Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2012
From ACM TechNews
Alan Turing at 100
Harvard University is celebrating Alan Turing's 100th birthday with a new exhibit titled, "Go Ask A.L.I.C.E., Turing Tests, Parlor Games, and ChatterBots," which will run through Dec. 20, 2012.
From ACM TechNews
Icann Faces Battles Over New Web Domains
Former ICANN interim CEO Akram Atallah says ICANN does not plan to announce the results of any of the 1,930 new generic top-level domain submissions it received until they are all evaluated, "unless the community can agree on…
From ACM News
Stuxnet Tricks Copied By Computer Criminals
Malicious code apparently used by governments to spy on, harass, and sabotage one another has grabbed headlines in recent years, yet the highly targeted nature of such attacks have meant ordinary Web users have so far had little…
From ACM News
Scientists Ponder Interstellar Travel at Nasa-Backed Space Summit
In one room, scientists debated whether the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer will help find a way to bend the space-time continuum and make interstellar travel feasible within a lifetime. In another, they estimated how many…
From ACM TechNews
Blue Brain Project Accurately Predicts Connections Between Neurons
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's Blue Brain Project has identified key principles that determine synapse-scale connectivity by virtually reconstructing a cortical microcircuit and comparing it to a mammalian sample,…
From ACM TechNews
From Gps and Virtual Globes to Spatial Computing-2020
Spatial computing is a set of ideas and technologies that will transform human understanding of the physical world, agreed attendees at the recently held Spatial Computing-2020 workshop, which exhibited diversity across organizations…
From ACM TechNews
The Jacket That Talks to Facebook
SINTEF researchers have developed a jacket that can communicate with Facebook.
From ACM TechNews
Europeana's Huge Cultural Dataset Opens For Reuse
The digital portal Europeana has made its dataset of more than 20 million cultural objects available to be used freely by developers, designers, and other digital innovators.
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Study How to Wedge Wireless Broadband Between TV Signals
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are studying the best ways to utilize white space to increase the data rates of wireless communication.
From ACM News
Intel Researchers Put Wi-Fi Inside—the Processor, That Is
At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner unveiled a pair of technologies coming out of Intel Labs that will overcome many of the size and power limits that have stood in the…
From ACM News
A Robot With a Reassuring Touch
If you grab the hand of a two-armed robot named Baxter, it will turn its head and a pair of cartoon eyes—displayed on a tablet-size computer-screen "face"—will peer at you with interest.
From ACM News
Flame C&c Server Analysis Reveals New Malware in the Wild
Forensic analysis of a number of Flame malware toolkit command-and-control servers revealed an additional three unidentified pieces of malicious code are under the control of the attackers, including one in the wild.
From ACM News
It's Official: The Era of the Personal Computer Is Over
As a signpost on the road to the so-called Post-PC Era we’ve been hearing about for so many years, this one is pretty hard to argue with: As of this year, personal computers no longer consume the majority of the world’s memory…
From ACM News
Google's Restricting of Anti-Muslim Video Shows Role of Web Firms As Free-Speech Arbiters
Google lists eight reasons on its "YouTube Community Guidelines" page for why it might take down a video. Inciting riots is not among them.
From ACM News
Twitter Reluctantly Coughs p Occupy Protester's Data
Twitter on Friday reluctantly complied with a judge's order to divulge the tweets and account information connected to an Occupy protester.
From ACM News
Wired Is the New Wireless: Spreading the Web in China
It's not easy to give over 1.3 billion people access to the internet—especially if that population is spread across a vast area that ranges from hinterland to sprawling megacities, as China's is.
From ACM TechNews
Europe Hits Old Internet Address Limits
Ripe NCC, the governing body that hands out addresses to European Internet service providers and other organizations, has started strict rationing of IPv4 addresses, and is allowing companies to make just one more application…
From ACM TechNews
Icann's New Ceo Announces Bold Restructure
New ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade recently announced his plans to restructure the organization, including the selection of two new senior managers.
From ACM TechNews
Data Mining in the Social-Media Ecosystem
Northeastern University professor Raymond Fu recently received funding from the U.S. Intelligence Community and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to develop algorithms capable of rapidly analyzing content on social…
From ACM News
Ethical Robots: Let Their Artificial Consciences Be Their Guides
When lethal autonomous robots take their place on the field of battle and function independent of human control, what will govern the decisions of these next-gen weapons to either shoot or hold their fire?
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Develop Rapid Method to Measure Carbon Footprints
Researchers at Columbia University's Earth Institute have developed software that can rapidly calculate the carbon footprints of thousands of products simultaneously.
From ACM TechNews
Despite a Slowdown, Smartphone Advances Are Still Ahead
Apple's new iPhone 5 has faster chips and a bigger screen, but these improvements lack the dramatic impact the first iPhone had in 2007. However, analysts say breakthroughs in smartphone materials, software, and batteries could…
From ACM TechNews
European Commission Deploys Crack Computer Emergency Response Team
The European Commission announced that it has deployed its anti-hacker Computer Emergency Response Team on a permanent basis to combat the growing number of cyberthreats it faces.
From ACM TechNews
At 100 Gbps, Esnet Puts Network Research on Fast Track
The U.S. Department of Energy's 100 Gbps testbed provides a facility for researchers to solve the near-term challenges associated with deploying and operating science networks, while the dark fiber testbed can be used for research…
From ACM TechNews
Online Mentors to Guide Women Into the Sciences
Harvey Mudd College president Maria Klawe recently launched the WitsOn project, which organizes hundreds of prominent women working in STEM industries to become online mentors for college students.
From ACM TechNews
Intel Seeks to Eliminate Computer Passwords With Wave of Hand
Intel researchers recently demonstrated a system that has the potential to do away with computer passwords.
From ACM Opinion
Iphone 5? Yawn. What Will the 'phone' of 2022 Look Like?
The near-term future of phones is fairly well-established. The iPhone 5 was released Wednesday and its similarity to every Apple phone since 2007 serves as a reminder that our current mobile devices have been sitting on the same…
From ACM News
Software, Not Just Bullets, Puts Military At Odds
Military commanders, government officials and members of Congress have long wrangled over which weapon systems are needed. Now, there's an argument over what computer software should be provided to soldiers in Afghanistan. It's…
From ACM News
Arab Spring: Tech As Tinder
The Internet tools of the Arab Spring have become the weapons of a new Arabian nightmare playing out at American diplomatic missions across North Africa and the Middle East.
From ACM TechNews
Computer Program Can Identify Rough Sketches
Brown University researchers have developed software that can identify simple sketches in real time, which they note is the first program that enables semantic understanding of abstract sketches.