 Welcome to the Digital Edition of the June 2012 Communications of the ACM. To access the Digital Edition, please click on the cover image at left or on the link at the top of this email. Also see the Table of Contents at the bottom of this email.
Judea Pearl, winner of the 2011 ACM A.M. Turing Award, is pictured outside his office at UCLA on this month’s cover. Pearl's fundamental contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, and his ruminations on what to do with the award’s $250,000 prize money, are addressed in "Game Changer," by Neil Savage. And Pearl discusses probability and causation in "A Sure Thing," an interview with Leah Hoffman.
Also in this issue:
- "Trust Extension for Commodity Computers," by Bryan Parno, describes techniques to enable users to their trust in one computing device to other devices and services.
- "The GCT Program Towards the P vs. NP Problem," by Ketan D. Mulmuley, presents an overview of geometric complexity theory, an approach to the foundational questions of complexity theory via algebraic geometry and representational theory.
- Why hasn't increased attention to cybersecurity made today's computer systems more secure?, asks Simson L. Garfinkel in "The Cybersecurity Risk."
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With the ongoing policy debate about matters of war and peace in cyberspace as a backdrop, Herbert Lin explains "Why Computer Scientists Should Care About Cyber Conflict and U.S. National Security Policy."
I am also very pleased to announce that we will be launching the new Communications of the ACMwebsite early next week using the same URL as the existing site, so please visit the new site atcacm.acm.org after May 29, 2012. This new site was developed with significant input from theCACM Editorial Board and Readership Community, and I would like to thank all who volunteered their time and experience to improve cacm.acm.org for everyone's benefit. Notable changes include a new sophisticated design, improved navigation for latest issues, new and improved discoverability and search tools, including faceted search, improved readability of article-level pages, enhanced sharing functionality for full-text articles, and improved display of video and multi-media content. I hope you will enjoy the new site and please send your feedback to cacmfe...@acm.org !
As always, we welcome and appreciate your thoughts and comments on Communications of the ACM.
Sincerely,
Scott Delman
Director, Group Publishing
Association for Computing Machinery
- Table of Contents
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- USACM and U.S. legislation
- Eugene H. Spafford
Pages: 5-5
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Computing professionals sometimes find policy issues ill-defined, confusing, or irrelevant. Perhaps that is why---to date---policy participation has been limited within our community.
- DEPARTMENT: Letters to the editor
- The halting problem in the clear light of probability
- CACM Staff
Pages: 6-7
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- DEPARTMENT: BLOG@CACM
- Protecting against data breaches; living with mistakes
- Jason Hong, Greg Linden
Pages: 10-11
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The Communications Web site, http://cacm.acm.org, features more than a dozen bloggers in the BLOG@CACM community. In each issue of Communications, we'll publish selected posts or excerpts.twitterFollow us on Twitter ...
- DEPARTMENT: CACM online
- Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
- Scott E. Delman
Pages: 12-12
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- COLUMN: News
- Analyzing medical data
- Gregory Goth
Pages: 13-15
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Electronic patient records contain a treasure trove of data, and researchers are using natural language processing technology to mine the structured data and free text.
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Smarter photography
- Gary Anthes
Pages: 16-18
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Improvements in camera hardware, image processing, camera-photographer interfaces, and image viewing are advancing the state of the art in digital photography.
- Data mining meets city hall
- Leah Hoffmann
Pages: 19-21
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Local and national governments are turning to open data to cut their costs, increase transparency and efficiency, and respond to the needs of citizens.
- Game changer
- Neil Savage
Pages: 22-23
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Judea Pearl's passionate advocacy of the importance of probability and causality helped revolutionize artificial intelligence.
- An influential theoretician
- Paul Hyman
Pages: 24-24
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Sanjeev Arora, winner of the 2011 ACM-Infosys Award, discusses his pivotal role in theoretical computer science.
- COLUMN: The business of software
- A measure of control
- Phillip G. Armour
Pages: 26-28
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Some limitations on measurements in software.
- COLUMN: Inside risks
- The cybersecurity risk
- Simson L. Garfinkel
Pages: 29-32
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Increased attention to cybersecurity has not resulted in improved cybersecurity.
- COLUMN: Kode Vicious
- Scale failure
- George V. Neville-Neil
Pages: 33-34
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Using a tool for the wrong job is OK until the day when it isn't.
- COLUMN: Privacy and security
- Security of the internet and the known unknowns
- Chris Hall
Pages: 35-37
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Seeking answers to questions about Internet vulnerabilities.
- COLUMN: The profession of IT
- The myth of the elevator pitch
- Peter J. Denning, Nicholas Dew
Pages: 38-40
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Instead of pitching, listen and offer.
- COLUMN: Viewpoint
- Why computer scientists should care about cyber conflict and U.S. national security policy
- Herbert Lin
Pages: 41-43
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Cybersecurity and policy issues for computer scientists.
- SECTION: Practice
- A guided tour of data-center networking
- Dennis Abts, Bob Felderman
Pages: 44-51
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A good user experience depends on predictable performance within the data-center network.
- Modeling people and places with internet photo collections
- David Crandall, Noah Snavely
Pages: 52-60
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Understanding the world from the sea of online photos.
- Real-time computer vision with OpenCV
- Kari Pulli, Anatoly Baksheev, Kirill Kornyakov, Victor Eruhimov
Pages: 61-69
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Mobile computer-vision technology will soon become as ubiquitous as touch interfaces.
- SECTION: Contributed articles
- Why rumors spread so quickly in social networks
- Benjamin Doer, Mahmoud Fouz, Tobias Friedrich
Pages: 70-75
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A few hubs with many connections share with many individuals with few connections.
- Trust extension for commodity computers
- Bryan Parno
Pages: 76-85
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A user's trust in a single device can be extended to many other devices.
- SECTION: Review articles
- Data services
- Michael J. Carey, Nicola Onose, Michalis Petropoulos
Pages: 86-97
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Exploring the technology trends in basic, integrated, and cloud data services.
- The GCT program toward the P vs. NP problem
- Ketan D. Mulmuley
Pages: 98-107
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Exploring the power and potential of geometric complexity theory.
- SECTION: Research highlights
- Reconstructing the unknown, balancing structure and uncertainty: technical perspective
- Pablo A. Parrilo
Pages: 110-110
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- Exact matrix completion via convex optimization
- Emmanuel Candès, Benjamin Recht
Pages: 111-119
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Suppose that one observes an incomplete subset of entries selected from a low-rank matrix. When is it possible to complete the matrix and recover the entries that have not been seen? We demonstrate that in very general settings, one can perfectly recover ...
- The fox and the hedgehog: technical perspective
- Peter Lee
Pages: 120-120
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- Lightweight modular staging: a pragmatic approach to runtime code generation and compiled DSLs
- Tiark Rompf, Martin Odersky
Pages: 121-130
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Good software engineering practice demands generalization and abstraction, whereas high performance demands specialization and concretization. These goals are at odds, and compilers can only rarely translate expressive high-level programs to modern hardware ...
- COLUMN: Last byte
- Puzzled
- Peter Winkler
Pages: 133-133
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Last month (May 2012) we posted a trio of brainteasers concerning designs on square grids. Here, we offer solutions to all three. How did you do?
- Q&A
- Leah Hoffmann
Pages: 136-ff
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Artificial intelligence pioneer Judea Pearl discusses probability, causation, the calculus of intervention, and counterfactuals.
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