Communications of the ACM
The opinion archive provides access to past opinion stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2014
From ACM Opinion
Abstract Ideas Don't Deserve Patents
The Constitution gives Congress the power to grant inventors a temporary monopoly over their creations to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."
From ACM Opinion
Five Ways to Make Sure We Never Lose a Plane Again
For the past few weeks the world's attention has been focussed on the lost Malaysia Airlines plane and its 239 passengers and crew that has apparently crashed in the far reaches of the southern Indian Ocean.
From ACM Opinion
The Dream of Intelligent Robot Friends
Karotz is an Internet-enabled console in the shape of an abstracted rabbit.
From ACM News
Will We Ever Travel in Wormholes?
The universe is huge.
From ACM Opinion
What Oculus's $2 Billion Payday Teaches S About Innovation
Tuesday's announcement that Facebook is buying the virtual-reality start-up Oculus for $2 billion no doubt left many people scratching their heads.
From ACM Opinion
Who's Afraid of Nate Silver?
Nate Silver doesn't look very threatening.
From ACM Opinion
A Conversation With Danah Boyd, Author of 'it's Complicated,' About Teenagers Online
Danah Boyd is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, a research assistant professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center.
From ACM Opinion
The Top 10 Google Glass Myths
Mr. Rogers was a Navy SEAL. A tooth placed in soda will dissolve in 24 hours. Gators roam the sewers of big cities and Walt Disney is cryogenically frozen. These are just some of the most common and—let’s admit it—awesome urban…
From ACM Opinion
Anger on Weibo Over Flight 370
Tragedy, when its cause and the fate of its victims are still unknown, is supposed to occasion solidarity.
From ACM Opinion
How to Win $1 Billion on Ncaa Basketball: A Mathematician's Tips
Last Thursday, the underground classroom at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York was filled to capacity for a college professor's PowerPoint-aided lecture.
From ACM Opinion
Discovering Two Screens Aren't Better Than One
For years, techies have argued that getting an extra monitor or two for your desktop computer is an especially effective way to increase personal productivity.
From ACM Opinion
Building Bicep2: A Conversation with Jamie Bock
Caltech Professor of Physics Jamie Bock and his collaborators announced on March 17, 2014 that they have successfully measured a B-mode polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the BICEP2 telescope at…
From ACM Opinion
Facebook's Security Chief Talks Encryption Plan
Facebook has built its business upon the sharing of content between people worldwide, but protecting that data is a gargantuan responsibility—one that demands an increasing amount of transparency.
From ACM Opinion
Roomba Creator: Robot Doubles Need More Charisma
Colin Angle is co-founder and CEO of iRobot in Bedford, Massachusetts.
From ACM Opinion
Three Questions For Leslie Lamport, Winner of Computing's Top Prize
This year's winner of the Turing Award—often referred to as the Nobel Prize of computing—was announced yesterday as Leslie Lamport, a computer scientist whose research made possible the development of the large, networked computer…
From ACM Opinion
When Big Data Marketing Becomes Stalking
Many of us now expect our online activities to be recorded and analyzed, but we assume that the physical spaces we inhabit are different.
From ACM Opinion
Why Google Doesn't Have a Research Lab
Research vice presidents at some computing giants, such as Microsoft and IBM, rule over divisions housed in dedicated facilities carefully insulated from the rat race of the main businesses.
From ACM News
The Future of Brain Implants
What would you give for a retinal chip that let you see in the dark or for a next-generation cochlear implant that let you hear any conversation in a noisy restaurant, no matter how loud?
From ACM Opinion
The Search For Life Across the niverse
When Jeremy Drake was beginning his career in the late 1980s, the question of whether or not we are alone in the universe still seemed beyond the realm of scienc
From ACM Opinion
Hacking Your Dna
Keeping track of what we reveal about ourselves each day—through email and text messages, Amazon purchases and Facebook "likes"—is hard enough.
From ACM Opinion
Three Things to Take Away from Cansecwest, Pwn2own
Browsers, brokers, and BIOS: You could safely call that triumvirate the past, present, and future of security, but you'd be wrong.
From ACM Opinion
A Close Look at the Nsa's Most Powerful Internet Attack Tool
We already knew that the NSA has weaponized the Internet, enabling it to "shoot" exploits at anyone it desires.
From ACM Opinion
The Data Brokers: Selling Your Personal Information
Over the past six months or so, a huge amount of attention has been paid to government snooping, and the bulk collection and storage of vast amounts of raw data in the name of national security.
From ACM Opinion
The True Meaning of Pi Day
There are holidays like Mother's Day, Earth Day, Thanksgiving Day. Even a Talk-Like-Shakespeare Day. But Friday is Pi Day.
From ACM Opinion
Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview
At 58, Bill Gates is not only the richest man in the world, with a fortune that now exceeds $76 billion, but he may also be the most optimistic.
From ACM Opinion
Flight 370 and the Terror of Being Off the Grid
How can a commercial airliner go missing?
From ACM Opinion
The Search For Aliens Is Just Getting Started
Over the past 50 years, several SETI projects have scoured the cosmos but have yet to turn up anything conclusive. What do you make of this cosmic radio-silence?
From ACM Opinion
The Future of Internet Freedom
Over the next decade, approximately five billion people will become connected to the Internet.
From ACM Opinion
5 Things That Will Remake Big Data in the Next 5 Years
Big data has evolved a lot of the past few years; from a happy buzzword to a hated buzzword, and from a focus on volume to a focus on variety and velocity.
From ACM Opinion
Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It
I once worked with Steven Spielberg on the development of Minority Report, derived from the short story by Philip K. Dick featuring a future society that uses surveillance to arrest criminals before they commit a crime.