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Congress is paying careful attention to threats to U.S. high technology from two areas: trademark and patent infringement and proposed foreign violation of U.S. copyright laws.
Computer technology is becoming a major victim of the nearly $8 billion counterfeit business threatening the American economy. Some recent product examples include fake Apple computers seized by U.S. Customs and reverse engineered Apples and other microcomputers on sale in Hong Kong for $300, about a third of the price of a genuine product. U.S. firms fear losses large enough to hinder research and development efforts. This would result in erosion of their technological edge.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has recently passed a resolution opposing “continuing governmental efforts to restrict the communication or publication of unclassified research.” This statement reaffirms an AAAS resolution passed in 1982, which was against “governmental restrictions on the dissemination, exchange, or availability of unclassified knowledge.” According to the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, the second resolution was prompted by what the society considers excessive Administration efforts to prevent export of U.S. technology to Soviet bloc countries. These measures include requesting prepublication review of unclassified technical papers, inhibiting communication of unclassified scientific research in university classrooms and research laboratories, limiting foreign student access to university research projects and results, censoring technical papers at professional society meetings, and restricting otherwise unclassified meetings to U.S. citizens.
We are entering a new era in very high performance computing that will be dominated by parallel architectured systems. It is critical for the United States to maintain its leadership as this new era, with its broadened applications, evolves over the next decade. Toward this end the National Science Foundation sponsored a workshop in November 1983 to focus the collective strength of universities, industry, and government on projects for development of knowledge-intensive industries.
From Washington: NSF takes the initiative
The National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee for Advanced Scientific Computing Resources was formed to provide leadership for large-scale scientific computing throughout the United States. Consisting of 15 members representing universities, industry, and national laboratories, the Committee held its first meeting in January 1984. A summary of the meeting issued by Chairman Neal F. Lane of Rice University makes the following points.
Programming pearls: graphic output
In previous columns we've studied the innards of programs. In this column we'll take a broader view of the programmer's task and consider the kind of output a program should produce. We'll focus on a single problem: once a system has produced detailed output, how can it summarize the trends in the mountain of data?
The answer to that question depends heavily on both the data and the taste of the reader; paragraphs of text and tables of numbers often provide fine summaries. This column, however, will concetrate on graphical representations of data, which allow the powerful human vision system to understand data. A decade ago programmers could offer the excuse that they were limited to crude line printer graphics, but technology has changed that. Many large installations now have laser printers, and graphics printers for home computers sell for a few hundred dollars. This column is about ways that programmers can use the technology to deliver more useful (and more graphic) output.
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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