Communications of the ACM articles from April 2000

Communications of the ACM archives from April 2000

MERGER MARRIAGES.(Internet mergers)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Bank mergers dominated 1998; 1999 was the year of the telecommunications merger. And this could be the year of Internet mergers. Experts expect the record-setting $166 billion merger of AOL and Time Warner may be the beginning of a wave of Net...

CALL FOR SECURITY.(News Briefs)
April 1, 2000... In the wake of February's crippling hacker attacks on popular Web sites, among them CNN.com, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon.com, and E*Trade, President Clinton convened a meeting of computer executives and academics and endorsed a $9 million proposal to...

GIGAHERTZ AND BEYOND.(IBM, Intel)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... The gigahertz chip era has arrived, faster than Gordon Moore could have predicted, reports the New York Times. Both Intel and IBM will introduce production chips in the second half of the year operating at gigahertz speeds. Though computers...

MORPHING ROBOTOYS FOR X-MAS.(News Briefs)
April 1, 2000... A few of the latest high-tech toys available before the 2000 holiday season: Computer Sound Morpher (Intel Play, $44, ages 6 and up). PC-based microphone lets children record sounds, then morph and mix them with preset sounds and...

PLASMA DISPLAY.(innovation from BTL Fwllows)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... A new, tiny plasma display lit by a self-illuminating semiconductor chip promises future inexpensive electronic devices, from laptop computers to video conferencing to virtual reality eyepieces. The technology, developed by Martin P. Lepselter...

DOMAIN NAME STAKES UPPED.(Loans.com, Business.com)(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... A Silicon Valley computer consultant sold the Internet domain name Loans.com for $3 million in cash, continuing to raise the stakes for popular Web addresses. The price is the second highest paid for a domain name. The name business.com was...

OLFACTORY OPT IN.(Digiscents' digital language for transmitting fragrances)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... A new digital language for recording, re-creating, and transmitting fragrances has been developed, dedicated to bringing smells to computer games, Web pages, and even movies. Digiscents of Oakland, Calif., also plans to sell a small computer...

CHINA'S EMAIL SHANGHAID.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Only 10 million people--less than 1% of Chinas population--are online. But offliners have an option: the post office. Letters can be brought to a post office, where they are scanned and emailed anywhere in the world. Customers who are wired but...

Securing User Passwords.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2000... ANNE ADAMS AND MARTINA Angela Sasse say a lot of sensible things in their article about password selection, "Users Are Not the Enemy" (Dec. 1999, p. 41). They note correctly that users rarely know what is needed to construct a secure password...

ACM Fellows.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... The ACM Fellows Program was established by Council in 1993 to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM....

CALL FOR 2001 ACM FELLOW NOMINATIONS.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... The designation "ACM Fellow" may be conferred upon those ACM Members who have distinguished themselves by outstanding technical and professional achievements in information technology, who are current voting members of ACM and have been voting...

A Patchwork of Legislation and Regulation.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 1, 2000... Corporations tout consumerism against citizenship. America Online's takeover of Time Warner is another great coup for Steve Case and his colleagues. This success was made possible by AOL's use of technology, its good understanding of its...

Surfing Your Turf.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... For a medium that holds anonymity in high regard, privacy is fast eroding. The Web offers bottomless information, bountiful entertainment--or at least the pursuit of it--and best of all, anonymity. But like tracks in snow, the ability...

ERP EXPERIENCES AND EVOLUTION.(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... Enterprise resource planning systems are configurable information systems packages that integrate information and information-based processes within and across functional areas in an organization. The current generation of ERP systems also...

ERP ADOPTION BY EUROPEAN MIDSIZE COMPANIES.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... Searching for ERP systems offering a perfect fit. Until recently, the major ERP vendors (SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, and Baan) were mainly targeting the high end of the market (companies with more than 1,000 employees), but this...

How the Survey was Conducted.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... The survey was performed using a prestructured questionnaire that covered questions about ERP adoption decisions, general company policies concerning IT, and investment planning. Because various European countries were included in the survey,...

THE ROLE OF THE CIO AND IT FUNCTION IN ERP.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... Are some organizational decision-makers blind to the benefits of ERP? By early 2000 the ERP revolution(1) generated over $20 billion in revenues annually for suppliers and an additional $20 billion for consulting firms. However, for many...

INTEGRATING ERP IN THE BUSINESS SCHOOL CURRICULUM.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... Implementing ERP into business education is as challenging as it is rewarding--and necessary. Demand for trained enterprise resource planning professionals has motivated a number of universities to join alliances with ERP software vendors...

SAP Resources.(Brief Article)(Directory)
April 1, 2000... Web Sites www.sap.com offers update information about products, installations, press releases, and white papers. www.duc.auburn.edu/sap/is the unofficial Web site of University Alliance--information on programs and activities. ...

MULTISITE ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS.(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... The meanings of "enterprise" and "site" vary depending on unique organizational circumstances. Historically, ERP systems evolved from MRP II systems, which are designed to manage a production facility's orders, production plans, and...

CULTURAL FITS AND MISFITS: IS ERP A UNIVERSAL SOLUTION?(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... The universality of embedded business models of "industry best practices" is considered from an Asian perspective. ERP software packages that manage and integrate business processes across organizational functions and locations cost...

ERP SYSTEM MIGRATIONS.(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... It has become increasingly clear that implementing an ERP system requires extensive efforts to transform the organization's processes [1]. ERP systems are supposedly based on best practice generic business processes. Therefore, when buying an...

MAKING ERP A SUCCESS.(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... Using business process models to achieve positive results. Business information systems can be either designed as custom applications or purchased as off-the-shelf standard solutions. The development of custom applications is generally...

COMPONENTIZING THE ENTERPRISE APPLICATION PACKAGES.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... Tomorrow's customers will demand the ability to buy, reuse, and build theft competitive-edge solutions: Can the package vendors adapt in time? The so-called enterprise resource planning applications market was one of the fastest growing...

EMBODIED CONVERSATIONAL INTERFACE AGENTS.(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... More than another friendly lace, Rea knows how to have a conversation with living, breathing human users with a wink, a nod, and a sidelong glance. Animals and humans all manifest social qualities and skills. Dogs recognize dominance and...

OCEAN AND CLIMATE MODELING.
April 1, 2000... Only the most advanced parallel computers are fast enough to produce high-quality ocean simulations and accurate global climate predictions of temperature and precipitation. Climate prediction has been regarded by researchers as a huge...

THE ETHICS OF SAFETY-CRITICAL SYSTEMS.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 1, 2000... There are many practices that should be avoided in order to enhance the safety features of software systems. Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth. --Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) The use of safety-critical software is rapidly...

INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEMS AND MULTISENSOR DATA FUSION.(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... Creating a cyberspace situational awareness environment will take more sophisticated tools and network sensors. Next-generation cyberspace intrusion detection (ID) systems will require the fusion of data from myriad heterogeneous...

Deconstructing the "Any" Key.(software design)(Technology Information)
April 1, 2000... A popular techies' tale goes as follows. A user calls customer support with a problem: "The program says `press any key to continue' but I can't find the any key on the keyboard." Stupid user. We suppose this story is apocryphal. Most...

Data Mining and Rough Set Theory.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2000... This is in response to "Myths about Rough Set Theory (Nov. 1998, p. 102) by W.W. Koczkodaj, M. Orlowski, and V.W. Marek. The authors raise some important issues and express some legitimate concerns. We are surprised they list rough set theory...

Abstract Class Hierarchies, Factories, and Stable Designs.(Technology Tutorial)(Tutorial)
April 1, 2000... Much of the debate about the general aptness of class hierarchies is rooted in the different objectives taxonomists and implementers are thought to pursue. Designers of conceptual hierarchies tend to embrace Aristotle's principle of genus et...

Denial-of-Service Attacks.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)(Column)
April 1, 2000... A Funny Thing Happened on my Way to the (Risks) Forum this month. I had planned to write a column on the ever-burgeoning risks of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks relating to the Internet, private networks, computer systems, cable modems, and...