text
stringlengths 102
284k
| nemo_id
stringlengths 18
18
|
|---|---|
Linuxgruven > Software > Ubuntu Linux
Ubuntu Linux
April 23, 2005
While it's true that I've had many good things to say about both Linspire and Mepis lately, my distribution of choice for myself and most of my CS friends and coleagues is Ubuntu Linux. Specifically, 5.04, or "Hoary Hedgehog." Bad release names aside, Ubuntu is a breath of fresh air on the Linux scene. Funded by Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu is a well-funded, well-guided Debian-derivative that is gaining both mindshare and marketshare faster than any distribution I've seen in recent memory. It's fast, it's easy to use and install, it looks great, it's free, it's well supported both by the parent company and a surprisingly large community. While other distributions may be better at certain aspects of a Linux desktop, overall Ubuntu is and continues to be second to none. and are both key to a truly pleasant Ubuntu experience. The forums, now officially supported by Cononical, are an invaluable resource, offering excellent support. Meanwhile, exists to answer all of the details of all of the little questions that pop up to new users. Want to know how to add the nvidia driver, play encrypted DVDs or view PDF files? Check out the guide. The guide is very practical, but it answers questions in a way that makes it impossible to support directly. Playing encrypted DVDs is at best quasi-legal. For this reason, Canonical can't really sponsor the site. However, to my knowledge, it hasn't done anything to shut it down. Realistically, that's good enough for me.
Ubuntu is based on Debian Sarge but lacks the politics that mire Debian proper. There are many examples of this: For one, Ubuntu only focuses on three architectures: x86, AMD64 and PowerPC while Debian includes support for Sparc, Mips, ARM and many other lesser known architectures. This is certainly one of Debian's great strengths, but for 99% of Linux users out there, x86, AMD64 and PPC is good enough. By targetting multiple architectures, Ubuntu keeps their work cross-platform enough to easily take on extra architectures, but it doesn't worry about having to catch all variations out there. This allows Ubuntu to focus on higher-level goals, such as the inclusion of rather than Debian's XFree86. Ubuntu also packages a very slick and fine-tuned Gnome desktop. Ubuntu's is the first Gnome installation that I have liked since Helix Code's original release back in 2000.
Ubuntu stays focused on the things that most end-users care about: Great USB device support, excellent hardware detection, a slick desktop and fast bootup. 5.04 boots in about 30 seconds. Sure, it doesn't use a fnacy graphical boot screen, but you're up and running in Gnome before Fedora loads up the X11 server used by their boot screen. I know which I'd rather have.
Ubuntu is very aggressive with it's release schedule and the software it includes. 5.04 shipped Gnome 2.10.1 days after it had been released. Similarly fresh KDE, Mozilla, kernel and packages were included. This is because the next beta release begins as the previous release is deemed stable. They are constantly testing new software as it is released. The result is a release that has the advantages of a mix of Testing, Unstable an Experimental with security patches like Debian Stable.
Ubuntu also ships with binary Nvidia and ATI video drivers, making quality 3D an out-of-the-box reality. You can also easily install Macromedia's Flash plugin, Adobe's new Reader 7 and Sun's 1.5 JDK. These are things that, for political reasons, simply could not be with Debian. This isn't to say that Ubuntu is a brilliant multimedia distribution. Like Red Hat, they don't ship with MP3 or encrypted DVD support. However, these minor problems are easily remedied by following very simple instructions set out on the website.
Ubuntu the distribution is doing it's best to be inclusive. The developers work fairly closely with Debian and always submit patches to their packages. They are also keen to foster their own community. This has already resulted in the release of Kubuntu, a distribution of Ubuntu that uses KDE instead of Gnome.
Unlike any other, this distribution has breathed new life into the Debian community, giving it focus and once again forging ahaead with innovative new development. | dclm-gs1-106140000 |
Arbyte Slides
Simon Wistow simon at
Mon Dec 1 14:57:44 GMT 2008
On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 12:16:45PM +0000, Alistair MacLeod said:
> Work continues on making it CPAN ready.
Some comments on Gearman and TheSchwartz which (kind of obviously) used
quite a lot here at 6A.
You're right about Gearman in that it's "Not Reliable" but potentially
that's a poor choice of words - "Not Guaranteed" is probably a better
way of putting it and it's deliberately designed that way - it's for use
as a one shot tasks that you don't mind if they fail. For example I use
it for firing off $n web request jobs simultaneously which update a
cache. If after a timeout they've updated the cache then fine, otherwise
I just use the old cache version.
As for it not working - ping me off list or add an RT ticket (if you
haven't already) and I'll take a look.
As for the TheSchwartz you say it's not easily scalable - it uses
Data::ObjectDriver and hence has inbuilt support for sharding. And trust
me - it's scalable. We use it for everything here which, until fairly
recently, included all of TypePad and LiveJournal simultaneously
(including sending out all the email) :)
Also, you say it doesn't have batching after submission - unless I'm
misunderstanding you that's not actually true. If you look in the docs
for TheSchwartz::Job you'll find the coalesce param to new()
Which allows batching.
Anyway, I've been thinking of writing something very similar to Arbyte
so I'm looking forward to it. I notice you mentioned something about Jo
bRunner::Simple that fork()s - one of the things I wnated was something
that ran The various parts of Gearman (the injector, the Geamand and a
number of workers) or TheSchwartz (the ibjector, the DB and a number of
workers) all within the same process for testing purposes - is that the
same kind of functionality that you're looking at providing?
More information about the mailing list | dclm-gs1-106150000 |
Yahoo Weather
You are here
Cheer clinic participants
Priscilla Campbell
Carlisle Elementary School girls pre-kindergarten through sixth grade pose for a photo after performing during half time at the Carlisle versus Des Arc game Friday, Nov. 1, at Fred C. Hardke Field. Carlisle Senior Bison Cheerleaders held a Pee Wee Cheer Clinic Oct. 28-30 inside Raymond H. Brown Gymnasium on the old high school campus. Then Friday night the elementary girls performed chants and a dance they had learned through the week.
| dclm-gs1-106160000 |
Welcome to LXB4J, a Java library and API used for light-weight XML binding.
Most Java XML binding solutions work with XSD compilers that create a large number of Java classes
implementing all the XSD types and elements.
The problem is that when working with large schemas, the overhead of managing this large number of classes might be problematic.
LXB4J tries to solve this problem and create an easy to use, lightweight, 100% pure Java binding solution.
How does it work?
LXB4J has a special compiler that reads XSD files and create binary representations of the schemas.
Later you will use this binary representation to marshall (Java -> XML) and unmarshall (XML -> Java) XML
files that were created by the schema.
Note that the original XSD file is not needed on runtime, only the binary format of this file. LXB4J will use
this binary format to make sure that all the elements and attributes are used correctly as stated in the schema.
Above that, LXB4J also has a very simple API to work with Documents and Elements, this API is written above the W3C DOM API
but is simpler and requires less code.
LXB4J is 100% pure Java and is developed over the Java 5.0 platform, so the first thing you have to make sure
is that you have with JDK 1.5!
There is only one jar to use: lxb4j-{version}.jar
Needed third party software:
General design notes
To make things really easy for developers, a BoundedElement in LXB4J can have:
• Children - ComplexType elements (elements with child elements and / or attributes). Every child is also a BoundedElement.
• Members - SimpleType elements (elements with #PCDATA content) or attributes.
Note that a simple typed element and an attribute are both considered members, this means that adding or reading simple elements and attributes can be achieved using the same code. LXB4J identifies the member using the schema data provided with the BoundedDocument.
The idea here is that working with simple typed element should be as easy and fast as adding attributes, and the developer should not deal with text nodes and DOM methods for that.
See usage examples on the Short manual page and sample directory provided with the release.
SourceForge.net Logo
LXB4J is hosted on sourceforge.net
Site last updated: 13-dec-05 | dclm-gs1-106170000 |
CyHi The Prynce breaks down Kanye's album title
CyHi The Prynce breaks down Kanye's album title
Listen to Kanye West on iHeartRadio
GOOD Music rapper "CyHi the Prynce" is revealing the true meaning behind the title to Kanye West's sixth album Yeezus.
CyHi - who helped write nine of the ten tracks on Yeezus - tells MTV News that the album title isn't just an allusion to Christianity. Instead, the emcee explains that the title breaks down to "'Ye-Is-Us."
CyHi doesn't care if people know the true meaning of the album's title, even though he says Kanye prefers to let people figure it out for themselves.
CyHi also dished the inside details about what went on during the group writing sessions for Yeezus. He says the group of writers "wrote a booklet of different things" that could be included in the album.
Apart from helping to pen lyrics, CyHi says he was also tasked with "keeping the environment in the room."
More Articles | dclm-gs1-106180000 |
Sabathia cherishes wearing No. 42
Sabathia cherishes wearing No. 42
CLEVELAND -- When first presented with the opportunity to wear Jackie Robinson's No. 42, C.C. Sabathia figured he'd be doing so while seated firmly on the bench.
Sabathia, you see, wasn't originally scheduled to pitch Sunday's home game against the White Sox. But when Mother Nature wiped out four home games and forced the Indians to make some adjustments to their rotation, Sabathia suddenly fell in line for a start on Jackie Robinson Day.
Turns out, it was a memorable one. The Tribe's ace left-hander worked eight innings in which all he allowed was a run on five hits with 10 strikeouts to go 3-0 to start a season for the first time in his career.
It was, simply, a performance that would have made Jackie proud.
"It meant a lot [to wear the number]," Sabathia said. "I'm just excited I got a chance to pitch. To be able to pitch and play on this day was huge."
Introduced in 2004, Jackie Robinson Day was created to honor the enduring impact of Jackie Robinson and his legacy as the first African-American player to break the Major League color barrier. Robinson played his first Major League game at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of that event, Robinson's No. 42 was retired throughout the Major Leagues.
Alex Aguilar, a Toledo native and Jackie Robinson Foundation scholarship recipient, was invited to Jacobs Field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Sunday's game.
Center fielder Grady Sizemore joined Sabathia in wearing the No. 42 jersey on the field. Second baseman Josh Barfield was given the day off, so he wore it in the dugout. The jerseys will be auctioned off by MLB, with proceeds benefiting the Jackie Robinson Fund. Additionally, home clubhouse manager Tony Amato will make a copy of the jersey for each of the three players to keep as a memento, and another copy will be made to be auctioned off for Cleveland Indians Charities.
"This was just a chance to remember what [Robinson] did and what he brought to the game," said Sizemore, whose father is African-American. "It's the least you can do. It brings some awareness to him."
Some in baseball, Sabathia included, feel the tribute might have been cheapened a tad by the sheer mass of people wearing No. 42. Originally, the honor was going to be bestowed upon one member of each club. By the time Sunday's action got under way, entire teams were wearing the number.
Then again, Sabathia couldn't fault anyone for wanting to join in the celebration of the man's legacy.
"I understand what people are trying to do," Sabathia said. "It does water it down a little bit. But it's for a good cause, and everybody's trying to do the right thing."
Said Barfield: "We just want to pay our respects to a great man. I can understand why so many people wanted to wear it. It's such a good idea that everybody wants to be a part of it."
The Indians have requested permission to bring Larry Doby's No. 14 out of retirement for their game against the Tigers on July 5, the 60th anniversary of the day Doby broke the American League color barrier with the Tribe.
It's believed the league will give the Indians an answer sometime after the Jackie Robinson Day hubbub has died down.
"Hopefully the league will let us do it," Sabathia said. "It's definitely something that needs to be honored."
| dclm-gs1-106190000 |
The Original Pitch for "The Muppet Show" Is Amazing
If you have 2 minutes and 42 seconds to kill today (and who are we kidding, you do), you really should watch this clip, apparently created by Jim Henson, intended to convince the executives at CBS that they should air The Muppet Show. Enthusiastic consumer patriotism...there's just not enough of that going around these days.
[Laughing Squid]
Add a comment | dclm-gs1-106200000 |
Subject: port-sparc/2062: reboot or halt not happening 'sometimes'
To: None <[email protected]>
From: David Gilbert <>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 02/10/1996 20:08:38
>Number: 2062
>Category: port-sparc
>Synopsis: reboot or halt stalls unmounting some disks
>Confidential: no
>Severity: serious
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: gnats-admin (GNATS administrator)
>State: open
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: net
>Arrival-Date: Sat Feb 10 20:35:04 1996
>Originator: David Gilbert
|Mail: | equal if and only if they |
| | are precisely opposite. |
>Release: 1.1
It seems to me that the system has to be up for a day or so
for this to take effect, but the symtom is that reboot or halt will
not reboot or halt. Several times, I have tried taking it to single
user mode, and then unmounting the disks. Unmounting my news spool
hung the system there.
Now when I come back up out of either one of these problems, I
find that there are never any problems --- so the sync is working
(doesn't complain at all abou the disks in fsck), but the actual
unmount (setting the clean bit?) never happens.
Note that if the machine is up a few hours it will normally
reboot. I'm wondering if this may be something that expire does to
the disk, but I have no hard data. I think that I have dump
technology finally mastered if a kernel dump might help you (how do I
trigger one is a good question). | dclm-gs1-106210000 |
Provided by: libsvga1-dev_1.4.3-27ubuntu1_i386 bug
vga_flip - toggle between text and graphics mode
#include <vga.h>
int vga_flip(void);
switches between graphics and text mode without destroying the screen
contents. This makes it possible for your application to use both text
and graphics output.
However, This is an old vgalib function. You should really only use it
for debugging as it runs extremely unstable because svgalib now does
its own virtual console management. If you want to perform a similar
action, save the current screen contents with ordinary memory copy
operation to the frame buffer or gl_getbox(3), set vga_setmode(TEXT),
then call vga_setmode(3) to return to graphics operation and restore
the screen contents with memory or gl_putbox(3).
One could also use vga_drawscansegment(3) and vga_getscansegment(3)
However, avoid any calls to vga_flip() in your applications.
The function always returns 0, a fact on which you shouldn’t rely.
It might be useful if you are debugging one of your svgalib
applications though. If your program reaches a breakpoint while in
graphics mode, you can switch to text mode with the gdb command
print vga_flip()
and later restore the graphics screen contents with the same command.
It is useful to define the following alias in gdb:
define flip <Return> print vga_flip() <Return> end <Return>
svgalib(7), vgagl(7), libvga.config(5), vga_init(3),
vga_setflipchar(3), vga_drawscanline(3), vga_drawscansegment(3),
vga_getscansegment(3), gl_getbox(3), gl_putbox(3)
the original documentation is unknown.
Hanemaayer <>.
original author and will happily accept any additions or corrections to
this first version of the svgalib manual. | dclm-gs1-106220000 |
'The Wolf of Wall Street' Trailer Takes Debauchery to a New Level
Think The Hangover was crazy? The new Martin Scorsese flick, The Wolf of Wall Street, reaches Wolfpack-levels of craziness, with a subtle difference: It's actually based on a real-life story.
In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a New York stockbroker who's approached by the FBI to cooperate in a large securities fraud case. Belfort's lifestyle involves a lot of booze, insane parties and spending huge amounts of money, so it's no wonder his reaction is literally throwing dollar bills at the FBI officers.
What follows doesn't look like it'll end well for Belfort, but it involves a monkey, several pools, tons of money, gorgeous women, guns, a goldfish, and a completely wacky boss played by Matthew McConaughey.
The movie hits theaters Nov. 15.
How do you like the trailer? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image courtesy of YouTube/Paramount
Load Comments
What's New
What's Rising
What's Hot | dclm-gs1-106230000 |
Sign up ×
How can i find the ones digit for the number $$2^{98}$$
share|cite|improve this question
Do you mean the number of ones in the decimal representation of 2^98 – Amr Nov 15 '12 at 14:29
Hint : find $mod 10$ – Theorem Nov 15 '12 at 14:29
3 Answers 3
up vote 4 down vote accepted
$2^6=8^2 = 64$.
$2^{12} = 64^2 = \ldots6$.
$2^{24} = (\ldots6)^2 = \ldots6$.
$2^{48} = (\ldots6)^2 = \ldots6$.
$2^{49} = 2\cdot(\ldots6) = \ldots2$.
$2^{98} = (\ldots2)^2 = \ldots 4$.
So the answer is 4.
share|cite|improve this answer
$2^{1+4}=32=2\pmod{10}$ hence $2^{1+4n}=2\pmod{10}$ for every $n\geqslant0$ hence $2^{1+4\cdot24}=2^{97}=2\pmod{10}$ hence $2^{98}=2\cdot2^{97}=2\cdot2=4\pmod{10}$.
share|cite|improve this answer
Hint: Try finding the ones digit of the first few powers. You should see a pattern that you can prove. If you just want the specific answer, a spreadsheet with A1=1, A2=mod(2*A1,10), copy down 97 times gets you there.
share|cite|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106240000 |
Sign up ×
Let $1<p<\infty$. Let $x,y\in l^p$ such that $||x||_p=1$, $||y||_p=1$ and $x\neq y$. Would you help me to show that for any $0<t<1$, $||tx+(1-t)y||_p<1$.
My answer : By using Minkowski inequality, we get $||tx+(1-t)y||_p\leq t||x||_p+(1-t)||y||_p=t+(1-t)=1$. But I don't get the strict inequality.
But, For $p=2$: \begin{eqnarray} ||tx+(1-t)y||_2^2&=&t^2||x||_2^2+(1-t)^2||y||_2^2+2t(1-t)\Re(<x,y>)\\&=&1+2t(1-t)(\Re(<x,y>)-1)) \end{eqnarray}
Since $x\neq y$ and $||x||_2=||y||_2$, we conclude that $x\neq ky$ for every scalar hence we get $\Re(<x,y>)\leq|<x,y>|<||x||_2||y||_2=1$. So, $||tx+(1-t)y||_2<1$.
Thanks everyone.
share|cite|improve this question
1 Answer 1
For $1 < p < \infty$, Minkowski's inequality is an equality if and only if one of the vectors is a multiple of the other by a nonnegative scalar.
share|cite|improve this answer
If the vectors is multiple of the other by scalar implies the equality is trivial. How about the converse? – beginner Nov 30 '12 at 6:43
You can go back over the proof of Minkowski's inequality, and Hölder's which is usually used in that proof. At some point you may use something like the fact that the minimum of the function $f(x) = x^p/p - x$ for $x \ge 0$ is at $x=1$. Now note that this is a unique minimum ($f$ is strictly convex)... – Robert Israel Nov 30 '12 at 8:20
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106250000 |
Sign up ×
I am still stuck on this problem and it is very frustrating. I need to solve this using exponential generating series and again with telescoping. Problem is I am not even sure what telescoping is and my googling has not been very helpful. Thanks in advance.
Solve the recurrence $y_{n+1} = 2y_n + n$ for non-negative integer n and initial condition $y_0=1$ for Using
1. Exponential generating series
2. Telescoping.
share|cite|improve this question
Use \$ \$ to denote your code, so that the LaTeX displays properly. – Calvin Lin Feb 2 '13 at 18:01
Thanks. I did not know that! – Northpaw Feb 2 '13 at 18:19
It would be better to make a comment on your other question… – Ross Millikan Feb 2 '13 at 18:23
This is true. Im new here and was unsure what the usual protocol is. :/ – Northpaw Feb 2 '13 at 21:43
3 Answers 3
Telescoping - Observe that $y_{n+1} + (n+2) = 2( y_n + (n+1) )$.
So, if we set $x_n = y_n + (n+1)$, ($x_0 = 2$), we easily see that $x_n = 2^{n+1}$ by telescoping series.
Thus, $y_n = 2^{n+1} - (n+1)$.
share|cite|improve this answer
The trick is to work backwards $$y_{n+1}=n+2y_n$$ $$=n+2(2y_{n-1}+(n-1))$$ $$=n+2(n-1)+2^2(2y_{n-2}+(n-2))$$ $$=n+2(n-1)+2^2(n-2)+2^3(n-3)+...+2^n(n-n)$$ So we have $$ y_{n+1}=\sum_{i=0}^n2^i(n-i)=n\sum_{i=0}^n2^i+\sum_{i=0}^ni2^i$$ I suspect you can take it from here.
Well, I guess this doesn't really use generating functions, so this is probably not what you want.
share|cite|improve this answer
For exponential generating functions, define: $$ \widehat{Y}(z) = \sum_{n \ge 0} y_n \frac{z^n}{n!} $$ Take your recurrence, multiply by $\frac{z^n}{n!}$, sum over $n \ge 0$, and see how to express the result in terms of $\widehat{Y}$ and its derivatives. The initial condition to the recurrence translates into $\widehat{Y}(0) = 1$.
Also try the ordinary generating function $Y(z) = \sum_{n \ge 0} y_n z^n$: multiply by $z^n$ and sum, express the result in terms of $Y(z)$ and $z$.
share|cite|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106260000 |
Sign up ×
Let $G = \mathbb Z^n$, the fi nite cyclic group of order $n$, and let $A = l ^1(G)$, a Banach algebra over $\mathbb C$ when the product is convolution, de fined for $f, g \in A$ by $f * g(x) =\sum _{y \in G}f(y)g(x -y)$. Can we determine the maximal ideal space of $A$, equivalently the space of algebra homomorphisms from $A$ onto $\mathbb C$?
share|cite|improve this question
Is there something missing or unclear in the answer below? – Martin Feb 15 '13 at 9:25
1 Answer 1
up vote 5 down vote accepted
The group $G$ embeds into $\ell^1(G)$ via the homomorphism $g \mapsto \delta_g$ since $\delta_g \ast \delta_h = \delta_{gh}$. Since $\lVert \delta_g \rVert_1 = 1$, a surjective homomorphism $\ell^1(G) \to \mathbb{C}$ restricts to a homomorphism $G \to \mathbb{C}^\times$ with bounded range. The maximal bounded subgroup of $\mathbb{C}^\times$ is $\mathbb{T} = \{z \in \mathbb{C} \mid |z| =1\}$, so we obtain a map from the maximal ideal space of $\ell^1(G)$ to the Pontryagin dual $\widehat{G} =\operatorname{Hom}(G,\mathbb T)$. Conversely, a homomorphism $G \to \mathbb{T}$ determines a surjective homomorphism $\ell^1(G) \to \mathbb{C}$ since the $\delta_g$ span a dense subspace of $\ell^1(G)$. From this one easily deduces an identification of the maximal ideal space of $\ell^1(G)$ with the Pontryagin dual of $G$ which is $\widehat{G} = \mathbb{T}^n$ or $\widehat{G} \cong \mathbb{Z}_n$ depending on whether you meant $G = \mathbb{Z}^n$ or $G = \mathbb{Z}_n$.
share|cite|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106270000 |
Sign up ×
Let $G$ = $\mathbb{Z_n}$ and let $A$ = $\ell^1(G)$ with convolution, over $\mathbb{C}$. Let $A_{\mathbb{R}}$ denote the subring of real valued functions in $A$, so $A_{\mathbb{R}}$ is an algebra over $\mathbb{R}$.
I'm being asked to find the maximal ideals of $A_{\mathbb{R}}$, their dimensions, and the corresponding quotient fields.
I've found that $m$ = {$f \in A_{\mathbb{R}}$ : $\sum_{m=0}^{n-1} f([m])$ = 0} is a maximal ideal of dimension n-1 with corresponding quotient field $\mathbb{R}$. I also know that $m$ isn't the only the maximal ideal as the function which takes 1 on every element of G is not invertible and isn't in $m$. I don't really know where to go with this problem. I spent a fair bit of time trying to determine the invertibility of sums of delta functions, which seemed to depend on the parity of n, but that didn't lead anywhere. I'm way up the river on this, and any pointers in the right direction would be helpful.
For context, the previous two parts of the problem were to determine the maximal ideal space of $A$ and whether or not the Gelfand transform of $A$ was isometric.
Edit: With the help of the suggestions below, I've been able to identify a number of maximal ideals of $A_\mathbb{R}$. Namely, $\mathfrak{m} \cap A_\mathbb{R}$, where $\mathfrak{m}$ is a maximal ideal in $A$. I want to say that these are the only maximal ideals of $A_\mathbb{R}$ (or at least I think I do), but I am unsure as to how to approach this.
share|cite|improve this question
Via the Fourier transform, this convolution algebra is isomorphic to the algebra of functions on $G$ with pointwise addition and multiplication. From this point of view, some other surjective maps onto $\mathbb{R}$ are easier to see: the projections onto each coordinate. So there are these $n$ maximal ideals plus the one you found. I don't know how to find them all though. – Ted Oct 2 '11 at 3:39
Hmmm, the Fourier transform will end up taking values in $\mathbb{C}$, not $\mathbb{R}$. So I'm not so sure about the above comment. But I'll leave it there in case it's useful. – Ted Oct 2 '11 at 3:43
Here's some progress: The Fourier transform is given by $F(\chi) = \sum_{g \in G} f(g) \overline{\chi(g)}$ for $\chi \in G^*$. In general, this is $\mathbb{C}$-valued. But if $\chi$ is the trivial character, this projection $F \mapsto F(\chi)$ is real-valued, and corresponds to the maximal ideal you already found. And if $n$ is even, there is a non-trivial character onto $\{1,-1\}$ which gives you another maximal ideal. – Ted Oct 2 '11 at 4:32
Hi Ted. Thanks for your input. What you’ve mentioned so far fits in with what I’ve been thinking i.e. trying to salvage some of the theory from the complex case. I’ve considered simply taking the intersection of a maximal ideal in $A$ with $A_\mathbb{R}$ but I don’t believe that this will be maximal in general. – Grasshopper Oct 2 '11 at 4:53
Dear Grasshopper, Let $\mathfrak m$ be a maximal ideal in $A$. What is the quotient $A/\mathfrak m$? Now consider the quotient $A_{\mathbb R}/\mathfrak m \cap A_{\mathbb R}$. What are the possibilities for this quotient? Regards, – Matt E Oct 2 '11 at 5:50
1 Answer 1
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Note that $f \in A_{\mathbb R}$ iff $\hat{f}(\overline{\alpha}) = \overline{\hat{f}(\alpha)}$ for all $\alpha$. If $M_\alpha$ is the maximal ideal $\{f: \hat{f}(\alpha) = 0\}$ of $A$, then $M_{\alpha} \cap A_{\mathbb R} = M_{\overline{\alpha}} \cap A_{\mathbb R}$. For any $\alpha$, there is $h_\alpha \in A_{\mathbb R}$ such that $\widehat{h_\alpha}(\alpha) = \widehat{h_\alpha}(\bar{\alpha}) = 1$ and $\widehat{h_\alpha}(g) = 0$ for all other $g$.
Use this to show that $M_\alpha \cap A_{\mathbb R}$ is a maximal ideal in $A_{\mathbb R}$.
share|cite|improve this answer
Your suggestions look good but I haven't been able to work through them yet. – Grasshopper Oct 2 '11 at 7:40
I decided to take one more look at the problem before I went to sleep and I think I've got it now. The map from $A_\mathbb{R}$ to $\mathbb{C}$ given by $f \mapsto \sum_{g\in G} f(g)\alpha(g)$ is an $\mathbb{R}$-algebra homomorphism. The function $h_\alpha$ that you mentioned ensures that the range of this map is either $\mathbb{R}$ or $\mathbb{C}$. In either case, the range is a field and so the kernel is a maximal ideal. Is this what you had in mind? I don't know how to show that this construction gives us every maximal ideal of $A_\mathbb{R}$, but maybe that'll be easier in the morning. – Grasshopper Oct 2 '11 at 8:14
Is it the case that every maximal ideal of $A_\mathbb{R}$ is of this form? I tried assuming there is a maximal ideal that isn't equal to any of the $M_\alpha \cap A_\mathbb{R}$ but I'm getting nowhere with that. – Grasshopper Oct 2 '11 at 23:43
@Grasshopper: To prove that you've found all maximal ideals, it's much easier to work in the Fourier-transformed space (with pointwise addition and multiplication) than the original space. First, figure out how to prove the complex equivalent: every maximal ideal of $A$ is one of the $M_{\alpha}$. Then adapt this proof for the real case. – Ted Oct 3 '11 at 5:28
@Ted: I am unfamiliar with the Fourier-transformed space that you are referring to. I know that the $M_\alpha$ are the only maximal ideals of $A$ via the identification of the maximal ideals with the maximal ideal space. – Grasshopper Oct 3 '11 at 6:28
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106280000 |
I sell merchandise on eBay.
Now, if I posted my item as an Auction, starting at $1 and for 7-days length, it may end up selling at high bid for $15, $20, or $25 dollars 7 days later.........
Now, let's say I have that same item posted as a "Buy It Now" for $100, because I don't want to take low money (the $15-$25).
A Buy It Now can have the right buyer come along in hours or days, and pay you the $100, or offer you (with the "Best Offer" function) $90, $75, etc........
ORRR the item can sit there for MONTHS at a time, while waiting for the right person, who wants to pay the right money.
I am writing a business plan for investors, and I am dying to know what this economic concept/terminology is called ---- when you have to "sit" on inventory for sometimes a verrrrryyyy long time before it sells.
I am also trying to justify it as profitable, since my product take little space to store, and my overhead/expenses are low.
It is well worth it for me to list something for 6 months to get $75-$100, as opposed to doing a 7-day auction, and get only $15-$25 because the right people were not FIGHTING for it.
Terminologies, or a shove to the right Wiki page, would be most appreciated. | dclm-gs1-106300000 |
June 10, 2013 by Krista Conger
And there's the rub: The immune system's ability to protect against foreign invaders like bacteria or viruses hinges on its ability to differentiate them from our body's own tissues, to which it must not react (a phenomena called ). So it's a catch-22 when researchers attempt to prime B and T cells, macrophages and all of our many other to wipe out cancer cells. Often, what seems to be a promising response is dulled over time as immune cells called T , or Tregs, recognize the cancerous tissue as "self" and call off the attack.
Now, Ronald Levy, MD, professor of oncology at the School of Medicine and pioneer in the field of , and postdoctoral scholar Aurelien Marabelle, MD, have shown it's possible to perpetuate an anti-cancer immune response in by blocking the activity of Tregs with specific antibodies injected directly into the tumor site. The work, which has resulted in the recent initiation of a phase-1 and -2 clinical trial in humans, was published May 24 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
"These monoclonal antibodies target and eliminate T regulatory cells mixed in with the tumor that dampen the immune response against it," Levy said. "With these negative regulatory cells out of the way, the killer of the immune system are unleashed to seek and destroy the cancer cells wherever they are in the body, including in the brain."
Levy and his colleagues studied laboratory mice in which human had been implanted under the skin or injected into the blood. Once tumors were established, they treated the mice with a combination of two highly specific, or monoclonal, antibodies that recognize and bind to two molecules on the surface of the Treg cells.
Although some of these anti-Treg antibodies have already been approved for use in humans (one, ipilimumab, marketed as Yervoy, is currently used to treat metastatic melanoma), they can have negative side effects. That's because they're injected in fairly large doses into a patient's blood stream, inhibiting the Tregs not just in the tumor, but throughout the body. As a result, even normal, healthy tissues is subject to attack from the immune system.
Levy and his colleagues found that injecting much smaller amounts of the anti-Treg antibodies directly into the animals' tumors effectively targeted the Treg cells. What's more, coupling this treatment with the local injection of a molecule known to rev up the anti-tumor immune response causes an effect that ripples throughout the body to other organs and the central nervous system.
"We have found in animal experiments that by injecting certain into cancer in one place in the body we can trigger the immune system to fight cancer throughout the body," Levy said. "This result has the potential to change the way we use the immune system to treat cancer."
The researchers saw that the triple treatment—the two anti-Treg antibodies plus an injection of a molecule to stimulate the anti-cancer immune response—in one tumor site was highly effective even in mice with distant metastases. The animals lived longer and were resistant to a second administration of the .
The ability of the treatment to induce a response in distant tumor sites is particularly interesting, say the researchers, because some sites in the central nervous system are very difficult to target or reach with conventional therapies. Holbrook Kohrt, MD, PhD, assistant professor of oncology, will now be leading a parallel phase-1 and -2 clinical trial in patients with melanoma, lymphoma and colon cancers.
Explore further: 'Two-faced' cells discovered in colon cancer: Immune cells can suppress or promote tumor growth
Related Stories
Study reveals that chemotherapy works in an unexpected way
April 4, 2013
Modulating the immune system to combat metastatic cancer
May 24, 2013
Recommended for you
Click here to reset your password. | dclm-gs1-106310000 |
Saturday, March 19, 2011
FULL MOON: hearts breaking open
My heart, like so many of yours, is breaking for our world. While I feel full what sometimes feels like never-ending grief, I am also keenly aware of the beauty and resiliency in communities coming together, mobilizing actions, and taking care of one another. It's so vital that we stay grounded right now. Grounded in the reality of the crisis and grounded in the reality of what opportunities arise for healing and transformation during a time of such uncertainty. The day is just dawning here and I woke up before light to write what’s on my heart. I’ll tell you a true story and then offer some practices to help support us during these times. (I've also added some new recipes to the previous post)
As the radioactive fallout moves across the pacific, it falls into the beautiful sea, where life began from magical teeny tiny stuff. We’re watching our great mother be poisoned and nuclear is forever. My little human mind can hardly even comprehend the scale of time of nuclear toxicity, though my body knows it well. My own knowledge of how to care for the body and spirit in the face of radiation comes from a profoundly personal place. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when I was 21 years old. Thyroid cancer is pretty rare and has a fairly high survival rate; it also is most common in people with radiation exposure, with spikes in children post- Chernobyl. The year after I was diagnosed, a class action suit was filed from very sick residents of the San Fernando Valley (it’s true, I’m a valley girl, for sure.) against Rocketdyne, a nuclear lab which has had leakages since the 50s. After two hellacious surgeries, I had what is the common treatment for thyroid cancer: Radioactive Iodine 131. I took this tiny pill, had a Geiger counter pointed at me, and was quarantined for a three days, because I myself was radioactive.
14 years later, I am still dealing with the toxic fallout from the treatment for cancer. I bow to cancer and I bow to the spirit of radiation, both big teachers for me in my path as a healer. I know that touching what felt like the bottom of the ocean of my own mortality at such a young age deepened my capacity for compassion and holding the suffering of all beings, grew my fiery passion for justice, and broke open my heart even further to connect with the earth herself, who like me, is a body capable of receiving both love and toxins. Someone recently sent me an email, which said, “Toxic is the new normal.” Yes, we’re exposed to junk all the time- EMF, heavy metals, PCBs, pesticides and even more so if you’re poor or a person of color or someone living in the global south.
It can be hard to not get mired or paralyzed in fear or freak out. It can feel like you are going crazy, living in this world, in which the dominant culture invalidates our experiences and instead offers empty options to numb ourselves with or buy our way out of fear. I just want to say, and maybe I am just talking to myself, that it is normal and so human to be scared, sad, uncertain, shut down, angry, and overwhelmed right now.
I invite you to ask yourself if your feelings of fear or grief can allow you to feel even more connected to everyone and everything, to the whole sparkling web of life? Can you extend your compassion as far as it can reach and also extend it to yourself, at this moment, living in this time of great anguish and uncertainty? And can you let it break your heart right open, so as you feel your pain for the world, you can sense that it is rooted in your love for the world and your love for life?
Last post I listed some nutritional and herbal remedies for these times and so now I want to offer some practices to help us keep on keeping on.
1. Get Present: easy to say, harder to do. A way to come into presence when it's hard is to slow down and take notice of what's inside and outside of you, without judgment or the need to fix or do anything. Be mindful of your consumption of media and how it makes you feel. Breathe.
2. Gratitude: When big waves of fear arise, or any emotions that feel overwhelming, inviting yourself to make a list of things you're thankful for can set your heart right again. This morning I am so grateful for my most precious magical dog curled up at my feet, a cup of nettles, contra dancing, running water, the sounds of the crows in the pine tree out my window. A good way to begin this practice is just to notice the things immediately around you and make yourself count 10-20 things. Place your hand on your heart and feel that pumping muscle and just how much you actually love this intense planet and all the beings here.
3. Gather: be with people. Make soup or a potluck with people and rather than get worked up in a collective freak out, create space to cry, laugh, or make rituals. Make plans for emergencies with your neighbors. Reach out to elders, marginally housed folks, people with disabilities in your buildings or neighborhoods to assess needs in case of emergency. Make a list of all the amazing skills all the people you know have, and then find new friends who have skills that might be missing. Find out about vigils, protests, rituals, or workshops in your area. (see below for some in the bay area and New England)
4. Grieve: I mentioned in the last post the importance of letting the rivers flow. I invite you to create a container with some people, perhaps around a bowl of water, and take turns going in the center of the circle to let tears, fears, or whatever comes come. Also, I love the buddhist practice of tonglen, which is to breathe in suffering and breathe out love, healing, or gratitude. Rather than turn away from the pain, we can experience our own capacities to transform suffering into love.
5. Give: make food for people. give yourself extra love and nourishment with baths or walks or a day off. if you have some extra, give money to doctors without borders or social justice organizations. Make offerings of your tears or songs or prayers to the earth, the sea, the creatures, the people. Give yourself respite from taking in news or images from time to time. Give your time to what's important.
6. Grow: allow your heart to get bigger from being stretched. Grow out of some old patterns. Maybe now's the time to stop eating sugar or stop using your microwave or spend less time on the computer or get involved more or rest more. Grow roots and tendrils, letting yourself grow towards others in solidarity.
7. Gentle: be kind and easy with your self. these are tough times and there's no need to go at anyone else's pace or be in anyone else's process. take a little time each day to tend to the tenderest part of you as if it's a baby. or a toddler. or a kitten. whatever works for you to bring out your kind, nurturing self.
7. keep Going. we're all in this together.
Happy full moon!
May this serious moonlight bathe the planet and all beings in healing, love, and balance and may our fears and grief connect us with everything, everyone and most of all with our love and reverence for life.
with much love,
San Francisco: Elm Dance
Sunday 3/20 5-7pm Justin Hermann Plaza (canceled in the event of rain)
New England : Vigil at Vermont Yankee
Sunday, 3/20 1pm
The Herbal Highway with Sarah Holmes
3/17 show all about herbal and nutritional support for radiation
see below- Joanna Macy's site has links to other health information. Take care not to get too overwhelmed in all the things you should be doing. Keep it simple and remember that we all need seaweed, miso, etc...let's share.
Information on stopping US Government subsidies and loan guarantees to nuclear industries, including bills that are before Congress now.
Joanna Macy
information on workshops in the Work that Reconnects
Verhext said...
Love this & love you
Leah Lakshmi said...
thank you so much for this light. <3
Milla said...
Ooh! Seems I love your blog. I'm definitely adding this to my reader. What a magical mystical place. Thank you for your kind comment on my log that led me here. | dclm-gs1-106330000 |
Tracking app eyes pharma with clinical trial play
By: Jonah Comstock | Feb 5, 2014
Tags: | | | | | | |
TapTrak’s forthcoming clinical trials app.
Medical micro-journaling startup tapTrak has formally hired pharma veteran Efren Olivares, a hire that signals the company’s upcoming expansion into the pharma space.
New York City-based tapTrak, which raised $390,000 in seed funding last July, began its life in 2011 as a consumer-focused quantified self app, to make it easy for people to track and count things in their daily lives. Last year the company launched tapTrak Med, turning the same technology towards patient engagement and adherence.
“For tapTrak Med, we’re in two pilots that are diabetes-focused,” Olivares told MobiHealthNews. “We’re looking at uncontrolled diabetes patients, to remind them to take their medicine, but also to help them manage their eating habits because a lot of the clinicians feel their patients aren’t monitoring their diets. So this is a way that every day there’s a gentle reminder, that by watching their diets and taking their medicine they can go from being uncontrolled diabetics to patients with their diabetes under control.”
On tapTrak Med, patients can track prescriptions, pain and side effects, diet, exercise, vitals, mental health, and appointments. The company also recently launched SurgeryTrak, an app that gives patients recovering from surgery daily surveys and checklists of therapeutic activities. With all the tapTrak Med apps, the data patients enter is uploaded to the cloud so their physician can access it. It’s HIPAA compliant and EHR-compatible.
As the company moves into the pharmaceutical space, Olivares will lean on a 22-year pharma background, including work with Pfizer, Lilly, Baxter and Dura Pharmaceuticals.
“As I was finishing my tenure at Pfizer it was clear that the digital world was a world that pharma was quite behind on,” he said. “I spent a good part of last year looking at different apps and technology and opportunities.”
The company will explore a number of uses for tapTrak’s micro-journaling apps, including medication adherence and chronic disease managment, but Olivares said the first applications will be in clinical trials.
“We actually have a new version of tapTrak coming, it’s called tapTrakCR, for clinical research,” he said. “It will be a take home app for patients in clinical trials whereby the trial managers are able to give all the participants in trials specific questions and answers and then we can get the data back. A lot of times this is done in person by people coming in or filling in a journal or logbook and it’s very inconsistent. So we’re hoping to give them a tool so they have a simple journal that links back to the trial managers automatically, without having phone calls to the participants.”
Olivares said the innovation behind tapTrak is that it combines self-tracking with patient-physician communication, and that the presence of the clinician in the process actually makes patients more likely to track.
“By and large the majority of patients need to feel like there’s someone looking out for them, that their clinician is looking for them and using the data in a helpful way,” he said. “I would say the real key innovation is understanding patient-clinician communication, and how to do it in a way that’s convenient for the patient, but also so the clinician doesn’t feel overburdened with extra work.” | dclm-gs1-106350000 |
News Home
Sarah Cafferkey's murderer Steven James Hunter loses appeal for reduced sentence
Sarah Cafferkey's body was found nine days after she was murdered.
Sarah Cafferkey's body was found nine days after she was murdered.
The man convicted of the murder of Melbourne woman Sarah Cafferkey has lost his bid to have is life sentence reduced.
Steven James Hunter,48, stabbed and bashed 22-year-old Cafferkey to death in November 2012 at his unit in Bacchus Marsh, west of Melbourne, after an argument.
Police found her body in a wheelie bin at a home at Point Cook, in Melbourne's outer-west, nine days later.
Last year Hunter was sentenced to life in jail without parole.
At the time, Supreme Court Justice Kevin Bell called Hunter a "serious violent offender" and said he would remain a threat even in old age.
Hunter, a user of methamphetamine, had just finished serving parole before he killed Cafferkey.
He also has an extensive criminal history, including a previous conviction for murdering another young woman.
In 1986, Hunter was sentenced to a maximum of 16 years' jail for stabbing 18-year-old schoolgirl Jacqueline Cecilia Mathews seven times in the throat and heart, before burning her body in a car under the Arundel Road bridge in Keilor.
Mother relieved, but questions appeals process
Cafferkey's mother Noelle Dickson said there was cheering from family and friends in the courtroom when the decision was reached.
"I'm very relieved that this is all over and he can never hurt another young girl," Ms Dickson told the ABC.
It didn't make sense at all. As far as I'm concerned it was a waste of tax-payers money.
Noelle Dickson, Sarah Cafferkey's mother
"It actually took a little while for it to sink in for me because I just found it very hard to take it in.
"I was probably out of the courtroom before it hit me and then I just broke down in tears. Oh it was a relief, it was a relief that it was over."
But Ms Dickson said the appeal was a waste of time and money, and the appeals system needed an overhaul.
Victoria's Court of Appeal rejected Hunter's first appeal against his indefinite sentence in December 2013.
He then took his case to the High Court, where his lawyers argued the indefinite sentence imposed on him was excessive.
"His [Hunter's] claims were ridiculous," Ms Dickson said.
"The previous justices had covered everything, and they were really grasping at straws. The whole thing just seemed a farce.
"Sarah has lost her life. She has been given a life sentence; I have been given a life sentence.
"Now Hunter has been given a life sentence. I doesn't go away, and it's just horrific when you listen to them discuss his rights and what he should be entitled to.
"It has worked for us, because it is a finality now and he will never be released, but I find the whole process itself really needs to be addressed."
Friday's ruling means Hunter has no further avenue of appeal.
More Stories | dclm-gs1-106360000 |
Chalet Style Modular Homes: Finding The Perfect Prefab
Chalet style modular home
Inspired by the classic Swiss alpine houses, Chalet Style modular homes combine a rustic feel with all the modern comforts modular building allows. Chalet modular homes are easily identifiable by their high, pointed roofs which are usually tilted at extreme angles to prevent heavy snow from building up and causing problems. They also tend to feature extremely large windows that let in massive amounts of light.
Since Chalet style modular homes tend to be most at home in snowy, cold, more rural regions, they tend to be built in relative seclusion, allowing the floor plan to be set up so that the large windows can face whatever direction will let in the most direct sunlight or provide the best views.
by . | dclm-gs1-106370000 |
2013 Angels Prospects Countdown #20: Steve Geltz
The MWAH prospect countdown marches on with a relief prospect who developed a bit of a cult following last season, but couldn't translate it into a spot in the big league bullpen.
Steve Geltz
Position: Relief Pitcher Highest Level: Majors
Throws: Right Height: 5'10" Weight: 170 lbs.
Age: 25 Born: 11/1/87
2012 Season Stats
Double-A: 25.1 IP, 3-0, 6 SV, 0.36 ERA, 13 H, 6 BB, 0 HR, 37 SO, 0.41 GO/AO, 1.11 FIP, .255 BABIP
Triple-A: 33.2 IP, 0-1, 5 SV, 5.02 ERA, 29 H, 14 BB, 4 HR, 33 SO, 0.58 GO/AO, 4.21 FIP, .284 BABIP
Majors: 2.0 IP, 0-0, 0 SV, 4.50 ERA, 2 H, 3 BB, 0 HR, 1 SO, 0.50 GO/AO, 6.59 FIP, .286 BABIP
Fastball – B+. Geltz’s fastball sits in the 93-95 range, which is enough to generate plenty of swings and misses. But what really makes Geltz’s heater considerably better than average is his deceptive delivery. Hitters have a difficult time picking up the ball until after it has left Geltz’s hand.
Off-speed Pitches – B-. As a reliever, Geltz is your typical fastball-slider pitcher. His slider really isn’t that great, but it’s certainly above average and he throws it hard (85 mph).
Control – C+. As a reliever, a BB/9 in the high 3’s is actually pretty decent. Overall, it’s nothing worth bragging about. But Geltz has the ability to sit in the zone safely because of the quality of pitches he throws.
Command – D. This is where Geltz really struggles as a reliever. He throws strikes, but he has the unfortunate tendency of missing his spots. He’ll leave the ball out over the plate or leave it up. In the minors up to AA, he got away with this. But in the hitter friendly PCL and against advanced major league hitters, this will lead to a lot more contact than a strikeout pitcher like Geltz would prefer.
Mechanics – B. Geltz’s delivery is rather simple. He shows very good balance, isn’t rushed, hides the ball and fires it hard.
Performance – B. Geltz posted a 3.05 ERA and high K/9 at the highest levels of minor league baseball and made his major league debut. All in all, I’d say he had a good year, despite a shaky performance in AAA.
Projection – C+. Geltz can be a pretty solid middle reliever if he develops more command.
Estimated MLB Arrival Date – Now. Should spend time in AAA though.
Season Summary: It should never have happened, but Steve Geltz become something of a cult hero amongst Angel fans in 2012. With the big league bullpen falling apart, desperate eyes found their way to the stat sheet of the Arkansas Travelers where they found Geltz posting video game numbers in relief. Exactly what the Angels needed! Or so went the belief. Even with his ridiculous performance for the Travs and the Angels' obvious need for bullpen help, the organization resisted promoting Geltz to the bigs, instead moving him to Triple-A where he did not find the same kind of success. Given Geltz's extreme flyball tendencies, it shouldn't have been a big surprise that he'd get hit harder in Salt Lake, but what was curious was that his control regressed when he arrived there. Steve's walk rate has been a bit erratic throughout his career, but having his walk rate nearly double in Triple-A seemed to be what really hurt him, especially with his strikeout rate declining to a more mortal level.
Still, Geltz did get a brief call-up to the majors in August, but more out of necessity than merit as the Angel bullpen was taxed by injury at the time. Even with that, Geltz never really got a chance to show what he could do, working just two innings in his week on the active roster. Perhaps more telling than that though was that Geltz was not recalled when rosters expanded in September. That just goes to show that as logical as it would seem to fans that a guy should be called up, that the organization may have a completely different perception of the player and what should be done with him.
What to Expect in 2013: Before the Angels rebuilt their entire pitching staff, Geltz probably was a dark horse to grab the final bullpen spot for Opening Day, however, that seems highly improbable now. Instead, he'll be returning to Salt Lake to see if he can't get his command issues straightened out. There is actually a pretty good chance that will happen. For whatever reason, Geltz has needed a half season or so to readjust his command after a promotion. Back in 2010, he got a mid-season promotion to Double-A after decimating the Cal League but walked nearly a better per inning upon his arrival in Arkansas. It wasn't until he started fresh in 2011 that he started obliterating batters in the Texas League. If he stays true to his pattern this season, then I feel sorry for the opposing batters in the PCL and even sorrier for the front office who will face yet another season of fans demanding Geltz be promoted because of his gaudy strikeout numbers.
Garrett Wilson
About Garrett Wilson
| dclm-gs1-106380000 |
Monthly Review
Subscribe to
for Subscribers
Buy directly
from the
and support
Donate to MR! $
Follow mrzine_notes on Twitter
Subscribe to MRZine
02.02.13 About MR
Monthly Review Press
Law and the Rise of Capitalism
The God Market: How Globalization Is Making India More Hindu
Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya
Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives
Prison for the Man With the Megaphone:
Dresden Court Passes a Harsh Sentence Against Participant in Anti-Nazi Protest of 2011
by Hendrik Lasch
An alleged "ringleader" of protests against a Nazi march on February 19th, 2011 in Dresden was sentenced by a local court to a prison sentence of 22 months.
"Eventually the population of Dresden has had enough" -- with this opinion, district judge Hans-Joachim Hlava justified his harsh sentence against a participant in an anti-Nazi protest on February 19th, 2011 in the capital of the German state of Saxony. The 36-year-old father of a family was sentenced to a prison sentence of 22 months without probation. His attorney Sven Richwin regards an appeal as likely: he had no hope "in the initial trial court anyway."
The skilled industrial mechanic was charged with coordinating and commanding, as a "ringleader," a violent breach of a police barricade in Dresden's Südvorstadt district, using a megaphone. Rocks were alleged to have been thrown, and police were allegedly attacked with sticks. In 2011, the police had attempted to keep the right-wing extremists and the counter-demonstrators separated on the opposite sides of the Elbe River, but were not numerically up to the task. The "Nazi-free Dresden" coalition in turn had called for a blockade of the Nazi march, which presupposed a "permeation" of police lines. The central principle of the "action consensus" was non-violence, however. This wasn't always followed: south of the main train station there were fierce skirmishes. In one case, hundreds of protestors confronted 14 police officers. While the barricade was stormed, some officers were injured. There were injuries from firecrackers, lacerations, and bruises.
Whether or not the accused played a role that day, and if so, what kind, is an open question. One witness was not able to identify him in court. The prosecutor referred to a police video. In the video, a man of the same height as the accused could be seen. The action "exhibited great criminal energy" according to the prosecutor. The charge was particularly serious breach of the peace, aggravated battery, and assault. The prosecutor even demanded a two-and-a-half year sentence. The defense, on the other hand, did not regard it as proven that the accused really even was the man in the video. The defense also stated that the charge should have been at most simple breach of the peace and that his client could not be held responsible for the injuries to police officers.
Judge Hlava is of a different opinion: "You must also take responsibility for the deeds of others," he said to the accused during sentencing. He also accused him of not stating and explaining "your position on violence" to the court. Furthermore, he also nebulously stated that the "political vita" of the 36-year-old shows "that you were there." The judge made no effort to conceal that the sentence was also intended as a deterrent from the upcoming counter-demonstration against the Nazi march on February 13th. The historical date attracts right-wingers and "automatically also the left" and would be "politically exploited by both sides." Residents of the city, the judge claimed, had had enough.
Defense attorney Sven Richwin regards the sentence as excessive in comparison with similar cases, for example around the 1st of May demonstrations in Berlin: "It is beyond the pale," he stated in response to a Neues Deutschland query. It is simply incomprehensible why the sentence was not at least suspended. The 36-year-old is the father of one child and has a full-time job working for the executive board of the party Die Linke. One of the curiosities of the trial was that a representative of his employer was questioned as a witness before the court, even though the accused did not start working there until after February 2011. Richwin is now placing his hopes in the appeal. Whereas the Dresden district court has become nationally known for its harsh judgments against participants in blockades and other protests, other courts have sometimes at least mitigated them.
The original article "Haft für den Mann am Megafon" was published by Neues Deutschland on 17 January 2013. Translation by Angelus Novus.
| Print | dclm-gs1-106400000 |
Super Book Password
Some of Bev's Favorite Quotes...
Saturday, January 7, 2012
The Problem of the Green Capsule: Review
John Dickson Carr is one of the grand masters of the locked room and the [apparently] impossible crime. And, of course, The Problem of the Green Capsule is another such specimen. It begins with Dr. Marcus Chesney lecturing his household and associates on the fact that eyewitnesses are unreliable--that, as has often been said, if ten people observe the same incident then ten different versions will be told. And, as he later writes in a letter to Dr. Gideon Fell, "Show them a black-and-white record of it aferwards, and they will believe you; but even then they will be unable to interpret correctly what they see."
This subject has long been a hobby-horse of his, but the latest lecture has been brought on by an incidence of poisoning his home village. One child was killed and several others became deathly ill when someone slipped strychnine-laden candies into the stock of a local merchant. The police are at a loss to find evidence enough to capture the culprit and suspicion falls upon Chesney's niece and heir Marjorie.
In order to prove his point and, as we later find out, to show how Chesney believes the poisoning to have been accomplished, the doctor arranges for a demonstration to be performed in his own home. He has three in his audience--his niece, her fiance, and a friend who is a psychologist. Harding, the fiance, is set to film the entire show. Chesney and an unknown player go through a scene in his darkened library. The doctor sits at a desk with various objects on it, pretends to write some sort of note, and then a man in coat and silk hat, muffled to his nose and wearing dark glasses and gloves, comes into the room. The mysterious figure forces a green capsule into the doctor's mouth and then leaves. When the show is over and the lights go up, the doctor dies of cyanide poisoning before he can find out how his audience has fared in their observations. Once the three observers realize what has happened, they rush outside to see if they can catch the mysterious visitor. They find his costume in a pile outside the french doors and the handyman lying prone under a tree--a victim of the proverbial blunt instrument.
The police begin investigating, but it seems that everyone who is a viable suspect has an alibi. And, as Chesney predicted, each of the observers saw things just a little bit differently. It is going to be difficult to bring the murder (and the poisonings) home to anyone. But then the inspector on the case brings in Dr. Fell who has a way of making the most mysterious plain and unraveling the most impossible conundrums.
This is another excellent example of Carr's taking a seemingly impossible situation and giving it enough twists and turns to make it come out right..and quite simply too. As always, the clues are all there and as soon as Fell dangled them under my nose, I was all "of course! I should have seen that." I had a fine time with my first installment in the Colorful Crime portion of my Vintage Mystery Challenge reads. Four stars.
*Oh, and this counts for several other challenges too.
Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...
The challenge is off to a cracking start Bev - this is one of the few Carr books I haven't read yet, keeping it tucked away for a rainy day and I thought it would probably be a good 'un - thanks very much for confirming that.
Yvette said...
I have two Carr books lined up for the Challenge, Bev. HAG'S NOOK and THE CASE OF THE CONSTANT SUICIDES.
I know I read most of Carr's books, but damn if I can remember. So it's like reading them for the first time. :)
Don't know if I read this one or not, but it sounds good.
Sharon said...
I am not familiar with Carr but from the sound of this review I should become acquainted. This sounds like a fun read!
bloodymurder said...
Classic stuff Bev - so glad you liked this one two - we're both right and we were both had by an expert! | dclm-gs1-106410000 |
Netflix DVD Rentals
Star Half star Empty star Empty star Empty star
1.5 out of 5, based on 2 ratings and
7 reviews & complaints.
Company Profile
100 Winchester Circle
Los Gatos, CA 95032
408-540-3700 (ph)
Compare Entertainment Companies
Most Popular | Newest | More Options >
More filter options:
7 Movies in Queue and NONE sent
StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 1/51
LOS GATOS, CALIFORNIA -- I had a queue of 8 movies that could be shipped. One was an accidental reship of a movie we already saw. None of the others were sent. Neither the CS Rep nor her Manager could tell me when all of the following were in my queue: Therese Raquin, Doctor in the House, Hell Is a City, Martin Scorsese: Pt.1&2, The Patriot, Tiger Bay, Wanted for Murder. Not one of them shipped on 2/21 even though when my returned DVDs were received three of these were listed as next in my Queue.
They also could not tell me how many copies Netflix has of each of the above movies or how many of those were rented. They could not explain why, when I placed these movies in my queue that, with one exception, there was NO indication of a wait to get the movies, neither "short wait" or "long wait". When I put as many as 7 movies in my queue and, at the time they are added, there is no indication there will be any wait then I expect to get some of those movies when I return what I have. If not, I do not expect to pay. The manager suggested a vacation hold. Of course, once I removed the hold I would be charged with no guarantee that ANY of the movies would show up.
In effect, I would be paying for nothing. I asked that my billing be suspended until these movies could be sent. This suggestion was refused. I asked that I be credited for the prior month. This also was refused unless I canceled. So I did, even though I would have been willing to retain Netflix streaming. Let's compare this to an ordinary video rental store. You pay only when you actually receive movies. Even a Gym, at which you purchase a membership, though it will charge you even if you don't use their facilities, cannot charge you for any period of time the place is closed for repairs and cannot be used.
Netflix is unique in this respect. You can be charged even when they do not honor the good faith aspect of their contract by sending you a movie when you have many in your queue. I know that Netflix would prefer not to be in the business of sending out DVDs my mail at all but would rather concentrate on streaming. To me, my most recent experience shows that they will go to any lengths to assure this happens including failing to honor their contract. Netflix should not treat its DVD rental customers as I was treated. It is such a serious breach of ethics that I am inclined to publicize this as widely as possible.
If I ever use Netflix again it will only be if I can get satisfactory service from BOTH the DVD rental and streaming portion of the company. To me, satisfactory service is simply defined as follows: If movies in your queue, when placed there, did not show an associated wait time, and you have two to three times as many movies in the queue as required for the next shipment, but receive none; then you will not be charged for the interval of time you wait until those movies can be shipped.
The concept is very simple: You must not charge for a service you do not provide and which the customer had every right to expect. As a business practice it should be unnecessary for me to point out exactly how unethical and possibly illegal this is.
Unlimited DVD Rentals Limited By Purposeful Processing Delays
StarStarEmpty StarEmpty StarEmpty StarBy -
Rating: 2/51
I called Customer Service and the person I spoke to didn't even know where to find the Terms and Conditions. I ended up speaking with a supervisor who wouldn't admit that they throttle customers. His only admission was that they are limiting the frequency of newer releases that are mailed out to a given customer. They need to remove any reference to "UNLIMITED" on their DVD Plans. What angers me the most is that they aren't honest about it. Either you have limits or you don't. They obviously have limits, so just be honest about it!
The Reason For Long Waits On DVD Rentals From Netflix!
By -
After being a Netflix customer for over 4 years, I was miffed at why I was not getting first run DVD's that were on my queue for weeks and weeks. I was getting excuses such as, "long wait" or "very long wait". It was very interesting that my neighbor who is also a Netflix customer, WAS receiving first run DVD's WITHOUT a "long wait".
Lo and behold we figured it out. Netflix does not want you to know that if you are a ONE DVD AT A TIME customer, you are not going to get first run DVD's as fast as customers who are spending more money with Netflix per month. My neighbor is on the 3 at a time plan and he very rarely has to wait for a new release whereas I at 1 at a time have to suffer! Very unfair and very unprofessional!
Netflix or Net flukes ?
By -
HENDERSON, NEVADA -- Netflix or Net Flukes? Until this week I was a very happy Netflix member. At my suggestion, relatives and friends have also signed up over the past few years. I now suggest switching to Blockbuster. Here's why: Netflix ignores your selected DVDs and mails DVDs you never requested. After this happened to me, it also happened to my mother. At that point, both my mother and I started doing printouts of our Queue lists. When it happened to me a 2nd time, I was very unhappy because it was the 2nd DVD in a TV series that I really wanted to receive and watch on a weekend when TV had nothing but re-runs.
As soon as I received the email showing the DVD being mailed, I went to Netflix.com and tried to find a way to contact Netflix immediately to stop that shipment and have the one I wanted shipped the same day. To my surprise, there is NO WAY to alert Netflix to this situation from their website. It also took me several minutes to even find a phone number. In case you need it: **.
At 1 PM on a Friday (5 hours before deadlines at most post offices and mailboxes), I spoke with **. Explained my situation and was basically told that it's impossible for Netflix to send a DVD that I did not put in my Queue (list of requested DVDs). In other words, Netflix claims to have the only 100% flawless computer system on Earth and I was being called an idiot. I asked to speak with a supervisor. I repeated everything. ** told me the best they could do was sent me the correct DVD 3 days later, meaning I'd receive it on Tuesday instead of Saturday.
I asked why NOBODY at Netflix could put a postage stamp on a DVD and get it to a mailbox within the next 5 hours to satisfy this one-time request from a repeat customer. ** response was the same BS I heard from ** "our system doesn't make mistakes." At that point I reminded ** about the headlines Netflix made in the past year when their entire system went down. Bottom Line: Switch to Blockbuster because if they ever send you the wrong DVD or you simply want another title, you drive to the nearest retail store and exchange it.
One other question I forgot to ask **. Aside from insisting that I had selected a summer camp movie for kids, he said that title was #6 on my Queue list. If that were true, I'd like to know why Netflix didn't send ANY of the #1 through #5 titles that were available NOW instead of jumping to #6.
In case you're not familiar with it, Netflix's Queue is a web page that lists DVDs you selected. You can rearrange the list in order you want to receive them. The Availability column tells you if a DVD is available "NOW" which is supposed to mean that if the #1 on your list says as such, it will be the next DVD mailed to you. If it says things like "Long wait" don't expect to get it as the next DVD on your list. As I now know, that list is worthless and you'll be sent whatever DVD their computer chooses for you, even if it's not on your list.
Imagine if other businesses were run the same way. Would you dine at a restaurant that brought you the wrong food and then refused to even try to bring what you ordered and had already paid for? P.S. Quick Google search delivered several websites with others who say they received the wrong DVDs. Are they suggesting that Netflix's perfect computers made a mistake? How dare they!
Where Are My Movies?
By -
OMAHA, NEBRASKA -- I signed up for Netflix 12 days ago, put 15 movies in my queue, but still haven't received any DVDs. After 8 days, I called customer service twice. The first time I waited on hold for 10 minutes, told a representative my story, was put back on hold for 5 minutes, told another representative the story, was put on hold again and after a few minutes the call was disconnected. The second time I called I finally spoke with a supervisor, who told me that it sometimes takes a few days to set up a new account. According to her, my DVDs were shipping that day.
Now it's been 12 days and when I go to Netflix.com it still says my movies are "shipping today." I'm on a free trial, so at least I'm not paying for nothing, but it's still annoying that it takes almost 2 weeks to set up a new account and get movies sent out. There is a Netflix shipping center in the city I live in so I don't see what the hold up is! I plan on canceling the subscription when the free trial is up. This service sucks.
Quality of service has eroded
By -
NEBRASKA -- I was very satisfied with the service that Netflix has provided me until the past month or so. My "short waits" have become "I'll see you in hell first." They arbitrarily pick movies from my queue. Last week, my 18th movie was sent to me. The week prior was even worse. It used to take two days for my movies to reach them and then two days to get them back. Now it sometimes takes four days or until I report it lost before it gets checked in.
Slow Return
By -
MAINE -- Their handling of returns is very slow. I think they are choking the traffic or throttling it so the renters don't get the number of movies they pay for. Often it takes over 6 days for a movie to be registered as returned and then if you report them as lost too many times they treat you like a thief and suspend your account. Their customer service is almost impossible to get through to. They do have a great selection and television is such a wasteland--too bad they are so arrogant.
Top of Page | Next Page > | dclm-gs1-106420000 |
National Catholic Reporter
The Independent News Source
Chicano studies are an important part of Arizona's curriculum
| NCR Today
Earlier this month, the Tucson, Ariz., school district, responding to pressure from the state superintendent of education, eliminated the Chicano studies curriculum in that district.
Courses in the high schools on Chicano studies had been taught for a few years with no negative reaction until recently, when extreme right-wing politicians began to say that the Chicano studies classes were characterized by expressed racial hatred of whites and possessed no academic value. They further added that no classes should focus on just one ethnic group.
These allegations came from some of the same people who, a year earlier, supported and passed state laws giving local police the authority to arbitrarily stop anyone they suspected of being an undocumented immigrant despite the fact that immigration is a federal responsibility. That law has been challenged by the administration of President Barack Obama and will be adjudicated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
All of this is part of a nativist, anti-immigrant and anti-Latino movement in Arizona as well as in other states. What these reactionaries are responding to are their unfounded fears that they are losing control of "their country." They incorrectly believe or are made to believe that Latino immigrants are inundating and taking over the United States. They further believe, just like many of them believe that Obama is not a "real American," that Latinos, whether U.S.-born or not, do not represent "real Americans." To them, all Latinos are foreigners.
All of this, of course, is nonsense.
Latino immigrants represent only a small percentage of all people in the United States. In fact, immigration from Mexico, for example, is significantly down and almost non-existent today.
Latinos, the majority being born in the United States, have been part of this country for centuries and have worked and contributed to its wealth and security. Thousands through the years have proudly served in the U.S. military, and many have given their lives for the red, white and blue.
With respect to Chicano studies, I have been teaching Chicano studies classes for more than four decades, and I have never encountered a Chicano studies professor who preaches anti-whiteness. My colleagues, like me, teach that racism too often practiced in this country has significantly been directed against Mexican-Americans and other Latinos. This racism through the years has been predicated on maintaining most Latinos as sources of cheap labor. Teaching about racism is necessary in teaching about the history of racialized minorities such as Latinos and African-Americans.
I have also never met a colleague in Chicano studies who only teaches about Chicanos in isolation. You cannot teach about Chicanos -- or any other ethnic group, for that matter -- without also referencing the relationship of that group to other ethnic ones. For example, when I teach about the initial mass movement of Mexican immigrants to the United States in the early 20th century, I tell my students how at the same time many new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, such as Russian Jews and Italians, were being recruited or encouraged to come to the United States because of the labor needs of the burgeoning new American industries. These were the so-called "New Immigrants."
I also tell my students about the horrible discrimination that these immigrants faced because "older-stock" Americans perceived them as being the wrong kind of Europeans. They were too Jewish, too Catholic, too Mediterranean. I conclude by telling my students that Mexican immigrants faced the same forms of discrimination in the Southwest and California as they still do, but that knowing how all of our ancestors were badly treated is, in part, what should bind us together. We all have similar histories.
This is how I teach Chicano studies and how many, if not all, of my colleagues in Chicano studies teach.
Moreover, Chicano studies in the last 40 years have produced countless solid academic research in the form of published books in major university and non-university presses as well as in major academic journals. Many of these publications have received awards from the leading academic associations in this country. The idea that Chicano studies is simply political rhetoric flies in the face of voluminous evidence of significantly and nationally recognized scholarship.
What is happening in Arizona is not unique to that state. Anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment and movements are disguises about what is really happening to our country, and it has to do with the extreme disparities of wealth and power and the need for working class and middle class Americans to join together to stop being cheated and exploited by the small ruling elite of this country. In this sense, all of us have a stake in what is happening in Arizona.
Enjoy this article?
Help support more like it by donating today!
NCR Comment code: (Comments can be found below)
Comments from unverified email addresses will be deleted.
• Don't use obscene, profane or vulgar language.
For more detailed guidelines, visit our User Guidelines page.
Friends of NCR 300x80 web ad.jpg
NCR Email Alerts
In This Issue
September 25-October 8, 2015
| dclm-gs1-106430000 |
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
BBC News
watch One-Minute World News
Last Updated: Monday, 10 November, 2003, 02:22 GMT
Children's fears over nut allergy
Children with a nut allergy have be very vigilant over their diet
Children who have a peanut allergy worry more about their condition than those with diabetes, research suggests.
A team from the University of Southampton found children with the allergy had a poorer quality of life and were more worried about being killed by their illness.
Some said they were even afraid of dying if they were near peanuts.
Doctors said children with the allergy should be helped to have a more positive attitude.
The more information you can give, the better able people are to manage their condition
Allergy UK spokeswoman
Researchers studied 40 children aged nine and 10, half of whom had a peanut allergy and half of whom had insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Children with diabetes need daily injections of insulin but can alter their diet and exercise to control their blood sugar levels.
Children with peanut allergies carry adrenaline injections which they only need to use if they have a severe reaction to a peanut.
Fear of peanuts
The children were given questionnaires to fill in and used cameras to record how their conditions affected them.
The researchers found that those with the allergy felt their lives were "restricted" and that they were "unable or not allowed" to do things that other people could.
Two even said they were scared of dying when they knew peanuts were nearby.
Children who had diabetes complained about not being able to eat foods their brothers and sisters could eat, and about the size of their own helpings.
However, none mentioned a fear of dying.
Dr Jonathan Hourihane, assistant director of the university's Wellcome Trust clinical research facility, who carried out the study, told BBC News Online that many children with allergies were more worried about their condition than they needed to be.
They should be better informed about how to manage their condition, he said.
"They should be less frightened, but that doesn't mean they should be less aware."
He said being treated at a specialist allergy clinic had been found to help children and their families.
"When there is a management plan in place, most reactions are usually less severe because people know what they are doing."
'Quality of life'
Dr Hourihane said that before his team's study, no one had asked allergic children themselves how they felt about their condition.
"This is an interesting first step to measure food allergic children's anxiety levels rather than relying on parents' opinions.
"Previous research to measure the impact peanut allergy has on children's quality of life involved parents completing questionnaires rather than children."
A spokeswoman for Allergy UK said she was not surprised at the findings.
"There have been so many scares, and it tends to make a lot of news when someone unfortunately dies from a nut allergy.
"Whether it's children or adults, the more information you can give, the better able people are to manage their condition.
"It's vital that children with serious allergies are treated within an allergy clinic. But the problem is that these clinics are not widely available."
Peanut allergies 'may not last'
10 Jul 03 | Health
Peanut test could save lives
07 Feb 03 | Health
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
Americas Africa Europe Middle East South Asia Asia Pacific | dclm-gs1-106440000 |
BBC Homepage World Service Education
BBC Homepagelow graphics version | feedback | help
BBC News Online
You are in: Sci/Tech
Front Page
UK Politics
Talking Point
In Depth
Sunday, 31 December, 2000, 05:02 GMT
Spacecraft gets close to Jupiter
Shot showing Io, one of Jupiters four largest satellites Nasa
Jupiter has very different weather to that on Earth
The Cassini spacecraft has made its closest approach to the planet Jupiter, capturing dramatic pictures of the massive storms that rage across the gas giant's "surface".
The probe, which is en route to Saturn, got within 9.7 million km (six million miles) of Jupiter on Saturday.
Camera equipment peered deep into the planet's cloud cover to reveal smaller storms being created and torn apart by larger ones.
Jupiter facts
Largest planet in the Solar System
2.5 times as massive as all the other planets
Almost entirely made of hydrogen and helium
Surrounded by 16 moons
Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot, visible with a telescope, was first seen 300 years ago and for many years was thought to be a thunderstorm stretching across an area three times as wide as the Earth.
Recent studies suggest instead that the Red Spot is a natural product of the complex laws which govern a spinning ball of gas the size of Jupiter. It is what researchers call a "strange attractor", a self-organising system of stable flow that is closely related to the chaotic turmoil around it.
Nevertheless, scientists hope the new data will help them reach a better understanding of the Earth's atmosphere. The main purpose of Cassini's approach to Jupiter was to give the 5,712kg (12,593lb) spacecraft a final gravitational push towards Saturn, where it is due to arrive on 1 July, 2004.
Weather puzzle
The new images from Jupiter suggest the massive storms draw their energy from absorbing smaller systems, said Andrew Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology.
Jupiter surface
Smaller storms surround the Red Spot
"The weather is different on Jupiter," he told a news conference at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We'd like to know why Jupiter's weather is so stable and Earth's is so transient."
Previous observations from the US space agency's Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995, have suggested that smaller thunderstorms draw their power from below the cloudy "surface" of the hot, gassy planet.
Close-ups show lightning Nasa
Close-ups reveal lightning
Scientists are also using data from Galileo and the $3.4bn Cassini to study how the solar wind of particles speeding away from the Sun affects the huge magnetic region surrounding Jupiter.
William Kurth of the University of Iowa said: "For the first time we have the opportunity to have a 'weather station' in the solar wind."
Dr Carolyn Porco of the University of Arizona said the quality of the imagery coming back from the satellite was first class: "The camera has performed beyond our wildest imaginings - and that's saying something, because we've been imagining this for a decade now," she said.
Future task
One immediate finding was that the huge bubble of charged particles known as Jupiter's magnetosphere is changing size more rapidly than expected.
Saturn Nasa
Cassini will spend four years studying Saturn
Dr Kurth said Cassini hit Jupiter's magnetic boundary on Thursday, much farther out than expected. It recorded a burst of radio waves similar to the sonic boom created by a jet breaking the sound barrier.
In recent months, Galileo has broken through Jupiter's magnetic boundary, but the bubble collapsed suddenly and unexpectedly back towards the planet, he said.
Cassini will end its flyby of Jupiter in March. When the spacecraft, launched in 1997, finally reaches Saturn, it will swing into orbit inside the outermost ring. It will send a European-built, parachute-equipped probe to the planet's largest moon, Titan.
Titan is thought to have an atmosphere much like Earth's, but with clouds, rain and weather patterns produced by methane gas.
Search BBC News Online
Advanced search options
Launch console
See also:
18 Dec 00 | Sci/Tech
Listening to the 'sounds' of Jupiter
09 Feb 00 | Sci/Tech
Jupiter's thunderous rising damp
19 May 00 | Sci/Tech
Io's wandering volcanoes
18 Aug 99 | Sci/Tech
Saturn probe swings by Earth
06 Oct 00 | Sci/Tech
Cassini approaches Jupiter
24 Oct 00 | Sci/Tech
Giant storms collide on Jupiter
Internet links:
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
E-mail this story to a friend
Links to more Sci/Tech stories | dclm-gs1-106450000 |
Four Interesting Facts About Our Teeth
Try to protect your teeth
1. Specialists say that if during an accident you lose a tooth, do not throw it. Your chances of reimplanting the teeth can be of 50 % if you go to the dentist 30 minutes after the 'incident'. Try to stay calm, as much as possible. Hold the tooth by the corona and rinse it gently with warm water. Don't brush it.
Call the stomatologist and if he/she does not recommend otherwise, introduce the tooth in its alveola. Bite strongly a handkerchief or a clean cloth for up to 5 minutes, to put the tooth back in its place, after which keep on biting moderately till reaching the stomatologist's office.
If you cannot replace the tooth immediately, keep it in the mouth soaked in the saliva. In case of small children, which might swallow it, put the tooth in a plastic bag or in a cup of water or milk, in which you've added a pinch of salt.
Even if a lot of time has passed, the best thing to do is go to the stomatologist's and let him/her decide.
2. Not only sugar induces tooth decay, but also acid containing foods. Those drinking orange juice at breakfast or acid-containing foods are advised not to brush their teeth for at least half an hour after eating. That's because when the level of acids overcomes a certain value, the teeth enamel softens, and through brushing the outer layer is removed.
To neutralize the acidity eat protein-rich food, like cheese or peanuts, but no later that 20 minutes after eating acid foods.
3. The teeth treatment can be painless. The YAG laser for tooth surgery removes the caries not through a small drill, but by pulverizing decayed tooth tissue. The laser has many advantages compared to traditional mills. Besides being not painful, thus not requiring anesthesia or anesthetic injections, the stomatologist does not have to wait for the effect of the anesthetic chemicals, starting the treatment immediately. Moreover, the patient won't have to stand the annoying vibrations of the high speed mills. One disadvantage is that laser cannot be employed for filled teeth.
4. Drugs can destroy your teeth completely. Methamphetamine (also known as meth, crank, crystal and speed), a powerfully addictive drug, can do this.
The drug releases a high amount of dopamine inside your body, leading to the typical euphoria. Short-term effects include extreme wakefulness, a lasting boost of energy and a lack of appetite. Long-term effects include a high blood pressure, stroke and serious heart problems.
Methamphetamine is used by over 12 million people in the US, taken orally, injected, snorted or smoked. Most users are 18 to 34 years old. In just one year, the users can experience from sensitive teeth to tooth loss, a condition called "meth mouth".
The so-called 'meth mouth' frequently leads to full-mouth extractions and a lifetime of wearing dentures. It is characterized by rampant tooth decay, blackening, staining, rotting, crumbling or falling apart.
The drug inhibits the salivary glands and without the diluting saliva, acids produced by food and bacteria in your mouth start dissolving tooth enamel. Moreover, the consumers may neglect their oral hygiene and the drug's effect can last for 12 hours.
Hot right now · Latest news | dclm-gs1-106460000 |
NBC's 'Playboy' Pitch Failing With Feminists, Not Just Traditionalists
NBC's going to have a tough time with critics from both directions on its new show "The Playboy Club." Radical feminist Gloria Steinem casually dismissed the series in a panel discussion at the Television Critics Association confab in Los Angeles. Steinem, who once went undercover as a Playboy bunny, strongly suggested the show was exploiting the past to feed the male need for nostalgia in tough economic times.
TV critics weren't buying NBC's claim the show was female-empowering. “I hear someone use the word ‘empowering’ but I’ve heard from my female readers that a show centered on Playboy…they don’t see it as empowering,” said one TV critic. “And your central story involves a woman who needs to rely on a man to get through the crisis that she in the middle of. How is this show empowering and how are you going to be able to sell female viewers on this show -- a show centered on a nudie magazine -- as empowering?”
In the pilot, openly lesbian actress Amber Heard stars as a young woman named Maureen who is hired as a bunny at the Playboy Club in Chicago. Maureen gets sexually harassed by a mobster in a back room of the club and, as she tries to escape, the mobster falls, and she accidentally (implausibly) kills him by plunging her stiletto heel into his skull. A club regular, Nick, a lawyer who has political aspirations and mob connections, comes to her rescue, sneaking her out of the club – and over to his place. That’s not a female-empowerment narrative. It’s a barely-clothed-waitress-in-distress plot.
Ian Biederman, another executive producer of “Playboy Club,” tried to toss out NBC’s primary talking point. “Well, the first thing I’d say is, it’s not based on the magazine, it’s based on The Playboy Club in 1961. It’s entirely different.”
The critic shot back sarcastically, “That’s an empowering institution for women. I can see that.”
Why can’t NBC be honest enough to proclaim that the network is promoting and associating itself with porn? They want to pretend the Playboy Club is very tame, sort of a Sixties version of Hooters. So why don’t they just make a show about Hooters? Somehow, NBC thinks that Playboy in the Sixties is far more glamorous. Then they try to deny they’re promoting the entire Playboy empire.
Another critic wanted to talk about one of the show’s silly promotional slogans about the club being a place where men hold the key but women run the show. “That just seems ridiculous to me… all the Playboy Clubs were run by men. And Hugh Hefner, I’m sure, had a lot to say about how women were portrayed, what they could do, couldn’t do. How are women running the show here in reality?”
"There is no Playboy Club without these women,” explained cast member Naturi Naughton, which is almost as dumb as claiming there is no McDonald’s without the cattle. “At the end of the day, of course the men hold the key. But let’s be real. This is a world that you come to enjoy the music. You walk in. You feel like you’re in this fantasy, and that’s what it was. It’s like Disney World for adults.”
That whirring sound you hear is Walt Disney spinning in his grave at being associated with Hugh Hefner.
# # #
Tim Graham
Tim Graham | dclm-gs1-106470000 |
Nick Comper
Nick Comper was one of Britain’s most brilliant and influential aeronautical engineers of the early 1930s. He is best known for the design and manufacture of the “Comper Swift” light aircraft. The Swift enjoyed considerable success in the many flying competitions of the era, most notably the Kings Cup air race. In 1931 the plane broke the world record time for a flight from the UK to Australia. The aircraft was exported all over the world and several of them survive to the present day. Comper is regarded as one of the country’s pioneers in the development of commercial light aircraft.
Born in April 1897 he was the son of the celebrated church architect, Sir Ninian Comper and grandson of John Comper, a highly prominent clergyman in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Nick was brought up with his five brothers and sisters in Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood in London.
He was educated at Dulwich College, where he was a pupil from September 1911 until July 1914. Nick at de HavillandAt the outbreak of the first World War, Comper, at the age of seventeen, joined the aircraft manufacturer, de Havilland, to study aeronautics. He was working as a draughtsman for The Aircraft Manufacturing Company , who built Henry and Mauraice Farman’s airplanes and seaplanes in Hendon in London, when he was released by them to sign up with the Royal Flying Corps in April 1916 as a second lieutenant, special reserve. As a pilot he was stationed in France and there he undertook dangerous reconnaisance missions throughout the rest of the war. He left behind him a record of events in a series of letters written to his mother. After the war he remained in what in 1918 had become the RAF. In 1920 he spent a year at Jesus College, Cambridge University, reading aerodynamics. From there he was stationed at Felixstowe to study and fly seaplanes and flying boats, then came the assignment as an engineering instructor at the Cranwell Academy, training cadets at the engineering laboratory. One of his pupils there was Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine.
RAF Years
While at Cranwell he and some staff and pupils formed the Cranwell Light Aeroplane Club (in 1923) and they produced four aircraft in what they named the “CLA” class (Cranwell Light Aeroplane). One of them, a so-called “parasol monoplane”, won the International reliability trials at Lympne near Folkstone and the following year in the plane’s successor, the CLA-3, was second overall in the speed trials at the same event. By then it had became evident that to pursue his gifts as an aeronautical engineer he would need to leave the RAF and enter the business world.
In March 1929 when Comper left the Royal Air Force he formed the Comper Aircraft Company and set up a manufacturing plant to build the Comper Swift, an aircraft he had designed and whose origins were in the work he’s done at Cranwell. The plant was based at Hooton Aerodrome in Cheshire. The Prototype Swift (registered G-AARX) first made a public showing at Brooklands on 17 May 1930. The aircraft was a small but graceful single-seat braced high-wing monoplane of wooden construction and was powered by a 40 hp (30 kW) A.B.C Scorpion piston engine. After successful tests, seven more aircraft were built in 1930 powered by a 50 hp Salmson A.D.9 radial engine. Trials with Pobjoy P radial engine for use in air racing resulted in all the subsequent aircraft being powered by the Pobjoy R. The last three aircraft (sometimes called the Gipsy Swift) were fitted with de Havilland Gipsy engines – two with 120 hp (89 kW) Gipsy Major III and one with a 130hp (97 kW) Gipsy Major. Postwar, surviving Swifts continued to compete successfully in UK air races into the mid 1950′s. In fact, probably no other aircraft built in such small numbers has ever broken so many records and won so many prizes. Amongst these achievements one of the most outstanding was Charles Butler’s record 9 days 2 hours flight to Darwin, Australia in October 1931.
Swifts were entered in all the major air races of the period, competing in every King’s Cup Air race from 1930 to 1937. In the 1933 race no fewer than seven Swifts were entered. They won four of the qualifying heats and the G-ABW flown by Flight Lieutenant ECT Edwards took second place overall. In the 1930s the Kings Cup Air Race drew considerable national attention. The results would be published on the front pages of the national newspapers and the pilots became famous figures in their own right. As a pilot himself, Comper loved to race his own Swifts and one year was placed sixth in the Kings Cup Air Race.
But by March 1933 the Comper Aircraft Company was struggling and left Hooton, transferring production to Heston, where it was thought more modern production facilities would help production of the Mouse, the Kite and the Streak. Heston at the time was the hub of light aviation activity. The company strategy didn’t work, in spite of the many frantic changes to its board of directors in the final months and it proved to have been the company’s last desperate throw of the dice. By August 1934 Nick had lost control of his own company. It folded and was liquidated.
The company’s move from Hooton to Heston roughly coincided with the failure of his marriage to Phyllis with whom he had his only child, Naomi. The divorce ended up in the courts and was very messy. In those days divorce was heavily frowned upon. Comper was a colourful character and larger than life with a fondness of practical jokes and good company. He may not have been the most successful of businessmen but he inspired much loyalty from his employees. He was a dog lover. He acquired his own dog during the first world war war and in later life was often seen with his Fox Terrier. He loved to write children’s stories for his daughter.
Of the planes he designed and built, only the Swift had any financial success. His other work. though technically brilliant and high performance, proved uncommercial. The Great Depression was a hard time for many who had businesses such as his. He could have sheltered from the storm by accepting one of the offers of work made to him by the big aircraft manufacturers but preferred to struggle on alone. He turned to consultancy in an effort to achieve financial survival and he persuaded Robert Blackburn, head of the Blackburn Aircraft Company, to appoint him technical advisor and chief designer of a project to build a helicopter designed by Oskar Asboth. Comper had some expertise in this field as in 1932 he had worked with Juan de la Cierva, the Spanish rotary wing aircraft pioneer, on a single seat touring autogiro, the Comper C25, using a Swift airframe. The project was not a success nor were his next moves.
He went to central London where he set up another consultancy in the Strand with a friend called Francis Walker, a location which proved to be far beyond both their financial means. He’d known Walker because he had been one of his pilots. In the previous year Walker had narrowly escaped death in a crash of the Gipsy Swift while competing in the King’s Cup air race.
Nick Comper had long operated in the highest circles and had attracted several backers. Among them it’s thought was Lord Ronald Graham (who was the second son of the 6th Duke of Montrose). More committed was Lord Patrick Crichton Stuart (son of the 4th Marquess of Bute) . Both found themselves much the poorer as a result.
Comper worked from home on “the Scamp”, a reconnaisance aircraft, and it was built by students at Brooklands but not completed. Restlessly, in December 1936 he formed Comper Aeroplanes Limited and set about designing two airliners he named the “Dominion” and “Commerce”, which was where his heart now lay. It seems, the Scamp project was only a means to an end.
His last years had been spent in desperate attempts to maintain his professional credibility, efforts which were hampered further by the opposition of hostile ex-associates and business partners.
His chaotic affairs were brought to an abrupt climax in June 1939, when Comper died, at the age of 42, in tragi-comic circumstances. So dire were his finances that his electricity and gas had been cut off. One day Nick decided to distract himself by paying a visit to see the work in progress on the Scamp and he stopped on his way at a pub in Hythe. He decided it would be a good idea to let off fireworks inside the pub but was ordered by the publican to go outside. Once there, he bent down to set off a firework when a passer-by asked what he was doing. He is reported to have replied “I am going to blow up the Town Hall. I am an IRA man”. This proved to be his last practical joke. The man knocked him down and he fell and hit his head on a curb and Comper suffered a brain haemorrhage as a result. His last words in hospital were said to have been “I didn’t know prisons had such comfortable beds”.
After he died, a young woman of 22, by the name of Molly, came forward and said she and Nick Comper were engaged to be married. His daughter, Naomi, thought this was credible.
His death revealed just how calamitous his personal affairs had become. His executor (his brother Sebastian) was able to pay his creditors only about 6p in the pound. He was bankrupt.
Two days before her death in 2007 his daughter, Naomi, disclosed that she believed her father was an alcoholic. This may or may not have been true, but without doubt the last years of his life had been in a sorry state. Yet, if only he had lived a few months longer his career might well have been rescued by the second world war and its imperative appetite for the services of aeronautical engineers.
The development of technical innovation in Britain is strewn with the names of brilliant and eccentric individuals who were never able to gain the support their work merited from the establishment to further their inventions. Even Barnes Wallis, Frank Whittle, Neville Norway and Christopher Cockerall all suffered in the face of British industrial inertia. Had Nick Comper received the financial backing he deserved his could have been a very different story. | dclm-gs1-106480000 |
Chicago Morning News Anchors Sad About Explosion, Their Lives
When something goes wrong in front of a camera, people are tested. Some go berserk, like Bill O'Reilly famously did back in his Inside Edition days. Some try to pluckily push on despite hardship, like when Meredith Vieira really hurt herself while ice skating with Will Ferrell. And some, like WGN9 in Chicago's Robin Baumgarten and Larry Potash, respond by revealing how they really feel under all that pancake makeup and hairspray: dead on the inside. When, after waiting several minutes for a local bridge to explode on live camera this morning, producers cut away to the weather just as the event actually happened. Chaos and frustration erupted. Instead of having a ready replay of the event, producers just let Baumgarten and Potash moan and wheeze for a couple more minutes about the shoddiness of their own show. "This is a metaphor for our show," someone off-camera lamented: "Another crash and burn." | dclm-gs1-106500000 |
Wavechasers and the Samoan Passage
Watch as a team of wave chasers heads to Somoa where they search for an undersea river five kilometers beneath the ocean's surface. There they measured skyscraper-sized internal gravity waves, which break and produce strong turbulence underwater. Understanding these deep waves and flows is critical to understanding more about the Earth's climate and can help to improve climate models. The team is still chasing waves: they now know where the waves start, but they are still searching for where they end up.
| dclm-gs1-106510000 |
Thursday, December 28
Cinema in Muscat
If you want to go to the movie theater there are good ones in Muscat. Here is a example : the shati plaza cinema
The movies proposed are very new (sometimes more recent than the ones proposed in France) and in english. The building itself is new and luxuous. The price are about 5Ryals for 2 entrances.
1. this is a usefull link to see the movies available in the cinema :
2. Is this cinema theater also a 3D theater.
| dclm-gs1-106520000 |
Yankees dispatch Angels
MLB Roundup
Posted: Sunday, August 05, 2001
NEW YORK -- Tino Martinez hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning and the New York Yankees overcame a rare blown save by Mariano Rivera to beat the Anaheim Angels 5-4 Saturday.
After Troy Glaus' two-run homer off Rivera put the Angels ahead 4-3 in the top of the eighth, the Yankees rallied.
Bernie Williams drew a one-out walk from Al Levine (5-6) and Martinez followed with an opposite-field drive to left for his 26th home run.
The previous night, Martinez's two-run homer in the seventh capped a three-run comeback that beat the Angels.
Anaheim did little against Roger Clemens, who pitched on his 39th birthday and eased worries about his injured groin. Clemens wound up with a no-decision, keeping intact his 11-game winning streak.
Red Sox 10, Rangers 4, 1st game: In Boston, Troy O'Leary and Trot Nixon each hit two home runs, and Boston had a season-high six homers in a victory over Texas in the first game of a day-night doubleheader.
David Cone (7-1) went 5 2-3 innings to win his seventh straight decision.
Nixon, who had his third career multihomer game, hit solo shots in the third and fifth innings. O'Leary, on his 32nd birthday, hit a two-run homer in the second and a solo shot in the seventh.
Brian Daubach and Carl Everett also homered for the Red Sox.
Four of the homers were hit off Texas starter Rick Helling (8-9) who gave up eight hits and seven earned runs in 2 2-3 innings. He had won three in a row.
The Red Sox snapped a three-game losing streak.
Mariners 8, Indians 5: In Cleveland, Dan Wilson hit a tiebreaking three-run homer in the seventh inning as Seattle Mariners moved 50 games over .500 by beating Cleveland.
Wilson's homer off Danys Baez (2-1) snapped a 3-3 tie as the Mariners won their fourth straight to improve to a preposterous 80-30. The homer was Seattle's first in 226 at-bats.
Last season, Seattle didn't get its 80th victory until Sept. 13. The Mariners also won their 44th road game -- matching their total from last season.
Bret Boone hit a two-run homer, his career-high 25th, in the eighth for the Mariners, who have won eight of nine and are 17-6 since the All-Star break. Ichiro Suzuki had three hits.
Freddy Garcia (13-3) allowed three runs and 10 hits in 6 2-3 innings and won for the seventh time in nine decisions. He walked none and struck out a season-high eight. Arthur Rhodes retired the final batter for his third save.
Blue Jays 2, Orioles 1: In Toronto, Brandon Lyon pitched into the eighth inning to win his major league debut as Toronto beat Baltimore.
Lyon (1-0), recalled from Triple-A Syracuse on August 3, allowed just one run on four hits in 7 1-3 innings. The 21 year-old right-hander, who struck out five and walked one, retired his last 14 batters.
Dan Plesac got two outs in the eighth, and Billy Koch pitched a perfect ninth for his 23rd save in 26 opportunities to complete the combined four-hitter.
Phillies 12, Giants 2: In San Francisco, Barry Bonds' major league-leading 47th homer wasn't nearly enough to prevent Philadelphia from snapping San Francisco's nine-game winning streak.
The Giants' longest winning streak in more than three years was snapped on a day when Bonds stayed on the fastest home run pace in baseball history.
Mets 4, Diamondbacks 2: In Phoenix, Vance Wilson, getting a rare start in place of All-Star catcher Mike Piazza, drove in two runs and made two big defensive plays as New York defeated Arizona.
Mark Johnson had a solo homer and doubled, and Kevin Appier held the Diamondbacks in check with six hits in seven innings. Arizona, fell one-half game behind Los Angeles in the NL West.
Appier (6-10) picked up his first victory in six starts since beating Atlanta 2-1 on July 1. Armando Benitez, who blew his last two save chances, pitched the ninth for his 25th save.
Miguel Batista (6-7) took the loss.
Dodgers 3, Cubs 1: In :Los Angeles, Gary Sheffield went 3-for-3 with an RBI double, and Adrian Beltre hit a tiebreaking two-run single as Los Angeles snapped a season-worst five-game losing streak by beating Chicago.
Baldwin, who struck out eight and walked two, won for the sixth time in seven decisions. He retired his last 14 batters.
Trending this week:
| dclm-gs1-106540000 |
The Vampire Diaries Round Table: "My Brother's Keeper"
at . Comments
Sorry, we got distracted there for a second, as The Vampire Diaries provided plenty of fodder for our Round Table team - comprised of staffers Matt Richenthal, Leigh Raines, Steve Marsi and Miranda Wicker - to discuss in "My Brother's Keeper."
Highlighted by a certain closing scene that exposed both secrets and skin...
What was your favorite scene from the episode?
Matt: Stefan prompting Jeremy to kill that newly-turned vampire, no doubt. That was some seriously intense stuff and it furthered the show's best storyline at the moment: Jeremy's murderous urges and that ever-growing mark.
Leigh: I love Tyler, but I found myself oddly drawn to the scenes between Klaus and Caroline. I think there's a chemistry there, whether Caroline like it or not. He was the only person keeping her calm and entertained during the pageant.
Steve: Klaus making his move on Caroline. Being the most powerful creature on Earth only gets you so far when it comes to women apparently ... fool's gotta run game like anyone else (if only we all had that accent). Second place? Jeremy morphing into a mini-Connor before our eyes. Third place? Any scene with Hayley for obvious reasons, if you get what I'm insinuating. What I'm insinuating is that she's not unattractive.
Miranda: It feels too easy to say Damon and Elena, but I've been waiting for that since the balcony on The Vampire Diaries Season 3. I also really loved Klaus and Caroline and almost, for half a second, started to think they should give a relationship the old college try. I kind of think I wouldn't hate it if they did. Bonus favorite scene: Matt moving in with Jeremy. Was his house finally foreclosed on? Was he finally evicted? I mean, I can't imagine he was making enough at The Grill to pay that bill every month.
Vampire Diaries RT - depreciated -
More likely to hook up: Matt and April, Stefan and Caroline or Hayley and Tyler?
Matt: I have no clue how Tyler will be able to resist Hayley after seeing her in that dress (especially if she breaks out the Australian accent soon), until I remember that he's dating the amazing Caroline Forbes. Matt, meanwhile, is way too nice to get down and dirty with anyone... so let's give it up for Scaroline, everyone! They will soon drown their sorrows over Delena by drowning in one another's hot bods!
Leigh: Hayley and Tyler for sure. Hayley wants it, Tyler is gonna get mad at Caroline inevitably over something Klaus related. Plus, you don't bring Phoebe Tonkin to guest star on your show if you're not gonna show off her sexy side!
Steve: Matt and April, without a doubt. Who's NOT waiting for that? TVD water cooler topic of the spring, mark my words.
Miranda: More likely? Hayley and Tyler. Paws down. But I'm hoping Matt, April and Jeremy become the new triangle. I could see there being something supernatural about her where she's the only one who can help him control his urge to hunt.
The Delena sex scene: All you ever dreamed about, or a total letdown?
Matt: As I mentioned once or two dozen times in my Vampire Diaries review of the episode, any positive feelings I possessed over these two were wiped away by the siring nonsense. Was the scene scorching? Of course. But my brow was more furrowed over Caroline and Stefan's discussion than any other body parts of mine were... nevermind.
Leigh: Hot hot hot! I don't ship one brother over the other. Well done. I enjoyed how it started off with the dancing. And I wonder if Ian and Nina's offscreen chemistry makes it easier onscreen.
Steve: See last night's Vampire Diaries review by Matt for my sentiments exactly. Hot, sure, but a total letdown thanks to the contrived sire bond, a twist made even more lame by Caroline's drawn-out epiphany. Sorry, C. Not even you could sell me on that.
Miranda: All I ever dreamed about. And more. I don't for one second buy the "The Sire Bond Made Me Do It" angle. Not even a little bit. And I'm actually kind of peeved that even now there's still some angle for WHY she has feelings for Damon. It's okay for her to have feelings for Damon, and those feelings existed before she was turned even if she wouldn't admit it. He never said "Hey, VampElena, have feelings for me and me only." Sire bond, schmire bond. THAT WAS HOT.
What is Professor Shane's endgame?
Matt: Easy. He wants to un-sire all hybrids? Maybe kill Klaus? Find a cure and put an end to the existence of vampires, if not every supernatural in the world? He's working undercover for TNT, trying to get The Vampire Diaries canceled.
Leigh: Well, he wants all of the hybrids un-sired... so it's safe to say he knows about Klaus. Perhaps he wants to cure Klaus? Hunt him? Certainly wouldn't make him the first person with such desires.
Steve: If he played a role in murdering the entire council, which he kind of obviously did, his endgame can't be as simple as killing Klaus for the sake of it. Maybe he just wants that charming Original out of the way so he can have the Cure all to himself. Shane mentored Connor in addition to Bonnie, so he's gotta be after that first and foremost.
Miranda: Either he IS Silas, or he wants to awaken Silas. And he's hellbent on destruction. I don't trust him.
What would you hope to accomplish as Miss Mystic Falls?
Matt: World peace is probably out, considering the events that take place in this town alone. I'd probably start a Stay in School campaign. Seriously, when was the last time these seniors attended class?!?
Leigh: To just keep breathing. In this town, you never know when your time is up! Also, I'd open up another hangout besides the Mystic Grill. We need a little variety.
Steve: The way things are going these days? Living long enough to hand the crown to Miss Mystic Falls 2013. That and modernizing the school's mascot ... the 1994 Minnesota Timberwolves called, guys, they want their logo back.
Miranda: World Peace? Life insurance policies for workers at The Grill? A truancy officer to check on why all these kids aren't attending school? Making sure no one ever cares that all these teenagers are drinking in public?
Laplaya Properties Real Estate and Property womens ugg classic tall Search
I don't know why so many of us find Damon so wrong.
Did he sleep with his bother's ex days after the break-up, yes.
If you ask me he just went along with the rap. He is Damon not a saint.
I do think that he is trying to change his ways, but Elena is his kryptonite.
Has he not been there time after time for everyone.
Elena Elena Elena what can you say about cra cra. She looks at stefan as her blue dress (the easy,safe choose) but like she said she is not the same girl any more she is a vampire who knows what she wants(the dam red dress).
BEST SCENES: Caroline and Klaus
RUNNER UP: Jeremy going Connor 2.0
The rest I really don't care anymore
I actually liked the sire bond storyline. While I used to be a Damon fan, I'm finding Stefan more and more appealing. I enjoy seeing where the sire storyline will take us. If becoming a vampire intensifies her feelings for Damon, then wouldn't it intensify her feelings for Stefan as well. I don't see why everyone keeps saying Elena changed into a completely different person. She doesn't seem that different to me. She's still a dumbass.
In reply to M you are right about the supernaturals having the rare quality of being sired....makes sense to me....good analogy!!!
1. Klaroline Scenes, Caroline scenes in General followed by Jeremy going all Connor 2.0
2. Hayley and Tyler
3. Total letdown due to the sire bond
4. Revive Silas
5. Agree with Miranda
Part 2. People are also getting very angry about the compulsion between Damon and Elena saying it has never been showed between two vampires before. Well let's think it through. I believe it was Damon who made the Tyler/Klaus sire connection and saying that it is RARE but does happen to vampires!!! Okay so let's take that information and put together why it has happened to just Elena out of all the people that have turned with Damon's blood in their system (besides to continue this love triangle). Well Tyler was supernatural (as a werewolf) before he turned hybrid and was sired (as are all werewolves who turn hybrid of course). Elena was also supernatural (as a doppelganger) before turning. Maybe this is the reason for it being so rare.
Part 1. Obviously Elena already had feelings for Damon people . . we know this. However, the old and good Elena would never have acted on it as quickly as she did (moving in to their house a day or two after breaking up AND sleeping with his brother, slut move Elena). And yes, many of you are confusing siring and compulsion. Damon would never have to tell Elena to break up with Stefan (which she didn't, Stefan ended it) or to sleep with him because when you are sired you want and do what your "master" (for lack of better word) wants. Not to negate their feelings for each other but I still think that the siring had a lot of influence here.
I loved the delena sex scene and thought Nina and Ian were smoking HOT. The only problem was the annoying voice over of S/C. I mean really they cut back and forth a total of SEVEN times. Thank god for YouTube.
Damon and Elaine love it. If, u In siril all hybits makes a boring show
Tags: ,
The Vampire Diaries Season 4 Episode 7 Quotes
| dclm-gs1-106550000 |
Friday, February 22, 2013
Grow Your Way Out of Federal Largess?
Recently, a slew of know-it-all Keynesian policy junkie types have hit the media with suggestions that those in favor of limited government (or a merely a more limited version than the current incarnation) style budget cuts are dwelling too much on the numerator of the debt-to-GDP ratio and not enough on the denominator.
The suggestion being that we could easily turn around our insolvency problem if the government would simply focus on GDP growth and NOT on the growth of federal spending.
A quintessentially maniacal Keynesian solution indeed!.... Better, smarter government spending will stimulate GDP growth enough to reduce the debt-to-GDP!
Ha! What absurdly delusional times these are.
Reader... let's first establish a few basic facts and then take some time to absorb the chart below.
Nominal GDP has a trailing 20 average annual growth rate of 4.71% while the average growth rate for nominal federal government debt is 7.41%.
Right there you can see a problem, for the last 20 years, GDP has been growing at nearly half the rate of federal government spending.
But taking the Keynesian policy junkies contention seriously for a moment, let's assume that "smart" policy makers could manage to generate an 8% annual nominal GDP rate... a literal farce.... and kept the federal government spending pumping along at it's average 7.41%.
Even given this absurd growth assumption, debt-to-GDP would remain above 100% till 2018 and would still be at a level of 82% in 2050!! ... bear in mind, the debt-to-GDP averaged roughly 50% during the 40 years preceding 2008.
Sorry policy junkies, you can't grow your way out of it federal largess... and certainly not with MORE largess... bring on the cuts and LOTS of them! | dclm-gs1-106560000 |
Perdido 03
Perdido 03
Friday, January 18, 2013
The Fix Is In: King Threatens To Strip Title 1 Money From NYC If No Evaluation System Is In By March 1
Gauntlet thrown down tonight by the corporate education crooks at the NYSED:
He said the DOE was unprepared to implement any plan that's eventually adopted. In a letter Friday to NYDOE Chancellor Dennis Walcott, the commissioner set a Feb. 15 deadline for the department to outline its preparation plans.
Oh, sure you want to give the children of NYC the best education you can.
That's why you're threatening to take away the Title 1 money if your APPR system isn't imposed by a new deadline.
It's because you care so much about the kids.
Clearly Commissioner King does not like that the state's largest school district will not implement his rigged teacher evaluation system, and so he is going to use every ounce of power he has to extract that agreement from the aggrieved parties here in NYC.
State Education Commissioner John King said the city's inaction on teacher evaluations has put the state's "Race to the Top" grant at risk.
He has given city officials until February 15 to come up with a plan.
The United Federation of Teachers will have until March 1 to sign off on it.
Now I dunno, I don't remember that stipulation being in the Race to the Top law.
I know the NYSED Commissioner was given broad powers in the law, so perhaps he can get away with what sounds very much like his giving the DOE the right to impose a system and the UFT the need to accept it or else.
Because if the NY1 report is correct, that sounds like what has just happened.
I don't know how else to read that King "has given city officials until February 15 to come up with a plan. The United Federation of Teachers will have until March 1 to sign off on it" other than he's giving the NYCDOE a lot more power than they're supposed to have.
Perhaps the NY1 report is wrong.
Or perhaps my reading of it is wrong.
More on this as we get information.
But surely you all can see - the fix is in and the boys and girl in charge are going to get their APPR system this year if they have to strip every cent of state and federal aid they can from the city in order to do it.
1. The blame on this is 100% with Obama. He is the man behind the entire "Race to the Top" crap. He is responsible for holding ever school district in this county hostage to his blood money demands. Sickening to the core for sure.
2. Replies
1. Worse than Bush. RttT is worse than NCLB. Accountability is now for the individual teacher, not for the district or the politicians running it.
The APPR law needs to be changed as soon as possible and King needs to be stripped of his autocratic powers.
3. This is one of the most disgusting things to come out of Albany in a while, which is saying a whole lot.
What sense does it make to strip Title I funds, which are federal funds reserved for the neediest students, when we've already lost access to the pittance that was RTTT money?
I mean, if King wants to play hardball I am sure he could do many other things like cut other types of funding, maybe even funding slotted for six-figured educrats throughout the state. At least then he could pressure the educrats to pressure the school districts to pressure the union. That would be more effective and might actually work.
But he threatens to take money from the absolute neediest children in the state, most of which are concentrated right here in NYC? It boggles the mind.
Ok, maybe these Title I funds are the only funds he LEGALLY can mess around with. However, something tells me this is not the case. I certainly do not know the law but the SED has wide authority and can always get more from Cuomo and the legislature.
The UFT can do a couple of things here. They can appeal to Obama himself and say "this has gone far enough. We worked within the spirit of your RTTT law, got most of the school districts of the state on board and that's that. Step in and do something about the potential misappropriation of FEDERAL funds that you and the Congress have ALREADY GUARANTEED to the State of New York." This would force Obama to take a stand, although we most likely won't like the stand he'll take.
The UFT can file a lawsuit challenging King's legal authority to do what he's threatening to do. The UFT has had some success in recent lawsuits and public opinion seems to be turning against deform in general, so this tack might give the UFT a fighting chance.
Or the UFT can do a combination of these two things. Or they can roll over and die which they would be stupid to do with elections right around the corner.
One thing is for certain: Mulgrew, Casey and the rest of the brain trust are going to have to come up with a shrewd response and fast. Let's see what they do.
What a horrible human being this John King is.
1. I am going to assume that whatever deal Mulgrew and Casey were getting before the Jan 17 deadline, it will be worse now because they have been put into a corner by Commissioner King's ultimatum.
Unless they sue, of course. Does he have the power to strip Title 1 money over APPR? The original law says it doesn't have to be in place UNTIL a contract is agreed upon. The increase in aid was part of the Feb 2012 deal, but the Title 1 money wasn't.
They probably won't do it, but they ought to sue him while simultaneously working to undo the APPR law that gave the NYSED commissioner expanded powers. Clearly that is as bad as mayoral control.
And yes, AT, John King really is a horrible human being. I have a piece coming later on that.
4. Despite everything lending to the contrary I still believe in the people of NYC. Sometime this year critical mass will be achieved in and these criminals will be made to pay for what they've done to the children of the NYC public school system.
This mayoral campaign seems like the event that will be the catalyst for change. Klein, Steiner, and others have received their golden/platinum parachutes and others are standing in their place. Those replacements will feel the weight of the corrupt house of cards falling on them.
Christine Quinn is going to answer for allowing Bloomberg a 3rd term when the people of NY voted for term limits twice.
5. It would be nice if someone would set up an online poll for in-service UFT members and ask them to list the procedures and methodology by which they would prefer to be evaluated.
6. Could we just take the word "Deadline" out of the dictionary, already?
When the reformers or 1%ers don't get what they want, it's "extend the deadline" time.
It happened with the last Mayoral Control sunset, it's happened with term limits, and I'll throw the Obama/Bush tax cuts in, too.
1. I expected push back from Cuomo, King and Tisch. You can bet Cuomo is behind this threat, only he's using King as the front man. As usual, King doing the bidding of somebody rich and powerful.
7. This debate is going on all night. Wow.
8. There must be some mechanism to stop this dictatorial behavior from a "democratically" elected governor. He's stealing taxpayer money earmarked for support for the poorer and needier in our school system and holding it as ransom until he and his fascist cronies accomplish what they want to do with the education system in New York City and state. NYSUT and the UFT just never address the bottom line legality of even the RTTT. I don't notice other entities, such as the military, being asked for changes in its structure and integrity before it gets federal monies. Both the federal and the state governments are abominations.
1. This is partly our fault. We teachers have not mobilzed en mass against these attacks. If our union won't lead us in this, then we need to do it ourselves. We need a march in Albany ASAP, joined by other teachers in New York State,to let the governor and commissioner know we're not gonna take it anymore. As a voting block, NYS educators are huge. How about it comrades?
2. The threat to title 1 monies, just illustrates how cruel they really are. They would threaten to strip the poor of crucial educational resources. This is pure and simple blackmail. We teachers must be our own voice standing up for our students, our colleagues, ourselves, and public education. Where can we sign up for the march?
9. I honestly believe that the UFT should do absolutely nothing in regard to the Feb 15th date. The city and the union did not come to an agreement on the new evaluation deal and thus the city will "loose" 450 million dollars. Race to the Top says nothing about withholding the Title 1 money that Cuomo is threatening to do. The UFT/DOE bargained and came out with no deal. Reaching no deal was a possibility in the way the Race to the Top grant was created. However, for Cuomo threatening to withhold billions of dollars in Title 1 money is a move by a desperate man and the public outcry will be enormous. This time around the general public will put the blame for these "cuts" squarely on his head. Of course the rag papers will blame the UFT if no new evaluation is reached and the money from the state/feds gets cut. That should not matter one bit. The UFT will eventually step to the bargaining table again when a new mayor is a part of the picture. In the meantime, the best move would be to do nothing. Cuomo can not implement his own evaluation deal as that would mean that he would have to change the entire education law already on the books and that would have ramifications for every other school district in NYS. The ball is totally in the UFT's court right now and there is no reason what so ever that they should give in to this new hostage style negotiating.
10. He will never,do it...he is,bluffing. | dclm-gs1-106570000 |
High Falls, Pigeon River
by Jakub
submit your photo
Hall of Fame
View past winners from this year
Please participate in Meta
and help us grow.
Sign up ×
I'm thinking of getting a flash for better indoor pictures. I was looking at the 430EX Speedlite as a good unit in budget, but still having lots of capability.
How do I use this most effectively indoors to not get super harsh light? I see a lot of talk about the diffusers, and bouncing, but I want to be able to get quick reactions, so working with a large setup won't work very well.
share|improve this question
Also, do you have to use it in a hotshoe? I quite often use a 430EX II attached to a short coiled cable for use when I need to work quickly. – Edd Nov 29 '12 at 9:12
I think this question should just have the words "effective" removed. Effective and flash units bring on ideas of light modifiers for direct and typically harsh light over usually longer distances or difficult lighting situations. I understand the easy confusion, but it is more clear by saying "how do i get soft light from a hot shoe mounted flash". – dpollitt Nov 29 '12 at 15:03
Thanks for updating the question title, I was wandering around it a bit before you all really figured out what I was looking for. – Aaron Nov 29 '12 at 17:33
@Edd no, it doesn't need to be in a hotshoe, I guess the main criteria is that the setup be mobile - so no stands, etc. so a sync cable would probably work fine. – Aaron Nov 29 '12 at 17:34
6 Answers 6
Bouncing gives the most diffuse light given an appropriate surface and usually produces excellent results. It's better to aim above and slightly behind you, if you light the ceiling directly above your subject you can get uneven lighting of the face, particularly eye sockets.
Bouncing off walls can work well but tends to be less predictable and even, as your distance (and that of your subjects) from the wall will vary, whereas your distance from the ceiling tends to remain fairly constant!
share|improve this answer
If you want to use the flash the "most effective way", it makes me think you are trying to direct the most light on a subject as possible. To do this you would want to point the flash directly on the subject and possibly use a snoot depending on the distance away from the camera.
If you have a white ceiling that isn't too high, bouncing requires no additional equipment beyond the 430EX and provides a much larger surface area for the light to reflect off of. This is typically much more pleasing as the light is softer and more attractive if it comes from above and not directly head on.
I don't think the question is, what is the most effective way to use a hot shoe mounted flash indoors, the question should be something like
• What is the most flattering way to light a subject indoors with a flash unit
• What is the best way to light a macro subject indoors with a flash unit
• How do I best photograph large groups indoors with a an on camera flash unit
• etc. etc
share|improve this answer
This question originally came from Photography Chat, and I'm pretty sure the intention of the question was about getting nice, soft light, not about getting the most light. I've edited the question to reflect that, and I thought I'd give you a heads-up so you can update your answer if you like. :) – mattdm Nov 29 '12 at 14:00
@mattdm - Yea, that would make sense. Nice soft light is certainly different then the most light! – dpollitt Nov 29 '12 at 14:55
@dpollitt my question is more towards the first bullet you've pointed out - I believe that it would be more effective to get a flash instead of a very fast lens for indoor use, and I was just wondering what other options there are besides the off-the-ceiling method. – Aaron Nov 29 '12 at 17:35
If you want to have soft light, the source of the light has to be a significant size. So the bigger it is the 'softer' it will be.
When you bounce your flash say against the ceiling what you are effectively doing is creating that large big source of light on whatever you are shooting at. Specifically what @PatFarrell was alluding to was to have a look at this article and other related to it.
share|improve this answer
For cost-effectiveness, you're almost certain to be better off looking at some third-party flash vendors, rather than Canon own-brand models. Yongnuo in particular make some very cheap E-TTL (ie automatically metering) flashes. Speedlights.net has very detailed reviews of just about every flash available.
As an aside, if by "indoors" you mean a typical family home, you may well be able to use the ceiling as something to use for bounce flash.
share|improve this answer
The question is not "what flash should I buy", it is "how to use this flash unit the most effectively". – dpollitt Nov 28 '12 at 21:24
The question /was/ "what flash should I buy" before the OP edited it though - see the history (admittedly some of it from me). – Philip Kendall Nov 28 '12 at 21:35
I looked at the full history, and I disagree. – dpollitt Nov 28 '12 at 21:41
Originally, Aaron asked this question in chat: "so even if I get a 430EX speedlite for indoor use, how do I use it effectively to not get harsh light?" and I suggested bring it here. – mattdm Nov 29 '12 at 14:03
The most effective way to have your photos look good is to move the flash off the hotshoe. Its impossible to have flattering light with on-camera flash.
Go read Strobist 101 on strobist.com to learn huge numbers of cool tricks and concepts, all free.
share|improve this answer
It is not impossible. Adding reflectors and using bounce techniques, flattering lighting is very possible. – Victor Engel Nov 29 '12 at 1:46
You are right. I read the question literally as, hotshoe mounted, and not hotshoe flash off camera :P – dpollitt Nov 29 '12 at 2:58
While a reflector can help, photos are interesting when there is contrast between light and shadow. To get interesting shadows, you must move the flash off camera. You can do it with a $50 kit of stand, cord and umbrella. – Pat Farrell Nov 29 '12 at 15:06
Again, nonsense. You don't have to move the flash off camera, you need to move the light source off camera. Bounce does that, and lets you choose the direction as well (more effective if you use a flash-mounted flag to block direct light). – user28116 Aug 17 '14 at 12:36
Gary Fongs Light Sphere does a really decent job at softening and molding light from a flash on the hot shoe approach. I disagree with Pat Farrel on this as there are hundreds of people shooting completely effective imagery this way.
It's quick, relatively cheap compared to an external light and can produce great "event" style photos.
It can be bulky but I suggest just working on your approach more, practice carrying the rig in one hand often and do less asking for permission and just take peoples photos. you can get great expressions and after awhile people just let you do your thing.
check it out here
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106580000 |
High Falls, Pigeon River
by Jakub
submit your photo
Hall of Fame
View past winners from this year
Please participate in Meta
and help us grow.
Sign up ×
I want to stitch more than 5 images into panorama. I took all those images using landscape mode which means some images have different shutter speeds therefore exposures. How can I fix exposure of all those images in Lightroom so it would fit to panorama just fine? Any tricks to compare two different images side by side while able to change settings for the other?
share|improve this question
What about the other settings of the camera? Are the pictures taken at same ISO-Setting? Same contrast level? Are there any other settings which are different, or just Shutter speed? – Vertigo Mar 12 '14 at 22:49
In Lightroom you can try the Match Total Exposures functionality. This relevant previous answer tells a bit about it. – Bart Arondson Mar 13 '14 at 0:14
Check this answer for your next panorama shoot: photo.stackexchange.com/questions/12443/… – Esa Paulasto Mar 13 '14 at 1:39
@Vertigo, Same ISO (500), focal length (135mm) and aperture (f/5.6). The only thing differs is shutter speed (between 60 and 125) – RCola Mar 13 '14 at 9:13
How can I use math to manually calculate the necessary chance for exposure in LR while only shutter speed varies (example 1/60 ; 1/80; 1/100; 1/125) ? – RCola Mar 13 '14 at 9:25
2 Answers 2
up vote 1 down vote accepted
You stated in your comment that every other configuration was identical. So to get the "same" overall exposure to get a consistent brightness within your panorama, you need to adjust your exposure compensation.
The correlation is as follows: Doubling the exposure means a correction of one f-stop (One Full number in the Lr-Exposure Correction)
An Example: Image 1 has 1/60s, Image2 has 1/30. So to get the same overall brightness in the panorama, you have to push Image1 with +1 or pull Image2 with -1.
The same correction would work if Image1 has 1/100 and Image two has 1/50.
share|improve this answer
Use Hugin, and don't worry about it. Hugin, if you use the default nona stitcher, evaluates photometrics of the member images and adjusts automatically for brightness and colors by modeling the camera response curve, exposure, white balance, and vignetting. For examples, see this article on the Hugin website.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106590000 |
GoPro Settings Menu Overview - One Button Mode
helmet cam
Mark Zealand gives a quick tutorial on the One Button Mode for your GoPro HD HERO. Turning this mode ‘ON’ forces the camera to automatically begin recording video or photos once the camera is turned on, depending on which default power up mode the camera is set to.
The shutter button is disabled in One Button Mode and will not start or stop the recording while the camera is on. One Button Mode is convenient when you only want to shoot one type of video or photos and prefer to simplify operation of the camera to be either on and recording or off with only the power button being used to operate the camera. This is a great Simple Mode for loaning the camera to friends not as experienced as you!
At any rate, watch as Mark breaks it down for you in style, as always!
To turn “One Button Mode” ‘ON’:
1. Press the SHUTTER button to toggle between SET MENU choices and stop when onO (One Button Mode On) is showing on the screen.
2. Press the POWER/MODE button to save whichever setting is showing on the screen and continue to the next feature option.
3. Turn your camera off and then on again and the camera will begin recording in whatever the default power on setting and resolution is set to.
4. Press and hold the power button for 3 seconds to stop recording and turn the camera off.
To turn “One Button Mode” ‘OFF’:
1. Turn the camera on.
2. While the camera is on (and recording), press and hold the shutter button for 3 seconds. Let go.
3. The camera’s SET menu will appear.
4. Press the shutter button to enter the SET menu.
5. When onO (One Button Mode On) appears, press the shutter button to toggle the setting to onF (One Button Mode Off).
6. Turn the camera off.
7. When you turn the camera on again the One Button Mode feature will be turned off.
See • BrandsGoProHelmet Cam ResourcesTutorials
Page 1 of 1 pages | dclm-gs1-106610000 |
August 6th, 2008
12:04 PM ET
7 years ago
Paris Hilton fires back at McCain's "Celeb" ad
Watch Paris Hilton’s message for McCain
Related: How did Paris Hilton's response come about?
soundoff (417 Responses)
1. Nancy Volpe
Fun response, Paris. I hope Cindy McCain is taking John McCain by the ear to the back of the room, and telling him he is making a fool of himself. At the end of an distinguished career to his country, he needs to be careful about lasting impressions.
August 6, 2008 09:52 am at 9:52 am |
2. oscar
Does Mccain see Moses as a celebrity? Moses was a charismatic leader and possessed all qualities of leadership. He knew how to reach out to his people and how and when to interceed for his people.He also knew how to talk to leaders of other nations on behalf of his people.That was what Obama stood for. Moses was never experienced,David was never experienced and all charismatic leader who lead in the book of judges were not experienced but called. That's why God has called Obama to deliever his people from Economic,Social and political logjam. Someone should tell Mccain to stop reading prepared text to the American. Let him stand up and talk to the Americans from his head. Is this how he is going to carry and read from prepared text to address other nations of the world? That'd be a slap to our face.
August 6, 2008 09:53 am at 9:53 am |
3. poor johnny mack
crypt keeper daaaammmmmmn
4. Yogi
This Country is like totally screwed. We are laughed at by the rest of the world. It will be just like the fall of the Roman Empire. American citizens with the help of the media are too ignorant to have a serious discussion of issues.
5. Lexie
I saw this ad this morning. Hearing something intelligent coming out of Paris Hilton's mouth may have short circuited my television, but I thought the commercial was funny.
August 6, 2008 09:54 am at 9:54 am |
6. Chas in Iowa
John has got to get back on his medication,....he's not making much sense these days.
He best get on message and off the comedy wagon before he totally becomes a joke to America and the rest of the world.
He is coming off as a blithering idiot.
7. Edwin
This is madness. I wish Obama would take the gloves off and start smearing McCan't back. He sure as hell a a LOT more skeletons in his closet.
OBAMA '08!!!
August 6, 2008 09:55 am at 9:55 am |
8. Demogogue
I always listen to Paris... and Oprah....
That is why I voted for Obama- NOT because HE is a celebrity... but because the celebrities created him.
9. Sam R
If we could ever get unbiased reporting from the media, this video wouldn't be so funny because everyone would already know that the "all of the above" energy plan is exactly what John McCain is proposing. As far as her strict environmental controls for offshore drilling, go back and read about hurricane Katrina and see how much crude oil spillage there was in the Gulf during/after the storm.
10. dr. yes we can
for you ignorant repubs on here?paris was supporting obama's plan,not mccains.u peeps are so dumb.keep following tucker bounds.he acts like a teenager compared to axelrod.
11. Phil Newton Murphy, Oregon
The politics of the absurd.
Be careful what you start, my friend.
Might not be able to finish.
12. Lone McCain Blogger
Picture this ad ...
... the Maverick?
= James Garner
McCain ,,,
= 90% Bush
August 6, 2008 09:56 am at 9:56 am |
13. Tom
Good for her. McCain's campaign is a joke, except it won't be one bit funny if he gets elected and gives us four more years of Bush/Cheney Deluxe.
14. Timber (ex dem)
Vote for Obama because I think it is hot. I bet a lot of people would. The presidency is becoming like a popularity contest instead of one of the most powerful, important job positions in the world. Why don't we just put Paris in there or Lindsay Lohan? It is getting ridiculous. What about the issues facing our people? It is ok for Paris and Obama to fool around but there are a lot of hungry people, people without health insurance, without jobs in this country. Let us not put an empty suit celebrity in the most important job in the world. Obama will tell you what you want to hear to get elected, we see that from the primaries. He has gone back on his words too many times to count.
15. Bubbleheads get to vote too
I vote based on who Oprah picks- Obama is the book club choice of the month- but is he presidential?
The DNC and supedelegates also voted based on Oprah's pick.
Look where celebrity worship got us.
16. Van
And how is this news?
17. anna ga
Well done Paris. When made fun of or ditzed, get even. The girl's energy plan did sound half way reasonable though. I thought Mccain was running a clean campaign. Aparently he flipped.
August 6, 2008 09:57 am at 9:57 am |
18. MINNESOTA Democrat
Mccain enters his wife into a topless bikini pageant.
Can we talk about Respecting Women? Paris Hilton has more sense than this senile man. What's 27 years of senate experience to do when he is still stuck in his stubborn 1950's mindset?
19. dummycrats
The stupid vote generally outnumbers the smart vote.
Look at what happened in the democratic primary.
America suffers from celebrity fever.
McCain is right.
20. Nick, NY
The fact that there are people who are defending Sen. McCain's behavior is saddening. Some of the comments on here that ignore the story entirely and just take a jab at Paris Hilton or Sen. Obama are also saddening. I would hope that the U.S.A. has learned a valuable lesson [or two] from electing President Bush, twice. Are you, the eligible voters, going to tell the world that whoever is the most fiercely negative campaigner wins? Isn't it time for something new? Isn't it time to try to hope again? Isn't it time to work to get ourselves on a better path? Bitter, tunnel-visioned, Clinton Supporters, racists, and the Far Right need not answer; your answers would most likely be saddening as well.
August 6, 2008 09:58 am at 9:58 am |
21. dummycrats
Will the endorsement from Paris HELP Obama?
That is the question.
So far it is all about star power- NOT substance
22. Ken
Another McCain swipe at Obama backfires, how funny.
How much more foolish can this man's campaign look?
Yesterday he was offering up his wife for a beauty contest at Sturgis, not even realizing that this "contest" includes fondling a banana and toplessness, among other things much too sensitive for values oriented Republicans for me to post on this site.
He now comes across as a doddering fool. We've already have one now in the White House, we certainly don't need another.
August 6, 2008 09:59 am at 9:59 am |
23. randy
Wow dems should be happy paris hilton has a better plan than barrach. She also sounds better as well not uhhhhh after every word.
24. dummercrats
If Paris gains Obama votes.... I'm moving to an intelligent country.
25. brightest bulb
Another dim wit for Obama?
Now that the BRIGHTEST bulb stands behind the straw man... I will vote for Obama.
August 6, 2008 10:00 am at 10:00 am | | dclm-gs1-106620000 |
Bike to Barn to Plate
• B2B2P - Bike to Barn to Plate
CLIENT UW - Stevens Point Dining Services
DESIGN illustration, typesetting, copy, concept development
CONCEPT Bike to Barn to Plate is an event sponsored by University Dining Services which allows them to make a difference in the community purchasing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares from local farmers. Marketing an event to different demographics means that different promotional material is needed. Each piece is designed to reflect a different demographic such as fast-paced activist, biker, artist and donor. | dclm-gs1-106630000 |
Features » Literature
A writer in the Cold War
Richard Wagner pleads for a fresh look at the novels of right-wing Romanian writer Vintila Horia, who died in 1992 in literary disgrace.
In December 2006 a group of Romanian intellectuals submitted a petition to the Culture Ministry in Bucharest requesting the rehabilitation of the writer Vintila Horia. Among the signatories of the petition were poet Ana Blandiana, the Paris-based writer and dissident Paul Goma, literary critic and editor Monica Lovinescu, and Ion Caramitru, an actor and cultural policy maker.
Who is Vintila Horia? In 1960 the Prix Goncourt jury selected him to receive the Prize for "God Is Born in Exile," his novel about Ovid (published well before Christoph Ransmayr's "The Last World" - review). Horia's book was translated into 14 languages, including German, and ultimately appeared in Germany as a Goldmann paperback. But the Prix Goncourt was never actually awarded to Horia. Shortly after the jury's selection was announced, the newspaper L'Humanité, mouthpiece of France's Communist Party, launched a campaign against the Romanian author, who wrote in Romanian, French and Spanish.
Horia was born in 1915. In his youth during the 1930s he published articles in periodicals of Romania's extreme right wing. He was one of the spokesmen for the generation whose feverish existentialism extolled the political madness of the period. Subsequent discussion both within and outside of Romania has shown how a dark mixture of death cult, Orthodox Christianity and ethnocracy gripped an entire generation. Segments of that discussion have been the biographies of E.M. Cioran, Mircea Eliade and Constantin Noica, Romanian authors who later either came to international prominence or attained guru status in their own country.
As a young author, Vintila Horia's writings appeared in the same publications as those of these other, better-known figures. During the Second World War, under the pro-Hitler regime of Ion Antonescu, he worked as cultural and press attaché in Romanian embassies in Rome and Vienna. Mircea Eliade filled the same post, first in London and then, after Romania's entry into the war on the Axis side, in Lisbon. That sort of activity should not be seen solely from an ideological perspective, however. It also helped save members of the country's intellectual elite from being sent into front-line combat. Those who had influential patrons in government were granted "survival niches" in the diplomatic service.
Following Romania's about-face in August 1944, Horia was interned by the Nazis. His advocates tend to exaggerate the significance of this detail. They also point to the fact that he was never a card-carrying member of the pro-fascist Iron Guard – something of an academic matter, considering the tone of his political articles from the 1930s. There were a number of extreme right-wing groups active in Romania back then, distinguished from one another more by internal rivalries than by differences in programme.
Like Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco and many others, Horia remained in the West after the end of the war. He lived in Spain, and for a while in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Soviet-occupied Romania could no longer provide a home for these intellectuals. In the first post-occupation governments, the Communists secured the interior and justice ministries for themselves, and thus were able to make an early start in the persecution of their rivals, enemies and potential enemies, as well as in settling old scores (an aspect of the situation which should not be under-estimated).
As early as 1946, show-trials were held which followed the Stalinist pattern of torture and farce. In one such trial, Vintila Horia was sentenced in absentia to life in prison. The justification for the sentence was that he had facilitated the penetration of fascist ideas into Romania and had made the case for those ideas to be realized under the leadership of the German embassy in Bucharest. For Stalinists, of course, everything was espionage and denunciation. The sentence against Horia has not been rescinded to this day.
The intellectual struggle during the Cold War was one of the great proxy wars in a divided world. It was, so to speak, a Vietnam of the Gutenberg Galaxy. One need only recall the denial of the existence of the Soviet gulag system, and its down-playing by left-wing intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre. And there was the "Congress for Cultural Freedom," whose anti-Communist protagonists were repeatedly accused of having received money from the CIA.
The scandal surrounding the 1960 Prix Goncourt should also be seen against that background. Witnesses from the period report that, during a publisher's party – Horia's novel had been published by Fayard in France – the author was lured into a side room, where a representative of the Romanian embassy in Paris awaited him. Apparently the official's purpose was to blackmail Horia into issuing positive remarks about the Soviet-satellite Bucharest regime.
In the early 1960s, the Communists in Bucharest pardoned prominent right-wing extremists from the intra-war years, released them from prison and commissioned them to write articles for the propaganda journal "Glasul Patriei" ("Voice of the Fatherland"), which was aimed at readers abroad. This happened, for example, to Nichifor Crainic, once the mentor of the youthful Vintila Horia. (So much for the anti-fascism of the Romanian Stalinists!) In pursuing this policy, one of the aims of the Bucharest regime was to gain control of the Romanian diaspora in order to counter critical reporting on Stalinist Romania abroad and to control image-building in the Western media.
One means to that end was to manipulate intellectuals who had become prominent in the West and therefore exerted a certain influence both on diasporic communities and on the media in their host countries. So the Bucharest regime collected material against them, and by raising the charge of fascism – easily demonstrated by pointing to their youthful activities – it gained control of most intellectuals. Even people like Cioran and Eliade became prisoners of their own biographies. The campaign launched by L'Humanité in 1960 made use of the same materials against Vintila Horia that had been used against him in the Stalinist trial of 1946. What followed was a wave of public indignation in Paris. In view of the revealed facts, no one felt in a position to defend him. Horia relinquished the Prix Goncourt and became persona non grata in French literary and cultural circles. Those of his subsequent novels which were published in France were seldom if ever reviewed.
Unquestionably, in the 1930s Horia published essays such as "The Fascist Miracle," and he had to answer for them. But what had his historical novels of the 1960s to do with that – books rich with ideas, with protagonists like Ovid, Boethius or Plato, works which deal with the grand theme of exile as a form of existence? It is as if one were to ignore "Being and Time" because Heidegger was close to the Nazis, or to refuse to print Louis Ferdinand Céline's "Journey to the End of Night" because of his "Bagatelles for a Massacre" and his role in Vichy France.
Did Vintila Horia have more to answer for than Céline, more than Eliade or Cioran? He had an exchange of letters with Eliade, but as late as the 1970s Cioran reportedly avoided contact with him for fear of public opinion. In the postwar years Horia wrote decidedly anti-Communist articles, in contrast to his prominent compatriots who largely avoided going head-to-head with the Bucharest criminals – because they were vulnerable to blackmail, and they knew it.
The record of one of the Stalinist trials of 1959, hence one year prior to the Prix Goncourt affair, notes the following about a foreword written by Horia to an anthology of poems which was circulating in Bucharest in manuscript form. The Securitate document states that the foreword constituted "a manifesto inciting the writers in the People's Republic of Romania not to subordinate their works to the People's Democratic regime." It was this that bothered the Bucharest rulers about Vintila Horia, not his fascist past.
Following his excommunication by the Paris cultural elite, Horia returned to Madrid in Franco's Spain. There he became a prominent novelist, publicist, critic and founder of periodicals. He died in Madrid in 1992. Politically he was right-wing and anti-Communist, critical of liberalism and the Enlightenment, in the tradition of Rivarol. His historical novels, which often use their material as a platform for historical-philosophical reflection, link contemporary lives and fates with events far in the past. His Ovid novel deals with the condition of the exiled writer in the era of the Cold War, but also in the time of the Roman Europe and the threats it faced. In "Pursue Boethius!" the biography of the 6th-century Neoplatonist and bridge-builder to Scholasticism is interwoven with the life of a 20th-century individual. "The Seventh Letter" takes off from a similarly named work by Plato in order to reflect on tyranny and utopia.
Without ignoring his involvement in totalitarianism, Vintila Horia as novelist is worth rediscovering. This will not be a simple task, since it demands a feeling for the obsessions of literature and for the dialectic of intellectual engagement in the 20th century, particularly under Cold War conditions. Finally, the case of Horia is an illuminating example of the difficulties in establishing a new literary canon following the end of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe.
The article originally appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on April 2, 2007
Born in 1952 in the Banat region of Romania, Richard Wagner is a writer living in Berlin. His book "Der deutsche Horizont. Vom Schicksal eines guten Landes" ("The German horizon: On the Fate of a Good Country") was published by Aufbau in 2006.
Translation: Myron Gubitz - let's talk european | dclm-gs1-106640000 |
This is chotii's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following chotii's activity
Join Now!
Already a member? Sign In
Recent Activity
Here is my question: If the court (that is to say, if a judge) orders this girl back to her family, and she is subsequently killed....will the judge bear equal guilt with the murderer, and face the same penalties? If not, why not?
Nadler said "Congress must not be in the business of punishing individual organizations or people without trial, and that’s what this Amendment does." OH really? I wonder what his vote was, during the 'Punish employees of AIG and other recipients of government money" pile-on?
This is interesting. Is it "racism" if the perp is also a minority? Of a different minority?
1 reply
I have been writing and writing to my congresswomen, asking the NOT to vote for this monstrosity, which we cannot afford and from which they themselves will be conveniently exempt. I keep getting this sort of form letter: "Thank you for your thoughts. We are all concerned about the country's finances, but I must continue to spend money on things we think are important, no matter how many people oppose them. If you have any more concerns, please feel free to send them to me, so they can be ignored again." It would be horrible, but not the least bit of a surprise, to learn that all of this "opposition" is simply a choreographed bit of acting; that all senators and representatives are so spineless that they can be arm-twisted, bribed or both into things they know their constituents don't want (can you say 'bailout'? I knew you could), and that none of us poor plebes and peons ever had any hope of affecting the outcome, no matter how vociferously we say NO NO NO. I used to believe we had a representative government. It's what I was taught in school. I don't think we have that at all anymore. If we did, our representatives might actually listen to know, the idiots who had the bad judment to vote them in.
1 reply
1 reply | dclm-gs1-106650000 |
Sign up ×
I'm using Autumn gem to create a Ruby IRC bot for a game. However, it makes me feel rather embarrassed because I don't know how to test this kind of program...
I think I should mock the IO process to have a control over it but I can't see how in this case when using the gem.
Has anyone an idea ?
share|improve this question
closed as too broad by MichaelT, ChrisF May 5 '14 at 10:38
Are you trying to perform manual or automated testing, or doesn't it matter? Are you testing your application or trying to create tests for the gem? – Thomas Owens Jan 28 '12 at 14:08
I'm trying to perform automated testing on my bot. – Skydreamer Jan 28 '12 at 15:06
3 Answers 3
up vote 2 down vote accepted
It is very, very difficult to test external dependencies in an automated repeatable fashion. At least without creating more framework to fake the external dependency than you've got code under test. And oftentimes that sort of thing is very fragile anyhow, leading to lots of false test failures.
I'm not a rubyist by any stretch of the measure, the following advise is going to be pretty language agnostic. What I would do here is to:
• Wrap the external dependency in my own interface. All my code should talk to this interface. and not patch directly to the library. Depending on the complexity of what the return data was, I would consider building my own DTO objects as well.
• Test my code against mocked or stubbed versions of this interface to ensure my end of the world is behaving correctly given correct inputs.
• Finally, try and find a way to test my pass-through interface to the external service. But at the end of the day this class tends to be so simple as to be not worth the effort.
But trying to unit test external services in a conventional sense can be maddening and horribly noneffective.
PS: I should add I just wrote an IRC bot over the last weekend. I did largely use TDD in C#, and I most certainly did not test the IRC connection angle outside of using nUnit as a harness to stand up the experimental code I needed to understand how the library works.
share|improve this answer
Why don't you run a local IRC server? Restrict it to the local network, or even just localhost, and you can easily test your bot using your favorite IRC client.
share|improve this answer
That's what I'm currently doing but I'd like to automate the testing with RSpec or another test framework. – Skydreamer Jan 28 '12 at 15:06
A bot should be almost entirely event driven. In that case, you'll most likely have an event handler. In the case of an IRC bot, the event handler will just be reading a TCP input stream, detecting what event is happening, and then calling the event handler. If your events are built to an interface then you can quite easily fake events in your automated tests.
This all comes down to how Autumn works. I'm not familiar so it may do its own event handling in which case things may get a little more tricky.
share|improve this answer
What do you mean by "built to an interface" ? – Skydreamer May 7 '12 at 16:05
| dclm-gs1-106660000 |
Sign up ×
I am a junior developer in my first work experience after university. I joined the company as PHP developer but I ended up developing using C# and ASP.NET. Right from the start I did not receive any training in C# and I was assigned with ASP projects with quite tight deadlines scoped by Senior developers. The few project hand overs I had from other developers were brief and it looked like I had to discover the system myself, in really short time.
This is my first job as web developer and I wonder whether it is normal not to have a kind of mentor to show me how to do things, especially because I am completely new to the technology.
Also, do you have idea how to tackle this? As you can imagine, it gets really frustrating.
share|improve this question
Ask one of them to mentor you. Maybe they can come up with a better SO user name. – JeffO Jun 30 '12 at 13:17
8 Answers 8
I don't know about culture work in your country, but in my country before I get the job, I explain to employer about my skill. If your leader give you a project and you don't have any knowledge, give him explanation about it, if he force you to take a part in project. You should request time for learning this language or someone in your team know about this language. You should talk to him for course / advice.
I have experience like you before but this book and some of my team mates give me advice and difference about C# and PHP, so I can understand about it quickly. Also this book:
Sitepoint.Build.Your.Own.ASP.NET.3.5.Web.Site.Using.C.Sharp.and.VB.3rd.Edition.Dec.2008 ( really easy to understand - compare how we write code in and C# )
Hope this help you and work with positive energy.
share|improve this answer
I was in the exact same situation :) I knew C#, but I had to ship applications coded with Delphi. It was horror at the beginning, but I kept struggling and fighting and coding all kind of stuff. What a war that was! But in the end, after a few months of coding day and night, looking through many tutorials, examples, practices and asking advice from the Senior Developers, I managed to learn the language and build the damn thing. You will do the same and you will succeed :)
Save a bookmark of this question - you'll look into it after a few years and you will acknowledge what a huge amount of stuff you have learned meanwhile. Good luck!
share|improve this answer
Just do it. Real programmers learn new languages as needed. You are lucky to be getting paid to add a popular technology to your resume. If you don't know how to do something, then ask, but only after doing your own research. It's reasonable to ask questions about the application architecture. It's less reasonable to ask questions about the basics of C# and .NET. You should be able to find those answers on your own.
In my experience, mentors are pretty rare. If you find one in your early career you will be very lucky.
share|improve this answer
Welcome to the world of work! Unlike school and university, a lot of companies don't have "orientation" or "newbie week" and you will be expected to figure things out by yourself and hit the ground running.
Its unreasonable of them to expect you to develop in .NET if you applied for a PHP position. If that's a deal breaker for you then you should leave now while you are still likely on some sort of probation period. If you are ok with working with this technology then stick with it.
It can be frustrating, but on the flipside people probably don't expect much from you which is something you will miss once you do learn the ropes and the company starts to rely on you more. The benefit of the environment you're in is that you will build your work ethic and self-reliance which are two great skills to have for your career.
If you would prefer a role where you always have someone watching you telling you what to do then you would probably be more comfortable working at a larger company.
share|improve this answer
Typically, when you join a company you're employed as an engineer to work with whatever technologies and systems they use regardless of whether you have any previous experience with it or not. Companies know when they take on juniors, that those people are most likely going to need to spend considerable time learning and making mistakes. I expect your manager has employed you with the hope that you're a fast learner; I doubt they took you on to be a specialist in one particular technology which you already knew beforehand.
However, unless the developers around you had also been part of your interview/selection process I expect those people have no idea exactly what your skills/experience are, they're probably just treating you as another junior member of the team and sharing out the workload, assuming that you've got at least a little knowledge to get started with, then learning the rest as you go .
All senior developers were juniors once, and most likely wouldn't deliberately give you anything which they thought you'd not be able to cope with (As seniors, they'll be aware that the blame will fall upon them if they've not been keeping you in check). Best thing is to be open about it as early as possible to them and to your direct manager/supervisor. The project managers will be interested in the work getting done on time, and someone will do something about it if they realise that you're unable to meet those deadlines on your own (However if you leave it so long that the deadlines get missed, then you'll be taking the brunt of the blame - and you definitely don't want to get into that situation!).
You need to be honest about it to everyone you work with/for, and then treat it as a fast-paced learning experience. Someone in the company will have the job of managing the engineers, and it will be in their best interests to find a way to help you cope (even if that ends up being a steep learning curve for you, you'll hopefully benefit from it in the long run).
share|improve this answer
The situation is probably not that unusual, but letting you write production work with little or no supervision and guidance is stupid. The senior devs / your team should help you as much as possible to get up to speed on the technology. If not they are bound to regret it later - experience is needed to not make a mess.
I would advice your team to use pair programming to show you the ropes as quickly as possible. You should also make sure to reserve time outside of normal office hours to read up on the technology yourself - and practice (so don't work overtime on the actual job if this is not mandated).
share|improve this answer
Well it happens, but you have to be sincere and tell your senior dev about whole situation. Maybe he doesn't know about this. Maybe he was given someone new and somebody told him that you have knowledge about Asp.Net. Hopefully he is a mature person and he will make this less painfull for you and your team.
Also i think that you have to ask questions about your role in the team. Beacuse maybe your company wants to train you in this technology and they are not expecting 'real' results soon ;)
share|improve this answer
I spoke to the Head of my division and clearly said I had never worked with ASP, so she is aware of it. When I get assigned a new project I ask many questions to Senior devs but most of the time they have their own work to do and not much time to spare helping me out. I get things done in the end, but it takes twice the time and the code is not always clear. Pair programming would be great and I told the Div Head about this. Unfortunately she had never heard of it (:/) and hopefully will consider it! – lady_killer Apr 8 '12 at 20:45
So don't worry :) They are clearly accepting that you will make something twice the time and the code won't be soo clear. Hopefully you will have somekind of a codereview. Just do your job and learn as much as you can. This is a great opportunity for you to learn. – Michal Franc Apr 8 '12 at 20:47
It might be helpful to request a code review, since it may require less time than introducing pair programming to a team that's never done it before. Code reviews may be more wide-spread of a practice, as well. – Velociraptors Apr 8 '12 at 23:58
On one hand you are (lucky?) to get the job, but on the other hand, you are kind of, in the wrong position. It is not common to have zero experience and be let to wonder in the same time they ask you to deliver on a dead line. ASP.NET and C# are not trivial technologies.
I was in your situation once, I joined for 1 job but was assigned to another. I had no experience in UNIX then, but I found that I need to write shell scripts and use about 5 other tools I never heard of them.
To answer your question, in my experience, this is not the norm. Also, to have a mentor is too much to ask in today's fast world (it depends on what you mean by a mentor any way). I don't know your capabilities, but it takes a long time and very hard work to teach yourself all what you need to do on the job. At least time will not be enough.
My advice is that you need to be clear with your so called senior programmer and explain the situation. Decide on a training plan that covers the tools and methods you are currently using (don't go for VS2011 features and MVVM if you are not using such technologies). Be realistic in your plan and see what the company is willing to offer. If you are keen to continue, be willing to spend a bit from your pocket on some good training.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106670000 |
How to make a GIF inside a picturebox transparent - Programmers Heaven
Howdy, Stranger!
How to make a GIF inside a picturebox transparent
piscispiscis Posts: 37Member
How to make a GIF inside a picturebox transparent
Does anyone knows how to make an animated GIF inside a picturebox transparent, so the background of the form can be seen?
• silverhazesilverhaze Posts: 1Member
I would like to know the same thing!! someone please reply
• piscispiscis Posts: 37Member
: I would like to know the same thing!! someone please reply
After many unsuccessful attempts this is how I did it and it is working like a charm. I have 8 animations running at the same time in the same form.
First test that the GIF animation does not have a transparent background by dropping a picturebox into VB.NET form and selecting a GIF for the image property, then select property: BACKCOLOR / WEB / TRANSPARENT, the GIF animation will start playing in the designer and you could see immediately if its background is transparent or not.
If it is not these are the EASY steps to make it transparent:
1. Download a free 60 days demo copy of Paint Shop Pro 8 (it comes with Animation Shop 3)
2. Start the programs and select; File > Jasc Software > Launch Animation Shop
3. Open the GIF in Animation Shop and select; Edit > Select All > Copy
4. Move to Paint Shop Pro 8 and select; Edit > Paste > As Animation As Multiple Images
5. Pick any of the images and click on icon named GIF Optimizer on opened window click on Use Wizard > Use Matching Color To Transparent > choose the color if the background and select the defaults provided until the wizard is finished.
6. Do the same with all the rest of the images.
7. Go back to Animation Shop and click on Animation Wizard
8. Accept all the defaults provided until the wizard is finished
9. Saved your new transparent GIF animation to the Bin folder of your VB.NET solution
Write the code below and voila!!!
Hope this help. Let me know
Private pbWaterDropsFast As New PictureBox
Private WaterDropsFast As Bitmap
WaterDropsFast = New Bitmap("WaterDropsTransparent.gif")
With pbWaterDropsFast
.SizeMode = PictureBoxSizeMode.AutoSize
.Location = New Point(724, 96)
.Image = WaterDropsFast
.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Transparent
End With
• ChazspazChazspaz Posts: 14Member
picis mate how do u do it with a bmp???
• EagleEyesEagleEyes Posts: 13Member
: picis mate how do u do it with a bmp???
Oh, there's an easier way than downloading that software and going through all those steps. I've done it a few months ago. It will work with GIF and BMP, I tested it on both.
There is a selection somewhere to make a certain color the transparent color. When you put the picture on your form, look through the things it lets you modify. I forget which it was, but I could tell the program to make a certain color transparent. You DO need to know the exact color, in RGB. For example, blue is (0,0,255) and green is (0,255,0).
When you make the GIF or BMP in your paint program, make the background or whatever part of the picture you want to be transparent exactly this color. Any other shade, no matter how close it is to this color, will not be transparent.
This is great for drawing things that require layers. In my game, I have tiles for the ground, and on top of that I have tiles with partial transparency like trees, rocks, animated characters etc.
If you continue having trouble with this, repost. I'll see if I can dig up the exact code I used to make the transparency.
• ChazspazChazspaz Posts: 14Member
eagle i still having trouble with my space invaders game. All that happens is the backgroundcolour dissapears. Do u have to print the picture to the form??? if not plz come up with some code because that would be
Sign In or Register to comment. | dclm-gs1-106680000 |
Can I move cursor in Java? - Programmers Heaven
Howdy, Stranger!
Can I move cursor in Java?
TorahteenTorahteen Posts: 15Member
Can I move the Cursor (The position at which output is currently being placed) to a specified position? Like if I wanted start typing at 40,40, what would I do?
Sign In or Register to comment. | dclm-gs1-106690000 |
1: Will everyone, everyone, everyone stop calling for suspensions on everything? This is hockey. Most of the players get it. It’s a physical sport, pain is a part of the deal. Mark Stuart once broke his sternum in a game and not only continued to play, but kept delivering the type of hits that get him compared to Scott Stevens. Stamkos had his face mashed by a puck in game play and was back on the ice before the announcers were finished wondering if he’d been taken to the hospital. Can we please leave off all discussion of supplementary discipline for routine penalties and debatable cheap shots. The guys playing know and accept the risk, many and probably most even enjoy it or they wouldn’t be playing.
2: When is the ownership in Vancouver going to realize they won’t win with their current leadership? That team’s accountability level is about zero. The dippy general manager is more concerned with protecting his players feelings than building a cup winner. Ever a guy as bellicose as Brian Burke is impossible to imagine getting into a sandbox level squall with a player in the press over something said in the media. What Bolland said isn’t very unique and hardly rises to the level of something anyone above ice level needs to or even should address.
3: The LA Kings came into this season a favorite of no few to win the conference and possibly the Cup. Where is that team? The guys on the ice with possibly one exception outside of Quick look like their one puff from dropping the bone and going to sleep. Its awful. Its worse than watching Columbus or Calgary who are both far thinner on talent. Its even worse than watching the Caps who no one expects to win after April 15th anyway.
4: Who’s ready to jump on the Wild bandwagon? If you aren’t, you aren’t paying attention. The scariest part of their rampage to the top of the standings with almost half the season gone is how many injuries they’ve had. At just 30 games in they’ve dressed close to two complete teams. I’m not calling them serious contenders yet, but if you expect them to fade away in another week or two you need to pay more attention.
5: Speaking of accountability, why is there so little among general managers? The Washington Capitals continue to flush $6,000,000.00 a year on the only player I can think of to be called out more than once by teammates and former teammates, the team can’t get to creditable spot in the playoffs and its coaches who are the fall guys. The Ducks fired a solid coach, brought in a solid coach, and continue to, in precise technical terms; stink on ice. The coach was not to blame. Of the 7-8 defensemen all shot from the same side but one. The only two player moves anyone’s noticed were this weeks trade and allowing Smith-Pelle to play at the world juniors. Yet GMs stay in their jobs for years, and Julien at less than five seasons holds the fifth longest tenure of NHL head coaches.
Off the Faceoff is a semi-regular feature filled with a varying number of one(ish) line thoughts, mostly on hockey.
In regards to the Issue of the week: You always know where you are and who’s where on the ice.
Me: B**** Please! How many times a season are we treated to the sight of two or three teammates plowing into each other on the ice? What about the players who trip over their own goalie without being pushed? Or the guys who get their stick hung up in the netting or the goal? Nice fantasy, but I prefer mine in print form and clearly labeled as such.
Goonery on March 24th. It has been posited that some schlep will be brought up to fight Chara for his technically correct, but ill timed hit.
Me: It wouldn’t surprise me. Ryan White has played 12 games for the Habs this season and has yet to record a goal. He has 77 PIM’s in 33 AHL games and just 12 points, seriously you’d think that a team with LTIR cap space, and the 22nd ranked offense would call up someone who was of use with their gloves on.
Playoffs, who’s in.
Me: Two west predictions to make it, Los Angeles Kings, Phoenix Coyotes.
Two Coaches who should get Jack Adams notice in the east
Me: Bruce Boudreau for keeping his team at or near the top of the conference while (finally) implementing reasonable defensive structure and having several key players forget how to score. Dan Bylsma, with more man games lost than any one wants to think about and almost as much salary on IR as on the ice, he’s kept his team within striking distance of the division and conference lead.
What the experts say about the hit: Kevin Weekes, and Carey Price both say you know where you are on the ice at all times. Jeremy Roenick says he was often surprised to hit those stanchions or be hit into them. Mathew Barnaby says he fought Chara three times and that the guy isn’t dirty.
Me: Is it any surprise that both Price and Weekes are goalies who spend 99% of their in the same pretty small area within the crease and the rest within two strides of it feel you know where you are all the time? Not really, but goalie isn’t like any other position on the team. Roenick played more than 1500 NHL games and called five different NHL arenas in both conference home, I can’t see someone with more than 500 goals and 1200 points to their credit can’t be counted as highly creditable on the topic of on ice awareness. As for Barnaby:
I don’t see how that disposes someone towards excess sympathy.
Off the Faceoff is a semi-regular feature filled with a varying number of one line thoughts, mostly on hockey.
Faceoff 1: It’s hockey day in America and the NHL has kindly made it impossible to watch all the games, or even most of the games since three of them start at about the same time.
Response: Great, next time just schedule them all at 6:30 AM ‘PT, the ratings will be about the same. And why aren’t there any sunbelt teams scheduled? I realize a lot of the south thinks of the Mason Dixon as the natural border but there’s no sense in helping the delusion.
Faceoff 2: The Calgary Flames and the Montreal Canadiens square off today in the Heritage Classic. Who are you rooting for?
Response: As a hockey fan, a Bruins fan, and someone who wants to see more of Jarome Iginla on TV, I want the Flames to roast the Habs. Maybe if they do NBC, Versus, and the NHL will show more of their games on tv in the east and I won’t have to sit through the same four western teams all the time.
Faceoff 3: There has been lots of comment on Twitter about the possible relocation of the Thrashers to western Canada.
Response: !) Not happening soon. (Sorry Winnipeg.) 2) Detroit and Columbus would make decent choices to relocate to the East to rebalance the conferences, but the natural choice with the minimum amount of redrawing of the division lines is neither, it’s Nashville. Weber against Stamkos or against Ovechkin would make great tv and spark some rivalries in that division.
Since every blog on the internet needs a few regular features just to keep itself going, and I refuse to resort to naked link salads here’s my new one.
Faceoff 1:
Someone who was discussing concussions and punishments recently questioned the NHL’s ability to survive the long-term loss of players like Marc Savard and Sidney Crosby.
Response: B!tch Please! If the NHL can survive the lockout, Gary Bettman’s inability to explain anything to his daughter, the retirement of Bourque, Gretzky, Bossy, the coverage on Versus, and the media ignoring it most of the time, even losing two top centers won’t kill it.
Faceoff 2:
Some people have called the Pepsi Maxx commercial with the couple in the park where one party is a touch domineering, and a little psycho is either sexist or racist.
Response: Are you high? I keep forgetting that not only is every relationship made up of 100% equals in every way with no jealousy, but that’s exactly what will get peoples attention in advertising too. (For the record I’m a black Coke fan.)
Faceoff 3:
Phil Kessel has been telling tales out of school up in Toronto. Apparently he doesn’t like being told to work in more than one zone, and even when it’s clear the coach is more interested in his efforts than his results he’s resumed full sulk mode, with no apparent claim to responsibility.
Response: It’s Phil Kessel. Zero personality, zero drive, zero accountability. I’m convinced if Sean Avery and PK Subban had both been in the All Star Draft they would each have gone before Kessel. Say what you will about Avery and Subban, both bring it.
Faceoff 4:
The Colorado Avalanche recently signed Petr Forsberg to a contract for the rest of the season.
Response: Clearly the thin air is getting to management. When you have a major issue on defense, and particularly with having a mobile defense, and you’re in the top third of the league for scoring you don’t solve the issue of a nonexistent penalty kill by adding a guy who hasn’t played in the NHL since April of 2008, and is one of the 20 oldest skaters in the NHL on top of it.
Faceoff 5:
Ilya Kovalchokes the Hab’s.
Response: Have you learned nothing? Seriously, the evidence goes back years. Kovalchuck is good at head games, feeds off the crowd and does not hate being the villain. | dclm-gs1-106700000 |
Monday, March 8, 2010
Fright Night Remake
Been hearing about this for a while now. I dread the thought of this being touched by modern-Hollywood hands, but it looks like it's going to happen.
As Peter Vincent said in the original film when his television show was cancelled:
“Nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. Apparently all they want are demented madmen running around in ski masks hacking up young virgins.”
And we definitely do NOT want to see Twilight-style vampires either.
Acorn said...
Roddy MacDowell WAS Fright Night. All these horror remakes are wearing thin - where's the imagination?
Der Krampus said...
yeah, this is getting downright depressing. There is actually more than enough talent in and around these Halloween/horror themed blogs to right a story or a script in a collaborative manner....hmmmm
Black Friday said...
Well we knew this was going to happen eventually...I hope it turns out to be one of those remakes that aren't actually too bad (Dawn Of The Dead, The Hills Have Eyes) and hopefully not one of those that just completely suck (Halloween, The Fog).
GhoulishCop said...
Which is why it's so surprising Trick 'r Treat didn't get a wide theater release, albeit it wasn't about vampires.
Still, it had an original plot, great acting, stunning Halloween visuals, and was an all around thoroughly enjoyable movie.
Maybe the recent The Wolfman movie will help studios go for more classic style monsters than stylized monsters. Although I thought Wolfman was okay (maybe better than okay, just not great), it's success may help studios realize we don't need the kids from the O.C. to star here. Roddy McDowell definitely wouldn't have fit in with the O.C. cast.
Otaku said...
I agree with the "Twilight" vampires assessment. I watched part of the movie the other day, and didn't get the romantic aspect at all. Maybe it's just me - my wife says the books are pretty good, but then she watches a lot of soap operas, too. Vampires may sometimes have a charming demeanor (re Bela Lugosi's Dracula and King's Kurt Barlow), but in the end they're still gonna bite your throat.
Vampires see humans as prey; we are their food source. Having a romantic relationship with a human would be kind of like falling in love with a cow - or if you're vegan, a cauliflower.
And yes, Roddy McDowall IS Peter Vincent. | dclm-gs1-106710000 |
Welcome to Punkin Seed Productions!
Monday, May 9, 2011
Kind Words
I'm reminded today how kind words can lift a spirit and encourage a soul! As a homeschool mom, it's so easy for me to constantly be coaching (correcting) instead of finding the positive words. Well, I received some very sweet, encouraging words from a customer today and I'm reminded what a difference a positive thought can make:
"Oh my GOODness!!!!!!!!! I love them. They are on my mantle. Myself, hubby and kiddos LOVE it. I ordered another wooden item from a different shop and am KICKING myself. Yours is SO lovely.... A masterpiece. Wish that I had bought your bLESSED blocks too... oh well the family one from******* is fine, but not like yours. Be proud, it is lovely and I am overwhelmed at the beauty, quality and stunning-ness of the piece.
Thank you,
Karen Cowart"
Thank you Karen for making my day. Now I'm off to give some encouraging words to those little people in my life.
1 comment:
1. How fun for you, Kristi, that someone thought enough of your work to let you know! Doesn't that just make your day? Congrats for being 'top of the line' with your blocks! | dclm-gs1-106720000 |
Friday, 30 August 2013
For Baby John Gobbin and His Parents
Please click on the photo in order to enlarge
If the photograph, above, isn't clear, then let me explain what it's about. You are looking at a grave located in the burial yard of Gooderstone Church, Norfolk. It commemorates John and Mary Gobbin, who died in the early years of the twentieth century, aged 78 and 83, respectively. However, there is an additional name inscribed on this gravestone. It is another 'John Gobbin' who died - presumably in the mid-1800s - after only three days. If you look carefully, you'll notice something else. Placed carefully in front of the stone is a white rose.
It was placed by us in memory of the pain of loss experienced by the Gobbins family, and as a tribute to the brief life of baby John. Just because these lives have now passed beyond living memory doesn't mean that we shouldn't empathise and care across the years. We do. So, draped in a warm caress of late August sunshine we laid this flower down and thought for a while about these long-departed strangers who we now drew into our hearts.
1. Awww....!
There's a stone on the side of St Stephen's church in Norwich (the outside). In very fine 18th century calligraphy it lists the numerous children of the couple - everyone of which died in infancy or childhood, over a few years. Heartbreaking.
2. I like old cemeteries; if I'm with easily bored friends I'm often led out.
I am drawn to the tiniest graves; marked with no name but Baby.
I have been in a poor local cemetery where the tiny graves were marked with cinder blocks--and fresh flowers. Not forgotten. | dclm-gs1-106730000 |
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment
read more of todays top articles
This corn earworm eats the corn at the silk end of the ear. (photo: Alan King/flickr)
go to original article
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Remember that making the world better begins with responsible action.
- The RSN Team
+15 # Bob-Investigates 2011-08-30 23:57
Let's see---we have a very visible insect on the corn plants. Seems to me you could come up with a MECHANICAL solution---hire out-of-work people to walk through the fields and pick off the little vermin into a jar. What if a worker simply walked down the rows with a hand-held vacuum? It reminds me of why there are virtually no rattlesnakes in Ohio---they were all killed-off so none around to reproduce! Messing with nature (GMO) usually just causes more problems than it cures. SOMEONE with an inventive mind (probably not at Monsanto or competitors,jus t might come up with an inexpensive solution that doesn't involve GMO or some gawd-awful chemicals. Unfortunately, humans often go for the seemingly easy way, when there just might be a smarter, less toxic way to defeat the insects. Purple Martins? An Amish farmer I know has perfect blueberries because he got some cheap netting and now nothing can get to his blueberries. He had a huge crop this summer. He also protects other crops with netting. NO chemicals, NO GMO.
+3 # punk 2011-08-31 01:58
havent read article. 4am. must sleep. just writing to say that this relates to the recent wikileaks [which WL says was not even leaked by them, but by some MS media-hints at NYTimes or der speigel.
here's article on usa pushing GE crops in euro/asia/africa/s.america:
+5 # Charlie Peters 2011-08-31 02:15
+23 # abby in N.H. 2011-08-31 05:16
Monsanto is EVIL.
+7 # Oak1 2011-08-31 08:05
The development of resistance to corn rootworm shows that a technology is very vulnerable to basic principles of of agro-ecology. Crop rotation is essential. Gm crops are the biological equivalent of the newest super pesticide which never really worked.
It's very disappointing when you show a picture of a corn earworm in an article about corn rootworm. They are very different critters and require different approaches to control Please proofread your articles or hire a science editor. Note that this lead to confusion about control strategies by readers.
+2 # Glen 2011-08-31 12:40
Quite right, Oak1. I hardly glanced at the larva pictured, and proceeded with the rootworm in mind. Under the photo of the larva in the photo above it does state that it is an earworm. Readers would be better informed if the beetles and moths were also shown, rather than just the larvae. Rootworm larvae are white.
+16 # Glen 2011-08-31 08:37
I have seen these worms in my own small corn crop for the first time. Not only is there manipulation in farm crops, but apparently misleading labeling in individual packages of corn, and who knows what else.
One method of avoiding these issues with these monster companies is stick close to home and buy heritage seeds. Large farmers worldwide are being screwed out of their long time practice of saving seeds, meaning they will be forced to buy these "frankenseeds".
+5 # fredboy 2011-08-31 12:40
This is just the start. Years of fertilizer runoff into Florida waters is producing the stuff of monster movies: dangerous bacteria. And many neighborhoods are -- hang on -- using it for irrigation, thus spraying the bacteria into the air. Yep, this is one of the most dangerous ways to "ingest" it. Gulf beachfronts are teeming with resulting bacteria.
It is interesting that humankind's screwups may result in the most dire threats from some of the tiniest, truly lethal organisms. Warn your friends.
+1 # Glen 2011-09-01 09:52
I wish more folks as yourself would report on these issues in their own states. I grew up in Miami and lament the loss of that particular paradise. Florida was a jewel, and your information increases that lamentation for the entire state.
+7 # jerryball 2011-09-01 15:19
I knew it was just a matter of time before Frankinfoods would bite us in the a$$. And Monsanto is giving the stink-eye and sueing farmers who are unfortunate to have the Monsanto Frankinseeds migrate to their fields. They are being sued for royalties for their entire crop even though there are a few Frankenfood plants that migrated to their fields. Dr. Frankenstein wins, and we end up with more toxic sprays on our food. How does one sue this too big to fail monster that will mutate us all?
+4 # BobHG 2011-09-01 19:47
Well, what a surprise. The corporatocracy has spread its toxicity not only around the world, in a vain attempt to control the world's food supplies without so much as a safety test, and with the collusion of the Rockefeller Foundation, GATT and the World Bank in the interests of "free trade", but has now polluted its own back yard. Read "William Engdahl's disturbing "Seeds of Destruction" for the full story. The world will suffer the after-effects of this piece of agricultural imperialism for centuries to come. The Monsanto crops were developed to be used in conjunction with Monsanto-suppli ed chemicals which were designed to kill the bugs, but not the plants.
| dclm-gs1-106740000 |
Alien Abductions
The Threat
The Nature of Alien Intentions
Excerpts from THE THREAT: The Secret Agenda
by David M. Jacobs, Ph.D.
Chapter 11
Despite the numerous examples of aggressive and humiliating hybrid behavior, the existence of "benign" independent hybrid activity and the "peaceful" and even polite demeanor of the gray aliens have led some abductees and researchers to conclude that the abduction phenomenon is a positive force. This growing group has launched a crusade to convince the public that the entire alien agenda is benevolent, helpful, and spiritually uplifting. "I see the ET visitors - the so-termed 'alien humanoids' - as friendly and with positive motivations and beneficial effects." So writes Dr. John Hunter Gray (formerly John Salter), professor of Indian Studies at the University of North Dakota, committed social activist, winner of the Martin Luther King award for civil rights work, and an abductee.
Hunter Gray consciously remembered being abducted with his son in 1988. From the fragments he recalled of the event, he knew that kindly extraterrestrials were visiting Earth and that he was personally enhanced by their abduction of him. His view is typical of those of researchers and abductee who believe that aliens are benevolent beings who have come to Earth to help humans on both a personal and a societal level. Since the early 1980s the Positives have espoused the belief that humanity is fortunate to have been chosen for this beneficence.
Influential Proponents
In addition to John Hunter Gray, there are several other Positive proponents who have shaped a segment of public opinion about the meaning of abductions and the aliens' ultimate intentions. One of the first to champion the idea that aliens are on Earth for our benefit was University of Wyoming professor of Guidance and Counseling Leo Sprinkle. An early pioneer in abduction research, beginning hypnosis in the mid-1960s, Sprinkle concluded that the simple explanation that beings come to Earth for their own purposes was insufficient.
Eventually Sprinkle developed the rationale that "there are two themes to the ET [extraterrestrial] purpose; 1, ETs are here to rejuvenate planet earth and 2, ETs are here to assist humankind in another stage of evolution." The ETs' method of showing mankind that they are here to help us, he explained, is "through a metamorphosis of human consciousness."2 The metamorphosis takes place, in part, through the lessons that wise aliens teach humans about cosmic matters. The aliens often communicate these lesson through channeling. In the course of his research, Sprinkle came to realize that he himself is an abductee.
In 1980, Sprinkle held the first of his annual conferences in Laramie, Wyoming, which has become a central meeting place for followers of the Positive point of view. At the conferences, Sprinkle often takes questions from concerned individuals about abductions or sightings and "channels" the meaning of the person's event, directly asking the aliens questions and relating the answers. This total acceptance of the spirituality of the abduction phenomenon has made him popular with many abductees and researchers influenced by New Age thought.
Another proponent of Positive themes is Richard Boylan, a former private practice psychologist in Sacramento, California, and also an abductee. Like Hunter Gray and Sprinkle, Boylan interprets his abduction experiences as profoundly benevolent and beneficial for him. His aliens are environmentally minded creatures who want to raise people's consciousness about Earth's problems and humanity's place in the cosmos. According to Boylan, the "mission" of the aliens "is to communicate to humans the concerns the ETs shareDconcerns about our violence toward each other and our government's violence toward them; about the ecological destruction and degradation we are visiting upon our earth; about our failure to properly care for and educate each child; about our possession of, and intended use of, nuclear weapons as a way to resolve disputes; and about our becoming more conscious of our heritage and our destiny (which both involve the ETs).
Boylan believes that the aliens will reveal themselves eventually, and at that time a "conditioned" humanity will not be afraid.When the great event comes, we will welcome the friendly aliens with open arms as we join with them in universal fellowship.
We look forward as some of the implications of ET-human relationships develop when we finally get to CEIV [Close Encounters of the Fourth KindDthat is, abductions], the open, official, mutually welcomed, meeting of our earth's representatives with the representatives of these other star civilizations, and then we finally have a truly multi-racial world, racial in its true sense of races from other planets since we are only one human race with different colors and bone structures and so forth.... If we get rid of our nuclear weapons and our gun-slinging attitude towards solving problems by outdrawing the other guy, then we will be ready for admission into the intergalactic UN, if you will. We can look forward to cultural exchanges or representatives from earth and other civilizations because they have other things to learn from us just as we have other things to learn from them and this may involve the actual exchange of people going to other planets to observe their society and their representatives here walking among us.
To Boylan, the aliens are even more acceptable because they believe in a form of Supreme Being and therefore confirm Judeo Christian monotheism: "The ETs, too, realize that there's a Supreme Being or a supreme source of everything. They're not kidded that they are the top of the pile either. They acknowledge a supreme source out thereDthe fountainhead of all life."
A significant influence on the Positives' belief system has been Massachusetts researcher Joseph Nyman, who began hypnotic regressions of abductees in the late 1980s and added "past lives" to the Positives' vision.When he regressed them to early childhood to recover the first abduction memories, he found he could take some of his subjects back to when they were infants, then back to the womb, and then to a "past life." A few of them "remembered" that they had lived their past lives as aliens. Nyman hypothesized that abductees were taken from the time they were babies because they already had existed as aliens in past lives.
Not only does Nyman find that many abductees think they were aliens in a past life, but he also suggests that some abductees possess an alien's "consciousness," which imbues their present human form. For Nyman, the evidence is "overwhelming" that the aliens impose these dual feelingsDhuman and alienDon the abductees. "It implies the taking up of residence in the human form at birth (or before) of a fully developed intelligence which for a while is aware of both its human and non-human nature and of the pre-arranged monitoring to be conducted throughout life." Abductees and aliens have "melded" together in some way and in a sense abductees and aliens are the same. Abductees live their present lives with a "dual reference," human and alien. This allows the abductee to feel a positive connectiveness to the aliens with a resultant loss of "fear, anxiety, and self-doubt."'
Perhaps the most significant spokesperson for the Positive viewpoint is John Mack of Harvard University. As Mack examined the established structure of abductions, he concluded that the aliens' goal was more than administering clinical procedures. Although Mack says the abduction phenomenon is "mixed" and not entirely positive, he believes abductions bring an opportunity for spiritual transformation and heightened consciousness.
Mack has been influenced by psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, who postulated that the human mind could connect with the "collective unconscious," the universe, and all things animate and inanimate, present and past. Similarly, Mack believes that the abduction phenomenon has the potential, like Eastern metaphysical philosophies, to "depict the universe and all its realities as a vast play of consciousness with physical manifestations." The effect of abductions can be "personal growth," which results in "an intense concern for the planet's survival and a powerful ecological consciousness."8
In addition, Mack thinks that Western society has cut itself off from "awareness of any higher form of intelligence" in the universe. In his view, the aliens have predicted the destruction of Earth by the encroachment of "technodestructive and fear-driven acquisitiveness," and he suggests that the aliens may be using the hybridization program and visualizations of our self-destruction to bring about the healing of Earth and "the further evolution of consciousness."9
Within this framework, Mack began hypnotic regression of abductees in 1990, hoping to "push past" their trauma and unveil the essential goodness of the alien higher consciousness. And like Nyman, he found that a number of abductees whom he hypnotized had lived past lives, sometimes as aliens. Mack concluded that even though most other abduction researchers have not found the pastlife-as-alien account, Nyman's "dual reference" was a "fundamental dimension of the consciousness expansion or opening that is an intrinsic aspect of the abduction phenomenon itself.''
As a credentialed Harvard faculty member with entree into main stream intellectual life, Mack became an intellectually courageous and powerful advocate for the abduction phenomenon. Where he deviates from the mainstream is in his belief that the phenomenon transcends conventional ideas about the nature of reality. For Mack, understanding reality requires consciousness expansion that goes beyond traditional science. And such consciousness expansion can only be good for humanity.
A growing number of abductees who are not abduction researchers have also found their experiences spiritually uplifting and transforming. At an abduction conference held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, abductee "Susan" explained that the "communication" she receives from "the alien 'guardians' of our planet offers insight and wisdom to a world in need of it. It contains a message of love and support to a planet in need of healing." She also found personal benefit in the experience: "Since my experience, I rejoice in being who I am, with no expectations of how I should be, and complete acceptance of who I am. The changes in me are staggering. My life works as if by magic.... Although at one time I thought 'Why me?' now I say 'Thank you for choosing me.'''
Abductee Leah Haley, who related her experiences in her book Lost Was the Key, believes that members of the American militaryD somehow in conjunction with the aliensDabducted her on many occasions and held her in a barrackslike building. Yet despite these clearly negative experiences, her view of the aliens is positive. In her children's book, Ceto's New Friends, Haley tells the story of the gray alien Ceto who comes to Earth and meets little Annie and Seth. The three play together, and Ceto invites them on board his UFO. They are happy to go, float up into the object, play various "games," and then are floated back. On the final page, the two happy but weary children look longingly toward the UFO, and the story concludes with Haley writing that "the Spaceship flew away, but Ceto will come back soon to visit his new friends on Earth." Although most abductees have not gone as far as this in "humanizing" and sentimentalizing the aliens, Haley's viewpoint is a logical extension of the desireDperhaps the need for the aliens to be friendly and helpful.
Taken as a group, the Positives' message is that humans have conducted their affairs in a way that will lead to the degradation of the planet and the end of the human species. Humans have caused poverty, ignorance, and overpopulation, and they risk environmental catastrophe and atomic annihilation. The concerned aliens are "educating" abductees to warn us of what is to come if we do not change our behavior.
The Positives argue that aliens are more fully evolved spiritually than humans, and that they have a heightened awareness of the mysteries of the universe. The aliens recognize the specialness of human life and are also aware of how humankind has erred. They respect the sanctity of human life even more than we do. They care about us and love us. The aliens are the teachers and we are the students. They are the parents and we are the children. They must teach us how to behave. Because they are a benevolent species, they have come to help us find solutions to our problems.
Moreover, the Positives believe that alien guidance is not meant only for society in general. The aliens can help the individual abductee to raise himself spiritually by giving him knowledge of higher realms of existence and the connectedness of all things. They can also aid individual abductees physically by curing various problems that they may have. John Hunter Gray was a recipient of alien largess. His body hair increased, his face and neck narrowed, many wrinkles and blemishes disappeared from his face, and his circulation and blood-clotting improved. He has not been ill since the abduction, and after forty years of smoking, he gave it up with no signs of nicotine withdrawal. He also has had expanded psychic abilities. Hunter Gray is convinced that the aliens treat all people with the same kindness and respect that he received.
A key aspect of the Positive strategy to mold public opinion is to change the vocabulary used to describe aliens and abductions. They have denied the legitimacy of the word abductee in favor of the more positively charged experienced. An abductee is a person kidnaped against his will. An experiences is specially chosen for a very important task. An abductee has unwanted and traumatic medical procedures administered to him. An experiences is a willing participant in a grand and wonderful plan. An abductee endures reproductive and sexual procedures that are sometimes tantamount to rape. An experiences helps the aliens create new people for the betterment of aliens and humans alike. Abductees are laboratory animals, but experiencers are united with the aliens to build a better world. To reinforce the phenomenon's harmlessness, the Positives use only neutral or friendly terms to describe abduction events: visitors come here for encounters with the experiencers; the visitors are ETs, not aliens. Using these terms humanizes the aliens and makes them seem friendly and benign. The abduction phenomenon as a whole is "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind."
Moreover, some Positives aggressively try to discredit researchers who are not in their camp. John Hunter Gray has called abduction researchers who adopt a skeptical or even a neutral stance "gloom and doomers," and he treats them scornfully. He accuses the "gloom and doom" researchers of being either "downright paranoid, motivated by commercial considerations, or ideologically endeavoring to resurrect a new version of the Red Scare.'' Similarly, Positive Richard Boylan has suggested that mainstream abduction researchers are working together with a "self-serving government elite" and CIA operatives to prevent the "real truth" about alien intentions from coming out. The "gloom and doomers" have made the aliens' plans all the more difficult to carry out, because they play on people's fears.
Both Boylan and Mack de-emphasize the effects of the standard abduction procedures. Boylan believes that gynecological and urological procedures take place only with a very small number of abductees and he rarely focuses on them. And although Mack has found nearly the full range of alien physical, mental, and reproductive procedures, he only mentions them in passing while emphasizing what he finds to be the spiritually uplifting elements. Joe Nyman believes that investigators who find that abductees were victimized have been influenced by the popular media, which have publicized abductees who have been victimized. For Nyman, these investigators have "prejudged" the phenomenon and their abduction work is "superficial," and ''incomplete.''
The benevolent "spin" that the Positives (both abductees and researchers) put on the abduction phenomenon is puzzling, given the way most people describe their abductions: being unwillingly taken; being subjected to painful physical procedures (sometimes leaving permanent scars); enduring humiliating and abusive sexual episodes, including unwanted sexual intercourse; living with the fear and anxiety of wondering when they will be abducted again.
The Positives acknowledge that some abduction procedures might be painful or traumatic, but they liken the experiences to going to a dentist, where one endures short-term pain for long-term health. They look past fear because the frightened or traumatized abductees fail to understand the aliens' hidden benevolent motivations. Once the "experiencers" grasp the big picture, they will understand that temporary fear and pain are an insignificant price to pay for the enormous rewards they will reap in the future.
Echoes of the Contactees
The Positives, although more sophisticated and complex, echo the "contacted" thought of the 1950s. The contactees were a group of people who spun tales of having continuing contact with benevolent "space brothers" who had come to Earth to prevent humans from blowing up the planet with atomic bombs and upsetting other planets in the process. Contactees were careful to suggest that the aliens believed in a Judeo-Christian god, and some even claimed that Jesus was also a religious figure for them. The contactees followed alien-directed missions to spread the word to stop atomic wars, live together in fellowship, and stamp out communism. Contactee Howard Menger summed it up: "They are friendly people and are by far more advanced spiritually and physically than the people of this planet. At the present time they are observing us. They wish to help us to help ourselves to attain a higher understanding of life and its meaning.... They are only here to help you and worship the same Infinite Creator that we do.''
At first potentially reasonable, before long the contactee stories become increasingly fanciful. The space brothers gave them short rides in flying saucersDone went from Los Angeles to Kansas City. Howard Menger went to the moon. Eventually, the contactees were flying to Mars, Venus, and the outer planets. Led by "Professor" George Adamski, Daniel Fry, Orfeo Angelucci, Howard Menger, Truman Bethurum, Buck Nelson, and others, the contactees proved to be a terrible embarrassment to legitimate UFO researchers of the period, who had to spend great amounts of time and money combatting them and explain to a confused public that they were charlatans who did not represent legitimate UFO witnesses.
Of the many influences on contactee thought, perhaps the most significant was the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. The movie portrays humans as warlike and the peaceful alien, Klaatu, as possessing an advanced technology that can end disease for humans. Klaatu has a proto-ecological message: If Earth continues on its aggressive, warlike path, its atomic technology will endanger the community of planets; therefore, the Earthlings must renounce war or the alien will use his robot, Gort, to blow up Earth and end the threat to the planetary confederation's peace.
Although the contactees lost popularity in the 1960s, their legacy is still with us. Devoted followers of the teachings of George Adamski and other contactees still exist in the United States. The modern Swiss contactee Billy Meier has published volumes of philosophical ruminations supposedly derived from aliens who come from the Pleiades constellation. Meier has attracted a large worldwide following and supplies photos, films, and tapes of UFOs, all of dubious origin, in support of his contentions. Dr. Steven Greer has formed an organization that will take a member to a secluded place and signal aliens to come to Earth for private sightings. Greer's claims suggest a special relationship with the extraterrestrials so that they will do his bidding.
The Positive Leo Sprinkle uses the word "contactee" to describe his and other people's experiences. He feels that meditation can cause a UFO sighting, either in the present life or in one or more past lives. He claims direct communication with aliens and can get them to answer his questions virtually on demand.
Using the New Age to Cope
It is extremely difficult for unaware abductees who have not undergone competent hypnosis, or who have had none at all, to come to terms emotionally with their abductions. As a result, they develop coping mechanisms to deal with the continual psychological and physical assault from their experiences. To mitigate their victimization, they transform their lifetime of fear and anxiety into a more psychologically bearable scenario.
These abductees seek reassurance and find organizations and people who share their belief that the aliens are benevolent. Often they become involved with New Age groups that focus on the existence of alternative realities. The abductees learn there is more to life than one can know on a conscious, objective level. When they come in contact with the channeling of aliens or spirit-aliens, they "discover" an explanation for their experiences. In channeling, the entity answers all questions, no matter how grand, esoteric, or trivial. And the channeled messages directly address the rationale behind the abduction experiences: The abductees have been chosen to undertake a mission to help humanity, Earth, the aliens, and the universe. Abductees are not victimsDthey are important players in a majestic alien plan for the betterment of humanity. Enduring a little fear and pain is a small price to pay for taking part in such an important task.
To circumvent the problems of being taken against their will, living in fear, and being unable to say "no," the New Age abductees believe they have given the aliens "permission" to abduct them, either in a past life or when they were small children. They entered into a verbal contract and, therefore, it is proper, and even legal, for the aliens to abduct them. For New Age Positives, the aliens are humanity's friends. Godlike, they have come from the heavens to help us find our way. Not only do they have superior technology, but their moral sense, desire for peace, spirituality, and ability to love are all far more advanced than ours. Being a part of their cosmic vision is a privilege and an honor.
Often the New Age Positives band together into almost cult-like groups to defend themselves from their detractors - researchers and abductees who have come to different conclusions about the abduction phenomenon. The Positives reinforce one another's feelings and insulate themselves from the terror of their lives; they become angry when "less enlightened" abduction researchers question their interpretation.
For years critics of the UFO phenomenon spuriously claimed that UFO witnesses were forming a "new religion" based on gods from space. This was never true of UFO witnesses who came forward to report their sightings and then went on with their lives. However, abductees and researchers who have accepted New Age teachings share a quasi-religious sentiment in their interpretation of alien intentions. They ascribe benevolent powers to the aliens and have an almost religious fervor in protecting the aliens from wrong-thinking individuals who would treat them more as scientific objects than as miraculous messengers. The Positives simultaneously anthropomorphize and deify the aliens. While the benevolent alien-gods were all powerful, they have a moral structure not unlike our own. They can destroy us but choose to work for our betterment. In return, they will eventually receive our gratitude and will know that they preserved Earth and the precious life on it, which is intrinsically rewarding to them.
The belief system of the New Age Positives is exceptionally strong because they know the alien-gods exist. After all, they have actually contacted the individual "experiences," which adds "proof" to their religious belief and drives the "experiences" to missionary zeal. Each abduction confirms the reality of the phenomenon and strengthens the New Age beliefs. For New Age Positives, the aliengods are not just a matter of faithDthey are a matter of stark fact.
Of course, some New Age abductees have sought assistance from a competent hypnotist, one who is well-versed in the abduction phenomenon. As a result, they remember events that do not seem so positive. Often, the contradiction between belief system and reality is overwhelming, and the abductee breaks off hypnosis, retreating into his protective New Age cocoon.
Rejecting the Importance of Competent Hypnosis
A primary reason for the Positive attitude is that most of these at'ductees have not undergone competent hypnosis to help them understand what has happened to them. They have only conscious recollections, which are often tainted with screen memories, false memories, fragmented memories, the remnants of imaging and envisioning procedures, and wishful thinking.
In abduction research, memories derived hypnotically under the guidance of a competent hypnotist are more reliable than conscious memories. This is clearly demonstrated by analyzing the abduction "frame"Dthe first few seconds and the last few seconds of the abductionDwhich usually takes place in the person's normal environment. Unaware abductees (those who have not undergone expert hypnosis) often extrapolate from memory fragments of these periods. For example, an unaware abductee might remember that an alien came close to him or her in bed to "greet" him, when under hypnosis this is revealed to be a staring procedure to subdue the abductee. An unaware abductee will say that he watched aliens in his room, told them that he did not want to be abducted that night, and watched the obliging aliens depart. But under hypnosis, the unaware abductee reveals that the scenario he consciously remembered consists of only the first few seconds of the abduction, when the aliens first appear, and the last few seconds of the abduction, when they leave two hours later. It does not include the actual abduction. The aliens in both cases had originally and falsely appeared to be more reasonable and "human," exhibiting concern for the abductee and honoring his wishes.
Experience with unaware abductees clearly leads to the conclusion that the most serious barrier to competent abduction research is incompetent hypnosis. This problem is compounded by lack of agreed upon standards for conducting hypnosis on abductees, and by the continuing debate over the meaning of UFO abductions. Without standardized methodology, a hypnotist can use any induction or questioning techniqueDno matter how experimental, untried, or dubiousDto explore abduction accounts. Questionable technique coupled with the hypnotist's lack of knowledge of the abduction phenomenon results in false memories, inserted memories, confabulation, dissociative states, and error.
A second barrier to competent abduction research is the mindset of the hypnotist. Many hypnotists and therapists who work with abductees adhere to New Age philosophies and actively search for confirmational material. During hypnosis, the hypnotist emphasizes material that reinforces his own world view. If both the subject and the hypnotist are involved with New Age beliefs, the material that results from the hypnotic sessions must be viewed skeptically, because their mindset can seriously compromise their ability to discern the facts.
Competent abduction hypnosis is difficult. Each question must be intrinsic to the abductee's narrative and should grow organically from it, without introducing extraneous material. The investigator should critically evaluate each answer in light of the established knowledge of the abduction phenomenon, the abductee's suggestibility and ability to filter out erroneous memories, the internal integrity of the account, and that ineffable but supremely important element common sense.
When unskilled hypnotists regress an abductee, they fail to situate him in the event's minute-by-minute chronology. Without links to a temporal sequence, the abductee can interpret the events without the facts necessary to guide his thoughts, which leads to confabulation and other memory problems. The inadequate hypnotist and the abductee engage in a mutual confirmational fantasy: the abductee reports the fantasy; the hypnotist assumes that the abductee's narrative is objective reality. And then by asking questions about the details of the pseudo-event, the hypnotist validates its reality.
Research over the years has shown that the aliens are rational. Virtually everything that happens during abductions is, given adequate information, comprehensible and logical. A systematic, rigorous, and skeptical approach to this phenomenon has successfully uncovered its secrets; there is no reason to abandon competent analysis in favor of religious or philosophical belief systems.
Furthermore, mainstream abduction researchers have been unable to uncover anything paranormal, spiritual, religious, or metaphysical about the phenomenon.There is no evidence to support NewAge hypnotherapists' contention that once the abductee "pushes past the trauma" of his abduction, he will encounter "spirit guides" or "guardian angels" who will steer him safely through abduction events, protect him in ordinary life, and guide him toward enlightenment. Usually "pushing past the trauma" comes at the expense of rooting the abductee in the reality of what is happening. Thus, the naive hypnotherapist has unwittingly pushed the abductees into unrecognized dissociative states.
Spiritual Assumptions and Validational Questioning
John Mack is a good example of a hypnotist who has relied more on New Age thinking than on an objective approach to hypnosis. Mack's personal study of consciousness transformation and spiritual enlightenment informs and shapes his assumptions and questions during hypnotic regressions. From the beginning of his interest in abductions, he thought the accepted interpretations of the abduction phenomenon that the beings had their own agenda of physiological exploitation of humansDwere inadequate. He also suspected that mainstream abduction researchers were finding the accepted abduction structure because they "pull out of the experiencers what they want to see."
Ignoring the well-documented research about repression, recovered memory, confabulation, false memories, and mistakes that abductees commonly make about visualization procedures, Mack began to delve into the phenomenon from an unconventional perspective. For his hypnotic sessions, he used a combination of traditional hypnosis and modified Grof "breath" work (holotropic breathing), in which the subject regulates the intake and exhaust of oxygen and carbon dioxide. In full fledged holotropic breathing, people can feel they are experiencing their birth, some can hallucinate quite strongly, and many have powerful emotional reactions. The effect of even modified breath work on hypnosis and on memory formation and retrieval is unknown, but information derived with it must be treated with caution.
In spite of his New Age viewpoint and methodology, Mack found much of the same material that other researchers have uncovered: "These individuals reported being taken against their wills by alien beings, sometimes through the walls of their houses, and subjected to elaborate intrusive procedures which appeared to have a reproductive purpose." But Mack also began to hear more "spiritual" and transformational accounts from abductees who either related conversations with aliens or just "knew." Rather than proceeding with extreme skepticism, he assumed the abductee's veracity and incorporated the information into an idiosyncratic abduction scenario.
Mack is sensitive to charges of "leading" the subject within the hypnotic session. He sincerely says he does "not lead clients in any particular direction so that if information that is relevant to the spiritual or consciousness expanding aspects of the abduction phenomenon emerges during our sessions, it will do so freely and spontaneously and not as a result of specific inquiries of mine." Yet he also sincerely believes that the construction of an abduction scenario depends on the "intermingling or flowing together of the consciousness of the two (or more) people in the room." They "co-creatively" build an experience that they share for the benefit of both.
While Mack does not "lead the witness" in the classic meaning of the phrase, he embraces the "positive" therapeutic technique that leads to mutual confirmational fantasies and easily steers the abductee into dissociative channeled pathways. This technique may be temporarily useful, but it represents the antithesis of the goal of scientific researchDto uncover the facts.
Apparently unconcerned with the problems of dissociation and channeling, John Mack accepts "recollections" at face value. For example, one of Mack's subjects, Ed, "remembered" a female being who told the young man that he possessed special gifts and powers and recommended an environmental course of action for him.
"Listen to the earth, Ed," [the being said]. "You can hear the earth. You can hear the anguish of the spirits. You can hear the wailing cries of the imbalances. It will save you. It will save you.... Things are going to happen," she said, but he must "listen to the spirits," even if he is taunted and not feel overwhelmed. "She gave me a flash . . . she opened up that channel and turned up the volume. Some of [the spirits] are crying; some of them are mirthful. She just ran me through the whole thing in a couple of seconds, 'All this you can see, hear, and feel. Other people may think you are crazy."' The earth itself, the being told him, is enraged at our stupidity, and "the earth's skin is going to swat some bugs off" that do not know how to "work in symbiotic harmony" with it.
Instead of treating this "dialogue" with extreme skepticism, Mack asks the validational question that confirms the fantasy and calls for more information: "I asked Ed how this swatting off was going to happen." By posing this question, he unknowingly joins with the subject in a mutual confirmational fantasy that assumes the authenticity of the information and adds import to it.
There are many examples of validational questioning in Mack's published research, which make the information upon which he bases his theories exceptionally suspect. But despite his methodology, Mack's Positive stance is appealing to many people, and his methodology is typical of the researchers who have found abductions to be positive. The Positive outlook, however, does not only emanate from methodological inadequacies. There are procedures that aliens perform within the abduction phenomenon that also generate Positive feelingsDbut in unexpected ways.
Alien Affirmation of the Positive Viewpoint
Some abductees think that aliens are benevolent as a direct result of abduction procedures. The aliens can be civil, caring, and even kindly. They can ensure that the abductees will not feel pain during invasive procedures. They can sometimes cure ailments. They can be appreciative. They do reaffirm that the abductee is a "special" person. For women, the Mindscan procedure, with its elicitation of romantic and sexual feelings, can encourage them to feel love and affection for the aliens. When these women think of aliens, they do so with a vague yearning, a sense of emotional emptiness, as if recalling a haunting memory of a long-lost lover.
Abductees have spent their lives entangled in the abduction phenomenon, and the aliens sometimes use this fact for their own purposes. They often tell abductees that they are part of the alien "family," and they frequently tell children that the aliens are their "parents." Abductees often feel a sense of loss when their hybrid offspring are taken away, reinforcing the idea that they have an emotional interest elsewhere, not on Earth. For these abductees, the aliens must be benevolent. The two species are working together to create a better world. The Positive interpretation is a natural outcome of these close links and active collaboration.
Back To Alien Abductions | dclm-gs1-106750000 |
Silly Grins
Thursday, May 17, 2012
He Crossed the Line
He Crossed the Line
And now it is time to die.
The first time we met, he crossed the line.
Smiling even.
Walked right through the gap
in that fence we were building.
Our neighbor.
We give him peace before he rests.
1. "If you have to kill someone, never ever tell a living soul."
- Gene, "Layer Cake"
1. There is a misunderstanding. Here is the context:
Our dear neighbor, after retiring to care for his senile mother (mentioned in a comment maybe about a year ago in Bad Boy's confession chamber - his senile mother being a reason for the fence in the first place even though she was somewhat comic relief)... our dear neighbor is 'on his way out', as they say.
Most of his retirement has been spent tending his magnificent garden. One of the trees has some nice fruit on it, almost ripe for picking. We share what we've got with each other when we've got too much, which seems to happen just often enough.
The picture at the top of this post is of one of the flowers in the garden he'll probably never come back to see. He can't eat anymore, so bringing homegrown food won't due any good. But we've got a number of pictures we took this morning and had printed out. He can look at those when he's awake. His system is going into shutdown.
Yeah. He crossed the line when we first met. The fence wasn't quite finished and I was doing something in our yard when I looked up. For a moment, I was uncomfortable, almost tempted to be angry but I just couldn't be. I realized that his straightforward approach was just being friendly. And something else. Something else disarming. A look in his eye told me he's seen things. I later learned why.
And now he is getting ready to cross another line from which he will never come back. He's worn his life well. Truly a kind soul. They are not as plentiful as you might think.
Later, a post will be devoted solely to him.
But now, it is time...
Thank you for yours.
2. Damn, if I'd known all that... My comment looks in awfully poor taste now.
3. Say the word and it comes down. Now I can see how it might have functioned as a 'hook' (word I learned today) which could be considered a 'cheap shot'. Not my intention. Not my intention at all. The whole thing is about lines people draw and boundaries people understand.
First time meeting someone. And last. Both of those moments kind of pulled together across that string of time. A quick seven years.
Good part is, got the pictures up to him today. He's so bad he can't talk and can barely see and hardly move his head from side to side. I was painfully aware of that when I set the pics down for his family to be able to take their time showing him when he's go the strength. He was trying to die at home, but things got kind of bad, so he's in a room.
We'll take the kids in for a brief moment tomorrow afternoon, after our morning hike, when visiting hours start. Wifey was always apologizing for the noise our offspring make, but he always said he enjoys hearing the laughter of children.
Not a bitter man.
2. (Removes hat and covers heart with it while bowing solemnly...) | dclm-gs1-106760000 |
@Article {export:80545, abstract = {
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) mutations that confer escape from cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) recognition can sometimes result in lower viral fitness. These mutations can then revert upon transmission to a new host in the absence of CTL-mediated immune selection pressure restricted by the HLA alleles of the prior host. To identify these potentially critical recognition points on the virus, we assessed HLA-driven viral evolution using three phylogenetic correction methods across full HIV-1 subtype C proteomes from a cohort of 261 South Africans and identified amino acids conferring either susceptibility or resistance to CTLs. A total of 558 CTL-susceptible and -resistant HLA-amino acid associations were identified and organized into 310 immunological sets (groups of individual associations related to a single HLA/epitope combination). Mutations away from seven susceptible residues, including four in Gag, were associated with lower plasma viral-RNA loads (q Gag > Rev > Pol > Nef > Vif > Tat > Env > Vpu (Fisher's exact test; P [≤] 0.0009 for each comparison), suggesting the same ranking of fitness costs by genes associated with CTL escape. Significantly more HLA-B (chi2; P=3.59 x 10-5) and HLA-C (chi2; P=4.71 x 10-6) alleles were associated with amino acid changes than HLA-A, highlighting their importance in driving viral evolution. In conclusion, specific HIV-1 residues (enriched in Vpr, Gag, and Rev) and HLA alleles (particularly B and C) confer susceptibility to the CTL response and are likely to be important in the development of vaccines targeted to decrease the viral load.
}, author = {Christine M. Rousseau and Marcus G. Daniels and Jonathan M. Carlson and Carl Kadie and Hayley Crawford and Andrew Prendergast and Philippa Matthews and Rebecca Payne and Morgane Rolland and Dana N. Raugi and Brandon S. Maust and Gerald H. Learn and David C. Nickle and Hoosen Coovadia and Thumbi Ndung'u and Nicole Frahm and Christian Brander and Bruce D. Walker and Philip J. R. Goulder and Tanmoy Bhattacharya and David E. Heckerman and Bette T. Korber and James I. Mullins}, journal = {Journal of Virology}, number = {13}, pages = {6434-6446}, title = {HLA Class I-Driven Evolution of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Subtype C Proteome: immune Escape and Viral Load}, url = {http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=80545}, volume = {82}, year = {2008}, } | dclm-gs1-106770000 |
The Legislative Record Proves the GOP is about Social Conservatism not Fiscal Responsibility
Dhalia Lithwick, senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate magazine, talks with Rachel Maddow about the latest legal tactics being employed by the anti-choice movement and the fact that, contrary to the hype about fiscal responsibility, the Republican Party is ultimately about social conservatism, as its legislative record makes clear. | dclm-gs1-106780000 |
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
False Compassion
Ellen K said...
I am sure they may feel that they like the idea, but they would feel differently if these same homeless people were moved into their condo building. Imagine the fun the HOA's would have with that!
Donalbain said...
Once again, the silly generalisations. You want to know what I think about global warming? I think it is a well supported scientific theory that is amply presented in the scientific journals.
Of course, if you want to imagine that the journals are filled with nothing but "feelings" then you are welcome to do so.
allen (in Michigan) said...
No Donal, that's not what you think about global warming.
What you think is that it's an exciting opportunity to display your moral and intellectual superiority.
Moral superiority because you can look beyond mundane pecuniary considerations to an all-embracing stewardship of the planet and intellectual superiority because you've decided that believing in the unproven cause-effect relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming is evidence of a degree of insightfulness that elevates you above "the masses".
By the way, I notice that it's becoming much more common to refer to those who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming as "deniers". Since this is a clear reference to Holocaust deniers I believe this means that supporters of anthropogenic global warming are have contravened Godwin's Law, i.e. you lose.
Donalbain said...
Oh. You are a mind reader. Fair enough. Perhaps you can tell what two words I am thinking right now.. if you need a clue, the first word rhymes with "duck". | dclm-gs1-106790000 |
Defense Plants
New cars were simply not available during the war. By February 1942, all car production had stopped and didn’t begin again until late 1945 after the end of the war. The government paid car manufacturers to make army trucks, airplanes, aircraft engines, radar units, machine guns, land mine detectors and other machinery needed for the armed forces. For example, Ford made jeeps that were used by the army. Rationing enabled scarce materials to be available for the armed forces and made an important contribution to our winning the war.
By the time the war ended, American factories had produced 299,000 airplanes, 102,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, 372,000 artillery pieces, 47 million tons of artillery ammunitions, 87,620 warships, and 44 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition. Time magazine called America’s wartime production a miracle.
Ruth Patrick Science Education Center
Aiken County Schools (February 2006)
| dclm-gs1-106800000 |
Broncos Fall to Gaels on the Road
April 8, 2006
Moraga, Calif. - The Santa Clara women's tennis team dropped a key West Coast Conference match on the road to Saint Mary's this afternoon by a score of 7-0. Kelly Leathers pushed her opponent to three sets at the No. 1 spot to spark her team, but came up just short with her 4-6, 6-4, 1-0 defeat.
Santa Clara drops its record to 6-9 on the year and returns to action on April 14 against UC Santa Cruz in a make-up match. Game time is set for 3 p.m. at the Degheri Tennis Center.
In doubles action, Kelly Leathers and Myra Davoudi beat Feline Charlot and Kate Harden 8-5 at the No. 2 position, but Saint Mary's won the remaining doubles matches to take the quick 1-0 lead. The Gaels demonstrated their strength in singles by sweeping all six contests. With the exception of the contest on Court 1, Saint Mary's won the rest of the matches in straight sets.
Saint Mary's 7, Santa Clara 0
Doubles (Saint Mary's wins the doubles point)
1. Aude Lambert/Jessica Hoath def. Erika Barnes/Stephanie Galainena (SCU), 8-6
2. Kelly Leathers/Myra Davoudi (SCU) def. Feline Charlot/Kate Harden (SMC), 8-5
3. Stef Ordoveza/Erin Young (SMC) def. Kim Daniel/Stephanie Herrmann (SCU), 8-1
1. Aude Lambert (SMC) def. Kelly Leathers (SCU), 4-6 6-4 1-0
2. Jessica Hoath (SMC) def. Stephanie Galainena (SCU), 6-0 6-2
3. Kate Harden (SMC) def. Kim Daniel (SCU), 6-2 6-2
4. Erin Young (SMC) def. Erika Barnes (SCU), 6-2, 6-2
5. Stef Ordoveza (SMC) def. Myra Davoudi (SCU), 6-4 6-3
6. Kristin Kummer (SMC) def. Stephanie Herrmann (SCU), 6-2 6-2 | dclm-gs1-106830000 |
*If you wish, please email about insurance or additional coverage, as we cannot predict flawless delivery.
5 CDs for $25
10 CDs for $40
15 CDs for $53
20 CDs for $60
Beast In The Field
The Astral Path
To Satan’s Throne
SHG 33
Finally, a live album that sounds great! Beast In The Field recorded ‘Astral Path…’ live in studio at WIDR in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We had no idea it would turn into this, a fantastic sounding live show, accompanied by an exquisite 12 page comic about the adventures of the Beast. The CD and comic come in a DVD case so we could make the comic that much bigger. It was illustrated by Decibel Magazine/Metal Hammer illustrator Mark Rudolph, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. If you’ve never seen Beast live, this might be the closest you’ll get to the electricity of seeing them in person.
1. Hollow Horn (7:11)
2. Altar Made Of Red Earth (7:20)
3. Waken Tanka (5:14)
4. The Destroying Angel (7:02)
5. Deep In The Caves (9:18)
6. Through The Fires In All Of Hell (7:33)
Sun Myth
A.M. Sky CD
SHG 35
Having played together in one form or another for almost 30 years, Sun Myth draws from late 1960’s to mid 1970’s progressive, improvisational and psychedelic bands like Peter Green, Can, and Steamhammer, and jazz influences like Coltrane and Miles. Armed with electric guitars, bass, and drums, the guys create some pretty intense rhythms, while paving a path for King Crimson-esque solos. Forgoing vocals, Sun Myth let the music do the talking as well as the walking. Their debut CD, A.M. Sky, features nearly 80 minutes of mind melting/time warping sonic adventures.
1. Sun (6:05)
2. Talon (9:05)
3. A.M. Sky (6:53)
4. Osun Ife (9:45)
5. Living Space (8:14)
6. Antimatter (4:43)
7. Sun Drops (6:45)
8. Atraga (6:42)
9. Mercury (7:11)
10. Ayler (5:01)
11. Kemti Nobles (7:44)
Beast In The Field
The Sacred Above
The Sacred Below
SHG 32
Welcome to Riff City: Population 2. Come for the storm. Stay for the ruins. We dare you to survive the wrath and wreckage of this 70+ minute hellride into oblivion. Recorded, once again, live to tape- never has the sonic prowess and sheer brute strength of Beast In The Field been captured the way it has here. Check out a track in the Beast In The Field band page. Prepare for total devastation.
1. Great Watcher Of The Sky (0:28)
2. Hollow Horn (7:12)
3. Altar Made Of Red Earth (7:15)
4. Waken Tanka (5:22)
5. There Once Were Mountains Of Ice (7:06)
6. The Great Spirit Of Light (0:46)
7. Oncoming Avalanche (22:15)
8. The Sacred Above The Sacred Below (11:53)
9. Covered By Clouds Eaten By Snakes (9:14)
Touch Of North America
Touch Of North America CD
SHG 29
Detroit’s TOUCH OF NORTH AMERICA brings the rock/punk/hardcore, ’90’s style. This trio features members of other Motor City stalwarts No Man and The Summer Pledge. They take the blueprint of their other bands, chop it in three and hit the gas. Fast and screamy bursts prevail, but not without a thick undercurrent of fantastic songwriting. The self titled debut CD is full of gritty and gnarly hooks with a razor’s edge. Any fan of Husker Du, Nirvana, The Men, and The Melvins will see the intensity and genius of this recording.
1. Rank (1:18)
2. Nark (2:13)
3. Dems (1:36)
4. Paid (2:17)
5. Away (1:49)
6. Nekst (1:41)
7. Suede (1:41)
8. Gasm (2:16)
9. Pear (1:09)
10. Niet (3:07)
Nurse Ratched
Nurse Ratched CD
SHG 28
Like the ex-Mayor of their hometown, Motown, Nurse Ratched poisons the well with as much grime and disgust as they can. Absurd, violent, fantastical, and sometimes socially aware lyrics make way for a grind/riff/grime sound that’ll turn your head, turn your stomach, and get you groovin’ in about a 60 second span. Imagine if Carcass went fishing, caught some Sex Pistols, and gutted them over a pile of blood soaked National Inquirer magazines, with Watain blaring on the garage stereo.
1. Blood In The Snow (2:00)
2. Medication Time (1:49)
3. Lemon Lyme Disease (0:45)
4. Rockbiter (2:45)
5. Pyroclastic Death/Parasite Feast (2:45)
6. Vomiting Shards Of Jesus (1:44)
7. Men Of Pause (1:04)
8. Cymbalta (1:51)
9. Joan Jett Travolta (0:41)
10. In Memory Of Omar Adams (0:57)
11. Chinese Quality Standards Are Equivalent To… (1:50)
Lost Coves
Bookends CDEP
SHG 27
Brooklyn’s Lost Coves explore the unexplored even further on their second offering. Picking up where they left off with their debut, the duo spaces out even further, but not without beefing up the rhythm and booze- stoner rock for the stoned astronaut! The recording is incredible, and LC deliver the goods with 3 new tracks that clock in at around 20 minutes.
1. Bookends (7:32)
2. When You Say It Like That (7:12)
3. Heading North (4:09)
Beast In The Field
Lucifer, Bearer Of Light CD
SHG 26
Beast In The Field’s follow up album to World Ending is even more evil and filthy than anyone could imagine. 5 tracks clock in at 40 minutes to deliver a completely disgusting and disturbing collection of stoner grit and terror. Recorded entirely on analog tape, it’s brand new and yet ancient as the hills.
1. Chapter IV: Black Earth Liver (12:23)
2. Prevalence Of Ritual (7:27)
3. The Destroying Angel (7:48)
4. Hymn Of The Sacred LIght (6:09)
5. Through The Fires In All Of Hell (7:33)
Mean Mother
Rock N Roll Shakedown CD
SHG 25
Detroit Rock City is alive and well with the sophomore release from Mean Mother. Equal parts stoner and biker rock, the fearsome foursome embark on a rip-roaring riff-athon of epic rock proportions. Those who like their jams raunchy, sleazy, and heavy as fuck will devour this nine song juggernaut. For fans of bikes, beer, and broads- chase your booze with motor oil and rock the fuck out! Not for the weak.
1. Rock N Roll Shakedown (3:19)
2. Kill For The Thrill (5:55)
3. Easy Livin’ (2:43)
4. Strange Appetite (6:08)
5. Freedom Wheelin’ (5:04)
6. You Don’t Have The Right (4:06)
7. The Hustler (3:53)
8. N.H. (5:38)
9. Paint The Town Red (5:29)
Lost Coves
Lost Coves CDEP
SHG 24
Lost Coves comes to us from Brooklyn, New York. Not the typical SHG fare, we welcome the bass and drums duo with open arms. While LC are certainly heavy, they rock in a much more psychedelic and unpredictable way. Easily fitting in on the Touch & Go roster of the late ’90’s, or opening for Mogwai or Sunny Day, the guys take the road less traveled and are better for it. Features Bil from The Nain Rouge!
1. Orig (2:55)
2. Red Mascara (4:00)
3. Deadweight (3:52)
4. Iceburg/Firebird (5:07)
5. Lost Cove (4:04)
6. Hitmaker/Coda (7:22)
Beast In The Field
World Ending CD
SHG 23
Beast In The Field’s World Ending sounds like just that- your world violently crashing down in a hellacious storm of apocalyptic measures. Seven tracks clock in at 66 minutes and 60 seconds of gritty, sprawling stoner doom. These subterranean anthems crawl, creep, pound and groove relentlessly. One part psychedelia, one part rock, World Ending is all parts evil and crushing. Nostradamus never told us that the apocalypse would be recorded live to two-inch tape. This is the masterpiece you’ve been living to die for.
1. Invoke The King Of Hell (6:49)
2. Beast In The Field (13:07)
3. Sermon Of The Black Order (3:09)
4. Burning Times (9:22)
5. Hallucinations From A Silver File (15:45)
6. No Hope On Earth (9:03)
7. Your Gods Have Died (9:44)
Hellas Mounds
New Heaven New Earth CDEP
SHG 21
Phoenix, Arizona’s Hellas Mounds returns in stealth, subtle, and dark fashion. This revamped 6-piece ensemble has melted down the chunky riffs from their last offering into a mysterious and liquid sound that is equal parts psychedelic and personal. The Eagles wrote about a ‘dark desert highway’, but never dared to venture this far into their own psyche. Overflowing with character, these shadowed stories of sound shine a dim yet telling light on the darkened corners of your imagination. You could cut the tension with a knife- a very sharp knife.
1. Passage I (0:53)
2. Movement I (4:19)
3. Movement II (10:02)
4. Passage II (1:50)
5. Movement III (12:10)
Tragedy CDEP
SHG 20
Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Hardcore veterans return with the CDEP version of their new record. Brothers yet again delivers a blistering and dense punch to the face, with 5 new tunes brought to you on a clear edged fan-disc! Mostly keeping with their melodic and colorful twist on traditional hardcore, the Bros take a bit more of a no-nonsense, no fluff approach to getting the job done. Positive Hardcore, as always!
1. Tragedy (2:10)
2. Peace Over Power (1:18)
3. Party Time!! (0:37)
4. All Equal (2:08)
5. Relentless (2:31)
The Nain Rouge
The Self Defeatist CD
SHG 19
Detroit’s murderous foursome called it quits on Halloween of 2008 but THE NAIN ROUGE recorded their swan song album and are finally ready to uncage the beast. Unanimously their finest and most accomplished work to date, TNR have created a truly heavy masterpiece. Being of the most cruel and bastardized concoction of Botch-like mathematics, Mastodon-esque riffage, and Isis-ish atmospherics, it’s almost a shame to name drop as these dudes indeed breathed their own clear air into a stuffy genre and authored a sound both indescribable and original. They will be missed, but you can enjoy their last and best work yet! CD digi-wallet is hand screened with art by Tim from TNR. Mastered by Scott Hull to ensure complete devastation!
1. Lovitz (2:29)
2. Saying Goodbye (4:00)
3. (I Am The..) Forgotten Sun (4:09)
4. Slowly Dying In Arizona (4:07)
5. Salvia Divinorum (2:51)
6. (We Are A…) Collapsing Star (4:58)
7. The Storm (5:51)
8. Distraction (2:35)
9. Gemini (5:37)
Beast In The Field
Lechuguilla CD
SHG 18
Michigan Stoner-Doom kings get Sleep-y in their nearly 40 minute one-piece sprawl of psychedelic thunder. Their sophomore slab is a wild ride for any fan of Earth, Electric Wizard, High On Fire, and Mono. This expansive swath of green was recorded on an analog console, live, in one take in the studio- the way it was, the way it should be.
1. Condenada Suerte (1:33)
2. Mira El Sol (2:20)
3. Dry, Dead End Passages (6:34)
4. Lake Of Blue Giants (3:58)
5. Castrovalva (9:41)
6. The Emperor’s Throne Room (13:29)
Vaalbara CD
SHG 17
Ann Arbor, Michigan’s ambient doom super-group features ex-members of The Black Dahlia Murder, but one should expect the likes of Isis, Baroness, and Crowbar. Mastered by Scott Hull, this mammoth work is riff heavy and wide as the land mass it was named after. This release features 5 different album covers, all hand-numbered of 200 copies!
1. Nebula (3:06)
2. Earthrise (7:31)
3. Lakes Of Iron (10:40)
4. Cataclysms (7:11)
5. Rain Gives Rise (3:09)
6. In Rust (8:06)
7. The Monolith (10:50)
8. Impact Winter (8:55)
9. Epoch (3:43)
Trendshitter CDEP
SHG 16
The debut offering from Michigan’s death and thrash masters! Consisting of 6 tracks/ 28 minutes of instrumental riffage of the gnarliest brand, this trio checked the vocals at the door- and all for the better! It’s a relentless barrage of the thrashiest riffs an ’80’s metalhead could dream of. Metallica, eat your heart out! For fans of Carcass, Slayer, Testament, and The Fucking Champs.
1. Unnatural Disaster (3:52)
2. The Grand Inquisitor (4:16)
3. March Of The Skeleton Army (4:27)
4. Castle Crusher (5:10)
5. Servant Of The Outer Dark (5:13)
6. Salted Earth (5:32)
Empires / Hellas Mounds
Split CD
SHG 15
Two bands, a thousand miles apart, seeing eye to eye to bring you a powerful recording. Minneapolis’ Empires offers two tracks spanning 17 minutes- any fan of Pelican, Paradise Lost, and old Katatonia will appreciate. Arizona’s Hellas Mounds brings a single 17 minute monster running the gamut from rustic acoustic guitar to an all out sonic storm. For fans of Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Isis.
1. Unease From Up North (6:53
2. Perpetual Downpour (10:13)
3. How Shall Thy Kingdom Stand? (17:53)
Across Tundras
Western Sky Ride CD
SHG 14
Denver is the appropriate setting for this Western-tinged doom masterpiece. In a Black Sabbath meets Neil Young salvo, Across Tundras successfully transcribe traditional Americana into a modern doom rock language that will be understood by any heavy music fan. Not convinced yet? Scott Hull mastered it, solid as an oak. Features ex-members of Examination Of The…
1. Carrion Crow (8:39)
2. Thunderclap Stomp (7:56)
3. Low The Daystar Hangs (8:57)
4. Badlands Blues (Dyin’ Days) (8:13)
5. Follow Me To The San Luis (3:50)
6. Song Of The Sullen Plains (8:21)
7. Run With The Wolves (6:22)
8. Two Black Clouds (8:23)
9. Gallows Pole (8:13)
Beast In The Field
Goat Isle Seance CD
SHG 13
Did someone just put on the new Kyuss record? This Michigan doom duo resurrects the ghosts of the desert fathers, as well as Sleep, High on Fire, and Electric Wizard. The most ripping and driving 45 minutes Michigan has heard since the Great Lakes were formed! The cover is brown and gold, but the sound is all Orange and Green!
1. Deep In The Caves (5:29)
2. Breath Of The… (6:10)
3. Discovered: Large Iron Core (9:03)
4. Upon The Herd (7:43)
5. Moth Amigo (3:52)
6. Goat Isle Seance (12:22)
Black Friday CD
SHG 12
Michigan hardcore has a new Champion in Brothers. Featuring ex-members of Comeback Kid and Two Stars Burning Sun, this Grand Rapids quintet plays passionate positive hardcore on their debut full length CD. Traditional HC played with unusual melody, without losing one ounce of tenacity and edge.
1. Beginnings (0:19)
2. War At Home (2:20)
3. Trapped (2:37)
4. Black Friday (1:52)
5. Day One (2:39)
6. So Sincere (3:09)
7. Never Again (2:10)
8. Strength In Numbers (2:22)
9. Hand Of Judgement (1:02)
10. The Destroyer (3:29)
11. Is Anyone Listening? (2:47)
Through Trial & Tribulation Comes Triumph CD
SHG 11
The debut full length CD from these Minneapolis ice-breakers. Empires play huge ambient doom in the vein of Pelican, yet convey the wintery darkness of old Paradise Lost and Katatonia. 6 tracks span 44 minutes in this broad swath of dense frost- a psych-riff chill out for any great stoner!
1. Mourning The Arrival Of The Sun (6:29)
2. Climbing Towards The Infinite (6:57)
3. Sickly Brown Sky (6:06)
4. Patience In The Tide (7:39)
5. Our Mother (7:57)
6. Through Trial & Tribulation Comes Triumph (9:01)
The Nain Rouge
Whatever Helps You Sleep At Night CDEP
SHG 07
Resurrecting and perfecting a sound that came and went with bands like Botch, Coalesce, and Deadguy, combined with the technicality and heaviness of early Mastodon, the atmospherics of Isis, and the grittiness that comes from living and playing in Detroit, the Nain Rouge are the very definition of heavy music.
1. Napoleon Complex (2:31)
2. Epiphany (3:03)
3. Zeitgeist (2:50)
4. Tire Tracks In Reverse (3:57)
5. Target Malpractice (3:35)
6. The Ocean Inside (4:29)
Indrid CDEP
SHG 06
Running the gamut of rhythms and influences, this totally unclassifiable Michigan quintet is difficult to pin down but easy to embrace. Somewhere in the universe of Botch and Coalesce resides Indrid, a rigid, yet slightly experimental conglomeration of mathematics and soulful trances, balanced by tortured screams and haunted singing. 5 tracks of heavy weirdness!
1. Heart Shaped Compass (4:06)
2. Turrets And Trenches (3:36)
3. Let’s Play A Game Of Telephone (2:56)
4. Slowed Down English Ambulance (4:12)
5. Setting Fire To Street Signs (3:48)
And The Sky Went Red / Signs Of Collapse
Split CDEP
SHG 05
Two Michigan metal-core bands at their peak. ATSWR brings the short and sweet punch while SOC play it out more gruff and epic. For fans of A Life Once Lost, Burnt By The Sun, Between The Buried And Me, and The Red Chord. CDEP comes on a clear edged fan disc!
1. Please Be Proportionate And Like To Dance (2:03)
2. It’s OK, I Like Corey Feldman Too (3:37)
3. Last Summer I Staged A Knife Fight (3:55)
4. We Eat Pieces Of Shit Like You For Breakfast (6:33)
5. Messiah’s Passion Fanfair #4 For Tubas And Flute (3:50)
6. Them Bones (2:24)
Flight Of The Jesus Dog
Untitled CD
SHG 04
FOTJD come grinding through the metal gates at breakneck speed. Blending blinding blast beats with serious groove, this trio has created a masterpiece of artful yet focused terror. Fans of Pig Destoyer, Nasum, and Cryptopsy will be floored by this violent and offensive creation. Murder in the Midwest!
1. Track 1 (1:24)
2. Track 2 (1:14)
3. Track 3 (1:43)
4. Track 4 (2:18)
5. Track 5 (1:25)
6. Track 6 (2:23)
7. Track 7 (2:40)
8. Track 8 (1:13)
9. Track 9 (1:09)
10. Track 10 (2:16)
11. Track 11 (1:47)
12. Track 12 (1:30)
13. Track 13 (1:54)
Signs Of Collapse
Weep For The Lives Your Wishes Never Led CD
SHG 03
Metal-core masters offer up their debut full length CD. This 45 minutes of Motown metal will destroy everything in its path. Fans of Between The Buried And Me, The Red Chord, and Burnt By The Sun will appreciate!
1. Intro (1:38)
2. And You Thought This Last Bullet Was For Me? (3:30)
3. Electronic Music Is For Drug Addicts And Hippies (3:39)
4. The Dashboard Watched Us Like That Candle From Beauty And The Beast (5:39)
5. The Last Leg Of A Disease (4:38)
6. Don’t Smile While You Play Because It’s Really Pissing Me Off (5:12)
7. No Less Than 3.14159265… (3:48)
8. The Gavel That You Hold So Dear Has Nailed Its Last Nail (14:51)
Two Stars Burning Sun
The Depression Diet CD
SHG 01
Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Two Stars Burning Sun were pioneers in the scene. Combining the intensity and passion of Engine Down, Serotonin, Saetia, and You & I, TSBS pushed themselves, and inspired many others. This is their swan song release, 40 minutes of their absolute best!
1. Connection/Separation (4:15)
2. One With You (3:34)
3. The Greatest Winter (2:50)
4. Before (0:50)
5. Waternoose (3:52)
6. Twilight Mile (5:15)
7. During (0:58)
8. Kid In Play (3:00)
9. Seeds To Grow (4:37)
10. The Depression Diet (4:15)
11. After (1:07)
Comments are closed. | dclm-gs1-106840000 |
The most common substance in the universe is called dark matter. It doesn’t shine or reflect light. We can’t even see it.
It is an invisible substance composed of atoms that are far different from those that make up the universe’s normal matter, such as stars and galaxies.
In fact, if you drove into a wall made of dark matter, you wouldn’t crack a headlight or inflate an airbag. You wouldn’t even know it happened. But what happens to dark matter during a collision?
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope got a first-hand view of how dark matter behaves during a titanic collision between two galaxy clusters. The wreck created a ripple of dark matter, which is somewhat similar to a ripple formed in a pond when a rock hits the water.
The ring-like structure is evident in a composite image of the cluster made from Hubble observations. The ring can be seen in the blue map of the cluster’s dark matter distribution, which is superimposed on an image of the cluster.
The Hubble astronomers say it is the first time they have detected dark matter as having a unique structure that is different from the gas and galaxies in the cluster. The researchers spotted the ring unexpectedly while they were mapping the distribution of dark matter within the galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17 (ZwCl 0024+1652), located 5 billion light-years from Earth. The ring measures 2.6 million light-years across.
Although astronomers cannot see dark matter, they can infer its existence in galaxy clusters by observing how its gravity bends the light of more distant background galaxies, a powerful effect called gravitational lensing. The blue streaks near the center of another Hubble image of the cluster are the distorted shapes of more distant galaxies, whose light was bent and magnified by the powerful gravity of Cl 0024+17.
The collision between the two galaxy clusters, the astronomers explained, created a ripple of dark matter that left distinct footprints in the shapes of the background galaxies. It’s like looking at the pebbles on the bottom of a pond with ripples on the surface. The pebbles’ shapes appear to change as the ripples pass over them. So, too, the background galaxies behind the ring show coherent changes in their shapes due to the presence of the dense ring. Although the invisible matter has been found before in other galaxy clusters, astronomers say it has never been detected to be so largely separated from the hot gas and the galaxies that make up galaxy clusters.
The astronomers found previous research that suggested the cluster had collided with another cluster 1 to 2 billion years ago. They then created computer simulations of galaxy cluster collisions. The simulations show that when the two clusters smash together, the dark matter falls to the center of the combined cluster and sloshes back out. As the dark matter moves outward, it begins to slow down under the pull of gravity and pile up, like cars bunched up on a freeway.
Get more stuff like this
in your inbox
| dclm-gs1-106850000 |
Hatching Chickens
What You Need
• Calendar
• Newspaper
• Chick food prop
• Water prop
Hatching Chickens
To help children understand the importance of carefully observing and caring for eggs and chickens in the classroom.
This lesson is intended to help students realize that they can learn a lot about chickens—and animals in general—through close observation. They also should come to understand that it is important to learn about the special needs of eggs/chicks in order to take care of them, whether on a farm or in a classroom hatching project.
This lesson can be used as an orientation for students before doing a chicken-hatching unit in class. It may also be used in conjunction with the unit to emphasize the importance of the proper care for eggs/chicks.
Students begin the lesson by expressing what they know about chickens in general and then are encouraged to think and talk about how eggs hatch into chicks and the kinds of special things that are needed to care for eggs/chicks. Students then watch a short movie of a chick hatching from an egg. They discuss what they observe to help reinforce and broaden what they are learning. Then students are prompted to think about what they would need (and how they should behave) if they were to have an egg-hatching project in their classroom. To help reinforce their ideas, they read about one kindergarten classroom's egg-hatching project and close the lesson by depicting the materials and acting out the processes and behavior that would be needed to successfully hatch eggs and take care of newborn chicks in a classroom.
In teaching students at this early level, it would be helpful if they walked away from this lesson with an understanding that they can learn a lot about the animals, plants, and other worldly things around them simply by observing and exploring. (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p. 333.) When possible, it is recommended that students work in small teams to ask and answer questions about their surroundings and to share their findings with classmates. It is also important to foster scientific values by recognizing instances of them in the work of individual students and student groups. For example, praise should be given simply for curiosity and creativity. (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p. 15.)
In lessons involving the collection and housing of live animals in a classroom for observation, it is important to remember that, while most children want to treat animals carefully, not all do, and that some children can be cruel. Nevertheless, students at this early level should have opportunities, in the context of science, to interact with living things in ways that promote respect. If you are not already familiar with the National Science Teachers Association's Guidelines for Responsible Use of Live Animals and Dissection in the Science Classroom, please familiarize yourself with them. (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p. 15.)
Planning Ahead
Background Reading:
You may wish to read Hatching Eggs: A Step by Step Guide, which details how to properly incubate eggs and care for newly hatched chicks in a classroom environment.
Another more detailed and science-related resource that is worth reading is Hatching Eggs in the Classroom: A Teacher's Guide.
As a fun and interesting way to get the class thinking and talking about chickens, ask a number of basic orientation questions like these:
• What can you tell me about chickens?
• What do they look like?
• What kinds of sounds do they make?
• Where do they (usually) live?
• What kinds of things do they do? Eat? Need to survive?
Once students are tuned into the lives of chickens, get them to start thinking about how baby chicks are born and the kinds of special circumstances necessary for chicks to be hatched successfully. Ask questions like these:
• How are baby chickens or "chicks" born?
• How long do you think it takes for an egg to hatch?
• What kinds of things do eggs need to hatch?
• What happens to an egg if it doesn't get these things?
• Once a chick is born, what kinds of things does it need to grow up healthy?
• Can you think of any other animals that are hatched from eggs?
Having students think about these and other related egg-hatching questions will help them develop a better understanding of what chicks need to hatch from eggs (and the kind of special measures that would be needed if they were to do their egg-hatching project in class).
Begin this section of the lesson by asking the class this question:
• Would you like to see a baby chick being hatched?
With that, have students use their Hatching Chickens student esheet to watch Baby Chicks Hatching, a movie of an egg being hatched in an incubator, from the Museum of Science and Industry. Students can play the short movie over again and again so they can see and discuss all the different aspects of what they are observing. This would include identifying and talking about: the incubator and its purpose; how the chick uses its beak to peck out of the shell; and the look and condition of the tired, wet newborn once it has been fully hatched. This can be done by asking questions like these:
• Where is the hatching taking place?
• What is the chick doing during the hatching process?
• How does the chick look?
Make sure to emphasize the special needs and delicacy of the hatching process. Also, as noted on the website, make sure students understand that, even though the movie doesn't show it, the chick spends about 5 minutes pecking at the shell, followed by about 15 to 20 minutes of rest.
Optional Activity:
Now that students have a better idea of the birthing process and the special conditions necessary for its success, you may wish to have students do the Egg Poem and Chick Song student sheet. Students can chorally read/sing along with these works to further reinforce what they have just watched and learned about what eggs need to enable chicks to hatch.
Next, have students imagine that they have the job of taking care of and hatching some chicks in their classroom. Have them brainstorm about what the classroom would need in order to properly take care of an egg, what they would need to hatch it, and how they would care for a chick once it is hatched. Have them address key questions such as these:
• What would we need to do this project?
• What would we need to do (or not do) to help the eggs hatch?
• What would we need to do to help the chicks survive once they are born?
To get a better idea of the kinds of things (and measures) that would be needed in an actual classroom hatching project, have students use their student esheets to visit Mrs. Baston's Kindergarten Web Page. This colorful resource has pictures of a kindergarten classroom's egg-hatching project. Take time to look at each picture and read each caption to give students a better idea of the stages involved in the egg/hatching/chick caretaking process. During the exploration and discussion, emphasize key points like:
• It takes 21 days for a chick to grow inside an egg.
• Eggs need to be warmed in an incubator.
• After being hatched, chicks will need to be housed in a separate "chick house" with plenty of food, water, and warmth.
• Chicks can be held after a couple of days. People need to be very gentle when handling them.
• The chicks will need to be taken to a farm or other place where they have room to roam about and continue to grow big and healthy.
This can be done by asking these questions, which are posed on the student esheet:
• How long does it take for a chick to grow inside an egg?
• Where did the class keep the eggs before they were hatched? Why?
• Where did the class put the chicks after they were hatched?
• What is important to remember when handling a chick?
• Where did the chicks go after Mrs. Baston's class?
Make sure students understand that, although all 14 eggs in Mrs. Baston's class hatched, often some eggs do not hatch. Have students think about why this may happen. Answers may include because an egg is not healthy or doesn't get enough warmth.
Depending on your preference, student understanding of the lesson can be assessed using one of the two activities below:
Option 1: This Is How We Hatch an Egg
As a way to review the lesson material, divide the class into four main groups:
1. The Eggs—two to four students who portray eggs, which hatch and become chicks
2. The Incubator—four to five students hold hands in a circle to warm the incubating eggs
3. The Chick House—four to five students hold hands in a circle housing the newborn chicks
4. The Caretakers—the rest of the class watch over the eggs, transfer the chicks to the chick house, and provide food, water, and warmth
As suggested above, the eggs can be placed inside the hand-holding incubator group to be warmed. The caretakers can use a calendar and pretend to count off the 21 days needed for the eggs to hatch. When the special time comes, the eggs can begin to peck at their eggshells and pretend to be newborn chicks. (It might be fun to have the class sing the short "I'm a Little Chicken" song they may have performed earlier as a way to celebrate this remarkable hatching process.) Once the chicks have hatched, the caretakers will need to set up the chick house, having group members form a circle holding hands, and providing props—real or portrayed by students—for water, food, and a heat lamp. Then the caretakers can carefully move the chirping chicks to this area to be housed. After the caretakers have counted off a couple of days, they and the former incubators can gently pet and handle the growing, fluffy chirping chicks.
(If possible, at different points, members of each group should talk about what they are doing and why it is important or necessary.)
Option 2: Caring For Eggs
Hand out the Caring for Eggs and Chickens student sheet. Have students first look over the sheet, then have them circle the images or phrases that are an important part of caring for eggs during the incubation and hatching process. Conversely, have them cross out the images or phrases that are not appropriate in this process. Then hold a class discussion to discuss what students circled and crossed out and why.
To summarize the lesson, you might want to hold a general discussion reviewing what students learned from this lesson. Questions may include:
• What did you learn about chickens today?
• When hatching eggs, what do you have to be careful about?
• What special needs do chicks (and other baby animals) have?
• What kinds of things could happen if you are not careful with an egg, chick, or other animal you might be taking care of?
In addition to the resources cited as "Background Reading" at the start of this lesson, here are some other resources that can be used to help guide an in-class hatching project:
42eXplore's Topic page on eggs features an extensive listing of diverse and interesting egg-related Web resources, lessons, games, and activity ideas that students may enjoy.
Did you find this resource helpful?
Lesson Details
Grades Themes Type Project 2061 Benchmarks National Science Standards
AAAS Thinkfinity | dclm-gs1-106860000 |
Refine Search
Taco Bell's Chihuahua kept on short leash
...immediately on the map in those states in a way that it just wasn't before," said Taco Bell chief marketing officer Vada Hill. Recognizing that consumers wanted more of the dog, Taco Bell quickly shifted the emphasis to the Chihuahua. So far... | dclm-gs1-106870000 |
Richard Clamp > Pipeline > Pipeline::Base
Annotate this POD
New 5
Open 0
View/Report Bugs
Module Version: 3.12 Source
use Pipeline::Base;
$object = Pipeline::Base->new()
$object->debug( 10 );
The new() method is a constructor that returns an instance of receiving class.
init( LIST );
init() is called by the constructor, new() and is passed all of its arguments in LIST.
debug( [ SCALAR ] )
The debug() method gets and sets the debug state of the OBJECT. Setting it to a true value will cause messages sent to emit() to be printed to the terminal. If debug() is called as a class method it always will return true.
emit( SCALAR )
emit() is a debugging tool. It will cause the the SCALAR to be formatted and sent to the log() method if the current debugging level is set to a true value.
log( SCALAR )
The log() method will send SCALAR to STDERR by default. It performs no processing of SCALAR and merely sends its results to the error handle. To change your logging mechanism simply override this method in the class as you see fit.
James A. Duncan <>
syntax highlighting: | dclm-gs1-106880000 |
Rate Yahoo & MSN Evilness, Too
Remember Evil Or Not? That's the site we wrote about last month that lets you rate how evil (or not) Google is based on current news stories. Growing concern over evilness has allowed the site to grow rapidly into new areas. In addition to rating Google's evilness here, you can now rate Microsoft's evilness here and Yahoo's evilness here.
Once again, Ask Jeeves is in the tricky position of being left out. They aren't considered big enough to warrant evilness measurements. But then again, they're probably relieved that they aren't considered potentially evil enough for such ratings.
Trend charts on evil are available for each company in the upper-right hand corner of their respective sites. Google's actually on a bit of a downswing. C'mon. Someone please mash up Google's stock price with the evil scale. Doing a very rough comparison, I see a bit of a stock price dive during Google's evil spike. But then again, recently both evilness and the stock prices have been falling.
Keep in mind that Evil Or Not does NOT use EvilRank. EvilRank, as it's known around the 'plex, is an internally developed scale that Google uses to determine the potential consequences of its actions.
Keep in mind, it's actually EvilRank Beta. So while some might not agree that EvilRank worked well with the China decision, rest assured that EvilRank may improve over time and better keep Googlers out of evil's way.
If you're curious to know more about EvilRank, Gray Hat News managed to get the scoop on how it works. Details here; photo below:
Interestingly, Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny shared on his personal blog how this same person recently lectured on evilness at Yahoo:
Jeremy will no doubt protest that he never actually said this person spoke at Yahoo. Jeremy will say he was simply referring to a Yoda versus Darth Vader PowerPoint face-off over at Presentation Zen. But the evidence is clear that Presentation Zen got its photo from someone upset about Darth making the rounds at search companies.
Look closely at the slide. Notice how it says
Search your feelings.
I've bolded the key word, Search. This isn't some funny, made up slide. This is actual evidence of Darth Vader pitching evil to our gatekeepers of the web. Why else would the word "search" be in his presentation?
Everyone will see the proof soon enough. One of these search companies will go with the "Search Your Feelings" in the near future, and now you'll know exactly where it came from.
Finally, with all this attention on being evil, it's worthwhile warning people against trying to buy or sell evilness on the web.
Yes, there are many evilness brokers out there promising to get your EvilRank higher through reciprocal evil trading, such as the dude in black above. But if this is spotted, you could be severely penalized. That's why you should make use of the noevil attribute, to transparently signal that you are buying evil rather than honestly earning evil the hard way. | dclm-gs1-106890000 |
Hoaxes: Nearly as deadly as a virus
Learn about the danger of virus hoaxes and how to avoid them.
There are very few people who can say that they have never been the victim of a virus infection. That's just the...
nature of the online world these days. A virus infection can take down your network, destroy data, reveal confidential information and much more. But do you know what else is nearly as damaging as an actual virus infection? Virus hoaxes.
The problem with most hoaxes is that there is no programmatical way to prevent them from hurting you. Hoaxes work by exploiting your fears, your desire for self-preservation, your gullibility, your common sense, your desire for knowledge, your intelligence and your ignorance. In other words, hoaxes are a social-engineering attack to which everyone is vulnerable.
So, what is a virus hoax? Well, it can be as simple as an e-mail message warning you about a spreading virus with instructions on deleting the virus file from your system. Often such instructions guide you through a process of hamstringing your system -- no virus necessary. Others hoaxes may include an attached scan and repair utility that actually installs a remote access backdoor on your system.
A virus hoax can convince people to perform malicious activities on their own system, open access pathways, purchase unneeded software, send money, reveal private or confidential information, avoid software, bypass legitimate information, avoid benevolent help and more.
I've found a great site that chronicles the spread of virus hoaxes and other computer security related hoaxes: vmyths.com. Take some time and peruse the archives. I'm sure you'll find out about a handful of myths, hoaxes or scams that you or someone you know succumbed to.
By the way, here are a few quick tips on how to avoid getting duped by a hoax:
1. Don't believe everything you read online, especially if it is sent to you via e-mail.
2. ALWAYS verify the source of information before you accept it.
3. Always check with other sources to corroborate the story before accepting it.
4. Never use any utility, program, etc. attached to an e-mail message from someone you don't know or that you didn't specifically request.
5. If a virus issue is real, every one of the major virus vendors (such as Symantec/Norton, Trend Micro, Network Associates/McAfee, etc.) will have details about it within hours of its discovery.
6. If in doubt about an infection, turn of the affected system until you can obtain a verified repair option or prove the issue is a hoax
About the author
This was first published in August 2002
Dig Deeper on Network intrusion detection and prevention and malware removal
Forgot Password?
Your password has been sent to: | dclm-gs1-106900000 |
FAQ: Troubleshooting Windows hardware
Have a question about troubleshooting Windows hardware? You may find the answer in this FAQ about Windows hardware troubleshooting.
Issues often arise when working with any Windows hardware component, particularly computer memory and hard disk...
drives. Below you'll find some of the hardware troubleshooting questions Windows administrators asked of Bernie Klinder, SearchWincomputing.com's hardware guru emeritus.
Why doesn't external disk drive recognize C: drive?
I recently formatted my C hard drive. When I was reloading my external hard drive that I use as a backup, it loaded as a device with a removable disk. Now I cannot get it to recognize my hard drive as a disk drive.
Unplug the external disk drive, check the cable connections (including power) for the internal drive, make sure it is configured as the master hard drive, and confirm the BIOS.
How can I calculate how much physical computer memory I need?
What are the counters I use to detect physical memory constraints and how can I calculate how much physical memory I need?
Sizing your server is a little different. There are a number of factors to consider, including number of concurrent connections, application requirements, server functions, etc. The minimum amount of memory I would use for any server is 512MB, and then add memory from there based on vendor recommendations. It's a bit dated, but there's a great book excerpt from Tuning and Sizing NT Server.
How can I double-boot two separate systems?
What's the easiest way to double-boot two separate HHDs on my system? It's a ASUS A78X Mb.
That depends on what operating systems you wish to dual boot. For more information, check out this Microsoft article.
Why does my system constantly ask to reactivate Windows XP?
When I reboot my Windows XP Pro machine it asks me to reactivate Windows XP. It always reactivates with no problems, but this is getting a little annoying. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
This behavior is not normal, however before you reactivate again, try running the system file checker utility. Click Start --> Run --> and type "sfc.exe /scannow" without the quotes. This utility checks to see if critical system files have become corrupted and it replaces them. If it doesn't work, I would consider reinstalling XP before you run out of activations.
Why can't I create a backup on Windows 2000 Server SP4?
I'm having problems trying to create a backup on my Windows 2000 Server SP4. I go through the wizard steps and start the backup. After a few seconds it comes back with an error saying I do not have access to media even though I am logged on as the administrator. What am I doing wrong?
There are a number of issues that can cause this issue, and it would be easier to troubleshoot with the exact error message and content of your event logs. However one of the most common causes is a corruption of the Removable Storage Manager (RSM) database, which will prevent creation or access to a media pool. For more information check out Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 288856 .
Why do I receive an 'invalid product code' error during WinXP install?
I installed a new copy of Windows XP but got an error saying "invalid product code" and Microsoft refuses to activate. Is there anything I can I do or must I take it back to the store?
That really depends on the specific issue with your product code. The store that sold you the PC should have provided you with a paper license that contains a watermark and hologram with your license code.
Some unscrupulous shops don't want to pay Microsoft's license fee and load a version of XP using a pirated license code, or a code that has been used before. If you do not have the paper license, go back to the store and demand one. If you do have the paper license, make sure that you are typing in the information correctly (the numbers 8 and 5 often looks like a B and S). If the store won't help you, report the problem to Microsoft's piracy center.
What does a 'hardlock driver' error message mean?
I just upgraded my Windows 2000 Pro machine with XP SP2. I am getting a strange error message when trying to update my Symantec antivirus using the Intelligent Updater download. The error message reads "HLVDD - Hardlock Virtual Device" and then says "Cannot find ///FAST Hardlock Driver." I also get an event ID 7000 referencing Hardlock service in Event Viewer. Any idea what that error means? The only time it shows up is when updating the virus definitions from Symantec.
A hardlock driver is usually a related to a physical dongle that is attached to a USB or serial port as a arcane manner of software licensing. There is no reference to it in Microsoft's or Symantec's knowledge base, so I can only imagine it must be related to something else you're running.
Dig Deeper on Windows Data Storage Administration Tools
Forgot Password?
Your password has been sent to: | dclm-gs1-106910000 |
Guinea Baboon
Guinea Baboon
COMMON NAME: Guinea baboon, yellow baboon
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Primates
FAMILY: Cercopithecidae
GENUS SPECIES: Papio papio
DESCRIPTION: Smallest of the baboon species, they have reddish-brown fur; black face; yellow-brown sideburns; tail carried in round arc
MALE nape and shoulder hair long in adult males, forming light hood
MALE 50-83 cm (1.6-2.8 ft.)
FEMALE 45-70 cm (1.5-2.3 ft.)
MALE 13-26 kg (28.6-57 lbs)
FEMALE 13-26 kg (28.6-57 lbs)
DIET: grass, greens, seeds, fruits, tubers, roots, leaves, nuts, cereals, invertebrates, young birds, small mammals
GESTATION: 184 days
MALE approximately 4 years
FEMALE approximately 4 years
LIFE SPAN: 35-45 years
RANGE: western equatorial Africa
HABITAT: dry forests, gallery forests, and adjoining bush savannas or steppes
STATUS: IUCN Lower Risk/Near Threatened
CITES Appendix II
USFWS Not listed
1. Guinea baboons are found in grassy, rocky, and steppe habitats in western Africa. They live in troops of up to 200 individuals, each with a set place in a hierarchy. Group living provides protection from predators such as lions and hyenas. Baboons are omnivores, eating almost anything available, which allows them to occupy areas with few resources or harsh conditions. Their presence may help improve habitats because they dig for water and spread seeds in their waste, encouraging plant growth.
2. Baboons live everywhere in Africa where they can find drinking water. Thay have dog-like muzzles and limb modifications which allow them to walk long distances on the ground.
3. Baboons can be an important food source for other animals. Some of the largest eagles will feed on them or their young. The African crowned hawk eagle will often hunt in pairs. One swoops and perches among a troop of baboons, and while they mob it, the mate swoops from behind and picks up an unwary baboon.
4. Mother-daughter bonds among baboons last into adulthood. The maternal bond with sons lasts until sexual maturity, when juvenile males leave their natal group to enter another group or become solitary.
5. The social structure of Guinea baboons is multi-leveled. Adult males maintain separate social units, containing females, juveniles, and subadult males.
6. Guinea baboons are highly communicative animals. They communicate with one another by using a variety of vocalizations and physical interactions. In addition to vocalizations to one another, these animals have vocal communications apparently intended to be received and interpreted by predators.
Guinea baboons likely play a role in soil aeration through the digging of roots and tubers. They are also likely to disperse the seeds of the fruits and grains they eat. They also serve as a prey item for their predators.
As crop-growing areas are extended throughout Africa, baboons may take to raiding crops, which leaves them vulnerable to farmers viewing them as pests.
Survival of many baboon species has become a matter of preserving the ecosystems in which they live, in large enough patches to allow viable populations to survive. Successful management depends upon controlling human encroachment.
Macdonald, D. (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Mammals. Vol 1. London: Equinox Ltd., 1984.
Parker, S. (ed.). Grizmeks Encyclopedia of Mammals. Vol II. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., 1990. | dclm-gs1-106920000 |
Anthony R.
After too much wine I talk endlessly about
how stuff works
If I could only drink one wine forever
Spanish Garnacha
Drunken munchies
pulled pork
The wine that got you into wine
sampler cases of $5 wine at Trader Joe's
Current watering hole
Most recently at: Wine Riot Boston
Showing wines matching:
Tasted at event: Loire Valley Trade Tasting: Boston
2008 Domaine Rochouard Bourgueil
France, Loire Valley, Bourgueil
Write a Review!
he loved it!
he liked it!
2008 Jean Dumont Chinon
France, Loire Valley, Chinon
Write a Review!
he loved it! | dclm-gs1-106930000 |
Sign up ×
Can I get some advice on what I should do next? Laptop was stolen yesterday and they tried to log in my facebook today like 20 minutes ago.
share|improve this question
Since this is tagged "passwords", I suppose you have already changed your passwords? – S.L. Barth Oct 19 '11 at 7:16
+1 to @S.L.Barth - Perhaps if you could provide more detail as to what sort of guidance you're looking for (i.e.: asset recovery, social media account security, etc.) we could better answer the question. Right now, it's a bit ambiguous. – Iszi Oct 19 '11 at 12:52
Michael - as @Iszi says, you'll need to provide us with more information. As it stands this isn't a very useful question. – Rory Alsop Oct 19 '11 at 22:00
4 Answers 4
Although you did not mention in which country you are in, it is very likely that stealing is a crime there. So you should go to the police.
share|improve this answer
First thing: change your passwords. Start with your email (since this is the gateway to many of your other accounts via password recovery). Keep in mind that the thief may have a fair amount of information about you, so make sure the new passwords are not easy to guess.
Then, for accounts that support it (e.g. Gmail), force-logout any other sessions that are active. (E.g. on Gmail there's a link in the bottom right corner that says something like "Open in 1 other location Details" -- click on the details link and use the button that logs out other sessions.) It may be helpful to an investigation if you record the IP address that the other session is using.
Then report the theft to local police.
share|improve this answer
As others have mentioned, GMail/LogMeIn tracks IP address usage on your accounts.
Luckily, Facebook has the same capability - go to and it will display the locations, OS, browser - and most important, IP information of all the sessions open in your account. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure (as also mentioned) if you provide the IP address to law enforcement under the charge of stolen property, you'll more than likely see justice, and your laptop.
EDIT: Didn't realize this question is old - hopefully you've gotten your laptop back. :P
share|improve this answer
This may be hindsight at this point, but I use LogMeIn on all my(the company's) PC's. Two of these were stolen. Luckily LogMeIn keeps track of all ipaddresses that are used by each PC. I have submitted the two ipaddresses to the police, and have had the two laptops returned to me.
Think back to remember what you had on the laptop. I know gmail keeps up with ipaddresses as well. Maybe you too had something on the laptop to help you find it.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-106940000 |
Seeking Alpha
What is your profession? ×
Profile| Send Message|
( followers)
When stocks are cheap they either represent a great buying opportunity or will ultimately be a nasty value trap. This article will take a close look at Sequans Communications (NYSE:SQNS) and review both the investment case and the competitive landscape.
Business model
An investment is SQNS is a pure play on 4G and the secular growth trend of the mobile internet. Founded in 2003 the company was formed to address the WiMAX opportunity where it is now a global leader, SQNS expanded in 2009 to address the LTE market.
King of WiMAX
SQNS currently enjoys healthy market share in the 4G WiMAX space and the lion share of the smartphone market. SQNS early success in WiMAX was attributed to the following factors;
1. Highly integrated chip, ideal for smartphones.
2. Successful relationship with smartphone maker HTC.
The HTC EVO 4G smartphone released on the Sprint (NYSE:S) network in June 2010 was a smash hit for SQNS and key behind the company's revenue ramp last year. Then in July last year SQNS largest customer HTC signaled softness in demand and since then WiMAX sales have fallen off a cliff.
LTE is the way forward
LTE comprises of two main standards, TDD-LTE used in China, India, Russia, Japan and Australia and FDD-LTE used in USA and Europe. SQNS initially positioned itself to compete in the TDD-LTE space and is currently in trials with wireless carriers in India and China.
I believe management made a mistake betting their chips on TDD-LTE rather than FDD-LTE. We have seen delays in the rollout and commercial deployments in China and India and this has affected SQNS. Whilst SQNS has announced CPE and embedded device wins in Australia and Brazil the real action is in the US FDD-LTE market with smartphones embracing LTE. SQNS was late to the party with their SQN 3110.
LTE handset market
As I am unable to source market share data for the LTE market I will refer to the top selling smartphones in the US as a barometer for this market.
Smartphone4G ChipSet
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Iphone 5Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) MDM9615M
Samsung Galaxy S IIIUS market QCOM built in LTE System on a chip, other markets Samsung's own chip.
HTC One XQCOM built in LTE System on a chip
Motorola Razr MaxxMotorola's own T6VP0XBG chip
QCOM is the leading independent 4G chip vendor with key design wins for the Iphone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X. Samsung and Motorola have taken a vertically integrated approach and use their own chips. Vertical integration amongst handset providers may not leave much room for independent providers outside of QCOM making it very difficult for SQNS to achieve design wins in this market.
According to ABI Research, the number of 4G chipsets shipped annually will increase from 14.5 million in 2010 to 245.9 million in 2014, representing a CAGR of approximately 103%. Most notably the growth will be in LTE and not WiMAX.
click to enlarge
Turnaround story: What to look for before investing in SQNS
It's tempting to look at SQNS with a market value of just $60million and think its super cheap. After all they are a pure play on 4G and the forecasts provided by ABI Research are staggering. In order for SQNS to turn around their business investors should look for one of two catalysts;
1. LTE smartphone design win with a Tier 1 handset vendor: This would secure their future and lead to a massive revenue ramp. As mentioned smartphone vendors are using a vertically integrated approach and this is a competitive market.
2. Revenue growth: SQNS has announced CPE and embedded device wins in LTE. Time will tell if these and future design wins actually lead to any material revenue growth. Ideally we would need to see strong revenue growth as evidence of success in the non-smartphone/tablet market.
WiMAX sales have dried up for SQNS, and so far they haven't been able to replicate their success in WiMAX to LTE. Management's strategy was to initially focus on TD-LTE particularly China and India, rather than FDD-LTE and the US smartphone market. This was a mistake as the US smartphone market has started supporting LTE.
ABI Research is forecasting strong growth for 4G device chipset sales with most of the growth in LTE. QCOM has a strong foothold in the US Smartphone market, and numerous smartphone vendors are using their own 4G chips making it difficult for SQNS to compete.
Investors should look for one of two catalysts before investing in SQNS; an LTE smartphone design win with a Tier 1 handset vendor or a strong ramp in revenues from their non-smartphone business. Until then investors may be better served with QCOM as the preferred play in the fast growing 4g chip market.
| dclm-gs1-106950000 |
Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag Cheats, Exploits and Secrets
By / 2 years ago
The tradition of cheating in games to progress further has dissipated over the past 10 years, simply because there are no more of those nearly impossible first-person shooters, those painstakingly difficult levels, and the encouragement to throw your console into infernal fire and watch it burn into a crisp.
That’s why many games don’t actually come with formal cheats now, but those that do only do for the fun of it.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is like that, with a few fun cheats that can give you godly abilities. However, you can’t save while these cheats are active, so you know quite well that the developers added them just for the fun of it.
Of course, there are exploits as well, which are discover and (even sometimes invented) as a result of the genius tendencies that we gamers possess.
Following is the list of all the cheats known to us so far that can be accessed in AC4. But first, let’s talk about a little exploit:
Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag Cheats, Exploits and Secrets
You can unlock various cheats to use in the singleplayer campaign by participating in the Abstergo Challenges. These extra goals not only unlock cheats in the campaign mode, but also unlock various items in the multiplayer as well.
The following are the so far known cheats, sorted in the order of number of Abstergo Challenges required:
Celestial Navigation
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 10
Effect: Controls the day/night cycle
Arrr Matey!
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 20
Effect: Makes Edward speak only in pirate clichés
No Quarter
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 30
Effect: Turns off health regeneration for Edward and the Jackdaw
Scourge of the Seven Seas
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 40
Effect: Brings your wanted level to max, and keeps it there
Loaded to the Gunwale
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 50
Effect: Makes Edward continuously drunk
Poseidon’s Will
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 60
Effect: Can eliminate waves, or make permanent huge waves
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 70
Effect: Makes Edward and the Jackdaw invincible
Shiver me Timbers
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 80
Effect: Turns enemies into Rabbids
Armed to the Teeth
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 90
Effect: Both Edward and the Jackdraw have unlimited Ammunition
Deceased Crew
Number of Challenges to Unlock: 100
Effect: Gives the Jackdraw a skeleton crew
Naval Battle Exploit
So you want to capture and loot an enemy ship, eh? Well, the game says it’s customary for you to shoot at them, weaken them significantly, board them, and then kill off their crews.
There’s a simple work around if you, like most of us, find this a rather longish procedure. AC4 gives you the advantage with the fact that transition from being on-foot to being in the ship is as seamless as mounting on a horse.
What you can do is approach the target ship you wish to board, get off your ship, swim to the enemy boat, kill off the crew, swim back to the Jackdaw, and shoot the enemy ship once or twice and win the boarding sequence.
It’s actually easier said than done, but if you can manage to practice it properly, most of them ships will be a cakewalk to take over.
If you have discovered any additional cheats or exploits, do let us know by commenting below!
• Hackerlol
There is an infinite money exploit! On sequence 3 mission 2 pickpocket all templars and then reload last checkpoint and you will still have the money!!! | dclm-gs1-106960000 |
Mary Sidney Herbert
Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembrokei is acknowledged as the most educated woman in England at the time, comparable only to Queen Elizabeth.
Mary was trained in rhetoric, scripture, the classics, law, music, geography, hawking, hunting, needlework, and history. She studied medicine and alchemy, having an active interest in spiritual magic; she was close with the leading “magicians” of the day, including....
| dclm-gs1-106970000 |
Joanna Swan is a singer who with songwriter Nick Pullin, form the music group Ilya. Based in Bristol, Swan and Pullin began writing music together in the 1980s and performed at private functions and numerous Jazz festivals including the Soho Jazz Festival. They went on to release numerous albums with independent labels under the name of Joanna Swan.
In 2002 Ilya signed a recording deal with Virgin Records and a publishing deal with Chrysalis. They have since released numerous EPs and remixes for other artists on the Virgin rosta and in February 2004 they released their album entitled ‘They Died For Beauty’. Ilya followed this with 'Somerset' (2006), 'Hootchi Cootchi' (under the name Jo Swan)(2007), 'Carving Heads On Cherry Stones' (2009) and 'Songs From The 90's' in 2010, a retrospective of unreleased recordings.. Their songs have featured on advertising campaigns for Revlon, Cacharel’s ‘Amour Amour’ fragrance and David Beckham’s ‘Instinct’ fragrance.
1. 19 Dec 2005
Joanna Swan features in a project.
Editing Fashion | dclm-gs1-106980000 |
Noteworthy News and Analysis from Around the World
How Long Can Berlusconi Evade Justice?
The Sacramento Bee, Jun. 21, 2003
"Talk about your Hollywood endings! There was Silvio Berlusconi in court, accused of trying to bribe judges into blessing his attempted takeover of a major food company back in the 1980s. Complicated stuff like that. A verdict was near. Was he in imminent peril of going to jail? Hardly. Just in the nick of time, Italy's parliament came through with a law that grants immunity from prosecution to the country's top five politicians during their term of office. Guess how many of the top five were being prosecuted? One. Guess who it was? No prize if you guessed Silvio Berlusconi. Scratch one bribery trial."
"He's the prime minister, by the way, and the timing of the new law was doubly beneficial. On Jul. 1, Italy takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union. Think how awkward it would be for Signor Berlusconi, just as he settled into the chairman's seat, gavel in hand, to be accosted by a couple of cops and hustled away in full view of his fellow prime ministers. The question now is whether there will be a day of reckoning in 2006, when Berlusconi's term of office ends and he again becomes subject to the same vicissitudes of life as the rest of us - at least in theory."
"What he will do then we're not sure, but he's pretty shrewd. He's already beaten two corruption raps. He's also Italy's richest man and its biggest media mogul, whose T.V. outlets reach 90 percent of the audience. How fortunate he is to have friends in high places." | dclm-gs1-106990000 |
Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system
Forgot your password?
United States
Journal orthogonal's Journal: Visitors to US to be tagged with RFID by Homeland Security 4 reports that 'the US Department of Homeland Security has decided to trial RFID tags' .... 'to track both pedestrians and vehicles entering the US to automatically record when the visitors arrive and leave in the country.'
Welcome to the Land of the Free!, number 4c62c570-70c5-11d9-9669-0800200c9a66! You'll be reflecting at 2450 MHz, enjoy your stay!
The article goes on to explain that
. . . .
What is your frequency, Kenneth?
Remind me again why the most talented foreign scientists are no longer doing research in America?
And how soon will the "success" of this program lead to tagging government employees and contractors as a prelude to tagging all citizens?
Visitors to US to be tagged with RFID by Homeland Security
Comments Filter:
• It would be unconstitutional.
I am *absolutely* confident that we can stop tagging of all US Citizens; even if the neoncons manage to get a court that would let them do it, this is beyond what the public will stand for. This is so obvious that even said neocons would not try it.
Government employees will almost certainly get RFID tags, especially in security-conscious sections.
Convicted felons? Parolees? We've already got the bracelets. Them too.
However, I fully expect the vast majority of people to carry
• It would suck if a current of sufficient voltage were to ARC across the required RFID tag...
• Thus, the question for privacy advocates is how to keep the information our wallet-based RFID tags transmit out of the goverment's hands. In this case, the outcome is entirely up-in-the-air.
Block the signal [] so you are not transmitting when you don't want to. Design the Faraday cage wallet and you have just made your millions.
• It seems mainland American is in denyal that the real threat [] is from Saudi Arabia [] and its state sponsered terrorism []. Its a pity because it would be interesting to visit the States at some time. But with the current restrictions myself as an allied Australian I wont set foot on US soil.
| dclm-gs1-107000000 |
Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop
Forgot your password?
Comment Re:I'm afraid to try (Score 1) 136
The USB port and SD card port have plastic flaps to keep the water out. The phone has a proprietary magnetic connector that doesn't need a flap for charging, though. Fortunately, there's plenty of knock-off connectors on Amazon for a few bucks.
It's actually pretty cool, I picked up a cheap stand that I use to charge the phone at night, and I have a Sony car stereo that holds the phone in its magnetic connector.
Comment Re:Get a business partner (Score 1) 146
In my experience, data coverage in the woods varies tremendously. What we call "in the middle of nowhere" is so relative; in the "middle of nowhere" in a state like Massachusetts is probably a mile or two "as the crow flies" to an area dense enough to have wireless data. "In the middle of nowhere" in California or Nevada will have excellent camping; but no data coverage.
In my opinion, you're better off finding a handful of camping sites and general locations that you know will have rock-solid data coverage; and spend your working hours there.
Comment Sony Xperia Z3 (Score 3, Interesting) 208
I've had a Sony Xperia Z3 for 6 months, and the battery capacity is shockingly giant. Idle, browsing, and reading on Kindle hardly use the battery. GPS and talking also are rather gentle on the battery. The only thing that eats battery is copying 100 GB of music over WIFI. The phone has a stamina mode to help throttle applications as well; but IMO, I'd rather only use it in emergencies.
Comment Re:Could not agree more (Score 1) 413
BUT, if you run the numbers, you will see that we NEED nukes
I used to be for nuclear power. The problem is that, when nuclear reactors get old, they require hyper-vigilance to ensure that they aren't leaking radioactive materials. We just don't have the political climate to regulate a leaky nuclear power plant.
If the US was pro-regulation, I think we could have enough checks and balances to run nuclear power safely. But, given how we don't like regulations, I'd rather just invest in energy sources that don't require such close watch.
Comment $35 Chromecast! (Score 1) 158
Use a $35 Chromecast!
You can send your entire screen to your TV with a Chromecast. You'll probably want to find some kind of wireless keyboard and/or mouse to do this.
You could also look at Android TV and see if there's a screen mirroring application. I don't know if Android TV can run ordinary Android apps, but if it can, there's already a screen mirroring program.
Finally, stick PCs are a thing. You could always run a screen sharing program on a stick PC.
IMO, I think trying to connect a PC to a TV is quickly becoming more effort than it's worth. This is for the following reasons:
• - I used to use my $1200 HTPC for Netflix and Youtube. Now, it's much easier to use a $35 Chromecast for these applications
• - Now that Android TV came out, I think we'll get a much better experience with apps designed for a remote control instead of PC apps designed for a mouse and keyboard.
• - Many smart TVs will have Android TV built-in.
Comment "Unfinished" areas (Score 1) 557
One thing I like about my house is that it has a large unfinished basement. Not only does it give me a lot of room to do messy projects, but it's very easy to run ethernet to anywhere it's needed on the first floor. I do wish I could get some kind of wired network onto the second floor, though.
In my opinion, avoid installing lots of "tech" in your walls. My house is loaded with so much obsolete wire: An old intercom system, coaxial, old electric heating wires, an old split-lead from before there was cable TV. Conduits are good, and unfinished space where you can access the ends.
Comment Re:Low Maintenance (Score 1) 557
"for example; much easier to have time to spend with people or on new productive projects rather than doing the same old maintenance; less to remember or coordinate between multiple maintenance people"
"If your municipality lets you, install a septic instead of connecting to city sewer. No sewer fee. (Just get it pumped every few years)."
My parents and I live in the same town. They have septic, I have sewer. The sewer fee is very cheap; much more preferable to dealing with a septic tank. A septic tank is also a liability if you need to get it replaced.
You are in the hall of the mountain king. | dclm-gs1-107010000 |
Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter
Forgot your password?
I also installed Windows 10 through the early adopter / developer program thing, and have not seen any of that crap (though the start tiles sure show enough other garbage that I don't care about). It's presumably an OEM load thing? /logging in for the first time in months just to avoid the anon post
Comment Re: open source 2 factor authentication? (Score 3, Interesting) 71
Google Authenticator is an open source, easy to use TOTP (and HOTP) implementation which is not bad at all. The pam module is decent, and the smart phone (androit, ios, and blackberry support) client's QR Code enrollment is very convenient. Because [TH]OTP are standards, it's compatible with any other implementation of those standards, such as and the Yubikey tokens.
Personally, I use the Google Auth client with pam_krb5 / mit kerberos using a custom preauth plugin with totp keys generated by oath and stored in an LDAP backend. It's pretty neat. I mostly went with TOTP because that allows me to more easily pre-generate keys for automation jobs, btw.
Comment Re: YES !! (Score 1) 241
Everyone hates Clear Case, except for the joker above who clearly works for them. If the mvfs implementation which implements a recursive loop (don't ever blindly use find on an mvfs volume) isn't bad enough to convince someone, the lack of granular access control and the incredibly clunky interface should be.
Comment Re: Live in a cave (Score 2) 664
Weird. The stock brakes on both the '95 Caprice and '96 Impala SS sitting in my driveway can hold the car in place. That was true when the engine was stock, and is still true after adding a shift kit, PCM tune, cat-back, intake, and valve train upgrades. It's been true on both the factory tires and the substantially wider aftermarket tires. It might be time for you to replace your brake material; you're seemingly endangering the other cars on the road.
When you're trying to power brake, BTW, you'll want to let up on the brakes just a little, and mash the gas. Don't ease in to it. ;)
Comment Re: Live in a cave (Score 2) 664
Well, if it was in article comments on the Internet, that's a whole new story... ;)
No one sells a car in the US with exclusive brake-by-wire, because nearly every state mandates the existence of a second braking system independent of the primary braking system. That's often the thing people call the "emergency brake," as compared to the "service brake." For IL, look at Article III at They must be separated such that a failure in any one part does not leave the vehicle without brakes. IL also prescribes a maximum stopping distance from a couple of speeds.
Comment Re:They probably don't want to burn affiliates (Score 2) 169
It's not really "free" to watch OTA - you have the show interrupted every few minutes by commercials, which cost you time. The problem here is that OTA broadcasting costs pretty much the same whether it goes to one TV or one million. All they pay to do is vibrate the air[1]. Cable's not that different. With Internet streaming, however, each individual connection typically costs more.
The solution is to fix the medium, IMHO. Big networks and content producers should be pushing for less expensive bandwidth or, even better, for working multicasting. :)
[1] yeah, I know how radio actually works, but I'm trying to make a point here.
Comment Re:Ethanol is a crock nobody wants (Score 1) 330
Here in the US, most new cars have fuel systems which are just fine with E85 (or more) as well. They just lack the appropriate sensors to identify the varying ethanol mix, and like the parent noted, lack adequate injector flow to handle the increased volume needed - 'cause that stuff costs money. :)
Comment Re:And in the process .... drop 10mpg (Score 4, Informative) 330
So, by replacing 10% of the gasoline with ethanol, you lose 20% of the energy? Man, ethanol really sucks! Does E85 reduce a flex fuel vehicle's mileage by 170%, then?
Since "anonymous coward" clearly doesn't know the answer, I'll help. People typically report losing about 20% of the mileage with E85 v/s gasoline, assuming no other changes (it's actually closer to 34%, but E85 is only 85% max, and then only in the summer; it's way less in cold weather, so that's probably why people see an average of 20-ish percent). Running E10 costs around 3% of your mileage, which is 1MPG in a 30 MPG car - or about the difference you'd see if you accelerate briskly from a couple more stoplights than usual.
Comment Re:List of alternatives to facebook? (Score 1) 216
Anything big enough to be a relevant general-use competitor will have a difficult time resisting the "suggestions" made by the NSA that "it would be for the best" if the data were made available to the government. You could easily set up a restricted access Word Press blog on your own server and give your friends author access, though. Then you can all write about your days on your own site, get emails when new posts are made, and generally keep in touch without everything being logged.
Or set up Majordomo and email each other. Or whatever else. ...Assuming you can set up good enough encryption, anyway. Otherwise, Prism has your number anyway. :)
Comment Re:What The Fuck? (Score 2) 216
So, the article at the top there is about selling advertising, which is a way to facilitate business people to communicate with their customers via Facebook. And you're suggesting that the idea of doctors communicating with their customers via Facebook is a ridiculous proposition which would have no application in the real world? Please come back when you're put a tad more thought into this, Anonymous Coward.
PS: I personally know at least two doctors treating chronically ill patients with whom they regularly communicate via Facebook. I might know more, but this is not a topic that I discuss with everyone I know. :) Normally, anecdote is not the sigular of data, but in this case I'm pretty sure that there has been "protected health information" recorded in Facebook's data centers.
Which bring up the question as to whether they're doing enough to comply with HIPAA laws. And PCI laws, as some bone head has probably sent credit card numbers through "private messages" at some point. With sufficient creativity, it'd probably be possible to shut Facebook down through regulatory compliance audits, unless their TOS is equally creative. ;)
| dclm-gs1-107020000 |
Forgot your password?
Submission Intelligence Official Says He Was Fired For Not Lying To Congress->
Link to Original Source
Submission Server Sky - internet and computation in orbit->
mbone writes: Even if SpaceX and other companies can drastically lower the cost of going to orbit, what are we going to do once we get there? Since the 1970's, NASA has been searching for commercial applications for space, such as making crystals or medicines in zero-gravity, but, except for communications and navigation, space as yet barely figures into commerce, largely because it is expensive to send materials there, and expensive to send finished products back. Now there is Server Sky, which is trying to build on the realization that information is the cheapest product to send to and from space, and that "traditional data centers consume almost 3% of US electrical power, and this fraction is growing rapidly. Server arrays in orbit can grow to virtually unlimited computation power, communicate with the whole world, pay for themselves with electricity savings, and greatly reduce pollution and resource usage in the biosphere." What do slashdotters (who tend to be interested in computation) think? Is there money to be made in putting the cloud above the clouds?
Link to Original Source
Comment Better Idea... (Score 1) 524
How about we are treated as if we were as important as the marketing department? I mean, without us, there would be no product to market, correct? So how about we are treated as humans instead of code-cranking-machines who do not need food, sleep, or free time on the weekends. That would be a nice, huge change.
Submission Big advance in hydrogen production could change alt energy landscape->
Link to Original Source
Submission Scientists inject ozone into packaging to make food last longer ->
An anonymous reader writes: Improving the shelf life of fresh, packaged food would cut down on waste considerably, and a group of scientists working out of the University of Glasgow think they have a solution — inject packaged food with ozone.
A retractable device is placed against the plastic (or glass) packaging, which turns some of the oxygen inside into ozone. It then remains in this form for a couple of hours and kills any bacteria/mold/fungi it encounters before reverting back to oxygen.
The end result is packaged food with a lot less bacteria contained within it and a treatment that has no impact on its taste. In real terms, it means the food gains at least an extra 24 hours of shelf life
Link to Original Source
Comment Re:FSM (Score 1) 763
I remember when the door-to-door creationists showed up in my neighborhood. Knocking in doors and handing out pamphlets about how evolution is the antithesis or religion, blah blah blah, science is evil, blah blah blah.
Of course the entire conversation starts with "What church do you go to?" Seeing that I was at my mother's house, a Catholic (in name only, pretty much agnostic), I replied with that and they ran away anyways.
Bonus points: The Catholic excuse works pretty well with Jehovah's Witnesses too.
Comment Start them young! (Score 1) 2
When I was about 8 my mom bought me a fake "laptop" with a ~4-5 inch LED screen that taught me my first programming language - Basic. When I was 9 I made a website for my 4th grade class. Definitely a BIG impact!!!! I've since passed the still working laptop on to my cousin's (also a software developer like me) son who took to it like a fish to water. My nephew is obsessed with video games and I keep trying to get him into stuff like ALICE or other child/teen computer science programs. My niece, nephews and little cousins all know how to use Linux because that's all they get on Aunt Cait's computers :)
Comment Re:but.. (Score 1) 226
More like, "hey we found these fossils and foot prints and droppings and DNA in a dead, mummified mosquito, this must mean there's dinosaurs! but since no human was alive back then, we can only say that with 99.999% certainty"
Or, "there must be some force that is keeping us on this planet, let's call it gravity!! we can see it act upon matter and we can drop things, but we can't see gravity itself, so we have to call it a theory."
Comment Re:Religious fundamentalism (Score 0) 734
If I had mod points, they would all be yours.
This pretty much lays it out exactly; at least from my point of view of a Democrat - to - Liberal Libertarian convert. (Yes, we exist. No, we don't like big government.)
I have many coworkers from Europe and when they come to visit - they are somewhat shell shocked. They see America as this pinnacle of light in Democracy and Freedom and Free Enterprise and Equality Under Law.... and I have to give them the truth, as it pains me to see them that ignorant of it.
| dclm-gs1-107030000 |
Hopefully, Chad Johnson learned his lesson
It turns out former New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Chad Johnson only spent one week in a Florida jail. He had his month-long sentence reduced Monday after issuing an apology to the judge, who felt Johnson’s pat on the butt to his lawyer was a sign he wasn’t taking his court appearance seriously.
Johnson stayed out of legal trouble most of his career but has suddenly fallen on hard times in the past year. He got into a domestic dispute with his former wife, Evelyn Lozada, which led to a divorce and probation. Johnson also violated that probation, which led to a police warrant for his arrest, his infamous court appearance and a subsequent jail sentence.
There's a very good chance that Johnson may never see an NFL field again. He’s a 35-year-old wide receiver past his prime, and many NFL executives view him as immature and a potential headache. Johnson did nothing to dispel those labels during his recent court appearance.
But this is about more than football for Johnson. Hopefully, he learned a life lesson that playtime is over. It's time for Johnson to grow up and be more responsible. | dclm-gs1-107040000 |
Sign up ×
Trying to make a Chrome extension, and for some reasons beyond me, I have to load images from a url hosted elsewhere...
"name": "Name",
"version": "1.0",
"manifest_version": 1,
"description": "A something something something",
"browser_action": {
"default_icon": "favicon.ico",
"default_popup": "popup.html"
"icons": {
"128": "logo_white.gif"
How can I load favicon.ico and logo_white.gif from and instead? I'm baffled since I'm reasonably new to chrome extensions and their use of JSON.
share|improve this question
2 Answers 2
up vote 1 down vote accepted
You can load the data at runtime as an image tag, then stick it in a canvas object, extract an ImageData and pass that to the setIcon API.
Something like the following in a background.js would do the trick:
var canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
var img = new Image();
img.onload = function() {
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
context.drawImage(this, 0, 0);
var imageData = context.getImageData(0, 0, img.width, img.height);
chrome.browserAction.setIcon({imageData: imageData});
img.src = "";
share|improve this answer
You can't use icons located outside of your extension. Your extension will be installed on a local computer and Google Chrome should be able to get your extension's icon when there's no internet connection available.
share|improve this answer
That makes sense, cheers! – Sam Jarman Jun 1 '12 at 10:42
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107050000 |
Sign up ×
it's a similar source I've uploaded yesterday but solve some problems thanks to your help.
it's a little bit shame asking another question about somewhat same problem:(
but though I deliberated what is the problem all day,I failed to find. So,
it looks good and do work,but the problem is, some thread never terminate themselves for a long time.
I waited even 10 minutes but 6 threads are still alive.
it's the biggest mystery thing since I started learing programming...
would you please teach me what's wrong with it?
import os
import threading
import multiprocessing
def finder(path, q, done):
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(unicode(path)):
for dirname in dirs:
if target in dirname.lower():
for name in files:
if target in name.lower():
#print "good bye",threading.current_thread()
#print threading.active_count()
def printer(q,done,worker_count):
total = 0
while 1:
try: done.get_nowait()
except: pass
else: total += 1
try: tmp=q.get(timeout=1)
except: pass
else: print tmp
if total == worker_count:
if __name__ =="__main__":
results = multiprocessing.Queue()
done = multiprocessing.Queue()
root, dirs, files = os.walk(u"C:\\").next()
for dirname in dirs:
if target in dirname.lower():
for name in files:
if target in name.lower():
target=raw_input("what you wanna get\n")
for i in xrange(thnum):
full_path = os.path.join(root, dirs[i])
t=threading.Thread(target=finder,args=(full_path, results, done,))
share|improve this question
It could be that it really takes that much longer. For example large cache folders from mail clients like thunderbird or outlook express, and from web browsers, may make this take very long (????) Or you could be looking at cycles somehow. Can you build in code somehow to signal the existing threads that they should print out their status? – Andre Blum Jul 10 '12 at 0:26
by comparing the result with that of my another program, it just find all the file but the thread just stop but not exit... – from __future__ Jul 10 '12 at 0:37
Um… you're walking the filesystem and putting every file in the tree into the queue, and then for each file in the queue you're walking the entire tree again and pushing every file in that tree into the queue. All this pointless repetition is going to take a very, very long time for even a modest subtree. – abarnert Jul 10 '12 at 1:13
Actually, hold on a sec… you're using target without ever defining it. So, unless your C: drive is completely empty, this is obviously not the code you're running, because this code will throw a NameError and quit immediately. – abarnert Jul 10 '12 at 1:17
can you try and run in a shallower and overseeable subdirectory, instead of your hard disk's root? – Andre Blum Jul 10 '12 at 2:09
1 Answer 1
up vote 0 down vote accepted
[ First, of course, I had to make some trivial changes to make this code 'compile']
The good news is: it just works as you think it should work. Well done. The bad news is: it doesn't work as fast as you had expected.
On my machine, running it on my home directory alone already takes approx 10 minutes:
[andre@hp ~]$ time python
what you wanna get
... results removed ...
real 9m39.083s
user 0m30.368s
sys 0m22.664s
[andre@hp ~]$
The question is whether implementing this in processes and threads is a good idea. I think not. Chances are the performance suffers from this massive multithreading.
share|improve this answer
I finally make it work with coroutine. make a connection with coroutine instead of using "done" with Queue.put, but it just 2 seconds faster:( I agree with you. it was not a good idea. thank you! – from __future__ Jul 11 '12 at 6:23
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107060000 |
Sign up ×
It's been a while since I last used T4 and this is probably a silly question...
Is it possible to reference an arbitrary assembly from a template?
• I have a class that I'd like to use in Project X
• Project X.Test references X and contains the .tt file
I assume the following should work
<#@ assembly name="X" #>
But I get the following error on save:
Compiling transformation: Metadata file 'X' could not be found
What am I doing wrong?
(In case anyone's interested: I'm trying to automatically generate a particular type of tests based on some metadata that I get from X)
Update: it looks like VS2010 has broken the assembly resolution behavior that I was expecting. From
T4's assembly set is completely separated from the containing project's assembly set to avoid picking up the wrong assemblies when a project targets previous framework versions. Project assemblies are no longer used to resolve template assembly directives.
Are there any workarounds, besides using absolute paths?
share|improve this question
Have you tried using the fully qualified path for that assembly? The text templating tool is an external tool and probably doesn't know about projects you have loaded into VS. – Mark H Jul 13 '10 at 21:54
That works, but I need this to run in multiple machines that might have the project in a different path. – Diego Mijelshon Jul 13 '10 at 21:58
3 Answers 3
up vote 23 down vote accepted
You can use VS macro variables such as $(SolutionDir) in your reference as of VS2010 e.g.
<#@ assembly name="$(SolutionDir)\Project1\bin\debug\Foo.dll" #>
share|improve this answer
That's what I was looking for. Thanks! – Diego Mijelshon Jul 14 '10 at 18:42
This isn't working for me. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? My assembly ref is as follows: <#@ assembly name="$(SolutionDir)\DataObjects\bin\Debug\DataObjects.dll" #> – ProfK Aug 8 '10 at 14:49
That shoudl work just fine, but it sounds from the otehr threads liek you are using VS 2008, not VS2010? If you're usign VS2008, the recommended approach is to add the assembly as a project reference in the hosting project instead. – GarethJ Aug 9 '10 at 21:13
+1 very useful. I had to reference the current assembly and used the following <#@ assembly name="$(TargetPath)"#> – JanW Apr 2 '12 at 10:06
How about when editing the scaffolding tts in Mvc? MVCWebApplication1\CodeTemplates\AddView\CSHTML\ Get folowing to work in a simple .tt but not in <#@ assembly name="$(TargetDir)\ToSpinitLibraryModel.dll"#> Also tried via "$(SolutionDir) – Per G Jun 6 '13 at 13:59
You can also check here on SO: Can't reference an assembly in a T4 template.
share|improve this answer
@GarethJ gives a good answer but for all the methods of referencing an assembly from a T4 template try this: T4 Template error - Assembly Directive cannot locate referenced assembly in Visual Studio 2010 project.
And if you like the VS Macro solution then you can find 'em all here: Macros for Build Commands and Properties
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107070000 |
Sign up ×
I want to access a resource like a String or a Drawable by its name and not its int id.
Which method would I use for this?
share|improve this question
possible duplicate of How can i get the resource id of an image if I know its name? – ghoti Dec 7 '12 at 18:55
5 Answers 5
up vote 58 down vote accepted
It will be something like:
Make sure you don't have the Android.R namespace imported as it can confuse Eclipse (if thats what you're using).
If that doesn't work, you can always use a context's getResources method ...
Drawable resImg = this.context.getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.resource);
Where this.context is intialised as an Activity, Service or any other Context subclass.
If it's the name you want, the Resources class (returned by getResources()) has a getResourceName(int) method, and a getResourceTypeName(int)?
Update 2:
The Resources class has this method:
public int getIdentifier (String name, String defType, String defPackage)
Which returns the integer of the specified resource name, type & package.
share|improve this answer
Thankq for your reply .R.drawable.resourcename i am using now i need to get its integer value by passing resourcename – Aswan Aug 13 '10 at 11:45
R.drawable.resourcename is the integer. – Rabid Aug 13 '10 at 11:46
Hi Rabid.what you said that's is there any way by accessing R.drawable .resource value by passing resouce – Aswan Aug 13 '10 at 11:47
i need that integer value by passing resourcename dynamically – Aswan Aug 13 '10 at 11:48
Thankq like this i want and i want to get drawable resource i wil to it – Aswan Aug 13 '10 at 11:57
If I understood right, this is what you want
int drawableResourceId = this.getResources().getIdentifier("nameOfDrawable", "drawable", this.getPackageName());
Where "this" is an Activity, written just to clarify.
In case you want a String in strings.xml or an identifier of a UI element, substitute "drawable"
int resourceId = this.getResources().getIdentifier("nameOfResource", "id", this.getPackageName());
I warn you, this way of obtaining identifiers is really slow, use only where needed.
Link to official documentation: Resources.getIdentifier(String name, String defType, String defPackage)
share|improve this answer
this is the solution I wanted :D – Kreshnik Apr 19 '14 at 19:39
This is pretty useful in the context of writing tests to make sure certain strings exist or etc. – Ehtesh Choudhury May 1 at 22:14
int resourceID =
this.getResources().getIdentifier("resource name", "resource type as mentioned in",this.getPackageName());
share|improve this answer
It'd be even better if you explained the code you posted. – user1114055 Oct 21 '12 at 1:11
I would suggest you using my method to get a resource ID. It's Much more efficient, than using getIdentidier() method, which is slow.
Here's the code:
* @author Lonkly
* @param variableName - name of drawable, e.g R.drawable.<b>image</b>
* @param с - class of resource, e.g R.drawable.class or R.raw.class
* @return integer id of resource
public static int getResId(String variableName, Class<?> с) {
Field field = null;
int resId = 0;
try {
field = с.getField(variableName);
try {
resId = field.getInt(null);
} catch (Exception e) {
} catch (Exception e) {
return resId;
share|improve this answer
It will not work for all cases. For example if you have <string name="">content</string> than the R.string class will have a string_name field. And your method will not work in this point. – ddmytrenko Oct 22 '13 at 14:32
Also your method is not fast actually. Because Java class serialization is never working quick. – ddmytrenko Oct 23 '13 at 10:39
A simple way to getting resource ID from string. Here resourceName is the name of resource ImageView in drawable folder which is included in XML file as well.
int resID = getResources().getIdentifier(resourceName, "id", getPackageName());
ImageView im = (ImageView) findViewById(resID);
Context context = im.getContext();
int id = context.getResources().getIdentifier(resourceName, "drawable",
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107080000 |
Sign up ×
I have the following C++ code:
class A {
struct Nested {
int x;
class B: public A {
friend class C;
class C {
void m1() {
B::Nested n; // or A::Nested
Compiling this snippet with g++ 4.4, it does not make a difference whether I use B::Nested or A::Nested in m1. Clang accepts B::Nested, but does not compile if I A::Nested. Is that a bug in g++ or in clang?
share|improve this question
2 Answers 2
up vote 7 down vote accepted
According to the Standard, GCC is correct and Clang is wrong. It says at 11.2/4
A member m is accessible when named in class N if
• m as a member of N is protected, and the reference occurs in a member or friend of class N, or in a member or friend of a class P derived from N, where m as a member of P is private or protected
This is subject of this Clang bugreport, which prevents Clang from building Qt: . One Clang guy says
Actually, I intentionally haven't implemented this rule yet. It is either a drafting error or a horrible mistake. It neuters the entire 'protected' specifier, it makes the well-formedness of code dependent on the existence of completely unrelated classes, it imposes high costs on the implementation, and it's formally undecidable in the presence of templates.
share|improve this answer
I tend to agree with the Clang on that, too bad the DR 747 doesn't seem to be considered. – Matthieu M. Aug 27 '10 at 16:55
In C++ friends are not-transitive. Friends of your friends are not necessarily my friends.
By making Nested protected in A, you indicate that all subclasses may use this element, but nobody else is allowed to use it. You could consider this is a kind of friend. A makes all subclasses friend regarding access to the Nested struct.
Now B makes C a friend, but this does not mean that C is also a friend of A. So C should have no access to Nested.
BUT: the behavior is changed from C++03. In C++03, a nested class is a full member of the enclosing class and so has full access rights. Friendship is still NOT transitive, but now member access is.
You may want to look at, which explains a similar problem.
share|improve this answer
Could you provide an example of code that acts differently in C++98 vs C++03? What about C++0x? – Ben Voigt Aug 27 '10 at 13:29
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107090000 |
Sign up ×
I want to run a query on an Oracle database and for each column in the result set, I want to know the schema that the column came from. I tried the following:
ResultSetMetaData rsMetadata = rs.getMetaData();
String schemaName = rsMetadata.getSchemaName(1)
However, this returns an empty string. Is there any work around to get the schema name?
Edit in response to OMG Ponies:
The tool we are developing takes data from a database and analyzes the data to find the most informative subset for a given question. We then create a query which returns only the rows that are informative for the given question. For instance if we had a customer database and wanted to know which customers are most likely to discontinue their service, our tool can create a query which returns 5% of the customer records which can then be run through high powered analytics algorithms. The benefit is that we run our analysis on only a subset of the data which of course will save time. It turns out as well that the high powered analytics algorithms work better now because the first step was essentially filtering the noise out of our data.
So in response to OMG Ponies, the user specifies the database connection information and query as inputs to our tool. Because they can specify any query they like, it would be possible for a user to connect to connect to schema foo, and then run the following query:
SELECT* FROM bar.customer;
If for some reason eye color and gender were predictors of people discontinuing their service, the resulting query that our system generates might look like this:
SELECT * FROM bar.customer WHERE bar.customer.eye_color='blue'
AND bar.customer.gender='M'
It would be nice to know the schema for each column in the results set so we can make sure our query will run correctly. We could assume the schema is the same as the schema used in the database connection and that should be fine 99% of the time. I'm just concerned for that 1% of the time a user might do something unexpected like run a query against another schema.
share|improve this question
Just need to look at the table(s) to get the schema, but that'll give you grief if you are dealing with a view... It begs the question - why don't you have access to the schema? – OMG Ponies Nov 2 '10 at 20:58
Good question! The short answer is that the user can specify any query they like which means they could in theory refer to any schema. I edited the question with the more complete answer. – Jay Askren Nov 3 '10 at 18:47
Can't the query manipulator verify that the schemas and tables are valid? It sounds like you're executing the modified query and passing the results back, so you already know it works. If you're actually passing the modified query back to be executed later, and really want the information, can you extract and pass back a list of the schemas/tables involved as well? I'm still not clear why it would be a problem, unless you're modifying and executing the query while connected as different users. – Alex Poole Nov 9 '10 at 19:31
2 Answers 2
up vote 2 down vote accepted
According to an old Oracle code sample:
OracleResultSetMetaData interface does not implement the getSchemaName() and getTableName() methods because underlying protocol does not make this feasible.
That implies to me that ResultSetMetaData will not have those methods for an Oracle either, at least when using an Oracle driver. (I tried with the OCI driver to see if that made a difference, but apparently not).
There's a WebLogic 8 document that suggests it could be done, but that type 4 driver has been deprecated in later releases. So it's possible you may still be able to find a third-party driver that supports getSchemaName() against Oracle, but it seems unlikely.
share|improve this answer
You may be able to get this information with some custom functions and queries. Basically, find the columns used by a query with DBMS_SQL and then match that to the tables referenced in v$sql_plan. There are potentially a large number of issues with this approach though; possible ambiguities between which column came from which table, and different objects in the explain plan, etc.
--#1: Create some test data
create table employee (id number primary key, name varchar2(100), department_id number);
create table department(id number primary key, name varchar2(100), test number);
insert into department select level, 'department test', level from dual connect by level <= 100;
insert into employee select level, 'employee test', level from dual connect by level <= 100;
--Actually run the query for this example so there will be data in the data dictionary.
select employee.* from employee inner join department on department_id =;
--#2: The first difficult part is to find the sql_id of the query. Can you get this directly from the
-- result set? If not not you'll have to find it.
-- I'm not exactly sure how you'll want to do this, here are some options:
--Look at the last loaded query in v$sql (I don't think this always works, especially if the query has run multiple times)
select * from v$sql where v$sql.parsing_schema_name = user order by first_load_time desc;
--Compare the query text (sql_text removes newlines, sql_fulltext is a clob)
select * from v$sql where sql_text like 'select employee.* from employee inner join department on department_id =';
--Find the last sql_id for this session. This doesn't work for me, maybe it's just an express edition bug?
select prev_sql_id, v$session.* from v$session where sid = sys_context('USERENV', 'SID');
--Look at the plan. Note that there may be an index instead of a table.
--(On my system the sql_id is 0k2t2y1d312j8, but it will probably be different on yours)
select * from v$sql_plan where sql_id = '0k2t2y1d312j8';
--3: Create a type and a function to return all of the columns from a specific query.
--It'd be more consistent to use the SQL_ID here, but then there are permission issues if we
--have to get the text from v$sql.
create or replace type varchar2_tab is table of varchar2(30);
create or replace function get_columns(sql_text in varchar2) return varchar2_tab
authid current_user pipelined is
my_cursor number;
column_count number;
my_columns DBMS_SQL.DESC_TAB;
select count(*) into column_count from v$sql;
my_cursor := dbms_sql.open_cursor;
dbms_sql.parse(my_cursor, sql_text, dbms_sql.native);
dbms_sql.describe_columns(my_cursor, column_count, my_columns);
for i in 1 .. my_columns.count loop
pipe row(my_columns(i).col_name);
end loop;
--Test queries. Note that it's possible for a column to be listed twice.
select * from table(get_columns('select employee.* from employee inner join department on department_id ='));
--4: Find the columns and their tables and schemas that are used in a query.
--Currently this only works for tables and indexes in the explain plan.
--There's probably a large number of items that won't work - materialized views, clusters(?), pipelined functiions, etc.
--You'll need to add each object type as necessary.
--(Remember to replace the SQL_ID and the query text with the real values)
select distinct owner, table_name, column_name
--Find all the columns for the relevant tables
select all_tab_cols.owner, all_tab_cols.table_name, all_tab_cols.column_name
--Find the relevant tables from the plans (may need to find the table behind an index)
nvl(all_indexes.table_owner, plan_objects.object_owner) owner,
nvl(all_indexes.table_name, plan_objects.object_name) table_name
select object_owner, object_name, object_type
from v$sql_plan
where sql_id = '0k2t2y1d312j8'
object_type = 'TABLE'
or object_type like 'INDEX%'
) plan_objects
left outer join all_indexes
on plan_objects.object_name = all_indexes.index_name
and plan_objects.object_type like 'INDEX%'
) relevant_tables
inner join all_tab_cols
on relevant_tables.owner = all_tab_cols.owner
and relevant_tables.table_name = all_tab_cols.table_name
) relevant_tab_cols
--It would be more
inner join table(get_columns('select employee.* from employee inner join department on department_id =')) all_possible_columns
on relevant_tab_cols.column_name = all_possible_columns.column_value;
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107100000 |
Sign up ×
Here's an implementation details question for JavaScript gurus.
I have a UI with a number of fields in which the values of the fields depend in a complicated fashion on the values of seven bits of inputs. Exactly what should be displayed for any one of the possible 128 values that is changing regularly as users see more of the application?
Right now, I've for this being implemented as a decision tree through an if-then-else comb, but it's brittle under the requirements changes and sort of hard to get right.
One implementation approach I've thought about is to make an array of values from 0x0 to 0x7F and then store a closure at each location --
var tbl; // initialize it with the values
tbl[0x42] = function (){ doAThing(); doAnotherThing(); }
and then invoke them with
This, at least makes the decision logic into a bunch of assignments.
Question: is there a better way?
(Update: holy crap, how'd that line about 'ajax iphone tags' get in there? No wonder it was a little puzzling.)
So what happened? Basically I took a fourth option, although similar to the one I've checked. The logic was sufficiently complex that I finally built a Python program to generate a truth table in the server (generating Groovy code, in fact, the host is a Grails application) and move the decision logic into the server completely. Now the JavaScript side simply interprets a JSON object that contains the values for the various fields.
Eventually, this will probably go through one more iteration, and become data in a database table, indexed by the vector of bits.
The table driven part certainly came out to be the way to go; there have already been a half dozen new changes in the specific requirements for display.
share|improve this question
From what i understand of your problem, your refactoring thoughts are sound, but tbh i am not sure from your description, what it is you need :P – Martin Jespersen Jan 12 '11 at 21:45
Does each bit determine a specific action? If so, why not perform a bitwise AND on your value against [0x01, 0x02, 0x04, 0x08, 0x10, 0x20, 0x40] – draeton Jan 12 '11 at 22:16
@Martin, the point is whether there is another, more flexible, way of doing this than my table of lambdas. – Charlie Martin Jan 12 '11 at 22:34
@draeton, that's a good point. The table is actually both sparse -- many of the values are simply invalid, represent an error, but irregularly so -- and redundant, so that several values might have the same action attached, but again with no regularity. If the relationship were somewhat fixed, I could transform it to an FSA, but I tried that already and requirements changes bust the FSA. – Charlie Martin Jan 12 '11 at 22:36
Out of curiosity, what did you decide upon? Did you find a better solution? – Martin Jespersen Jan 21 '11 at 21:38
4 Answers 4
up vote 1 down vote accepted
Have you considered generating your decision tree on the server rather than writing it by hand? Use whatever representation is clean, easy to work with, and modify and then compile that to ugly yet efficient javascript for the client side.
A decision tree is fairly easy to represent as data and it is easy to understand and work with as a traditional tree data structure. You can store said tree in whatever form makes sense for you. Validating and modifying it as data should also be straight forward.
Then, when you need to use the decision tree, just compile/serialize it to JavaScript as a big if-the-else, switch, or hash mess. This should also be fairly straight forward and probably a lot easier than trying to maintain a switch with a couple hundred elements.
share|improve this answer
I see two options...
Common to both solutions are the following named functions:
function aThing() {}
function anotherThing() {}
function aThirdThing() {}
The switch way
function exec(bits) {
switch(bits) {
case 0x00: aThing(); anotherThing(); break;
case 0x01: aThing(); anotherThing(); aThirdThing(); break;
case 0x02: aThing(); aThirdThing(); break;
case 0x03: anotherThing(); aThirdThing(); break;
case 0x42: aThirdThing(); break;
case 0x7f: ... break;
default: throw 'There is only 128 options :P';
The map way
function exec(bits) {
var actions = map[bits];
for(var i=0, action; action=actions[i]; i++)
var map = {
0x00: [aThing, anotherThing],
0x01: [aThing, anotherThing, aThirdThing],
0x02: [aThing, aThirdThing],
0x03: [anotherThing, aThirdThing],
0x42: [aThirdThing],
in both cases you'd call
share|improve this answer
couldn't that loop be for(var action in actions) action();? – Charlie Martin Jan 13 '11 at 2:47
It could but would make little sense. Actions in this case is an array of function references, and you don't wish to loop over arrays with for(var i in array) both because it is much slower and because it will give you uneven results across browsers. Some browsers will treat the "length" property on the array as just another member of the object and give you that as well as the function references. – Martin Jespersen Jan 13 '11 at 8:30
[].propertyIsEnumerable('length') === false – draeton Jan 13 '11 at 15:32
Since the situation (as you have described) is so irregular, there doesn't seem to be a better way. Although, I can suggest an improvement to your jump table. You mentioned that you have errors and duplicates. So instead of explicitly assigning them to a closure, you can assign them to named functions so that you don't have to duplicate the explicit closure.
var doAThingAndAnother = function (){ doAThing(); doAnotherThing(); }
var tbl; // initialize it with the values
tbl[0x42] = doAThingAndAnother;
tbl[0x43] = doAThingAndAnother;
Not that much of an improvement, but it's the only thing I could think of! You seem to have covered most of the other issues. Since it looks like the requirements change so much, I think you might have to forgo elegance and have a design that is not as elegant, but is still easy to change.
share|improve this answer
I've got a rough example of a JavaScript decision tree tool if you want to take a look:
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107110000 |
Sign up ×
I'm trying to sort an ArrayList with strings(PlayersNames) and imageIcons(PlayersIcons) based on the values i store in an other arrayList with integers(results). As you can see i get an indexOutOfBoundsException but i cant understand why. Maybe the earling of the morning makes me not to see plain things.
ArrayList<String> PlayersNames=new ArrayList<String>;
ArrayList<ImageIcon> PlayersIcons=new ArrayList<ImageIcons>;
public void sortPlayers(ArrayList<Integer> results){
String tmp;
ImageIcon tmp2;
for (int i=0; i<PlayersNames.size(); i++) {
for (int j=PlayersNames.size(); j>i; j--) {
if (results.get(i) < results.get(i+1) ) { //IndexOutOfBoundsException!
share|improve this question
Well obviously you're going off the end of the results list, but you haven't posted the code that calls sortPlayers() so we can't tell how big that list is supposed to be. Is it the same size as PlayersNames? If so, then the last iteration of your loop, when i == PlayersNames.size() - 1, will cause you to go out of bounds because trying to call results.get (i + 1) will be one too many for the results list. – Stewart Murrie Jan 13 '11 at 5:08
7 Answers 7
When the loop gets to the end of the arrayList, you are trying to get an item past the end of the list. On this line:
If i=9, with an arrayList with 10 items, results.get(9) will give you the last item in the list. results.get(10) will try to get something that doesn't exist.
share|improve this answer
You can use Collections.sort(Pass ArrayList Here), You need not to write your own method. Java provides it.
share|improve this answer
problem is that i dont want to sort an ArrayList only. I want to sort it based on the results arraylist. Just think that results are what players turn with the rolling of the dice and playernames their names. What i wanna do is not to sort their names only but their names list according their rolling of dice. thanx – FILIaS Jan 13 '11 at 12:55
Eventually i can hold a value of PlayersNames.size()-1. I can only assume that results has the same size as PlayersNames, or rather PlayersNames.size() == results.size().
If this is true, then eventually you're asking for the results.size()-th element (by doing results.get(i+1)) in results, which is one more than results holds, thus an IndexOutOfBoundsException is being thrown.
Said more concisely, if results holds N items, then the N-th item is accessed using the index N-1, but you're trying to access the item at index N, which doesn't exist.
Try changing your outer loop to:
for (int i=0; i<PlayersNames.size()-1; i++) {
to prevent the overrun.
Also, your inner loop appears to be unused, but if you try to access something in one of your arrays using the first value of j you're likely to run into the same issue for the same reason.
share|improve this answer
how can i use j on this occasion??i tried only to sort it based on bubblesort :/ – FILIaS Jan 13 '11 at 12:59
The very last iteration of the for loop, i will equal PlayersNames.size() - 1. On the line where the error occurred, you're calling results.get(i + 1), which evaluates to results.get(PlayersNames.size()).
share|improve this answer
Couple of mistakes that I can see :
that is good, but then you use
EVERYWHERE (not only in the if), so when you reach the last element you will always hit an indexOutOfBoundsException.
Either reduce the range of i or remove the +1;
2) you declare a variable
that you never use...
share|improve this answer
Many people have given the correct reasons.
There are many ways to correct this program. Easiest one is to iterate outer loop only till n-1 (where n is the size of the ArrayList)
share|improve this answer
Using Map like:
Map <String, ImageIcon>
may be more useful for sorting, rather than using two ArrayLists.
share|improve this answer
but how can i use map when i want both the 2 arrayLists on other cases? :/ – FILIaS Jan 13 '11 at 12:58
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107120000 |
Sign up ×
Using Delphi Steema TeeChart component, if I link a BarSeries to a dataset using the user interface, it shows up fine, but if I do it using code (which I need to), it's only showing one bar, even when I have several records in the database. What am I doing wrong?
ADataSet.Active := true;
ASource.DataSet := ADataSet;
Bar := TBarSeries.Create(AChart);
Bar.ParentChart := AChart;
Bar.DataSource := ASource;
Bar.XLabelsSource := 'Date';
Bar.YValues.ValueSource := 'Load';
for i := 0 to AChart.SeriesCount - 1 do
ADataSet is a DevExpress MemData (TdxMemData). When I run the program, the X axis is only showing one bar, the first record in the dataset, even though I have 4 records in the dataset.
share|improve this question
The name of the component is "tchart", so you might want to edit your title and text. There are a couple of other StackOverflow questions tagged "tchart", so this will help in searching for similar. – Argalatyr Feb 10 '09 at 3:53
I understand, I used TeeChart to emphasis this is Steema's component, not Delphi's default one. – Robo Feb 10 '09 at 4:40
2 Answers 2
up vote 3 down vote accepted
This code works for me (using an Access database with fields ID and Height, I dropped a TDBChart, TADODataSet, and a TButton on a form):
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
Bar : TBarSeries;
ADODataSet1.ConnectionString := 'Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;...';
Bar := TBarSeries.Create(DBChart1);
Bar.ParentChart := DBChart1;
Bar.DataSource := ADODataSet1;
Bar.XLabelsSource := 'ID';
Bar.YValues.ValueSource := 'Height';
ADODataSet1.Active := true;
Note that the Datasource should be a TTable, TQuery, or TDataSet (not a TDataSource - go figure!).
Hope this helps.
share|improve this answer
Thanks, this worked. I got rid of the DataSource, did this instead and it worked: Bar.DataSource := ADataSet – Robo Feb 10 '09 at 21:53
Great! I'm glad that helped. – Argalatyr Feb 11 '09 at 0:27
TChart refreshes the query each time you set
ADataSet.Active := true;
so, move this command to the end of your block (e.g. after you've set up the series properties).
share|improve this answer
Thanks, but this didn't help. I moved LoadFromDataSet and Active := true to below the part where TBarSeries gets setup, and it still showed only one record. Since it showed one record, it must know the dataset is active and has records inside, not sure why it's not displaying all of them. – Robo Feb 10 '09 at 4:44
Have you tried temporarily switching to a generic delphi dataset (say just a tadodataset pointed to an Excel spreadsheet, something simple like that) to separate the vendors (dbx and steema) for this issue?\ – Argalatyr Feb 10 '09 at 5:29
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107130000 |
Sign up ×
How can I make grep read the expression from standard input (stdin)?
For example (the following doesn't work):
grep -i -f &0 /path/to/text/file < "/regexp/"
share|improve this question
1 Answer 1
up vote 17 down vote accepted
Use -f with a single dash to denote the standard input:
$ echo Content | grep -f - notice.html
Note: This has been tested with GNU grep - I am not sure if it's specified by POSIX.
share|improve this answer
@Dor: what about using -E for extended expressions? Doesn't that work? – thkala Jul 10 '11 at 21:22
doesn't work. neither egrep – Dor Jul 11 '11 at 7:52
This works fine on MinGW (Windows) - as long as the free-standing dash is included! – Peter Mortensen Nov 21 '14 at 9:33
Actually, I get the expected matches but also false positives from grep that I can not explain. The search specification (from standard input) is a series of numbers (like 1.174500, 45045.367300, 45045.442300, 45045.502500, 45675.290200, 48149.824300, 48149.883600 and 52485.123600) and I use the "-A" and "-B" options for grep: "grep -f - -A 10 -B 10 <file>". I get false positive matches from places far apart in <file>. – Peter Mortensen Nov 21 '14 at 12:57
This probably has been solved a long time ago. If you search for 45045.502500, you do realize the . is a character wildcard, don't you? – jcoppens Jul 6 at 0:21
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107140000 |
Sign up ×
The way to cancel a BackgroundWorker's operation is to call BackgroundWorker.CancelAsync():
private void cancelButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
In a BackgroundWorker.DoWork event handler, we check BackgroundWorker.CancellationPending:
void backgroundWorker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
while (!backgroundWorker.CancellationPending) {
The above idea is all over the web, including on the MSDN page for BackgroundWorker.
Now, my question is this: How on earth is this thread-safe?
I've looked at the BackgroundWorker class in ILSpy — CancelAsync() simply sets cancellationPending to true without using a memory barrier, and CancellationPending simply returns cancellationPending without using a memory barrier.
According to this Jon Skeet page, the above is not thread-safe. But the documentation for BackgroundWorker.CancellationPending says, "This property is meant for use by the worker thread, which should periodically check CancellationPending and abort the background operation when it is set to true."
What's going on here? Is it thread-safe or not?
share|improve this question
Note that Jon Skeets example uses a static var, not a property. I think the property prevents caching of the value and that makes it completely thread-safe. – Henk Holterman Aug 6 '11 at 12:53
Hmm, interesting. I didn't consider that a property might be different. I wonder whether that is documented anywhere… – Tom Aug 6 '11 at 13:02
Then again, BackgroundWorker.CancelAsync() sets the field, not the property, to true, so I guess there could be a problem of writing only to the cache. – Tom Aug 6 '11 at 13:05
4 Answers 4
up vote 8 down vote accepted
It is thread-safe.
The code
while (!backgroundWorker.CancellationPending)
is reading a property and the compiler knows it can't cache the result.
And since in the normal framework every Write is the same as VolatileWrite, the CancelAsync() method can just set a field.
share|improve this answer
It is because BackgroundWorker inherits from Component which inherits from MarshalByRefObject. An MBRO object may reside on another machine or in another process or appdomain. That works by having the object impersonated by a proxy that has all of the exact same properties and methods but whose implementations marshal the call across the wire.
One side effect of that is that the jitter cannot inline methods and properties, that would break the proxy. Which also prevents any optimizations from being made that stores the field value in a cpu register. Just like volatile does.
share|improve this answer
My understanding was that question asks specifically about backing field of the CancellationPending, not about the property itself (the property is a feature of the language and is just a method from CLR standpoint). So what prevents backing field from being cached by reading thread? – Dmitry Aug 6 '11 at 17:20
@Dmitry - The fact that it is private (cancellationPending, lower case first letter). Client code has to use the property. – Hans Passant Aug 6 '11 at 18:00
As a consultation do you think in this case the scenario I described in my answer will not happen even on a weak memory models? – Jalal Aldeen Saa'd Aug 6 '11 at 18:08
@Dmitry - declaring it volatile makes no difference, it is already treated volatile. – Hans Passant Aug 6 '11 at 21:41
@Dmitry - I explained that in my answer. Sorry that I couldn't explain it well enough, the subject of volatile is fairly impenetrable until you grok machine code and why CPU registers matter. – Hans Passant Aug 6 '11 at 23:52
A good point and a very fair doubt. It sounds like not thread safe. I think MSDN also has the same doubt and that's why this is there under BackgroundWorker.CancelAsync Method.
I am not sure about BackgroundWorker class implementation. Looking at how it is using BackgroundWorker.WorkerSupportsCancellation property internally is important in this case.
share|improve this answer
I see, but my main worry is that backgroundWorker.CancellationPending, in backgroundWorker_DoWork, may never evaluate to true, even if backgroundWorker.CancelAsync(); has been called, because of caching. If so, RunWorkerCompleted event will never be raised anyway. – Tom Aug 6 '11 at 12:52
This is not what OP asked. The problem you are describing is caused by the fact that the worker thread may end before it has the chance to set the cancelled flag in event's args. OP is asking whether it is safe to assume that a different thread can read the current value of the flag after it has been set. – Groo Aug 6 '11 at 16:25
Question can be interpreted in two ways:
1) Is BackgroundWorker.CancellationPending implementation correct?
It is not correct because it may result in cancellation request being unnoticed. The implementation uses ordinary read from the backing field. If this backing field is updated by other threads then the update may be invisible to the reading code. This is what implementation looks like:
// non volatile variable:
private Boolean cancellationPending;
public Boolean CancellationPending {
get {
// ordinary read:
return cancellationPending;
The correct implementation would try to read the most up to date value. This can be achieved by declaring backing field 'volatile', using memory barrier or lock. There are probably other options and some of them are better than the others but is up to the team that owns 'BackgroundWorker' class.
2) Is code that uses BackgroundWorker.CancellationPending correct?
while (!backgroundWorker.CancellationPending) {
This code is correct. The loop will spin until CancellationPending returns 'true'. Keeping in mind that C# properties is just a syntax sugar for CLR methods. At the IL level this is just another method that will look like "get_CancellationPending". Method return values are not cached by calling code (probably because figuring whether method has side effects is too hard).
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107150000 |
Sign up ×
One of the problems with monad transformers I find is the need to lift the operations into the right monad. A single lift here and there isn't bad, but sometimes there are functions that looks like this:
fun = do
lift a
lift b
lift d
lift e
I would like to be able to write this function thus:
fun = monadInvert $ do
lift c
lift f
This halves the number of lifts and makes the code cleaner.
The question is: for what monads is monadInvert possible? How should one create this function?
Bonus points: define it for monad m which is an instance of MonadIO.
The title of this question speaks of permutations: indeed, how can we deal with arbitrary permutations of a monad tranformer stack?
share|improve this question
I highly doubt you can (but perhaps some evil trickery can be used). Thinking about the types just doesn't add up to me. – Thomas Eding Dec 5 '11 at 18:35
Not really a shovel-ready solution, but you might find this paper worth reading; from the abstract: "our algorithm inserts the necessary binds, units, and monad-to-monad morphisms so that the program type checks" – acfoltzer Dec 6 '11 at 2:07
3 Answers 3
up vote 10 down vote accepted
You might be interested in Monads, Zippers and Views, Virtualizing the Monad Stack by Tom Schrijvers and Bruno Oliveira.
This doesn't address your point about reducing the lifts, but it's an interesting approach to your "monad permutations" problem.
Here's the abstract:
This work aims at making monadic components more reusable and robust to changes by employing two new techniques for virtualizing the monad stack: the monad zipper and monad views. The monad zipper is a monad transformer that creates virtual monad stacks by ignoring particular layers in a concrete stack. Monad views provide a general framework for monad stack virtualization: they take the monad zipper one step further and integrate it with a wide range of other virtualizations. For instance, particular views allow restricted access to monads in the stack. Furthermore, monad views can be used by components to provide a call-by-reference-like mechanism to access particular layers of the monad stack. With these two mechanisms component requirements in terms of the monad stack shape no longer need to be literally reflected in the concrete monad stack, making these components more reusable and robust to changes.
share|improve this answer
Well, first of all, you don't actually need so much lifting. For monad transformers the following identities hold:
lift c >>= lift . f = lift (c >>= f)
lift c1 >> lift c2 = lift (c1 >> c2)
It's not uncommon to write:
x <- lift $ do
{- ... -}
Next is: When you use libraries like mtl or monadLib (i.e. type class based libraries instead of transformers directly), you actually can access most underlying monads directly:
c :: StateT MyState (ReaderT MyConfig SomeOtherMonad) Result
c = do
x <- ask
y <- get
{- ... -}
Finally, if you really need a lot of lifting despite these two points, you should consider writing a custom monad or even use an entirely different abstraction. I find myself using the automaton arrow for stateful computations instead of a state monad.
share|improve this answer
Not really a solution, but thanks anyway. Note that I can't write lift (a >> b >> c), because a,b,c are from two different monads. – Tener Dec 6 '11 at 9:08
I am mostly sure that what you are decribing is impossible for IO, which is always the innermost monad:
From Martin Grabmüller: Monad Transformers Step by Step, available at
Down in this document, we call liftIO in eval6 to perform I/O actions. Why do we need to lift in this case? Because there is no IO class for which we can instantiate a type as. Therefore, for I/O actions, we have to call lift to send the commands inwards
In general, for monads less restrictive than IO, (such as Error and State) order still matters for semantics, so you can't change the order of the stack just to make syntax more convenient.
For some monads, like Reader, that are central (in that they do commute in the stack), your idea seems not clearly impossible. I don't know how to write it though. I guess it would be a type class CentralMonad that ReaderT is an instance of, with some implementation...
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107160000 |
Sign up ×
I am new to web service and WSDL. I have a MySQL database stored in a server and I need to create a very simple web service that allows third party Java applications to input an integer (say 'membership number') and receive a string (say 'member name'). This should be done with WSDL.
Can someone please tell me what files do I need? A WSDL file, a schema file? Do I need a Java class stored in the server responsible to communicate with the database? I am pretty lost, I would be thankful if you could give me some suggestion
share|improve this question
3 Answers 3
As the simplest form of webservice is you can continue with JAX-WS, upon deployment of appilication it will publish a WSDL file and you can use this WSDL to communicate it from client
share|improve this answer
JAX-WS is the simplest way to convert an existing method into a web service endpoint, with a few annotations, and the simple web server in the standard Java 6 JRE. It can autogenerate the WSDL too.
This tutorial covers the essentials for getting started:
I have found this to be a very robust technology.
share|improve this answer
Using the SOAP Webservices can get pretty messy. Unless you are forced, I would recommend you use REST for webservices, it is much less complex than SOAP. You can find a good REST tutorial here.
If on the other hand you must use SOAP, you could strat by taking a look here.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| dclm-gs1-107170000 |
2009.10.07 Is it too late to start lying about my age?
Written by David Green.
It’s no surprise to me that I’m single and, lie as I might, not as young as I used to be. Like Kinky Friedman says, I’m too young for Medicare and too old for women to care. But does the media have to keep reminding me (and potential mates) of the disadvantages of aging? I got a double dose of bad news in that area over the weekend.
In an article titled “Yes, men also have biological clocks” in USA Weekend, a prominent urologist probably made sure that few women will ever marry a man past the age of 29. The article started by stating that a man’s fertility level starts dropping after the age of 30.
Even worse, after the age of 40, a man’s offspring supposedly run a higher risk of autism, lower IQ and birth defects. Since my father was 43 when I was born, that would explain my IQ. Everything else I guess I can attribute to undiagnosed birth defects. Joking aside, the article adds that women pregnant by men over 40 also run a higher rate of miscarriage.
That information goes a long way toward making sure I’ll never marry someone thinking about having her own child someday, at least not anyone reading that article. Now if one of those online matchmaker services ran a website specifically for people not planning to have children, maybe I’d have a better opportunity.
Even though I may have a biological clock, I’ve never heard it ticking. Besides, adoption is always an option. But even if I stay single (which is starting to seem more and more likely), that alone could present its own set of problems as I slide further into the abyss of geezerdom. I’ll get back to that in a minute, but first, another rant about AARP....
I’ve complained before about the never-ending stream of letters soliciting my membership in that organization. Chronologically, I may meet the minimum age to join the group, but I just don’t feel nearly that old and refuse to do anything to acknowledge that fact. That’s why I recently passed on attending a high school reunion. Who wants to hang out with those old-looking people who claim I’m their age? What would I do when they start pulling out pictures of their grandchildren?
Just when I’ve learned to accept and quickly dispose of the AARP letters, they apparently bought the mailing list from the mail-order firm that spells my name wrong and refuses to correct it. Now, I get AARP mail in two different names. Maybe I should save them and send them back with a change of address, giving them the mail-order company’s address. Think that would work?
Then there’s the other article I read. This one shares the happy news that single people are at a big disadvantage when it comes to retirement planning. At least I’m in a bigger group here than I would have guessed.
The article said that single people now make up 43 percent of the adult population, compared to just 28 percent 40 years ago. Look out, married people, we’re gaining on you! Nearly half of the total of singles are over 40 years old and 13 million of those have never married. Now there’s a group I’d join—“Too young for AARP, not ready to marry.” That is, if I could afford it.
According to the article, the cost of living for older singles is 40 percent higher than for couples. Those lucky married people get to share expenses, particularly housing costs. And, if something happens to the single person’s income, there isn’t a second one to fall back on.
Plus, long-term care insurance is more important for single people because there may not be anyone else available to take care of them. Luckily, in the case of my demise, I’ve already made arrangements for a friend to adopt my lifelong friend Teddy and all the rest of my stuffed bears, including the laundry basket full of Snuggles. That will be much cheaper than having to provide for children. Just give the bears a hug once in a while and they’re happy.
The article did say that single people can save money by skipping life insurance if they have no children. There’s no need to worry about burial expenses, either. Just put me in the trunk of the Buick and sell it to some unsuspecting out-of-state dealer. I couldn’t do that if I had a wife and kids. And please, no matter what, don’t give the address of my final destination to AARP.
| dclm-gs1-107180000 |
DOOM 3: BFG Edition
DOOM 3: BFG Edition
Zobrazit statistiky:
DOOM 3: BFG Edition > Obecné diskuze > Detaily tématu
HOTSHOT 5. pro. 2012 v 7.46 dop.
DOOM 4 announced???
Check it if you don't believe it, on Metacritic:
If it's just plain ♥♥♥♥♥♥*t, I'm deeply sorry...
< >
Zobrazeno 15 z 5 komentářů
Cute Little Girl💕 5. pro. 2012 v 9.18 odp.
doom4 has been known for years now.
move along.
IceHandz 7. pro. 2012 v 2.50 odp.
id Software already said Doom 4 is in the works. They waited til RAGE was shipped out then moved everyone over to focus on Doom 4. Don't expect it to come out for a couple more years.
Hitman 8. pro. 2012 v 5.46 dop.
Wow, I tought it was only rumors... I expect to be good as Doom 3, loved the new feel of it... Let's hope it has some trailers soon!
IceHandz 8. pro. 2012 v 5.14 odp.
In '08 it was a rumor. Two years ago (or three, I forgot) they said it's in the works, altho it wasn't confirmed to be titled "Doom 4." They say EVERYONE at id Software is focused on Doom 4 now. They learned a lot of mistakes from RAGE so hopefully they step up in the gaming market.
Kuehnau 10. pro. 2012 v 1.50 dop.
According to ID the last time I read anything about it, they confirmed there was a new Doom coming out, but it wouldn't be labeled as Doom 4. that they were going to be going in a different direction with it.
< >
Zobrazeno 15 z 5 komentářů
Na stránku: 15 30 50
DOOM 3: BFG Edition > Obecné diskuze > Detaily tématu
Datum odeslání: 5. pro. 2012 v 7.46 dop.
Počet příspěvků: 5 | dclm-gs1-107190000 |
This spectacular bird needs our help! Find Out More
Powerful Owl siblings growing up in Taronga Wildlife Hospital Rehabiliitation Aviaries
Two fledgling Powerful Owls (Ninox strenua) were admitted to the Taronga Zoo Wildlife Hospital, two weeks apart. The owls were siblings being raised by their parents in Bayview, and their progress had been monitored by local residents and wildlife carers. It was thought that the parents of these birds had abandoned them and the birds were struggling to find food.
They spent three months together in the hospital’s rehabilitation aviaries gaining condition and strength, before being released late one night in December back to Bayview, with assistance from the local residents who found them.
(Wildlife arrival numbers 09B269 and 09B287)
Wildlife Hospital - Taronga Zoo | dclm-gs1-107210000 |
Closing The Redemption Loop In Local Commerce
Next Story
The Winklevosses Vs. Silicon Valley
When it comes to local commerce, the ultimate prize everyone is going after right now is how to close the redemption loop. The redemption loop starts when a consumer sees an ad or an offer for a local merchant, and is completed when the consumer makes a purchase and that purchase can be tracked back to the offer. If you know who is actually redeeming offers and how much they are spending, you can be much smarter about tweaking and targeting those offers.
Groupon, LivingSocial, and other daily deal sites have created enormous value by pushing the redemption loop the furthest. When someone buys a daily deal, for instance, that translates into cash for the merchant. But for the vast majority of their deals Groupon and LivingSocial do not track whether or not they are ever redeemed, much less the amount each consumer actually spends at the store or restaurant once they show up.
In order to complete the circle and track offers all the way through redemptions, it is necessary to either tap into the payment system or create an alternative way to track redemptions. Different companies are tackling this problem in different ways, but they almost all rely on a shift from emailed coupons to offers delivered through mobile apps.
Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, who recently partnered with LivingSocial to power daily deals across his commerce network, sees a shift in targeting from broadcasting deals to narrowcasting them. “Blasting out a deal to everyone in New York is not targeting,” he says. “When you broadcast too much in any category, it is just a lot of noise. Email response rates have plummeted for everyone across the industry. What used to be 10% response rates even a year ago, now you are talking the 1% to 2% level.” The constant barrage of emails from Groupon, LivingSocial, and every daily deal copycat is creating user fatigue that is visible in declining response rates.
And that is why mobile is so appealing. If you can send deal notifications to people’s phones based on their exact location and nearby deals, you have the beginnings of narrowcasting. Later on, companies will figure out how to layer on ways to target by income, gender, and other factors as well.
Mobile and local commerce go hand in hand. In a few cities, Groupon is testing out Groupon Now and LivingSocial is offering Instant Deals. In both cases, the deals appear on mobile apps and can be redeemed instantly, rather than having to wait a day for the deal to go live, as is the case with their regular daily deals. The downside of these deals is that Groupon and LivingSocial cannot take advantage of their existing deal inventory and they have to actually provision participating merchants with iPhones and iPads so that they can accept the deals and Groupon/LivingSocial can track them. Yelp is doing something similar where you have to show a redemption code to the merchant from your phone.
Foursquare and Facebook are taking a different approach through their separate partnerships with American Express. Since AmEx is the payment system, it records deal redemptions along with the actual payments. Merchants and consumers don’t have to do anything different from what they normally do. Pay with a credit card and your deal is redeemed. Except it only works if you have an AmEx card and the discount is credited to your account later.
Google is trying to link Google Offers to its Google Wallet, which requires an NFC chip in your phone and an NFC reader at the merchant’s checkout. It has the advantage of working with MasterCard, Citi, and other large payment processors. But it also depends on a brand new technology that will take a long time to become widely available.
The key to closing the redemption loop is definitely payments. Investor Chris Sacca recently told Kevin Rose in a video interview the best reason why Twitter should buy Square is because Twitter has the broadest reach to distribute offers and deals, and Square has a built-in way to track redemption. This was just an off the cuff remark in a friendly chat (Twitter isn’t even in this business yet), but it makes sense.
We are moving from a world of online ads that produce impressions and clicks to online and mobile offers that produce real sales. If the deal companies can figure out a way to actually measure those sales, it could open up local commerce in a massive way that makes what they’ve done so far look like child’s play. | dclm-gs1-107220000 |
How to find leaks?
Discussion in 'Irrigation / Sprinkler Forum' started by blown, May 29, 2011.
1. blown
blown Engineer
Apr 23, 2005
Wichita KS
My friend has one drip/microspray zone in the beds in front of her house. There's gotta be close to 100 emitters/sprays total on the zone. It's split into 2 sections, divided by a sidewalk. Each section appears to be plumbed into the PVC line (as opposed to running a flex pipe under the sidewalk to connect the 2 directly).
She had some guy rip out a bunch of plants and plant even more. Now the microsprays are not popping up and aren't putting out much water.
I fixed 2 leaks in the funnypipe in section 2. The sprays in section 2 are better but still poor. Section 1 is not bad.
I've pulled up a ton of the funnypipe looking for more leaks with no luck. Is there some method that is better than pulling up the pipe? Is there a tool line a pressure gauge or something that would help isolate the leak(s)?
2. Gary Swart
Gary Swart In the Trades
Sep 1, 2004
Yakima WA
I know of no tool. How about just letting the water run and find the wet spots?
3. Sponsor
Sponsor Paid Advertisement
Similar Threads: find leaks
Forum Title Date
Irrigation / Sprinkler Forum Finding Valves Feb 21, 2007
Irrigation / Sprinkler Forum Finding where our leak is. Aug 20, 2006
Share This Page | dclm-gs1-107230000 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.