Teaching Trial and Analysis of English for Technical Communication

In this article is described the usage of English for technical communication (ETC), it is a novel development of English for specific purpose on the demand of the society for improving students' ability in communicating technical information. В статті описано використання англійської мови для технічної комунікації, як нестандартного розвитку англійської мови з спеціальних причин на потреби суспільства для доведення здатності студентів в комунікації технічної інформації

Testing in English language, kinds of tests

In this article it is described the testing in English language and different kinds of tests in English language which are mostly used nowadays. В статті описано тестування в англійській мові та різні види тестів в англійській мові

Timidez nos Media: Os Perigos do Acanhamento na Era Digital, uma Era de Velocidade, Satisfação e Espetáculo

A velocidade e a satisfação são fundamentais para as ferramentas de comunicação digital e ambientes sociais on-line de hoje. Este artigo examina como as novas formas e hábitos de comunicação social em ambientes digitais comprometeram, ao longo do tempo, utilizadores socialmente tímidos como resultado do design algorítmico e da mercantilização dos utilizadores. Um exame da história dos ambientes sociais on-line e seu desenvolvimento, a consideração de fatores sociais e culturais e a teoria da auto-representação serão usados para enquadrar esses argumentos

Robust Trust Establishment in Decentralized Networks

The advancement in networking technologies creates new opportunities for computer users to communicate and interact with one another. Very often, these interacting parties are strangers. A relevant concern for a user is whether to trust the other party in an interaction, especially if there are risks associated with the interaction. Reputation systems are proposed as a method to establish trust among strangers. In a reputation system, a user who exhibits good behavior continuously can build a good reputation. On the other hand, a user who exhibits malicious behavior will have a poor reputation. Trust can then be established based on the reputation ratings of a user. While many research efforts have demonstrated the effectiveness of reputation systems in various situations, the security of reputation systems is not well understood within the research community. In the context of trust establishment, the goal of an adversary is to gain trust. An adversary can appear to be trustworthy within a reputation system if the adversary has a good reputation. Unfortunately, there are plenty of methods that an adversary can use to achieve a good reputation. To make things worse, there may be ways for an attacker to gain an advantage that may not be known yet. As a result, understanding an adversary is a challenging problem. The difficulty of this problem can be witnessed by how researchers attempt to prove the security of their reputation systems. Most prove security by using simulations to demonstrate that their solutions are resilient to specific attacks. Unfortunately, they do not justify their choices of the attack scenarios, and more importantly, they do not demonstrate that their choices are sufficient to claim that their solutions are secure. In this dissertation, I focus on addressing the security of reputation systems in a decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network. To understand the problem, I define an abstract model for trust establishment. The model consists of several layers. Each layer corresponds to a component of trust establishment. This model serves as a common point of reference for defining security. The model can also be used as a framework for designing and implementing trust establishment methods. The modular design of the model can also allow existing methods to inter-operate. To address the security issues, I first provide the definition of security for trust establishment. Security is defined as a measure of robustness. Using this definition, I provide analytical techniques for examining the robustness of trust establishment methods. In particular, I show that in general, most reputation systems are not robust. The analytical results lead to a better understanding of the capabilities of the adversaries. Based on this understanding, I design a solution that improves the robustness of reputation systems by using accountability. The purpose of accountability is to encourage peers to behave responsibly as well as to provide disincentive for malicious behavior. The effectiveness of the solution is validated by using simulations. While simulations are commonly used by other research efforts to validate their trust establishment methods, their choices of simulation scenarios seem to be chosen in an ad hoc manner. In fact, many of these works do not justify their choices of simulation scenarios, and neither do they show that their choices are adequate. In this dissertation, the simulation scenarios are chosen based on the capabilities of the adversaries. The simulation results show that under certain conditions, accountability can improve the robustness of reputation systems

El género memorias en las últimas novelas de Ignacio Solares

Fil: Gambetta Chuk, Aída Nadí

Fixing Belief

This thesis is concerned with self-ascriptive belief. I argue that one’s lower-order belief can be fixed from the reflective level. One reasons about whether p is the case and it is on the basis of one’s endorsement of p that one comes to believe p. I argue that one’s self-ascriptive belief can also be fixed from the reflective level. One reasons about whether p is the case and it is on the basis of one’s endorsement of p that one comes to self-ascribe the belief p. I further suggest that it is possible for the reflective way of fixing lower-order belief to fail but the reflective way of fixing self-ascriptive belief to succeed. When this happens, one is in a state of believing that she believes p when in fact one does not believe p. This suggests that the state of believing that one believes p and the state of believing p are distinct states and that the state of believing that one believes p does not necessitate the state of believing p. It also raises a sceptical worry about whether one’s self-ascriptive belief amounts to knowledge. In Chapter 1, I situate my discussions in the existing literature, focusing on the constitutive view of self-ascriptive belief. In Chapter 2, I use an everyday case in which a subject self-ascribes the belief that p and is later surprised that p to motivate the possibility that there are different levels at which beliefs are fixed. In Chapter 3, I develop an account of ratiocination and argue that the conclusion of ratiocination is in the form of I ought to believe p. Hence, at the end of ratiocination, one is in a state of believing that I ought to believe p. In Chapter 3, I discuss how one’s belief that I ought to believe p initiates a top-down fixation of the corresponding lower-order belief. I also discuss why it is possible for the top-down fixation process of a rational subject to terminate before it fixes the lower-order belief. In Chapter 4, I discuss the transparency account of self-knowledge. I first criticise the transparency account’s claim that a rational subject’s endorsing p necessarily leads to believing p. Someone who ratiocinates and concludes that p but does not believe p because the top-down fixation process terminates early is an example of how a rational subject can endorse p without believing p. I then draw on the transparency account to argue that from a rational subject’s first-person perspective, if she self-ascribes a belief to herself and if she endorses that p, she will self-ascribe the belief that p. If this is right, then one can self-ascribe the belief that p because one endorses p but in fact does not believe p because one’s endorsement fails to fix the lower-order belief. In Chapter 5, I return to the constitutive account, explaining why its central claim should be rejected. I also reject the incorrigibility thesis, which holds that a self-ascriptive belief that p entails the lower-order belief that p. Finally, I raise a number of puzzles concerning the epistemic status of self-ascriptive belief