There is an old joke in the high-performance computing community that begins with a question, “How do you make a small fortune in high-performance computing?” There are several variations on the joke, but they all end with the same punch line, “Start with a large fortune and ship at least one generation of product. You will be left with a small fortune.” Forty years of experience, with companies large and small, has confirmed the sad truth of this statement.
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Scientists Convene at First Computational Sustainability Meeting
Keynote Address at the First Computational Sustainability Meeting by Carla Gomes.
With the Web delivering richer content to our desktops, why don't today's applications let us seamlessly create that content?
A call to the computer science community for what a research agenda might look like for the role of information and communications technologies in energy, the environment, climate science, and more broadly, sustainability.
According to wikipedia: e-Government is a diffused neologism used to refer to the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.
The Impact of APCS on Undergraduate CS Enrollment
The critics and detractors of the Advanced Placement exam in Computer Science (APCS) are many. But the flaws of APCS most likely have no effect on undergraduate CS enrollment. Fixing APCS, however, could have a big impact.
In February, President Obama pegged Melissa Hathaway of the National Security Council to do a 60-day review of the nation’s cybersecurity policy. Midway through the 60 days, her office called me at the National Science Foundation asking me to reach out to the academic community of researchers and educators for their input.
Speech-Activated User Interfaces and Climbing Mt. Exascale
The Communications Web site, cacm.acm.org, features 13 bloggers in the BLOG@CACM community. In each issue of Communications, we'll publish excerpts from selected posts, plus readers' comments. Tessa Lau discusses why she doesn't use the touch screen on her in-car GPS unit anymore and Daniel Reed considers the future of exascale computing.
As more information moves to the Web, we need better tools to manage it. Today's tools focus on static Web pages. However, I claim that the Web is becoming a platform for applications, and tools that track user activity with these applications are needed.
Webopedia defines robotics as: The field of computer science and engineering concerned with creating robots, devices that can move and react to sensory input. Robotics is one branch of artificial intelligence.
Helping Younger People Protect Themselves from Security Attacks
One potentially disturbing trend that came out in a recent eCrime meeting is that younger people 18-24 years old seem to be more susceptible to phishing attacks, roughly by a factor of three. It's likely that this translates into other kinds of security attacks as well. At this point, our understanding of young people and security is still murky, and it will require more work to understand the problem so that we can devise appropriate solutions.
Only the Developed World Lacks Women in Computing
The developing world has lots of women in computing. Great talks at this week's NCWIT meeting explain why the difference.
Media Computation: For Creativity and Surprises
The Media Computation approach to introductory computing is mostly used for creative expression, but it can also lead to some surprises.
Visibility Matters: Why You Need a Professional Web Page
If you do research in computer science, you need to have a professional web page summarizing your research career. Let me tell you why it matters, and what information you should have on the web. Then, if you don't have one already, go make one. If you haven't updated yours in a while, go update it. Now.
If you find reading research papers unpleasant, difficult, and boring, maybe it is time to try doing it differently.
High-Performance Computing: Where
By definition, the raison d’être for high-performance computing is high performance, but floating point operations per second (FLOPS) need not be the only measure. Human productivity, total cost and time to solution are equally, if not more important.
Common Problems of Se Students in Latin America, Part 2
Second part of this analysis of common problems faced by SE students in Latin America.
Recommendation Algorithms, Online Privacy, and More
Greg Linden, Jason Hong, Michael Stonebraker, and Mark Guzdial discuss recommendation algorithms, online privacy, scientific databases, and programming in introductory computer science classes.
Designing Effective Security Warnings
How do we create effective security warnings that people don't just swat away? Here, I report on one line of research that examines this question.
Security Education Can Really Work (but Only If It’s Done Right)
Although many people in computer security think that user education is hopeless, security education can really work, but only if it's done right. I report on a successful line of research looking at how to educate people to protect themselves from phishing scams.
‘There’s an App For That,’ and You Could Write It
The challenge of computing education today is convincing students that not every application is done and available for download.
When Petascale Is Just Too Slow
Evolution or revolution, it’s the persistent question. Can we build reliable esascale systems from extrapolations of current technology or will new approaches be required? There is no definitive answer, as almost any approach might be made to work at some level with enough heroic effort. The bigger question is what design would enable the most breakthrough scientific research in a reliable and cost effective way?
Shape the Future of Computing
ACM encourages its members to take a direct hand in shaping the future of the association. There are more ways than ever to get involved.
Get InvolvedCommunications of the ACM (CACM) is now a fully Open Access publication.
By opening CACM to the world, we hope to increase engagement among the broader computer science community and encourage non-members to discover the rich resources ACM has to offer.
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