Communications - October 2010

coMMuNicAtioNs;of;the;AcM
Departments
News
Viewpoints

5 President’s Letter ACM is Built on Volunteers’ Shoulders By Alain Chesnais

19 Historical Reflections Victorian Data Processing Reflections on the first payment systems.

By Martin Campbell-Kelly

7 Letters To The Editor How to Celebrate Codd’s RDBMS Vision

8 BLOG@CACM

In Search of Database Consistency Michael Stonebraker discusses the implications of the CAP theorem on database management system applications that span multiple processing sites.

22 Technology Strategy and Management Platforms and Services: Understanding the Resurgence of Apple Combining new consumer devices and Internet platforms with online services and content is proving to be a successful strategy.

By Michael A. Cusumano 16

10 CACM Online

The Mobile Road Ahead By David Roman

21 Calendar

105 Careers

Last Byte

112 Q&A

Gray’s Paradigm

Tony Hey talks about Jim Gray and his vision of a new era of collaborative, data-intensive science. By Leah Hoffmann

11 Linear Logic

A novel approach to computational logic is reaching maturity, opening up new vistas in programming languages, proof nets, and security applications. By Alex Wright

14 Personal Fabrication Open source 3D printers could herald the start of a new industrial revolution. By Graeme Stemp-Morlock

16 Should Code be Released?

Software code can provide important insights into the results of research, but it’s up to individual scientists whether their code is released— and many opt not to.

By Dennis McCafferty

25 Inside Risks

Risks of Undisciplined Development An illustration of the problems caused by a lack of discipline in software development and our failure to apply what is known in the field.