Author: SocialXYZ

And then I settled into my new apartment, which is a cozy one bedroom in Ventura, CA.

A frustrating fact is that I do not seem to be receiving Verizon cellular signals from my apartment (even when my phone is on the windowsill. I guess, in a way, it is also comforting that my brainwaves are not being bombarded with radio and micro waves. But I am paying for those non-ionizing waves, so it would be nice to receive them in a consistent fashion. I’m not in the mountains or far enough away from civilization to warrant such poor reception.

The good news is that I do have high-speed internet and can make phone calls via Google Voice or Skype, but I have found that my battery drains faster as it continually picks up and loses it’s cell connection. And text messaging is a futile battle.

I hear there is a booster I can pick up for $20. Just $20 bucks, right? Nickel and dimes… Nickel and dime…

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Boy do I miss my Sprint service. They didn’t provide the best service, but they provided the best services in my opinion… Unlimited text, voice and data. You can’t beat that!

Nevertheless, I have Verizon and found out some interesting things about their services recently. Here are a couple of problems I have with their service:

Last week I was on the move, driving cross-country from NY to CA. I have a pretty low level plan with Verizon, only 450 minutes, 1000 messages and 2GB of data. As I was expected, on my drive I quickly ate up minutes talking with friends and family back east to the point where I was perilously low on minutes. Right now, with ten days left in my window, I have 30 minutes of talk time, 200MB of data and 300 messages left.

I was thinking about bumping up my data, which I have done in the past, but Verizon only charges $10/GB overage, which hardly seems worth it. Then I was wondering about boosting my text messaging, but only $.10 a message also seems hardly worth it… But I was concerned about voice overage, so I really wanted to bump up my minutes. But it turns out that you can’t, without upgrading your plan completely. I’m not in favor of this idea and at $.45 / minute, I was rather concerned. In the end, I’ve opted to eat the overage charges. The way I figure it is that this is a once off. I will likely not use more than 450 minutes in the future, considering apps like Google Voice, where it’s like a penny a minute, GChat, which is free and Skype, which is also pretty cheap. Unfortunately, Verizon doesn’t allow Google Voice on their network, which is understandable from a business perspective. Spring on the other hand embraces it.

So it goes. In the end, I am willing to go over on minutes. With two weekends to work with and a host of VOIP apps, I will be surprised if I exceed forty minutes of talk ($20).

 

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I’m about to embark on a new course, teaching Multiagent Systems (MAS).

The MAS field centers on the idea that multiple intelligent agents (aka intelligent systems) can operate independently, yet cooperatively, within some environment. The notion that agents are intelligent means that not only must systems be able to operate autonomously within an environment but they must also have the capability to learn and adapt to changes in their environment. This concept is analogous to humans behavior.

What makes these systems particularly intriguing are the approaches one must take in designing such agents. Even within competitive environments, cooperation is required. After all, if I want to sell a product, I must consider what an individual wants/needs and also what the individual is willing to relinquish to buy my product. Similarly, within cooperative environments, where the end goals of multiple individuals are mutual, a person must still conserve their resources and also decide what tasks to perform that will be in the best interests of the community.

With this basic understanding of MAS, I am currently engulfed in a myriad of textbooks and academic papers exploring MAS in depth. I am still trying to figure out the best approach to teaching this course. In the end, I am leaning towards Michael Wooldridge’s Intro to MAS textbook with supplemental material from Gerhard Weiss’s edited text Multiagent Systems in addition to relevant academic articles. In the end, I feel that Wooldridge’s text will provide students with the required background on MAS to prepare them for designing and programming these systems in the future.

While background and theory of MAS is critical, Computer Science students must also be able to engineer and program MAS components on some level. Two frameworks I am looking into right now is JaCaMo (Jason, Cartago Moise), and Jade (Java Agent Development) , both built in Java. The next step is to find some realworld datasets that will provide students with environments upon which to develop intelligent agents.

Stay Tuned.

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I presented this scenario to my class a few weeks ago, which happened when I purchased my new laptop a couple months back… As Tom Petty sang, “The waiting is the hardest part.” But logistics can be funny and sometimes we don’t have to wait as long as we think we have to wait. Below is a snapshot showing the number of hops my package took from China to its destination in the U.S.

My favorite part of this snapshot is how my package travels back in time from Dec. 28 to Dec. 27, which happened after it crossed the international date line.

Kind of fun…

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Here is the abstract for work I co-authored, titled, “Design and Evaluation of Instructor-Based and Peer-Oriented Attention Guidance Functionalities in an Open Source Anchored Discussion System,” which will appear in Computers & Education next month!

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