COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
Departments

5 President’s Letter

ACM’s Place in the Global Picture By Wendy Hall

7 Publisher’s Corner 50 Years Young By Scott E. Delman

9 Letters To The Editor Knuth’s Art of Recovering from Errors

10 CACM Online We’re All Ears By David Roman

100 Careers

News

11 Finding Diamonds in the Rough

Spectral graph theory has proven to be very useful for text search and retrieval and for refining predictive-analysis systems.

By Kirk L. Kroeker

14 Ubiquitous Video

Scalable and distributed video coding offers the promise of two-way, real-time video.

By Logan Kugler

17 Privacy Matters

As concerns about protecting personal data increase, differential privacy offers a promising solution. By Samuel Greengard

19 Wisdom From Randy Pausch Weeks before his death on July 25, Randy Pausch graciously commented on his life’s work, his hopes for computer science, and his regard for the students who are its future.

By Leah Hoffmann

Vi ewpoints

22 Technology Strategy and Management The Puzzle of Apple

Given Apple’s unique characteristics, should it strive to be a platform or a product leader?

By Michael Cusumano

25 Kode Vicious

Pride and Prejudice (The Vasa) Navigating the well-traveled course of communication failure that often leads to engineering disasters.

By George Neville-Neil

27 IT Policy

Science Policy Isn’t Always

About Science

What is the appropriate role and level of influence for science and technical advice in policy deliberations?

By Cameron Wilson and Peter Harsha

30 Viewpoint

Global Warming Toward Open Educational Resources Seeking to realize the potential for significantly improving and advancing the world’s standard of education.

By Richard G. Baraniuk and C. Sidney Burrus

Practice

34 How Do I Model State? Let Me Count the Ways

A study of the technology and sociology of Web service specifications. by Ian Foster, Savas Parastatidis, Paul Watson, and Mark McKeown

42 Powering Down

Smart power management is all about doing more with the resources we have.

By Matthew Garrett

47 CTO Storage Roundtable, Part Two Leaders in the storage industry ponder upcoming technologies and trends.

By Mache Creeger, Moderator

54 Software Engineering and Formal Methods

The answer to software reliability concerns may lie in formal methods. By Mike Hinchey, Michael Jackson, Patrick Cousot, Byron Cook, Jonathan P. Bowen, and Tiziana Margaria

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