February 2017 - Vol. 60 No. 2

Features

Opinion Departments Feb 1 2017

Celebrating 50 Years of the Turing Award

To celebrate the first 50 years of the A.M. Turing Award, ACM is sponsoring a yearlong series of programs, as highlighted on the Turing 50th website http://www.acm.org/turing-award-50.

Vicki L. Hanson

Computing Profession

Opinion Departments Feb 1 2017

Social and Ethical Behavior in the Internet of Things

"Denial-of-service" cyberattacks require us to up our technical game in Internet security and safety. They also expose the need to frame and enforce social and ethical behavior, privacy, and appropriate use in Internet environments.

Francine Berman and Vinton G. Cerf

Computing Profession

Opinion Letters to the editor Feb 1 2017

Use the Scientific Method in Computer Science

Adi Livnat's and Christos Papadimitriou's critique of genetic algorithms in "Sex as an Algorithm" (Nov. 2016) stands in counterpoint to a voluminous empirical record of practical successes.

CACM Staff

Opinion Panels in print Feb 1 2017

Artificial Intelligence

To help celebrate 50 years of the ACM Turing Award and the visionaries who have received it, ACM has launched a campaign called "Panels in Print," which takes the form of a collection of responses from Turing laureates, ACM award recipients, and other ACM experts on a given topic or trend.

CACM Staff

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Raj Reddy, Jeff Dean, David Blei, and Pedro Felzenszwalb

BLOG@CACM Feb 1 2017

Liberal Arts Academia Wants You!

Janet Davis makes a plea to CS practitioners to consider even a short teaching stint.

Janet Davis

Computing Applications

News Feb 1 2017

Secure Quantum Communications

Data locking experiments provide stepping stones to a possible future in quantum cryptography.

Chris Edwards

Architecture and Hardware

Secure Quantum Communications, illustration

News Feb 1 2017

Are Computer Chips the New Security Threat?

Security researchers have identified a technique for installing a backdoor on computer chips, a security flaw that could profoundly change the computing industry.

Samuel Greengard

Architecture and Hardware

Are Computer Chips the New Security Threat? illustrative photo

News Feb 1 2017

It’s Not the Algorithm, It’s the Data

In risk assessment and predictive policing, biased data can yield biased results.

Keith Kirkpatrick

Computing Applications

It's Not the Algorithm, It's the Data, illustrative photo

Opinion Inside risks Feb 1 2017

The Future of the Internet of Things

The IoT can become ubiquitous worldwide — if the pursuit of systemic trustworthiness can overcome the potential risks.

Ulf Lindqvist and Peter G. Neumann

Security and Privacy

The Future of the Internet of Things, illustration

Opinion Education Feb 1 2017

Fostering Creativity Through Computing

How creative thinking tools and computing can be used to support creative human endeavors.

Aman Yadav and Steve Cooper

Computing Profession

Opinion Kode vicious Feb 1 2017

The Unholy Trinity of Software Development

Tests, documentation, and code.

George V. Neville-Neil

Computing Applications

The Unholy Trinity of Software Development, illustrative photo

Opinion Privacy and security Feb 1 2017

User-Centric Distributed Solutions For Privacy-Preserving Analytics

How can cryptography empower users with sensitive data to access large-scale computing platforms in a privacy-preserving manner?

Azer Bestavros, Andrei Lapets, and Mayank Varia

Security and Privacy

User-Centric Distributed Solutions for Privacy-Preserving Analytics, illustration

Opinion Viewpoint Feb 1 2017

Smart Machines Are Not a Threat to Humanity

Worrying about machines that are too smart distracts us from the real and present threat from machines that are too dumb.

Alan Bundy

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Smart Machines Are Not a Threat to Humanity, illustration

Opinion Viewpoint Feb 1 2017

AI Dangers: Imagined and Real

Arguing against the arguments for the concept of the singularity.

Devdatt Dubhashi and Shalom Lappin

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

AI Dangers: Imagined and Real, illustration

Practice Feb 1 2017

Life Beyond Distributed Transactions

An apostate's opinion.

Pat Helland

Architecture and Hardware

Life Beyond Distributed Transactions, illustration

Practice Feb 1 2017

Are You Load Balancing Wrong?

Anyone can use a load balancer. Using it properly is much more difficult.

Thomas A. Limoncelli

Computing Applications

Are You Load Balancing Wrong? illustrative photo

Practice Feb 1 2017

BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control

Measuring bottleneck bandwidth and round-trip propagation time.

Computing Applications

BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Feb 1 2017

Government-sanctioned and market-based anti-piracy measures can both mitigate economic harm from piracy.

Brett Danaher, Michael D. Smith, and Rahul Telang

Computing Applications

Copyright Enforcement in the Digital Age, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles Feb 1 2017

Computing History Beyond the U.K. and U.S.: Selected Landmarks from Continental Europe

It is past time to acknowledge 400 years of European computational innovation from non-English-speaking scientists and engineers.

Herbert Bruderer

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Review articles Feb 1 2017

Model Learning

Model learning emerges as an effective method for black-box state machine models of hardware and software components.

Frits Vaandrager

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights Feb 1 2017

Technical Perspective: Cleaning Up Flaws in TLS Implementations

One unfortunate fact about protocols is that as they get older and applied to more scenarios — and TLS is used basically everywhere — they tend to gain weight. A truism of the security community is that "complexity is the enemy of security." What is the community doing about this?

Eric Rescorla

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Feb 1 2017

A Messy State of the Union: Taming the Composite State Machines of TLS

We systematically test popular TLS implementations and find unexpected transitions in many of their state machines that have stayed hidden for years. We show how some of these flaws lead to critical security vulnerabilities.

Computing Applications

Research and Advances Research highlights Feb 1 2017

Authentication Using Pulse-Response Biometrics

We propose a new biometric based on the human body's response to an electric square pulse signal, called pulse-response.

Ivan Martinovic, Kasper Rasmussen, Marc Roeschlin, and Gene Tsudik

Computing Applications

Authentication Using Pulse-Response Biometrics, illustration

Opinion Last byte Feb 1 2017

Fatal Guidance

In a series of interactive murder mysteries, I might not have done it, but, then again, maybe I did

William Sims Bainbridge

Computing Applications

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