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""MY, WHAT a big mouth you have, Grandma," says Little Red Riding Hood, with just a hint of suspicion. The wolf sneezes. "Bless you," says the little girl. Sound odd? That's because this snippet of Little Red Riding Hood was written not by a person but by a piece of software called Xapagy. It may not seem like much, but it demonstrates a first step towards computers that can invent stories. It also signals a new approach to designing a more human-like artificial intelligence."

The aim of the Askemos project is to enable reliable and justiciable data processing, with the goal of producing "Software that can last 200 years." The first implementations of an Askemos peer can be obtained from ball.askemos.org. The Askemos web site itself is served from the Askemos/BALL development network. Follow here for more details. Note that Askemos concerns the abstract specification exclusively; including data formats, protocols, service interfaces etc. - not the actual implementations. Askemos combines incorruptible privilege delegation and non-repudiable replication of communicating processes into a trustworthy network. Physical machines under control of their operators execute applications processes under permanent multilateral audit. The network's honest majority of hosts provides users with exclusive control, and thus real ownership of processes. Askemos models a kind of "virtual constitutional state" where physical hosts bear witness to the interactions of virtual agents (akin to citizens). Self verifying identifiers can confirm that original documents have not beentampered with. The real potential for using Askemos is for identity and time stamp services, informationmanagement in public administration and libraries attaching metadata and archives, with the goal of establishing robust systems that can endure for centuries. German tax law, for instance, has storage requirements, which makes Askemos interesting even for private, individual use. Also Activist groups, non-profits and people who desire privacy and reliability in a chaotic and unpredictable world have much to gain from this software.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency told software vendors on Tuesday that it plans to revolutionize the way it does business with them as part of a race to keep up with the blazing pace of technology advances.

" It is, Julio Vildosola concedes, a very big bet. Enlarge This Image Warrick Page for The New York Times Julio and Eva Vildosola and one of their two children. Mr. Vildosola will join a small software company in Cambridge. Readers' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (269) » After working six years as a senior executive for a multinational payroll-processing company in Barcelona, Spain, Mr. Vildosola is cutting his professional and financial ties with his troubled homeland. He has moved his family to a village near Cambridge, England, where he will take the reins at a small software company, and he has transferred his savings from Spanish banks to British banks."

Since his diagnosis with Alzheimer's in 2007, beloved fantasy author Terry Pratchett has kept up his rigorous writing and touring schedule, despite his growing health difficulties. These days, he writes entirely with the help of voice-activated software and his assistant Rob Wilkins. Now he's done an extensive interview with New Statesman's Laurie Penny, where he reveals what his life is like now, and what's coming next for Discworld.

"The power of modern smartphones is one of the technological wonders of our age. These devices carry a suite of sensors capable of monitoring the environment in detail, powerful data processors and the ability to transmit and receive information at high rates.  So it's no surprise that smartphones are increasingly targeted by malware designed to exploit this newfound power. Examples include software that listens for spoken credit card numbers or uses the on-board accelerometers to monitor credit card details entered as keystrokes.

The Shared Learning Collaborative, a Gates Foundation-funded initiative, rebranded itself this week. There's a new name - inBloom, Inc. - but the mission and plans remain the same, the new non-profit insists. That mission is to build an open source, cloud-based education data infrastructure in the hopes of addressing a number of problems schools face: the lack of data interoperability between the various databases and software systems that they utilize and the merits of spending money to update outdated administrative IT (versus, say, buying instructional - or other - tech and/or versus spending money on something altogether non-tech).

Archaeologists may not need to get their hands so dirty any more, thanks to the kind of digital technology being pioneered at Southampton University. Its 'µ-VIS Centre for Computed Tomography' possesses the largest, high energy scanner of its kind in Europe: a 'micro-CT' machine manufactured by Nikon. Capable of resolutions better than 0.1mm - the diameter of a human hair - it allows archaeologists to carefully examine material while still encased in soil. Using visualisation software, archaeologists can then analyse their finds in 3D. This keeps the material in its original form, and postpones any commitment to the painstaking process of excavation by hand.

ou like to ask Wikipedia tougher questions than today's simple keyword searches allow? A prototype plug-in that can do just that will be demonstrated at the World Wide Web conference in Lyon, France, next month. Called Swipe - loosely short for "searching Wikipedia by example" - the software aims to let users of the online encyclopedia answer complex questions that most search engines would stumble over. For example, trying to figure out "which actresses won academy awards when they were under 30 years old in the last 25 years?" becomes relatively simple when using the program.

Eureqa (pronounced "eureka") is a software tool for detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in your data. Its goal is to identify the simplest mathematical formulas which could describe the underlying mechanisms that produced the data. Eureqa is free to download and use. Below you will find the program download, video tutorial, user forum, and other and reference materials.

Scaling College Composition by AUDREY WATTERS on 22 APR, 2012 I've been thinking a lot this week about two seemingly unrelated news items. The first, the research by David Shermis and Ben Hamner that found that automated essay grading software performs comparably to human graders. (See the Inside Higher Ed story.) The second, the official unveiling of Coursera, the latest online learning startup to spin out of Stanford, that promises to offer a full course catalog, including many classes in the humanities. (Here's my write-up of the news). The connection: scaling how we assess student writing.

Inside NYU art professor David Darts' black metal lunchbox, painted with a white skull and crossbones, is the PirateBox - a tiny Linux server, a wireless router, and a battery. Turn the PirateBox on and you have a self-contained mobile communications and file-sharing device, whereby those in the vicinity can upload and download files securely and anonymously. (See this 2011 Ars Technica story for photos and details.) Built with free and open source software and openly licensed itself, the PirateBox has inspired a number of other projects, including Alan Levine's Storybox and now Jason Griffey's LibraryBox.

Results from FIA Aalborg: The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most important fundaments for the smart cities, and is becoming slowly but steadily one of the core elements of the Future Internet (FI). In fact, various architectures and approaches from Future Internet such as Cloud Computing (Software as a Service - SaaS), which are being linked with the Web of Things, which is also allowing to define Sensors as a Service (SaaS) are clear examples of this relation between Future Internet and IoT architectures. At this particular point, where the IoT is a reality, where several IoT-based high scale deployments are being carried out such as Rome, and Santander. It is essential to discuss what are the IoT-specific aspects that the FI architecture has to take into account, in order to efficiently map the IoT architectures into an overall FI architecture, and particularly, how to manage rights of the individual (i.e. privacy) and its interaction with IoT objects taking into account aspects like delegation, access control as key aspects in the inclusion of the Internet of Things in the common lives with its total inclusion in the city of the future.

So, after my post on ground-truth documents, one of my commenters argued eloquently that I ought to clean it up and submit it to a journal read by people who manage programming projects. He suggested Software Practice and Experience. This seemed like a pretty good idea, until I read SP&E's submission procedures and was reminded that (like most journals) they want me to assign the copyright of my submission to the publisher. My instant reaction was this: Fuck. That. Noise. I'm certainly willing to cede publication rights when I want to be published, but copyright assignment ain't going to happen. Ever. Nobody gets to own my work but me. (Yes, I insist on this with my book publishers too.) I have a message to all you technical journal publishers out there…

A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity.  The document, part of a program called "Communities Against Terrorism", lists the use of "anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address" as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity.  The use of encryption is also listed as a suspicious activity along with steganography, the practice of using "software to hide encrypted data in digital photos" or other media.  In fact, the flyer recommends that anyone "overly concerned about privacy" or attempting to "shield the screen from view of others" should be considered suspicious and potentially engaged in terrorist activities.

Google has released a new software framework that aims to give programmers the ability to create interactive experiences in physical spaces. It could potentially be used to build interactive art installations or games that involve physical interaction.

When the founders of GitHub moved into their swank South-of-Market loft last year, the first thing they did was redecorate. They turned the floor's biggest office into a parody of an executive suite - complete with fake fireplace, plush leather chairs, and a wooden globe that slides open to reveal a bottle of single malt scotch. Hanging from the wall is a painting of a cat, dressed as Napoleon, with five octopus-like legs. They call it the Octocat.

Louisville's hackerspace LVL1 is working on a home automation setup for the space, and they call it MOTHER. Using open-source home automation software called HOLOS, the capabilities include: * Monitoring of LVL1 Space Occupancy & Zone Occupancy * Measuring of "Hacktivity Levels" of each Zone * Monitoring of individual member occupancy * INSTANT WOMP MODE! (dubstep everywhere at the press of a button) * Notifications of "Abnormal" hacktivity levels * Monitoring of various websites and notifications of LVL1 mentions * Various "Nagging" (Take out the trash, It's cold please shut the door, I haven't seen you in 3 days, please come visit your mother, etc…) * "Member Scenes" - Auto setting of audio, lights, etc.. based on specific members present * Logging and Graphing of ALL data * Voice recognition and communication * Control of Lighting and appliances * Security System monitoring and notification of alerts * Phone calls and emails based notifications * Google Talk communication with AIML chat integration

You want to start your own blog but you don't want to look tacky by using an existing design. Creating your own theme can be daunting, but with some assistance you can have a unique design for your blog in no time. This post will help you put it all together using WordPress, the most popular (and free) blogging software available.

The whole "everyone should learn programming" meme has gotten so out of control that the mayor of New York City actually vowed to learn to code in 2012.