The evolution of the front porch.
Since moving into the house two and half years ago (I KNOW, where did it go?!) our front porch has been through quite the gamut of changes.
Need a little reminding? Now worries, we got you.
The first to-do was taking out the ramp, adding some stairs and moving the propane tank.
And then we stayed with that for awhile.
Until it was time for a change. Because, why not?
Since the near-completion of our deck, I started doing a little comparison and our front porch was lookin' a little sad. I know, I know, parents are never supposed to pick a favorite… "they're all special to us" and all that. However, it wasn't even a competition in my mind – the front porch needed an overhaul.
To begin, all the chipped, cracked and discolored paint needed to come off. Surprisingly, it didn't take as long as I thought or require as much effort – which is always welcomed! I just went over everything with an orbital sander and 80 grit sand paper.
After getting it all sanded – about three days – I tried my hand at the power washer…and lived to tell the tale! I had way too much fun washing all dirt off the house and going up against a small hornet's nest. But seriously, if you've never power washed your house, it's a game changer!
After waiting for it all to dry (and for the weather to cooperate) it was time to seal. The color is Honey Teak and it's the other color we were going back-and-forth on for the deck.
Want to know a secret? We kind of like this color better than the one we chose for the deck. Of course, we sealed this one AFTER we did the deck so it was a little too late. But, that's what happens sometimes and you just go with it.
After sealing everything, it was time for the posts. I wavered back and forth between painting and staining them. I went with the painting because I thought it would make the door and door trim really pop AND I was ready to be done sanding. The color is Sherwin Williams' Alabaster.
If we had wanted to take the time and clean up the railing and posts a little, I think I would have gone with the stain, but I am banking on the fact that we'll be tearing this all down next summer to do the wrap-around deck and it didn't make sense to put all that work into it.
The white definitely pops. I am still getting used to it – but it's growing on me 🙂 The more I am out there and looking at everything, the more I am enjoying the change. And if anything, it's a heck of a lot better than before!
Overall, the entire refinishing process went a LOT better than I was expecting. It's really fairly easy and changing up the color makes a huge difference.


text:
Bigger than bomb threats: The political violence of national oppression
By Joshua Parks |
Read more articles in African-American
Map showing majority of Black people concentrated in the U.S. South, the historic homeland of the African American nation.
Jacksonville, FL - Throughout the months of January and February, there were over 20 bomb threats directed towards historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Black churches, most of which were in the South. These concentrated actions over the last few months are a microcosm of the extensive history of racism and national oppression that Black people have faced within the United States, particularly its southern region.
In general, all Black communities within the United States face systemic racism. The evidence is in the economically depressed ghettos of every city (big and small), riddled with deprived schools and social organizations, and lacking any significant political power. But racism alone cannot explain the particular violence that Black people face within the United States. For this reason, we must understand this phenomenon as a form of special oppression that Black people face under capitalism called national oppression. This unique form of oppression targets a particular group for their nationality. In the case of Afro-descendants living within the borders of the United States, this is a nation within a nation.
But why has the South, in particular, faced the most extreme manifestations of the terrorism associated with racist national oppression? Because historically, the South is where Africans and their descendants are and were most densely concentrated. This, of course, is the haunting legacy of centuries of enslavement in this region, which shaped the relationship between white and Black communities and whose effects radiate throughout every societal system existing today. Of course, this relationship includes the development of a particular form of racial terrorism. This terrorism stems from the slavery era, when enslavers and those who acted in their interests, used torture, terrorism and intimidation to deter any revolutionary organizing by freedom-seeking Africans.
After the Civil War, the KKK and other white supremacist organizations waged a campaign of political violence that overthrew Radical Reconstruction. This terrorism continued throughout the Jim Crow Era as lynch law dominated the South for nearly 100 years. This specific form of violence was - and continues to be - in response to white society's fear of a Black nation in the belly of the imperial core.
This intense display of national oppression, including subjection to extreme violence, and economic exploitation led to the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, when 6 million Black people moved out of rural areas in the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. Despite the Great Migration, one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, the majority of Afro-descended people still live in the South, particularly the Black Belt region, where Black people constitute a majority in several contiguous regions. In 2010, 55% of the Black population lived in the South, and 105 Southern counties had a Black population of 50% or higher. Of the total U.S. population of 308.7 million in 2010, 38.9 million people, or 13%, identified as Black alone.
Of these roughly 40 million Afro-descendants living within the borders of the United States, over half, or about 22 million, still live in the South. 22 million is a larger population than all of Scandinavia combined, and Scandinavia consists of 7 nations. It's more than Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, Serbia, Austria, and others. 40 million is a larger population than the majority of many nations on earth. Undoubtedly, a Black nation exists within the United States' borders, and national oppression inflicted by the capitalist system serves to facilitate its continued underdevelopment.
This underdevelopment of a Black nation is exacerbated by extreme forms state-sanctioned violence and terrorism, which did not end after Jim Crow's reign. In addition to organized threats against popular institutions, an even more organized system of police terror and violence is encouraged and expertly designed to brutalize Black people and hinder their national growth progress.
Black people are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white people. And the conditions they face are even more dire. A federal judge ruled that the conditions for incarcerated persons with mental health issues in Alabama prisons is so "horrendously inadequate" that it violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
This is just one example of the shame of the United States. In Louisiana, 816 people were incarcerated for every 100,000 people in 2014. The increasing privatization of prisons for profit and the willingness to turn a blind eye to ongoing injustice against Black and brown people has not only widened disparities in healthcare, education, food security and housing but has also paralleled the rise of bold, extremist attacks against Black personhood, Black identity and Black power.
Extreme acts, such as the Emanuel AME Church massacre that devastated Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, illustrate the political violence still required to suppress a nation, and why bomb threats to HBCU's and other Black institutions should not be taken lightly, or underanalyzed from the simple lens of being a one-off acts of racial violence, or hate crimes. In doing so, we miss the political nature of such attacks, and their intended function, which is political repression. We miss out on why Emanuel AME Church was targeted, and who was targeted. Of the victims, the primary target, was Black Senator Clementa Pinckney. Pinckney was the youngest Black person to be elected to the South Carolina state legislature. He proposed a bill to officially recognize the Pan African flag, held political rallies after the police murder of Walter Scott in North Charleston, and had introduced several bills to protect Black people's land in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. When we analyze acts of racial terrorism as a function of political repression that stem from national oppression, then Emmanuel AME is not simply a random anti-Black hate crime, but an assassination with the purpose of political repression.
If we fail to understand the implications of such bomb threats, the way many failed to understand the gravity of the Emmanuel AME massacre, then we will fail to understand the true intentions behind these acts of violence, and the purpose they serve in the grand scheme of things. All political acts are intentional, therefore terrorism aimed at Black communities have a political objective - to suppress the development of Black communities through violence and intimidation by targeting the productive forces - schools, churches, businesses and other social organizations - that are essential to any oppressed nation's quest for self-determination.
Joshua Parks is a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and co-founder of the Low Country Community Action Committee of Charleston, South Carolina, a National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression affiliated branch.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Are you a developer who blogs actively (and comments on other blogs)? Do you love presenting at a conference as much as writing code? Have you meaningfully contributed to an open source project? Do you like meeting new people? Do you relish explaining how something works and why it's the coolest thing since sliced bread? Do you enjoy traveling around the country (the world)?
If you can answer yes to all of the above then we have a great opportunity for you at one of our portfolio companies. You will be responsible for connecting a fantastic team working on some extraordinary technology with developers around the world. The software will be open source and you will be in charge of facilitating the growth of a community.
We can't say (quite yet) which company it is, but the job will be based in New York. If you are interested please write to [email protected] and make sure to include some evidence for all the questions above.
The United States has developed relationships that are much more than strategic in two … cases, with Britain and Israel. In both, the ties were broad and deep, going well beyond government officials and diplomatic negotiations. The two countries knew each other and understood each other – and, as a result, became natural and almost permanent partners.
Such a relationship between the United States and India is, on some level, almost inevitable.
I got a Nokia N95 to use as a camera on our trip to europe. It's not the greatest phone, but it's one hell of a camera. Here's a photo I took of a card game we played in the airport lounge waiting to board our plane yesterday.
My blackberry could not have taken such a crisp picture and my Canon SD750 wouldn't have done much better. I also shot some video and it was equally good.
I am having a rough time with the phone now that we are in Paris. I can't get it to upload via 3G broadband on my T-mobile SIM card. I think I'll stop by an Orange store in the next day or two and get a local 3G broadband card for the N95 and see if that works better.
I've installed Shozu on the phone and that seemed to work well in the states. I put a twitter client called twibble on the phone, but I don't like it very much. On the advice of several people, I am going to try another one called SlandR. I'll let you know how it goes.
But honestly, I suspect I'll mostly use the N95 as a camera (still and video) and not much else.
I generally post my top 10 records at the end of the year and I certainly plan on doing that again this year. But I couldn't help but get into this NPR poll to determine the top records so far this year.
My votes were for Bon Iver, Dengue Fever, MGMT, My Morning Jacket, and Vampire Weekend. I might have voted for Mike Doughty's Golden Delicious or Kooks' Konk, but neither were on the list.
But the best part of this poll is the comment thread. I bought three records just reading through it; Jason Collett, The Dodos, and Momofuku – Elvis Costello's new record.
I posted the other day about Google Trends For Websites. Google isn't the only search company that's taking the data it collects and turning it into valuable insight. Our portfolio company, Indeed, has launched Job Analytics. Here's their blog post announcing the availability of the service. RIght now, you have to contact Indeed (contact information is on their blog post) to get your company's job analytics.
Here's what your report will look like.
Recruiting is important business for every company and the web is transforming how a company finds and attracts employees. Indeed Job Analytics can help you understand what you are doing right and what you can do better.
Am I Bored With "Web 2.0"?
I read a comment on my "Looking For Inspiration" post this morning that suggested I was just getting bored with Web 2.0 like many others. It's something I've considered a lot lately.
I am certainly not bored with the investments we have made at Union Square Ventures and many of them would be classified as "web 2.0". There's pretty much nothing I'd rather do outside of family time than spend a few hours talking with the entrepreneurs who run our companies about their businesses and the opportunity and challenges facing them. This collection of companies we have in our portfolio right now is certainly the best collection of companies I have ever had the opportunity to work with at one single time.
But I am a bit jealous of friends who are working on finding and funding alternative energy or biomedical technologies that have the potential to address the serious problems facing the world. At times it seems that helping the web become more social, intelligent, mobile, and playful is not as impactful.
That's partially why I want to spend a month in Europe and will do that starting tomorrow. I want to see how the web is changing the world and I want to see how entrepreneurs who are operating with a different worldview are thinking about the power and potential of the web. I could do the same thing in Asia or some other part of the world, but Europe is particularly easy place to do this because of the range of cultures and countries within a couple hours plane ride from each other.
The work that we do at Union Square Ventures can't just be about making money. At least that's not enough for me. It has to be a force for positive social change. It needs to be about making the world a better place for our children and their children.
And certainly there is much about "web 2.0" that doesn't seem to address that need. Throwing food at your friends on Facebook or twittering about the length of the line at the shake shack lands squarely in the "banality" camp that Kirby railed about in his essay on "pseudo modernism" that I blogged about last week.
As I make my way through Zakaria's Post-American World, I am struck by the power of bringing the world together. As the "rest" modernizes in the next 20-40 years, we have a unique opportunity to create a world where people all feel like they belong to the same society. It's already happening in business. Look at the EU to see a model of what the entire world could become.
And I think the web is driving this globalization. Most analysts, including Zakaria, talk about the power of instant news and information in driving globalization. But I think the impact of information flow (in the news sense) is tiny when compared to the power of social media.
Take a look at this map of the last 500 vistitors to this blog.
We are a community here at AVC. I didn't start this blog to create a community. You all created it and I am blessed to be able to moderate it, to start the conversations that you all finish. And this community is a worldwide community. I can name at least a dozen commenters who are in the top thirty most frequent commenters who live outside the US. They give our conversation a global perspective. Which is a glimpse of what we are going to have in all forms of society in the next thirty years.
www stands for world wide web. It was aptly named. It is the single most powerful force in global change. And if that is true, then it will be the single most powerful force in solving our world's problems.
next. I am going to try to find out over the next year or two.
Europeans prefer complexity, the Japanese revere minimalism. But Americans like size, preferably supersize.
I need to start this post with an important disclosure. I was on the Board of ComScore for nine years from the summer of 1999 until earlier this month. And I am still a shareholder in ComScore through the Flatiron partnerships. In no way is this post intended as a plug for ComScore. And I cannot and will not disclose any confidential information about ComScore in this post.
Now that I have that on the table, I'd like to share my impressions after a first look at Google's new Trends For Websites service. I've been involved in the web measurement market for almost ten years and we use third party measurement services every day in our job as investors in Internet companies. I've blogged about our approach (USV's) to web measurement in the past.
In my opinion, there is no service that gets third party web traffic measurement exactly right. We like to triangulate at Union Square Ventures. We use ComScore actively and believe their data is the most accurate of all the services. But it is not perfect and it is particularly weak at measuring web sites with small (sub 500k uniques) audiences. We also use Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast on almost a daily basis. And we will most certainly start using Google's Trends For Websites.
There are a lot of misconceptions about third party measurement services out there. They are on display in the comments in this Techcrunch post. People say things like "ComScore's data is not worldwide" or "Compete doesn't have good statistical algorithms." Neither statement is true. ComScore, Compete, Hitwise, and NetRatings have been around for a long time and have invested heavily in the statistical talent that is required to get a third party measurement service right. And certainly a bunch of the leading services, particularly ComScore and NetRatings have built large international panels and report international data.
Google's service reminds me more of Alexa than anything else. And I don't think it's particularly accurate. Here's an example. We run monthly queries of all the third party services against our entire portfolio and share that data internally in our firm. I am very familiar with the numbers on our portfolio companies, both what their own analytics and server logs are telling them and what the third party services tell them.
Here are three charts of Twitter, Etsy, and Indeed. I picked these three services because they have large enough audiences which makes them fairly easy to measure by third parties and have been around a while and are well known.
Since we are investors in these three companies and know what their internal numbers are saying, I can safely say that ComScore and Compete are lower but directionally correct. Google is like Alexa in that they don't report absolute numbers but even if they did, they are not directionally correct on this particular set of companies.
Once again, this story demonstrates that many in the tech blog world don't really understand the third party measurement market. Google announces that they are offering a website traffic measurement service and everyone instantly assumes it is going to be great. I don't think it is, at least not yet.
in the product, and I'm not sure Google can easily solve it.
This is an important fact. Everyone who provides third party measurement starts out with a data set that is skewed in some way. The trick is to understand how your data set is skewed and apply statistics to take that bias out. Firms like ComScore, Compete, Hitwise, and NetRatings who sell their data have invested heavily for many years in reconciling their data to server logs and internal analytics. And that makes their data better.
If Google wants to be a player in this market, they'll have to invest time and energy doing the same. It will be interesting to see if they will do that. If not, they'll be more like Alexa. A helpful tool but not one that you can completely rely on.
Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, the United States succeeded in its great and historic mission – it globalized the world. But along the way, they might write, it forgot to globalize itself.
Wall street, the media and the blogs are unanimous in their view that the management exodus at Yahoo! this week is a terrible thing and shows the the company is in shambles. The rats are leaving the sinking ship, as it were.
Jeff Weiner, Usama Fayyad, Qi Lu, Brad Garlinghouse, Vish Makhijani, Caterina Fake, Joshua Schachter, and Stewart Butterfield are all talented people who will be missed. I know quite a few of these people and I would love to have the opportunity to work with them in the future.
Yahoo! probably needs more people to leave in the coming months, particularly senior people who have been around for a long time.
All of this is still very possible. But its clearly a turnaround of sorts and needs to be approached that way. The best turnaround people I know start with a challenge to the team. 'Are you ready to dig deep and work really hard for the next five years to get this thing working again If yes, let's do it. If no, then you have to leave now'. That's what is happening at Yahoo! and it can be a very good thing.


text:
Q: How do I use built-in MATLAB functions? MATLAB has lots of built-in functions that I can call, such as "sin" and "norm." However, some of MATLAB's built-in functions are part of different libraries that I cannot access directly. For example, the function "ssim" is part of MATLAB's image processing toolbox, so I cannot simply call "ssim" in my code and have it work.
How do I call built-in MATLAB functions that are in different libraries? Do I need to import the libraries somehow? If so, how do I do that? How do I do this for ssim specifically?
Thanks so much!

A: Type ver into the command window to see which toolboxes belong to the license you bought.
Any function of these installed toolboxes you can call normally, like the mentioned sin.
Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can find equivalent functions of otherwise expensive toolboxes at MATLAB File Exchange.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
package org.jivesoftware.smack.provider;

import org.jivesoftware.smack.packet.IQ;
import org.jivesoftware.smack.packet.PacketExtension;
import org.xmlpull.mxp1.MXParser;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParser;

import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.*;
import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap;

/**
 * Manages providers for parsing custom XML sub-documents of XMPP packets. Two types of
 * providers exist:

 *
IQProvider -- parses IQ requests into Java objects.
 *
PacketExtension -- parses XML sub-documents attached to packets into
 *          PacketExtension instances.

 *
 * IQProvider

 *
 * By default, Smack only knows how to process IQ packets with sub-packets that
 * are in a few namespaces such as:

 *
jabber:iq:auth
 *
jabber:iq:roster
 *
jabber:iq:register

 *
 * Because many more IQ types are part of XMPP and its extensions, a pluggable IQ parsing
 * mechanism is provided. IQ providers are registered programatically or by creating a
 * smack.providers file in the META-INF directory of your JAR file. The file is an XML
 * document that contains one or more iqProvider entries, as in the following example:
 *
 *

 * <?xml version="1.0"?>
 * <smackProviders>
 *     <iqProvider>
 *         <elementName>query</elementName>
 *         <namespace>jabber:iq:time</namespace>
 *         <className>org.jivesoftware.smack.packet.Time&lt/className>
 *     </iqProvider>
 * </smackProviders>

 *
 * Each IQ provider is associated with an element name and a namespace. If multiple provider
 * entries attempt to register to handle the same namespace, the first entry loaded from the
 * classpath will take precedence. The IQ provider class can either implement the IQProvider
 * interface, or extend the IQ class. In the former case, each IQProvider is responsible for
 * parsing the raw XML stream to create an IQ instance. In the latter case, bean introspection
 * is used to try to automatically set properties of the IQ instance using the values found
 * in the IQ packet XML. For example, an XMPP time packet resembles the following:
 *

 * <iq type='result' to='joe@example.com' from='mary@example.com' id='time_1'>
 *     <query xmlns='jabber:iq:time'>
 *         <utc>20020910T17:58:35</utc>
 *         <tz>MDT</tz>
 *         <display>Tue Sep 10 12:58:35 2002</display>
 *     </query>
 * </iq>

 *
 * In order for this packet to be automatically mapped to the Time object listed in the
 * providers file above, it must have the methods setUtc(String), setTz(String), and
 * setDisplay(String). The introspection service will automatically try to convert the String
 * value from the XML into a boolean, int, long, float, double, or Class depending on the
 * type the IQ instance expects.

 *
 * A pluggable system for packet extensions, child elements in a custom namespace for
 * message and presence packets, also exists. Each extension provider
 * is registered with a name space in the smack.providers file as in the following example:
 *
 *

 * <?xml version="1.0"?>
 * <smackProviders>
 *     <extensionProvider>
 *         <elementName>x</elementName>
 *         <namespace>jabber:iq:event</namespace>
 *         <className>org.jivesoftware.smack.packet.MessageEvent&lt/className>
 *     </extensionProvider>
 * </smackProviders>

 *
 * If multiple provider entries attempt to register to handle the same element name and namespace,
 * the first entry loaded from the classpath will take precedence. Whenever a packet extension
 * is found in a packet, parsing will be passed to the correct provider. Each provider
 * can either implement the PacketExtensionProvider interface or be a standard Java Bean. In
 * the former case, each extension provider is responsible for parsing the raw XML stream to
 * contruct an object. In the latter case, bean introspection is used to try to automatically
 * set the properties of the class using the values in the packet extension sub-element. When an
 * extension provider is not registered for an element name and namespace combination, Smack will
 * store all top-level elements of the sub-packet in DefaultPacketExtension object and then
 * attach it to the packet.

 *
 * It is possible to provide a custom provider manager instead of the default implementation
 * provided by Smack. If you want to provide your own provider manager then you need to do it
 * before creating any {@link org.jivesoftware.smack.Connection} by sending the static
 * {@link #setInstance(ProviderManager)} message. Trying to change the provider manager after
 * an Connection was created will result in an {@link IllegalStateException} error.
 *
 * @author Matt Tucker
 */
public class ProviderManager {

    private static ProviderManager instance;

    private Map<String, Object> extensionProviders = new ConcurrentHashMap<String, Object>();
    private Map<String, Object> iqProviders = new ConcurrentHashMap<String, Object>();

    /**
     * Returns the only ProviderManager valid instance.  Use {@link #setInstance(ProviderManager)}
     * to configure your own provider manager. If non was provided then an instance of this
     * class will be used.
     *
     * @return the only ProviderManager valid instance.
     */
    public static synchronized ProviderManager getInstance() {
        if (instance == null) {
            instance = new ProviderManager();
        }
        return instance;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the only ProviderManager valid instance to be used by all Connections. If you
     * want to provide your own provider manager then you need to do it before creating
     * any Connection. Otherwise an IllegalStateException will be thrown.
     *
     * @param providerManager the only ProviderManager valid instance to be used.
     * @throws IllegalStateException if a provider manager was already configued.
     */
    public static synchronized void setInstance(ProviderManager providerManager) {
        if (instance != null) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("ProviderManager singleton already set");
        }
        instance = providerManager;
    }

    protected void initialize() {
        // Load IQ processing providers.
        try {
            // Get an array of class loaders to try loading the providers files from.
            ClassLoader[] classLoaders = getClassLoaders();
            for (ClassLoader classLoader : classLoaders) {
                Enumeration<URL> providerEnum = classLoader.getResources(
                        "META-INF/smack.providers");
                while (providerEnum.hasMoreElements()) {
                    URL url = providerEnum.nextElement();
                    InputStream providerStream = null;
                    try {
                        providerStream = url.openStream();
                        XmlPullParser parser = new MXParser();
                        parser.setFeature(XmlPullParser.FEATURE_PROCESS_NAMESPACES, true);
                        parser.setInput(providerStream, "UTF-8");
                        int eventType = parser.getEventType();
                        do {
                            if (eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {
                                if (parser.getName().equals("iqProvider")) {
                                    parser.next();
                                    parser.next();
                                    String elementName = parser.nextText();
                                    parser.next();
                                    parser.next();
                                    String namespace = parser.nextText();
                                    parser.next();
                                    parser.next();
                                    String className = parser.nextText();
                                    // Only add the provider for the namespace if one isn't
                                    // already registered.
                                    String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
                                    if (!iqProviders.containsKey(key)) {
                                        // Attempt to load the provider class and then create
                                        // a new instance if it's an IQProvider. Otherwise, if it's
                                        // an IQ class, add the class object itself, then we'll use
                                        // reflection later to create instances of the class.
                                        try {
                                            // Add the provider to the map.
                                            Class<?> provider = Class.forName(className);
                                            if (IQProvider.class.isAssignableFrom(provider)) {
                                                iqProviders.put(key, provider.newInstance());
                                            }
                                            else if (IQ.class.isAssignableFrom(provider)) {
                                                iqProviders.put(key, provider);
                                            }
                                        }
                                        catch (ClassNotFoundException cnfe) {
                                            cnfe.printStackTrace();
                                        }
                                    }
                                }
                                else if (parser.getName().equals("extensionProvider")) {
                                    parser.next();
                                    parser.next();
                                    String elementName = parser.nextText();
                                    parser.next();
                                    parser.next();
                                    String namespace = parser.nextText();
                                    parser.next();
                                    parser.next();
                                    String className = parser.nextText();
                                    // Only add the provider for the namespace if one isn't
                                    // already registered.
                                    String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
                                    if (!extensionProviders.containsKey(key)) {
                                        // Attempt to load the provider class and then create
                                        // a new instance if it's a Provider. Otherwise, if it's
                                        // a PacketExtension, add the class object itself and
                                        // then we'll use reflection later to create instances
                                        // of the class.
                                        try {
                                            // Add the provider to the map.
                                            Class<?> provider = Class.forName(className);
                                            if (PacketExtensionProvider.class.isAssignableFrom(
                                                    provider)) {
                                                extensionProviders.put(key, provider.newInstance());
                                            }
                                            else if (PacketExtension.class.isAssignableFrom(
                                                    provider)) {
                                                extensionProviders.put(key, provider);
                                            }
                                        }
                                        catch (ClassNotFoundException cnfe) {
                                            cnfe.printStackTrace();
                                        }
                                    }
                                }
                            }
                            eventType = parser.next();
                        }
                        while (eventType != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT);
                    }
                    finally {
                        try {
                            providerStream.close();
                        }
                        catch (Exception e) {
                            // Ignore.
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Returns the IQ provider registered to the specified XML element name and namespace.
     * For example, if a provider was registered to the element name "query" and the
     * namespace "jabber:iq:time", then the following packet would trigger the provider:
     *
     *

     * <iq type='result' to='joe@example.com' from='mary@example.com' id='time_1'>
     *     <query xmlns='jabber:iq:time'>
     *         <utc>20020910T17:58:35</utc>
     *         <tz>MDT</tz>
     *         <display>Tue Sep 10 12:58:35 2002</display>
     *     </query>
     * </iq>

     *
     *
Note: this method is generally only called by the internal Smack classes.
     *
     * @param elementName the XML element name.
     * @param namespace the XML namespace.
     * @return the IQ provider.
     */
    public Object getIQProvider(String elementName, String namespace) {
        String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
        return iqProviders.get(key);
    }

    /**
     * Returns an unmodifiable collection of all IQProvider instances. Each object
     * in the collection will either be an IQProvider instance, or a Class object
     * that implements the IQProvider interface.
     *
     * @return all IQProvider instances.
     */
    public Collection<Object> getIQProviders() {
        return Collections.unmodifiableCollection(iqProviders.values());
    }

    /**
     * Adds an IQ provider (must be an instance of IQProvider or Class object that is an IQ)
     * with the specified element name and name space. The provider will override any providers
     * loaded through the classpath.
     *
     * @param elementName the XML element name.
     * @param namespace the XML namespace.
     * @param provider the IQ provider.
     */
    public void addIQProvider(String elementName, String namespace,
            Object provider)
    {
        if (!(provider instanceof IQProvider || (provider instanceof Class &&
                IQ.class.isAssignableFrom((Class<?>)provider))))
        {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Provider must be an IQProvider " +
                    "or a Class instance.");
        }
        String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
        iqProviders.put(key, provider);
    }

    /**
     * Removes an IQ provider with the specified element name and namespace. This
     * method is typically called to cleanup providers that are programatically added
     * using the {@link #addIQProvider(String, String, Object) addIQProvider} method.
     *
     * @param elementName the XML element name.
     * @param namespace the XML namespace.
     */
    public void removeIQProvider(String elementName, String namespace) {
        String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
        iqProviders.remove(key);
    }

    /**
     * Returns the packet extension provider registered to the specified XML element name
     * and namespace. For example, if a provider was registered to the element name "x" and the
     * namespace "jabber:x:event", then the following packet would trigger the provider:
     *
     *

     * <message to='romeo@montague.net' id='message_1'>
     *     <body>Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?</body>
     *     <x xmlns='jabber:x:event'>
     *         <composing/>
     *     </x>
     * </message>

     *
     *
Note: this method is generally only called by the internal Smack classes.
     *
     * @param elementName element name associated with extension provider.
     * @param namespace namespace associated with extension provider.
     * @return the extenion provider.
     */
    public Object getExtensionProvider(String elementName, String namespace) {
        String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
        return extensionProviders.get(key);
    }

    /**
     * Adds an extension provider with the specified element name and name space. The provider
     * will override any providers loaded through the classpath. The provider must be either
     * a PacketExtensionProvider instance, or a Class object of a Javabean.
     *
     * @param elementName the XML element name.
     * @param namespace the XML namespace.
     * @param provider the extension provider.
     */
    public void addExtensionProvider(String elementName, String namespace,
            Object provider)
    {
        if (!(provider instanceof PacketExtensionProvider || provider instanceof Class)) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Provider must be a PacketExtensionProvider " +
                    "or a Class instance.");
        }
        String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
        extensionProviders.put(key, provider);
    }

    /**
     * Removes an extension provider with the specified element name and namespace. This
     * method is typically called to cleanup providers that are programatically added
     * using the {@link #addExtensionProvider(String, String, Object) addExtensionProvider} method.
     *
     * @param elementName the XML element name.
     * @param namespace the XML namespace.
     */
    public void removeExtensionProvider(String elementName, String namespace) {
        String key = getProviderKey(elementName, namespace);
        extensionProviders.remove(key);
    }

    /**
     * Returns an unmodifiable collection of all PacketExtensionProvider instances. Each object
     * in the collection will either be a PacketExtensionProvider instance, or a Class object
     * that implements the PacketExtensionProvider interface.
     *
     * @return all PacketExtensionProvider instances.
     */
    public Collection<Object> getExtensionProviders() {
        return Collections.unmodifiableCollection(extensionProviders.values());
    }

    /**
     * Returns a String key for a given element name and namespace.
     *
     * @param elementName the element name.
     * @param namespace the namespace.
     * @return a unique key for the element name and namespace pair.
     */
    private String getProviderKey(String elementName, String namespace) {
        StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder();
        buf.append("<").append(elementName).append("/><").append(namespace).append("/>");
        return buf.toString();
    }

    /**
     * Returns an array of class loaders to load resources from.
     *
     * @return an array of ClassLoader instances.
     */
    private ClassLoader[] getClassLoaders() {
        ClassLoader[] classLoaders = new ClassLoader[2];
        classLoaders[0] = ProviderManager.class.getClassLoader();
        classLoaders[1] = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
        // Clean up possible null values. Note that #getClassLoader may return a null value.
        List<ClassLoader> loaders = new ArrayList<ClassLoader>();
        for (ClassLoader classLoader : classLoaders) {
            if (classLoader != null) {
                loaders.add(classLoader);
            }
        }
        return loaders.toArray(new ClassLoader[loaders.size()]);
    }

    private ProviderManager() {
        super();
        initialize();
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Home > About > News > JB Kind MD profiled in national business magazine
#YesJBKind
John Blower Kind
JB Kind Managing Director James Cadman profiled in Business Matters magazine
JB Kind Managing Director James Cadman has been profiled in the UK's leading business magazine for SMEs (small & medium sized enterprises) Business Matters Magazine. The magazine, whose regular columnists include Dragons' Den business gurus Duncan Bannatyne and James Caan, has a readership of more than 100,000 firms across the UK.
The publication first approached James in July of this year and asked him, as a Managing Director of a leading UK SME, if he would take part in its regular Getting to Know You feature, reserved for successful and high profile businessmen.
The magazine asked James a range of questions about his current work at JB Kind, his previous experience and the advice he would give to small firms just starting out, as well as about the people that he admires most in the business world.
James commented:
"Being asked to do a profile piece in such a longstanding and well thought of business publication is always welcome and helps to raise the profile of JB Kind. The feature may have been focussed on me, however, what's important to remember is that JB Kind's success is down to everyone in the company."
The publication, which was first formed in 1987, profiled James in October, as the lead story in the Entrepreneurs section, however, you will find the full article on the Business Matters Magazine's online portal profiles section Getting to know you: James Cadman
The magazine has between 1,500 and 5,000 visitors to its website every day, has more than 80,000 SME subscribers to its email Daily Update and more than 120,000 business people that subscribe to its physical magazine.


text:
Q: CocosDenshion - I keep seeing exceptions thrown We are using CocosDenshion for our games.
When we turn on exception breakpoints in xcode we keep getting exceptions from
status = ExtAudioFileSetProperty(extRef, kExtAudioFileProperty_ClientDataFormat, sizeof(theOutputFormat), &theOutputFormat);
In CDOpenALSupport.m
(note that this exception does not crash the game as it is caught by CocosDenshion but still we want to see if we can prevent these exceptions).

A: Set the exception breakpoint to handle only Objective-C exceptions. This prevents these Cocosdenshion exceptions from being caught by the breakpoint.
I wager they're nothing to worry about, it's been like that for as long as I can remember.


text:
Vol. 84/No. 32 ● August 17, 2020 The-Militant-Logo A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE
Fight for health care to treat everyone, not to make profit
By Róger Calero
The big-business press tells us COVID-19 is "the great equalizer," that it strikes without regard to "wealth, fame, and prestige." And, most importantly, they tell us, "We're all in this together." But these claims are lies that clash with the grim reality faced by millions of working people in the U.S. and around the world. The fact is, your chance of surviving COVID-19 is determined largely by which side of the class line you are on.
In the early stages of this disease, those who can afford to be treated in well-equipped and adequately staffed private medical centers, with access to specialized and trial medications, sufficient working ventilators, etc., do far better than those who are told to stay home until they're gasping for breath, with their lips and fingernails turning blue; or those who do manage to get a bed, but at an understaffed, crowded public hospital. And especially those who are elderly and get trapped in nursing homes, which in the U.S. have been the main incubators of the disease and of death.
These factors are consistent with what working people face with all illnesses. One example that underscores the truth about health and health care access for working people under capitalism is the current epidemic of diabetes and related amputations.
More than 30 million people in the U.S. have diabetes. Another 84.1 million have prediabetes, which if not treated can lead to diabetes within five years. It is the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S.
The disease can be managed if you have accessible health care. But it is in working-class areas — especially in Appalachia, the South and in urban neighborhoods across the country with large numbers of Blacks and Latinos — that the disease is most prevalent and destructive.
Every 17 seconds someone is diagnosed with diabetes, and every day 230 people will suffer a diabetes-related amputation in the U.S., according to Dr. Foluso A. Fakorede, a specialist whose work has brought attention to the devastating impact of untreated arterial disease among working-class patients.
The rate of amputations across the country grew by 50% between 2009 and 2015, with diabetic patients now undergoing some 130,000 amputations a year. The biggest toll is among the poor and the underinsured, with African Americans losing limbs three times as often as others.
Fakorede says there are relatively simple limb-saving screening and treatment procedures that could be done that could determine whether surgery is needed before applying a blade to a diabetic patient. But those are not being promoted by the medical "establishment."
Atherosclerosis and peripheral artery disease are common circulatory problems among patients with uncontrolled diabetes. This can complicate the healing of a blister or foot injury, and turn them into a life-threatening infection that requires amputation.
By performing an angiogram — an imaging test that shows precisely where blood flow is blocked — millions of amputations could be prevented by cleaning the arteries out and widening the blood vessels, says Fakorede. But, as ProPublica magazine said in May, "General surgeons have a financial incentive to amputate; they don't get paid to operate if they recommend saving a limb."
Some 50% of diabetics who undergo amputation die within two years of the surgery, Fakorede says. Once an amputee, they're far more likely to lose their jobs and a productive life. Depression, and the feeling of being a burden to their family, often follows.
"It's the norm to go to Walmart and see an amputation or a permacath [a permanent catheter to facilitate frequent dialysis] in the neck," of fellow shoppers, said a medical device sales rep friend of Fakorede. "If you don't see one, then you didn't stay more than two minutes."
It's common to see relatively young people missing limbs rolling in wheelchairs on the sidewalks of Harlem, Queens or the Bronx, in the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia.
The high rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and other so-called comorbidities for COVID-19 among working people in the U.S. are not because of the lack of "awareness," or an "education problem," as the capitalist rulers and Democratic and Republican politicians say, blaming us for getting sick and dying. These are social consequences of capitalist economic relations that determine access to health care, proper nutrition and other necessities.
One in 10 Americans does not have access to a grocery store that sells fresh food, much less at affordable prices. In 2015, 23.5 million lived in so-called "food deserts" — areas where the majority of residents don't live near a supermarket.
The bottom line is, capitalism is bad for your health.
When health care is not for profit
In Cuba, a popular revolution in 1959 eradicated capitalist social relations as workers and farmers took political power and formed their own government. They began to rebuild their health care system after thousands of doctors whose main motivation was to profit from their practice fled to the U.S.
They based the revolution's health care on prioritizing the education and training of large numbers of doctors and other health care workers, who operated out of facilities located in working-class neighborhoods where they lived. They provided health care — especially preventative health care — at no cost to all.
In Cuba, medical and scientific advances serve the needs of working people, and the number of amputations due to diabetic complications is declining.
Since 2007, Heberprot-P, a new kind of therapy for hard-to-heal foot ulcers has been used in health care centers and hospitals throughout the island, showing great results. Diabetes patients treated with Heberprot-P have an amputation rate four times lower than those without. More than 17,000 amputations have been avoided, Cuban newspaper Adelante reported last year.
By 2019, more than 300,000 patients in 26 countries had received Heberprot-P treatment. Tens of thousands of volunteer Cuban doctors and nurses provide medical services in the most hard-to-reach parts of countries around the world and also make available vaccines and medications developed in Cuba, like Heberprot-P. And like Interferon Alfa-2B, these are being used to fight the effects of COVID-19.
This is only possible because capitalist relations were overturned in Cuba.
Workers need a labor party, control of production, safety
'A labor party can organize workers in their millions'
Prison officials in Pennsylvania revoke ban on the 'Militant'
Build solidarity with shipyard workers strike in Bath, Maine
Workers fight bosses' attempts to solve deepening crisis on our backs
Intervention by capitalist rivals is disaster for toilers in Libya
Court backs Nevada gov't attack on right to worship
Workers reject both federal cops and disruption by antifa
Veterans against cop brutality rally in Pittsburgh
Protests in Russia Far East rock Putin government
Philadelphia Greyhound workers resist layoffs, speedup, attack on wages
75 years since US rulers bombed Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Sankara: 'We draw lessons from all the world's revolutions'


text:
Everyone You Know
Multi-talented sibling duo Everyone You Know have announced a 13-date UK headline tour in November and December. The tour will follow the release of their highly anticipated EP 'Just For The Times' on 1st October, which will be available on all DSPs as well as CD and cassette formats. You can pre-order the EP here.
Tickets for the tour will go on pre-sale to fans on Monday 13th September at 6pm and will be available on general sale on Thursday 16th September. The tour kicks off at Newcastle The Think Tank on 16th November, culminating in London at XOYO on 4th December.
EYK recently released their single 'Radio', which gave listeners an insight into what to expect from the forthcoming EP; a rich embodiment of EYK's sonic diversity delving into the pairs' journey over the last 18-24 months. The project provides a soundtrack to the highs, the lows, the nostalgia and the pent-up energy over lockdown, skewered in pin-sharp rhymes, layered over precision tooled bedroom beats. The EP features previously released singles including 'Just For The Times', When The Sun Comes Up' 'Higher', and 'Charlie', all which will all be available as an instant-grat if you pre-save the project, along with 'Radio'.
The release follows the bands momentous single 'Just For The Times' alongside Joy Anonymous which amassed almost 2 million streams. The track was also playlisted on BBC Radio 1, as well as spun on Love Island and Rugby League Final.
Everyone You Know have had a rapid rise to success in a short space of time, amassing over 100 million worldwide streams, sold out tour dates, a main stage festival performance and a stint as UK brand ambassadors for Reebok. Fusing hip hop, garage, dance and punk, the London based duo cite J Dilla, Dr Dre, The Streets, Wu Tang Clan and Kano amongst their musical inspirations. Honing their signature sound, the pair have built a cult following with tracks such as 'When The Sun Comes Up', 'Our Generation', 'She Don't Dance' and 'The Drive'. The pair have garnered key tastemaker support along the way from the likes of Annie Mac (headlined AMP at Old Blue Last), Jack Saunders (Radio 1 Maida Vale Session), Steve Lamacq (6Music Session), BBC Introducing, NME, Sunday Times Culture, Complex and The Line of Best Fit positioning themselves as one of the most exciting and innovative new talents to come out of the UK.
Everyone You Know ON SPOTIFY


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text:
WikiofScience is open to anyone who can contribute in any way to the scientific purpose of the site:
You can author and/or edit pages.
You can proof-read pages so that misspellings and syntactical errors get corrected, but you can also re-write pages in order to make their contents accessible to non-specialist users.
You can also contribute with independent revisions (peer-review)
In particular, WikiofScience needs members who are serious about the contribution that science can make to this world and wish to participate towards such goal with the rigor characteristic of academics and scientists.
Whenever contributors use work published elsewhere, plagiarism and copyright infringement of any type shall be avoided, unless compliant with legal allowances under 'fair dealing for criticism or review', 'fair use' for the same concept, and academic ethics regarding research and inquiry, including academic freedom to criticize and review research published by others.
Joning is a two-step process:
1st apply to have an account on Wikidot.com (unless you already got one)
2nd apply to be a member of WikiofScience.wikidot.com
What can you contribute?
The site is structured around five content areas:
Protoscience
Data Knowledge Technology
Data contain data files and records, with little in the way of interpretation. Data files form the empirical base for knowledge and technology, but they shouldn't be confused with them (eg, the same data may be interpreted differently by different models).
Knowledge content areas contain conceptual files which may be scientific (supported by empirical data), protoscientific (partially supported by empirical data, supported by data which may be methodologically dubious, or reasonable knowledge in waiting for empirical support), or pseudoscientific (no supported by data, or being an unreasonable spin-off of empirical data).
Technology is an application (eg, an artefact, tool, mechanical contraption, procedure, model, technique, etc) derived from data or knowledge. Eg, a book is a technology (a tool) for managing knowledge, a computer is a technology for processing information, and simulation is a technology (technique) for furthering knowledge. In a way, while data and, specially, knowledge are rather dynamic and immaterial, technology is rather static and material. Technology is the 'material' support that allows for capturing and expressing present and future data and knowledge. Eg, a book is a technological invention to capture and express data in the form of writing; it substituted technologies such as scrolls, and are now being substituted by computers. Equally, writing, alphabets and language are technologies, as are species and evolution itself.
At what level of knowledge can you contribute?
Each content area can be populated according to different levels of 'knowledge depth'. The site normally works with four levels of knowledge, from one-liners (reserved to published articles only) to highly technical knowledge, allowing the reader to progress from one level to another in the quest for more in-depth knowledge (while avoiding redundancy and repetition). Therefore, you can contribute knowledge at any level between 1 and 3, or at all three levels. Not all levels need to be populated for a particular topic, though (eg, external articles in scientific journals are normally published elsewhere at 'level 3', thus a link to those will suffix the spirit of progression to a higher level of in-depth knowledge).
Levels of depth of knowledge
Google+ Basic knowledge Intermediate knowledge Advanced knowledge
Facebook Most readers Knowledgeable readers Technical readers
Introductions, graphs… Descriptive stats Inferential stats
Interpretation Calculation Particularities
Psychology Grad School Wiki
for prospective psych grad students
Measurementcamp
Open source movement measuring social media
Computational Genetics Project


From sidelined to back in the game after a double knee replacement.
I was only 49 years old when I found out that I was going to need double knee replacement surgery. I'm an active person, and my kids are into sports and many school activities, too. Oftentimes keeping up with my kids seems like a full-time job, but on top of that I have an actual full-time job that's pretty physically demanding, too.
Getting back home and being able to step right back into my everyday life was top priority for me. I knew that I had a choice of where to recover after my surgery and I started planning for my recovery as soon as I knew I'd need surgery. I did my homework, toured five different facilities in the area and chose a LifeWorks Rehab Center.
As soon as I walked through the door I knew this was the place for me – they greeted me with a smile, and everyone was beyond warm and friendly. They went out of their way to answer all of my questions and make me feel at home.
Pre-registering for my recovery stay was one of the best moves I could have made —it made sure that everything was ready and waiting for me after my surgery. There were no surprises. I knew exactly what to expect and I could focus 100% on my recovery.
My LifeWorks Rehab therapists began working with me almost as soon as I arrived. They were determined to do everything in their power to make sure I got home as fast as I could, and that I'd be strong and healthy enough to get right back into my work and family life.
The LifeWorks Therapy was absolutely on-point. My therapists were incredibly knowledgeable. My recovery program was designed just for me, and I was able to feel myself getting stronger every day. There was never a second that I didn't know that I would be getting back home fast, and the LifeWorks Rehab therapists kept me motivated and working hard.
I was able to return home after only 21 days, and four months later I'm almost 100% recovered. I would recommend LifeWorks Rehab to anyone — the care I received was absolutely phenomenal.


The unedifying story of Paris Brown, Britain's first youth crime commissioner, is an obvious lesson in the dangers of social media. The 17-year-old resigned from her post after the discovery of certain tweets – at best misguided, at worst offensive – some of which she'd posted when she was only 14.
When it comes to social media, your content might be live and accessible for a lot longer than you want it to be. In fact, so great is the damage potential of embarrassing content, that companies dedicated to moving content down the search rankings have sprung up. This only underlines the importance of managing your social media presence carefully.
What about old web content?
Most companies know that a clumsy tweet or Facebook post can damage their reputations. What perhaps fewer are aware of is that old, forgotten, and no longer accurate web content can do the same.
Many company websites grow organically. That means organisations can end up with hundreds, sometimes even thousands of pages on their sites. And they may have little or no knowledge of the content of many of them.
These pages might contain details of old offers, out-of-date events or no-longer accurate product information. They might even use old company or product names, or contain obsolete contact information. And potential customers might still be landing on them.
Old content that no longer represents what you're about can damage your credibility wherever it appears. So how to clean up your act? It starts with knowing exactly what you've got.
A content inventory is your first step towards having content that reflects your business as it is today. It lists everything on your site, so you can see exactly where duplications and obsolete content are lurking. Plus, it can identify gaps and assess whether content is performing in line with your business aims. Keep it updated, and your inventory becomes a living document that helps you make sure your content is always on track.


text:
Establish the Global Influence by a new generation of academic research
Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) assists young talents of Taiwan to establish global influence in the humanities and social sciences.
The Executive Yuan 11th National Science and Technology Conference ended successfully in December 2020. There are many important consensuses of topic in conclusion. In the aspect of "Talent and Value Creation", the consensus focus on to develop human capital and to cultivate the international talents in key fields. The policy goal is to outline technology vision of Taiwan including innovation, inclusiveness, and sustainability.
To actively meets the needs of overseas academic community, and improve the talent gap of humanities and social science research in Taiwan, MOST has promoted the Taiwanese Overseas Pioneers Grants (TOP Grants) since 2018. TOP Grants has entered its third year by the Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center (STPI) of National Applied Research Laboratories. Today (6th January), the press conference will be held for the announcement of the results, inviting overseas scholars who have been cultivated to share their thoughts on their academic research. MOST announced that the schedule for the new phase of the grant solicitation will start in late April 2021. The doctoral candidates and young scholars in the humanities and social sciences who meet the application requirements are welcome to apply.
The purpose of the grants is to encourage talents of Taiwan in the field of humanities and social sciences, and to help them focus on the writing of academic books and dissertations to enhance the quality of academic research so that they can achieve certain status or position at foreign universities or academic institutions. As such, it should help strengthen and consolidate the status of our humanities and social sciences of our country in the field of international academic research.
Profound cultivation upon academic impact of the new generations
In order to cultivate outstanding research talents of our country in humanities and social science overseas, this grant has aimed at two types of research and new blood with great academic potential: the first category is of those talents who are PhD candidates at the last stage of their studies in overseas of Taiwan; of the second category, they are talents who obtain doctoral degree for less than 10 years, and they are working at research institutions in overseas of Taiwan as full-time teachers or researchers. With financial assistance, it should help them focus on the writing of academic books and dissertations, consolidating their firm foundation on international academic and research community.
Of those talents to be cultivated, they will be selected by the "Academic Review Committee," which is made up of scholars with academic prestige, academic achievement, and impartiality from the field of humanities and social sciences based on theoretical value and innovation of the candidate's research theme, extent of rigor with the application content, feasibility of the research plan, academic potential or research experience of the applicant, and academic achievements and other criteria of selection.
The grants has recently been reviewed and approved by the Academic Review Committee with a total of 25 PhD Candidates and 5 Young Scholars selected, and they will be awarded such research funding respectively as NT$900,000 and NT$600,000. In addition, the Young Scholars can also apply for NT$200,000 on publication expenses of academic books. The name-list of the award has already been announced on the homepage of STPI of NARLabs, whose official website is at: https://www.stpi.narl.org.tw/public/top.htm
The Principal Investigator, Ger Meng-yo , Assistant Researcher
Science and Technology Policy Research and Information Center
National Applied Research Laboratories, Taiwan
E-mail: myger@narlabs.org.tw
The Contact Window of Application and Consultation
Tel: 886-2-2737-7781 (Ms. Lin)
E-mail: topgrants@narlabs.org.tw


Whenever possible, select floor tile, linoleum, or hardwood floors over flooring. Despite normal vacuuming, carpet traps dust, pollen, dog pollen, and several other typical substances. Reliable floor sorts are simpler to always keep clean and allergen-cost-free. Should you prefer the delicate sense of carpets and rugs, rugs works extremely well. Location rugs snare less irritants, are simpler to keep clean, and fewer expensive to replace.
If you suffer from allergic reaction and want a pet, look at a single with short hair. Some kinds of hair or your hair could be much less or even more challenging for allergy victims. You also want to stay away from slumbering together with your domestic pets if you don't want to have a hypersensitive reaction.
Except if your symptoms of asthma and allergic reaction are significant, you could possibly feel that there is no explanation to visit an expert for remedy. Don't market your self short, chronic wheezing and little breathlessness can badly affect your standard of living. Each time you expertise even mild problems inhaling and exhaling your lung area and muscle tissue work harder and easily result in tiredness.
When you are performing tasks that can bother your allergies, put on a encounter face mask. This may incorporate dusting, vacuuming and garden function. Confident, a deal with face mask will not be really appealing, nevertheless it will prevent dusts and also other debris from activating your allergy symptoms. Deal with masks can be acquired at the nearby home improvement store.
Artificial cushions are the very least more likely to draw in dustmites. Man made materials are far less very likely to attract dustmites. You continue to must wash them to take care of on removing dust particles and substances, however are safer to sleeping on.
Once you know what allergens bring about your signs and symptoms, it is possible to take correct steps in order to avoid or reduce coverage. If you uncover airborne dirt and dust being a challenge, make sure you clear frequently and do your best to remove what airborne dirt and dust you can. If pet dander or fur is actually a supply of your allergy symptoms, think about finding new residences for your personal pets if this will not be an alternative, bathe and bridegroom them frequently. Dust and vacuum frequently also in order to management pet dander.
Treating your hypersensitive signs and symptoms initially with antihistamine's medication or over the counter is most beneficial to method it cautiously. Most of these products are notorious for leading to severe tiredness there is absolutely no strategy to determine how your body will respond. With this thought, you ought to go ahead and take initial amount in your house to prevent protection incidents or impairments.
Look at eliminating carpet from your home, and choosing timber or laminate floors. Rug will allow dust mites to build up, and that can aggravate allergic reactions. When possible, get rid of the carpeting out of your home, and change it with laminate or wooden flooring. Thiss helps prevent added build of of allergens at home.
Getting a run around the neighborhood could help you feel great and alive, but plant pollen and spores from the atmosphere can quickly spoil the ability. This is also true in case you are currently tired or are recently recuperating from a disease. Responding to the circumstances your immunity process is compromised, making you much more likely to practical experience a severe hypersensitive reaction to allergens.
Speak with your doctor when considering allergy medicine. They will help you find the best treatments for your personal allergies demands.
If you like the outdoors but prevent venturing out as you have problems with allergic reaction, think about passing time exterior following the rain. Rainwater will help decrease the volume of pollen that can be found in the atmosphere. So you can find the least level of plant pollen right after a good rainfall storm has gone by by means of.
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At A Tomb
Site ed. note: This haunting article about "the little rat-like man leaning on the balustrade", never once referred to by name, is made more poignant by the fact that the article appeared in the News exactly one year before Cash's death. (Cash may have gotten the idea for the article from the above photograph which appeared in Life the week before he wrote this piece.)
(This article appeared in the Reader section of Southern Prophet by Joseph l. Morrison.)
UNDER THE DOME of the Invalides, in his tomb of green and red marble, brought from Scandinavia, the great man slept as he had slept since they bore him there from the lonely and barren rock in the South Atlantic upon which he died.
And in that shadowed and shining place the rat-like quality of the little man who leaned on the balustrade above and looked down upon him was accentuated and heightened. He had come there almost by stealth, the little rat-like man, in fear that there might be a Frenchman left to remember France, in fear that the sword of Jeanne and Charles Martel--that sword foretold by Merlin--might stir for a moment from the evil spell that held it.
It was a silent and empty place now. There had been no crippled guard to cry "Votre chapeau, m'sieu" to heedless tourists at the door, nor any tourist, but only a gray green creature upon whose face was the mark of the Beast of the Apocalypse, servilely presenting arms.
But the great man slept on. In his time, he had been the master of all Europe, save only England, too. At his command kings had arisen and other kings had fallen. And over all the teeming millions of the great continent he had held the power of destiny.
For him there were things to be said. He had never taken the gorilla for his model. He had not dreamed of destroying the culture of other peoples, of wiping away the values of three thousand years and replacing them with those of a tribe of naked barbarians on the steppes of Mongolia. He had not dreamed of raising up a slave society, to toil humbly for the glory of a myth called The Master Race. He had been brave. He had not warred on women and children. He had not called himself The First Soldier and skulked safely out of the range of the guns, but had been found wherever the battle most raged, in his special dress and on his special mount, so that all men might know him for the man he was. He had not sneaked into the cities he had taken, surrounded by steel and hosts of brutal guards with orders to shoot into the crowds if any man moved, but had gone openly and in the light of day. He had been a lawgiver wise and humane enough for his people to retain his code even after they were free.
But his power had crumbled from his hands and he had died on that bleak rock standing alone in the South Atlantic, his imperial greatness reduced to two or three shabby followers and mocked by the jailers who ringed him about—a prisoner, a fat and maudlin old man mumbling over his past. And now he slept. And his glory was only a name in a book. And the planet which he had trod rolled swiftly on to its inexplicable goal in the constellation Hercules and the time when Paris would not be there, when the red and green marble and the bones of his body would not be there, and his name would be as lost as the name of the first man to dwell in the caves southward of his resting place, on the Lot.1 And in the world there was nothing certain save that, after his brief span, he slept and would sleep—and that the empires fragile man raises are fragile things.
But the little rat-like man leaning on the balustrade with his cap on his head was proudly smiling as he roused himself, strutted about the great room to stare at the banners hanging from the walls—the banners which the sleeping man had borne from towns whose names he had made like trumpets and the rolling of drums: Ulm, Marengo, Austerlitz, and Leipzig. Was still proudly smiling as he came out and was saluted by the gray green creature and hurried into a swift and armored automobile and fled away lest the sleeping sword of Sainte Catherine de Fierbois, which had once been raised under the citadel of Chinon, should stir again from the fateful spell upon it.
1 The Lot is a river, tributary of the Garonne, which flows through the mountainous Auvergne region.


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Dr. Carl Middleton is a lecturer on the International Development Studies Program in the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. Before joining the program in 2009, he spent eight years working with international and local civil society organizations throughout the Mekong Region. His research interests are the politics and policy of the environment in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on environmental justice and the political ecology of water and energy resources.
Technical Veil, Hidden Politics: Interrogating the Power Linkages behind the Nexus (705.7 KB) 2015-03-24 Author: Jeremy Allouche,et al,Carl Middleton.
The Rise and Implications of the Water-Crisis-Food Nexus in Southeast Asia through an Environmental Justice Lens (686.4 KB) 2015-01-01 Author: Carl Middleton.
Transborder Environmental Justice in Regional Energy Trade in Mainland South-East Asia (606.6 KB) 2012-01-01 Author: Carl Middleton.


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The Fall of Squaresoft
July 18, 2015 November 2, 2018 / Red Metal
Squaresoft used to be one of the most prolific gaming companies and a legendary RPG house. Practically all of their works received near-universal acclaim; just seeing them associated with a project was enough to guarantee the sale of millions of units. Unfortunately, it was not to last. Sometime around the mid-2000s, the bottom fell out and, suddenly, the same people who were praising their games found themselves instinctually shirking away whenever they heard the name of Square, eventually turning what was once a respected group of developers into the punchline of every joke lambasting JRPGs. "How could such a lauded company fall so hard?" many veteran video game fans doubtlessly wonder to this day. Personally, I don't think the answer can be pinpointed to any one thing, and with this essay, I intend to demonstrate the factors that caused their downward spiral.
Sowing the Seeds of Defeat
Despite the varying quality of their localizations, the nineties was definitely Square's golden age. At this point in history, they were about as close to untouchable as one could get. In the middle of the decade, they gave us classics such as Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasy VI. Once they jumped ship to the PlayStation and entered the 3D era, they continued this streak. In this decade Square could do no wrong… or so it would appear on the surface.
While Square's best games on the SNES, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG especially, are indeed timeless classics, could the same truly be said about their PlayStation output? I maintain that any work that has a terrible conclusion is not worthy of being deemed a classic, and fans have often complained about otherwise amazing games such as Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Xenogears, and Chrono Cross having awful or nonsensical endings. Xenogears was an especially notable case, as the budget had run out before they could finish the game properly, forcing them to rush. Square's propensity of not putting any effort into their endings only ensures that none of these games will hold up with time. Later generations would only see a primitive 3D game, and while they may be drawn in by the story, a backlash will ensue when the ending leaves them disappointed. So while the PlayStation era continued Square's winning streak with a series of short-term victories, all of their defining flaws would manifest at this time.
A development fans like to point to when discussing Square's downfall would be when they merged with Enix. The flagship series of these companies, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest respectively, constantly fought for the JRPG crown in their native Japan. Naturally, when the two companies merged in 2003, Square Enix practically monopolized the genre – their only real competition now being Atlus with their long-running Shin Megami Tensei metaseries. Competition breeds creativity. A lack of competition breeds stagnation. It's a logical conclusion that this caused the newly-formed Square Enix to become complacent, as they could release anything regardless of quality and be guaranteed to make their money back and more. A part of me agrees with this assessment, but I think there's more to it than that.
The Power of Limitations
Another commonly cited turning point is the year 2001 when the creator of the Final Fantasy series, Hironobu Sakaguchi, directed the film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The movie was a box office bomb and bankrupted the studio that created it. The movie's poor performance also resulted in Mr. Sakaguchi stepping down from his position as executive vice president of the company. It's reasonable to assume that without his supervision, the company lost its footing. However, as someone who tries not to partake in blindly worshiping creators as it often leads to an inaccurate assessment of a work's quality, I don't think his departure from Square entirely explains why the company fell as far as they did. After having played through Bravely Default, I think I have figured out what is perhaps the primary cause of Square's decline. This is what I meant when I insinuated that the PlayStation era was the beginning of the end for Square; the quality of their games seem to be inversely proportional to the processing power of the machines on which they're released.
To showcase my theory, let's take a brief look at Final Fantasy XIII. Very few people will contest that it's one of the best-looking games of its console generation, but its actual gameplay received a mixed reception, with many critics rightly deriding the game for being a metaphorical roller coaster ride, with a combat system that involves the player as little as possible. The ultimate irony of this is that despite the development staff insisting that they made the game that way in order for players to engage with the plot and its characters, the storytelling of Final Fantasy XIII is some of the worst in the medium's history, with very little exposition regarding the protagonists' backstories or how the world works. The main way of finding any of this out is to pause the game and read the supplemental information provided to the player in the form of data logs; hardly any of this vital information is worked into the narrative in any way. This form of storytelling would be inexcusable in any other medium; there's a reason you don't see books bundled with a glossary for the reader to turn to every time they stumble across an unfamiliar term.
"Now turn to page 61 in your textbook to find out what a l'Cie is. This will be on the test."
In other words, Square needs strict limitations in order for them to have any sort of critical success. It's because of this that Final Fantasy XIII and Bravely Default represent an interesting dichotomy. Final Fantasy XIII shows what happens when Square is not given any boundaries – they waste their time and money on cosmetics and presentation to the detriment of gameplay or even comprehensible storytelling. Conversely, when tasked with creating a game for a handheld device with Silicon Studios, they create Bravely Default, which has none of the aforementioned problems. There is a journal in Bravely Default that provides supplemental information about the characters and the world like the data logs in Final Fantasy XIII, but it is not necessary to read through it to comprehend what's going on – the exposition is seamlessly woven into the narrative.
Despite not having received the same amount of promotion as Square's console releases, critics and fans alike have widely praised Bravely Default, ironically, though perhaps not disingenuously, calling it the best Final Fantasy game in years. Want to know the scariest part about all this? We almost didn't get a chance to play this game.
Square vs. Their Fans
Square noticed that Bravely Default sold nearly 100,000 units on launch week and apparently decided to follow up this success by not making an effort to publish it overseas. It wasn't until the release of the second edition, For the Sequel, that plans to localize the game were finally being made, and even then, the burden fell on Nintendo to save the day. Meanwhile, Square apparently had no problems publishing all three games in their Final Fantasy XIII series overseas themselves despite their increasingly tepid receptions.
Seiken Densetsu 3
I'm certain this isn't an isolated incident either, and more proof of this trend can even be found in Square's heyday. To start with, there have been several instances over the years where games would never see the light of day outside of Japan. Square is particularly notorious for this, as many of their games from the mid-nineties such as Live A Live, Treasure of the Rudras, and Seiken Densetsu 3, the sequel to Secret of Mana, were never considered for localization. They do have some justification in the case of the first two games, however. There is no way Live A Live would have made it past Nintendo of America's draconian policies at the time without censoring it to the point of incomprehensibility. Furthermore, with its unique magic system involving the creation of your own spells, Treasure of the Rudras likely would have needed a ROM size larger than what cartridges were capable of holding at the time.
Creating a mantra (spell) in Treasure of the Rudras.
The first sign international fans would receive that Square wasn't exactly on the level on the subject of localization would be the release of Final Fantasy VII. The second, third, and fifth Final Fantasy games were originally glossed over, so the fourth and sixth installments were localized as Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III respectively. Final Fantasy VII was when Square decided to stop changing the installment numbers, causing much confusion to Western fans. To their credit, Square did eventually make efforts to remake and localize the skipped Final Fantasy games.
Despite this, a fair chunk of their catalog remains exclusive to Japan. Square's policy in this regard seems to be to sweep those games under the rug and hope international fans don't notice. This would work if it were still the nineties, and it hasn't been for quite some time. Things have changed – the advent of the internet has, among other things, allowed people all over the world to discover the existence of these games. It has also allowed diehard fans to band together in order to create their own translations of these games, giving people unfamiliar with Japanese the chance to enjoy them. Seiken Densetsu 3 has proven to be especially popular amongst Square's non-localized canon. Square has responded to this by not making any efforts to localize or remake the game whatsoever. Even more damningly, whenever fans attempt to show their appreciation for Square's older works by trying to remake them or even create their own non-canon sequels, the creators of these games reciprocate this display of goodwill and hard work by sending out cease-and-desist letters. This is from the same company that sees nothing wrong with remaking Final Fantasy IV over and over again.
This is arguably the main reason Square has such a bad reputation as of late. Outside of Capcom, I don't think I've ever seen a group of creators have such a hostile relationship with their fans (EA and Activision don't count). I do realize that the balance between doing what the fans want and maintaining one's artistic integrity is a tricky one. Sometimes following the fans' wishes leads to poor decisions. Typically, the more volatile a fandom is, the more ill-advised it is to take advice from them. However, by that same token, it's not a good idea to completely dismiss everything they say. Even the most obnoxious fanbases have good points every now and again. It's a judgement call to be sure, and it's not always going to be clear what the right choice is, but developing that skill is the first step Square needs to take if they wish to repair their less-than-stellar PR.
Considering the astonishingly bad actions the folks at Square have taken over the years, it's actually a minor miracle that they haven't completely folded. The fall of this company should be studied by any aspiring game developers to warn them of the dangers of hubris and treating one's audience with contempt. It would also teach them the unsung importance of promoting creativity through competition and hardware limitations. Many of these trends would be problematic on their own, but when combined, they were enough to make Square the video game equivalent of George Lucas.
However, despite all of the poor decisions they've made, I do think there is a small ray of hope. Bravely Default shows that they can still make good games as long as they collaborate with other companies and stick to the handheld market. It really is one of the best JRPGs of the 2010s and proves that the genre is alive and well despite not having the same presence it had back in the nineties.
Besides, I'm sure they've learned their lesson this time. In response to the fact that localizing Bravely Default more than doubled their sales figures and seeing the positive reception it received from longtime, international JRPG fans, Square decided to do the intelligent thing… by letting Nintendo take over publishing duties for Bravely Second in regions outside of Japan.
On that note, I feel it's appropriate to end this essay with an ode to Square's decision-making abilities.
Bravely Default, Chrono, Enix, Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Square Enix, Squaresoft
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6 thoughts on "The Fall of Squaresoft"
The Otaku Judge
The company has certainly gone downhill since the merger. I wish they would just return the formula that worked in their old RPGs rather than fighting their fan base. On the plus side their FF MMO is pretty good.
Yeah, considering their track record as of late, Bravely Default kind of feels like a happy accident, doesn't it? Meanwhile, their purposeful actions usually result in works of dubious quality such as the aforementioned Final Fantasy XIII trilogy.
Square needs to learn not to disrespect their fans. They certainly have fallen into an arrogant phase; they know they can sell their products on brand alone, and their current strategy only alienates the very people who got them where they are in the first place, demonstrating them to be quite ungrateful. Sure, they can attract new players with their famous brands, but it's not a sustainable solution. It's amazing that a company with such strong brands and an extensive library could be so shortsighted.
From here, I see one of two things happening. Either they figure out a way to return to their roots, or they'll make that one mistake that ends up completely decimating the company. Bravely Default is certainly a step in the right direction, but their stubborn refusal to publish it and its sequels outside of Japan shows a severe lack of foresight and common sense.
By the way, have you played Final Fantasy XIV? I heard that it's a lot better than when it first launched.
How I've had many hours of my life taken from their games. This was a great post, and I don't think I've read one like it before. For me personally I have mainly stayed away from the company in recent years. It all started with FFXII, its still the only FF game I've started and not finished, and probably never will. Even FFXIII didn't do anything for me, and I barely finished it, never toughed its sequels either.
The only thing really reminding me of the company is coming from their few Subsidiaries like Edios, IO Interactive, and Crystal Dynamics. I'd really like to see them get back on top though. I'd love to see JRPGs in general get as popular as they used to be. I enjoy things like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, with others, yet they don't cut it most of the time for me.
Thanks! I was originally going to put a lot of this in my review of Bravely Default, but I realized it was getting way off-topic, so I decided to make it its own post. It seems like a lot of people left the series after Final Fantasy XII. Considering the shift in gameplay and the fact that you don't even play as the main character, I can't say I blame them. It's one of those cases where going against the established standards only demonstrates why they exist in the first place.
As for Final Fantasy XIII, what I heard is that if you weren't impressed with that game, the sequels won't make up for it. As problematic as it is, it's the most critically acclaimed game in that trilogy. Lightning Returns apparently has a system where you have an in-game time limit of thirteen days before a disaster happens and you can't take your time as one would expect. Again, it's an instance of a unique idea not translating to good gameplay.
I too would like to see JRPGs make a comeback. Western RPGs are good (Planescape: Torment is still one of my all-time favorites), but they don't quite have the same appeal. I like JRPGs because there was a lot of complexity derived from their simplicity. Also, this may only be from my experience, but I've noticed that Western developers aren't as good at implementing boss fights as their Eastern counterparts. They don't seem to create games where boss fights are any more complicated than normal enemies with more health. It's too bad because the inclusion of good boss fights is one of the main reasons I like JRPGs. Have you ever noticed this or is it just me?
I have noticed that with boss fights. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls. They all fit the bill for that.
I remember playing some FF games going into a boss fight and getting wiped out just like that. Or not being high enough level and it taking for ever to finish. Or any other random thing like not having enough potions on me.
Also WRPGs tend to feature big open empty worlds for the most part, and lack story. This makes me feel like I'm playing an MMO by myself.
The story in these games like FF was what got me into them in the first place. Along with the addicting grinding up to become stronger.
That is the most disappointing thing about open-world RPGs. There is usually a main quest, but the game doesn't end when you finish it, so you just keep playing until you get bored of it rather than getting a sense of satisfaction of having seen a story through to the end.
I played Final Fantasy VI more than a decade after it was released and I was still impressed with both its story and its presentation. It's amazing what one pull off despite, and often because of, hardware limitations. I played Final Fantasy V when the Game Boy Advance port was released and I really enjoyed its gameplay. It was awesome that the Job System made a comeback in Bravely Default.