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The article discusses the importance and significance of professional certifications in computer-based occupations and industries. It examines the value of certification, how employees should consider the value of different levels and qualities of certification, and the opportunity costs of certification.

The article reports on the use of supercomputers in China. It mentions the development of computer systems by Chinese companies, the software developed for the computers to work with artificial intelligence and big data, and the kinds of applications for which the supercomputers are used.

The article discusses climate change and the computer industry's effects on the environment. The author argues that the computing community needs to embrace the challenge of reducing carbon emissions. Additional suggestions to reduce carbon emissions are also mentioned including the participation in computing sustainability events.

The article presents discussion on the importance of increasing participation of individuals with disabilities within the computing field, focusing on the successes of the AccessComputing initiative sponsored by the University of Washington. Topics addressed include description of the need for contributions by disabled persons within the field, the history of the program, and several lessons learned and challenges identified by the project.

The article discusses the computer company Apple Inc. and its reported discovery of a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) vulnerability involving the firm's iOS 6.0 computer operating system in 2014, focusing on man-in-the-middle computer attacks and various computer bugs (viruses). An apparent short circuit involving an SSL/TLS (Transport Layer Security) handshake algorithm is mentioned, along with the U.S. National Vulnerability Database and the C computer programming language. Computer coding standards and duplications of "goto" statements are examined.

The article focuses on the business of software as examined in the 2014 Research Edition of the "QSM Software Almanac" published by Quantitative Software Management (QSM). Topics discussed include the core metrics that provide insights into the health of software projects and organizations, some industry trends over time such as project duration, the decline of project effort along with the delivered size of systems, and the median project team size, and some useful approaches for the measurement of projects as described in the Almanac.

The author addresses some of the issues facing the computer education research (CER) community. Topics discussed include National Science Foundation's (NSF) funding of efforts to create a CER in the U.S. and Europe, research issues to be faced by CER in areas of broadening participation, students and learning, computing in primary and secondary education and tools, underrepresentation of women and minority groups in computing, the importance of interventions to make computing available for females, minorities and low-income students.

The author explores the ethics of the computer industry, pointing to contemporary author's notions on public trust regarding privacy and cybersecurity, the morality of computer industry executives, and scandals such as that involving privacy, Facebook, and the data mining company Cambridge Analytica. It considers Internet advertising, consent and the right to privacy, and regulation of the Internet.

The article reprints blog articles from the "Communications of the ACM" website at http://cacm.acm.org. One of the articles focuses on cyberwar and provides some examples of cyber attacks as a method of warfare including cyber attached on Estonia in 2007, use of cyberwar in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and the use of a computer worm (called Stuxnet) against Iran's nuclear program. Some of the technical and ethical questions related to cyber warfare are discussed. Another blog reprint discusses exascale computing and big data.

A calendar of events for the computing industry in July 2015 is presented including the Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference in Lithuania, the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation in England, and the 6th International Conference on Future Energy Systems in India.

The article announces several awards in computer science including the 2014 ACM-IEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award for Charles E. Leiserson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Marvin Minsky as recipient of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and Microsoft Research Verified Software Milestone Award for Intel Corp. principal engineer Roope Kaivola.

A correction to the article "Computer Science Awards, Appointments," in the September 2014 issue is presented.

The article discusses the highlights of the 2014 Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) in Germany. Topics discussed include the support for the event provided by Klaus Tschira, founder of the software firm SAP, formal lectures and informal small group gatherings for mathematics and computer science researchers and a visit to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).