AI Code Breaker

AI Code Breaker — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Hamilton C shell

    Hamilton C shell

    Hamilton C shell is a clone of the Unix C shell and utilities for Microsoft Windows created by Nicole Hamilton at Hamilton Laboratories as a completely original work, not based on any prior code. It was first released on OS/2 on December 12, 1988 and on Windows NT in July 1992. The OS/2 version was discontinued in 2003 but the Windows version continues to be actively supported. == Design == Hamilton C shell differs from the Unix C shell in several respects. These include its compiler architecture, its use of threads, and the decision to follow Windows rather than Unix conventions. === Parser === The original C shell uses an ad hoc parser. This has led to complaints about its limitations. It works well enough for the kinds of things users type interactively but not very well for the more complex commands a user might take time to write in a script. It is not possible, for example, to pipe the output of a foreach statement into grep. There was a limit to how complex a command it could handle. By contrast, Hamilton uses a top-down recursive descent parser that allows it to compile statements to an internal form before running them. As a result, statements can be nested or piped arbitrarily. The language has also been extended with built-in and user-defined procedures, local variables, floating point and additional expression, editing and wildcarding operators, including an "indefinite directory" wildcard construct written as "..." that matches zero or more directory levels as required to make the rest of the pattern match. === Threads === Lacking fork or a high performance way to recreate that functionality, Hamilton uses the Windows threads facilities instead. When a new thread is created, it runs within the same process space and it shares all of the process state. If one thread changes the current directory or the contents of memory, it's changed for all the threads. It's much cheaper to create a thread than a process but there's no isolation between them. To recreate the missing isolation of separate processes, the threads cooperate to share resources using locks. === Windows conventions === Hamilton differs from other Unix shells in that it also directly supports Windows conventions for drive letters, filename slashes, escape characters, etc.

    Read more →
  • Information security

    Information security

    Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data or the unlawful use, disclosure, disruption, deletion, corruption, modification, inspection, recording, or devaluation of information. It also involves actions intended to reduce the adverse impacts of such incidents. Protected information may take any form, e.g., electronic or physical, tangible (e.g., paperwork), or intangible (e.g., knowledge). Information security's primary focus is the balanced protection of data confidentiality, integrity, and availability (known as the CIA triad, unrelated to the US government organization) while maintaining a focus on efficient policy implementation, all without hampering organization productivity. This is largely achieved through a structured risk management process. To standardize this discipline, academics and professionals collaborate to offer guidance, policies, and industry standards on passwords, antivirus software, firewalls, encryption software, legal liability, security awareness and training, and so forth. This standardization may be further driven by a wide variety of laws and regulations that affect how data is accessed, processed, stored, transferred, and destroyed. While paper-based business operations are still prevalent, requiring their own set of information security practices, enterprise digital initiatives are increasingly being emphasized, with information assurance now typically being dealt with by information technology (IT) security specialists. These specialists apply information security to technology (most often some form of computer system). IT security specialists are almost always found in any major enterprise/establishment due to the nature and value of the data within larger businesses. They are responsible for keeping all of the technology within the company secure from malicious attacks that often attempt to acquire critical private information or gain control of the internal systems. There are many specialist roles in Information Security including securing networks and allied infrastructure, securing applications and databases, security testing, information systems auditing, business continuity planning, electronic record discovery, and digital forensics. == Standards == Information security standards are guidelines generally outlined in published materials that aim to protect a user's or an organization's cyber environment from threats. This environment includes the users themselves, hardware such as devices and networks, software such as applications or services, and any information in storage or transit. These standards comprise security concepts, technologies, and guidelines to deal with an adverse event. They may also include assessment criteria and certification for organizations implementing a minimum level of security. These standards are developed by various international and national bodies to prevent or mitigate cyber-attacks, ensure consistency among developers, and establish a minimum standard in industries susceptible to an attack. The ISO/IEC 27000 family, published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), provides information about the guidelines and requirements for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). The Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408) provides guidelines on evaluating and certifying the security of a system. The IEC 62443 establishes security standards for automation and control systems. Similarly, the ISO/SAE 21434, ETSI EN 303 645, and EN 18031 provide standards for road vehicles, the Internet of Things, and radio-based systems respectively. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) is a set of guidelines developed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology to help organizations with risk management. NIST also publishes various Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and Special Publications. The United Kingdom has introduced Cyber Essentials, which is a certification scheme to protect organizations against common security threats. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes the Essential Eight mitigation strategies. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) regulates handling of cardholder data in order to reduce credit card fraud. UL has published standards related to specific industries such as UL 2900-2-3 for security and life safety signaling systems and UL-2900-2-1 for healthcare and wellness systems. == Threats == Information security threats come in many different forms. Some of the most common threats today are software attacks, theft of intellectual property, theft of identity, theft of equipment or information, sabotage, and information extortion. Viruses, worms, phishing attacks, and Trojan horses are a few common examples of software attacks. The theft of intellectual property has also been an extensive issue for many businesses. Identity theft is the attempt to act as someone else usually to obtain that person's personal information or to take advantage of their access to vital information through social engineering. Sabotage usually consists of the destruction of an organization's website in an attempt to cause loss of confidence on the part of its customers. Information extortion consists of theft of a company's property or information as an attempt to receive a payment in exchange for returning the information or property back to its owner, as with ransomware. One of the most functional precautions against these attacks is to conduct periodical user awareness. Governments, military, corporations, financial institutions, hospitals, non-profit organizations, and private businesses amass a great deal of confidential information about their employees, customers, products, research, and financial status. Should confidential information about a business's customers or finances or new product line fall into the hands of a competitor or hacker, a business and its customers could suffer widespread, irreparable financial loss, as well as damage to the company's reputation. From a business perspective, information security must be balanced against cost; the Gordon-Loeb Model provides a mathematical economic approach for addressing this concern. For the individual, information security has a significant effect on privacy, which is viewed very differently in various cultures. == History == Since the early days of communication, diplomats and military commanders understood that it was necessary to provide some mechanism to protect the confidentiality of correspondence and to have some means of detecting tampering. Julius Caesar is credited with the invention of the Caesar cipher c. 50 B.C., which was created in order to prevent his secret messages from being read should a message fall into the wrong hands. However, for the most part protection was achieved through the application of procedural handling controls. Sensitive information was marked up to indicate that it should be protected and transported by trusted persons, guarded and stored in a secure environment or strong box. As postal services expanded, governments created official organizations to intercept, decipher, read, and reseal letters (e.g., the U.K.'s Secret Office, founded in 1653). In the mid-nineteenth century more complex classification systems were developed to allow governments to manage their information according to the degree of sensitivity. For example, the British Government codified this, to some extent, with the publication of the Official Secrets Act in 1889. Section 1 of the law concerned espionage and unlawful disclosures of information, while Section 2 dealt with breaches of official trust. A public interest defense was soon added to defend disclosures in the interest of the state. A similar law was passed in India in 1889, The Indian Official Secrets Act, which was associated with the British colonial era and used to crack down on newspapers that opposed the Raj's policies. A newer version was passed in 1923 that extended to all matters of confidential or secret information for governance. By the time of the First World War, multi-tier classification systems were used to communicate information to and from various fronts, which encouraged greater use of code making and breaking sections in diplomatic and military headquarters. Encoding became more sophisticated between the wars as machines were employed to scramble and unscramble information. The establishment of computer security inaugurated the history of information security. The need for such appeared during World War II. The volume of information shared by the Allied countries during the Second World War necessitated formal alignment of classification systems and procedural controls. An arcane range of markings evol

    Read more →
  • Kurzsignale

    Kurzsignale

    The Short Signal Code, also known as the Short Signal Book (German: Kurzsignalbuch), was a short code system used by the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) during World War II to minimize the transmission duration of messages. == Description == The transmission of radio messages had the potential risks of revealing the submarine's presence and direction; if decoded the content was also revealed. Submarines need to provide information, mostly in standard form (position of convoy to attack and of submarine, weather information), to their bases. Initially Morse code transmissions could be used. To inhibit detection, the duration of messages needed to be minimised; for this, Kurzsignale short-coding was used. To prevent interception, messages needed to be encrypted by the Enigma machine. To shorten transmission even further, the message could be sent by a fast machine instead of a human radio operator. For example, the Kurier system – not implemented in time – decreased the time to send a Morse dot from around 50 milliseconds for a human to 1 millisecond. == Short Signal book == The Kurzsignale code was intended to shorten transmission time to below the time required to get a directional fix. It was not primarily intended to hide signal contents; protection was intended to be achieved by encoding with the Enigma machine. A copy of the Kurzsignale code book was captured from German submarine U-110 on 9 May 1941. In August 1941, Dönitz began addressing U-boats by the names of their commanders, instead of boat numbers. The method of defining U-boat meeting points in the Short Signal Book was regarded as compromised, so a method was defined by B-Dienst cryptanalysts to disguise their positions on the Kriegsmarine German Naval Grid System (German:Gradnetzmeldeverfahren) was introduced and used until the end of the war == Radio direction finding == Aware of the danger presented by radio direction finding (RDF), the Kriegsmarine developed various systems to speed up broadcast. The Kurzsignale code system condensed messages into short codes consisting of short sequences for common terms such as "convoy location" so that additional descriptions would not be needed in the message. The resulting Kurzsignal was then encoded with the Enigma machine and subsequently transmitted as rapidly as possible, typically taking about 20 seconds. Typical length of an information or weather signal was about 25 characters. Conventional RDF needed about a minute to fix the bearing of a radio signal, and the Kurzsignale protected against this. However, the huff-duff system which was in use by the Allies could cope with these short transmissions. The fully automated burst transmission Kurier system, in testing from August 1944, could send a Kurzsignal in not more than 460 milliseconds; this was short enough to prevent location even by huff-duff and, if deployed, would have been a serious setback for Allied anti-submarine and code-breaking activities. By late 1944 the Kurier program was a top priority, but the war ended before the system was operational. == Short Weather cipher == A similar coding system was used for weather reports from U-boats, the Wetterkurzschlüssel (Short Weather Cipher). Code books were captured from U-559 on 30 October 1942.

    Read more →
  • Reverse proxy

    Reverse proxy

    In computer networks, a reverse proxy or surrogate server is a proxy server that appears to any client to be an ordinary web server, but in reality merely acts as an intermediary that forwards the client's requests to one or more ordinary web servers. Reverse proxies help increase scalability, performance, resilience, and security, but they also carry a number of risks. Companies that run web servers often set up reverse proxies to facilitate the communication between an Internet user's browser and the web servers. An important advantage of doing so is that the web servers can be hidden behind a firewall on a company-internal network, and only the reverse proxy needs to be directly exposed to the Internet. Reverse proxy servers are implemented in popular open-source web servers. Dedicated reverse proxy servers are used by some of the biggest websites on the Internet. A reverse proxy is capable of tracking IP addresses of requests that are relayed through it as well as reading and/or modifying any non-encrypted traffic. However, this implies that anyone who has compromised the server could do so as well. Reverse proxies differ from forward proxies, which are used when the client is restricted to a private, internal network and asks a forward proxy to retrieve resources from the public Internet. == Uses == Large websites and content delivery networks use reverse proxies, together with other techniques, to balance the load between internal servers. Reverse proxies can keep a cache of static content, which further reduces the load on these internal servers and the internal network. It is also common for reverse proxies to add features such as compression or TLS encryption to the communication channel between the client and the reverse proxy. Reverse proxies can inspect HTTP headers, which, for example, allows them to present a single IP address to the Internet while relaying requests to different internal servers based on the URL of the HTTP request. Reverse proxies can hide the existence and characteristics of origin servers. This can make it more difficult to determine the actual location of the origin server / website and, for instance, more challenging to initiate legal action such as takedowns or block access to the website, as the IP address of the website may not be immediately apparent. Additionally, the reverse proxy may be located in a different jurisdiction with different legal requirements, further complicating the takedown process. Application firewall features can protect against common web-based attacks, like a denial-of-service attack (DoS) or distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). Without a reverse proxy, removing malware or initiating takedowns (while simultaneously dealing with the attack) on one's own site, for example, can be difficult. In the case of secure websites, a web server may not perform TLS encryption itself, but instead offload the task to a reverse proxy that may be equipped with TLS acceleration hardware. (See TLS termination proxy.) A reverse proxy can distribute the load from incoming requests to several servers, with each server supporting its own application area. In the case of reverse proxying web servers, the reverse proxy may have to rewrite the URL in each incoming request in order to match the relevant internal location of the requested resource. A reverse proxy can reduce load on its origin servers by caching static content and dynamic content, known as web acceleration. Proxy caches of this sort can often satisfy a considerable number of website requests, greatly reducing the load on the origin server(s). A reverse proxy can optimize content by compressing it in order to speed up loading times. In a technique named "spoon-feeding", a dynamically generated page can be produced in its entirety and served to the reverse proxy, which can feed the page to the client as the connection allows. The program that generates the page need not remain open, thus releasing server resources during the possibly extended time the client requires to complete the transfer. Reverse proxies can operate wherever multiple web-servers must be accessible via a single public IP address. The web servers listen on different ports in the same machine, with the same local IP address or, possibly, on different machines with different local IP addresses. The reverse proxy analyzes each incoming request and delivers it to the right server within the local area network. Reverse proxies can perform A/B testing and multivariate testing without requiring application code to handle the logic of which version is served to a client. A reverse proxy can add access authentication to a web server that does not have any authentication. == Risks == When the transit traffic is encrypted and the reverse proxy needs to filter/cache/compress or otherwise modify or improve the traffic, the proxy first must decrypt and re-encrypt communications. This requires the proxy to possess the TLS certificate and its corresponding private key, extending the number of systems that can have access to non-encrypted data and making it a more valuable target for attackers. The vast majority of external data breaches happen either when hackers succeed in abusing an existing reverse proxy that was intentionally deployed by an organization, or when hackers succeed in converting an existing Internet-facing server into a reverse proxy server. Compromised or converted systems allow external attackers to specify where they want their attacks proxied to, enabling their access to internal networks and systems. Applications that were developed for the internal use of a company are not typically hardened to public standards and are not necessarily designed to withstand all hacking attempts. When an organization allows external access to such internal applications via a reverse proxy, they might unintentionally increase their own attack surface and invite hackers. If a reverse proxy is not configured to filter attacks or it does not receive daily updates to keep its attack signature database up to date, a zero-day vulnerability can pass through unfiltered, enabling attackers to gain control of the system(s) that are behind the reverse proxy server. Giving the reverse proxy of a third party access to private keys (for caching or optimizing content) places the entire triad of confidentiality, integrity and availability in the hands of the third party who operates the proxy. A reverse proxy is a single point of failure for the back-end services it fronts: an outage caused by misconfiguration, a denial-of-service attack, or a software fault can make every fronted service unreachable to outside clients, even when the back-end services themselves remain healthy. For example, a 2020 outage at Cloudflare briefly took down major sites and services that relied on its reverse-proxy edge, including Discord.

    Read more →
  • Sentence extraction

    Sentence extraction

    Sentence extraction is a technique used for automatic summarization of a text. In this shallow approach, statistical heuristics are used to identify the most salient sentences of a text. Sentence extraction is a low-cost approach compared to more knowledge-intensive deeper approaches which require additional knowledge bases such as ontologies or linguistic knowledge. In short, sentence extraction works as a filter that allows only meaningful sentences to pass. The major downside of applying sentence-extraction techniques to the task of summarization is the loss of coherence in the resulting summary. Nevertheless, sentence extraction summaries can give valuable clues to the main points of a document and are frequently sufficiently intelligible to human readers. == Procedure == Usually, a combination of heuristics is used to determine the most important sentences within the document. Each heuristic assigns a (positive or negative) score to the sentence. After all heuristics have been applied, the highest-scoring sentences are included in the summary. The individual heuristics are weighted according to their importance. === Early approaches and some sample heuristics === Seminal papers which laid the foundations for many techniques used today have been published by Hans Peter Luhn in 1958 and H. P Edmundson in 1969. Luhn proposed to assign more weight to sentences at the beginning of the document or a paragraph. Edmundson stressed the importance of title-words for summarization and was the first to employ stop-lists in order to filter uninformative words of low semantic content (e.g. most grammatical words such as of, the, a). He also distinguished between bonus words and stigma words, i.e. words that probably occur together with important (e.g. the word form significant) or unimportant information. His idea of using key-words, i.e. words which occur significantly frequently in the document, is still one of the core heuristics of today's summarizers. With large linguistic corpora available today, the tf–idf value which originated in information retrieval, can be successfully applied to identify the key words of a text: If for example the word cat occurs significantly more often in the text to be summarized (TF = "term frequency") than in the corpus (IDF means "inverse document frequency"; here the corpus is meant by document), then cat is likely to be an important word of the text; the text may in fact be a text about cats.

    Read more →
  • Social employee

    Social employee

    A social employee is a worker operating within a social business model. Following an organization's social computing guidelines, social employees use social media tools both for internal workflow and collaboration purposes and for external engagement with customers, prospects and stakeholders through a combination of social media marketing, content marketing, social marketing, and social selling. Social employee programs are considered to be as much about culture and engagement as they are about business processes and best practices. In addition to increased leads and sales, social employee best practices are said to improve business outcomes important to social media marketing, such as increased connections and web traffic, improved brand identification and "chatter", and better customer advocacy. == Overview == The term "social employee" was first introduced to describe those exhibiting the emerging characteristics of workers operating under a social business model. The term is often used interchangeably with similar designations like "employee advocate" or "social employee advocate". Crucial to the perceived value of the social employee is the concept of the digital footprint. While organizations are able to generate large bases of followers through social media, research shows that brand marketing and engagement efforts through these networks are not as effective as those of individual employees. In fact, some research indicates that employee experts are more trusted than any other member of an organization. Because of this, social employee programs are designed to train, empower, and support employee engagement efforts in the hopes of authentically engaging larger communities, increasing the frequency of shares, reviews, and other forms of "earned media" and expanding the brand's presence on the web. == The personal or employee brand == A foundational concept of the social employee is the idea of the personal or employee brand. This concept first gained popular attention in a 1997 FastCompany article by business leader Tom Peters titled "The Brand Called You". In the article, Peters argued that the premium placed on branding impacted workers' lives to such an extent that creating and cultivating a distinct personal brand had become a professional necessity. According to Peters, doing so built trust, loyalty, visibility, influence, and employability. With increased adoption of social media tools by both businesses and consumers in the early 21st century, many business leaders became increasingly concerned with social engagement, both internally among employees and externally with customers and other stakeholders. While many in the business community acknowledged the potential social tools had for improved collaboration, productivity, and brand messaging, the concern that employees would misrepresent their brand, disclose proprietary information, or otherwise damage their company's reputation or ability to conduct business persisted. As a result, many began to advocate for employee branding as a solution to this problem. This helped give new meaning to the concept of brand ambassadorship, positioning everyday employees in public, and potentially high-profile, engagement roles. == Characteristics == === Engaged === Because social employee advocacy is dependent on the perceived authenticity of the employee, engagement is highly valued in social organizations. Further, data show the measurable impact of employee engagement on organizational productivity and profitability: Happy employees were found to be 12 percent more productive. In one study, engaged employees were found to be 38 percent more likely to produce at above-average rates. In another, organizations with engaged employees had a 19 percent higher than average shareholder return, while organizations with disengaged employees experienced shareholder return that was 44 percent below average. Engaged companies were found to outperform disengaged companies by up to 202 percent. Companies with strong focus on culture were found to have an average 13.9 percent turnover rate, while those with a low focus experience were found to have a 48.4 percent turnover rate. === Flexible job environment and work–life balance === The number of professionals working mobile or remote has risen considerably since 2010. While estimates vary, one study found that number of organizations with mobile or remote employees is expected to rise from 24 percent in 2012 to 89 percent by 2020. Other research has estimated that by 2020, 105.4 million professionals will work remotely in America, about 72.3 percent of the total workforce. This change has been linked to a rise in social technologies, including biometrics, wearables, near-field communications, and augmented reality. Social employees have also put a greater emphasis on work–life balance, with many believing that advances in technology can directly support efforts in this area. Purported benefits of this shift include a more flexible workforce, reduced business costs, and greater organizational leverage in attracting and retaining top talent. === Buys into the brand's story === In 2009, thought leader Simon Sinek presented a speech called "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" at a TEDxPugetSound event. Sinek's central argument in this speech was, "People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it." This concept—that the story behind a business or product offering is a more compelling sales tool than the product itself—is frequently cited in social media marketing as a way to build authentic connections with stakeholders. However, others have argued that for employees to share a brand's story authentically, they must be engaged in that story themselves, and as a result, many companies have made storytelling part of their culture programs. === Collaborative === An implicit tenet in social business is that social technologies aren't a barrier to productivity, but rather a path to increased connectivity. The shift in enterprise software systems like IBM Connections to incorporate social communication models, such as mentions, wikis, and newsfeeds, reflects the changing communication dynamics within business. With an increase in diversity and sophistication in collaborative software platforms, social organizations have sought to find new creative ways to utilize these tools and secure employee buy-in around them. Crowdsourcing has also become popular in social businesses. Examples include AT&T's program The Innovation Pipeline (TIP), begun in 2009, which has generated over 28,000 ideas that have led to over 75 projects with funding exceeding $44 million. IBM has also put considerable resources into such processes, producing its social computing guidelines through employee crowdsourcing, as well as its Connections platform through the Technology Adoption Program (TAP), a more formalized crowdsourcing initiative. Another popular form of internal collaboration is the hack day, or hackathon. Organizations such as Netflix, Facebook, and IBM use hack days to pull employees out of their day-to-day work environments and encourage them to collaborate in nontraditional ways in an attempt to drive disruptive innovation. Social employees are often encouraged to seek external collaboration opportunities with customers and prospects. For example, Procter & Gamble introduced the Live Well Collaborative to connect with external stakeholders and develop products and services for the 50+ demographic. === Social listener === A social listener is someone who engages in social listening, or social media monitoring, for professional means. Social employees can use social media monitoring for a variety of reasons, including professional development, industry news and trends, and gauging market sentiment. Some have argued that social listening is one of the most important components of social business, as it enables organizations to collect rich market data, make more informed strategic decisions, and respond to customer needs more authentically. === Customer-centric === Advocates of customer-centricity in social business argue that social media has changed the dynamic from one-way brand messaging to shared interactions between brand and customer. Brand and customer engagement is seen as a means of creating more lasting connections with customers and prospects and empowering them to become brand promoters. Customer-centric interactions are seen to have distinct value to brands, as research shows that prospects are far more likely to trust brand-related messaging from a friend or family member than they are from a brand. As a means of building social employees, some social advocates have also called for a broader definition of customer to include the employees themselves. In the book The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence, authors Vala Afshar and Brad Martin made the following argument: A social business operates with the guiding principle that each employee's responsi

    Read more →
  • Sex differences in social media use

    Sex differences in social media use

    Men and women use social media in different ways and with different frequencies. In general, several researchers have found that women tend to use social network services (SNSs) more than men and primiarly to socialize. == Differences == === Predilection for usage === Many studies have found that women are more likely to use either specific SNSs such as Facebook or MySpace or SNSs in general. In 2015, 73% of online men and 80% of online women used social networking sites. The gap in gender differences has become less apparent in LinkedIn. In 2015 about 26 percent of online men and 25% of online women used the business-and employee-oriented networking site. Researchers who have examined the gender of users of multiple SNSs have found contradictory results. Hargittai's groundbreaking 2007 study examining race, gender, and other differences between undergraduate college student users of SNSs found that women were not only more likely to have used SNSes than men but that they were also more likely to have used many different services, including Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster; these differences persisted in several models and analyses. Although she only surveyed students at one institution – the University of Illinois at Chicago – Hargittai selected that institution intentionally as "an ideal location for studies of how different kinds of people use online sites and services." In contrast, data collected by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that men were more likely to have multiple SNS profiles. Although the sample sizes of the two surveys are comparable – 1,650 Internet users in the Pew survey compared with 1,060 in Hargittai's survey – the data from the Pew survey are newer and arguably more representative of the entire adult United States population. Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram attract more females. Picture sharing sites overall are very popular among women. Pinterest alone attracts three times as many female users than male. However, use of Pinterest by men has increased from 5% in 2012. Facebook attracts about 77% of women online. Instagram is also more likely to attract women. Men are more likely to participate in online forums like Reddit, Digg or Slashdot. One in five men claim to be a part of an online forum. === Uses === In general, women seem to use SNSs more to explicitly foster social connections. A study conducted by Pew research centers found that women were more avid users of social media. In November 2010, the gap between men and women was as high as 15%. Female participants in a multi-stage study conducted in 2007 to discover the motivations of Facebook users scored higher on scales for social connection and posting of photographs. Studies have also been conducted on the differences between females and males with regards to blogging. The Pew Research Center found that younger females are more likely to blog than males their own age, even males that are older than them. Similarly, in a study of blogs maintained in MySpace, women were found to be more likely to not only write blogs but also write about family, romantic relationships, friendships, and health in those blogs. A study of Swedish SNS users found that women were more likely to have expressions of friendship, specifically in the areas of (a) publishing photos of their friends, (b) specifically naming their best friends, and (c) writing poems to and about their friends. Women were also more likely to have expressions related to family relationships and romantic relationships. One of the key findings of this research is that those men who do have expressions of romantic relationships in their profile had expressions just as strong as the women. However, the researcher speculated that this may be in part due to a desire to publicly express heterosexual behaviors and mannerisms instead of merely expressing romantic feelings. A large-scale study of gender differences in MySpace found that both men and women tended to have a majority of female Friends, and both men and women tended to have a majority of female "Top" Friends in the site. A later study found women to author disproportionately many (public) comments in MySpace, but an investigation into the role of emotion in public MySpace comments found that women both give and receive stronger positive emotion. It was hypothesised that women are simply more effective at using social networking sites because they are better able to harness positive emotion. A study focused on the influence of gender and personality on individuals' use of online social networking websites such as Facebook, reported that men use social networking sites with the intention of forming new relationships, whereas, women use them more for relationship maintenance. In addition to this, women are more likely to use Facebook or MySpace to compare themselves to others and also to search for information. Men, however, are more likely to look at other people's profiles with in the intention to find friends. Women were less successful at actually finding new friends, but more successful at "maintaining existing relationships, making new relationships, using for academic purposes and following specific agenda". Similarly, men also self-reported this motivation "while women reported using them more for relationship maintenance". === Personality === OCEAN personality traits are known to systematically vary between human males and females. In one study, the same women were more extraverted and agreeable, such as less neurotic while on social media than offline. Other studies associated neuroticism with female use of social media. === Privacy === Privacy has been the primary topic of many studies of SNS users, and many of these studies have found differences between male and female SNS users, although some studies have found results contradictory to those found in other studies. Some researchers have found that women are more protective of their personal information and more likely to have private profiles. Other researchers have found that women are less likely to post some types of information. Acquisti and Gross found that women in their sample were less likely to reveal their sexual orientation, personal address, or cell phone number. This is similar to Pew Internet & American Life research of children users of SNSs that found that boys and girls presented different views of privacy and behaviors, with girls being more concerned about and restrictive of information such as city, town, last name, and cell phone number that could be used to locate them. At least one group of researchers has found that women are less likely to share information that "identifies them directly – last name, cell phone number, and address or home phone number," linking that resistance to women's greater concerns about "cyberstalking", "cyberbullying", and security problems. Despite these concerns about privacy, researchers have found that women are more likely to maintain up-to-date photos of themselves. Further, Kolek and Saunders found in their sample of college student Facebook users that women were more likely to not only post a photograph of themselves in their profile but that they were more likely to have a publicly viewable Facebook account (a contradictory finding compared to many other studies), post photos, and post photo albums. Women were more likely to have: (a) a publicly viewable Facebook account, (b) more photo albums, (c) more photos, (d) a photo of themselves as their profile picture, (e) positive references to alcohol, partying, or drugs, and (f) more positive references to or about the institution or institution-related activities. In general, women were more likely to disclose information about themselves in their Facebook profile, with the primary exception of sharing their telephone number. Similarly, female respondents to Strano's study were more likely to keep their profile photo recent and choose a photo that made them appear attractive, happy, and fun-loving. Citing several examples, Strano opined that there may also be a difference in how men and women Facebook users display and interpret profile photos depicting relationships. Privacy has also been a concern for the SnapChat app, which allows you to send messages either text or photo or video which then disappear. One study has shown that security is not a major concern for the majority of users and that most do not use Snapchat to send sensitive content (although up to 25% may do so experimentally). As part of their research almost no statistically significant gender differences were found. === Cyberbullying === Past research carried out to investigate if there are any gender differences in cyber-bullying has found that boys commit more cyber verbal bullying, cyber forgery and more violence based on hidden identity or presenting themselves as other person. === Mansplaining === A 2021 article found that mansplaining could be seen more prominent online rather than offl

    Read more →
  • Semi-Automatic Ground Environment

    Semi-Automatic Ground Environment

    The Semi-Automated Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SAGE directed and controlled the NORAD response to a possible Soviet air attack, operating in this role from the late 1950s into the 1980s. The processing power behind SAGE was supplied by the largest discrete component-based computer ever built, the AN/FSQ-7, manufactured by IBM. Each SAGE Direction Center (DC) housed an FSQ-7 which occupied an entire floor, approximately 22,000 square feet (2,000 m2) not including supporting equipment. The FSQ-7 was actually two computers, "A" side and "B" side. Computer processing was switched from "A" side to "B" side on a regular basis, allowing maintenance on the unused side. Information was fed to the DCs from a network of radar stations as well as readiness information from various defense sites. The computers, based on the raw radar data, developed "tracks" for the reported targets, and automatically calculated which defenses were within range. Operators used light guns to select targets on-screen for further information, select one of the available defenses, and issue commands to attack. These commands would then be automatically sent to the defense site via teleprinter. Connecting the various sites was an enormous network of telephones, modems and teleprinters. Later additions to the system allowed SAGE's tracking data to be sent directly to CIM-10 Bomarc missiles and some of the US Air Force's interceptor aircraft in-flight, directly updating their autopilots to maintain an intercept course without operator intervention. Each DC also forwarded data to a Combat Center (CC) for "supervision of the several sectors within the division" ("each combat center [had] the capability to coordinate defense for the whole nation"). SAGE became operational in the late 1950s and early 1960s at an estimated total cost between 8 and 12 billion dollars, four times the cost of the Manhattan Project. Throughout its development, there were continual concerns about its real ability to deal with large attacks, and the Operation Sky Shield tests showed that only about one-fourth of enemy bombers would have been intercepted. Nevertheless, SAGE was the backbone of NORAD's air defense system into the 1980s, by which time the tube-based FSQ-7s were increasingly costly to maintain and completely outdated. Today the same command and control task is carried out by microcomputers, based on the same basic underlying data. == Background == === Earlier systems === Just prior to World War II, Royal Air Force (RAF) tests with the new Chain Home (CH) radars had demonstrated that relaying information to the fighter aircraft directly from the radar sites was not feasible. The radars determined the map coordinates of the enemy, but could generally not see the fighters at the same time. This meant the fighters had to be able to determine where to fly to perform an interception but were often unaware of their own exact location and unable to calculate an interception while also flying their aircraft. The solution was to send all of the radar information to a central control station where operators collated the reports into single tracks, and then reported these tracks to the airbases, or sectors. The sectors used additional systems to track their own aircraft, plotting both on a single large map. Operators viewing the map could then see what direction their fighters would have to fly to approach their targets and relay that simply by telling them to fly along a certain heading or vector. This Dowding system was the first ground-controlled interception (GCI) system of large scale, covering the entirety of the UK. It proved enormously successful during the Battle of Britain, and is credited as being a key part of the RAF's success. The system was slow, often providing information that was up to five minutes out of date. Against propeller driven bombers flying at perhaps 225 miles per hour (362 km/h) this was not a serious concern, but it was clear the system would be of little use against jet-powered bombers flying at perhaps 600 miles per hour (970 km/h). The system was extremely expensive in manpower terms, requiring hundreds of telephone operators, plotters and trackers in addition to the radar operators. This was a serious drain on manpower, making it difficult to expand the network. The idea of using a computer to handle the task of taking reports and developing tracks had been explored beginning late in the war. By 1944, analog computers had been installed at the CH stations to automatically convert radar readings into map locations, eliminating two people. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy began experimenting with the Comprehensive Display System (CDS), another analog computer that took X and Y locations from a map and automatically generated tracks from repeated inputs. Similar systems began development with the Royal Canadian Navy, DATAR, and the US Navy, the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS). A similar system was also specified for the Nike SAM project, specifically referring to a US version of CDS, coordinating the defense over a battle area so that multiple batteries did not fire on a single target. All of these systems were relatively small in geographic scale, generally tracking within a city-sized area. === Valley Committee === When the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949, the topic of air defense of the US became important for the first time. A study group, the "Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee", was set up under the direction of Dr. George Valley to consider the problem and is known to history as the "Valley Committee". Their December report noted a key problem in air defense using ground-based radars. A bomber approaching a radar station would detect the signals from the radar long before the reflection off the bomber was strong enough to be detected by the station. The committee suggested that when this occurred, the bomber would descend to low altitude, thereby greatly limiting the radar horizon, allowing the bomber to fly past the station undetected. Although flying at low altitude greatly increased fuel consumption, the team calculated that the bomber would only need to do this for about 10% of its flight, making the fuel penalty acceptable. The only solution to this problem was to build a huge number of stations with overlapping coverage. At that point the problem became one of managing the information. Manual plotting was ruled out as too slow, and a computerized solution was the only possibility. To handle this task, the computer would need to be fed information directly, eliminating any manual translation by phone operators, and it would have to be able to analyze that information and automatically develop tracks. A system tasked with defending cities against the predicted future Soviet bomber fleet would have to be dramatically more powerful than the models used in the NTDS or DATAR. The Committee then had to consider whether or not such a computer was possible. The Valley Committee was introduced to Jerome Wiesner, associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Wiesner noted that the Servomechanisms Laboratory had already begun development of a machine that might be fast enough. This was the Whirlwind I, originally developed for the Office of Naval Research as a general purpose flight simulator that could simulate any current or future aircraft by changing its software. Wiesner introduced the Valley Committee to Whirlwind's project lead, Jay Forrester, who convinced him that Whirlwind was sufficiently capable. In September 1950, an early microwave early-warning radar system at Hanscom Field was connected to Whirlwind using a custom interface developed by Forrester's team. An aircraft was flown past the site, and the system digitized the radar information and successfully sent it to Whirlwind. With this demonstration, the technical concept was proven. Forrester was invited to join the committee. === Project Charles === With this successful demonstration, Louis Ridenour, chief scientist of the Air Force, wrote a memo stating "It is now apparent that the experimental work necessary to develop, test, and evaluate the systems proposals made by ADSEC will require a substantial amount of laboratory and field effort." Ridenour approached MIT President James Killian with the aim of beginning a development lab similar to the war-era Radiation Laboratory that made enormous progress in radar technology. Killian was initially uninterested, desiring to return the school to its peacetime civilian charter. Ridenour eventually convinced Killian the idea was sound by describing the way the lab would lead to the development of a local electronics industry based on the needs of the lab and the students who would leave the lab to start their

    Read more →
  • Coolgorilla

    Coolgorilla

    Coolgorilla was one of the earliest software developers that created 3rd party native applications for Apple iPod devices. Coolgorilla was an early adopter of using a sponsorship business model to enable mobile applications to be given away freely. Coolgorilla developed a series of Talking Phrasebooks for iPods in 2006. They partnered with online travel company lastminute.com who sponsored the applications enabling them to be made available to download completely free of charge. As mobile devices became more sophisticated, Coolgorilla developed the Talking Phrasebooks for Sony Ericsson and Nokia Mobile Devices which at the time were considerably noteworthy since the applications used real voice audio translations. With Apple's introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Coolgorilla developed a Web App before having four of the iPhone Talking Phrasebooks available to download from Apple's App Store on the day it opened in 2008. == Almanac in Chronological Order == On 23 December 2005, CoolGorilla, a new start-up, launched a trivia game for the iPod. It was titled "Rock and Pop Quiz". It was a quiz game that tested users' knowledge on bands such as U2, Metallica, Beyonce, and the Beatles. The quiz contained twenty megabytes of audible trivia questions. The free game was compatible with 3rd, 4th and 5th generation iPods, iPod mini and nano. In March 2006, Coolgorilla released "Movie Quiz for iPods" with a price of $5. It was an audio game narrated by New York's DJ Thomas, a radio and television host, voice over artist and event Master of Ceremonies. There were questions on Star Wars, Spiderman, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, The Matrix, James Bond, and others. The user could keep track of their score. The game included a secret code for players who answered all questions correctly which enabled users to enter their name on the Coolgorilla Hall of Fame. In May 2006, Coolgorilla launched a World Cup Encyclopedia which was released prior to the 2006 FIFA World Cup. It had information on the World Cup schedule, details of every player from every team, every score from every world cup game ever played, stadium details, and manager profiles. It was a free download. In June 2006, Coolgorilla released a series of iPod Phrasebooks in German, Greek, French and Spanish. They were sponsored by lastminute.com and were free. The phrasebooks included common words and phrases for tourists with 750 sound files. They were accessed through the iPod's Notes feature. In April 2007, Coolgorilla released a downloadable version of the Talking Phrasebooks for Nokia and Sony Ericsson mobile devices. French, Spanish, German, Greek, Italian, and Portuguese were produced. The application provided real voice translations. They initially sold for £3 but 3 months later were offered for free. The branding was lastminute.com branding. Apple's iPhone was released at the end of June 2007. Soon after, Coolgorilla released an online all-in-one version of their Talking Phrasebooks for iPhone (Web App). The Phrasebooks were made available online in the form of a web app as iPhone did not yet allow for the download of additional apps. The app provided both text and audio translations in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Greek. The iPhone translated the phrases using the recordings of real, native voice-over artists. A text translation on screen was also displayed. Apple's App Store opened in July 2008 with approximately 500 native apps available. Four of these Apps were Coolgorilla's Talking Phrasebooks for iPhone (Native Apps). There was French, German, Italian, and Spanish. These Apps carried lastminute.com branding and were available for free download. In the first three weeks following their release, the phrasebooks had over 350,000 downloads. Subsequently, Dutch, Arabic, Mandarin and Cantonese were also released. In October 2008, Coolgorilla released an iPhone London Travel Guide. Coolgorilla featured on NBC News in August 2009. In 2010, FIAT used the Italian Phrasebook to help promote the release of their FIAT 500 in the US. There has been no further activity since.

    Read more →
  • Comparison of OLAP servers

    Comparison of OLAP servers

    The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of online analytical processing (OLAP) servers. Please see the individual products articles for further information. == General information == == Data storage modes == == APIs and query languages == APIs and query languages OLAP servers support. == OLAP distinctive features == A list of OLAP features that are not supported by all vendors. All vendors support features such as parent-child, multilevel hierarchy, drilldown. == System limits == == Security == == Operating systems == The OLAP servers can run on the following operating systems: Note (1):The server availability depends on Java Virtual Machine not on the operating system == Support information ==

    Read more →
  • Vans challenge

    Vans challenge

    The Vans challenge is a viral internet challenge that began in March 2019 where people show their Vans shoes landing right-side up after tossing them in the air. The viral sensation reportedly started after a Twitter user shared a video of the occurrence, which was captioned: “Did you know it doesn’t matter how you throw your Vans they will land facing up.” Since then, multiple people on social media posted similar videos of them throwing their Vans in the air and landing right-side up, along with Crocs, UGG boots, and other popular shoes. This theory proved false, as these shoes have not always landed facing up after tossing them.

    Read more →
  • Defence Information Infrastructure

    Defence Information Infrastructure

    Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) is a secure military network owned by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence MOD. It is used by all branches of the armed forces, including the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force as well as MOD civil servants. It reaches to deployed bases and ships at sea, but not to aircraft in flight. In 2000, the MOD began to plan the systems replacement project. In March 2005, the MOD gave a contract to the Atlas Consortium, with EDS as prime contractor, for installation and management over 10 years. That has developed into a consortium made up of DXC Technology (formerly EDS), Fujitsu, Airbus Defence and Space (formerly EADS Defence & Security) and CGI (formerly Logica). Starting in May 2016, MOD users of DII begin to migrate to the New Style of IT within the defence to be known as MODNET; again supported by ATLAS. == Overview == DII supports 2,000 MOD sites with some 150,000 terminals (desktops and laptops) and 300,000 user accounts. It is designed to offer a high level of resilience, flexibility, and security in the provision of connectivity from ‘business space to battlespace’ in MOD offices in the UK, bases overseas, at sea, and on the front line. It aims to rationalise and improve IT provision for the defence sector in the 21st century; involving a major culture change for MOD users and their ways of working through a structure of shared working areas with controlled security and access. It should provide a records management system and search facility together with a range of office services. It hosts several hundred COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and bespoke MOD applications from a range of suppliers judged to meet the required security standards. The network handles alphanumeric data, graphics, and video. The system carries information from Restricted to above-Secret levels, but users are able to see only the data and applications for which they are authorised. == Incremental approach == In order to de-risk the programme Atlas and the MOD took an incremental approach to the development and implementation of DII, with a separate contract for each increment. The extended timeline allowed the MOD flexibility in defining its requirements. Increment 1: Contract awarded March 2005. This covered 70,000 user access devices (UADs) and 200,000 user accounts in the Restricted and Secret domains in 680 fixed locations. Increment 2a: Contract awarded December 2006. This was for an additional 44,000 UADs and 58,000 user accounts in the Restricted and Secret domains, again in fixed locations. Increment 2b: Contract awarded September 2007: This extended DII(F) into the deployed environment with the provision of UADs to support land and maritime deployed operations. Increment 2c: Signed in January 2009. This extended the DII footprint into the above-Secret domain to support a number of key operations and intelligence initiatives. Increment 3a: Contract awarded January 2010. Atlas provided 42,000 UADs operating in the Restricted and Secret domains to the remaining MOD fixed sites. This supported some 60,000 personnel, notably within the RAF, at Joint Helicopter Command and other MOD locations. Increment 3a received an MOD Chief of Defence Materiel commendation. == Costs and transparency == The Ministry of Defence informed Parliament the system would cost £2.3bn, even though it knew the cost would be at least £5.8bn. By 2008 the programme was running at least 18 months late; had delivered only 29,000 of a contracted 63,000 terminals; and had delivered none of the contracted Secret capability. In January 2010 the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence announced that the Ministry of Defence had authorised DII increment 3a at a cost of around £540 million to provide 42,000 terminals within the RAF and at Joint Helicopter Command. He stated that the project would deliver "benefits" worth over £1.6 billion over the 10 years of the contract. That year the project was scheduled to cost at least £7bn, however, the UK government said it might attempt to reduce this sum. By 2014 the rollout of all UK terminals was complete and a refresh of the original desktops and printers to new hardware underway. The overseas rollout was coming to an end and well over half the fleet, including aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, equipped. The final part of Secret capability deployment was scheduled to complete in summer of 2014.

    Read more →
  • Saliency map

    Saliency map

    In computer vision, a saliency map is an image that highlights either the region on which people's eyes focus first or the most relevant regions for machine learning models. The goal of a saliency map is to reflect the degree of importance of a pixel to the human visual system or an otherwise opaque ML model. For example, in this image, a person first looks at the fort and light clouds, so they should be highlighted on the saliency map. == Application == === Overview === Saliency maps have applications in a variety of different problems. Some general applications: ==== Human eye ==== Image and video compression: The human eye focuses only on a small region of interest in the frame. Therefore, it is not necessary to compress the entire frame with uniform quality. According to the authors, using a salience map reduces the final size of the video with the same visual perception. Image and video quality assessment: The main task for an image or video quality metric is a high correlation with user opinions. Differences in salient regions are given more importance and thus contribute more to the quality score. Image retargeting: It aims at resizing an image by expanding or shrinking the noninformative regions. Therefore, retargeting algorithms rely on the availability of saliency maps that accurately estimate all the salient image details. Object detection and recognition: Instead of applying a computationally complex algorithm to the whole image, we can use it to the most salient regions of an image most likely to contain an object. the primary visual cortex (V1) appears to be responsible for the saliency map, according to the V1 Saliency Hypothesis. ==== Explainable artificial intelligence ==== Saliency maps are a prominent tool in explainable artificial intelligence, providing visual explanations of the decision-making process of machine learning models, particularly deep neural networks. These maps highlight the regions in input data that are most influential on the model's output, effectively indicating where the model is "looking" when making a prediction. In image classification tasks, for example, saliency maps can identify pixels or regions that contribute most to a specific class decision. Developed for convolutional neural networks, saliency mapping techniques range from simply taking the gradient of the class score with respect to the input data to more complex algorithms, such as integrated gradients and class activation mapping. In transformer architecture, attention mechanisms led to analogous saliency maps, such as attention maps, attention rollouts, and class-discriminative attention maps. === Saliency as a segmentation problem === Saliency estimation may be viewed as an instance of image segmentation. In computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple segments (sets of pixels, also known as superpixels). The goal of segmentation is to simplify and/or change the representation of an image into something that is more meaningful and easier to analyze. Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries (lines, curves, etc.) in images. More precisely, image segmentation is the process of assigning a label to every pixel in an image such that pixels with the same label share certain characteristics. == Algorithms == === Overview === There are three forms of classic saliency estimation algorithms implemented in OpenCV: Static saliency: Relies on image features and statistics to localize the regions of interest of an image. Motion saliency: Relies on motion in a video, detected by optical flow. Objects that move are considered salient. Objectness: Objectness reflects how likely an image window covers an object. These algorithms generate a set of bounding boxes of where an object may lie in an image. In addition to classic approaches, neural-network-based are also popular. There are examples of neural networks for motion saliency estimation: TASED-Net: It consists of two building blocks. First, the encoder network extracts low-resolution spatiotemporal features, and then the following prediction network decodes the spatially encoded features while aggregating all the temporal information. STRA-Net: It emphasizes two essential issues. First, spatiotemporal features integrated via appearance and optical flow coupling, and then multi-scale saliency learned via attention mechanism. STAViS: It combines spatiotemporal visual and auditory information. This approach employs a single network that learns to localize sound sources and to fuse the two saliencies to obtain a final saliency map. There's a new static saliency in the literature with name visual distortion sensitivity. It is based on the idea that the true edges, i.e. object contours, are more salient than the other complex textured regions. It detects edges in a different way from the classic edge detection algorithms. It uses a fairly small threshold for the gradient magnitudes to consider the mere presence of the gradients. So, it obtains 4 binary maps for vertical, horizontal and two diagonal directions. The morphological closing and opening are applied to the binary images to close the small gaps. To clear the blob-like shapes, it utilizes the distance transform. After all, the connected pixel groups are individual edges (or contours). A threshold of size of connected pixel set is used to determine whether an image block contains a perceivable edge (salient region) or not. === Example implementation === First, we should calculate the distance of each pixel to the rest of pixels in the same frame: S A L S ( I k ) = ∑ i = 1 N | I k − I i | {\displaystyle \mathrm {SALS} (I_{k})=\sum _{i=1}^{N}|I_{k}-I_{i}|} I i {\displaystyle I_{i}} is the value of pixel i {\displaystyle i} , in the range of [0,255]. The following equation is the expanded form of this equation. SALS(Ik) = |Ik - I1| + |Ik - I2| + ... + |Ik - IN| Where N is the total number of pixels in the current frame. Then we can further restructure our formula. We put the value that has same I together. SALS(Ik) = Σ Fn × |Ik - In| Where Fn is the frequency of In. And the value of n belongs to [0,255]. The frequencies is expressed in the form of histogram, and the computational time of histogram is ⁠ O ( N ) {\displaystyle O(N)} ⁠ time complexity. ==== Time complexity ==== This saliency map algorithm has ⁠ O ( N ) {\displaystyle O(N)} ⁠ time complexity. Since the computational time of histogram is ⁠ O ( N ) {\displaystyle O(N)} ⁠ time complexity which N is the number of pixel's number of a frame. Besides, the minus part and multiply part of this equation need 256 times operation. Consequently, the time complexity of this algorithm is ⁠ O ( N + 256 ) {\displaystyle O(N+256)} ⁠ which equals to ⁠ O ( N ) {\displaystyle O(N)} ⁠. ==== Pseudocode ==== All of the following code is pseudo MATLAB code. First, read data from video sequences. After we read data, we do superpixel process to each frame. Spnum1 and Spnum2 represent the pixel number of current frame and previous pixel. Then we calculate the color distance of each pixel, this process we call it contract function. After this two process, we will get a saliency map, and then store all of these maps into a new FileFolder. ==== Difference in algorithms ==== The major difference between function one and two is the difference of contract function. If spnum1 and spnum2 both represent the current frame's pixel number, then this contract function is for the first saliency function. If spnum1 is the current frame's pixel number and spnum2 represent the previous frame's pixel number, then this contract function is for second saliency function. If we use the second contract function which using the pixel of the same frame to get center distance to get a saliency map, then we apply this saliency function to each frame and use current frame's saliency map minus previous frame's saliency map to get a new image which is the new saliency result of the third saliency function. == Datasets == The saliency dataset usually contains human eye movements on some image sequences. It is valuable for new saliency algorithm creation or benchmarking the existing one. The most valuable dataset parameters are spatial resolution, size, and eye-tracking equipment. Here is part of the large datasets table from MIT/Tübingen Saliency Benchmark datasets, for example. To collect a saliency dataset, image or video sequences and eye-tracking equipment must be prepared, and observers must be invited. Observers must have normal or corrected to normal vision and must be at the same distance from the screen. At the beginning of each recording session, the eye-tracker recalibrates. To do this, the observer fixates their gaze on the screen center. The session is then started, and saliency data are collected by showing sequences and recording eye gazes. The eye-tracking device is a high-speed camera, capable of recording eye movements at least 250 fr

    Read more →
  • Data definition specification

    Data definition specification

    In computing, a data definition specification (DDS) is a guideline to ensure comprehensive and consistent data definition. It represents the attributes required to quantify data definition. A comprehensive data definition specification encompasses enterprise data, the hierarchy of data management, prescribed guidance enforcement and criteria to determine compliance. == Overview == A data definition specification may be developed for any organization or specialized field, improving the quality of its products through consistency and transparency. It eliminates redundancy (since all contributing areas are referencing the same specification) and provides standardization and degrees of compliance, making it easier and more efficient to create, modify, verify, analyze and share information across the enterprise. To understand how a data definition specification works in an enterprise, we must look at the elements of a DDS. Writing data definitions, defining business terms (or rules) in the context of a particular environment, provides structure for an organization's data architecture. In developing these definitions, the words used must be traceable to clearly defined data. A data definition specification may be used in the following activities: Business intelligence Business process modeling Business rules management Data analysis and modeling Information architecture Metadata modeling Data mastering Report generation == Criteria == A data definition specification requires data definitions to be: Atomic – singular, describing only one concept. Commonly used and ambiguous terms should be defined. While a term refers to one concept, several words may be used in a term: File – A concept identifiable with one word File extension – A concept identifiable with more than one word Traceable – Mapped to a specific data element. In business, a term may be traced to an entity (for example, a customer) or an attribute (such as a customer's name). A term may be a value in a data set (such as gender), or designate the data set itself. Traceability indicates relationships in the data hierarchy. Consistent - Used in a standard syntax; if used in a specific context, the context is noted Accurate - Precise, correct and unambiguous, stating what the term is and is not Clear - Readily understood by the reader Complete - With the term, its description and contextual references Concise - To avoid circular references == Applications == === Enterprise data === A data definition specification was produced by the Open Mobile Alliance to document charging data. The document, the centralized catalog of data elements defined for interfaces, specifies the mapping of these data elements to protocol fields in the interfaces. Created for the exchange of financial data, Market Data Definition Language (MDDL) is an XML specification designed to enable the interchange of information necessary to account, to analyze, and to trade financial instruments of the world's markets. It defines an XML-based interchange format and common data dictionary on the fields needed to describe: (1) financial instruments, (2) corporate events affecting value and tradability, and (3) market-related, economic and industrial indicators. The principal function of MDDL is to allow entities to exchange market data by standardizing formats and definitions. MDDL provides a common format for market data so that it can be efficiently passed from one processing system to another and provides a common understanding of market data content by standardizing terminology and by normalizing the relationships of various data elements to one another ... From the user perspective, the goal of MDDL is to enable users to integrate data from multiple sources by standardizing both the input feeds used for data warehousing (i.e., define what's being provided by vendors) and the output methods by which client applications request the data (i.e., ensure compatibility on how to get data in and out of applications)." === Clinical submissions === The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium, a global, multidisciplinary, non-profit organization, has established standards to support the acquisition, exchange, submission and archiving of clinical research data and metadata. CDISC standards are vendor-neutral, platform-independent and freely available from the CDISC website. The Case Report Tabulation Data Definition Specification (define.xml) draft version 2.0, the oldest data definition specification, is part of the evolution from the 1999 FDA electronic submission (eSub) guidance and electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) documents specifying that a document describing the content and structure of included data be included in a submission. Define.xml was developed to automate the review process by generating a machine-readable data-definition document. Define.xml has standardized submissions to the Food and Drug Administration, reducing review times from over two years to several months. === Archival data === A data definition specification is the foundation of metadata for scientific data archiving. The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) uses one principle of a DDS: consistent use of key terms to catalog digital objects for global use. The METS schema is a flexible mechanism for encoding descriptive, administrative and structural metadata for a digital library object and expressing complex links between metadata, and can provide a useful standard for the exchange of digital-library objects between repositories. A similar effort is underway to preserve complex data associated with video-game archiving. Preserving Virtual Worlds attempted to address archival-format deficiencies, citing the lack of suitable documentation for interactive fiction and games at the bit level: specifically, the absence of "representation information" needed to map raw bits into higher-level data constructs. Preserving Virtual Worlds 2 is a research project expanding on initial efforts in this field.

    Read more →
  • Data preservation

    Data preservation

    Data preservation is the act of conserving and maintaining both the safety and integrity of data. Preservation is done through formal activities that are governed by policies, regulations and strategies directed towards protecting and prolonging the existence and authenticity of data and its metadata. Data can be described as the elements or units in which knowledge and information is created, and metadata are the summarizing subsets of the elements of data; or the data about the data. The main goal of data preservation is to protect data from being lost or destroyed and to contribute to the reuse and progression of the data. == History == Most historical data collected over time has been lost or destroyed. War and natural disasters combined with the lack of materials and necessary practices to preserve and protect data has caused this. Usually, only the most important data sets were saved, such as government records and statistics, legal contracts and economic transactions. Scientific research and doctoral theses data have mostly been destroyed from improper storage and lack of data preservation awareness and execution. Over time, data preservation has evolved and has generated importance and awareness. We now have many different ways to preserve data and many different important organizations involved in doing so. The first digital data preservation storage solutions appeared in the 1950s, which were usually flat or hierarchically structured. While there were still issues with these solutions, it made storing data much cheaper, and more easily accessible. In the 1970s relational databases as well as spreadsheets appeared. Relational data bases structure data into tables using structured query languages which made them more efficient than the preceding storage solutions, and spreadsheets hold high volumes of numeric data which can be applied to these relational databases to produce derivative data. More recently, non-relational (non-structured query language) databases have appeared as complements to relational databases which hold high volumes of unstructured or semi-structured data. == Importance == The scope of data preservation is vast. Everything from governmental to business records to art essentially can be represented as data, and is amenable to be lost. This then leads to loss of human history, for perpetuity. Data can be lost on a small or independent scale whether it's personal data loss, or data loss within businesses and organizations, as well as on a larger or national or global scale which can negatively and potentially permanently affect things such as environmental protection, medical research, homeland security, public health and safety, economic development and culture. The mechanisms of data loss are also as many as they are varied, spanning from disaster, wars, data breaches, negligence, all the way through simple forgetting to natural decay. Ways in which data collections can be used when preserved and stored properly can be seen through the U.S. Geological Survey, which stores data collections on natural hazards, natural resources, and landscapes. The data collected by the Survey is used by federal and state land management agencies towards land use planning and management, and continually needs access to historical reference data. == Related Concepts == In contrast, data holdings are collections of gathered data that are informally kept, and not necessarily prepared for long-term preservation. For example, a collection or back-up of personal files. Data holdings are generally the storage methods used in the past when data has been lost due to environmental and other historical disasters. Furthermore, data retention differs from data preservation in the sense that by definition, to retain an object (data) is to hold or keep possession or use of the object. To preserve an object is to protect, maintain and keep up for future use. Retention policies often circle around when data should be deleted on purpose as well, and held from public access, while preservation prioritizes permanence and more widely shared access. Thus, data preservation exceeds the concept of having or possessing data or back up copies of data. Data preservation ensures reliable access to data by including back-up and recovery mechanisms that precede the event of a disaster or technological change. == Methods == === Digital === Digital preservation, is similar to data preservation, but is mainly concerned with technological threats, and solely digital data. Essentially digital data is a set of formal activities to enable ongoing or persistent use and access of digital data exceeding the occurrence of technological malfunction or change. Digital preservation is aware of the inevitable change in technology and protocols, and prepares for data that will need to be accessible across new types of technologies and platforms while the integrity of the data and metadata are being conserved. Technology, while providing great process in conserving data that may not have been possible in the past, is also changing at such a quick rate that digital data may not be accessible anymore due to the format being incompatible with new software. Without the use of data preservation much of our existing digital data is at risk. The majority of methods used towards data preservation today are digital methods, which are so far the most effective methods that exist. === Archives === Archives are a collection of historical documents and records. Archives contribute and work towards the preservation of data by collecting data that is well organized, while providing the appropriate metadata to confirm it. An example of an important data archive is The LONI Image Data Archive, which is an archive that collects data regarding clinical trials and clinical research studies. === Catalogues, directories and portals === Catalogues, directories and portals are consolidated resources which are kept by individual institutions, and are associated with data archives and holdings. In other words, the data is not presented on the site, but instead might act as metadata and aggregators, and may administer thorough inventories. === Repositories === Repositories are places where data archives and holdings can be accessed and stored. The goal of repositories is to make sure that all requirements and protocols of archives and holdings are being met, and data is being certified to ensure data integrity and user trust. Single-site Repositories A repository that holds all data sets on a single site. An example of a major single-site repository the Data Archiving and Networking Services which is a repository which provides ongoing access to digital research resources for the Netherlands. Multi-Site Repositories A repository that hosts data set on multiple institutional sites. An example of a well known multi-site repository is OpenAIRE which is a repository that hosts research data and publications collaborating all of the EU countries and more. OpenAIRE promotes open scholarship and seeks to improves discover-ability and re-usability of data. Trusted Digital Repository A repository that seeks to provide reliable, trusted access over a long period of time. The repository can be single or multi-sited but must cooperate with the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System, as well as adhere to a set of rules or attributes that contribute to its trust such as having persistent financial responsibility, organizational buoyancy, administrative responsibility security and safety. An example of a trusted digital repository is The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) which is a multi-site repository that hosts Ireland's humanity and social science data sets. === Cyber Infrastructures === Cyber infrastructures which consists of archive collections which are made available through the system of hardware, technologies, software, policies, services and tools. Cyber infrastructures are geared towards the sharing of data supporting peer-to-peer collaborations and a cultural community. An example of a major cyber-infrastructure is The Canadian Geo-spatial Data Infrastructure which provides access to spatial data in Canada.

    Read more →