Communications of the ACM articles from October 1999

Communications of the ACM archives from October 1999

Most-Wired Top 20.(U.S. colleges and universities in 1999)(Directory)
October 1, 1999... The most-wired U.S. colleges and universities in 1999, according to Yahoo Internet Life: 1. Case Western Reserve University 2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3. Wake Forest University 4. New Jersey Institute of...

CHANGING THE COURSE OF RADAR.(air traffic control)(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... An ongoing experiment that may change the nature of air traffic control is being studied by the Federal Aviation Administration. The $25 million experiment, funded in partnership by government and the airlines, uses a radical new approach to...

MORE CELL PHONE FED MONITORING.(FCC rules)(Government Activity)(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... The federal government announced new technological standards for cellular phones that will broadly expand the ability of law-enforcement agents to monitor conversations. Agents can already monitor cell phone calls after obtaining a search...

Y2K COUNTDOWN.(Government Activity)
October 1, 1999... Russia/Ukraine Nuke Trouble... A project financed by Western governments is under way to try to immunize Ukraine's 14 aging, trouble-prone nuclear reactors against the Y2K computer problem, reports the New York Times. Although a nuclear...

OLYMPIC MONEY PIT.(Internet strategies for 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Organizers for the 2002 Olympics are considering various Internet strategies to assist in financing an alleged $185 million shortfall for the scandal-torn, cash-poor 2002 Winter Games, to be held in Salt Lake City, reports USA Today. The Salt...

CRYPTO RELATIVITY.(application of theory of relativity to cryptography)(Technology Information)(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity--the discovery that signals cannot go faster than light--has been used to devise a new type of crypto code. British mathematician Adrian Kent has applied the theory to cryptography, allowing users of his...

STOCKING THE FRIDGE WITH A CLICK.(Webvan.com online grocery shopping)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
October 1, 1999... Want online grocery shopping? One example is Webvan.com, the largest of these online upstarts, now serving the Bay area. Webvan relies on an enormous computerized shopping machine that is the first of its kind, set in a 330,000-square-foot...

Solving the Plagiarism Problem.(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 1999... NED KOCK'S ARTICLE, "A CASE of Academic Plagiarism" (July 1999, p. 96), was an interesting detective story that also shed some light on copyright laws, electronic publishing, and the frustration and aggravation encountered by authors who...

The Ongoing Tug-of-War for E-Commerce Control.(pan-American free trade agreement)(Industry Trend or Event)
October 1, 1999... It was an unprecedented and symbolic moment: Last October, the U.S. government quietly invited 12 industry lobbyists to join the nation's negotiating team for the pan-American free trade agreement. These lobbyists, representing the Motion...

The Post-PC Era.(era of ubiquitous computing)(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... Early computers processed jobs in batches. This was inconvenient for both programmers and users, but machine time was expensive relative to people's salaries. As technology improved, we moved to time sharing and then personal computers. The PC...

The Heroes Among Us.(candidates for the ACM's Eugene Lawler Award for humanitarian contributions within computer science and informatics)(Industry Trend or Event)(Column)
October 1, 1999... From the President The popular press has published numerous stories about technical and business leaders who have contributed to the extraordinary developments in computing during the past half century. But there are many unacknowledged...

UML in ACTION.(Unified Modeling Language)(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... THE UNIFIED MODELING LANGUAGE (UML) is a graphical language for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of a software-intensive system. The UML was adopted as a standard by the Object Management Group (OMG) in...

UML 2001: A STANDARDIZATION ODYSSEY.(Unified Modeling Language)(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... As the UML reaches the ripe age of four, both its proponents and its critics are scanning the recent changes in the UML 1.3 revision. IN A RELATIVELY SHORT PERIOD of time the Unified Modeling Language has emerged as the software industry's...

DESIGNING COMPONENT-BASED FRAMEWORKS USING PATTERNS in the UML.(Unified Modeling Language)(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... Framework solutions help create reusable, approachable software architectures. As I WALKED THROUGH THE ENTRANCE GATE I CAUGHT MY first glimpse of the structure. It appeared to be simple with symmetrical lines and was surrounded by gardens...

TURNING CLOCKWISE: USING UML in the REAL-TIME DOMAIN.(Unified Modeling Language, real-time systems)(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... "You mustn't forget one thing," the fairy godmother said. "Do not stay past midnight, for when the hour strikes, everything will return to the way it was before. "I promise," said Cinderella. TIME IS A TYRANT. UNLIKE MOST OTHER PHYSICAL...

UMLOQUENT EXPRESSION OF AWACS SOFTWARE DESIGN.(Boeing's use of the Unified Modeling Language to produce a next-generation Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS)
October 1, 1999... The UML is becoming the standard palette used by software designers to paint their thoughts. THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE OF BOEING'S NATO Midterm Modernisation Programme (NMT) is to produce a next-generation Airborne Warning and Control System...

MODELING WEB APPLICATION ARCHITECTURES with UML.(Unified modeling Language)(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
October 1, 1999... Modeling business logic in Web-specific components can be done in a coherent and consistent way. A NEW TERM HAS ENTERED the IT vocabulary in the past few years: Web application. It seems like everyone involved with business software...

WHAT NETSCAPE LEARNED FROM CROSS-PLATFORM SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT.(Company Business and Marketing)
October 1, 1999... Its development strategy produced unexpected costs, a wrong turn with Java, performance compromises, and questions about future ties to Sun Microsystems. NETSCAPE COMMUNICATIONS CORP. WAS established in April 1994 by Jim Clark, the founder...

FRAMEWORK INTEGRATION PROBLEMS, CAUSES, SOLUTIONS.(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... Though familiar with the most common problems and their causes, OO software developers struggle with solutions plagued by a lack of framework standards and development guidelines. TRADITIONAL FRAMEWORK-BASED Application development assumes...

PRIVACY INTERFACES FOR INFORMATION MANAGEMENT.(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... A system for examining Web browsing histories helps create a set of guidelines for designing privacy interfaces. THE DESIGNERS OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE MUST STRIKE A DELICATE BALANCE between protecting user privacy and...

Multipurpose Web Publishing USING HTML, XML, AND CSS.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
October 1, 1999... The World Wide Web Consortium devised these document-markup and style-sheet languages in the interests of Web device independence, content reuse, and network-friendly encoding. SINCE ITS CONCEPTION IN THE early 1990s, the Web has become a...

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING CODE OF ETHICS IS APPROVED.(Industry Trend or Event)
October 1, 1999... The exhaustive efforts of the ACM and IEEE--CS has resulted in the adoption of a code of professional practices for so, ware engineers to consider--and use. SOFTWARE ENGINEERING NOW HAS ITS OWN CODE OF ETHICS. THE CODE HAS BEEN ADOPTED by...

Comparing Java vs. C/C++ Efficiency Differences to Interpersonal Differences.(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... The relative efficiency of Java programs is much discussed today, particularly in comparison to well-established implementation languages such as C or C++. Java is often considered very slow and memory-intensive. However, most benchmarks...

Risks of Relying on Cryptography.(Technology Information)
October 1, 1999... Cryptography is often treated as if it were magic security dust: "sprinkle some on your system, and it is secure; then, you're secure as long as the key length is large enough--112b, 128b, 256b" (I've even seen companies boast of 16,000b.)...