With the emergence of service provisioning environments and new networking capabilities, antagonistic businesses have been able to collaborate securely by sharing information in order to have a beneficial result for all. This collaboration has sometimes been imposed by state legislation and sometimes been desirable by the firms themselves so as to resolve frequently occurring abnormalities. In any case, as information exchange takes place between antagonistic firms, security and privacy issues arise. In the context of this paper, a collaborative environment has (...) been analyzed for enterprises that set out in the banking sector. A Grid-based Anti-Money Laundering (AML) system has been developed in an effort to take advantage of the Grid infrastructure, supporting the secure and trustful exchange of information between financial institutions and ensuring the confidentiality of the data transferred and the authentication of the users to whom they are available. Special emphasis is put on security mechanisms for supporting identity and privacy management as well as in Service Level Agreements (SLA) enforcement for enabling a trust enforcement platform in a collaboration business model. (shrink)

My personal odyssey -- Tripping the night fantastic. Who-and what-am I? -- The journey home. Take me to the river-- -- The being human -- White crows : mystics, savants, and other harbingers of human potential. Mystic mind (or how to crack open the cranium) -- Wake up! Greek philosophy breaks the trance -- The ultimate cage match : philosophy, science, and religion (or togas, Bibles, and microscopes : why can't we all just get along?) -- Homo anxious : I (...) think, therefore I worry. Mindfulness walk : "being" without thinking -- Why philosophy matters-and how it just might save your life! Am I a neuron in the mind of God? -- Reality bites -- The physical world : the tip of the reality iceberg. More to reality than meets the eye -- Real deal reality : beyond sense and beyond reason. Beyond logic : riddles and paradoxes. Pyramids, togas, and cosmic consciousness -- Pythagoras squared : who was this mystic mathemagician? Infinity : the ultimate mind trip -- Good vibrations : Pythagoras and the big beat. The cosmic symphony : music from the universal orchestra -- Escaping Plato's cave -- Plato's retreat-from the material world. the universe as one big thought -- On the nature of change : the more things change--. Change : the great illusion -- Death : the new birth. Incubation (or how death can transform your life) -- Yes, but what does it all mean? -- New science and old wisdom -- Musings from my dissertation -- Some final thoughts. (shrink)

Saint Augustine is sometimes introduced as the first theologian-philosopher, a founder of the Western theologico-philosophical tradition, and a figure who unites two historical times—the Late Antiquity with the Middle Ages—and two different major schools—the Hellenistic philosophy with Christianity. Augustine lives and writes in the era of eudaimonism, teleology and virtue ethics, and he accomplishes, as we will see, a clear shift in the context of these doctrines. In this paper, we reconstruct Augustine’s philosophical approach to human psychology, looking at the (...) elements that bring together a philosophical anthropology, especially by focusing on human agency. Through an interpretative study of De libero arbitrio, we will address concepts such as the soul, freedom of choice, virtue, justice, faith and knowledge, seen as components of action, human freedom, intellect and the will. My main claim is that Augustinian thought and medieval philosophy generally can still offer arguments in practical philosophy as much as they can promote our understanding of moral agency. I intend to revive the interest both in this particular Augustinian work and in the forgotten concept of liberum arbitrium that is introduced and represents Augustine’s idea of a mediator, an arbitrator between reason and the will. (shrink)