text:
Q: Windows process can't close my application I have a windows form application which is writing bunch of stuff in the database. Now some time ago I was asking for the solution of how to be sure that all requests (writing to the database) has been done before windows form is closed.
The reason why am I doing this is because it will be a self standing application which has an automatic shut down and therefore I need to be able to finish all my writing and reading from the database and be sure when I am closing form that all the job is done.
Before I tried this solution I had a problem of cutting a connection when writing in the database because of a form closing.
Now the problem is that when I have a shut down process my windows form application won't close, so after some time it just cuts of the electricity which is not what I need.
Here is the code, and please tell me what is wrong with it? I need to close the form when program is sure that no task is working in the background.
private void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
{
      // this.Visible = false; // optional
      // this.ShowInTaskbar = false; // optional
      Task db = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => DBUpdate());
      Task.WaitAll(db);
      if (this.shutdownRequested)
            Process.Start("shutdown.exe", "-s");
 }

 protected override void WndProc(ref Message ex)
 {
      if (ex.Msg == WM_QUERYENDSESSION)
      {
           Message MyMsg = new Message() { Msg = WM_CANCELMODE };
           base.WndProc(ref MyMsg);
           this.shutdownRequested = true;
      } else {
           base.WndProc(ref ex);
      }
 }

EDIT:
I just realized that this is working when I click the X button and form starts to close, but when pc goes into the shutdown phase then its not. Any idea? Maybe I need to change a event on something else and not on the FormClosing ? One more thing. I have saved a priority of the application process as a real-time process.

A: If your process takes more than a couple of seconds, the OS will kill it during a shutdown. Your only hope is to abort the shutdown, do the work and call it again.
Your process only takes a couple of seconds, and is dependent on the instance of the Form, so this solution does not create a new thread to do the work in. So you should hide the form to prevent use interaction, as the main thread will be locked up while this process is run.
If a shutdown event tries to close the application. The application will abort the shutdown. It will need administrator privileges to be able to do this though.
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Timer = System.Windows.Forms.Timer;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        private bool _isClosing;
        private bool _isRunningUpdate;
        private bool _isShutdown;
        private Timer timer;

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            FormClosing += Form1_FormClosing;
            timer = new Timer();
        }

        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {

        }

        private void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.CloseReason == CloseReason.WindowsShutDown)
            {
                // Abort Shutdown
                Process.Start("shutdown.exe", "-a");
                _isShutdown = true;
            }

            if (!_isRunningUpdate && _isClosing) return;

            // Set isClosing to true
            _isClosing = true;

            if (!_isRunningUpdate)
            {
                _isRunningUpdate = true;
                timer.Tick += DbUpdate;
                timer.Interval = 500;
                timer.Enabled = true;
                timer.Start();
            }

            // Cancel current close request
            e.Cancel = true;

            // Optional Hide() --- could display message
            // Hide();
        }

        private void DbUpdate(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            timer.Stop();
            Thread.Sleep(3000);

            _isRunningUpdate = false;
            if (_isShutdown)
                Process.Start("shutdown.exe", "-s -t 10");
            if (_isClosing)
                Close();
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Why is the well-being of the two groups during the day quite similar whereas the life-satisfaction differs so distinctly? The power of adaptation ensures that people who experience either positive or negative events are able to return quickly on a stable happiness-level. That means, either he who wins the lottery or he who loses his job reaches after a certain time the same happiness level as before. In contrast, the social norms do not change. The social psychologist Marie Jahoda presents five points which differentiate the daily life of an employed and of an unemployed person. There is in detail the time structure, the social contacts beyond the family, the experience to work for a social purpose, regular activities and finally the status and the identity. It is here that the key factor seems to lie.
People thus also unemployed people orientate themselves on social norms. One claims e.g. those members of a society work as long as the society determines. If they deviate from this guideline, they consequently violate this norm that leads to the exclusion of this social group. This leads to a missing appreciation from this social group and thus the self-image of the unemployed person changes negatively. Quickly the feeling arises of being worth less when unemployed than when with job. Consequently, unemployment threatens the identity. Being unemployed reduces the self-worth, because the unemployed person does not seem to be able to fulfil his own as well as the societal requirements. One can conclude that unemployed people seem to be unhappier because they deviate from the norm. Therefore, it is reasonable why unemployed people are happier in regions with high unemployment. There they do not count as an exception from the norm since many other people feel the same. A feeling of solidarity arises thus a single unemployed person does not feel isolated.


We are delighted to be working with Hanbury Manor Marriott Hotel and Country Club to showcase work by artists associated with Courtyard Arts across this prestigious venue.
The substantial new collection can be enjoyed by visitors and guests at the estate, with all works available for purchase. Encompassing painting, print, drawing, mixed media and photography, the collection includes work from over fifty selected artists curated by our Gallery team. This ongoing project allows us to provide a platform for creative talents in the region.
The first phase of the project was completed in January 2019, with work introduced predominantly to the older parts of the hotel including the striking Oak Hall. Phase 2 is underway to exhibit work by further artists across additional parts of the site.
Fuller details of participating artists and work to follow.


- Suitable for GASOLINE, DIESEL, OIL, WATER.
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SMALL SELF SUCTION PUMP FOR GASOLINE, DIESEL, OIL OR WATER TRANSFER, WORKS FROM 220V AC.
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text:
by Kaiser Chiefs
Album: Stay Together (2016)
Over, over and over 'til you go and lock your heart
Open, totally broken when you've tumbled through the dark
Hold me, hold me closer 'til you're breaking up, don't leave
Fold it, fold it over, eight times then start again
I was your world, I was okay
And I was the light that shined on every day
And I was the light that followed you always
But if we've only got one parachute
If we've only got one parachute
You know I'd give it to you, you
I'd give it to you
Nowhere, nowhere is home unless we're both in the same place
Older, shoulder to shoulder 'cause we don't have separate ways
Hold me, hold me closer 'til we're breaking up, don't leave
Folded, I've folded it over, eight times then start again
Out of mind, it's not important anymore
I realize
That you're at the core of what I need
And if we've only got one parachute
I'd give it to you Writer/s: Brian Higgins, Charles Wilson, Danny Shah, James Rix, Matthew Gray, Owen Parker, Tobey Le Scott, Vijay Msitry
Publisher: CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Songtrust Ave, Warner Chappell Music, Inc., WORDS & MUSIC A DIV OF BIG DEAL MUSIC LLC
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In the INXS song "Devil Inside," the devil represents chaos. "Every time you think something's right, he comes in and changes everything," Michael Hutchence said.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Installation procedures of early TeX installations First some background information.
The old distributions of TeX included two programs, initex and virtex.
Initex could create format files, and virtex could load them.
These older versions of TeX (and LaTeX) recommended a special installation procedure to speed up the loading of format files. It included the following approximate steps which varied depending on system:

*

*initex plain \dump to load plain.tex macros, create plain.fmt and
exit program

*virtex &plain to load plain.fmt and wait for more input

*system command to create a core dump of program, ^C, control-\ or
similar

*system command to produce an executable from the core dump, undump
or similar

Now the resulting executable could be run with the plain format preloaded.
My questions concern the last two steps above:

*

*How common was it for TeX systems to use this feature during the
early eighties?

*How much faster was it to load the format files plain.fmt and latex.fmt
this way?

*When and why did this procedure of creating a new executable from a
core dump stop being used?

*How did Knuth feel about recommending such a "hackish" procedure of
installation?
I understand that question four might only be answerable by one person but maybe someone who was around at that time knows.
Sidenote: Early Emacs versions also employed this method and even included code to create an executable from a core image. Perl also had the
option -u to create a core dump with the same purpose of speeding up the loading time.

A: In answer to your question 4, he thought it "paid off handsomely"...
tex.web says:
The \.{VIRTEX} program cannot read a format file instantaneously, of course;
the best implementations therefore allow for production versions of \TeX\ that
not only avoid the loading routine for \PASCAL\ object code, they also have
a format file pre-loaded. This is impossible to do if we stick to standard
\PASCAL; but there is a simple way to fool many systems into avoiding the
initialization, as follows:\quad(1)~We declare a global integer variable
called |ready_already|. The probability is negligible that this
variable holds any particular value like 314159 when \.{VIRTEX} is first
loaded.\quad(2)~After we have read in a format file and initialized
everything, we set |ready_already:=314159|.\quad(3)~Soon \.{VIRTEX}
will print `\.*', waiting for more input; and at this point we
interrupt the program and save its core image in some form that the
operating system can reload speedily.\quad(4)~When that core image is
activated, the program starts again at the beginning; but now
|ready_already=314159| and all the other global variables have
their initial values too. The former chastity has vanished!

In other words, if we allow ourselves to test the condition
|ready_already=314159|, before |ready_already| has been
assigned a value, we can avoid the lengthy initialization. Dirty tricks
rarely pay off so handsomely.
@^dirty \PASCAL@>
@^system dependencies@>

A: TeX was written at a time when programs operated under harsher constraints of memory (and speed), so it had to resort to many tricks and to things that are now oddities but were common at the time. Three are relevant to this question (INITEX, fmt files, core dumps); more on each of them below (though I realize the question is mainly about the last one).
These are mentioned in section 1331 (part 51: The main program) of the TeX program, as quoted in David's answer. (There's also a talk by Knuth about just these things. Over 3 days in July 1982 he gave 12 lectures addressed (I think) to (what we would call) system administrators at other universities and such places, who would install the new "portable" TeX program on their systems. This is the last of them: The Internal Details of TeX82 - Session 12. Watching those videos may answer some of the questions.)

First, the source code of TeX has some compile-time variants (like #ifdef ... #endif in C, implemented as init ... tini in the TeX program), which if turned on, result in a separate program INITEX (which has the additional ability to initialize certain internal data structures, compute hyphenation patterns, dump format files, etc). The reason for having INITEX be a separate program is that it needs extra memory to do its work (e.g. computing hyphenation patterns requires allocating memory for a trie), which leaves less memory for typesetting.
When compiled without these flags we would get a separate program, called the production version of TeX, which may either be VIRTEX or TEX (more about this later). (Today with contemporary TeX distributions e.g. TeX Live and MiKTeX, there are no longer two separate programs compiled and distributed; instead we have a single program that will behave like INITEX if given the -ini flag.)

Second format files. This is closely related to the first, as the format files are dumped by INITEX. For example, after starting INITEX (or tex -ini today) we could do \input plain and then \dump. What this does is dump out a lot of TeX's program state to a .fmt file, so that the production TeX program can simply load the format file instead of having to process plain.tex (or as it was called then, BASIC.TEX: incidentally this is why in The TeXbook the documentation of the plain format is in Appendix B: Basic Control Sequences).
In the video linked above, somewhere around the 13-minute mark, he mentions some numbers that give an idea of the order of magnitude of time saved: he says that opening and reading about a dozen short .tfm files (as INITEX or tex -ini does with \input plain) took over 15 seconds, so it was faster to read a single format file.

Third, core dumps / undump. As I understand it, the idea was that your program's memory could be all dumped out to a file, and that you could "undump": when your program was started all its memory would be initialized as during the dump, and the program would start at the beginning.
There is an explanation and history of this feature here, in a comment by David R. Fuchs, who (see interview: 1, 2) was Knuth's "right-hand man" when writing TeX (the current version of TeX, i.e. TeX82):

Executable program files were not much more than memory images; to run a program, the OS pretty much just mapped the executable image into your address space and jumped to the start. But when the program stopped, your entire state was still there, sitting in your address space […]
The OS also had a built-in command to allow you to SAVE the current memory image back into a new executable file. There wasn't much to this command, either, since executables weren't much more than a memory image to begin with. So, the equivalent of dump/undump was really just built into the OS, and wasn't considered any big deal or super-special feature. Of course, all language runtimes knew all about this, so they were always written to understand as a matter of course that they had to be able to deal with it properly. It pretty much came naturally if you were used to that environment, and wasn't a burden.
Thus, when TeX (and I presume the various Lisp and Emacs and etc. that were birthed on these machines) were designed, it was completely expected that they'd work this way. Cycles were expensive, as was IO; so in TeX's case, for example, it took many seconds to read in the basic macro package and standard set of font metric files and to preprocess the hyphenation patterns into their data structure. By doing a SAVE of the resulting preloaded executable once during installation, everyone then saved these many seconds each time they ran TeX.

You can read more (about other systems/programs) in the comment, and in the two discussion threads in which this came up: one on the Emacs dumper (2016), and on making the Atom editor about 50% faster (2017).
Also, in the video, Knuth says this sort of system would be available at most places, or at least the lucky ones. (13:57: "on most—anyway, on lar—on lucky systems, let's say".) (If your system didn't have it, you could still use the format file feature: you'd start VIRTEX and load the plain format with &plain, instead of starting INITEX and \input plain.)
So the dump/undump system is not really as arcane as it may sound. And I think you have partly answered your question yourself to some extent, by pointing out that Emacs and Perl had/have similar features.

Fourth, (ha!) is the Pascal coding trick that makes the dump/undump behaviour possible. This from the TeX program:

and

Some analysis (and speculation)
Of the three tricks, the first one (INITEX as a separate program, with different memory characteristics) was just inevitable, to fit within the memory constraints. But the other two (fmt files and dump/undump) seem rather similar (for example the verb "dump" is used for both). Do we need both?
My suspicion is that the fmt file feature was added to TeX because the dump/undump feature was not available everywhere, that it's basically an implementation within TeX of what was in most (but not all) places an OS feature. So the fmt file feature was necessary, as it was the only thing guaranteed to work everywhere.
Could TeX have just the format file feature and not use dump/undump? On certain systems it was forced to, and evidently this was acceptable. On other systems ("the best implementations […] have a format file pre-loaded", "On systems that allow such preloading…") using dump/undump was natural so there's no reason not to. While loading a format did save a lot of time (e.g. that of opening lots of TFM files for font information), there was still work that needed to be done ("The VIRTEX program cannot read a format file instantaneously, of course…"):

*

*Sanity-checking of various compile-time constants for meaningful values,

*Initializing lots of variables to correct values (look at section 21 and over 30 "see also" sections mentioned),

*Open and load the format file (then close it): this is the bulk of the time, and involves undumping a lot of things (section 455): the string pool, the entire dynamic memory (TeX "does nearly all of its own memory allocation"—this is basically a giant array called mem), various tables, etc. Although simply writing the final value of all of these would be faster than doing it one step at a time while processing plain.tex (opening files, defining macros one-by-one instead versus simply writing out the final hash table), it would still a fair bit of time.

So the dump/undump trick is worth doing if available. There are a few problems though:

*

*Even if given the right memory, how would the Pascal program know (if started from the beginning) whether it has already read a format file (i.e. is is being started from such a dump) or not?

*(Mentioned around 16:40) The state of the program at the time of the dump file is actually not exactly right: it has a timestamp of when you started VIRTEX to core-dump, not the time of your job, and it has the wrong \jobname. (You can try this yourself with a modern distribution: if you start with tex -ini (the closest we can get to VIRTEX), then do \input plain and then your doc (hello world \bye or whatever), then you'll get output on plain.dvi.) So we need to re-initialize some of these.
This is where the "dirty trick" comes in: by accessing a global variable that would have initialized to a specific value in the case of the core dump, but uninitialized if started from scratch, we can distinguish the two cases, and (if resuming from a core dump) initialize only those things that need initializing.
This is IMO why DEK says the trick "pays off handsomely" (making this dump/undump possible at all, and saving some time), even though it's a trick that only helps on some systems.

To answer the actual questions asked about dump/undump:

*

*This feature was common: going by the comment of DRF and the video, it was just the usual/sensible way to start (all) programs on many systems (in use at "big CS departments"). But DEK knew this feature didn't exist on all systems.

*It was several (20+) seconds faster to load BASIC.FMT (with VIRTEX) instead of \input BASIC (with INITEX). Not sure how much additional time saving came from the dump/undumping (starting TEX directly), but somehow I suspect it wouldn't have been more than this.

*The feature stopped being used when most people moved to other Operating Systems that didn't natively support dump/undump, and it needed special programs:

But when TeX was ported over to Unix (and then Linux), it came as a bit of a surprise that the model was different, and that there was no convenient, predefined way to get this functionality, and that the runtimes weren't typically set up to make it easy to do. The undump stuff was created to deal with it, but it was never pretty, since it was bolted on.

(Similar thing with unexec in Emacs apparently.)

*Based on the cues we have, we can guess Knuth wouldn't have considered it hackish (this was just how all programs worked), and would have been happy to have found a way to make TeX even faster — see David Carlisle's answer. :-)

A: From the answers and comments given so far I will try to make a summary.

*

*No one knows but it seems it was fairly common.

*One report indicates that it could save on average 30 seconds. See TUGboat Vol 4 No 1

*No one knows precisely but it coincided with TeX moving to newer operating systems which made it less convenient to do so. Late eighties, early nineties perhaps.

*Knuth might not have thought the actual embedding of the format in the executable a hack but he certainly considered the Pascal code he wrote to take advantage of it a hack, even calling it a dirty trick.


Cruze is sleeping in his swing right now and I couldn't help myself. I sat there in front of him just watching him. Taking in his breaths and every movement. It put the biggest lump in my throat. You guys, my baby is THREE MONTHS OLD today and I just can't take it ( I wrote this on Monday).
Three months. I know that's not a lot. He's still a itty baby with so much ahead of him. We still get to look forward to his first steps, first word, first time for a lot of things but my heart is aching at the idea that everyday a bit of his babyness is slipping away.
I feel like this month was HUGE for him. He's really developing his own personality and if I thought he was aware before, whoa. This month he started rolling onto his side. Not his belly yet but I'm thinking that will be soon. He gets himself into a sitting position while lying in his rock n play, bathtub and daddy's arms. He baby talks like he knows what he's saying and laughs at us like he knows what we're saying.
His sleep has improved some although he likes to shake things up for us. Just when we think we have him sleeping through the nights... SURPRISE! He wakes up that night wanting to play and upset that we are putting him back down. His naps have definitely improved though. I sort of gave up on the whole sleep training thing when I realized that it wasn't working for us. He wasn't happy and when baby isn't happy, mommy and daddy aren't happy. My new focus became getting him to sleep full naps whether that be in my arms, in the swing, in bed with me and so on. Once I did this, things changed. He started sleeping better at night and actually being rested through out the day.
My favorite thing this month is that he started "playing" with things. He met Sophie the giraffe and yesterday was his first time picking her up on his own and sticking her in his mouth. (Is it weird that I refer to a teething toy as "her"??) He's also trying his hardest to watch TV! We are in no way supporting this but let me tell you, he will turn his body and fight and squeel as much as he physically can to see the tv if it's on. Most of the time, we just turn it off or one of us will walk with him into another room.
Size: He's wearing 3-6 months and is filling it out quite well. He's even wearing some 6 months items.
Moment of the month: when I put him in the cutest little man outfit and he reduced his father to tears. Seriously, and I thought I couldn't love that man any more. I was wrong.
Oh baby boy, we adore you so much it hurts. Yes, my heart aches for you every moment of every day but it's the best ache ever.
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The Morning Paper isn't trying to be a 'breaking news' site (there are plenty of those already!) — we covered a paper from 1950 last month for example! That said, when exciting research news breaks, of course I'm interested to read up on it. So The Morning Paper tends to be a little late to the party, but in compensation I hope to cover the material in a little more depth than the popular press. Recently there's been some big excitement around Geoff Hinton's work on capsules (and let's not forget the co-authors, Sabour & Frosst), AlphaZero playing Go against itself, and Scharwtz-Ziv & Tishby's information bottleneck theory of deep neural networks. This week I'll be doing my best to understand those papers, and share with you what I can.
There are two capsule-related papers from Hinton. The first of them is from NIPS'17, and it's today's paper choice: 'Dynamic routing between capsules.' Some of the ideas in this paper are superseded by the ICLR'18 submission 'Matrix capsules with EM routing' that we'll look at tomorrow, nevertheless, there's important background information and results here. Strictly, we're not supposed to know that the ICLR'18 submission is by Hinton and team – it's a double blind review process. Clearly not working as designed in this case!
For thirty years, the state-of-the-art in speech recognition used hidden Markov models with Gaussian mixtures, together with a one-of-n representation encoding.
The one-of-n representations that they use are exponentially inefficient compared with, say, a recurrent neural network that uses distributed representations.
Why exponentially ineffecient? To double the amount of information that an HMM (hidden Markov model) can remember we need to square the number of hidden nodes. For a recurrent net we only need to double the number of hidden neurons.
Now that convolutional neural networks have become the dominant approach to object recognition, it makes sense to ask whether there are any exponential inefficiencies that may lead to their demise. A good candidate is the difficulty that convolutional nets have in generalizing to novel viewpoints.
Increase the size of the labelled training set in a similarly exponential way.
The big idea behind capsules (a new kind of building block for neural networks) is to efficiently encode viewpoint invariant knowledge in a way that generalises to novel viewpoints. To do this, capsules contain explicit transformation matrices.
A network layer is divided into many small groups of neurons called "capsules." Capsules are designed to support transformation-independent object recognition.
The activities of the neurons within an active capsule represent the various properties of a particular entity that is present in the image. These properties can include many different types of instantiation parameter such as pose (position, size, orientation), deformation, velocity, albedo, hue, texture, etc.. One very special property is the existence of the instantiated entity in the image.
(Albedo is a measure for reflectance or optical brightness of a surface – I had to look it up!).
The authors describe the role of the capsules as like 'an inverted rendering process' in a graphics pipeline. In a graphics pipeline for example we might start out with an abstract model of a 3D teapot. This will then be placed in the coordinate system of a 3D world, and the 3D world coordinate system will be translated to a 3D camera coordinate system with the camera at the origin. Then lighting and reflections are handled followed by a projection transformation into the 2D view of the camera. Capsules start with that 2D view as input and try to reverse the transformations to uncover the abstract model class (teapot) behind the image.
There are many possible ways to implement the general idea of capsules… In this paper we explore an interesting alternative which is to use the overall length of the vector of instantiation parameters to represent the existence of the entity and to force the orientation of the vector to represent the properties of the entity.
To turn the length of the vector into a probability we need to ensure that it cannot exceed one, which is done by applying a non-linear squashing function that leaves the orientation of the vector unchanged but scales down its magnitude.
Where are coupling coefficients determined by an iterative dynamic routing process we'll look at in the next section.
In convolutional capsule layers each unit in a capsule is a convolutional unit. Therefore, each capsule will output a grid of vectors rather than a single output vector.
In general, the idea is to form a 'parse tree' of the scene. Layers are divided into capsules and capsules recognise parts of the scene. Active capsules in a layer from part of the parse tree, and each active capsule chooses a capsule in the layer above to be its parent in the tree.
The fact that the output of a capsule is a vector makes it possible to use a powerful dynamic routing mechanism to ensure that the output of the capsule gets sent to an appropriate parent in the layer above.
Initially the output is routed to all possible parents, but scaled down by coupling coefficients that sum to 1 (determined by a 'routing softmax').
For each possible parent, the capsule computes a 'prediction vector' by multiplying its own output by a weight matrix.
If the prediction vector has a large scalar product with the output of a possible parent, there is top-down feedback which has the effect of increasing the coupling coefficient for that parent, and decreasing it for other parents.
This type of "routing-by-agreement" should be far more effective than the very primitive form of routing implemented by max-pooling which allows neurons in one layer to ignore all but the most active feature detector in a local pool in the layer below.
To replicate knowledge across space, all but the last layer of capsules are convolutional.
The CapsNet above is trained on MNIST, and then the capsules are probed by feeding perturbed versions of the activity vector into the decoder network to see how the perturbation affects the reconstruction.
Since we are passing the encoding of only one digit and zeroing out other digits, the dimensions of a digit capsule should learn to span the space of variations in the way digits of that class are instantiated. These variations include stroke thickness, skew and width. They also include digit-specific variations such as the length of the tail of a 2.
With a 3-layer network, CapsNet overall achieves a 0.25% test error – an accuracy previously only achieved by deeper networks.
To test the robustness of CapsNet to affine transformation, a CapsNet and traditional CNN were both trained on a padded and translated MNIST training set. The network was then tested on the affNIST data set, in which each example is an MNIST digit with a random small affine transformation. CapsNet and the traditional network achieved similar accuracy (99.23% vs 99.22%) on the expanded MNIST test set. CapsNet scored 79% on the affNIST test set though, handily beating the CNN's score of 66%.
Dynamic routing can be viewed as a parallel attention mechanism that allows each capsule at one level to attend to some active capsules at the level below and to ignore others. This should allow the model to recognise multiple objects in the image even if objects overlap.
And indeed it does! A generated MultiMNIST training and test dataset is created by overlaying one digit on top of another with a shift of up to 4 pixels on each axis. CapsNet is correctly able to segment the image into the two original digits. The segmentation happens at a higher level than individual pixels, and so it can deal correctly with cases where a pixel is in both digits, while still accounting for all pixels.
Research on capsules is now at a similar stage to research on recurrent neural networks for speech recognition at the beginning of this century. There are fundamental representational reasons for believing it is a better approach but it probably requires a lot more insights before it can out-perform a highly developed technology. The fact that a simple capsules system already gives unparalleled performance at segmenting overlapping digits is an early indication that capsules are a direction worth exploring.
Xifeng Guo has a Keras implementation of CapsNet on GitHub which is helpful to study.
Can you comment on the "Replicate feature detectors on a grid that grows exponentially with the number of dimensions"? I didn't quite get it.


Hello and welcome to you all, whether you are preparing to have your baby or are already holding your baby, congratulations! I am here to help you in any way I can. This is the most precious time! My motive is always one of positivity and caring. That is who I am. I am here not only for the Mummy and her baby but also for the family, especially the partner (who is sometimes left a little bit out of the loop!) plus siblings and pets. I am happy to make meals & stay over night, enabling you all to get some rest and be together.
I offer a very bespoke package, as we are all individual so our needs can vary greatly. I believe I am a good listener, a great hugger, very calm plus I know when to be present & when to be in the background. I work mainly on initiative but I am here for you so sometimes you need to share! My Yoga training assists me enormously in keeping it together and breathing.
I now live in Surrey, having spent 26 years living in Southern Spain (fluent in Spanish) I have 3 amazing children aged from 15 – 28. My aim has always been to trust your body, it's capabilities & the power of acceptance.
Personally, I love Yoga, horse riding, swimming, skiing, the outdoors and my family.
Pregnancy, birth and babies are a constant passion in my life!
I am always happy to chat to you about your beautiful journey and any fears.


Our dedication to delivering the very best travel experiences has won us praise not only from our customers, but also from travel professionals and trade publications. We pride ourselves on offering a seamless and specialised customer journey, from the exceptional service and in-depth knowledge of our sales teams, to our best-in-class tour guides and concierges around the globe.
As a result of this dedication, our customer satisfaction and loyalty is incredibly high across our entire portfolio. Our brands frequently receive industry awards and media recognition for their offering.
The range of source markets and destinations covered by Travelopia brands spans all seven continents. This breadth means we can be at the forefront of emerging travel trends, and allows us to easily spot opportunities for exciting and innovative new product.
We cater to all sorts of travellers, whether they're looking for an expertly led group tour or a tailor-made adventure. And while the majority of our portfolio is positioned towards the higher end of the experiential offering, we do have a number of brands offering more affordable price points for those on a tighter budget.
In May 2016, TUI Group announced the rebranding of Specialist Group to Travelopia and it's intention to sell the businesses.


We are scientific start-up poised for rapid growth through our cutting edge optical devices that are used in all kinds of applications. We are currently hiring for a well-rounded Electronics Engineer with a bit of emphasis of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).
The company is growing and we now want to bring some electronics capability in house. We expect to continue to work with the external electronics engineers in parallel, but we want the internal electronics engineer to be able to develop new designs, or tweak old designs as our products evolve. You'll be able to use our current portfolio of designs to help develop new ones.
Over the next few years our requirements will grow so there will be opportunities for career development.
We're looking for someone who is well motivated - it's essential in this kind of environment that you enjoy your work and are adaptable. Expect us to throw challenges at you and to work with Agile methods. Some technical things that we need may be new to you, but we'll offer support and external assistance as required - we are interested in you succeeding!
In return we'll expect you to communicate openly and engage with the company's growth. You'll see almost everything that's happening in the company and be a trusted member of the team.
- Ability to assess new design possibilities and develop product concepts.


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text:
It's Complicated: Forest Management's Wicked Problems
April 3, 2011 by daveiverson
Most people view the problems of forest management from the narrow perspective of their own interests. They understand that there are "many great interests on the National Forests which sometimes conflict a little," as Gifford Pinchot described the situation a century ago. While we must honor specific interests, the Forest Service's charge under Organic Act of 1897 stewardship framing, then broadened and altered by subsequent law is more complex. It is never as easy as getting folks together to sit across a table and working out a "forest plan."
The Forest Service came into being at the end of a very rapacious period in American history. Hence the emphasis on "reserves" in the Organic Act , and later in the Weeks Act of 1911. The public lands had been attacked by many as the so-called settlement of the American West proceeded after the Civil War. It was perceived and used as a "commons" and plundered and burned in too many places. That caused the public outrage that led to the forest reserves.
After successfully bringing the reserves into the national forest system, Gifford Pinchot wanted to regulate all forest practices in the US. Pinchot could not achieve his dream, and the private lands were over-cut for a long time. Even Weyerhauser, where I worked for a summer in the late 1970s—and deemed the "Best of the SOBs" by Forbes magazine, knew but were reluctant to admit in public that their "fee lands" were being cut faster than their "High Yield Forestry" tree farms could replace the volume being cut and milled during that late period of the US housing boom. There would be a "gap." And sure enough, just as soon as their and other private land owners "gaps" appeared the pressure mounted to cut the national forests. And cut they did, until the environmentalists, working public attitudes/pressures/law shut it down, amid great angst for locals particularly in the Northwest.
As the timber wars raged, more people with new-found affluence were using the national forests and more conflicts emerged between recreationists and cattle and sheep grazers on the national forests. And there were two emergent back-country recreationist movements that were destined to clash one with another: the "primitive back-packers" and the "ATV/OHV users". In addition, primitive canoe, kayak, float boat enthusiasts were clashing ever-more with commercial outfitters and motorboat enthusiasts, not to mention personal watercraft. And then there were Wilderness advocates clashing against motorheads of all ilks. The wars were on.
Amid this upwelling of controversy, the US Congress penned the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974. But before the ink dried on that law, timber cutting on the national forests, clearcutting to be precise slammed to an immediate legal halt via a lawsuit on the Izaak Walton League. Then under a panic to reopen clearcutting on the national forests, the National Forest Management Act of 1976 was born, and so was forest-level planning. But there was little in either the RPA nor its amendment the NFMA that was destined to settle the controversies. The controversies were the stuff of wicked problems in public forests as noted first by Allen and Gould in 1986.
So here we are more than 30 years after NFMA, with the same controversies raging, overlaid by more people wanting more (and different) things from the national forests, more people living much closer to the national forests, global climate change controversy, species loss controversies that stem from more people (and roads/dams/power lines/energy corridors/etc.) across the landscape and from more stress on both "sources" (resources) and "sinks" (particularly air and water sheds where pollution is dumped)added in, etc..
And all the while the Forest Service continues to pretend that forest planning, pretty much as designed in the late 1970s, but having dropped economic rationality in favor of ecological rationality, will somehow save the day. Or at least that's how I read the Draft Planning Rule (pdf)
It is my feeling that the only path forward that will afford any chance to allow forest users to sit across tables and talk seriously about prudent use of individual forests, watersheds, or mountain ranges, is for their to be some means to continue to discuss, debate, and develop policy for "broader scale" issues that will set boundaries on discussions of use and conservation at "local scales," including but not limited to the national forest-scale.
That is why I continually suggest that an Adaptive Governance approach be developed in the NFMA rule. It could as well be developed apart from the NFMA rulemaking process. But until and unless it is developed, there is little or no chance that national interest groups will allow for the type across-the-table "use discussions" that more local interest groups advocate. This conclusion is not mine alone. Consider this from 1999, subtitled Making Sense of Wicked Problems:
What is the answer then, to these complex (wicked) problems? How do we organize ourselves to deal with diverse values and expectations about sustainable forest management? Shannon (1992) asserted that the answer lies in the notion of informed governance. That is, we need places where people can learn, question, debate, and come to an informed judgment of what choices are best (FEMAT 1993). In Coming to Public Judgment , Yankelovich (1991) determined that the most critical barrier to making effective and informed choices in a complex world is the lack of forums in which the process of "working through" value differences and preferences can occur. There is growing support among natural resource professionals that a public dialogue must be an integral part of achieving social and political acceptance of forest practices (e.g., Bengston 1994, Clark and Stankey 1991, Shepard 1992). Regardless of value differences, if people are to come to an understanding of, if not agreement on, the problems and choices that confront public lands management, it is likely to be in public forums where open and honest discussion can occur. Unfortunately, from their research on adaptive approaches to forest management, Stankey and Shindler (1997) conclude that such forums are most notable by their scarcity. (emphasis added)
Anybody want to explain to me where I (we) have got it wrong?
[Note this post was precipitated by this comment. Thanks Brian]
Categories adaptive management, collaboration and public involvement, Planning Rule Development Process Post navigation
Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
Desired Future: Whose Desire? What Future? Why?
12 thoughts on "It's Complicated: Forest Management's Wicked Problems"
Dave, I appreciate your posting these last few weeks..
If I understand what you are saying, you are saying:
(1) These problems are wicked and need dialogue and people sharing views and perspectives to move forward
(2) but some questions are broader than local (where it is fairly easy for that kind of collaboration to take place) and need fora at the right levels for the decisions
and (3) those fora don't yet exist .
Is that what you are saying?
Is that right?
Dave Iverson
That's pretty much it, except for the idea that if the Forest Service ever wants the wars to move toward fierce conversations instead, they had better wake up to adaptive governance with a "heavy dose" of collaboration. Where "collaboration" looks more like "strategic arms limitations talks" (SALT) than the inform and involve engagement that is all too common in natural resources circles.
OK, Dave, you lost me with the SALT reference. Can you elaborate?
Hamis Nev
I've been following the planning rule revision effort for the past 10 years or so, and I can't make any sense of it all. Like many I've wondered if the USFS leadership is simply incompetent, or if they intend to fail so completely that Congress will have to act to make things better.
I agree that we've got wicked problems in public lands management. No matter what happens someone ends up under the bus, and if unsatisfied stakeholders have the resources they can use the courts or political connections to throw someone else under the bus instead. And it goes around and around.
Adaptive governance, well executed, could maybe make things a little better. Maybe. I'm skeptical.
Hamis- does your name mean "false name" in Hungarian? Just curious.
Yes, but I have good reasons for using a false name. Maybe I should pick something less obvious.
it wasn't that obvious. I am more curious than your average (Smokey) bear.
I suggested in a reply to Sharon that collaboration in the "Forest Wars" setting is more akin to "Strategic Arms Limitation Talks" than the typical inform and involve meetings that the FS usually stages. I used to talk about this a lot in the early days of "collaboration chatter" in the FS, but I can't find any hyperlinks right now. Running from 1969 to 1979, when the US and the USSR were in the early stages of negotiating Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties, it was noted that sometimes weeks would be spent just deciding who would sit where. Then the talks would proceed, break up, reconvene, etc. Tough issues, tough players, and agreements a very long time in the making.
So too if the FS ever gets serious about working out differences in the Forest Wars.
Likening the Forest Service to the Russian Communist regime. Oh, how far we have come, so far! During my career, the average cut tree diameter of my first timber sale was 47″ dbh (never got logged). The average diameter of my last timber sale (2007) was 14″ dbh. Yep, that's just not "serious" enough, eh, Dave? Stubborn Commies?!?
Dave- do you think this approach to budget cutting in schools would be a good model for SALT-like talks?
The approach you reference uses "interest-based bargaining" as opposed to "position-based bargaining. That is like the SALT talks. Unlike the SALT talks, however this was a one day, 17 hr. negotiation instead of a series of discussions/agreement-building sessions.
What distinguishes this process from traditional negotiations … is that parties don't come to the table with specific proposals to accomplish an end. Instead, they openly express their concerns, needs and interests, and try to hammer out a solution acceptable to all.
"Generally speaking," Numair says, "it's easier to use this process when there are gains to be had for each side. …
Summit participants agreed that whatever budget proposals emerged would be a "package deal" — an all-or-nothing proposition in which individual elements couldn't be "cherry- picked" for change. …
A big part of workable process will be to use techniques that are already in use in the USFS, via Dialogos. But we've yet to see the WO unveil a broader strategy for use of dialogic techniques generally. I view blogs like this as an extended form of dialogue, that is if/when we can get people to settle-down long enough to engage in interest-based thought/policy-development.
I just found a particularly good article in Ecology and Society that looks at using adaptive management as a conflict resolution tool: Adaptive Management Planning Projects as Conflict Resolution Processes, Greg Walkerden, 2006. From the introduction:
Lawrence Susskind remarks (Susskind 1994:7), "Too few people realize that the processes used to negotiate global agreements are as important as the technical capabilities and scientific understanding that the negotiators bring to the bargaining table." This is equally true at regional and local scales, of course. The design of processes to facilitate decision making in multifaceted, contested situations is a central issue in natural resource and environmental management. …
[How] can adaptive management planning processes be adapted so that they can work better as conflict resolution processes? This is a pivotal question for practitioners, because processes that both probe uncertainty and engage conflict well are essential for good policy development. Science derived processes like adaptive management planning address uncertainty much more skillfully than they address conflict. On the other hand, processes derived from bargaining traditions such as principled negotiation (Fisher and Ury 1981) engage conflict much more skillfully than they engage uncertainty. Crossing the two can lead us to process designs that are a better fit to these science intensive public policy conflicts.


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We Danes are fond of our welfare society and of living in a free and democratic country. We also pride ourselves of being among the most satisfied and happiest people in the world.
We like working, but we also enjoy having time off and spending it with our family.
We highly appreciate that we have fresh air, clean water, and bathing water, and that we can freely move about in nature. We would also very much like to take good care of nature, and many prefer organics and green energy.
We would like to live comfortably, and we are fond of gathering family and friends around a good meal, preferably prepared from fresh and local produce. That's what we call "hygge" = having a good time!
The Danish concept of "hygge" is a wide term, covering everything which is pleasant, nice, friendly, comfortable, relaxing, safe, and often also homely.
We enjoy ourselves when we have visitors, go for a walk with the family, have lunch with our colleagues, go out for a meal with friends, drink a cup of coffee with our neighbours or our friends, watch television, or play games together with our children. "Hygge" is often associated with joint adventures, but we can also have a good time on our own reading a good book, drinking a cup of coffee and lighting candles, or pottering around in the garden. That is indeed "hygge"!
We Danes are also renowned for our associational life. We have a long tradition for joining forces and setting up an association for anything and everything. In particular, we gather around leisure activities in the associations. The Sports Confederation of Denmark (DIF) alone has around 9,000 sports clubs, with a total membership of approximately 1.9 members. We Danes also like to join voluntary work in associations and institutions.
In Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality we are at the top – when it comes to associations and voluntary work. More than 800 different associations can be found in Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality. In all towns and villages, you will for example find a number of different civic associations and sports associations, whose members are diligent users of both the nature and the 26 sports- and swimming facilities and outdoor facilities. The village of Spjald holds a record – out of 1,200 inhabitants - every third inhabitant is a member of the football club.
Quite a lot of the citizens in Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality are also dedicated and passionate volunteers in their leisure time. As many as 57% lend a hand to some kind of voluntary work. By comparison, the figure is 38% on a national level.
The Danish society is the most trust-based society in general in the world, with 76% being of the conviction that you can trust strangers. In Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality this figure is even higher, namely 91%, and that is saying a lot about the well-functioning local community and its citizens. We need each other, and in Western Jutland, we have a tradition for helping each other.
Statistics Denmark has also established that the citizens in Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality are the most satisfied citizens in Denmark. In the survey a total of nine categories were examined and the citizens of the municipality are above national average in all categories. As an example, the citizens of the municipality are the happiest when it comes to family life. This is supported by the fact that the municipality also has the lowest divorce rate per 1000 married couples. Here the figure is 12.5 against 15.3 for the entire country.


WASHINGTON — The father of a 4-year-old boy who was allegedly molested by a bus aide for James Ryder Randall Elementary School in Clinton, Maryland, says he is heartbroken.
"I tried my best to protect my kids — to let nothing happen to them. I go to the school; I go to the bus stop; I meet the teachers. I'm heavily involved, just so that this kind of thing won't happen," said the devastated parent, who asked reporters not to identify him to protect his son.
The victim's father and some frustrated board members talked to reporters after Tuesday's briefing by Prince George's County Public Schools CEO Kevin Maxwell.
During the briefing, Maxwell confirmed that police and Child Protective Services were investigating allegations into the school bus aide who is accused of molesting preschool children with special needs, first reported by NBC Washington.
The aide and a person in a supervisory role were immediately put on administrative leave, Maxwell said, after he first learned of allegations in late August.
Still, the concerned father said he was bothered by the sense that information is often withheld by school officials.
Maxwell also told reporters Tuesday that a principal had been placed on leave from Judge Sylvania Woods Elementary, but did not say exactly why.
That news infuriated school board member Edward Burroughs, who said members of the board had just wrapped up an executive session with Maxwell and no mention was made of the incident at the elementary school — the same school where, last year, the principal was replaced after an aide was alleged to have sexually abused students there.


text:
Deal Maker Success Stories
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Multifamily Syndication Structure and What You Need to Know
We often get questions from investors wanting to know how our multifamily deals are structured.
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Typically, our deals are LLCs – limited liability companies.
Sometimes we may create multiple entities. We may have a holding company that's registered in Texas or Delaware, for example, and then we may create a local entity that actually owns the building and that's in the state we're buying it in. Almost everyone uses LLCs, and that's what we use as well.
Another question that comes up is, "What are equity splits?"
Equity Splits
An equity split means there are limited partners and general partners. When a syndication is done, a part of the ownership of the property, let's say 70 percent, goes to the limited parters (the LPS) and 30 percent goes to the general partners (GPS.)
Splits can be divided in various ways, 60/40 or 80/20, for example. The general partner's part of the equity is called carried interest, meaning the general partners get equity in the deal for putting the deal together even though the investors put up 100 percent of the money for the deal.
That's very common in syndication, and my advice for investors is don't focus too much on the splits. The thing that's important, aside from the operator and the deal itself, is the return – specifically the cash on cash return and the overall average return on a deal.
I find that some investors get caught up on the splits. They see a 60/40 or a 70/30 split and they think the general partners are paying themselves too much, while they're making a 15-17 percent average annual return.
Keep your eye on the ball and don't get too distracted with the equity splits.
They need to be in line, of course, but what's most important is the quality of the operator, the quality of the deal, how conservative the underwriting or assumptions are and then what the returns are. The equity splits are really secondary.
Preferred Returns
Some deals have a preferred return and some do not.
A preferred return is a certain minimum of cash flow that is paid out to investors before the general partner is paid. One way to think about this is like an interest payment which is paid out first before the cash flow is split.
Here's an example. If a syndication is a 70/30 split, 70 is going to the limited partners and 30 going to the general partners. Let's assume the total cash investment from the investors in $100, 000 and the preferred return is 5 percent. That means the first five percent of a hundred thousand dollars, or five thousand dollars, is paid out first to the investors and then whatever is left over is split 70/30.
If the total available cash flow in one year is fifteen thousand dollars and the first five of that is paid out to the investors, that leaves a net of ten thousand cash flow. The investors would receive 70 percent of that, or seven thousand, so the investor gets five thousand out of the preferred and seven thousand from the equity split, so they get a $12,000 total payout for 12 percent cash on cash return.
Basically, the investors get paid the first money that's available.
This sounds pretty good, but here's why I don't like it, and not just from the general partner's perspective. I don't like it from the limited partner perspective either.
If the project doesn't go as planned, which does sometimes happen, because there's a slow start with the units being turned over, or the property manager is struggling, then there's not enough cash flow to fund the preferred return and it starts to accrue into the next year.
If there's no cash flow, the operator can't pay the five thousand preferred. It then gets tacked on year two. Let's say in year two things start to pick up a little bit more, but there's been a delay, so now instead of fifteen thousand dollars in anticipated cash flow, they're at three thousand. They're already doing better, and in year three they're going to be good, but now they have three thousand, which means they're going to fall short that second year, which means that shortfall is now accrued to the third year.
You see the trend.
After a while, the GP realizes they can never catch up and they're working for free. They might decide to let it go and let the bank take over and part ways with it.
In a situation where a project doesn't go quite as planned, a preferred return could make the operator behave in a way that is not aligned with the best interest of the entire partnership.
This is why I think a preferred return puts the LPs and the GPS on separate pages, and that's a problem.
If we're making a lot of money, then everyone is getting paid. If we're not making any money, no one should really get paid.
So, I don't like preferences and have never done them. We're aligning the interest of the syndicator and the investor because it's really about creating a relationship where we can all have a win-win for a long period of time.
Voting and Control
What does it mean to have control in a deal? What are voting rights?
The nature of being a passive investor (limited partner) is that you are limited and this means that you have limited liability. You can only lose your principle money, you can't lose more than that. If there's a total loss of the building, the bank can't go after the limited partners. If there's a lawsuit, it can't go after the LPs.
So, in order to protect the LPs, the day to day operational control is limited. The law says, you're not really driving the ship so if the ship runs ground, that's not your fault. You're protected. That's a good thing, but it also means you don't really control the ship.
When you invest in a syndication, the operation agreement outlines the rights that the LPs have and the rights of the GPs. The GPs have to make day to day decisions including things like when they sell or refinance. LPs have to vote on anything that reduces their voting rights or their equity rights in any way. Typically, that's how these deals are structured.
Another question that comes up is, "When do I get my money back?"
Liquidity Events
There are different ways that you can get your money back and these are called liquidity events – a cash out refinance or actual sale.
Here's an example. We have a 21-unit and we buy it seven million dollars and put a million into it then 13 months later we get it refinanced at a 15 million dollar valuation, which is great. The refinance covers the preceding loan as well as the majority of the initial investment. So we are able to return for 84 percent of the initial investment.
We get the majority of our money back, which is good for the investor because of the risks is off the table. They get their money back and can invest it again in another deal.
You get a huge cash on cash return on the same amount of money that you're rolling over.
The other way you could get your money back would be the sale of the property, typically in five to ten years. That is normally part of the business plan so when you invest in a syndication, the plan says this is a five year hold or a seven year hold, etc. We expect to refinance or not – that's all a part of the plan. A good operator will honor those commitments.
In our deals, if something about our business plan changes, I will poll the LPs and ask, "What do you want to do?"
At the end of the day, if the majority of our investors want something, then why am I going to resist? I need to honor my initial commitment and if I'm going to change the plan, they should provide input.
This gives you the basics of my philosophy and how our deals are structured.
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Home Relationships 7 Things Cheaters Regret
7 Things Cheaters Regret
It doesn't matter at all whether adultery happened once or lasted for some time. All cheaters regret the same thing. Sometimes cheaters suffer no less than the one they cheated on.
That the relationship will never be the same
The news of cheating changes the relationship forever. Firstly, the trust is lost forever, and it is possible to return it only after a titanic effort of both partners. Probably not without the help of a psychologist.
Secondly, cheating hooks and pulls out all the problems in a relationship, and they have to be discussed (this is very painful), and the partners need to reach new agreements (this is very difficult). Third, the relationship can end forever.
In most cases, the cheater would not want to provoke such large-scale changes in his life, so he is very sorry that he has crossed the line.
That the partner was not appreciated
The threat of separating makes you feel so strongly why these very relationships and the partner are dear to you. Before cheating, a person focuses on everything that is bad in a loved one, and after it they suddenly begin to see that there was just as much good, and perhaps more. It was just taken for granted and depreciated.
As a rule, the cheater regrets about their action, and the desire to preserve all the best becomes the foundation for a new round in developing the relationship.
That they lost their freedom
Earlier, the partners used to give each other a huge credit of trust and freedom of action, but then the fact of treason divides them into two militant camps. Even if they decide to stay together, one will constantly suspect, be jealous and control every step of the other, while the other will have to report where with whom he was and what he did.
The cheater regrets very much that betrayal has deprived him of his former freedom and it has to be won over again.
That they made the beloved one suffer
Some cheaters curse their intemperance because they see how the loved one is tormented and worried about their cheating. Here's how it turns out: I wanted to have fun and add color to life. Well, I got it. But it was a fleeting moment, and the pain of the loved one and their own pain will remain in the couple for a long time or even destroy it immediately.
That you didn't trust your loved one
Cheating rarely occurs quickly and from scratch. At first, for some reason, you cannot talk to your beloved heart to heart, share the pain. Perhaps to keep him or her from worrying. At this moment, the intimacy begins to melt because instead of a partner there is another person who is ready to listen and understand. Sympathy arises for him, and so does the desire. More often than not, cheating happens.
If there was an opportunity to undo the action, the cheater would be surprised to find that the loved one is able to withstand the problem, console, and cheer. But there is no such possibility, it remains only to scold oneself for evading, keeping silent and looking for support on the side.
Those sex problems could have been solved differently
Men most often cheat because they lack sex in a marriage. They find a partner, who is not burdened with everyday life, children, and worries. She does not want to fall asleep facing the wall at the end of a hard day.
Having received the desired sex, many cheaters are surprised to discover that they actually like their marriage. They love and appreciate their partner and are grateful to her for taking care of the house and the children. They don't want to get divorced just because they lack sex.
They continue to cheat while experiencing a tremendous sense of guilt and feeling hopeless. They do not even suspect that they could support their partner, help her with the chores, share many worries with her, pay attention and give her a little freedom. Most often, deeply married women have a surge of libido from this.
That adultery brought no joy
Many are looking for sex outside their marriage, subconsciously thinking that it will solve their problems. But such sex gives only temporary relief, as well as the feelings of guilt, shame, pain. After such an adventure, cheaters often feel even greater emptiness than before. Now they have to lie, hide, try not to say too much and pretend even more that everything in their life is normal.
More often than not, cheaters regret making this mess. Because the effort and the consequences were absolutely not worth the result.
It also happens that cheaters feel no pricks of conscience. So they regret more selfish things.
That he/she confessed cheating
It happens that the very confession of cheating occurs spontaneously, during some kind of abuse and quarrels. After such a confession, there will be nothing but tears and regret. Aggression is also possible. But as a result, every cheater then regrets that he has told about it.
That he/she said nasty things during a quarrel
The confession is followed by conversations or major scandals and quarrels. In a fit of anger, any person is able to say a lot of nasty things. Of course, all people later regret what was said, but after such unpleasant news of cheating, a lot of nasty things are shared, as a rule.
Regrets the decision to go to his mistress
As a rule, the decision to go to the lover is based on the fact that it is seemingly better there, and the grass looks greener there. It will be different, but not always better. Over time, a person also gets bored, the passion fades away, and everyday life prevails. So more often than not, all these are just intrigues and ways to amuse your pride, proving to yourself that someone else likes you.
That he confessed his love to his mistress
Confession takes place in the same way as is told in the previous paragraph. Everything seems to be perfect, unlike in the family. On the one hand, it is easy and calm here. On the other hand, there are constant problems in the family, abuses, and rules. But everything looks so simple precisely because there are no obligations. As soon as you confess your love, problems will appear because the mistress has certain expectations that must be followed.
At first, new relationships on the side are interesting, they capture all your attention and are, in all respects, better than the existing marriage. But over time, the same problems appear as in the marriage. So what's the point in cheating and making the loved ones and then yourself unhappy?
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An explosive first novel - Madame Bovary in modern Germany - about a wife and mother whose failed love affairs have driven her to the edge of sanity and to a startling attempt at vindication. After being jilted by a rich boyfriend, Margaret, eighteen and heartbroken, throws herself into a comfortable but stifling marriage to Ernst, a war veteran with a penchant for routine and order, who still lives with his mother in a small German village. It's not a bad life, considering Margaret's psychological scars, but neither Ernst's adoration nor the birth of a daughter can reawaken her frozen emotions. Until she slides into an affair with a married man with whom she plans to run away. Her plan is a fantasy that cannot possibly come true. Its repercussions nevertheless will explode with unimaginable force in these astonished lives.


text:
Immigrant's Path to Permanent Residence Paved After Approval of His I-601A Waiver Application
Like thousands of immigrants coming to the United States every year, Sergio entered this country without proper immigration documents, fleeing a grim and dangerous future in Mexico, his country of birth. Sergio has been working ever since, learning English and becoming a contributing member of his local community.
Since Sergio married Allison, a U.S. born citizen, he also became her "personal guardian angel", and the main income provider for a family that additionally includes Allison's two young daughters, also U.S. citizens. Sergio and Allison are devoted to each other, to their children, and to their community.
Sergio, however, was not eligible to adjust his status to permanent resident in the U.S. because he was not "inspected and admitted." Further, since he was unlawfully present in the U.S. for more than one year, Sergio was not eligible to obtain an immigrant visa for 10 years after he leaves the U.S.
This hard-working family, like many in our country, could have been broken apart indefinitely by immigration laws, but for the new I-601A Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver. This program, implemented by the Obama administration in 2013, was developed with the intent to protect family unity, and to prevent devastating periods of separation often associated with the traditional I-601 waiver process, which requires the applicant to be outside the United States at the time of application and wait for the waiver's adjudication.
To obtain a provisional unlawful presence waiver, the applicant must be present in the United States, be the immediate relative of a U.S. citizen, and be the beneficiary of an approved immigrant petition giving him an immediately available immigrant visa number. The applicant must also demonstrate that his only ground of inadmissibility is accrued unlawful presence in the United States. No other ground of inadmissibility can be waived by the I-601A provisional waiver.
Finally, the applicant must also demonstrate that his/her U.S. citizen spouse or parent may suffer "extreme hardship" in the event of the applicant's removal or inability to immigrate to the United States. Developing a convincing "extreme hardship" waiver most often requires the assistance of an experienced immigration attorney, often collaborating with other professionals.
Attorney Silvia Manzanero represented Sergio and Allison in their immigration case seeking espousal classification, a provisional waiver of inadmissibility and immigrant visa issuance.
Manzanero prepared a compelling case that clearly demonstrated the extreme economic, emotional, health hardships that Allison would suffer if Sergio is removed or if this family of four is forced to relocate to Mexico. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services approved Sergio's waiver last August 28th, 2014.
On February 3, 2015, Sergio successfully completed the final step in this three-phases process, immigrant visa issuance at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Sergio recently entered the United States, this time lawfully as a resident. Sergio can finally live and work as a permanent resident in this country, with his spouse and their two daughters.
Sergio's immigration case included one of the numerous inadmissibility waiver applications that attorneys at David F. Vedder P.A., have successfully prepared for clients from all over the world.


text:
from scipy.interpolate import griddata
import numpy as np
import logging

from .helpers import get_latex_table_frame

class Comparison(object):
    def __init__(self, parent):
        self.parent = parent
        self._logger = logging.getLogger("chainconsumer")

    def dic(self):
        r""" Returns the corrected Deviance Information Criterion (DIC) for all chains loaded into ChainConsumer.

        If a chain does not have a posterior, this method will return `None` for that chain. **Note that
        the DIC metric is only valid on posterior surfaces which closely resemble multivariate normals!**
        Formally, we follow Liddle (2007) and first define *Bayesian complexity* as

        .. math::
            p_D = \bar{D}(\theta) - D(\bar{\theta}),

        where :math:`D(\theta) = -2\ln(P(\theta)) + C` is the deviance, where :math:`P` is the posterior
        and :math:`C` a constant. From here the DIC is defined as

        .. math::
            DIC \equiv D(\bar{\theta}) + 2p_D = \bar{D}(\theta) + p_D.

        Returns
        -------
        list[float]
            A list of all the DIC values - one per chain, in the order in which the chains were added.

        References
        ----------
        [1] Andrew R. Liddle, "Information criteria for astrophysical model selection", MNRAS (2007)
        """
        dics = []
        dics_bool = []
        for i, chain in enumerate(self.parent.chains):
            p = chain.posterior
            if p is None:
                dics_bool.append(False)
                self._logger.warning("You need to set the posterior for chain %s to get the DIC" % chain.name)
            else:
                dics_bool.append(True)
                num_params = chain.chain.shape[1]
                means = np.array([np.average(chain.chain[:, ii], weights=chain.weights) for ii in range(num_params)])
                d = -2 * p
                d_of_mean = griddata(chain.chain, d, means, method="nearest")[0]
                mean_d = np.average(d, weights=chain.weights)
                p_d = mean_d - d_of_mean
                dic = mean_d + p_d
                dics.append(dic)
        if len(dics) > 0:
            dics -= np.min(dics)
        dics_fin = []
        i = 0
        for b in dics_bool:
            if not b:
                dics_fin.append(None)
            else:
                dics_fin.append(dics[i])
                i += 1
        return dics_fin

    def bic(self):
        r""" Returns the corrected Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) for all chains loaded into ChainConsumer.

        If a chain does not have a posterior, number of data points, and number of free parameters
        loaded, this method will return `None` for that chain. Formally, the BIC is defined as

        .. math::
            BIC \equiv -2\ln(P) + k \ln(N),

        where :math:`P` represents the posterior, :math:`k` the number of model parameters and :math:`N`
        the number of independent data points used in the model fitting.

        Returns
        -------
        list[float]
            A list of all the BIC values - one per chain, in the order in which the chains were added.
        """
        bics = []
        bics_bool = []
        for i, chain in enumerate(self.parent.chains):
            p, n_data, n_free = chain.posterior, chain.num_eff_data_points, chain.num_free_params
            if p is None or n_data is None or n_free is None:
                bics_bool.append(False)
                missing = ""
                if p is None:
                    missing += "posterior, "
                if n_data is None:
                    missing += "num_eff_data_points, "
                if n_free is None:
                    missing += "num_free_params, "

                self._logger.warning("You need to set %s for chain %s to get the BIC" % (missing[:-2], chain.name))
            else:
                bics_bool.append(True)
                bics.append(n_free * np.log(n_data) - 2 * np.max(p))
        if len(bics) > 0:
            bics -= np.min(bics)
        bics_fin = []
        i = 0
        for b in bics_bool:
            if not b:
                bics_fin.append(None)
            else:
                bics_fin.append(bics[i])
                i += 1
        return bics_fin

    def aic(self):
        r""" Returns the corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) for all chains loaded into ChainConsumer.

        If a chain does not have a posterior, number of data points, and number of free parameters
        loaded, this method will return `None` for that chain. Formally, the AIC is defined as

        .. math::
            AIC \equiv -2\ln(P) + 2k,

        where :math:`P` represents the posterior, and :math:`k` the number of model parameters. The AICc
        is then defined as

        .. math::
            AIC_c \equiv AIC + \frac{2k(k+1)}{N-k-1},

        where :math:`N` represents the number of independent data points used in the model fitting.
        The AICc is a correction for the AIC to take into account finite chain sizes.

        Returns
        -------
        list[float]
            A list of all the AICc values - one per chain, in the order in which the chains were added.
        """
        aics = []
        aics_bool = []
        for i, chain in enumerate(self.parent.chains):
            p, n_data, n_free = chain.posterior, chain.num_eff_data_points, chain.num_free_params
            if p is None or n_data is None or n_free is None:
                aics_bool.append(False)
                missing = ""
                if p is None:
                    missing += "posterior, "
                if n_data is None:
                    missing += "num_eff_data_points, "
                if n_free is None:
                    missing += "num_free_params, "

                self._logger.warning("You need to set %s for chain %s to get the AIC" % (missing[:-2], chain.name))
            else:
                aics_bool.append(True)
                c_cor = 1.0 * n_free * (n_free + 1) / (n_data - n_free - 1)
                aics.append(2.0 * (n_free + c_cor - np.max(p)))
        if len(aics) > 0:
            aics -= np.min(aics)
        aics_fin = []
        i = 0
        for b in aics_bool:
            if not b:
                aics_fin.append(None)
            else:
                aics_fin.append(aics[i])
                i += 1
        return aics_fin

    def comparison_table(
        self, caption=None, label="tab:model_comp", hlines=True, aic=True, bic=True, dic=True, sort="bic", descending=True
    ):  # pragma: no cover
        """
        Return a LaTeX ready table of model comparisons.

        Parameters
        ----------
        caption : str, optional
            The table caption to insert.
        label : str, optional
            The table label to insert.
        hlines : bool, optional
            Whether to insert hlines in the table or not.
        aic : bool, optional
            Whether to include a column for AICc or not.
        bic : bool, optional
            Whether to include a column for BIC or not.
        dic : bool, optional
            Whether to include a column for DIC or not.
        sort : str, optional
            How to sort the models. Should be one of "bic", "aic" or "dic".
        descending : bool, optional
            The sort order.

        Returns
        -------
        str
            A LaTeX table to be copied into your document.
        """

        if sort == "bic":
            assert bic, "You cannot sort by BIC if you turn it off"
        if sort == "aic":
            assert aic, "You cannot sort by AIC if you turn it off"
        if sort == "dic":
            assert dic, "You cannot sort by DIC if you turn it off"

        if caption is None:
            caption = ""
        if label is None:
            label = ""

        base_string = get_latex_table_frame(caption, label)
        end_text = " \\\\ \n"
        num_cols = 1 + (1 if aic else 0) + (1 if bic else 0)
        column_text = "c" * (num_cols + 1)
        center_text = ""
        hline_text = "\\hline\n"
        if hlines:
            center_text += hline_text
        center_text += "\tModel" + (" & AIC" if aic else "") + (" & BIC " if bic else "") + (" & DIC " if dic else "") + end_text
        if hlines:
            center_text += "\t" + hline_text
        if aic:
            aics = self.aic()
        else:
            aics = np.zeros(len(self.parent.chains))
        if bic:
            bics = self.bic()
        else:
            bics = np.zeros(len(self.parent.chains))
        if dic:
            dics = self.dic()
        else:
            dics = np.zeros(len(self.parent.chains))

        if sort == "bic":
            to_sort = bics
        elif sort == "aic":
            to_sort = aics
        elif sort == "dic":
            to_sort = dics
        else:
            raise ValueError("sort %s not recognised, must be dic, aic or dic" % sort)

        good = [i for i, t in enumerate(to_sort) if t is not None]
        names = [self.parent.chains[g].name for g in good]
        aics = [aics[g] for g in good]
        bics = [bics[g] for g in good]
        to_sort = bics if sort == "bic" else aics

        indexes = np.argsort(to_sort)

        if descending:
            indexes = indexes[::-1]

        for i in indexes:
            line = "\t" + names[i]
            if aic:
                line += "  &  %5.1f  " % aics[i]
            if bic:
                line += "  &  %5.1f  " % bics[i]
            if dic:
                line += "  &  %5.1f  " % dics[i]
            line += end_text
            center_text += line
        if hlines:
            center_text += "\t" + hline_text

        return base_string % (column_text, center_text)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


With a 6mm wide opening, this well-proportioned cone can hide the ends of several strands of cord or beads and not overwhelm your design. Watch our video Ending with a Cone for a how to on finishing your jewelry with cones. A perfect size for a bracelet or delicate necklace, the Cutest Cone Ever is a keeper. It pairs well with our Silk Strings. Made in America. Lead Free.


Feed issues are among the most common cause of crusher problems. They account for about 70% of liner wear issues – and shorten the life of your crushing chamber. Bad feed arrangements also lead to big losses, with higher OPEX and cost per ton due to a reduction in the amount of final product you can produce. But the fix is simple – a Sandvik Rotating Feed Distributor.
Our Rotating Feed Distributor is placed above the feed hopper and evenly spreads your incoming feed material - correcting for misaligned feeds or feed segregation. This upgrade helps to enhance your crusher's performance and keeps your system running smoothly, avoiding excessive pressure and power draws.
Crusher compatibility – RFD model 90/320: SANDVIK CH420*, CH430*, CH440*, CH540, and CH550.
Crusher compatibility – RFD model 130/630: SANDVIK CH660*, CH860i*, CH865i*, CH870i*, CH890i* and CH895i*.
* Test results are to be considered as results reached under certain and controlled test conditions. These test results should not be treated as specifications and Sandvik does not guarantee, warrant or represent the outcome of test results in any or all circumstances.


How do I buy a Beeline Bikes Franchise?
Make a Beeline for this Opportunity.
Beeline Bikes is a business built by mechanics for mechanics and they're taking a new approach to the bicycle industry. By enabling customers to schedule a Mobile Bike Shop at the time and location of their choosing, they are reinventing how people interact with bike shops by providing the ultimate in customer convenience.
In just two years, they have surpassed the expectations of thousands of customers. They accomplished this by supporting them at their homes and at over 100 corporate partner locations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
How the business model works; fleet doubled in 2014; and now there are franchise opportunities in a market near you.
Open Beeline Bikes in any of these available states: AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Beeline enables you to build your own business by meeting the increasing demand with a differentiated model customers love.
Most Beeline Bikes Mobile Bike Shops are built using Ford Transit High Roof Vans, which include infrastructure upgrades to enable bike repairs to take place directly inside the vehicle.
Beeline Bikes mobile bike shops generate revenue from both service and product sales (including new bike sales). Mobile bike shops make house call and workplace visits. Some corporate visits are subsidized by the employer or property manager.
Don't miss your opportunity to be the first in your market with a Beeline Bikes mobile bike shop!
Beeline Bikes is not currently active in our directory, but here are some other recommended selections for you to explore.


text:
Entertainment TV News
RTÉ's big earners like Tubridy 'are worth every cent', insists Rosenstock
Ryan Tubridy earns €495,000. Picture: Steve Humphreys
Melanie Finn Twitter Email
December 30 2019 2:30 AM
Broadcaster Mario Rosenstock has said that he believes RTÉ's top 10 earners are worth every cent.
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/tv-news/rtes-big-earners-like-tubridy-are-worth-every-cent-insists-rosenstock-38820946.html
https://www.independent.ie/incoming/c0352/38821224.ece/AUTOCROP/h342/-LATE-TOY-SHOW-13SH.jpg
The Today FM Sunday show presenter has said that Ryan Tubridy - whose annual salary is €495,000 - is worth the money as he contributes so much to the State broadcaster.
"I do think the big earners are worth it because their salaries only represent less than 1pc of RTÉ's overall operating costs.
"If Ryan is doing 37 episodes of live TV every year and then five hours of live radio every week on top of that, then he deserves every cent.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
New to Independent.ie? Create an account
"'The Late Late Show' is totally live so he deserves his 'danger money'," he said.
"Everyone goes on about Graham Norton. He doesn't do live TV. His show films for three-and-a-half hours and then they take the best bits out of it. Of course Ryan deserves his salary. His time isn't his own and he doesn't get any privacy."
Rosenstock believes the overall problem with RTÉ's current financial crisis is too many people in middle management.
The Government is giving the company a €50m cash injection over the next five years after it recorded a €13m deficit in 2018.
"There's too many guys in there on €102,000 a year and nobody knows what they do," he said.
"Being in middle management is not a creative position. It's like the health service. There's too many administrators, too much connective tissue and not enough sheer creativity.
"Just like the health service, RTÉ has too many layers and they're not all essential."
He said there were "lots of elements" to its current crisis, not least the licence fee issue.
RTÉ service is 'fair value' compared to Netflix, insists boss Forbes
RTÉ Guide sale halted as bids 'not sufficient to merit a sale'
Salary cap on top presenters would save RTÉ €1m a year
Kevin Doyle: 'Despite the goodwill of the Toy Show, there'll be no peace or harmony at RTÉ this Christmas'
By Gemma Dunn, PA Michael Portillo has said his railway TV series are more about life off trains than on them.
Melanie Finn 'Love Island' star Yewande Biala was cast adrift from RTÉ's 'Dancing with the Stars' last night after she became the first celebrity to be booted off the show.
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text:
Investing In Your Community Pays More Than A Savings Account
Want to get involved in impact investing, but don't have millions of dollars? Organizations like the Calvert Foundation are making it possible.
[Top Photo: Michael Shake via Shutterstock]
By Ben Schiller 2 minute Read
Impact investing has the potential to leverage serious capital for social purposes. But, as we saw recently, it hasn't yet emerged as the force it could be. There's a need for better measurement and metrics to satisfy data-hungry funders, as well as an expanded range of investors. At the moment, the field is associated mostly with institutional funds, big foundations, and well-meaning one-percent types. It's still not a movement for the rest of us.
When we made this point recently, Patrick Davis got in touch to say he agreed–but that there are avenues for ordinary people to participate. The Calvert Foundation, where Davis works, recently launched Vested.org, which lets people invest in community projects, putting down as little as $20 a time. The platform is a little like Kickstarter–except there are real financial returns, not just perks and products with funny names.
Kenneth Sponsler via Shutterstock
For example, Calvert works with a group in Minneapolis and St. Paul that helps finance entrepreneurs from minorities. Go to the Twin Cities page and you can immediately invest $100 over five years. You get a 1.5% interest rate–longer periods pay more–and everything you put in is guaranteed back. The investments are fixed, which means you're pretty safe whatever happens.
"It's a much better place to put your money than a savings account," Davis says. "Savings are not giving anything at the moment. With this, you are at least getting some interest." Most accounts currently pay less than 1%, according to Bankrate.com.
Vested.org is actually Calvert's second effort at an impact investing web site. Until early this year, it partnered with MicroPlace.org, a PayPal-managed platform that featured several social investment products. PayPal claims it enabled $58 million in funding over its seven year existence; about 10,000 investors bought into Calvert's community bond using the site.
We're trying to break through the bubble that's almost impenetrable in this community.
Davis thinks those numbers aren't bad, but that they could have been better. "One of the things we learned from MicroPlace was we need to drive hard at a simple user experience," he says. "MicroPlace had a lot of bells and whistles, but there was a lot of information people needed to fill out, so there was significant drop-off after they visited the site." Vested.org site tries to be more like crowd-funding in terms of its accessibility.
Davis says impact investing needs to learn from consumer web sites if it's going to attract more consumers. "We're trying to break through the bubble that's almost impenetrable in this community. It's a whole bunch of people talking to themselves and not getting outside that sphere," he says. "It's really a lot reformed i-bankers who want to do something better with themselves. We don't have a lot of talent around communications and digital."
Impact investing has plenty of stories to tell about improving lives and doing good. That it hasn't told those stories yet is down to two reasons, Davis says. One is regulation. The authorities still aren't keen on alternative investing online, despite Kickstarter and the JOBS Act, which should make things easier. The second is more cultural. There needs to be a shift in mindset before ordinary folk feel included in this movement.
Ben Schiller is a New York staff writer for Fast Company. Previously, he edited a European management magazine and was a reporter in San Francisco, Prague, and Brussels.
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