Agents of responsibility—freelance web developers in web applications development

Much of the literature on responsibility in the IT field addresses the responsibilities of members of the IT profession. In this paper, we investigate to what extent the responsibilities associated with computing practitioners apply to freelance web developers. The relevant moral question is not “can freelancers be considered as professionals?”, but “are they agents of responsibility and can they cause harm”? It is obvious that they can. To justify this claim we will take the case of using free malicious code by freelance web developers and show how their actions or omissions may cause harm to the users, clients and others. We will then identify different types of responsibilities and relationships, which can be associated with freelance web developers. In the end, we will stress that, freelance web developers have higher form of responsibility and should actively seek to bring about environments in which they can function as responsible agents aiming at developing safe, secure, and workable web applications and systems.     

Raising the bar

The IT and comms sector group of the recruitment and employmentconfederation (REC) has launched new industry-wide codes ofpractice in conjunction with the professional contractors group(PCG), the not-forprofit trade organisation set up in 1999 tosupport and advise freelance contractors. The initiative comesin an effort to drive up standards in the industry.     

Landscape visualizations: Applications and requirements of 3D visualization software for environmental planning

This paper presents the findings of an investigation into the role and use of landscape visualization software for landscape and environmental planning in Germany. It examines the challenges and requirements of 3D visualization technology and its potential for application in landscape and environmental planning. Relevant literature and comparable surveys are reviewed in order to determine the current state of affairs, and the general and international relevance of the results is assessed.In 2000, a survey of user requirements for 3D landscape simulation software, including the demand for specific features, was conducted within the framework of a feasibility study for a visualization tool. As part of the German-wide survey, comprehensive questionnaires were sent to 1044 respondents from a pool of private landscape planning consultancies, freelance landscape architects, and public planning and environmental authorities.The survey showed that 3D landscape visualization has a positive image in Germany, both among user and non-user groups of visualization tools. Twenty-eight percent of private consultancies and freelance landscape architects, as well as 7% of public authorities, stated that they already used 3D simulation software. Those respondents who did not use 3D simulation software cited insufficient computer equipment, lack of technical expertise of planners and cost-related aspects as reasons for not yet having adopted the technology. “Ease of learning” and “interoperability” are deemed to be the most important features of 3D simulation software, whereas factors such as “high interactivity”, “representability of ecological processes” and “photo-realism” are, surprisingly, regarded as much less important.Users of 3D visualization software are particularly concerned by insufficient representation of plants and habitats in simulations. Looking to the future, the vast majority of respondents (91%) expect increased benefits for landscape planning from 3D visualization software, are convinced of the advantages of the technology, and are eager to integrate 3D landscape visualizations into their working practices.     

Idea generation and material consolidation: tool use and intermediate artefacts in journalistic writing

We report an in-depth, longitudinal study of a freelance music journalist writing a feature article. Our analysis attends to the participant’s activities from initiation to completion, and the ways in which she established structure using tools and artefacts to support cognitive effort. We observed five work stages: establishing an initial idea; preparing for an interview; interviewing; planning the article; and writing. Each resulted in the production of a working document embodying ideas and commitments which provided a key resource for the next stage. Stages began with phases of idea generation during which ideas were spontaneously triggered through intense engagement with information resources. They finished with phases of material consolidation when intermediate artifacts were configured to facilitate generation during the next stage. We examine these in detail and use our findings to motivate a discussion of working document overview representations and specific requirements related to idea generation and material consolidation.     

The New Visual Age: The Influence of Computer Graphics on Art and Society

Only a few years ago it would have seemed ridiculous to discuss the influence of computer graphics on art and society. Although computer generated graphics had already been applied in important areas of science and technology, its influence was not yet felt in the arts or in society at large. Those few who used the computer as an artistic instrument were regarded as outsiders: with their freelance experiments they deviated from the solid ground of strictly defined tasks, but on the other hand found no approval in artistic circles. One of the causes for this lack of approval may have been that they did not submit to the frequently changing fashions which are prevalent in today's visual arts. Rather, they were, at least in the beginning when searching for motifs, guided by mathematical and geometrical aspects. The fact that they succeeded in opening up a largely unknown realm of graphically attractive forms went unheeded by the critics.     

Musicians as entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs as musicians?

This study investigates how Swedish musicians in the non‐profit sector accept the “entrepreneur” label for themselves. The background section describes how identity work among “serious” musicians has, historically, made them shun any facet related to money‐making. The qualitative study shows that there is some remaining reluctance. But it is obvious that freelance musicians recognize the need for entrepreneurial skills. A majority of those interviewed regard themselves as “entrepreneurs”, although in most cases it is out of necessity. It seems that the older generations are more hesitant than the younger. I conclude that it would be beneficial if musicians, during their higher education, were introduced to basic entrepreneurial skills.     

UK Film Companies: Project‐Based Organizations Lacking Entrepreneurship and Innovativeness?

The growth of project‐based forms of organization has been interpreted as a response to rapidly changing technological and market environments. Companies operating in this way are assumed to be inherently innovative, continually breaking up and reconfiguring teams of workers whose highly developed skills enable them to multi‐task and apply their knowledge in novel situations, in which new technology is swiftly assimilated and deployed. Project workers, who may engage in repeat contracting with different employers, belong to technical communities wherein knowledge is developed and resides. The transformation from vertical integration to project‐based working in the film industry would thus appear to privilege innovation. However, in the UK film industry at least, this study suggests that, in spite of freelance working, crew and technicians follow highly specialized, hierarchical careers, and that the organization of production is virtually the same as it was at the height of the Hollywood ‘Studio System’. Furthermore, it will be argued that the informal, reputational networks that operate in the UK industry may act as a barrier to development rather than as an engine of change.     

Visual querying and analysis of large software repositories

We present a software framework for mining software repositories. Our extensible framework enables the integration of data extraction from repositories with data analysis and interactive visualization. We demonstrate the applicability of the framework by presenting several case studies performed on industry-size software repositories. In each study we use the framework to give answers to one or several software engineering questions addressing a specific project. Next, we validate the answers by comparing them with existing project documentation, by interviewing domain experts and by detailed analyses of the source code. The results show that our framework can be used both for supporting case studies on mining software repository techniques and for building end-user tools for software maintenance support.

Creating ambient music spaces in real and virtual worlds

Sound and, specifically, music is a medium that is used for a wide range of purposes in different situations in very different ways. Ways for music selection and consumption range from completely passive, almost unnoticed perception of background sound environments to the very specific selection of a particular recording of a piece of music with a specific orchestra and conductor at a certain event. Different systems and interfaces exist for the broad range of needs in music consumption. Locating a particular recording is well supported by traditional search interfaces via metadata. Other interfaces support the automatic creation of playlists via artist or album selection, up to more artistic installations of sound environments that users can navigate through. In this paper we present a set of systems that support the creation of as well as the navigation in musical spaces, both in the real world as well as in virtual environments. We show common principles and point out further directions for a more direct coupling of the various spaces and interaction methods, creating ambient sound environments and providing organic interaction with music for different purposes.

Invertible orientation scores as an application of generalized wavelet theory

Inspired by the visual system of many mammals, we consider the construction of—and reconstruction from—an orientation score of an image, via a wavelet transform corresponding to the left-regular representation of the Euclidean motion group in (ℝ²) and oriented wavelet φ ∈ (ℝ²). Because this representation is reducible, the general wavelet reconstruction theorem does not apply. By means of reproducing kernel theory, we formulate a new and more general wavelet theory, which is applied to our specific case. As a result we can quantify the well-posedness of the reconstruction given the wavelet φ and deal with the question of which oriented wavelet φ is practically desirable in the sense that it both allows a stable reconstruction and a proper detection of local elongated structures. This enables image enhancement by means of left-invariant operators on orientation scores. The text was submitted by the authors in English. Remco Duits received his M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in Mathematics in 2001 from Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. He received his PhD degree (cum laude) at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology on the subject of multiscale perceptual organization. His interests include functional analysis, group theory, partial differential equations, multiscale representations and their applications to biomedical imaging and vision, and perceptual grouping. His PhD thesis is titled Perceptual Organization in Image Analysis (A Mathematical Approach Based on Scale, Orientation and Curvature). Several of his submissions at conferences have been selected/best papers, in particular, at the PRIA 2004 conference on pattern recognition and image analysis in St. Petersburg, he received a best paper award (second prize) for his work on invertible orientation scores. Currently, he is working at Eindhoven University of Technology as an assistant professor at both the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Maurice Duits received his MSc degree (cum laude) in Mathematics in 2004 from Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands on the subject of reproducing kernels in frame and wavelet transforms. Now he is a PhD student at the Department of Mathematics at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven on the subject of random matrices. His interests include Riemann-Hilbert problems, random matrices, orthogonal polynomials and Toeplitz matrices. Markus van Almsick earned a master degree in physics at the Technical University of Munich in 1990. From 1988 until 1992, he worked for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a research and teaching associate. He taught undergraduate chemistry as well as graduate courses in advanced quantum mechanics, for which he developed Mathematica course material. His research interest has been quantum logic and quantization procedures of space-time. Since 1990, he has been a freelance applications consultant for Wolfram Research, Inc., USA, and Wolfram Research Europe Ltd., United Kingdom, promoting Mathematica at universities and research institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Israel, as well as developing Mathematica packages and application material. In 1996, Mr. van Almsick joined the Max Planck Insitut fur Biophysik in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he addressed problems in nonequilibrium thermodynamics until the theoretical department closed in 1997. Then, until 2001 he worked in collaboration with QT Software GmbH, Munich, as a full-time Mathematica consultant on a wide variety of assignments, e.g., designing the geometry of slides for playgrounds, modeling human interaction via graph theory (“social networks”), lossless image compression, vibration control in electric engines, and the isomer enumeration of libraries containing chemical diamutamers. Since 2001, he has been a part-time employee of the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, where he develops Math VisionTools, a biomedical image analysis toolkit based on Mathematica. Bart M. ter Haar Romany is full professor in Biomedical Image Analysis at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. He has been in this position since 2001. He received a MSc in Applied Physics from Delft University of Technology in 1978, and a PhD on neuromuscular nonlinearities from Utrecht University in 1983. After being the principal physicist of the Utrecht University Hospital Radiology Department, in 1989 he joined the department of Medical Imaging at Utrecht University as an associate professor. His interests are mathematical aspects of visual perception, in particular linear and non-linear scale-space theory, computer vision applications, and all aspects of medical imaging. He is author of numerous papers and book chapters on these issues; he edited a book on non-linear diffusion theory and is author of an interactive tutorial book on scale-space theory in computer vision. He has initiated a number of international collaborations on these subjects. He is an active teacher in international courses, a senior member of IEEE, and IEEE Chapter Tutorial Speaker. He is chairman of the Dutch Biophysical Society. An erratum to this article is available at .     

A successive estimation scheme of an occupation probability†

This paper treats of an estimation problem of an occupation probability of some targets in a Tegion M by an infra-red detector followed by a threshold device in a satellite.

First, a successive estimation scheme is proposed for an estimation problem of an occurrence probability of signal 1 of the 1,0 type binary signal sequence disturbed by some noise. The estimate obtained by this scheme is shown to converge to the true value with probability one and in the mean square. Then, as an application of this scheme for the occurrence probability, an estimation scheme for an occupation probability is proposed. Two examples illustrating the scheme for an occupation probability are presented.     

Iterative inflow-implicit outflow-explicit finite volume scheme for level-set equations on polyhedron meshes

In this paper, we propose a cell-centered finite volume method for advective and normal flows on polyhedron meshes which is second-order accurate in space and time for smooth solutions. In order to overcome a time restriction caused by CFL condition, an implicit time discretization of inflow fluxes and an explicit time discretization of outflow fluxes are used in an iterative procedure. For an efficient computation, an 1-ring face neighborhood structure is introduced. Since it is limited to access unknown variables in an 1-ring face neighborhood structure, an iterative procedure is proposed to resolve the limitation of assembled linear system. Two types of gradient approximations, an inflow-based gradient and an average-based gradient, are studied and compared from the point of numerical accuracy. Numerical schemes are tested for an advective and a normal flow of level-set functions illustrating a behavior of the proposed method for an implicit tracking of a smooth and a piecewise smooth interface.     

Automatic assembling procedure generation from mating conditions

A method is developed to automatically generate an assembling procedure for an assembly. In this work, an assembly is described by its components and their relationship in an assembly, especially the mating conditions. From the mating conditions of the components, an assembling procedure is generated in two steps. First, each component in an assembly is located at a specific vertex of a hierarchical tree. Second, an assembling procedure is generated from the hierarchical tree with the help of interference checking.     

An adaptive mixed finite element method for wind field adjustment

In this paper we present an adaptive strategy to obtain an incompressible wind field that adjusts to an experimental one, and verify boundary conditions of physical interest. We use an augmented lagrangian formulation for solving this problem. Our method is based on an Uzawa iteration to update the lagrange multiplier and on an elliptic adaptive inner iteration for velocity. Several examples show that the proposed method is efficient and reliable.     

Static and dynamic postural loadings during computer work in females: Sitting on an office chair versus sitting on an exercise ball

Seated computer work results in prolonged static loading, which has been associated with the development of musculoskeletal disorders. A popular alternative to sitting on an office chair while performing computer work is to sit on an exercise ball. Sitting on an exercise ball might affect static and dynamic aspects of working posture. We monitored posture, muscle activation and spinal shrinkage in 10 females performing a 1-h typing task, while sitting on an office chair with armrests and while sitting on an exercise ball. Sitting on an exercise ball resulted in 33% more trunk motion and in 66% more variation in lumbar EMG. Both of these findings can be considered to be an advantage for the exercise ball. However, the fifth percentile and average lumbar EMG were also higher when sitting on an exercise ball, with 38% and 78%, respectively. In addition, more spinal shrinkage occurred when sitting on an exercise ball than when sitting on an office chair. Arm flexion was reduced, but trapezius activation was unaffected when sitting on an exercise ball. It is concluded that the advantages with respect to physical loading of sitting on an exercise ball may not outweigh the disadvantages.     

Roughness in MV-algebras

In this paper, by considering the notion of an MV-algebra, we consider a relationship between rough sets and MV-algebra theory. We introduce the notion of rough ideal with respect to an ideal of an MV-algebra, which is an extended notion of ideal in an MV-algebra, and we give some properties of the lower and the upper approximations in an MV-algebra.     

企业内部供应链信息流集成 --上海精艺纺织制品加工厂集成化信息系统的建立

提出了以Intranet为基础 ,针对企业的实际现状 ,为企业进行管理咨询 ,选择适合企业的经营管理模式 ,并将其融入系统中 ,建立企业的集成化信息系统的设想。并以上海精艺纺织制品厂为实例 ,介绍了基于B/S架构的企业集成化信息系统的整体框架     

Stabilization via homogeneous feedback controls

In this paper, we provide an explicit homogeneous feedback control with the requirement that a control Lyapunov function exists for an affine control system and satisfies an homogeneous condition. We use a modified version of the Sontag formula to achieve our main goal. Moreover, we prove that the existence of an homogeneous control Lyapunov function for an homogeneous affine system leads to an homogeneous closed-loop system by using the previous feedback control.     

Time- and Space-optimal height-balanced 2-3 brother trees

The node-visit optimal (NVO) and the space-cost optimal (SCO) height-balanced (HB) 2-3 brother trees are defined. The characterization of the NVO HB 2-3 brother trees is developed. This characterization leads to a linear-time algorithm for constructing an NVO HB 2-3 brother tree for an ordered set of keys. The minimum space-cost of an N-key NVO HB2-3 brother tree and the space-cost of an N-key SCO HB 2-3 brother tree is analysed. It is shown that the minimum space-cost of an NVO HB 2-3 brother tree is never more than one plus the space-cost of an SCO HB 2-3 brother tree. Further, the minimum node-visit cost of an SCO HB 2-3 brother tree is at most one plus the node-visit cost of an NVO HB 2-3 brother tree. It is also shown that there exists an HB 2-3 brother tree which is both SCO and NVO for just over half the possible values of keys. Finally, an outline for constructing an SCO HB 2-3 brother tree is presented.     

A rule-based system for generating a ladder logic control program from a high-level systems model

In this article an interface between a high-level specification of a system and a logic controller of that system is developed. The interface is based on a number of rules to transform an IDEF0 specification into an intermediate-level Petri-net-based controller and to transform the intermediate specification into a ladder logic program which can be run on a PLC. These rules could be used as a basis for developing an expert system to handle the interface. Such an expert system provides an environment for rapid prototyping and analysis of controllers.