Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2010
From ACM Opinion
Apple's Multitouch Lawsuit Is Both Dumb and Dangerous
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at 2007's Macworld conference, he began by describing the device's groundbreaking user interface. "We have invented a new technology called 'multi-touch' which is phenomenal," Jobs…
From ACM Opinion
Harnessing the Power of the Real-Time Social Web
How 5,000 geographically dispersed strangers teamed up to solve DARPA's Network Challenge.
From ACM Opinion
Why It's So Hard For Toyota to Find Out What's Wrong
I won't lie to you: I was not a good engineering student. That's one of the reasons I went into journalism. But I managed to acquire a bachelor of sciences in mechanical engineering, and the recent Toyota hearings on Capitol …
From ACM TechNews
The Grill: Tom Mitchell
Tom Mitchell, head of Carnegie Mellon University's Machine Learning Department, says that advances in machine learning could bring about a transformation in psychology and neuroscience.
From ACM Opinion
Mike Mcconnell on How to Win the Cyber-War We're Losing
The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It's that simple. As the most wired nation on Earth, we offer the most targets of significance, yet our cyber-defenses are woefully lacking.
The problem is…From ACM Opinion
How Chinese Hacked Google, and Why India Should Worry
Google's announcement that it might withdraw from China has drawn attention to the aggressiveness of Chinese hackers. Shishir Nagaraja, a postdoctoral research associate with the Information Trust Institute of the University…
From Communications of the ACM
Gaming Will Save Us All
How gaming, as the first media market to successfully transition toward media-as-a-service, is an exemplar for a similar evolutionary transition of content and entertainment.
From Communications of the ACM
Making the Case For Computing
Seeking funding for current and future computing initiatives requires both a strong argument and a broad community of supporters.
From Communications of the ACM
Only Technological Processes Are Patentable
The U.S. Supreme Court will narrow the universe of process innovations that can be patented to those that are "technological," but what will that mean for software?
From Communications of the ACM
The Ethics Beat
Surveying the increasing variety and nature of ethical challenges encountered by computing researchers and practitioners.
From Communications of the ACM
Orchestrating Coordination in Pluralistic Networks
Learning to build virtual teams of people of diverse backgrounds is an urgent challenge.
From Communications of the ACM
Hiring and Developing Minority Faculty at Research Universities
Emphasizing the importance of creating more programs and investing more funding toward the goal of developing minority faculty at research universities.
From Communications of the ACM
Privacy on the Data Web
Considering the nebulous question of ownership in the virtual realm.