The ninth annual "World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics" (WMSCI -2005) is scheduled to take place this July in Orlando, Florida. According to its web site, the conference focuses on "specific disciplinary research, as well as for multi, inter and trans-disciplinary studies and projects" with an aim of "fostering analogical thinking and, hence, producing input to the logical thinking." One of the academic papers included for presentation is titled "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" (pdf doc). The product of three MIT graduate students, "Rooter" is a very difficult read. To the untrained eye, it seems to be a bunch of gibberish. In this case, the untrained eye is in the right, because "Rooter" is a grade A prank.

According to Jeffrey Stribling, one of Rooter's authors, the paper is a computer-generated research paper. It includes graphs, figures, and citations and prints out hand-written context-free grammar to form all elements of the paper. How random and context-free can the report be? Here's a sample from the paper, "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning." Stribling said the trio was inspired to contribute the paper to WMSCI because they have a thing about academic conferences which only seem to exist to make money for organizers. Stribling said that WMSCI is one such example, a conference which spams the academic world looking for contributions.

MIT students pull prank on conference

In recent months proposals have been made for the introduction of competition into the system of allocation of IP addresses. In particular, calls have made for new IP address registries to be established which would compete with the existing Regional Internet address Registries. Specific proposals have been made by Houlin Zhao of the ITU-T and by Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project, both of which propose that the ITU itself could establish such a registry group, operating as a collection of national registries.

This is a response to these proposals by Paul Wilson, Director General of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), and Geoff Huston, Senior Internet Research Scientist at APNIC.

Could IP Addressing Benefit from the Introduction of Competitive Suppliers?

The latest information confirms the ?card specifications quoted in the August 6 DigiTimes article and adds the number of connection pads (20), the operating voltage (legacy 5V, 3.3V, 1.8V), the frequency (60MHz) and the interface (MMC SPI USB, x1, x4, x8, x16). There is also a micro-size card added at 24×18×1.4mm (14mm shorter than the full size 24×32×1.4mm)

Mu-Card Alliance’s new 2-terabyte ‘?card’ ready to go!

The First Court of Appeals in Massachusetts ruled that Bradford C. Councilman did not violate criminal wiretap laws when he surreptitiously copied and read the mail of his customers in order to monitor their transactions.

E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible

The US Marine Corps (USMC) and navy are considering a radical restructuring that will change the way units ashore are organised to fight and alter plans for at least two new ship class designs to support those forces.

http://peoships.crane.navy.mil/factsheets/lharfactsheet.htm

US considers overhaul of amphibious forces

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are developing a self-powered exoskeleton.

http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/bleex.htm
http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/matdev/ehpa.htm

Self-powered exoskeleton assists human locomotion

For anyone who read the earlier post of "VeriSign Rerouting .net DNS queries", here is a little more information.

http://www.haque.net/verisign_dns_rant.php

This was taken off of NANOG (North American Network Operators Group)where a fairly involved thread about what problems this creates for the global internet is in progress.