What If People Learn Requirements Over Time? A Rough Introduction to Requirements Economics

The overall objective of Requirements Engineering is to specify, in a systematic way, a system that satisfies the expectations of its stakeholders. Despite tremendous effort in the field, recent studies demonstrate this is objective is not always achieved. In this paper, we discuss one particularly challenging factor to Requirements Engineering projects, namely the change of requirements. We proposes a rough discussion of how learning and time explain requirements changes, how it can be introduced as a key variable in the formulation of the Requirements Engineering Problem, and how this induces costs for a requirements engineering project. This leads to a new discipline of requirements economics

Perfectionist Liberalisms and the Challenge of Pluralism

Based on Steven Wall's work I take perfectionism in political philosophy to include two components: the objective good and the non-neutral state. Some perfectionist theories aim to be liberal. But given the objective good component perfectionism seems to be unable to accommodate the commitment to value pluralism found in liberalism, this is what I call the challenge of pluralism. The perfectionist reply is to claim that their objective good can also be plural and thus there is no conflict. My aim in this paper is to show that this reply does not work. I do this by looking at three different ways we could conceive of perfectionist theories as plural and show how each is unsatisfactory

Waiting experience at train stations

In the railway sector there is a great deal of interest in objective time but hardly any in passengers’ subjective experience of time. The focus of this publication is thus not on (shortening) objective time but on how time itself is experienced and how this can be improved. \ud Aware that a journey must not only be quick but also pleasant, Netherlands Railways (NS) consequently sets itself the following objective: “To transport our passengers safely, on time and in comfort via appealing stations.” Particularly the wait is found to be unpleasant, with passengers regarding stations and especially platforms as sombre, boring and grey places, devoid of atmosphere and colour. By improving the waiting environment, we can kill two birds with one stone: passengers will find waiting more pleasant and the waiting time will appear to be shorter. The practical question in this research thus reads: “Which measures are effective to make the waiting time at stations more pleasant and/or to shorten the perception of waiting time?” The conclusion is that by adding the right environmental stimuli at the right moment, both the station and the wait are more positively evaluated, resulting in the score for the general appraisal of the platform increasing by half to one full point

Modularity in support of design for re-use

We explore the structuring principle of modularity with the objective of analysing its current ability to meet the requirements of a 're-use' centred approach to design. We aim to highlight the correlation's between modular design and 're-use', and argue that it has the potential to aid the little-supported process of 'design-for-re-use'. In fulfilment of this objective we not only identify the requirements of 'design-for-re-use', but also propose how modular design principles can be extended to support 'design-for-re-use'

Quantum observer and Kolmogorov complexity: a model that can be tested

Different observers do not have to agree on how they identify a quantum system. We explore a condition based on algorithmic complexity that allows a system to be described as an objective "element of reality". We also suggest an experimental test of the hypothesis that any system, even much smaller than a human being, can be a quantum mechanical observer.Comment: 11 pages. Section 6 on experimental tests added in version

A Discussion of Space Distances

The objective of this activity is to help students comprehend the vast distances between the stars, and that the light we see is not recent starlight, but may be millions of years old. Instructors will help students understand how astronomers find out about the origins of the universe. Educational levels: High school, Middle school

Stable Invitations

We consider the situation in which an organizer is trying to convene an event, and needs to choose a subset of agents to be invited. Agents have preferences over how many attendees should be at the event and possibly also who the attendees should be. This induces a stability requirement: All invited agents should prefer attending to not attending, and all the other agents should not regret being not invited. The organizer's objective is to find the invitation of maximum size subject to the stability requirement. We investigate the computational complexity of finding the maximum stable invitation when all agents are truthful, as well as the mechanism design problem when agents may strategically misreport their preferences.Comment: To appear in COMSOC 201

On cost-effective communication network designing

How to efficiently design a communication network is a paramount task for network designing and engineering. It is, however, not a single objective optimization process as perceived by most previous researches, i.e., to maximize its transmission capacity, but a multi-objective optimization process, with lowering its cost to be another important objective. These two objectives are often contradictive in that optimizing one objective may deteriorate the other. After a deep investigation of the impact that network topology, node capability scheme and routing algorithm as well as their interplays have on the two objectives, this letter presents a systematic approach to achieve a cost-effective design by carefully choosing the three designing aspects. Only when routing algorithm and node capability scheme are elegantly chosen can BA-like scale-free networks have the potential of achieving good tradeoff between the two objectives. Random networks, on the other hand, have the built-in character for a cost-effective design, especially when other aspects cannot be determined beforehand.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure