Communications of the ACM articles from March 2000

Communications of the ACM archives from March 2000

News Track.(News Briefs)
March 1, 2000... A FUTURE SPACE ODYSSEY A growing circle of space and tourism industry veterans say leisure trips to the cosmos are just a few years away. More than a dozen startup companies, encouraged by the traveling public's desire for new experiences...

Planning for Software Project Success.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2000... I READ ROBERT GLASS'S "Practical Programmer" column ("Evolving a New Theory of Project Success," Nov. 1999, p. 17) and would like to add a practitioner's point of view. First, I agree software projects need "More accurate and honest...

Y2K and Believing in Software Practice.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 2000... Naysayers made an event-turned-nonevent more unpleasant than it needed to be. "Countdown to doomsday"--One book's pre-Y2K description/prediction of what was happening in the computing world. The smoke (and the mirrors?) of the Y2K...

Using Telemedicine in the Department of Defense.(Government Activity)
March 1, 2000... Utilizing connectivity to provide and manage medical care in global times of crises. In order to meet increasing global crises, the U.S. military must find ways to more effectively manage manpower and time. Joint Medical...

Standardizing the European Information Society.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 2000... New steps and rapid approaches in the effort to mainstream Europe's standards process. In 1999, the European Union formally approved Agenda 2000 (europa.eu.int/comm/ agenda2000/overview/en/agenda. htm) as "a strategy for strengthening...

Trademarking the Net.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 2000... Net-based shopping is becoming commonplace, and the value of Internet real estate has become obvious both to established companies and to new Net-based companies. Name recognition is synonymous with an easy-to-remember domain name. Because...

Exploring the Telecommuting Paradox.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 2000... According to a recent survey conducted by the International Telework Association and Council, 19.6 million U.S.-based employees telecommuted in 1999 (www.telecommute.org). Although some 62% of companies are reportedly encouraging telecommuting...

PERCEPTUAL USER INTERFACES.(Technology Information)
March 1, 2000... THERE IS NO MOORE'S LAW FOR USER interfaces. Human-computer interaction has not changed fundamentally for nearly two decades. Most users interact with computers by typing, pointing, and clicking. The majority of work in human-computer...

PERCEPTUAL INTELLIGENCE.(Technology Information)
March 1, 2000... Good-bye keyboard, so long mouse. Hello smart rooms and clothes that recognize acquaintances, understand speech, and communicate by gesture. And that's just the beginning... Inanimate things are coming to life. However, these stirrings are...

MULTIMODAL INTERFACES THAT PROCESS WHAT COMES NATURALLY.(Technology Information)
March 1, 2000... Using our highly skilled and coordinated communication patterns to control computers in a more transparent interface experience. During multimodal communication, we speak, shift eye gaze, gesture, and move in a powerful flow of...

THINGS THAT SEE.(Technology Information)
March 1, 2000... Exploring machine vision for human-computer interaction. The exponential decrease in the costs of computation and of communication is rapidly leading to convergence and ubiquity. At the same time, inexpensive computing power is enabling a...

PERCEPTUAL BANDWITH.(user interfaces)(Technology Information)
March 1, 2000... What happens to people when computers become perceptually complex? In the study of human computer interaction, one of the two words surrounding the hyphen usually leads. Perceptual interfaces from the perspective of computers signal an...

Programming By Example.(Technology Information)
March 1, 2000... Avoiding the voodoo of conventional programming, users get personalized solutions to one-of-a-kind application problems that can be used over and over again. When I first started to learn about programming, many years ago than I care to...

Novice Programming Comes of Age.(Stagecast Creator)(Product Information)
March 1, 2000... Stagecast Creator lets children and other novice programmers build interactive stories, games, and simulations without syntactic programming languages. Since the late 1960s, program language designers have develop approaches to programming...

Intelligence in Demonstrational Interfaces.(Technology Information)
March 1, 2000... A system needs the right level of intelligence to infer the correct generalizations from examples while providing enough feedback to keep the user in control. For the. past 15 years, we have built about a dozen, different applications in...

Programming BY Analogous Examples.(Technology Tutorial)(Tutorial)
March 1, 2000... Combining programming by example and real-world analogies, users create new behavior out of existing behavior. Why do end users need to program? Anyone can become overwhelmed trying to cope with information in a world flooded by...

Programming BY Demonstration FOR Information Agents.(Technology Tutorial)(Tutorial)
March 1, 2000... Let users teach their own imperfect software agents what to do and where to do it. Software agents are intended to perform certain autonomous tasks on behalf of their users. In many situations, however, the agent's competence might be...

Generalizing by Removing DETAIL.(ToonTalk children's programming software)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
March 1, 2000... To generalize programs in ToonTalk, use an animated vacuum cleaner to remove the details in virtual robots' thought bubbles. A long-standing goal of the programming by demonstration (PBD) research community is enabling programmers and...

VISUAL GENERALIZATION IN Programming BY Example.(Technology Tutorial)(Tutorial)
March 1, 2000... Let PBE systems use the visual properties of on-screen interactive elements to bridge the user's view of an application and its underlying programmable functionality. In programming by example (PBE), also known as programming by...

Software Engineering in the Small.(Industry Trend or Event)
March 1, 2000... Smaller-sized software companies are developing significant products that need effective, tailored software engineering practices. In 1968, the NATO Software Engineering Conference in Garmisch, Germany [6] initiated the concept of software...

A Tale of Two Thousands.
March 1, 2000... It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but now it is time to reflect on the lessons of Y2K. Ironically, if the extensive media hype had not stimulated significant progress in the past half-year, serious social disruptions could...

MemberNet.
March 1, 2000... ACM MemberNet Highlights 5 ACM will co-host Symposium Z000 on Computer Science and Technology Education with ISTE. 11 The ACM Digital Library has significantly expanded its full-text coverage. 11 Ubiquity, a new Web-based publication, is...

ACM Seeks Travel Funds for IFIP WCC '2000 in Beijing, China.
March 1, 2000... ACM became a full member of IFIP, the International Federation for Information Processing (www. ifip.or.at) in January, 1999. In support of a key IFIP activity, ACM, in cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society, has applied for a grant from...

Notes From the Motherboard.
March 1, 2000... ACM Digital Library Represented at ALA Midwinter Conference Over two hundred visitors stopped by the ACM booth and registered to win three free memberships at the American Library Association's midwinter meeting in San Antonio, Texas,...

New & Noteworthy Products.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Welcome to "For Members Only: New & Noteworthy Products," a showcase for the latest (and noteworthy) ACM publications/special interest groups, and products. The selected Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and magazine section contain new offerings....

Pubs Corner.
March 1, 2000... ACM Digital Library, Increases Full-Text Coverage The ACM Digital Library has significantly increased the scope of its full-text coverage. The Digital Library now contains full text of both journals and proceedings going back to 1985. This...

The Sig World.
March 1, 2000... SIGCOMM Begins Fourth Decade Of Service SIGCOMM, ACM's Special Interest Group on Data Communication serves professionals involved in all aspects of data communication, including computer networks, technical design and engineering,...

Local Activities.
March 1, 2000... Pakistan Chapter Hosts Contest The Big-O Programming Contest, sponsored by the Lahore University of Management Sciences/Pakistan ACM Student Chapter, was recently created to help develop faster algorithms. The contest consists of eight...

LETTER FROM PRESIDENT.
March 1, 2000... Preparing an annual report is a simple exercise in recapping recent achievements. And yet it's these very achievements that propel ACM into 2000 with a solid foundation and an even stronger commitment to advancing information technology. ...