Communications of the ACM
Blinding the Watchman
Internet constellations could thwart killer asteroid discovery algorithms.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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How Companies Learn Your Secrets
Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question...
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How Revolutionary Tools Cracked a 1700s Code
It has been more than six decades since Warren Weaver, a pioneer in automated language translation, suggested applying code-breaking techniques to the challenge...
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Progress in Artificial Intelligence Brings Wonders and Fears
At the dawn of the modern computer era, two Pentagon-financed laboratories bracketed Stanford University. At one laboratory, a small group of scientists and engineers...
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Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage
In most businesses, not knowing how well a particular product is performing would be almost unthinkable. But newspapers have always been a peculiar business,...
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Bringing Data Mining into the Mainstream
Plumbing the world’s ever-growing pools of digitized information—on the Web, in corporate databases, generated by scientific research—for wisdom and profit is a...
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Roll-p Computers and Their Kin
Digital reading technology has evolved from the original Amazon Kindle, which cost $400 and displayed four shades of gray, to devices that are much less expensive...
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After Patent on Genes Is Invalidated, Taking Stock
Many biotechnology stocks fell on Tuesday as investors struggled to understand the impact of a ruling that threw out parts of two gene patents and called into question...
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Google Set to Showcase Fast Internet
Google said Wednesday that it would offer ultrahigh-speed Internet access in some communities in a test that could showcase the kinds of things that would be possible...
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.s. Scientists Given Access to Cloud Computing
The National Science Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation have agreed to offer American scientific researchers free access to the company’s new cloud computing...
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Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We
In computing, the vision always precedes the reality by a decade or more. The pattern has held true from the personal computer to the Internet, as it takes time...
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The Web Way to Learn a Language
The young woman seated next to us at the sushi bar exuded a vaguely exotic air; her looks and style, we thought, made it likely that she was not American born. ...
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In Digital Combat, U.s. Finds No Easy Deterrent
On a Monday morning earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the...
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If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It Hackme
Back at the dawn of the Web, the most popular account password was “12345.” Today, it’s one digit longer but hardly safer: “123456.” Despite all the reports...
From ACM TechNews
At Argonne Lab, a Shift From Radioactivity to Supercomputers
Argonne National Laboratory is phasing out its use of radioactive materials in favor of supercomputers for the purpose of conducting research. "The past was the...
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Despite Risks, Internet Creeps Onto Car Dashboards
LAS VEGAS — To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated...
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Obama to Name Chief of Cybersecurity
Nearly seven months after highlighting the vulnerability of banking, energy and communications systems to Internet attacks, the White House on Tuesday is expected...
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A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing
In a speech given just a few weeks before he was lost at sea off the California coast in January 2007, Jim Gray, a database software pioneer and a Microsoft researcher...
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Open Source as a Model For Business Is Elusive
SAN FRANCISCO — In many ways, MySQL embodies the ideals of the populist software movement known as open source, in which a program’s creator releases it to the...
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Adding a Sixth Sense to Your Cellphone
Many Indians bought their first mobile phones before they had their first experiences with personal computers. Pranav Mistry thinks that most of them might also...
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