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lancefortnowsyn | |
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http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2009/07/complexity-proposal.html Tonight I fly off to Paris for the 24th IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity, the namesake conference of the blog. If the plane arrives on time I should just make it for my paper's presentation (which will be given by Ryan Williams in any case).
I (along with Eric Allender) will have attended all 24 conferences. I have had several papers in the conference, served on the PC including once as chair and a six-year stint as conference chair. But my most important Complexity Conference event had little to do with any of the above.
Twenty years ago, I attended the 1989 Structures Conference (as it was called back then) at the University of Oregon between grad school and my first job at the University of Chicago. The outing consisted of a rafting trip and I landed in a raft with Toda and Razborov. Glad we didn't capsize.
But the moment came when I found a florist in Eugene. I sent a dozen red roses to my then girlfriend Marcy's work place back in Boston with a card that said "Will you marry me?"
We've been married nearly nineteen years.
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code_martial | |
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I got out of the arrival lounge and spotted the man holding a placard with my name on it. Soon I was inside a cab taking me down the beautiful but narrow road outside the airport. In about half an hour of driving through beautiful narrow roads, we entered a residential complex with black fences, black gate and lots of greenery. There was a military establishment across the street. I was shown into a ground floor flat and given keys to one room in the flat. The room had a small attached balcony and a huge attached bathroom.   Century Park Apartments, Richmond Road, Bangalore
It was 14 th of July, 2004, a little before 9 AM. In a couple of hours I was to take the 5 minute walk from Century Park Apartments, Richmond Road to Yahoo! SDC, Esquire Centre, #9 M. G. Road. Around this time 5 years ago, my life changed forever. I became a Yahoo. Tags: 5 years, bangalore, half decade, mgr, nostalgia, viabb, yahoo, yblr
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pun_princess | |
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It is half past 2 in the night. Most have chosen to rest their sore muscles and embrace sleep. The lonely street lights cast brooding shadows on the roads used to hustle-bustle. They, no longer the pointer to the destination, no longer the faithful friend throughout the journey, lie meek and downtrodden by known and unknown shadows. Like light reflected by far away planets, waging their way through the eternal darkness of the space, two of the windows let neon light perforate them and pass through to join the brooding shadows on the road. Silence *** Earth shattering music drums against fine membrane, the outlet cushioned so that the sound doesn’t spill outside the tunnel. Beyond the cushion, it is drunken peace that pervades dreamy gamma waves of the unity conscious state, floating only to be rejected by the antenna part of the object that the membrane also shares. Only if it would have been accepted, the gamma rays would have been successful in simulating stupor in the object. ***
Scene-1
Brrrrr Brrrrrr
The cell phone vibrates on the study table. The girl with a bushy curly mane stopped reading from her laptop screen to check the cell phone. Who could be it, at this hour? Her mind is flooded with all sort of possibilities. ( What happens half past 2 in the night??? )
Tags: 3 am, cell phone, good night, half past 2, humour, life, midnight, sms, suspense, thriller Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Girl like me - Rihanna
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lancefortnowsyn | |
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http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2009/07/icalp.html Ryan O'Donnell, reporting from last week's ICALP in Rhodes.
ICALP has a pretty large number of papers, divided into three tracks.
Track A is roughly algorithms and complexity ("Amero-theory"?). Track
B is roughly Logic, Semantics, and PL Theory ("Euro-theory"?). Track
C, formerly cryptography, is now Foundations of Networked Computation;
this seems to appeal most to the Track A people, and sometimes there
were mixed A/C tracks.
Three highlights for me were:
- Amin Coja-Oghlan's outstanding paper A better algorithm for random
k-SAT, which quite deservedly won Best Paper in Track A. I was
very sorry to miss the talk, the earliest in the schedule, as my
hydrofoil from Bodrum did not get in till just after it finished. In
this paper, Amin gives an O(n3/2)-time algorithm for random k-SAT
which finds satisfying assignments for clause densities up to (ln k /
k) 2k. Much work has gone into this problem, and the previous best
algorithm only worked up to density (1.8 / k) 2k. Although the
threshold for satisfiability is (ln 2) 2k, Amin's work may in fact be
"tight": his FOCS 2008 result with Achlioptas gives significant
theoretical evidence that (ln k / k) 2k may be the "algorithmic
barrier".
- The special session devoted to Papadimitriou. This proved to be a
birthday Festschrift, although it was not advertised as such. Laci
Lovasz gave it away (repeatedly) in his invited talk, and the rumour
floating around afterwards was that Papadimitriou is indeed "nearly
60" (cf. this). The
invited talks here were excellent: Karp, on algorithmic problems from
biology; Lovasz, on graph limits; Nisan, on auctions; Roughgarden, on
improved methods for analyzing the price of anarchy; and Yannakakis,
on complexity-theoretic aspects of Papadimitriou's research. Normally
these events are good for getting amusing anecdotes about the fest-ed
person, but most stories were quite heartfelt ones about the influence
of Papadimitriou on the speaker's work. Possibly the most interesting
thing was learning that one of Papadimitriou's most notable
contributions to TCS was convincing fellow PhD-student Yannakakis to
switch from EE-style information theory to TCS.
- Philip
Bille and Mikkel Thorup's paper in which they made the first
running-time improvement in 17 years on the problem of regular
expression matching; they got it down from nm/log(n) to
nm/log3/2(n) (modulo log log factors). Naturally, Philip
name-checked SLOGN in his very nice talk.
We also saw the Greek and Turkish national youth basketball teams at
the conference lunches; I believe they skipped all the talks, though.
More from Noam Nisan.
Pictures: view of hotel grounds; view of hotel beach; view of
basketball players at the conference lunch.

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bombaylives | |
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http://www.bombaylives.com/index.php/qualcomm-ventures-qprize-competition.html http://www.bombaylives.com/?p=1641 More than $500,000 in Early Stage Financing for Companies and Entrepreneurs
Qualcomm Ventures Launches QPrize Business Plan Competition Supporting Global Entrepreneurship
QPrize is an initiative to identify and strengthen novel business ideas while in the concept stage.
Business Sectors
QPrize competition is open to international entrants whose business plans accelerate wireless technology development in the following business sectors:
• Consumer/enterprise applications and services
• Communication devices
• Semiconductor and component technologies
• Mobile platforms
• Digital media and content
• Healthcare technologies and services
• CleanTech
Additional details on candidate eligibility and submission guidelines are available at www.qprize2009.com
Timelines
May 7th, 2009 Public Launch
July 31st, 2009 Deadline for submitting completed business plans
August 28th, 2009 Notifications will be sent to all semi-finalists
September 2009 India Regional event to pick India Region Winner
October 16th, 2009 Deadline for submitting revised business plans for the final competition
November, 2009 Finals at San Diego, CA
For more information, please visit www.qualcomm.com/ventures
The Qualcomm Ventures QPrize™ competition is open to entrepreneurs in India, North America, Europe and China and will provide US$550,000 in total seed funding to help entrepreneurs transform their innovative business plans into reality. India Regional winner will receive US$100,000 of convertible note funding. The India Regional Winner will also have the opportunity to compete with other Regional winners for a Grand Prize of an additional US$150,000 of convertible note funding.
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arnabsworld | |
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http://arnab.org/blog/microsoft-researchs-data-related-launches Microsoft Research has been making a bunch of cool data analysis-related launches at the upcoming Faculty Summit.
First, there’s The academic release of Dryad and DryadLINQ

Dryad is a high-performance, general-purpose, distributed-computing engine that simplifies the task of implementing distributed applications on clusters of computers running a Windows® operating system. DryadLINQ enables developers to implement Dryad applications in managed code by using an extended version of the LINQ programming model and API. The academic release of Dryad and DryadLINQ provides the software necessary to develop DryadLINQ applications and to run them on a Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster. The academic release includes documentation and code samples.
They also launched Project Trident , a workflow workbench, which is available for download:

Project Trident: A Scientific Workflow Workbench is a set of tools—based on the Windows Workflow Foundation—for creating and running data analysis workflows. It addresses scientists’ need for a flexible and powerful way to analyze large and diverse datasets, and share their results. Trident Management Studio provides graphical tools for running, managing, and sharing workflows. It manages the Trident Registry, schedules workflow jobs, and monitors local or remote workflow execution. For large data sets, Trident can run multiple workflows in parallel on a Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster. Trident provides a framework to add runtime services and comes with services such as provenance and workflow monitoring. The Trident security model supports users and roles that allows scientists to control access rights to their workflows.
Then there’s Graywolf :
GrayWulf builds on the work of Jim Gray, a Microsoft Research scientist and pioneer in database and transaction processing research. It also pays homage to Beowulf, the original computer cluster developed at NASA using “off-the-shelf” computer hardware.
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pun_princess | |
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Ø Make up gross secret family traditions and tell them your family stealthily still follows it. Make sure your face brims with contorted sincerity. My favourite is that we (I and my family) drink blood of the human/animal being sacrificed on the Amavasya Nights. :D We are bongs after all.
Ø Keep a collection of Prankies handy. Guide to buying the ultimate scary Pranky for dummies 1.0 : § The pranky should spook you out sometimes despite the fact you know it is a pranky. § The pranky should be extremely touch sensitive. It should wiggle and wiggle for longer stretches of time upon being touched. Even better if it wiggles with change in speed of breeze. § Throw the pranky on the shopkeeper, does he / she run away leaving the counter for you to get away without paying? If not, then the pranky ain’t good enough. ( And some more... )
Tags: asari chan, crap, crazy, family, friends, fun, humour, insanity, life, time pass Current Mood: crazy
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arunshanbhag | |
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For a friend's wedding I recently traveled to Chicago. Since that's where I did my doctoral work, we have many friends there and love the city. I have previously posted on the architectural wonders of Chicago, the Balaji Temple and have run the Chicago Marathon!
On this visit, I additionally got darshan at the exquisitely maintained Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago! Was surprised at their calendar of activities including Yoga, Meditation, Gita Recitation, Discourses and Sunday School. And importantly a cafeteria serving dosas, idli sambar, yogurt rice and else. Reason enough to go!
Two more pics!
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arunshanbhag | |
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As I prepare for travel to Mumbai, I cast an eye on monsoon forecasts, particularly when they coincide with high-tides.
Excerpt from notice from the US Consulate in Mumbai.
During the monsoon, most flooding occurs during high tide. Mumbai's drainage system is designed to run off into the Arabian Sea. If a major storm occurs during high tide, the rainfall backs up and flooding occurs. Particular concern should be paid during the days listed in the table below. ... if there is heavy rain (during these dates), the possibility of the city flooding is very high. Sluice gates, which funnel flood waters from the city to the sea, are also closed on these days, increasing the possibility of flooding ...
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai site is very informative and lists the 27 days during this Monsoon season when tides are expected to crest 4.5 meters (14.8 ft). See entire list of Mumbai High Tide Dates and Times
Highlighted are the 11 days when the high tides will crest over 4.8 meters (15.75 ft). In July of 2005, when heavy rains coincided with high tides, caused city-wide flooding and killed over 400 people, the tide had crested at 4.84 meters. So these are dates you should prepare for.
The 7 remaining dangerous days this Monsoon 2009!
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