Monday, June 23, 2008

Gathering of addresses

In order to send spam, spammers need to obtain the e-mail addresses of the intended recipients. To this end, both spammers themselves and list merchants gather huge lists of potential e-mail addresses. Since spam is, by definition, unsolicited, this address harvesting is done without the consent (and sometimes against the expressed will) of the address owners. As a consequence, spammers' address lists are inaccurate. A single spam run may target tens of millions of possible addresses — many of which are invalid, malformed, or undeliverable.

Sometimes, if the sent spam is "bounced" or sent back to the sender by various programs that eliminate spam, or if the recipient clicks on an unsubscribe link, that may cause that email address to be marked as "valid", which is interpreted by the spammer as "send me more".

Monday, June 16, 2008

Blacklisting

Attempts to stop spam by blacklisting sender's IP addresses still allows a small percentage through. Most IP addresses are dynamic, i.e. they are frequently changing. An ISP, or any organization directly connected to the Internet, gets a block of real Internet addresses when they register in the DNS. Within that block, they assign individual addresses to customers as needed. A dial-up customer may get a new IP address each time they connect. By the time that address appears on blacklists all over the world, the spammer will have new addresses for the next run. There are 4 billion possible IPv4 addresses on the Internet. The game of keeping up with these rapidly changing IP addresses has been facetiously called "whack-a-mole".

So called policy lists are black lists that contain IP addresses on a preventive basis. An IP address can be listed therein even if no spam has ever been sent from it, because it has been variously classified as a dial-up address, end-user address, or residential address, with no formal definition of such classification schemes. Not requiring evidence of spam for each enlisted address, these lists can collect a greater number of addresses and thus block more spam. However, the policies devised are not authoritative, since they have not been issued by the legitimate user of an IP address, and the resulting lists are therefore not universally accepted.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL)

This Microsoft license allows for distribution of derived code so long as the modified source files are included and retain the Ms-RL. The Ms-RL allows those files in the distribution that do not contain code originally licensed under Ms-RL to be licensed according to the copyright holder's choosing. This is equivalent to the CDDL or LGPL (GPL with a typical "linking exception"). Initially known as the Microsoft Community License, it was renamed during the OSI approval process.

On December 9, 2005, the Ms-RL license was submitted to the Open Source Initiative for approval by John Cowan. OSI then contacted Microsoft and asked if they wanted OSI to proceed. Microsoft replied that they did not wish to be reactive and that they needed time to review such a decision.

At the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in July 2007, Bill Hilf, director of Microsoft's work with open source projects, announced that Microsoft had formally submitted Ms-PL and Ms-RL to OSI for approval. It was approved on October 12, 2007 along with the Ms-PL. According to the Free Software Foundation, it is a free software license. However, unlike the Microsoft Public License, it is not compatible with the GNU GPL.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Concurrent Versions System

In the field of software development, the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, provides a version control system based on open-source code. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers (potentially widely separated in space and/or time) to collaborate. Dick Grune developed CVS in the 1980s. CVS has become popular in the open source software world and is released under the GNU General Public License.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Types of systems psychology

In the scientific literature different kind of systems psychology have been mentioned in the scientific literature:

Applied systems psychology

De Greene in 1970 described applied systems psychology as being connected with engineering psychology and human factor.

Cognitive systems theory
Cognitive systems psychology is a part of cognitive psychology and like existential psychology, attempts to dissolve the barrier between conscious and the unconscious mind.

Contract-systems psychology

Contract-systems psychology is about the human systems actualization through praticipative organizations.

Family systems psychology
Family systems psychology is a more general name for the subfield of family thearpists and like Murray Bowen, Michael E. Kerr, and Baard. and researchers have begun to theoretize a psychology of the family as a system.

Organismic-systems psychology

Through the application of organismic-systems biology to human behavior Ludwig von Bertalanffy conceived and developed the organismic-systems psychology, as the theoretical prospect needed for the gradual comprehension of the various ways human personalities may evolve and how could they evolve properly, being supported by a holistic interpretation of human behavior.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Developmental robotics

Developmental Robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a methodology that uses metaphors from developmental psychology to develop controllers for autonomous robots. The focus is on a single robot going through stages of autonomous mental development. Researchers in this field study artificial emotions, self-motivation, and other methods of self-organization.

DevRob is related to, but differs from, evolutionary robotics (ER). ER uses populations of robots that evolve over time, whereas DevRob is interested in how the organization of a single robot's control system develops through experience, over time.

DevRob is also related to work done in the domains of Robotics, Artificial Life.

Similar to developmental robotics, Epigenetic robotics is an interdisciplinary research area with the goal of understanding biological systems by the integration between neuroscience, developmental psychology and engineering sciences. Epigenetic systems are characterized by a prolonged developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual structures emerge as a result of the interaction of an embodied system with a physical and social environment. An additional goal is to enable robots to autonomously develop skills for any particular environment instead of programming them for a specific environment.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Open source software

Open source software is computer software for which the human-readable source code is made available under a copyright license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that meets the Open Source Definition. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open source software is the most prominent example of open source development and often compared to user generated content.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Columbian Exchange

The Columbian Exchange has been one of the most significant events in the history of world ecology, agriculture, and culture. The term is used to describe the enormous widespread exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western hemispheres that occurred after 1492. Many new and different goods were exchanged between the two hemispheres of the Earth, and it began a new revolution in the Americas and in Europe. In 1492, Christopher Columbus' first voyage launched an era of large-scale contact between the Old and the New World that resulted in this ecological revolution: hence the name "Columbian" Exchange.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories

Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories are theories which contend that medieval Muslim explorers from the Islamic world (specifically Al-Andalus, Africa or China) may have reached the Americas (and possibly made contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas) at some point before Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492. Proponents of these theories cite as evidence reports of expeditions and voyages conducted by Muslim navigators and adventurers who they allege reached the Americas from the late 9th century onwards

Monday, April 21, 2008

Cargo

Carg is a term used to denote goods or produce being transported generally for commercial gain, usually on a ship, plane, train, van or truck. Nowadays containers are used in most intermodal long-haul cargo transport.

Cargo represents a concern to U.S. national security. It was reported out of Washington, DC that in 2003 over 6 million cargo containers are entering the United States each year. After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the security of this magnitude of cargo has become highlighted. The latest US Government response to this threat is the CSI: Container Security Initiative. CSI is a program intended to help increase security for containerized cargo shipped to the United States from around the world.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Computer-aided software engineering

Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is the use of software tools to assist in the development and maintenance of software. Tools used to assist in this way are known as CASE Tools.

Some typical CASE tools are:

* Code generation tools

* Data modeling tools

* UML

* Refactoring tools

* QVT or Model transformation Tools

* Configuration management tools including revision control

Monday, April 07, 2008

Alpha Five

Alpha Five relational database management system and Rapid Application Development system (RAD) for building Windows desktop and Web (including AJAX) applications.

It is created by Alpha Software, Inc., which has been continually producing end-user and developer database application software since 1982. Finalist in the DR Dobbs JOLT awards for 2008 as the Best Development environment with Alpha Five v8 and winner of Product of the Year award from CRN. Applications can be created against its built-in DBF engine and against MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, DB2, Enterprise DB, Postgress and any other SQL database engines through ODBC sources. The latest version now incorporates Portable SQL, a feature that allows users to switch database back ends without having to rewrite queries.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Relational model

The relational model for database management is a database model based on predicate logic and set theory. It was first formulated and proposed in 1969 by Edgar Codd with aims that included avoiding, without loss of completeness, the need to write computer programs to express database queries and enforce database integrity constraints. "Relation" is a mathematical term for "table", and thus "relational" roughly means "based on tables". It did not originally refer to the links or "keys" between tables, contrary to popular interpretation of the name.

Monday, March 24, 2008

CrossFTP Server

CrossFTP Server is free secure FTP server program for multiple platforms. It supports FTP, FTPS, and the monitoring of the connections. Its main features are:

* Multi platform support and multithreaded design.
* UTF-8 directory encoding for internationalization support.
* User virtual directory, write permission, idle time-out and upload/download bandwidth limitation support.
* You can monitor all the user activities.
* Anonymous login support.
* Both upload and download files are resumable.
* Handles both ASCII and binary data transfers.
* IP restriction support to allow/ban IPs.
* Database and LDAP can be used to store user data.
* All the FTP messages are customizable.
* Implicit/explicit SSL/TLS support.
* MDTM support - your users can change the date-time stamp of files.
* "MODE Z" support for faster data upload/download.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE)

Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE) is an approach to apply metaheuristic search techniques like genetic algorithms, simulated annealing and tabu search to software engineering problems. It is inspired by the observation that many activities in software engineering can be formulated as optimization problems. Due to the computational complexity of these problems, exact optimization techniques of operations research like linear programming or dynamic programming are mostly impractical for large scale software engineering problems. Because of this, researchers and practitioners have used metaheuristic search techniques to find near optimal or good-enough solutions.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

solar tracker

A solar tracker is a device for orienting a solar photovoltaic panel or concentrating solar reflector or lens toward the sun. Concentrators, especially in solar cell applications, require a high degree of accuracy to ensure that the concentrated sunlight is directed precisely to the powered device, which is at (or near) the focal point of the reflector or lens. Non-concentrating applications require less accuracy, and a tracker is not necessary, but can substantially improve the amount of power produced by a system by enhancing morning and afternoon performance.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Pharmacists

Pharmacists are health professionals who practice the art and science of pharmacy. In their traditional role, pharmacists typically take a request for medicines from a prescribing health care provider in the form of a medical prescription and dispense the medication to the patient and counsel them on the proper use and adverse effects of that medication. In this role, pharmacists ensure the safe and effective use of medications. Pharmacists also participate in disease state management, where they optimise and monitor drug therapy – often in collaboration with physicians and/or other health professionals.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

HDTV blur

HDTV blur is a common term used to describe a number of different artifacts on consumer modern high definition television sets:

The following factors are generally the primary or secondary causes of HDTV blur; in some cases more than one of these factors may be in play at the studio or receiver end of the transmission chain.

• Pixel response time on LCD displays (blur in the color response of the active pixel)
• Slower camera Shutter speeds common in hollywood production films (blur in the HDV content of the film)
• Blur from eye tracking fast moving objects on sample-and-hold LCD, Plasma, or Microdisplay.
• Resolution resampling (blur due to resizing image to fit the native resolution of the HDTV)
• Blur due to 3:2 pulldown and/or motion-speed irregularities in framerate conversions from film to video
• Computer generated motion blur introduced by video games

Friday, February 22, 2008

Acoustic Intelligence

Sensors relatively close to a nuclear event, or a high-explosive test simulating a nuclear event, can detect, using acoustic methods, the pressure produced by the blast. These include infrasound microbarographs (acoustic pressure sensors) that detect very low-frequency sound waves in the atmosphere produced by natural and man-made events.

Closely related to the microbarographs, but detecting pressure waves in water, are hydro-acoustic sensors, both underwater microphones and specialized seismic sensors that detect the motion of islands.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Derivative action

The derivative part is concerned with the rate-of-change of the error with time: If the measured variable approaches the setpoint rapidly, then the actuator is backed off early to allow it to coast to the required level; conversely if the measured value begins to move rapidly away from the setpoint, extra effort is applied — in proportion to that rapidity — to try to maintain it.

Derivative action makes a control system behave much more intelligently. On systems like the temperature of a furnace, or perhaps the motion-control of a heavy item like a gun or camera on a moving vehicle, the derivative action of a well-tuned PID controller can allow it to reach and maintain a setpoint better than most skilled human operators could.