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Kids Today Need a Licence to Tinker
From ACM Opinion

Kids Today Need a Licence to Tinker

Back to school time and millions of British kids are heading back to classrooms to embark on the national curriculum so beloved of busybody ministers.

From ACM Opinion

Beware: Europe's 'unitary Patent' Could Mean ­nlimited Software Patents

Just as the U.S. software industry is experiencing the long-anticipated all-out software patent wars, the European Union has a plan to follow the same course....

Seeing the Future of the Office Internet
From ACM News

Seeing the Future of the Office Internet

Inside the headquarters of networking giant Cisco in San Jose, California, lies a technology showcase where executives can test out advanced technologies like...

Ben Fry, Information Designer
From ACM News

Ben Fry, Information Designer

In the golden age of data visualization, he helps designers think like programmers, and vice versa.

From ACM Opinion

Jobs's Legacy: Changing How We Live

Steve Jobs's resignation as Chief Executive Officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in...

Judge Says Warrant Required For Cell Phone Location Data
From ACM News

Judge Says Warrant Required For Cell Phone Location Data

In recent years, the courts have struggled to decide whether the government needs a warrant to access historical records about a cell phone user's location. Some...

From ACM Opinion

Let Our Bots Do Our Tweeting For ­S

My tweets generally reflect a set of parochial interests I continually revisit: the shuffle function in iTunes, the Phillies’ crummy batting lineup, reviews of...

From ACM Opinion

A Turbulent End to the Pc Era

The personal computer recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Then last week, Silicon Valley staged the PC's funeral.

From ACM Opinion

Why Google Had to Have Motorola Mobility

For several years now, Google has been following a vow made by former CEO Eric Schmidt: mobile first. New CEO Larry Page is taking that dictum to a new level...

From ACM Opinion

Why Software Is Eating the World

Last week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily...

From ACM Opinion

Can Math Beat Financial Markets?

Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...

From ACM Opinion

Can Math Beat Financial Markets?

Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...

Steve, Please Buy ­S a Carrier!
From ACM Opinion

Steve, Please Buy ­S a Carrier!

What should Apple do with its $76bn in cash? It could do worse than spend some of it on acquiring its own mobile carrier.

From ACM Opinion

What Constitutes an Act of Cyberwar?

Before we get to that, there's a clue in the spelling of the word: cyberwar instead of cyber war. The U.S. Defense Department has determined that cyber is a fifth...

From ACM News

The Death of Booting ­p

Remember "booting up"? It was the first thing you did every morning—you waited two minutes, three minutes, sometimes even longer while your computer ran through...

Apple's Rise to Top Means Less Than You Think
From ACM Opinion

Apple's Rise to Top Means Less Than You Think

With Apple officially becoming the world's most valuable company—at least for a day—it's tempting to engage in lofty talk about what this says about the rise...

From ACM Opinion

Education Needs a Digital-Age ­pgrade

If you have a child entering grade school this fall, file away just one number with all those back-to-school forms: 65 percent. Chances are just that good that...

Why I Already Miss Physical Media
From ACM Opinion

Why I Already Miss Physical Media

For years, I had a happy weekend ritual. I'd head to my local Tower Records and lose myself in the aisles of CDs and DVDs. After emerging from the store—usually...

Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says He Can Bring His Dead Father Back to Life Through a Computer Avatar
From ACM News

Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says He Can Bring His Dead Father Back to Life Through a Computer Avatar

Ray Kurzweil, a prominent inventor and "futurist" who has long predicted that mind and machine will one day merge, has been making arrangements to talk to his...

From ACM News

Google's Self-Driving Wreck: Really Human Error?

When a self-driving car crashes, one just has to wonder about those robots. Are they really all they're cracked up to be? Or might they be just as cracked as...
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