Will MOOCs Destroy Academia?
"Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee," wrote the prophet Isaiah. This phrase has been popping into my mind as I have been following the recent raging discussions over the topic of MOOCs.
Moshe Y. Vardi
Page 5
Why Is Accessibility So Hard?
I sometimes think that, of all the disciplines, ours ought to be the most effective at adapting to the varied needs of users. For various physical limitations, we really should be able to configure our software to adapt. But …
Vinton G. Cerf
Page 7
DEPARTMENT:
Letters to the Editor
When Predicting, Start With Humility
In "Don't Feel Bad If You Can't Predict the Future," Peter J. Denning wrote: "Make sure your models are validated and that their assumed recurrences fit the world you are forecasting. Ground your speculations in observable …
CACM Staff
Pages 8-9
DEPARTMENT:
BLOG@CACM
New Opportunities For New SQL
Michael Stonebraker expects a substantial increase in the number of New SQL engines using a variety of architectures in the near future.
Michael Stonebraker
Pages 10-11
Major Update to ACM's Computing Classification System
ACM has completed a major update of its Computing Classification System (CCS), which has served as the de facto standard for classifying the computing literature since 1964.
Bernard Rous
Page 12
COLUMN:
News
Software on Mars
With the AEGIS system, the Mars Exploration Rovers can autonomously select, capture, and analyze images using onboard logic.
Gregory Goth
Pages 13-15
Control Without Controllers
Disney's Touché project could transform every conductive surface into a touch-control surface.
Tom Geller
Pages 16-18
On the Digital Trail
Forensics experts increasingly use data from digital devices to solve crimes, fight lawsuits, and unravel accidents.
Samuel Greengard
Pages 19-21
COLUMN:
Privacy and security
The Research Value of Publishing Attacks
Security research can be improved by more effectively sharing what is learned from attacks on information systems.
David Basin, Srdjan Capkun
Pages 22-24
COLUMN:
Legally speaking
Oracle v. Google: Are APIs Copyrightable?
Assessing the first phase of the trial based on claims that Google's Android platform infringes Oracle's Java-related copyrights and patents.
Pamela Samuelson
Pages 25-27
COLUMN:
Economic and business dimensions
Decentralization Versus Centralization in IT Governance
It's not as simple as you might think.
Kristina McElheran
Pages 28-30
COLUMN:
Education
Learning to Teach Computer Science: The Need For a Methods Course
A multipronged approach to preparing computer science teachers is critical to success.
Aman Yadav, John T. Korb
Pages 31-33
COLUMN:
Computing ethics
Societal Implications of the Emerging Smart Grid
Seeking solutions to concerns that go beyond the engineering of the smart grid.
Timothy Kostyk, Joseph Herkert
Pages 34-36
COLUMN:
Viewpoint
Keeping Technology Promises
Considering new models for educational technology and methods.
Richard A. DeMillo
Pages 37-39
SECTION:
Practice
Resilience Engineering: Learning to Embrace Failure
A discussion with Jesse Robbins, Kripa Krishnan, John Allspaw, and Tom Limoncelli.
Pages 40-47
Weathering the Unexpected
Failures happen, and resilience drills help organizations prepare for them.
Kripa Krishnan
Pages 48-52
Disks from the Perspective of a File System
Disks lie. And the controllers that run them are partners in crime.
Marshall Kirk Mckusick
Pages 53-55
SECTION:
Contributed articles
Functional Encryption: A New Vision For Public-Key Cryptography
Decryption keys allow users to learn a specific function of the encrypted data and nothing else.
Dan Boneh, Amit Sahai, Brent Waters
Pages 56-64
Cheminformatics
Open-source chemistry software and molecular databases broaden the research horizons of drug discovery.
Joerg Kurt Wegner, Aaron Sterling, Rajarshi Guha, Andreas Bender, Jean-Loup Faulon, Janna Hastings, Noel O'Boyle, John Overington, Herman Van Vlijmen, Egon Willighagen
Pages 65-75
SECTION:
Review articles
The Challenges Ahead For Bio-Inspired 'Soft' Robotics
Soft materials may enable the automation of tasks beyond the capacities of current robotic technology.
Rolf Pfeifer, Max Lungarella, Fumiya Iida
Pages 76-87
SECTION:
Research highlights
Technical Perspective: Open Platforms For Computational Photography
A fundamental impediment to the widespread development and deployment of in-camera algorithms is the lack of a clean open architecture for controlling camera features and writing the corresponding real-time processing and …
Richard Szeliski
Page 89
The Frankencamera: An Experimental Platform For Computational Photography
Progress in computational photography has been hampered by the lack of a portable, programmable camera with sufficient image quality and computing power. To address this problem, we have designed and implemented the Frankencamera …
Andrew Adams, David E. Jacobs, Jennifer Dolson, Marius Tico, Kari Pulli, Eino-Ville Talvala, Boris Ajdin, Daniel Vaquero, Hendrik P. A. Lensch, Mark Horowitz, Sung Hee Park, Natasha Gelfand, Jongmin Baek, Wojciech Matusik, Marc Levoy
Pages 90-98
Technical Perspective: The Realities of Home Broadband
Buying residential broadband services seems relatively simple: pick among a small number of plans, and then compare similar plans by price. Unfortunately, reality is somewhat more complicated.
Henning Schulzinne
Page 99
Measuring Home Broadband Performance
We present the results from the first study of Internet access link performance measured directly from home routers. Our findings provide a snapshot of access network performance across the United States.
Srikanth Sundaresan, Walter de Donato, Nick Feamster, Renata Teixeira, Sam Crawford, Antonio Pescapè
Pages 100-109
COLUMN:
Last byte
Puzzled: Weighed in the Balance
Many of us have pondered puzzles involving a set of n coins and a balance scale. Here we take a slightly different tack: a set of coins and a balance scale that can tell us which of two sets of coins is heavier or that they are …
Peter Winkler
Page 120