Ericom Connect is a remote access/application publishing solution produced by Ericom Software that provides secure, centrally managed access to physical or hosted desktops and applications running on Microsoft Windows and Linux systems. == Product overview == Ericom Connect is desktop virtualization and application virtualization software that allows users to run applications remotely, without installing them on the local computer or device. The software is noted for its scalability, ease of deployment, and compatibility with any type of infrastructure, cloud or physical. Ericom Connect uses AccessPad (native client for desktops), AccessToGo (native client for mobile), or AccessNow, one of the first HTML5 RDP solutions to support clientless access to Windows desktops and applications from any device with an HTML5-compatible browser, including Macintosh computers, mobile devices, and Google Chromebooks. Other notable features include performance monitoring, built-in real-time analytics & BI, support for two-factor authentication (using RSA SecurID), multi-tenancy and multi-datacenter support via a single unified web interface, and a “Launch Simulation” feature that allows users to visualize and simulate actual step-by-step user processes directly from within the administration console. In addition to scalability, by distributing configurations, logs, etc., across multiple servers there is no single point of failure, as can be the case if all configuration information is stored on one server. == History == Ericom Connect was introduced in 2015. Ericom Connect is a successor to Ericom PowerTerm Web Connect. PowerTerm Web Connect used an architecture similar to what was then current with Citrix and VMWare, relying on a centralized SQL server, a connection broker, image management for different hypervisors, and a variety of clients. Ericom Connect uses a new grid architecture that provides more scalability, reliability, and flexibility than before.
Harmony (software)
Harmony is a Java-based software for creating high-definition music videos with 2D and 3D animations. The application was developed by Digital Chaotics, a company based in San Jose, California and established in 2010 by Ken and Leanna Scott. == History == During a March 1, 2011 interview published by The LIST magazine, Ken explained how he initially got into music and digital entertainment. According to Scott: “I came at it from both the art and the technology side. … I built one of the first digital audio synthesizers as an undergrad project back in 1979. It was a short jump from there to creating visuals with computers, too.” Taking inspiration from Fantasia – which Scott calls, “The greatest music video of all time” – he began writing software code for Harmony in late 2009, finishing the project in mid-2010. However, Scott has also said that the idea for Harmony began much earlier: I read a book in 1978 called Digital Harmony, by John H Whitney, Sr. (Interestingly, he was the father of the president of Digital Productions.) He said that there was a kind of visual art based on motion, and proposed theories about the underlying mathematical structure of visual harmony. So there's the book, combined with my desire to create art with computers-add a taste or two of things commonly used by college students during the 70's - and lots of Pink Floyd. Add it all up, and the seeds for Harmony were planted. My friends in school and at Floating Point Systems listened to me ranting about "making music videos with computers" incessantly. I'm sure it was both maddening and fascinating to see. == Features == Harmony runs on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Currently, Digital Chaotics does not offer a macOS or Linux platform for the software. However, Harmony can be run on these platforms by running it on Windows in a virtual machine. == Harmony 2 == On November 1, 2011, Digital Chaotics released the 2.0 version of the Harmony software. Unlike the original version, the second release featured three product levels: Harmony 2 Express, Harmony 2 Pro, and Harmony 2 Extreme. The "Express" version was positioned as an entry-level, free release to allow users a chance to "test-drive" the software. The "Pro" version currently retails at $197, while the "Extreme" is priced at $397. These two versions, aimed more towards VJ and Fulldome theater usage, featured additional software capability and features such as higher resolution, more video formatting options, and more camera angles.
CuckooChess
CuckooChess is an advanced free and open-source chess engine under the GNU General Public License written in Java by Peter Österlund. CuckooChess provides an own GUI, and optionally supports the Universal Chess Interface protocol for the use with external GUIs such as Arena. An Android port is available, where its GUI is also based on Peter Österlund's Stockfish port dubbed DroidFish. The program uses the Chess Cases chess font, created by Matthieu Leschemelle. The name CuckooChess comes due that the transposition table is based on Cuckoo hashing. Android app based chess gaming app Droidfish employs both CuckooChess and Stockfish chess engines. Similarly, Kickstarter funded AI based virtual reality chess game Square Off also uses CuckooChess engine. It has an ELO rating of 2583 (as of July 2018) and a rank of 135‑137 in the Computer Chess Rating List.
Moral Machine
Moral Machine is an online platform, developed by Iyad Rahwan's Scalable Cooperation group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that generates moral dilemmas and collects information on the decisions that people make between two destructive outcomes. The platform is the idea of Iyad Rahwan and social psychologists Azim Shariff and Jean-François Bonnefon, who conceived of the idea ahead of the publication of their article about the ethics of self-driving cars. The key contributors to building the platform were MIT Media Lab graduate students Edmond Awad and Sohan Dsouza. The presented scenarios are often variations of the trolley problem, and the information collected would be used for further research regarding the decisions that machine intelligence must make in the future. For example, as artificial intelligence plays an increasingly significant role in autonomous driving technology, research projects like Moral Machine help to find solutions for challenging life-and-death decisions that will face self-driving vehicles. Moral Machine was active from January 2016 to July 2020. The Moral Machine continues to be available on their website for people to experience. == The experiment == The Moral Machine was an ambitious project; it was the first attempt at using such an experimental design to test a large number of humans in over 200 countries worldwide. The study was approved by the Institute Review Board (IRB) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The setup of the experiment asks the viewer to make a decision on a single scenario in which a self-driving car is about to hit pedestrians. The user can decide to have the car either swerve to avoid hitting the pedestrians or keep going straight to preserve the lives it is transporting. Participants can complete as many scenarios as they want to, however the scenarios themselves are generated in groups of thirteen. Within this thirteen, a single scenario is entirely random while the other twelve are generated from a space in a database of 26 million different possibilities. They are chosen with two dilemmas focused on each of six dimensions of moral preferences: character gender, character age, character physical fitness, character social status, character species, and character number. The experiment setup remains the same throughout multiple scenarios but each scenario tests a different set of factors. Most notably, the characters involved in the scenario are different in each one. Characters may include ones such as: Stroller, girl, boy, pregnant, Male Doctor, Female Doctor, Female Athlete, Executive Female, Male Athlete, Executive Male, Large Woman, Large Man, homeless, old man, old woman, dog, criminal, and a cat. Through these different characters researchers were able to understand how a wide variety of people will judge scenarios based on those involved. == Analysis == The Moral Machine collected 40 million moral decisions from 4 million participants in 233 countries, analysis of which revealed trends within individual countries and humanity as a whole. It tested for nine factors: preference for sparing humans versus pets, passengers versus pedestrians, men versus women, young versus elderly, fit versus overweight, higher versus lower social status, jaywalkers versus law abiders, larger versus smaller groups, and inaction (i.e. staying on course) versus swerving. Globally, participants favored human lives over lives of animals like dogs and cats. They preferred to spare more lives if possible, and younger lives as opposed to older. Babies were most often spared with cats being the least spared. In terms of gender variations, people tended to spare men over women for doctors and the elderly. All countries generally shared the preference to spare pedestrians over passengers and law-abiders over criminals. Participants from less wealthy countries showed a higher tendency of sparing pedestrians who crossed illegally compared to those from more wealthy and developed countries. This is most likely due to their experience living in a society where individuals are more likely to deviate from rules due to less stringent enforcement of laws. Countries of higher economic inequality overwhelmingly prefer to save wealthier individuals over poorer ones. === Cultural differences === Researchers subdivided 130 countries with similar results into three ‘cultural clusters’. North America and European countries with significant Christian populations had a higher preference for inaction on the part of the driver and thus had less of a preference for sparing pedestrians as compared to other clusters. East Asian and Islamic countries, together constituting the second cluster, did not have as much preference to spare younger humans compared to the other two clusters and had a higher preference for sparing law-abiding humans. Latin America and Francophone countries had a higher preference for sparing women, the young, the fit, and those of higher status, but a lower preference for sparing humans over pets or other animals. Individualistic cultures tended to spare larger groups, and collectivist cultures had a stronger preference for sparing the lives of older people. For instance, China ranked far below the world average for preference to spare the younger over elderly, while the average respondent from the US exhibited a much higher tendency to save younger lives and larger groups. == Applications of the data == The findings from the moral machine can help decision makers when designing self-driving automotive systems. Designers must make sure that these vehicles are able to solve problems on the road that aligns with the moral values of humans around it. This is a challenge because of the complex nature of humans who may all make different decisions based on their personal values. However, by collecting a large amount of decisions from humans all over the world, researchers can begin to understand patterns in the context of a particular culture, community, and people. == Other features == The Moral Machine was deployed in June 2016. In October 2016, a feature was added that offered users the option to fill a survey about their demographics, political views, and religious beliefs. Between November 2016 and March 2017, the website was progressively translated into nine languages in addition to English (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish). Overall, the Moral Machine offers four different modes, with the focus being on the data-gathering feature of the website, called the Judge mode. This means that the Moral Machine, in addition to providing their own scenarios for users to judge, also invites users to create their own scenarios to be submitted and approved so that other people may also judge those scenarios. Data is also open sourced for anyone to explore via an interactive map that is featured on the Moral Machine website. == In the literature == Studies and research on the Moral Machine have taken a wide variety of approaches. However, theological examinations of the topic are still scarce where two bodies of work that examine such perspective currently exist in this regard: One is Buddhist while the other is Christian.
Script theory
Script theory is a psychological theory which posits that human behaviour largely falls into patterns called scripts because they function the way a written script does, by providing a program for action. Silvan Tomkins created script theory as a further development of his affect theory, which regards human beings' emotional responses to stimuli as falling into categories called affects: he noticed that the purely biological response of affect may be followed by awareness and by what we cognitively do in terms of acting on that affect, so that more was needed to produce a complete explanation of what he called human being theory. These scripts fall under the larger cognitive concept called schemas, which are organized chunks of information. A schema is a script that has the potential to lack the specificity of the sequence of events. A schema becomes a script is when there is an ordering to it that requires action, such as the process of starting a car (get in, put on the seatbelt, turn the car on, release the emergency brake, etc.). In script theory, the basic unit of analysis is called a scene, defined as a sequence of events linked by the affects triggered during the experience of those events. Tomkins recognized that affective experiences fall into patterns that we may group together according to criteria, such as the types of persons and places involved and the degree of intensity of the effect experienced—the patterns of which constitute scripts that inform behavior in an effort to maximize positive affect and to minimize negative affect. == In artificial intelligence == Roger Schank, Robert P. Abelson and their research group extended Tomkins' scripts and used them in early artificial intelligence work as a method of representing procedural knowledge. In their work, scripts are very much like frames, except the values that fill the slots must be ordered. A script is a structured representation describing a stereotyped sequence of events in a particular context. Scripts are used in natural-language understanding systems to organize a knowledge base in terms of the situations that the system should understand. The classic example of a script involves the typical sequence of events that occur when a person drinks in a restaurant: finding a seat, reading the menu, ordering drinks from the waitstaff, etc. In the script form, these would be decomposed into conceptual transitions, such as MTRANS and PTRANS, which refer to mental transitions [of information] and physical transitions [of things]. Schank, Abelson and their colleagues tackled some of the most difficult problems in artificial intelligence (i.e., story understanding), but ultimately their line of work ended without tangible success. This type of work received little attention after the 1980s, but became very influential in later knowledge representation techniques, such as case-based reasoning. Scripts can be inflexible. To deal with inflexibility, smaller modules called memory organization packets (MOP) can be combined in a way that is appropriate for the situation.
Drops (app)
Drops is a language learning app that was created in Estonia by Daniel Farkas and Mark Szulyovszky in 2015. It is the second product from the company, after their first app, LearnInvisible, had issues in retaining a user's engagement over the required time period. The languages available include Native Hawaiian and Māori, and was classified as one of the fifty "Most Innovative Companies" for 2019 by Fast Company. The company partnered with Global Eagle Entertainment to include Travel Talk, a feature intended to focus on words and phrases frequently used by travelers. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the number of users increased by 55 percent in the United States and 92 percent in the United Kingdom. Droplets, a language app for children, includes profiles for multiple teachers working with remote students. The company also produces an app called Scripts, intended to help users learn to write alphabets. The app was purchased by the Norwegian company Kahoot! on 24 November 2020.
Lobsang Monlam
Geshe Lobsang Monlam (Tibetan: དགེ་བཤེས་བློ་བཟང་སྨོན་ལམ, Wylie: dge bshes blo bzang smon lam), born in 1976 in Ngawa eastern Tibet, is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and programmer who uses digital technologies to preserve the Tibetan language and culture. He is best known for developing Tibetan typefaces and for the multi-volume Great Monlam Tibetan Dictionary. In 2025, he received the Snow Lion Award for Human Rights from the International Campaign for Tibet. He is also working on developing a "Dalai Lama AI," a specialized language model. == Biography == Lobsang Monlam was born in 1976 in Ngawa, eastern Tibet, anciently Tibetan Amdo, where he became a monk at the age of 12.. At the age of 17, in 1993, Lobsang Monlam fled Tibet by crossing the Himalayas to reach southern India and discovered computer science in a monastery. In 1993, he was ordained monk in the Sera Mey College in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India, where he obtained a Geshe title in 2013.. By the early 2000s, Lobsang Monlam had already learned to paint thangkas and to compose plans and drawings. He used this knowledge to design a new assembly hall for Sera Mey, which the monks needed. Thanks to his work, Lobsang Monlam received donations from patrons of the monastery, which he was able to use to buy his first computer. He bought his first laptop in 2002 and largely taught himself how to use the hardware and software with the help of manuals. As a Buddhist scholar, he combines meditation practice with his digital work. In 2012, he founded and directs the Monlam Tibetan Information Technology Research Center in Dharamsala, which specializes in Tibetan language and software projects. Since then, he is its director, researching Tibetan language-related software. In 2019, advised by the 14th Dalai Lama, he founded Monlam IT and Research (OPC) Private Limited. Since the 2000s, Monlam has been developing Tibetan typefaces; the first Monlam Tibetan font was created in 2005. Under his direction, the Monlam Great Tibetan Dictionary was created, comprising 223 printed volumes and over 300,000 entries; approximately 150 people worked on this project for over nine years. On May 27, 2022, the Dalai Lama inaugurated the Monlam Tibetan Dictionary, produced by the Monlam Tibetan Information Technology Research Center, at Namgyal Monastery in McLeod Ganj. According to Penpa Tsering, this is the world's largest dictionary, created with guidance from the Dalai Lama, based on proposals from Lobsang Monlam and his team under the direction of Samdhong Rinpoche, and other lamas from all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Yungdrung Bön. On December 5, 2024, Lobsang Monlam testified at a hearing of the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China in Washington, chaired by Christopher Smith, on the difficulties of preserving the Tibetan language and culture in Tibet and the Tibetan diaspora, and on the interest of the Monlam Tibetan Informatics Research Center in developing technologies for the preservation of the Tibetan language. On December 12, 2024, the work was presented to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and launched at an event. The free Monlam Great Tibetan Dictionary app is available in several languages; the German version was created in collaboration with the Tibet Institute Rikon and has been downloaded millions of times. In total, Monlam has created over 37 apps related to the Tibetan language and translation; In 2023, its center launched the Monlam artificial intelligence platform, equipped with modules for machine translation, optical character recognition, speech transcription and speech synthesis.. For their efforts, he and Sophie Richardson received the Snow Lion Award in 2025, which was presented by Richard Gere and came with a prize of €3,000. In 2019, he started a PhD at Bangalore University on Library Science. He obtained his doctorate on November 30, 2023. Currently, he spearheads Monlam AI. Lobsang Monlam is developing "Dalai Lama AI" to digitally preserve the teachings of the 14th Dalai Lama, now 90 years old, for future generations. Lobsang Monlam states, "If we succeed in preserving the Dalai Lama, we also preserve the movement."