Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
Why Gadgets Flop
According to the old saying, you learn more from a failure than a success. Well, if that's the case, the consumer electronics industry ought to have a master's...
From ACM Opinion
Apple Multitouch Patent Is All About x Lock-In
Apple notched a significant win last week when it was awarded a key patent related to basic multitouch functionality. The patent was first called "hugely problematic"...
From ACM Opinion
Lady of the Rings: Saturn Surveyor Carolyn Porco
When Carolyn Porco started exploring the outer solar system, it was all about the rings. Her 1983 doctoral thesis at Caltech focused on shifting spokes in Saturn’s...
From ACM Opinion
The Cop on the Cyber Beat
Homeland Security's Bruce McConnell on the government's role in helping companies fight online attacks.
From ACM News
Protect Your Computer and Phone from Illegal Police Searches
Your computer, your phone, and your other digital devices hold vast amounts of personal information about you and your family. Can police officers enter your...
From ACM Opinion
Why Lulzsec Had No Choice but to Disband
After just 50 days, the group said it was ceasing individual operations. Why, when you might have thought things were going so well?
From ACM Opinion
Supporting Choice, Ensuring Economic Opportunity
At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible—and our product innovation and engineering...
From ACM News
Big Win For the Losers at D-Wave
Does D-Wave's first big sale disprove the quantum computing naysayers?
From ACM Opinion
Eff and Bitcoin
For several months, EFF has been following the movement around Bitcoin, an electronic payment system that touts itself as "the first decentralized digital currency...
From ACM Opinion
Seven Questions For Iridium Ceo Matthew Desch
More often than not, the Iridium satellite phone system is remembered as one of the great telecom flameouts of the 1990s. It almost became a literal one: At one...
From ACM Opinion
Networks Are Not Always Revolutionary
"For most artists," as the famous Tim O'Reilly aphorism has it "the problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity." To me, this is inarguably true and self-evident—the...
From ACM Opinion
In 'cars 2,' John Lasseter Says Big Oil Is the 'uber Bad Guy'
"Cars 2" director John Lasseter talked with The Wall Street Journal in his office at the Emeryville headquarters of Pixar Animation Studios, where he is chief...
From ACM Opinion
China's Cyberassault on America
In justifying U.S. involvement in Libya, the Obama administration cited the "responsibility to protect" citizens of other countries when their governments engage...
From ACM News
All Your Bitcoins Are Ours
Malware authors move fast. Following on from the previous blog post on Bitcoin botnet mining, we have seen a recent Trojan in the wild targeting Bitcoin wallets...
From ACM Opinion
Seven Questions For Rackspace Cto John Engates
In a completely rational world, Rackspace would no longer be a independent company. The Web host that has in recent years veered into the cloud services business...
From ACM News
Has Facebook Peaked?
Facebook's active user base grew by only 1.7% in May. That's about half its usual growth rate, and it came after similarly slow growth in April. According to Inside...
From ACM News
Who Is Behind the Hacks?
Every day there's another report of a computer hack. Yesterday it was a video game company and a U.S. Senate database. And today it could be the Federal Reserve...
From ACM Opinion
How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code
When Colin Hughes was about 11 years old his parents brought home a rather strange toy. It wasn't colorful or cartoonish; it didn't seem to have any lasers or...
From ACM Opinion