ExtremeCom: To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before

Research on networks for challenged environments has become a major research area recently. There is however a lack of true understanding among networking researchers about what such environments really are like. In this paper we give an introduction to the ExtremeCom series of workshops that were created to overcome this limitation. We will discuss the motivation behind why the workshop series was created, give some summaries of the two workshops that have been held, and discuss the lessons that we have learned from them

Copyright issues for the technological classroom : what is permissible under current copyright law and guidelines for educators in the design and use of multimedia, disance learning, and other recent technological advances?

Technologies, such as computers, Internet, electronic mail etc., offer educational institutions limitless opportunities for learning and teaching. While technological advancements encourage academia to boldly go where no one has gone before, there are legitimate copyright and intellectual property concerns that need to be addressed. The current copyright law passed in 1976, although it legally established the Fair Use principle, is inadequate given the age we live in. To encourage dialogue, this review of the literature will explore the applicability of copyright law to educators in the electronic environment. Current law, established guidelines, and recent court decisions will be discussed in relationship to their role in determining what is acceptable and unacceptable Fair Use

From generative fit to generative capacity: exploring an emerging dimension of information systems fit and task performance

Information systems research has been concerned with improving task-related performance. The concept of fit is often used to explain how system design results in better performance and overall value. So far, the literature focuses mainly on performance evaluation criteria that are based on measures of task efficiency, accuracy, or productivity. However, nowadays, productivity gain is no longer the single evaluation criterion. In many instances, computer systems are expected to enhance our creativity, reveal opportunities and open new vistas of uncharted frontiers. To address this void, we introduce the concept of generativity and develop two corresponding design considerations-- generative capacity that refers to one’s creativity, ingenuity and mental dexterity, and generative fit that refers to the extent to which an IT artifact is conducive to evoking and enhancing that generative capacity. We offer an extended view of the concept of fit and realign the prevailing approaches to humancomputer interaction design with current leading-edge applications and users\u27 expectations. Our findings guide systems designers who aim to enhance creative work, unstructured syntheses, serendipitous discoveries, and any other form of computer-aided tasks that involve unexplored outcomes, expect fresh configurations or aim to enhance our ability to boldly go where no one has gone before. In this paper, we explore the notion of generativity, review its theoretical background in the context of the social sciences, and argue that it should be included in the evaluation of task-related performance. Then, we briefly explore the role of fit in IS research, position “generative fit” in that context, explain its role and impact on performance, and provide key design considerations that enhance generative fit. Finally, we demonstrate our thesis with an illustrative case of good generative fit, and conclude with ideas for further research and final thoughts

Star Trek : Arbeitsbibliographie

Eine erste Fassung der folgenden Bibliographie haben wir in: Faszinierend! STAR TREK und die Wissenschaften. 2. (hrsg. v. Nina Rogotzki [...]. Kiel: Ludwig 2003, S. 222-240) vorgestellt

On Dark Chemistry: What’s Dark Matter and How Mind Influences Brain Through Proactive Spin

Benjamin has written an article entitled “Dark Chemistry or Psychic Spin Pixel?” which promotes a “dark chemistry” model of mind and discuss the spin-mediated theory. This hypothetical chemistry is based on the hypothetical axion dark matter. Although Benjamin is commendable for boldly going where no one has gone before, he may find himself still in the “bright” territory instead of the “dark” side, if he is willing to use Occam’s razor to cut out “dark” things and replace them with non-local effects. Based on our recent experimental findings, our contentions are two-fold: (1) dark matter is likely the cosmological manifestation of quantum entanglement; and (2) the hypothetical axion dark matter is, therefore, replaceable by non-local effects mediated by the primordial spin processes. We also discuss the cause of apparent dark energy. In particular, we explore the issue how mind influences the brain through said spin processes. Our thoughts are that the manifestation of free will is intrinsically associated with the nuclear and/or electron spin processes inside the varying high electric voltage environment of the neural membranes and proteins which likely enable the said spin processes to be “proactive,” that is, being able to utilize non-local energy (potential) and quantum information to influence brain activities through spin chemistry and possibly other chemical/physical processes in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics

Lazarus laughed

Sermon preached on All Saints Sunday at the Mount Zion Lutheran Church, Waterloo, Ontario, 5 N 2006. Jn 11:32-44

To boldly go:an occam-π mission to engineer emergence

Future systems will be too complex to design and implement explicitly. Instead, we will have to learn to engineer complex behaviours indirectly: through the discovery and application of local rules of behaviour, applied to simple process components, from which desired behaviours predictably emerge through dynamic interactions between massive numbers of instances. This paper describes a process-oriented architecture for fine-grained concurrent systems that enables experiments with such indirect engineering. Examples are presented showing the differing complex behaviours that can arise from minor (non-linear) adjustments to low-level parameters, the difficulties in suppressing the emergence of unwanted (bad) behaviour, the unexpected relationships between apparently unrelated physical phenomena (shown up by their separate emergence from the same primordial process swamp) and the ability to explore and engineer completely new physics (such as force fields) by their emergence from low-level process interactions whose mechanisms can only be imagined, but not built, at the current time

Teaching Truth and Authenticity - An East West Comparison

This instructional module makes a comparison between the concepts of truth and authenticity in Western and Eastern philosophy and culture