Cristiano Ronaldo has spoken at length about his future and this summer's speculation in an interview with Publico, a newspaper in his native Portugal.

Here, with Publico's kind permission, is the full transcript:

Sir Alex Ferguson said this week it was "the end of the matter." Is this true?
"Yes. My coach was kind enough to come and see me in Lisbon a few days ago, which I think is common knowledge. It was a very honest conversation between two people that respect one other and that I'm sure share a mutual affection and friendship. What we said to each other will remain private. Sir Alex listened to me, I listened to him and we established that the best for both sides would be for me to continue at Old Trafford. So, I can confirm that I'll be playing for Manchester United next season. And before there are any rumours about me staying against my will, I want to make one thing clear: whoever says or writes anything to that effect is lying. I'll be playing at United with my heart and soul. I will fight and honour the shirt with the same desire and dedication as I always have."

How do you think the people at Real Madrid will feel about this?
"I want to say that I was the one that was responsible for all this controversy. It wasn't their fault because it was me that said publicly that I wanted to move to Real Madrid. It was also me, although wholly unintentionally, that caused the friction between the two clubs."

Your statements this summer demonstrated your desire to leave United and move to Madrid. What did you actually want?
"I knew that Real Madrid were interested in signing me and that they had, allegedly, made a very substantial offer to United. For a while, I wanted Manchester to accept the offer and for me to move to Madrid. If I denied it I would be deceiving everyone, including myself. Anyone who knows me knows that it would have to be something very important for me to admit such a thing. If there's one thing I've never been - nor do I ever want to be - it is ungrateful. Manchester United - from the Glazer family, the directors, namely David Gill, to the coaches, team-mates and backroom staff - is a club that will always be dear to my heart. Whatever happens in the future, that will never change. I'm very aware of what this club has done for me and I'll be eternally grateful, come what may. But it was because of this, because I knew this club was different and extraordinarily human, that I hoped that my wishes and my reasons would be understood."

What were the reasons that made you want to leave?
"After we'd won the Champions League, I felt that in five years I had helped win everything there was to win. We'd won the Premier League twice and I'd won a host of individual awards, including the best goalscorer in the Premier League, Champions League and in Europe. So I felt that maybe I needed a new challenge. I never hid the fact that I wanted to play in Spain, at Real Madrid in particular, and I thought this could be the right moment. United and Real are probably the two biggest clubs in the world and it would never be an easy decision to make. Apart from the challenge, everyone realises that Spanish and Portuguese culture and lifestyle are more similar. Those were the reasons that made me consider the change."

Nothing else? The attraction of an even more generous wage that Real Madrid are said to be willing to pay, for example?
"I'm aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me. I knew that there would always be someone who'd say that my main concern was making more money. Others would insist that my vanity couldn't resist being linked to the biggest transfer fee of all time at the age of 23. Of course I am proud to see my work recognised, but none of this had any major effect on what I wanted. In fact, if it was just a question of money, I would never leave United.

"Apart from the reasons I've just given, I also have to recognise that my family would welcome the change. The chance of being an hour's flight from my mother and the rest of my family was very attractive, even more so playing for a club like Real Madrid. I know I have to deal with these circumstances, even though it's difficult sometimes, but it's harder to ask the same of the people I love the most. The best proof of what I've just said is the fact that I've just made a major investment in a house in Manchester, even though I didn't have to. I did it not just for my own comfort but also for those closest to me. The people at United, particularly the manager, understood my reasons. But we all eventually concluded that I should continue to wear that number 7 shirt. It's no sacrifice for me, it's a great honour. I have important things to win in England. I will give everything I have to United. I want to defend the European Cup and help United become world champions, not forgetting the league and other cups."

Are you afraid of the reception you'll get from the United fans?
"No, to be honest. It's possible but I hope it doesn't happen. I know I'm a good professional, I know that no one's harder on me than myself and that's never going to change, under any circumstances. The high point of my career was winning the Champions League. No one will ever erase that from my memory, in the same way that no one will ever erase the fact that I did it in a United shirt. What I said publicly, which was maybe a little naive, I take total responsibility for. People have to understand one thing: at the age of 18 I arrived at a dream club like United. It was a dream come true. But, even at that moment, I was thinking about playing in England for some years and then going to play in Spain. Even at that time I was thinking that way, and I always gave 100% everything. Why lie? I'm not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do. I said exactly what I thought: I have a dream of playing at Real and I thought it was time to move on. People can't be upset about me fulfilling a childhood dream."

But would it be fair for United to lose you while you are still under contract?
"I'm very aware of what this club has done for me. I'll be forever grateful. United and its fans can be sure that I'll never forget them, no matter what happens. They're special and they'll always have a place here [puts hand on heart]. In fact, I confess that one of the reasons I had the courage to say what I did was the fact that United would be fairly compensated. The figure mentioned, which would be a world record, would serve as some compensation for the debt of gratitude that I owe the club, as least in material terms. I'm going to say something here that I've never told anybody: if we hadn't been European champions I probably wouldn't have even thought about going to Madrid. And there is something else that should be mentioned: I never wanted to leave against United's will. When they turned down the offer, the people at United made it very clear how much they wanted me. I didn't fully understand it at the time, but now I can really appreciate it."

But you agreed with Sepp Blatter when the president of Fifa said that long-term contracts between players and clubs were a form of "modern slavery"?
"That makes no sense, nor do I believe that's what he meant, as he himself has already stated. My comment was about something else. I was saying that players should be where they feel happy. Nothing more."

Sir Alex was always intransigent and denied any possibility of a transfer...
"Believe me, it makes me proud to know how much he thinks of me. And he knows I feel exactly the same way about him. He has been one of the most important people in my playing career. Not only because of what I've learnt and continue to learn from him in sporting terms but also in human ones as well. I love the passion he has for football. If it were humanly possible I would like to have him always by my side. Of course it's not possible but it shows how much affection, admiration and respect I have for him. He has always been like a second father to me at United. I'll never forget it was him that explained the significance of the number 7 United shirt, which will always be my shirt. When I was at Sporting I had a number of offers, some of them very lucrative. One of them offered eight million Euros just as a signing on fee and meant that I would play for Sporting for one more year and then leave as a free agent. But money isn't everything. Real, Barcelona, Inter, Milan, Juventus, Valencia and practically all the big clubs were also interested.

"At the time, Jorge Mendes explained that United also wanted me and that Sir Alex Ferguson had told him that he would be very careful with my playing career. So I would play at least 50% of the games in the first season, which is what happened. This shows that I also chose United and that money wasn't the deciding factor. Alongside my agent [Mendes], Sir Alex Ferguson has been the most important person I've ever known in my career. Because of this, because of the special relationship that exists between us, I know that he'll understand that there are times when a father has to worry only about what's best for his child."

The Spanish press continues to say that your future is at Real Madrid...
"There's no point in making predictions. It's not worth speculating because nothing is set in stone and things change all the time in football. Today there are opportunities that no one knows if they will come round again in the future. There are only two certainties: I'll be playing at United, a club I'm proud to represent; Real Madrid will continue to be a great club without me and I will continue to admire them, as I have done since I was a boy. I'm saying what I think and I hope that all the speculation will stop. The press has written some terrible things about me and about this whole thing. They've invented a thousand and one things and that's one of the reasons why I decided to talk about this now. You can be sure of one thing: everything I've said comes from the bottom of my heart and is the only truth."

Which means you don't exclude the possibility the dream of playing for Madrid?
"I'm 100% professional and I've always given my heart and soul to this club. I even played a major part of the season injured, which was verified by my operation. I played in excruciating pain while taking anti-inflammatory medication every day. And I'd do it again if necessary. This club deserves it because the United staff and the fans are fantastic, not forgetting the affection and respect I have for Sir Alex Ferguson. If one day I leave the club, I want to do it knowing that I did everything I could to help the club win as much as possible. If that happens, I'll leave with the feeling of having done my duty to the maximum."

Cristiano was speaking to Publico.

I finished a number of LOs, mostly for my son’s first birthday. I’ll be posting it in the next few days.

Here is the first one. I love this picture of him. He was just 7 months old when this picture was taken.

For the title, I altered the chipboard letters to fit my LO. Can you tell I love glitters. :-)

The journaling is inside the guitar case, at the back of the guitar. I’m proud to say I made this one myself.

Journaling:

This photo of you never fails to put a smile on my face. You look so adorable in your Rock Star get-up. And you held your guitar like a real pro! We can almost hear your hit song!

Baby, you rock our world!

Mom

I also submitted this to the Coordinates Collections July Stars and Stripes contest but my name wasn't drawn :-( I'm not that lucky with raffles but you can't blame me for trying.

Thanks for looking and hope you can drop by again!

I can't help it!  I just work better under pressure!! :(:( I SOOO NEED TO ACE THIS THOO!!! ><

Oh right, my topic is now Special Interest Groups in Canadian Politics - EW.  I know, it was supposed to be about Parliamentary reform but I just couldn't drum up anything interesting nor bold to say about it and my prof did say my writing isn't "gutsy" enough.  Fuck that.  This is evidence based politics and thus, postive.  I'm also not gonna get all crazy passionate about a 2000 word paper on a subject I could care less about.

Btw, I promise my next post will not be about school as my posts have been recently.  I promise some juicy gossip! Including updates on my Christian and some guy who's infatuation with me seems to stretch all the 1000s of km between him and I...although I have to admit, I'm more creeped out than flattered and kind of suspect his mom - YES! HIS MOM! - who adores me is trying to set us up.  Creeeepy.

BearingPoint and HP initiated a structured review, based on a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, of how the current economic landscape has affected the business outlook for UK CEOs and how, in turn, this will impact their expectations of the IT function.

Specifically, the survey was designed to reveal answers to the following key questions:

• How will CEO priorities, in the light of the credit crunch, translate into business implications for CIOs?

• How can CIOs best position the IT function for these predicted changes?

• In what ways are CEOs expecting CIOs to use information technology to improve the situation?

One of the findings of the CEO survey which bucked reported trends was confidence. Despite media consistently claiming that the economy looks certain to slow to dangerous levels, Britain's CEOs remain more optimistic. Whilst there was concern, the majority felt that with good planning and sensible actions the next 12 months were navigable. In fact many felt that in areas such as customer focus and cost reduction, the financial climate had simply forced them to take actions which were probably overdue.

This survey revealed some new thinking that businesses can utilize in times of economic slowdown. Review the survey analysis.

1 final paper this Friday... I can't wait to finish it.

I'm so looking to Friday... going to celebrate after all my exams.

`lush;-

Bibtex:
@ARTICLE{heus2008b,
author = {{H}eus, {T}. and {P}ols, {C}. {F}. {J}. and {J}onker, {H}. {J}. {J}.
and {H}. {E}. {A}. {V}an den {A}kker and {L}enschow, {D}. {H}.},
title = {{O}bservational validation of the compensating mass flux through the
shell around cumulus clouds},
journal = {Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc.},
year = {2008},
note = {submitted},
doi = {10.1256/qj.08.66},
file = {heus2008b.pdf:heus2008b.pdf:PDF},
timestamp = {2008.03.12}
}

BibTeX record:

@PHDTHESIS{heus2008d,
author = {{H}eus, {T}.},
title = {{O}n the edge of a cloud},
school = {Delft University of Technology},
year = {2008},
file = {heus2008d.pdf:heus2008d.pdf:PDF},
owner = {thijs},
timestamp = {2008.08.06}
}

Salve a tutti amishi :) Come butta? Spero bene.. Oggi ho scritto un piccolissimo paper che introduce alla programmazione orientata agli oggetti ( OOP ). Nel paper vengono illustrati alcuni aspetti fondamentali della OOP e del linguaggio Java come il concetto di classe,oggetto,ereditarietà,aggregazione,dipendenza,incapsulamento ecc. Potete trovare una versione txt al seguente indirizzo http://www.divshare.com/download/5112131-98c

In alternativa,di seguito vi è riportarta la guida pari passo al file txt :)

*** PREFAZIONE E NOTE DELL'AUTORE ***

Il seguente documento può essere rielaborato,modificato,stampato e pubblicato a patto che sia citato l'autore e i relativi crediti.
Nella seguente guida parlerò delle caratteristiche fondamentali della programmazione OOP e come linguaggio di riferimento userò Java,illustrandone alcune caratteristiche.

*** OOP & JAVA : CARATTERISTICHE ***

La programmazione ad oggetti ( identificata anche con la sigla OOP,Object-Oriented Programming ) è oggigiorno uno degli aspetti e approcci dominanti della programmazione a discapito della "vecchia" e cara programmazione "strutturata",basata cioè su procedure e funzioni,che ebbe un notevole successo soprattutto nei primi anni '70.

Nella programmazione OOP,il concetto fondamentale è l'oggetto. Ogni programma è composto da oggetti,ognuno dei quali ha determinate caratteristiche e funzioni specifiche che gli oggetti possono svolgere. Facciamo un esempio pratico ed aziendale per rendere meglio l'idea:

Per le aziende,o meglio i loro programmatori,costruire un oggetto oppure acquistarlo da altri dipende solo dal budget e dal tempo disponibile. Importa poco distinguere il modo in cui una certa funzione è stata implementata,almeno fino a quando soddisfano le specifiche richieste.

Nella OOP è importante stabilire cosa un oggetto deve esporre.

Ad una azienda produttrice di computer ad esempio non importa sapere quali sono i componenti interni di un alimentatore e allo stesso modo ad un programmatore Java non interessa sapere come è stato implementato un oggetto,fintanto che l'oggetto continua a soddisfare ciò che si vuole.

La programmazione strutturata invece è un insieme di procedure e/o algoritmi in grado di risolvere un problema. Inizialmente si stabiliscono le procedure da utilizzare o l'algoritmo da usare,successivamente si passa alla memorizzazione dei dati. Ecco uno dei motivi del titolo del famoso libro di N. Wirth sul linguaggio Pascal: " Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs " ( penso non ci sia bisogno di traduzione ).

La OOP rovescia questa soluzione di approccio ai problemi catalogando al primo posto i dati,seguiti dagli algoritmi che implementano i dati.

Se un oggetto fa riferimento ad un'attività che non rientra tra le sue possibilità,bisogna accedere ad un altro oggetto che includa l'attività desiderata. Questo procedimento in Java prende il nome di " chiamata di metodo ".

Bisogna ricordare che un oggetto non deve MAI elaborare direttamente i dati interni di un altro oggetto ne tantomeno esporre i dati in modo da renderli accessibili ad altri oggetti.

Il concetto di incapsulamento dei dati di un oggett ci permette infatti di ottimizzare la riusabilità,ridurre la dipendenza dai dati e minimizzare il tempo di debug.

Proprio come per le procedure,è buona norma di programmazione evitare che un singolo oggetto svolga troppe attività.

*** CLASSI & OGGETTI ***

Altro concetto fondamentale della programmazione OOP è quello di " classe ". Una classe è un modello rispetto al quale vengono definiti gli oggetti utilizzati nei programmi. Possiamo pensare alla classe come una formina per i biscotti e agli oggetti come i biscotti stessi ( mamma mia che metafora ).

Quando viene creato un oggetto di una classe,noi creiamo una instanza della classe.

L'incapsulamento ( che già ho accennato prima ) non è altro che un " occulamento dei dati " ed è il concetto fondamentale per lavorare con gli oggetti. Formalmente quindi,l'incapsulamento è la combinazione dei dati e del loro comportamento,racchiusi in un pacchetto,che occulta all'utente esterno l'implementazione effettiva.

I dati nell'oggetto sono chiamati campi istanza dell'oggetto e le procedure che elaborano i dati sono i metodi dell'oggetto. L'insieme dei valori definisce invece lo stato dell'oggetto.

Regola fondamentale è che i metodi non devono mai accedere direttamente ai campi istanza di una classe diversa da quella in cui sono definiti. I programmi interagiscono con gli oggetti solo mediante i metodi dell'oggetto.

Un altro concetto fondamentale dell'OOP e di Java è la possibilità di scrivere delle classi come estensioni di altre classi. Quando una classe esistente viene estesa,la nuova classe ha tutte le proprietà e i metodi della classe che estende ed è possibile aggiungere nuovi metodi e campi dati da applicare solo alla nuova classe. Questo concetto è chiamato ereditarietà ma verrà spiegato meglio in seguito.

Per quanto riguarda gli oggetti invece,le tre caratteristiche fondamentali sono:

1 - comporamento : cosa si può fare con l'oggetto e i metodi che si possono applicare
2 - stato: la reazione dell'oggetto quando si applicano i metodi
3 - identità: le differenze tra oggetti che possono avere lo stesso comportamento o stato.

Quando si progetta un sistema orientato agli oggetti,un utente alle prime armi potrebbe chiedersi da dove iniziare. La risposta è che bisogna prima trovare le classi e poi aggiungere i relativi metodi. Una regola pratica è quella di analizzare il problema ed associare i metodi ai verbi mentre le classi sono identificate dai nomi utilizzati.

*** RELAZIONI TRA CLASSI ***

Le relazioni più comuni tra le classi sono tre:

1 - dipendenza ("use-a")
2 - aggregazione ("has-a")
3 - ereditarietà ("is-a")

La dipendenza è la relazione più ovvia ed anche più generica,ad esempio abbiamo una classe A che utilizza (use-a) una classe B. Una classe dipende da un'altra classe se i suoi metodi elaborano gli oggetti dell'altra classe.

L'aggregazione è la più facile da comprendere; ciò significa che oggetti della classe A contengono oggetti della classe B.

L'ereditarietà invece esprime una relazione tra una classe generica e una più specializzata; per esempio una classe A che eredita una classe B.

*** CONCLUSIONE ***

Penso che come introduzione all'OOP possa andare più che bene,naturalmente l'argomento va approfondito essendo vasto ma non molto complesso.
Spero di esservi stato utile,alla prossima

T4n|n0 Ru|3z

OMG! NO!!! I WAS ONE CENT OFF TODAY! =[
One cent! Like, a PENNY! Where did you roll off to, Lincoln?
And I know it was a literal penny, because I couldn't be off a cent any other way. Not even through credit cards.
Ugh.

And there were other people handling my cash drawer today. I wish I could say "whoop! day 4 since it was probably THEM that did it" but I don't know that =( I'm just going to have to work from day 1 again soon...
*sigh*
Record: Still 3 days.

Anyways, not much happened today. I traded my shift with someone so that instead of working this one annoying-ish carnival game, I was able to work at the store. I enjoy using a cash register much more than an apron.
However--guess what?--The carnival game breaks down and closes! And the guy I traded gets put on relatively easy stocking work and when that's done, he just waits around in the office till he was needed.
GAH!
Unlucky day for me today. lol
But I think I made another family's day--at least, in part I did. I was given a set of rental keys that was lost, and about an hour later was approached by a guy looking for keys.
When I determined they were his, he was ECSTATIC. He thanked me a bunch of times, then went over to his family, who returned to thank me a bunch more times and even offer me $20 as a tip.
"haha sorry, I can't take tips, but thank you"
"That's ok, I'll just 'accidentally' put it over here, and you can pick it up after I leave"
Thankfully his wife told him that I'd probably be fired if I took the money, cuz I sure wasn't doing a good job of getting the point across.
It's good though--I'm really glad I was able to help them =) The guy said he had a bunch of "client's papers" in a briefcase in the car that would have caused a horrible situation if someone else got the keys and stole the car.

Anyways.
Overall, it was a very good day =)

Currently, my stress level has increased.  I'm having difficulties even meeting my basic needs.  I can barely afford to buy the stuff I need for college.  Pens, pencils, notebooks, food, stuff like that.  And college starts in around 4 weeks.  How am I supposed to get the stuff I need?  Especially, when I have zero money. And by zero, I mean zero.  I was hoping that for the first time in my life this summer my parents and I could have our first real vacation away.  The only vacations we've had was family trips to Arkansas, Kentucky, West Virgina, Virginia, to meet up and visit family, and go to King's Island and Cedar Point.  No real vacation, with no worries.  Yeah, I realize people have it worse.  I just need a vacation.  And God knows so do my parents.  I mean after my brother died they just haven't been the same. I'm just worried about money and becoming a doctor.  I can barely afford college right now, how am I going to afford Medical School?  I finally find my calling and I have difficulty coming up with the sources to obtain the goals I need to become a doctor.  Why's life got to be so difficult?  On the plus side of the negativity is that the thing isn't over yet (one of the two things that I'm worried about the most right now), and I hope that it's not.  There's be no call yet, so, I'm guess it hasn't be finalized which means it'll go up to the highest possibly.  Hopefully, and then we will triumph.  No, it's not hoping.  We will triumph.  We deserve.  My parents deserve.  He deserves.

Descripción: Se trata de un buen estudio analítico (2004) y mapeo de las actividades extraterritoriales de las ciudades checas. Para la descripción y análisis de estas actividades se utiliza el concepto: "para-diplomacie", indicando la actividad en el extranjero de actores territoriales. Los autores examinan la paradiplomacia en relación con las actividades en el extranjero de otros actores locales (ministerios, empresas, organizaciones no gubernamentales), con diferentes tipos de socios extranjeros (en  especial la Unión Europea, así como también estados y actores no estatales) y los motivos que llevaron a las regiones y ciudades a este tipo de actividad fuera del territorio nacional.

Autores: Petr Drulák, Lucie Königová, Petr Kratochvíl
Publicado por: Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales (IIR), Praga, República Checa
Fecha de publicación: Marzo 2004
Formato: PDF
Páginas: 66
URL: www.iir.cz
Serie: IIR documentos de trabajo

       http://rapidshare.com/files/134280691/Amazing_Car_Wallpapers_byCDR32.rar

.

Articles discussing some details that were released in a presentation by Larry Siler:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=602

http://techgage.com/article/intel_opens_up_about_larrabee

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=14757

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3367

and on top of all that you get 30% off for the first week :)

The August Quick Page Freebie from Gabrielle is now up in store too, go
grab it while  its still free, she also has new pages up and again for one week you get to grab them at 30% off.

Also don't forget to check out the LAST CHANCE Category at Dragons Lair Designs Store as they wont be there forever saving 65% while they are still here

FREE BRACKET PAGE

Exclusivly at Dragons Lair Designs are these FREE QUICK PAGES

Kit Available at

http://dragonslairdesigns.com/shop

http://www.artandscrap.com/store/index.php?act=viewAff&affId=7

http://www.deco-pages.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=43

http://kjoistudios.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=14

The brain is the outcome of five hundred million years of tinkering.  How could such a jumble be captured by a single mathematical law?

Karl Friston, from UCL in London, has presented "a theory of cortical responses".  Friston's theory rests on a single premise: the brain optimizes a free energy function.  This function measures how closely the brain's internal representation of the world approximates the true state of the real world. From this simple postulate, Friston spins off an enormous variety of predictions.

Neuroscience now has a wealth of beautiful theories that should attract the attention of top-notch mathematicians -- we will need them!

Three relevant papers, from Friston's site:

Free energy and the brain (with KE Stephan, 2007)

A free energy principle for the brain (with J Kilner and L Harrison, 2006)

A theory of cortical responses (2005)

The English newspaper reports that Blues boss Alex McLeish, who coached Fletcher with the Scotland national team, has attempted to lure his compatriot to St. Andrew's.

The Midlands club were relegated last season but are intent on bouncing straight back up to the Premier League, and hence have singled out some fairly lofty transfer targets.

Fletcher has already been sounded out by a number of top-tier teams, including Everton and Sunderland, as he is stuck behind the likes of Paul Scholes, Michael Carrick, Owen Hargreaves and Anderson in United's midfield.

However, the 24-year-old has made plain his desire to remain at Old Trafford, meaning McLeish and co will have to look elsewhere to bolster their promotion bid.

But, like I've told friends and family, I am ready to leave, I've spent two fruitful, intense and personally fulfilling months here. And as I contemplate my homecoming and my back to Batescoming, I obviously assess the reason I came to Upaya in the first place: my research. I realize now (retrospection you are a fickle yet desired friend, the person at the party that you find yourself slightly disliking just because they are so awesome) that the notions of productivity and what my research was going to be upon leaving here were rather artificial and disembodied. I had this idea that I would come here and read this many books and buy this many books and write this many pages- it was all about quantity. And I didn't read 13 books let me tell you. I read The Fountainhead which had nothing really to do with zen buddhism but more people being selfish jerks. I also do not think it exhibited the most affirmative feminist ethics either. But that's besides the point. The point is that this was a novel and not one I foresee using in any part of my thesis. So understandably I went through a freak-out phase, labeling myself as unproductive and pretty much dumb because I didn't measure up to these fallacious goals I had set for myself.

Luckily I have friends and luckily they are smart and so I was complaining to one of them who wisely pointed out that my day-to-day experience was as much part of my research as reading any text. All the questions I was asking myself, all the time I spent sitting, all the experiences of being a woman at a zen center will contribute and influence my thesis in profound ways. So my journal is just as valuable as my "academic notes". And man, I've been through a lot here. And it won't end once I leave.

If you see a blonde girl carrying around a meditation cushion that will be me. I plan to continue my practice up at Bates either at home or in the Chapel. And I won't forget this experience when I return to Bates to continue my academic life. I strongly advise that before you beat yourself up over not being "productive" enough, that you reevaluate what productivity means to you. I believe now that it can't necessarily be quantified or measured by tangible objects like money and such regardless of what our lovely American culture would have us believe. And perhaps the next time I can't get a paper in on time I'll make a powerful argument about how the skewed notions of productivity are engendered in due dates and because of that they oppress me.

Shhhh,

Steph

Flener, Pearson: Solving Necklace Constraint Problems

Pierre Flener showed how standard constraint satisfaction techniques could be applied to model an enumeration problem in discrete mathematics, without needing any complicated special purpose algorithms.  However, the necklace constraints used in such problems have nice applications in scheduling, and fast propagators can be built.

Bessiere, Hebrard, Hnich, Kiziltan, Walsh: SLIDE: a useful special case of the CardPath constraint

Toby Walsh discussed how SLIDE can be used as a building block for many other global constraints (including REGULAR and CARDPATH, which themselves generalize many others).  The claim is that SLIDE can be as efficient as specialized propagators for sequencing problems, even though propagation for such a general constraint is NP-complete.  When SLIDE is used to encode tractable constraints in the right way, there is a lot of regularity in the encoding, which then yields tractable propagation.  Using an intractable propagator in a tractable way is an interesting idea that I feel it should be possible to formalize.  Experimental results are presented in support, but the theory in Section 6 seems further development to constitute a rigorous argument.  Of course, 5 pages aren't really enough to do the topic justice, and I look forward to the journal version.  (By the way, coding SLIDE in Tailor's implementation of Essence' is proving quite tricky -- the lack of macros makes it rather difficult...  The unbounded arity of some of these constraints also means that the Global Constraint Catalog doesn't list them either!)

Samadi, Schaeffer, Torabi Asr, Samar, Azimifar: Using Abstraction in Two-Player Games

Mehdi Samadi demonstrated that it is possible to abstract from game positions, for instance by removing some pawns from a chess endgame.  By dropping some pieces from the position one may end up with a position close enough to endgame databases so that the gain in accuracy is more important than the inaccuracy of abstraction.  Quite convincing experimental evidence was presented that pure abstraction outperformed Crafty.

Hoche, Flach, Hardcastle: A Fast Method for Property Prediction in Graph-Structured Data from Positive and Unlabelled Examples

Peter Flach spoke about using an iterative neighbourhood majority voting scheme to classify vertices in a graph.  This was apparently faster and not worse than a Markov chain approach.  I think this could be used to weakly tag new objects by pre-populating the suggested tags, which would potentially encourage tagging, instead of presenting an empty tag cloud to the first tagger.

There were several talks about applications of BDDs to various problems.  Donald Knuth's statement in a talk last year (that BDDs were at the same stage as linked lists were before everyone started using them as a basic data structure in the 1960s) seems more and more on the mark.  There is something in the air...

I missed Adrian Petcu's talk on his prize-winning dissertation, but a brief outline conveyed on the bus back to the hotel one evening is that 1) communication overhead can swamp the benefit of distributing search, but 2) there are ways of grouping messages to achieve good speedup.

A tiring week, but fun and stimulating.

Before the main conference, several interesting papers were presented at the Workshop on Modeling and Solving Problems with Constraints (proceedings are available online).

Battiti, Campigotto: Penalties may have collateral effects. A MAX-SAT analysis

Paulo Campigotto argued that fiddling with clause weights to smooth out a MAX-SAT fitness surface doesn't work except to nudge solutions along from a local minimum; there are simply too many side effects to use this technique globally.

Freuder, Wallace, Nordlander: Debugging Constraint Models with Metamodels and Metaknowledge

Richard Wallace discussed a system named Ananke, after the Goddess of Bonds (and therefore an appropriate deity for constraint satisfaction).  Given specific solutions that the user of the system expects, Ananke suggests ways to alter an overconstrained specification of a constraint problem so that those solutions become possible.  The idea is that this would help find constraints which unnecessarily disallow desired solutions.

Gent, Miguel, Rendl: Common Subexpression Elimination in Automated Constraint Modelling

Andrea Rendl talked about the Tailor system to translate high-level Essence' specifications of constraint problems into models that can be run using existing constraint programming systems such as Minion.  In the translation, it is possible to detect common subexpressions, as a byproduct of parsing and with minimal overhead, resulting in more compact constraint programs and sometimes also much faster search.  Even where eliminating subexpressions doesn't yield any improvement, there is essentially no cost to including it as part of the translation phase.

Makeeva, Szymanek: Revisiting the Generalized Among Constraint

The main point in this tightly argued talk by Polina Makeeva was that it can be faster to use AMONG (if carefully implemented) than to decompose into individual global constraints, since this allows sharing and reuse of information.  This kind of result would seem to argue against the traditional, loosely coupled view of constraints interacting purely through a set of domains.

Maher, Narodytska, Quimper, Walsh: Flow-Based Propagators for the SEQUENCE and Related Global Constraints

Nina Narodytska argued that for some global constraints one can use an Integer Linear Programming model if a graph model is not known, while some kinds of ILP models can be transformed into flow problems.  If both techniques are applied, one can sometimes find fast flow-based propagators.  An example is the SEQUENCE constraint, and an algorithm was presented to enforce domain consistency down a branch of the search tree in $latex O(n^2)$ time, an $latex O(\log n)$ factor improvement on the best previous algorithm.

The call for papers, at this massively valuable expat conference (I've been 5 times) closes at the end of August. They want new blood, new research and something different to add to their usual mix of experts, old hands and old favourites (that's me, folks). I've put in my bid to talk about starting to write your story. What about you?

In Houston 5-7 March. Don't miss it. I'll be there. Remember www.figt.org

Organizations can be effective by matching their needs and pain points to mature technology tools on a just-in-time basis. And they must execute incrementally against a time-based road map. This new thinking to a practical approach works for organizations regardless of where they are on the BI maturity continuum. Executing BI within a business oriented vision and a broader enterprise information management framework can set companies apart from their competitors.

Develop your Business Intelligence strategy