Communications of the ACM
From ACM Opinion
Why Facebook Can't Match Ravelry, the Social Network For Knitters
The best social network you've (probably) never heard of is one-five-hundredth the size of Facebook. It has no video chat feature, it doesn't let you check in...
From ACM News
Former CIA Director: Build a New Internet to Improve Cybersecurity
The United States may seriously want to consider creating a new Internet infrastructure to reduce the threat of cyberattacks, said Michael Hayden, President George...
From ACM News
Should the Government Need a Search Warrant to Track Your Car with Gps?
The Supreme Court ended its term with a high-profile ruling that violent video games are protected by the First Amendment, but a bigger technology decision could...
From ACM Opinion
The Tragic Decline of Blackberry
Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the venerable BlackBerry devices, will always be remembered as the company that liberated corporate email from the PC. In...
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 Opinion
Was the Space Shuttle a Mistake?
Forty years ago, I wrote an article for Technology Review titled "Shall We Build the Space Shuttle?" Now, with the 135th and final flight of the shuttle at hand...
From ACM Opinion
Doing the Math on News Corp.'s Disastrous Myspace Years
Once upon a time, MySpace was the king and pioneer of social networking. When Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the company for $580 million, it looked like...
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 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
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
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 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