Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2012
From ACM News
When Gaming Is Good For You
A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception.
From ACM News
Better Living Through Video Gaming
From AI-designed games to realistic virtual worlds and social physics, gaming is changing our world view.
From ACM Opinion
Jeff Jaffe Lights a Fire nder Web Standardization
It's been an action-packed two years since Jeff Jaffe took over as the World Wide Web Consortium's chief executive, but more action is the order of the day at the standards group.
From ACM News
An App That Helps You Cozy p to Strangers
Paul Davison is in a hurry. Not just to board the plane that's about to take him to his father's retirement party in San Diego, or to get through the talking points about his new iPhone app, Highlight.
From ACM News
The First Google Maps War
Did Google Maps almost cause a war in 2010? On Nov. 3 of that year, Edén Pastora, the Nicaraguan official tasked with dredging the Rio San Juan, justified his country's incursion into neighboring Costa Rica's territory by claiming…
From ACM TechNews
Stanford Offers More Free Online Classes For the World
Stanford University is introducing five free online classes in March as the next step in a university initiative to use new technologies to improve education. The classes follow the launch of pilot classes last fall, which drew…
From ACM News
Stakeout: How the Fbi Tracked and Busted a Chicago Anon
"Script kiddie." No hacker worth his salt wants to hear the term used to describe him.
From ACM TechNews
Cloud Will Create 14 Million Jobs, Study Says
Cloud computing technologies will help create nearly 14 million technology-related jobs worldwide by 2015, resulting in $1.1 trillion in revenue annually, according to a Microsoft and IDC report.
From ACM News
What Geography Can Teach S About Basketball
The annual Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, created in 2006, has become something like Bonnaroo for sports nerds. And if there was a breakout star at this year's gathering, held at MIT this past weekend, it may have been Kirk…
From ACM TechNews
Microsoft Devises Faster, More Power-Efficient Mobile Browsing System
Microsoft is developing PocketWeb, a mobile browser system that offers faster search results and conserves battery life.
From ACM News
AI Designs Its Own Video Game
It is never going to compete with the latest iteration of Call of Duty, but then Space Station Invaders is not your typical blockbuster video game. While modern shooters involve hundreds of programmers and cost millions of dollars…
From ACM TechNews
Research in Programming Languages
Crista Videira Lopes has had a difficult time determining whether academic research in programming languages is a worthwhile endeavor.
From ACM Careers
Hackers Vie For More Than $1 Million to Take Down Browsers
As alleged hackers from LulzSec and Anonymous contemplate the possibility of a life behind bars, other hackers are limbering up in Canada this week to vie for more than $1 million in prize money for their hacking prowess.
From ACM News
Hackers Arrested as One Turns Witness
Federal prosecutors brought charges against a group of men allegedly behind "LulzSec"—a globe-spanning collective of computer hackers who wreaked havoc on companies, governments and individuals world-wide—after one turned government…
From ACM News
The Bright Side of Being Hacked
Hackers operating under the banner Anonymous have been poking a finger in the eye of one private company after another for two years now.
From ACM News
Stuxnet: Computer Worm Opens New Era of Warfare
For the past few months now, the nation's top military, intelligence and law enforcement officials have been warning Congress and the country about a coming cyberattack against critical infrastructure in the United States that…
From ACM TechNews
Oak Ridge Morphing Jaguar Supercomputer Into 10+ Petaflop Titan
The U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is upgrading the Jaguar supercomputer, which is currently the most powerful system in the United States.
From ACM TechNews
A Match For Angry Words
The Dr. Fill artificial intelligence program will debut March 16 at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
From ACM TechNews
Dot-Brand Explosion Will Shell-Shock Lazy Coders-ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers reports that software developers and Webmasters need to keep track of its new generic top-level domain program to ensure that users are able to reach the domains starting…
From ACM News
Number 1 on Army's Shopping List: Wireless Broadband
The most important element of the Army's effort to modernize itself doesn't shoot. You can't ride in it. You can't wear it for protection against homemade bombs.
From ACM News
Why the Security Industry Never Actually Makes s Secure
Every year, security vendors gather at the RSA conference here to reaffirm their commitment to fencing out hackers and keeping data safe. And every year, corporate and government Web sites continue to fall victim to basic attacks…
From ACM News
Behold the Cheetah Robot. The Singularity Is Nigh!
Big defense budgets during the aughts financed the deployment of thousands of robots, including unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon's fascination with robots hasn’t slackened even in…
From ACM News
Parkagent Seeks to Reduce Urban Traffic Congestion
Researchers in Israel and the Netherlands have teamed up to create PARKAGENT, a spatially explicit agent-based software model designed to assess and optimize urban parking policies.
From ACM News
The Little White Box That Can Hack Your Network
When Jayson E. Street broke into the branch office of a national bank in May of last year, the branch manager could not have been more helpful.
From ACM TechNews
Pushing the Boundaries of Artificial Intelligence
Boston University Neuromorphics Laboratory researchers are developing an artificial intelligence-based robotics technology that can sense, learn, and adapt.
From ACM News
Here's The Best (and Prettiest) Way To See Exactly How You're Being Tracked Online
Firefox-browser provider Mozilla has released an awesome new tool for seeing how you're being tracked on the Web.
From ACM TechNews
Simulator Computes Evacuation Scenarios for Major Events
Technical University Munich researchers are leading the Interactive Pedestrian Simulation for Regional Evacuation project, which is developing emergency evacuation software that can be used to compute different scenarios at specific…
From ACM TechNews
New Computers Respond to Students' Emotions, Boredom
University of Notre Dame researchers have developed AutoTutor and Affective AutoTutor, intelligent tutoring programs that model and respond to students' cognitive and emotional states.
From ACM TechNews
Stroustrup Reveals What's New in C++ 11
Texas A&M University professor Bjarne Stroustrup recently spoke with InfoWorld's Paul Krill about the past, present, and future of C++, which was recently upgraded via the C++ 11 release.
From ACM TechNews
Automated Stress Testing for Web 2.0 Applications Helps Web Developers Find Programming Errors
Saarland University researchers are developing methods for automating and systematically testing Web applications for malfunctions and security vulnerabilities.