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From ACM Opinion

On the Latest Google Chinese-Hacking News

Thanks to many people who have written in asking whether the recent Google announcement of a new China-based wave of attacks on Gmail accounts is related to the...

Parting Shots from a Mars Rover
From ACM News

Parting Shots from a Mars Rover

NASA is no longer sending commands to the Spirit rover on Mars, but the long-silent robot still has a few more chances to phone home. Not that anyone is expecting...

Bill Would Keep Big Brother's Mitts Off Your Gps Data
From ACM News

Bill Would Keep Big Brother's Mitts Off Your Gps Data

The reauthorization of the Patriot Act looks like a forgone conclusion. But next month, a bipartisan band of legislators will try to mitigate a different kind...

A Brief Lesson in American History, or Why 'world of Warcraft' Matters
From ACM Opinion

A Brief Lesson in American History, or Why 'world of Warcraft' Matters

Many readers are probably too young too remember Senator William Proxmire. I am sorry to say he served in the U.S. Senate from 1957 to 1989. Despite some good...

From ACM Opinion

Critical Mass: How to Maintain the Power of Online Reviews

The wisdom of crowds can be brilliant. It can also be corrupt.

From ACM Opinion

Windows 8: What Should Be, If You Ask Me

What's next for Microsoft Windows? With Windows 7 now 19 months old, plenty of people are curious about its successor, a product that everybody's calling Windows...

What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices
From ACM Opinion

What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices

In this era of Big Data, there is little that cannot be tracked in our online lives—or even in our offline lives. Consider one new Silicon Valley venture, called...

From ACM Opinion

When the Internet Thinks It Knows You

Once upon a time, the story goes, we lived in a broadcast society. In that dusty pre-Internet age, the tools for sharing information weren’t widely available....

Open Science: A Future Shaped By Shared Experience
From ACM Opinion

Open Science: A Future Shaped By Shared Experience

Mapping the human genome showed how the Internet can play a vital part in collective scientific research. Now more scientists are collaborating—and inviting amateurs...

One on One: Jaron Lanier
From ACM Opinion

One on One: Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier, a partner architect at Microsoft Research, has had a long and varied career in technology. Mr. Lanier popularized the term "virtual reality" in...

From ACM Opinion

Why Library Privacy Matters

Without library privacy, individuals might not engage in free and open inquiry for fear that their interactions with the library will be used against them.

From ACM News

Why You Can't Really Anonymize Your Data

One of the joys of the last few years has been the flood of real-world data sets being released by all sorts of organizations. These usually involve some record...

How Computers Got US Into Space
From ACM News

How Computers Got US Into Space

When you look back at the past 50 years of human spaceflight, don't forget the computer scientists who helped make it possible.

Why Google Does Not Own Skype
From ACM Opinion

Why Google Does Not Own Skype

So Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion, its biggest deal ever. It’s too soon to make a pronouncement on whether the purchase is an idiot move, a brilliant...

There's No Data Sheriff on the Wild Web
From ACM Opinion

There's No Data Sheriff on the Wild Web

A company suffers a catastrophic attack on its servers. Gone are names, email addresses, home phone numbers, passwords, credit card numbers. Everything ends up...

From ACM Opinion

Five Gadgets that Will Be Dead in Five Years

If there's one thing that's predictable in the technology world, it's that things change. Products that were commonplace 10 years ago (PDAs, CRT televisions,...

Customers Had More Faith in Sony Than It Deserved
From ACM News

Customers Had More Faith in Sony Than It Deserved

In the wake of the recent hacking attacks, which compromised more than 100 million account records on its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment services...

Data Privacy, Put to the Test
From ACM News

Data Privacy, Put to the Test

To the catalog of corporate "bigs" that worry a lot of us little people, add this: Big Data.

From ACM Opinion

Conspiracies Say Bin Laden Lives

The decision to drop terror chieftain Osama bin Laden’s corpse into the Arabian Sea was the final meticulous step in a raid whose details were calculated to exert...

The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories
From ACM Opinion

The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories

No sooner had President Obama released his long-form birth certificate than Orly Taitz, the doyenne of the "birther" movement, found reason to doubt it.
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