Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2011
From ACM Opinion
Is Personal Data the New Currency?
What if Facebook paid you? Several startups envision an era in which we are all the brokers, and beneficiaries, of our own personal data.
From ACM Opinion
Cutting Their Own Throats
Traditional publishing is dominated by the Big Six publishing groups—folks like Hachette, Holtzbrinck, Penguin-Putnam, and so on. In general these publishers and their imprints refuse to publish ebooks without DRM.
From ACM Opinion
Nobody Needs a Tablet
Tablet manufacturers don't know what you—in the back of your mind—already know. No one needs a tablet.
Millions of people already own tablets in the U.S. Millions if not tens of millions more want one, and may very well getrequires…From ACM TechNews
Google sability Chief: Ideas Have to Be Discoverable
Google's Dan Russell recently spoke to New Scientist on improving searches.
From ACM Opinion
Who Watches the Watchers?
Once again, specialized security technology from a western vendor was found being used by foreign regime on the U.S. trade embargo list.
From ACM Opinion
Who Needs Keys When Siri Has Been Hacked to Start Cars?
Last week we showed you how a developer had hacked Siri to operate his internet-connected thermostat. But that's not cool. Starting your car using Siri, now that's cool.
From ACM Opinion
Internet Anti-Piracy Bill Would Chill Free Expression
A bill in the House aims to fight online piracy, but its blunderbuss approach would cripple online innovation and chill free expression on the Web.
From ACM TechNews
Q&a: Exascale Now a Global Race For Tech
Peter Beckman, director of the Exascale Technology and Computing Institute at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, recently spoke with Computerworld about current developments in exascale computing.
From ACM Opinion
Voice Recognition: Has It Come of Age?
The man sits down in front of the computer and says, affably: "Computer!"
From ACM Opinion
The Big Data Boom Is the Innovation Story of Our Time
The data revolution has turned customers into unwitting business consultants, as our purchases and searches are tracked to improve everything from Web sites to delivery route.
From ACM TechNews
Eu Chief Privacy Regulator on New Internet Rules
In an interview, European Commission vice president Viviane Reding discusses the differences between U.S. and European views on Internet privacy regulation.
From ACM Opinion
Q&a: Exascale Now a Global Race For Tech
The international competition to build an exascale supercomputer is gaining steam, especially in China and Europe, according to Peter Beckman, a top computer scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory…
From ACM Opinion
Walter Isaacson, Biographer of Steve Jobs
I’ve known Steve off and on since 1984. I was at Time magazine and he came to our offices to show us the original Macintosh. He was talking about these icons on the screen with a passion that these icons were going to change…
From ACM News
Managing the Demise of Privacy
Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists examine identity management in social media at the Privacy Identity Innovation conference.
From ACM Opinion
Occupy the Net!
What would George Orwell make of Facebook? Nothing really: His account would probably be deactivated by the company. If he were lucky, he would be told to produce a scanned first page of his passport and return as Eric Blair…
From ACM Opinion
Google and Microsoft Talk Artificial Intelligence
Google and Microsoft don't share a stage often, being increasingly fierce competitors in areas such as Web search, mobile, and cloud computing. But the rivals can agree on some things—like the importance of artificial intelligence…
From ACM Opinion
The Last Person
There is a concept in telecommunications called "the last mile," that part of any phone system that is the most difficult to connect—the part that goes from the main lines into people's homes. Prem Kalra, the director of the…
From ACM Opinion
Misconceptions in Ai: Or Why Watson Can't Talk to Siri
On Tuesday night, I was schooled by Watson on playing Jeopardy in an exhibition match at the Computer History Museum. I discovered that despite our fear of the robot overlords, humans are much smarter than we think. Case in…
From ACM TechNews
The Bumpy Road to Exascale: A Q&a With Thomas Sterling
Indiana University professor Thomas Sterling says in an interview that an effort is under way to cultivate an international community committed to the goal of developing a shared software stack for exascale computing.
Sterling…From ACM Opinion
Could 3D Printing End Our Throwaway Culture?
There's a tiny knob missing from my hands-free car kit, which I keep meaning to replace. The thing is, I don't think I can buy parts for it, so I probably need to fork out for a whole new system, which, frankly, I'm reluctant…
From ACM Opinion
Slow Train to the Future
Tablets are in, computer labs are out, and the cloud is the new hard drive, according to technology futurists. But a new survey from Student Monitor suggests that college students are not quite in step with the future of campus…
From ACM Opinion
Will Cloud Computing Make Everything (and Everyone) Work Harder?
What do the following have in common: Computers, limousines, empty beds and stay-at-home moms?
The cloud keeps them busy.
The rest of us are next.
Virtualization of computer servers, a core element in the development of cloud…From ACM Opinion
.s. Anti-Hacking Law Turns Computer sers Into Criminals
A commonly invoked anti-hacking law is so overbroad that it criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake user name on Facebook or fibbing about your weight in a Match.com profile, one of the U.S.'s most respected legal…
From ACM Opinion
Stephen King's Rules For Time Travel
If you're going to travel back in time, author Stephen King says, preparation is everything. The further back you go, the more you have to think about.
From ACM Opinion
Privacy Loses in Twitter/wikileaks Records Battle
A district court judge in Virginia ruled against online privacy, allowing U.S federal investigators to collect private records of three Twitter users as part of its investigation related to Wikileaks. The judge also blocked the…
From ACM Opinion
Our High-Tech Health-Care Future
Why can't Americans tap into the ingenuity that put men on the moon, created the Internet, and sequenced the human genome to revitalize our economy?
From ACM Opinion
Take That, Adobe! Jobs Gets Last Laugh on Flash
In April, 2010, Steve Jobs devoted about 1,700 words to a public post ripping Adobe's Flash to shreds. His most cutting comments concerned the mobile version of Flash.
From ACM TechNews
In Love With Android: Q&a With Matias Duarte
Google Android user experience director Matias Duarte notes that games influenced the new design for Android version 4.0, which includes new features such as Face Unlock, a facial-recognition system that opens the phone.
From ACM Opinion
Blogging the Stanford Machine Learning Class
After three weeks of frustrating math dealing with dull statistics problems, we’re on to frustrating math dealing with "neural networks"—models of how the cells in your brain pass information to one another.
From ACM Opinion
How Can Malware Be Stopped?
The world of cybersecurity is starting to resemble a paranoid thriller.