On October 3rd and 4th, I attended the ACES symposium. It is an opportunity for the PhD students of the participating research groups to present their ongoing work or wild ideas they would like to try out by means of a poster and a small introductory presentation. Obviously, getting practice for giving presentations is always a Good Thing ™. Additionally, it is a chance to socialize during the recurring bowling evening, and to exchange ideas. All in all, a good time is ensured, though the food – while excellent – can use larger amounts 
Pictures can be found on flickr.
Archive for October, 2006
ACES
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006Middle East conquerors
Saturday, October 7th, 2006The Middle East is an area of much turmoil. Peace seems hard to attain. Nations were created, people were driven out. Claims to land were made, and old (religious) arguments were brought to bear. One seems to often forget that these countries have been part of many empires and that claims to the land should not be made in haste, for political or other reasons.
I do wish this nice animation has ended with the new US empire on the map. It might open some eyes.
Let loose
Saturday, October 7th, 2006A judge has decided (Dutch) that police cannot catch criminals when they provide the goodies that will be stolen. I find this a very disturbing sentence. IANAL, but I find this to be almost as close as the following.
In the above case, the police intentionally left a laptop visibly lying in a car, in order to catch thieves. But, suppose you, an ordinary citizen, leave a laptop in your car. You need to get some groceries or bread, and you leave the machine sitting on the front seat. Can you be held responsible if somebody steals the computer? Or, can the thief get away with it?
Anyway, a thief is on the loose once more, despite efforts of the police force to put a halt to breaking into cars in the Belgian capital.
Manipulation
Monday, October 2nd, 2006The NMBS (Belgian railways) keeps track of the delays each vehicle has. They use it to produce annual reports on the preciseness of their service. The aim is to keep delays to a minimum. However, I was told that, as long as the announced delay does not equal or exceed 10 minutes, they delay is dropped from the statistics.
I’ve been commuting between Ghent and Ostend for the past ten years, and it is quite rare that they use delays that are not a multiple of five minutes. So, perhaps this was a neat way to improve, shall we say, the annual report
