European Women in Computing
Two years ago, the ACM Europe Council formed ACM-WE to sponsor European initiatives for women in computing.
Vicki Hanson, Reyyan Ayfer, Bev Bachmayer
Page 5
Responsible Programming
Welcome to "Cerf's Up!" I am grateful for Editor-in-Chief Moshe Vardi's invitation to continue writing for Communications; this column succeeds the "From the President" column I penned during my service to ACM in that role.
Vinton G. Cerf
Page 7
DEPARTMENT:
Letters to the Editor
Snowden Weak Link: Copying to USB Device
I wish reality were as simple as Bob Toxen made it out to be in his article "The NSA and Snowden: Securing the All-Seeing Eye" (May 2014).
CACM Staff
Pages 8-9
DEPARTMENT:
[email protected]
The Difficulty of Teaching Programming Languages, and the Benefits of Hands-on Learning
Mark Guzdial considers the "poor learnability" of programming languages, while Philip Guo enumerates some practical benefits to working in a CS lab.
Mark Guzdial, Philip Guo
Pages 10-11
COLUMN:
News
Big Data Meets Big Science
Next-generation scientific instruments are forcing researchers to question the limits of massively parallel computing.
Alex Wright
Pages 13-15
Robots Compete in Disaster Scenarios
The DARPA Robotics Challenge pitted teams from around the world against each other in a series of disaster-themed tasks.
Logan Kugler
Pages 16-18
Holographic Projection Systems Provide Eternal Life
Optical tricks help deceased entertainers keep on performing.
Esther Shein
Pages 19-21
COLUMN:
Legally speaking
Watching TV on Internet-Connected Devices
The ABC vs. Aereo case has potentially far-reaching consequences.
Pamela Samuelson
Pages 22-24
COLUMN:
Computing ethics
Toward a Pedagogy of Ethical Practice
Teaching computing ethics in a manner that allows students to address both abstract ethical knowledge and actual ethical practice.
Chuck Huff, Almut Furchert
Pages 25-27
COLUMN:
Technology strategy and management
The Business of the State
Considering the opportunities and challenges for commercial firms involved with government business process outsourcing.
Mari Sako
Pages 28-30
COLUMN:
Broadening participation
That Classroom 'Magic'
Effective teaching practices for broadening participation in computer science.
Jane Margolis, Joanna Goode, Gail Chapman, Jean J. Ryoo
Pages 31-33
COLUMN:
Viewpoint
Structural Challenges and the Need to Adapt
Broadening the conversation about scholars and scholarship in computing and information research.
Batya Friedman
Pages 34-37
Licensing Professional Software Engineers: Seize the Opportunity
Professional organizations should be in the forefront of the ongoing discussion about licensing professional software engineers.
Phillip A. Laplante
Pages 38-40
SECTION:
Practice
Who Must You Trust?
You must have some trust if you want to get anything done.
Thomas Wadlow
Pages 42-49
Automated QA Testing at Electronic Arts
A discussion with Michael Donat, Jafar Husain, and Terry Coatta
Pages 50-57
Finding More Than One Worm in the Apple
If you see something, say something.
Mike Bland
Pages 58-64
SECTION:
Contributed articles
Community Sense and Response Systems: Your Phone as Quake Detector
The Caltech CSN project collects sensor data from thousands of personal devices for real-time response to dangerous earthquakes.
Matthew Faulkner, Robert Clayton, Thomas Heaton, K. Mani Chandy, Monica Kohler, Julian Bunn, Richard Guy, Annie Liu, Michael Olson, MingHei Cheng, Andreas Krause
Pages 66-75
The Rise of RaaS: The Resource-as-a-Service Cloud
In the RaaS cloud, virtual machines trade in fine-grain resources on the fly.
Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda, Muli Ben-Yehuda, Assaf Schuster, Dan Tsafrir
Pages 76-84
SECTION:
Review articles
Big Data and Its Technical Challenges
Exploring the inherent technical challenges in realizing the potential of Big Data.
H. V. Jagadish, Johannes Gehrke, Alexandros Labrinidis, Yannis Papakonstantinou, Jignesh M. Patel, Raghu Ramakrishnan, Cyrus Shahabi
Pages 86-94
SECTION:
Research highlights
Technical Perspective: The Power of Joint Multiuser Beamforming
Having multiple Wi-Fi Access Points with an overlapping coverage area operating on the same frequency may not be a problem anymore.
Konstantina (Dina) Papagiannaki
Page 96
JMB: Scaling Wireless Capacity with User Demands
JMB, a joint multiuser beamforming system, enables independent access points (APs) to beamform their signals and communicate with their clients on the same channel as if they were one large MIMO transmitter.
Hariharan Rahul, Swarun Kumar, Dina Katabi
Pages 97-106
COLUMN:
Last byte
Future Tense: The Chatbot and the Drone
Autonomous or not, design is destiny.
Geoffrey A. Landis
Pages 112-ff