COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

Departments

5 Letter From USACM Chair

USACM and U.S. Legislation

By Eugene H. Spafford

6 Letters To The Editor

The Halting Problem in the Clear Light of Probability

10 BLOG@CACM

Protecting Against Data Breaches;

Living with Mistakes

Jason Hong writes about security breaches and offers a three-pronged approach. Greg Linden discusses the differences between computers and the human brain and their tolerance of errors.

12 CACM Online

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

By Scott E. Delman

37 Calendar

131 Careers

Last Byte

133 Puzzled

Solutions and Sources

By Peter Winkler

136 Q&A

A Sure Thing

Artificial intelligence pioneer Judea Pearl discusses probability, causation, the calculus of intervention, and counterfactuals.

By Leah Hoffmann

News

13 Analyzing Medical Data

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.

By Gregory Goth

16 Smarter Photography Improvements in camera hardware, image processing, camera-photographer interfaces, and image viewing are advancing the state of the art in digital photography.

By Gary Anthes

19 Data Mining Meets City Hall Local and national governments are turning to open data to cut their costs, increase transparency and efficiency, and respond to the needs of citizens.

By Leah Hoffmann

22 Game Changer

Judea Pearl’s passionate advocacy of the importance of probability and causality helped revolutionize artificial intelligence.

By Neil Savage

24 An Influential Theoretician Sanjeev Arora, winner of the 2011 ACM-Infosys Award, discusses his pivotal role in theoretical computer science. By Paul Hyman

Viewpoints

26 The Business of Software A Measure of Control Some limitations on measurements in software. By Phillip G. Armour

29 Inside Risks

The Cybersecurity Risk Increased attention to cybersecurity has not resulted in improved cybersecurity. By Simson L. Garfinkel

33 Kode Vicious

Scale Failure

Using a tool for the wrong job is OK until the day when it isn’t. By George V. Neville-Neil

35 Privacy and Security

Security of the Internet and the Known Unknowns Seeking answers to questions about Internet vulnerabilities.

By Chris Hall

38 The Profession of IT

The Myth of the Elevator Pitch Instead of pitching, listen and offer. By Peter J. Denning and Nicholas Dew

41 Viewpoint

Why Computer Scientists Should Care About Cyber Conflict and U.S. National Security Policy Cybersecurity and policy issues for computer scientists.