Monday, 04 September 2006 15:02:58
MILAN Giacinto Facchetti was born in Treviglio, Bergamo province on 18 July 1942. A gifted all-round sportsman in his youth, he played football for his local team and achieved good results in athletics championships. At the age of sixteen he was already a promising young player courted by Bergamo-based side Atalanta and Inter. Facchetti chose the Milanese Nerazzurri, and would go on to become a legend.

Facchetti made his Italian top-flight debut on 21 May 1961 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. Inter beat Roma 2-0. The following Sunday in Milan he scored the first of his 59 goals for Inter in a match against Napoli. It was Helenio Herrera, coach of the legendary Great Inter side of all time, who combined Facchetti's attacking and defending abilities and invented the role of the modern full-back.

In his playing career Facchetti won 4 Italian league titles, 2 European Cups, 2 Intercontinental Cups and a Coppa Italia. He collected a total of 476 Serie A appearances for Inter. His international career was just as extraordinary. Facchetti earned 94 Italy caps (70 as captain), won the 1968 European championship with Italy in 1968 and captained the Azzurri against Brazil in the World Cup final in Mexico in 1970.

After his playing career Facchetti took up various managerial positions at Inter, including technical director, board member, worldwide ambassador and vice president. On 30 January 2004 Massimo Moratti handed him the highest office: Facchetti was the first player in Inter's history to become president. Under his administration, Inter won a Scudetto, two Italian Cups and two Italian Super Cups.

An icon of world football, Facchetti held a number of institutional roles within FIFA and UEFA along with the great champions who have written the history of the sport.

Monday, 04 September 2006 19:17:20

Dear Cipe,

I didn't manage to tell you what I wanted to for fear of making you understand that time was inexorable and the illness terrible.
I am sorry, but I think I should thank you most of all for the patience you have always had with me. For your eyes that smiled, until the end, at the enthusiasm or the irony with which I tried to overcome the difficult times with you.
A few days ago you spoke to me with hardly any voice left - and with the expression of someone who loves you - about Inter, projecting your thoughts towards a future beyond our possibilities, humble, ignorant and human.
A few months ago I asked you, half joking and half serious, why we never managed to have a referee as a friend, so we could feel protected at least once. And you, with an expression that was both soft and severe, replied to me that I couldn't ask you this because you weren't capable.
Fantastic. Your great dignity wasn't capable of it, your natural honesty wasn't capable of it. Neither was the sportsmanship that remained intact since your first day at Inter, with Herrera who mistakenly called you Cipelletti, and since then all of us have called you Cipe. Gentle, intelligent, courageous, reserved, far from every vulgar reaction.
Thank you again for having honoured Inter, and with her, all of us.

Massimo Moratti

大家可能聽說過，Google 革命性的發明是它名為 “Page Rank” 的網頁排名算法，這項技術徹底解決了搜索結果排序的問題。其實最先試圖給互聯網上的眾多網站排序的并不是 Google。Yahoo！公司最初第一個用目錄分類的方式讓用戶通過互聯網檢索信息，但由于當時計算機容量和速度的限制，當時的 Yahoo！和同時代的其它搜索引擎都存在一個共同的問題：收錄的網頁太少，而且只能對網頁中常見內容相關的實際用詞進行索引。那時，用戶很難找到很相關信息。我記得 1999 年以前查找一篇論文，要換好幾個搜索引擎。后來 DEC 公司開發了 AltaVista 搜索引擎，只用一臺 ALPHA 服務器，卻收錄了比以往引擎都多的網頁，而且對里面的每個詞進行索引。AltaVista 雖然讓用戶搜索到大量結果，但大部分結果卻與查詢不太相關，有時找想看的網頁需要翻好幾頁。所以最初的 AltaVista 在一定程度上解決了覆蓋率的問題，但不能很好地對結果進行排序。

Google 的 “Page Rank” （網頁排名）是怎么回事呢？其實簡單說就是民主表決。打個比方，假如我們要找李開復博士，有一百個人舉手說自己是李開復。那么誰是真的呢？也許有好幾個真的，但即使如此誰又是大家真正想找的呢？:-) 如果大家都說在 Google 公司的那個是真的，那么他就是真的。

在互聯網上，如果一個網頁被很多其它網頁所鏈接，說明它受到普遍的承認和信賴，那么它的排名就高。這就是 Page Rank 的核心思想。當然 Google 的 Page Rank 算法實際上要復雜得多。比如說，對來自不同網頁的鏈接對待不同，本身網頁排名高的鏈接更可靠，于是給這些鏈接予較大的權重。Page Rank 考慮了這個因素，可是現在問題又來了，計算搜索結果的網頁排名過程中需要用到網頁本身的排名，這不成了先有雞還是先有蛋的問題了嗎？

Google 的兩個創始人拉里•佩奇（Larry Page ）和謝爾蓋•布林 (Sergey Brin) 把這個問題變成了一個二維矩陣相乘的問題，并且用迭代的方法解決了這個問題。他們先假定所有網頁的排名是相同的，并且根據這個初始值，算出各個網頁的第一次迭代排名，然后再根據第一次迭代排名算出第二次的排名。他們兩人從理論上證明了不論初始值如何選取，這種算法都保證了網頁排名的估計值能收斂到他們的真實值。值得一提的事，這種算法是完全沒有任何人工干預的。

理論問題解決了，又遇到實際問題。因為互聯網上網頁的數量是巨大的，上面提到的二維矩陣從理論上講有網頁數目平方之多個元素。如果我們假定有十億個網頁，那么這個矩陣就有一百億億個元素。這樣大的矩陣相乘，計算量是非常大的。拉里和謝爾蓋兩人利用稀疏矩陣計算的技巧，大大的簡化了計算量，并實現了這個網頁排名算法。今天 Google 的工程師把這個算法移植到并行的計算機中，進一步縮短了計算時間，使網頁更新的周期比以前短了許多。

我來 Google 后，拉里 (Larry) 在和我們幾個新員工座談時，講起他當年和謝爾蓋(Sergey) 是怎么想到網頁排名算法的。他說："當時我們覺得整個互聯網就像一張大的圖（Graph)，每個網站就像一個節點，而每個網頁的鏈接就像一個弧。我想，互聯網可以用一個圖或者矩陣描述，我也許可以用這個發現做個博士論文。" 他和謝爾蓋就這樣發明了 Page Rank 的算法。

網頁排名的高明之處在于它把整個互聯網當作了一個整體對待。它無意識中符合了系統論的觀點。相比之下，以前的信息檢索大多把每一個網頁當作獨立的個體對待，很多人當初只注意了網頁內容和查詢語句的相關性，忽略了網頁之間的關系。

今天，Google 搜索引擎比最初復雜、完善了許多。但是網頁排名在 Google 所有算法中依然是至關重要的。在學術界, 這個算法被公認為是文獻檢索中最大的貢獻之一，并且被很多大學引入了信息檢索課程 (Information Retrieval) 的教程。