Software

What role can technology play in cultivating a disciplinary stance — raising questions, planning investigations, interpreting data and constructing explanations in a way that reflects disciplinary values and principles? How can overt and tacit expert scientific knowledge be captured, represented and used to design software that enables novices to assume a disciplinary stance in their investigations? We present The Galapagos Finches software designed to foster a biological and evolutionary stance. Our approach, Discipline-Specific Strategic Support, translates the main variable types, comparison (...) types and relationships in a discipline into manipulable objects in the interface. Pre/post-tests show how DSSS helps achieve a balance between content and process goals. A contrastive-case microanalysis of high, medium and low-achieving students' inquiry shows progress toward a disciplinary stance. Our study shows how software representations carry multiple levels of meaning, and that the efficacy of learning technologies hinges on reflection at both the navigation and disciplinary-signification levels. (shrink)

Chaucer’s Treatise on the astrolabe is one of the earliest English-language works on an astronomical instrument. It draws on earlier sources, including a work on the astrolabe attributed in the Middle Ages to Messahalla, but reorders and reworks these sources to produce a description of the parts of, and the use of, the planispheric astrolabe. In their turn, fifteenth-century scribes sometimes drew on more than one source when producing a new copy of Chaucer’s text. Conflation of this kind means that (...) working out the relationship between the extant manuscript copies of the text can be complex and confusing. In this paper we reconsider the relationship between copies of Chaucer’s Treatise on the astrolabe by using new techniques derived from evolutionary biology to clarify the copying and conflation of this important early scientific text. We propose a stemma for the extant manuscripts, place fragmentary copies of the text on it in relation to the more complete versions, and argue that the conflation of Chaucer’s text may have been motivated by a concern amongst scribes for the completeness of what always was an incomplete work.Keywords: Astrolabe; Geoffrey Chaucer; Manuscripts; Stemmatics; Phylogenetics. (shrink)

Recent innovations in computer software development have produced a new breed of pet, AIBO 2, a robotic pet that simulates the behavior of real pets. This paper argues that software developers who create such simulations have ethical responsibilities to product users and to society. The paper concludes with some general ethical guidelines for software developers to follow when engaged in projects involving real-world simulations.

‘It is much more difficult than is often admitted to make a strong case for the ownership of computer software.’ This closely argued study of the strengths and weaknesses of the case for intellectual property rights and against software piracy is based on material contained in the author’s joint work with Douglas Adeney, Computer and Information Ethics, Greenwood Press, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, INC., Westport, CT, forthcoming May, 1997. The author is a member of the School of Information (...) Studies at Charles Sturt University, PO Box 588, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650 Australia; tel 61 69 33 2372; fax 61 69 33 2733; email jweckert@csu.edu.auHe wishes to acknowledge the contribution to this paper of Douglas Adeney of the University of Melbourne. (shrink)

The public interest should be a central ethical concern of members of the computer profession, and this would also result in the social status and power of software engineers being augmented. One attractive means to encourage and enforce ethical standards on the part of engineers and employers would be a system of licensing by internationally recognised professional bodies whose legitimacy stems from their capacity to act in the public interest. The author is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, (...) School of Applied Sciences, Anglia Polytechnic University, East Road, Cambridge CB1 1PT, England; email jwilkes@bridge.anglia.ac.uk or 10016.3425@compuserve.com. (shrink)

Defending or attacking either functionalism or computationalism requires clarity on what they amount to and what evidence counts for or against them. My goalhere is not to evaluatc their plausibility. My goal is to formulate them and their relationship clearly enough that we can determine which type of evidence is relevant to them. I aim to dispel some sources of confusion that surround functionalism and computationalism. recruit recent philosophical work on mechanisms and computation to shed light on them, and clarify (...) how functionalism and computationalism mayor may not legitimately come together. (shrink)

Una imagen muy generalizada a la hora de entender el software de computador es la que lo representa como una “caja negra”: no importa realmente saber qué partes lo componen internamente, sino qué resultados se obtienen de él según ciertos valores de entrada. Al hacer esto, muchos problemas filosóficos son ocultados, negados o simplemente mal entendidos. Este artículo discute tres unidades de análisis del software de computador, esto es, las especificaciones, los algoritmos y los procesos computacionales. El objetivo central es (...) entender las prácticas cientficas e ingenieriles detrás de cada unidad de software, así como analizar su metodología, ontología y epistemología. (shrink)

It has been argued that the fundamental laws of physics do not face a ‘problem of provisos’ equivalent to that found in other scientific disciplines (Earman, Roberts and Smith 2002) and there is only the appearance of exceptions to physical laws if they are confused with differential equations of evolution type (Smith 2002). In this paper I argue that even if this is true, fundamental laws in physics still pose a major challenge to standard Humean approaches to lawhood, as they (...) are not in any obvious sense about regularities in behaviour. A Humean approach to physical laws with exceptions is possible, however, if we adopt a view of laws that takes them to be the algorithms in the algorithmic compressions of empirical data. When this is supplemented with a distinction between lossy and lossless compression, we can explain exceptions in terms of compression artefacts present in the application of the lossy laws. (shrink)

We suggest that the issue of constructing and verifying social procedures, which we suggestively call "social software", be pursued as systematically as computer software is pursued by computer scientists. Certain complications do arise with social software which do not arise with computer software, but the similarities are nonetheless strong, and tools already exist which would enable us to start work on this important project. We give a variety of suggestive examples and indicate some theoretical work which already exists. I send (...) someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to the shopkeeper who opens a drawer marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers -- I assume he knows them by heart -- up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer. "But what is the "meaning of the word 'five'?" No such thing was in question here, only how the word "five" is used. (shrink)

Coordination is a key problem for addressing goal–action gaps in many human endeavors. We define interpersonal coordination as a type of communicative action characterized by low interpersonal belief and goal conflict. Such situations are particularly well described as having collectively “intelligent”, “common good” solutions, viz., ones that almost everyone would agree constitute social improvements. Coordination is useful across the spectrum of interpersonal communication—from isolated individuals to organizational teams. Much attention has been paid to coordination in teams and organizations. In this (...) paper we focus on the looser interpersonal structures we call active support networks, and on technology that meets their needs. We describe two needfinding investigations focused on social support, which examined four application areas for improving coordination in ASNs: academic coaching, vocational training, early learning intervention, and volunteer coordination; and existing technology relevant to ASNs. We find a thus-far unmet need for personal task management software that allows smooth integration with an individual’s active support network. Based on identified needs, we then describe an open architecture for coordination that has been developed into working software. The design includes a set of capabilities we call “social prompting”, as well as templates for accomplishing multi-task goals, and an engine that controls coordination in the network. The resulting tool is currently available and in continuing development. We explain its use in ASNs with an example. Follow-up studies are underway in which the technology is being applied in existing support networks. (shrink)

This research examines the role that ethics plays in an individual's intention to engage in peer-to-peer file sharing. Previous studies have focused on P2P file sharing as primarily an act of piracy; and accordingly many, although not all, have found that ethical considerations do play a role in file sharing intentions. While piracy over P2P networks has continued and ethical predispositions clearly remain important issues, in the face of new business models and increased use of P2P file sharing for perfectly (...) legitimate applications, the percentage of pirated files has decreased even as overall P2P network traffic has grown.It is therefore important to understand a user's intentions to engage in P2P file sharing as a whole, without restricting that understanding to the single aspect of piracy. But because piracy is still a factor, it is critical to consider the role of ethics in those intentions. The objectives of this research are to propose and test a model of file sharing intentions based on the theory of planned behavior which considers ethical predisposition. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze our model. The results show that while ethical predisposition does not have a significant effect on intentions, other factors do. From this we draw several important conclusions regarding P2P file sharing. These are findings that have significance for network managers and internet service providers, both of who are greatly concerned about the impact of this mode of file sharing. This work is the first of its kind to provide a macro level understanding of the role ethics plays in file sharing in general, not restricted to illicit activities. (shrink)

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 13372 "Integration of Tools for Rigorous Software Construction and Analysis". The 32 participants came from 10 countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Norway. The aim of the seminar was to bring together researchers and tool developers from different state- and machine-based formal methods communities in order to share expertise and promote the joint use of modelling tool technologies. Indeed, each of these communities -- fromState (...) Machines, to B, TLA, VDM, Z -- has valuable tools and technologies which would be beneficial also for the other formal approaches. Understanding and clarifying their commonalities and differences is a key factor to achieve a possible integration or integrated use of these related approaches for accomplishing, in a rigorous way, the various modelling and analysis tasks to construct reliable high quality software systems. The working group formula offered by the Dagstuhl seminar was a fruitful way to share knowledge of the various techniques and tools -- such as simulators, animators, model checkers, theorem proves -- developed for the individual methods, and to constructively experiment the combined use of different approaches by means of a series of well known case studies. Participants did not arrive with well-prepared solutions, but all the modelling and integration work was directly done in Dagstuhl in a very exciting and competitive atmosphere. Some related presentation were also given on recent advances on methodologies and tools. The seminar posed the bases for a series of future research collaborations between different, and up to know closed, formal method communities. An LNCS volume will be prepared by the contributions of the all participants to give the common vision of future methodology and tool integration. (shrink)

This is an introduction to open access (OA) for those who are new to the concept. I hope it's short enough to read, long enough to be useful, and organized to let you skip around and dive into detail only where you want detail. It doesn't cover every nuance or answer every objection. But for those who read it, it should cover enough territory to prevent the misunderstandings that delayed progress in our early days.

Version Control systems like CVS and Subversion have transformed collaboration workflows in software engineering, and made possible the globally distributed project teams we know from the Open Source Phenomenon. On the other hand, XML is coming of age as a basis for document formats, and even though XML as a text-based format is amenable to version control in principle, the fact that version control systems work on files makes difficult the integration of fragment access techniques like XPath, XQuery that are (...) currently revolutionizing XML workflows. In this paper we present the TNTBase system, an open-source versioned XML database obtained by integrating Berkeley DB XML into the Subversion Server. The.. (shrink)

Computer simulations play a key role in many domains of contemporary science. The question of how they transform science has received a lot of scholarly attention. Many have concentrated on outlining the epistemological similarities and differences between simulation and experiment and theory and on the diversity of kinds of modelling and representing found across domains of science. A third direction, which I explore here, looks instead at how working with computers, and working in software environments in particular, gives this kind (...) of computational science research its distinctive character. Following Knuuttila, I.. (shrink)