Gallery software is software that helps the user publish or share photos, pictures, videos or other digital media. Most galleries are located on Web servers, where users are allowed to register and publish their pictures. Gallery software usually features automatic image resizing, allows digital media be categorized into sets, and allows comments. == Types == Early digital media publishing and sharing was done with imageboards. The boards are by topics, sometimes called "chan". Each discussion in a "chan" are started with a piece of digital media, and follow-up discussions can contain another piece too. Software works in this way: Futallaby, Danbooru. Traditionally, galleries are managed. An administrator maintains a set of or hierarchy of albums. The users can upload their digital media in one of the existing albums defined by an administrator, or create their own albums. The users with sufficient permission can re-categorise the digital media others uploaded. Often, the site's administrator can define which album the users are allowed to categorise their media into, or delete other user's content. Examples are open source galleries Coppermine, Gallery Project. There are decentralised gallery software that does not have an administrator for managing contents. Pinterest, Flickr and DeviantArt has been successful with this model. Open source gallery software MediaGoblin works in this way. Each user can create their own "collections", to categorise theirs or other users' media. However users cannot put media into other user's collections. Each user's category is separate. There is no centralised theme or hierarchy for the media.
FoundationDB
FoundationDB is a free and open-source multi-model distributed NoSQL database owned by Apple Inc. with a shared-nothing architecture. The product was designed around a "core" database, with additional features supplied in "layers." The core database exposes an ordered key–value store with transactions. The transactions are able to read or write multiple keys stored on any machine in the cluster while fully supporting ACID properties. Transactions are used to implement a variety of data models via layers. The FoundationDB Alpha program began in January 2012 and concluded on March 4, 2013, with their public Beta release. Their 1.0 version was released for general availability on August 20, 2013. On March 24, 2015, it was reported that Apple has acquired the company. A notice on the FoundationDB web site indicated that the company has "evolved" its mission and would no longer offer downloads of the software. On April 19, 2018, Apple open sourced the software, releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license. == Main features == The main features of FoundationDB include the following: Ordered key–value store In addition to supporting standard key-based reads and writes, the ordering property enables range reads that can efficiently scan large swaths of data. Transactions Transaction processing employs multiversion concurrency control for reads and optimistic concurrency for writes. Transactions can span multiple keys stored on multiple machines. ACID properties FoundationDB guarantees serializable isolation and strong durability via redundant storage on disk before transactions are considered committed. Layers Layers map new data models, APIs, and query languages to the FoundationDB core. They employ FoundationDB's ability to update multiple data elements in a single transaction, ensuring consistency. An example is their SQL layer. Commodity clusters FoundationDB is designed for deployment on distributed clusters of commodity hardware running Linux. Replication FoundationDB stores each piece of data on multiple machines according to a configurable replication factor. Triple replication is the recommended mode for clusters of 5 or more machines. Scalability FoundationDB is designed to support horizontal scaling through the addition of machines to a cluster while automatically handling data replication and partitioning. Systems supported FoundationDB supports packages for Linux, Windows, and macOS. The Linux version supports production clusters, while the Windows and macOS versions support local operation for development purposes. Configurations on Amazon EC2 are also supported. Programming language bindings FoundationDB supports language bindings for Python, Go, Ruby, Node.js, Java, PHP, and C, all of which are made available with the product. == Design limitations == The design of FoundationDB results in several limitations: Long transactions FoundationDB does not support transactions running over five seconds. Large transactions Transaction size cannot exceed 10 MB of total written keys and values. Large keys and values Keys cannot exceed 10 kB in size. Values cannot exceed 100 kB in size. == History == FoundationDB, headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, was started in 2009 by Nick Lavezzo, Dave Rosenthal, and Dave Scherer, drawing on their experience in executive and technology roles at their previous company, Visual Sciences. In March 2015 the FoundationDB Community site was updated to state that the company had changed directions and would no longer be offering downloads of its product. The company was acquired by Apple Inc., which was confirmed March 25, 2015. On April 19, 2018, Apple open sourced the software, releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license.
Statistical semantics
In linguistics, statistical semantics applies the methods of statistics to the problem of determining the meaning of words or phrases, ideally through unsupervised learning, to a degree of precision at least sufficient for the purpose of information retrieval. == History == The term statistical semantics was first used by Warren Weaver in his well-known paper on machine translation. He argued that word-sense disambiguation for machine translation should be based on the co-occurrence frequency of the context words near a given target word. The underlying assumption that "a word is characterized by the company it keeps" was advocated by J. R. Firth. This assumption is known in linguistics as the distributional hypothesis. Emile Delavenay defined statistical semantics as the "statistical study of the meanings of words and their frequency and order of recurrence". "Furnas et al. 1983" is frequently cited as a foundational contribution to statistical semantics. An early success in the field was latent semantic analysis. == Applications == Research in statistical semantics has resulted in a wide variety of algorithms that use the distributional hypothesis to discover many aspects of semantics, by applying statistical techniques to large corpora: Measuring the similarity in word meanings Measuring the similarity in word relations Modeling similarity-based generalization Discovering words with a given relation Classifying relations between words Extracting keywords from documents Measuring the cohesiveness of text Discovering the different senses of words Distinguishing the different senses of words Subcognitive aspects of words Distinguishing praise from criticism == Related fields == Statistical semantics focuses on the meanings of common words and the relations between common words, unlike text mining, which tends to focus on whole documents, document collections, or named entities (names of people, places, and organizations). Statistical semantics is a subfield of computational semantics, which is in turn a subfield of computational linguistics and natural language processing. Many of the applications of statistical semantics (listed above) can also be addressed by lexicon-based algorithms, instead of the corpus-based algorithms of statistical semantics. One advantage of corpus-based algorithms is that they are typically not as labour-intensive as lexicon-based algorithms. Another advantage is that they are usually easier to adapt to new languages or noisier new text types from e.g. social media than lexicon-based algorithms are. However, the best performance on an application is often achieved by combining the two approaches.
Fuzzy logic
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false. By contrast, in Boolean logic, the truth values of variables may only be the integer values 0 or 1. The term fuzzy logic was introduced with the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by mathematician Lotfi Zadeh. Basic fuzzy logic had, however, been studied since the 1920s, as infinite-valued logic—notably by Łukasiewicz and Tarski. The works of Zadeh and Joseph Goguen in the 1960s and 1970s went further by considering issues such as linguistic variables and lattices. Fuzzy logic is based on the observation that people make decisions based on imprecise and non-numerical information. Fuzzy models or fuzzy sets are mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information (hence the term fuzzy). These models have the capability of recognising, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and using data and information that are vague and lack certainty. Fuzzy logic has been applied to many fields, from control theory to artificial intelligence. == Overview == Classical logic only permits conclusions that are either true or false. However, there are also propositions with variable answers, which one might find when asking a group of people to identify a color. In such instances, the truth appears as the result of reasoning from inexact or partial knowledge in which the sampled answers are mapped on a spectrum. Both degrees of truth and probabilities range between 0 and 1 and hence may seem identical at first, but fuzzy logic uses degrees of truth as a mathematical model of vagueness, while probability is a mathematical model of ignorance. === Applying truth values === A basic application might characterize various sub-ranges of a continuous variable. For instance, a temperature measurement for anti-lock brakes might have several separate membership functions defining particular temperature ranges needed to control the brakes properly. Each function maps the same temperature value to a truth value in the 0 to 1 range. These truth values can then be used to determine how the brakes should be controlled. Fuzzy set theory provides a means for representing uncertainty. === Linguistic variables === In fuzzy logic applications, non-numeric values are often used to facilitate the expression of rules and facts. A linguistic variable such as age may accept values such as young and its antonym old. Because natural languages do not always contain enough value terms to express a fuzzy value scale, it is common practice to modify linguistic values with adjectives or adverbs. For example, we can use the hedges rather and somewhat to construct the additional values rather old or somewhat young. == Fuzzy systems == === Mamdani === The most well-known system is the Mamdani rule-based one. It uses the following rules: Fuzzify all input values into fuzzy membership functions. Execute all applicable rules in the rulebase to compute the fuzzy output functions. De-fuzzify the fuzzy output functions to get "crisp" output values. ==== Fuzzification ==== Fuzzification is the process of assigning the numerical input of a system to fuzzy sets with some degree of membership. This degree of membership may be anywhere within the interval [0,1]. If it is 0 then the value does not belong to the given fuzzy set, and if it is 1 then the value completely belongs within the fuzzy set. Any value between 0 and 1 represents the degree of uncertainty that the value belongs in the set. These fuzzy sets are typically described by words, and so by assigning the system input to fuzzy sets, we can reason with it in a linguistically natural manner. For example, in the image below, the meanings of the expressions cold, warm, and hot are represented by functions mapping a temperature scale. A point on that scale has three "truth values"—one for each of the three functions. The vertical line in the image represents a particular temperature that the three arrows (truth values) gauge. Since the red arrow points to zero, this temperature may be interpreted as "not hot"; i.e. this temperature has zero membership in the fuzzy set "hot". The orange arrow (pointing at 0.2) may describe it as "slightly warm" and the blue arrow (pointing at 0.8) "fairly cold". Therefore, this temperature has 0.2 membership in the fuzzy set "warm" and 0.8 membership in the fuzzy set "cold". The degree of membership assigned for each fuzzy set is the result of fuzzification. Fuzzy sets are often defined as triangle or trapezoid-shaped curves, as each value will have a slope where the value is increasing, a peak where the value is equal to 1 (which can have a length of 0 or greater) and a slope where the value is decreasing. They can also be defined using a sigmoid function. One common case is the standard logistic function defined as S ( x ) = 1 1 + e − x {\displaystyle S(x)={\frac {1}{1+e^{-x}}}} which has the following symmetry property S ( x ) + S ( − x ) = 1. {\displaystyle S(x)+S(-x)=1.} From this it follows that ( S ( x ) + S ( − x ) ) ⋅ ( S ( y ) + S ( − y ) ) ⋅ ( S ( z ) + S ( − z ) ) = 1 {\displaystyle (S(x)+S(-x))\cdot (S(y)+S(-y))\cdot (S(z)+S(-z))=1} ==== Fuzzy logic operators ==== Fuzzy logic works with membership values in a way that mimics Boolean logic. To this end, replacements for basic operators ("gates") AND, OR, NOT must be available. There are several ways to accomplish this. A common replacement is called the Zadeh operators: For TRUE/1 and FALSE/0, the fuzzy expressions produce the same result as the Boolean expressions. There are also other operators, more linguistic in nature, called hedges that can be applied. These are generally adverbs such as very, or somewhat, which modify the meaning of a set using a mathematical formula. However, an arbitrary choice table does not always define a fuzzy logic function. In the paper (Zaitsev, et al), a criterion has been formulated to recognize whether a given choice table defines a fuzzy logic function and a simple algorithm of fuzzy logic function synthesis has been proposed based on introduced concepts of constituents of minimum and maximum. A fuzzy logic function represents a disjunction of constituents of minimum, where a constituent of minimum is a conjunction of variables of the current area greater than or equal to the function value in this area (to the right of the function value in the inequality, including the function value). Another set of AND/OR operators is based on multiplication, where Given any two of AND/OR/NOT, it is possible to derive the third. The generalization of AND is an instance of a t-norm. ==== IF-THEN rules ==== IF-THEN rules map input or computed truth values to desired output truth values. Example: Given a certain temperature, the fuzzy variable hot has a certain truth value, which is copied to the high variable. Should an output variable occur in several THEN parts, the values from the respective IF parts are combined using the OR operator. ==== Defuzzification ==== The goal is to get a continuous variable from fuzzy truth values. This would be easy if the output truth values were exactly those obtained from fuzzification of a given number. Since, however, all output truth values are computed independently, in most cases they do not represent such a set of numbers. One has then to decide for a number that matches best the "intention" encoded in the truth value. For example, for several truth values of fan_speed, an actual speed must be found that best fits the computed truth values of the variables 'slow', 'moderate' and so on. There is no single algorithm for this purpose. A common algorithm is For each truth value, cut the membership function at this value Combine the resulting curves using the OR operator Find the center-of-weight of the area under the curve The x position of this center is then the final output. === Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) === The Takagi–Sugeno or Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) system was introduced by Tomohiro Takagi and Michio Sugeno for fuzzy identification of systems and applications to modeling and control. Sugeno and Kang later developed methods for structure identification of such fuzzy models from input-output data. The TSK system is similar to Mamdani, but the defuzzification process is included in the execution of the fuzzy rules. These are also adapted, so that instead the consequent of the rule is represented through a polynomial function, usually constant in a zero-order model or linear in a first-order model. An example of a rule with a constant output would be: In this case, the output will be equal to the constant of the consequent (e.g. 2). In most scenarios we would have an entire rule base, with 2 or more rules. If this is the case, the output of the entire rule base will be the average of the consequent of each rule i (Y
Fuzzy Control Language
Fuzzy Control Language, or FCL, is a language for implementing fuzzy logic, especially fuzzy control. It was standardized by IEC 61131-7. It is a domain-specific programming language: it has no features unrelated to fuzzy logic, so it is impossible to even print "Hello, world!". Therefore, one does not write a program in FCL, but one may write part of it in FCL. == Example == RULE 0: IF (temperature IS cold) THEN (output IS low) RULE 1: IF (temperature IS very cold) THEN (output IS high) == Limitations == FCL is not an entirely complete fuzzy language, for instance, it does not support "hedges", which are adverbs that modify the set. For instance, the programmer cannot write: RULE 0: If (Temperature is VERY COLD) then (Output is VERY HIGH) However, the programmer can simply define new sets for "very cold" and "very high". FCL also lacks support for higher-order fuzzy sets, subsets, and so on. None of these features are essential to fuzzy control, although they may be nice to have.
Wink Bingo
Wink Bingo is an online bingo website launched in 2008. It is part of Broadway Gaming Ireland DF Limited and is based and licensed in Ireland. == History == Wink Bingo launched in 2008 and under chief executive Eitan Boyd it grew to 60,000 active players within two years. It had an estimated £1.3 million profit in the first 11 months of trading, and by 2009 it had estimated annual revenue of £15 million. In 2009 Wink Bingo was purchased by 888 Holdings Plc, which operates a number of entertainment brands including 888casino, 888poker and 888sport. The initial up front fee was reported in the London Evening Standard to be £11 million, rising as high as £59.7 million depending on performance-based earn out arrangements. The acquisition included Daub Ltd’s other online bingo businesses Posh Bingo and Bingo Fabulous. In 2011, the sellers agreed to amend the terms and accept two subsequent payments in addition to the initial cost, of £9.2 million in May and £6.1 million in August. In 2011 Wink Bingo sponsored ITV2's The Only Way Is Essex, and other notable advertising campaigns have included sponsorship of Harry Hill's TV Burp. In 2014, Wink Bingo rebranded with an updated slogan 'Wink if you're in!', with an aim of creating a 'sunny, calm and inclusive' online destination, and an accompanying TV commercial featuring the Ottawan song D.I.S.C.O. re-recorded as B.I.N.G.O.. Wink also launched a new digital magazine, 'Winkly', and 'Winkipedia, a bingo encyclopedia'. Wink Bingo is available on desktop and as a mobile app. Wink launched Wink Slots in 2016 as a companion site to Wink Bingo. The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled on Wink Bingo's advertisements on a number of occasions. In August 2008, Wink ran a television ad which showed a midwife celebrating while at work at a hospital maternity unit. The ASA banned the ad, concluding that it condoned gambling in the workplace and suggested that it took priority over professional commitments. In June 2013, the Gambling Reform & Society Perception Group (GRASP) challenged the use of semi-naked "athletic" men together with the claim "Go on ... you know you want to" on an outdoor ad, suggesting it linked gambling to seduction and enhanced attractiveness. The complaint was not upheld. The site underwent another rebrand and pop art inspired redesign in April 2018, taking on a new tone of voice and a new slogan, "You’ve Earned It". An online shop was added, where players can redeem reward points for free play or vouchers for online high street retailers. In 2021 Wink Bingo was purchased by Saphalata Holdings, a company that forms part of the Broadway Gaming group. === Cancer Research UK campaign === In 2015 Wink Bingo began an open-ended partnership with the Peter Andre Fund to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Peter Andre also met with players who were selected in a raffle. == Awards ==
A Fire Upon the Deep
A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a CD-ROM sold by ClariNet Communications along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book, and was later released as a standalone e-book. It has a loose prequel, A Deepness in the Sky, from 1999, and a direct sequel, The Children of the Sky, from 2012. == Setting == The novel is set in various locations within the Milky Way. The galaxy is divided into four concentric volumes called the "Zones of Thought"; it is not clear to the novel's characters whether this is a natural phenomenon or an artificially created one. Each Zone has fundamental differences in basic physical laws. One of the main consequences of these differences is the effect on intelligence. Artificial intelligence and automation is most directly affected, in that advanced hardware and software from the Beyond or the Transcend will work less and less well as a ship descends towards the Unthinking Depths. Biological intelligence is affected to a lesser degree. The four zones are spoken of in terms of "low" to "high" as follows: The Unthinking Depths are the innermost zone, surrounding the Galactic Center. In it, only minimal forms of intelligence, biological or otherwise, are possible. This means that any ship straying into the Depths will be stranded, effectively permanently. Even if the crew did not die immediately—and some forms of life native to "higher" Zones would likely do so—they would be rendered incapable of even human intelligence, leaving them unable to operate their ship in any meaningful way. Surrounding the Depths is the Slow Zone or Slowness. "Old Earth" is in this Zone, although Earth plays no significant role in the story. Biological intelligence is possible in "the Slowness", but not true, sentient, artificial intelligence. Faster than light travel (FTL) is impossible in the Slow Zone. Faster-than-light communication is impossible into or out of the Slow Zone. As the boundaries of the Zones are subject to change, accidental entry into the Slow Zone is a major hazard at the "Bottom" of the Beyond. Starships which operate near the Beyond/Slow Zone border often have an auxiliary Bussard ramjet drive, so that if they accidentally stray into the Slow Zone, they will at least have a backup (sub-light) drive to try to reach the Beyond. Such ships also tend to include "coldsleep" equipment, as it is likely that any such return will still take many lifetimes for most species. The next layer outward is the Beyond, within which artificial intelligence, FTL travel, and FTL communication are possible. All human civilizations in the Beyond are descended from a single ethnic Norwegian group. The original settlement of this group is known as Nyjora; other human settlements in the Beyond include Straumli Realm and Sjandra Kei. In the Beyond, FTL travel is accomplished by making many small "jumps" across space, with the efficiency of the drive increasing the farther a ship travels from the galactic core. The Beyond is not a homogeneous zone; it includes the "High Beyond", "Middle Beyond", and the "Bottom of the Beyond", depending on distance from the galactic core. The Beyond is populated by a very large number of interstellar and intergalactic civilizations which are linked by an FTL communication network, "the Net", sometimes cynically called the "Net of a Million Lies". The Net is depicted as working much like the Usenet network in the early 1990s, with transcripts of messages containing header and footer information as one would find in such forums. The outermost layer, containing the galactic halo, is the Transcend, within which incomprehensible, superintelligent beings dwell. When a "Beyonder" civilization reaches the point of technological singularity, it can "Transcend", becoming a "Power". Such Powers always seem to relocate to the Transcend, seemingly necessarily, where they become engaged in activities which are entirely mysterious to those in the Beyond. == Plot == An expedition from Straumli Realm, a human civilization in the High Beyond, investigates a newly discovered data archive in the Low Transcend. The expedition's facility, High Lab, is gradually compromised by a superintelligence that is accidentally awoken by the researchers. This superintelligence is later known as the Blight. Shortly before the Blight's final "flowering", two self-aware entities, created similarly to the Blight, plot to aid the humans before the Blight can gain its full powers. Finally recognizing their danger, the High Lab researchers attempt to flee in two ships. The Blight destroys one ship; a second ship, carrying many High Lab children in coldsleep boxes, escapes. This ship lands on a distant planet at the Bottom of the Beyond. The planet is occupied by dog-like creatures, dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as group minds. The Tines have a level of technology comparable to the human Middle Ages. Upon landing, however, the two surviving adults, Arne and Sjana Olnsdot, are ambushed and killed by Tine fanatics known as Flenserists, in whose realm they have landed. The Flenserists capture their children, Jefri and Johanna. Johanna is rescued by a Tine named Peregrine and taken to a neighboring kingdom ruled by Woodcarver. A distress signal from the Straumli ship eventually reaches Relay, a major information provider for the Net. A Transcendent being named "Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it. Old One then reconstitutes a human man named Pham Nuwen from the wreckage of a spaceship to act as its agent. Pham remains unsure if he is a construct or if his memories are real. Ravna Bergsndot, the only human Relay employee, traces the Straumli ship's signal to the Tines' world and persuades her employer to investigate. Ravna contracts the merchant vessel Out of Band II to transport her and Pham. The ship is owned by two Skroderiders, Blueshell and Greenstalk. Before the mission is launched, the Blight launches a surprise attack on Relay and kills Old One. As Old One dies, it downloads its anti-Blight information into Pham. Pham, Ravna and the Skroderiders barely escape Relay's destruction in the Out of Band II. During their journey to Tine's World, Ravna communicates with Jefri. Jefri is manipulated to believe that Woodcarver is his enemy. The Flenserist leaders, Steel and Tyrathect, use Ravna's information to develop advanced technology such as cannon and radio communication. Meanwhile, Johanna and the knowledge stored in her dataset device help Woodcarver rapidly develop as well. The Blight expands, taking over several civilizations, brainwashing their populations, and seizing archives in the Beyond. On the Net, some claim that humans are the means by which the Blight is able to spread. Anti-human fanatics destroy the entire civilization of Sjandra Kei, which is Ravna's home world. The Out of Band II is pursued by three fleets: anti-human fanatics, survivors from Sjandra Kei, and a shadow fleet controlled by the Blight. During the pursuit, Ravna and Pham learn that every member of the Skroderider species can be subverted by the Blight; this drives a wedge between the crew members. Ships from Sjandra Kei sacrifice themselves to delay the Blight and the anti-human ships, allowing the Out of Band II to reach Tine's World before the Blight. When the Out of Band II arrives at Tine's World, the humans ally with Woodcarver to defeat the Flenserists and rescue Jefri. Blueshell sacrifices himself to rescue Jefri. Pham then initiates an anti-Blight Countermeasure, which was aboard the humans' ship. The Countermeasure extends the Slow Zone outward by thousands of light years. This envelops and destroys the Blight, but results in the destruction of thousands of civilizations and trillions of deaths. The humans are stranded on the Tines' World, now in the depths of the Slow Zone. Activating the Countermeasure proves fatal to Pham, but before he dies, the remnant of Old One reveals to him that, although his body is a reconstruction, his memories are indeed real. == Related works == Vinge first used the concepts of "Zones of Thought" in a 1988 novella The Blabber, which occurs after Fire. Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky (1999) is a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep set 20,000 years earlier and featuring Pham Nuwen. Vinge's The Children of the Sky, "a near-term sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep", set ten years later, was released in October 2011. Vinge's former wife, Joan D. Vinge, has also written s