Communications of the ACM articles from September 1998

Communications of the ACM archives from September 1998

Editorial pointers.(management of corporate databases)(Editorial)
September 1, 1998... CORPORATE databases are chock full of business information critical for identifying new market opportunities, calculating customer needs, or even forecasting buying trends. For management, the challenge is to glean and collate the pertinent...

Wall Street's millennium test.(Year 2000 transition )(Brief Article)
September 1, 1998... MORE THAN A YEAR AND A HALF before computer clocks around the world roll over to 2000, some of Wall Street's major brokerages ran extensive tests scrutinized by everyone even remotely involved in solving the Y2K computer date problem. The...

Barring prisoners from personal info.(personal information)(Brief Article)
September 1, 1998... A PROPOSED LAW WOULD BAN prisoners from entering personal information into computers used by government agencies and private companies, reports the Privacy Journal. Convicted felons in an Illinois maximum security prison have been entering...

Disclosing privacy policy disorders.(News Track)(Brief Article)
September 1, 1998... MOST WEB OPERATORS DO NOT disclose privacy policies to visitors of their sites, reports a Federal Trade Commission survey of 1,400 commercial sites. This finding comes after Web site operators were warned in 1997 that the FTC would be surveying...

Voluminous backup.(Brief Article)(Buyers Guide)
September 1, 1998... Periodic file transfers to storage disks is one way to back up precious computer files but not the best solution for small- or mediumsized businesses where a crash can provoke a crisis. The following are inexpensive ways to keep data safe from...

Widening the gap.(News Track)(Brief Article)
September 1, 1998... THE SALARY GAP BETWEEN VETeran information security managers and newcomers has widened dramatically, says Information Security, a magazine based in Norwood, Mass. Most security managers with more than three years of experience earn annual...

Liar, liar.(new truth verifier)(Brief Article)
September 1, 1998... A software that allows an "ingenious new algorithm to detect vocal stress" and identify shades of truth has been developed by Israeli company Makh-Shevet, Tel Aviv. Truster, marketed as a personal truth verifier, claims 85% accuracy and has...

Russia's Y2K response.(Year 2000 transition risk factors)(Brief Article)
September 1, 1998... IN A SURVEY OF 50 RUSSIAN COMPANIES BY consulting group Coopers and Lybrand, only one-third--all large financial institutions-said they were aware of the problem. Experts say Russia faces less of a calamity than Western nations because it has...

Mainstream media heartburn.(Electronic Frontier)
September 1, 1998... Mainstream media tried to eat Matt Drudge, the self-made cyber sleuth who regularly publishes the online "Drudge Report" and who scooped Newsweek on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, bringing it to the public's attention first. Then mainstream...

Does information really have to be licensed?(Legally Speaking)
September 1, 1998... We have all purchased packaged software. After paying for it, we've taken the box home and loaded the software on our computer. We typically throw away the licensing agreement forms, although we may have glanced at them long enough to know...

Computerizing computer science.(Viewpoint)
September 1, 1998... There are two possible scenarios for the future of relations between humans and computers: user friendliness and computer friendliness. In the user-friendliness scenario, computers become smart enough to communicate in natural language...

Peeling the Y2K onion.(Forum)
September 1, 1998... How SWEET IT IS TO SEE correspondence from two ACM giants, Anthony Ralston and Herb Grosch, side by side (June 1998 "Forum," pp. 24-25). Ralston has long hoped to educate the public, writing in a 1984 issue of Abacus, the magazine he...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
September 1, 1998... In the July 1998 News Track "Human Teleportation, Hardly" (p. 10), an item reported the amount of data in a person being "at least 1,032 bits..." and that "over a fiber optic line it would take more than 100 million centuries to transmit......

Industrial-strength data warehousing: why process is so important--and so often ignored.
September 1, 1998... Developing data warehouses has become a popular but exceedingly demanding and costly activity in information systems development and management. The proportion of companies implementing data warehouses exploded from 10% in 1993 to 90% in 1994,...

Managerial considerations: organizational resistance on many fronts can detail the most promising systems, even those designed to address a specific organizational pain.
September 1, 1998... The architectural advantage of having a separate, customized repository of data for decision-support applications was recog nized as early as the 1970s, when these systems were first developed [6]. In the mid-1980s, large retail, banking, and...

The IBM data warehouse architecture: how IBM integrates its own and other vendors' tools to derive useful information for decision support.
September 1, 1998... Users of IBM's data warehouse solution represent a wide range of communities differing with respect to business activities and processes, services and products, resources and cultures, and, most important, business objectives. This diversity...

Project-based warehouses: these interdependent projects quickly address Ryder System's business needs for refined but strategic information.
September 1, 1998... Ryder System Inc. is an international logistics and transportation company with more than 160,000 vehicles, 45,000 employees, 13,000 commercial customers, and revenues over $5 billion (fiscal 1997), putting it in the Fortune 250. While the...

Building the data warehouse: the tough questions project managers have to ask their" companies' executives--and themselves--and the guidelines needed to sort out the answers.
September 1, 1998... Your company decides to build a data warehouse and you are designated the project manager. What are your first steps? You've read the books, attended the conferences, and perused the trade publications. Now you have to act. There are numerous...

Seducing the end user: the key to generating the ROI corporate management expects from data warehousing projects is a design that inspires end users to actually use the solution.
September 1, 1998... Corporations that invest in data warehouse and business intelligence solutions often don't derive the return on investment (ROI) they expect. By providing the wrong end-user tools and failing to engage and enable end users, the most elegantly...

How men and women view ethics.
September 1, 1998... Information systems are an integral part of business today and the benefits are numerous. But, there is also a downside to the easy data access that IS provides. There are opportunities for invasion of privacy, as well as theft of data, money,...

What (else) should CS educators know?
September 1, 1998... Beyond the mastery of core CS material, good CS educators should also be familiar with a significant body of material that will expand their perspectives on the field, and consequently, enhance the quality of their teaching. There is a...

A pattern system for network management interfaces: NMI builders and applications developers should find the operational benefits of a pattern-based framework called Layla a welcomed ally in their efforts.
September 1, 1998... Network management systems are used to control and monitor the components of distributed systems like communication networks, where many different subsystems need to collaborate to offer a service. Communication networks are large dynamic...

Distributed object computing platforms: CORBA offers a useful methodology and middleware for building interoperable databases.
September 1, 1998... A common characteristic of today's information systems is the distribution of data among a number of autonomous and heterogeneous repositories. Increasingly, these repositories are database management systems, but there is still a very large...

Calendar of events.(Calendar)
September 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...

Y2K update.(Inside Risks)(Year 2000 transition )
September 1, 1998... Somewhere in the wide spectrum from doomsday hype to total disdain lie the realities of the Year-2000 computer-date problem. Some computer systems and infrastructures will be OK, but others could have major impact on our lives. We won't know...