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Why China's Homemade Microchips Will Struggle to Displace Western Giants
From ACM Opinion

Why China's Homemade Microchips Will Struggle to Displace Western Giants

If China's ultimate aim in the sphere of technology is to become completely self-sufficient, it is well on the way to achieving this ambitious goal.

From ACM Opinion

Sneaky Apps That Track Cellphones

A perversion of smartphone technology called "stalking apps"—precise, secretive trackings of the movements of cellphone users—is increasingly a matter of national...

How Technology Has Restored the Soul of Politics
From ACM Opinion

How Technology Has Restored the Soul of Politics

In 1979, I was an aeronautical-engineering major at San Jose State University, sneaking time in the laser lab to make holograms or running over to the computer...

Who Owns the Content You ­pload Online?
From ACM Opinion

Who Owns the Content You ­pload Online?

The outrage over Instagram's announcement that it is changing its terms and conditions has turned the spotlight on the relationship between websites and users who...

Conference-Journal Hybrids
From Communications of the ACM

Conference-Journal Hybrids

Considering how to combine the best elements of conferences and journals.

What College Could Be Like
From Communications of the ACM

What College Could Be Like

Imagining an optimized education model.

Five Lessons from Really Good History
From Communications of the ACM

Five Lessons from Really Good History

Lessons learned from four award-winning books on the history of information technology.

Beyond Location
From Communications of the ACM

Beyond Location: Data Security in the 21st Century

Viewing evolving data security issues as engineering problems to be solved.

How We Build Things
From Communications of the ACM

How We Build Things: . . . and Why Things Are 90% Complete

It seems to be a law of software development that things always take longer than we expect. When a project manager talks to a designer, programmer, or tester...

The Apple-Samsung Lawsuits
From Communications of the ACM

The Apple-Samsung Lawsuits

In search of a middle ground in the intellectual property wars.

Five Big Tech Stories to Watch For in 2013
From ACM Opinion

Five Big Tech Stories to Watch For in 2013

We were dazzled by an array of smartphones. We were fascinated and then disappointed by Facebook's initial public offering. And we held our breaths as we awaited...

How Hackers Exploit 'the Seven Deadly Sins'
From ACM Opinion

How Hackers Exploit 'the Seven Deadly Sins'

This isn't the high tech wizardry of Hollywood but is a good, old-fashioned confidence trick.

Intellectual Ventures: Why the Patent System Needs Aggregators Like ­S
From ACM Opinion

Intellectual Ventures: Why the Patent System Needs Aggregators Like ­S

The U.S. patent system borrowed from mainland Europe a concept that had evolved over hundreds of years: the "moral right" for inventors to protect their ideas....

A Plea to Google: Protect Our Email Privacy
From ACM Opinion

A Plea to Google: Protect Our Email Privacy

We recently learned that even the director of the CIA, David Petraeus, can't seem to secure his private email conversations properly, and over the past month tech...

From ACM Opinion

Internet Regulation Seen at National Level As Treaty Talks Fail

The world's major Internet companies, backed by U.S. policymakers, got much of what they wanted last week when many nations refused to sign a global telecommunications...

How the ­n's 'game-Changing' Internet Treaty Failed
From ACM Opinion

How the ­n's 'game-Changing' Internet Treaty Failed

Did you know that, for the past two weeks, the future of the Internet has been at stake?

From ACM Opinion

I Am Not Big Brother

I've grown accustomed to reading inaccurate accounts of my day job. I'm in political data.

Prepare For the New Cameras-Everywhere World
From ACM Opinion

Prepare For the New Cameras-Everywhere World

Some questions can never be answered.

The Fog of Cyberwar
From ACM Opinion

The Fog of Cyberwar

In mid-2010, thousands of centrifuges, enriching uranium at Iranian nuclear research facilities, spun out of control.

How the ­nited Nations Could Ruin the Internet
From ACM Opinion

How the ­nited Nations Could Ruin the Internet

The Internet has sustained some pretty intense assaults in the past couple of years. There was the heavy-handed attempt to stamp out content piracy with SOPA/PIPA...
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