Some of the most perplexing and frustrating experiences that technologists have are with politics and social policy. One that is currently playing out involves encryption, and what (if anything) should be done to regulate it.
March 2016 - Vol. 59 No. 3
Features
Computer Science in the Curriculum
Computer science is in significant measure all about analyzing problems, breaking them down into manageable parts, finding solutions, and integrating the results. The skills needed for this kind of thinking apply to more than computer programming.
Opinion Letters to the Editor
ACM Moral Imperatives vs. Lethal Autonomous Weapons
I concur with Moshe Y. Vardi's Editor's Letter "On Lethal Autonomous Weapons" (Dec. 2015) but think the answer to his philosophical logjam is readily available in the "ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct."
Valerie Barr considers the continuing attraction of the woman considered the first computer programmer.
Deep or Shallow, NLP Is Breaking Out
Neural net advances improve computers' language ability in many fields.
When Computers Stand in the Schoolhouse Door
Classification algorithms can lead to biased decisions, so researchers are trying to identify such biases and root them out.
Peter Naur, a Danish computer scientist and 2005 recipient of the ACM A.M. Turing Award, died recently after a brief illness.
Opinion Legally speaking
New Exemptions to Anti-Circumvention Rules
Allowing some reverse engineering of technical measures for non-infringing purposes.
Opinion Computing ethics
The Question of Information Justice
Information justice is both a business concern and a moral question.
Opinion The profession of IT
Fifty Years of Operating Systems
A recent celebration of 50 years of operating system research yields lessons for all professionals in designing offers for their clients.
Opinion Broadening participation
The Need For Research in Broadening Participation
In addition to alliances created for broadening participation in computing, research is required to better utilize the knowledge they have produced.
Opinion Viewpoint
Paper Presentation at Conferences: Time For a Reset
Seeking an improved paper presentation process.
News Interview
An Interview with Stanford University President John Hennessy
Stanford University President John Hennessy discusses his academic and industry experiences in Silicon Valley with UC Berkeley CS Professor David Patterson.
A Purpose-Built Global Network: Google's Move to SDN
A discussion with Amin Vahdat, David Clark, and Jennifer Rexford.
The Paradox of Autonomy and Recognition
Thoughts on trust and merit in software team culture.
Automation Should Be Like Iron Man, Not Ultron
The "Leftover Principle" requires increasingly more highly skilled humans.
Research and Advances Contributed articles
Repeatability in Computer Systems Research
To encourage repeatable research, fund repeatability engineering and reward commitments to sharing research artifacts.
Research and Advances Contributed articles
Lessons Learned from 30 Years of MINIX
MINIX shows even an operating system can be made to be self-healing.
Research and Advances Contributed articles
A Lightweight Methodology For Rapid Ontology Engineering
UPON Lite focuses on users, typically domain experts without ontology expertise, minimizing the role of ontology engineers.
Research and Advances Review articles
Hopes, Fears, and Software Obfuscation
What does it mean to be secure?
Research and Advances Research highlights
Technical Perspective: Stacking Up Undefined Behaviors
In "A Differential Approach to Undefined Behavior Detection," Wang et al. hypothesize that any time a compiler is able to delete code by using reasoning based on undefined behavior, the program being compiled probably contains a bug.
Research and Advances Research highlights
A Differential Approach to Undefined Behavior Detection
This paper studies undefined behavior arising in systems programming languages such as C/C++. We introduce a new static checker called STACK that precisely identifies undefined behavior bugs.
Research and Advances Research highlights
Technical Perspective: Taming the Name Game
In "Learning to Name Objects," the authors offer a method to determine a basic-level category name for an object in an image.
Research and Advances Research highlights
This paper looks at the problem of predicting category labels that mimic how human observers would name objects.
Opinion Last byte
Q&A: A Graphics and Hypertext Innovator
Andries van Dam on interfaces, interaction, and why he still teaches undergraduates.
