HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: GQ.JAN@forsythe.stanford.edu (Tony Navarrete)
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: CWIS Project Leader position available
Date: 4 Jan 1993 11:01:37 -0800
Organization: Stanford University
NNTP-Posting-Host: morrow.stanford.edu

The Stanford Data Center at Stanford University is developing
Portfolio - a Campus Wide Information System (CWIS) that will extend
and enhance the functions of Folio (SU's current CWIS).

The Portfolio Project Leader will manage & coordinate the design &
development of Portfolio.

For details on this position, see the posting on ALT.GOPHER.
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors,comp.infosystems,alt.hypertext,comp.software-eng
From: martin@DMI.USherb.CA (Jean-francois Martin)
Subject: Selecting evaluation criterias, NEED COMMENTS!
Organization: Universite de Sherbrooke -- Dept. d'Informatique
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 20:39:35 GMT

Question:
 
I'm asking your opinion on the selection of criterias
for the evaluation of the user interface quality.
 
Problem: suppose you are in front of the Smith & Mosier
report (Smith, S. L. et Mosier, J. N.  Guidelines for Designing 
User-System Interface Software, The Mitre Corporation, 1986. )
and you want to build a database of evaluation criteria. What
criteria would you choose if:
 
 you don't want to end-up having more than 300 hundred
criterias in your database
 
 you want to evaluate the interface on as many aspect as
possible.
 
Currently, I'm working on building such a database. Without
looking in the Smith & Mosier report, I already have 300 hundred
criterias taken from miscellanious sources. What should guide the
selection of criterias in building my database? Should I keed only
"general" criterias? OK, but how "general" is defined?
 
Let's look at an example: "the menu structure is well balanced".
Is this criteria specific or general. Well, is it specific in a
sense that it look only at menus. It may be general in a sense
that, to answer this criteria, the evaluator must walk through
all the interface. So how to decide? Is there other way to
decide if a criteria is specific or general?
 
Comments, anything is wellcome.
 
JF Martin
Graduate Student
Project: User interface quality evaluation methodology using
evaluation criterias.
 
-- 
================================================================================
= Jean-Francois Martin                                     martin@dmi.usherb.ca=
= Graduate student of Universite de Sherbrooke (je parle francais)             =
= "In complete darkness we are all the same" Janet Jackson                     =
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
From: bkillam@ccel.mitre.org (Bill Killam)
Subject: Wanted - Icon Standards
Followup-To: comp.human-factors
Organization: The MITRE Corporation
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 19:03:30 GMT

Is anyone aware of any industry, government, or international standards for
icons for GUIs?  I'm not looking necessarily for application icons, but
other icon like folders, files, executable programs, disk drives, etc,. as
well as some more technical ones like drivers and bridges.  Any help would
be appreciated.  I'll post a summary of the replies.

Thanks,
Bill

H. William Killam
Human Factors Enginner
The MITRE Corporation
e-mail: bkillam@ccel.mitre.org
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
From: bathurst@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Bruce Bathurst)
Subject: Re: Selecting evaluation criterias, NEED COMMENTS!
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 13:58:00 GMT

In article <C0I421.2pq@DMI.USherb.CA> martin@DMI.USherb.CA (Jean-francois Martin) writes:

[SNIP,SNIP]

>What criteria would you choose if:

>% you don't want to end-up having more than 300 hundred
>criterias in your database

>% you want to evaluate the interface on as many aspect as
>possible.

[SNIP,SNIP]

My impression of applications for personal computing is that they come
in one flavor only, one interface.  People even speak of the best
interface design, as if there were a best cheese (excluding
Liederkrantz).  Computers tax people's cognitive functions: their
ability to deal with organizational tasks, complex screens of images,
memory of exact syntax, eye-hand coordination, and so forth, even
artistic sensitivity to one's tools.

People's innate abilities in these areas differ greatly.  Also, the
details of peoples' professional working methods, as well as (of
course) the applications they use, so forth, call for different
interfaces.

The mass production of products has created a statistical person for
whom one thing is designed and sold.  My feeling is that this reasonable
approach to designing a single product for a rigid assembly line has
be carried beyond its purpose to flexible assembly lines and even the
philosophy of product design.

I know nothing of the subject ("clearly", many are thinking), but I
imagine a very difficult aspect of studying interfaces is defining the
following function:

working environment (distractions, so forth)    |
neuropsychological strengths and weaknesses     | A sufficient number of
details of working methods                      | independent variables to  
tasks to perform                                | produce a unique design.
degree of repetition                            | 
constraints such as time, so forth
...                                             | The aspect optimized: time,
          |                                     | lack of stress, accuracy,...
          V

BEST INTERFACE DESIGN

Collecting 300 good design features would be building the domain of this
function, in which the optimal interfaces lie.

Bruce (Gypsy Geologist)
-- 
Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu bathurst@pucc.bitnet !princeton!phoenix!bathurst
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
From: andyd@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Learnability of Notations
Date: 7 Jan 93 11:47:51 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England

I am aware of some work done by Thomas Green and colleagues
on _Methods for comparison_ of difficulties in learning and
using different notations, and programming languages. 
 
What other work has been done in this area. I'm particularly
interested in any work on the cognitive difficulties 
of using different KBS tools and techniques.
 
I will of course post a summary to this group

Andy Dearden
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
York
YO1 5DD
UK
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
From: Jim Hahn <jhahn@gibbs.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Ergonomic keyboards
X-Xxmessage-Id: <A7720B34E201A4B0@thebit.sph.unc.edu>
X-Xxdate: Thu, 7 Jan 93 16:30:44 GMT
Organization: Health Policy & Admin, UNC-Chapel Hill
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d17
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 21:27:10 GMT

Does anyone have information/experience with any of the new ergonomic
keyboards? My wife is recovering from surgery on her wrists for carpal
tunnel syndrome and she needs a keyboard so she can write
briefs/pleadings/etc. without putting herself back in the same condition.
Any information (models, price, reviews) appreciated. I would prefer
responses by email as I don!t read this group often, but if there is
sufficient response, I will post a summary. Thanks for you help!
(Apologies if this is a FAQ, but I couldn!t find the FAQ file for this
group.)

Jim Hahn
jhahn@gibbs.oit.unc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors,comp.cog-eng
From: Stephen S Davis <sdavis@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Authoring w/authoring software
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 02:01:49 GMT

Greetings!  

	I am about to begin the dissertation phase of my PhD program in Educational Design and Technology at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.  During my course work I have become interested in course development software like Authorware, Hypercard, IBM Linkway, and Toolbook.  My concern is that, although these are great tools for developing courseware, there is a huge bridge between the tool and the developer.

	My question then is how does "good" courseware happen?  Is there a taxonomy of competencies that successful programs have in common?  What is most important: human-computer interaction, instructional design, pedagogy, cognitive engineering, locus of control, screen design, mapping, etc.?  How can this be identified?  

	With this in mind, I respectfully request your views on how to identify "good" courseware that has been developed using an authoring package and how "good" can be (was/is) verified and how to research the question of "How does 'good' courseware happen?"  I am reaching out for dialog and ideas in an attempt at a kind of brain storming through the network (Netstorming/Brainnetting).

	I am toying with the idea of doing either a qualitative study examining the critical competencies that went into successful programs developed using and authoring software or a quantitative study trying to correlate which software development tools and education/training efforts yield the greatest benefits for development of software.  

	Since this is a personal request I would appreciate if you could send your reply to my internet address: sdavis@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu, rather than to the newsgroups.  This will also reduce the multiple cross postings that sometimes results with this kind of correspondence.  Thank you for your considerations in this matter.  
Regards.

Stephen S. Davis                   FUZZNAME: Stephen_Davis@osu.edu
4910 Upper Valley Rd         EMAIL: sdavis@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
Dayton, OH 45424             Home (513)879-1869
OSU APRTMNT (614)262-3480    OSU Work, Ed P&L (614)292-4872
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
From: j.craick@trl.oz.au (John Craick)
Subject: Is there an archive of this newsgroup ?
Organization: Telecom Research Laboratories
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 06:29:26 GMT

The subject is the message - pretty much

This being a new year, there seems to have been a lot of tidying up going 
on & my news host has almost no back traffic stored from this group. So, is 
there an ftp site or something similar where an archive of this group 
can be obtained ? 

Thanks

John Craick
From: chu@pit.bear.com (Arnold Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.self-org-sys
Subject: Artificial LIfe S/W
Date: 8 Jan 93 17:25:31 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]


I'm interested in locating software aritficial life simulations for MS DOS
or Unix.  I saw one advertised in a catalog once, but lost the catalog.

Any one can give me a few pointers??

Thanks in advance.
From: jmr@cs.anu.edu.au (Mike Robson)
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: P=NP; the proof
Date: 7 Jan 1993 09:14:17 +1100
Organization: Computer Science Department, ANU, Australia
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: nunki.anu.edu.au
Keywords: Collapse of hierarchy

jmr@cs.anu.edu.au (Mike Robson) writes:

>jmr@cs.anu.edu.au (Mike Robson) writes:


>>Who can shoot down this alleged proof that P=NP?
>>The ideas are taken from the Gismondi and Swart papers but the
>>algorithms are simplified and the proofs are completely new.
>>If you haven't read their papers, you will probably not follow this.
>>I'll post a more detailed version soon unless anyone has convinced
>>me I'm wrong (in which case I will post a retraction).

>I was wrong about the dimensions of the matrix M since it has more
>rows than the number of nonzero sab. I can't see any way to fix this
>(though I am working on it). I've had mail from Peter Breuer of
>Cambridge who says he has found a fix. I am looking forward to hearing
>from him what it is.

>So currently my proof is dead but if you believe in resurrection
>watch this space.

>Mike Robson.

AARRGGHH!!

Jim Reeds has proved that this problem cannot be fixed.
I'll go back to trying to decide if the current Gismondi and Swart
linear programming formulation has the required property (that every
solution covers a permutation). If that claim is true, then I think
my approach is a good way to try and prove it.

Newsgroups: comp.theory
From: crippa@inf.ethz.ch (Davide Crippa)
Subject: Roommate for SODA
Followup-To: crippa@inf.ethz.ch 
Organization: Dept. Informatik, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 14:54:07 GMT

I am looking for someone to share a room with me at SODA in Austin
from Sunday night through Tuesday night. I am a nonsmoking male.

Please contact me through email.

D.Crippa
crippa@inf.ethz.ch
Xref: sparky comp.theory:2815 soc.college.gradinfo:1837
From: orponen@cs.Helsinki.FI (Pekka Orponen)
Newsgroups: comp.theory,soc.college.gradinfo
Subject: Address change: Univ. of Helsinki
Date: 7 Jan 1993 10:46:29 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: andros.helsinki.fi

To whom it may concern:

As of 1.1.1993, the University of Helsinki has changed to a P.O.Box
based mail distribution system. Consequently, all s-mail addresses
for the University have changed. The general format of the new addresses is:

   Department of <Whatever>
   P.O.Box <departmental code> (<optional street address>)
   SF-00014 University of Helsinki
   Finland.

Use of the parenthesized street address is optional, but it should be
included for express and courier mail.

Specifically, the new address of the Computer Science Department is:

   Department of Computer Science
   P.O.Box 26 (Teollisuuskatu 23)
   SF-00014 University of Helsinki
   Finland.

E-mail addresses, of course, remain unaffected. Their general format
is

  Firstname.Lastname@Helsinki.FI

   
Newsgroups: comp.theory
From: ian@ponder.csci.unt.edu (Ian Parberry)
Subject: SIGACT News deadline
Summary: February 1
Organization: University of North Texas, Denton
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 21:00:38 GMT

Reminder: the submission deadline for the next issue of SIGACT News is one
month away.  SIGACT News is the quarterly newsletter of the ACM Special
Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory. The regular deadlines are:

	Winter issue, 1 February
	Spring issue, 1 May
	Summer issue, 1 August
	Fall issue,   1 November

I encourage everybody to use SIGACT News as a forum for issues important to
theoretical computer scientists.  As always, Letters to the Editor,
Transitions, Reports and Pictures from conferences, Articles,  Calls for
Participation, Conference Programs, and Announcements are welcome.
 
Electronic submissions are encouraged.  My email address is (either)
  ian@ponder.csci.unt.edu
  ian@hercule.csci.unt.edu
 
Send email or phone for information on submission procedures, or consult the
Submission Guidelines in issue number 1 of each volume, starting with Vol. 23,
No. 1, Winter 1992.  You can finger ian@ponder.csci.unt.edu to get my
regular mail and express mail addresses.
 
Your contributions and feedback are welcome.
----
Ian Parberry, ACM SIGACT News Editor
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Univ. of North Texas
(817) 565-2845 (desk and answering machine) 2767 (secretary) 2799 (fax)
Xref: sparky comp.theory:2825 sci.math:17823
From: sitarama@cps.msu.edu (Kocherlakota Sitarama)
Newsgroups: comp.theory,sci.math
Subject: sci.math.graph
Keywords: graph,graph theory, theory, computers
Date: 8 Jan 93 06:14:33 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Michigan State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: indian.cps.msu.edu
Originator: sitarama@indian.cps.msu.edu


Hello Netters

What do you think of a news group on graph theory (sci.math.graph) ?

I am an applied graph theorist. Only a small fraction
of sci.math etc., interests me. Now a days I see lot of 
traffic about graphs on both sci.math, comp.theory etc.,

How do we start a news group ?

Thanks!

Sitarama Swamy Kocherlakota
Newsgroups: comp.theory
From: nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren)
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Probabilistic Turing Machines
Date: 5 Jan 93 19:19:25 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England


Consider standard deterministic Turing machines with a fixed, finite program
and an arbitrary input tape (i.e. the input is deemed separate from the
program.  Consider probabilistic versions with the program extended to
allow the generation of a true random bit.

Clearly the second model is strictly more powerful than the first, but I
am interested (for now) only in deterministic problems - that is ones
where the output and termination (if any) depend solely on the input tape.

1) Is it known whether there are any deterministic problems that can be
solved by probabilistic Turing machines but not by deterministic ones?

2) Is it known that there are no such algorithms?

3) Assuming (2), are there any deterministic problems that have a lower
complexity for probabilistic Turing machines than deterministic ones?

4) Is is known that there are no such problems?

Does anyone know of any good results/references on these questions?
Please note that I am NOT working in the automata area, but am interested
because they affect the theoretical justification for pseudorandom
numbers.  I know that there are zillions of probabilistic algorithms,
many of which predate Turing, but that isn't much help!


Nick Maclaren
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street,
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
Email:  nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk
Tel.:   +44 223 334761
Fax:    +44 223 334679
Newsgroups: comp.theory
From: jamie@cs.sfu.ca (Jamie Andrews)
Subject: Re: Benj. C. Pierce address / _Basic Cat. Theory_ errata?
Organization: CSS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 20:47:29 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.001631.11670@cs.sfu.ca>, I wrote:
>     Does anyone know of an e-mail address for Benjamin C. Pierce,
>or know if a list of errata has been published for his book _Basic
>Category Theory for Computer Scientists_ (MIT Press, 1991)?

Thank you all for replying so swiftly.  I now have his address
and an electronic version of the errata.

--Jamie.
From: jmr@cs.anu.edu.au (Mike Robson)
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: P=NP; the proof
Date: 8 Jan 1993 16:22:40 +1100
Organization: Computer Science Department, ANU, Australia
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: nunki.anu.edu.au
Keywords: Collapse of hierarchy

reeds@alice.att.com (Jim Reeds) writes:



>jmr@cs.anu.edu.au (Mike Robson) writes:

>>[...]
>>I'll go back to trying to decide if the current Gismondi and Swart
>>linear programming formulation has the required property (that every
>>solution covers a permutation). If that claim is true, then I think
>>my approach is a good way to try and prove it.

>This is rather more than G&S themselves state.  If every point in the
>feasible region covers a permutation, then the extreme points of the
>feasible region are exactly the permutations, and hence every point in
>the feasible region is expressible as a convex combination of permutations.

I should have been more precise. I think they are claiming that every
solution has covers the s and t variables of a permutation (not the u).
I think that gets round your argument; if not things look bad.

>But all G&S claim is that any solution is expresible as an affine
>combination of permutations, with AT MOST ONE NEGATIVE COEFFICIENT.

Where did they claim that?

>(I would like to see a real proof that any solution is expressible
>as an affine combination of permutations, regardless of sign.  Equivalently,
>I'd like to know the dimension of the affine hull of the G&S feasible
>region.)

They claim to have a complete proof based on the dimensions of the spaces
involved but I haven't seen any details.
I have an idea of how to construct a proof by taking an arbitrary
solution and systematically zeroing out all u variables except those
of the identity permutation vector. This can be done by subtracting
carefully chosen permutations, possibly preceded by adding other
permutations which don't involve any u variables except the ones
which you haven't got round to yet.
>Jim

Mike.
From: andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: Looking for random permutation generation algorithms
Date: 9 Jan 93 17:05:27 GMT
Organization: Renaissance Technologies Corp., Setauket, NY.

Since nobody has proposed it, I will. See Floyd's lovely algorithm as
explained in Jon Bentley's _More Programming Pearls_ pp. 139ff. The
same thing is also found in Bentley's CACM column.

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Newsgroups: comp.theory
From: gordon@cs.uwa.oz.au (Gordon Royle)
Subject: Re: Suggstion: (was: Re: P=NP; the proof)
Keywords: Collapse of hierarchy
Organization: Dept. Computer Science, University of Western Australia.
Distribution: inet
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 07:24:55 GMT

In <pcw.726468672@digex> pcw@access.digex.com (Peter Wayner) writes:

>core of the problem. We already have neat algorithms that get close to
>the right answer on NP-complete problems like the travelling salesman.
>For all practical intents and realistic purposes, this is enough.It's
>really just an academic question now.


Is this true? I am not aware of any decent algorithms for Travelling 
Salesman at all. In fact G&J show that there cannot be any polynomial
time approximation algorithms for Travelling Salesman that achieve
ANY given multiple of the optimal solution (page 147).   
Does this not contradict the above statement, or am I labouring under a 
delusion? 


Gordon

Newsgroups: comp.theory
From: skm8109@ucs.usl.edu (Mishra Subhada K)
Subject: Roommate for SODA (Austin)
Organization: Univ. of Southwestern La., Lafayette
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 03:16:24 GMT

Hi !
Is there still someone out there looking for sharing room at
Austin for the SODA. I have reservation in my name. Please
contact me if you are planning to attend and would like
to share the room with me.

Subha
(mishra@cacs.usl.edu)

Newsgroups: comp.theory
From: boerncke@kirk.fmi.uni-passau.de (Frank-Roland Boernke)
Subject: Re: Real Numbers vs. Rational Numbers?
Organization: University of Passau, Germany
Distribution: inet
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:19:55 GMT

In article <butrfeld-050193140552@butrfeld.cs.tcd.ie>, butrfeld@cs.tcd.ie (Andrew Butterfield) writes:
|> In article <4287@dozo.and.nl>, jos@and.nl (Jos Horsmeier) wrote:
|> > 
|> > In article <1993Jan3.151347.29159@tom.rz.uni-passau.de> boerncke@kirk.fmi.uni-passau.de (Frank-Roland Boernke) writes:
|> > 
|> > |For 2/5 you can find a finite numeric representation ( 0.4 )
|> > |for PI or PI*PI you cannot!
|> > 
|> > But what if we use a base PI representation? PI*PI obviously equals 100,
|> > which is definitely a finite numeric representation. There is none for 2/5,
|> > when using base PI.
|> > 
|> > kind regards and happy new year!
|> > 
|> > Jos aka jos@and.nl
|> 
|> 
|> You cannot represent 1, 2, 3, exactly either --- "base PI" doesn't seem
|> much use.
|> 
|> Say we have 12 and 23 as numbers in your base PI, how do we add them ?
|> What gets carried and how is it represented ?
|> 
|> The key point is that no matter what base you choose, it will not be
|> capable of 
|> giving a finite representation to all real numbers. Real numbers are
|> inherently
|> infinite objects.
|> 

So what does this mean in the end? When I introduced this subject, I asked,
whether a Turing Machine, that handles not only bits or naturals but also 
real numbers is more powerful, than a turing machine, that only works 
with natural numbers. 

My professor said, both types of Turing Machines are the same concerning
their power of computability. I claimed that can't be true, refering to
ideas  like the ones mentioned in the quotes at the beginning of this side.

Who is right?




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank Boerncke                       ,,,   University of Passau - Germany
boerncke@kirk.fmi.uni-passau.de     (.~.)            phone: +49 0851 2267
--------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------------------------

Newsgroups: comp.theory