November 2003 - Vol. 46 No. 11

Features

Opinion Editoral pointers Nov 1 2003

The future of high-performance networking and the data-intensive applications that depend on it is in the hands of some of today’s brightest computer scientists. Their efforts are making it possible for e-scientists to collaborate on projects sometimes so wide-ranging they embrace the entire universe from desktops worldwide. These breathtaking projects point to a globally distributed […]

Diane Crawford

Architecture and Hardware

News News track Nov 1 2003

News Track

Fast on the heels of a U.S. Federal Trade Commission report indicating the incidence of identity theft is far greater than the government previously believed, comes a report from the General Accounting Office offering clear evidence how easy it is to obtain fake driver’s licenses throughout the U.S. Congressional investigators readily convinced DMV employees to […]

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

Opinion Forum Nov 1 2003

Forum

Computer science students certainly need math, and the math they need should include what Peter Henderson recommended in his article "Mathematical Reasoning in Software Engineering Education" (Sept. 2003), namely, discrete math and logic. But computer scientists also need other kinds of math. A typical set of math courses toward a CS undergraduate degree might include: […]

Diane Crawford

Computing Applications

Opinion The profession of IT Nov 1 2003

Great Principles of Computing

The great principles of computing have been interred beneath layers of technology in our understanding and our teaching. It is time to set them free.

Peter J. Denning

Computing Applications

Practice Practical programmer Nov 1 2003

A Sociopolitical Look at Open Source

Contemplating the sociological and political aspects of the open source movement.

Robert L. Glass

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint Nov 1 2003

The Myth of Diminishing Firms

Economist Ronald Coase was not suggesting that because the size of firms is tied to transaction costs, the lower transaction costs of e-commerce would cause e-businesses to grow smaller and smaller.

Geoffrey Sampson

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking Nov 1 2003

Introduction

E-scientists are moving from a processor-centric to a network-centric world with new levels of persistent collaboration over transoceanic distances and the ability to process, disseminate, and share vast stores of distributed data.

Maxine D. Brown

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking Nov 1 2003

Translight: a Global-Scale Lambdagrid For E-Science

This global experiment wants to see if high-end applications needing transport capacities of multiple Gbps for up to hours at a time can be handled through an optical bypass network.

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking Nov 1 2003

Transport Protocols For High Performance

The Explicit Control Protocol and other new congestion-control systems greatly improve application performance over a range of network infrastructure, including extremely high-speed and high-delay links. What then is next for TCP and other established but less-capable Internet protocols?

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking Nov 1 2003

Data Integration in a Bandwidth-Rich World

Inexpensive storage and wide-area bandwidth (with prices for both declining at least as fast as Moore's Law) drive demand for middleware to integrate, correlate, compare, and mine local, remote, and distributed data.

Ian Foster and Robert L. Grossman

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking Nov 1 2003

The Optiputer

This architecture/infrastructure of parallel optical networks couples data exploration, visualization, and collaboration technologies through IP at multi-gigabit speeds.

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking Nov 1 2003

Data-Intensive E-Science Frontier Research

Large-scale e-science, including high-energy and nuclear physics, biomedical informatics, and Earth science, depend on an increasingly integrated, distributed cyberinfrastructure serving virtual organizations on a global scale.

Harvey B. Newman, Mark H. Ellisman, and John A. Orcutt

Architecture and Hardware