communications of the acm
Departments
5 President’s Letter
A New Beginning, A Fond Farewell
By Stuart I. Feldman
7 Letters To The Editor
Words Both Kind and Contrary
8 CACM Online
Small Changes Hint at Bigger Things
By David Roman
101 Careers
Last Byte
104 Puzzled
Delightful Graph Theory
By Peter Winkler
News
9 Designing the Perfect Auction
Distributed algorithmic mechanism
design is a field at the intersection of
computer science and economics.
By Hal R. Varian
12 Access for All
Accessible technologies are improving
the lives of millions of physically
impaired people around the world.
By Peggy Aycinena
15 Challenging Poverty
Information and communication
technologies are an important
component in the generation
of wealth. How can they help
reduce poverty?
By Sarah Underwood
18 Remembering Jim
Both melancholy and reverential, the
Jim Gray Tribute at the University of
California at Berkeley honored one of
computer science’s leading pioneers
and visionaries.
By Michael Ross
Viewpoints
19 The Profession of IT
Voices of Computing
The choir of engineers,
mathematicians, and scientists who
make up the bulk of our field better
represents computing than the solo
voice of the programmer.
By Peter J. Denning
22 From the Front Lines
Software Development Amidst the
Whiz of Silver Bullets
Software development organizations
must accept the inevitability of silver-bullet solution proposals and devise
strategies to defend against them.
By Alex E. Bell
25 Education
Paving the Way for
Computational Thinking
Drawing on methods from
diverse disciplines—including
computer science, education,
sociology, and psychology—to
improve computing education.
By Mark Guzdial
28 Viewpoint
Envisioning the Future
of Computing Research
Advances in computing have
changed our lives—the Computing
Community Consortium aims
to help the research community
continue that lineage.
By Ed Lazowska
31 Interview
Donald Knuth:
A Life’s Work Interrupted
In this second of a two-part interview
by Edward Feigenbaum, we find
Knuth, having completed three
volumes of The Art of Computer
Programming, drawn to creating
a system to produce books digitally.
Edited by Len Shustek
Practice
38 Scaling in Games and Virtual Worlds
Online games and virtual worlds
have familiar scaling requirements,
but don’t be fooled: Everything you
know is wrong.
By Jim Waldo
45 CTO Storage Roundtable
Leaders in the storage world
offer valuable advice for making
more effective architecture and
technology decisions.
By Mache Creeger, Moderator
52 The Rise and Fall of CORBA
There’s a lot we can learn from
CORBA’s mistakes.
By Michi Henning