Eckles and Kaptein walk through the ethical implications of using means-based persuasive systems. It is a good paper that forces us to consider certain questions in the context of where this field goes:

How do we abstract certain types of data?
How do we deal with personal information in these systems?
How do we think about disclosing the existence of such systems and their end purpose to users?
Is disclosure necessary?
If so, what facts about the system should be disclosed and when?

Just the tip of the iceberg…enjoy :)

Image via Wikipedia

So when will these greens blame the death of the Dinosaurs on humans? This is crazy! Cant except that the environment happens independent of human mischief.

From Slashdot:
DesScorp writes “Science News reports on a story which blames a centuries long cooling of Europe on the discovery of the new world. Scientists contend that the native depopulation and deforestation had a chilling effect on world-wide climate. ‘Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University.’ The story notes that the pandemics in the Americas were possibly an example of human climate manipulation predating the Industrial Revolution, though isotope measurements used during research have much uncertainty, so ‘that evidence isn’t conclusive.’”

BREAKING: Sebastian Thrun launches Udacity.com

Sebastian Thrun gave one of the DLD12’s most inspiring speeches today, presenting his newest initiative in free online education. By offering free world class education, Thrun said, we can truly change the world.

Sebastian Thrun has long been recognized for his genius work with Google’s driverless cars. However, during today’s speech, the Stanford professor and computer science expert had an entirely different agenda.

Thrun engaged his audience with the heartwarming story about how an initial idea of offering his renowned Stanford classes for free to students online evolved into an education project touching hundreds of thousands of students across the world.

“I hoped for 500 students. We got 160,000,” Thrun said.

Thrun’s approach is more than “just” offering quality teaching for free. What he wanted to do was, in fact, to revolutionize higher educate itself, he said.

The classes were soon translated into 44 languages and reached individuals he had never dared to imagine possible. An Afghan student wrote him an email describing how he risked his life to reach a hotspot, just to follow and complete the classes.

“With this class I was able to touch lives,” Thun said.

At the same time, he achieved what regular classroom teaching cannot - creating a sense of connectivity with each student despite the large numbers of eager followers.

“Maybe we should rethink education,” he concluded. “If we can make education free and accessible for the world, we can achieve things we never thought possible.”

The first step on this journey was taken already today, right here at the DLD12. To the sound of massive applause, Thrun unveiled his Udacity.com project, tailored to power the global knowledge revolution.

The site will combine the quality teachings of one of the world’s sharpest minds in computer science and artificial intelligence with the reach that the Internet provides.

It will begin with a seven-week course on how to build a search engine, with a dedicated goal of attracting 500,000 students.

Judging from the initial interest in his online Stanford lectures, he is likely to succeed.

Going Back to Basics

Recently, I have been brushing up my programming skills on Objective-C. I have been learning from the people of Stanford University through iTunes U. I just go through with the lectures and activities that is presented on a video. They are really good!

Here’s a sample snippet that i wrote which displays my root folder and breaking it into components.

void PrintPathInfo() {
	NSString *path = @"~";
	NSLog(@"My home folder is at '%@'", [path stringByExpandingTildeInPath]);
	NSArray *components = [[path stringByExpandingTildeInPath] pathComponents];
	for(NSString *element in components) {
		NSLog(@"%@", element);
	}
}

I have been learning also about IBOutlets and IBActions, their relationship between each other; the headers and implementation files that it was written; and, doing it programatically or using Interface Builder!

I would be posting more snippets and screenshots later while i go through with the class. :)