Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From Communications of the ACM
Computer Science Can Use More Science
Software developers should use empirical methods to analyze their designs to predict how working systems will behave.
From Communications of the ACM
Think Before You Fork
Kode Vicious's thoughts on forking, config files, and using internal wikis.
From Communications of the ACM
The Risks of Stopping Too Soon
Good software design is never easy, but stopping too soon makes the job more difficult.
From Communications of the ACM
Practical Application of Theoretical Estimation
One of the most popular and successful approaches to estimating software projects is the Putnam model. Developed in the 1970s by...
From Communications of the ACM
Who Are We - Now?
Considerable progress has been made toward the formation of a computing profession since we started tracking it in this column a decade ago.
From Communications of the ACM
Identity Management and Privacy: A Rare Opportunity To Get It Right
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace represents a shift in the way the U.S. government is approaching identity management, privacy, and the...
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...
From ACM News
Andy Rubin: Why Android Is Only Quasi-Open
Android is open-source software, but it doesn't come with much of an open-source community, and the Google leader of the project explained why.
From ACM News
Ralph Langner on Stuxnet, Copycat Threats
A year ago, Ralph Langner was plugging away in relative obscurity, doing security consulting work for the industrial control system industry in his Hamburg headquarters...
From ACM News
Seven Questions For Prith Banerjee, Hewlett-Packard's Head of Research
It's been about two months since Hewlett-Packard’s new CEO Léo Apotheker put the company on a new cloud-centric path as part of a big speech laying out a new strategy...
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 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...
From ACM Opinion
Your Data Isn't Secure, Don't Trust Companies to Keep It Safe
It's time for a major change in the way our personal, private data is handled. We need to take back our data from companies that are unwilling and unable to protect...
From ACM Opinion
Sohaib Athar on Twitter Fame After Bin Laden Raid (q&a)
As U.S. special forces assaulted Osama bin Laden's walled compound in Pakistan, a Twitter user was already recording a rough outline of the events to come. Sohaib...
From ACM News
Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Rails Against Facebook, Says It's a Spy Tool For .s. Government
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Facebook "the most appalling spying machine ever invented" in an interview with Russia Today, pointing to the popular social...
From ACM Opinion
Sony Hack Highlights Importance of Breach Analysis
Sony's apparent difficulty in figuring out the extent of the damage from the recent intrusion into its PlayStation Network, while frustrating for those affected...
From ACM Opinion
Jobs and Apple Execs on Tracking Down the Facts About Iphones and Location
Although Apple was silent for several days after researchers raised issues about location information being stored on the iPhone, that wasn’t because it was ignoring...
From ACM Opinion