Home → Magazine Archive → June 1984 (Vol. 27, No. 6)
Table of Contents
President's letter
David Brandin
Page 525
ACM forum
Robert L. Ashenhurst
Page 526
From Washington: NSF takes the initiative
The National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee for Advanced Scientific Computing Resources was formed to provide leadership for large-scale scientific computing throughout the United States. Consisting of 15 members representing …
Rosalie Steier
Page 528
Programming pearls: graphic output
In previous columns we've studied the innards of programs. In this column we'll take a broader view of the programmer's task and consider the kind of output a program should produce. We'll focus on a single problem: once a system …
Jon L. Bentley
Pages 529-536
Computer matching: should it be banned?
Since discovering the technique of computer matching several years ago, government managers have been invoking this computer tool in the attempt to root out waste and fraud in their programs. Is computer matching an indispensable …
Gene Dallaire
Page 537
Computer matching is a serious threat to individual rights
John Shattuck
Pages 538-541
The government needs computer matching to root out waste and fraud
Richard P. Kusserow
Pages 542-545
Laser optical disk: the coming revolution in on-line storage
Commercially available only recently, the optical disk drive uses a laser beam to burn impressions onto a plastic disk. Employing a highly focused beam rather than a diffuse magnetic field to write, the laser optical disk drive …
Larry Fujitani
Pages 546-554
An assessment of the prototyping approach to information systems development
A two-phased research project comparing the prototyping approach with the more traditional life cycle approach finds that prototyping facilitates communication between users and designers during the design process. However, the …
Maryam Alavi
Pages 556-563
Updating a database in an unsafe environment
Normally, when an application makes use of a database, considerable resources are invested in maintaining the integrity of that database. However, in situations where use of a database may be desirable even though the normal
…
Anthony I. Hinxman
Pages 564-566
A large font virtual terminal interface: a software prosthesis for the visually impaired
A large font software interface running under UNIX1 is of great assistance to the severely visually impaired in the interactive use of computers. The interface, which functions as a virtual terminal as far as other processes/ …
Ephraim P. Glinert
Pages 567-572
Talking to UNIX in English: an overview of UC
UC is a natural language help facility which advises users in using the UNIX operating system. Users can query UC about how to do things, command names and formats, online definitions of UNIX or general operating systems terminology …
Robert Wilensky, Yigal Arens, David Chin
Pages 574-593
Anomalies in parallel branch-and-bound algorithms
We consider the effects of parallelizing branch-and-bound algorithms by expanding several live nodes simultaneously. It is shown that it is quite possible for a parallel branch-and-bound algorithm using n2 processors to take1 …
Ten-Hwang Lai, Sartaj Sahni
Pages 594-602