Software

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)

The graphical software Morph Moulder presented here was originally created for teaching the logical foundations of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar in an e-Learning environment. It has then been extended to a treatment of description logics , which are at present the standard formalism for building ontologies. With MoMo, students can construct interpretations of sets of formulae and check whether their interpretations model these formulae . MoMo also supports reasoning such as the construction of well-formed interpretations in the feature logic of (...) HPSG and the automatic extraction of subsumption hierarchies in DL. It has been used successfully in several courses on HPSG linguistics, on computational grammar implementation and on the logical foundations of constraint-based grammar frameworks. (shrink)

Computers are increasingly present in education and make many resources and activities available to teachers and pupils. New pedagogical resources development is very interesting for both. Our digital library Summa Logicae is overtly involved in innovation and pedagogical systematization. It includes some software tools for teaching logic developed by computer science students, and in this article we present two of these tools. The MAFIA tool is especially attractive for first year students and helps them to understand the basic concepts of (...) logic in an interactive way using sematic tableaux. It also allows them to solve the crazy cases in Mafia which their fellow students from previous years proposed. The Modelos de Kripke tool, oriented to a more advanced level, serves for understanding the link between the properties of the accessibility relation and the modal formulas, which is at the basis of the current developments of modal logic. (shrink)

A computer hard- and software system designed to support Otto Neurath’s Isotype methodology has to meet a number of different requirements which roughly belong to two categories. The first category contains all requirements regarding the technical aspects of the user interface as well as the quality of the resulting printouts . The second category lies beyond Pure computer science considerations and is closely related to Neurath’s rule base used to define semantically correct Isotype charts. All considerations aiming at the technical (...) quality of the produced output or on user-friendly interfaces are more or less common to all graphic editors. However, the topics belonging to the second category are specific to the Isotype methodology and therefore motivate the design and implementation of an Isotype chart editor. (shrink)

Who are computer hackers? What is free software? And what does the emergence of a community dedicated to the production of free and open source software--and to hacking as a technical, aesthetic, and moral project--reveal about the values of contemporary liberalism? Exploring the rise and political significance of the free and open source software movement in the United States and Europe, Coding Freedom details the ethics behind hackers' devotion to F/OSS, the social codes that guide its production, and the political (...) struggles through which hackers question the scope and direction of copyright and patent law. In telling the story of the F/OSS movement, the book unfolds a broader narrative involving computing, the politics of access, and intellectual property. E. Gabriella Coleman tracks the ways in which hackers collaborate and examines passionate manifestos, hacker humor, free software project governance, and festive hacker conferences. Looking at the ways that hackers sustain their productive freedom, Coleman shows that these activists, driven by a commitment to their work, reformulate key ideals including free speech, transparency, and meritocracy, and refuse restrictive intellectual protections. Coleman demonstrates how hacking, so often marginalized or misunderstood, sheds light on the continuing relevance of liberalism in online collaboration. (shrink)