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subjectInformation Systems
authorThe New York Times
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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


How Companies Learn Your Secrets
From ACM News

How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question...

How Revolutionary Tools Cracked a 1700s Code
From ACM News

How Revolutionary Tools Cracked a 1700s Code

It has been more than six decades since Warren Weaver, a pioneer in automated language translation, suggested applying code-breaking techniques to the challenge...

Progress in Artificial Intelligence Brings Wonders and Fears
From ACM News

Progress in Artificial Intelligence Brings Wonders and Fears

At the dawn of the modern computer era, two Pentagon-financed laboratories bracketed Stanford University. At one laboratory, a small group of scientists and engineers...

Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage
From ACM News

Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift Coverage

In most businesses, not knowing how well a particular product is performing would be almost unthinkable. But newspapers have always been a peculiar business,...

From ACM News

Bringing Data Mining into the Mainstream

Plumbing the world’s ever-growing pools of digitized information—on the Web, in corporate databases, generated by scientific research—for wisdom and profit is a...

Roll-­p Computers and Their Kin
From ACM TechNews

Roll-­p Computers and Their Kin

Digital reading technology has evolved from the original Amazon Kindle, which cost $400 and displayed four shades of gray, to devices that are much less expensive...

From ACM News

After Patent on Genes Is Invalidated, Taking Stock

Many biotechnology stocks fell on Tuesday as investors struggled to understand the impact of a ruling that threw out parts of two gene patents and called into question...

Google Set to Showcase Fast Internet
From ACM News

Google Set to Showcase Fast Internet

Google said Wednesday that it would offer ultrahigh-speed Internet access in some communities in a test that could showcase the kinds of things that would be possible...

From ACM News

­.s. Scientists Given Access to Cloud Computing

The National Science Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation have agreed to offer American scientific researchers free access to the company’s new cloud computing...

Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We
From ACM News

Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We

In computing, the vision always precedes the reality by a decade or more. The pattern has held true from the personal computer to the Internet, as it takes time...

The Web Way to Learn a Language
From ACM News

The Web Way to Learn a Language

The young woman seated next to us at the sushi bar exuded a vaguely exotic air; her looks and style, we thought, made it likely that she was not American born. ...

In Digital Combat, U.s. Finds No Easy Deterrent
From ACM News

In Digital Combat, U.s. Finds No Easy Deterrent

On a Monday morning earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the...

From ACM News

If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It Hackme

Back at the dawn of the Web, the most popular account password was “12345.” Today, it’s one digit longer but hardly safer: “123456.” Despite all the reports...

At Argonne Lab, a Shift From Radioactivity to Supercomputers
From ACM TechNews

At Argonne Lab, a Shift From Radioactivity to Supercomputers

Argonne National Laboratory is phasing out its use of radioactive materials in favor of supercomputers for the purpose of conducting research. "The past was the...

Despite Risks, Internet Creeps Onto Car Dashboards
From ACM News

Despite Risks, Internet Creeps Onto Car Dashboards

LAS VEGAS — To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated...

Obama to Name Chief of Cybersecurity
From ACM News

Obama to Name Chief of Cybersecurity

Nearly seven months after highlighting the vulnerability of banking, energy and communications systems to Internet attacks, the White House on Tuesday is expected...

A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing
From ACM News

A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing

In a speech given just a few weeks before he was lost at sea off the California coast in January 2007, Jim Gray, a database software pioneer and a Microsoft researcher...

From ACM News

Open Source as a Model For Business Is Elusive

SAN FRANCISCO — In many ways, MySQL embodies the ideals of the populist software movement known as open source, in which a program’s creator releases it to the...

Adding a Sixth Sense to Your Cellphone
From ACM News

Adding a Sixth Sense to Your Cellphone

Many Indians bought their first mobile phones before they had their first experiences with personal computers. Pranav Mistry thinks that most of them might also...

­.s. Begins Antitrust Inquiry of I.b.m.
From ACM News

­.s. Begins Antitrust Inquiry of I.b.m.

The Justice Department has started a preliminary investigation into whether I.B.M. has abused its monopoly position in the market for mainframe computers, which...
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