A Conversation with Ed Catmull
The head of Pixar Animation Studios talks tech with Stanford professor Pat Hanrahan.
A Conversation with Jeff Heer, Martin Wattenberg, and Fernanda Viégas
Sharing visualization with the world
A Conversation with Steve Furber
The designer of the ARM chip shares lessons on energy-efficient computing.
A Conversation with David Shaw
In a rare interview, David Shaw discusses how he's using computer science to unravel the mysteries of biochemistry.
A Conversation with Arthur Whitney
Can code ever be too terse? The designer of the K and Q languages discusses this question and many more with Queue editorial board member Bryan Cantrill.
A Conversation with Van Jacobson
The TCP/IP pioneer discusses the promise of content-centric networking with BBN chief scientist Craig Partridge.
A Conversation with Steve Bourne, Eric Allman, and Bryan Cantrill
In part two of their discussion, our editorial board members consider XP and Agile.
A Conversation with Steve Bourne, Eric Allman, and Bryan Cantrill
In part one of a two-part series, three Queue editorial board members discuss the practice of software engineering.
A Conversation with Erik Meijer and Jose Blakeley
The Microsoft perspective on ORM
Custom Processing
Today general-purpose processors from Intel and AMD dominate the landscape, but advances in processor designs such as the cell processor architecture overseen by IBM chief scientist Peter Hofstee promise to bring the costs of specialized system on a chip platforms in line with cost associated with general purpose computing platforms, and that just may change the art of system design forever.
Reporting for Duty
All too often the reporting tools that developers select for their applications are a little more than an afterthought. In this Premium ACM Queuecast, Vice President of Product Management for Actuate, Paul Clenahan, explains why it's in the interest of developer to select richer sets of reporting tools and how these tools more readily accessible though the Eclipse Foundation's BIRT project, spearheaded by Actuate.
Five Steps to a Better Vista Installation - Transcript
Unravel the mysteries and learn the best practices associated with mastering the new application installation routines for Vista applications. In this Premium Queuecast hosted by Michael Vizard, Bob Corrigan, senior manager for global product marketing at Macrovision, and Robert Dickau, principal trainer, reveal the five most crucial things you need to know about Vista application installations.
Software Operations' Profit Potential
Today's software producer faces many challenges in building and keeping a satisfied customer base. In this ACM Premium Queuecast, Macrovision FLEXnet Publisher Product Manager Mitesh Pancholy discusses how companies can solve their license management challenges and turn their software operations into a profit center.
Large Scale Systems: Best Practices
Time again companies moving to build large scale systems and networks stumble over the same problems. In an interview with ACM Queuecast host Michael Vizard, Jarod Jenson, the brains behind the Enron Online trading site, talks about the best practices he emphasizes now that he is the chief architect for Aeysis, a consulting firm that specializes on advising clients on how to build manageable high performance systems.
Business Process Minded
A new paradigm created to empower business system analysts by giving them access to meta-data that they can directly control to drive business process management is about to sweep the enterprise application arena. In an interview with ACM Queuecast host Michael Vizard, Oracle vice president of product development Edwin Khodabakchian explains how the standardization of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and the evolution of the business process execution language (BPEL) are coming together to finally create flexible software architectures that can adapt to the business rather than making the business adapt to the software.
Discipline and Focus
When it comes to managing and deploying large scale systems and networks, discipline and focus matter more than specific technologies. In a conversation with ACM Queuecast host Mike Vizard, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels says the key to success is to have a relentless commitment to a modular computer architecture that makes it possible for the people who build the applications to also be responsible for running and deploying those systems within a common IT framework.
Automatic for the People
Probably the single biggest challenge with large scale systems and networks is not building them but rather managing them on an ongoing basis. Fortunately, new classes of systems and network management tools that have the potential to save on labor costs because they automate much of the management process are starting to appear.
A Conversation with Kurt Akeley and Pat Hanrahan
Interviewing either Kurt Akeley or Pat Hanrahan for this month's special report on GPUs would have been a great opportunity, so needless to say we were delighted when both of these graphics-programming veterans agreed to participate.
A Conversation with Jason Hoffman
Jason Hoffman has a Ph.D. in molecular pathology, but to him the transition between the biological sciences and his current role as CTO of Joyent was completely natural: "Fundamentally, what I've always been is a systems scientist, meaning that whether I was studying metabolism or diseases of metabolism or cancer or computer systems or anything else, a system is a system," says Hoffman. He draws on this broad systems background in the work he does at Joyent providing scalable infrastructure for Web applications.
A Conversation with Mary Lou Jepsen
From Tunisia to Taiwan, Mary Lou Jepsen has circled the globe in her role as CTO of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. Founded by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte in 2005, OLPC builds inexpensive laptops designed for educating children in developing nations. Marvels of engineering, the machines have been designed to withstand some of the harshest climates and most power-starved regions on the planet.
A Conversation with Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore
This month ACM Queue speaks with two Sun engineers who are bringing file systems into the 21st century. Jeff Bonwick, CTO for storage at Sun, led development of the ZFS file system, which is now part of Solaris. Bonwick and his co-lead, Sun Distinguished Engineer Bill Moore, developed ZFS to address many of the problems they saw with current file systems, such as data integrity, scalability, and administration. In our discussion this month, Bonwick and Moore elaborate on these points and what makes ZFS such a big leap forward.
A Conversation with Joel Spolsky
Joel Spolsky has never been one to hide his opinions. Since 2000, he has developed a loyal following for his insightful, tell-it-like-it-is essays on software development and management on his popular Weblog “Joel on Software” (http://www.joelonsoftware.com). The prolific essayist has also published four books and started a successful software company, Fog Creek, in New York City, a place he feels is sorely lacking in product-oriented software development houses.
A Conversation with Michael Stonebraker and Margo Seltzer
Over the past 30 years Michael Stonebraker has left an indelible mark on the database technology world.
A Conversation with Cory Doctorow and Hal Stern
For years, the software industry has used open source, community-based methods of developing and improving software—in many cases offering products for free. Other industries, such as publishing and music, are just beginning to embrace more liberal approaches to copyright and intellectual property. This month Queue is delighted to have a representative from each of these camps join us for a discussion of what’s behind some of these trends, as well as hot-topic issues such as identity management, privacy, and trust.
A Conversation with Cullen Jennings and Doug Wadkins
Getting the lowdown on SIP
A Conversation with Jamie Butler
Rootkitting out all evil
A Conversation with John Hennessy and David Patterson
As authors of the seminal textbook, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (4th Edition, Morgan Kaufmann, 2006), John Hennessy and David Patterson probably don’t need an introduction. You’ve probably read them in college or, if you were lucky enough, even attended one of their classes.
A Conversation with Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann
Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann have long been active participants in promoting integrity in the election process, with special emphasis on the dependable use of information technology, as well as on the weak-link nature of the entire process, from beginning to end.
A Conversation with David Brown
This month Queue tackles the problem of system evolution. One key question is: What do developers need to keep in mind while evolving a system, to ensure that the existing software that depends on it doesn’t break? It’s a tough problem, but there are few more qualified to discuss this subject than two industry veterans now at Sun Microsystems, David Brown and Bob Sproull.
A Conversation with Jordan Cohen
Jordan Cohen calls himself 'sort of an engineer and sort of a linguist.' This diverse background has been the foundation for his long history working with speech technology, including almost 30 years with government agencies, with a little time out in the middle to work in IBM's speech recognition group. Until recently he was the chief technology officer of VoiceSignal, a company that does voice-based user interfaces for mobile devices. VoiceSignal has a significant presence in the cellphone industry, with its software running on between 60 and 100 million cellphones. Cohen has just joined SRI International as a senior scientist.
A Conversation with Leo Chang of ClickShift
To explore this month’s theme of component technologies, we brought together two engineers with lots of experience in the field to discuss some of the current trends and future direction in the world of software components. Queue Editorial board member Terry Coatta is the director of software development at GPS Industries. His expertise is in distributed component systems such as CORBA, EJB, and COM. He joins in the discussion with Leo Chang, the cofounder and CTO of ClickShift, an online campaign optimization and management company.
A Conversation with Werner Vogels
Learning from the Amazon technology platform: Many think of Amazon as 'that hugely successful online bookstore.' You would expect Amazon CTO Werner Vogels to embrace this distinction, but in fact it causes him some concern.
A Conversation with Chuck McManis
Developing systems with a purpose: do one thing, and do it well.
A Conversation with Steve Ross-Talbot
The IT world has long been plagued by a disconnect between theory and practice.
A Conversation with Jarod Jenson
Pinpointing performance problems
A Conversation with Phil Smoot
The challenges of managing a megaservice
A Conversation with Ray Ozzie
Cooperate, Communicate, Collaborate
A Conversation with Roger Sessions and Terry Coatta
In the December/January 2004-2005 issue of Queue, Roger Sessions set off some fireworks with his article about objects, components, and Web services and which should be used when (“Fuzzy Boundaries,” 40-47). Sessions is on the board of directors of the International Association of Software Architects, the author of six books, writes the Architect Technology Advisory, and is CEO of ObjectWatch. He has a very object-oriented viewpoint, not necessarily shared by Queue editorial board member Terry Coatta, who disagreed with much of what Sessions had to say in his article. Coatta is an active developer who has worked extensively with component frameworks.
A Conversation with David Anderson
A Conversation with David Anderson It’s supercomputing on the grassroots level—millions of PCs on desktops at home helping to solve some of the world’s most compute-intensive scientific problems. And it’s an all-volunteer force of PC users, who, with very little effort, can contribute much-needed PC muscle to the scientific and academic communities.
A Conversation with Peter Tippett and Steven Hofmeyr
There have always been similarities and overlap between the worlds of biology and computer science. Nowhere is this more evident than in computer security, where the basic terminology of viruses and infection is borrowed from biomedicine.
A Conversation with Tim Marsland
Delivering software to customers, especially in increments to existing systems, has been a difficult challenge since the days of floppies and shrink-wrap. But with guys like Tim Marsland working on the problem, the process could be improving.
A Conversation with Pat Selinger
Leading the way to manage the world's information
A Conversation with Tim Bray
Tim Bray's Waterloo was no crushing defeat, but rather the beginning of his success as one of the conquerors of search engine technology and XML. In 1986, after working in software at DEC and GTE, he took a job at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where he managed the New Oxford English Dictionary Project, an ambitious research endeavor to bring the venerable Oxford English Dictionary into the computer age.
A Conversation with Alan Kay
Big talk with the creator of smalltalk - and much more
A Conversation with Bruce Lindsay
Designing for failure may be the key to success.
A Conversation with Mike Deliman
Mike Deliman was pretty busy last January when the Mars rover Spirit developed memory and communications problems shortly after landing on the Red Planet. He is a member of the team at Wind River Systems who created the operating system at the heart of the Mars rovers, and he was among those working nearly around the clock to discover and solve the problem that had mysteriously halted the mission on Mars.
A Conversation with Donald Peterson
That light we see at the end of the tunnel is the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications. As chairman and chief executive officer of Avaya, Donald Peterson is in a position to help make that convergence happen sooner rather than later. Peterson has been with Avaya since it was spun off from Lucent in 2000. Prior to that he was chief financial officer of AT&T's Communication Services Group and Lucent.
A Conversation with James Gosling
As a teenager, James Gosling came up with an idea for a little interpreter to solve a problem in a data analysis project he was working on at the time. Through the years, as a grad student and at Sun as creator of Java and the Java Virtual Machine, he has used several variations on that solution. "I came up with one answer once, and I have just been repeating it over and over again for a frightening number of years," he says.
A Conversation with Brewster Kahle
Stu Feldman, Queue board member and vice president of Internet technology for IBM, interviews the chief executive officer of the nonprofit Internet Archive.
A Conversation with Sam Leffler
The seeds of Unix and open source were sown in the 1970s, and Sam Leffler was right in there doing some of the heaviest cultivating. He has been actively working with Unix since 1976 when he first encountered it at Case Western Reserve University, and he has been involved with what people now think of as open source, as he says, "long before it was even termed open source."
A Conversation with Matt Wells
Search is a small but intensely competitive segment of the industry, dominated for the past few years by Google. But Google's position as king of the hill is not insurmountable, says Gigablast's Matt Wells, and he intends to take his product to the top.
A Conversation with Teresa Meng
In 1999, Teresa Meng took a leave of absence from Stanford University and with colleagues from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, founded Atheros Communications to develop and deliver the core technology for wireless communication systems. Using a combination of signal processing and CMOS RF technology, Atheros came up with a pioneering 5 GHz wireless LAN chipset found in most 802.11a/b/g products, and continues to extend its market as wireless communications evolve.
A Conversation with Will Harvey
In many ways online games are on the bleeding edge of software development. That puts Will Harvey, founder and executive vice president of Menlo Park-based There, right at the front of the pack. There, which just launched its product in October, is a virtual 3D world designed for online socializing.
A Conversation with Steve Hagan
At Oracle, distributed development is a way of life.
A Conversation with Peter Ford
The IM world according to a messenger architect
A Conversation with Dan Dobberpuhl
The computer industry has always been about power. The development of the microprocessors that power computers has been a relentless search for more power, higher speed, and better performance, usually in smaller and smaller packages. But when is enough enough?
A Conversation with Wayne Rosing
How the Web changes the way developers build and release software
A Conversation with Chris DiBona
Chris DiBona has been out front and outspoken about the open source movement.
A Conversation with Jim Gray
Sit down, turn off your cellphone, and prepare to be fascinated. Clear your schedule, because once you've started reading this interview, you won't be able to put it down until you've finished it.
A Conversation with Mario Mazzola
To peek into the future of networking, you dont need a crystal ball. You just need a bit of time with Mario Mazzola, chief development officer at Cisco.
Interview:
A Conversation with Jim Ready
Linux may well play a significant role in the future of the embedded systems market, where the majority of software is still custom built in-house and no large player has preeminence.
Interview with Adam Bosworth
The changes that are going to be driven by web services will result in a major language extension.