acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

Recent Opinion


bg-corner

Andy Rubin: Why Android Is Only Quasi-Open
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.

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.

Ralph Langner on Stuxnet, Copycat Threats
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...

Workplace Robots Need a Better View
From ACM News

Workplace Robots Need a Better View

Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks says a new generation of industrial robots could be enabled by better machine vision.

Seven Questions For Prith Banerjee, Hewlett-Packard's Head of Research
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...

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...

Air France 447: How Scientists Found a Needle in a Haystack
From ACM News

Air France 447: How Scientists Found a Needle in a Haystack

Two weekends ago, investigators announced that they had recovered the flight data recorder from the wreckage of Air France 447—a jetliner that crashed in the deep...

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...

Sohaib Athar on Twitter Fame After Bin Laden Raid (q&a)
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...

Online 24/7: "life Logging" Pioneer Clarifies the Future of Cloud Computing
From ACM Opinion

Online 24/7: "life Logging" Pioneer Clarifies the Future of Cloud Computing

Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, paperless for more than a decade, envisions data centers saturated with information and services readily available via the...

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Rails Against Facebook, Says It's a Spy Tool For ­.s. Government
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...

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.

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...

Jobs and Apple Execs on Tracking Down the Facts About Iphones and Location
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

Will Amazon's Recent Server Failures Slow the Rise of Cloud Computing?

Last Thursday morning around 5 a.m. eastern time, Amazon suffered a major data center outage. These sorts of outages happen now and then, but they seldom makewhy...

From ACM Opinion

Iran's Answer to Stuxnet

Might a "halal Internet" be in the wings?
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account