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From ACM Opinion

Beware: Europe's 'unitary Patent' Could Mean ­nlimited Software Patents

Just as the U.S. software industry is experiencing the long-anticipated all-out software patent wars, the European Union has a plan to follow the same course....

Seeing the Future of the Office Internet
From ACM News

Seeing the Future of the Office Internet

Inside the headquarters of networking giant Cisco in San Jose, California, lies a technology showcase where executives can test out advanced technologies like...

Ben Fry, Information Designer
From ACM News

Ben Fry, Information Designer

In the golden age of data visualization, he helps designers think like programmers, and vice versa.

Let's Get Back to Real Space Exploration
From ACM Opinion

Let's Get Back to Real Space Exploration

Time to ditch the black armbands and look beyond low Earth orbit again. The shuttle's passing marks the start of an exciting new era.

From ACM Opinion

A Turbulent End to the Pc Era

The personal computer recently celebrated its 30th birthday. Then last week, Silicon Valley staged the PC's funeral.

Arrogance in Business Planning
From Communications of the ACM

Arrogance in Business Planning

Technology business plans that assume no competition — ever.

Managing Time, Part 2
From Communications of the ACM

Managing Time, Part 2

Masterful time management means not just tracking of messages in your personal environment, but managing your coordination network with others.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Global IT Outsourcing
From Communications of the ACM

Corporate Social Responsibility and Global IT Outsourcing

How to improve IT outsourcing relationships while doing good for society.

From ACM Opinion

Can Math Beat Financial Markets?

Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...

From ACM Opinion

Can Math Beat Financial Markets?

Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...

From ACM Opinion

What Constitutes an Act of Cyberwar?

Before we get to that, there's a clue in the spelling of the word: cyberwar instead of cyber war. The U.S. Defense Department has determined that cyber is a fifth...

From ACM News

The Death of Booting ­p

Remember "booting up"? It was the first thing you did every morning—you waited two minutes, three minutes, sometimes even longer while your computer ran through...

Apple's Rise to Top Means Less Than You Think
From ACM Opinion

Apple's Rise to Top Means Less Than You Think

With Apple officially becoming the world's most valuable company—at least for a day—it's tempting to engage in lofty talk about what this says about the rise...

Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says He Can Bring His Dead Father Back to Life Through a Computer Avatar
From ACM News

Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says He Can Bring His Dead Father Back to Life Through a Computer Avatar

Ray Kurzweil, a prominent inventor and "futurist" who has long predicted that mind and machine will one day merge, has been making arrangements to talk to his...

From ACM News

Google's Self-Driving Wreck: Really Human Error?

When a self-driving car crashes, one just has to wonder about those robots. Are they really all they're cracked up to be? Or might they be just as cracked as...

Director of Mit's Personal Robots Group on Designing Robots that Will Be ­seful in Our Everyday Lives
From ACM Opinion

Director of Mit's Personal Robots Group on Designing Robots that Will Be ­seful in Our Everyday Lives

It's all about human-robot interaction in this more interpersonal sense, like you saw in Star Wars. Until then, the way we reacted with robots was [by] remote...

From ACM Opinion

Google's Instant Pages and the Joys of a Computer that Can Read Your Mind

Chrome is reading my mind. When I type a search query in Google's Web browser, it offers me the most likely results right in the address bar. It doesn't justWikipedia...

From ACM News

Shady Rat Hacking Is Not About China

Jeffrey Carr, author of O'Reilly Media's Inside Cyber Warfare, argues that McAfee's supposed revelations about large-scale Chinese hacking attacks are a smokescreen...

Meet Dark Tangent, the Hacker Behind Black Hat and Def Con
From ACM News

Meet Dark Tangent, the Hacker Behind Black Hat and Def Con

The word "hacker" evokes all kinds of scary images. But Jeff Moss says hackers are exactly what the world needs more of, because they can make the Internet safer...

David Ferrucci, Lead Researcher of Ibm's Watson Project
From ACM News

David Ferrucci, Lead Researcher of Ibm's Watson Project

How do you improve on a computer that beat the world's best Jeopardy! players? Have Watson team up with humanity.
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