Converging on The Customer

Three categories of information—computing, knowledge, and communications—are converging in a model that places the consumer at the center of a technological and business revolution. As an enabler of communications, and the aspect of the convergence model getting the most press, the Internet encourages companies to rethink the enterprise and to change the way they do business.     

Converging content: diverging law

While traditional media continues to be available and to be regulated according to its specific formats, new media poses challenges for that regulation. Much of the content traditionally found and regulated in its distinctive formats is now also found in new media, and particularly on the Internet. This convergence of content, coupled with the divergence of content regulation, is the focus of this paper. This paper looks to some of the challenges faced in attempts to regulate new media in line with traditional media. It illustrates some current 'offline' controls to give a picture of the variety of schemes applying to traditional media. It then sketches briefly the content control regime for the Internet in Australia which was introduced by the Online Services Amendment (1999), and discusses its results. The paper then notes both regulatory and practical inconsistencies in the control of Internet content and content in other media. Finally, the paper looks to the possibilities, and the difficulties, of establishing more uniform content regulation for a variety of different media forms.     

进化策略求解Hopfield神经网络

提出了一种进化策略求解ＨＯｐｆｉｅｌｄ神经网络的方法。该进化策略分三个阶段,即第一阶段只在较小区间上求出局部优化解;然后,在此基础上,由第二阶段求出较大区间上的局部优化解;最后由第三阶段求出全局优化解。同时采用Ｈｏｐｆｉｅｌｄ神经网络动态方程指导第一阶段的局部进化策略的进化方向,因而大大加快了优化搜索速度。在分阶段的进化策略中,其第一阶段只需搜索较小区间、第二和第三阶段的搜索则建立在其前一阶段的基     

Converging coolness and investigating its relation to user experience

Recently a number of studies appeared that operationalised coolness and explored its relation to digital products. Literature suggests that perceived coolness is another factor of user experience, and this adds to an existing explosion of dimensions related to aesthetics, hedonic quality, pragmatic quality, attractiveness, etc. A critical challenge highlighted in prior research is to study the relationships among those factors and so far, no studies have empirically examined the relationship between coolness and other established user experience factors. In this paper, we address this challenge by presenting two studies one that focuses on factors from two cool questionnaires, and one that compares them against existing User eXperience (UX) factors. Our findings show that factors from the two cool questionnaires converge and they also converge to existing, established UX factors. Thus, 11 distinct cool and UX factors converge into 5 for the case of mobile devices. Our findings are important for researchers, as we demonstrate through a validated model that coolness is part of UX research, as well as for practitioners, by developing a questionnaire that can reliably measure both perceived inner and outer coolness as well as the overall coolness judgement based on 5 factors and 21 items.     

Clustering: An Essential Step from Diverging to Converging

Within the context of new product development processes and the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process, the authors have come to the view that clustering is to be seen as a separate step in the process of diverging and converging. Clustering is generally presented as part of the converging stages, and as such categorized as a selection technique, which in the authors' view does not do justice to this activity. It is about expanding knowledge, about connecting ideas, and connecting ideas to problem statements, functionalities, and values and consequences. It is about building a shared understanding, in other words about ‘making sense’, an essential creative activity in the development of concepts and, although different from a more freewheeling divergent phase, can be as creative and maybe even more so. Four kinds of clusterings are distinguished: object clustering, morphological clustering, functional clustering and gestalt clustering. Object clustering is mainly aimed at categorizing ideas into an overviewable set of groups of ideas. No special connections are being made, other then looking for similarities. Morphological clustering is used to split up a problem into subproblems after which the ideas generated are considered as subsolutions which can then be combined into concepts. Functional clustering is interesting when different approaches can be chosen to answer some question. It permits a more strategic choice to be made. Gestalt clustering is a more synthesis like approach, often with a more metaphoric and artistic stance. Collage is a good example of such clustering. General guidelines for clustering are: use a bottom‐up process of emergence; postpone early rationalisations and verbalisations; start grouping ideas on the basis of feeling and intuition; and use metaphoric names to identify clusters.     

A Continuous-Time Recursive Fixed-Lag Smoother Converging in Finite Time

In this technical note, we propose a new fixed-lag smoother that estimates the fixed-delayed state for a stochastic continuous-time system. The estimation error variance of the proposed smoother is minimized under the constraint that the estimated state converges to the real state exactly in finite time after noises or uncertainties disappear. For numerical computing, the proposed smoother is represented in a recursive form. Unlike other approaches, any additional processes such as batch processing and sampling data through discrete-time techniques are not required to achieve the finite time convergence. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the finite time convergence of the proposed smoother in comparison with the asymptotic convergence of an optimal smoother.      

Converging multistep methods for initial value problems involving multivalued maps

Every consistent and strongly stable multistep method of stepnumberk yields a solution, of the setvalued initial value problem \(\dot y \in F(t,y),y(t_0 ) = y_0 \) . The setF(t, z) is assumed to be nonvoid, convex and closed. Upper semicontinuity of F with respect to both variables is not required everywhere. If the initial value problem is uniquely solvable, the solutions of the multistep method will converge to the solution of the continuous problem. These results carry over to functional differential equations \(\dot y \in F(t,M_t y)\) of Volterra type and to discontinuous problems \(\dot y(t) = f(t,M_t y)\) in the sense of A.F. Filippov. A difference method is applied to the discontinuous delay equation \(\ddot x(t) + 2D\dot x(t) + \omega ^2 x(t) = = - \operatorname{sgn} (x(t - \tau ) + \dot x(t - \tau ))\) . In the limit τ→0 we obtain results for the problem \(\ddot x + 2D\dot x + \omega ^2 x = = - \operatorname{sgn} (x + \dot x)\) which cannot be solved classically everywhere.     

基于时空轨迹的移动对象汇聚模式挖掘算法

移动对象的聚集模式是时空轨迹模式挖掘中的重要课题,它研究移动对象群体在多个连续时刻中的空间聚集问题。现有的聚集模式基于共现模式进行定义,挖掘结果中夹杂大量非运动的聚集群体,严重影响模式挖掘的效果。为了解决此问题,本文提出了基于群体运动过程建模的汇聚模式。该模式定义从群体运动形态出发进行设计,准确识别向心运动的移动群体,有效排除非聚集类型运动群体的干扰。本文设计并实现了汇聚模式挖掘（Converging pattern mining,CPM）算法,该算法首先定位密度峰值点,确定候选的汇聚中心区域,然后依次识别每个时刻的汇聚群体,按照群体汇聚的持续性要求识别汇聚模式。基于真实轨迹数据进行实验,结果验证了本文提出的CPM算法在挖掘效果和算法效率的有效性。     

Some Extensions of the Converging Squares Algorithm for Image Feature Analysis

In [1], the converging squares algorithm was introduced as a method designed to effectively and efficiently locate peaks in data of two dimensions or higher. In this correspondence, the performance of the algorithm on a signal in noise is examined, and some extensions of the algorithm-beyond peak-picking-are introduced. The minimum-area enclosing square is one extension, which locates an image region in a uniform background, and finds the smallest square which entirely encloses it. The maximum-difference enclosing square is another extension by which a global feature of the image is found which separates it into a foreground square region and background region, based on the maximum statistical difference between the two. Some applications of these extensions are shown, including object location, tracking of a moving object, and adaptive binarization.     

一种基于输入队列的交换机快速会聚调度算法

随着网络带宽需求的增加,高性能交换机的地位日趋重要。交换机包括3个部分:(1)在输入端口保存到达此端口的信元的输入缓冲。(2)在输出端口保存将要发送的信元的输出缓冲。(3)调度输入信元到所需输出端口的调度模块。当由多个输入端口要求输出到同一输出端口的时候由此调度算法来裁决一个输入输出对。一般而言,交换机的性能很大一部分取决于这一调度算法的性能,但并不希望这一调度算法成为交换机性能的瓶颈。该文讨论了许多近年来常用的算法,在此基础上同时提出一种新的的调度算法。通过计算机模拟结果可以看出这种算法具有更高的效率,更快的会聚速度。     

网络融合趋势及电信运营商大客户支持体系的演进

整体的网络融合必然是分阶段、分领域、分应用而步完成的浙进过程，随着客户需求的不断变化和竞争的加剧，运营商的网络会向降低运维成本和方便、灵活地推出新产品的方向演进。     

Converging to periodic schedules for cyclic scheduling problems with resources and deadlines

Cyclic scheduling has been widely studied because of the importance of applications in manufacturing systems and in computer science. For this class of problems, a finite set of tasks with precedence relations and resource constraints must be executed repetitively while maximizing the throughput. Many applications also require that execution schedules be periodic i.e. the execution of each task is repeated with a fixed global period w.The present paper develops a new method to build periodic schedules with cumulative resource constraints, periodic release dates and deadlines. The main idea is to fix the period w, to unwind the cyclic scheduling problem for some number of iterations, and to add precedence relations so that the minimum time lag between two successive executions of any task equals w. Then, using any usual (not cyclic) scheduling algorithm to compute task starting times for the unwound problem, we prove that either the method converges to a periodic schedule of period w or it fails to compute a schedule. A non-polynomial upper bound on the number of iterations to unwind in order to guarantee that cyclic precedence relations and resource constraints are fulfilled is also provided. This method is successfully applied to a real-life problem, namely the software pipelining of inner loops on an embedded VLIW processor core by using a Graham list scheduling algorithm.     

Web 2.0 and SOA: Converging Concepts Enabling the Internet of Services

Recently, the relationship between Web 2.0 and service-oriented architectures (SOAs) has received an enormous amount of coverage because of the notion of complexity-hiding and reuse, along with the concept of loosely coupling services. Some argue that Web 2.0 and SOAs have significantly different elements and thus cannot be regarded as parallel philosophies. Others, however, consider the two concepts as complementary and regard Web 2.0 as the global SOA. This paper investigate these two philosophies and their respective applications from both a technological and business perspective     

Converging Coevolutionary Algorithm for Two-Person Zero-Sum Discounted Markov Games With Perfect Information

This note proposes a novel population-based coevolutionary algorithm, called the ldquolocal-equilibrium-based coevolutionary algorithmrdquo (LECA), for solving infinite-horizon-discounted two-person zero-sum Markov games with perfect information. LECA ldquorandomizesrdquo a simplified variant of Raghavan and Syed's algorithm, which adapted Howard's policy improvement algorithm for solving Markov decision processes into a ldquonegotiation processrdquo algorithm between two players via a lexicographical search. LECA runs over relatively small sets of policies such that the negotiation process proceeds with the sets via ldquopolicy switching,rdquo rather than with the entire policy spaces of the players. The use of policy switching eliminates the action spaces manipulation in value iteration and policy iteration-type algorithms and derives a novel concept of ldquolocal equilibrium.rdquo With the concept incorporated into the LECA, a ldquolocalrdquo equilibrium policy pair is identified as an ldquoelitist,rdquo and kept in the next population, directing the LECA toward finding an equilibrium or a near-equilibrium policy pair. The algorithm is especially targeted to problems where the state space is small but the action spaces of the players are extremely large, and converges with probability one to an equilibrium policy pair for a given game.     

Converging technologies and a modern man: emergence of a new type of thinking

The processes of changing the way of thinking, typical for modern people, and subsequently shaping a new “Homo clicking” individual are analyzed. The authors consider a specific mindset of “Homo clicking” illustrating it with some patterns and modes of action that characterize individuals in the human–machine interface. Under this frame, the influence of modern converging technologies upon human conduct is examined and functional redistribution between human beings and technical devices is outlined. In the literature, the latter phenomenon is referred to as “life outsourcing.” This material is used to introduce several principles that form the basis for a new type of thought and actions of “Home clicking”: snapping, transforming trust into knowledge, and action reduction. Reducing the traditional classic understanding of a human act of thinking to a pattern of a thinking act as a need-satisfying act is described. In the last section, we introduce an extension of Searle’s Chinese room, which can be seen as a possible consequence of intensive exploitation of technologies.