November 2008 - Vol. 51 No. 11

Features

Opinion CEO's letter Nov 1 2008

On the 10th Anniversary of ACM’s Digital Library

When ACM launched its pioneering Digital Library a decade ago, it was one of the first professional societies to offer its members—and the broader computing…

John R. White

Computing Applications

Opinion Executive editor's corner Nov 1 2008

Jim Gray: Humble Visionary

"Visionary" and "humble" are words often used in the same breath by friends and colleagues to describe Gray. His …

Diane Crawford

Computing Applications

Opinion Letters to the editor Nov 1 2008

Letters to the Editor: Even Science Would Benefit From Auctions

In "designing the Perfect Auction" (Aug. 2008), Hal R. Varian noted that such auctions have many practical and obvious …

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

Opinion CACM online Nov 1 2008

A First Look at the Redesigned Site

Here's a first look at the revised Communications Web site. The design is mostly complete, and development is in full …

David Roman

Computing Applications

News Nov 1 2008

Damage Control

The U.S. patent system is overdue for reform, but what needs fixing, and how, is a matter of some dispute.

Leah Hoffmann

Computing Applications

News Nov 1 2008

Analyzing Online Social Networks

Social network analysis explains why some sites succeed and others fail, how physical and online social networks differ and are alike, and attempts to predict how they…

Bill Howard

Computing Applications

News Nov 1 2008

The Limits of Computability

Computational complexity and intractability may help scientists better understand how humans process information and make decisions.

David Lindley

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Nov 1 2008

Economic and Business Dimensions: Search Engine Advertising

Examining a profitable side of the long tail of advertising that is not possible under the traditional broadcast advertising model.

Avi Goldfarb and Catherine Tucker

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Nov 1 2008

Cyber Privacy and Security Pose Difficult Problems

It's not just science or engineering that will be needed to address security concerns, but law, economics, anthropology, and more.

Susan Landau

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoints Nov 1 2008

Legally Speaking: Quantafying the Value of Patent Exhaustion

Should patents confer power to restrict reuses and redistributions of products embodying the whole or essential parts of inventions?

Pamela Samuelson

Computing Applications

Careers Viewpoints Nov 1 2008

Education: Reprogramming College Preparatory Computer Science

The college preparatory computer science education curriculum must be improved, beginning with the earliest phases of the process.

Joanna Goode

Computing Applications

Practice Nov 1 2008

Real-World Concurrency

What does the proliferation of concurrency mean for the software you develop?

Bryan Cantrill and Jeff Bonwick

Computing Applications

Practice Nov 1 2008

Software Transactional Memory: Why Is It Only a Research Toy?

The promise of STM may likely be undermined by its overheads and workload applicabilities.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Opinion Nov 1 2008

CTO Roundtable on Virtualization: Part I

Virtualization technology is hot again, but for the right reasons?

Mache Creeger

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Nov 1 2008

A Tribute to Jim Gray

We knew him as both scholar and friend.

Michael Stonebraker and David J. DeWitt

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Contributed articles Nov 1 2008

Jim Gray, Astronomer

How he helped develop the SkyServer, delivering computation directly to terabytes of astronomical data.

Alexander S. Szalay

Architecture and Hardware

Jim Gray and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope

Research and Advances Review article Nov 1 2008

The Convergence of Social and Technological Networks

Internet-based data on human interaction connects scientific inquiry like never before.

Jon Kleinberg

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Facebook visualization: Nexus friend grapher (Nexus.ludios.net)

Research and Advances Research highlights Nov 1 2008

Technical Perspective: The Polaris Tableau System

Jim Gray nominated the Polaris paper for the Research Highlights section and wrote the first draft of this Technical Perspective in November 2006. David Patterson revised…

Jim Gray

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Research and Advances Research highlights Nov 1 2008

Polaris: A System For Query, Analysis, and Visualization of Multidimensional Databases

In this paper, we address these demands by presenting the Polaris formalism, a visual query language for precisely describing a wide range of table-based graphical…

Chris Stolte, Diane Tang, and Pat Hanrahan

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Research and Advances Research highlights Nov 1 2008

Technical Perspective: Safeguarding Online Information Against Failures and Attacks

Users need storage that is highly reliable (it is not lost) and highly available (accessible when needed). Guaranteeing…

Barbara Liskov

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Nov 1 2008

Zyzzyva: Speculative Byzantine Fault Tolerance

A longstanding vision in distributed systems is to build reliable systems from unreliable components. An enticing formulation of this vision is Byzantine fault-tolerant…

Computing Applications

Opinion Last byte Nov 1 2008

Puzzled: Circular Food

Welcome to three new challenging mathematical puzzles. Solutions to the first two will be published next month; the third is as yet unsolved, so you may need extra luck…

Peter Winkler

Research and Advances Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

SME Strategies: An Assessment of High vs. Low Performers

Little has been known about how and to what extent small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are implementing supply chain management (SCM) initiatives and e-business…

DaeSoo Kim, Terence T. Ow, and Minjoon Jun

Architecture and Hardware

News Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

A European Perspective of VoIP in Market Competition

The debate on the future of VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is not new. For some time now this technological innovation has been considered one of main drivers for…

Claudio Feijóo, José Luis Gómez-Barroso, and David Rojo-Alonso

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

Technology Acceptance and ERP Documentation Usability

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Systems have a reputation for being complex, problematic to implement and difficult for users to learn. The technology puts pressure on…

Judy E. Scott

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

Conceptually Modeling Windows and Bounds For Space and Time in Database Constraints

A variety of application areas involve spatial and temporal data. Spatial data is used in GIS, logistics, CAD/CAM, robotics …

Faiz Currim and Sudha Ram

Computing Applications

News Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

User-Centric Services Provisioning in Wireless Environments

To date, services provided for mobile users are still hard to build. Two main challenges need to be considered. The first …

Quan Z. Sheng, Boualem Benatallah, and Zakaria Maamar

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

Exploring the Dark Side of IS in Achieving Organizational Agility

Organizational agility is currently a popular topic in the academic and practitioner communities. While Information Systems (IS) has been identified as having a positive…

DongBack Seo and Ariel I. La Paz

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

Six Strategies For Electronic Medical Records Systems

The health care sector, despite its importance, is still behind most other industries such as retail, manufacturing, and …

Srinivasan Venkatraman, Hillol Bala, Viswanath Venkatesh, and Jack Bates

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Virtual extension Nov 1 2008

Technical Opinion: Motivational Affordances: Reasons For ICT Design and Use

Organizations hoping to improve employee productivity, increase strategic advantages, and gain or hold the competitive edge have invested heavily in information and…

Ping Zhang

Computing Applications

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