acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

Latest Practice



A Threat Analysis of RFID Passports
From Communications of the ACM

A Threat Analysis of RFID Passports

An RFID-passport attack is more plausible than skimming RFID information. Do RFID passports make us vulnerable to identity theft?

You Don't Know Jack About Software Maintenance
From Communications of the ACM

You Don't Know Jack About Software Maintenance

Long considered an afterthought, software maintenance is easiest and most effective when built into a system from the ground up.

Four Billion Little Brothers?
From Communications of the ACM

Four Billion Little Brothers?: Privacy, Mobile Phones, and Ubiquitous Data Collection

Participatory sensing technologies could improve our lives and our communities, but at what cost to our privacy?

Communications Surveillance: Privacy and Security at Risk
From Communications of the ACM

Communications Surveillance: Privacy and Security at Risk

As the sophistication of wiretapping technology grows, so too do the risks it poses to our privacy and security.

A Conversation with David E. Shaw
From Communications of the ACM

A Conversation with David E. Shaw

Stanford professor Pat Hanrahan sits down with the noted hedge fund founder, computational biochemist, and (above all) computer scientist.

Unifying Biological Image Formats with HDF5
From Communications of the ACM

Unifying Biological Image Formats with HDF5

The biosciences need an image format capable of high performance and long-term maintenance. Is HDF5 the answer?

Probing Biomolecular Machines with Graphics Processors
From Communications of the ACM

Probing Biomolecular Machines with Graphics Processors

GPU acceleration and other computer performance increases will offer critical benefits to biomedical science.

Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems
From Communications of the ACM

Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems

All revision-control systems come with complicated sets of trade-offs. How do you find the best match between tool and team?

Monitoring and Control of Large Systems With MonALISA
From Communications of the ACM

Monitoring and Control of Large Systems With MonALISA

MonALISA developers describe how it works, the key design principles behind it, and the biggest technical challenges in building it.

Reveling in Constraints
From Communications of the ACM

Reveling in Constraints

The Google Web Toolkit is an end-run around Web development obstacles.

The Pathologies of Big Data
From Communications of the ACM

The Pathologies of Big Data

Scale up your datasets enough and your apps come undone. What are the typical problems and where do the bottlenecks surface?

Browser Security
From Communications of the ACM

Browser Security: Lessons from Google Chrome

To shield the browser from attacks, Google Chrome developers eyed three key problems.

The Five-Minute Rule 20 Years Later
From Communications of the ACM

The Five-Minute Rule 20 Years Later

Revisiting Gray and Putzolu's famous rule in the age of Flash.

Hard-Disk Drives: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
From Communications of the ACM

Hard-Disk Drives: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

New drive technologies and increased capacities create new categories of failure modes that will influence system designs.

Debugging AJAX in Production
From Communications of the ACM

Debugging AJAX in Production

Lacking proper browser support, what steps can we take to debug production AJAX code?

Security in the Browser
From Communications of the ACM

Security in the Browser

Users with no security training download Web browsers from the Internet without precaution, and demand that they be fast and easy to use. What can be done to make ...

ORM in Dynamic Languages
From Communications of the ACM

ORM in Dynamic Languages

Dynamic languages offer a taste of object-relational mapping that eases application code.

Cybercrime 2.0
From Communications of the ACM

Cybercrime 2.0: When the Cloud Turns Dark

Web-based malware attacks are more insidious than ever. What can be done to stem the tide?

Erlang For Concurrent Programming
From Communications of the ACM

Erlang For Concurrent Programming

Designed for concurrency from the ground up, the Erlang language can be a valuable tool to help solve concurrent problems.

Better Scripts, Better Games
From Communications of the ACM

Better Scripts, Better Games

Smarter, more powerful scripting languages will improve game performance while making gameplay development more efficient.
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account