04.13.06

WMSCI 2006 Invitation

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:42 pm by Todd

I just got an email today from Dr. Nagib Callaos inviting me to participate in WMSCI 2006. At first I was flattered since it sounded like a personal invitiation (figuring someone read my first paper and liked it) and not auto-generated spam. So I took a look at the conference website and figured I would just delete the message and move on since it didn’t sound like an interesting conference (pretty vague descriptions of the type of work presented).

After deleting I decided to take a quick peek at what google has to say about this and found some interesting links including the MIT guys random paper generation and a blog entry follow-up to this story.

Now I won’t make any claims about the conference but it certainly seems like the conference has some questionable history.

I have included the text of the message here (for no particular reason):
Dear Todd Wallentine:

On behalf of the WMSCI 2006 Organizing Committee, I would like to invite
you to participate in the 10th World Multi-Conference on Systemics,
Cybernetics and Informatics (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.iiisci.org/wmsci2006">http://www.iiisci.org/wmsci2006</a>), which will
take place in Orlando, Florida, USA, from July 16-19, 2006.

The best 10%-20% of the papers will be published in Volume 4 of JSCI
Journal (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/SCI/Home.asp">http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/SCI/Home.asp</a>). 12 issues of the
volumes 1 and 2 of the Journal have been sent to about 200 university and
research libraries, and 6 issues of Volume 3 (2005) will be sent to a
larger number of library. Promotional, free subscriptions, for 2 years, are
being considered for the organizations of the Journal's authors.

Also, we would like to invite you to organize an invited session related to
a topic of your research interest. If you are interested in organizing an
invited session, please, fill the respective form provided in the
conference web page, and we will send you a password, so you can include
and modify papers in your invited session.

Organizers of the invited sessions with the best performance will be
co-editors of the proceeding volume where their sessions' papers were
included and of the CD electronic proceedings. They will also be candidate
for invited editors, or co-editors of a possible JSCI Journal issue related
to their invited session papers.

You can find information about the suggested steps to organize an invited
session in the Call for Papers and in the conference web page.

If by any reason you are not able to access the page mentioned above,
please, try the following pages: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.iiis.org/wmsci2006">http://www.iiis.org/wmsci2006</a> .

If you need a detailed Call for Papers, don't hesitate in asking us for it.
You can also get it the conference's web site.

If the deadlines are tight and you need more time, let me know about a
suitable time for you and I will inform you if it is feasible for us.

Best regards,

Professor Nagib Callaos
WMSCI 2006 General Chair

If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:wmsci.remove@iiis-sci.org">wmsci.remove@iiis-sci.org</a> with REMOVE MLWMSCI in the subject line.

04.08.06

MDD: Not just for Models anymore

Posted in Programming at 1:57 am by Todd

I just found a great blog entry that provides a funny look at development.  The blog entry introduces a new development model called MDD, Meeting Driven Development.  Funny stuff … or maybe sad if you work in a world like this (which most of us have some form of this).  Enjoy!

04.07.06

Thunderstorms in Manhattan

Posted in Manhattan at 8:11 pm by Todd

Yesterday Manhattan, and quite a bit of the midwest, had an outbreak of severe thunderstorms. While there were no tornadoes that ripped through Manhattan, it sounds like a tornadic storm ran through Kansas just west of us (near Clay Center). At our house, we had some rain, about 5 minutes of good sized hail, and then some great views of storms. I tried taking pictures but I am still not great with the camera. So here is the only good picture that I got.

Thunderstorm East of our house

04.01.06

TACAS06 Paper SpringerLink

Posted in SAnToS at 12:34 am by Todd

While I don’t have the paper posted online (yet), here is the SpringerLink to the paper we presented at TACAS06. By “we presented” I mean John Hatcliff traveled and gave the talk while the rest of us helped prepare the talk (along with helping write the paper itself).

Crazy Patent Case

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:27 am by Todd

I just read an essay by Michael Crichton published in The New York Times talking about a patent case that went before the Supreme Court (or so I gather, hard to read the docket information).  It is hard to believe that a company can patent the idea (or the biological process) involved.  But hey, we are talking about the USPTO.