Cool websites
Try this. it is a good AI engine and a clever demonstration.
http://www.20q.net/
then have a go at :
This flash adventure game. it's good fan.
panos on 08.31.06 @ 03:31 PM gmt [link]
Tuesday, August 29th
Weekend Blast
Back to work from a long weekend that marked the last summer bank holday and the last bank holiday before Ramadan 
(and Christmas).
I spent most of this bank holiday in Manchester. Coincidently it was the 26th of August i first stepped foot onto English soil back in 1992...I visited my friend Steve L., and we went to watch Man City versus Arsenal at the Manchester city stadium. It turned out to be a great game. I was hoping to see Samaras playing but he didn't feature much (came of the subs bench 5 minutes before the end).
I was also watching the palyers I had picked for my Fantasy team. I had 4 players in that game which feature in my first fantasy 11. None of them scored many points, although overall i did better than last week. I am still way off the 250K Telegraph is handing out to the winner though.
Later that night we went to Jillies RockWorld nightclub and that really brought back memories from my time as a student there. We had a blast. I should make more of an effort to visit Manchester more often.
This week I have to prepare some slides for a talk I am giving at a workshop on business grids, wrap up the demostration code for the AHM2006 conference and sort out my travel for Washignton which is only about a week away!
panos on 08.29.06 @ 08:57 AM gmt [link]
Monday, August 21st
Fantasy Football
mood: 
I made an attempt on fantacy football again this year. I played in a league couple of years ago and I did about average. This year, I joined the telegraph league and another local league comprised largely of colleagues.
Although I did put the effort this time around, the first game did not go as I had anticipated. Half of my team was out for the first game of the season so I didn't score many points. Also I realised that sentimentality when it comes to selecting players for the team does not do any good.
Neither of the 2 Greek players in my squad scored any points, so that was a bit of a let down. I will stick with them for pride if nothing else until the end of the month and then i will take advantage of the tranfers I have at the end of the month.
Talking about football, I bought tickets for the Man City - Arsenal game which takes place next saturday at the City of Manchester Stadium. I look forward to that. Man City was the very first team I saw live when I first came to the UK back in 1992....long time ago... for the record they were playing Oldham Athletic and the game ended a 3-3 draw...
panos on 08.21.06 @ 09:14 AM gmt [link]
Saturday, August 19th
Update
The program for the next all hands meeting is out, and i have been lucky enough to have my talk on the very first of the conference. I am currently conteplating attending the next GGF meeting in Washington DC. It will give me a chance to catch up with colleagues and friends. The latest news about plane delays and cancellations has put me slightly off the whole idea of going to the States but I think I will not give in.
Assuming I go to GGF i will be away for most of September, so Iam hoping to have my book and ph.d. related bussiness sorted.
panos on 08.19.06 @ 03:25 PM gmt [link]
Friday, August 11th
Privacy and Access Control Policies
mood: 
I read the XACML privacy profile recently and I was surprised to see how close it is to the work we do here on the GOLD project. In GOLD we always supported the view that the owner of a resource should both be identified by the system and in addition he should be allowed to express security requriemetns related to his resource. I notice that latest XACML privacy profile draft, proposed just what GOLD has always been saying. The Profile standardizes as one can guess the way policies include information about the onwer or custodian of a resource as well as purpose of collection of a resource and action. The spec also proposes an additional step during the assessment phase of a request, which includes the matching of a purpose (of the request) to the purpose for which the resource was collected in the first place. In a nutshell this new spec gives teh power to the owner or custodians to express how they would want their resource to be handled prior to commiting it.
The problems that arise are of course related to the way policies are expressed since by giving such powers to owners we move from a role based view of the policies to a resource view. This has implications on the ways policies are expressed, privilages are collected and consequently distributed amongst roles. This the exact problem the GOLD team is working on right now. :-) more soon.
panos on 08.11.06 @ 09:37 AM gmt [link]
Monday, August 7th
New Movies
If you find the time check out the Sci-Fi French movie Renaissance. I paid a visit to the cinema twice recently to check out some recent indi movies and twice I stroke GOLD 
It is ironic, that as I was thinking that there are no more stories to make movie out of, the French strike with some great efforts. Renaissaance is the Sci-Fi film that takes place in 2032. A Ph.D. student working in genetics makes a major discovery but before she submits her thesis she gets kinapped. As the story unfolds we find out the impact of the discovery as well as the discovery itself. Goverment, secret services and major Corps are all involved. I won't reveal more because I don't want to give it away but it reminded me of the good old Phillip k. Dick stories. Don't miss it. I look forward to buying it on DVD. I also look forward to Scanner Darkly coming out in 10 days time; another P.K.Dick classic.
panos on 08.07.06 @ 11:03 PM gmt [link]
Saturday, August 5th
WS Chapters
I have collected about 25 chapters for the WS-Book and I have started hassling people to review them. The reviews will be blind and the authors will be informed as soon as the results come in. I'm hoping to speed things up a little if we are to make the end of the year deadline. The plan remains to publish the book in early (1st quarter) of 2007.
panos on 08.05.06 @ 06:37 PM gmt [link]