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The article discusses software engineering in which software is used to develop software. Compilers convert a text form of instructions into machine instructions executable by a machine, the author states. Topics include integrated development environments (IDEs) which are mostly word processors with specific look-up processes, what the act of putting knowledge onto pieces of paper does to the knowledge itself, and computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools used to store knowledge in a variety of formats including tables.

We present our approach for overcoming the cost, operational complexity, and limited scale endemic to datacenter networks a decade ago. Three themes unify the five generations of datacenter networks detailed in this paper. First, multi-stage Clos topologies built from commodity switch silicon can support cost-effective deployment of buildingscale networks. Second, much of the general, but complex, decentralized network routing and management protocols supporting arbitrary deployment scenarios were overkill for single-operator, pre-planned datacenter networks. We built a centralized control mechanism based on a global configuration pushed to all datacenter switches. Third, modular hardware design coupled with simple, robust software allowed our design to also support inter-cluster and wide-area networks. Our datacenter networks run at dozens of sites across the planet, scaling in capacity by 100x over 10 years to more than 1 Pbps of bisection bandwidth. A more detailed version of this paper is available at Ref. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at issues in the history of computing and computer science. The author assesses computer scientist Donald Knuth's criticisms of historiographic trends in the history of computer science, particularly as described by computer scientist Martin Campbell-Kelly in a 2007 paper entitled "The History of the History of Software." Topics include computer scientists versus historians as researchers on the history of computing.

The article focuses on the constitutionality of the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) spying on all Americans. It states the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution provides people the right to be secure in their persons, papers, houses, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure and mentions in colonial America officials of the British Crown conducted mass searches of houses and persons despite the English Court's Saman's Case of 1603. It comments on Judge William H. Pauley III's ruling Americans cannot file suit against the NSA when he dismissed a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union due to legislation in the Patriot Act requiring the spying be kept secret forever. It mentions a report by the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on telephone spying.