Thesis at Politecnico di Milano: Latex template

Here you can read a complete vademecum (written in italian) to write a thesis at Politecnico di Milano. All those instruction are provided in the AIRLab's wiki (AIRLab is the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory of the Politecnico di Milano).

It is recommended to use LaTeX for an automated process of writing and well ordered output. It is also provided a useful template to start to set the structure of all the thesis.

To use LaTeX in a Linux system Ubuntu-like you have to install the package texlive.
So, for example, you can install it launching in a terminal the command:

sudo apt-get install texlive

Then you can start using LaTeX in two ways:

1) by command line

For example, once you have downloaded the template and you changed you directory in the folder where you extracted it, you can compile the thesis launching:

latex tesi

you will obtain a file .dvi which can be converted in .ps or .pdf by:

dvips tesi.dvi

ps2pdf14 tesi.ps

There are many other arguments and commands to have a complete compilation of the LaTeX code: they are specified in the README.txt of the template. You can also compile your thesis using the provided script, which contains all the commands for a complete compilation of your thesis:

./compilatex.sh tesi

2) by an editor/compiler

Many of them are listed here.

I vangeli apocrifi - Einaudi

Finalmente ho concluso la lettura de I vangeli apocrifi [Einaudi].

Si tratta di un libro assolutamente interessante e già segnalato nella mia raccolta. Esso non comprende tutti gli apocrifi ma solo quelli più rilevanti e comunque presenta la traduzione di ben 31 testi e 4 frammenti, tutti corredati di note filologiche.

Edito per la prima volta nel 1969, sempre dalla casa editrice Einaudi, il testo è curato da Marcello Craveri in maniera minuziosa. Dal punto di vista della lettura, certamente presenta dei testi più pesanti rispetto ad altri, ma il valore storico è assolutamente indiscutibile e crea quel senso di antico che spinge a continuare nel percorso di lettura-ricerca.

I testi sono divisi nei 6 gruppi che seguono.

1) Vangeli dell'infanzia

Molto interessanti, soprattutto il vangelo arabo siriaco e quello armeno, ma altrettanto molto ripetitivi. Inoltre, si nota, quasi in eccesso, che i testi sono modellati per far combaciare il tutto con la storia conosciuta e comunemente accettata all'epoca. Questo vale, in generale, anche per gli altri testi: in pratica, come dice Mauro Pesce in Inchiesta su Gesù, "le fonti riflettono la fede di chi le ha scritte".

2) Vangeli della predicazione

Noiose note (e contronote) di testi antichi sulla predicazione del Cristo ecc. Sono più interessanti i frammenti papiracei contenuti alla fine del gruppo.

3) Vangeli della Passione e della Resurrezione

E' il gruppo più corposo. Contiene lunghissimi racconti delle ultime ore di Gesù, in particolare del processo fatto da Pilato e dai sacerdoti ebrei. Testi molto particolari sono quelli intitolati "Discesa all'inferno" riguardanti l'arrivo nell'oltretomba da parte di un Gesù trionfante il quale libera tutti i vecchi patriarchi e incatena definitivamente Satana.
In questo gruppo è contenuto anche il cosiddetto "Ciclo di Pilato": una serie di testi (alcuni di epoca medievale) che descrivono il destino del governatore Ponzio Pilato dopo gli avvenimenti della Passione e Resurrezione, a volte accusandolo, altre volte santificandolo. Alla fine di questo gruppo da segnalare l'apocrifo "La vendetta del signore" un simil-romanzo medievale di stile leggermente differente dal resto e molto divertente da leggere.

4) Assunzione di Maria

Testi apocrifi sulla modalità della morte di Maria e sulla magica riunione degli apostoli (ognuno avvisato per l'occorrenza e trasportato al capezzale della Vergine da una nuvola).

5) Vangeli gnostici

Pesanti e profondi testi sugli insegnamenti del Cristo, ma soprattutto sull'essenza mistica retrostante al suo pensiero. Penso che dalla complessità interpretativa di testi del genere si possa capire il livello di confusione nel quale versavano i credenti dei primi secoli dopo Cristo (periodo di ricchissimo di dottrine-eresie). Tuttavia, nonostante le contorte e antiche argomentazioni cosmogoniche, molti ragionamenti sembrano avvicinarsi al pensiero platonico e anche a taluni concetti della filosofia orientale (come per esempio, al concetto di unità cosmica del taoismo).

6) Vangeli dualistici

In realtà questa sezione comprende un solo libro di origine medievale intitolato Libro di Giovanni Evangelista. In esso viene trattata brevemente la cosiddetta dottrina dualistica per mezzo di una interrogazione-intervista di Giovanni a Gesù.

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A questo libro ho aggiunto anche la lettura di due altri testi apocrifi facilmente scaricabili dalla rete: Il vangelo di Giuda frammentario e altamente gnostico-mistico, Didachè o Dottrina dei Dodici Apostoli che mi è sembrato un approfondimento dei dieci comandamenti con ulteriori regole di buona condotta.

Can ignorance promote democracy?

A multiagent system involved in a single collective decision. It's the case of the elections in a democratic assembly (it can be also related to the forming process of the public opinion). The process of making decisions can be (and really it is in more than one occasion) influenced by a strongly opinionated minority.

Here it is a very interesting paper Can ignorance promote democracy? in which the authors try to demonstrate that, for a wide range of conditions, a strongly opinionated minority can dictate group choice, but the presence of uninformed individuals spontaneously inhibits this process, returning control to the numerical majority.

Remembering that:

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

Are we controlled by machines... wireless?

I discovered this strange experiment by Professor Patrick Haggard from Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London.
So far, some micro-parts of the brain can be excited with direct electric impulses, in this way it's possible to control some parts of the body (and, in a certain way, someone could say it's also possible to "touch the emotions").

What if the control of the brain can occur "wireless"?
Professor Patrick Haggard seem sure: "We certainly don't have free will". In the following links there are a lot of discussions about these philosophical and neuroscientific topics.

News and comments

• http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/12/14/you-are-a-machine/
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8058541/Neuroscience-free-will-and-determinism-Im-just-a-machine.html
• http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/does-neuroscience-kill-free-will.html
• http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/is-neuroscience-the-death-of-free-will/

And also this: Patrick Haggard The Neuroscience of Human Will Patrick Haggard


The problem of free will in philosophy

• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
  

MindPapers

How many theories and currents of thought are there in philosophy? And how many articles, books and other material have been produced for each theory? Really a lot...
In particular, for those who are interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, and science of consciousness, I would like to signal this link: MindPapers. It is a wonderful tidy bibliography of works (articles, books, etc.) in these fields, compiled by David Chalmers and David Bourget.
It is also part of PhilPapers: online research in philosophy, another aggregator and research tool in the ocean of philosophical articles and books.

An interesting resource

"Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well—usually programs they wrote themselves—and never study the great programs of history. As a result, they repeat one another's mistakes rather than building on one another's successes.

This book's goal is to change that. In it, the authors of twenty-five open source applications explain how their software is structured, and why. What are each program's major components? How do they interact? And what did their builders learn during their development? In answering these questions, the contributors to this book provide unique insights into how they think."

The Architecture of Open Source Applications
Amy Brown and Greg Wilson (eds.)
Lulu.com, 2011, 978-1-257-63801-7
License / Buy / News / Contribute / FAQ

How to fix the webcam for Skype in Ubuntu

There are some old problems to set the webcam for Skype in Ubuntu. The followings are two rapid methods to try to fix them.

1) First of all install cheese (to normally use your webcam). In a terminal type the command:

sudo apt-get install cheese


Then launch the program with the terminal (typing cheese) or using the menu Applications > Audio and Video. Do you see the webcam working? If not, there is something wrong (maybe with the webcam drivers, etc.) and you have to fix it first. If webcam works you can normally use cheese and you can set the correct resolution in Modify → Preferences → Resolution.
Then you have to modify the config.xml file:

sudo gedit ~/.Skype/name_user_skype/config.xml

Where name_user_skype is your username in Skype (like john.wayne). In this file look for the tag <video> and modify it like the following:

<video>
[...]
<captureheight>1024</captureheight>
<capturewidth>1280</capturewidth>
<device>/dev/video0</device>
</video>


Where the numbers refer to the resolution you previously set in cheese. Save, exit, restart Skype and click on Try in Main menu → Options → Video device. Now your webcam should work properly also in normal videocalls.


2) Another way to fix the webcam is to launch Skype with this command (which include a library):

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype


Check if the webcam works clicking on Try in Main menu → Options → Video device. If it doesn't work the problem is another. If it works you can set the default launcher in the menu Application in this way. Create a text file just with the command above. Rename it skype_launcher.sh, copy it in /usr/share/applications/:

sudo cp skype_launcher.sh /usr/share/applications/


Set execution permissions:

sudo chmod +x /usr/share/applications/skype_launcher.sh

Then open the configuration file for the icon Skype in the Application menu:

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

You will see something like that:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Skype
Comment=Skype Internet Telephony
Exec=skype
Icon=skype.png
Terminal=0
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Categories=Network;Application;


Modify only the Exec row in this way:

...
Exec=/usr/share/applications/skype_launcher.sh
...


Save, exit, restart Skype using the icon in the Applitation menu and click on Try in Main menu → Options → Video device. Now your webcam should work properly also in normal videocalls.