge data centers with uniform high capacity between servers, performance isolation between services, and Ethernet layer-2 semantics.
Opinion Last byte
Puzzled: Solutions and Sources
Last month (February 2011, p. 112) we posted a trio of brainteasers, including one as yet unsolved, concerning partitions of Ms. Feldman's fifth-grade class. Here, we offer solutions to at least two of them. How did you do?
Opinion Last byte
Future Tense: Catch Me If You Can
I envisioned and wrote the first computer virus in 1969 but failed to see that viruses would become widespread. Technologies don't always evolve as we'd like. I learned this then but failed to catch the train I knew, even then, would soon leave the station.
Opinion Viewpoints: Virtual extension
Reaching Out to the Media: Become a Computer Science Ambassador
Why computer scientists should come out from "behind the scenes" more often and work with the media to draw public attention to their fundamental innovations.
Research and Advances Contributed articles: Virtual extension
The 2008 U.S. presidential election demonstrated the Internet is a major source of political information and expression.
Research and Advances Contributed articles: Virtual extension
Grounding principles to get the most out of enterprise 2.0 investments.
