Notice of the renewal of an existing computer matching program which is scheduled to expire on December 25, 2008.
In accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act, as amended, we are announcing the renewal of an existing computer matching program we are currently conducting with BPD.
We will file a report of the subject matching program with the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs of the Senate, the Committee on Government Reform of the House of Representatives and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The matching program will be effective as indicated below.
Interested parties may comment on this notice by either telefaxing to (410) 965-0201 or writing to the Deputy Commissioner for Budget, Finance and Management, 800 Altmeyer Building, 6401 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21235-6401. All comments received will be available for public inspection at this address.
The Deputy Commissioner for Budget, Finance and Management as shown above.
The Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (Pub. L. 100-503), amended the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. 552a) by describing the manner in which computer matching involving Federal agencies could be performed and adding certain protections for individuals applying for and receiving Federal benefits. Section 7201 of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101-508) further amended the Privacy Act regarding protections for such persons.
(6) Verify match findings before reducing, suspending, terminating or denying an individual's benefits or payments.
Deputy Commissioner for Budget, Finance and Management.
The purpose of this matching program is to establish the conditions, safeguards and procedures for BPD's disclosure of certain savings security information to SSA. (The term "savings security" means Series E, EE or I United States Savings Securities.) This disclosure will provide SSA with information necessary to verify eligibility and payment amounts of individuals under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The SSI program was created under title XVI of the Social Security Act (the Act) to provide benefits under the rules of that title to individuals with income and resources below levels established by law and regulations.
Sections 1631(e)(1)(B) and (f) of the Act (42 U.S.C. 1383(e)(1)(B) and (f)).
We will provide BPD with a finder file extracted from SSA's Supplemental Security Income Record and Special Veterans Benefits system of records (SSA 60-0103 full text last published in the Federal Register on January 11, 2006 at 71 FR 1795, 1830), containing Social Security numbers of persons who have applied for, or receive, SSI payments. This information will be matched with BPD files in BPD's savings-type securities registration systems of records (United States Savings Type Securities and Retail Treasury Securities Access Application) and a reply file of matched records will be furnished to SSA. These records are included under the systems of records Treasury/BPD.002, United States Savings Type Securities, and Treasury/BPD.008, Retail Treasury Securities Access Application, last published in the Federal Register on July 23, 2008 at 73 FR 42906 and 42918, respectively. Upon receipt of BPD's reply file, we will match identifying information from the BPD file with SSA's records to determine preliminarily whether the data pertain to the relevant SSI applicant or recipient before beginning the process of verifying savings security ownership and taking any necessary benefit actions.
The matching program will become effective upon signing of the agreement by both parties to the agreement and approval of the agreement by the Data Integrity Boards of the respective agencies, but no sooner than 40 days after notice of this matching program is sent to Congress and the Office of Management and Budget, or 30 days after publication of this notice in the Federal Register , whichever date is later. The matching program will continue for 18 months from the effective date and may be extended for an additional 12 months thereafter, if certain conditions are met.


I currently subscribe to three different music streaming platforms. I am pretty Savvy with technology but I am old school and like the Simplicity of things. for the life of me I cannot figure out how to import downloaded music or any music for that matter into the Poweramp platform it is driving me crazy and the only thing that I am able to listen to is the recording apps that I have for my business and they show up automatically someone please help me this is driving me crazy. I currently have the music subscriptions to Apple music, tidal music, and my personal playlist from PC to Note 8. Just got my sound system installed in the new truck and I had to walk away from it because I want to use this app instead of the subscriptions. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!


text:
UNICEF dispatches mobile clinics to help malnourished Afghan children
Ariana NewsDecember 27, 2021
United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said Sunday that it has tasked mobile health teams to provide health services to Afghan women and children across the country.
UNICEF said in a statement that the mobile health and nutrition teams will travel across Afghanistan to provide health services to women and children who have no access to "life-saving health care".
Marixie Mercado, a member of the UNICEF Emergency Response Team, stated: "We are doing everything to bring this life-saving treatment to children across the country."
14 million people in Afghanistan are facing acute food insecurity, and an estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.
At least 1 million of these children are at risk of dying due to severe acute malnutrition without immediate treatment, UNICEF said.
The development comes after UNICEF warned last month that half of Afghanistan's children would face severe acute malnutrition without immediate treatment.The post UNICEF dispatches mobile clinics to help malnourished Afghan children first appeared on Ariana News.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Caitlyn Jenner Opens Up to H&M About Her Greatest Victory: Her Transition
"This person who has lived inside me all my life, there she was for the first time."
Alyssa Vingan Klein
Caitlyn Jenner has been an American hero since she took home a gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, but to the current generation, she's best known for her unbelievable strides in bringing the subject of gender identity to the mainstream. With her debut Vanity Fair editorial, her E! docu-series "I Am Cait," and, most recently, her Sports Illustrated cover, Jenner has openly shared the story of her internal struggle — and has finally been embraced by the public as the woman she's been all along.
Ahead of the Summer Olympics in Rio, Jenner sat down with H&M (she's the face of the Swedish retailer's H&M Sport line) to discuss her life's greatest victories, of which there were many. She admits that she had issues with her gender since she was in the fifth grade, but was fortunate to find something that took her mind off of it, since she felt she couldn't tell a soul. "Sports was always this wonderful diversion from myself, and about who I was," she said.
In 1984, Jenner visited a gender clinic for the first time to talk about what was going on in her head, and she finally felt understood. She wanted to transition by the time she was 40 — but when that milestone arrived, she couldn't bring herself to go any further. Fast forward through the next few decades seemingly infinite seasons of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" — she credits Kris Jenner for bringing her back to life after a very low point, and calls her children her proudest accomplishments — she decided to go public in 2015 with the Annie Leibovitz spread in Vanity Fair.
"I looked in the mirror and I thought to myself, 'This is the first time I've ever seen myself,'" she said. "This person who has lived inside me all my life, there she was for the first time." Jenner admits that the media attention blew her away ("This Caitlyn character's a lot more interesting," she laughed), but more than anything, it's given her the ultimate freedom. "That's the greatest victory of them all: To wake up in the morning and to just be yourself."
Watch the interview in full above.
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H&m SportH&M
Caitlyn JennerOlympics 2016Rio 2016
Caitlyn Jenner Is the New Face of H&M Sport
The former Olympian announced the news on Twitter.
Bruce Jenner Introduces the World to Caitlyn Jenner on Cover of 'Vanity Fair'
Major.
Caitlyn Jenner Wears A Sequined Jumpsuit — And Her Gold Medal — On The Cover of 'Sports Illustrated'
This is the first time Jenner has worn the gold medal in public since her transition.
Gisele Bündchen Came Out of Runway Retirement to Walk at the 2016 Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony
Watch Gisele Bündchen walk the runway at the 2016 Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony.
By Maura Brannigan


text:
<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace ApiPlatform\SchemaGenerator\Schema;

use EasyRdf\Resource as RdfResource;

final class TypeConverter
{
    public const RANGE_DATA_TYPE_MAPPING = [
        'https://schema.org/URL' => 'url',

        'https://schema.org/Boolean' => 'boolean',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#boolean' => 'boolean',

        'https://schema.org/Float' => 'float',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#float' => 'float',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#double' => 'double',

        'https://schema.org/Integer' => 'integer',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#integer' => 'integer',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#int' => 'integer',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#long' => 'integer',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#short' => 'integer',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#negativeInteger' => 'negativeInteger',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#nonNegativeInteger' => 'nonNegativeInteger',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#unsignedInt' => 'nonNegativeInteger',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#unsignedShort' => 'nonNegativeInteger',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#unsignedLong' => 'nonNegativeInteger',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#positiveInteger' => 'positiveInteger',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#nonPositiveInteger' => 'nonPositiveInteger',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal' => 'decimal',

        'https://schema.org/Date' => 'date',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date' => 'date',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#gYearMonth' => 'date',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#gYear' => 'date',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#gMonthDay' => 'date',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#gDay' => 'date',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#gMonth' => 'date',

        'https://schema.org/DateTime' => 'dateTime',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime' => 'dateTime',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#duration' => 'duration',

        'https://schema.org/Time' => 'time',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#time' => 'time',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#byte' => 'byte',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#unsignedByte' => 'byte',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#hexBinary' => 'hexBinary',

        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#base64Binary' => 'base64Binary',

        'https://schema.org/Text' => 'string',
        'https://schema.org/Number' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#QName' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#NOTATION' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#normalizedString' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#token' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#language' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#NMTOKEN' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#NMTOKENS' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#Name' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#NCName' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#ID' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#IDREF' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#IDREFS' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#ENTITY' => 'string',
        'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#ENTITIES' => 'string',

        'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#langString' => 'string',

        'https://schema.org/DataType' => 'mixed',
    ];

    public function getType(?RdfResource $range): ?string
    {
        if (!$range) {
            return null;
        }

        return self::RANGE_DATA_TYPE_MAPPING[$this->getUri($range)] ?? null;
    }

    private function getUri(RdfResource $range): string
    {
        if ($range->isBNode() && $onDatatype = $range->get('owl:onDatatype')) {
            return $onDatatype->getUri();
        }

        if ($range->isBNode() &&
            null !== ($unionOf = $range->get('owl:unionOf')) &&
            null !== ($rdfFirst = $unionOf->get('rdf:first'))) {
            return $rdfFirst->getUri();
        }

        return $range->getUri();
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Sheila Shanker CPA, MBA – Tips and Ideas– 2nd Edition of "Nonprofit Finance A Practical Guide" is out!!
With over 15 years of experience, Sheila Shanker has worked in many industries, such as nonprofit, manufacturing, and hospital sectors. She served many years as a Treasurer- CFO for the Brazil California Chamber of Commerce. Sheila has also created and written very successful online courses for universities and continuing education providers.
Her 200+ popular articles have been published by eHow, Houston Chronicle, and The Journal of Accountancy.
A strong believer in education, Sheila received the "Recognized" and "Honored/Honorary" online instructor designations at the University of Liverpool- UK- Laureate, where she taught MBA courses.
She loves a good cup of coffee!
The materials and information contained in and incorporated in this website and blog are provided solely for general information purposes, do not, and should not be deemed or construed to, constitute legal or other professional advice and should not be relied on as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances. The opinions set forth in the publications or other blog postings, unless expressly stated to the contrary, are the opinions of the individual authors thereof.


text:
Q: What's the standard way to avoid constant dereferencing after using `new` keyword? The new keyword hands you back a pointer to the object created, which means you keep having to deference it - I'm just afraid performance may suffer.
E.g. a common situation I'm facing:
class cls {
    obj *x; ...
}

// Later, in some member function:
x = new obj(...);
for (i ...) x->bar[i] = x->foo(i + x->baz);  // much dereferencing

I'm not overly keen on reference variables either as I have many *x's (e.g. *x, *y, *z, ...) and having to write &x_ref = *x, &y_ref = *y, ... at the start of every function quickly becomes tiresome and verbose.
Indeed, is it better to do:
class cls {
    obj x; ...    // not pointer
}
x_ptr = new obj(...);
x = *x_ptr;       // then work with x, not pointer;

So what's the standard way to work with variables created by new?

A: There's no other way to work with objects created by new. The location of the unnamed object created by new is always a run-time value. This immediately means that each and every access to such an object will always unconditionally require dereferencing. There's no way around it. That is what "dereferencing" actually is, by definition - accessing through a run-time address.
Your attempts to "replace" pointers with references by doing &x_ref = *x at the beginning of the function are meaningless. They achieve absolutely nothing. References in this context are just syntactic sugar. They might reduce the number of * operators in your source code (and might increase the number of & operators), but they will not affect the number of physical dereferences in the machine code. They will lead to absolutely the same machine code containing absolutely the same amount of physical dereferencing and absolutely the same performance.
Note that in contexts where dereferencing occurs repeatedly many times, a smart compiler might (and will) actually read and store the target address in a CPU register, instead of re-reading it each time from memory. Accessing data through an address stored in a CPU register is always the fastest, i.e. it is even faster than accessing data through compile-time address embedded into the CPU instruction. For this reason, repetitive dereferencing of manageable complexity might not have any negative impact on performance. This, of course, depends significantly on the quality of the compiler.
In situations when you observe significant negative impact on performance from repetitive dereferencing, you might try to cache the target value in a local buffer, use the local buffer for all calculations and then, when the result is ready, store it through the original pointer. For example, if you have a function that repeatedly accesses (reads and/or writes) data through a pointer int *px, you might want to cache the data in an ordinary local variable x
int x = *px;

work with x throughout the entire function and at the end do
*px = x;

Needless to say, this only makes sense when the performance impact from copying the object is low. And of course, you have to be careful with such techniques in aliased situations, since in this case the value of *px is not maintained continuously. (Note again, that in this case we use an ordinary variable x, not a reference. Your attempts to replace single-level pointers with references achieve nothing at all.)
Again, this sort of "data cashing" optimization can also be implicitly performed by the compiler, assuming the compiler has good understanding of the data aliasing relationships present in the code. And this is where C99-style restrict keyword can help it a lot. But that's a different topic.
In any case, there's no "standard" way to do that. The best approach depends critically on your knowledge of data flow relationships that exist in each specific piece of your code.

A: Instantiate the object without the new keyword, like this:
obj x;

Or if your constructor for obj takes parameters:
obj x(...);

This will give you an object instead of a pointer thereto.

A: You have to decide whether you want to allocate your things on heap or on stack. Thats completely your   decision based on your requirements. and there is no performance degradation with dereferencing. You may allocate your cls in heap that will stay out of scope and keep instances of obj in stack
class cls {
  obj x;//default constructor of obj will be called
}

and if obj doesn't have a default constructor you need to call appropiate constructor in cls constructor

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The Waukon girl basketball team was looking for their first win of the season Tuesday evening and they got it defeating the Warriors of South Winn 55-26. The Tribe jumped out to a commanding lead early in the game with great full court pressure defense and held it throughout the contest.
Senior post player Bethany Stock started the Tribe off with the first two buckets. Senior guard Nicole Behrend dropped in six points in the first period as the Indians held a 16-0 lead over the Warriors after one quarter.
The Indians pushed forward and were lead in the second quarter by Freshmen point guard Maddie Ahlstrom who poured in 10 points in the second period alone. Ahlstrom started the frame with a 3 point make, and added an old fashion "and one" 3 point play later in the quater. Stock continued with a hot hand as she dialed in for two more baskets. Freshmen forward Lauren Griffith kept the Indian dominance going with a drive to the basket for two points and foul resulting in a 3 point play. Waukon lead 38-9 at the break.
Junior forward Regan Wasson got the Indians started in the 3rd period with a free throw make and also added a basket later in the quarter. Senior post Emily Hammel added a basket to end the third with the Tribe still in command with the lead of 48-19.
Waukon continued to control the game in the fourth and got the entire varsity roster of 15 players contributed to the win, with 11 of those players contributing in the scoring column.
The Indians were paced in scoring with Behrend 14, Ahlstrom 11, Stock 8, Wasson 5 and Griffith adding 5 points as well.
Waukon gets set to host their first conference game of the season vs New Hampton Tuesday Dec 1st.
The Lady Indians played an intense first quarter vs Kee High Monday evening ending in a 14-14 tie. The Hawks caught fire in the second period and outscored Waukon 15-2 and held their lead the rest of the game for a 56-38 victory.
The Waukon JV squad was victorious in the first game of the evening.
The Indians will continue their season tomorrow as they travel to South Winn.
The Indians JV/V season will now start on Monday November 23rd vs Kee High. Check back for game wrap ups and stats!
Any preparation that could be done for the upcoming season has been completed. The Indian coaching staff and team started preparing for this date at the conclusion of the 2014/15 season.
Many open gym sessions, weight lifting and speed sessions. Early morning shooting sessions. A week of camp in mid summer followed by 4 team tournaments in June and July, followed by more open gym sessions as soon as October hit.
The Waukon girls program had a great turnout in overall numbers and attitude during all of this and are looking to start the season tonight vs Class 1A #9 ranked Kee High.
Waukon JV is set to tip off tonight at 6 15 @ Waukon High School with the Varsity to follow aprox 7 30pm.
You are currently browsing the Indian Girls Hoops blog archives for November, 2015.


Refresh your memory on organic compounds by viewing the short but engaging lessons in this chapter. Use these lessons to get ready for related questions on the TExES Life Science 7-12 test.
Everyone has a different study style, so we try to make our test preparation chapters as accommodating as possible. As long as you have an Internet-receiving device, you can view our mobile-friendly video lessons and transcripts as many times as you'd like. We also know that you are here because you want to pass your test. We want that too, and we want to give you every tool in our arsenal to help you do it, including the opportunity to practice answering questions similar to those on the TExES Life Science 7-12 test. Just click on the lesson quizzes or chapter exam to challenge yourself as you study for this test.
The TExES Life Science 7-12 test is part of the certification process for life science educators. There are 100 selected-response questions on this test, but not all questions may be scored. There are six major fields of inquiry covered in this test. The organic compound topics covered in this chapter could be found in some of the questions in the cell structure and processes content domain, which makes up 20% of the total score.
Though life on Earth is incredibly diverse, all of it is built upon the same basic molecular structures. In this lesson, we'll look the basic building blocks of life and see how functional groups, monomers and polymers build up organic molecules.
Carbohydrates are found in many foods that we eat and may be found as sugars, starches, or fiber. Learn more about these three distinct types of carbohydrates, and how they are distinguished through their chemical structures in this lesson.
Molecules called lipids have long hydrocarbon chains that determine the way they act. They can be fats, oils, or hormones, and even exist in our cell membranes. Learn more about the chemical structure and biological function of various lipids in this lesson.
Without proteins you couldn't survive. But how much do you know about them? This lesson will explore the structure and function of proteins, and list some types of proteins you might encounter.


Have a look at their "courses" section - lots of good resources there!
Author note (updated on April 2017): This post was written in November 2015, and published on January 2016. 6 months after publishing this article (and sooner than expected), David -my partner in Hacking UI - and I decided to leave our jobs at Similarweb to work on Hacking UI full time.
You first Craft product is free forever. With Craft you can create not only roadmaps, but manage the entire agile product cycle from end-to-end.
Phoenix Startup UI Kit is a versatile tool to kickstart a landing page. It cointans 110 premade HTML5 cards coming with Sketch and PSD resources. With Phoenix Startup UI Kit it's really easy and joyful to create landing pages.
With our product, you can create stunning web projects to impress your audience ⚡ The tool is terrifically easy to use by both designers and developers. One time purchase and unlimited license.
Phoenix Startup UI Kit free demo is the part of a large user interface kit that helps building beautiful websites fast. Furthermore, every component can be easily customized in PSD, Sketch & HTML formats. Freebie contains 8 perfect cards crafted with editable smart objects.
Semplice is really easy to use if you're looking to build a portfolio website.
Now you can access all the Product Habits email newsletter links in an Airtable Base! I've shared 1,800 links and resources for startups since September 5th, 2014 covering product, startups, and business.
Semplice 4 is is the new generation of the Semplice advanced online portfolio tool. The portfolio system. Made by designers, for designers. Everything has been completely re-designed & re-developed everything from scratch.
The Almost 1000 ClubA collection of products with 900 votes and above!
Design Tools for Non-DesignersNot a designer? No problem. These tools can help.
All the best design tools in one place - Product Hunt.Collections of everything you need for designing - tools and inspiration.
All about startups on Product Hunt.Discover all you need for your startup - tools, resources, tips and recommendations.


text:
Seychelles hosting prestigious golf tournament for second year in a row
Victoria, Seychelles | December 5, 2019, Thursday @ 15:04 in National » SPORT | By: Betymie Bonnelame | Views: 2064
The tournament is taking place at the Praslin island's Constance Lemuria golf course. (Vanessa Lucas, Seychelles Tourism Board)
(Seychelles News Agency) - The Seychelles is for the second year in a row hosting a prestigious regional golf competition, the MCB Tour Championship, which starts Thursday.
According to the Seychelles Tourism Board (STB), 48 players are expected to tee off on Praslin island's Constance Lemuria golf course for three days of competition.
Among the internationally known golfers are Roger Chapman of Britain, the defending champion, Clark Dennis of the United States and Paul McGinley of Ireland.
Praslin, the second-most populated island and home to the iconic coco-de-mer, will be featured as the second leg of a three-destination competition of the regional MCB Tour Championship.
The STB's chief executive, Sherin Francis, has expressed her satisfaction that the event has contributed considerably in providing visibility to the destination, especially Praslin.
"Since we opened our shores to the MCB Tour Championship last year, it is clear that the visibility received by the destination was worldwide. Our partnership in the event is even more justified today as we see the increase in the number of players for the event, implying that the interest for our destination has also increased. We are looking forward
to a successful event in Seychelles," she said.
Francis added that being part of the event is one of STB's marketing strategies to increase the destination's visibility and promoting Seychelles as a sports destination.
Bernard Jackson, managing director of MCB, one of the sponsors of the tour, said, "For the second year running, Seychelles is thrilled to host the pro golfers competing in the European Senior Tour. We celebrate our renewed international visibility on the golfing scene and are delighted that this year Madagascar also gets its share of the limelight with its inclusion in the tour alongside Mauritius and Seychelles. I thank the Seychelles Tourism Board and all the contributing partners for making this event a resounding success."
Golfers warmed up in the pro-am competition in which professionals teamed up with Seychellois residents. (Vanessa Lucas, Seychelles Tourism Board) Photo License: CC-BY
In a warm-up competition on Wednesday, the professional golfers teamed up with Seychellois residents for the pro-am competition.
This year the Tour Championship was extended to three tournaments with an extra tournament at International Golf Club Du Rova near Antananarivo, Madagascar.
The first tournament started on Friday November 29 to Sunday December 1, in Antananarivo.
The tournament in Seychelles will end on Saturday December 7 and the season finale will take place at Constance Belle Mare Plage in Mauritius from Friday December 13 to Sunday December 15.
The MCB Tour Championship is a men's senior (over 50) professional golf tournament on the European Senior Tour. It has been held every year in December since 2009.
Sport » Be a reporter: Write and send your article » Subscribe for news alert
Tags: MCB Tour Championship, European Senior Tour, professional golf tournament
More from Sport →
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National » Sport | January 11, 2020, Saturday @10:16
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National » Sport | October 26, 2019, Saturday @10:40
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Seychelles Tourism Board · Madagascar · Zimbabwe · Air Seychelles · National Assembly · All tags


text:
retrology
The MIT Dropouts Who Created Ms. Pac-Man: A 35th-Anniversary Oral History
The amazing, little-known backstory of the most popular arcade game in U.S. history.
In 1982, everybody played Ms. Pac-Man. [Photo: Brian Brainerd, The Denver Post via Getty Images]
By Benj Edwards long Read
Thirty-five years after its release, Ms. Pac-Man is one of the most successful and enduring video games of all time. After debuting publicly on February 3, 1982, in its original form as an arcade game from Bally Midway, versions have since appeared on at least 28 different game and computer platforms.
Today, this "first lady of video games"–as she was dubbed by Midway in 1982–remains a ubiquitous ambassador of coin-op games, as the machine can still be found in restaurants, truck stops, arcades, and other venues across the U.S. In fact, having sold 117,000 units in this country (more if you count recent re-releases combined with other games), Ms. Pac-Man still holds the all-time sales record for a standalone arcade video game in the U.S. (Her spouse, Pac-Man, holds the No. 2 spot.)
Midway advertises its new game in 1982.
Despite its dramatic success, few people know that this arcade classic was not developed by Japanese firm Namco, the company behind Pac-Man. In fact, a small group of MIT dropouts from New England created the game. In an astounding feat of business acumen and teamwork, they sold Midway on the concept and quickly pushed the game into record-breaking reality.
In 2011, I conducted extensive interviews with three of Ms. Pac-Man's creators for a planned feature about Ms. Pac-Man's creation for the game's then upcoming 30th anniversary. While the subject has since been covered in other venues, I have found that my original interviews are still packed with nuggets of information that have not yet come to light.
For this oral history, the participants' responses have been edited for length and clarity and arranged to tell the story. Set in New England rather than the familiar setting of Silicon Valley or Japan, their tale is one of creativity, gumption, and loyalty among a group of gifted friends who happened to work very well together.
The original, iconic Ms. Pac-Man arcade game's cabinet marquee, with its very 1980s logo.
Meeting Up And Dropping Out At MIT
At the time of Ms. Pac-Man's release in early 1982, arcade mania was in full swing in the U.S. Concepts pioneered in coin-op games filtered down to console and home computer level, and advertisements for less-advanced home titles bragged of "arcade-like realism," as if it were the peak aspiration of all games.
Such was the primacy of the coin-op realm in video game culture when a group of young students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge first began dabbling in the arcade business as a side job in the late 1970s.
Steve Golson, former engineer, General Computer Corporation: I moved into a dorm at MIT in '76 as a freshman, and the following year Doug Macrae and Kevin Curran moved in as freshmen into the same double suite of rooms that I lived in. That's how we all met each other.
Doug Macrae, cofounder and former chairman, General Computer Corporation: In 1977, I went up to start MIT. I was working on a combined bachelor's and master's degree in mechanical engineering, economics, and architecture. My thesis was supposed to be done in the spring of 1981, and I never got around to it. Rather than doing my thesis, I developed Ms. Pac-Man.
Golson: In our dorm, there was a local guy who had pinball games. His games kept getting trashed, and he finally pulled his games out. Doug's brother had this old Gottlieb Pioneer game and we had a big party coming up, and we said, 'Hey, we don't have a pinball game.' Doug said, 'Well, I can get my brother's game.'
Doug was working on the game one day and Kevin was there and they said, 'Hey, we could start a business doing this.'
Macrae: Kevin Curran and I operated the original video game route on campus.
Golson: They joined up and bought a new pinball game and put it in the dorm, and that was really successful. They got another one and put it in the dorm. I got involved really early on helping them out with running their games at the dormitory.
Kevin Curran (left) and Doug Macrae during the development of Super Missile Command; Steve Golson is in the background at the computer.
Macrae and Curran's arcade route–a series of machines they owned and operated both for their own profit and for the benefit of students–quickly expanded to three dorms, but they soon had trouble with declining revenues as people began to master the games. As arcade operators themselves, they had a direct financial stake in making the games more interesting. So they did what any clever MIT student would do in that situation: confront the problem with mathematical precision. And their thinking gravitated to Atari's Missile Command, one of the most popular games of the early 1980s.
Macrae: When we first got them, our Missile Command games on the MIT campus were pulling in roughly $600 a week. If you do the math on that, that's one quarter every three minutes on 17 hours a day. The problem became if a game lasted longer than three minutes, the quarter count would go down, or if it wasn't being played 17 hours a day because people didn't like it as much, and were not standing in line to play it, the quarters went down.
"Well, hey, we go to MIT. I bet we can figure it out."
We were looking at ways to keep the time-per-game down some–because it was obviously creeping up as people got good at it–but also to keep the excitement there so people would want to play it more often. We were trying to keep the quarter count up in any way we could.
Golson: At this point in the video game world there were these kits called speed-up kits or enhancement kits that were being sold directly to arcade owners. The first really successful one was for Asteroids because people learned how to beat Asteroids, and they could play forever on a quarter. So somebody game up with a little circuit that you could clip on, and wow, it made the game much more difficult.
Doug and Kevin started looking around for an enhancement kit for Missile Command, but nobody had figured out how to do it. The complexity of the programming techniques of the game were substantially more difficult than the other games. You had to understand how it was programmed. Doug and Kevin said, 'Well, hey, we go to MIT. I bet we can figure it out.'
Chris Rode at a Missile Command cabinet during the creation of Super Missile Attack.Photo courtesy of Steve Golson
Macrae: We did the enhancement kit to Missile Command, called Super Missile Attack, and were wildly successful with it–at least for college kids. We sold 1,000 kits at roughly $250 profit per kit, and made a quarter of a million dollars while in college. Super Missile Attack was designed to make the game more interesting, more challenging, and take away some of the shortcomings of the game.
When taking inflation into account, $250,000 in 1981 is roughly equivalent to $663,000 today. Macrae and Curran met their newfound success by incorporating the business into a firm called General Computer Corporation (GCC). Lacking the capital to pay engineering salaries, they set up a profit-sharing structure to benefit those who worked for the small firm.
Macrae: Kevin and I were the two founders of the company and owners of it. John Tylko was brought on primarily as a business partner; he did not do any of the programming. The other three, Mike Horowitz, Chris Rode, and Steve Golson, were engineers. Kevin and I were equal partners, and the other four were set up to share in the profits.
Golson: I was there in the spring of '81 when they decided to start up this company. Doug and Kevin had moved off campus and with a couple of other students. They were renting a house in Brookline. They said, 'Oh, we've got a spare bedroom in this house. You could live with us.'
Macrae: Technically I think I was chairman and Kevin was president. I'm not sure whether we had established it formally. It might have just been on the legal filing in Massachusetts.
Enter Pac-Man
As Super Missile Attack proved popular, it became evident to Macrae and Curran that they could expand their arcade enhancement kit business. They experimented with modifying Atari's hit game Asteroids and other titles, but one breakthrough maze game from Japan caught their attention in particular.
Namco's Pac-Man had been released in the U.S. in the fall of 1980 by Bally Midway, but it wasn't until early 1981 that it began to make waves in the U.S. arcade market. With its iconic characters and easy-to-learn game play, Pac-Man soon became a cultural force unto itself that moved beyond video games and into merchandising, music, and, eventually TV.
Macrae: After the success of Missile Attack, we looked up and said, 'We should do this again,' and the most successful game at that time was Pac-Man, and we said, 'Let's do an enhancement kit for Pac-Man.'
"Once you played it for a while, it was pretty much the same game."
Golson: Pac-Man had already been a big hit in Japan and the Far East, and we knew it was going to be a big thing.
Macrae: We had a Pac-Man cabinet and we played it over and over again, trying to say, "What are its weaknesses? Why are we bored? Why would be able to play for a long amount of time?'
We realized that Pac-Man had the same kind of issues Missile Command did. People could learn the patterns and play it forever, and that once you played it for a while, it was pretty much the same game. It got a little bit faster, but there was only one maze, and nothing really changed.
Golson: We wanted to have more than one maze instead of the same maze every time. We wanted to make the character algorithm truly random so that it was no longer predictable and make it harder. Those were really the big things that drove us.
Macrae: We attacked it in the same way as Missile Command–in trying to take what was good in Pac-Man and make it even better. That's what became Crazy Otto.
Unlike Pac-Man, Crazy Otto had multiple mazes.
GCC hoped to avoid trademark issues by reworking Pac-Man's characters and visuals into something similar but not identical.
Golson: We brought a woman named Patty Goodson, who was a professional musician, on board to come up with game ideas for us. I remember her drawing the character of Crazy Otto. I'm not sure if that was after we had picked the name and knew what he looked like, or if she came up with the name.
We started Crazy Otto in late May or early June of '81, pretty much right after the Super Missile Attack was done. For Crazy Otto, we gave him legs and blue eyes inspired by the side of the Pac-Man cabinet.
Crazy Otto was basically Pac-Man with eyes and legs.
During the development of an enhancement kit for Pac-Man, most of the GCC crew moved into a five-bedroom house in Wayland, Massachusetts. At first, Doug Macrae, Kevin Curran, Steve Golson, Chris Rode, John Tylko, and a friend named Larry Dennison all lived in the house at the same time. They soon brought on two more engineers to help with the project: Mike Horowitz and Phil Kaaret. While Macrae got married and moved out shortly thereafter, the house still served as the locus for the company's development activity.
Mike Horowitz, former software engineer, General Computer Corporation: They were all MIT guys, and they all knew each other, and they were all living in this house.
Macrae: Mike Horowitz was an engineer out of Cornell. I had worked at the same company as he did, Computervision, and I recruited him.
Golson: The house belonged to a professor who was taking a sabbatical and sailing a sailboat to Norway.
GCC's house/headquarters in Wayland, Massachusetts, in 2016.Photo courtesy of Steve Golson
Horowitz: Doug and I did not live there, and we were both newly married. We were both competitive people, so we'd see who could get there earlier. You would come in the door, and to the right was a kitchen area. To the left was this, I guess you'd call it a sun room. It was a big room, and that's where we had all our emulators set up.
Macrae: We were using in-circuit emulators created by Tektronix, which were roughly $25,000 computers that could emulate Pac-Man's microprocessor.
Golson: We had a desk right next to the front door which is where our secretary, Cathy Rohrs, would sit. UPS would come by every day to pick up our shipments.
Macrae: Down in the basement we were doing the manufacturing of the Super Missile Attack board–stuffing them, putting them in packages–and we were taking phone calls anywhere it rang in the house to take orders.
Steve Golson at a TRS-80 Model II computer during Super Missile Attack's development.Photo courtesy of Steve Golson
Horowitz: I would just come in, park myself at my emulator, and start coding. That was at like 7 or 8 a.m. The other guys, they'd come down at like 10 or 11 in their pajamas, go have breakfast, then see how I was doing.
Golson: I remember times where I'd come downstairs in my bathrobe, but that's what we did. Basically, we were just working nonstop. Doug was married, but he was there pretty much all the time.
Like Pac-Man, Only Better
Living and working in close but comfortable quarters in the relative isolation of a house up a wooded hill in Wayland, the young crew set out to implement its planned improvements to Pac-Man.
Macrae: The maze design was being done carefully to help prevent areas where you could get dead spots and hide from the monsters. It took a good bit of time to create interesting ones that would be challenging for people and not have the monsters get trapped or stuck. They were originally designed on graph paper, then implemented and tried out. We kept playing with them until we liked them.
Horowitz: I, unlike everyone else at GCC, actually graduated from college in 1979. Doug said he'd be able to pay me no salary, but my wife made enough to support us.
By the time I joined, they had already made the mazes. I had to come up to speed. I knew nothing about microprocessors, or video, or anything. I had been doing CAD/CAM software.
"It was basically boy meets girl, and they chase each other, and then they find true love."
The first thing I did was work on sounds. We had to reverse-engineer the game. Reverse-engineering the sound generator was pretty much impossible, but I just played around, substituting in values trying to get a feel for what changed if I put a 6E here instead of a 24. I did all the sound effects for the whole game. Chris Rode did the music.
Golson: I remember Chris on the piano there at the house figuring out the music for the attract mode and for all of the intermissions for all the cartoons.
Horowitz: Then I did the intermission animations. I remember driving to a friend's wedding. It was a long drive, and I'm in the car with my wife, and just thinking. That's where I thought of the three animations. It was basically boy meets girl, and they chase each other, and then they find true love.
Macrae: As we strived to look for more interesting improvements, at some point it was mentioned that we could have the fruit move.
Golson: We had the idea to move the fruits around the maze because the hardware allows you to have six moving objects. There's the four monsters, then Pac-Man, and then the bonus fruit. In Pac-Man, they never moved the fruit around. We said, "Well, if the hardware allows us to move it around, why don't we move it around?'
Macrae: Once we started the fruit moving, it became really fun to try to catch it.
Golson: With the fruit design, the thought was, again, we were trying to be careful to not infringe on the other guys' trademarks, and if they had a particular character that was recognizable like Pac-Man and the monsters and the Galaxian ship, well, we're not going to use that. So that's what we changed.
The two cherries is not trademarked because everybody uses that same two cherries image on every slot machine game. That's where the fruits came from. The pretzel bonus fruit was because Kevin Curran really loved pretzels.
With its new mazes and its refined monster AI, Crazy Otto aimed to overcome the patterns that Pac-Man players memorized to play the game perfectly on a single quarter. That would give Crazy Otto the potential for gameplay longevity that Pac-Man never had.
Horowitz: The original Pac-Man was totally deterministic. It played the same way every single time. You could hide in a spot, walk away from the game, and the game would play forever, because the monsters would never get you.
We added some randomness to it, and we made the monsters have different modes depending on the level of the game the different amounts of time at each mode. They would either chase Ms. Pac-Man, they would run away from Ms. Pac-Man, they would go to some specific corner of the maze, or they would just take a bunch of left turns. When they went to their corner we made them go to a random corner instead of going at the same corner every time. Just doing that made it different every time.
Tangling With Atari
Not long after the release of Super Missile Attack–and during the development of Crazy Otto–Atari caught wind of the unauthorized Missile Command add-on board and planned to sue GCC to stop its distribution. GCC heard of Atari's plans through a local arcade distributor, and in July 1981, the startup preempted Atari with a suit of its own, ensuring that GCC could pick the venue, which meant that the trial would take place in Massachusetts and not California. That gave the small firm a considerable home field advantage in the negotiations that commenced after Atari, then a division of media giant Warner Communications, sued GCC for $15 million.
Horowitz: I joined, and pretty much a couple weeks after, Atari filed the restraining order against GCC to stop them from selling Super Missile Attack.
"We felt like we must really be something if we've gotten Atari's attention."
Golson: At that point, Atari was like Google plus Microsoft. They were the high-tech behemoth that could do no wrong and were doing amazing stuff.
I think they felt that we would just be so cowed by, 'Oh my gosh, Atari is suing us.' I'm sure that was successful with other people. These people doing the rip-off clones of games, you send them a nasty letter and you say, 'Please stop making Asteroids T-shirts because that's our trademark.' People would say, 'Oh, of course. We'll do whatever you say.'
Instead, we said, 'Yeah, okay, bring it on. Let's go to court.' We felt like we must really be something if we've gotten Atari's attention.
We had nothing to lose, and we actually had carefully thought about what they were claiming, which was that we had infringed their copyright and trademark and unfair trade practices. We had previously thought about how to design our kit as such that we do not violate their copyright and trademark. It wasn't like we had just gone into this planning on infringing or knowing that we infringed.
Horowitz: We could have burned ROMS that were the game plus our changes. But we didn't want to do that, because there was the whole legal issue of copyright, so we didn't want to copy their code. What we produced was all our code, we wrote it all, and we were just adding it to the game, sort of an aftermarket thing.
Golson: We had this little daughter board that we would sell to the arcade owner and they would unplug their ROMs and plug them into our board, and then our board would plug into their Missile Command game. For business reasons and also for legal reasons, that's how we built it. We felt pretty confident that we would eventually prevail if we had gone to court.
Atari succeeded in getting a temporary restraining order to keep Super Missile Attack off the market until the suit could go to trial, although the judge gave GCC an opportunity to address Atari's complaints and resubmit a new version of the game that they could potentially sell in its place.
GCC's maneuvering and moxie caught Atari off-guard, and the suit soon became an annoyance for Atari's executives, whom were suddenly and unexpectedly under threat of being deposed to appear across the country in Massachusetts court. The suit also presented a David versus Goliath PR problem as the case gained press attention, and Atari soon sought a way to make it end quickly.
"Eventually Atari came to us and said, 'What do you guys really want out of this?'
Macrae: We fought in court for a while, and eventually Atari came to us and said, 'What do you guys really want out of this?' They definitely did not want enhancement kits done. We said, 'What we're really after is designing games.'
So as a way of buying us off, they gave us a development contract saying, 'Here's $50,000 a month for the next two years, or $1.2 million, and in exchange, develop games for us with no strings attached.' We didn't really have to do anything.
We later found out that Atari just wanted us to go sit on the beach, or go back to school, and never wanted to see us again. What we did was eventually started developing video games for them.
Golson: It was go-away money, but we said, 'No, we're going to design games for you.' We took the money and started cranking out games.
Getting Midway's Attention
The settlement of the Atari-GCC suit on October 8, 1981, marked a new beginning for the small New England company, which would go on to design several arcade games and an entire new home console (the 7800) for Atari over the next several years. But the most immediately pressing issue was the fate of Crazy Otto, whose development had been ongoing during the tussles with Atari in court.
A Bally Midway ad warning others not to violate the Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man trademarks.
Golson: As part of the negotiations with Atari, Kevin and Doug said, 'Hey, we've been working all summer on this kit for Pac-Man. We'd like to be able to sell it, and that's totally independent of whatever deal we do with Atari.'
Atari said,'Okay, We will allow you to sell enhancement kits as long as you can get the manufacturer's permission.'
Macrae: Atari did not want [unauthorized] enhancement kits out there in the industry because it would set a precedent that they did not want happening.
Golson: So Kevin calls up the president of Midway, a guy by the name of Dave Marofske–just cold calls him. One president to another. Kevin's an MIT dropout, but says, 'Dave, maybe you saw in the news that Atari dropped their lawsuit against us, and we're about to bring out a kit for your game Pac-Man.'
"They said, 'Thanks very much; and they gave each of us a Pac-Man tie.'
Macrae: We told him we were going to produce the enhancement kit with or without them. We'd just like to get their blessing, rather than ending up in court with them.
Golson: Marofske is in court all the time against people making unauthorized Pac-Man merchandise, so to have somebody who actually calls him up and talks to him, he thought that was pretty cool.
Marofske says, 'Hey, are you going to be in Chicago? Why don't you show us what you're working on?'
Macrae: We happened to show up shortly after their production had ended on Pac-Man. They'd run 24/7 for months, and had nothing in the pipeline. They were about to lay off lots of people, and we walked in with what they saw as the sequel to Pac-Man.
The Pac-Man tie bestowed upon GCC's staffers by Midway in 1981.Photo courtesy of Steve Golson
Golson: I flew in with the prototype kit. Kevin, Doug, and I go off to see the folks at Midway, including Marofske and Stan Jarocki, who was the head of marketing. They brought in one of their assembly guys, who was really good at playing Pac-Man, to play it. He plays the game for a little while, and he likes it.
They said, 'Thanks very much' and they gave each of us a Pac-Man tie. We packed up and flew home.
Macrae: Midway was very impressed with Crazy Otto. The game played very well. We'd already had it out on test in Framingham, Massachusetts, and it was earning very well.
Golson: Over the next week or so we're having these negotiations with them about what kind of a deal would we have.
Macrae: Midway said, 'Let's not do it as an enhancement kit, let's create the sequel to Pac-Man.'
Golson: I went back out about a week later with a more complete kit that they then put on location in Chicago to test to see how well it would work in an arcade. That's mid-October.
Crazy Otto appears in the pages of TIME, misidentified as Pac-Man.
Macrae: While it was out there, a photographer for TIME magazine was sent on an assignment to write about video games, and he wanted to go get a picture of Pac-Man. He walked into one of the only arcades in world to have a Crazy Otto. He took a picture of it, and used it as his picture of Pac-Man.
Golson: The test on location went really well. On October 29, we signed the agreement with them for Crazy Otto. It was a royalty thing, so we got a certain amount if they sold it as a kit, and we got more if they sold it as a complete game. So now we're frantic in getting it done so they can go into production.
Horowitz: The fact Doug and Kevin knew that there was only one way they could sell this thing, and how they convinced Midway to do it, is just one of the great sell jobs. They were kids. They were like 21 years old. They had some stones, you know?
Like any king of all media, Pac-Man had his own breakfast cereal.
Becoming Ms. Pac-Man
After signing a contract with Bally Midway on October 29, 1981, for Crazy Otto, GCC began the process of modifying their once-illicit aftermarket mod into a full-fledged sequel to Pac-Man. With guidance from Midway and some input from Namco, Crazy Otto began to take a new thematic direction.
Macrae: As soon as Midway said, 'Let's make a sequel out of it,' we no longer had to avoid the Pac-Man name. They originally said, 'Let's make it into Super Pac-Man.' I think that was the first game that they suggested.
We looked at the intermissions. Even on Crazy Otto, in the first intermission, a yellow Pac character with legs called Otto meets a red Pac character with legs, which obviously had to be a female Otto, because a heart goes above their head. They chase each other, and eventually a baby is brought to them by the stork.
We were looking and going, 'Wow, we've got a whole storyline here about how a character meets a red character that's female. Why don't we turn this into a male and female Pac character, and build a bit more personality into them?'
The design evolution of the character that began as Crazy Otto morphed into Super Pac-Man and was nearly Miss Pac-Man or Pac-Woman before becoming Ms. Pac-Man.Courtesy of Steve Golson
Golson: In the span of just two weeks, it went from Crazy Otto to Super Pac-Man to Miss Pac-Man, which is what it says on this little board that they manufactured. It was Pac-Woman at some point. Then again very quickly it changed to Ms. Pac-Man.
Macrae: "Pac-Woman" did not roll off the tongue very well. It then became "Miss Pac-Man," and it was that way until someone pointed out that the third intermission had Mr. and Miss Pac-Man having a baby brought to them. We need to have them married.
Word was sent back to Mike Horowitz that it should be Mrs. Pac-Man. Well, Mike was married to Eileen Mullarkey who refused to take his last name. She really did not like going by the name Mrs. Horowitz, or even Mrs. Mullarkey. She liked Ms. Mullarkey.
"The first character we had was a Ms. Pac-Man with red hair–shoulder-length red hair, not that she had any shoulders."
Horowitz: The women's movement was kind of big then–Ms. magazine–so Ms. was the new thing. I married in '81, and my wife didn't take my last name. She said that if I changed my name to her name, she would change it to something different just because she didn't want to have the same.
Horowitz: My wife just thought, you know, she's an independent woman–she can be. In the progression of the animations, the implicit thing is they do get married, because they have a child. But she's still a Ms.
During the one or two weeks when potential names for the new female Pac-character were being debated, Mike Horowitz began working on new artwork for the game to bring everything in line with the new concept.
Macrae: Mike Horowitz designed the Ms. Pac-Man character, with some review cycle going on with both Bally Midway, and with Namco in Japan. The first character we had was a Ms. Pac-Man with red hair–shoulder-length red hair, not that she had any shoulders.
Horowitz: It was hard to develop the characters. I used graph paper and colored pens, and would draw them, and then you'd have a 16-by-16 three color picture, and then you'd have to hand code them into a ROM burner, and it wasn't straightforward.
The Ms. Pac-Man board plugged into the Pac-Man board.Photo courtesy of Steve Golson
Macrae: We sent out ROMs to Midway, and they sent them over to Japan for the President of Namco, Masaya Nakamura, to look at. He said, "Love the concept, get rid of the hair." Ms. Pac-Man lost her hair–it was actually Pac-Woman at the time, I believe. The beauty mark stayed, and the lips stayed. I think we added a bow, and were quickly done with it, so Ms. Pac-Man had been created.
Masaya Nakamura died on January 22, 2017.
Golson: As I recall, the Midway folks had some suggestions. 'Hey, let's have a bow, let's have eyelashes and a beauty mark.' Well gosh, it's only 16-by-16 pixels. We went through several iterations. We tried several different things until we ended up with what we've got.
Macrae: We used a Lite Brite on Ms. Pac-Man some also, as a way to see what some of the characters would look like. It provided a relatively inexpensive character development system. Mike Horowitz insisted on doing it by hand on graph paper.
Courting Namco
Considering the unusual nature of how Ms. Pac-Man came to be, there has been much confusion over the years in history books and press reports about who gets credit for what in the game, and if Namco ever actually gave Midway approval to create Ms. Pac-Man, even thought Midway possessed the legal latitude through its Pac-Man license with Namco to do so. Today, Doug Macrae and other GCC veterans take special care to note that Namco was aware of Ms. Pac-Man during its development.
"The music, the colors, the mazes, the game play, everything–none of that came from Midway."
Macrae: Basically, Namco was fully approving of Ms. Pac-Man. In fact, their president was approving what the character would even look like. At the same time, there was a little bit of embarrassment, I believe, in-house in Japan, of the fact that the sequel was being done somewhere other than in their own laboratories.
There was always a little bit of bad feeling there, but they were fully aware. The arrangement that Namco had with Midway was that Namco would still get their royalty on Ms. Pac-Man, being the same as what they got on Pac-Man, and Midway could choose to do whatever they wanted in paying us a royalty in addition to Namco.
Because of its design, Ms. Pac-Man still operated as an after-market add-on board–even during its production run. So Midway essentially sold a copy of Pac-Man every time they sold a copy of Ms. Pac-Man. In that way, Namco still got the same Pac-Man royalty on every unit of Ms. Pac-Man that sold.
Horowitz: If you open up a Ms. Pac-Man, it'll have a Pac-Man board in it with our data card that sits in the processing slot. When the Pac-Man program came to certain addresses, it would jump to run the software in our data card.
Macrae: Every Ms. Pac-Man ever made has a Pac-Man board in it and a Ms. Pac-Man add-on, the same way Super Missile Attack was an add-on. If you were to remove that board, you'd get Pac-Man. Our intention was, once we went into production, that it would eventually be integrated onto one board, but things moved so fast that the entire [standalone] production run of Ms. Pac-Man was done with Pac-Man boards and Ms. Pac-Man enhancement kits.
The graphical appearance of Ms. Pac-Man wasn't the only suggestion that Midway offered the development team at GCC. During the final, frantic push to finish the game, GCC went back and forth repeatedly over minor changes, and some last-minute bugs were fixed. But the team still likes to stress that Ms. Pac-Man was their creation.
Golson: The only difference between the Crazy Otto that we showed Midway and Ms. Pac-Man was the characters. The Crazy Otto characters and monsters were gone, and it was back to the old original monsters and the new Ms. Pac-Man female character. Nothing else–other than a couple of minor bug fixes, which made no difference to the appearance. The music, the colors, the mazes, the game play, everything–none of that came from Midway.
Macrae: The fourth monster in Ms. Pac-Man is named Sue, which is my sister. I always get to joke about that with her a little bit. I worked really hard to make sure I could name a monster after my sister. It was a great way to take an inside poke at her.
Horowitz: Toward the end, I found a spot where Ms. Pac-Man could hide. We didn't want to ship like that, so the one last thing I did was with the red monster. When the red monster was put in chase mode, it went directly at Ms. Pac-Man and never left chase mode. That way if you ever found a corner where you could have hidden, once the red guy starts chasing they'll chase forever, and then, well, get you.
Golson: Midway kept coming back with what to us were silly changes. They could not make up their mind what the copyright was going to say. Make it do this. Okay, we'd turn it out. Then it would be, 'No, no, make it do this.' There was some of that towards that December/January timeframe. We just wanted to be done with it.
Horowitz: We gave Midway the board and the software, and they did everything else.
The Ms. Pac-Man board.Photo courtesy of Steve Golson
Ms. Pac-Man made its worldwide public debut on February 3, 1982, during a press conference held by Namco at Castle Park Entertainment Center in Sherman Oaks, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. Local reports of the conference spread nationwide through wire services, and word of Pac-Man's new female counterpart, complete with cheeky headlines ("Why is Pac-Man Grinning? Because He's Sharing His Quarters.") ran widely in papers across the U.S. By every measure, the response from both the press and video game players was immediately enthusiastic.
Ms. Pac-Man was an instant superstar.
Horowitz: There was an old arcade between Central Square and Harvard Square in Cambridge called 1001 Plays, and we found out that they had a Ms. Pac-Man, so we all rushed over, because it wasn't far from where we were. It was just so cool to go into an arcade and see this thing that you had done. It was awesome.
It was the first time we ever saw the cabinet. We didn't know what the artwork would be. When we got there, there were people playing it, and I think it was a hit from day one.
Golson: It got rave reviews. All the changes we made from Pac-Man to Ms. Pac-Man were just universally accepted and people said, 'Pac-Man was great, this is even better.' That, again, was a real vindication the improvements we had made were well thought-out.
Coleco's tabletop home version of Ms. Pac-Man.
Macrae: Midway kept the Ms. Pac-Man production line running as long as orders kept coming in, 24/7. They produced 117,000 units. General Computer made roughly $10 million on the Ms. Pac-Man arcade at the time.
Golson: That year while it was such a huge, big thing, it was this feeling of being on top of the world. Here we are, dropouts in our newly rented space and we got this development deal with Atari, the biggest consumer electronics company in the world, and we had the No. 1 video arcade game. It was just a wow, we're just doing well on everything.
The Pac family in a storybook based on the TV cartoon.
Interestingly, one of the reasons for Ms. Pac-Man's astronomical sales success in the arcade may have been a clever copy protection method baked into its hardware design that strongly deterred clones from flooding the market and cannibalizing its sales.
Steve Golson: There was a chip called a PAL, which stood for Programmable Array Logic. You could program your own digital logic into it, and then you could prevent it from being read back out, so you could not tell how it had been programmed.
The Ms. Pac-Man had four of these PALs, and the sophistication of the security technique was quite a bit more than the Super Missile Attack. It really prevented it from being copied because there were certainly people who tried.
As Ms. Pac-Man became wildly popular, GCC stayed busy with their Atari contract. They blazed through dozens of games at the twilight of the golden age of the American video game industry–a period that included the major video game market crash that hit in 1983-84.
Like other '80s games, Ms. Pac-Man inspired playing tips in dead-tree form.
Macrae: The success all happened unbelievably quickly, that not only did Ms. Pac-Man get put into production, and 117,000 made very, very quickly, but at the same time we were diving into designing games for Atari, and those were also taking off. Not in the same quantity in the arcade, but we were doing very well in the home market.
In addition to Ms. Pac-Man, during the next few years, we shipped 76 other games, mainly for Atari's 2600, 5200, and eventually the 7800, which we designed, and got paid on each one of those.
Horowitz: The whole game era was kind of short-lived. In four years, it was pretty much all over. Atari got sold, and we lost our funding, and we started doing other things. It was just like a little kind of blip.
Macrae: I don't think it was until 1984, 1985, that we kind of came up for breath, when the market slowed down, and we had a chance to look around.
A commercial for Atari's 1983 version of Ms. Pac-Man for its Atari 2600 home console, complete with the title character singing and dancing
The Fight For Ms. Pac-Man
Like Pac-Man before it, Ms. Pac-Man became a blockbuster overnight, spawning reams of merchandise like T-shirts, comic books, lunchboxes, toothbrushes, bed sheets, pajamas, board games, puzzles, trash cans, and more. Before long, GCC even created a follow-up arcade title for Midway called Jr. Pac-Man.
With GCC busy at work with new projects, Midway went full throttle in pursuing Ms. Pac-Man licensing opportunities–to the exclusion of GCC. In September 1982, a Saturday morning cartoon from Hanna-Barbara debuted and got the small firm's attention. It featured the basic family plotline introduced by GCC during Ms. Pac-Man's animated intermission scenes (and the ghost named Sue), and GCC felt it had to speak up to avoid being excluded from profiting on its own creation.
Ms. Pac-Man costarred in her spouse's Hanna-Barbera Saturday-morning cartoon in 1982 and 1983.
Macrae: Who owns the rights to Ms. Pac-Man is a very, very complicated issue. Ms. Pac-Man was originally created as a derivative work on Pac-Man. The whole concept of derivative works I don't think was ever heavily fleshed out in intellectual property law.
It was obvious always to us that Ms. Pac-Man could not exist without Pac-Man. You could never pay a royalty on Ms. Pac-Man without having a royalty going to Namco who created Pac-Man. With that being said, we always took the position that you cannot ever pay a royalty on Ms. Pac-Man without some going to us, because we are responsible for Ms. Pac-Man, and also the family that got created–Jr. Pac-Man and the whole Pac family.
Horowitz: They came out with all this Ms. Pac-Man stuff. There was a cartoon, and there were all the dolls and plush things. Midway wasn't giving us any of that, so I think we took them to court. Since we had created the character, we thought we were entitled to some of those proceeds.
Coleco's Ms. Pac-Man Power Cycle.
Macrae: We ended up in court in 1983 with Midway, which became known as 'the maternity suit,' because we were claiming that we were the mother of the family, that we created Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man. The first member of the next generation was created in the third intermission, with the stork flying in with Jr. in its mouth.
1983 Pac-Man-themed figurines, including Ms. Pac-Man as a bride.
Eventually we settled in a three-way agreement between us, Midway, and Namco, to how the various rights would work over the years that would follow, on characters that would get created and on the use of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man in arcade games, and the use of Ms. Pac-Man elsewhere, etc. All of that was pretty carefully spelled out for the '80s.
Almost 20 years later, Ms. Pac-Man saw a revival that wasn't spelled out in the original agreements. In 2000, Namco of America released an arcade machine called 'Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga-Class of 1981' that combined the firm's two all-time most popular arcade titles in one machine, and it represented the second release of Ms. Pac-Man in the arcade. The only problem was that they had not consulted GCC about it.
When GCC veterans heard about the new machine, Macrae and others went knocking on Namco's door to see what was up. The result shocked them.
Class of 1981 included both Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga.
Macrae: They had not even heard of who we were, and did not have any idea that we were the creators of Ms. Pac-Man.
Golson: When we were talking with the folks at Namco, we said, 'Look, hey guys, we designed this. This little outfit in Massachusetts.' They were like, 'What? What are you talking about?'
Macrae: I think this was totally honest because both Nakajima and Nakamura, the two Namco executives we had negotiated with, had passed away. [Class of 1981] was a machine developed by Namco of America. We got the old contract, faxed it out to them, and started our discussions.
After an initial period of confusion, Namco of America and the former shareholders of GCC entered into arbitration that lasted between 2002 and 2007. After a first round over the new Namco arcade cabinet, a second round of arbitration during the period covered the emergence of Ms. Pac-Man onto platforms not envisioned in the 1980s, such as iPods, cell phones, and plug-and-play game consoles. The two firms reached a new agreement whose terms are still confidential.
Macrae: When [Namco of America] decided to put the new game out, I don't think they had ever known that Ms. Pac-Man was not their creation. We'd never made much noise back in the '80s that we had created it. I don't think we've ever demanded credit, so I don't think we've really cared. Fame was never what we were after, so that was fine.
Horowitz: I think we've all been pretty much low-key about this thing. At some point, people found out about it, and there was some word of us on the internet. We're all engineers, right? So we're pretty quiet guys anyway. None of us have been going around bragging that we did Ms. Pac-Man, but it was our friends that would.
Golson: As for getting credit, getting paid was the first step. The thought was, well, eventually somebody will write the big history of video games and then we can talk about how it all came out.
Horowitz: Doug and Kevin have been very nice. When I first signed up, I wasn't getting a salary, but Doug said that the developers would get 10% of the profits from anything they did. To their credit, when this latest arbitration thing happened, even though we didn't do much except answer some emails, they held to the same 10%. They didn't owe us that, but they're nice guys.
To this day, Namco does not publicly acknowledge that Ms. Pac-Man was created outside of Japan, and Toru Iwatani, the creator of Pac-Man, declines to comment on the very popular American-made spin-off of his game. I have tried to contact Iwatani about this issue twice since 2011, and I have received no response.
Golson: At some point I'd love to sit down with Toru Iwatani and say, 'Hey, what do you think of us?'
"I didn't walk around with a sign saying 'I made Ms. Pac-Man.'"
Yeah, I suspect they were a little bit annoyed–probably not so much that they were not responsible for it–but I think that they were very proud of Pac-Man, which they should be. Pac-Man's a wonderful game.
I think the fact that Ms. Pac-Man showed flaws in their game, that their game could be improved a little bit, might be annoying to them. Maybe they have those feelings. I don't think that's very fair to themselves, though.
Horowitz: Typically, there's a lot of innovation that happens in America and then Japan will take that innovation and refine it a little bit and sell it back to us, so I think we sort of turned the tables on them.
The gameplay of Pac-Man is awesome. There are a lot of games that, like Tetris, are incredibly simple, but they're really compelling to play. They came out with this great idea, and we fixed those flaws and made a better game.
Golson: Frankly, I'm sure that there are other games under the Namco brand that were designed by third parties, and they do not talk about that either–and rightly so. You contract out for somebody to do some work for you, and whether your acknowledge them or not, it's up to you. Our attitude was as long as we get paid, we don't care.
Macrae: It has brought in tremendous amounts of revenue for Namco. They made as much on every Ms. Pac-Man that shipped in America as they did on Pac-Man. If you get down to the profits behind it, they don't care in the least.
In the 21st century, Ms. Pac-Man remains a universal symbol of arcade games.Photo: Flickr user Ian Muttoo
Thirty-five years after its release, Ms. Pac-Man remains both iconic and addictively fun to play. It even makes the news from time to time, as it did in January when computer scientists taught an AI to play the game better than any computer before it, achieving a record-breaking high score of 43,720.
After a brief but successful run in the video game industry, General Computer pivoted to other technologies, creating the first internal hard drive for the Macintosh and a pioneering set-top box for TV Guide before settling down in the laser printer market. Despite decades of work on dozens of products since then, Ms. Pac-man remains a satisfying high-water mark in the lives of the engineers who brought her to life.
Funko's Ms. Pac-Man figure, a modern piece of character merchandise.
Horowitz: How has it changed my life? It introduced me to a bunch of smart guys and from a career point of view. We made a bunch of money, and it was great. I bought a house basically from the proceeds of Ms. Pac-Man that I still live in.
In terms of Ms. Pac-Man itself, until recently, it really wasn't a active part of my life. It was something we did in less than a year, and it was fun, but I didn't walk around with a sign saying 'I made Ms. Pac-Man.'
Golson: It's been a real trip, I'll tell you. It's the most popular arcade video game ever in the U.S., and to be able to point to that and say I was one of the designers is a real feeling of accomplishment. It certainly turns people's heads when you tell them and they want to hear the story. On a personal level it affected me because it was financially a big thing.
Among other things, Ms. Pac-Man is a popular cosplay themePhoto: Flickr users Jamie
Horowitz: I was 24 when Ms. Pac-Man was released. I have four daughters, and my two oldest are older than I was when I did Ms. Pac-Man. So they sometimes moan, 'Dad, I'm 25 years old and I haven't created the most popular video game of all time, I'm a failure.'
Macrae: I still have a Ms. Pac-Man machine in my basement. I was never amazingly good at it, but my wife's best friend growing up played Ms. Pac-Man a lot, and she got so good at it that she decided to start playing it with her toes. She can beat me while I'm playing with my hands.
Horowitz: They're all over the place. Usually you see them if you're driving on the Mass Turnpike that runs through Massachusetts. At all their rest stops, there are all these gas stations, and they all seem to have the combo Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga game.
It was a little short thing in my life that happened: It was wonderful, and I have nothing but great memories of that. It was the only cultural phenomenon I've ever worked on.
Benj Edwards is a tech historian and journalist. He is currently a staff writer for How-To Geek and has written for The Atlantic, Wired, Macworld, and others
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Automatic Milking System Game Changer for Wisconsin Dairy Farm
Leave a Comment / Rasberry / By pi4ov
Editor's Note: Part two of a two-part series on automated milking systems designed for dairy farms. Two University of Wisconsin River Falls professors will conduct a research study on RBS, and a Wisconsin farmer using automated milking systems says they saved their family farm. Read the first part here.
Children often think that they will enjoy reversing the role. But when they have to try it on for size, it just doesn't fit snugly.
Especially with your parents. But it got to a point where Tina Hinchley's daughter had seen enough.
Anna Hinchley watched her mother milk the cows in the barn nine hours a day. She was often alone. Anna's father had his own workload to conquer the farm. The help was unreliable.
University of Wisconsin River Falls professors, in collaboration with four other universities, have been awarded a $250,000 grant to study the financial, environmental and social impacts of robotic milking systems on dairy farms.
Automated milking is an optional milking system that allows cows to set their own milking schedule. As the robot milks the cow, farmers have more flexibility in how they use their time and more time to devote to managing the farm
Automatic milking systems collect information on the quantity, quality and health of the cow, helping farmers better manage their herd
The project is planned to be completed by October 2024
"She saw I was killing myself," Hinchley said.
Armed with a dairy science degree from the University of Wisconsin and knowledge from a summer internship where she has analyzed and evaluated nearly 60 robotic farms, Anna Hinchley has, in one form or another, set an ultimatum.
"I made this suggestion, 'If I bring robots to the farm, I'll come back,'" Hinchley said.
Unlike that …
So they toured different farms and checked out different robotic milking systems.
"Speaking with these farmers, they shared with us what has changed in their lives," Hinchley said.
I understood that change was not only good, but necessary. So in December 2019, Hinchleys installed four automated milking machines as part of a larger investment in its Cambridge dairy farm.
( Specif News 1 / Anthony Dabrozzi )
"I think I'm a better farmer," Tina said. "Well, I know I am a better farmer. I am a better manager. And with that, I am a better mother and a better wife. I have more time to do other things."
Robotic milking systems have been around for a while. But due to many unknowns and a large initial cost – roughly $150,000 to $200,000 – they didn't light up the dairy industry.
To that end, two University of Wisconsin River Falls professors have received a $250,000 grant to study the financial, environmental and social impacts of robotic milking systems on dairy farms. The project is expected to be completed in October 2024.
"A lot of[information]is driven by rumours, and what robotic milk manufacturers are saying," said Shahir Burney, a professor in the UWRF's Department of Agricultural Economics who co-led the study. "This is not always accurate.
"It's really high time because it's a new technology that is now beginning to integrate into dairy farms."
Tina Hinchley has already been sold.
"Oh sure," she said. "100%."
Perhaps the biggest advantage that RMS offers is that the cows set their own milking schedule.
"On our farm, they pass an average of three times a day," Hinchley said. "But we have some that go through four or five times.
"When we were in the tie stall, I only milked twice a day. And if you can get a cow that produces more milk, not more cows, that is definitely more sustainable."
Tina Hinchley on her family's farm. ( Specif News 1 / Anthony Dabrozzi )
Robotic milking systems also work like a neighborhood bar, a place where the cows can hang out and bond. It is an important component of their health and well-being.
"It's definitely a social environment," Hinchley said. "In the robot, the cows can milk themselves. They can eat when they want. They can go for a drink when they want. There are mattresses for them. There are waterbed mattresses, so they can take an afternoon nap. Food is always available. It's the most technology there is." right Now ".
The bots also track more than 110 data points per cow.
"She'll take her temperature," she said. "Conductivity will do. We also have the somatic cell count. So we will be able to determine if this cow has ever got sick before we ever expected."
If something happens to the bot, it automatically makes a Hinchley call.
"They tell you what a robot is and what the problem is," she said.
They can often solve the problem themselves, Hinchley said. When they can't, they have a company nearby that offers around-the-clock support.
"They don't want to go out at 2 in the morning," she said. "So I can tell them on the phone and tell them what's going on. They can actually interact with our computers and see what's going on and talk to us through it. If we can't figure it out by chance, they can come out with their tech truck and they can fix it. Usually in a couple of hours."
So what does all this mean?
"The farm was run by three kids in high school in 2019," Hinchley said. "And our whole family, with my mother who died of cancer, we went to my son's wedding in Seattle for seven days. It was the first time we had a family vacation. Ever. And so it's definitely life changing."
Changing lives on many fronts.
"If you want a family member to come back to the farm, and you're not up to date with your technology, your kids aren't going home," Hinchley said. "They have no reason to go home. There is not enough money in the dairy industry to keep these children at home.
"So if you want your kids to come home, you better give them something to come back to. And that's what we did for our daughter Anna."
Story idea? You can reach Mike Woods at 920-246-6321 or at: michael.t.woods1@charter.com
#Automatic #Milking #System #Game #Changer #Wisconsin #Dairy #Farm
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PELL CITY, Ala. — German automotive supplier, Eissmann Automotive, N. A. has announced an expansion to its Pell City, Alabama facility. The expansion will include a $14.5 Million investment in a new 130,000 Square Foot building and advanced manufacturing equipment for their new production line. They expect to hire an additional 200 employees to support the production necessary for their new orders. This project will bring in a new, highly advanced manufacturing process that is currently performed at only two other Eissmann facilities in the world. Goodgame Company will construct the new facility. Check for Eissmann Automotive jobs here.
Eissmann Automotive currently has 13 locations on three continents. The company specializes in car interiors, built-to-print trim components, shifter modules and many other parts for German and Domestic auto makers such as Mercedes, Audi, Jeep, Tesla, Porsche, Volkswagen and others. Their commitment to high quality and 100% customer satisfaction has been a key to their success. The new contract will require a new, to this location, advanced manufacturing process that currently is used by Eissmann in Slovakia and China.
During the last decade, Eissmann Automotive has grown to be the largest industrial employer in St. Clair County. They have had numerous expansions growing from an original employment number of 85 to the current number of 650, and soon to be 850 employees.
READ MORE of this story at St. Claire County Economic Development Council. Photo courtesy of Eissmann Automotive.


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Home»News»SA senate learns of $600,000 in surplus funds
SA senate learns of $600,000 in surplus funds
Chad Arnold 2018-04-10
Chad Arnold / April 10, 2018 /	0
SA President Jerlisa Fontaine notified the senate of $600,000 in surplus funds during Wednesday's meeting. Chad Arnold / ASP
A shift in spending oversight this past summer has led to the discovery of more than $600,000 in Student Association surplus funds – highlighting delays in the auditing process and causing senators to question the organization's transparency.
On Wednesday, SA President Jerlisa Fontaine notified members of the senate that UAS discovered more than $600,000 in surplus funds in the organization's bank account this past summer. The funds, according to Fontaine, are comprised of unspent money from previous years.
It is not known how long SA has had the surplus funds.
The discovery came less than two months after UAS took over spending oversight — referred to as custodianship — of SA funds on July 1. The shift was the result of continuing delays in SA's auditing process.
According to Executive Director of Student Involvement Michael Jaromin, whose office oversees SA, the organization's annual audit should be completed in September following the end of the fiscal year on June 30. The 2016-17 audit was not completed until March 2018.
"Every audit will tell you how much your surplus is," said Jaromin who explained it is very likely SA has a surplus but stopped short in saying just how large the surplus is. "The only reason why there would be some uncertainty is because the audits are so late."
In addition to Fontaine, Langie Cadesca, chief of staff; Michael Spellane, former comptroller; Mitchell Rybak, then SA secretary; and Jarrett Altilio, senate chair, all knew of the surplus this past summer.
SA's senate and board of finance were not alerted to the surplus funds until Altilio notified BOF Vice Chair Anna Agnes last week.
"We honestly, genuinely, with the quick pace of the school year, just didn't get back to it," said Fontaine, who explained that dealing with surplus funds is new for SA.
An idea to create a "mini budget" with the surplus funds was initially discussed by Fontaine, Altilio, and Spellane, leading Joey Fambrini, director of programming, to believe he had additional funding for this year's Parkfest.
The BOF blocked the move early last week after learning about the funds.
"You can't just open up your budget and throw more in there," said Cassandra Jones, a member of the BOF who expressed frustration in not knowing about the surplus funds. "You can't just tell us two days ago that you have $600,000 and expect us to just say, 'Yeah, throw it into Parkfest.'"
On Wednesday the SA senate voted to transfer $65,000 from the organization's payroll line to the programming concert line to cover Parkfest expenses. The move came just two days after the BOF learned of the $600,000 surplus.
Several senators felt they were intentionally misled about the surplus funds, including Rules Committee Chair Brandon Holdridge.
"Roughly six people know about this and we just forget? No. There's no way in my mind that's something that would happen," he said. "I don't believe it for a second."
UAS custodianship now performs monthly reconciliations, matching purchase receipts with funds spent. Jaromin said this will allow the audit to be completed on time and lead to better financial understanding within the organization.
"If there are ways for us to improve what they do, we are constantly asking and advising them to do that," said Jaromin of SA. "Ultimately at the end of the day, it is still their budget."
The BOF plans to allocate the surplus funds into the 2018-19 budget but has not finalized what the money will be allocated towards.
Chad Arnold
Chad Arnold is a reporter for the Albany Student Press covering Student Association affairs. He is also an die-hard heavy metal fan.
Tags:AuditBOFJarrett AltilioJerlisa FontaineLangie CadescaMichael Jarominstudent associationSurplusUAS
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Student group gets their wish: SA recognition by any means
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I've tested with Dutch, maybe other languages work?
Chinese language UI doesn't work also.
German language only during setup. Setting 'german' in OO Options doesn't work.
Working on this, shall be in 1.1.0-3.
about.  So we get to special-case a bunch of langauges.... Sigh.
Dictionaries/hyph/thes issue # is 108720.  This one now closed.