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Simon Wells
Simon Wells

Simon Wells is an academic researching Argumentation Theory, Automated Reasoning, Intelligent Agents (IA) and MultiAgent Systems (MAS) all approached through a ludic lens.

He is particularly interested in how these tools can be usefully applied to critical literacy, security, gamification, and complex systems.

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2011 (12)
2010 (27)
2009 (3)
 

Security in Open Systems

Last week in one of the tutorials the subject of open security systems came up. I tried to explain how open systems can encourage security and that knowing all of the details of the security of a system actually translates into a more secure real world system, mainly because the security doesn't rely merely on keeping secrets but on good engineering. Anyhow, here is an article on the security of the nascent Mastercard Chip Authentication Program that explains some of the issue.
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Delegation to Intelligent Machines?

Iain mentioned a graphic example of the problems that we can face when we delegate control to machines. In this example, so the story goes, the systems of the fully-automated Airbus A380 are trying to land the aeroplane whilst the (human) pilot is trying to abort the landing. The status quo results in something quite spectacular when the plane neither climbs nor lands before reaching the trees:

 

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Software Licensing Resources

One of your colleagues is an Erasmus student spending his second year in Sweden instead of here in Dundee. He is currently working on an essay about software licensing, which is the subject of your second tutorial so I thought that I would post some resources now that would give you a head start and will help out your Erasmus colleague a little. The basic premise is to explore Software licensing by comparing and contrasting a representative free software license like the GNU GLP against a proprietary software license like the MS EULA. To get you started you should use the following two links to get examples of actual licenses:
  1. GNU Licenses
  2. Microsoft EULA Search Engine
Now consider the following questions:
  • What is meant by the term free software in the context of the Free Software Foundation?
  • How is GNU/Linux licensed?
  • How does the GNU/Linux license differ from that of Windows XP?
  • What is Open Source software? How does Open Source software differ from free software?
  • What software is available under these different licenses?
  • How do software companies make money from free software?
  • What are the legal implications of developing, distributing, and using software which is licensed under either free, open or proprietary licenses?
    Some secondary sources & polemic that might be useful in understanding the variety of communities involved and the legal issues that exist can be found here:
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    Trends in Computing

    My open question for the week is, "what do you think have been the most important trends in computing that have lead us to our current state"? Supplementary to this I wonder, "what current trends might persist into the future and how will computing develop as a result"? There are no right or wrong answers, I am merely interested in soliciting your opinions. An added benefit is that the more of you who provide answers then the better a revision resource we have by the end of the module.
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    Tutorials Next Week

    A few of you have asked for a little more guidance about what is expected of you at next weeks tutorials. Well firstly, you do not have to turn up and talk about ubiquitous computing for a half hour. Remember that there will be 5-6 of you in each group of students. Therefore if you each share the 1/2 hour you will get around 5 minutes each. But that is not how the tutorials are arranged. You will not each get a slot where you have to talk to everybody. It is not a presentation but more like a conversation. All I really want for you to do is to turn up and be prepared to take part in a conversation about the things that you have read about. If you have found out about something that nobody else has mentioned then you should speak up and tell everybody else. The list in the tutorial description is more like a set of guidelines for topics that you might want to find out about if you cannot find anything else that is interesting and gives us insight into the ways that computing has developed in the past and the ways that it might develop in the future.
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    Wednesday Mornings

    For the foreseeable future, there will not be a lecture on a wednesday morning (10-11AM) due to some timetable clashes. However I did ask Iain to timetable the labs for our use between 9-11AM on wednesday mornings and these are still available to you guys to use. For the moment there will not be any tutors or lecturers in the labs during that period so you should use the time for quiet study, coursework, and catching up on lab exercises. If we find that we are falling behind then we will use the wednesday sessions to get back on schedule. Similarly if we need to spend some extra time on any subjects then we might schedule some extra tutorials during this time.
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    Posterous theme by Cory Watilo.
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