tkCybernetics

tkCybernetics is a simulation software that can be used to create and evaluate simple cybernetic circuits as a combination of lowpass and highpass filters and several nonlinear elements. tkCybernetics has been developed for and successfully applied to introductory courses on biological cybernetics at Bielefeld University. Therefore, it is recommended for students who start learning about cybernetics. Students can quickly grasp the concepts used in the graphical user interface and are able to create their own circuits after a short introduction to the program. Its usefulness for advanced students and researchers is limited to quickly testing circuits. This article provides detailed tutorial information on how to install and work with tkCybernetics for self-learning and for higher education.

Teaching Cognitive Modeling Using PDP++

PDP++ is a freely available, open source software package designed to support the development, simulation, and analysis of research-grade connectionist models of cognitive processes. It supports most popular parallel distributed processing paradigms and artificial neural network architectures, and it also provides an implementation of the LEABRA computational cognitive neuroscience framework. Models are typically constructed and examined using the PDP++ graphical user interface, but the system may also be extended through the incorporation of user-written C++ code. This article briefly reviews the features of PDP++, focusing on its utility for teaching cognitive modeling concepts and skills to university undergraduate and graduate students. An informal evaluation of the software as a pedagogical tool is provided, based on the author’s classroom experiences at three research universities and several conference-hosted tutorials.

Software als Schutzgegenstand des Europäischen Urheberrechts

After 20 years of silence, two recent references from the Czech Republic (Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace, Case C-393/09) and from the English High Court (SAS Institute, Case C-406/10) touch upon several questions that are fundamental for the extent of copyright protection for software under the Computer Program Directive 91/25 (now 2009/24) and the Information Society Directive 2001/29. In Case C-393/09, the European Court of Justice held that “the object of the protection conferred by that directive is the expression in any form of a computer program which permits reproduction in different computer languages, such as the source code and the object code.” As “any form of expression of a computer program must be protected from the moment when its reproduction would engender the reproduction of the computer program itself, thus enabling the computer to perform its task,” a graphical user interface (GUI) is not protected under the Computer Program Directive, as it does “not enable the reproduction of that computer program, but merely constitutes one element of that program by means of which users make use of the features of that program.” While the definition of computer program and the exclusion of GUIs mirror earlier jurisprudence in the Member States and therefore do not come as a surprise, the main significance of Case C-393/09 lies in its interpretation of the Information Society Directive. In confirming that a GUI “can, as a work, be protected by copyright if it is its author’s own intellectual creation,” the ECJ continues the Europeanization of the definition of “work” which began in Infopaq (Case C-5/08). Moreover, the Court elaborated this concept further by excluding expressions from copyright protection which are dictated by their technical function. Even more importantly, the ECJ held that a television broadcasting of a GUI does not constitute a communication to the public, as the individuals cannot have access to the “essential element characterising the interface,” i.e., the interaction with the user. The exclusion of elements dictated by technical functions from copyright protection and the interpretation of the right of communication to the public with reference to the “essential element characterising” the work may be seen as welcome limitations of copyright protection in the interest of a free public domain which were not yet apparent in Infopaq. While Case C-393/09 has given a first definition of the computer program, the pending reference in Case C-406/10 is likely to clarify the scope of protection against nonliteral copying, namely in how far the protection extends beyond the text of the source code to the design of a computer program and where the limits of protection lie as regards the functionality of a program and mere “principles and ideas.” In light of the travaux préparatoires, it is submitted that the ECJ is also likely to grant protection for the design of a computer program, while excluding both the functionality and underlying principles and ideas from protection under the European copyright directives.

Vergleich von Softwarelösungen für die Ökobilanzierung – eine softwareergonomische Analyse

Ökobilanzierung von Produktsystemen dient der Abschätzung ihrer Wirkung auf die Umwelt. Eine vollständige Lebenswegbetrachtung erfordert auch die Einbeziehung intralogistischer Transportprozesse bzw. -mittel. Für die Erstellung von Ökobilanzen wird i. d. R. ein Computerprogramm verwendet. Die Demoversionen dreier kommerzieller Softwarelösungen (SimaPro, GaBi und Umberto NXT LCA) und die Vollversion einer Open Source Software (openLCA) wurden aus softwareergonomischer Sicht analysiert. Hierzu erfolgte u. a. der Nachbau der bereitgestellten Tutorials bzw. die Modellierung eigener Produktsysteme. Im Rahmen der Analyse wurden die Punkte • Entstehung, Verbreitung, Zielgruppe, • Eignung der Tutorials, Erlernbarkeit, • Grafische Benutzeroberfläche, Individualisierbarkeit der Software, • Umsetzung der Anforderungen aus den Ökobilanzierungsnormen, • Notwendige Arbeitsschritte zur Erstellung einer Ökobilanz einer vergleichenden Betrachtung unterzogen. Der Beitrag beinhaltet eine Einführung in die wesentlichen Prinzipien der Ökobilanzierung und die Grundsätze der Softwareergonomie. Diese werden zu softwareergonomischen Eigenschaften für Ökobilanzsoftwarelösungen subsumiert. Anschließend werden die Ergebnisse des Softwarevergleiches dargestellt. Abschließend erfolgt eine Zusammenfassung der Erkenntnisse.

Semi-Automated Creation of Converged iTV Services: From Macromedia Director Simulations to Services Ready for Broadcast

While sound and video may capture viewers' attention, interaction can captivate them. This has not been available prior to the advent of Digital Television. In fact, what lies at the heart of the Digital Television revolution is this new type of interactive content, offered in the form of interactive Television (iTV) services. On top of that, the new world of converged networks has created a demand for a new type of converged services on a range of mobile terminals (Tablet PCs, PDAs and mobile phones). This paper aims at presenting a new approach to service creation that allows for the semi-automatic translation of simulations and rapid prototypes created in the accessible desktop multimedia authoring package Macromedia Director into services ready for broadcast. This is achieved by a series of tools that de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces (UI) and applications for mobile terminals. The benefits of rapid prototyping are essential for the production of these new types of services, and are therefore discussed in the first section of this paper. In the following sections, an overview of the operation of content, service, creation and management sub-systems is presented, which illustrates why these tools compose an important and integral part of a system responsible of creating, delivering and managing converged broadcast and telecommunications services. The next section examines a number of metadata languages candidates for describing the iTV services user interface and the schema language adopted in this project. A detailed description of the operation of the two tools is provided to offer an insight of how they can be used to de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces and applications for mobile terminals. Finally, representative broadcast oriented and telecommunication oriented converged service components are also introduced, demonstrating how these tools have been used to generate different types of services.

Integrating structured and unstructured data in a business-intelligence-system

The recent liberalization of the German energy market has forced the energy industry to develop and install new information systems to support agents on the energy trading floors in their analytical tasks. Besides classical approaches of building a data warehouse giving insight into the time series to understand market and pricing mechanisms, it is crucial to provide a variety of external data from the web. Weather information as well as political news or market rumors are relevant to give the appropriate interpretation to the variables of a volatile energy market. Starting from a multidimensional data model and a collection of buy and sell transactions a data warehouse is built that gives analytical support to the agents. Following the idea of web farming we harvest the web, match the external information sources after a filtering and evaluation process to the data warehouse objects, and present this qualified information on a user interface where market values are correlated with those external sources over the time axis.

Pedagogical quality in e-learning

The article is concerned with design and use of e-learning technology to develop education qualitatively. The purpose is to develop a framework for a pedagogical evaluation of e-learning technology. The approach is that evaluation and design must be grounded in a learning theoretical approach, and it is argued that it is necessary to make a reflection of technology in relation to activities, learning principles, and a learning theory in order to qualitatively develop education. The article presents three frameworks developed on the basis of cognitivism, radical constructivism and activity theory. Finally, on the basis of the frameworks, the article discusses e-learning technology and, more specifically, design of virtual learning environments and learning objects. It is argued that e-learning technology is not pedagogically neutral, and that it is therefore necessary to focus on design of technology that explicitly supports a certain pedagogical approach. Further, it is argued that design should direct its focus away from organisation of content and towards design of activities.

How to Improve the Production Process for interactive TV with semi-formal Methods

The central question for this paper is how to improve the production process by closing the gap between industrial designers and software engineers of television(TV)-based User Interfaces (UI) in an industrial environment. Software engineers are highly interested whether one UI design can be converted into several fully functional UIs for TV products with different screen properties. The aim of the software engineers is to apply automatic layout and scaling in order to speed up and improve the production process. However, the question is whether a UI design lends itself for such automatic layout and scaling. This is investigated by analysing a prototype UI design done by industrial designers. In a first requirements study, industrial designers had created meta-annotations on top of their UI design in order to disclose their design rationale for discussions with software engineers. In a second study, five (out of ten) industrial designers assessed the potential of four different meta-annotation approaches. The question was which annotation method industrial designers would prefer and whether it could satisfy the technical requirements of the software engineering process. One main result is that the industrial designers preferred the method they were already familiar with, which therefore seems to be the most effective one although the main objective of automatic layout and scaling could still not be achieved.

An Architecture for End-User TV Content Enrichment

This paper proposes an extension to the televisionwatching paradigm that permits an end-user to enrich broadcast content. Examples of this enriched content are: virtual edits that allow the order of presentation within the content to be changed or that allow the content to be subsetted; conditional text, graphic or video objects that can be placed to appear within content and triggered by viewer interaction; additional navigation links that can be added to structure how other users view the base content object. The enriched content can be viewed directly within the context of the TV viewing experience. It may also be shared with other users within a distributed peer group. Our architecture is based on a model that allows the original content to remain unaltered, and which respects DRM restrictions on content reuse. The fundamental approach we use is to define an intermediate content enhancement layer that is based on the W3C’s SMIL language. Using a pen-based enhancement interface, end-users can manipulate content that is saved in a home PDR setting. This paper describes our architecture and it provides several examples of how our system handles content enhancement. We also describe a reference implementation for creating and viewing enhancements.

Exploring Urban Environments Using Virtual and Augmented Reality

In this paper, we propose the use of specific system architecture, based on mobile device, for navigation in urban environments. The aim of this work is to assess how virtual and augmented reality interface paradigms can provide enhanced location based services using real-time techniques in the context of these two different technologies. The virtual reality interface is based on faithful graphical representation of the localities of interest, coupled with sensory information on the location and orientation of the user, while the augmented reality interface uses computer vision techniques to capture patterns from the real environment and overlay additional way-finding information, aligned with real imagery, in real-time. The knowledge obtained from the evaluation of the virtual reality navigational experience has been used to inform the design of the augmented reality interface. Initial results of the user testing of the experimental augmented reality system for navigation are presented.

The TViews Table Role-Playing Game

The TViews Table Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) is a digital tabletop role-playing game that runs on the TViews table, bridging the separate worlds of traditional role-playing games with the growing area of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The TViews table is an interactive tabletop media platform that can track the location of multiple tagged objects in real-time as they are moved around its surface, providing a simultaneous and coincident graphical display. In this paper we present the implementation of the first version of TTRPG, with a content set based on the traditional Dungeons & Dragons rule-set. We also discuss the results of a user study that used TTRPG to explore the possible social context of digital tabletop role-playing games.

Gesture-Based, Touch-Free Multi-User Gaming on Wall-Sized, High-Resolution Tiled Displays

Having to carry input devices can be inconvenient when interacting with wall-sized, high-resolution tiled displays. Such displays are typically driven by a cluster of computers. Running existing games on a cluster is non-trivial, and the performance attained using software solutions like Chromium is not good enough. This paper presents a touch-free, multi-user, humancomputer interface for wall-sized displays that enables completely device-free interaction. The interface is built using 16 cameras and a cluster of computers, and is integrated with the games Quake 3 Arena (Q3A) and Homeworld. The two games were parallelized using two different approaches in order to run on a 7x4 tile, 21 megapixel display wall with good performance. The touch-free interface enables interaction with a latency of 116 ms, where 81 ms are due to the camera hardware. The rendering performance of the games is compared to their sequential counterparts running on the display wall using Chromium. Parallel Q3A’s framerate is an order of magnitude higher compared to using Chromium. The parallel version of Homeworld performed on par with the sequential, which did not run at all using Chromium. Informal use of the touch-free interface indicates that it works better for controlling Q3A than Homeworld.