March 2009 – Communications of the ACM (original) (raw)
Opinion Editor's letter Mar 1 2009
The 2008 presidential campaign slogan "Yes, We Can" is the English translation of the United Farm Workers' 1972 slogan "Sí, se puede," or "Yes, it can be done."
Opinion Publisher's corner Mar 1 2009
Communications’ Web Site to Launch in March
2008 was a year of significant change for Communications. The same will be the case in 2009. After a successful relaunch of the print magazine last year, ACM is getting ready to launch a new Communications’ Web site, which will go live this month. The new site will complement the magazine by providing an easy […]
Opinion Letters to the editor Mar 1 2009
Children’s Magic Won’t Deliver the Semantic Web
To explain the nature of "Ontologies and the Semantic Web" (Dec. 2008), Ian Horrocks, a leading figure behind the theory and practice of Description Logics, employed analogous characters and language of the fictional Harry Potter children's novels.
Opinion CACM online Mar 1 2009
The task identified by ACM in 2005 has come to fruition. Communications of the ACM has been remade both in print and online. The magazine was relaunched in July 2008, and now we are putting the finishing touches on the Web site to launch in March at cacm.acm.org. To say a Web site is preparing […]
Advanced computational models are enabling researchers to create increasingly sophisticated prediction markets.
Researchers are turning to computers to help us take advantage of our own cognitive abilities and of the wisdom of crowds.
The Evolution of Virtualization
Virtualization is moving out of the data center and making inroads with mobile computing, security, and software delivery.
A Difficult, Unforgettable Idea
On the 40th anniversary of Douglas C. Engelbart's "The Mother of All Demos," computer scientists discuss the event's influence — and imagine what could have been.
Forty-four men and women are being inducted this year as 2008 ACM Fellows.
Opinion Viewpoints Mar 1 2009
Is Software Engineering Engineering?
Software engineering continues to be dogged by claims it is not engineering. Adopting a computer-systems view that embraces hardware, software, and user environment may help.
Opinion Viewpoints Mar 1 2009
When Is a ‘License’ Really a Sale?
Can you resell software even if the package says you can't? What are the implications for copyright law of the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous June 2008 decision in Quanta v. LG Electronics?
Opinion Viewpoints Mar 1 2009
This Viewpoint boils down into a few magazine pages what I've learned in my 32 years of mentoring Ph.D. students.
Opinion Viewpoints Mar 1 2009
Some advice for those doing the advising (and what the advisors can learn from the advisees).
Opinion Viewpoints Mar 1 2009
An Interview With C.A.R. Hoare
C.A.R. Hoare, developer of the Quicksort algorithm and a lifelong contributor to the theory and design of programming languages, discusses the practical application of his theoretical ideas.
Smarter, more powerful scripting languages will improve game performance while making gameplay development more efficient.
Erlang For Concurrent Programming
Designed for concurrency from the ground up, the Erlang language can be a valuable tool to help solve concurrent problems.
Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2009
Reflecting Human Values in the Digital Age
HCI experts must broaden the field's scope and adopt new methods to be useful in 21st-century sociotechnical environments.
Research and Advances Contributed articles Mar 1 2009
Statecharts in the Making: A Personal Account
How avionics work led to a graphical language for reactive systems where the diagrams themselves define the system's behavior.
Research and Advances Review articles Mar 1 2009
Probabilistically Checkable Proofs
Can a proof be checked without reading it?
Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2009
Technical Perspective: The Beauty of Error-Correcting Codes
Error-correcting codes are the means by which we compensate for interference in communication, and are essential for the accurate transmission and storage of digital data.
Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2009
Error Correction Up to the Information-Theoretic Limit
Ever since the birth of coding theory almost 60 years ago, researchers have been pursuing the elusive goal of constructing the "best codes," whose encoding introduces the minimum possible redundancy for the level of noise they can correct.
Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2009
Technical Perspective: Where Biology Meets Computing
Alan Turing died in 1954 in his laboratory after eating a cyanide-laced apple. During his last years, Turing had become interested in bio-chemical systems. He had proposed a reaction-diffusion model in his 1952 paper entitled "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis," putting forth his hypothesis of biological pattern formation.
Research and Advances Research highlights Mar 1 2009
Learning and Detecting Emergent Behavior in Networks of Cardiac Myocytes
We address the problem of specifying and detecting emergent behavior in networks of cardiac myocytes, spiral electric waves in particular, a precursor to atrial and ventricular fibrillation.
Opinion Last byte Mar 1 2009
Puzzled: Solutions and Sources
Last month (February 2009, p. 104) we posed a trio of brain teasers concerning algorithm termination. Here, we offer some possible solutions. How did you do?
Opinion Last byte Mar 1 2009
Future Tense: Radical Evolution
In 1913, the U.S. Government prosecuted Lee De Forest for telling investors that RCA would soon be able to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic. What similarly preposterous claims are enabled by today's technology?
Research and Advances Virtual extension Mar 1 2009
A New Map For Knowledge Dissemination Channels
The landscape for Information Systems (IS) research spreads across a large, diverse, and growing territory with linkages to other fields and traversed by increasing numbers of researchers. There are well over 500 journals for publishing IS-related research.
Research and Advances Virtual extension Mar 1 2009
Online Privacy Practices in Higher Education: Making the Grade?
In June 2006, the trustees of Ohio University (OU) voted unanimously to spend up to $4 million on enhanced information security. The decision came in the wake of the media coverage about OU's "lax, low-priority attitude toward security," resulting in data breaches, the theft of Social Security numbers, and an unsecured alumni database which was used by hackers for over a year to share music files and launch attacks on other systems.
Research and Advances Virtual extension Mar 1 2009
Ensuring Transparency in Computational Modeling
Computational models are of great scientific and societal importance because they are used every day in a wide variety of products and policies. However, computational models are not pure abstractions, but rather they are tools constructed and used by humans.
Research and Advances Virtual extension Mar 1 2009
Open Access Publishing in Science
While the evolving information society is freely opening and sharing its diaries, social networks and source codes, it remains to be seen if the same will come true for scientific knowledge. Despite strong sympathy for the idea, scientists balk at Open Access publishing. Here we shed some light on why this is so.
Research and Advances Virtual extension Mar 1 2009
Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation Network?: The Case of Apple's iPod
Innovation is often touted as a key driver of economic growth. However, when firms operate within production and innovation networks that span national and firm boundaries, the question arises as to who actually benefits from innovation.
Research and Advances Virtual extension Mar 1 2009
Concept Similarity By Evaluating Information Contents and Feature Vectors: A Combined Approach
Evaluating semantic similarity of concepts is a problem that has been extensively investigated in the literature in different areas, such as Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Databases, and Software Engineering. Currently, it is growing in importance in different settings.
Research and Advances Virtual extension Mar 1 2009
Technical Opinion: Security Threats of Smart Phones and Bluetooth
In a recent security experiment, a computer with a Bluetooth sniffing program was hidden in a suitcase that was wheeled around public places. The objective was to ascertain the number of Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices that could be infected with viruses wirelessly.
May 2025 Vol. 68 No. 5 
April 2025 Vol. 68 No. 4 
March 2025 Vol. 68 No. 3 
February 2025 Vol. 68 No. 2