AI Grammar Paraphrase Generator

AI Grammar Paraphrase Generator — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Elasticity (computing)

    Elasticity (computing)

    In computing, elasticity is defined as "the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible". Elasticity is a defining characteristic that differentiates cloud computing from previously proposed distributed computing paradigms, such as grid computing. The dynamic adaptation of capacity, e.g., by altering the use of computing resources, to meet a varying workload is called "elastic computing". In the world of distributed systems, there are several definitions according to the authors; some consider the concepts of scalability a sub-part of elasticity, others as being distinct. == Purpose == Elasticity aims to match the amount of resources allocated to a service with the amount of resources it actually requires, avoiding over- or under-provisioning. Over-provisioning, i.e., allocating more resources than required, should be avoided as it may incur extra costs (monetary, energy, operational, etc.) for unused or underutilized resources. For example, if a website is over-provisioned with two cloud computing resources to handle current demand that only requires one resource, the costs of maintaining the second resource would effectively be wasted. Under-provisioning, i.e., allocating fewer resources than required, must be avoided; otherwise, the service cannot serve its users with a good service. For example, under-provisioning a website may make it seem slow or unreachable, because not enough resources have been allocated to meet current demand. == Example == Elasticity can be illustrated through an example of a service provider who wants to run a website on the cloud. At moment t 0 {\displaystyle t_{0}} , the website is unpopular and a single machine is sufficient to serve all users. At moment t 1 {\displaystyle t_{1}} , the website suddenly becomes popular, and a single machine is no longer sufficient to serve all users. Based on the number of web users simultaneously accessing the website and the resource requirements of the web server, ten machines are needed. An elastic system should immediately detect this condition and provision nine additional machines from the cloud to serve all users responsively. At time t 2 {\displaystyle t_{2}} , the website becomes unpopular again. The ten machines currently allocated to the website are mostly idle and a single machine would be sufficient to serve the few users who are accessing the website. An elastic system should immediately detect this condition and deprovision nine machines, releasing them to the cloud. == Problems == === Resource provisioning time === Resource provisioning takes time. A cloud virtual machine (VM) can be acquired at any time by the user; however, it may take up to several minutes for the acquired VM to be ready to use. The VM startup time is dependent on factors such as image size, VM type, data center location, number of VMs, etc. Cloud providers have different VM startup performance. This implies that any control mechanism designed for elastic applications must consider the time needed for the resource provisioning actions to take effect. === Monitoring elastic applications === Elastic applications can allocate and deallocate resources on demand for specific application components. This makes cloud resources volatile, and traditional monitoring tools which associate monitoring data with a particular resource, such as Ganglia or Nagios, are no longer suitable for monitoring the behavior of elastic applications. For example, during its lifetime, a data storage tier of an elastic application might add and remove data storage VMs due to cost and performance requirements, varying the number of used VMs. Thus, additional information is needed in monitoring elastic applications, such as associating the logical application structure over the underlying virtual infrastructure. This in turn generates other problems, such as data aggregation from multiple VMs towards extracting the behavior of the application component running on top of those VMs, as different metrics may need to be aggregated differently (e.g., CPU usage could be averaged, network transfer might be summed up). === Stakeholder requirements === When deploying applications in cloud infrastructures (IaaS/PaaS), stakeholder requirements need to be considered in order to ensure that elastic behavior meets stakeholder needs. Traditionally, the optimal trade-off between cost and quality or performance is considered; however, for real world cloud users, requirements regarding elastic behavior are more complex and target multiple dimensions of elasticity (e.g., SYBL). === Multiple levels of control === Cloud applications vary in type and complexity, with multiple levels of artifacts deployed in layers. Controlling such structures must take into consideration a variety of issues. For multi-level control, control systems need to consider the impact lower level control has upon higher level ones, and vice versa (e.g., controlling virtual machines, web containers, or web services in the same time), as well as conflicts that may appear between various control strategies from various levels. Elastic strategies on in cloud computing can take advantage of control-theoretic methods (e.g., predictive control has been experimented in cloud computing scenarios by showing considerable advantages with respect to reactive methods). One approach to multi-level elastic clouc control is rSYBL.

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  • NCover

    NCover

    NCover is a .NET code coverage tool. There are two non-related NCover products that do .NET code coverage. There is an open source NCover that can be found on SourceForge and there is a company called NCover, LLC. There has been additional development on both products since this 2004 reference. The company NCover, LLC began when the founder, Peter Waldschmidt, decided to commercialize the open source tool he created. The commercial versions were launched in 2007, but the last supported free version 1.5.8 is still available on the company site.

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  • Convolution

    Convolution

    In mathematics (in particular, functional analysis), convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions f {\displaystyle f} and g {\displaystyle g} that produces a third function f ∗ g {\displaystyle fg} , as the integral of the product of the two functions after one is reflected about the y-axis and shifted. The term convolution refers to both the resulting function and to the process of computing it. The integral is evaluated for all values of shift, producing the convolution function. The choice of which function is reflected and shifted before the integral does not change the integral result (see commutativity). Graphically, it expresses how the 'shape' of one function is modified by the other. Some features of convolution are similar to cross-correlation: for real-valued functions, of a continuous or discrete variable, convolution f ∗ g {\displaystyle fg} differs from cross-correlation f ⋆ g {\displaystyle f\star g} only in that either f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} or g ( x ) {\displaystyle g(x)} is reflected about the y-axis in convolution; thus it is a cross-correlation of g ( − x ) {\displaystyle g(-x)} and f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} , or f ( − x ) {\displaystyle f(-x)} and g ( x ) {\displaystyle g(x)} . For complex-valued functions, the cross-correlation operator is the adjoint of the convolution operator. Convolution has applications that include probability, statistics, acoustics, spectroscopy, signal processing and image processing, computer vision and human vision, geophysics, engineering, physics, and differential equations. The convolution can be defined for functions on Euclidean space and other groups (as algebraic structures). For example, periodic functions, such as the discrete-time Fourier transform, can be defined on a circle and convolved by periodic convolution. (See row 18 at DTFT § Properties.) A discrete convolution can be defined for functions on the set of integers. Generalizations of convolution have applications in the field of numerical analysis and numerical linear algebra, and in the design and implementation of finite impulse response filters in signal processing. Computing the inverse of the convolution operation is known as deconvolution. == Definition == The convolution of f {\displaystyle f} and g {\displaystyle g} is written f ∗ g {\displaystyle fg} , denoting the operator with the symbol ∗ {\displaystyle } . It is defined as the integral of the product of the two functions after one is reflected about the y-axis and shifted. As such, it is a particular kind of integral transform: ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) := ∫ − ∞ ∞ f ( τ ) g ( t − τ ) d τ . {\displaystyle (fg)(t):=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }f(\tau )g(t-\tau )\,d\tau .} An equivalent definition is (see commutativity): ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) := ∫ − ∞ ∞ f ( t − τ ) g ( τ ) d τ . {\displaystyle (fg)(t):=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }f(t-\tau )g(\tau )\,d\tau .} While the symbol t {\displaystyle t} is used above, it need not represent the time domain. At each t {\displaystyle t} , the convolution formula can be described as the area under the function f ( τ ) {\displaystyle f(\tau )} weighted by the function g ( − τ ) {\displaystyle g(-\tau )} shifted by the amount t {\displaystyle t} . As t {\displaystyle t} changes, the weighting function g ( t − τ ) {\displaystyle g(t-\tau )} emphasizes different parts of the input function f ( τ ) {\displaystyle f(\tau )} ; If t {\displaystyle t} is a positive value, then g ( t − τ ) {\displaystyle g(t-\tau )} is equal to g ( − τ ) {\displaystyle g(-\tau )} that slides or is shifted along the τ {\displaystyle \tau } -axis toward the right (toward + ∞ {\displaystyle +\infty } ) by the amount of t {\displaystyle t} , while if t {\displaystyle t} is a negative value, then g ( t − τ ) {\displaystyle g(t-\tau )} is equal to g ( − τ ) {\displaystyle g(-\tau )} that slides or is shifted toward the left (toward − ∞ {\displaystyle -\infty } ) by the amount of | t | {\displaystyle |t|} . For functions f {\displaystyle f} , g {\displaystyle g} supported on only [ 0 , ∞ ) {\displaystyle [0,\infty )} (i.e., zero for negative arguments), the integration limits can be truncated, resulting in: ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) = ∫ 0 t f ( τ ) g ( t − τ ) d τ for f , g : [ 0 , ∞ ) → R . {\displaystyle (fg)(t)=\int _{0}^{t}f(\tau )g(t-\tau )\,d\tau \quad \ {\text{for }}f,g:[0,\infty )\to \mathbb {R} .} For the multi-dimensional formulation of convolution, see domain of definition (below). === Notation === A common engineering notational convention is: f ( t ) ∗ g ( t ) := ∫ − ∞ ∞ f ( τ ) g ( t − τ ) d τ ⏟ ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) , {\displaystyle f(t)g(t)\mathrel {:=} \underbrace {\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }f(\tau )g(t-\tau )\,d\tau } _{(fg)(t)},} which has to be interpreted carefully to avoid confusion. For instance, f ( t ) ∗ g ( t − t 0 ) {\displaystyle f(t)g(t-t_{0})} is equivalent to ( f ∗ g ) ( t − t 0 ) {\displaystyle (fg)(t-t_{0})} , but f ( t − t 0 ) ∗ g ( t − t 0 ) {\displaystyle f(t-t_{0})g(t-t_{0})} is in fact equivalent to ( f ∗ g ) ( t − 2 t 0 ) {\displaystyle (fg)(t-2t_{0})} . === Relations with other transforms === Given two functions f ( t ) {\displaystyle f(t)} and g ( t ) {\displaystyle g(t)} with bilateral Laplace transforms (two-sided Laplace transform) F ( s ) = ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s u f ( u ) d u {\displaystyle F(s)=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-su}\ f(u)\ {\text{d}}u} and G ( s ) = ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s v g ( v ) d v {\displaystyle G(s)=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-sv}\ g(v)\ {\text{d}}v} respectively, the convolution operation ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) {\displaystyle (fg)(t)} can be defined as the inverse Laplace transform of the product of F ( s ) {\displaystyle F(s)} and G ( s ) {\displaystyle G(s)} . More precisely, F ( s ) ⋅ G ( s ) = ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s u f ( u ) d u ⋅ ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s v g ( v ) d v = ∫ − ∞ ∞ ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s ( u + v ) f ( u ) g ( v ) d u d v {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}F(s)\cdot G(s)&=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-su}\ f(u)\ {\text{d}}u\cdot \int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-sv}\ g(v)\ {\text{d}}v\\&=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-s(u+v)}\ f(u)\ g(v)\ {\text{d}}u\ {\text{d}}v\end{aligned}}} Let t = u + v {\displaystyle t=u+v} , then F ( s ) ⋅ G ( s ) = ∫ − ∞ ∞ ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s t f ( u ) g ( t − u ) d u d t = ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s t ∫ − ∞ ∞ f ( u ) g ( t − u ) d u ⏟ ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) d t = ∫ − ∞ ∞ e − s t ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) d t . {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}F(s)\cdot G(s)&=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-st}\ f(u)\ g(t-u)\ {\text{d}}u\ {\text{d}}t\\&=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-st}\underbrace {\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }f(u)\ g(t-u)\ {\text{d}}u} _{(fg)(t)}\ {\text{d}}t\\&=\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }e^{-st}(fg)(t)\ {\text{d}}t.\end{aligned}}} Note that F ( s ) ⋅ G ( s ) {\displaystyle F(s)\cdot G(s)} is the bilateral Laplace transform of ( f ∗ g ) ( t ) {\displaystyle (fg)(t)} . A similar derivation can be done using the unilateral Laplace transform (one-sided Laplace transform). The convolution operation also describes the output (in terms of the input) of an important class of operations known as linear time-invariant (LTI). See LTI system theory for a derivation of convolution as the result of LTI constraints. In terms of the Fourier transforms of the input and output of an LTI operation, no new frequency components are created. The existing ones are only modified (amplitude and/or phase). In other words, the output transform is the pointwise product of the input transform with a third transform (known as a transfer function). See Convolution theorem for a derivation of that property of convolution. Conversely, convolution can be derived as the inverse Fourier transform of the pointwise product of two Fourier transforms. == Visual explanation == == Historical developments == One of the earliest uses of the convolution integral appeared in D'Alembert's derivation of Taylor's theorem in Recherches sur différents points importants du système du monde, published in 1754. Also, an expression of the type: ∫ f ( u ) ⋅ g ( x − u ) d u {\displaystyle \int f(u)\cdot g(x-u)\,du} is used by Sylvestre François Lacroix on page 505 of his book entitled Treatise on differences and series, which is the last of 3 volumes of the encyclopedic series: Traité du calcul différentiel et du calcul intégral, Chez Courcier, Paris, 1797–1800. Soon thereafter, convolution operations appear in the works of Pierre Simon Laplace, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, Siméon Denis Poisson, and others. The term itself did not come into wide use until the 1950s or 1960s. Prior to that it was sometimes known as Faltung (which means folding in German), composition product, superposition integral, and Carson's integral. Yet it appears as early as 1903, though the definition is rather unfamiliar in older uses. The operation: ∫ 0 t φ ( s ) ψ ( t − s ) d s , 0 ≤ t < ∞ , {\displaystyle \int _{0}^{t}\varphi (s)\psi (t-s)\,ds,\quad 0\leq t<\infty ,} is a particular case of composition products considered by the Italian mathematician Vito Volterra in 1913. == Circular c

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  • SmartQVT

    SmartQVT

    SmartQVT is a unmaintained (since 2013) full Java open-source implementation of the QTV-Operational language which is dedicated to express model-to-model transformations. This tool compiles QVT transformations into Java programs to be able to run QVT transformations. The compiled Java programs are EMF-based applications. It is provided as Eclipse plug-ins running on top of the EMF metamodeling framework and is licensed under EPL. == Components == SmartQVT contains 3 main components: a code editor: this component helps the user to write QVT code by highlighting key words. a parser: this component converts QVT code files into model representations of the QVT programs (abstract syntax). a compiler: this component converts model representations of the QVT program into executable Java programs.

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  • MY F.C.

    MY F.C.

    MY F.C. is a freemium app designed to organise and administer football teams. It is developed by MY F.C. Limited, a private company headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. The app allows users to build a team by adding players and from there they can create trainings and matches, keep up with relevant news in the curated newsfeed, record statistics both individually and team based, follow the games live in the match-centre. The app also features integrated lineup builder with custom team kits. == History == Founders Sam Jenkins, Mike Simpson and Sam Jasper started MY F.C. in 2015 to help them "run their football lives". The app was launched on Android and iOS on 14 February 2017. == Accolades == MY F.C. won the first place prize at Bank of New Zealand Start-up Alley 2017 competition that aims to discover New Zealand start-ups who are doing innovative work and ready to establish themselves as long-term, sustainable businesses. The prize package included $15,000 and a trip to San Francisco.

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  • Software durability

    Software durability

    In software engineering, software durability means the solution ability of serviceability of software and to meet user's needs for a relatively long time. Software durability is important for user's satisfaction. For a software security to be durable, it must allow an organization to adjust the software to business needs that are constantly evolving, often in impulsive ways. Durability of software depends on four characteristics mainly; i.e. software trustworthiness, Human Trust for Serviceability, software dependability and software usability.

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  • Podium (company)

    Podium (company)

    Podium is a private technology company headquartered in Lehi, Utah that develops cloud-based software related to messaging, customer feedback, online reviews, selling products, and requesting payments. == History == Podium was founded in 2014 by Eric Rea and Dennis Steele, who developed a tool to help small businesses "build their online reputation" through online reviews. Podium was initially known as RepDrive before rebranding as Podium in 2015. In 2015, Podium moved from a spare bedroom to a new location above a Provo bike shop. In March 2020, Podium added payments technology to its product suite. In November 2021, Podium raised $201 million in Series D funding and was valued at $3 billion. == Product == Podium is a software-as-a-service platform designed to improve business online reputation. It helps users manage business interactions in one tool. Users can communicate reviews, texts, chats, and post payment directly within the app.

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  • The Outliner of Giants

    The Outliner of Giants

    The Outliner of Giants was commercial outlining software. Like other outliners, it allowed the user to create a document consisting of a series of nested lists. It was one of a number of browser-based outliners that are delivered as a web application, used through a web browser, rather than being installed as a stand-alone application. The Outliner of Giants was released in 2009. The service was shut down on December 31, 2017 and only exports are allowed at this time. == Feature set == Unlike most other browser-based outliners - which often focus on providing a minimum viable product - the Outliner of Giants had much of the functionality typically associated with a desktop outliner, such as the ability to use of columns to structure information. However, The Outliner of Giants did not support offline editing, requiring an active internet connection in order to make changes to an outline document. === Outlining === Like all outliners, The Outliner of Giants supported the creation of a hierarchy of items, with users modifying the parent-child relationship between items in order to structure a document. This included the ability to promote or demote items up or down the hierarchy, or move an item up or down a list of siblings on the same level. The Outliner of Giants did not support the true cloning of items (where an item can appear to be in multiple places within the hierarchy at the same time), although it did support the copying of single or multiple nodes. === Import === The Outliner of Giants could import both plain text and the OPML XML format, which is commonly used to transfer data between outlining applications. === Editing === Outline documents could be edited using a WYSIWYG editor, as well as the Markdown, and Textile markup languages. === Annotation === The Outliner of Giants supported functions to annotate an outline, such as the ability to add colored labels, highlights and text, as well as tags and hashtags. === Collaboration === The Outliner of Giants supported real-time collaboration, where multiple users could edit the same document, and can see the changes made by another user as they happened. === Publication === Outlines created through The Outliner of Giants could be published directly online through the service, either as outlines, pages or in a blog format. === Export === The Outliner of Giants can export outline data as plain text, HTML, as well as directly to the Google Docs word processor.

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  • Ernie Bot

    Ernie Bot

    Ernie Bot (Chinese: 文心一言, Pinyin: wénxīn yīyán), full name Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the Chinese technology company Baidu. Ernie Bot rivals GPT models in Chinese NLP tasks. It is built on the company's ERNIE series of large language models, which have been in development since 2019. The service was first launched for invited testing on March 16, 2023, and was released to the general public on August 31, 2023, after receiving approval from Chinese regulators. Since its public launch, Ernie Bot has undergone several updates, with newer versions like ERNIE 4.0 and 4.5 released to improve its capabilities. The service has seen rapid user adoption, reportedly reaching over 200 million users by April 2024. It has been integrated into various products, notably powering AI features for the Chinese release of Samsung's Galaxy S24 smartphones. As a product operating in China, Ernie Bot is subject to the country's censorship regulations. It has been observed to refuse answers to politically sensitive questions, such as those regarding CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, and other topics deemed taboo by the government. == History == Ernie Bot was initially released for invited testing on March 16, 2023. The live release demo was reported to have been prerecorded, which caused Baidu's stock to drop 10 percent on the day of the launch. The company's stock gained 14 percent the following day after analysts from Citigroup and Bank of America tested Ernie Bot and gave it positive preliminary reviews. On August 31, 2023, Ernie Bot was released to the public after receiving approval from Chinese regulatory authorities. By December 2023, Baidu announced the service had surpassed 100 million users. In January 2024, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported that a university research lab linked to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had tested Ernie Bot for military response scenarios. Baidu denied the allegations, stating it had no connection with the academic paper. That same month, Ernie was integrated into Samsung's Galaxy S24 lineup for its launch in China. The user base reportedly grew to 200 million by April 2024 and 300 million by June 2024. In September 2024, Baidu changed the chatbot's Chinese name from "Wenxin Yiyan" (文心一言) to "Wenxiaoyan" (文小言) to position it as a search assistant. On March 16, 2025, Baidu announced version 4.5 and the reasoning model ERNIE X1. The following month, at the Create2025 Baidu AI Developer Conference, the company released the Wenxin 4.5 Turbo and Wenxin X1 Turbo models, designed to be faster and less expensive to operate. == Development == Ernie Bot is based on Baidu's ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration) series of foundation models. The general training process begins with pre-training on large datasets, followed by refinement using techniques like supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning with human feedback, and prompt engineering. === Foundation models === ==== Ernie 3.0 ==== The model powering the initial launch of Ernie Bot. It was trained with 10 billion parameters on a 4-terabyte corpus consisting of plain text and a large-scale knowledge graph. ==== Ernie 3.5 ==== Released in June 2023. At the time of release, its performance was reported as "slightly inferior" to OpenAI's GPT-4. ==== Ernie 4.0 ==== Unveiled in October 2023 and released to paying subscribers in November. According to Baidu, this version featured improved performance over its predecessor, with information updated to April 2023. ==== Ernie X1 ==== Announced in March 2025, with Ernie X1 positioned as a specialized reasoning model. Baidu stated that performance improvements were achieved through new technologies such as "FlashMask" dynamic attention masking and a heterogeneous multimodal mixture-of-experts architecture. === Turbo Models === In June 2024, Baidu announced Ernie 4.0 Turbo. In April 2025, Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo were released. These models are optimized for faster response times and lower operational costs. == Service == In its subscription options, the professional plan gives users access to Ernie 4.0 with a payment either for a month or with reduced payment for auto-renewal per month. Meanwhile, Ernie 3.5 is free of charge. Ernie 4.0, the language model for Ernie bot, has information updated to April 2023. == Censorship == Ernie Bot is subject to the Chinese government's censorship regime. In public tests with journalists, Ernie Bot refused to answer questions about CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the persecution of Uyghurs in China in Xinjiang, and the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. When queried about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, Ernie Bot stated that it originated among American vape users.

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  • Cloud management

    Cloud management

    Cloud management refers to the administration and oversight of cloud computing products and services. Public clouds are managed by cloud service providers, which operate the underlying infrastructure such as servers, storage, networking, and data center facilities. Users may also opt to manage their public cloud services with a third-party cloud management tool. Users of public cloud services can generally select from three basic cloud provisioning categories: User self-provisioning: Customers purchase cloud services directly from the provider, typically through a web form or console interface. The customer pays on a per-transaction basis. Advanced provisioning: Customers contract in advance a predetermined amount of resources, which are prepared in advance of service. The customer pays a flat fee or a monthly fee. Dynamic provisioning: The provider allocates resources when the customer needs them, then decommissions them when they are no longer needed. The customer is charged on a pay-per-use basis. Managing a private cloud requires software tools to help create a virtualized pool of compute resources, provide a self-service portal for end users and handle security, resource allocation, tracking and billing. Management tools for private clouds tend to be service driven, as opposed to resource driven, because cloud environments are typically highly virtualized and organized in terms of portable workloads. In hybrid cloud environments, compute, network and storage resources must be managed across multiple domains, so a good management strategy should start by defining what needs to be managed, and where and how to do it. Policies to help govern these domains should include configuration and installation of images, access control, and budgeting and reporting. Access control often includes the use of Single sign-on (SSO), in which a user logs in once and gains access to all systems without being prompted to log in again at each of them. == Characteristics of Cloud Management == Cloud management combines software and technologies in a design for managing cloud environments. Software developers have responded to the management challenges of cloud computing with a variety of cloud management platforms and tools. These tools include native tools offered by public cloud providers as well as third-party tools designed to provide consistent functionality across multiple cloud providers. Administrators must balance the competing requirements of efficient consistency across different cloud platforms with access to different native functionality within individual cloud platforms. The growing acceptance of public cloud and increased multicloud usage is driving the need for consistent cross-platform management. Rapid adoption of cloud services is introducing a new set of management challenges for those technical professionals responsible for managing IT systems and services. Cloud-management platforms and tools should have the ability to provide minimum functionality in the following categories. Functionality can be both natively provided or orchestrated via third-party integration. Provisioning and orchestration: create, modify, and delete resources as well as orchestrate workflows and management of workloads Automation: Enable cloud consumption and deployment of app services via infrastructure-as-code and other DevOps concepts Security and compliance: manage role-based access of cloud services and enforce security configurations Service request: collect and fulfill requests from users to access and deploy cloud resources. Monitoring and logging: collect performance and availability metrics as well as automate incident management and log aggregation Inventory and classification: discover and maintain pre-existing brownfield cloud resources plus monitor and manage changes Cost management and optimization: track and rightsize cloud spend and align capacity and performance to actual demand Migration, backup, and DR: enable data protection, disaster recovery, and data mobility via snapshots and/or data replication Organizations may group these criteria into key use cases including Cloud Brokerage, DevOps Automation, Governance, and Day-2 Life Cycle Operations. Enterprises with large-scale cloud implementations may require more robust cloud management tools which include specific characteristics, such as the ability to manage multiple platforms from a single point of reference, or intelligent analytics to automate processes like application lifecycle management. High-end cloud management tools should also have the ability to handle system failures automatically with capabilities such as self-monitoring, an explicit notification mechanism, and include failover and self-healing capabilities. == Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Management Challenges == Legacy management infrastructures, which are based on the concept of dedicated system relationships and architecture constructs, are not well suited to cloud environments where instances are continually launched and decommissioned. Instead, the dynamic nature of cloud computing requires monitoring and management tools that are adaptable, extensible and customizable. Cloud computing presents a number of management challenges. Companies using public clouds do not have ownership of the equipment hosting the cloud environment, and because the environment is not contained within their own networks, public cloud customers do not have full visibility or control. Users of public cloud services must also integrate with an architecture defined by the cloud provider, using its specific parameters for working with cloud components. Integration includes tying into the cloud APIs for configuring IP addresses, subnets, firewalls and data service functions for storage. Because control of these functions is based on the cloud provider’s infrastructure and services, public cloud users must integrate with the cloud infrastructure management. Capacity management is a challenge for both public and private cloud environments because end users have the ability to deploy applications using self-service portals. Applications of all sizes may appear in the environment, consume an unpredictable amount of resources, then disappear at any time. A possible solution is profiling the applications impact on computational resources. As result, the performance models allow the prediction of how resource utilization changes according to application patterns. Thus, resources can be dynamically scaled to meet the expected demand. This is critical to cloud providers that need to provision resources quickly to meet a growing demand by their applications. Charge-back—or, pricing resource use on a granular basis—is a challenge for both public and private cloud environments. Charge-back is a challenge for public cloud service providers because they must price their services competitively while still creating profit. Users of public cloud services may find charge-back challenging because it is difficult for IT groups to assess actual resource costs on a granular basis due to overlapping resources within an organization that may be paid for by an individual business unit, such as electrical power. For private cloud operators, charge-back is fairly straightforward, but the challenge lies in guessing how to allocate resources as closely as possible to actual resource usage to achieve the greatest operational efficiency. Exceeding budgets can be a risk. Hybrid cloud environments, which combine public and private cloud services, sometimes with traditional infrastructure elements, present their own set of management challenges. These include security concerns if sensitive data lands on public cloud servers, budget concerns around overuse of storage or bandwidth and proliferation of mismanaged images. Managing the information flow in a hybrid cloud environment is also a significant challenge. On-premises clouds must share information with applications hosted off-premises by public cloud providers, and this information may change constantly. Hybrid cloud environments also typically include a complex mix of policies, permissions and limits that must be managed consistently across both public and private clouds. == Cloud Management Platforms (CMP) == CMPs provide a means for a cloud service customer to manage the deployment and operation of applications and associated datasets across multiple cloud service infrastructures, including both on-premises cloud infrastructure and public cloud service provider infrastructure. In other words, CMPs provide management capabilities for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. A cloud management platform (CMP) provides broad cloud management functionality atop both public cloud provider platforms and private cloud platforms. CMPs manage cloud services and resources that are distributed across multiple cloud platforms. The value of CMPs stands in delivering the maximum level of consistency between platforms without comp

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  • Distributed manufacturing

    Distributed manufacturing

    Distributed manufacturing, also known as distributed production, cloud producing, distributed digital manufacturing, and local manufacturing, is a form of decentralized manufacturing practiced by enterprises using a network of geographically dispersed manufacturing facilities that are coordinated using information technology. It can also refer to local manufacture via the historic cottage industry model, or manufacturing that takes place in the homes of consumers. == Enterprise == In enterprise environments, the primary attribute of distributed manufacturing is the ability to create value at geographically dispersed locations. For example, shipping costs could be minimized when products are built geographically close to their intended markets. Also, products manufactured in a number of small facilities distributed over a wide area can be customized with details adapted to individual or regional tastes. Manufacturing components in different physical locations and then managing the supply chain to bring them together for final assembly of a product is also considered a form of distributed manufacturing. Digital networks combined with additive manufacturing allow companies a decentralized and geographically independent distributed production (cloud manufacturing). == Consumer == Within the maker movement and DIY culture, small scale production by consumers often using peer-to-peer resources is being referred to as distributed manufacturing. Consumers download digital designs from an open design repository website like Youmagine or Thingiverse and produce a product for low costs through a distributed network of 3D printing services such as 3D Hubs, Geomiq. In the most distributed form of distributed manufacturing the consumer becomes a prosumer and manufacturers products at home with an open-source 3-D printer such as the RepRap. In 2013 a desktop 3-D printer could be economically justified as a personal product fabricator and the number of free and open hardware designs were growing exponentially. Today there are millions of open hardware product designs at hundreds of repositories and there is some evidence consumers are 3-D printing to save money. For example, 2017 case studies probed the quality of: (1) six common complex toys; (2) Lego blocks; and (3) the customizability of open source board games and found that all filaments analyzed saved the prosumer over 75% of the cost of commercially available true alternative toys and over 90% for recyclebot filament. Overall, these results indicate a single 3D printing repository, MyMiniFactory, is saving consumers well over $60 million/year in offset purchases of only toys. These 3-D printers can now be used to make sophisticated high-value products like scientific instruments. Similarly, a study in 2022 found that 81% of open source designs provided economic savings and the total savings for the 3D printing community is more than $35 million from downloading only the top 100 products at YouMagine. In general, the savings are largest when compared to conventional products when prosumers use recycled materials in 'distributed recycling and additive manufacturing' (DRAM). == Emergency Distributed Manufacturing During COVID-19 Pandemic == Distributed manufacturing became far more visible during the COVID-19 pandemic because it offered a practical response to the breakdown of centralized global supply chains. As lock downs, border restrictions, and factory shutdowns disrupted conventional production, decentralized networks using local facilities such as Open Source Medical Supplies stepped in and manufactured over 48 million products. Additive manufacturing /3D printing were used to produce urgently needed items such as face shields, ventilators and their components, nasopharyngeal swabs, and other personal protective equipment. This demonstrated that distributed manufacturing could reduce lead times, improve responsiveness, and lessen dependence on distant suppliers during crisis conditions for a wide range of products. Peer-reviewed studies on pandemic-era manufacturing note that additive manufacturing was especially valuable because digital design files could be shared rapidly and produced close to the point of need, enabling hospitals, universities, small firms, and maker communities to supplement strained medical supply chains. The pandemic also helped shift distributed manufacturing from being seen as a niche or experimental model to a credible strategy for resilience, flexibility, and emergency response. At the same time, scholars caution that its wider adoption depends on solving issues related to quality assurance, regulation, material consistency, and coordination across distributed production sites. Overall, COVID-19 popularized distributed manufacturing by showing that localized, digitally enabled production could complement traditional manufacturing systems when speed, adaptability, and supply-chain resilience were critical. == Social change == Some call attention to the conjunction of commons-based peer production with distributed manufacturing techniques. The self-reinforced fantasy of a system of eternal growth can be overcome with the development of economies of scope, and here, the civil society can play an important role contributing to the raising of the whole productive structure to a higher plateau of more sustainable and customised productivity. Further, it is true that many issues, problems and threats rise due to the large democratization of the means of production, and especially regarding the physical ones. For instance, the recyclability of advanced nanomaterials is still questioned; weapons manufacturing could become easier; not to mention the implications on counterfeiting and on "intellectual property". It might be maintained that in contrast to the industrial paradigm whose competitive dynamics were about economies of scale, commons-based peer production and distributed manufacturing could develop economies of scope. While the advantages of scale rest on cheap global transportation, the economies of scope share infrastructure costs (intangible and tangible productive resources), taking advantage of the capabilities of the fabrication tools. And following Neil Gershenfeld in that "some of the least developed parts of the world need some of the most advanced technologies", commons-based peer production and distributed manufacturing may offer the necessary tools for thinking globally but act locally in response to certain problems and needs. As well as supporting individual personal manufacturing social and economic benefits are expected to result from the development of local production economies. In particular, the humanitarian and development sector are becoming increasingly interested in how distributed manufacturing can overcome the supply chain challenges of last mile distribution. Further, distributed manufacturing has been proposed as a key element in the Cosmopolitan localism or cosmolocalism framework to reconfigure production by prioritizing socio-ecological well-being over corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. == Technology == By localizing manufacturing, distributed manufacturing may enable a balance between two opposite extreme qualities in technology development: Low technology and High tech. This balance is understood as an inclusive middle, a "mid-tech", that may go beyond the two polarities, incorporating them into a higher synthesis. Thus, in such an approach, low-tech and high-tech stop being mutually exclusive. They instead become a dialectic totality. Mid-tech may be abbreviated to "both…and…" instead of "neither…nor…". Mid-tech combines the efficiency and versatility of digital/automated technology with low-tech's potential for autonomy and resilience. == Contracting in Distributed Manufacturing == Research into contracting and order processing models tailored for distributed manufacturing has highlighted the need for flexible, role-based frameworks and advanced digital tools. These tools and frameworks are essential for addressing issues related to quality assurance, payment structures, legal compliance, and coordination among multiple actors. By addressing these challenges, contracting models for distributed manufacturing can unlock its potential for more localized, efficient, and sustainable production systems. A system prototype has been developed to simplify contracting for distributed manufacturing. This tool allows buyers to manage orders across multiple manufacturers using a single interface, automating workflows to ensure clarity and accountability for everyone involved. This research was led by the Internet of Production, as part of the mAkE project (African European Maker Innovation Ecosystem), funded by the European Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

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  • WiPay

    WiPay

    WiPay is a Caribbean-based payment technology company that specializes in electronic payments for businesses. WiPay was founded in 2016 by Aldwyn Wayne Jr., a Trinidadian businessman and graduate of Georgia Tech Institute. In September 2019, WiPay partnered with MasterCard. As a result, WiPay became the only licensed Payment Facilitator (PAYFAC) on both the MasterCard and Visa networks in the region.

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  • InstallCore

    InstallCore

    InstallCore (stylized as installCore) was an installation and content distribution platform created by ironSource, considered potentially unwanted programs (PUP) by a number of anti-malware vendors. It included a software development kit (SDK) for Windows and Mac OS X. The program allowed those using it for distribution to include monetization by advertisements or charging for installation, and made its installations invisible to the user and its anti-virus software. The platform and its programs have been rated potentially unwanted programs (PUP) or potentially unwanted applications (PUA) by anti-malware product vendors since 2014, and by Windows Defender Antivirus since 2015. The platform was primarily designed for efficient web-based deployment of various types of application software. As of August 2012, InstallCore was managing 100 million installations every month, offering services for paid, unpaid, and free software by using the SDK version. == History == The InstallCore team introduced the first version of the SDK at the beginning of 2011. The SDK was a fork of the FoxTab installer and had only basic Installation features. InstallCore was discontinued as part of a company flotation in late 2020. == Criticism and malware classification == InstallCore and its software packages have been classified as potentially unwanted programs (PUP) or potentially unwanted applications (PUA), by anti-malware product vendors and Windows Defender Antivirus from 2014–2015 onwards, with many stating that it installs adware and other additional PUPs. Malwarebytes identified the program as "a family of bundlers that installs more than one application on the user's computer". It has been described as "crossing the line into full-blown malware" and a "nasty Trojan".

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  • GNU social

    GNU social

    GNU social (and its predecessor StatusNet) is a largely defunct free and open-source microblogging social networking service that implements the OStatus and ActivityPub standards for interoperability between installations. While offering similar functionality to social networks such as Twitter, GNU social seeks to provide the ability for open and federated communication between different microblogging communities, known as 'instances'. Both enterprises and individuals can install and control their own instances and user data. At its peak in popularity, GNU social had been deployed on hundreds of interconnected instances, however has since fallen into disuse as competing software like Mastodon and Pleroma have taken its position as the dominant federated microblogging services. Later on in its lifespan, the project split into two separate branches, with "v2" being a continuation of the original codebase for maintenance of existing instances, with "v3" being a complete redesign of the project meant to integrate further ActivityPub support and modernization of the user experience and its technological back-end. As of August 15, 2022, there had been no new commits to the v2 branch, with the v3 branch also no longer being actively developed not long after by November 25, 2022, with the project essentially abandoned. Despite its modern obsolescence and dated design compared to modern platforms, GNU social and StatusNet is regarded to be the origin of the Fediverse network and has had a major influence on the design of more modern decentralized social networks that succeeded it. == History == While being the main project within its lineage, GNU social originally began as a fork of StatusNet. The software was first developed for a service called identi.ca from Evan Prodromou, which offered free microblogging accounts to the public. The software quickly became one of the first popular examples of a decentralized social network, as identi.ca allowed any other server that was running the software to communicate with it, something which had not previously been attempted before in social media at such a large scale. === StatusNet === Originally, StatusNet (named Laconica at the time) was launched with a communication protocol designed specifically for the project called OpenMicroBlogging (OMB). With version 0.8.1, the name of the software was changed to StatusNet. Version 0.9.0 was released soon after in March 3, 2010, with the developers implementing a newly designed protocol dubbed OStatus, with support for OMB being dropped not long after. Compared to OpenMicroBlogging, OStatus could handle and federate more events and actions than the basic plaintext communication that OMB provided and was based on a variety of other web technologies, allowing for easier adoption of new implementations of the protocol for servers and clients compared to the fully custom architecture of OMB. With the StatusNet name change, the company developing both the software and OStatus as well as managing identi.ca rebranded from Control Yourself to StatusNet Inc. In August 2010, the company raised a new round of venture capital funds to establish a hosting service under the status.net domain from sources such as First Mark Capital, BOLDstart Ventures, iNovia Capital and Montreal Start Up, raising over $2.3 million in funding up to that point. The hosting service allowed anyone to establish their own StatusNet instance without maintaining a server, similar to WordPress.com and other blogging platforms. New registrations on identi.ca along with the ability to create new status.net instances was disabled in December 2012, in preparation for a migration to pump.io that has since been named by users of StatusNet and OStatus as "the Pumpocalypse". pump.io was a brand new software package like StatusNet, but with a new protocol designed for general purpose activity streams outside of microblogging and ease-of-use for developers building on the technology, much like the transition from OMB to OStatus. The announcement was seen as unexpected among identi.ca users, who were concerned about the possibility of their statuses being deleted with the transition. At the same time, server administrators running third-party instances and their users who were left behind on StatusNet were also worried, as it was unclear at the time whether future development of the software would be picked up by a new maintainer. The transition for identi.ca users to pump.io was completed on 12 July 2013. ==== Previous names ==== The original name of StatusNet was Laconica, a reference to the Laconic phrase; a particularly brief statement commonly attributed to the leaders of Sparta (Laconia being the Greek region containing Sparta). In microblogging, all messages are designed to be very short due to the traditional 140-character limit on message size, a limitation imported from SMS. Beginning with version 0.8.1, the name was changed to StatusNet. The developers said that the new name "simply reflects what our software does: send status updates into your social network." === GNU social === GNU social originally began as a side project of GNU FM (Libre.fm) maintainer Matt Lee, with the goal of being able to federate messages between Last.fm and other instances of GNU FM using StatusNet plugins. Around the same time, a developer named Mikael Nordfeldth forked StatusNet with the intention of maintaining it as a personal project, dubbing it "Free Social". However, following identi.ca's transition to pump.io and its developers' sudden abandonment of StatusNet, the projects received more attention from server administrators and other users looking for an actively updated alternative. Shortly after LibrePlanet 2012, a plan was formed to merge all three projects into a single service. On June 8, 2013, it was announced that along with Free Social, StatusNet would be merged into the GNU social project and stewarded by the Free Software Foundation, with the project since becoming the dominant variant of StatusNet. During GNU social's lifespan, a popular theme for the user interface named Quitter was used, which was similar to an earlier Twitter interface. Many instances were made specifically using the name Quitter such as Quitter.se, an instance created by the developer of the theme. Before the establishment of Mastodon's popularity and dominance within the network, Quitter was noted as a frequent location for users of Twitter to migrate to when users disagreed with moderation policies or feature updates, such as when an algorithmic feed was added to Twitter. A fork of GNU social was made called postActiv, which planned to rewrite the backend and user interface of GNU social, as well as to add compatibility for Diaspora's protocol. == Features == A basic GNU social instance takes the form of a microblogging service with a reverse chronological timeline that features status updates and small messages from followed accounts, similar to other services such as Twitter or Weibo. While users could see their own customized timeline, they could access another timeline that showcased every message that the instance knows of, including from other instances that were connected to each other if someone on the instance followed an account from it. Users could also create and join groups, which allows for discussion and collaboration on specific topics. Administrators can also customize their server via the plugin system, which allows developers to create new features or modify existing plugins to suit the needs of the instance via PHP. A notable plugin built for GNU social was Quitter, a revamp of the user interface that resembles an earlier version of Twitter's user interface.

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  • List of JavaScript libraries

    List of JavaScript libraries

    This is a list of notable JavaScript libraries. == Constraint programming == Cassowary (software) CHR.js == DOM (manipulation) oriented == Google Polymer Dojo Toolkit jQuery MooTools Prototype JavaScript Framework == Graphical/visualization (canvas, SVG, or WebGL related) == AnyChart Apache ECharts Babylon.js Chart.js Cytoscape D3.js Dojo Toolkit FusionCharts Google Charts JointJS p5.js Plotly.js Processing.js Raphaël RGraph SWFObject Teechart Three.js Velocity.js Verge3D Webix == GUI (Graphical user interface) and widget related == Angular (application platform) by Google AngularJS by Google Bootstrap Dojo Widgets Ext JS by Sencha Foundation by ZURB jQuery UI jQWidgets OpenUI5 by SAP Polymer (library) by Google qooxdoo React.js by Meta/Facebook Vue.js Webix WinJS Svelte === No longer actively developed === Glow Lively Kernel Script.aculo.us YUI Library == Pure JavaScript/Ajax == Google Closure Library JsPHP Microsoft's Ajax library MochiKit PDF.js Socket.IO Spry framework Underscore.js == Template systems == jQuery Mobile Mustache Jinja-JS Twig.js == Unit testing == Jasmine Mocha QUnit == Test automation == Playwright Cypress == Web-application related (MVC, MVVM) == Angular (application platform) by Google AngularJS by Google Backbone.js Echo Ember.js Enyo Express.js Ext JS Google Web Toolkit JsRender/JsViews Knockout Meteor Mojito MooTools Next.js Nuxt.js OpenUI5 by SAP Polymer (library) by Google Prototype JavaScript Framework qooxdoo React.js SproutCore svelte Vue.js == Other == Blockly Cannon.js MathJax Modernizr TensorFlow Brain.js

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