May 2014 - Vol. 57 No. 5

Features

Opinion May 1 2014

Many of us have lived with Moore's Law for all of our professional lives. We knew that it cannot continue forever, but the end always seemed to be beyond the horizon. No more. We are witnessing the denouement of an extraordinary technical saga.

Moshe Y. Vardi

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion From the president May 1 2014

Sometimes It Takes Some Time!

Too often one gets the impression of tacit expectation that scientific research has to produce results within some predictable time. But many examples illustrate that it may take some time to validate the results of theoretical research.

Vinton G. Cerf

Computing Applications

Opinion Letters to the Editor May 1 2014

Know Your Steganographic Enemy

"Trends in Steganography" (Mar. 2014) included a good survey of the history of data hiding and a comprehensive list of methods for inserting bits into cover objects but omitted an important actor from the scene — the enemy.

CACM Staff

Computing Profession

News May 1 2014

ACM’s 2014 General Election: Please Take This Opportunity to Vote

Meet the candidates who introduce their plans — and stands — for the Association.

CACM Staff

Computing Applications

BLOG@CACM May 1 2014

Rethinking How to Teach Programming to Newcomers

Judy Robertson reviews what happened when she decided to introduce Android development into the curriculum for first-year computer science students.

Judy Robertson

Computing Applications

News May 1 2014

How Computers Are Changing Biology

Sophisticated computer models and simulations are replacing test tubes and beakers. This revolution in biology research is redefining medicine, agriculture, and more.

Samuel Greengard

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

News May 1 2014

The Forever Disc

Can our digital data represent us a million years from now?

Tom Geller

Architecture and Hardware

News May 1 2014

Technology Confounds the Courts

Despite the need to make decisions relevant to technologies, the U.S. Supreme Court is not the most techno-savvy group.

Keith Kirkpatrick

Computing Applications

Supreme Court of the United States, October 2010

Opinion Economic and business dimensions May 1 2014

Why Bitcoin Has Value

Evaluating the evolving controversial digital currency.

Marshall Van Alstyne

Computing Applications

Opinion Law and technology May 1 2014

What Happened to Video Game Piracy?

How video games thrive in a world of piracy.

Ben Depoorter

Computing Applications

Opinion Historical reflections May 1 2014

Tom Kilburn: A Tale of Five Computers

Reflections on a British computer engineer who influenced several important machines, including the first stored-program computer.

David Anderson

Architecture and Hardware

Opinion Education May 1 2014

Building a Virtual Community of Practice For K-12 CS Teachers

Bringing educators together and focusing their interests toward improving computer science education in high schools.

Steve Cooper, Shuchi Grover, and Beth Simon

Computing Applications

Opinion Viewpoint May 1 2014

Robots Are Coming

Considering the societal implications of the robotics revolution.

Ruzena Bajcsy

Computing Applications

Practice May 1 2014

The NSA and Snowden: Securing the All-Seeing Eye

How good security at the NSA could have stopped him.

Bob Toxen

Computing Applications

Practice May 1 2014

A Primer on Provenance

Better understanding data requires tracking its history and context.

Computing Applications

Practice May 1 2014

Don’t Settle For Eventual Consistency

Stronger properties for low-latency geo-replicated storage.

Wyatt Lloyd, Michael J. Freedman, Michael Kaminsky, and David G. Andersen

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles May 1 2014

Cloud Security: A Gathering Storm

Users' trust in cloud systems is undermined by the lack of transparency in existing security policies.

Mihir Nanavati, Patrick Colp, Bill Aiello, and Andrew Warfield

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Contributed articles May 1 2014

Reducing the Software Value Gap

How to cope with the growing demand for software solutions at no extra cost.

Shimeon Pass and Boaz Ronen

Architecture and Hardware

Reducing the Software Value Gap, illustration

Research and Advances Contributed articles May 1 2014

The Community Source Approach to Software Development and the Kuali Experience

Participating educational institutions get a much more cost-effective result compared to the commercial off-the-shelf alternative.

Manlu Liu, Sean Hansen, and Qiang Tu

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Review articles May 1 2014

Understanding the Empirical Hardness of NP-Complete Problems

Using machine learning to predict algorithm runtime.

Kevin Leyton-Brown, Holger H. Hoos, Frank Hutter, and Lin Xu

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Understanding the Empirical Hardness of NP-Complete Problems, illustration

Research and Advances Research highlights May 1 2014

Technical Perspective: The Interplay of Neuroscience and Cryptography

An ideal scheme for password storage would enable a password with more than 20 bits of randomness to be input and output from the brain of a human being who is unconscious of the process and thus unable to give away or reveal the password.

Ari Juels and Bonnie Wong

Architecture and Hardware

Research and Advances Research highlights May 1 2014

Neuroscience Meets Cryptography: Crypto Primitives Secure Against Rubber Hose Attacks

We present a defense against coercion attacks using the concept of implicit learning from cognitive psychology. We use a carefully crafted computer game to allow a user to implicitly learn a secret password without them having any explicit or conscious knowledge of the trained password.

Architecture and Hardware

Neuroscience Meets Cryptography, illustration

Opinion Last byte May 1 2014

Puzzled: A Sort, of Sorts

Sorting is one of the most fundamental, and most studied, computational tasks. The problem is typically to put n items in order. The objective is to minimize time, space, number of comparisons, or number of rounds of comparisons.

Peter Winkler

Computing Applications

Recent Issues

Explore the Issue Archive