text:
Developing Android Apps
Developing Android apps requires you to use the APIs offered by Android. These APIs enable developers to create a wide variety of apps. These applications can take advantage of the powerful capabilities of the Android platform, and they are easy to create, maintain, and extend. But before you start building your app, be sure to follow some guidelines to make it work as smoothly as possible.
Resources in Android apps are files used to display content and define a device's features. This includes image assets, colors, and string values. Resources are essential to the development of Android apps. They help the app display content, handle multiple screen sizes, and support multiple languages. The following sections describe the types of resources in Android and their purposes.
In an Android application, a resource can store bitmaps, colors, layout definitions, and animation instructions. All of these resources are stored in subdirectories under the res/ directory. Typically, application resources are organized into XML files containing multiple subdirectories. Each resource has a corresponding name, which is used to access it from Java code or a separate XML resource file.
Generally, an Android app has two different directories to store different types of resources. One directory houses bitmap items, while another is devoted to XML files. The layout directory contains XML files used to create the user interface, while the menu directory contains XML files for the launcher icon and navigation menu.
Resources can be grouped by device, language, and configuration. Device-specific qualifiers are added to the resource definition to support different device configurations. Android automatically detects the current device configuration and loads the appropriate resources for the app. If it doesn't, it can use a default resource instead. It is possible to add more than one resource qualifier, as long as the subdirectories are separated by a dash.
Android developers should also keep up to date with new tools, libraries, and other resources. Android Weekly is a weekly publication that provides information on new libraries, tools, and blogs that can help them create Android apps. Android is a highly fragmented market, and there are many different types of devices and operating systems. This means that Android apps need to support a wide range of UI facilities and sensors.
Content providers are necessary for storing and displaying data in Android apps. The content provider is a central database that allows other applications to access data it stores. For example, the content provider can hold data about a user's preferences. In addition, it can store files, which are stored on the mobile or in an extended storage medium. However, by default, these files are not accessible to other applications. Fortunately, Android supports SQLite databases, as well as network storage, so it is easy to store data outside of the application. Content providers allow you to share data between applications and provide your users with the data they need.
Content providers can also provide apps with the information they need to manage data. While content providers are not required for every Android app, they are useful for those that store user data and access it across multiple apps. For example, a user may have multiple versions of the Dialer or Contacts app on their device.
In a typical Android app, a Content Provider serves as a relational database. It can be used to securely access data and manipulate it based on user requirements. This allows content providers to store data in various ways and allows developers to customize their apps to use them the way they need. For example, a user can use a ContentProvider to store data on to-do items. To do this, a user can call a query method and get a cursor that shows the records to be iterated through.
Content providers for Android apps offer a consistent interface for accessing data. The data is exposed in a table format with each row representing a record and a column for a specific data type. The data can be anything from a file to an address.
Permissions are a way to control the amount of data your app can access. The permission system on Android is organized into broad categories. These include read, write, and modify. Android apps can also list their permissions on a permissions page. For example, in the Storage section, your app may ask for permission to read the contents of your device's shared storage. It may also ask for permission to edit and delete the contents. Each permission type has its own description, and you can tap each permission for more information.
To use the permission system on Android, you must make sure that your app meets the requirements. Normally, Android will grant permissions that do not pose a security risk to users. You can choose to display these permissions as a list of individual permissions. For each permission, make sure to include a description and label that explains its main functionality. Generally, these should be two sentences long.
The AFP standard for Android permissions was created to empower end users to manage the permissions of their applications. It allows users to specify fine-grained permission levels and differentiates between private and confidential resources. The AFP system will also monitor an app's permissions at runtime. This helps ensure that the app can do its job while protecting users' privacy.
Android permissions give apps access to private data and other information that can be sensitive. Typically, a pop-up will appear when an app needs to access sensitive hardware or data. You should always check the permissions before allowing an app to run on your device.
The Battery life for Android app allows you to monitor the battery usage of each app on your device. It provides information such as which apps are using the most battery power, whether the screen is on or off, and if the device is in deep sleep. This information can be helpful in reducing battery drain. The app is easy to use and can be added to your home screen to provide easy access to the battery usage data.
To get an overview of the battery usage of your apps, go to the Settings menu and tap Battery. Then, tap each app to view how much power it is using. If an app is taking up more power than you want, uninstall it from your phone. You can also change the settings of each app to limit its background usage.
Another way to optimize battery usage is to use a task killer application. These apps can be used to manage brightness, Wi-Fi, data, and sound. By using these apps, you can improve your battery life and enhance your device's performance. While many battery saving apps are just bogus, there are four that are actually effective at extending your battery life.
Android 8.0 has introduced several updates that help preserve battery life while maintaining system health and user experience. One of the biggest drains on battery life is network requests made by apps. Many network requests require the use of power-consuming radios, which use a lot of battery. Hence, it is important to optimize network requests and minimize data connection to save battery life. In addition, apps can perform background work only when the system needs it.
Other battery saving apps for Android include JuiceDefender and Mobile Booster. JuiceDefender is a comprehensive app that helps users extend the battery life of their phone by controlling the most power-consuming features. It also has the ability to automatically toggle Wi-Fi based on location.
When developing an Android app, there are various factors to consider, including network and device performance. This means optimizing your app to work efficiently across multiple networks and devices. You should also consider how your app works with APIs and servers to ensure it will be as fast and smooth as possible. By optimizing your app's performance, you can enhance user experience and enhance functionality.
Mobile performance is different from desktop performance, and if you're planning to shift your application from desktop to mobile, you should know this. Mobile users often have a faster internet connection and a larger screen. The performance of android apps may be affected by small mistakes, such as not using the correct APIs.
During development, developers should run tests on different devices. Not all users will have high-end devices with 2GB of RAM and powerful CPUs. A common mistake that many developers make is optimizing code for the wrong device. Even if you have high-end devices, you should test your app on several types of devices to see how it reacts to different resolutions, memory size, and CPU speed.
As you can see, the results of this survey are not encouraging. Almost half of the developers are not implementing micro-optimizations to improve their app's performance. Many developers still believe that micro-optimizations are not worth the time or effort. This results in poor app performance.


The unprecedented rate of change in marketing technology, coupled with an elevated demand for better customer experiences, is a daunting challenge for even the most tech-savvy marketers. As a result, an agile approach to marketing has become best practice. Testing the engagement level of each marketing campaign on each platform is critical, and making quick adjustments based on data is the key to achieving a healthy ROI.
Marketing in today's environment makes BI tools invaluable for digital marketing agencies and corporate marketing teams. Marketing has become a bit more of a science in the past five years, and BI enables marketers to analyze results from all inputs in a single view and determine where to make tweaks and when. Having all marketing analytics in a single view is vital, as omnichannel marketing campaigns create challenges in compiling data from disparate systems and applications.
The value of obtaining BI information is the knowledge it provides marketers to make data-driven adjustments. This is why it is so important to remain open to what the data says. It can be tempting only to share positive results, yet the real value is derived from analyzing the negative data. Understanding what didn't work, and why it didn't work, is how marketers learn and improve.
It is essential to have a culture where negative results do not reflect negatively on a person or team, but rather the information is looked at as an opportunity to improve. A safe and collaborative environment is most productive so that whether results are positive or negative for any specific initiative, viewing the data honestly and openly makes the team stronger and more productive in the future.
The number of marketers who feel their companies' current marketing technology helps them better do their jobs increased from 58 percent to 69 percent year-over-year. This increased investment is a trend likely to continue for the foreseeable future. If your company has not yet invested in the tools needed to effectively combat your competition, take the time to research the statistics and find case studies on the true value these technologies bring to a company's bottom line.
ClicData has marketing expertise, and a focus on marketing analytics that help build strong marketing machines. Take a look at the pre-created marketing dashboards available today and contact the team to learn more about methods for implementing BI solutions that provide data insights to improve marketing initiatives.


text:
The Wildebrams Saga
The Wildebrams Saga is the continuing story of the life and relationship of Kitty Wilde and Artie Abrams stretching from the time they met, and all the way through the ups and downs of their friendship, dating life, marriage, careers, and family life. It follows Glee Cannon (more or less) up through the season 5 episode New New York, and is considered Alternate Universe (AU) after that, with the exception of the episode Opening Night, which is also accepted as cannon. The stories also heavily feature the people who were closest to them at various times in their lives.
The Wildebrams Saga currently consists of five parts:
The Wildebrams Saga 1: The Ballad of Kitty and Artie
This is a retelling of the 2012-2013 school year (seasons 4 and 5a), and will tell the story of how Kitty and Artie met and fell in love. There will be a chapter for each episode, along with several "bonus episodes".
The Wildebrams Saga 2: New Beginnings
This story is AU and takes place during the 2013-2014 school year (overlaps season 5b) and tells what happens during Kitty's sophomore year when she is separated from Artie and there is no Glee Club at McKinley, and Artie's freshman year in college. With Glee Club gone our heroes are forced to find their bearings again so they can navigate the complicated waters of high school and figure out how to get their glee club back. Meanwhile Artie navigates college life and figures out what he is going to do without his love Kitty around. [ This is a rewrite of my current story A New Beginning. Because it is being changed so much, it's going to be a totally new publication instead of an in place replacement of the older story. ]
The Wildebrams Saga 3: New New Directions
This is also AU and is more of an ensemble story. It takes place during the 2014-2015 school year (overlaps season 6). Thanks to the efforts of Kitty, Mr. Schue, and the other season 4 newbies, Glee Club is back at McKinley and they have one year to demonstrate the validity of the program or its gone for good. Both sets of newbies (Season 4 and 6) band together, with a few other familiar faces to compete for the National Show Choir title. Along the way they will continue the tradition of weekly glee club lessons and have plenty of drama along the way. I'm hoping to recreate the drama and sense of urgency of season 1. Unlike the show itself, during season 4, I want to really focus on the current gee club members themselves. We will assume that the alumni are off in the world pursuing their dreams and will only be occasionally mentioned, and only seen if the story really calls for it. [ I had originally intended this to be the later chapters of A New Beginning, but the more I thought about it the more apparent it was that it deserved to be a separate story. ]
The Wildebrams Saga 4: Wedding Song
This story is also AU and takes place 2 years after New New Directions. Artie is about to graduate from college and Kitty is finishing up her sophomore year (Spring/Summer of 2017). Four years after they began dating, Kitty and Artie prepare to take the next step in their relationship and Artie is offered a tempting opportunity. As the title implies, this story will include the wedding of Kitty Wilde to Artie Abrams.
The Wildebrams Saga 5: Homecoming
Ten years after the original glee kids graduated (2022), Mr Schue holds an All Glee Club reunion. Kitty, Artie, and the rest of the alumni return to McKinley and catch up on where they are in life.
At the current time, this is where I intend the saga to end, burn who knows what might happen in the future.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I enjoyed learning about the Mormon Meteor III (video by Jay Leno) and hearing historian David Fetherston's speak (video of lecture) about "Bonneville Then and Now" last Saturday September 10th as part of the Blackhawk Museum's Speaker Series. Took Meteor will be there for only a few more days before returning to the Price Museum of Speed in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Next Sunday is annual trek to the Go Pro Grand Prix at Sonoma Raceway. It is the final of this year's Indy series.and my last chance to see my favorite driver Helio Castroneves race this year.
This entry was posted in Blackhawk Automotive Museum, Car Shows, Classic race cars, Helio Castroneves, Indy car racing, Karen Stephen Author, Sonoma Go Pro Grand Prix and tagged Blackhawk Museum, Helio Castroneves, Indy car racing, Karen Stephen Author, Mormon Meteor III, Mother Tongue, Sonoma Go Pro Indy Race by Dr. Karen Stephen. Bookmark the permalink.


Morning all and welcome to Saturday and in a couple of hours we will be playing football against Chelsea and it's going to be an important game.
As the preview said, we will do well against Chelsea as they will come at us and allow us to play our counter attacking football. It is fairly predictable writing that but even Marky Mark is writing it these days.
Martin O'Neill has promised we'll go all out today and it is easy to promise that because well, it is the only way we will be able to play and it will be playing to all our strengths and while some will think Chelsea are just too much for us, you know I'm a bit one dimensional so I think we can get something out of it today.
But, at the same time and to keep it level, if we got thumped it wouldn't surprise me either. O'Neill can't for example, play Carew like he did against Manchester City. He has to play Gabby up front by himself and he has to play Reo-Coker. I mean, the confrontation was all forgotten wasn't it?
But, none of that matters now, it's about what happens in the ninety minutes and that is coming up. As soon as we have team news and some links for you to special websites we'll put them here but you know I like this service but there will be more later.
Friedel, Cuellar, Collins, Dunne, Warnock, Petrov, Milner, Sidwell, Young, Carew and Agbonlahor.
Subs: Shorey, Gardner, Guzan, Reo-Coker, Beye, Delph and Heskey.
Let's not forget, for those of you heading off to the game or reading this from the game on your mobile, atmosphere is important today and the support at Villa Park is worth a goal. Roar.


Offering an indoor pool and a spa and wellness centre, Hilton Batumi is located in the centre of Batumi, 100 m from the 6 may Park. The Black Sea coast is just 200 m away.
Each room here will provide you with air conditioning, a flat-screen TV and a minibar. There is also an electric kettle. Featuring a shower, private bathroom comes with a bath and a hairdryer. Extras include a desk, a safety deposit box and a laptop safe.


text:
in Adulthood, Equality, Ethics, Mormonism, Popular Culture, Religion, Skepticism
Sextravagana! Not Letting Religion Rule Secular Sexual Ethics
Over the weekend, Thrack and I attended the wonderful "mini-con" Sextravaganza put on by the local Secular Student Alliance affilitate, Secular Humanism Inquiry and Freethought (SHIFT) at the University of Utah. It was awesome and I'm glad we went. I do wish there had been more people there, but as Greta Christina put it, it was competing with the "biggest football game in all human history." (Rivalry between the University of Utah and Brigham Young University is too deep to be ignored here.)
For an event that was expected by religious conservatives to be somewhere between vile orgy and pushing "erotic whimsys," I fear that permanently offended religious people seeking shocked titillation, Sextravaganza would have been a terrible disappointment to them. I'm almost sad that no such huffy people showed up to protest or express their displeasure. But I suspect deep down they feared learning something too much to come and glare at us all disapprovingly. And there was so much they could have learned.
Of the three speakers at Sextravaganza, I had only heard of one. In fact, if I wasn't already such a big fan of Greta Christina, I might have missed this event altogether and that would have been a shame.
As SHIFT and other SSA affiliate groups handed out the programs, the first thing that Thrack noted and pointed out to me is that organizers took the time to put a clear and simple harassment policy where everyone would see it right on the back. After the months and months of willfully ignorant shitstorm surrounding the simple request that atheist cons take sexual harassment seriously, it was refreshing and delightful to see the issue handled easily with no fuss. Contrast that with the adversarial and secretive approach at this year's TAM when victims were surveilled without their consent following any problem. It's wonderful to show that even for a small event with three speakers and a panel discussion, people can to do it right:
What's more it was wonderful to see that women's voices were not only considered but valued; you could tell by the panel composition (two women one man) and the fact that the audience had slightly more women than men. The whole purpose was to give a contrasting secular view to sexual ethics and you couldn't differentiate yourself more clearly in a year when an all-male panel of (partially-celibate) religious leaders was considered experts by congressional leadership.
Dr. Lisa Diamond
The first speaker, Dr. Lisa Diamond, is a professor of psychology here at the University of Utah (in Utah, it's usually just referred to as "The U" as if there were only one). Dr. Diamond specializes in sexuality and relationship development in adolescents. Her book, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire (which Thrack bought at the event) followed women over ten years from adolescence to adulthood to study how sexual identity and relationships develop. As a speaker, Diamond was funny, and jovially self-deprecating as she recognized that she was much newer to the discussion than her fellow speakers. And although she acknowledged she is a non-believer, her focus was far less explicitly atheistic.
"I do want to slowly poison and destroy the marriage institution."
Instead, Diamond wanted to talk about how we have allowed conservative religious ideals about relationships and families to dominate how we present our case for equal rights for same-sex couples. She argues, quite rightly, that by presenting a clean and conservative looking gay couple with kids as the public face, we are buying into the idea that certain types of people and relationships are worthy of protection. Now it's a strategy that is working and has parallels with other movements, but it has some troubling implications for the long-term because it excludes and marginalizes members of the queer community by default.
And truthfully, I can see a number of different ways in which this has happened in other movements as well. Just looking at the push for women's reproductive rights, we have the same problem. We support women's right to choose, but no one wants to say that abortion itself can be a good thing; just look at the implications of "safe, legal and rare." Why do we have to hedge on what we support?
Dr. Diamond pointed out that for many people, leading happy and full lives means a huge range of sexual and familial arrangements and we should avoid creating any additional stigma for them. There is nothing wrong with being non-monogamous or single or asexual just for starters. What's more, we need to stop making the argument that individual deserve equal rights because they look so much like other happily married straight couples. Diamond said that rather than pushing the idea that marriage is sort of the end-goal of happiness and relationships without question, we need to start having more nuanced discussions about how patriarchal norms are dictating life choices.
Is marriage equality something we need to strive for? Yes. Is Diamond a fan of marriage? Yes, she's in one of those not-yet-legal marriages herself. But should we promote marriage as a state and societal good? Hell no.
She stated that while she's happy with her marriage and is absolutely a supporter of marriage equality as a political goal, we should stop working so hard to convince everyone we're not damaging the institution of marriage, because the institution of marriage should be challenged. Diamond got a great laugh when she said, "I do want to slowly poison and destroy the marriage institution."
After Diamond finished speaking, they took a few questions and a short break before Greta Christina went onstage.
Greta Christina is one of those speakers and writers with the rare talent for organizing their point and evidence so clearly that it looks absolutely obvious. You find yourself wondering how on earth you didn't think of explaining ideas that way from the beginning. It's wonderful and to be completely honest, a bit intimidating.
Christina has been writing about sex, sexuality, atheism and LGBT issues since 1989 and is a giant among those I consider my inspirations. I was so excited to hear she was speaking in my hometown because it meant I would be able to get my copy of her book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry, signed. It's absolutely one of the best and most clearly written pieces of non-fiction I've ever read. She is, in a word, amazing.
Greta Christina spoke about the ethical basis for sex that doesn't rely on supernatural ideas. If we want to have discussions about secular ethics and move past the idea that there is a supernatural being who "cares who and how we're boffing," we need to figure out how we form that basis. Christina discussed how we need to get past ingrained and religiously based taboos about sexual behavior and start basing our judgments and decisions on what we know and understand empirically. Religiously based taboos and ideas are often surprisingly resistant to change even when your religious ideas evolve because they come in early and build up personal preferences that range from mild distaste to revulsion.
But Christina argued personal revulsion is a terrible basis on which to make judgment calls. She calls it the broccoli test. She hates broccoli with a fierceness I've never before encountered: can't bear the smell to even be in the same room with it, admits to feeling vaguely queasy just talking about it. But that doesn't mean that people who eat and enjoy broccoli are wrong. Likewise sexual tastes are incredibly complex and we simply don't understand them well enough to even begin to figure out how they develop.
At the core of many, many anti-gay arguments you have nothing more than an ick factor; sometimes it's more hidden and cloaked in language about knowing what an imaginary friend wants, but often, it's simply described as unnatural and disgusting. But it's far from just gay people (which almost always seems to come down to "ick, ick anal sex!"). Women who dare to be more open and unashamed about their sexuality (which can include simply admitting to using birth control) are met with the same kind of irrational hostility and derision. Clearly we have to throw out this entire way of constructing right vs. wrong in sexual relationships.
But that doesn't mean we're just drifting along without any foundation and having wild crazy orgies either. Christina said of course we have a basis for ethical sexual behavior, because "only a sociopath" could fail to see the need for an ethical framework. So if we're ignoring the idea of consulting God's checklist for good and bad sex, what do we use?
Simple and no different from any other of our moral guides as happy cooperative and secular members of a social species. In fact, Greta Christina directly addressed the growing idea that many of our rough ethical frames are a physical intrinsic part of our minds that have been shaped directly through evolutionary processes over hundreds of thousands of years. Christina had a small tangent about materialism. Because not only do we own our bodies, but to a materialist, we are our brain and body as it interacts with the outside world. Everything we are is governed by interchemical interactions. And far from being bleak, that is jaw-dropping and inspiring.
Christina talked about how incredible it is that you, as a random and infinitesimally unlikely accident of nature can share intimacy and joy with another rare and precious person so profound that it can take you outside yourself and into someone else. That we as a species are capable of such amazing transcendence and pleasure is not only wonderful but it also shows our connection to every other person on the planet. We have common ancestors with every living thing on this planet. We are made of star stuff. Christina said that's so wondrous and astonishing that it made her want to go home "right now" and have sex with her wife Ingrid. It was adorable and sweet.
Greta Christina also discussed (and during the later panel gave more detail) about how ideas we have about sex really come down to taboos. Which at least partially explains how inconsistent religious guidelines for sexual behavior are both internally and between different faiths. She explained that as we understand taboos psychologically, they are a human attempt to exercise controls over important and emotionally powerful areas in our lives such as food, drugs, sex. We set up social taboos that in this country you eat bugs, and in this country you don't. Alcohol is safe and good as a drug and marijuana is dangerous and bad. This type of sex is good and this type is bad.
But if people have some psychological need for taboos, that doesn't mean we need to rely on the crutches of religion to form them. Christina suggests we get rid of the old ones and start building taboos based on secular ethical principles.
She was wonderful, giving us a set of tools to build a better evidence-supported framework as an alternative to religious ideas. And I think it is telling that not a single person could immediately come up with a question immediately after her talk. Thrack said, "It's hard to come up questions when you cover your points so clearly."
After another brief break, the keynote speaker was up.
Dr. Ray has been a practicing psychologist for 30 years in clinical and later organizational practice. Earlier this year he launched his newest achievement, The Secular Therapist Project. Ray is the author of The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture and Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality. He went around the room before the event introducing himself and chatting with attendees. He also complimented Thrack on wearing a shirt with the devil burying dinosaur bones.
I don't know how to lead into describing Dr. Ray's presentation, so I'll just say it had lots of penises. Literal photographs of penises belonging to ducks and great apes, and more figurative penises using vegetables to represent comparative size. And it wasn't what I was expecting, but it makes sense. If we're going to talk about healthy and natural sexuality without gods, it makes sense to talk about other animal's sexuality. It makes particular sense to talk about our closest cousins evolutionarily because you can begin to see how the sexual behaviors and social norms of other apes developed over time. I'll say this: I'd much rather be a bonobo than a chimpanzee.
In any event, the simple idea that Ray was trying to explain is that genital configuration can change very rapidly compared to many other systems and that these changes seem to correspond with a species' types of mating strategies. Want to know what humans' physiology suggests? We evolved as a multi-mate species. There is no evidence of idyllic monogamous marriages during early homo sapien history.
Darrel Ray questioned why it is we continue to let religious shame about sexuality and sexual desires dictate our actions. As secular people, we have tons of evidence why religious strictures about sex simply don't reflect reality and far from being helpful, often cause direct harm. Ray noted that while many people leave behind their religious beliefs, sometimes they hold onto religious ideas about sexual ethics; as an acquaintance of mine once remarked, we often remain "culturally Christian" even after we're godless. Dr. Ray says we need to keep this in mind and redefine our ethics to keep them consistent with our understanding of the world. As a logical extension of this, he calls himself a "secular sexual."
Ray felt we can take many lessons from the success we've seen in changing social bigotry toward LGB individuals. That if we come out, and refuse to embrace shame over our sexuality we can move toward a healthier secular society.
After Ray's presentation, we took another short break before a discussion panel with the three speakers.
The Q & A largely expounded on or clarified points brought up during speaker's presentations, but it was also nice to hear how one panelist's idea would get greater depth or perspective through discussion. I also can't say how much it meant to me to see an equitable discussion about sexuality that made it clear just how important and valuable women's voices are in the discussion. I think having two non-straight panelists was also helpful in preventing the discussion from being too heteronormative as well.
But the very best moment for me came when someone who works as an educator with Planned Parenthood asked a question. The first person on the panel to respond thanked him and told him that he was a hero. The whole room clapped. It was awesome.
In all, it felt like we barely scratched the surface about you could cover when talking about godlessness and sexual ethics. Greta Christina touched on it earlier that evening by noting that once you get past irrational taboos, questions of sexual morality can become very complicated. (For example, if in a relationship, one partner decides that they are finished having sex forever but don't want their partner(s) to seek sex elsewhere, is that ethical?) I would love to see more discussions like this that center around fulfillment and consent because I truly believe we can have a much happier and healthier society by fostering this sort of discussion.


text:
package com.lachesis.mnisqm.module.system.dao;

import com.lachesis.mnisqm.module.system.domain.SysRoleFun;
import java.util.List;

public interface SysRoleFunMapper {
    int deleteByPrimaryKey(Long seqId);

    int insert(SysRoleFun record);

    SysRoleFun selectByPrimaryKey(Long seqId);

    List<SysRoleFun> selectAll();

    int updateByPrimaryKey(SysRoleFun record);

    public int updateSysRoleFun(SysRoleFun record);

    int deleteByRoleFun(String roleCode);
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
package org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.codec.tiff;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;

import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.codec.util.SeekableStream;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.renderable.DeferRable;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.renderable.Filter;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.renderable.RedRable;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.rendered.Any2sRGBRed;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.rendered.CachableRed;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.spi.ImageTagRegistry;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.ext.awt.image.spi.MagicNumberRegistryEntry;
import org.apache.flex.forks.batik.util.ParsedURL;

/**
 *
 * @version $Id: TIFFRegistryEntry.java 501094 2007-01-29 16:35:37Z deweese $
 */
public class TIFFRegistryEntry
    extends MagicNumberRegistryEntry {

    static final byte [] sig1 = {(byte)0x49, (byte)0x49, 42,  0};
    static final byte [] sig2 = {(byte)0x4D, (byte)0x4D,  0, 42};

    static MagicNumberRegistryEntry.MagicNumber [] magicNumbers = {
        new MagicNumberRegistryEntry.MagicNumber(0, sig1),
        new MagicNumberRegistryEntry.MagicNumber(0, sig2) };

    static final String [] exts      = {"tiff", "tif" };
    static final String [] mimeTypes = {"image/tiff", "image/tif" };

    public TIFFRegistryEntry() {
        super("TIFF", exts, mimeTypes, magicNumbers);
    }

    /**
     * Decode the Stream into a RenderableImage
     *
     * @param inIS The input stream that contains the image.
     * @param origURL The original URL, if any, for documentation
     *                purposes only.  This may be null.
     * @param needRawData If true the image returned should not have
     *                    any default color correction the file may
     *                    specify applied.
     */
    public Filter handleStream(InputStream inIS,
                               ParsedURL   origURL,
                               boolean needRawData) {

        final DeferRable  dr  = new DeferRable();
        final InputStream is  = inIS;
        final String      errCode;
        final Object []   errParam;
        if (origURL != null) {
            errCode  = ERR_URL_FORMAT_UNREADABLE;
            errParam = new Object[] {"TIFF", origURL};
        } else {
            errCode  = ERR_STREAM_FORMAT_UNREADABLE;
            errParam = new Object[] {"TIFF"};
        }

        Thread t = new Thread() {
                public void run() {
                    Filter filt;
                    try {
                        TIFFDecodeParam param = new TIFFDecodeParam();
                        SeekableStream ss =
                            SeekableStream.wrapInputStream(is, true);
                        CachableRed cr = new TIFFImage(ss, param, 0);
                        cr = new Any2sRGBRed(cr);
                        filt = new RedRable(cr);
                    } catch (IOException ioe) {
                        filt = ImageTagRegistry.getBrokenLinkImage
                            (TIFFRegistryEntry.this, errCode, errParam);
                    } catch (ThreadDeath td) {
                        filt = ImageTagRegistry.getBrokenLinkImage
                            (TIFFRegistryEntry.this, errCode, errParam);
                        dr.setSource(filt);
                        throw td;
                    } catch (Throwable t) {
                        filt = ImageTagRegistry.getBrokenLinkImage
                            (TIFFRegistryEntry.this, errCode, errParam);
                    }

                    dr.setSource(filt);
                }
            };
        t.start();
        return dr;
    }
}


text:
Explosive prank could spell fine or even prison for members of artistic group
Last June, a group of artists called Ztohoven hijacked a Czech Television programme to broadcast images of a nuclear bomb going off on a peaceful Czech hillside. The mock explosion may have been and gone in a flash, but the fallout has far from disappeared. Last month, Ztohoven won an award from the Czech National Gallery for the work. On Wednesday, State Attorney Dušan Ondráček said that he had brought charges against the group.
Elevator music may seem an unlikely soundtrack to a nuclear explosion – but it was to this tune that hackers broadcast images of an atomic bomb detonating in the Czech hills last June. The images were broadcast on Czech Television's morning show Panorama, which - as its name would suggest - streams weather news across the bottom of the screen while panning across some of the Czech Republic's most idyllic spots.
Czech Television was not amused and pressed charges against the group behind the stunt – Ztohoven. On Wednesday, State Attorney Dušan Ondráček said that he had taken up the case:
"The members of this group have been charged with scaremongering and propagating false information, according to paragraph 199 of the penal code."
But not everyone disliked Ztohoven's actions. Last month, the group won a prestigious award from the Czech National Gallery for the work – which has been titled Media Reality. The group won 333,000 CZK (18,350 USD) in prize money.
Milan Knížák is the head of the National Gallery. He explains why Ztohoven won the NG 333 prize:
"This piece – alongside all of the art the group Ztohoven is making - is crossing the border from art into something more social. The artists are trying to escape from the cage of art, and into real life. They would like to influence their own lives, and other people's lives."
But wasn't the jury which decided upon the winner in two minds about awarding a group currently undergoing criminal investigation?
"We are an artistic jury, we are not lawyers, we are not policemen. We don't care. And if the group did something that was maybe against the law then okay, society can punish them. But this has nothing to do with our award. We believe that their intentions were good – and sometimes art crosses the borders of law."
But back to State Attorney Dušan Ondráček – does he not think that Ztohoven's work was a clever and funny piece of art? When does art stop being art, and become a crime?
"It's when an individual's actions fall into the category of a criminal offence as outlined by this country's penal code. The police and the state attorney should investigate such actions, regardless of whether they have some artistic value or significance."
The trial of six members of the Ztohoven group is expected to start in under a month. If they are found guilty, the artists could face up to three years in prison or a hefty fine. We will soon see if that prize money from the National Gallery ends up covering legal costs and damages.
Author: Rosie Johnston


Fouad Mebazaa (Arabic: فؤاد المبزع Fuʾād el-Mbazaʿ; born 15 June 1933) is a Tunisian politician who was President of Tunisia from 15 January 2011 to 13 December 2011. He was active in Neo Destour prior to Tunisian independence, served as Minister of Youth and Sports, Minister of Public Health, and Minister of Culture and Information, and was President of the Chamber of Deputies of Tunisia from 1991 to 2011.
After Tunisian independence in 1956, Mebazaa was elected to the Chamber of Deputies several times, starting in 1964. He was Governor-Mayor of Tunis from 1969 to 1973, occupied several ministerial posts relating to youth, sports, public health, culture and information during the 1970s and late 1980s, and was an ambassador in Geneva and Morocco during the 1980s. Mebazaa has been a member of the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Rally since 1988. From 1995 to 1998 he was Mayor of Carthage. He was also elected President of the Chamber of Deputies in 1997 and reelected in 2004.
After the exile of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia following continued protests, Mebazaa was appointed as President following the Constitutional Council's interpretation of the situation and the Constitution. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi had briefly claimed to be President the previous day, prior to the Constitutional Council's declaration of its opinion. Under Article 57 of the Constitution, an election was to take place between 45 and 60 days following Mebazaa's appointment.
^ a b c d e f g h i j "Biographie de Monsieur Foued Mebazaa Président de la Chambre des Députés" (PDF). Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie. 2011-01-16. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-01-16. Retrieved 2011-01-16.
This page was last edited on 18 October 2018, at 18:39 (UTC).


The Palmas sun lounger is part of our exclusive Costa Ray garden furniture collection from Smania Italy. Understated luxury at it's best - modern, elegant and extremely well made in sustainable teak with polished steel wheels and feet.
Cushion covers are made in Sunbrella, a specialist outdoor fabric (designed for the yacht market) which is water repellant, stain proof and colour fast. There are lots of choices available, which come with or without contrasting piping. To see the Smania colours click here.
In addition to this sun lounger, Smania also make matching garden chairs, sofas, tables, planters and garden lights. To see their collection click here. To see all of our sun loungers click here.


text:
Q: SQL update query - Can you not specify the column names? Is it possible to write a update statement and not give the columns names. For example
UPDATE tbl VALUES('1','2','3','4') WHERE id = 1;

The number of values will always match the column count.
Thanks in advance.
EDIT
I don't know the column names only the number of columns.
I know i could delete the row and then do an insert be then the id(which is A_I) wont be the same.
Please help.

A: No, it is not possible:
UPDATE Syntax
If you don't know the column names (which is rather strange), you could query the information schema:
INFORMATION_SCHEMA Tables

A: You can retrieve the list of columns using:
SELECT  COLUMN_NAME
FROM    INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS C
WHERE   TABLE_NAME = 'MyTable'

That allows you to build a new SQL query which checks for a value in each column.  It's best to do this in a client, like a C#, Python or perl script.

A:
...know i could delete the row and then do an insert be then the id(which is A_I) wont be the same...

Assuming that your first column is an AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL.
INSERT into tbl VALUES(NULL, val1, val2);

A: Even if it is possible, why would you want to do that? If you want to use the same query form for updates and inserts you can use "replace into tbl_name (column_names...) values (values...)"

A: Don't ever try to do that.
That will make your code hard to read and impossible to maintain.
If you later change the columns of your table all your code will fall apart and since you don't have the column names in the code you will not be able to search for the changed columns and find where they are used.

A: I'm not sure if it's possible in a simple SQL query.  However, if you can create a stored procedure then you have options.  I'm not going to research the options, but here's the example.
I know that Oracle has metadata that you can query, so you can get the column names of a table. (I think SQL server has something similar)
So, since you can query this metadata then you can loop through the column names, build a string with column names for your update statement and do an "execute" of that string
This has issues though:
- security - SQL injection is possible since you are building a string to execute.  Perhaps you could use bound variables or parameterize even the string you build and run
- if you build a "hard-coded" UI, the moment the table changes and doesn't have default values for new columns or the columns are reordered, it will break.  However, if you build the UI to read the metadata and then do the same thing to create the string to run then it should be fine.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Dr. Chris Chung
I Have been a volunteer in a medical mission in the Philippines. Dr. Chung
Chris Chung, MD was raised in Claremont, California. He did his undergraduate studies at UCLA, and as luck would have it, met a new next door neighbor by the name of Anthony Saglimbeni. That friendship has had a huge impact on Dr. Chung's journey to South Bay Sports and Preventive Medicine Associates.
Dr. Chung received his medical degree from St. Louis University, in St. Louis, Missouri, and continued his education by returning to UCLA for his family medicine residency. Following completion of that program, he moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, for his sports medicine fellowship. He is board certified in Family Medicine, with the added CAQ in sports medicine.
He relocated to San Jose in 2002 after working for several years with a medical group in San Diego. He sees patients for both primary care and sports injuries. He has a special interest in dance medicine and has worked for years with dancers from a variety of disciplines.
His volunteer activities include being the Team Physician for King's Academy High School, Mountain View High School, and Coyote Creek Pop Warner Football. Other activities included a volunteer medical mission in the Philippines in 2001.


text:
FDA approves GTC's transgenic drug ATryn (FierceBiotech)
February 9, 2009 by Hakeem Alexander
February 9, 2009 — 9:37am ET |
By Maureen Martino
The FDA has approved GTC Biotherapeutics' ATryn. This marks the first time the agency has given the okay to a transgenic therapy–a drug developed in genetically engineered animals–and the first recombinant antithrombin approved in the U.S. ATryn, which is made from the milk of genetically engineered goats, will be used for the prevention of peri-operative and peri-partum thromboembolic events in hereditary antithrombin deficient patients. GTC and Ovation, which will market the drug in the U.S., expect ATryn to be available in the second quarter of 2009.
FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine also approved GTC's New Animal Drug Application, the first of its kind to regulate genetically engineered animals. The application will now be required for all therapies develop using transgenic animals.
"The approval of ATryn marks a significant milestone in the development of this innovative recombinant technology and delivers a new therapeutic option to benefit hereditary antithrombin deficient patients who are undergoing surgery or childbirth procedures," said GTC's Chairman and CEO Geoffrey Cox. "Advancing this novel technology from the early days of demonstrating its capability to the daily practice of producing a safe and efficacious product for the U.S. and the European Union, is a testament to the persistence and capability of our employees."
– check out GTC's release
– read the New York Times article
FDA staffers endorse transgenic anti-clotting drug
GTC shares jump on $257M ATryn pact
GTC announces positive ATryn data
GTC inks new transgenics collaboration deal
Regulators focusing on transgenic animals
Vitamin D helps control MS gene
84 Children Are Killed by Medicine in Nigeria (New York Times)
Are The Bees Really Dying? Will We All Die With Them?
[smd] NAI – Cycle 7 CAN – NNH13ZDA017C


text:
Cruises: clear skies ahead
The cruise market experienced severe struggles between sea giants in search for worldwide domination. Carnival won this naval combat over its long lasting rival, RCCL. Concentrated among few operators, and a fairly narrow sector, the cruises suffered from the international crisis in tourism. Some of the players didn't made it trough the crisis. But the surviving companies have not stoped their investments, confident in the market come back, which seems to be very strong.
In a few lines, Howard Frank, the vice-president of the board of directors of Carnival Corp & Plc, gives the of the land: "The major manoeuvres have already taken place. Nothing else very significant will happen after our fusion with P&O Princess, aside from one or two mergers between smaller companies that want to attain a critical size". By swallowing up P&O Princess, the number 4 of the cruise line industry, after a ferocious battle, to become the incontestable world leader, has Carnival written the final great chapter in the history of the cruise industry? Those protagonists that are still afloat and likely to regroup look insufficient in number to even hope to surpass this group in the mid- or even long term. All the more so since some of the major predators are either still digesting their latest acquisitions such as Norwegian Cruise Line for Star Cruises, or give prefer sustained organic growth of their fleet as is the case for Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (RCCL). The world's oceans will – for some time now – be dominated by the mastodon Carnival. With profits that today surpass a billion dollars per annum and revenues nearly that double those of its closest follower, RCCL, it is the first "global" cruise line. The company's fleet may be broken down among 12 different brands, covering all market segments and with an implantation on both sides of the Atlantic. To the point of being the number two corporation worldwide in the leisure sector just behind Walt Disney Corp.Always innovative, in Spring 2005, the group Easy will launch EasyCruise, the low-cost cruise. With no activities on board, nor attractive package: the boat goes from city to city in the Mediterranean with the option to stop at just one port for 50 euros, not including housekeeping. This new offer – at the opposite of the pleasure concept that all the cruise lines developed together – leaves most of its competitors perplexed.Yet, the market is still restricted: it represents just barely 1% of sales for the whole of tourism products in Europe and 2.5% at best in North America. But it is in the hands of veritable giants, who can write their own laws. They own the best-known brands, the bestdeveloped fleets, the most impressive ships. "From a financial point of view, the size allows for economies of scale that are carried over to the prices," explains Patrick Ryan, marketing director Europe for RCCL. Among these enormous ocean liners, some are mythical such as the new Queen Mary 2 launched this year by Cunard, a subsidiary of Carnival, and the Voyager of the Sea from Royal Caribbean: these are the largest ships in the world with more than 3,000 passengers. And we must not forget Pacific Princess, whose name, made famous by the television series "Loveboat", cannot be abandoned by its parent company. When the original ship of 1971 proved to have too limited a capacity with just 700 passengers, Princess Cruises replaced it in 2002 by a ship three times bigger that previously belonged to the cruise line Renaissance, one of the first victims of post September 11."In order to survive, it is necessary to have strong reins," observes Jean- Claude Hélary, president of France Ferries Croisières, an association that regroups most of the sector's actors on the French market. Cruises require heavy investments in order to play with the big time players who concentrate on putting new ships on the market, at a minimum of 350 million euros per ship, which are then resold after 15-20 years when their cost has been absorbed. Those who tried to rival them immoderately learned at their own expense. "Festival should have stayed on the niche of old ships rather than build several ships at once," remarks Jean-Claude Hélary, commenting on the recent collapse of the Italian company.Defaulted for non-payment by its creditors, Crédit Agricole and the owner of the Chantiers de l'Atlantique, Alstom, also in difficulty, Festival was dismantled. This happened to the benefit of a company that is rising: MSC. In parallel to the order of three new ships and the launch of the MSC Lirica and Opéra this month, the Italian cruise line bought European Vision, a Premium ship, from its compatriot and rebaptised it Armonia. The dispersal of the fleet dissuaded RCCL from buying Festival's entire fleet. This fall led to another collateral victim: Hilton Group, which had created the first partnership between a hotelier and a cruise line with its product "Hilton Floating Resorts on Festival Cruises" for the sale of Festival cabins under the hotel brand. According to the hotel group, which is in a stand by position, the first results of this agreement were very satisfactory with 1,500 reservations.The race for size is not the only reason for the difficulties encountered by certain cruise lines. Speed could be the cause. With the Olympia Voyager and Explorer, Royal Olympic Cruises (ROC) had the fastest ship that could reach 28 knots. These enabled shorter maritime transfers and consequently longer stays at port in more distant locations. Problem: the faster they go, the more the ships consume. These two ships belonging to subsidiaries of ROC were placed under the protection of the American "chapter 11" following the refusal of German banks to restructure the debt incurred to finance the acquisition of these two ships. Royal Olympic hopes to quickly bring this bad period to a close with signed, but unpaid, contracts for the rental of five ships to the organisers of the Olympic Games at Athens.In this enchanted universe, everything has not been golden lately. In the aftermath of September 11, the cruise lines were weakened by cancellations, changed itineraries or increased insurance premiums. RCCL recorded a loss of 4,000 passengers – at an average of 1,700 euros the ticket – for the Athens-Singapore line. Deep sea cruises have stopped drawing its traditional clientele of American regulars. Actors positioned on the luxury niche market were the first to be hurt. Experts have also counted 3.5 billion euros in total losses from the cruise industry in the three months following the terrorist attacks in New York. According to a report from Seatrade, the entire sector posted an 8% drop for 2002. "Recent years, particularly 2003, have been difficult. Prices have dropped as a result of the economic slump in the United States and geopolitical events," confirms Howard Frank. Strict control of their operating costs made it possible for many actors to soften the drop in their profitability.While profits were affected by all these elements, there is nonetheless hope in the small world of cruise lines. Firstly in terms of good news: the demand for this means of travel is literally exploding. As proof of a recovery, the latest figures published surpass all hopes: revenue is up by 20.6% for RCCL in the first quarter; +13% for Carnival in the second. 2004 should be a good year and 2005 should confirm the return to results close to those posted before 2001. "Consumers seem to be immune to outside events. They are realising that the situation won't change and that there will always be occasional problems somewhere," remarks Howard Frank contentedly.The future for the mid-term looks mostly radiant. 17 million passengers are expected on the horizon of 2010, for a 70% increase in 10 years. Even a difficult year like 2002 posts a 1% increase in the number of passengers for the Americas and +0.2% for Europe. Figures for 2003 are more in line with a growth generally estimated at 10% per year: 8.2 million passengers in the United States, up by 12.1%, while the United Kingdom, N°2 market worldwide, approaches one million according to the Passenger Ship Association. Coming out of its economic torpor, Germany, the N°3 supply market, posts an increase by 25% with 537,000 travellers. Italy and France (240,000 passengers), complete this ranking, followed by Spain with over 200,000 cruise passengers, the country with the highest growth, boosted by the presence of national companies such as Pullmantour and Spanish Cruise Lines.The world of cruises seems to be entering a virtuous spiral. The accommodation capacity grows by 42% between 2000 and 2005. This intense increase in number of cabins – 11 new ships launched this year alone – seems easily absorbed by the demand. Although orders for ships have slowed in the past two years, the capacity should nonetheless grow another 25% between 2005 and 2010.In direct competition with resorts on land and packages proposed by tour-operators, cruise ships are veritable "floating beach resorts" offering their clients a growing number of activities (wellness centres, many restaurants, shows, sports equipment). " I think we offer a better product and we try to be competitive with regards to prices in comparison to vacations on land," explains Howard Frank. One thing is clear, cruises present an advantage that no hotel-club can rival: they make it possible to visit several places without having to pack up a suitcase every day.For relaxation, the Caribbean remains the star cruise destination, and is offered by European operators Costa or P&O as well as by Carnival and Royal Caribbean. US leaders offer their domestic clientele short cruises (3 to 4 days) and more often one week, the classic length of a cruise with 52% of sales worldwide. These products are adapted to "this time poor cash rich clientele," explains Patrick Ryan. American coastal cruises saw their appeal grow following September 11. When travellers deserted airline transport, cruise lines multiplied their ports of embarkation (Los Angeles, Miami, Galveston, New Orleans, Port Canaveral, and Tampa) to develop a "drive & sail" policy to the place of embarkation. This phenomenon of "Homeland Sailing" explains in part the unrefutable liveliness of cruises, even when tourism was at its lowest.The other major destination for cruises remains the Mediterranean, which attracts clientele from both sides of the Atlantic. The effects of the terrorist attacks are fading, American cruise lines such as RCCL are repositioning more and more ships in the European ports for the summer months. Like Germans, the British are very sensitive to this destination that makes it possible to combine visits to historic sites with farniente in the sun with over 400,000 passengers versus 200,000 to the Caribbean. But, unlike the West Indies, short-stay products do not work very well with European clientele. On the English market, a lengthening of the duration of cruises has even been observed: 9.6 days on average in 2003 versus 8.6 in 2002.For some time now, the Mediterranean has not been Europe's only destination. Cruises in the Baltic Sea, a region of the world that is considered safer by North American clientele, confirm their popularity (+ 41.4% in 2003). New niche destinations are now being offered that provide the possibility of discovering places that are accessible only by sea: Norwegian fjords in Europe or a tour of South America with several high points: Manaus in the heart of the Amazon, the beach of Copacabana, Cap Horn and Chile's fjords (+128% on the English market). Alaska and the North and South poles are also gaining popularity with wealthy clientele.In general, cruises are still associated with luxury in most mindsets. But the vigour of the cruise market lies in the progressive change of this image. The same phenomenon observed in the United States 20 years ago is being seen in Europe today. During the boom of cruises in Miami in the 1970s, Carnival and others conquered a new clientele and democratised maritime holidays by offering products to the general public. Passengers traded blacktie- and-caviar for T-shirts and hamburgers. "Through efficient marketing and communications, we succeeded in convincing consumers that the cruise was not a product designed exclusively for the rich. This is what we do today with our brands Costa and Aïda," explains Howard Frank.These enormous floating resorts are veritable machines for drawing in new cruise passengers, the "first timers". These fresh followers often constitute half of the clientele on a ship for the general public. Also aimed at these first timers are appealing packages: honeymoon packages (25% of Costa's clientele in Italy), family products with free passage for children under 15 in the summer, athletic holidays. With the democratisation of the cruise, clientele is slowly getting younger. The age of most cruise passengers has already dropped to 45 ans. According to the Passenger Ship Association, the average age was 54.6 year in 2003. No matter what, cruises are finding arguments for catching new clientele: the under 35 age group (13.8% versus 9% ten years ago), couples and families, but singles as well. Before it was taken over by Carnival, P&O launched a product clearly targeting the 25-40 age group in Britain. The ship Ocean Village offers packages with evocative names: Piazzas & pastas in the Mediterranean and Sugar & Spice in the Caribbean. This brand, which relies on the same win-win policy as Aïda, in Germany, is responsible for one third of the 12% growth in number of passengers in the United Kingdom in 2003.
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Amidst the angst of writing cover letters, polishing resumes, and preparing for job interviews, spending time on employment references may fall by the wayside. But judging by the expert advice given by career counselors and employers alike, job references can be equally, if not more important than the rest.
Employment references often are the last step in the hiring process, so the competition has generally been whittled to a very small pool of candidates. A reference from a current or former employer is often the difference between being hired and writing more cover letters, so you should be sure your job references are solid. In an age where many companies are hesitant to do any more than confirm your dates of employment, you'll want to be sure that your employer has positive comments about your contributions.
Choosing the right people to serve as your references is an important choice and one which this article will explore.
You should start by preparing a summary list of potential references and gather their contact information. While your reference doesn't necessarily have to come from an employer, future employers typically prefer to hear what your supervisors and managers have to say about you, rather than what your co-workers think of your work. If you choose to selecting a mix of supervisors, co-workers, clients, and customers, just make sure you have at least a few people who have directly supervised your work. Personal friends or family members should be excluded.
Common courtesy dictates that you ask permission before handing out other people's contact information. After all, they may not want to be contacted by future employers and take time out of their day to answer questions. This means that you should definitely not put anyone's contact info (aside from your own, of course) on your resume. Additionally, you will want to know what this person is likely to say about you and thus whether they would be a good reference.
You should contact your employment references and let them know your situation (hopefully you've already maintained regular contact) and discover for yourself during the conversation whether they would be a good reference. You should feel free to ask them directly what they might answer to some of the questions above, as well as questions directly related to the type of job for which you're applying.
When you speak with your potential reference, remind them of exactly what you did at your old position and your strengths in getting the job done. It may have been awhile since you worked with this person, so reminding them of the quality of your work and bring a copy of your resume to refresh their memory even further.
Discuss your career goals and see what type of feedback you get from them. Presumably you're asking them for an employment reference because you believe they have a favorable opinion about you and/or your work product, so it's likely that most of the people you speak with will be willing to serve as a reference and perhaps go a little further with career advice if they have any.
After you've spoken to a group of people you believe will give you positive references, compile their information (name, company, title, phone, address) in one document and print it out. You should bring this sheet to every interview you have and give it to those employers in whom you have an interest.
Just remember that the employment references are something you've earned and shouldn't be handed out to everyone who asks for a resume. The typical time to give reference information is at the end of an interview (maybe even your second interview). Let the employer request it, don't just throw it at them. If they have an interest in hiring you, they will ask you for references, and that's when you professionally pull it out of your folder.
You should also keep in touch with these references. Keep them abreast of your progress and make sure to thank them each time you get a job--graciousness goes a long way in the professional world. Your references likely have an interest in your future success, so they'll want to know how you're doing professionally, and it also increases their professional network.
Some companies don't release information on former employees other than to confirm the dates of employment. These policies have arisen because of employees suing their former employers for speaking ill of former employees during reference checks and potentially costing them a job. Even if your former company has such a policy, it's wise to speak to your reference and make sure they will serve as good references. During a reference check, your former supervisor may be willing to go off record to say a few positive words if you were an outstanding employee.
Another consideration would be to waive your right to sue a former employee in exchange for the employer's willingness to respond honestly to potential employers. The catch here of course is that you need to double and triple check to confirm that your reference will be unequivocally positive. The last thing you want is to give up your right only to receive poor references.
Letters of recommendation may be necessary in upper level professional settings (e.g., law firms often request such letters from attorney applicants), though they are becoming less common. You should go through the same steps in contacting your references as outlined above, and ask if they would be willing to write a letter. This is obviously more labor intensive on a former employer's part, so you might suggest a general structure which they could follow.
You can give the employment reference tips on how you fit some of the above, but don't be pushy--they have their own opinion and it's off-putting to be told what to write. Because of the time such a letter takes to write, you might also consider giving the writer a small gift, or at least a written note, of appreciation.


Caesars Entertainment Corp., which operates the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, said June 28 that the Indiana Horse Racing Commission and the Indiana Gaming Commission have granted approval for the company to buy Centaur Holdings LLC.
Centaur operates Indiana Grand and Hoosier Park, which averages 6.5 million patrons annually mostly from the Indianapolis and central Indiana areas and serves more than 1.1 million members as part of its loyalty program, the company said. Caesars expects the deal to close by mid-July.
Caesars also operates the Horseshoe Southern Indiana, which serves the southern Indiana and Louisville areas.
Both Hoosier Park and Indiana Grand feature live and simulcast horse racing and have more than 2,000 slot machines and electronic table games as well as live entertainment and multiple dining outlets.


As you explore API documentation, you can't help but bump into curl examples. For the uninitiated, these may look unfriendly and confusing. REST assured (that's an API joke), it's not as bad as it looks. Knowing the basics of curl will help you interact with APIs.
One of the reasons that curl is intimidating is because it can be used a lot of different ways. It works with a bunch of data transfer protocols, but for APIs you'll usually see it use HTTPS and HTTP. That's the same way that web browsers exchange data. See, this isn't so foreign after all.
On success, you'll see a long list of command options. Almost every letter of the alphabet, capital and lowercase, are mapped to commands in curl. That's one of the things that makes it seem difficult.
That means you'll need to install curl. You'll need to download a binary for your operating system. Make double sure you choose a binary option, because getting the source would require you to compile curl on your own system—that's way more complicated than most people need.
Try the example curl command again with the -h (the help option) to make sure you're good to go.
It may seem like hyperbole, but your first curl request is going to space. Well, almost. We'll be calling the Open Notify API to get the number of astronauts currently outside our atmosphere (likely on the International Space Station).
The number of astronauts in space in this case is three, but your result could be different, because Open Notify is always up-to-date. It also provides additional information on the people in space and where they are.
GET is an HTTP method used to read data. These simple API calls don't even require curl—you could load this data directly in your browser.
For more advanced API requests, you'll start to see the value of curl, so let's move on to writing data using a POST request.
You can use curl to read and write all kinds of data. That's what it does! You can use JSON, XML, URL encoded data, and more. When using APIs, new data is often written with a POST request. If you've ever filled out a form on a website, that data is also sent with the HTTP POST method.
It's important to copy from Stripe, because they will give you a test token that works. When writing data you almost certainly will need to authenticate, because otherwise anyone could write data anywhere, including in your account. Stripe gets around this to provide a great developer experience by generating test tokens in their documentation—even if you haven't signed up.
The token is passed with curl's -u flag, which takes a username and password. In this case, the token is the username and the password (which would be on the other side of the :) is blank.
When you perform the operation, you'll get back a big blob of JSON. Success! But, even though JSON was in the response, we haven't quite POSTed JSON yet.
One of curl's many flags is -d, which sends data along with our request. Because curl can be used in so many different ways, this flag is versatile. It can be used once or multiple times (as Stripe does here). By default, curl will send all -d data bunched together with & separating them. It URL encodes the data as would happen with a form (x-www-form-urlencoded).
In the case of Stripe, this is exactly what they're looking for! Other APIs may be looking for JSON directly in the body of the data that you POST.
In this example (which uses example.com and isn't live), you'd write a new coffee shop to a place API. The name and place type are sent along in JSON with the -d flag. Note that the entire JSON is wrapped in single quotes, which allows us to use double quotes in the JSON without things getting really ugly.
There's also some authentication (with the -u flag) and then we also need to tell the server that we're sending JSON. To do that, we add a new Header with the -H flag.
Now that you've made your first GET and POST API requests, take your skills further. Use Twilio, Slack, and (more) Stripe to make and combine API calls. With Hands on APIs for the Casual Coder you'll get five short and fun lessons to master how APIs work.
You're now familiar with the basics of curl, but might have some questions. I've gathered common and anticipated questions below, but feel free to reach out with your own and I'll try to answer them.
When you run it from the command line, it's always lowercase: curl. Additionally, that's how the creator refers to it and how most others write it, as well. Sometimes it's given a capital c: Curl.
The only time it's consistently written with any uppercase letters is for the PHP library, cURL.
What is the difference between wget and curl?
You may already be familiar with another command line utility, wget, which has some similar functionality to curl. The focus of wget is centered on HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP. That means wget is perfectly capable of doing everything shown above.
However, wget only supports basic authentication (username and password), so you might have difficulty accessing APIs with more advanced methods.
The cURL library in PHP can be used to make API and other calls from your PHP code.
There is more curl than simply the command line utility. The curl command we used above is built on a C library called libcurl. PHP's cURL is also based on libcurl.
What is cURL in WordPress?
If you've dove into WordPress source code, you may have seen cURL mentioned. As WordPress is built on PHP, it uses the cURL library to make its own requests. As of WordPress 2.7, there are helper functions like wp_remote_request you can use instead of calling cURL directly.
Twilio and SendGrid are leaders in their infrastructure categories and certainly APIs every developer needs to know. If you've been around the developer community for awhile, you likely already consider these two like twins separated at birth, so maybe then it's natural that they're set to join forces.
Twilio (a leader in telephony APIs) recently announced its acquisition of SendGrid (email services platform), which it expects will close in 2019. Both companies are publicly traded, so these things take time. Together they represent a key expansion of Twilio's communications platform into the tough area of email.
You think bringing the world's telecommunications players under a single API is hard, try dealing with spammers. Unwanted email is the first thing many people think of when they hear about sending email at scale. What SendGrid and any reputable email provider tries to do is ensure the quality of the email they send. Just as Twilio is an API interface into a whole world of telephony, SendGrid is far beyond a simple email server most developers could build.
Think of the commercial emails you actually want to receive. Many people look forward to valuable newsletters or updates from companies they follow. Even if that's not you, receiving an email with a download for something you just bought, a password reset message, or a receipt for a big purchase… these are all the types of email that made SendGrid's name and created the developer-friendly transactional email category.
I worked at SendGrid (and, full disclosure, I'm still a stockholder) and saw the efforts the teams went to build a developer-friendly API, maintain the infrastructure to run at massive scale, and most of all to keep the email high quality. The compliance team had to fire customers for the greater good of the entire platform. They worked with every major email service (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc) to create whitelists and feedback loops. If you've ever tried to get email delivered without the help of a provider like SendGrid, you know how hard it is.
There are quite a few ways you can communicate with people now and APIs to control all of them. Here are some of the largest slices of the pie, along with the likely leader*.
*Those are subjective decisions based upon my own research, but all of these categories have multiple, strong players.
Some other emerging areas of communications infrastructure are rich communications services (RCS or rich messaging) and web notifications. Others might include Slack and similar workplace communications tools. While important, those aren't really oriented toward mass communication nor focused on developer interaction at an infrastructure level.
You can see that with SendGrid's email service, Twilio is leading in several slices of the communications infrastructure pie. Twilio also dabbles in every category in some capacity, but it's hard to really be the best in many categories on your own. The ones who try to build the Communications Everything platform from the ground up end up not excelling in any of the slices.
With its primary focus on telephony, Twilio would have a hard time building SendGrid on its own. Now that it acquired the leader, we'll have to see if it can maintain a suite of best-in-class products. Who knows, maybe Urban Airship is next?
Maps are the most popular way to add location features to your website or mobile app. If a user's whereabouts is important to your application, you'll likely want to visualize your data geographically. For example, any directory, marketplace, or social product will at minimum need to display nearby results.
It's easy to zero in too narrowly on one of these areas. Read on about each approach, but remember to consider the overall tradeoffs between them.
Naturally a big focus for some is on map data and the styling that determines how it is displayed. Similarly, you may want to customize the styles, an advanced approach that can let you choose colors and highlight or remove certain types of map data.
There are only a handful of providers for worldwide geographic data. It's a huge job to gather and maintain every road, park, landmark, and other entities. That's why historically this has been handled by just a few large companies. For example, when Google Maps started, it used Navteq (now owned by Nokia and branded as HERE). Sometime after the acquisition, it switched to TeleAtlas (a subsidiary of navigation company TomTom). While Google has mostly moved on, you'll find many providers still using one or both of these two data providers.
In addition to the location data companies, some map providers have collected their own data. Most notably, Google Maps has been built on Google's own data for some time. Between its satellites, StreetView vehicles, user-generated corrections, and other means, Google's data is now widely regarded as the best available.
MapBox is also notable in its reliance on OpenStreetMap. MapBox supports the long-running community of volunteer mappers, which can often have the most updated cartography, especially in fast-changing locations. Additionally, MapBox is the only provider that lets you bring your own data, in case you have intimate knowledge of a region not covered by others.
The data behind each provider is naturally visualized on the map itself. Though roads, parks, and landmarks are table stakes for maps, some go further. Individual lots, buildings, and even three dimensional structures are included with some maps.
In most cases, colors and what's visible at each zoom level is predetermined by each provider. However, Google and MapBox each have highly customizable interfaces. There are visual editors for styling, though you'll need some technical chops to implement either of them.
For non-customizable providers, you'll want to compare imagery yourself to see if the detail and design meet your needs. Keep in mind that a single provider may have more or less data available in certain regions and at different zoom levels. You'll want to compare by looking at locations you expect to be most used.
Since the launch of Google Maps in 2005, users expect to see satellite imagery. Users often consume satellite images as a way to augment the data-generated map (sometimes referred to as a "hybrid map.") Satellite shots are especially useful with apps aimed at hiking and other large outdoor area use cases.
As with the underlying data, you can expect differences between providers. Again, it's best to view the regions and zoom levels most used in your application.
Google has the head start here, but the differences are less stark. For one, satellites are more common and less expensive now than they used to be. Each provider must still stitch the images together and interpolate the locations.
With modern map APIs, the actual map is just one piece of the experience. You also gain access to an ecosystem of supporting services. For example, you'll need a geocoder to accept address and other input from users. If you need to provide driving directions, a routing engine may be important.
Certain providers are better in one area than another. When it comes to additional services, you may be tempted to bring results from one provider to another's map. The reason you're often adopting an entire ecosystem—a suite of location tools—is embedded in some terms of service. You may only be able to use specific data in combination with its underlying map.
For example, Google's geocoder (which converts addresses into machine-readable coordinates) requires that developers also use Google Maps to visualize the data. Even though a server can make a call to the geocoding API, the result needs to be displayed client-side.
More open-friendly options, such as MapBox, may be more willing to allow results from different services. But you'll need to check the terms of service for both providers when attempting to mix and match.
Other than a map itself, geocoders are the most common location services. Typical geocoding converts an address (or other human-readable location) into something that can be interpreted by machines. Typically, the result of a geocoder is a pair of coordinates—latitude and longitude—that describe a location on earth.
As with other map data, you'll get different results for geocoders based on the provider and the region. Typically, Google's results will outshine others, based on the foundation of location data and user interactions it has available. Try out a few known search terms and see how each performs.
Reverse geocoders, as implied by the name, go the opposite direction. Given a location, often received from the user's GPS, a reverse geocoder will return the nearest address, business name, or other landmark. Often, the interface for a reverse geocoder (function, API, or SDK) is the same as the forward geocoder.
One way to get better user input for searches is to help them with search suggestions. Google made this famous in its web searching product, and comes through for maps, as well. But other providers have solutions to fit what you're after.
Similar to geocoding, which relies on addresses, businesses are often the even-more-human-readable name behind a place. That's where Place APIs come in.
Additionally, you may want to search on particular facets, such as the type of business or whether the business is open now. This type of search may sound familiar from your smart phone's built-in mapping app, or through other services such as Yelp.
You'll find solutions for this within Google, MapBox, and Bing mapping suites. These are available as either part of the map API/SDK, or via a separate service.
Additionally, you can find outside Place APIs, such as Foursquare and Factual.
For years, the Google Maps API was completely free. There were paid versions, but those early options were focused on access to support, reliability agreements, and some flexibility in the terms of service. However, since 2011, Google Maps has had a public paid tier, required of heavy users.
As a startup, MapBox always provided a paid plan. Bing Maps has enterprise pricing, which is not shared publicly.
As of the most recent updates to Google Maps pricing, the most generous free tier is available from MapBox, which provides 50,000 views per month without a charge. Google's 28,000 views per month is still enough for most of the millions of websites that use the search giant's mapping service. Bing pricing is harder to find, but appears to allow 125,000 views per year.
You'll also want to consider costs beyond the service itself. For example, you'll want to consider the developer experience of each API, as that will determine how quickly you'll be able to get up to speed.
Further, you may need to connect some features (such as place auto-suggest) to the map for certain providers, where-as others support the feature natively. And customization options are a two way street: on one hand, changing underlying styles is powerful, but on the other, it takes more developer time than going with default styles.
Check out our map APIs comparison to see how each sits on developer experience, mobile options, and our quick takes for why to use each provider.
When the API is the beer, the API's biggest competitor is the home brewer. Developers love to solve problems. In the face of a new problem, even one with a few complexities, we're often prone to diving in for a solution.
In Bob the Builder, a children's cartoon, Bob asks "can we fix it?" Developers often respond to this question as the construction equipment characters do in the show, with a resounding "yes we can!" Just because we can build something does not mean we should.
Here are three APIs that have recently given developers even less reason to re-solve a problem themselves.
The response includes the total for the order, including the tax required for that particular customer. To make this work, we've partnered closely with both Avalara and TaxJar to build integrations that effectively take care of the calculations for you. They also take on the work of maintaining a canonical (and extensive!) database of tax rules.
Just as Stripe takes away the pain of payment processing, it's now layering on cures for a couple other customer headaches. And it's notable that Stripe has turned to other API companies to do the heavy lifting.
The feature developers have re-built more than any other may be a login and registration system. That makes it both a great opportunity for a service, as well as as service devs might brush off and build themselves. Why pay a User Login API every month? There are many answers to that question and Auth0 has added another.
Auth0 tracks security breaches, because that's their business. Using the leaked data, it can determine accounts under its watch that have the same usernames and passwords. That way, they decrease the risk of password reuse by proactively locking accounts that have the potential to be compromised. Not only is Auth0 helping developers build sound registration systems, now it is helping them protect against future attacks.
Checkout pages are largely the purview of designers and front-end developers. The UX can make all the difference between customers and abandoned carts. Braintree's new beta SDK has a feature to help style your forms.
See the Pen Hosted Fields: Card Form by Braintree (@braintree) on CodePen.
Braintree's hosted fields enable fully styled and interactive payment screens, all while maintaining PCI compliance.
To have complete control over your applications sometimes is used as an excuse to build yourself what someone else can solve. Whether it's taxes, shipping, leaked passwords, or payment form interactions, these three APIs have given additional reasons to talk back to Bob the Builder. Yes, you can build it, but you're better off focusing efforts elsewhere. Let the master beer brewers do what they do best.
MapQuest's modern approach is to suggest their plugin to the popular open source Leaflet library. Super-customization map startup MapBox suggests Leaflet exclusively. In each case, Leaflet holds the standard map controls, using tiles from each provider. Google Maps terms of service do not allow developers to use its tiles outside of the Google Maps API, but there is a Leaflet plugin built as a wrapper for Google Maps.
Do You Want API Billing Data Via API?
When you invite APIs into your stack, they become part of the infrastructure your code is built upon. This is especially true when the API is the beer, as it is for the API comparisons on EveryDeveloper. Yet, since the API is a service someone else runs, you have far less control over it than the rest of your code. When a billing, usage, or pricing endpoint is provided, it helps you keep a closer eye on this auxiliary piece of infrastructure.
MapBox released API analytics, which makes map view and other usage data available programmatically. The animation above shows how you could plot the values in a chart, but you could also build alerts or email reports from the data. You could save yourself, or your team, from logging into the MapBox dashboard.
What do you think? Is it?
MapBox and Twilio are among the great APIs with one thing in common, but that doesn't mean we have to like everything they do.
Meta-features like billing are more table than beer, meaning they support the service rather than are the service. Certainly, the more committed to a platform, the more likely you are to integrate usage data (in fact, MapBox only provides it at the top two tiers). I think it's a sign of a mature infrastructure API, but does the feature alone make you more interested in the service?
Let me know on Twitter or send me a message. I'll incorporate your feedback into future research.
Ever since launching this site I've received many emails with ideas for other comparisons. With thousands of public APIs there are many ways one could compare APIs. How do I focus in on only the APIs that every developer needs to know? I think about beer.
Let's say you're at a bar and ordering a pitcher of your favorite beer. (If you don't drink beer, feel free to substitute your beverage of choice). You set the pitcher down at your table, because hopefully you are sharing the beer with others. Right? That's a lot of beer for one person.
Why are you here? For the beer, obviously.
Yes, you like spending time with your friends, but you could do that anywhere. The table itself is unlikely to have influenced your decision. The beer, in that pitcher in front of you, is likely the thing that has the most interest.
For the vast majority of APIs, they are not the beer in this scenario.
Most APIs are the table. A sturdy foundation, certainly. A place to gather around, yes. But not likely the main attraction. The beer, in the case of most APIs, is a service that the API supports and extends. The service is likely even built on the API.
These "table APIs" are certainly interesting. These are the APIs covered in my Business User's Introduction to APIs. If you're a Salesforce user, for example, you care about using the Salesforce API. If Google Docs is at the center of your business life, you definitely want to be able to automate your workflow.
There are many, many decisions that drive whether you choose a service. The service's API is unlikely to make or break your decision to use it over its competitors. The service itself is what you care about. The service is the beer.
If the majority of APIs support a service, that leaves the minority of APIs where the API is the service.
The APIs every developer needs to know fit this criteria. The API is the beer. It's the reason you've come to the table.
Sales gets to decide which CRM to use. Marketing gets to decide which newsletter software to use. When the API is the service, developers get to decide which brand of beer to buy.
It's through that lens that I'll choose which APIs to compare, so that I can help developers make (and defend) the right choice for their situation.
Now, who needs a drink?
SDKs or libraries are important elements of a good developer experience. That's why the API comparisons include a run-down of available libraries and why this factors into the DX Index. But how do libraries help improve the developer experience? In two primary ways, one of which is illustrated in a new update from one of the User Login APIs.
Why are API libraries important?
The second is absolutely related to the first. With fewer choices to make, a developer can more quickly write code against the API.
We often received this question: because the tokens are cryptographically signed, can I skip the token verification round-trip to the Stormpath REST API? You bet! This was always possible with the local validation strategy option, but in 3.0 we've made local validation the default.
We also refactored our middleware chain, to not attempt to resolve the current user unless you've explicitly requested a resolution with the getUser middleware. We made this change because it was too easy to accidentally require authentication on your public asset routes, and this could cause a serious slowdown if your front-end needs to request a lot of assets during bootstrap.
In the same way that choices degrade user experience, they also can be barriers to entry for developers. One difference is that we usually want APIs that are adaptable to our use case, which might run counter to few choices. The user experience analogy continues to work, as software usually has some base features for everyone and additional power user functionality. The libraries, with their good defaults, help developers get started and work long term for the majority. When you need more, you either change the defaults or move outside of the library to use the API directly.
Your very first experience with an API may be directly via cURL. Your second experience is almost certainly via an SDK or library, which is where good defaults will make you much more familiar with what's possible. In its latest release, StormPath has proven worthy of its DX Index by being thoughtful about its defaults.
Any API that courts developers typically has a whole team of people working to create a great developer experience. In fact, this should be an important factor in choosing an API. If there are no humans behind an API, who will you go to if something goes wrong?
There are many groups that are part of supporting developers, but a Developer Relations team is often on the front lines, with a balance of marketing, support, product, and engineering duties. These developer evangelists or developer advocates attend events, write code, talk to developers, and share sample applications or use cases. It takes a rare person to succeed in the role, and it's highly sought.
We've decided to rethink #battlehack 2016 & are working on new initiatives to engage with you all. Follow @braintree for future updates.
The BattleHack had been a much-promoted, world-wide event for PayPal (Braintree's parent company). According to TheNextWeb, along with shuttering the series of events, Braintree laid off some or all of its developer advocates. The Twitter account meant for communicating directly with developers now points to the main company account.
"Developer advocacy… is at the core of everything that we do," PayPal said in a statement to TheNextWeb. That would be an exciting proclamation if true, but it smacks of spin. Removing the most visible humans behind an API is not the way to gain trust of developers.
Braintree moves a notch down in the DX Index, based on elements of the rating tied to direct support, at least until it shows it really is serious about developer advocacy.


From the notable births of legendary icons Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie to the inaugural recording of America's quintessential musical oeuvre, this year welcomes the 100th anniversary of some of jazz's most important milestones. We invite you to join us as we pay tribute to this enduring legacy by highlighting the musical genre's evolution from Dixieland to modern, performed by a selection of 28 world-class ensembles and virtuosos. The "Imperial Jazz 2017" centennial celebration will first take place in Osaka, August 13th, followed with repeat performances in Tokyo, August 15th and 16th.