Communications - July 2009

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
Departments

5 Editor’s Letter

Open, Closed, or Clopen Access? By Moshe Y. Vardi

6 Publisher’s Corner Communications’ Annual Report Card By Scott E. Delman

8 Letters To The Editor Inspire with Introductory Computer Science

10 blog@CACM

Sharing Ideas, Writing Apps, and Creating a Professional Web Presence

Greg Linden reveals his new approach to reading research papers, Mark Guzdial discusses how to encourage students to write computer programs, and Tessa Lau shares her ideas about the importance of Web visibility.

12 CACM Online

Moving Forward and Backward By David Roman

45 Calendar

116 Careers

Last Byte

120 Q&A

Liskov on Liskov

Barbara Liskov talks about her groundbreaking work in data abstraction and distributed computing. By Leah Hoffmann

Association for Computing Machinery Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession

News

13 Contemporary Approaches to Fault Tolerance

Thanks to computer scientists like Barbara Liskov, researchers are making major progress with cost-efficient fault tolerance for Web-based systems.

By Alex Wright

16 Toward Native Web Execution Several software projects are narrowing the performance gap between browser-based applications and their desktop counterparts.

In the process, they’re creating new ways to improve the security of Web-based computing.

By Kirk L. Kroeker

18 Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically?

Computer technology has enhanced lives in countless ways, but some experts believe it might also be affecting people’s ability to really think.

By Samuel Greengard

20 Liskov’s Creative Joy

Barbara Liskov muses about the creative process of problem solving, finding the perfect design point, and pursuing a research path.

By Karen A. Frenkel

23 Master of Connections

Jon Kleinberg is honored for his pioneering research on the Web and social networking. By Alan Joch

25 ACM Award Winners

Among this year’s distinguished honorees are Barbara Liskov of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Jon Kleinberg of Cornell University.

Viewpoints

28 Legally Speaking

The Dead Souls of the Google Book Search Settlement Why the Google Book Search settlement agreement under consideration could result in an extensive restructuring of the book industry.

By Pamela Samuelson

31 Technology Strategy and Management Globalization of Knowledge-Intensive Professional Services Does the trend toward standardization and modularization of professional services make outsourcing inevitable?