Communications of the ACM articles from May 1998

Communications of the ACM archives from May 1998

Editorial pointers.
May 1, 1998... HARDLY an issue goes by where we do not point to a glaring example of how the Internet or Web has changed the very core of a well-worn practice or technology. The whole process of disseminating and accessing information today is less expensive,...

Ethnic networks.(number of members)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... ETHNIC NETWORKS ARE SPROUTING up all over Silicon Valley, becoming an important part of the local entrepreneurial scene, since approximately 23% of those who work in the area are immigrants, according to Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network,...

Countering counterfeiting.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... PERSONAL COMPUTERS, MOUSEPADS, and inkjet printers have become the tools of choice for counterfeiters, making it easier to reproduce bogus U.S. currency and more difficult for the Secret Service to prosecute due to outdated federal guidelines...

An ethereal birthday ...(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... The Ethernet, invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center on May 22, 1973, turns 25.

Boom time.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... INTERNET-BASED SELLING IS LIKELY to more than quadruple by 2000, from 10% to 44%, reports market watcher Zona Research. Studying current commerce activities at 12 enterprises with over 500 employees each, Zona found that 79% already use the Web...

High-definition consequences.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... WHEN A DALLAS TV STATION turned on its new HDTV transmitter to test it, the signal overwhelmed low-power heart monitors at Baylor University Medical Center, causing nurses to lose track of their patients' heartbeats. Now that HDTV broadcasts...

Sidestepping cryptography prohibition.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... THE LARGEST U.S. MAKER OF encryption programs announced its intention to bypass U.S prohibitions on exporting strong cryptography, reports Nesweek. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Network Associates plans to ship a version of its software from a...

Warrants via computer.(new product from Federal Data Systems Corp.)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... IN AN EFFORT TO INCREASE POLICE efficiency, a system that allows officers to request a search or arrest warrant from a judge by using a computer rather than going to a courthouse is being tested in a suburb outside Atlanta, reports CNN. The...

Laptop Virtuoso.(new violin from QRS Music Technologies Inc.)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... POWERED BY A LAPTOP COMPUTER, the electronic violin only slightly resembles its predecessor; the four strings have been replaced by a two-inch steel rod that vibrates at different frequencies when a bow, driven by motors and microchips in a box...

Gadgets of mass distraction.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... THE LATEST ELECTRONIC GADGETS for cars and trucks are causing concern over driver distraction at the Big Three U.S. auto makers. Driver use of navigation systems, cellular phones, and car-mounted computers is being studied by the Society of...

Latest Internet numbers for China.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... CHINA'S INTERNET USERS HAVE increased to 620,000 from less than 20,000 five years ago, reports the Xinhua news agency. About 300,000 computers are now wired to the global computer network, Xinhua said, quoting a report by the Data Communication...

Top 5 oline purchase categories.(News Track)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
May 1, 1998... Top 5 Online Purchase Categories No. Adult Category Consumers Books 2,342,000 Computer Hardware 2,196,000 Airline Tickets 2,013,000 General Software 1,793,000 Music...

Email parcel delivery.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... UNITED PARCEL SERVICE AND other delivery companies now offer a more secure way to deliver electronic messages and important electronic documents over the Internet, reports PC Magazine Online. How it works: UPS Online Dossier...

Computer attacks on the upswing.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... MORE THAN SIX OUT OF EVERY 10 businesses, government offices, and universities reported computer security breaches during 1997, according to a survey by the Computer Security Institute. Likely suspects include an employee or domestic...

No time on the meter.(News Track)(a product by Eastern Business Software and Intelligent Devices Corp., parking meter)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... A PARKING METER THAT USES built-in heat and motion detectors has been developed by Intelligent Devices in Harleyville, Pa., and Eastern Business Software in Broomall, Pa. The intelligent meter senses when a car enters or leaves a space. When a...

A caddy that never gets tired.(News Track)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1998... GOLFERS CAN NOW LOOK FORWARD to a new buddy on the links: a robotic golf caddy. Using a digital map of the course and satellite signals, the autonomous robot, developed and patented by GolfPro International in Santa Clara, Calif., navigates...

Don't shoot me, I'm famous.(Electronic Frontier)
May 1, 1998... It's a pain being famous. There's the crushing burden of wealth. The stress of having to live up to your reputation, if not your news clips. And there are those mind-numbing decisions: do you buy the Lear Jet or give a seven-figure check to...

Everything old is new again.(Practical Programmer)(Column)
May 1, 1998... "Those who can't remember the past are ffoomed to repeat it." --George Santayana You've already seen, from earlier instantiations of this column, that I believe in software practice and software practitioners. In particular, I believe that...

Flogging the wrong horse?(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 1998... IN HIS DECEMBER 1997 COLUMN (p. 17), Robert Glass argued that domain-specific programming languages are better than generalized languages augmented by libraries of add-on functions. Glass is flogging the wrong horse. Every programming...

Praise for Cobol.(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 1998... CONGRATULATIONS TO ROBERT Glass for upholding the role of the practitioner and of domain-specific languages such as Cobol (Sept. 1997, p. 11). The low esteem accorded Cobol in academic computer science perhaps deserves more attention. I would...

San Franscico risks.(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 1998... I QUESTION PETER NEUMANN'S inclusion of the San Francisco 911 system as an example of a new system development failure ("Inside Risks," Dec. 1997, p. 160). This is old news and if anything an example of failure to develop rather than a failure...

Programming as a discipline.(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 1998... I do not understand why Nigel Ward ("Technical Opinion," Dec. 1997, p. 113) supports the idea that programming should not be regarded as a discipline. Independent of what one wishes to call the attributes distinguishing a good programmer from a...

Correction.(Forum)(Correction Notice)
May 1, 1998... The correct URL for Fellows nominations is www.acm.org/ awards/nomination_packet/.

Communications of the ACM: Virtual Extension edition www.acm.org/cacm/extension/ve598.html: May 1998 volume 41, number 5.
May 1, 1998... AS WE MOVE INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM WITH A RENEWED FOCUS AND RESTRUCTURED EDITORIAL direction, we continue our commitment to high-quality technical information with the publication of a Virtual Extension of the May issue of Communications. This...

Assessing computer technology in Europe.(On Site)
May 1, 1998... Bruce Barnes spent 16 months evaluating the status of European computer software technology for the London-based Office of Naval Research--Europe. He visited most of the countries, and was able to trace definite patterns emerging in the...

Distributed dynamic systems.(Editorial)
May 1, 1998... AT>Cover Story THE ADVENT OF THE WORLD-WIDE WEB as a digital distribution mechanism for information has emphasized the need for tools to mediate between browsers, servers, and databases. What used to be called the three-tier client/server...

Unifying heterogeneous information models: semantic tags support knowledge webs.
May 1, 1998... ORGANIZATIONS MUST DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM OF managing their information assets. The need to process and analyze huge volumes of information has led to the electronic production, dissemination, and storage of enterprise information. A significant...

Distributed recognition of patterns in time series data: from sensors to informed decisions.
May 1, 1998... FROM A MANUFACTURING PLANT TO A rocket launch pad, to a hospital intensive care unit, arrays of sensors are producing large volumes of information on critical systems. These environments require data analysis to reduce and summarize the data....

A conversation with Paul Graham.(Interview)
May 1, 1998... A programmer by training, viaweb president Paul Graham has become a successful entrepreneur in the rapidly evolving realm of online commerce. Viaweb's site (www.viaweb.com) allows sellers to easily establish online storefronts and makes user...

Modern languages and Microsoft's component object model: programming COM made simple.
May 1, 1998... AS THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY'S RELIANCE O' COMPONENT software increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to integrate complex component systems. Modern development environments take a variety of approaches to simplifying this programming problem....

Self-adaptive software for signal processing: evolving systems in changing environments without growing pains.
May 1, 1998... DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING SYSTEMS ARE WIDELY USED IN communication, medical, sonar, radar, equipment health monitoring and many other applications. Frequently, the signal processing system has to meet real-time requirements and provide very...

Successful multiparty audio communication over the Internet: the Internet was once perceived as a computer network used by researchers to transfer files and send text messages. Today, more users are becoming aware of its potential as a general communication network.
May 1, 1998... Multicast conferencing over the Internet has the potential to offer low-cost real-time multimedia solutions to a wide range of user groups, provided that sufficient audio quality can be sustained. Commercial interest in Internet audio has...

Regression testing in an industrial environment: progress is attained by looking backward.
May 1, 1998... Issues such as test case revalidation, test execution failure identification, fault identification, modification dependency, fault mitigation and test case dependency are essential for an industrial environment in applying regression testing....

Client/server benefits, problems, best practices.
May 1, 1998... THE GOAL: NOT JUST BETTER TECHNOLOGY BUT BETTER BUSINESS PROCESSES THAT MAKE A COMPANY MORE COMPETITIVE. Client/server systems link clients and servers via a network to support distributed computation, analysis, and presentation, providing...

Supporting the negotiation life cycle: in our increasingly networked world, a capacity to negotiate will be a critical factor of success, or even survival.
May 1, 1998... Negotiation behavior is so broad and powerful that it applies wherever multiple agents interact--from the strategic posturing prior to agreements among nations, to the "handshake" protocol between connecting computer modems. Unfortunately,...

The art of managing multiple processes.(Thinking Objectively)
May 1, 1998... The people performing the process must own the process [1]. While a process group may be essential in helping to capture a process or analyzing a process, it is the group using the process that is likely to have the best understanding of its...

Candidates for President (7/1/98-6/30/00).
May 1, 1998... BARBARA SIMONS Senior Technology Advisor IBM San Jose, California USA BIOGRAPHY * Barbara Simons earned her Ph.D. in computer science from U.C Berkeley in 1981, having matriculated there without any previous college...

Candidates for Vice-President (7/1/98-6/30/00).
May 1, 1998... DORIS KEEFE LIDTKE Professor Computer and Information Sciences Towson University Towson, Maryland USA BIOGRAPHY * Doris Lidtke received her bachelors and doctoral (1979) degrees from the University of Oregon and her...

Candidates for Secretary (7/1/98-6/30/00).
May 1, 1998... MARK SCOTT JOHNSON Research and Development Director Embarcadero Systems Corp. Alameda, California USA BIOGRAPHY * B.S. in Mathematics, Univ. of CA, Santa Barbara, 1973; M.S. in Computer Science, Univ. of CA, Santa...

Candidates for Western Region Representative (7/1/98-6/30/01).
May 1, 1998... DAVID J. KASIK Senior Principal Scientist Boeing Commercial Airplane Group Seattle, Washington USA BIOGRAPHY * BA, Quantitative Studies, The Johns Hopkins University 1970. MS, Computer Science, University of Colorado...

Candidates for Members at Large (7/1/98-6/30/02).(Association for Computing Machinery )
May 1, 1998... MARIA M. KLAWE Vice President, Student and Academic Services Professor Computer Science University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC Canada BIOGRAPHY * B.Sc. (1973) and Ph.D. (1977) in Mathematics, University of...

Proposed ACM Constitutional amendments.
May 1, 1998... The following modifications to the Constitution are recommended for your vote in two groups. Because of the integrated nature of these changes members will vote yes or no by group. The primary changes to the Constitution are as follows: ...

For comparison purposes: existing ACM Constitution.
May 1, 1998... ARTICLE 1. Name This organization shall be called the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. ARTICLE 2. Purposes The purposes of the Association are: (a) To advance the sciences and arts of information processing...

Calendar of events.(Calendar)
May 1, 1998... ACM's calendar policy is to list open computer science meetings that are sponsored by ACM, sister societies, or other scientific, technical or educational tax-exempt organizations. Educational seminars, institutes, and courses are not included...

In search of academic integrity.(Inside Risks)
May 1, 1998... AS the use of computers in scholastic disciplines has grown and matured, so have many related issues involving academic integrity. Although the now rather commonplace risks of security breaches (such as falsification of student records, and...