multitouch vnc?

has anyone looked at thin 3G client + cloud computing?

basically ,multitouch VNC and a remote service...

would make the battery life really good and with most the android/t-mobile and iPhone/O2 contracts being unlimited data, one could just win big compared with those platforms...

dasher for cell phone or other consumer electronic config

has anyone looked at using dasher for input for configuration of applications ? It would be quite easy compared to using it for probabilistic text input..

time to leave facebook?

now they've made it as pointless as twitter!

TINA in Hong Kong

Later today, I'm presenting some work on the
Intelligent Networked Airport project
at a Cambridge Alumni event in Hong Kong at the
Polytechnic University

Aside from the slightly alarming jetlag, its a great place to visit! some more info of my home talks page

I also had a tour of CS in the PolyU and saw some excellent mobile/mesh demos, and a really cool biometric lab (with chinese medicine intergrated in biometric ID!), and a model car/ITS lab, plus of course Henry Chan's new lab for the airport work.

on the way back, i was pleased to be flying Air New Zealand who were not only cheap, but also very good - 30-40 films on a VOD system - including (what I watched)

twilight - kind of like Near Dark, but slightly better

4 xmases - reese withersoon vehicle - basically naff, but likeable - the bloke is very drop dead pan amusing

slumdog millionaire - i prefer the book, but the film doesn't pull many punches - very good

my best friend's girlfriend - great idea fairly well done (bloke messes up dates deliberately for money from ex-s who want their girlfriend back) _ typical hollywood bottleout ending ruins it.

happy-go-lucky - mike leigh movie in a good mood - simply awesome

body of lies - not as good as other recent sensible US movies in the middle east, but not bad at all.

enchanted - fabulous combination of animation and pretty camp live action in NY.

the day the earth caught fire - diabolical remake of classic story.

quantum of solace - bond - better than US government bond, but only just

grading and reviewing

so in academic life, the one thing I think almost everyone would agree is the most negative experience is grading papers - (or marking exams) - teaching is fun (lecturing, supervising) and research is fun (coming up with ideas, building stuff, writing papers, giving presentations) - even some admin (interviewing, teaching/research admin) is ok

but grading is really de-grading.

so why is it the, that so many academics also volunteer for reviewing (i.e. being on Technical Programme Committees, and on Journal Boards of Editors)??

I suppose the main difference is that at least some of the things one reviews for conferences and journals are new and interesting, whereas most of the things one sees for exam answers are at best correct answers to something we already knew.

But to be honest, the payoff is pretty small, and in exam marking, at least sometimes you get the pleasure of seeing someone do a neat slightly novel answer (or the amusingly awful answers of course)...whereas there's very little amusing about awful paper submissions to conferences... ... ...

this week in european comms research land...

today I am at Pablo's Lab in Barcelona
but then shortly after I'll head off for this unusual workshop in swizzerland, where I may travel under the name of dr necessitor, in the hope of meeting and reconciling Michael Hfuhruhurr and Helen
Uumellmahaye.

some pix of barcelona...are at
the usual place

I has ta say any city with an actual Diagon Alley (as Barcelona has) nearly makes me forgive Harry potter.

today's mad idea - virtualise cell phones so you can migrate all the expensive p2p comptutation onto the Cloud, and save battery life in the handset:)

ignoble prize alert - the impact on reviewers judgement of being cited in the work under review

so how much is our judgment affected (unfairly) by seeing a citation to our own work in a paper (or book or whatever) we are reviewing?

devising an experiemnt to test this is tricky - there are effects like
a) very bad people who accept a paper because they want to boost their citation count to prepare a bigger H factor
b) there's the simple (correct) effect of being more familiar with the previous and related work (which is why presumably one was picked as a reviewer

to conduct an experiment to test this effect we need to submit some papers with
i) blinded citations for PC members
ii) citations replaced with irrelevant citations
iii) citations with authors names changed
iv) citations replaced by equivalent works (e.g. level of indirection - cite instead a work (survey, similar paper) that cites the original citation)

it should be done:)

facebook minimal age captcha

so its well known that if you break someones legs, the time to heal in weeks is the same as the age of the person.

hence a very big robot controlled mallet connected to the keyboard and remote run by facebook through a browser plugin could deter underage facebook users...

one problem is that the sense of the test is wrong - i am working on that:)

not to muckrake or anything, but...

...today i see they are spreading signage
on the field in front of the vet school
opposite the WGB:)

i'd love to see a picture of a herz rental outlet a donkey and cart with the sign
(Carriage Return, Line Feed) :-)