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From ACM Opinion

Why The 'check Engine' Light Must Be Banned

It's pretty easy to dismiss the "check engine" light as just stupid, because, well, it is. 

From ACM Opinion

Why We've Censored Wired.com

We've blacked out the headlines on our Website homepage today as part of a global internet protest against two radical anti-piracy bills pending in Congress—legislation...

From ACM Opinion

It's Time to Start 3d Scanning the World

When Microsoft was developing its Kinect 3D sensor, a critical task was to calibrate its algorithms to rapidly and accurately recognize parts of the human body,...

From ACM Opinion

Research Bought, Then Paid For

Through the National Institutes of Health, American taxpayers have long supported research directed at understanding and treating human disease.

Read My Email? Get a Warrant
From ACM Opinion

Read My Email? Get a Warrant

Last October the well-known hacking group Chaos Computer Club revealed that the German state police had been monitoring the computers of ordinary citizens using...

From ACM Opinion

Internet Access Is Not a Human Right

From the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the world last year were built on the Internet and the many devices that interact with...

Four Industries Apple Can Disrupt in the Near Future
From ACM Opinion

Four Industries Apple Can Disrupt in the Near Future

Over the past 10 years, Apple has done a rather amazing job of disrupting quite a few industries.

Smoke Screening
From ACM Opinion

Smoke Screening

Not until I walked with Bruce Schneier toward the mass of people unloading their laptops did it occur to me that it might not be possible for us to hang around...

Interfaces For the Ordinary User
From Communications of the ACM

Interfaces For the Ordinary User: Can We Hide Too Much?

Increasing the visibility and access to underlying file structure on consumer devices can vastly improve the user experience.

The IBM PC
From Communications of the ACM

The IBM PC: From Beige Box to Industry Standard

Looking back at three decades of PC platform evolution.

The Difference Engine
From Communications of the ACM

The Difference Engine

Observations on cognitive diversity and team performance.

The Yin and Yang of Copyright and Technology
From Communications of the ACM

The Yin and Yang of Copyright and Technology

Examining the recurring conflicts between copyright and technology from piano rolls to domain-name filtering.

The Emergence of a Digital Money Ecosystem
From ACM Opinion

The Emergence of a Digital Money Ecosystem

At the beginning of this year I wrote that the transition to universal mobile digital money is likely to be among the most exciting, important and challenging...

From ACM Opinion

Expanding Internet Domains

Come January, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers plans to allow businesses, nonprofits and others to apply for their own "top-level domain"...

From ACM Opinion

Don't Break the Internet

Two bills now pending in Congress—the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House—represent the latest...

From ACM Opinion

Patents and the Public Interest

Next week, in a case closely watched both by analysts and retailers, the International Trade Commission will decide whether the handset maker HTC should be allowed...

From ACM Opinion

An Open Letter from Internet Engineers to the ­.s. Congress

Today, a group of 83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers sent an open letter to members of the United States Congress, stating their opposition to the...

From ACM Opinion

Why Transparent Tracking Needs Its Own App

Amid widespread concern over an obscure piece of smart-phone diagnostic software that some experts say could be used to collect and transmit sensitive information...

Dna: The Next Big Hacking Frontier
From ACM Careers

Dna: The Next Big Hacking Frontier

Imagine computer-designed viruses that cure disease, new bacteria capable of synthesizing an unlimited fuel supply, new organisms that wipe out entire populations...

From ACM Opinion

The Rise of the New Information Gatekeepers

The promise of the Internet age is one of unparalleled access to information of all kinds, but it has also seen the rise of some powerful gatekeepers that control...
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