DEPARTMENT:
From the President
How ACM Evolves in Response to Community Needs
One question people ask me as President is how ACM — as a global, volunteer-based organization — can evolve over time. Does it evolve to keep up with changes going on in our profession?
Cherri M. Pancake
Page 5
DEPARTMENT:
Cerf's up
AI Is Not an Excuse!
I keep hearing excuses for not working on difficult problems: "Eventually AI will solve this so there's no point working on it now." Sorry, wrong answer.
Vinton G. Cerf
Page 7
DEPARTMENT:
BLOG@CACM
Pinning Down Variables, and Taking an Agile Approach
Robin K. Hill tries to better define variables, while Edwin Torres acknowledges he is his own greatest obstacle.
Robin K. Hill, Edwin Torres
Pages 8-9
COLUMN:
News
Closing In on Quantum Error Correction
Quantum computers will only become practical when they implement quantum error correction.
Don Monroe
Pages 11-13
Protecting Industrial Control Systems
Finding, and plugging, the security holes in SCADA.
Keith Kirkpatrick
Pages 14-16
The CS Teacher Shortage
How can we fill more computer science classrooms when there just aren't enough teachers to go around?
Esther Shein
Pages 17-18
COLUMN:
Technology strategy and management
The Cloud as an Innovation Platform for Software Development
How cloud computing became a platform.
Michael A. Cusumano
Pages 20-22
COLUMN:
Inside risks
How Might We Increase System Trustworthiness?
Summarizing some of the changes that seem increasingly necessary to address known system and network deficiencies and anticipate currently unknown vulnerabilities.
Peter G. Neumann
Pages 23-25
COLUMN:
Kode Vicious
What Is a Chief Security Officer Good For?
Security requires more than an off-the-shelf solution.
George V. Neville-Neil
Pages 26-27
COLUMN:
Viewpoint
Multi-Device Digital Assistance
Increased availability of cloud services and ownership of multiple digital devices create unique opportunities for digital assistants to provide guidance across a range of tasks and scenarios.
Ryen W. White, Adam Fourney, Allen Herring, Paul N. Bennett, Nirupama Chandrasekaran, Robert Sim, Elnaz Nouri, Mark J. Encarnación
Pages 28-31
SECTION:
Practice
Open Source Firmware
Step into the world behind the kernel.
Jessie Frazelle
Pages 34-38
Demo Data as Code
Automation helps collaboration.
Thomas A. Limoncelli
Pages 39-41
The Evolution of Management
Transitioning up the ladder.
Kate Matsudaira
Pages 42-47
SECTION:
Contributed articles
Unlocking Data to Improve Public Policy
When properly secured, anonymized, and optimized for research, administrative data can be put to work to help government programs better serve those in need.
Justine S. Hastings, Mark Howison, Ted Lawless, John Ucles, Preston White
Pages 48-53
Sampling-Based Robot Motion Planning
To address the computational challenges that arise when planning for robotic systems, traditional CS algorithms, tools, and paradigms must be revisited.
Oren Salzman
Pages 54-63
SECTION:
Review articles
Consumer-Grade Fabrication and Its Potential to Revolutionize Accessibility
Digital fabrication technologies open new doors — and challenges — for real-world support.
Jennifer Mankoff, Megan Hofmann, Xiang 'Anthony' Chen, Scott E. Hudson, Amy Hurst, Jeeeun Kim
Pages 64-75
Protein Design by Provable Algorithms
Protein design algorithms can leverage provable guarantees of accuracy to provide new insights and unique optimized molecules.
Mark A. Hallen, Bruce R. Donald
Pages 76-84
SECTION:
Research highlights
Technical Perspective: The Scalability of CertiKOS
The authors of "Building Certified Concurrent OS Kernels" illustrate that formal verification can scale up to a moderate-size program (6,500 lines of C) that has substantial shared-memory concurrency.
Andrew W. Appel
Page 88
Building Certified Concurrent OS Kernels
In this work, we present CertiKOS, a novel compositional framework for building verified concurrent OS kernels.
Ronghui Gu, Zhong Shao, Hao Chen, Jieung Kim, Jérémie Koenig, Xiongnan (Newman) Wu, Vilhelm Sjöberg, David Costanzo
Pages 89-99
COLUMN:
Last byte
Dust Wars
Considering willful approaches to a golden opportunity.
Dennis Shasha
Pages 104-ff