text:
Raising one million pounds to save rainforest in Borneo is a landmark achievement SEARCH NEWS
Less than a year after launching the Borneo Rainforest Appeal, World Land Trust (WLT) has raised one million pounds to save the Keruak Corridor in the Lower Kinabatangan floodplain of Sabah, Borneo.
John Burton, WLT Chief Executive, commented: "Meeting the million pound target for the Borneo Rainforest Appeal is a landmark in the Trust's 25 year history. The scale of our achievement in Borneo renews my confidence in the Trust's ongoing ability to raise the funds that are so desperately needed to stem the tide of habitat destruction worldwide."
The Borneo Rainforest Appeal was organised in partnership with Hutan, WLT's conservation partner in Malaysia.
Dr Isabelle Lackman, Co-Director of Hutan, said: "Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of World Land Trust's supporters and partners, we are now in the process of purchasing and permanently protecting a strategically important corridor of forest along the River Kinabatangan. The protection of the forest is crucial for the protection of species, and by connecting forests that are fragmented we know we can save viable populations of Orang-utans."
To promote the Borneo appeal abroad, WLT joined forces with Rainforest Trust, a US-based non-profit conservation organisation. A donation from Rainforest Trust on the eve of WLT's 25th Anniversary brought the appeal total to one million pounds.
WLT continues to raise funds for strategic land purchase in Sabah in partnership with Hutan. Future donations will be used to extend the Keruak Corridor and to identify and protect new corridors in Kinabatangan.
The announcement was made during a celebration of WLT's 25th Anniversary in London on Tuesday 6 May 2014. The evening event at the BAFTA Theatre was hosted by WLT Patron, Sir David Attenborough, and commemorated WLT's conservation successes of the past quarter century.
UPDATE: The following button will now take you to the donate to Action Fund page
Donate to the Action Fund
World Land trust raises one million pounds to save Orang-utans' threatened habitat in Bornean rainforest »
Borneo Rainforest Appeal: million pound target in sight »
Borneo Rainforest Appeal launched »
25th Anniversary Conservation News Fundraising Malaysian Borneo Species
Thank you to the World Land Trust fundraisers of 2021! 06/01/2022
As we head into the new year, we at World Land Trust (WLT) would like to take a moment to …
A season of conservation action: Winter issue of WLT News out now 09/12/2020
WLT News is the Trust's in-depth newsletter, available printed or online in PDF format. WLT News complements the eBulletin, featuring …


Click here if you need help creating a NEOGOV account.
Click here if you are already have a NEOGOV account and you are unable to login.
Click here for more detailed instructions on how to apply.
Still need help? Call the NEOGOV applicant support line at 855.524.5627.
Please note that the NEOGOV Applicant Support Line is open from 8 AM to 5 PM Pacific Standard Time, Monday through Friday. Calls are directed to a voice mail operated system, and someone will return your call within one (1) business day.


REMINDER – SGC Meeting – Tues. – 10/13/15 – 10 a.m.
October 13, 2015 10:00 A.M.
gardening – pots, soil, plants and time.
C.A. Hiscock – Master Gardeners Speaker Bureau – DCMGA Speaker of year 2012.
Distribute Christmas Home Tour Tickets.
Buy your tickets for Christmas Luncheon ($25).
Bring toiletries for Veterans Gift Bags next month.


This Modern Craftsman is ideally situated next to York Blvd, the epicenter of Highland Park, offering an array of coffee shops, restaurants, bars, & boutiques, while also close to Figueroa and D.T.L.A. Along with walkable access to hip and eclectic destinations, the beautifully-appointed residence offers owners the opportunity to fully entertain friends & family at home thanks to a spacious, fenced-in backyard with fire pit and elevated Redwood deck. The open-concept kitchen, complete with a dedicated bar area with wine/beverage cooler, further enhances the home's ability to host gatherings of any kind. Solid oak hardwood floors continue to the upper level which, comprised solely of the master suite, delivers total privacy and relaxation. This A-frame sanctuary features a walk-in-closet, elegant dual vanity bath, and hillside views. Additionally, the property boasts a standalone garage, with high ceilings, natural light which can easily convert into a creative dream space/studio or ADU.
Copyright Pierre Galant Photography 2018 All rights reserved.


text:
Students and Parents
High School Opportunities
College and University Partners
Become an Employer Partner
Business Partners of the Year
Atlantic County Institute of Technology
Bergen County Technical School District
Burlington County Institute of Technology
Camden County Technical Schools
Cape May County Technical Schools
Cumberland County Technical Education Center
Essex County Schools of Technology
Gloucester County Institute of Technology
Hudson County Schools of Technology
Hunterdon County Vocational School District
Mercer County Technical Schools
Middlesex County Magnet Schools
Monmouth County Vocational School District
Morris County Vocational School District
Ocean County Vocational Technical School
Salem County Vocational Technical School District
Somerset County Vocational and Technical Schools
Sussex County Technical School
Union County Vocational-Technical Schools
Warren County Technical School
Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Animal Science
Audiovisual Technology, Digital Media and Design, and Graphic Arts
Automotive and Engine Technology
Communications, Broadcasting, and Journalism
Construction Technology and Architecture
Culinary Arts and Hospitality
Global Logistics and Distribution
Law and Public Safety
Science, Technology, Mathematics & Engineering (STEM)
Teaching and Early Childhood Education
Welding, Electrical, and Plumbing
Resources for CVTS Districts
Teach CTE
Business Partners Honored by New Jersey's County Vocational-Technical School Districts – 2019
Middlesex County Vocational and Technical Schools
From amusements in Wildwood to a high-tech photonics manufacturer in Sussex County, New Jersey's county vocational-technical schools are recognizing their business partners for outstanding contributions to career and technical education.
The 21 businesses receiving the 2019 Business Partnership Awards serve on county vocational technical school program advisory boards, offer opportunities for students to gain valuable work experience, donate equipment, or serve as mentors and role models for students.
"We could not fulfill our mission of providing relevant career and technical education without the active involvement of businesses and employers in our communities," said Scott Moffitt, the president of the New Jersey Council of County Vocational-Technical Schools and the superintendent of the Morris County Vocational School District.
County vocational technical school districts have been honoring business partners in their respective counties since 2001. The annual awards are presented to business partners by the individual county vocational technical school districts during the month of December.
"These business partners help our county vocational-technical schools develop strong career and technical education programs for our students," Moffitt said. "At the same time, these employers devote their time and energy to our schools because they understand the critical need to develop a technically trained workforce for their industries and New Jersey's economic future. This is really a win-win for everyone involved."
The 2019 honorees are:
Atlantic County Institute of Technology recognized Atlantic City Electric, whose employees serve on the vocational-technical school's advisory board.
The Bergen County Technical School District honored Michael Hern of Luxury Living by Michael Hern Real Estate.
Burlington County Institute of Technology honored Holman Automotive, which has offered students the opportunity to participate in Holman University.
Camden County Technical School District honored Vanessa A. Ravenelle, MHS, the ombudsman/community liaison for state Superior Court in Camden County.
The Cape May County Technical School District honored Cape May County Fire Training Academy, which has provided vital guidance to the district's advisory board and as well as collaborative planning and curriculum review for the past four years.
Cumberland County Technical Education Center has recognized Morey's Piers, which operates a classic seaside amusement park in Wildwood. Family owned and operated since 1969, Morey's is run by second generation Morey brothers, Will and Jack.
The Essex County Schools of Technology honored the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program (NJMEP), a nonprofit organization that works with manufacturers in the state to improve their productivity and efficiencies, reduce costs and enhance employee performance
Gloucester County Institute of Technology (GCIT) honored C. Schultes, which specializes in the development of groundwater and surface water resources in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Hudson County Schools of Technology honored Louis Gargiulo Co., Inc., a third-generation family owned and operated business specializing in industrial, commercial, and municipal construction.
Hunterdon County Vocational School District recognized Sumner Siecke, the owner and operator of Hunterdon Horizons Excavating, a full excavating and septic installation company based in Flemington.
Mercer County Technical School honored the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, a U.S. Department of Energy research facility affiliated with Princeton University.
Middlesex County Vocational and Technical Schools honored David Baron, plant manager at Gilchrist & Soames, a soap manufacturing facility.
The Monmouth County Vocational School District honored the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office, led by Sheriff Shaun Golden, for their partnership with the Academy of Law and Public Safety.
The Morris County Vocational School District honored Chilton Medical Center, a 260-bed hospital in Pompton Plains that has provided allied health students with two- to three-days-per-week internship opportunities, allowing students to work with health care professionals in nearly every hospital department.
Ocean County Vocational Technical Schools honored Yamaha Motor Corp., which partners with technical colleges and high schools nationwide through its Yamaha Marine University to help foster qualified marine technicians.
Passaic County Technical Institute honored Scott Barna, the president of Route 23 Auto Mall, a Ford dealership in Butler.
Salem County Vocational Technical School honored the Salem County Sheriff's Office, which includes the Department of Emergency Management, Emergency Medical Services, the 911 Call Center, the Fire Academy and the Correctional Facility.
The Somerset County Vocational & Technical School District honored Prestige Medical Solutions, a private vocational institute in North Plainfield that specializes in career training for the medical profession.
Sussex County Technical School honored Thorlabs, a high-tech photonics manufacturing facility in Newton.
Union County Vocational-Technical Schools honored Dr. Susan Rele, the owner of AmeriCare Physical Therapy, which has multiple locations in Union, Somerset and Middlesex counties.
Warren County Technical School honored welders Dino Forst and William Heins, who have served on the district's welding advisory committee for a number of years.
Could county vo-tech schools help end New Jersey's teacher shortage? These educators say yes. | Opinion (NJ.com)
Career Classroom: N.J. employers recognized for strengthening career and technical education (ROI-NJ)
County vocational-technical schools name 2022 Business Partners of the Year
Dr. Christina Wilson, founder of Equiheart Veterinary Services, receives 2022 Business Partner of the Year honor from Hunterdon County Vocational School District
Somerset County Vocational and Technical High School names American Tire and Auto Care the 2022 Business Partner of the Year
Business Partners News
Employers across the state were recognized recently by New Jersey's county vocational-technical schools for making valuable contributions to career and technical education. Each school district chose its Business Partner of the Year, an annual award that highlights the time, talents and other resources shared by a company to benefit students. This year's honorees represent a […]
Posted in Career and Technical Education, Career Programs, Employer Engagement, Featured News, Schools | Comments Off on Career Classroom: N.J. employers recognized for strengthening career and technical education (ROI-NJ)
New Jersey's county vocational-technical schools each chose a Business Partner of the Year, an annual award that highlights a professional, company or organization helping to develop the future workforce.
Posted in Career and Technical Education, Career Programs, Employer Engagement, Featured News, Schools, Uncategorized | Comments Off on County vocational-technical schools name 2022 Business Partners of the Year
Dr. Christina Wilson was named Hunterdon County Vocational School District's (HCVSD) 2022 Business Partner of the Year for her dedication to the district's Animal Science students.
Posted in Career and Technical Education, Career Programs, Employer Engagement, Featured News, Schools | Comments Off on Dr. Christina Wilson, founder of Equiheart Veterinary Services, receives 2022 Business Partner of the Year honor from Hunterdon County Vocational School District
View More News about Business Partners
Copyright © 2023 New Jersey Council Of County Vocational–Technical Schools.
10 West Lafayette Street 2B, Trenton, NJ 08608
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;

class CreateOratoriosTable extends Migration {

	/**
	 * Run the migrations.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function up()
	{
		Schema::create('oratorios', function(Blueprint $table)
		{
			$table->increments('id');
			$table->string('nome');
			$table->string('email');
			$table->string('logo')->default('');
			$table->string('sms_sender', 11)->default('');
			$table->boolean('reg_visible')->default(1);
			$table->string('reg_token');
			$table->timestamp('last_login')->default(DB::raw('CURRENT_TIMESTAMP'));
			$table->integer('last_id_event')->default(0);
			$table->timestamps();
		});
	}

	/**
	 * Reverse the migrations.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function down()
	{
		Schema::drop('oratorios');
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


I hated Malcolm McLaren when I was old enough to have an opinion about him for the same reasons I hated Aerosmith and KISS back then: I saw him as having ruined, and then stolen, the best of my beloved New York Dolls. Through the lenses of my blinding teenage love, the Dolls broke up because he killed them, while their pale, feeble imitators were able to make a living at it. And later, every time I'd find myself in the "who started punk first, the US or the UK" argument, his name would be invoked and I'd point out that he stole it lock, stock and barrel from Richard Hell and every kid hanging out at CBGB before there was anything resembling punk fashion.
You could also hate him for turning the word "punk" into the thing that made your parents lock their doors, robbing the Ramones of "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" finally giving them their first hit. But would it have been so monumental and enduring a force if it hadn't been so divisive? We'll never know.
I hated him because he never gave his partner, Vivienne Westwood, any credit for being his partner in crime (or at least not publicly enough), and Jessica Hopper reminds us of his svengali-esque exploitation of an underage Annabella Lwin.
But he was an influencer and he added something to the culture. He had a profound influence on my world. Begrudging respect is given, although Malcolm would have loved and fed off my hatred.
I am heartily tired of writing obituaries and I haven't even started.


This entry was posted on 星期二, 五月 27th, 2014 at 上午8:57	and is filed under 健康. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


Hi Debbie! Sounds like you are planning an awesome Disney vacation! Since you're planning on going to four theme parks over the two days you are there, you will need to purchase the Park Hopper option as well. This add-on enables you to visit any or all of the four theme parks on the same day.
- Mini golfing before 4 pm at either Winter Summerland or Fantasia Gardens courses.
You can use these however you wish, on the same day you visit a theme park or on a separate day, and you can even go to several on the same day. If you wanted to go to a third, you would need to either purchase a three-day theme park ticket and then you would be entitled to three WPFAM visits. Note that the price for the WPFAM option is the same whether it's added on to a two or a three day ticket. If you don't need the third day theme park visit, then you can simply purchase an single entry to DisneyQuest.
Write us back with any other questions as you continue planning your magical vacation Debbie!


text:
Q: CSS Tumblr Theme: Post2 Background Misplaced I don't know the right term but I hope someone could help me fix this up. The background isn't fixed with the border.
I can't really explain how it looks like so please click here for the imgur uploaded image of my problem.
For the code I used, please click here to be directed on my Tumblr. Right click and select "view page source".

A: You have to modify the padding for the post div.
Change this
.post{
   width: 450px;
   padding: 7px;
   background-color:#FFCCCC;
   margin-bottom:0px;
   margin-top:5px;
   margin-left: 10px;
   border:1px dashed #f0e5c4;
}

to
.post{
   width: 450px;
   padding-right: 11px;
   background-color:#FFCCCC;
   margin-bottom:0px;
   margin-top:5px;
   margin-left: 10px;
   border:1px dashed #f0e5c4;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


T. Chews Natural Moisturizing Shampoo 8 oz.
Fernandez Super Gro 4 oz.
T. Chews conditioning & Detangling Shampoo 8 oz.
Triple strength Super Grow 4 oz.
T. Chews Scalp & Hair Therapy 8 oz.
Semi Permanent Hair Color 8 oz.
T. Chews Natural Moisturizing Shampoo 32oz.
T. Chews Revitalizing Shampoo 32oz.


text:
Coastal management (3)
Adapting to Climate Change in Coastal Communities of the Atlantic Provinces, Canada: Part 1 Guidance for Selecting Adaptation Options (Opens in a new Window)
This guide aims to familiarize decision makers in the Atlantic provinces with strategies and tools to manage climate change-driven sea level rise and coastal flooding and erosion. This resource includes a description of expected and observed climate change impacts in Atlantic Canada, characterization of coastal environments and an overview of appropriate land use planning and engineering adaptation approaches.
Atlantic Climate Adaptation Solutions Association, Natural Resources Canada
Canada in a Changing Climate: National Issues Report (2021) (Opens in a new Window)
The report provides a national perspective on how climate change is impacting our communities, environment and economy, and how we are adapting to reduce risks. It includes chapters on topics that are of national importance or that benefit from a pan-Canadian perspective, along with case stories featuring examples of adaptation in practice
Government of Canada, Natural Resources Canada
Canada's Changing Climate Report (Opens in a new Window)
This report is about how and why Canada's climate has changed and what changes are projected for the future. It is the first report to be released as part of Canada in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action. Released in 2019.
Climate-Resilient Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure: an assessment of the impact of climate change on climatic design data in Canada (Opens in a new Window)
The report provides an assessment of how climatic design data relevant to users of the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC 2015, Table C-2) and the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CHBDC/CSA S6 2014, Annex A3.1) might change as the climate continues to warm.
Government of Canada: Environment and Climate Change Canada, Pacific Climate Impact Consortium, National Research Council
Guidance on Good Practices in Climate Change Risk Assessment (Opens in a new Window)
ICLEI Canada worked on a project for the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) to author a guidance document on Good Practices in Climate Change Risk Assessment. Climate change risk assessments can form the basis and inform strategies to build our resilience to climate change, and it is important for all orders of government to better understand how to best conduct these assessments.
Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment
Guide for Considering Climate Change in Coastal Conservation (Opens in a new Window)
This guide aims to assist coastal conservation managers integrate climate considerations into new or existing conservation schemes. This manual covers a six-step approach to strengthening conservation efforts, including the identification of climate stressors and evaluation of their impact on conversation targets.
Guide For Integrating Climate Change Considerations into Municipal Asset Management (Opens in a new Window)
This guide aims to provide municipal staff with a process for systematically building climate resiliency into assets management policies, plans and practices. This guide focuses on the integration of climate change within infrastructure services and/or risk management frameworks. Examples from practice leaders, lessons learned and tools for building climate resilience are included.
Federation of Canadian Municipalities


2019 Nissan Rogue Release Date, Changes, Hybrid, Carplay Features – Please, have a look in the masterfully designed and excellently been constructed 2019 Nissan Rogue. It does seem familiar? Yes? We suppose that people got you confused, however, it had been our intention:–RRB-! Even though we were, a bit, cruel, however, you are, definitely right once you had been claiming that yore been seeing this vehicle on the streets, worldwide.
Here is the thing, this newly-made SUV, has now been globally known under the various names have you heard for the Nissan Qashqai? This exactly the exact same vehicle, intended to be sold in European markets or maybe you have heard for the Nissan Dualis? Again, exactly the exact same SUV, under the different name, intended to be in love with the Japanese and the Australian automobile markets. Found the picture?
It will stay faithful to its CMF (Common Module Family) platform, which presents the joined efforts of the Nissan and Renault designers. Being built on this light weight platform, this newly-made variant is likely to be a lot stronger, as well as the fuel efficient with, at precisely the same time, awesome aerodynamic capabilities.
If it has to do with the exterior design changes, when being when compared with its previously made variant, among the most striking features is likely to undoubtedly be masterful: slightly redesigned flashing lights, fully restyled panoramic sun roof and integral mirror. These features are likely to undoubtedly be of an enormous help when it comes to boosting the overall look of the vehicle itself.
Along with your features, a lot of people will get this newly designed SUV quite attractive, utterly handsome and highly elegant. Undoubtedly, the addition amount of attractiveness is going to be achieved by adding with a set of the variety of grille treatments in conjunction with a high-styled 17 and 18 inched aluminum wheels.
And the interior of the brand new 2019 Nissan Rogue is in the pipeline to be created as spectacular as the outside. Even though the huge selection of experts assesses it like an extremely bad and damaging play, however, in the event that you will ask us for a comment, we would say that people see that move as a quite clever one. All credits for an idea to Nissa's designers.
Even though the cabin may provide, somehow, a smaller volume of a Freespace, however, it will suit for your larger families. The major cabin will have the ability to accommodate up to seven people, to sit up straight quite comfortable with, having, at precisely the exact same time, just the room enough all their body parts.
Traveler safety has always been one of the important things for your Nissan Company. Because of that reality, all new 2019 Nissan Rogue will show up equipped having quite a wide selection of the many security features. Among all these, the next few, according to our opinion, would function as one of the most relevant ones: advanced level brake system, somehow upgraded cruise control, advanced level blind spot detection system, 7 airbags, vehicle dynamic control system and hill start assist system. besides that, there are also 2019 nissan rogue apple carplay.
It is planned that under the hood of the newly 2019 Nissan Rogue is going to be placed single machine option. The honor, probably the most likely, should fall to a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine option integral with capability gadget to supply approximate in regards to a 170 horsepower and 175 pound-feet. This kind of motor option is likely to likely be accessible paired with the CVT traditional transmission and adjusted to front-wheel drive or an optional all-wheel drive mode.
The release date of Nissan Rogue 2019 is expected scheduled till the conclusion of the very year, and its own general sales should start right after. As for the price tag, it is expected to come in a range between $28000 and $33000.


This video shows the title credits for a sweet movie from 1986. There are 11 parts total. If you enjoy musicals, you will enjoy this movie.
This short video shows what the Hare Krishna meditation ritual is like. Mr Dasa describe their prayer symbols and explains the number of times the prayer is repeated.
The stretch of coastline between Slapton Sands and Start Point lighthouse is one of the most beautiful and interesting in the UK. In this podcast, we take you along the way, combining fascinating snippets of information about the natural history, geography, geology and history of the area. Presented by Dr Phil Bradfield, Open University tutor, this walk has something for everyone. This is the first stop on the walk (part two).


The No. 7 ranked Hutch Lady Dragons jumped out on top of Neosho early and won going away 75-38 in the first night of …Read More.
Hutchinson Community College sophomore guard Mark Braden was named the Verizon Wireless/Jayhawk Conference Player of the Week on Tuesday after …Read More.
For the second-straight season, the Hutchinson Community College women's soccer team swept the Jayhawk Conference's top postseason awards. Head coach …Read More.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) Penn State trustees fired football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier amid the growing …Read More.
MANHATTAN (AP) – Having successfully shored up last season's troubled run defense, No. 17 Kansas State is now struggling to …Read More.
LAWRENCE (AP) – Kansas has signed highly touted forward Perry Ellis to a national letter of intent during the early …Read More.
IOLA – The Hutchinson Community College men's basketball team dominated the final 7 minutes, 14 seconds of the game and …Read More.
Jonathan Sanchez Ryan Verdugo KANSAS CITY, MO. – The Kansas City Royals have announced that the club has acquired left-handed …Read More.
Brett Giesen Justin Vargas Austin Ledy WICHITA – Kansas Wesleyan's Brett Giesen (Junior, Laguna Niguel, Calif.) totaled a NAIA leading …Read More.


Amazon has proved the rumour-mongers right by launching the Amazon Fire TV streaming box to take on the likes of the Google Chromecast, Roku and Apple TV.
The Amazon Fire TV box comes with a Bluetooth remote control, loads of partner apps (including Netflix) and also puts gaming front and centre with the option of buying a dedicated games controller.
At an event themed to look like a living room and filled with movie theatre paraphernalia, Amazon's Peter Larsen took to the stage to unveil the device.
After dissing the search function, closed ecosystems and lag on Apple TV, Microsoft's Xbox Live and the Roku box, Larsen took the wraps off the Fire TV.
The little black box boasts smartphone-esque specs, including a quad-core processor, dedicated GPU and 2GB of RAM which Amazon says should make operation smooth and fast.
There's also dual-band Wi-Fi on board, and a Bluetooth remote control that also features a microphone input so you can just talk into it to control the box. Searching on the Fire TV box will bring back results from all your streaming services - and Amazon says its voice search is the best in the biz.
Streaming in 1080p is supported, and there's Dolby Digital Surround Sound via HDMI out too.
As with most streaming services these days, Amazon's pretty keen on finding you new things to watch - the Fire TV predicts movies and shows it thinks you want to watch and queues them up so they start playing instantly (rather than making you sit through a loading screen).
The device is designed to play nicely with Amazon's own Prime Instant Video streaming service (formerly Lovefilm Instant in the UK), and because the OS is based on Android there are already loads of partners on board including Vevo and Crackle - even Amazon's streaming arch-nemesis Netflix is present and correct.
Amazon's looking to own the second screen too, with tablet integration telling you info about the actors in whatever you're watching and identifying the music playing too.
Music services are coming to Fire TV next month as well, with Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn on board.
So that's film and music, what about gaming? Describing games consoles as too expensive and Apple TV's mirroring efforts as laughable, Larsen said, "With Fire TV we thought of games right from the beginning - fun immersive games at affordable prices."
There's an optional extra of the Amazon Fire Game Controller, that will set you back US$40 (about AU$43.27) and comes with some Amazon Coins to spend on games (the average price of which is US$1.85, or AU$2.02).
Amazon also gave a sneak peek of the first game it's making itself at Amazon Game Studios, Sev Zero.
The Amazon Fire TV price is set at US$99 (about AU$107.09) for Statesiders, and it's available from today. No word yet on other countries, but we'd imagine that price will translate to AU$110 to AU$150 in Australia - if the box makes it across the Pacific.


text:
Q: Automatically display vertical scrollbar in multiline text edit control On a windows mobile device I have a mutliline text edit control that is set to read-only and has some static text displayed during it's display lifetime.  I would like to only display a vertical scrollbar when it's actually useful (i.e. the text is larger than the display).
I can't easily figure out if the text is to large to display because of two reasons.

*

*There is no horizontal scroll bar displayed so the text wraps.

*Under windows mobile, the win32 routines to calculate the size of what text will display does not work correctly.  They return a incorrect rectangle.

The edit control must tell the scroll bar what it's scroll range is at some point.  I was wondering if I could get in between then and hide the scroll bar if it's not going to be used.

A: This is how I solved this problem.
First off:

*

*It only works with read-only mode of a edit control (as you don't want the text to change often).

*I think is specific to Windows Mobile MFC, big windows can handle this a lot better.

*The solution is very very hacky.

Solution:

*

*I have a standard CEdit bound to the control.

CEdit m_Message;
DDX_Control(pDX, IDC_MESSAGE,
  m_Message);

*During the InitDialog and OnSize calls, turn on the display of the scroll bar and setup a timer message.

m_Message.ShowScrollBar(SB_VERT,
  TRUE);
SetTimer(DO_ADJUST_DISPLAY_STATE, 50,
  0);

*In the timer handling code, use the scroll information to determine if the scroll bar needs to be displayed.

*If not being displayed, turn off the scroll bar and force the window to redisplay.

 void CMessageDlg::OnTimer( UINT_PTR nIDEvent )
  {
    switch(nIDEvent)
    {
    case DO_ADJUST_DISPLAY_STATE:
        KillTimer(nIDEvent);
        // deselect all text
        m_Message.SetSel(0, 0);

        SCROLLINFO info;
        m_Message.GetScrollInfo(SB_VERT, &info);

        if(info.nPage > (UINT)info.nMax)
        {
            // need to re-display the non scroll bar version
            m_Message.ShowScrollBar(SB_VERT, FALSE);

            // I could not find any other way to force a redisplay
            // correctly without display problems...

            // first move the window to a know invisible area
            // then wait (using a timer) for the window to move
            // then move the window back to it's original position
            RECT rt;
            rt.left = 0;
            rt.right = 5;
            rt.top = 0;
            rt.bottom = 5;
            m_Message.MoveWindow(&rt);

            SetTimer(DO_REDISPLAY_MESSAGE, 50, 0);
        }
        break;

    case DO_REDISPLAY_MESSAGE:
        KillTimer(nIDEvent);
        // m_MessagePosition holds the original position
        // worked out dynamically during the WM_SIZE
        // processing
        m_Message.MoveWindow(&m_MessagePosition);
        break;
    }
}

I hope that helps out other people who may have similar requirements.

A:
I was wondering if I could get in between then and hide the scroll bar if it's not going to be used.

I highly doubt it. But I bet you could call SetScrollInfo some time after the text box is created, and send your own scroll parameters.
EDIT: Wrong link, my bad. Here's the one for the Windows CE


text:
Home > What's On > Our Thriving Tribe - GESTURE
Online Digital Resource
Our Thriving Tribe - GESTURE
GESTURE, is a new space within Our Thriving Tribe Project (OTT) where arts professionals were commissioned to consider entrepreneurship from the perspective of the arts in Ireland and respond with a gesture.
Each Gesture was digitally documented, this documentation became part of Our Thriving Tribes research materials. Each unique Gesture remained with the arts professional. The commissioned documentation from GESTURE will be exhibited online, shared through the OTT & AHEH projects digital platforms and published in the Our Thriving Tribe publication.
As a curatorial project Our Thriving Tribe (OTT) aims to expand upon the current discourse on entrepreneurship within the arts in Ireland. A process of enquiry into the context of artistic practice by researching entrepreneurship from the perspective of arts professionals in order to generate new knowledge within this field.
Our Thriving Tribe's curators are particularly drawn to activating spaces within the digital realm of public culture both as part of their research and to disseminate knowledge to society. These spaces exist in real time, continuously evolving and adapting in keeping with the progress of this curatorial project. The collaboration and conversation that emerges within OTT is relevant for the AHEH project whose aims are to develop a tailored Arts and Humanities entrepreneurship model that improves the long-term entrepreneurial prospects for A&H students.
OTT is produced by Visual as part of the AHEH project. The Arts & Humanities Entrepreneurship Hubs (AHEH) project brings together 14 partners from across 7 EU member states to improve the entrepreneurial capacity of A&H students with an innovative programme of entrepreneurial training. OTT is Co Curated by David Francis Moore and Juliette Harvey at Visual.
GESTURE ONE
Illustrator & graphic designer
Claire Prouvost is a French illustrator and graphic designer based in Dublin, Ireland. She loves to draw charismatic women in her bold, colourful and minimalist style. She has worked and collaborated with a variety of clients, including Gucci, Lavazza, Hop House 13, Becks, Image Magazine, Oh Comely, Paulette and many other.
Claire Prouvost partcipated in the OTT zoom room sessions which can be viewed here
Claire Prouvost - www.claireprouvost.com
GESTURE TWO
Music producer and Mixer
Brian Sheil an award-winning Music producer and Mixer who works with artists from Ireland to the U.S to create chart topping records in diverse genres.
Brian himself began making his mark on the music industry at sixteen years old when he set up Ireland's first exclusive internet radio streaming service, Klubb FM. Additionally, he assisted Lady Gaga during the recording of her 2011 album, Born This Way. Brian went on to receive a gold disc for his mixing and mastering work on country star Derek Ryan's fifth album, "The Simple Things", which went to #1 in the Official Irish Album Chart. He is currently the in-house sound/recording engineer and Senior Theatre Technician at VISUAL Center for Contemporary Art & The George Bernard Shaw Theatre in Carlow. Brian finished at the top of his graduating class at the University of Central Lancashire and holds a First Class Honours degree in Music Production, as well as a Diploma in Strategic Business Management & Leadership from the Institute of Business & Technology, Dublin.
Brian partcipated in the OTT zoom room sessions which can be viewed here
Brian Sheil - www.BrianSheilMusic.com
Brian Sheil - Vulnerable Dream - Spoken Word
Music by Arn Andersson
Our Thriving Tribe (OTT) · Brian Sheil - Vulnerable Dream - Spoken Word
GESTURE THREE
Artist, Activist & Independent scholar.
Vukašin Nedeljkovic initiated the multidisciplinary platform Asylum Archive & holds a Masters in Visual Arts Practice at Dunlaoghaire Institute of Arts, Design & Technology.
He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. His recent contributions include Reiterating Asylum Archive: documenting direct provision in Ireland, 2018 and Asylum Archive: an Archive of Asylum and Direct Provision in Ireland, 2016, 2017. He was recently awarded an Arts and Activism bursary from the Arts Council and has recently published Asylum Archive publication. Asylum Archive is a platform open for dialogue and discussion inclusive to individuals who have experienced a sense of sociological/geographical 'displacement', social trauma and violence. It is an act of solidarity to bring a different perspective on the life of people who came to Ireland to seek protection. Asylum Archive's objective is to collaborate with asylum seekers, artists, academics and activists, amongst others, with a view to creating an interactive documentary cross-platform online resource, critically foregrounding accounts of exile, displacement, trauma and memory.
Vukašin partcipated in the OTT zoom room sessions which can be viewed here
Vukašin Nedeljkovic - www.asylumarchive.com
GESTURE FOUR
Harry Walsh Foreman was born in Dublin where for the most part he has been based since either making art, teaching art or sometimes both.
Harry recently graduated from the MFA in Fine Art Paint in the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) in Dublin. He has exhibited extensively through Ireland in numerous group shows where he has honed his particular approach which celebrates the human and the marks we make on the world from the architecture of a skyline to the tagging on a storefront. It is made in celebration of the local, the small-scale, the eccentric and the down-right ordinary.
It is a search for the moments which contain a multitude of possibilities for examining the humour of the everyday. These works are inspired by contemporary events ranging from the Repeal the 8th movement to the current housing crisis and every thing in between so he can satirise the nation we live in and in doing so create pieces which spark conversations which will allow us all to examine what we mean by erroneous terms like local or small scale when these borders we put up wheter the divide between north side and south side of Dublin, or more recently the unrelenting bickery of the Hard Border are as fictitious as the stories he puts his characters in.
Harry partcipated in the OTT zoom room sessions which can be viewed here
Harry Walsh Foreman - www.harrywalshforeman.com
Harry Walsh Foreman - A Notional Gesture for the Arts - Pen & Ink on Gesso Panel - 13 x18 cm - 2020
GESTURE FIVE
Bernadette Kiely graduated from the College of Art and Design, Waterford I.T. with first class honours in Graphic Design Communications and worked for two years in Graphic Design in London and Architecture in New York before attending the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London, UK.
Her largescale paintings and drawings have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at The Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, The Source Arts Centre, Thurles, LUAN Gallery, Athlone, Ballina Arts Centre, Co. Mayo, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise, Model Gallery, Sligo, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, Co. Armagh, N. Ireland, Imagine Arts Festival, Waterford, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Skive Kunstmuseum, Skive, Denmark and in group exhibitions at The Royal Academy, London, UK, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, The Royal Ulster Academy, Belfast, N. Ireland, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Kinsale Arts Festival, the American Irish Historical Society, New York, USA. Bernadette's recent exhibition "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin" is taken from Ulysses' famous speech in William Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida. Continuing with Bernadette Kiely's theme of mapping the changing landscape and the passage of time, the exhibition included paintings depicting flooding on the river Nore and on the Suir and paintings referencing wildfires, a theme she first explored in the late '90's. The exhibition also included a series of small paintings made in response to her nightly walks around the deserted streets of Thomastown where she lives.
She was elected to the membership of Aosdana. in 2007. Studio residencies include the RHA Schools in 2015, the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. Monaghan and Cill Rialaig Artists retreat Centre, Co. Kerry. Bernadette's work is held in public and private collections in Ireland, UK, Europe, USA and Korea. She is represented in Ireland by
Taylor Galleries, Dublin
Bernadette partcipated in the OTT zoom room sessions which can be viewed here
www.bernadettekiely.ie
www.taylorgalleries.ie
GESTURE by Bernadette Kiely - THE ENTREPRENEUR AS A CREATIVE WHO PRODUCES ART FOR SALE
GESTURE SIX
B-boy & Hip Hop Dancer
Tobi Omoteso is an internationally acclaimed B-boy (breakdancer) and hip hop dancer.
Training at Broadway Dance Centre & The birth place of Hip-Hop - New York, Tobi has been dancing for over 15 years and is dedicated to supporting the foundations of this dynamic and influential dance form.
As curator and director of hugely popular TOP 8 at Dublin Dance Festival, Tobi consistently delivers the best of Irish and International street dance to new audiences. Now heading into it's 6th year, the event continues to grow in size and popularity, drawing huge numbers of both old/young dancers to the festival.
As a dance facilitator Tobi has designed and delivered youth programmes for Dance Ireland, Dublin Dance Festival, Waterford Youth Art, Lioas Dance Platform, Cork, Tipperary, Carlow and Dance limerick. Teaching in schools, youth groups and established dance organisations, he has brought his knowledge of Hip-Hop and breakdance into a wide variety of youth and academic contexts. In 2016 he was invited to share his experiences as part of Dance Ireland's - Dance Talks. He has performed his own work at Imagine Arts Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Limerick Fringe Festival, Whats Next Festival, Loias Dance Platform, Glor Performance Platform and at Dance2Connect among other festivals and events. On screen he has performed on Sky's Got to Dance, hit US TV show Penny Dreadful and in numerous music videos and commercials. Tobi has worked with some of Ireland's leading choreographers including David Bolger, as part of the core ensemble for the 1916 Easter Rising Commemorations in Croke Park (TG4 & Tyrone Production LAOCHRA), Catherine Young, Libby Swerd, Tobi joined Lucia Kickham in the studio at Dance Ireland as part of Lucia's Hatch residency research for - INIT: The Warm Up Project.
Tobi participated in the OTT Zoom Room Sessions which can be viewed here
GESTURE SEVEN
Andrea Fitzpatrick is an artist, arts manager and curator, with a strong interest in collaboration and overlapping disciplines.
In 2015 she created the Chimera Art and Science programme to create a space for experimentation and collaboration between art and science. She curated a programme which included six month artist residencies, a student project with the Centre for Creative Arts and Media (CCAM) of the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and an artist talk given by Andy Gracie. The two artists in residence, Siobhan McGibbon and Joanna Hopkins, worked in the CÚRAM laboratory in the National University of Ireland, Galway. Andrea curated 'The Future is Here' exhibition which featured work by Siobhan McGibbon and Joanna Hopkins which was created during their residencies. The programme was funded through Science Foundation Ireland's Discover award scheme.
The Art and Science Programme became part of CÚRAM's Public Engagement Programme in 2016. In the same year, Andrea worked with the socially engaged artist, Joanna McGlynn and her School of Alternative Possibilities (SOAP). SOAP's residency culminated in a public participatory event. Since then Andrea has created links between the engaged artists, researchers and communities of interest. Cleary Connolly have worked with the programme since 2017 and Karen Conway began working with CÚRAM researchers in 2019. In 2021, Andrea will work with the experimental architect, Rachel Armstrong, and visual artist, Carol Anne Connolly, for the Moore Institute's European Capital of Culture Legacy project.
Andrea participated in the OTT Zoom Room Sessions & this will be published soon!
GESTURE by Andrea Fitzpatrick
GESTURE EIGHT
Susan Buttner is an artist based in Ireland, concerned with bodily experiences of knowledge and power, identity, politics, alienation and difference.
Susan's practice involves sculpture, film, performance, painting, writing and collaborative projects. Recent group exhibitions include, Highlanes Gallery Open Submission, 2020, curated by Joy Gerrard, Sean Kissane, Jerome ODrisceoil, Drogheda; ARRANGEMENTS, (Orphans 6) 2019, curated by James Merrigan, Pallas Projects Studios, Dublin. Cairde Visual, 2019,The Model, Sligo; RHA 189th Annual Exhibition, Dublin; Periodical Review #8 2018, curated by James Merrigan, Aisling Prior, Gavin Murphy, Mark Cullen, Pallas Projects Studios, Dublin; Sirens Part II/III, 2018, by Celina Muldoon, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios; Floats in the Aether, 2018, by Amanda Coogan, National Gallery of Ireland; Strange Foreign Bodies exhibition, 2017, by Sarah Brown, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow; Report to the Academy exhibition, 2017, by Sarah Brown, Marabouparken Show, Stockholm.
Current project Chewing gum in my hair, (which began 2019 at the RHA) explores vulnerability, injury and pain, the health impact of mesh surgery on the individual and collective body and the politics of female subjectivity. This work involves close collaboration with women impacted by the mesh. It will culminate as a live performance, choreographed by Buttner with dancers Rebecca Reilly and Ella Clarkson, creating a synergy between sound, film, sculpture, and the body. It will form part of the PLATFORM 2020 exhibition curated by Sharon Murphy at the Draíocht Arts Centre. Recent awards include; Inaugural Janet Mullarney Prize 2020, (Highly Commended); Draíocht Incubate residency award 2020; Fingal County Council bursary award 2020; Arts Council of Ireland bursary award 2020; RHA Peer studio residency award 2019; RDS VAA 2018, curated by Amanda Coogan; RDS VAA 2016, curated by Alice Maher.
Buttner is founder of Temporality and Collapse Collective, which regularly meets in public spaces, making temporary sculptures with artists and non-artists, expanding the reach of sculpture, and opening conversations.
www.susanbuttner.com
Susan participated in the OTT Zoom Room Sessions which can be viewed here
GESTURE by Susan Buttner
Susan Buttner, spatial-temporal gesture, 2020, HD video 03.02 Artists interpretation of digital documentation in relation to a gesture.
The artist transforms her interpretation of gesture into a spatial-temporal gesture structure, creating an environment that virtulises a project of interactive viewer behaviors. This work considers how Gesture can be an unconventional, de-authorised form of action, locating the body, at the interface between linguistic and performance, the gesture becomes event, motion and stillness a decomposition of the speech act.
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text:
Community Gathers for Remembrance of 9-11
By Jeremy Coumbes on September 13, 2021 at 11:35am
Jacksonville Fire Fighters listen to keynote speaker Sergeant Matt Doss Saturday during the 9-11 memorial service held on the grounds of the Prairieland Heritage Museum in South Jacksonville.
Members of both the Jacksonville and South Jacksonville Fire Departments took part in remembering those who lost their lives on September 11th during a ceremony at the Prairieland Heritage Museum on Saturday.
Sponsored by the Jacksonville AMVETS Post 100, the ceremony began with a parade of first responder vehicles down West Michigan lead by the Jacksonville Combined Color Guard.
The memorial service was held on the museum grounds at the foot of the Traveling World War II memorial which is on display through Sunday.
Keynote speaker Matt Doss who is a graduate of Jacksonville High School, Army veteran, and current Sergeant with the Springfield Police Department, recalled the stories of seven people whose lives were lost on September 11th while working to save others.
Springfield Police Sergeant and Jacksonville resident Matt Doss was the keynote speaker for the September 11th memorial service at the Prairieland Heritage Museum Saturday.
Sergeant Doss made a request from the sizable crowd that had gathered near the end of his speech.
"I would like to make this request, for anyone here that is present today to gather around the podium after the twenty-one gun salute has been honored and Taps has been played for a photograph. I would like to send that photograph to the families of those I mentioned here today to let them know that Jacksonville, Illinois has not forgotten them or their loved ones that died on 9-11."
The Jacksonville Drum Line Institute performed followed by a 21 gun salute and a moment of silence in remembrance.
Vehicles from Jacksonville and South Jacksonville Fire Departments make their way to the Prairieland Heritage Museum for a September 11th memorial service Saturday, September 11th.


Congratulations to Jonardon Ganeri who has been elected a British Academy Fellow.
Fellows are distinguished UK academics recognised for their outstanding research in humanities and social sciences. See more here.
Wonderful news, and richly deserved. Congratulations, Jonardon!
Congratulations! It seems that Jonardon might be the one who will make it possible to have Indian Philosophy acknowledged as a main perspective on each topic (and perhaps also to make philosophy in general more polycentric). Let us hope that he will succeed!


This is the Player Profile of Angel Di Maria the Argentinean and Manchester United football player.
Born to Miguel Di Maria and Diana Harnandez di Maria on 14th February in Rosario, Argentina, Angel Di Maria was one of the third children of the Italian-Spanish couple. During his young age, Angle Di Maria used to help his parents in a local coal yard. Because of not so good financial conditions, Angel Di Maria faced lots of difficulties in buying football boots and other necessary equipment. He calls himself a very family oriented man. When Angel Di Maria started playing for Benfica, he asked his father to stop working and brought home for the parents and the family. Angel Di Mario is married to Jorgelina and they have a daughter named Mia.
After making his professional debut for Rosario Central in 2005, he was transferred to Benfica of Portugal in the year 2007. He was first paid Euro 6 million for his sports rights by the club and then in 2009 again, he was paid Euro 40 million as a minimum release fee. The next year he was transferred to Real Madrid with a five-year contract of Euro 25 Million contract fees plus Euro 11 million in incentives. Playing for Real Madrid, Angel Di Maria scored 22 goals in his 124 appearances. Recently on 26th August, Angel Di Maria was signed by the Manchester United with a five-year contract and a transfer fee of 59.7 million Pounds. He thus became the fifth most expensive transfer of all time and the highest fee paid ever by an English football club.
In the recent FIFA World Cup 2014, Di Maria played 12 games and in the round of 16 games against Switzerland Di Maria scored the only goal of the game and in the quarter-final game against Belgium Di Maria suffered a muscle tear in his thigh and that was the end of his World Cup campaign.
See What the Greats Say About the Game of Rugby!!


Dr. Benjamin T Po, Jr. graduated from Texas A&M University and received his Doctor of Dental Surgery Degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 1985. He practiced as a general dentist in Houston until 1991, and then in the United States Navy for 6 years as a military officer and general dentist to the armed forces. He completed 20 years of active and reserve military service and retired from the United States Air Force. He received his Post-Doctoral Certificate in Pediatric Dentistry after completing a two-year residency at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1999. He returned to the Houston area after completing his Pediatric Dental residency and worked as an associate with various pediatric dentists before opening his Katy practice in March 2005. Having over 30 years of extensive training and experience has made Dr. Po extremely proficient and knowledgeable in his specialty. He is also fluent in Spanish.
Dr. Po is an active member of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.
Dr. Po has also worked for the Public Health Service, providing much needed pediatric dental care for the American Indian Health Service in both Arizona and Alaska. His willingness to travel to remote regions where there are no pediatric dentists made him a vital team member in the dental care and treatment of native American children.
Dr. Po also provides community service and education locally by offering dental health presentations for preschoolers and their caretakers, as well as school age children and school nurses.
Dr. Po and his wife Taina reside in Fulshear and have two adult children, Kaitlyn and Ben III. Kaitlyn is serving as a registered nurse in the United State Air Force. Ben III is currently attending Mississippi State University studying large animal and dairy science.
Taina is a registered nurse and has a Masters degree in emergency nursing. She works in the practice as the office manager and plays a vital role in monitoring patients who require non IV conscious sedation. Her years of experience as an educator and clinical specialist add extra value to the practice. In addition to helping teach children and their parents how to care for their child's teeth, she is well prepared to handle any emergencies in the office.
Dr. Po is an Eagle Scout (1973) and he charters three cub scout packs in the Katy area. He is also a member of various cattle and ranching organizations in Texas. He is the current president of the Texas Black Hereford Association.


Batman is Bruce Wayne, a millionaire business man who masquerades as Batman-due to his wealth he is able toi have the latest gadgets, electronics and a souped up-tricked out car so he does his best to combat crime in Gotham City.
The Green Hornet is just a reporter who also fights crime.
Theyt maybe extraordinary at what they do but they are not superheroes, perhaps you could call them heroes that are superb.
he isnt "super human" Nor is he a super hero. he is just a rich guy with a bunch of toys.
By this convoluted logic, Lex Luthor should be considered a "super villain." Lex is the evil Bruce Wayne due to monetary assets alone, and he fights against Superman in his own right...in the same style as Batman: expensive toys.
Sadly, batman is no super hero. He is just a rich man by the name of Bruce Wyane with a butler name Alfred Pennyworth. Bruce Wyane is a millionair and drives a reall nice car "the batmobile." A real super hero is Superman.
Batman just drives around and if he gets shot at by the joker and gets hit, then he would die. But for superman the bullet would just bounce off his chest, and for that is a real super hero.
Batman does not defy the laws of physics so so therefore he is not super natural, super human or a super hero he would die just as easily as any other human if a bullet or knife pierced his armor.
He's a "superhero" alright. So what if he doesn't have superpowers. He's got the costume, the secret real-life identity, gadgets, an awesome car and fights on behalf of the good. If superpowers were all it took to make a character a "superhero", then anyone who does magic (Gandalf from Lord of the Rings) could be labelled a "superhero". Batman definitely deserves the label.
I think he's a superhero, because, think about it. He's a superhuman, therefore, he has supernatural powers. How? Merriam Webster defines supernatural as, of superlative degree; what's beyond natural. And another definition says "Of a reality that is past the observable, physical world." If this isn't true of Batman, I'm sure we'd see plenty of copycats and other caped crusaders roaming around. Plus, he's at an intellectual and physical peak that's been unheard of.
What do you mean by "super" hero, if you say that being a super hero is to wear a mask to hide his own heroic personality would be the only superheroes will be superman like since his mask would be Clark Kent to hide his true identity of a hero, and they aren't a lot of this kind of superheroes… meaning batman is not, spiderman is not…(i can't think of any others who hide their heroic identity) ;).
If you say being a superhero is something that you are born with the truth is that none is born a hero, if so then the best superhero comics would be about kids not grown ups, and even if so batman would be a superhero since he was born with his superpower like superman and unlike spiderman, his superpower is money, he is just rich rich rich, and he uses his superpower to fight crime hence he is a superhero.
Batman has the morals of a superhero. Its just not fake BS like Superman. He is a character that is built out of reality, anyone with a billion dollars could be him.
Yes, Batman uses "toys" as you must call them I suppose. However, he still contains the state of mind, and aside from that, if he were just a human being, then why would the Justice League accept him as an honorary member? Comparing him to Superman? They accept him as an equal. Also, in various older Batman comics, he had actually received the assumed superpowers. If Batman's not a superhero, it's quite funny how no one else was able to acheieve what he did in his movies, it's hilarious how he actually does make these fancy gadgets that no real person has yet to obtain, and it's just grand how he captures criminals and villains (alone) on hardly any sleep, and with all the determination in the world. Ohh, yes, but of course, it wasn't the years of training he put himself through, the murder of his parents in front of his eyes, the countless subjects he's studied, and his amzingly high levels of combat and intellingence (that, do, in fact, exceed Superman's, Iron Man's, Spiderman's, and the Hulk's.), and it's not his dedication, or saving of people that puts him at his rank. Of course, it's HIS MONEY! Wow, that didn't sound right, huh? That's because Batman is, indeed, a superhero.
First of all as "Simmyjay" points out, what do you define as a superpower?
A superhero can of course be self made / scientific accident: "The Fantastic Four" and "The Hulk" being examples.
I don't see why falling in a vat of toxic waste etc gives anymore legitimacy to the claim "superhero" than using your superior intellect and economic value to construct the identity for yourself.
Clearly batman is super due to his superior combination of wealth, intellect and moral codes, I fail to see the wall street elite regularly crusading, therefore batman has something unique, and for that matter "super" in order to do what he does.
First of all what is a superhero?
Maybe someone out of the ordinary who chooses to fight evil and/or save people from disasters? then he is a superhero since he is out of the ordinary and fights evil.
Batman can do what no other ordinary man can do, he is very intelligent and has great physical condition, it is true that he has money for his gadgets, either way he had the intelligence of designing the gadgets wich no other richboy had done.
Superman is less amazing than batman. Superman is nothing special when you compare him with any other kryptonian, it is true that he has won over other kryptonians, just as batman wins over other humans gadgets or not. Superman is not super when you remember where he comes from, for that matter any kryptonian is a superhero.... But considering the posibilities of the DC universe, if you take batman and superman into a planet without a yellow sun, superman is no match for batman, just as superman is no match for batman in earth because of the kryptonite.
He is a superhero. Even though he does not have superpowers, the money and intelligence he has is definitely super, as well as the technology he uses.


Thinking about something to get that difficult person on your list? We recently went on a guided food tour through hayes valley (via gourmet walks), and absolutely loved it. I'd recommend it to anyone that you're struggling to find that last minute present for.
Also, before I start rambling, I'll preface that this is not a sponsored post.
San Francisco is definitely known for its fabulous food, and there are a handful of known food tour groups. We decided on the neighborhood of hayes valley, which is really a hidden gem with amazing eats. Likewise, the neighborhood has such an interesting history - once the most dangerous neighborhood in the city when the freeway was built over top of it. When the freeway collapsed in the '89 earthquake, the neighborhood started to turn the corner and is now one of the most expensive places to live in the city.
Fun facts that we learned from our fantastic guide: Michael Hayes named Gough street is named after the milk man. Octavia street was named after Gough's sister. And Steiner was named after a friend of Hayes.
The tour started at 10. But first, coffee.
I started at Artis, although both Ritual & Blue Bottle are also both nearby. No, seriously super close..
First stop on the tour was Tacos Cala, which is located down an alley & through the back door of restaurant Cala.
We each had a different taco.. and they were all amazing. The tortillas on these were the unsung hero - the chef himself explaining that these are made with corn that they grind themselves on site. I'm still full, and my mouth waters when I think of these tacos, ha.
Next up, we stopped at the Fatted Calf for their artisanal charcuterie. It didn't dissapoint.
Let's just say this place is not for vegetarians.. Luckily, I'm not & the cuts were excellent. The butchery prides themselves on using the entire animal, holding true to their values that if an animal is sacrificed, then we should use every part of the animal. I couldn't agree more..
Next up, ice SCREAM (sorry, I couldn't help myself..). Otherwise known as the absolutely amazing Smitten.
I was absolutely smitten with Smitten. Okay, I'll stop with the puns (blame it on the sugar).. But really, the ice cream is to die for - not overly sweet, unique seasonal flavors & rich enough to be satisfied with small portions. I tried a little bit of each of their flavors (including the vegan pop, which was so wonderfully rich), but settled in to the cookie dough & pretzels. Who would have thought to add pretzels to the classic cookie dough? Bravo.
Next up, DragonEats, in seek of their famous bahn mi sandwiches. When we arrived, there was already a line out the door. Always a good sign.
Our guide mentioned that the tofu had the same amount of flavor depth as the meats, so I opted for the tofu. And he was spot on. This was by far the best banh mi I've had - melt in your mouth flavor on a perfectly crusted french roll (the bakery is kept a secret).
Next up, we headed off to the Boxing Room for some classic New Orleans grub.
The guide ordered us the smoked chicken & andouille sausage gumbo, which I paired with a classic mint julep. And despite already being slightly full from the last stop, I scooped up every last bit of my gumbo.
Our second to last stop as at Arlequin Cafe for their artisanal cheese plate.
The goat cheese was phenomenal, and there was the cutest little garden in the back that looked like it was straight out of a cafe in England. Connected to the cafe is a fantastic little wine shop, with walls of wines to choose from.
Finally, dessert. Again! Our tour ended at Miette, which is the cutest little cupcake bakery & candy shop.
Okay, now insert food coma + nap at this point. This tour was phenomenal, but there are other locations & food tours as well, including the mission district & north beach. Don't live in San Francisco, check out your local city to see if there are guided food tours! And let us know what your favorites are, so we can add them to our bucket list.


text:
Talib Kweli recalls first meeting Kanye West: 'I couldn't believe how good his beats were'
NME News Desk Jun 13, 2016 6:17 pm BST
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 18: Talib Kweli performs at Verizon Center on November 18, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/WireImage) Credit: Getty
He was so impressed with West's beats that he bought them all, despite having never heard of him before
Talib Kweli has recounted the story of his first meeting with Kanye West.
The Brooklyn rapper revealed that he met West while recording his 2002 album 'Quality', in an interview on N.O.R.E and DJ EFN's 'Drink Champs' podcast.
West was introduced to Kweli by his close collaborator Mos Def at the Platinum Island Studios in New York, in the middle of a recording session.
Kweli was so impressed with the beats that Kanye played him that day that he decided to use all of them on his record.
"I said play me the beats, I'm working on an album. Every beat that Kanye played me […] made it onto my album," Kweli told the hosts. "I couldn't believe how good these beats was because I had never heard of him. How have I have never heard of you and these beats and this quality?"
West has production credits on three tracks on 'Quality': 'Get By', 'Guerilla Monsoon Rap', and 'Good To You'.
Kweli went on to recall that West had already planned out his first two albums, 'College Dropout' and 'Late Registration'. At a later meeting, he played Kweli demos of 'Jesus Walks' and 'Hey Mama'.
"Kanye had the hot beats but he was trying to sell himself as an artist," Kweli said.
Kanye West recently dropped a brand new single called 'Champions' featuring a host of rappers including 2 Chainz, Gucci Mane and Desiigner.
Bob Dylan / Neil Young Credit: Getty (various)
These are the stage times for Bob Dylan and Neil Young at Hyde Park
WOO HAH! Festival bills itself as a champion of hip-hop Credit: Erik Luyten/WOO HAH! Festival
Five must-see acts at WOO HAH! Festival 2019 – as picked by the acts themselves
Metronomy: How they made the delicious summer anthem, 'Salted Caramel Ice Cream'


Amazon recently released a new offering called the Elastic Beanstalk. At its heart, it is a simplified interface to EC2 and its ancillary services (load-balancing, auto-scaling, and monitoring integrated with alerts), along with an Amazon-maintained AMI containing Linux and Apache Tomcat (an open source Java EE application server), and a deployment mechanism for a Java app (in the form of a WAR file), which notably adds tighter integration with Eclipse, a popular IDE.
Many people are calling this Amazon's PaaS foray. I am inclined to disgree that it is PaaS (although Amazon does have other offerings which are PaaS, such as SimpleDB and SQS). Rather, I think this is still IaaS, but with a friendlier approach to deployment and management. It is developer-friendly, although it should be noted that in its current release, there is no simplification of any form of storage persistence — no easy configuration of EBS or friendly auto-adding of RDS instances, for example. Going to the database tab in the Elastic Beanstalk portion of Amazon's management console just directs you to documentation about storage options on AWS. Almost no one is going to be running a real app without a persistence mechanism, so the Beanstalk won't be truly turnkey until this is simplified accordingly.
Because Elastic Beanstalk fully exposes the underlying AWS resources and lets you do whatever you want with them, the currently-missing feature capabilities aren't a limitation; you can simply use AWS in the normal way, while still getting the slimmed-down elegance of the Beanstalk's management interfaces. Also notably, it's free — you're paying only for the underlying AWS resources.
Amazon exemplifies the idea of IT services industrialization, but in order to address the widest possible range of use cases, Amazon needs to be able to simplify and automate infrastructure management that would otherwise require manual work (i.e., either the customer needs to do it himself, or he needs managed services). I view Elastic Beanstalk and its underlying technologies as an important advancement along Amazon's path towards automated management of infrastructure. In its current incarnation, it eases developer on-boarding — but in future iterations, it could become a key building-block in Amazon's ability to serve the more traditional IT buyer.
This is not just a Cloud IaaS MQ. As the title says, this is a Cloud IaaS AND Web Hosting MQ. You should not interpret a vendor who is a Leader in the MQ as necessarily being a "cloud leader", for instance; they are simply a leader in the context of the overall market, of which we have forecasted 25% of the revenue to be cloud IaaS by the end of 2011. You should look at the execution axis as favoring vendors whose positioning fits well with the immediate, relatively conservative needs of typical Gartner clients, and the vision axis as favoring vendors whose strategy makes them likely to succeed in a more cloud-oriented future.
The Magic Quadrant rates relative positions of vendors in an overall market. Importantly, it does not rate products or services; these are only a component of the overall rating (in this particular MQ, about a third). You should never judge a vendor's position as indicating that it necessarily has a better service, especially with respect to your specific use case. It's especially important in this particular MQ because most of the vendors are not pure-plays, and their cloud IaaS service might be much better or much worse than their portfolio as a whole.
Strengths and Cautions are statements about a vendor, not the reasons for their rating. The statements are things that we think it is important for a prospective customer to know when they're thinking about working with this vendor. They are distinct from the criteria scores that underly the graph. In many cases, the vendor has not lost or gained points specifically for the thing that is called out, but it's something distinctive, or that readers might not be aware, or is a common misunderstanding from readers, or is even just simply pointing out a best practice when dealing with a particular vendor.
At no point do we say that Amazon's cloud service is unproven. Amazon is positioned as a Visionary, and as a category, Visionaries are typically companies who have a relatively short track record in the evaluated market as a whole (yes, the boilerplate language for the category uses "unproven"). Pure-play cloud vendors are still emerging, which makes this characterization fit pretty well. While Amazon has obviously been at the pure-cloud-IaaS business longer than any other vendor on the Magic Quadrant, they are newcomers to the overall market assessed by the MQ, which is now about 15 years old. MQ Visionaries are pioneering new territory. That shouldn't be regarded as a bad thing.
We are not "dissing" Amazon. Some writers have been trying to imply that we don't think much of Amazon's cloud service. Nowhere does the report state this. The report certainly attempts to present meaningful strengths and cautions for Amazon, as it does for every vendor. Amazon has by far the highest rating on vision. Its execution score is based on its ability to serve the whole host of evaluated enterprise use cases in the Magic Quadrant, which, if you think about it, indicates that Amazon must have scored well on the self-managed IaaS use case, since that is the only one of the three evaluated use cases that are considered by the Magic Quadrant, and Amazon doesn't serve the other two use cases at all. Use of Amazon or any other vendor should be considered in light of your use case and requirements.
Obviously, there are plenty of people who are interested in understanding more about the thinking and market observations that led to this Magic Quadrant, and possibly some substantial confusion on the part of people who don't have access to the larger body of research as to Gartner's views on cloud IaaS and so forth. I've blogged a fair amount recently to try to clear up some points of confusion. However, I am mindful of Gartner's policies for social media use by analysts, and believe that it would be inappropriate for me to methodically blog about market evolution, market segmentation, and the use cases and adoption patterns that we are seeing from our clients — the things that would be necessary in order to fully lay out an explanation of our market view and how it led to this particular MQ. Instead, I should be writing research notes for paying clients, and I intend to do exactly that.
Tata Communications buys BitGravity. Video CDN BitGravity was pretty cool and promising when it first came to market. A number of my clients in traditional media and established online companies really loved what they had to offer in the live-streaming space when they launched. Unfortunately, they never really manage to break out beyond that space. I always thought it was a bit weird for Tata to choose to license their technology as the basis for Tata's own CDN, given Tata's customer base and use cases that I'd expected to see Tata be successful at selling. Tata's investment in them at the time seemed outrageously large to me — for what they paid, you'd have thought they could have just bought the company outright (especially given the rumored valuation of Panther Express when it was acquired by CDNetworks). I'd speculate that this was a desperation buyout for BitGravity, but there are lots of questions about the long-term value of this to Tata.
Continuing the ongoing debate about the Cloud IaaS and Web Hosting Magic Quadrant, Bob Warfield has made a blog post called "Gartner: The Cloud is Not a Contract". I want to address a number of points he made in his post. I'm going to address them out of order, starting with the points that I think are of more general interest, and then going into some of the MQ-quibble-specific stuff.
Bob goes into detail about why customized contracts can destroy what a customer was hoping to get out of the cloud in the first place. Bob writes something that I agree with but want to nuance in a number of ways. He says: How do we avoid having a contract destroy Cloudness? This is simple: Never sign a contract with your Cloud provider that interferes with their ability to commoditize through scale, sharing, and automation of operations.
I think that a cloud provider has to make decisions about how much they're willing to compromise the purity of their model — what that costs them versus what that gains them. This is a business decision; a provider is not wrong for compromising purity, any more than a provider is right for being totally pure. It's a question of what you want your business to be, and you can obtain success along the full spectrum. A provider has to ensure that their stance on customization is consistent with who and what they are, and they may also have to consider the trade off between short-term sales and long-term success.
Customers have to be educated that customization costs them more and may actually lower their quality of the service they receive, because part of the way that cloud providers drive availability is by driving repeatability. Similarly, the less you share, the more you pay. (These points are usually called out in gigantic bold caps in my conference presentations.) The cloud creates some harder choices for customers, because the cloud forces IT buyers to confront what "having it your way" is costing them, and will cost them in the future. The cloud is not, as it were, Burger King. The ability to take advantage of commodity cloud services will be a key factor in IT efficiency going forward.
But I believe that customers will continue to make choices along that spectrum. Most of them will walk into decisions with open eyes, and some will decide to sacrifice cost for customization. They are doing this today, and they will continue to do it. Importantly, they are segmenting their IT portfolios and consciously deciding what they can commoditize and what they can't. Some will be better at embracing Smart Control than others, but ultimately, the most successful IT managers will be the ones who be the ones that manage IT to business goals. They are looking for cloud solutions that fit those goals, and many of those solutions are impure.
A significant percentage of my job is helping an IT buyer client talk through his requirements, challenging the reasoning for those requirements, explaining to him what his options are, and what vendors are likely to be good shortlist candidates — but also noting explicitly where his choices are preventing him from deriving greater value. I want him to consciously understand the trade-offs that he's making, both short-term and long-term. And it's also critical to understand their expectations of the future, so they can be advised on how to get there from here. Most organizations will transform gradually, not immediately or radically.
Bob wrote: The easy thing is to cave to your clients since they're paying the bills and concoct a scenario where the clients get what they think they want. The hard thing is to show some leadership, earn your fees, and explain to the client, or at least to the vendors slighted, why your recommendation is right.
Any Gartner client trying to make a decision about the cloud is entitled to make an inquiry, and we're happy to dive into the details of what they're looking for, tease out what they need, and help them choose something that will be right for them. I did more than a thousand client phone inquiries during 2010. That's a lot of people; each one represents a sourcing decision, and that number doesn't include my conference one-on-ones, roundtables, sales visits, email exchanges, and so forth. I'm pretty confident about what our clients want to buy because I've talked to an awful lot of them. Most of those conversations are conducted without reference to the MQ, although many clients do look at the MQ first, and come prepared with questions about specific vendors.
But my job isn't to tell clients the benefits of an "objectively right" decision. I'm not in the business of telling him what he should want, although I can tell him what other companies do as a best practice. And frankly, clients don't need me to tell them to go be more innovative. In most cases, they want to be able to venture boldly into the benefits of cloud computing, but there are many business and technical circumstances that they need to factor into their decision-making, and most have serious needs for risk mitigation. Ihave to help a client come to a decision that will work for him. He's going to pay for it, he's going to be the one defending it to his management, and he's going to be the one who pays the price if it goes all pear-shaped. I wrote previously about our IT buyer audience, and my belief that my formal research writing should highly pragmatic for their needs, not a reflection of what I think the market should want, so I won't go into that again here — see that post instead.
By the way, on Bob's "you ought to explain to the vendors slighted" gripe: Every single vendor on the MQ was entitled to a phone call with me — it's a mandatory Gartner courtesy extended to all participants, regardless of client status, when they receive a draft for their review. I had long conversations on the phone, as well as in email, with many vendors (regardless of placement), about the MQ, their own placements, and the placements of other vendors. I assure you that they understand why things are the way they are (even if they don't necessarily agree).
Bob wrote: It is obvious and absurd not to rank Amazon Web Services at least among the leaders. If youre going to take that step, it's a bold one, and needs to be expressed up front with no ambiguity and leading with a willingness to have a big discussion about it. Gartner didn't do that either. They just presented their typical blah, blah, blah report.
We do not call out commentary about specific vendors in a Magic Quadrant, as a matter of policy; the document follows a very strict format. However, we're always happy to discuss anything we write with our clients. Moreover, even though Gartner considers social media engagement (whether blogging or otherwise) for analysts to be personal time and not actual work, I think I've been pretty thoroughly engaged with people in discussing the MQ both in the blogosphere and on Twitter (@cloudpundit). I'm not sure how Bob is concluding that there's not a willingness to have a big discussion about it (although I am specifically refraining from going into detail on Amazon's rating on my blog, since it is against Gartner policy to do so).
Ben Kepes has raised some perceived issues on the recent Cloud IaaS and Web Hosting Magic Quadrant, on his blog and on Quora. It seems to reflect some confusion that I want to address in public.
Ben seems to think that the Magic Quadrant mixes colocation and cloud IaaS. It doesn't, not in the least, which is why it doesn't include plain ol' colo vendors. However, we always note if a cloud IaaS vendor does not have colocation available, or if they have colo but don't have a way to cross-connect between equipment in the colo and their cloud.
The reason for this is that a substantial number of our clients need hybrid solutions. They've got a server or piece of equipment that can't be put in the cloud. The most common scenario for this is that many people have big Oracle databases that need big-iron dedicated servers, which they stick in colo (or in managed hosting), and then cross-connect to the Web front-ends and app servers that sit in the cloud. However, there are other examples; for instance, our e-commerce clients sometimes have encryption "black boxes" that only come as hardware, so sit in colo while everything else is in the cloud. Also, we have a ton of clients who will put the bulk of their stuff into the colo — and then augment it with cloud capacity, either as burst capacity for their apps in colo, or for lighter-weight apps that they're moving into the cloud but which still need fast, direct, secure communication with interrelated back-end systems.
We don't care in the slightest whether a cloud provider actually owns their own data center, directly provides colocation, has any strategic interest in colocation, or even offers colocation as a formal product. We don't even care about the quality of the colocation. What we care about is that they have a solution for customers with those hybrid needs. For instance, if Amazon were to go out and partner with Equinix, say, and customers could go colo in the same Equinix data center as Amazon and cross-connect directly into Amazon? Score. Or, for instance, Joyent doesn't formally offer colocation — but if you need to colocate a piece of gear to complement your cloud solution, they'll do it. This is purely a question of functionality.
Now, you can argue that plenty of people manage to use pure-play cloud without having anything that they can't put in the cloud, and that's true. But it becomes much less of a typical scenario the more you move away from forward-thinking Web-native companies, and towards the mixed application portfolios of mainstream business. It's especially true among our mid-market clients, who are keenly interested in gradually migrating to cloud as their primary approach to infrastructure, hybrid models are critical to the migration path.
However, I still think it's important to understand the inherent messiness of this market, which is why we currently have an MQ that covers not just cloud IaaS, but also the hosting market.
I've previously talked about how customers have different levels of desire for managed services with the cloud. In that blog post, I also touched on the difference between trying to source cloud for a single important application (or a tightly-related group of apps), and sourcing cloud for a bunch of multiple less-critical applications.
Customers who are trying to source cloud for a single important application are essentially looking at hosting; the cloud is offering them on-demand, elastic resources. That's why cloud has impacted the hosting industry so strongly — people want the flexibility and agility, but it doesn't change the fact that they have traditional hosting requirements. As always with hosting, customers run the gamut from those who just want infrastructure, to those who want it fully managed. Customers often don't know what they want, either, as I described in a blog post a while back, called, "I'm thinking about using Amazon, IBM, or Rackspace…" — which is how you get a weird mix of vendors in an RFP, as a customer tries to explore the possibilities available to them.
Customers who are trying to source cloud for multiple, less-important applications — essentially, the first steps towards replacing a traditional data center with a cloud IaaS solution — have different needs. Their requirements are distinct, but many of the provider capabilities that are useful for hosting are also useful for delivering these solutions, which is why so many Web hosters have expanded into this market.
You can cross "single app or multiple app?" with "what level of managed services?" to derive a set of distinct market segments — in fact, I'm in the midst of writing a research note on market segmentation that does exactly that. I believe it's still all one market, and that most providers will end up serving multiple segments of that market. I believe that all of those segments are important, not just the ones closest to the cloud pure-play model.
I think, as an analyst, that it can be tempting to follow only the most compelling, fast-growing, quickest-evolving pieces of a market — to get caught up in the excitement, so to speak. My IT buyer clients force me to be balanced, though, because they care about a lot more than just what's hot. Clearly, right now, they need more help sourcing in specific segments, which is why we're doing some narrower vendor ratings focused on a more "pure cloud" tilt — but that shouldn't be taken as an indication that the other segments aren't important.
Let me start by saying that I have drunk the cloud Kool-Aid. I am a believer in its transformative power, and in the business models that it is enabling. I believe that the IT world will look very different in 10 years, and the 5-year differences will be noticeable. I believe in the success stories of the fresh young cloud-native companies.
But I also believe that you've got to get there from here. While I have the privilege of working with many smaller technology companies, including cloud-based start-ups, the vast majority of Gartner's clients are mid-sized businesses and enterprises. Those clients have a vast array of existing IT investments, in both infrastructure and applications, as well as people, process, policies, and the like. Most of our clients are excited by the possibilities that the cloud is offering, and they're interested in adopting all of it — SaaS, PaaS, IaaS. But they've got to figure out how to do it, how to make a sensible, risk-controlled move from what they've got today, including, importantly, the mindset and culture of what they have today, to the cloud future.
Our clients are looking for solutions to business needs. Many of them are also explicitly looking for an opportunity to use cloud for the sake of using cloud — to get their feet wet, to learn things, to satisfy the demands of a CEO or CFO, and so forth. As an analyst, my goal is to help my clients find solutions that they'll be successful with. That's not just purely about technology; I need to help clients find solutions that also work for their culture, their appetite for risk, their ability to manage change, the way they budget, the way they approach operations and applications and governance, the way they source solutions and manage vendors, their available personnel and their ability to learn new things, their timeframes and business needs, and so forth.
IT buyers are slowly transforming the way they think about cloud, as hype begins to give way to reality. We see people doing very sensible, pragmatic things with cloud IaaS, these days. For most organizations, it will be a five to ten year gradual transformation. The successful blending of old and new models, and the transitional models, are both critical parts to that transformation.
I think my feeling on these things is: Get excited, but don't get excitable. Most of my research is pitched to people making decisions right now, which is typically about IT buyer immediate needs, and vendor one-year and two-year plans. With cloud, I often look at three-year and five-year scenarios, and we're doing some ten-year scenarios as well, but that also involves having to think about the sequence and timeline for how things occur in the market.
Fast-evolving markets create and destroy new approaches, and there will always be transitional approaches, artifacts of "what tech is available at this stage" and "what customer mindset exists at this point". The desires of customers at any given point should not necessarily be taken as the future direction of the market and what will lead to vendor success (or even customer success, ironically). Frankly, some of the things customers will ask for during the transition will be flat-out wacky and wrong. But it won't change the fact that they want them.
What's cloud IaaS really about?
As expected, the Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS and Web Hosting is stirring up much of the same debate that was raised with the publication of the 2009 MQ.
Derrick Harris over at GigaOM thinks we got it wrong. He writes: Cloud IaaS is about letting users get what they need, when they need it and, ideally, with a credit card. It doesn't require requisitioning servers from the IT department, signing a contract for any predefined time period or paying for services beyond the computing resources.
Fundamentally, I dispute Derrick's assertion of what cloud IaaS is about. I think the things he cites above are cool, and represent a critical shake-up in thinking about IT access, but it's not ultimately what the whole cloud IaaS market is about. And our research note is targeted at Gartner's clients — generally IT management and architects at mid-sized businesses and enterprises, along with technology start-ups of all sizes (but generally ones that are large enough to have either funding or revenue).
Infrastructure without a contract? Convenient initially, but as the relationship gets more significant, usually not preferable. In fact, most businesses like to be able to negotiate contract terms. (For that matter, Amazon does customzed Enterprise Agreements with its larger customers.) Businesses love not having to commit to capacity, but the whole market is shifting its business models pretty quickly to adapt to that desire.
Infrastructure without involving traditional IT operations? Great, but someone's still got to manage the infrastructure — shoving it in the cloud does not remove the need for operations, maintenance, patch management, security, governance, budgeting, etc. Gartner's clients generally don't want random application developers plunking down a credit card and just buying stuff willy-nilly. Empower developers with self-provisioning, sure — but provisioning raw infrastructure is the easy and cheap part, in the grand scheme of things.
Paying for services beyond the computing resources? Sure, some people love to self-manage their infrastructure. But really, what most people want to do is to only worry about their application. Their real dream is that cloud IaaS provides not just compute capacity, but secure compute capacity — which generally requires handling routine chores like patch management, and dealing with anti-virus and security event monitoring and such. In other words, they want to eliminate their junior sysadmins. They're not looking for managed hosting per se; they're looking to get magic, hassle-free compute resources.
I obviously recognize Amazon's contributions to the market. The MQ entry on Amazon begins with: Amazon is a thought leader; it is extraordinarily innovative, exceptionally agile and very responsive to the market. It has the richest cloud IaaS product portfolio, and is constantly expanding its service offerings and reducing its prices. But I think Amazon represents an aspect of a broad market.
Cloud IaaS is complicated by the diversity of use cases for it. Our clients are also looking for specific guidance on just the "pure cloud", self-provisioned "virtual data center" services, so we're doing two more upcoming vendor ratings to address that need — a Critical Capabilities note that is focused solely on feature sets, and a mid-year Magic Quadrant that will be purely focused on this.
I could talk at length about what our clients are really looking for and what they're thinking with respect to cloud IaaS, which is a pretty complicated and interesting tangle, but I figure I really ought to write a research note for that… and get back to my holiday vacation for now.