Forging The Future — The Best of Our Blog 9/5/10 — 4:54 EDT

These are some of our most salient and representative blog postings.

Tool of the Day — Zotero

If you ever have to do any academic writing you know how much work can be involved in building and formatting a bibliography.

There are some great commercial products that dispatch this task with aplomb, but they tend to be too expensive for casual End Users who aren't in academia.

Enter Zotero a free FireFox plugin that does the job.

Zotero makes it easy to extract references from web pages and build bibliographies from citations you insert in your favorite word processor. Zotero can even capture web pages and sync across multiple computers & operating systems.

Many of us at the IEUC still use commercial products that support higher end functionality in our workflow, but Zotero is a great compliment to these tools as well.

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Book of the Day — Coders At Work

Did you ever wonder how software gets created? Who are the people behind the programs you love to use? How do they think and what do they think about?

If you do, "Coders At Work: Reflections On The Craft Of Programming" is the book for you!

Written by Peter Seibel, the book contains revealing interviews with such famous programmers as Douglas Crockford, Simon Peyton Jones, Guy Steele, and Donald Knuth among others.

Find it at your favorite bookseller from Apress (ISBN: 978-1-4302-1948-4).

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Teaching in The Age of Google

Over the weekend I read yet another dower article on the percentage of students who self-report using Google and/or their cell phones to cheat on assignments or shortcut homework assignments by downloading prior semesters' solutions.

Such concerns are not new, dating back at least as far as 1958 with Williams & Abrashkin's publication of "Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine." — which optimistically posited that programming a computer to do one's homework would have at least as much pedagogical value as doing such work by hand.

Sadly, most students have their schedules so heavily overloaded in an attempt to woo collegiate and grad school admissions committees that they lack the time to pursue their own research interests. And even more sadly, many feel that not taking advantage of a search engine to avoid re-inventing the wheel and stashing a few key notes in their PDA to compensate for the vagaries of memory will grievously disadvantage them vis-a-vis their peers.

In short, lazy assignment and test designs that lend themselves to regurgitating stock answers invites an arms race in ways to avoid doing such ultimately pointless work. Students are not entirely wrong to view the memorization of facts or hand calculation of readily computable values to be utterly worthless skills in the modern age.

Herein lies the challenge for faculty. It is no longer acceptable to recycle past assignments of a "write a program to implement a binary search tree" or "write an essay about the Turning Test" variety. Instead we need to figure out ways to invoke today's skill set of integrating the results of multiple discreet searches, reading and analyzing other people's code, identifying bias and gauging the quality of others' research.

Demands on today's students are considerably higher than they were in previous generations as the sheer volume of human knowledge has exploded. Thus, the tools and skills that matter today have changed, as to must our approach to teaching.

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Happy 4th of July — Personal Computing is Freedom!

On the 4th of July, we celebrate The Founding of the United States of America.

For all peoples of the world, this holiday represents the potential for individual freedom to triumph in the eternal struggle between Liberty and Tyranny.

The Founders were very much the Hackers (in the constructive sense) of their day, using the best technology of their age to spread the radical idea that ordered liberty and the civil society could empower every individual to reach their full human potential. They knew that as human beings, those serving in office aren't perfect, and that on the broader scale, to achieve the consensus necessary to launch the new republic short term political compromises would have to be made.

But they never lost sight of the ideals espoused in The Declaration of Independence. This is why they crafted our system of checks and balances between the branches of government. It is why they established Constitutional mechanisms by which the deeper defects of our founding documents could be cured and why countless American's laid down their lives to end Slavery and establish racial equality.

Such epic statecraft is very much like programming and those entrusted with governmental authority could learn much from the lessons of good software engineering principles — since code, be it legal or computer, shares many of the same qualities and ought to be approached with a similar mindset.

Sadly, it is hard to convey the sense of exhilaration and personal mastery that one can derive from the act of programming. There is no greater sense of freedom than realizing that aside from a very few fundamental limits on what is "computable" by any machine, you have the power to make a computer do nearly anything you can dream of and thanks to cheap hardware, Open Courseware, Free Software, and the global community of professionals and hobbyists eager to help you, anyone anywhere on the planet can teach themselves how and by so doing amass the skills and knowledge needed to elevate their lot in the *real* world.

Tyrants everywhere quake at this potential of Personal Computing and Ubiquitous Communications to educate and rouse their citizenry to enlightenment. This is why it is so threatening to authoritarian power which would filter The Net and censor The Press.

Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution along with our technological innovations in Personal Computing that have made so many other advances possible are our gifts to the world which we most joyously share with you on this 4th of July.

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Historical Note :: The 61st Birthday of the First Stored-Program Computer

On this Father's Day we note that the Manchester Mark I - the first functioning stored-program computer - executed its first program sixty one years ago on June 21, 1948.

While sources aren't in full agreement as to this exact date*, it is appropriate to recognize this milestone on Father's Day since the microprocessors that dominate our lives today are all descendants of the Mark I inheriting some of its most fundamental conceptual design elements.

* June 21st is indirectly cited according to lab notes by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi in their magna opus "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" (MIT Press, 2004 - page 36) whereas Wikipedia cites dates in April and June of 1949. But like much of the early History of Computing, we may never be able to reach "ground truth".

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Self-Hosting OpenID Not Ready for End Users

OpenID is the name for a single login scheme that is supposed to free us of the need to juggle multiple user names and passwords. Instead, with OpenID, the theory goes, that we use a single login and sites we want to visit will redirect us to the OpenID provider of our choice for us to verify our identity with that service which will then return us to the site we were originally trying to log into with a security token that will complete the login process.

Since the system consolidates all of your accounts into one, it is critical that you trust your OpenID provider even more than you would a single site, since someone with database access to the OpenID server could usurp your identity everywhere by resetting your password to a new one and then logging into any of your accounts elsewhere.

The logical way to minimize that risk is to host your own identity provider server, which is supposed to be quite painless and easy to do.

Be warned, it is not.

For the last few weeks we have been trying various OpenID servers and have yet to find one that can pass all of the OpenID Enabled: OpenID Tests.

If you do want to experiment with this technology, we recommend indirectly specifying your OpenID End Point. This means that you should point any services requiring you to use OpenID to a web page that uses link tags in its headers to redirect them to your current OpenID provider of choice. Then you can, in theory, change OpenID providers without changing your OpenID Identity with respect to third party sites. However, different implementations may place restrictions on your account name choice which could foil your attempt to seamlessly swap servers.

If you can find a solution that reliably performs well in the real world, do let us know so we can share your good news. Until then, beware the hype and avoid diving in prematurely since this sort of experimentation can be a real time sink.

So in the meantime, if you must use OpenID, go with a large trusted "name" provider and if there isn't one that you truly trust, consider establishing multiple OpenID's for different accounts, even though doing this would of course defeat the point of the entire exercise.

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Not all bullies are on the playground.

The 2007 Cyberbullying Public Service Announcement

Presented by Sony Creative Software, the National Crime Prevention Council, and the Ad Council.

Sony Creative Software, the Ad Council, and the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC), are pleased to announce the winners of last fall's public service announcement (PSA) development contest organized to raise awareness of the problem of cyberbullying.

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Excelsior — A New Mobile Device Marks the Return of the Micro Executive Work Station!

[This was posted on April Fools Day under Serious Humor.]

Over the last few weeks reports based on Open Source Intelligence have been trickling in from a number of Institute Operatives in various organizations that point to the eminent reintroduction by RadioShack® of the Micro Executive Work Station.

The new design closely follows the body plan and design philosophy of the TRS Model 100™, the new machine code-named "Excelsior" is thinner than a MacBook Air™.

In another bold move, RadioShack is using the latest nano-tech fabrication techniques. Excelsior's rechargeable paper battery is worn inside out under the protection of a thin sapphire coating making the unit's housing a functional component rather than mere dead weight.

Pushing the power frontier even further, thanks to piezoelectric power cells integrated into the illuminated full travel keyboard which generate power as you type, Excelsior's battery life is effectively unlimited!

With its integrated support for high bandwidth long range ad hoc Mesh Networking inspired by OLPC™ technology, Excelsior will be able to remain connected to the Net at all times in urban areas with no air charges, while remaining practical in less developed areas of the world where it can fall back to networking through your cell or satellite phone.

Its high contrast color light emitting e-ink display further conserves power and offers unparalleled legibility under a wide range of lighting conditions.

An integrated webcam, microphone/speakers, and bio-metric fingerprint reader round out the base hardware. Naturally a full compliment of ports is provided on the back-pane behind ingeniously designed trap doors that keep dust and gunk away from the connections.

Of course when you are on the road you can't always find a place to sit down and type, so the Excelsior features a toggle switch that lets you configure it for wireless Audio I/O using your favorite bluetooth headset while it is stored in your luggage or backpack.

In this mode, you can use a stylized Natural Language Interface to access your schedule, address book, dictate memos, and request GPS directions by making requests through the headset's microphone. Responses from Excelsior are returned in the calming voice of Canadian actor Douglas Rain.

Indeed, the simplicity and elegance of Excelsior's software rivals its next generation engineering. Hardware buttons integrate the device with the most important Social Networking Applications, which can also be accessed via speech, putting LinkedIn, Twitter and more just a touch away.

With its brilliant industrial design and ingenious use of AI, this ultimate expression of mobile perfection will be a must have for tech savvy executives on the go.

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Readscheme.org

Readscheme.org — Functional Programming Resources is an annotated bibliography and digital library of academic papers and resources related to functional programming. If you are Computer Science student, grad or undergrad, it would behoove you to make extensive use of this site.

Functional Programming is a very powerful paradigm with many terms of art, so it is a good idea to start with the early papers where these deep concepts are first introduced.

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What We Do At The IEUC

We are calling our web log, Forging the Future, because that is the business we are all in "here' at The IEUC.

Of course, for us, "here" is a state of mind, because it doesn't make sense for us to try to package our quest as a drive to create yet another brick-and-mortar lab. One day, perhaps, we will enjoy a level of support that will make it feasible to build, rent, or lease such a physical plant in support of a residential program like that of the Stanta Fe Institute.

Indeed, it would unquestionably be a good thing to dedicate a substantial facility to furthering research into End User Computing, so there would be a neutral site at which visiting researchers could collaborate on such issues. But there are already labs a many chipping away at different facets of the technological problems facing End Users. The real problem lies in breaking down disciplinary boundaries and figuring out the best ways to put all the pieces together, and that won't be happening any time soon at an established lab, since all of these organizations have a primary interest in maintaining support for their own site. This is why collaborations among such peer labs tend to fizzle out in a few years when most participants start to fear that the fruits of any initial success are disproportionately accruing to the host site. In other words if a distributed project is administered from Lab A, in time its partner Labs B, C, and D will fear that Lab A is getting more money and prestige from the project than they are so they will start to pull back and the project will die. This same dynamic also dooms most interdisciplinary and interdepartmental projects within a given institution.

Thus for now, we need to run a lean operation and channel our resources into Forging a non-threatening network of colleagues from all labs and requisite fields of endeavor who care about breaking this vicious cycle and are in a position to make things happen. Indeed, as we embark on our quest to reboot the computer sector and knit together the many critical strands of relevant research, our not being attached to an existing institution or trying to compete with any of them in the brick-and-mortar building game will be absolutely critical.

If and only if we can draw on public support from enlightened computer users like YOU, will we be able to do what others can't and make it possible to leverage each of our supporters' contributions and undertake the needed work that wouldn't otherwise get funded.

Alas, there is a tremendous amount of inertia centered around maintaining today's desktop computing platforms. Whole careers have been built around mastering the quirks of yesterday's hardware and software. Decades old decisions based on then appropriate technology tradeoffs have become ossified into bad designs that make our lives miserable, but the risks of trying to make a clean break and offer a real alternative are too great to be undertaken in the commercial sector.

We all know that today's operating systems are sources of endless frustration and that it doesn't matter which one we are talking about in this regard. Apple's OS X works smoothy out of box and looks gorgeous, but even if you are a single user using your machine in the total security of your own home, there is no way to escape being forced to "prove" your identity by retyping your password thousands of times over. Despite their rapidly improving user interfaces, the many flavors of Windows remain subject to constant worm and virus attacks that make them a security nightmare. Likewise, while Unix and Linux may well have the potential to do anything an end user could ask for, often at little or no cost, unlocking that potential requires a deep immersion in highly arcane knowledge much of which is grounded in historical accident. Moreover, none of these environments makes coherent use of the many advanced technologies and common sense insights accumulated since the dawn of the personal computing revolution.

But despite these clearly manifest and utterly pervasive failings, just image going to your friendly local bankers and asking for funding to start from scratch and design a real alternative to ALL of these platforms - not just some sexy looking veneer grafted on top of Linux or some other current offering, but a REAL alternative. We all know it is needed, but from a commercial standpoint it is untouchable. That is why we have formed The IEUC to do what needs to be done in the not-for-profit space.

We all need this to work. You need us to succeed. There is a silver bullet, and YOUR Support is it!

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