COMMUNICATIONS CACM.aCm.ORG OF THEACM 01/2014 VOL.57 NO.01 Touchless Interaction in Surgery The Software Inferno Peace Technologies Speech Recognition Actually, Turing Did Not Invent the Computer ACM’s FY13 Annual Report Scalable Conferences Association for Computing Machinery ICMI 2014 The 16th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction November 12-16th, 2014 Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey Multimodal Interaction Processing Interactive Systems and Applications Modelling Human Communication Patterns Data, Evaluation and Standards for Multimodal Interactive Systems Urban Interactions http://icmi.acm.org/2014 Organising Committee General Chairs Doctoral Consortium Chairs Albert Ali Salah (Boğaziçi University, Turkey) Justine Cassell (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) Jerey Cohn (University of Pittsburgh, USA) Marco Cristani (University of Verona, Italy) Björn Schuller (TUM / Imperial College London, UK) Publication Chairs Program Chairs Alessandro Vinciarelli (University of Glasgow, UK) Oya Aran (Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland) Zakia Hammal (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) Louis-Philippe Morency (University of Southern California, USA) Publicity Chair Workshop Chairs Nicu Sebe (University of Trento, Italy) Important Dates Alexandros Potamianos (University of Crete, Greece) Sponsorship Chair Grand challenge proposals January 15th, 2014 Carlos Busso (University of Texas at Dallas, USA) Aytül Erçil (Sabancı University, Turkey) Special session proposals March 22nd, 2014 Demo Chairs Local Organization Chair Kazuhiro Otsuka (NTT Comm. Science Lab.s, Japan) Hazım Ekenel (Istanbul Technical University, Turkey) Workshop proposals March 15th, 2014 Lale Akarun (Boğaziçi University, Turkey) Multimodal Grand Challenge Chairs Long and short paper submissions May 9th, 2014 Dirk Heylen (University of Twente, The Netherlands) Doctoral consortium submissions July 1st, 2014 Hatice Gunes (Queen Mary University of London, UK) Demo proposals July 15th, 2014 ACM’s Career & Job Center Are you looking for your next IT job? Do you need Career Advice? The ACM Career & Job Center offers ACM members a host of career-enhancing benefits: • A highly targeted focus on job • Job Alert system that notifies you of opportunities in the computing industry new opportunities matching your criteria • Access to hundreds of industry job postings • Career coaching and guidance available from trained experts dedicated to your • Resume posting keeping you connected success to the employment market while letting you maintain full control over your confidential • Free access to a content library of the best information career articles compiled from hundreds of sources, and much more! Visit ACM’s Career & Job Center at: http://jobs.acm.org The ACM Career & Job Center is the perfect place to begin searching for your next employment opportunity! Visit today at http://jobs.acm.org ACM_printadv1_final.indd 1 11/21/13 11:36 PM COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM Departments News Viewpoints 5 Editor’s Letter 30 Technology Strategy and Management Scalable Conferences The Legacy of Steve Ballmer Adapting computing-research Assessing the positive and negative conferences to the growth components of the second of the field. Microsoft CEO’s tenure. By Moshe Y. Vardi By Michael A. Cusumano 7 From the President 33 Law and Technology Virtual Reality Redux Toward a Closer Integration By Vinton G. Cerf of Law and Computer Science Seeking better integration 8 Nominees for Elections and Report of the insights from the fields of the ACM Nominating Committee of law and technology. By Christopher S. Yoo 9 ACM’s FY13 Annual Report 27 36 Historical Reflections 16 Letters to the Editor 21 French Team Invents Faster Actually, Turing Did Not U.S. Does Not Control the Internet Code-Breaking Algorithm Invent the Computer New method can crack Separating the origins of 18 BLOG@CACM certain cryptosystems far faster computer science and technology. MOOCs Need More Work; than earlier alternatives. By Thomas Haigh So Do CS Graduates By Gary Anthes Mark Guzdial assesses the first full 42 The Business of Software year of massive open online courses, 24 How Do You Feel? Estimation Is Not Evil while Joel C. Adams considers the Your Computer Knows Reconciling agile approaches employment outlook for CS grads. Interfaces can sense your mood, and project estimates. if you let them. By Phillip G. Armour 45 Calendar By Tom Geller 44 Viewpoint 116 Careers 27 ‘Peace Technologies’ Enable Publish Now, Judge Later Eyewitness Reporting A proposal to address the problem When Disasters Strike of too many conference submissions Last Byte Ushahidi—or “testimony” in and not enough time for reviewers Swahili—has played a central role to carefully evaluate each one. 128 Future Tense in coordinating responses to crises By Doug Terry The Second Signal around the globe. Even cosmic enlightenment can By Paul Hyman involve unwelcome contact. By Seth Shostak RSMAN HE H BY ERIK H BY P Association for Computing Machinery Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession PHOTOGRA 2 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM | JANUary 2014 | VOL. 57 | NO. 1 01/2014 VOL. 57 NO. 01 Practice Contributed Articles Review Articles 54 70 94 48 The Software Inferno 70 Touchless Interaction in Surgery 94 A Historical Perspective Dante’s tale, as experienced Touchless interaction with medical of Speech Recognition by a software architect. images lets surgeons maintain What do we know now that By Alex E. Bell sterility during surgical procedures. we did not know 40 years ago? By Kenton O’Hara, Gerardo Gonzalez, By Xuedong Huang, James Baker, 54 Toward Software-Defined SLAs Abigail Sellen, Graeme Penney, and Raj Reddy Enterprise computing Andreas Varnavas, Helena Mentis, in the public cloud. Antonio Criminisi, Robert Corish, By Jason Lango Mark Rouncefield, Neville Dastur, Research Highlights and Tom Carrell 61 Unikernels: The Rise of the Virtual 106 Technical Perspective Library Operating System 78 Retweeting the Fukushima Silicon Stress What if all the software layers in Nuclear Radiation Disaster By Subramanian S. Iyer a virtual appliance were compiled The Japanese government within the same safe, high-level tweeted to calm public fear, 107 TSV Stress-Aware Full-Chip language framework? as the public generally listened Mechanical Reliability Analysis By Anil Madhavapeddy to tweets expressing alarm. and Optimization for 3D IC D and David J. Scott By Jessica Li, Arun Vishwanath, By Moongon Jung, Joydeep Mitra, E CT and H. Raghav Rao David Z. Pan, and Sung Kyu Lim LLE O K Articles’ development led by queue.acm.org 86 Democratizing Transactional Programming USTRATION BY BY USTRATION Control transactions without ILL R: compromising their simplicity E NT About the Cover: for the sake of expressiveness, Ce While medical imaging application concurrency, technologies abound, the ability for doctors or performance. to interact with visual RSTOCK.COM By Vincent Gramoli E displays during surgery without compromising and Rachid Guerraoui HUTT S the sterility of the operating room has been S FROM restrictive. This month’s E cover story (p. 70) explores MAG I the latest technologies that allow surgeons to control and manipulate medical images without touching them. Cover illustration FT, RIGHT: RIGHT: FT, E L by Kollected. JANUary 2014 | VOL. 57 | NO. 1 | COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM 3 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM Trusted insights for computing’s leading professionals. Communications of the ACM is the leading monthly print and online magazine for the computing and information technology fields. Communications is recognized as the most trusted and knowledgeable source of industry information for today’s computing professional. Communications brings its readership in-depth coverage of emerging areas of computer science, new trends in information technology, and practical applications. Industry leaders use Communications as a platform to present and debate various technology implications, public policies, engineering challenges, and market trends. The prestige and unmatched reputation that Communications of the ACM enjoys today is built upon a 50-year commitment to high-quality editorial content and a steadfast dedication to advancing the arts, sciences, and applications of information technology. ACM, the world’s largest educational STAFF EDITORIAL BOARD ACM Copyright Notice and scientific computing society, delivers Copyright © 2014 by Association for resources that advance computing as a Director OF GROUP PUBLISHING Editor-IN-CHIEF Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM). science and profession. ACM provides the Scott E. Delman Moshe Y. Vardi Permission to make digital or hard copies computing field’s premier Digital Library [email protected] [email protected] of part or all of this work for personal and serves its members and the computing Executive Editor NEWS or classroom use is granted without profession with leading-edge publications, Diane Crawford Co-Chairs fee provided that copies are not made conferences, and career resources. Managing Editor Marc Najork and William Pulleyblank or distributed for profit or commercial Thomas E. Lambert Board Members advantage and that copies bear this Executive Director and CEO Senior Editor Hsiao-Wuen Hon; Mei Kobayashi; notice and full citation on the first John White Andrew Rosenbloom Michael Mitzenmacher; Rajeev Rastogi page. Copyright for components of this Deputy Executive Director and COO Senior Editor/News work owned by others than ACM must Patricia Ryan Larry Fisher VIEWPOINts be honored. Abstracting with credit is Director, Office