Technische Universität München,
Fakultät für Informatik
Lehrstuhl Informatik IV,
Research Group Automated Reasoning
Stephan Schulz
|
Some Words
of Wisdom.
...and my geek code:
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS$ d--@ s:+ a>? C++ U+++ P--- L++ E++ W+ N+++>+ K+++ !w----
!O !M V-- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP>+++ t+ 5+ X- R(+++) tv b++++
DI+ D+>+++ G e+++>++++ h r y+
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
I now have a CV online. You can download either the PostScript version
or the PDF version. Please note that I
am not currently looking for a new job. If you want to lure me, please
keep the following in mind:
- I am a researcher and a hacker at
heart, and I value the ability to work following my own schedule and
developing my own ideas. I can work in a team (in fact, I like working
with brilliant people), but I require sufficient time to think things
over on my own. I hate unproductive meetings.
- I am interested in reasonably paid tenured or
tenure track positions in my field of interest (deduction, automated
reasoning, machine learning, general AI).
- I might be interested in temporary teaching or
research positions if the combination of location, field, and
payment is attractive enough.
- I can be tempted to do low-impact, but well-paid
consulting jobs on the side.
- I might accept a permanent or temporary position at an
influential research institution if the conditions are right.
- I do have a low tolerance
for suits, both of the wearable and the babbling
persuasions. To get me for a job that requires significant contact
with either sort will be really hard. Please don't waste my time if
you cannot bring heaps of cash and point out other redeeming
circumstances (being located near a great beach or a great Ski area
counts ;-).
Please note that I will consider unsolicited
offers as spam unless they are obviously not part of a mass mailing or
a form letter.
About my Work
- A short biography and some links about my previous and present
work can be found on my
official page.
- At the moment I am working on an equational theorem prover, E,
which will complement SETHEO
to become
E-SETHEO.
- You might also want to take a look at some of my
publications.
- I am currently working on some guidelines for C and C++
programming. Here is a link to a very
preliminary version. As I am working on this file, there is
no guarantee that you'll get something readable - use it at your
own risk. Here is a link to a
package that might help you in following my guidelines:
Templates for commenting, and hooks that configure emacs to use
my formatting style.
- If you are interested in neuro-symbolic hybrid systems,
I can offer you a
topic for a diploma thesis or a
Fortgeschrittenen-Praktikum (sorry, in German only).
- I was (or am) a member of various program committees (many of
which will be missing here):
- I have (co-)organized a number of scientific events:
- In November 2003, I was elected as a member of the Workshop on
First-Order Theorem Proving Steering Comittee.
- I do some hacking either for fun or out of necessity. Some of the
results are below:
- Some (for small values of "some")
useful scripts.
- Borderline between work and hobbies is the
Virtual
MCSE AI application I have developed ;-) (well, ok, it's
not really borderline). I've finally managed to fix it
and moved it to one of my personal domains.
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able
to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even
more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (eg automobiles,
airplanes, guns or power saws).
-Found in a .sig
My Hobbies (and links related to them)
- I'm a member of a illustrious
society and I do cook
occasionally (both links
to German language pages).
- I am interested in building fantasy worlds for roleplaying
games. Look at the
Networlds in the Net
page to find out what kind of worlds have been published on the
net. I was part of the now dormant networld project. As there has
been some renewed interest in this project I made an old copy of
the FAQ
available. I also have an old copy of Wizards of the Coast's Envoy,
a system-independent format to describe characters for
roleplaying games. There is a much nicer copy (apparently of the
same text, but in HTML) somewhere
else on the net.
- Another of my interests, which probably set off my interest in
fantasty roleplaying, is history (For many people this seems to
work the other way round ;-). I was the proponent for the Usenet
newsgroup soc.history.medieval and
maintain a short introductory
FAQ for this group.
I also was one of four proponents for the newsgroup soc.history.ancient, dealing
with recorded history up to about the year 700. I created and
maintained the first FAQ for the group (the soc.history.ancient Mini-FAQ)
for the group. With the help of Joe Bernstein and
others, this has by now mutated to two FAQs:
I am particularly attracted by naval history. Here is a text
about ancient
triremes I wrote some time ago (answering some requests from
a news group), and which I HTML'ized now. I welcome all comments
and would be glad for recommendations about interesting sources
in this field.
- Finally, while I am a Hacker, I am quite
active physically. Here are some pictures showing me in the great
room with the high roof that changes colour all the time. The
page might take some time to load...
"If Windows-95 is the answer, how bloody stupid was the question?"
"Windows-95 is not the answer, it is the question. The
answer is NO!"
Freedom of Information on the Net
The internet is one of the biggest experiments in the history of
mankind. It allows people from all over the world to associate and
communicate freely and without any central control. As a result, the
people on the net now form a unique and distinct culture, full of
diversity, but based on a common set of values. Prime among this is a
strong belief in the freedom of information: Everybody should be able
to communicate his thoughts and ideas to the world, freely and without
fear of repression.
Recently, this freedom of information on the net has come under attack
from a variety of sources. It is telling that the attacks primarily
originate from people and organizations that depend on a strong
hierarchy and aim at controlling people, often via restriction or
manipulation of information: Governments, politicians, religous
groups.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin, 1759
You may consider to display the blue ribbon as a symbol
for freedom of expression on the internet as well as everywhere in the
world.
Join the Blue Ribbon Anti-Censorship Campaign!
Russ Alberry has
written an excellent statement on the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 and on freedom of information on
the net, titled Defiantly
Free. While not quite current, it sums up the feeling of much of
the Net back in 1996. Another important text is John Perry Barlow's Cyberspace
Independence Declaration (here is my
German Translation as a DVI file). Ask Google, Altavista or Lycos for 'Cyberspace Independence
Declaration' to estimate the impact of and the support for this
document (in fact, Lycos nearly breaks down while transmitting the
results).
Why was this page black?
On February 8th, 1996, the American President Clinton signed the
so-called "telecommunications decency act" as part of the
Telecomunications Reform Bill. This act includes a provision which
severly limits freedom of expression on the Internet. The internet is
an entirely new medium on which a unique, world wide culture
develops. Freedom of expression is one of the major values in this
culture, and attempts to curb this freedom are a major attack on this
culture and the possibilities the new medium may offer to all of us.
Please check this
site for more information on the act and the protests against it.
A coalition of different people and organizations (including the ACLU
and the EFF) on the net have
challenged the constitutionallity of the bill. On June 26th, 1997, the
US supreme court found the bill unconstitutional.
"As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence
to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the
content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange
of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of
expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but
unproven benefit of censorship."
This decision has eliminated one of the major threats to freedom of
information on the net. However, other governments are still working
on legislation to restrict the use of the internet for the free
exchange of ideas.
"Zen is for opening your eyes. Most other
religions and occult movements are for putting on cool-looking
blindfolds."
Scientology - Another attack against the freedom of the net
The Church of $cientology
(offering this link should not be taken as an endorsement of
the Church) has been waging a war angainst the freedom of information
on Usenet and the internet since 1994. See Ron Newman's page
titled The
Church of Scientology vs. the Net for more details. A more up to
date account can be found on the Operation
Clambake page. I offer these links just to spite the Co$.
I try to write standard-conforming web pages. This page (and all of my
pages that I checked) pass the W3 validator.
Stephan
Schulz,schulz@informatik.tu-muenchen.de, 5.7.2000