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Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Means Giant Robots, Powerful Computers
From ACM Opinion

Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Means Giant Robots, Powerful Computers

Gummi Bears. That's what playing with Lego bricks reminds me of—sitting cross-legged on the floor in the back room of my parents' house on Saturday mornings, ahere...

How Wearable Technology Could Transform Business
From ACM Opinion

How Wearable Technology Could Transform Business

Once upon a time seeing your life flash before your eyes was something people did their best to avoid. The arrival of Google Glass seems to have changed that.

From ACM Opinion

We Need a Moratorium on 'Brain-Like' Tech Stories

My "aha" moment arrived two decades ago while I was an undergrad student (and dilettante "futurist," though I didn’t know the word then), sitting in the Great Hall...

Counterfeits Can Kill ­.s. Troops. So Why Isn't Congress and Dod Doing More to Stop It?
From ACM Opinion

Counterfeits Can Kill ­.s. Troops. So Why Isn't Congress and Dod Doing More to Stop It?

Sometime in the not-to-distant future, a submarine will sink. An air defense missile will detonate far from its intended target. These chilling scenarios will...

WikiLeaks' Teenage Benedict Arnold
From ACM Opinion

WikiLeaks' Teenage Benedict Arnold

When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder's attitude and quickly signed up to the cause.

What Motivates Free Software Licencing Decisions?
From ACM Opinion

What Motivates Free Software Licencing Decisions?

Free software licenses can be divided into two broad categories: copyleft licenses and permissive licenses. The licenses reflect a particular view about fairness...

How Steve Jobs Turned Technology — And Apple — Into Religion
From ACM Opinion

How Steve Jobs Turned Technology — And Apple — Into Religion

The technological values promoted by Apple are part of the Faustian bargain of technology, which both giveth and taketh away.

If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?
From ACM Opinion

If We Landed on Europa, What Would We Want to Know?

Most of what scientists know of Jupiter's moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo...

From ACM Opinion

The End of Integrated Systems

I always travel with a pair of binoculars and, to the puzzlement of my fellow airline passengers, spend part of every flight gazing through them at whatever happens...

Snowden—Facts, Fictions, and  Fears
From ACM Opinion

Snowden—Facts, Fictions, and Fears

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere ... I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your...

Online Courses Can Improve Life on Campus
From ACM Opinion

Online Courses Can Improve Life on Campus

The future of on-campus learning lies in the right combination of digital and traditional tools.

From ACM Opinion

Google's Science Fellows Challenge the Company's Fund-Raising For Senator Inhofe

Ten years ago this week, Senator James M. Inhofe, the Republican from Oklahoma, used a two-hour floor speech to launch his campaign on the credibility of climate...

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership
From ACM Opinion

The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership

Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry...

How Moocs Can Help India
From ACM Opinion

How Moocs Can Help India

Online courses have the potential to dramatically transform Indian higher education by alleviating faculty shortages and delivering education on a scale and at...

The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can't Stop Looking at Pictures on Facebook
From ACM Opinion

The Machine Zone: This Is Where You Go When You Just Can't Stop Looking at Pictures on Facebook

"People love Facebook. They really love it," Biz Stone wrote earlier this month. "My mother-in-law looks hypnotized when she decides to put in some Facebook time...

They Know Much More Than You Think
From ACM Opinion

They Know Much More Than You Think

In mid-May, Edward Snowden, an American in his late twenties, walked through the onyx entrance of the Mira Hotel on Nathan Road in Hong Kong and checked in.

A Day in the Life of My Iphone
From ACM Opinion

A Day in the Life of My Iphone

Each morning at 7 a.m., I am awakened by the sound of a spaceship next to my bed.

Mail from the (velvet) Cybercrime ­nderground
From ACM Opinion

Mail from the (velvet) Cybercrime ­nderground

Over the past six months, "fans" of this Web site and its author have shown their affection in some curious ways.

Software-Defined Data Centers Could Change the It Landscape
From ACM Opinion

Software-Defined Data Centers Could Change the It Landscape

IT vendors like VMware, Red Hat and Citrix are close to realizing a decades-old vision of virtualized data centers, which could usher in an era of commoditized...

Justice For Alan Turing?
From ACM Opinion

Justice For Alan Turing?

What do we do with the knowledge that people not all that different from ourselves have behaved with astounding stupidity and cruelty, over and over again, in the...
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