Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2011
From ACM TechNews
Open Data Initiative Moves Into the World of Consumers' Personal Data
The Open Data initiative has launched a project in Britain to assist businesses in returning personal data to consumers.
From ACM TechNews
Socialbots Used By Researchers to 'steal' Facebook Data
University of British Columbia researchers were able to collect 46,500 email addresses and 14,500 home addresses from Facebook by using socialbots.
From ACM TechNews
A Kaist Research Team Has Developed a Fully Functional Flexible Memory
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology researchers have developed a fully functional and flexible non-volatile resistive random access memory in which a memory cell can be randomly accessed, written, and erased on…
From ACM TechNews
Think About It: CS Research Could Turn Brain Waves Into Remote Control
Colorado State University researchers are developing technology that will enable people with severe neurological impairments to complete tasks by changing what they are thinking about.
From ACM TechNews
University Adopts Predictive Technology
Edith Cowan University is using an IBM-developed predictive model to identify students at risk of leaving a course before they complete it, says National ICT Australia (NICTA) researcher Lawrence Cavedon.
From ACM News
High-Tech Spider For Hazardous Missions
Spiders are agile, and some can even jump. They owe this capability to their hydraulically operated limbs. Researchers have now designed a mobile robot modeled on the same principle that moves spider legs. Created using a…
From ACM News
Software Finds Place in Posse
Law-enforcement and intelligence agencies are increasingly relying on information from the Web and electronic records to help solve crimes and evaluate threats, producing a stream of new business for companies that can help…
From ACM News
To Stop Cybercrime We Need to Think Like the Criminals
Whenever William Hague, our esteemed foreign secretary, speaks on the subject of cyberspace, what comes to mind is Dr Johnson’s celebrated comment about seeing a dog walking on its hind legs: one is surprised, not that the…
From ACM News
Inventing the Future of Computing
As researchers confidently predict a future of faster-than-ever transformations in computing, they are creating chips that learn and respond as they gain experience.
From ACM News
Casino Cheats Snared by Smart Camera System
People trying to cheat in casinos may soon be taking more of a gamble than they realise. Grosvenor Casinos, a major UK chain, is assessing software that can spot cheating at the roulette table and alert the croupier.
From ACM TechNews
3D Chips: The Next Electronics Revolution
The semiconductor industry is moving toward three-dimensional (3D) chip design, stacking dies and moving data from one layer to another.
From ACM TechNews
Major Breakthrough Improves Software Reliability and Security
Columbia University researchers have developed Peregrine, software designed to improve the reliability and security of multithreaded computer programs.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Defeat CAPTCHA on Popular Web Sites
Stanford University researchers have developed an automated tool that can decipher Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs), which are used by many Web sites as an anti-spam test. …
From ACM News
Mind-Goggling
If you think the art of mind-reading is a conjuring trick, think again. Over the past few years, the ability to connect first monkeys and then men to machines in ways that allow brain signals to tell those machines what to…
From ACM TechNews
IBM Open-Sources 'Internet of Things' Protocol
IBM is collaborating with Eurotech to donate a complete protocol for asynchronous inter-device communication to the Eclipse Foundation.
From ACM News
Feds Shift Tracking Defense
The U.S. Department of Justice now says its use of a cellphone-tracking device in a controversial Arizona case could be considered a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, a tactical move legal experts say is designed to protect…
From ACM News
Governments Turn to Hacking Techniques For Surveillance of Citizens
In a luxury Washington, D.C., hotel last month, governments from around the world gathered to discuss surveillance technology they would rather you did not know about.
From ACM News
Japan Pushes World's Fastest Computer Past 10 Petaflop Barrier
The Japanese have broken the 10 petaflop barrier. On Wednesday, Japanese IT giant Fujitsu and the government-funded RIKEN research lab announced the supercomputer they've built in Kobe can speed through 10.51 quadrillion floating…
From ACM News
Stuxnet Raises 'blowback' Risk In Cyberwar
The Stuxnet computer worm, arguably the first and only cybersuperweapon ever deployed, continues to rattle security experts around the world, one year after its existence was made public.
From ACM TechNews
Robots Are Taking Mid-Level Jobs, Changing the Economy
The eventual replacement of humans by robots and computers in enough jobs will eventually transform the economic landscape, and this process has already begun, according to participants at a recent robotics symposium.
From ACM TechNews
MSU Prof's Fingerprint Software Helps Nail Criminals
Michigan State University professor Anil Jain has developed software that detects altered fingerprints. He recently received an FBI grant to further develop the technology so that it could reconstruct marred fingerprints and…
From ACM TechNews
New Hybrid Technology Could Bring 'quantum Information Systems'
Purdue University researchers are developing a new hybrid technology that could lead to a new approach to quantum computing. The technology would use metamaterials combined with tiny optical emitters to make the quantum light…
From ACM TechNews
Pitt Research Team Finds Ways to Reduce Computing Energy Consumption While Saving Money
University of Pittsburgh researchers are developing computer memory technology that could lower energy consumption associated with computer data storage. They have demonstrated a memory system that is fast enough for most software…
From ACM News
Catching a Wave, and Measuring It
James Gosling wants to network the world’s oceans.
From ACM Careers
How to Predict the Future
Imagining the future, we naturally think of it as a different place to the one we live in now. It is populated with new technologies, advanced science, and perhaps even a more evolved version of humanity.
From ACM News
Outsmarted: Captcha Security Not Much of a Gotcha
A team of Stanford University researchers has bad news to report about Captchas, those often unreadable, always annoying distorted letters that you're required to type in at many a Web site to prove that you're really a human…
From ACM News
H.p. Builds Servers With Cellphone Chips
Hewlett-Packard announced on Tuesday a new design for some of the world's largest computer centers and says it could reduce power consumption in some cases by 90%.
From ACM News
How Your iPhone Chip Will Reinvent the Internet Data Center
Jonathan Heiliger is the kind of guy you want running your data center.
From ACM News
Arm Cto Predicts Chips the Size of Blood Cells
In less than a decade, that smartphone you're holding could have 32 times the memory, 20 times the bandwidth and a microprocessor core no bigger than a red blood cell, the CTO of chip design company ARM said.
From ACM TechNews
How Games Can Lead to a Radical Redesign of Everyday Computer Use
Polytechnic Institute of New York University researchers are using video games and human-computer interfaces to devise new ways of engaging with computers physically and emotionally, which they say could lead to positive practical…