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Presents several letters to the editor on topics related to distance education, published in the February 1, 2000 issue of the journal Communications of the ACM. Features of the email-based course on planning and staging a medieval period-inspired feast; Factors contributing towards the successful implementation of GNA-VSNS BioComputing course, a distance learning course, at the postgraduate level; Comparison of the effectiveness of teaching via distance education with that of conventional classroom teaching.

There are many perspectives from which these questions might be addressed. Academic computer science and engineering is multifaceted. Academic computing programs exist in institutions of different sizes and educational philosophies. […]

Several letters to the editor in response to articles in previous issues including an article related to the Draft Proposed American National Standard for Programming Language in the August 1975 issue, an another article related to the process of refereeing in computer science in the July 1975 issue, an article concerning computer programming techniques in a previous issue, an article on the structure of computer programming in a previous issue and an article related to computer network control and operation is a previous issue are presented.

Describes a resource management program for avoiding deadlock, a computer system state in which resources have been allocated to tasks in such a way that none of the tasks can continue unless one or more resources are preempted. Costs of resource preemption; Reduction of the possible extreme space and processing overhead.

Deja vu. As I read the many comments on software engineering licensing I'm reminded of the debate on the merits of the 'go to' statement that raged in this publication […]

The article presents information about the progress made by the American Chemical Society (ACS). Founded in 1876, ACS did not receive a charter from the U.S. Congress until 1937-some 61 years later. Its objectives are to encourage the advancement of chemistry, to foster improvements in the qualifications of chemists and to be concerned with worldwide applications of chemistry to meet the needs of humanity. With 137,125 members worldwide, ACS is the largest scientific society in the world. ACS members are mostly chemists, with only about 10 percent being chemical engineers. ACS views chemists as a professional group and its activities emphasize the interchange of scientific information and long term R&D issues. It supports chemistry as a science, but its members largely oppose getting involved with technology aspects. The society maintains a computerized roster of experts in various areas of chemistry, obtained by surveying members. It acts as a referral service, citing approximately one referral per week from this roster.

acm forum How Soft the Software? I read Christopher Cherniak's article, 'Undebuggability and Cognitive Science' (Communications, April 1988, pp. 402-12), with fascination. I have not read any similar line of […]

Focuses on several issues related to the long-range planning of the Association for Computing Machinery. Information on the key elements of the "Long-Range Planning Report," which includes the results of a membership survey; Recommendations by the Long-Range Planning Committee, chaired by Dorothy Deringer, for the establishment of a Program Planning and Opportunity Review Committee; Examination of the long-range plan and its recommendations by the Strategic Planning Committee.