COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
Departments
5 Editor’s Letter
Is The Image Crisis Over?
By Moshe Y. Vardi
6 Letters To The Editor
Pay for Editorial Independence
9 In the Virtual Extension
News Viewpoints
25 Privacy and Security
Usable Security: How to Get It
Why does your computer bother you
so much about security, but still isn’t
secure? It’s because users don’t have
a model for security, or a simple way
to keep important things safe.
By Butler Lampson
10 blog@CACM
Computer Science Curriculum,
Deceptive Advertising
Ramana Rao writes about the
evolution of computer science
curriculum and Greg Linden
reflects on ethics and advertising.
28 Legally Speaking
Are Business Methods Patentable?
How the U.S. Supreme Court’s
forthcoming decision in the Bilski v.
Doll case is expected to affect existing
and future software patents.
By Pamela Samuelson
12 CACM Online
Internet Addiction:
It’s Spreading, but is it Real?
By David Roman
33 Calendar
13 Deep Data Dives
Discover Natural Laws
Computer scientists have found
a way to bootstrap science, using
evolutionary computation to find
fundamental meaning in massive
amounts of raw data.
By Gary Anthes
31 Economic and Business Dimensions
The Broadband Price
is Not Right
Developing an effective pricing index
is essential to understanding the
value of broadband connectivity.
By Shane Greenstein
106 Careers
Last Byte
112 Puzzled
Covering the Plane
By Peter Winkler
15 Electronic Paper’s Next Chapter
The technological challenge for
researchers working on the next
generation of electronic paper is to
render color as brightly as traditional
paper, without increasing power
requirements or end-user costs.
By Kirk L. Kroeker
18 Implementing Electronic
Medical Records
Despite a number of challenges,
patients’ medical records are slowly
making the transition to the digital age.
By Leah Hoffmann
34 Viewpoint
On Public Service
and Computer Science
Members of the computer science
community should become
more involved in public service
by becoming program managers
at federal agencies, the opportunities
and benefits of which are
outlined here.
By Jonathan M. Smith
21 Exploring New Frontiers
The Expeditions in Computing
program provides scientists with
the funding to work on ambitious,
often multi-disciplinary research.
By Gregory Goth
36 Interview
An Interview with Ping Fu
Ping Fu, CEO of the digital
shape sampling and processing
company Geomagic, discusses her
background, achievements, and
challenges managing a company
during a period of dynamic growth.
By Bob Cramblitt
Association for Computing Machinery
Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession