Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
To Track Militants, U.s. Has System That Never Forgets a Face
When the Taliban dug an elaborate tunnel system beneath the largest prison in southern Afghanistan this spring, they set off a scramble to catch the 475 inmates...
From ACM News
In Search of a Robot More Like S
The robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks often begins speeches by reaching into his pocket, fiddling with some loose change, finding a quarter, pulling it out and twirling...
From ACM Opinion
A Collision of Creativity and Cash at Disney/pixar
When the Walt Disney Company bought Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion in 2006, there was understandable concern that the media conglomerate that drove...
From ACM News
Phone-Call Cartography
Americans are more connected now than ever. Mobile phones allow people to maintain relationships with friends, family, and colleagues across long distances. If...
From ACM News
Who
My dad, who at 98 no longer drives, used to complain about women drivers, defensive drivers, slow drivers, cab drivers and, occasionally, fast drivers. I should...
From ACM News
Robert Morris, Pioneer in Computer Security, Dies at 78
Robert Morris, a cryptographer who helped developed the Unix computer operating system, which controls an increasing number of the world's computers and touches...
From ACM News
Post-9/11 Security: A Rational Student Debate
The 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is approaching, and you can count on the flow of remembrances and where-are-we-now updates swelling...
From ACM News
Tamper-Proof Internet Security System Begins
A small group of Internet security specialists gathered in Singapore last week to start up a global system to make email and e-commerce more secure, end the proliferation...
From ACM News
A Start-Up
With an innovative camera due out later this year from a company called Lytro, photographers will have one less excuse for having missed that perfect shot.
From ACM News
Upending Anonymity, These Days the Web Unmasks Everyone
Not too long ago, theorists fretted that the Internet was a place where anonymity thrived. Now, it seems, it is the place where anonymity dies.
From ACM News
War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs
Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air...
From ACM News
F.b.i. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household...
From ACM News
Thieves Found Citigroup Site an Easy Entry
Think of it as a mansion with a high-tech security system—but the front door wasn’t locked tight.
From ACM News
Computer Studies Made Cool, on Film and Now on Campus
When Keila Fong arrived at Yale, she had never given much thought to computer science. But then last year everyone on campus started talking about the film "The...
From ACM News
.s. nderwrites Internet Detour Around Censors
The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy "shadow" Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments...
From ACM News
The First Computer Musician
In 1957 a 30-year-old engineer named Max Mathews got an I.B.M. 704 mainframe computer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, to generate 17 seconds...
From ACM News
Rsa Gets a Security Chief
RSA, the computer security unit of EMC that was hacked, has named Edward Schwartz as chief security officer, promoting him from the same role at NetWitness, a...
From ACM News
Brain Calisthenics For Abstract Ideas
Like any other high school junior, Wynn Haimer has a few holes in his academic game. Graphs and equations, for instance: He gets the idea, fine—one is a linear...
From ACM News