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Impressions of Curely's Wife
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Impressions of Curely's Wife John Steinbeck sees Curleys wife as 'nice girl' and not a 'floozy' however in the novel 'Of Mice and Men', Steinbeck introduces the character of Curley's wife; she could be interpreted as a mis-fitting character in the novel. In the novel Curley's wife is probably the most loathed on the ranch, the way she looks and acts lead others on the ranch to see her as a 'tart'. Additionally Curley might be the reason of Curley's wife behavior; Curley's wife is clearly lonely in the novel because Curley doesn't pay much attention to her. The lack of attention from Curley forces her to seek it elsewhere. She flirts with the other characters on the ranch but they pay her no attention either. This essay will go on to look at the character of Curley's wife and how characters perceive her. When first introduced to Curley's wife in the novel she comes into the bunkhouse, when both Lennie and George are in there. She is apparently looking for Curly but she already knows that new men have arrived. Steinbeck gives a detailed description of her as she stands in the doorway of the bunkhouse and talks to Lennie and George. ...read more.
In the novel Curley's wife real dream was to become a movie star however her dream was shattered because end up marrying Curley instead of making her dream come true. Curley's wife also says that 'Sure I gotta husband you all seen him small guy aint he?' Curley's wife here is being sarcastic clearly showing that she is not happy with the relationship that she has with Curley. Since Curley is the boss's son and who is also know as a vicious bully who picks on many people on the ranch he obviously has power over a lot people; including his own wife. Curley clearly has a lot of power of his wife and dislikes it his wife is somewhere she shouldn't be. This is clearly shown when Curley's wife seeks out the friendship of Lennie and she seems to be 'apprehensive'. The attitude of other people on ranch to Curley's wife is undoubtedly that the men on the ranch try to avoid her because of flirtatious personality to keep out of trouble. This is because she is the only female on the ranch and half of the men rarely get a chance to see females and the ones they see are when they go into town to a 'whore-house'. ...read more.
This is shown when she was having a conversation with Lennie in the barn, she says 'Coulda been in the movies and had nice clothes, coulda sat in them big hotels'. This shows that Curley's wife has dreamt for many years seeing herself as a potential film-star. She was tricked by a man at saying that she was a natural and that he put her into the movies. He said that he would write back however she never received that letter and her naivet� shows in her belief that her mother has stolen a letter (from her 'contact' in Hollywood) which was obviously never written; her immaturity appears in her instant reaction of marrying the loathsome Curley. Finally Curley's wife end up dead because Lennie's mistake, however when Curely's wife was found dead her appearance was not the same. By this I mean when the men found her dead Steinbeck describe her by saying 'and the meanness and the planning's and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young.' This means that underneath all the flirtatious and provocative personality she also has an innocent and sweet side of her. ?? ?? ?? ?? Linda Caengprasath 10S English Essay ...read more.
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A good basic essay where points are often supported with evidence from the text and there is some analysis of language and structure. Make sure that story telling is avoided in analytical essays and the question remains the focus throughout the text.
Marked by teacher Laura Gater 20/05/2013
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A Federal Farm bill was passed in 2014, which enabled farmers in states where industrial hemp is legal to participate in programs with their state departments of agriculture. These initial programs allowed farmers grow and harvest hemp with under 0.3% THC.
Oregon legalized industrial hemp production in 2009, but you may not have heard because there were high barriers of entry, and only 13 producers ended up getting licensed. The law was intended for oilseed and fiber production on large-production farms.


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using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class StateMachine1 : MonoBehaviour {

	State1 currentState; //create a new instance of State called currentState. Our state is stored in here.

	void Update ()
	{
		if(currentState != null)
		{
			currentState.Update(); //run the update method from the currentState
		}
	}

	public void SwitchState(State1 newState) //call this when we want to switch state and pass over the newState
	{
		if(currentState != null)
		{
			currentState.Exit(); //run the exit method from the currentState
		}

		currentState = newState; //set currentState to newState, which is passed over when we call the SwitchState method
		if(newState != null)
		{
			currentState.Enter();//run the Enter method from the currentState
		}
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Fed rattles markets | Quinn rejects MSG plea | MakerBot in deal
Bernanke's talk of tapering stimulus roils markets
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stressed on Wednesday that the Fed isn't poised to raise interest rates anytime soon but would look to trim its monthly bond purchases from the current level of $85 billion by the end of this year. The remarks rattled global markets, extending recent losses on Treasury bonds and sending prices to a 15-month low. [The Wall Street Journal]
Quinn rejects MSG's all-star plea
Madison Square Garden brought an all-star cast that included director Spike Lee and Knicks Hall of Famer Walt Frazier to the City Council Wednesday to support the arena's push for a new, permanent special permit to continue to operate in the heart of midtown. But Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn said in a statement that she backed only a 10-year permit for the arena. [Crain's New York Business]
Brooklyn startup MakerBot in $400M merger
MakerBot, a Brooklyn-based pioneer in desktop 3-D printing, has agreed to merge with a subsidiary of Stratasys, an industrial 3-D printing giant based in Minneapolis and Rehovot, Israel. The proposed deal for the smaller company has an initial value of $403 million, based on Stratasys' closing stock price of $84.60 on June 19. [Crain's New York Business]
Plus: Imperial Bag & Paper of Bayonne, N.J., said it would buy Brooklyn's Morton Paper. [Crain's New York Business]
Citi, JPMorgan failing mortgage settlement terms
The nation's five biggest mortgage lenders have largely satisfied their financial obligations under last year's $25 billion settlement over mortgage abuses. But four of the five, including Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, have yet to meet their commitment to end the maze of frustrations that borrowers must navigate to modify their loans, according to a report on Wednesday by the settlement's independent monitor. [The New York Times]
News Corp. spinoff valued at $9.1B
News Corp.'s publishing spinoff began trading on Wednesday at a market value of about $9.1 billion, one-seventh the value of the entertainment side of the media empire. The "when-issued" trading will set stock prices and values for the two companies when they officially split on June 28. [Bloomberg]
Four upstate casinos authorized
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders agreed Wednesday to authorize four upstate New York casinos. The deal also would license two video slot centers of 1,000 machines each on Long Island run by the off-track betting agencies of Suffolk and Nassau counties. Voters will have the final say this fall. [Crain's New York Business]
Plus: No deals were reached in the state Legislature on health-care bills addressing nurse staffing, patient handling, the statute of limitations on malpractice claims or a plan to shore up financially distressed SUNY Downstate Medical Center. [Crain's Health Pulse]
Dems toe Bloomberg transit line
Four of the six Democrats running for mayor bandied about a number of transportation issues Wednesday at a forum sponsored by the University Transportation Research Center at Baruch College. But aside from making jibes at Mayor Michael Bloomberg's transportation policies, the candidates did not stray far from the mayor's basic vision for the city's streets. [The Insider]
Plus: The Teamsters Local 237 union is set to back former City Comptroller Bill Thompson for mayor. [The Insider]
Also: Republican mayoral candidate Joseph Lhota will propose doubling the number of charter schools in the city on Thursday in a speech before the Association for a Better New York. [New York Post]
Diddy and Time Warner agree on Revolt
After months of negotiations, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs has reached an agreement with Time Warner Cable to offer his yet-to-launch Revolt TV channel to some of the cable company's roughly 12 million subscribers. Revolt already has an agreement to launch in about 10 million Comcast homes, as part of a deal Comcast struck with regulators to offer more minority-focused channels. [New York Post]
Staten Island project finally breaks ground
Four years after the city first announced the latest project for the site, ground is finally expected to be broken Thursday for a mixed-use development on the site of Staten Island's long-ago decommissioned U.S. naval base. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro are expected to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a parcel of the Homeport base. [Crain's New York Business]
New artworks unveiled in Riverside Park
Eight new sculptures and statues were unveiled this week in Riverside Park South. The artworks were created for a public-spaces arts program and will be on view in the park for the next year. [Metropolis]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Ph.D.: English, University of Toronto, 1996.
M.A. : English, University of Toronto, 1991.
B.A.: English and History, Rutgers University, Henry Rutgers Scholar, 1990.
"Courtly Love on Mars: E. R. Burroughs and the Medieval Lineage of Planetary Romance,"Medieval Science Fiction, ed. Carl Kears and James Paz, King's College London Medieval Studies (London: Centre for Late Antique & Medieval Studies, King's College London, 2016), 201-216.
"Transition and Renewal: Jews and the Church Year in Anglo-Saxon England" in Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture, ed. Samantha Zacher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 108-127.
"Beowulf Handbooks and Guides," Teaching Beowulf in the 21st Century, ed. Allen J. Frantzen, Howell D. Chickering, and R.F. Yeager (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2014).
"Sacred History and Old English Religious Poetry" in The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature, 500-1150, ed. Clare Lees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 406-26.
"Space and Place" in A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Studies, ed. R. Trilling and J. Stodnick (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 197-213.
"Beowulf and the Emergent Occasion," Literary Imagination 11.1 (2009): 83-98.
"The Historiographic Dimensions of Beowulf,"Journal of English and Germanic Philology 107.3 (2008): 281-302.
"Babylon and Anglo-Saxon England," Studies in the Literary Imagination 36.1 (2003): 37-58.
"Bodies and Boundaries in the Old English Life of St. Mary of Egypt,"Neophilologus 84 (2000): 137-156.
"Anti-Judaism in Ælfric's Lives of Saints," Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999): 65-86.
"Somatic Ambiguity and Masculine Desire in the Old English Life of Euphrosyne,"Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory and Medieval Studies 11.2 (1999): 345-61.


PARKWAY has two new additions with French boulangerie and patisserie Paul opening its doors and hairdressers Toni & Guy relocating to the centre.
The former occupies a 3,675sq ft unit on Middle Street, between Jones Bootmaker and Fat Face.
Toni & Guy have vacated its existing premises on Northbrook Street to operate from a 1,310sq ft store on the Parkway site between Fraser Hart jewellers and Cath Kidston.
Commenting on the two lettings, Parkway centre director David Pickett said: "We are delighted to welcome Paul and Toni & Guy to Parkway Shopping Centre.


As your sales organization scales up, there's one function that becomes crucial to your ability to drive revenue efficiently – sales operations.
Until Xerox created the first team in the 1970s, sales operations didn't exist. Fifty years later, it's still one of the hardest functions to nail. On the surface, their mission is simple: enable the sales organization to run better and faster. In practice, the best sales ops teams strike a delicate balance between being stewards of long term growth and executing for near term wins.
Reflecting on what he's learned scaling sales ops globally at Marketo and now Intercom, Jeffrey Serlin shared the mic with Collin Stewart on the Predictable Revenue podcast. They discussed everything from growing a top-performing sales ops team to building an effective sales ops roadmap.
Short on time? Check out Collin's recap on Predictable Revenue, or get our five key takeaways below.
For sales operations to scale, you need to have buy-in at every level – from your executives to your sales reps. A common mistake that sales ops leaders make is focusing only on managing up. The reality is, for the entire team to run more efficiently, the people on the sales floor need to have input into the changes being made and understand how those changes will impact their day-to-day work. It's the difference between getting things right and continually having false starts.
As your sales organization scales from a handful to hundreds of people, your workflows will grow in complexity too. There are so many sales tools, integrations and third party solutions that will become integral to your infrastructure. You need to bring on experts who can own each part of your tech stack. That means hiring for specific roles like Salesforce engineers who can create a development roadmap and then actually implement it.
The constant action of being in sales means there will always be fires to put out – systems that don't work as expected, docs that are out of date. If you fall into the trap of firefighting, you will only be plugging the dam without meaningfully impacting your organization's ability to hit its topline goals or your reps' ability to hit quota. The key is to focus on the strategic outcomes you want to drive, alongside the work required to keep the trains running.
Every person on the sales team should have a way to contribute ideas to the sales ops roadmap. It allows you to acknowledge the fires happening on the sales floor without having to drop everything to put them out. If you can, go on a listening tour to identify the top priorities for each team – your SDRs, AEs, relationship managers and customer solutions folks. It builds bridges and cultivates empathy too.
At the end of the day, your sales ops roadmap is a product of two things: your priorities and your capacity. It's a conversation about whether you prioritize 40 small things or 3 big things, whether you put out fires or solve strategic problems. When executed properly, your roadmap gives the entire team visibility into what's currently being worked on and as a result, provides you with the air cover to discuss trade offs when new requests arise.


text:
Derek Flack
Get ready for an (even more) awful Gardiner commute
Commuting on the Gardiner Expressway can be trying at the best of times, but it's about to get a whole lot worse - and for a longer time. Long term construction work began this morning on the troubled highway, which will extend until 2016. No, that's not a typo. Along with periodic weekend closures like we had on Saturday, lane reductions will become an everyday reality for those travelling to and from the core of the city.
Reports from this morning indicated that traffic had slowed to stop-and-go prior to 7:00 a.m. with the left lane closed in both directions from Park Lawn to Strachan. That's going to mean some groggy-eyed wake-ups for those hoping to beat traffic into the city. Ouch. The crumbling expressway needs all manner of work, including bridge repairs over the Humber River, guardrail work, and replacement of the centre median and a deck of roadway on the westbound side near the CNE.
In addition to daytime lane reductions, the eastbound Gardiner will also be closed periodically overnight (from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.) so that work crews can address repairs that require complete lane closures. Let the road rage begin.


"Because We Looked Like The Enemy"
"Buddha In The Searchlights" was commissioned for Williams' "American Sutra" book talk at the Futures Without Violence gallery (San Francisco Presidio) on February 24, 2019, in conjunction with the gallery's exhibition "Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII and the Demise of Civil Liberties" (on view until May 27, 2019).
The launch period has entered a new phase: readership. As a way of highlighting enthusiasm from public events & to keep the conversation about #AmericanSutra in motion, I'd love it if you would share comments & reflections on either Amazon or Goodreads.
We respect your privacy. Your information wil not be shared.
"American Sutra movingly and insightfully tells the long-buried true history of the ordeals suffered and triumphs achieved by Japanese American Buddhist individuals unjustly dispossessed and interned during WWII who drew on their Buddhist faith to remain loyal to the nation. I cannot recommend this compelling work highly enough for anyone who faces clearly the present-day conflicts of identities and yet aspires to a twenty-first-century vision of America's still-possible promise for the world.
List of the over 600 Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian priests and ministers in the WWII camps.
We welcome media inquires about the book and author. Members of the press are invited to email Duncan with questions or for interviews.


Kwashiorkor and Edema have topped the list of disease doctors attend to at the Princess Marie Louise Hospital, also known as Children's Hospital in Accra.
It follows a case study conducted by the Administrative Secretary of the hospital, Hannah Addison.
A child suffering from kwashiorkor has a swollen head; protruding tummy, drastic weight loss and light reddish hair.
It is caused by lack of proper nutrition. A child who is denied a balanced diet risks contracting the disease.
Edema, on the other hand, is caused mainly by salt retention in the body. It involves accumulation of fluids in any part of the body, resulting in booting and swelling of the feet or head in children.
Madam Addison who received items presented to the hospital by make-up artist, Ruth Maadjoa Ntow-Otchere, indicated high mortality rate at the hospital can be reduced if parents give their children balanced diet.
She added regular check-up is also essential to preventing such diseases that hamper physical and emotional child development.
Madam Addison further urged government to support the hospital to activate its newly-furnished block which remains dormant due to lack of doctors.
She says number of doctors would ensure improved healthcare for the people and also less pressure on the limited number of personnel in the hospital.
Madam Maadjoa Ntow-Otchere who is Chief Executive Officer of Glow, Ruth Maadjoa Ntow-Otchere, emphasized balanced diet for children in order to save medical cost.
She also urged the public to reach out to the vulnerable in society.
The food items and toiletries donated by the make-up artist were contribution from well-meaning people under her ''Glow for Change'' initiative.
Madam Maadjoa Ntow-Otchere stated, "good nutrition is key for a child's growth and parents or guardians have to make it a point to give their children that… balance diets that include a lot of protein, carbohydrates, fats, and mineral can save parents the agony of their children suffering in the hospital".


Deceptive and Extended 3 Bed Semi with additional Loft, Off Road Parking, Garage and Gardens. The accommodation comprises Entrance Hallway, Dining Room, Extended Lounge, Extended Breakfast Kitchen, Garage\Workshop, Landing, 3 Bedrooms, Family Bathroom, Staircase to the Loft. Outside there is a block paved drive providing Off Road Parking and thee are well maintained Gardens to the Rear.
14′ 7″ x 5′ 9″ (4.44m x 1.75m) Radiator, laminated flooring, under stair storage cupboard with plumbing, spindled staircase to the first floor landing, doors to the Lounge, Dining Room and Kitchen/Breakfast Room.
12′ 4″ x 10′ 7″ (3.76m x 3.23m) Radiator, oak flooring, coving, PVCu double glazed bay window to the front.
22′ 5″ x 10′ 0″ (6.83m x 3.05m) Radiator, television point, ceiling fan, velux double glazed skylight window, PVCu double glazed french doors to the garden.
18′ 5″ x 12′ 4″ (5.61m x 3.76m) Oak units to base and wall, roll edge work surfaces, breakfast bar, inset single drainer sink, with mixer tap, integrated double oven, hob and extractor, space for american fridge freezer, integrated dishwasher, velux double glazed skylight window, PVCu double glazed window to the rear,PVCu double glazed door to the rear garden, door to the garage/workshop.
15′ 8″ x 6′ 3″ (4.78m x 1.91m) Double Timber doors, Power and Light, wall mounted combi boiler.
PVCu double glazed window to the side, staircase to the loft.
11′ 9″ x 10′ 8 into robes" (3.58m x 3.25m) Fitted wardrobes, radiator, PVCu double glazed window to the rear.
10′ 8″ x 9′ 9″ (3.25m x 2.97m) Radiator, small cupboard, PVCu double glazed bay window to the front.
7′ 1″ x 5′ 9″ (2.16m x 1.75m) Radiator, PVCu double glazed window to the front.
8′ 4″ x 5′ 8″ (2.54m x 1.73m) Radiator, PVCu double glazed window to the rear, low level wc, vanity hand wash basin, panelled bath with shower over, enclosed airing cupboard.
11′ 6″ x 10′ 9″ (3.51m x 3.28m) Small dorma with PVCu double glazed window to the rear, build in cupboards, spindled balustrade.
To the front of the property there is a block paved double driveway. To the rear is a fully enclosed garden, split into sections, there are flagged patio areas, gravelled patio and astro turf lawn, a gate leads to the rear.


Ready to purchase your license? If you would like to license online, a convenience fee of $1.95 will apply for each transaction. Any required documents, such as your pet's current rabies vaccination certificate, may be scanned and uploaded or submitted later by fax, mail or email. The license will be issued after all required documents are received.


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5 Cloud Contact Center Trends to Watch in 2020
January 20, 2020 /0 Comments/in Blog /by Marketing
With 2020 upon us, it's safe to say the cloud contact center has arrived. Over 70% of businesses already have their contact center in the cloud or at least have plans to start the migration this year.
What follows are the most important trends you need to know to ensure your cloud contact center stays on the cutting edge. The technologies supporting these trends will help you create the most engaging experience possible for your customers.
1. A real omnichannel experience provides even more ways to communicate.
A true omnichannel experience allows customers to move seamlessly from one channel of communications to another without skipping a beat. Achieving this requires working with a provider that offers true omnichannel support. TCI's implementation of Mitel's MiCloud Connect Contact Center, for example, allows your customers to communicate effortlessly with your agents as they navigate between voice, web, text and other options without losing any of their information or having to repeat themselves.
2. Artificial Intelligence delivers training and assistance.
Although AI already has begun to transform cloud contact centers, planned investments mean the technology will have an even bigger impact in 2020. The technology brings real-time training and coaching through virtual agent assist. Virtual agents are AI-powered chat bots that monitor interactions between agents and customers – even if the conversation moves between channels – to provide guidance and training for the agent in real time.
3. Analytics play a more powerful role.
Contact centers have long been collecting data on customers, but the information is useless if it isn't properly analyzed and applied. This is where AI makes all the difference. The use of natural language processing (NLP) interprets data and provides analysis around why customers contact you, ways you can improve your products and services and how you make information available to customers. Since these insights are created in real-time, you can respond and adapt to customers' preferences quickly, increasing loyalty while staying ahead of the competition.
4. Self-service expands.
Customers don't want to get stuck in a queue or wait for a human agent – especially when they have a simple question about a product or service. Chat bots allow customers to get answers to basic questions and FAQs. They also free up human agents to focus on more complex queries and keep wait times down for those who really do need to speak to a live agent.
A key differentiator in 2020 will be the provision of chat bots that create a smooth transition when a customer needs live support. Smart bots route customers to an agent with the appropriate level of expertise and provide agents with a full history of the customer engagement. This saves customers from having to repeat themselves and enables agents to pick up exactly where the chat bot left off.
5. The rise of the remote contact center workforce.
Cloud contact centers have ushered in the ability to maintain a remote contact center workforce, without the need to offshore calls to a third-party vendor. With a cloud contact center, agents can be dispersed throughout the country, putting them closer to your customers. The money saved on office space and other overhead can be applied toward hiring local talent that can provide localized service. "Homeshoring" improves customer satisfaction, and this trend will continue in 2020.
Putting these cloud trends at the center of your contact center plans will help you meet your customers' expectations for a stellar experience.
Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
https://www.tcicomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/call-ctr-chatbot-1000.jpg 384 1000 Marketing https://www.tcicomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/TCI_logo_white-300x184.png Marketing2020-01-20 00:15:352020-01-19 09:40:315 Cloud Contact Center Trends to Watch in 2020
How Real-World AI is Transforming the Fast-Paced World of Contact Centers
November 11, 2019 /0 Comments/in Blog /by Marketing
Thanks to Hollywood, it's easy for many people to think of artificial intelligence as a sentient, self-learning technology that inevitably runs amok with the intent of wiping out humanity. This makes for fun movies, but what about the practical applications of AI in the real business world?
AI enables a computer or application to perform tasks commonly done by human beings – such as carry on conversations, discover meaning, and generalize or learn from past experiences. So, it should come as no surprise that AI is becoming a valuable tool in Contact Centers where such tasks have traditionally been carried out by human Agents to assist customers.
With more businesses looking to leverage AI's capabilities, Mitel has partnered with tech leaders like Google to deliver AI-driven improvements across their core contact center solutions…
AI-enabled Chatbots accelerate Implementation
With a traditional chatbot, a contact center team is responsible for predicting what their customers are going to ask, and painstakingly scripting each interaction. With AI in the mix, the customer is connected directly to your company's knowledge base, simplifying and shifting chatbot implementation time from months to days.
Natural Language Processing enables Virtual Agents
Using natural language processing, an intelligent customer experience solution understands what your customers are saying, chatting or texting – without requiring specific phrasing – and a virtual agent responds in real-time – whether a human agent is available or not.
Whenever the virtual agent reaches a question or situation it cannot handle, it can involve a human Agent in the conversation and feed its conversation details directly to that Agent.
Machine Learning improves the Customer Experience
Leveraging machine learning, the AI solution will continue to observe the customer-agent interaction, suggesting relevant options or content to the Agent and monitoring which responses come to a successful conclusion. This real-time coaching from AI Agent Assist results in more accurate, more responsive follow ups and an improved customer experience.
Webinar recap: The Intelligent Contact Center [57:30]
This in-depth webinar will show you how AI provides valuable insight into customer behavior so your contact center can deliver the best customer experience every time.
Among the topics covered:
Utilize IVR and CRM data to intelligently route incoming calls, offer predictive recommendations and drive up first call resolution
Save time and money by automating responses to common queries, improving resolution time and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores
Identify trends, monitor performance and unlock deep insights into agents and customers
Video Demo: AI in the Contact Center [4:56 min]
This video overview shows how Google AI & Mitel technology…
Uses the virtual agent chatbot and AI analytics to respond to common customer issues
Stays with each call, SMS or chat to find the best information for each customer
Learns what works and what doesn't to improve future customer interactions
Simplifies agent workflows with smart virtual agent assist
New use cases will continue to emerge as the technology becomes more advanced. That means the definition of AI will continue to evolve, and you'll want to keep pace to reap future business benefits.
Ready to improve your customer experience with real-world AI now? Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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Chatbots Are helping Small & Mid-Sized Firms Compete With Big Businesses
August 5, 2019 /0 Comments/in Blog /by Marketing
Small and midsize businesses are regularly challenged to compete with enterprises that have deeper pockets, larger contact centers and more options to serve their customers.
By embracing chatbots, smaller firms can improve their Customer Experience and compete head-on with larger companies. Here's how…
Basic question-and-answer functions. When customers start an online webchat they can get routine information such as overnight mailing addresses, product information, links to knowledgebases and physical location hours. Customers get their information faster – via their preferred device – and your business doesn't need to rely on more costly employees to answer basic questions.
Addressing complex, customer-specific inquiries. These include looking up account balances, linking to extended warranty terms and scheduling service calls. The chatbot asks for information to confirm customer identity and then accesses the appropriate database, knowledgebase or apps to complete the request.
Delivering scripted information. By directing a customer to a chatbot, companies can ensure there is no human error that may result in potential industry compliance and regulatory liabilities.
Making recommendations. By asking customers a few questions, the chatbot can make product or service recommendations, thereby increasing sales. Further, analytics tools can track customer preferences and make proactive recommendations in the future.
Assisting human agents. Chatbots also can listen to conversations between agents and customers, offering real-time suggestions on upsell opportunities. Or, if a customer becomes upset, the chatbot can summon a supervisor to join the call.
Once trained and implemented, chatbots cost roughly 10% to 20% of a human agent, and leading AI platform vendors like Google, IBM, Amazon and Oracle are teaming up with contact center providers like Mitel to make chatbots even more intelligent.
Looking for more innovative ways to improve your customer service? Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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Mitel Integrates with Google Cloud Contact Center AI to Deliver More Insightful Customer Experiences
November 5, 2018 /0 Comments/in Blog /by Marketing
Mitel has announced an integration with Google Cloud's new Contact Center AI that will improve your company's customer service experience, as well as the productivity of your contact center.
Contact Center AI is a simple, secure, and flexible solution that allows enterprises with limited machine learning expertise to deploy AI in their contact centers.
Key features of Mitel's integration with Contact Center AI include new capabilities you can use to offer smarter, more personalized agent/customer interactions.
AI-Powered Virtual Agent – Enables your customers to self-serve with the help of an intelligent chatbot equipped with product and service information.
AI-Powered Agent Assist – Enables a customer inquiry to be easily transferred to a live agent with full context of the virtual agent conversation and continuous AI support to provide the agent with real-time research and coaching.
AI-Powered Analytics – Provides another layer of intelligence and insight to enhance your offerings and further elevate your Customer Experience.
Let's talk about upgrading your Mitel contact center with AI. Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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Are You Getting the Full Value Out of Your CRM Platform?
August 27, 2018 /0 Comments/in Blog /by Marketing
Getting the most out of your CRM requires that you integrate it with your Business Voice applications. Almost all of the popular CRM services on the market seamlessly integrate with Mitel's systems. Using a customized CRM? Our experienced development team can bring your customer data, phone system and call center together.
When your CRM is integrated with Mitel's MiVoice or MiContact Center, for example, the contact's personal details can be set to pop-up on your phone or computer screen. Imagine how much time will be saved when your people don't need to search for important information like customer preferences and details on past transactions.
Enhanced call functionality like click-to-dial, automated call logging, intelligent dialing, and screen pops and transfer can all be enabled and integrated with your customer data.
Bringing CRM and Voice together makes every employee and contact center agent in your business significantly more productive, while improving the calling experience for your customers.
Let's talk about connecting your CRM to your phone system and contact center. Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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10 Contact Center Tools You Should be Using… But Probably Aren't
You may think you are running an efficient and cost effective contact center, but there is always room for improvement when it comes to the Customer Experience.
Mitel recommends adopting the following capabilities to help boost productivity, ensure resiliency, and improve the efficiency of your contact center…
Cradle-to-Grave Lifecycle Reporting
Agent Forecasting
Schedule Adherence Monitoring
Interactive Agent, Queue and Call Control
Self-Service Interactive Voice Response
Outbound Dialing
Contact Center as a Service
Learn more about these essential tools… Download the 4-page Mitel whitepaper
Ready to empower your contact center team? Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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Meet Your Customers Where & How They Want with Omnichannel Contact Centers
June 28, 2018 /0 Comments/in Blog /by Marketing
The term omnichannel refers to connecting your customers to your business across all available channels – web, voice, smartphones, social media, PCs, email, text, etc. – with a consistent experience and message.
In our digital world, customers want to choose the method of contact that makes the most sense for them at any given time.
Using new technology, a well-executed omnichannel Customer Experience connects the dots between each available channel. To keep pace with this trend and increase your customer loyalty, Mitel's MiContact Center solutions provide the tools your business needs to deliver a smooth Customer Experience across all media types.
Empower your Contact Center Team
Set your customers' expectations and guide their actions, offering helpful information like their wait times for inbound calls, emails, Web chat and callbacks.
Online access to real-time and historical reports provide the insights you need into daily operations and agent performance.
When it comes to control and coaching, a simple interface provides a single point of administration for configuring omnichannel workflows.
Mitel's portfolio delivers everything your small or big business needs…
MiContact Center Solidus: A rich suite of seamlessly integrated Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) and contact center applications for intelligent interaction in your enterprise.
MiContact Center Workgroup Edition: Designed for the MiVoice Business platform, this solution helps your informal contact centers deliver excellent customer service.
MiContact Center Enterprise Edition: Designed for the MiVoice Business platform, this solution is ideal for sophisticated contact centers of all sizes.
MiContact Center with Skype for Business (formerly Lync): The only true end-to-end multimedia contact center today that utilizes both Microsoft back-office and desktop solutions.
MiContact Center Business: An enterprise-grade, omni-channel customer experience management platform designed to power your customer-centric organization.
Ready to meet the omnichannel demands of your customers? Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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A Fresh Look at Skills-Based Routing in your Contact Center to Improve the Customer Experience
October 9, 2017 /0 Comments/in Blog /by Marketing
The concept of skills-based routing has been around for as long as there have been call centers – connecting in-bound callers directly to the subject matter experts that can get the job done right on the first call.
New considerations driven by Digital Transformation
Historically, when businesses thought about skills-based routing in their call centers, they typically would organize their groups, and their skills, based on the line of business that the agent would be answering for, or the product line that the agent had expertise to handle. But, in fact, there's a wide variety of skills that also need to be considered, such as:
Business skills like ordering, fulfillment, support and services
Industry skills like specialized training or certifications
Passive soft skills
Authority for escalations
The Essential Role of Text, Email & Social Media in your Contact Center
In addition to connecting customers to the right people, you'll want to enable your team to interact with customers over their preferred media. You can exploit new digital communication technologies to improve the customer experience by adding email and web chat interactions, as well as SMS and social media messaging. Of course, all of this adds layers of complexity as you begin enabling new tools and programming routing workflows.
Let TCI simplify the process
Our experts can show you how holistic skills-based routing – enhanced with the latest digital communication technologies – can empower your call center to serve your customers better than ever. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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How Mitel-Powered Contact Centers are Evolving to Improve the Customer Experience
While voice-based channels remain the primary communication method with customers today, consumers are increasingly expecting, even demanding, to interact with companies through alternate methods such as text, web chat, email and other social media tools.
This means that every company MUST become as fluent in these emerging media channels as they are with voice communications today. That's where TCI and Mitel's Contact Center Solutions come in…
Multichannel Contact Center Solutions give customers the flexibility to choose the method of contact that makes the most sense for them at any given time, while giving your organization the ability to provide the same prompt, informed customer experience across all channels.
Outbound Contact Center Solutions provide tools your teams can use to proactively reach out and execute campaigns efficiently. Information is delivered right to agents as they make calls, increasing the chances for successful interactions.
Inbound Contact Center Solutions allow agents to efficiently handle calls and perform common actions using fewer steps and with reduced errors in call processing for an optimized customer experience.
Workforce Management and Recording Management Solutions allow you to plan, forecast and schedule agents to increase operational efficiency. A variety of tools help monitor, analyze and enhance individual and group performance.
For more information about Mitel's Contact Center Solutions and how they can improve your business, contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.
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One of the first activities I share with my first-year writing students is a writing exercise based on Sandra Cisneros's "A House of My Own," a chapter from her The House on Mango Street.
A key lesson I am reaching for involves recognizing that each sentence in this chapter is a grammatical fragment. It is here that I introduce my students to the problems they have faced in being taught rules (that fragments are errors and should be avoided in their writing) instead of being guided into purposeful language.
The difference, I explain, between Cisneros's fragments and most of the ones they have included in their writing for school is that Cisneros constructed these with purpose—and the students likely were completely unaware of the fragments, and thus had no real purpose for them in the writing.
Purposeful writing is an overarching goal in my writing instruction—notably focusing on the craft of word choice and sentence formation as they drive tone. Most novice writers are composing carelessly. The result is that the reader couldn't care less about the product.
As I have examined before, poetry is an ideal text for helping students grow as essayists.
Here I want to walk through January Gill O'Neil's "The Blower of Leaves" as a model of purposeful writing.
For poets, the economy of language often required by poetry drives well the need to labor with purpose over word choice and sentence formation (although I often have to stress to misinformed students that poetry is almost entirely driven by complete sentences, even as they carry over for more than one line).
As I anticipated, discussing O'Neil's poem spurred students to notice a variety of effective examples of purposeful writing.
We highlighted the powerful use of "fall"—signaling both the season and the motion. Here I stress that writers often look for layers of meaning carried in the fewest words possible (the power of concision) as well as reaching for ambiguity (this contrasts with most students believing writing is mostly about making grand certain statements).
Readers know someone is missing—but not the who, why, or how. That phrasing (repeating "work") emphasizes a key element of the poem (possibly what we would call its meaning) through repetition, which in this case is a bit clunky, possibly jarring the reader.
I emphasize here that students often come to first-year writing having been cautioned against repetition. But the lesson they have learned is mechanical and works against purposeful writing that seeks key works to repeat for effect. "Hard work"/"yard work" comes not from a careless and lazy writer, but embraces the sound devices common in poetry in order to make the central message cohesive with the literal scene.
Here we may be drawn to discuss emotional labor, in fact, but not because it is explicitly stated—the emotional labor of loss.
in a curtain of color.
In some ways, poets play word games, but rarely are they games for games' sake; in other words, these games lend cohesion through patterns. Patterns, we must recognize, create meaning.
O'Neil's poem is also driven by imagery, concrete language and details. Augmenting the concrete nature of the discourse is the use of analogy (and personification), a powerful but dangerous strategy in purposeful writing.
"My yard is their landing strip," "the stiff kiss of acorns puckers the ground," "the gaping mouths of lawn bags/with their remains," and the final line, "Dependable as a season"—the comparisons, we examine, help emphasize the concrete—becoming more vivid—but those comparisons must also resonate accurately. In other words, purposeful writing does not make analogies simply to make comparisons; they must be true and then must elevate the ideas being addressed as well as working with the tone established.
This poem raises a complicated aspect of purposeful writing, however, since it demonstrates the effectiveness of specific and concrete details along with craft (comparison, personification, rhyme, etc.) in order to create an ambiguous message.
Readers are compelled to believe the speaker of the poem has experienced loss, and that speaker's hurt over the loss is somehow triggered by doing lawn work. Yet, we cannot be certain of the who, why, and how—although those details help nudge us in some credible directions.
Maybe the speaker has been left by a lover, or maybe someone close has died?
"Forgive" and "forgiveness" sit near "refuse," "dying clover," and "weeds." Readers may be drawn to reading "leaves" darkly (a double meaning as with "fall"), yet the reader is also left with only informed speculation.
"Nothing is ever easy or true" may serve as a ironic line against the poem's ambiguity, but the poem becomes effective and compelling because of the power of purposeful writing—moves students can make their own as they grow in the writing of essays.


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Amoeba Music Opens the (Digitized) Vinyl Vaults!
Michael Lavorgna | Dec 6, 2012
Speaking of digitizing vinyl, thanks to reader "CG" for pointing us to this fascinating development over at Amoeba Music:
Vinyl Vaults is our boutique, curated collection of digitized vinyl and 78s, available for download exclusively here! Vinyl is the ultimate expression of an artist's work, and we're doing our best to preserve our history! Enjoy the depth and warmth of these vinyl masters, and for the full sonic impact upgrade to M4A (Lossless) or WAV Files.
45rpm singles and 78s start at $3.08 for the WAV version and full LPs in WAV format start at $11.98. The selection is eclectic and filled with rarities (I think that's the gist for a number of reasons including copyright concerns) from blues to jazz to ragas to rags to rock n roll to Abbott & Costello and more from the 1920s to the 2000s.
I downloaded the Digitized 78 of Scrapper Blackwell's "Hard Time Blues" / "Back Door Blues" and they were delivered in 16/48 format and sound for the most part like a 78-transfer—immediate, punchy with some background hiss to remind you you're listening to a recording from 1931 (with scant musical information above 5kHz in this case). I wish these were 24-bit transfers but I can always do those myself.
You can check out Amoeba's Vinyl Vaults here & now!. I also can't help but think (hope?) this may be the first such offering of more to come from other like-sources.
Some rare tune-age!
Submitted by kenmac on December 6, 2012 - 2:19pm
Almost good as digging through Amoeba's record racks.....
Love those guys!
Submitted by DeFgibbon on December 10, 2012 - 8:17pm
Though I wouldn't say it was almost as good as digging through the racks. Cause that's pretty good...


Perfect location with visibility along off-ramp of I-74! Vacant land shovel ready with public Sewer, water and gas. Zoned in Highway interchange (H-I). Located in St. Leon incorporation.
From I-74 go north on SR1. Turn rt onto SR 46. Rt onto Christina Dr.


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Failing Power Means The End For InSight
By Shane McGlaun • 8 months ago
NASA has confirmed that this year will be the end of the InSight Mars lander mission. The mission is ending because the solar panels are covered in dust, and power levels are falling. However, NASA is clear that the mission has met its science goals already.
NASA believes that the mission will end scientific operations by late summer. Mission team members have tried various methods of getting the dust off the solar panels.
Winter will be even harder on the lander as more dust is in the Martian atmosphere during the winter months. Particles of dust floating in the atmosphere reduce the sunlight that reaches the panels.
NASA has been clear that the mission reached its primary goals in its first two years on the surface of the Red Planet. InSight went into safe mode on May 7, which led to only essential functions remaining active.


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Walks And Walking in Wales – Brecon Beacons
The Brecon Beacons in South Wales offers walks and walking routes as varied as you could imagine. An area of true outstanding natural beauty its landscape is intertwined with exploitation, conservation, preservation and recreation.
The Brecon Beacons, defined by the Brecon Beacons National Park, has embraced the need to protect this beautiful area with investment and environmental consciousness. The area boasts the tallest, roughest, toughest peaks in South Wales engulfed in the boundless terrain, swooping escarpments, huge vistas, impressive tarns (lakes formed by glacial formations) and the barren moorlands.
The Brecon Beacons South Wales - we were headed to the peak on my right hand shoulder
The sudden transition from the tranquillity and the breathtaking scenery of the Brecon Beacons to the coal bearing valleys legacy of the industrial revolution is almost instant.
Merthyr Tydfil used to be the largest town in Wales with a legend dating back to 480 when Saint Tydfil was slain by pagans. In her honour the town was renamed Merthyr Tydfil, with Merthyr being a modern Welsh translation of Martyr. With the growth of the iron industry, several wars and the rapid expansion of railways meant the town grew until its peak in 1861. By the 1930's following World War I the area and industry was in decline. All that remained of the Dowlais ironworks finally closed in 1987 marking the end of 228 years of continuous production from one of the many, many sites.
Close by is Port Talbot, the home in 1952 of one of Europe's biggest steelworks and the then largest employer in Wales. A chemical plant in 1960 and deep-water harbour renovation in 1970 meant the area was good for the community but a ruin within the landscape.
Herein lays the importance of maintaining rural South Wales with the Brecon Beacons being the saviour of tourism and the Gower Peninsula by Swansea offering wonderful holiday spots for the beach lovers and coastal walkers.
The Brecon Beacons National Park offers a consistent character of wave upon wave of open hillside and crystal clear mountain air. The terrain dips, rolls and rises fluidly like a giant green sea. Walking routes in the Brecon Beacons are uncomplicated with wide open spaces and vast skies above, easy to navigate but ruthlessly draining with slow steady climbs that seem endless.
The Black Mountains is the first of the four main mountain ranges in the Brecon Beacons, a lofty range of hills along the Welsh/English border. The Brecon Beacons are the heart of the Brecon Beacons National Park and to the west are the moors and plateaux of Fforest Fawr. The loneliest of mountain ranges is at the far west of the Brecon Beacons, Black Mountain; a daunting wilderness for the very brave explorer.
In comparison to its northern counterpart, the Snowdonia National Park, the Brecon Beacons is more reliable than the lucky-dip landscape of boulder strewn slopes, jagged pinnacles, boggy moors and woodland valleys.
Whilst Mount Snowdon and the Snowdonia National Park may sound like the preferred choice for the more adventurous the Brecon Beacons beholds rarer of treasures; the Welsh waterfalls. The Welsh waterfalls are almost as endless as the mountain ranges and can be found in the ancient woodlands and forest pathways in and around the Brecon Beacons.
The experience of walking into, around, up and below, inside and outside of a Welsh waterfall is a definite rival to the many peaks and cwms of Mount Snowdon.
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Home Film, Music & TV May the 4th: Holiday Special
May the 4th: Holiday Special
Adam D Bram
May 2, 2014, 3:00 AM, BST
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Episode ??? THE HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Starring Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia.
With Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, R2-D2 as R2-D2, and James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader.
Introducing Chewbacca's Family: His wife, Malla; His father, Itchy; His son, Lumpy.
With special guest stars: Beatrice Arthur, Art Carney, Diahann Carrol, The Jefferson Starship, Harvey Korman, and an animated Star Wars story on the Star Wars Holiday Special…
In 1978, after the screaming success of A New Hope (then simply the first and only Star Wars), someone got the idea to make a TV special around Christmastime. Who exactly had the idea has been disputed for years. This should tell you something.
George Lucas granted the writers a general story outline and then stayed out of the way to see what the creative team could do with it. The directing duties ended up changing hands due to infighting. This should tell you something else.
The show aired once and has since only survived by bootleg copies taped from TV sets. George Lucas himself has gone on record saying he wishes he could find every last copy and burn it.
I've got a BAD feeling about this…
This special is pretty much the dictionary definition of the word "infamous," and I'll be honest; this is one of the ones I was looking the least forward to viewing and reviewing. Even though I've never seen it, its ungodly reputation precedes it.
But is it truly as bad as they say?
Frankly, it never is. Though parts of it do come close in this case.
See, the fundamental flaw of the piece is that rather than give us simply a new adventure, it quickly becomes apparent that this special is actually a classic 70's cheesy variety show. Which is all well and good, except that the segments seem to come almost out of nowhere and don't seem to fit the atmosphere of the framing story, which is at least attempting to be a Star Wars story.
Oh, that's right. I have to explain the framing story because for some odd reason this special has no opening crawl. Just a cold open and the announcement of the cast that I wrote in the crawl's place above.
Well, the framing story is as follows: the Wookiee holiday Life Day is fast approaching (as there is no such thing as Christmas a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away). Han Solo is trying to get Chewbacca back to his family on Kashyyyk for the celebration. However, the Empire is closing in on both fronts and making life difficult for the Wookiees.
So the majority of the special is spent with Malla, Itchy, and Lumpy. Those last two are rather unfortunate names, and I'm told that the Expanded Universe writers who used the characters in later material gave them extended names in an attempt to salvage their dignity. Also, it's a good 15 minutes between Han's lines in the cold open and the appearance of another English-speaking character. During this interval, we get our establishing sequence with the Wookiees who speak unsubtitled Shyriiwook. This is an…odd choice, and likely what started to turn viewers away.
Honestly, though, it doesn't bother me, because of what is my first overwhelmingly positive point in this special: the actors behind Malla, Itchy, and Lumpy are really, really good. They get across so much with just their body language and their telling looks. Not to mention the fact that the animatronics/costumes, courtesy of Stan Winston no less, are also surprisingly well-done and believable for the time period.
Plus, there's the little fact that this is the first appearance of Kashyyyk itself in media, and it would not reappear on film until over 25 years later in Revenge of the Sith – and its appearance there was based on Lucas and Ralph McQuarrie's designs for this special.
So then the special is basically the Wookiees waiting for Chewbacca, and having to fend off an Imperial inspection while trying to contact both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Of these, it's really Art Carney who is the best as a lovable trader named Saun Dann. While at first it seems incredible that the original cast of the film reappears, it's a little jarring. First of all, Han Solo is uncharacteristically serious through the whole thing. Ford pulls it off, but it's out of character. Thank goodness Mark Hamill is right back into classic Luke Skywalker mode…
…except holy bantha beaks. This was right after Mark's unfortunate car accident and subsequent facial reconstruction. Explained away in The Empire Strikes Back with a Wampa claw to the face, poor Mark looks like a reanimated Ken doll here. While, like I said, he's the same old Luke in voice and mannerisms, this look is supremely distracting.
And then there's Carrie Fisher, who was…
…let's just say "impaired" through her two appearances. This, by the way, is by Carrie's own admission, if it wasn't obvious from watching her.
The other skits come in and out while the family is waiting, and sometimes used as a distraction for the Imperial Officers that come calling. So I think it's only fair to judge each segment individually.
The first is a series of acrobats that Lumpy watches through a holotable.
It's a nice performance, but it leaves us asking…well…why?
After this is a cooking show that Malla watches that is populated by the first of this special's three Wacky Harvey Korman characters, Chef Gormaanda. Now, I love Harvey Korman, and I get the joke here, but for some reason I find it goes on just a bit too long with a minor payoff at best.
Then there's Diahann Carrol's segment, which has perhaps the most disturbing lead-in imaginable: Saun sets Itchy up with some virtual-reality erotica. I'm not kidding, it's pretty blatant.
And the resulting musical number is not my style, though I suppose there's nothing really wrong with it other than it's kind of slow.
The next variety segment is a performance by Jefferson Starship which…again, this is completely subjective, but I'm not a huge fan. Plus I have to admit tilting my head at the general atmosphere of the segment, especially the "microphones."
I bet you've all been waiting for me to get to the next part, which is the animated segment. It's a cute little serial story starring Mark, Harrison, Carrie, and Anthony. However, what distracted me is that it's clear whoever animated it is a huge Ralph Bakshi fan, since a lot of the creature design seems like it came right out of his adaptation of Heavy Metal. But you guys don't care about that; you want to know how I felt when I saw this sucker:
Yes, this is the legendary first appearance of Boba Fett, and I can see why Lucas brought him in for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Funnily enough, when I watch Boba here with his subtle disarming kindness and his soft accented voice, he reminds me more of Jango Fett than the Boba we'd see just a few short years later.
Then there's an instructional video for Lumpy's new toy starring Harvey Korman, and I feel the same way about that skit as I do about the Gormaanda sketch.
But Harvey redeems himself in the next sketch opposite Bea Arthur and the Cantina crew. It was surprisingly heartwarming, and I found Arthur's character Ackmena – the Cantina bartender – extremely engaging. Arguably, this is the best non-story segment in the special. Even the musical number didn't seem so out-of-place.
And that's really the secret to enjoying this special. As a whole, it's a giant mess, and I can't blame Lucas for being ashamed of letting it happen. However, there are enough really good ideas and performances that, if you give each piece a chance, you'll find something worthwhile. If you're a Star Wars fan, at least.
Next week, we find out what happens when George Lucas has even more influence in a Television project…
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Home - Registration - Hotels - Maps
Topics - Invited Speakers - Programme - Venue - Program Committee - Sponsors
FLOPS 2001
Fifth International Symposium on Functional and Logic Programming
Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
The symposium is a forum for research on all issues concerning functional programming and logic programming. In particular, it aims to stimulate the cross-fertilization as well as integration of the two paradigms. The symposium takes place about every 1.5 years in Japan. Previous FLOPS meetings were held in Fuji-Susono (1995), Shonan (1996), Kyoto (1998), and Tsukuba (1999).
The Fifth International Symposium on Functional and Logic Programming solicits original papers in all areas of functional and logic programming, including (but not limited to):
Language issues: language design and constructs, programming methodology, integration of paradigms, interfacing with other languages, type systems, constraints, concurrency and distributed computing
Foundations: semantics, rewrite systems and narrowing, type theory, proof systems
Implementation: compilation techniques, memory management, program analysis and transformation, partial evaluation, parallelism
Applications: case studies, real-world applications, graphical user interfaces, internet applications, database connection, formal methods and model checking
Gopalan Nadathur University of Minnesota, USA
George Necula University of California, Berkeley, USA
Taisuke Sato Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Three invited papers and 21 refereed papers have been organized into this final programme.
Venue, Registration, and Accommodation
The symposium will be held at the Conference Room 1 (third floor) of the International Conference Center of Waseda University, Nishi-Waseda Campus. The International Conference Center is located in the Center for Scholarly Information (Bldg. 18).
Information about symposium registration and accommodation, as well as related maps, can be found in separate Web pages.
Program Co-Chairs
Herbert Kuchen University of Münster, Germany
Kazunori Ueda Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Sergio Antoy Portland State University, USA
Gopal Gupta New Mexico State University, USA
Michael Hanus University of Kiel, Germany
Fergus Henderson University of Melbourne, Australia
Zhenjiang Hu University of Tokyo, Japan
Giorgio Levi University of Pisa, Italy
Michael Maher Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Dale Miller Pennsylvania State University, USA
I.V. Ramakrishnan State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA
Olivier Ridoux IRISA, France
Mario Rodriguez-Artalejo Complutense University, Madrid, Spain
Colin Runciman University of York, UK
Akihiko Takano National Institute of Informatics, Japan
Peter Thiemann Freiburg University, Germany
Yoshihito Toyama Tohoku University, Japan
Local Arrangements Chair
The proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in the LNCS series.
Sponsored by: Japan Society for Software Science and Technology (JSSST),
Special Interest Group on Principles of Programming
In cooperation with: Association for Logic Programming (ALP).
Send any question to flops2001@ueda.info.waseda.ac.jp.
Technical questions can be received by flops2001-www-admin@ueda.info.waseda.ac.jp.
Last update: March 14, 2001


This patter is made in Moss stitch / Linen stitch, its one of the most easy pattern to learn and the reason to that is that it only contains 2 stitches, ch and sc. And the result gives you a elegant woven look.
The moss/linen stitch is basically a repetition of *ch, sc*, working into the ch-1 space formed by the ch-1's in the previous row. You are effectively single crocheting between single crochets.
1. Sc in the fourth ch from the hook. *Ch 1, skip the next ch, sc in the next ch * Ch 2 and turn.
2. Sc in the first ch-1 space. *Ch, sc in the next ch-1 space*. Remember that the turning ch-2 counts as a stitch and should be worked int0. Ch 2 and turn.
4. Dont cut the yarn when you come to the end of the last row. Continue around the corner, doing 2 sc extra in that corner and then continue the moss/linen stitches all around your work (make 3 sc in the corners). Finish your work with a slip stich.


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Q: Finding possible combinations Sorry if this isnt the right place to ask but heres my problem
I have a 6 digit combination that uses these 5 numbers (2,5,6,8,0). One of these numbers will have to be used twice. How would i go about getting a list of all possible combinations of these 5 numbers being used in a 6 digit combination

A: Number of possible combinations are 5*(6!/2!) = 1800 (credit to @JMoravitz in the comments)
Here's a simple python code that provides you all combinations (you may run it here)
from itertools import permutations

p = [2,5,6,8,0]
q = [2,5,6,8,0]

my_set = set()

index =0
for i in q:
    p.append(i)
    perm = permutations(p,6)

    for x in list(perm):
        if x in my_set:
            continue

        my_set.add(x)
        print (index,x)
        index += 1

    p.remove(i)

snapshot result:
...
1784 (8, 5, 2, 6, 0, 0)
1785 (8, 5, 6, 0, 2, 0)
1786 (8, 5, 6, 0, 0, 2)
1787 (8, 5, 6, 2, 0, 0)
1788 (8, 6, 0, 2, 5, 0)
1789 (8, 6, 0, 2, 0, 5)
1790 (8, 6, 0, 5, 2, 0)
1791 (8, 6, 0, 5, 0, 2)
1792 (8, 6, 0, 0, 2, 5)
1793 (8, 6, 0, 0, 5, 2)
1794 (8, 6, 2, 0, 5, 0)
1795 (8, 6, 2, 0, 0, 5)
1796 (8, 6, 2, 5, 0, 0)
1797 (8, 6, 5, 0, 2, 0)
1798 (8, 6, 5, 0, 0, 2)
1799 (8, 6, 5, 2, 0, 0)

*

*remember that the index start from position 0 (hence 1799+1 results)

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