August 2011 - Vol. 54 No. 8

Features

News Aug 1 2011

From the Presidents of the IEEE Computer Society and ACM

As most members of our organizations probably know, there is a great deal of overlap between the products and services offered by the IEEE CS and ACM. In fact, about 27% of ACM members belong to IEEE CS.

Sorel Reisman and Alain Chesnais

Computing Applications

Opinion Letters to the editor Aug 1 2011

A Policy that Deters Violation of Security Policy

In their article "Does Deterrence Work in Reducing Information Security Policy Abuse by Employees?," Qing Hu et al. (June 2011) analyzed deterrence of employee violation of information-security policy based on various criminological theories.

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

News Aug 1 2011

In the Virtual Extension

To ensure the timely publication of articles, Communications created the Virtual Extension (VE) to bring readers high-quality articles in an online-only format. The following articles are now available to ACM members via the Digital Library.

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM Aug 1 2011

Stonebraker on NoSQL and Enterprises

Michael Stonebraker discusses several reasons why NoSQL has not caught on with enterprise users.

Michael Stonebraker

Computing Applications

Opinion CACM online Aug 1 2011

Why You Should Be Happy to Sign In!

For many, the five dreaded words "This article is premium content" is a frustration. Many in the community would prefer all publications be made freely available without barriers or constraints that get in the way of downloading exactly what we want to read.

Scott E. Delman

Computing Applications

the full text of this article is premium content

News Aug 1 2011

A New Benchmark For Artificial Intelligence

Computers are unable to defeat the world's best Go players, but that may change with the application of a new strategy that promises to revolutionize artificial intelligence.

Kirk L. Kroeker

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News Aug 1 2011

Supercomputing’s Exaflop Target

The twin challenges of parallelism and energy consumption are enlivening supercomputers' progress.

Tom Geller

Architecture and Hardware

News Aug 1 2011

Life, Translated

The Holy Grail of language translation is to develop a machine-based system that can handle the task transparently and accurately.

Samuel Greengard

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Opinion Economic and business dimensions Aug 1 2011

Geography Is Alive and Well in Virtual Teams

Just because a team is virtual, it doesn't mean geography is dead.

Jonathon N. Cummings

Computing Applications

Opinion Education Aug 1 2011

From Interests to Values

Computer science is not that difficult but wanting to learn it is.

Betsy DiSalvo and Amy Bruckman

Computing Applications

Opinion Privacy and security Aug 1 2011

As Simple As Possible ? But Not More So

An assessment of the U.S. government's EINSTEIN project.

Computing Applications

Opinion Kode Vicious Aug 1 2011

Storage Strife

Beware keeping data in binary format.

George V. Neville-Neil

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint Aug 1 2011

Journals For Certification, Conferences For Rapid Dissemination

The publication culture in computer science is different. Whereas other disciplines focus on journal publication, the standard practice in CS has been to publish in a conference and then (sometimes) publish a journal version of the conference paper

Joseph Y. Halpern and David C. Parkes

Computing Applications

Journals for Certification, illustration

Practice Aug 1 2011

The Robustness Principle Reconsidered

In 1981, Jon Postel formulated the Robustness Principle. Although described for implementations of TCP, it was quickly accepted as a good proposition for implementing network protocols in general. It's simple, easy to understand, and intuitively obvious. But is it correct?

Eric Allman

Architecture and Hardware

Be Conservative in What You Do, Be Liberal in What You Accept From Others

Practice Aug 1 2011

Computing Without Processors

Heterogeneous systems allow us to target our programming to the appropriate environment.

Satnam Singh

Architecture and Hardware

Computing Without Processors, illustration

Practice Aug 1 2011

The Pain of Implementing LINQ Providers

It's no easy task for NoSQL.

Oren Eini

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Contributed articles Aug 1 2011

Cognitive Computing

Unite neuroscience, supercomputing, and nanotechnology to discover, demonstrate, and deliver the brain's core algorithms.

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles Aug 1 2011

Gender and Computing Conference Papers

Women increasingly publish in ACM conference proceedings and are notably productive authors.

J. McGrath Cohoon, Sergey Nigai, and Joseph "Jofish" Kaye

Computing Applications

Gender and Computing Conference Papers, photo/illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Aug 1 2011

Reputation Systems For Open Collaboration

Algorithmic-based user incentives ensure the trustworthiness of evaluations of Wikipedia entries and Google Maps business information.

Luca De Alfaro, Ashutosh Kulshreshtha, Ian Pye, and B. Thomas Adler

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Review articles Aug 1 2011

An Overview of Business Intelligence Technology

BI technologies are essential to running today's businesses and this technology is going through sea changes.

Surajit Chaudhuri, Umeshwar Dayal, and Vivek Narasayya

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Aug 1 2011

Technical Perspective: Sketches Get Sketchier

Are data synopses — such as the hash-based sketches discussed by Li and König — still needed for querying massive datasets? The answer to this question is a firm "yes!"

Peter J. Haas

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Aug 1 2011

Theory and Applications of b-Bit Minwise Hashing

Efficient (approximate) computation of set similarity in very large datasets is a common task with many applications in information retrieval and data management. One common approach for this task is minwise hashing.

Ping Li and Arnd Christian König

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Aug 1 2011

Technical Perspective: Skintroducing the Future

Two critical goals for mobile devices seem intrinsically in conflict. For carrying, the smaller the better. Yet for interacting, more real estate is generally better. This tension makes for great sketch comedy.. Chris Harrison and colleagues may have the last laugh.

Scott Klemmer

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Aug 1 2011

Skinput: Appropriating the Skin as an Interactive Canvas

Skinput is a technology that appropriates the skin as an input surface by analyzing mechanical vibrations that propagate through the body. Specifically, we resolve the location of finger taps on the arm and hand using a novel sensor array worn as an armband.

Chris Harrison, Desney Tan, and Dan Morris

Architecture and Hardware

interactive elements projected on a hand

Opinion Last byte Aug 1 2011

Puzzled: Uncommon Divisors

Welcome to three new puzzles. Solutions to the first two will be published next month; the third is (as yet) unsolved. In fact, this time it's a famously unsolved problem.

Peter Winkler

Research and Advances Contributed articles: Virtual extension Aug 1 2011

Should Privacy Impact Assessments Be Mandatory?

Privacy impact assessments should be integrated into the overall approach to risk management with other strategic planning instruments.

David Wright

Computing Applications

step-by-step overview of the PIA process

Research and Advances Contributed articles: Virtual extension Aug 1 2011

Cyberwarfare: Connecting the Dots in Cyber Intelligence

Cyberwarfare is a potent weapon in political conflicts, espionage, and propaganda. Difficult to detect a priori, it is often recognized only after significant damage has been done. Gaining offensive capability on the cyber battlefield figures prominently in the strategies of many countries.

Sanjay Goel

Architecture and Hardware

Defense Cyber Investigations Training Academy

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