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Jpn J Ophthalmol. 2007 Sep-Oct;51(5):347-52. Epub 2007 Oct 5.
Changes in contrast sensitivity function and ocular higher order aberration by conventional myopic photorefractive keratectomy.
Author information
• 1Department of Ophthalmology, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
To evaluate the relation between induced changes in ocular higher order aberrations and changes in the contrast sensitivity function in patients undergoing excimer laser photorefractive keratectomy (PRK).
Myopic PRK using excimer laser was performed in 31 patients (56 eyes). The preoperative refractive error was -6.2 +/- 2.9 diopters. Before and 1 month after surgery, we measured the ocular higher order aberrations for a 4-mm pupil, and three indices of contrast sensitivity function. From the data collected, the area under the log contrast sensitivity function (AULCSF) was calculated.
PRK significantly reduced AULCSF (P = 0.004), low-contrast visual acuity (P = 0.004), and letter-contrast sensitivity (P = 0.013). Coma-like (P < 0.001) and spherical-like (P < 0.001) aberrations were significantly increased by surgery. The change in AULCSF by surgery significantly correlated with the change in coma-like (r = -0.468, P < 0.001) and spherical-like (r = -0.291, P = 0.033) aberrations. The change in low-contrast visual acuity by PRK significantly correlated with the change in coma-like aberration (r = 0.599, P < 0.007), but not with change in spherical-like aberrations (r = 0.136, P = 0.326). There were significant correlations between changes in letter-contrast sensitivity and changes in coma-like (r = -0.450, P < 0.001) and spherical-like (r = -0.255, P = 0.048) aberrations.
PRK significantly increases ocular higher order aberrations, which compromise contrast sensitivity function after surgery.
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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Any Winter Games?
The first modern Winter Olympic games were held in 1924 in Chamonix, France. There was no winter Olympic festival in ancient times. Separate Winter Games were first authorized in 1911 to be held in 1916, but due to World War I they didn’t occur until 1924, in Chamonix.
Starting with Lillehammer in 1994, it was decided that every other year will be an Olympic year (with Summer and Winter Games alternating), rather than holding Summer and Winter Games every 4th year. This was done to accommodate TV networks and audiences. | [] |
Thief Review: Petty
Posted by: Mike Splechta
Gamezone Review Rating 6.5 Above Average
Your Score
Garrett the Master Thief has had a long, ten year hiatus since his last outing in Deadly Shadows. You would think having a long time to gather your thoughts and hone your skills would do a Master Thief good. In reality, it made Garrett all the more rusty. It's a polarizing experience really, with moments teeming with brilliance quickly overshadowed by mission-breaking bugs, bad lip-syncing or overly frequent loading times.
Thief shines in the stealth department, which is a relief considering the game heavily relies on it. Sure, you can brute force your way through guards, knock them out from behind or send an arrow through their skull, but the brilliance of the game lies in figuring out a way around them. In that way, Thief's sneaky moments turn the game into a puzzle. Do you go out of your way to put out all lightsources and stay hidden, or do you take the high ground and sneak above unsuspecting guards? Do you use Garrett's various specialized arrows to put out fires around him, or start them with a fire arrow and cause a distraction long enough for him to slip by unnoticed? Choice is the keyword here, and Thief thankfully has a lot of it to offer. Each new location you come across will serve up a buffet of choices in how to tackle them.
Garrett's arsenal and move set make him a stealth force to be reckoned with. One of the handiest skills is Swoop, which allows Garrett to quickly move ahead a decent distance, making it one of the most indespensible skills when moving between shadows. Seriously, this ability is amazing. Thief also handles first-person running in one of the best ways I've seen thus far. It just seems natural. From the momentum Garrett gains as soon as you press it to actually navigating when running, the whole process seems super smooth.
However the silver linings end there. NPCs in Thief are just plain stupid. Don't get me wrong, I understand the need and importance of guards eventually stopping their pursuit in stealth games, but the way they do it in Thief just seems silly. Here's a scenario. A guard is patrolling near a burning fire. I need to sneak past him, but to do that, I need to dispose of the fire. After shooting my water arrow at it, he gets startled and goes on alert, giving me the chance to sneak by him while he's looking at the fire. That's great, but a mere seconds after, he relights the fire and goes back to his post, ignoring the arrow that's lodged into it. The fact that Garrett turns practically invisible when crouched in shadows also warrants for some silly NPC encounters. For instance, a guard can be standing literally in front of Garrett and not notice him thanks to being in the shadows. You don't even have to hide behind anything.
Like Deadly Shadows before it, Thief allows Garrett to explore the City in between missions. The City also holds numerous challenges, such as side missions to complete for Basso and other various clients. Garrett can break into various homes to steal valuables and increase his gold amount as well pick up a number of collectibles scattered around. As much as I initially liked the open-world like structure of the City, it wasn't long before I grew to loathe it. Getting from one place to the next or simply trying to reach the next mission can be extremely frustrating. Instead of the City being one seamless playground for Garrett, it's separated into various smaller districts, all requiring about 20-30 seconds of loading (played on the PlayStation 4). But it's not as simple as running to a door to get to the next district. These places are separated by windows or barricaded alleyways that you're never fully sure lead to the place you want to go. In one instance, I spent about 20 minutes trying to reach one end of the district and kept running around in circles because the most obvious path was always blocked.
This frustration is further enhanced by the fact that you don't always know what Garrett can or can't climb or jump across. There are a few visual cues that distinguish a scaleable wall, but there are also ledges that seem like they can be climbed on but can't. It's also frustrating when trying to run across a gap, hoping that Garrett will jump across, only to have him jump down into the streets instead. This makes traversing the town in any efficient matter non-existant. It's a shame, since like I previously stated, I absolutely love Garrett's running mechanics.
Yours for the taking
Continuing with the theme of archaic game design is the constantly repeating audio loops of NPCs in the city. If you stay in one place for more than 10 seconds, you'll hear the same conversation looping over and over with the same responses. It's maddening.
Then come the random bugs that completely ruin the immersiveness of the game. Cutscenes will randomly drop framerate, but the sound will still keep playing, ensuring that the rest of the cutscene is completely out of sync with the audio. Garrett also occasionally has various items stuck to his hands in cutscenes, like his bow. One of the worst bugs I encountered (which required me to completely restart a mission) was having an important NPC get stuck to an object. No matter what I did, he wouldn't budge. Goodbye, last 30 minutes.
Visually, Thief is a really good looking game. Sure it's mostly dark and not teeming with color, but it doesn't need to be. The architecture of the City looks absolutely believable. And those unique collectibles, like necklaces and rings look stunning as well.
The sound is a mixed bag. While the soundtrack is mostly great, it has a few odd tunes that would fit more in a horror game than here, though admittedly, there is one mission that takes place in a run down asylum. Voice acting is also mediocre at best. Garrett just doesn't sound likeable, though the supporting case, Basso especially, sound pretty great.
It might be a silly comparison, but Thief is sort of like the poor-man's Dishonored. Both have cities that are plagued with some sort of disease, and both rely on heavy stealth mechanics to keep the plot going. However, Dishonored had much better level design, voice acting, likeable characters and some sweet powers thrown in for good measure. Maybe it's because Thief is a cross-gen game, but many elements of Thief don't really scream next-gen. The amount of loading screens I had to endure during my playthrough was unbearable.
Some might be able to look past Thief's shortcomings and instead only focus on the moments of brilliance. However, I imagine long-time Thief fans hoping for Garrett's grand return might be somewhat disappointed.
[Reviewed on PlayStation 4]
Tags: Thief, Square Enix, Eidos Montreal, Garrett
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The Little Rock National Airport is the largest airport in Arkansas. The airport hosts most major airlines in North America and has regular commercial connections to most major cities in the U.S. There are three smaller regional airports that host domestic and regional flights in and around the state. These can be found in Texarkana, Fort Smith and the Northwest region. For a more leisurely way to get around, why not do part of your journey on the Texas Eagle railroad? The route runs through the state of Arkansas from the northeast to the southwest, and stops in towns and cities such as Walnut Ridge, Little Rock, Malvern and Texarkana. The train runs twice daily. Because of the many outdoor attractions, most people like to drive around Arkansas. If you are not traveling by car from your hometown, you can arrange a rental from any one of the regional airports.
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Arkansas has earned a reputation for being the "Nature State." It has vast wilderness areas where vehicles are not allowed and the only way to explore is on foot or horseback. The landscape is made up of wide fertile valleys, mountains and thick forested areas. The Northwest part of Arkansas forms part of the Ozark mountain range. This wealth of natural assets attracts those who enjoy nature and the outdoors. There is a large number of local outfitters that offer guided trails and excursions through the different regions. If you enjoy hunting or fishing, there are many wilderness areas where you can spend your vacation time. Hiking enthusiasts can follow nature trails and camp at remote wilderness campsites.
It is not just the sporting enthusiasts who will enjoy the region. Arkansas has a rich cultural heritage. There are several important Native American sites, Civil War battle sites, and museums detailing the history and culture of the state. Those with an interest in American culture and history can enjoy visiting the various attractions.
Top Things to See and Do near Arkansas Lake Homes
Arkansas is a destination where you can really have fun exploring the outdoors. Pack the bicycles, canoes and hiking boots before you head off to your destination. The Ozark Mountain region in particular offers a wealth of adventure activities. The most popular are the scenic hiking trails that traverse the mountain slopes and explore the thick forests. Another favorite pastime is to explore the region on horseback. Mountain bikers can spend days exploring the many challenging biking trails in Arkansas. Choose from cross country climbs to some thrilling sections of single-track trails. If you are on a family vacation, you can spend some time on the rivers paddling and fishing. Golfers can also enjoy a few rounds of golf on championship golf courses designed by Robert Trent-Jones.
Best Season to Travel to Arkansas
The majority of Arkansas enjoys a humid subtropical climate which results in hot humid summers and cold dry winters. The northern regions of the state have a more temperate climate, owing to the higher elevation and mountainous regions. Your season of choice for traveling will largely depend on what activities you want to do. The winter months see snow over most of the northern region and snow sports can be enjoyed. In the summertime, the rainfall generally is characterized by dramatic thunderstorms which are relatively short-lived. As long as you are adequately prepared for rain, summertime is a great time of year to explore the many natural attractions that the state has to offer.
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I own none of the characters of October Road
After Eddie and Janet shared their dance, the D.J. put some music on and the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party really started. Eddie and Janet retreated from the dance floor when the music started and they spent the remainder of the evening going around the room, talking to their friends and family, catching up on each other's lives and thanking everyone for coming and celebrating with them. Around midnight, they happy couple decided to call it a night because they weren't as young as they used to be and frankly, they were exhausted. Before leaving, they gathered their children and their families together so they could properly thank them with hugs and kisses.
"This was an amazing night. You guys went above and beyond. Mom and I just wanted a nice, quiet family dinner and this great party and trip down memory lane is what we got. I don't know how to thank you." Eddie told his family.
"You guys have been married for twenty five years." Zach told him. "It deserved to be recognized with a big ass party."
"I thought our wedding was wonderful, but it's nothing compared to tonight." Janet said tearfully.
"Nice try mom. There is no way that this evening could have been better then your wedding was." Amber informed her.
"You're wrong Amber. Yes, our wedding was wonderful but tonight, tonight was all about celebrating a love that started twenty some years ago and is stronger tonight then it was then. What makes this evening spectacular is that my children, the family that your father and I created with our love are here to celebrate with us." Eddie saw that Janet was getting all emotional and he decided to pull her out.
"Come on babe. Let's go home." She nodded and hugged her family. "Will you guys all come over for breakfast in the morning?" The kids all nodded and with a final goodbye Eddie and Janet left, holding hands.
Even though it was only a fifteen minute drive Janet dozed off as soon as the truck started moving and didn't waken again until Eddie was standing next to her, placing soft kisses all over her face. Her eyes fluttered open and the first thing she saw was the loving hazel eyes that she has looked into for the past twenty five years. Smiling, she reached out, pulled his face up to hers and kissed him. "Hmmm. I love you." She whispered when they broke apart.
"I love you too darling. Come on; let's get you to bed sleepy head." Janet allowed Eddie to pull her out of the truck and led her into the house.
Janet had bought a new nightgown for tonight so once they got to their bedroom Janet disappeared into the bathroom to change and freshen up. She let her hair down, applied a cherry flavor edible lotion all over because she knew how Eddie's tongue liked to travel around her body and cherry was his favorite. She slipped on the royal blue silk nightgown on, checked her reflection and stepped into her bedroom. "Eddie." She whispered to his form lying on the bed. "I thought that maybe you might want to do an up close and personal inspection of my new nightgown." When he didn't respond she moved closer to the bed and that's when she heard the snoring. "Oh sweetheart." She sat next to him on the bed and stared at the sleeping man beside her.
As much as she wanted to have sex with her husband she couldn't possibly be mad at him for conking out on their anniversary. It had been a very long day and she got to take a quick nap on the way home but her desire to touch him didn't lessen. Reaching out she gently ran her fingers through his hair, down to his face, tracing every line and finally ending up on his bare chest. The instant she touched his chest Janet heard and felt his breathing pattern change and she knew he was awake. She lifted her eyes to Eddie's face and saw that his were still closed so she decided to play along. Leaning down, she took a hardened nipple in her mouth and sucked, smiling against his chest when she heard him gasp. While working on his nipple with her mouth, she reached out and caressed the other, rolling the hardened nub between her thumb and forefinger.
"You better hurry up. My wife can come in at anytime." He mumbled
"What I have planned for you will take a very long time." She purred as she began to kiss down his chest. "So if you're worried that your wife may catch us…"
"Don't stop." He begged.
"What about your wife?" She tapped his hips and he automatically lifted up and she pulled his boxers down.
"Who cares? All I want is you."
"Well if you're sure."
"Oh yeah. I'm really sure. I want you." Taking a few steps forward, Janet was at the head of the bed and she kissed him.
"What do you want Eddie?" She asked when she finally pulled away, breathless.
"I want you to suck me baby. Please, suck me Janet." He begged.
"I suppose that could be arranged. Scoot over." She demanded and he eagerly followed her instructions.
With a smile, Janet lay on the bed with her head level with her husbands cock. First, she took it in her hand and stroked it nice and slow. When he began to squirm impatiently, she decided to quit torturing him and she took him in her mouth. "Oh God. Son of a bitch Janet. He groaned in pleasure and Janet increased her strokes. Without warning Eddie's fingers were traveling up her legs, between her thighs and he was shoving two fingers inside of her. She unconsciously, she lifted her leg up of the bed, bending it at the knee and resting it on the bed, giving him better access and now it was her turn to groan with desire. She continued to suck him until she felt the familiar bubbling in her stomach and had to pull away to she could shriek in pleasure and not bite him at the same time.
Eddie sat up, pulled her nightgown over her head, tossed it somewhere and their lips crashed together in a passionate kiss. When they broke apart Eddie pushed Janet on her back but she wasn't having it. She wanted to be in control. She pushed Eddie off of her and onto his back. Before he could protest she was on top of him and sliding on to his erection. When Janet bent over so she could kiss him Eddie knew what had to be done. He placed his feet flat on the bed, bending his knees at the same time and he began to pump himself furiously into her while holding her flush to his chest until the both were shouting in orgasmic bliss.
"Happy anniversary babe." Eddie whispered as they both snuggled up with each other.
"It's after midnight. It's no longer our anniversary." Janet pointed out.
"I'm still awake so in my mind it's out anniversary so Happy anniversary hon."
"Happy anniversary cowboy. I love you."
"I love you more." Janet giggled and decided not to argue with that.
"By the way, you looked absolutely beautiful in your new nightgown." He whispered lovingly before he drifted off to sleep. Janet smiled in the darkness because she didn't think he even noticed it but it didn't surprise her. Eddie always noticed everything about her.
Janet climbed out of bed early the next morning, showered and stared making breakfast, hours before Eddie woke up and by the time he managed to crawl out of bed and the kids and their kids arrived at their childhood home Janet had scrambled up a couple dozen eggs, fried a few pounds of bacon, whipped up a box of instant pancakes and toasted up a couple loaves of bread. As her family grew Janet learned to cook for an army and if anyone left the Latekka house hungry it was their own fault.
After they all had full bellies they were relaxing in the living room when Emily and Jordan brought a wrapped gift in the room. "What is this?" Eddie asked suspiciously.
"You guys us that amazing party. We don't need anything else."
"It's from the kids. You can't say no to a gift from your grandchildren can you mom because if you did that would be just wrong." Natalie played the grandchildren card knowing her parents wouldn't say no to that. "Fine." Janet agreed.
Knowing the rules Eddie handed Janet the gift and the card. Whenever they got a gift that was meant for both of them Janet always opened the card, handed it off to Eddie and then opened the gift. When Eddie finished reading the card that had their grandkids name on it he hadn't heard anything from Janet. When he looked over at her he saw her staring at some paper in her hands with tears rolling down her face. "Honey?" She handed him what was in her hand. "Oh my God." He whispered. The kids arranged and paid for a two week trip to Paris, France for them.
"This is so thoughtful and wonderful but it's too much. It's way too much."
"We didn't do it. Your grandchildren…"
"Nice try Amber. Your mom and I know damn well your kids didn't buy this trip."
"Technically no they didn't." Zach agreed.
"The tickets are non refundable so if you don't take the trip none of us can get our money back and then talk about a waste of money." Collin added and Janet glared at him. Amber, Zach and Collin looked at their older sister because they new if any of them could convince their parents it was Natalie.
"Mom, dad, you have both spent the last twenty five years spending everyday raising, taking care of us and our kids. You two deserve this trip, more than anyone. Mom we know that you have been dreaming of a romantic trip to Paris for years. Your first trip was a disaster and even though you tried to hide it, we all know how disappointed you were that it wasn't anything like you dreamed it would be." Eddie and Janet smiled sheepishly. "We talked about it and we have all been contributing to this trip since right after you guys got home. We actually paid it off last year. Please mommy, please daddy, take this trip. You have earned it." Janet knew that Natalie had many valid points but she wasn't ready to give up quite yet.
"According to the plane ticket our flight is scheduled for tomorrow. That's not enough time for us to make arrangements. Your father and I have responsibilities."
"Really mom?" Natalie asked. "You must be ready to give in if that's the best excuse you can come up with. We have planned this trip so we have known your departure date. Daddy, we are totally covered for the next couple weeks. I made sure of it and mom you watch our kids during the day. We have all arranged alternate care for them. Sure it won't be as good as Grammy's house but for two weeks it will work."
Eddie and Janet looked at each other and without speaking they came to a mutual decision. "All right guys, first of all mom and I want you to know how grateful that your mom and I am to you for this extraordinary gift. Every day we are reminded what amazingly, wonderful children we raised."
"Duh." Amber said and everyone laughed.
"Thank you all, thank you so very much." Janet whispered tearfully.
"So does that mean that you're accepting your gift?" Collin asked.
"Yes we are accepting your generous gift."
"So you found our reasons convincing?" Zach inquired.
"We did and I know that your mom really, really wants to go." Eddie answered and Janet agreed.
"What about you dad? Do you want to go?" Natalie asked.
"Yeah pumpkin I do."
Eddie and Janet left the following day for the anniversary trip to Paris. This time all of their flights were on time and they arrived in Paris as scheduled. The hotel that they kids booked for them was beautiful. It was an old mansion which had been converted into a luxurious hotel that sat on a lake. Since they were staying in Paris for two weeks they spent lots of time in their room making love and many nights out in a canoe on the lake talking, laughing, and kissing under the stars.
They went to all of the best restaurants with the exception of where they went the last time when they got food poisoning. They went to every tourist attraction that they could find. Eddie even relented and spent two days at The Louve with Janet. Art really isn't Eddie's cup of tea but because Janet wanted to go to the famous museum he went through every inch of the museum with a smile on his face. He would never deny his wife anything that she wanted, even if he hated every minute of it.
Once Eddie and Janet returned home life continued to move on and change for the Latekka family. A month after her parent's got back from their trip Natalie gave birth to a healthy little girl named Olivia Edith Rowan. Janet begged her daughter to change Olivia's name but Natalie refused. She wanted Olivia to have part of her mother's name. Amber and Nate finally had a little girl, the little girl that Amber had been yearning for, a little girl that Amber named Courtney, a name that she had picked out when she was a little girl and Zach and Tammy completed their family with a son, Max.
Meanwhile Collin completed college and then medical school. He ended up specializing in children with diabetes. Collin felt because he has had diabetes since he was two and he never remembered not having diabetes he would be able to relate to his patients. He was very good as his job and his patients adored him. Gay marriage never became legal but Jamie and Collin had a commitment ceremony and became life partners. Like any other couple they eventually wanted children. They considered adoption but the state was giving them a really hard time so Amber stepped up and offered to carry a baby for her brother since being pregnant was one of Amber's favorite things in the world. Collin and Jamie picked an egg donor, each man gave a sample and Amber was implanted with two embryos, hoping at least one would take. In fact not just one but both of the embryos took and Collin and Jamie were by Amber's side in the delivery room when she gave birth to their fraternal twin boys, Aiden Edward and Jaden James. As soon as they were born it was obvious that Collin was Aiden's father because Aiden was born with the same red hair as his father and Jaden had dark hair like his father. So the boys would know that both men were their father, regardless of their biology, Aiden was given Jamie's last name and Jaden was given Collin's last name but it was never an issue, Aiden and Jaden always knew that they were loved and adored by their dads.
Janet continued to watch her grandchildren everyday until the twins were in school and when that happened her heart broke a little bit. She attempted to go back to work a Sully's but she realized that her heart wasn't in it anymore so she finally sold it. All of her children had their own careers and family and none of them had time to manage the bar so it left the family. She split the money from the sale among her nine grandchildren equally and put into the savings account that she and Eddie had started and continued to contribute to every month. Until Eddie retired she spent most of her time volunteering at the kids' schools.
Eddie continued to work until he had a second mild heart attack and his doctors told him that he was done. Thankfully this heart attack was so mild that it did not require any surgery but it scared him enough not to argue with his physician when he was told to quit working. He loved his job but he loved his wife and family more. He knew that he wouldn't be around forever and neither was Janet and he didn't want to miss out on they time that they had left together.
Retirement was wonderful for both Janet and Eddie. After so many years of getting up and going to work everyday it was a shock to their systems that they could lay around in bed all day, sleep in or hang around the house in their pajama's if that's what they wanted to do. Their lives were finally their own to do with what they wanted. Eddie took Janet fishing and he taught her how to golf, something as it turned out that she loved. Janet in the meantime got Eddie into gardening, a hobby she picked up and Eddie surprised himself by having a green thumb and she taught him how to cook more than grilling and boiling of hot dogs that he was great at but most of the time Eddie and Janet could be seen walking through Knights Ridge hand in hand just talking and being together.
Eventually the couple sold their treasured home that had been the foundation of so many wonderful memories and they moved into a small two bedroom condo. Janet missed her big home but she had developed arthritis and keeping up on it got to be too much for her. The worst thing about selling the house for Janet was their new condo was too small to have everyone over at once for family dinners and holidays but the kids tried to help her out with that. They continued to have their weekly dinners but they alternated between Natalie, Amber, Zach and Collin's homes with Janet showing up early and doing most of the cooking. Holidays were the same. Dinner was held at one of the kids' homes after Pops and Grammy made their Christmas morning rounds to see all of the gifts that their grandchildren received for being such good children. Basically what it boiled down to was that if Eddie and Janet could be with their family then it was all good.
Six months into their 48th wedded year together Janet was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. Eddie was devastated and terrified for his wife but he remained strong and how could he not when Janet was being incredibly brave and strong enough for the both of them. At first her medication worked great and for that reason alone Eddie and Janet decided to keep her diagnosis to themselves. They didn't want to upset their children or grandchildren when there really was no reason to. For nine months Janet's medication worked fine but eventually it stopped working and when that happened her cardiologist told her she maybe only had a few months left.
Eddie broke down in the doctor's office, the knowledge that his Janet was going to die was just too much for him to handle. The older he got the more death was a part of their lives and many nights, he prayed that he would go first because he knew he wouldn't be able to make it without her but obviously his prayers weren't answered. When they got home, Janet talked about the technicalities of her death like her funeral for example without shedding a tear but when they got into bed that night and Eddie wrapped his arms around her the damn broke and she cried until she fell into a restless sleep. That night and many nights thereafter, Eddie spent them lying awake and staring at the woman he loved more than anything.
When the news of their mother's diagnosis reached Natalie, Amber, Zach and Collin they all felt as if their hearts were getting cruelly ripped out of their chests. Their mother was such a huge, important part of their lives and none of them could or wanted to imagine their lives without her in it but now, they had no choice but to start imagining. During her last few months of life Janet was constantly surrounded by her children, grandchildren and she made sure that each of them knew how much they meant to her.
Eddie on the other hand, never left her side. He tried numerous times to have the "last" conversation, but Janet didn't want to have that conversation because she knew, how much he loved her and that's all that mattered in the end. He was terrified that if he left her, even for one minute that would be when she would be gone when he returned. Nighttime was the worst. He spent most nights lying awake listening to her breathe praying that she makes it through another night but sadly one night she didn't.
When Eddie awoke that morning, after sleeping for maybe an hour, he rolled over and reached out for her and when his hand touched her she was cold. Even though he knew what it meant he shook her and called her name but she didn't respond. Sobbing he pulled her upper body into his lap and cradled her as he sobbed and stroked her hair until Natalie found them and took care of the heartbreaking details.
Eddie never really recovered from Janet's death. When she died, she took his heart with her. He actually spent the night before her funeral at the funeral home holding her hand and talking to her. After he buried his beloved wife Eddie Latekka just went through the motions of living. He sold the condo because he couldn't stand living there without her and moved in with Amber since Jordan had moved out on his own and she had an extra room. If he wasn't lying in his room staring at the ceiling he was at the cemetery with his wife. Even though he had their kids and grandkids with him all of the time he had never felt more alone.
The morning of what would had been her parent's fiftieth wedding anniversary Amber went to her father's room to check on him and found that he had passed away. Natalie, Amber, Zach and Collin assumed that their father died of a broken heart and he died on what would have been their fiftieth anniversary because he couldn't go through that day without her. He promised Janet fifty years and since she wasn't here he went to where she was to celebrate fifty wonderful years together. Natalie, Amber, Zach and Collin were heartbroken over the loss of their parents six months apart and as much as they were hurting they knew that their parents were once again together, as they were always meant to be. When Eddie and Janet left this earth they left a big hole in the hearts and lives of their family, a hole that could never be closed but more importantly they behind a legacy of true loved that will be carried on through generations.
The End.
I hope you all enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. | [] |
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NYC-Bound Flight Grounded After ‘Non-Credible’ Threat
An American Airlines flight bound for New York from San Francisco was grounded for five hours after a phoned-in hijacking threat, which has since been deemed “non credible” by the San Francisco police and other law-enforcement authorities. After the call, the plane was taken to a remote location where passengers were interviewed and re-screened while the airplane was searched. An original report said two people were taken off the plane in handcuffs in conjunction with the threat, but the AP is reporting that the removed couple told authorities they were “picked at random for questioning.” A Yale sophomore on the flight posited their appearance may have led to their selection: "It definitely seems like it was racial profiling, based on what they look like physically and the fact they are Pakistani
. It seems like this was a false accusation," he told the AP. (Other passengers refuted this claim, explaining the twosome “looked like typical Californians.”) The FBI confirmed two passengers were taken off the plane “separately,” but refused to “discuss the specifics why.”
Jetliner grounded in San Francisco after threat [AP via MSNBC]
Hijack threat grounds New York-bound flight in San Francisco [NYP]
Photo: Jeff Chiu/AP | [] |
grand tactics
The topic grand tactics is discussed in the following articles:
• TITLE: tactics (military)
SECTION: Evolution of the term
...but over time each has acquired both a prescriptive and a descriptive meaning. There have also been attempts to distinguish between minor tactics, the art of fighting individuals or small units, and grand tactics, a term coined about 1780 by the French military author Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert to describe the conduct of major battles. However, this distinction seems to have been lost... | [] |
Chapter 9. The Berkeley DB Environment
Table of Contents
Database environment introduction
Creating a database environment
Opening databases within the environment
Error support
DB_CONFIG configuration file
File naming
Specifying file naming to Berkeley DB
Filename resolution in Berkeley DB
Shared memory regions
Remote filesystems
Environment FAQ
Database environment introduction
A Berkeley DB environment is an encapsulation of one or more databases, log files and region files. Region files are the shared memory areas that contain information about the database environment such as memory pool cache pages. Only databases are byte-order independent and only database files can be moved between machines of different byte orders. Log files can be moved between machines of the same byte order. Region files are usually unique to a specific machine and potentially to a specific operating system release.
The simplest way to administer a Berkeley DB application environment is to create a single home directory that stores the files for the applications that will share the environment. The environment home directory must be created before any Berkeley DB applications are run. Berkeley DB itself never creates the environment home directory. The environment can then be identified by the name of that directory.
An environment may be shared by any number of processes, as well as by any number of threads within those processes. It is possible for an environment to include resources from other directories on the system, and applications often choose to distribute resources to other directories or disks for performance or other reasons. However, by default, the databases, shared regions (the locking, logging, memory pool, and transaction shared memory areas) and log files will be stored in a single directory hierarchy.
It is important to realize that all applications sharing a database environment implicitly trust each other. They have access to each other's data as it resides in the shared regions, and they will share resources such as buffer space and locks. At the same time, any applications using the same databases must share an environment if consistency is to be maintained between them.
Database Environment Operations Description
db_env_create() Create an environment handle
DB->getenv() handle Return DB's underlying DB_ENV handle
DB_ENV->close() Close an environment
DB_ENV->dbremove() Remove a database
DB_ENV->dbrename() Rename a database
DB_ENV->err() Error message
DB_ENV->failchk() Check for thread failure
DB_ENV->fileid_reset() Reset database file IDs
DB_ENV->open() Return environment's home directory
DB_ENV->open() Return flags with which the environment was opened
DB_ENV->lsn_reset() Reset database file LSNs
DB_ENV->open() Open an environment
DB_ENV->remove() Remove an environment
DB_ENV->stat() Environment statistics
db_strerror() Error strings
DB_ENV->version() Return version information
Environment Configuration
DB_ENV->set_alloc() Set local space allocation functions
DB_ENV->set_app_dispatch() Configure application recovery
DB_ENV->set_cachesize() Set the environment cache size
DB_ENV->set_data_dir() Set the environment data directory
DB_ENV->set_encrypt() Set the environment cryptographic key
DB_ENV->set_errcall() Set error and informational message callbacks
DB_ENV->set_errfile() Set error and informational message FILE
DB_ENV->set_errpfx() Set error message prefix
DB_ENV->set_event_notify() Set event notification callback
DB_ENV->set_feedback() Set feedback callback
DB_ENV->set_flags() Environment configuration
DB_ENV->set_isalive() Set thread is-alive callback
DB_ENV->set_intermediate_dir_mode() Set intermediate directory creation mode
DB_ENV->set_shm_key() Set system memory shared segment ID
DB_ENV->set_thread_id() Set thread of control ID function
DB_ENV->set_thread_count() Set approximate thread count
DB_ENV->set_thread_id_string() Set thread of control ID format function
DB_ENV->set_timeout() Set lock and transaction timeout
DB_ENV->set_tmp_dir() Set the environment temporary file directory
DB_ENV->set_verbose() Set verbose messages | [] |
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avatarUdut, Kenneth -- on Jul. 18 2008, from Golden Gate Estates, Naples, FL
Founder of this Naples site of NeighborHelp Referrals.
One of the dumbest ideas around.
The "Zeno effect" is based on the philosopher Zeno, who put forth the paradox:
Whereas the first two paradoxes presented divide space, this paradox starts by dividing time - and not into segments, but into points.[7] [from wikipedia] "
Interesting but dumb in today's world. [even in the world of the 19th century!]
Take a series of successive photographs very quickly. Show them all in a series. You have what looks like motion.
But you're fooled. It's an optical illusion of film. A series of fixed pictures put together looks like motion.
Now is reality a series of fixed pictures and no motion actually occurs?
No, I think motion does occur. I just see it as another example of catching the baseball. You catch the baseball here, then here, then here, then here. If you let go of the baseball in each of the locations where you caught it, you have to let go of the baseball in a paricular order in order to simulate what motion looks like.
But by catching the ball, you've stopped motion. To recreate it mathematically, the order in which you recreate the baseball moving it in a particular order, otherwise you recreate a reality that didn't exist in the first place. Switch the numbers around and the baseball goes backwards but only in an illusionary recreation of what motion seems like -- just like a film.
The act of observation - measuring - DOES "ruin the moment", sort of like asking the composer in the middle of composing a piece, "Hey, what's your next note going to be?" Once you've interrupped the composer, you've made it hard for him to get back on track. But give enough time, and he can. [I know because when I am "in the zone" and playing new stuff on the piano, any interruption at all ruins the 'NOW', then 'FLOW']
By choosing to use particle calculations to measure a quantum state, you're stopping its motion in mid-stream and asking, "Okay, if you were a fixed object, where would you be fixed?" You stike it with a photon (that's "shining a light on it" - literally) - and the quanta freezes so to speak - you've hit it over the head to ask it a few questions and it takes time to recover.
Now does that mean that observation by humans changes reality? No. It just means that it's a crappy way to measure reality by taking a wave-particle and measuring it like a particle. Well, of COURSE it will give you a particle-style answer.
And if you measure it like a wave, of course it will not show you its "particle ways" because that's NOT what you were measuring.
If you come up with a way to measure waves and particular simultaneously, THEN you'll do alright and be able to measure a quanta's location and movement.
Bah, it's starting to make sense but some of this stuff is quite irritating.
Simplify3 on Jul. 18 2008 edit · delete
Okay, that's cool. See, that explains the problem in quantum physics. It's not that observation "changes" things. It just means that we are NOT YET CAPABLE of measuring a subatomic objects "POSITION" AND "DIRECTION" at the same time.
It's inconceivable for an object to have a definite position and motion simultaneously...
So... "Where are you?" and "Where are you going?" are separate questions. if you could answer them at the same time in a subatomic mathematical way, then you've solved the riddle of quantum states, no?
Kenneth Udut again.
Simplify3 on Jul. 18 2008 edit · delete
Ah ha. Gotcha wondering?
Einstein figure it out, at least for big things, how to measure time and space simultaneously.
" The theory of special relativity answers Zeno's concern over the lack of an instantaneous difference between a moving and a non-moving arrow by positing a fundamental re-structuring the basic way in which space and time fit together, such that there really is an instantaneous difference between a moving and a non-moving object, insofar as it makes sense to speak of "an instant" of a physical system with mutually moving elements. Objects in relative motion have different planes of simultaneity, with all the familiar relativistic consequences, so not only does a moving object look different to the world, but the world looks different to a moving object "
If only people were paying attention to Zeno, they'd have figured Special Relativity a thousand years ago.
Simplify3 on Jul. 18 2008 edit · delete
" Some people, including Peter Lynds, have proposed alternative solutions to Zeno's paradoxes. Lynds posits that the paradoxes arise because people have wrongly assumed that an object in motion has a determined relative position at any instant in time, thus rendering the body's motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived. Lynds asserts that the correct resolution of the paradox lies in the realisation of the absence of an instant in time underlying a body's motion, and that regardless of how small the time interval, it is still always moving and its position constantly changing, so can never be determined at a time. Consequently, a body cannot be thought of as having a determined position at a particular instant in time while in motion, nor be fractionally dissected as such, as is assumed in the paradoxes (and their historically accepted solutions). "
Oh, I like that idea far better than the stinky calculus solution.
But, wow, Peter Lynds isn't any different than me. Not a PhD, just a guy who did a little thinking.
I don't think it means that time doesn't exist though. It just means that you either measure motion with an object in space by taking a snapshot, which gives you a location at that instant, or you look at overall motion by comparing what happened inbetween the time that an object was at rest, then motion, then rest again without chopping up the motion into little bits and pieces using slices of time.
You can watch a butterfly flutter its wings or you can pin it to a board. If you pin it to a board, you can pick it apart (akin to slices of time) but it can't fly anymore because it's dead. You can shoot xrays at it to see its innards but then that'll eventually kill it too. [ie - change its properties]. It says something about our observatoin methods as being very coarse and destructive, not that nature can't be observed at all. We're like the archaeologists of the early 20th century, using cranes and backhoes to excavate. Now they use paintbrushes to clean away dirt more carefully so less gets destroyed.
Simplify3 on Jul. 18 2008 edit · delete
" Actually, you cant know the exact position and velocity of an object at the same time. In quantum physics this is especially relevant because, for example, to see something a photon must bounce off it. but a photon to a quantum particle carries a lot of energy so when it hits that particle it moves it as it is deflected. So you see the photon as it was at the moment of collision yet the thing you are trying to measure has already moved because of that photon. "
Zeno-effect: quick observations stops time, space and decay? One of the dumbest ideas around. | [] |
Subject: Stuck during gnome meta-package install
To: None <>
From: Trey Sizemore <>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 06/27/2005 18:44:21
I'm attempting to install the gnome meta package on a new NetBSD 2.0
install and it gets to a point where it prompts:
===>Patching for gst-plugins-0.8.9nb1
===>Applying pkgsrc patches for gst-plugins-0.8.9nb1
File to patch:
I'm not sure what it's looking for here and if it doesn't proceed, it
just stops.
What is it expecting?
devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.
FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE i386 i386 GENERIC
6:41PM up 1 day, 8:36, 0 users, load averages: 0.42, 0.15, 0.09 | [] |
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Young Robbers, Sunday October 29 2000
When I was still at school ten years ago, I was mugged by a young robber on the way home. However, when one is mugged, one usually is threatened to hand money over to the person. I never carried money with me when I was at school so how could I hand any money over? The problem at the time was that I was about the same age as the person who mugged me and I thought that when I reported it to the police, they would probably put my case as a second rated incident. I thought that if I was elderly or more vulnerable, I would have got better help. Another thing about the mugging was that the mugger was black. I didn't really want to report it, in case people would get the wrong idea and would think that I was a racist and it was a grudge against the person. Since that attack, I have found out that I am in a vulnerable position as I am now disabled. What bothers me is that they go around town centres "taxing" other young people and passers by think nothing of it as they probably think that as both victim and robber are of the same age, they are probably just on the same wavelength. These robbers don't have to play truant to do their stuff; they just wait till Saturday and do it then so that people like myself are too afraid to go out at the weekends.
George Handley
The most striking point about the whole programme for me was the fact that no one was worried by the clearly stereotypical portrayal of muggers in Birmingham. If the police are to be believed and young black males are responsible for much of the crime in Britain today then why is it the case that in rural areas where crime rates are rising rapidly the numbers of ethnic minorities are negligible if present at all. Just like the problems faced with the combat of drug abuse people are quick to point the finger at the easiest target. The rise in Drug use is seen as again a "black issue" but anyone who knows anything about drugs will tell you that the majority of money spent on drugs and cocaine particularly in this country is by white middle-class professionals or students. This is an issue that has never been raised by the police who find it easier to blame a black population who have no real voice. Yes young black males are responsible for some of the crime that is being perpetrated in many urban areas, but this hard line policy is only going to have one real result and that is to cause greater friction between the black community and the police and this supposedly isn't what the police want. Let's try and find out the real reason why people commit crimes and try and solve those rather than returning back to the days when men were stopped simply because of the colour of their skin. It's a black and white problem because we live in a black and white society.
Kwaku Boakye-Adjei
My three teenage sons and their mates have been robbed numerous times in South Manchester. It's been under-reported in the media and politics because teenage lads aren't as vocal as car-owners in the 'political' world. So we're pleased your programme has been made. I've discussed the programme and these comments with eight of them. As far as the stop and search of suspected thugs goes, we recognise the possibility of racism. But certainly round here, they are more often black than you'd expect. Our kids say it's an attitude thing, that being black means they think they've got to be hard, and these days robbing is the first option in demonstrating hardness. We know that in Salford and Wythenshawe, and probably in Newcastle or other areas with few black people, there's plenty done by white thugs too. But all the police have to do to avoid racist bias, surely, is check the victim reports on racial type of offenders, and ensure the proportion they stop are comparable? Stop and search is a dodgy procedure, and could lead to widespread harassment of young people. But we don't think it's too difficult to spot the types - clothes and haircut can be indicators but body language, hoods pulled down unnecessarily, and neckerchiefs over faces enable the spotting of real thugs. If some non-thugs affect the appearance and body language of thugs, they can't complain if they're stopped, can they? Also the police often do have intelligence on who's most doing it, and can easily target them for stop and search without discriminating or harassing innocent young people.
E McDonnell
I think that the police are doing the right thing. In the last 4 years I have seen a lot of crime in B'ham city centre and I think something should be done about it.
Has burglary been forgotten? It is my experience that the same people that go out and commit street robbery are also behind many burglaries. It is all the more frustrating when you know who committed the crime, yet due to the law being the way it is, the police are unable to just go and arrest someone on your "Gut Feeling" no matter how certain you may be. I was recently burgled, and I knew who by, however the police could not arrest that person as there was no independent witness. I have been forced to move home, taking the remnants of my business, which was all but destroyed by the thoughtless burglars who saw my PC as just a toy, or something to sell.
Three things struck me about this programme: The first is that world they were describing was not so different to the one I inhabited as a child in Manchester, except that the children had more valuable goods to be stolen. None the less what we had, dinner money rather than mobile phones, was just as vulnerable. The second point is the role that the war on drugs, mainly used and accepted by younger people, has in needlessly setting up conflict between the police and young people - especially the war against cannabis. This was true when I was young in the 70's, and with the increase of recreational drug use amongst young people, must be even more true today. These foolish laws result in the criminalisation of large sections of society, especially the young and members of ethnic minorities, and it is no wonder that the people so criminalised are reluctant to trust and support the police. The final point is that, whatever changes have taken place in the ethos of the police and in their methods, they are just as crass as ever when it comes to trying to be pally with youths. I would not have thought that social ineptitude would be a desirable characteristic in such a human centred job, but it seems to be the norm!
Mike Gowland
An excellent programme highlighting the seriousness of street crime in the Birmingham area. I have been mugged at knifepoint three times in the past six months in the town of Walsall where I lived and was afraid to even leave my flat after dark alone. Although I am a strong healthy nineteen year old lad the abundance of violence on the streets made me terrified of anyone who even looked suspicious. I even took to carrying a length of metal pipe when going out despite the fact it was illegal fearing the harm which may befall me far more than any criminal prosecution. A clean criminal record is worthless if you are dead. Despite concerns over the use of the 'stop and search' measures used by police I feel that if a hundred innocent people are stopped for every one attack prevented then the initiative is definitely worthwhile. Being stopped should only be a problem for someone who has something to feel guilty about. Serious action is required to make the streets safe for everyone, not just the most violent people around. I hope police and authorities can find some way of effectively tackling this problem which in some areas is ridiculously out of control. In ten months of living in Caldmore Walsall I was stopped for cash, cigarettes or even clothing a total of seven times, three times with a weapon, and twice suffered violence when I refused to co-operate. I did not report these incidences to police as I felt they could do nothing to help me and such action may cause further problems if the police did actually find the perpetrators. Also both of my flatmates were attacked at different times and one was hospitalised suffering memory loss after a beating. Thank you again for the programme which was definitely the best I have ever seen on the subject and I hope it helped others to appreciate the gravity of the situation as it is today.
Adam Ross
Having watched yet another programme about young people and crime, I am again frustrated and angered by the lack of imagination in official places such as politicians and the police, in dealing with this issue. As a young man I was involved in many criminal acts myself. I know that what frightened me away from an area was a vigilant public on the lookout for criminals. I wonder if a simple, cheap, and easy solution would be providing short wave single channel radios to trained members of the public (volunteers), to report all suspicious activity in their areas directly to the police. Descriptions would be immediate, timing instantaneous, and the whole thing would be more effective and cost a lot less than having endless vans full of police officers cruising the streets. As an EX criminal (I have been out of trouble for 15 years) I know the feeling that the person over the road, or looking through their curtains could be in direct touch with the police and giving an accurate and detailed description of me at the time, would have terrified me. What is more, if those people that were trained to do this were instructed to keep it quiet, I would have no idea who they were so reprisals would be non-existent! Unfortunately I had a great deal of experience with crime and I know what makes the average criminal think. That experience is very valuable surely? I am straight now, and very proud of it. I kicked the habit of crime, by the grace of God. Perhaps this little idea, if taken up, would mean I could put something back. If not, well at least I tried.
George Rolph
Concerned that the Police are using an item of legislation which had clear objectives on its inception; that being to deal with crimes related to football hooliganism and related crime. However it is now being used with the right to stop and search without suspicion. This must be contrary to the HRA 1998. It is also a misuse of Parliaments' authority in that the legislation is being used for other than that which Parliament originally intended. Should not Police Chief Constables be obliged to use legislation for its original purpose and objective until otherwise changed by Parliament.
Keith Carr
Two things :- Calling the Police racist is such a cop-out! If the statistics show that people are from a particular (identifiable) group, then of course they will target that group. To do otherwise would be too dumb even for the coppers! All these kids out mugging and where are their parents!
Andy Wood
Having lived in Brixton for 6 years I was not surprised to see that young black males topping the statistics for street crime. I personally have been the victim of 2 street robberies, one of which put me in hospital with a serious eye injury. Both these crimes were perpetrated by black youths. I am not saying that all black people are criminals, indeed nothing of the sort, but there does seem to be a problem in areas of south London with black street crime and also a large degree of racism and bigotry from in particular the West Indian community. I was kind of disgusted by the reactions of many black people who spoke on the programme. There seems to be an unwillingness to approach the subject and to face up to some hard facts. Many of the more radical black thinkers seem to portray black youth as being artists, poets, thinkers etc that are having their potential stifled by the white man. Having lived amongst certain sections of these people I can say that there seems to be a glorification of bad attitude in movements such as the raggamuffins, who have very little positive attributes and whose most common features seem to be aggression, bigotry, misogyny, homophobia and idiocy. Why doesn't the black community take a harder line on these idiots rather than trying to divert blame onto wider society. We all know that the police are institutionally racist ,and not just against blacks e.g. look at the hassle given to New Age Travellers and road protestors for example. Also the white community is expected, and rightly so, to expose and distance themselves from neo nazis and other such scum. I don't see much difference between them and the raggas myself. Let's put these idiots, whatever their cultural background on the spot. Then we might get somewhere.
Why is it that black people accuse police of being racist when that is not the case? Most muggings that take place in Birmingham are committed by blacks. Why can't the black community understand that? That makes it difficult for the police. That's why so many innocent teenagers are approached. Jon-Marc, who featured on the programme, used to go to my school. He was known for being a bully, but sometimes he was a great guy. I live in Harborne, which I think is the safest place in Birmingham. But I become anxious when I go to places such as Handsworth and the City Centre.
Chris Allen
Harborne, Birmingham
It's the innocent people of Handsworth who are the victims as a result of the West Midlands Police Force's failure to police the streets of Handsworth. The lack of constructive policing in Handsworth has allowed Handsworth to become a criminals haven. The laughable number of police patrolling Handsworth makes it easy for any criminal to commit a crime and avoid capture.
Vinod Karra
Sadly this problem is now prevalent in most of the UK. It was comforting to see that your programme recognises this and that the problem must be dealt with before it ruins every day life.
Young people need to be exposed to the value of kindness and the sensitivities of other people
Chris Smith, Wanstead
If we are to deal with this problem and make quick improvements we need psychologists to work with schools to develop a programme consisting of films, posters, essays, improvisations etc. The programme should be implemented in schools to pupils from the age of say 8 or 9 onward and relentlessly. The poster campaign should run in schools, tube stations and bus stops, cleverly demeaning people who take part in such crimes and guide individuals away from cowardly gang mentality and more toward self respect; raising morale and offering suggestions of more rewarding things to do. Young people need to be exposed to the value of kindness and the sensitivities of other people. It should be taught as Religious Studies and Physical Education are. Our qualified psychologist should be employed extensively in this area. Young abusers need to be made to think about the effect their actions have on people.
Chris Smith
Why is an image portrayed that the muggers are the blacks and asians and the victims are the whites. It was clearly portrayed on last night's programme. How come no 'white' people were interviewed as muggers and very few blacks and asians were interviewed as victims - you're programme last night was sh** and it told half of the story and that scheme the police had was just targeting blacks and asians and very few white, therefore I will take this matter further
Kashif Hussian
It's interesting how this problem is primarily a black minority problem. Other minorities don't winge what a hard time they are given or go round being violent they just get on with it the same as everybody else. If the black minority are incapable as a group of taking responsibility for themselves like the rest of us then they shouldn't be surprised that as a group they are treated with less respect. Respect is earned by putting in effort that others can appreciate not by waving a weapon about. When an unmistakable proportion of a group go round exhibiting this sublevel of behaviour then that group will never be treated equally. They must first want to take responsibility of themselves as a group, however, as yet, there seems little sign of that happening.
I was deeply shocked. Coming from Handsworth myself I was deeply upset in the way you portrayed the area. I am an 18 yr old black girl who has grown up in Handsworth for 14 years and have never in my life known anyone who has been mugged. Not to say that this is not true. I was upset that majority of the people questioned were BLACK. Birmingham has a wide range of areas were I would not personally walk alone. You seemed to miss out areas of highly populated white people such as Chelmsly Wood and Kingstanding. You only seemed to notice Newtown, Lozells and Hockley which may I add are not in Handsworth, like your reporter suggested. I was also disgusted at the way the police approached many of the youths they questioned. Stopping and searching youths for no apparent reason than looking away from a police van is no reason at all to question a person. The programme seemed to say that all the victims were white and all the attackers were black. I am not at all trying to rule out the fact that young black people are committing such offences, I am just trying to suggest that these offences are committed a lot more widely than Newtown and Handswoth. Suggestions would include that next time a programme of such an issue is raised, the victims and attackers are racially equal.
Victoria Ebo
Handsworth, Birmingham
As I said in first email I am of West Indian origin but am third generation so to look you might think I was no more than dark European. I am 43 and have suffered exclusions in the past because of my look, however I cannot hold to this claptrap about you should have more police of the same colour as the criminals and that the so-called "victim" of stop and search would by definition be more respectful. Everybody knows that these so called put upon thieves would then call the officers coconut (black outside white inside) and the like and then use that as a ruse to try to escape blame. These criminals are well versed in using any means necessary and as anyone who knows they take any attempt to help them or kindness towards them as a sign of weakness to be exploited. As the robber in the blue jacket that was stopped showed he convinced the reporter that he did not "do robbery" only car crime which was later proved to be a complete lie - why should this person be given any concession at all. He is a known street robber who presumably uses any tactic to get himself left alone by the powers that be so that he can use the space to perpetuate his chosen pastime and he does choose to do it. He is not forced, there is not some latter-day coffee skinned Fagin controlling these people other than the diatribe of rubbish that is foisted on us all everyday from all corners.
Russell Homan
Almost everyone I know either has been or has a close friend, neighbour or relative who has been mugged. My own son in the middle of the day at our local station, my brother-in-law in his car, neighbours on local trains, buses and parks at almost every time of day from morning, mid-afternoon to late evening. No-one has been apprehended in any of these incidents. In almost all cases the perpetrators have been young black men. The social reasons cannot be dealt with by the police, but the effect on the population at large is as reported in your programme - children are (1) growing up with a fatalistic "mugging happens" attitude and (2) we are all having our personal choices restricted (jewellery worn, limiting possessions taken with us) in order to accommodate this. If stop and search is the way to stop these people feeling (as quoted extensively in your programme) that they can more or less take what they want, when they want it, then any restriction on the muggers' "rights" is a small price to pay for reducing the overall threat to society. My teenage son has been stopped and searched by the police at night - we would rather that than the alternative - a society forced into negative reactions to an increasing and apparently uncontrollable threat.
Quetta Kaye
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Why do I have 3 copper pipes in my gas water heater? It seems two are cold and one is hot. All videos I see online show only two pipes; one for cold coming in, one for hot going out.
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A picture, or a few, would help immensely. You'll have to make links as a new user and someone will edit and embed them for you. – Jason Aug 12 '13 at 19:33
Can you provide the make and model of your water heater? – pdd Aug 12 '13 at 19:40
The third might be connected to the pressure/temp relief valve, in which case it should be going to a drain. This is good, because if that valve discharges significantly and doesn't get to a drain, it can cause a flood. – gregmac Aug 12 '13 at 19:43
gregmac is likely right, only other possibility I can come up with is a recirculation pump, but those tend to be attached to the cold water pipe. – BMitch Aug 12 '13 at 21:25
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Depending on the specific system installation and type of tank it could be any of these:
1. Cold in, hot out, and overflow: Standard water heater.
2. Cold in, hot out, recirculate in. This configuration has diverse uses:
• typical for a solar water heating booster.
• In heavy use applications, it could be for an external hot water reservoir.
• In long lines applications, this could be for recirculating hot water so that a faucet 400 feet away has hot water available just a few feet away. Many motels and hotels are plumbed this way.
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+ - E.U. Drops Microsoft Browser anti-trust case.->
Submitted by timrichardson
timrichardson writes "E.U. Drops Microsoft Antitrust Case Over Browsers. The EU is convinced about Microsoft's moves to offers a genuine choice of browsers, and is dropping the threat of fines and intervention regarding the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. The agreement, announced in Brussels by the European competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, calls for Microsoft to give Windows users a choice of up to 12 other browsers from competing companies, including Google and Apple."
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Comment: Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score 1) 493
by timrichardson (#26767503) Attached to: IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries
Yeah, many jobs that have been replaced were highly skilled; even riding a horse is more difficult than driving a car, arguably, and who can thatch a roof to last 50 years these days? As for shoing horses, probably proportionately many more people can change a car's flat tyre than could change a horse shoe in the days of getting around on horseback. You can see the point, but calling it "low-skilled" is not correct.
by timrichardson (#26767309) Attached to: IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries
Of course they are lower skilled jobs being exported. The rising tide of productivity and economic growth means that "low-skilled job" is a moving target. It's a relative term, and it's an indication that jobs in advanced economies are getting more skilled. Moving jobs overseas costs time and money; it's not done for no reason.
Efficiency is "output/cost". If you get the same output for less money, that's more efficient. A car that goes 100 miles on one gallon is more efficient than an car that goes 50 miles on one gallon.
Calling service jobs not real jobs is an old fallacy. Apparently people had the same reaction during the rise of manufacturing. How could manufacturing be really doing something? It just takes things from nature and rearranges them. Everyone knew that only farming and growing things was really creating value.
If someone pays money for something, then value has been created. Service jobs also include programming the iPod, making movies, designing more efficient road systems, career advice, education, medicine, childcare, babysitting, price comparison, ... to me it seems clear there is a lot of value. Mobile dog washes ... well, I'm not so sure, but it must be of value to someone.
And the final point in Economics 101: stable economies are not healthy. You need growing economies. The bedrock of growing economies is really simple. It's the allocation of scarce resources to the most effective use, and the most important scarce resource is people. That's why it's good that jobs are destroyed (in the long run): it's the only way to free people for better jobs. Meanwhile, the places where the jobs go are also getting richer, and downloading more music, watching more movies etc etc
I am not depressed. What gave you that idea? I know I'm right because the past 500 years proves me so.
Comment: Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score 4, Insightful) 493
by timrichardson (#26761709) Attached to: IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries
The fact is that for 20 years the US has been bringing the smartest and brightest internationals to work in the US: other governments paid for the first 12 to 15 year of educating these people, but in a global economy, they go to where they add the most value. I bet a lot of IBM's US patents have significant contributions from foreigners who live in the US. The same economic forces that attract PhDs means lower skilled jobs get exported. We can all except that manually harvesting wheat or hand-making horse shoes are low-skilled jobs that long ago got swept aside by technology. Perhaps it's hard to accept that this process never stopped happening.
Sorry for any typos, but the typing pool that I normally use to take my dictation seems to have disappeared in the past 50 years.
Comment: Re:der takin oar jorbs (Score 0, Flamebait) 493
by timrichardson (#26761607) Attached to: IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries
They are not "taking jobs"; this is a process of reassigning people to jobs where they are worth the salary they want. It's harsh, but the fact is that if someone in Eastern Europe can do the job for $2000 a month, that is what the job is worth. If you force those jobs to stay in the US at $5000 a month, who pays for this? Either the USD get devalued, or through the force of law you rob the customers of IBM of $3000 a month. Get a grip. Don't you see where this would end? What's so special about IBM workers? Why not block every lost job, and ban every foreign import? Why should T-shirts cost $5 and shoes $70? That's way too cheap, damn foreign labor. Make them in the US, ban the imports and pay $25 for a T-shirt and $200 for shoes. That will fix everything. Of course that's too bad for poor families, but let's fix that with price controls. Or subsidises. Gosh, why didn't anyone think of this before? Anyway, where is Eastern Europe?
Comment: Re:Will there be no wiki truths? (Score 2, Insightful) 439
by timrichardson (#26603889) Attached to: Edit-Approval System Proposed For English-Language Wikipedia
Why assume that wikipedia has stopped learning about how it should work? Maybe this proposal is a bad idea. However, it's an attempt to solve a problem, and it's better than the current tool of locking-down pages. Because this will only be used for a small range of pages, I think/hope. What other solutions are there? Peer review is essential in open source projects, why should it be different for Wikipedia? This is a process or technical question.
The problem with Wikipedia is cultural. Peer review can work if the culture is right. Wikipedia is infested with nits. It's has become cliquey and obsessed with a playground-interpretation of "objectivity". I've seen good articles rejected stupidly by people who don't know anything about the topic, but think the application of a few simple "objectivity" rules is a substitute for their ignorance.
Appealing against rejections is Kafka-esque, it is surreal and one of those activities probably best experienced with the aid of mind-altering substances. Extremely demotivating. It's really hard to avoid the conclusion that its deliberately difficult. How sad is that? Is anyone listening?
Stats on contribution would be interesting. If Britannica gets its act together, good because then Wikipedia will have to get young and fresh again. Perhaps it has entered a mid-life crisis, hesitant, defensive and scared of what it has created. Standing on the shoulders of giants is no good if you're scared of heights.
Comment: Re:OMGITSSOOOOOSHINY (Score 1) 301
by timrichardson (#25699505) Attached to: Study Finds iPhone Twice As Reliable As BlackBerry
Well speaking as an iPhone user I got to say - BlackBerrys suck.
Speaking as a BlackBerry user, I agree. My reference is a series of Nokias, which the BalckBerrry has taught me to appreciate. The BlackBerry user interface ... well, I love to read documentation, but I hate to have to read it.
Social Networks
The Battle For Wikipedia's Soul 471
Posted by kdawson
from the deleting-inclusions-or-including-deletions dept.
njondet recommends an article at The Economist that sheds light on the identity crisis faced by Wikipedia as it is torn between two alternative futures. "'It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between 'inclusionists,' who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and 'deletionists' who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries."
German Police Raid 51 CeBIT Stands Over Patent Claims 191
Posted by kdawson
LeCaddie writes "Last week German investigators raided 51 exhibitor stands at CeBIT, the German information technology fair in Hanover, looking for goods suspected of infringing patents. Some 183 police, customs officers, and prosecutors raided the fair on Wednesday and carried off 68 boxes of electronic goods and documents including cellphones, navigation devices, digital picture frames, and flat-screen monitors. Of the 51 companies raided, 24 were Chinese. Most of the patents concerned were related to devices with MP3, MP4, and DVB standard functions for digital audio and video, blank CDs, and DVD copiers, police said." In the US there are no criminal penalties associated with patents, and such a raid could not be conducted, especially in the absence of a court ruling of infringement.
+ - Attacking hashes used to prevent document changes->
Submitted by
timrichardson writes "A supposedly cast-iron way of identifying digital documents, known as a hash function, is looking a bit rusty. You could, for instance, present your boss with a document to sign. If this all happened electronically, the document might then be hashed to make sure it was not altered after the signing. But if you have a suitably prepared collision attack at your disposal, and have created two very different documents with the same hash, then your boss is at your mercy. Now that could come in handy, says the Economist. Read more, including a fool-proof prediction about who will win the US Presidential election."
Link to Original Source
The Courts
Microsoft Internal Emails Show Dismay With Vista 662
Posted by kdawson
from the you-scratch-my-back dept.
God doesn't play dice. -- Albert Einstein | [] |
oh, and rape? sorry, but it requires at least 2 or 3 witnesses for it to be valid. Forget that DNA evidence - it doesn't count cuz it isn't in the good book.
so says Ron Hamm, the pastor of the Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla, AK (yes THAT Wasilla)
"...And while I understand that in Alaska the lone female is able to convict her alleged perpetrator, this goes contrary to the Bible. In the book of Deuteronomy we find the following: “One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.”
"While in our day of feminism it is asserted that a woman’s body is her own. Biblically speaking, this is only true prior to marriage, for in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians we read: “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.”
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I for one would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the feminists (whether they ever called themselves that) who stood up in the face of: death, domestic violence, rape, public humiliation and centuries of roaring male laughter to fight for the life I enjoy today. Yes, this is ridiculous, yes these beliefs are laughable and Yes - we still need to fight against them.
I don't how women can still belong to any of these misogynistic desert dogma's. These religion were created by men who considered women to be nothing more than sex objects, and second class citizens. Yet, when you tell them this they deny it. I'm glad to be an atheist.
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ITHACA, NY—In an announcement with major implications for future generations of big fat hogs, Cornell University geneticists announced Monday that they have isolated the specific DNA series that makes an individual susceptible to eating a whole goddamn bag of chips.
According to Cornell researchers, the tendency to eat a whole goddamn bag of chips (above) may be genetic.
"We have long known that the tendency to sit down and eat the whole goddamn bag runs in certain families," said team leader Dr. Edward Alvaro. "However, until we completed our work, we weren't sure whether the disposition to cram chips down your greasy gullet was genetic or whether it was a behavioral trait learned from one or both fat-fuck parents. With the discovery of gene series CHP-48/OZ-379, we have proof positive that single-case serial chip-eating is indeed hereditary."
For years, scientists have been aware of the numerous health complications linked to a person's predisposition to plop down and mow through a whole bag of chips, but it wasn't until now that they were able to isolate the gene that carries the trait.
According to the Cornell team, series CHP-48/OZ-379 is a set of "alleles," or collections of genetic material, that cause chip-eaters to develop a markedly larger number of chip-responsive nerve endings in their cerebral material.
"People with this gene have up to four times the amount of fritoceptors normally found in a human," Alvaro said. "This increases their pleasure response to snaxamine-2, the human body's principal chip-eating hormone, which is released in response to giant handfuls of chips being shoveled into the mouth. This tends to promote entire-goddamn-bag-eating behavior in those individuals who possess the series."
One of the most interesting characteristics of the newly discovered series, researcher Dr. Paul Bergleiter said, is its tendency to appear more than once in the gene strands of a human subject.
"Series CHP-48/OZ-379, because it is a fairly large, or 'fat-assed,' allele, tends to just lie around at convenient sites on the DNA sequence," Bergleiter said. "Though many subjects exhibit only one instance of this gene, on others we have found as many as four. This, of course, led these rather rare subjects to eat four times as many whole goddamn bags of chips as those in our control group."
Though many more fatsos must be studied to determine CHP-48/OZ-379's transmission pattern, conventional wisdom seems to indicate that the gene is recessive.
"Who would want to pass on their own intact genetic material to someone who just sat around eating chips all goddamn day?" Bergleiter asked. "Unless, of course, that was the only person you could find because you were such a big lard-ass yourself. That would probably be the only source of friendly RNA-transcriptive culture you could find."
Carriers of the CHP-48/OZ-379 gene are hailing the Cornell find.
"It is about time science took steps to help people like me--people who eat bags of chips like it's fucking popcorn," said 370-pound Erie, PA, resident Russell Roberts. "I can't even get jogging pants in my size anymore."
The discovery is considered the most significant advance in gene-mapping since a University of Chicago team isolated the DNA strand that causes people to shovel spoonfuls of ice cream into their mouths while standing in front of the friggin' freezer with the door wide open. | [] |
Linked by MOS6510 on Thu 10th Jan 2013 23:25 UTC
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RE: Point by point
by moltonel on Fri 11th Jan 2013 10:06 UTC in reply to "Point by point"
Member since:
In what way is C simple? Take someone who's got a good background and mind for programming and show them C. See how long it takes them to actually understand how to (...)
C is much simpler to understand fully than most other languages, in the sense that you understand exactly what a given line of code does. You pretty much know what (unoptimized) assembly will be generated by reading C. Try that with python, java, or even C++.
Of course C is harder to understand when you start with the language, but that's not what the author is talking about. He's talking about very experienced programmers (which he is).
"Faster Build-Run-Debug Cycles"
In what universe?
In the universe where java is not a "comparable language" I suppose, but I admit I wonder about this one too.
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How does one know that a number field $K$ has a maximal abelian extension (unique up to isomorphism) $K^{\text{ab}}$?
I've read proofs involving Zorn's lemma that it has an algebraic closure (And that algebraic closures are unique up to isomorphism.) $\bar{K}$ All these proofs involved ideals of the polynomial ring in variables $x_f$, $f$ an irreducible monic polynomial in $K[x]$, but I don't see any obvious way of "restricting" this proof to abelian extensions.
I tried proving that such an extension exists using Zorn's lemma: Let $\Sigma$ be the set of all abelian subgroups of $\text{Gal}(\bar{K}/K)$ partially ordered by inclusion. Any chain of subgroups $(G_\alpha)$ has an upper bound, namely, $\bigcup_\alpha G_\alpha$ (which is a [sub]group as each $G_\alpha$ is contained in another), so by Zorn's lemma $\Sigma$ has a maximal element. But I don't have that this element is unique. (and I don't think I proved that $\bigcup_\alpha G_\alpha$ is abelian, either).
Additionally, how does $\text{Gal}(K^\text{ab}/K)$ relate to $\text{Gal}(\bar{K}/K)$ ? My incomplete attempt at a Zorn's lemme proof doesn't tell me what the maximal abelian galois group should be, and I don't know many ways of finding abelian subgroups.
share|improve this question
Why are you looking at subgroups? The Galois groups of subextensions of $\bar{K} \mid K$ are quotients of the absolute Galois group. – Zhen Lin May 7 '12 at 15:16
Perhaps because I'm naive. :) But is not looking at quotients of $\text{Gal}(\bar{K}/K)$ equiv to looking at the normal subgroups (except that the inclusion is reversed) ? or am I missing something subtle about galois theory? – mebassett May 7 '12 at 15:25
An abelian extension of the base field doesn't correspond to an abelian subgroup but to an abelian quotient. So the maximal abelian extension has Galois group the abelianization of the absolute Galois group. – Qiaochu Yuan May 7 '12 at 15:37
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1 Answer
up vote 17 down vote accepted
Existence: It's not hard to check that a compositum of abelian extensions is again abelian (the Galois group of the compositum embeds into the product of the individual Galois groups) and the maximal abelian extension of $K$ is precisely the compositum of all such extensions. Once you've constructed an algebraic closure, you don't have to worry about working directly with minimal polynomials.
Relation to $\operatorname{Gal}(\overline{K}/K)$: As mentioned in the comments, the Galois group of the maximal abelian extension is just the abelianization of the absolute Galois group. Note that this abelianization process can be trivial (though not for number fields) -- if you start with a finite field, or $\mathbb{R}$, its algebraic closure is already an abelian extension.
What it looks like: Remarkably, this is a largely wide open question, and I'll just briefly reference you to the whole branch of number theory known as class field theory. When $K=\mathbb{Q}$, the answer is completely understood (but fairly non-trivial): The maximal abelian extension is the field obtained by adjoining all roots of unity to $\mathbb{Q}$, i.e., the splitting field of the set of polynomials $x^n-1$ for all $n\geq 1$. The Galois group is precisely $\prod \mathbb{Z}_p^\times$, where the product ranges over all primes $p$. (Note this is an uncountable group). There's also an explicit version of such a statement in the case that $K$ is quadratic imaginary, where the maximal extension is obtained by adjoining special values of functions defined on elliptic curves. Beyond those two cases, the state of the art ranges from fairly explicit conjectures (e.g., Stark conjectures for totally real fields, in particular real quadratic fields) to completely unknown. That said, there's lots of neat stuff known about these fields and their Galois groups which falls shy of an explicit construction, but I suspect they lie beyond the scope of the answer you were looking for.
share|improve this answer
A very pleasing answer. – Lubin May 7 '12 at 18:43
Yup. If $\alpha,\beta\in K^{ab}$, then the Galois closure of $K(\alpha,\beta)$ is an abelian extension of $K$. – Cam McLeman Jun 26 '13 at 16:24
The Galois group of a compositum of two number fields is a subgroup of the direct product of those two fields (in fact, it's the subgroup that fixes the intersection). The product of abelian groups is abelian, and subgroups of abelian groups are abelian. That's it! – Cam McLeman Jun 26 '13 at 17:44
Maybe the issue is Galois closures? For $\alpha\in K^{ab}$, it's not even true that $K(\alpha)/K$ has to be <i>Galois</i>, let alone abelian. There's also a bit of confusion about the order of the construction. If $\alpha\in K^{ab}$, then the Galois closure of $K(\alpha)/K$ is a subfield of $K^{ab}/K$, so its Galois group is a quotient of an abelian group, so is abelian. Of course, you have to believe $K^{ab}$ already exists to make this argument, which is what I thought was what your question was really about. – Cam McLeman Jun 26 '13 at 18:18
Ah, yes. The compositum of two Galois closures is the Galois closure of the compositum. So since each individual Galois closure is abelian, so is their compositum (by arguments above). – Cam McLeman Jun 26 '13 at 21:19
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I have a set of files that are commonly used as inputs in my tex files, so I put them in a directory and set the path in the TEXINPUTS environment variable (in Ubuntu). This works fine when compiling files with the latex command, but if I compile them with pdftex, it gives the following error message:
! I can't find file `{header.tex}'.
l.1 \input{header.tex}
As far as I can tell, pdftex is completely ignoring the TEXINPUTS environment variable. Does it use a different environment variable? How can I get it to recognise a path?
share|improve this question
Are you using pdftex or pdflatex. The latter will read \input{header.tex} as a braced argument for file header.tex, but pdftex is Knuth's plain format with the pdfTeX engine: there, \input has primitive syntax only, and the file name searched is {input.tex}. – Joseph Wright Nov 18 '12 at 12:38
Aha! pdflatex works, but pdftex doesn't. Thanks for explaining. – thornate Nov 18 '12 at 12:52
I'll write that up in a slightly modified form as an answer, then :-) – Joseph Wright Nov 18 '12 at 13:06
Start your documents with \NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e} to get a meaningful error message if you use the wrong program. – Martin Schröder Nov 19 '12 at 7:41
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1 Answer
up vote 6 down vote accepted
The latex command runs LaTeX in DVI-output mode. LaTeX's definition of \input allows for a syntax
where the <file-name> is read as a braced argument. The pdflatex command will do exactly the same but with direct PDF output.
On the other hand, pdftex runs plain TeX with direct PDF output. The plain TeX definition for \input uses a 'primitive' syntax, in which the name is read as any tokens at all up to the first space. Thus with pdftex
ends up looking for a file called {<file-name>}, including the braces.
share|improve this answer
It may be worth noting that \input{filename} works also in LuaTeX (as opposed to LuaLaTeX). – egreg Nov 18 '12 at 13:46
@egreg One of the 'features' of LuaTeX which gives me headaches :-) – Joseph Wright Nov 18 '12 at 14:00
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Natura Morta
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• “Natura Morta” is a musical concert where the only instruments used are real fruits and the sound we’ll hear is exclusively the electric energy contained within them.
The elettric power of the humans getting mixed with the energy of the fruits makes the sound audible, is the fisical contact between human and nature that generate the music.
Each fruit has acid in it that produces electrical tension, using a special technique we can boost these frequencies making the inaudible audible,
the sound of the vital energy of nature.
The individual fruits are raised on wooden platforms, standing on a transparent plexiglass plate lit from under. Each time a fruit plays its base will lit up, staining the surrounding space, making it changeable and dinamic. Each platform is a home made midi controller which allow us to modulate the sound wave’s, creating more complex rhythms and sounds.
The sound frequencies are emphasized by a large videoprojection representing a macro vision of the fruits.
Slowly the concrete images becomes abstract, the Natura morta (Still life) picture changes reacting precisely to the sound vawes,
crashing and dissolving into pure shapes of colors and lights. | [] |
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Old September 13th, 2006, 12:51 AM
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Mean Dean Mean Dean is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Portland, Oregon
Posts: 2,280
Hey guys,
San007 is allowed his or her theories, just as everyone is. You have yours, he or she has his/her's, and I have mine. And who's to say with absolute certainty that San007's isn't correct? After all it is possible.
But just because something is possible doesn't mean it is probable.
San007, your theory is possible, but highly unlikely. Some sociopath could be hopping from ship to ship committing random murders for his twisted pleasure. But most murders are committed by someone with something to gain by them. Bump the husband off to gain the insurance settlement. Bump the cheating wife off in a jealous rage. One doesn't wander the decks of cruise ships and toss passengers overboard just for fun. The cost/benefit ratio isn't in his favor.
The terrorist is going to make the same cost/benefit calculation. Why toss one passenger overboard when he can walk into the dining room, blow himself up, and kill dozens of passengers? (Assuming he could smuggle the explosives on board.)
But being aware of your surroundings is always good advice.
At the same time, the probability of such an incident is so extremely low.
So go on your cruise. Eat drink and be merry. Each day is a gift. Not to be feared, but to be enjoyed.
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Oracle announced the release of VirtualBox 4.3, this is a major release that comes with important new features, devices support and improvements. According to the announcement, “Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.3 adds a unique virtual multi-touch interface to support touch-based operating systems, and other new virtual devices and utilities, including webcam devices and a session recording facility. This release also builds on previous releases with support for the latest Microsoft, Apple, Linux and Oracle Solaris operating systems, new virtual devices, and improved networking functionality. “
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The secret to losing weight every cook should know
By Jessie Price, January 12, 2012 - 12:26pm
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The secret to losing weight every cook should know
As a food lover and food editor of EatingWell Magazine, it’s probably no surprise that I’m not a big fan of any diet where you have to give up a bunch of different foods. No bread or pasta? Forget it. Cabbage soup for two meals a day? No way. That’s why I’m a big believer in the weight-loss and maintenance approach that EatingWell has taken both in the magazine and in our diet books, including EatingWell 500-Calorie Dinners, which I co-authored with Nicci Micco. The idea is that you can eat anything you want. That includes dessert or a glass of wine with dinner. One of the secrets to losing weight on this diet? Portion control, which can naturally help you limit the number of calories you eat each day, your ultimate goal. To find out how many calories you need to eat to lose a healthy 2 pounds a week, click here.
Here are a few tricks for making sure you’re eating the right portions:
Make dinner in cute portion-controlled servings. Research has shown that when dieters ate two portion-controlled meals a day they lost about 5 pounds more than their counterparts who ate the same number of calories but had to portion out their own food. Cook frittatas in the oven in ramekins, bake mini meatloaves in muffin tins, stuff a bell pepper (each person gets one) or make packets of foil or parchment paper to bake with fish and veggies inside.
Recipes to Try: Check out these great individually portioned recipes.
Diet Dinner Plan for Foodies
Use your hands. If you’re not near a measuring cup, scale or spoons, use your hands to estimate portions: 1 teaspoon equals the tip of your thumb, 1 tablespoon equals your whole thumb, 1 cup equals your fist and 3 ounces of meat (which is an appropriate serving size) is the size of the palm of your hand.
Know the size of your utensils and dishes at home. You use the same ladle every time you scoop out some soup, right? So why not measure that ladle (fill it with water, then pour that into a measuring cup) right now so that each time you serve yourself some soup you know exactly how much you’re getting. Also try this with your bowls. If you’re a cereal eater, know what size bowl you eat out of. Should you be using a smaller bowl to make it easier to stick to that 1-cup serving?
Memorize the calorie counts and serving sizes of foods you eat over and over. For example, I like to eat a piece of fruit midmorning. In the winter, it’s often an orange and I know that one medium orange has 62 calories. A medium apple has 95.
Related: 10 Tips to Make Losing Weight Easier
If you need a lot of food to feel satisfied, stack your plate with veggies. This is certainly a gross oversimplification, and you still want to keep portions in mind, but the bottom line is that most vegetables are less calorie dense than other types of food. For example, ½ cup of cooked pasta has 87 calories while ½ cup of cooked broccoli has just 22. So you can eat 2 cups of broccoli to get the same amount of calories that are in just ½ cup of pasta (and that is a puny amount of pasta!).
Don’t Miss: 7 Foods That Do the Weight-Loss Work for You
Check out this video from me and Nicci to see how you can eat a whole lot more when you stack your plate with veggies.
Go for the power salad. Following up on my last trick, I would never suggest you just eat a ton of plain broccoli. The best way to put that veggies-have-fewer-calories maxim into action is to make big, satisfying power salads. That means tons of lettuce, other veggies and a little bit of protein to help keep you satisfied.
Check out this collection of awesome EatingWell power salads.
Salad dressing on the side, please. That’s something you hear all the time when you’re out with someone who’s dieting. And with good reason. While those salads I was just talking about tend to be less calorie dense than other foods, most dressings are the opposite. One teaspoon (the tip of your thumb) of oil has 42 calories. That’s nearly the same as a whole cup of broccoli. So do control the amount of dressing you use, whether that means asking for it on the side at a restaurant or measuring the amount you use at home. Which salad dressing to use? I tend to be a homemade vinaigrette type of person. But when it comes to having a really tasty low-cal salad dressing, the very best way to do that is to make a homemade creamy dressing with ingredients like low-fat mayo, nonfat plain yogurt and low-fat buttermilk and skip the oil altogether. All these ingredients have a fraction of the calories of oil.
Check out this collection of tasty, easy homemade salad dressings.
What’s your cooking secret to losing weight? Tell us what you think below.
TAGS: Jessie Price, Healthy Cooking Blog, Dinner, Weight loss
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Will Foust in Springville, TN
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Beijing is a city that somehow manages to balance progress with history. The most conspicuous demonstration of this balance can be seen when visiting the Forbidden City, an ancient palace that still stands proud amongst the skyscrapers popping up throughout Beijing. Beijing is a thriving and vibrant city filled with imperial history, great shopping, delicious food and beautiful parks. Find out for yourself what makes Beijing such a popular tourist attraction; book your flights to Beijing on When planning your flights to Beijing, it’s a good idea to take Chinese holidays into consideration. Forget about foreign tourist crowds; during holiday seasons, the domestic tourists are the ones flooding the city. Peak domestic travel seasons include the Chinese New Year, Labor Day and National Day. It’s also a good idea to take weather into consideration when planning your flights to Beijing. The most popular time to get flights to Beijing is during September and October, when Beijing has pleasant and warm weather. The second most popular time of year to get flights to Beijing is during March, April and May. The biggest attraction in Beijing is the Forbidden City, located in the district of Dongcheng. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is famous for being the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures on Earth. Beijing is filled with museums; be sure to check out popular museums such as the Palace Museum, the National Museum of China, the National Art Museum of China, the Capital Museum and the Beijing Art Museum. If you’re looking to shop, check out Xizhimen in the Xicheng District, Silk Street in the Chaoyang District, Nanluoguoxiang in the Dongcheng District and Tea Street in the Xuanwu District. Some popular and inexpensive Beijing foods include savory pancakes, lamb kebabs, candied fruit and mutton hotpot. Relax in one of Beijing’s numerous parks such as Zhongshan Park, Beihai Park, Chaoyang Park and Ritan Park. It’s easy to find flights to Beijing on, so what are you waiting for? Get your flights to Beijing today! | [] |
(relates to my other question can't upvote edited post)
Suppose this sequence of events occurs:
1. User X posts an answer (revision #0).
2. I read revision #0 of user X's answer.
3. User X edits the answer to revision #1.
4. I decide to EVALUATE (= upvote/downvote/remove vote/accept, I don't know what you guys call it) user X's answer. But I'm still looking at revision #0 of the answer.
When the client-side part of SO sends an EVALUATE request to the server, does it send the revision # of the displayed answer to the server? If so, could the server send back info to warn the user before accepting the EVALUATE request?
At present there's no indication on the client-side that an answer has been updated. I would have to reload the page to check if the answer I'm voting on is the latest revision.
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2 Answers
While I agree this could be a problem in a few specialized cases, I don't think it's a big enough deal to 'fix.'
Right now, if an answer/question has been edited after you have 'evaluated' it, you are free to change your evaluation. This is meant to combat a very similar problem that you describe.
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-1, because your 2nd paragraph has a flaw, which was illustrated by my other post (meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/82047/cant-upvote-edited-post/…). I upvoted, then the user edited their post, then I removed the upvote, then I saw that the user had edited their post (which had happened before I removed the upvote), then I went to re-upvote, and could not. – Jason S Mar 7 '11 at 18:07
@Jason, so the scenario was - upvote, edit, remove upvote, edit, upvote? – jjnguy Mar 7 '11 at 18:10
The scenario was the sequence him:post#0, me:upvote#0, him:edit#1, me:remove-upvote#0, me:read#1, me:upvote#1 -- where the problem is that because I hadn't refreshed the page, SO server interprets my remove-upvote request as applying to revision #1 (thus blocking me from changing my vote later), even though I was judging the post on revision #0. – Jason S Mar 7 '11 at 18:20
@Jason, I feel that this scenario would be so rare that it isn't necessary to fix. You should simply edit the post yourself (trivial edit to 'unlock' your vote), and then change your evaluation accordingly. – jjnguy Mar 7 '11 at 18:26
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This seems unlikely to happen very often. If you read an answer and want to vote on it ten minutes later, reloading the page seems pretty reasonable
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I disagree. From time to time, I will read an answer, then go try it, then come back and vote. The burden is on me to reload the page before I vote... which may be reasonable, but it's another source of errors. – Jason S Mar 7 '11 at 18:05
...and it may be only a minute later, not ten minutes. – Jason S Mar 7 '11 at 18:08
@Jason Between you checking an answer "from time to time", and people editing their answers from time to time, the odds that they'll exactly overlap and mess you up are really small – Michael Mrozek Mar 7 '11 at 18:39
Well, you might think differently if you had been involved in that discussion for my C++ array initializer question. There were a lot of changes happening very fast. One person had to get me to clarify which part of his post I had been commenting on: while I was composing my comment, he had edited the post. There were at least 3 instances of concurrent editing during the first 20 minutes after I posted my question. – Jason S Mar 7 '11 at 19:19
"Between you checking an answer "from time to time"" -- and why do I have to do this anyway? Why can't the server and client help me do this, instead of me having to reload the page every 60 seconds? – Jason S Mar 7 '11 at 19:20
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I processed my first ever film the other week - a roll of Ilford FP4 plus, rated at 125, in Kodak-HC110 developer, at the recommended time of 9mins, and inversions every 30 secs. Firstly, I had some problems with air bubbles despite thumping the tank after every inversion - large bubbles were visible on two frames, effectively ruining them. And the resultant negatives were somewhat unsharp after I scanned them in my film scanner, and mostly greys - not a very good tonal range at all. Some photos worked out better than others though. So my first developing experience turned out to be a bit of a dud and I am a bit apprehensive about trying it again on an important film. Is the greyness a characteristic of FP4 and should I be using something else, or is it the film+developer combination or something I did, or all of the above?
puzzled newbie,
<See some of the grey Ilford FP4 images here> | [] |
Android G2 Hands On: Close to PerfectionS
The bad news first: Apart from my gripes about the user interface—which are still there—there is one but. A big BUT, bigger than Ramona's, the planetary lady with accidental moustache who serves the bocadillos down at one of the fair's restaurants: The software keyboard. On this first touch, the keyboard felt cramped, probably a result of the screen size, which is smaller than the iPhone's—which is the obvious soft keyboard reference, since it was the first one to implement a finger-touch software keyboard.
In addition to that, there's an additional user interface problem, this time having to do with perception: Instead of popping up above your finger—like in the iPhone so you can clearly see what you pressed—the keys appear on the sides. They flash quickly as you press them, and I found it extremely distracting. They said that they put them on the sides not to obstruct the view, but knowing the over-the-key implementation in the iPhone's software keyboard, it doesn't make much sense. Furthermore, when you are typing with one finger only—like I often do—you will be obstructing the view of the flashing key with your finger. The reason: When you type on the right side of the keyboard, the flashing keys appear on the left. When you click on the right, they pop out on the left.
Other than this, the rest is great. There's a new Google Mail feature to delete or classify mail in bulk, as well as a faster camera, which now can take video—which obviously means you can play back video as well. The rest of the interface and features is what you already have in the Android G1. However, what really steals the show here is the hardware itself.
HTC has got a very smooth phone, which feels great on your hands and in your pants' pockets. While it's sightly thicker than the iPhone, the narrower, rounded body, and weight makes it feel the same size. For sure, a lot less bulky than the G1, which looks like a brick next to this. And as you have seen in the shots, the final HTC Magic is quite pretty. Have no doubt: This thing alone will make many consumers put up with the less-than-ideal software keyboard.
Click to viewOverall, the first feeling is that we got a potential winner here. If they can manage to make the software keyboard better, Apple will definitely have a formidable enemy in the Android G2. | [] |
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Friday, 12 October, 2001, 05:33 GMT 06:33 UK
New York rejects Saudi millions
new york
Row: Giuliani shows Walid the ruins in New York
New York city officials have rejected a $10m donation from a prominent member of the Saudi royal family after he said America should "re-examine its policies" in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington.
On a visit to the city, Prince Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz - a nephew of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and one of the world's richest men - called the destruction of the World Trade Center a tremendous crime.
But in a separate statement, he said that the US Government should reconsider its polices in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinians.
We must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack
Prince Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz
Mayor Rudi Giuliani said he entirely rejected the prince's comments, calling them "highly irresponsible and very, very dangerous".
He said the people who had attacked New York had lost any right to ask for justification when they slaughtered more than 5,000 innocent people, and the Prince's cheque would not be accepted.
Mr Walid is ranked by Forbes magazine as the world's sixth richest man, with an estimated personal fortune of $20.3bn.
Palestinian issue
In a statement released by his company as he visited Ground Zero with the mayor, Mr Walid said: "I believe the government of the United States should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.
World Trade Center ruins
Mayor Giuliani said there was no justification for the attack on the World Trade Center
Speaking at a City Hall news conference later, Mr Giuliani said there could be no justification for the 11 September attacks.
"The people who did it lost any right to ask for justification for it when they slaughtered four or five thousand innocent people, and to suggest that there is a justification for it only invites this happening in the future," he said.
Saudi Arabia is reported to have turned down a request for UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to visit the desert kingdom on his current tour of the Middle East.
Downing Street denied the prime minister had been rebuffed, saying Mr Blair had discussed making a visit in a telephone call with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah last week but it could not be fitted into Mr Blair's schedule.
The BBC's Jane Standley
"The cheque will now be returned to Saudi Arabia"
See also:
11 Oct 01 | Americas
New York, one month on
01 Oct 01 | Middle East
Saudi leaders fear Muslim backlash
12 Sep 01 | Country profiles
Country profile: Saudi Arabia
25 Sep 01 | Middle East
Saudi Arabia warns of West-Islam split
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Conversation Starters
How to Step-Up Your Tinder Game
Originally posted on
We've all been there: You're sitting at brunch with your BFF who is mindlessly swiping her thumb across her iPhone screen not listening to your really important story. Why? She's Tindering. Tinder, the hot-or-not dating app that connects singles within a certain radius (users can see select Facebook photos and friends in common), has quickly become one of the most popular ways to score a date. Yes, Grindr for straight people has arrived and it's catching on quick.
The app appeals largely to women and men, ages 18-35, and boasts impressive stats: 200 million profile swipes per day (users swipe through potential matches—a swipe to the left indicates interest), leading to over three million new matches per day and 300 million matches worldwide so far.
We recently caught up with the app's VP, Whitney Wolfe, at Tinder's headquarters on the Sunset Strip in L.A. to chat about why the Tinder empowers single ladies, what strategies you should employ to get asked out, and why it's not just a "hook-up" app.
Why is Tinder different from other social media outlets?
Facebook, for example, does a great job of organizing and keeping you in touch with the network you already have, but it’s hard to meet new people. If someone new adds you, even when you have 12 mutual friends, you question it. You ask yourself, "Why are you adding me?" There’s a barrier—online and in real life. So, we’re trying to get you to say "hello" in a socially acceptable way.
Tinder is empowering for women. Why do you think it gives us Sadie Hawkin-style courage?
In a bar, a girl might not approach a guy or make the first move. But, you are always looking around, [evaluating men] thinking "yes," "no," "yes," "no." Online, I would never friend a random cute guy on Facebook or start liking his pictures on Instagram—even if I had a crush on him. But with Tinder, it’s like following or friending each other at the same time. The risk of revealing your feelings is removed.
Should we worry about rejection on Tinder?
You’ll never know [if someone is rejecting you], and you won’t think about it. You’re too busy swiping and doing your own thing.
What are your tips for setting up a Tinder profile?
Be genuine. Put out what you want to receive, that’s the same for real life and Tinder. I’m not going to dress like a "hoochie" in real life, because I don’t want to be perceived that way. And be relevant. Don’t put up a picture when you were 17 and had the best body. It’s a real-life representation. Put your best face forward.
Is there a Tinder strategy for users?
Tinder carefully, because you cannot go back [and re-see someone's profile] yet. For the time being, if you swipe "no" to someone, he or she is gone [from your feed], and sometimes it happens accidentally. It’s like real-life missed connections. My best advice for a new Tinder user is don’t just start swiping left or right. Take a moment and really evaluate everyone’s photos before you say "yes" or "no." Sometimes people don’t know what they are doing when choosing photos. You might see the first one and think "absolutely not," but then he’s scuba diving in the third and, wow, you love that.
Does technology ever have a negative effect on meeting someone?
In real life, we are all on our devices. We might go to a place where we fit the crowd and could meet someone. But, because we are all on our phones, you might not notice the cute boy behind you in line for coffee, and he’s not going to notice the gorgeous girl sitting outside. So, we might as well notice them on our phones, on Tinder.
The apps still has a bit of a "hook-up" reputation, meaning that the people on it are looking for one-night stands and such.
We don’t call Tinder a dating app. We don’t call it anything. We are creating connections that the users get to define. I get very defensive over [that reputation]. Most of the people who say that about Tinder haven’t used the app. If you ask anyone on Tinder if it is a hook-up app, the answer is unequivocally "no." So, if you’re afraid that Tinder is a hook-up app, then don’t use it. But I’d say to that person, "Don’t go out to a bar either. Stay at home. Don’t go out at night. Stay at home and cook by yourself for yourself."
When and where does the app work best?
Anywhere. All times. That’s the beauty of it. You can be eating Ben & Jerry’s in bed and find a guy. Tinder puts the convenience of dating in your lap. You see people up to 50 miles around you, or you can change the radius down to one mile.
Tinder has a global reach, too.
We are growing out of control. We are international. So, even when you are traveling, you can meet relevant people via Tinder. I can’t tell you how many stories of normal, very cool friends meeting up with other very cool, normal two-degrees-of-separation people in Berlin, Croatia, South America, and South Africa. Anytime you have a mutual friend, you can meet anyone, anywhere in the world.
Photo: Ashley Terrill
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Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs
For Immediate Release:
July 1, 2010
Andy Grove
Bloomberg Businessweek
Not this time. I left the restaurant unsettled. Something did not add up. Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the 9.7 percent national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn't been creating many jobs of late—unless you're counting Asia, where American tech companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
The underlying problem isn't simply lower Asian costs. It's our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called "Start-Ups, Not Bailouts." His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.
What Went Wrong?
I am fortunate to have lived through one such example. In 1968 two well-known technologists and their investor friends anted up $3 million to start Intel (INTC), making memory chips for the computer industry. From the beginning we had to figure out how to make our chips in volume. We had to build factories, hire, train, and retain employees, establish relationships with suppliers, and sort out a million other things before Intel could become a billion-dollar company. Three years later the company went public and grew to be one of the biggest technology companies in the world. By 1980, 10 years after our IPO, about 13,000 people worked for Intel in the U.S.
Not far from Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., other companies developed. Tandem Computers went through a similar process, then Sun Microsystems, Cisco (CSCO), Netscape, and on and on. Some companies died along the way or were absorbed by others, but each survivor added to the complex technological ecosystem that came to be called Silicon Valley.
As time passed, wages and health-care costs rose in the U.S. China opened up. American companies discovered that they could have their manufacturing and even their engineering done more cheaply overseas. When they did so, margins improved. Management was happy, and so were stockholders. Growth continued, even more profitably. But the job machine began sputtering.
The 10X Factor
Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000, lower than it was before the first PC, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975 (figure-B). Meanwhile, a very effective computer manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers—factory employees, engineers, and managers. The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn. The company has grown at an astounding rate, first in Taiwan and later in China. Its revenues last year were $62 billion, larger than Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Dell (DELL), or Intel. Foxconn employs over 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Intel, and Sony (SNE) (figure-C).
Since the early days of Silicon Valley, the money invested in companies has increased dramatically, only to produce fewer jobs. Simply put, the U.S. has become wildly inefficient at creating American tech jobs. We may be less aware of this growing inefficiency, however, because our history of creating jobs over the past few decades has been spectacular—masking our greater and greater spending to create each position. Should we wait and not act on the basis of early indicators? I think that would be a tragic mistake, because the only chance we have to reverse the deterioration is if we act early and decisively.
Already the decline has been marked. It may be measured by way of a simple calculation—an estimate of the employment cost-effectiveness of a company. First, take the initial investment plus the investment during a company's IPO. Then divide that by the number of employees working in that company 10 years later. For Intel this worked out to be about $650 per job—$3,600 adjusted for inflation. National Semiconductor (NSM), another chip company, was even more efficient at $2,000 per job. Making the same calculations for a number of Silicon Valley companies shows that the cost of creating U.S. jobs grew from a few thousand dollars per position in the early years to a hundred thousand dollars today (figure-A). The obvious reason: Companies simply hire fewer employees as more work is done by outside contractors, usually in Asia.
The job machine breakdown isn't just in computers. Consider alternative energy, an emerging industry where there's plenty of innovation. Photovoltaics, for example, are a U.S. invention. Their use in home energy applications was also pioneered by the U.S. Last year, I decided to do my bit for energy conservation and set out to equip my house with solar power. My wife and I talked with four local solar firms. As part of our due diligence, I checked where they get their photovoltaic panels—the key part of the system. All the panels they use come from China. A Silicon Valley company sells equipment used to manufacture photo-active films. They ship close to 10 times more machines to China than to manufacturers in the U.S., and this gap is growing (figure-D). Not surprisingly, U.S. employment in the making of photovoltaic films and panels is perhaps 10,000—just a few percent of estimated worldwide employment.
There's more at stake than exported jobs. With some technologies, both scaling and innovation take place overseas.
The Key to Job Creation
Scaling isn't easy. The investments required are much higher than in the invention phase. And funds need to be committed early, when not much is known about the potential market. Another example from Intel: The investment to build a silicon manufacturing plant in the '70s was a few million dollars. By the early '90s the cost of the factories that would be able to produce the new Pentium chips in volume rose to several billion dollars. The decision to build these plants needed to be made years before we knew whether the Pentium chip would work or whether the market would be interested in it.
Lessons we learned from previous missteps helped us. Some years earlier, when Intel's business consisted of making memory chips, we hesitated to add manufacturing capacity, not being all that sure about the market demand in years to come. Our Japanese competitors didn't hesitate: They built the plants. When the demand for memory chips exploded, the Japanese roared into the U.S. market and Intel began its descent as a memory chip supplier. Despite being steeled by that experience, I still remember how afraid I was as I asked the Intel directors for authorization to spend billions of dollars for factories to produce a product that did not exist at the time for a market we could not size. Fortunately, they gave their O.K. even as they gulped. The bet paid off.
My point isn't that Intel was brilliant. The company was founded at a time when it was easier to scale domestically. For one thing, China wasn't yet open for business. More importantly, the U.S. had not yet forgotten that scaling was crucial to its economic future.
Wanted: Job-Centric Economics
Such evidence stares at us from the performance of several Asian countries in the past few decades. These countries seem to understand that job creation must be the No. 1 objective of state economic policy. The government plays a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces and organization necessary to achieve this goal. The rapid development of the Asian economies provides numerous illustrations. In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent-shattering economic performances over the '70s and '80s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries.
Consider the "Golden Projects," a series of digital initiatives driven by the Chinese government in the late 1980s and 1990s. Beijing was convinced of the importance of electronic networks—used for transactions, communications, and coordination—in enabling job creation, particularly in the less developed parts of the country. Consequently, the Golden Projects enjoyed priority funding. In time they contributed to the rapid development of China's information infrastructure and the country's economic growth.
How do we turn such Asian experience into intelligent action here and now? Long term, we need a job-centric economic theory—and job-centric political leadership—to guide our plans and actions. In the meantime, consider some basic thoughts from a onetime factory guy.
The story comes to mind of an engineer who was to be executed by guillotine. The guillotine was stuck, and custom required that if the blade didn't drop, the condemned man was set free. Before this could happen, the engineer pointed with excitement to a rusty pulley, and told the executioner to apply some oil there. Off went his head.
We got to our current state as a consequence of many of us taking actions focused on our own companies' next milestones. An example: Five years ago a friend joined a large VC firm as a partner. His responsibility was to make sure that all the startups they funded had a "China strategy," meaning a plan to move what jobs they could to China. He was going around with an oil can, applying drops to the guillotine in case it was stuck. We should put away our oil cans. VCs should have a partner in charge of every startup's "U.S. strategy."
Every day, that Palo Alto restaurant where I met the Chinese venture capitalists is full of technology executives and entrepreneurs. Many of them are my friends. I understand the technological challenges they face, along with the financial pressure they're under from directors and shareholders. Can we expect them to take on yet another assignment, to work on behalf of a loosely defined community of companies, employees, and employees yet to be hired? To do so is undoubtedly naïve. Yet the imperative for change is real and the choice is simple. If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us.
Andy Grove, senior adviser to Intel, was the company's chief executive officer or chairman from 1987 until 2005. | [] |
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Who Is Measuring Your Job For Carpeting
Helps and Tips About Measuring For Wall To Wall Carpet Installation
PRLog (Press Release) - Sep. 28, 2009 - I want to talk about something that is very dear to my heart and a problem that runs rampant in the carpet industry. Wrong sizing on you carpet & flooring needs. You know that a store can really make a deal sound so sweet by telling you that the labor is free and the pad is free and the financing is free, when in reality you are really paying for all the above and then some. I've been on many a job over the last 37 years where a store has told the consumer that they have 1125 square feet. After measuring the job it actually took only 875 sf of product to cover the floor. Just think. That person would have paid for 250 sf of product they didn't get. At $ 3.75 sf that is $937.50. That pays for a lot of the free pad and labor and certainly covers the finance charge.
You know the average LR-DR-Hall is around 55 sq or 495 sf. That is a good rule of thumb figure. You simply measure the lenght of the room and the width of the room. You measure into the middle of the doorway (or jamb). Then muliply the two figures to get the square feet of the room. Typically add about 8-10 % for seaming and waste to the net square footage. That gives you the total sf. needed to do the job. Remember carpet usually comes in 12 ft. wide rolls. So if you room is 10 x 16 you will need a 12 x 16 . The net square footage is 160 but the actual is 192 sf. Now that is pretty simple don't you think ? But when you get into mupitle rooms it gets a little tricky. You simply do each room seperate and add the rooms together and add the 8-10 % and you would be be close to what the needed material actually will be. By doing this simple little math problem you won't be paying for material you didn't need.
I've even found that measuring services ( even the ones the big box stores use ) really get lost in their measurements. They can handle a small job ( like 1 room ), but boy throw in 4 rooms a hall, 10 custom steps and a pattern match and man they are lost. In many cases I've seen the store never call the customer back with a price because they totally underestimated the orginal quote when the customer was in the store. Or they just pile on the yards to make sure they have enough. In any case usually the customer loses. The latter is usually what happens the most and you really got hammered for the Free Stuff (you thought was fee) .
Think about this. A carpet installer is usually a independent installer and on his own. You really don't expect him to go to a complete strangers home, take up the old carpet and pad for free, move your furniture for free, then work all day installing the new carpet and pad for free, put all the furniture back for free, then when he and his helper are dead beat tired load up all the old stuff and haul it off for free. Boy do I have a bridge for sale. Heck it's hard to get my crew to find time to install a room in my own home and believe me it's not free.
One of the true benefits of buying from a locally owned floor covering professional is just exactly what I'm talking about in the above article. Chances are you are dealing with the owner or his family and when they come to measure they know what they are doing. And when their crew comes they will most likely come with them to go over the job. That's the steps that Judy, Brandon and I take on every job we sell at Home-Based Carpet & Flooring. We know exactly how many sf. each job takes, where the seams are going, what kind of quality seam tape we are using and at the end of the day come back and look at each job with few exceptions.
That's the service you should expect and that you certainly deserve.
You can contact Judy, Brandon or Greg at http://www.cincinnatifloorings.com or e mail at [email protected]. You can also visit my blog at http://gregthecarpetman.blogspot.com
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Family owned carpet & flooring dealer in Cincinnati, Ohio. Excellent certified installation. Carpet, hardwood floors, laminate floors and vinyl tile. We also ship in USA and help arrange iinstallation in your location. Major credit cards and shop @ home
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Specifically dual-CPU 32 core - 128RAM - RAID 10 SSD . Ubuntu 64 server.
Heavy Innodb load at times - ~ 2000+ queries per sec. Heavy read and write.
Currently we are running on the default write_io_threads of 4.
Are we "nerfing" the power of our server? Is it safe to run it on max write_io_threads=64 and read_io_threads = 64 ?
How is this number determined?
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1 Answer
Back on March 15, 2012, I answered this question : MySql recommended hardware.
In my answer, I mentioned a client who is still in my employer's web hosting company to this very day. They are currently running 3 DB Servers in Circular Replication. Each DB Server has:
• MySQL 5.5.9
• 192 GB RAM
• 162 GB InnoDB Buffer Pool
• Dual hexacore (that's right, 12 CPUs)
• 1.8TB Disk Volume
• 528 multitenant databases
• 500 GB of InnoDB Data
• innodb_file_per_table enabled
I have them set with
innodb_read_io_threads = 64
innodb_write_io_threads = 64
innodb_thread_concurrency = 0
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 162G
innodb_buffer_pool_instances = 2
innodb_log_file_size = 384M
Bottom line: You got the cores, and 128G RAM? What are you waiting for ? Crank it up and have some fun. My client has been all but flabbergasted with these settings against that hardware since March 2011. You will be blown away !!!
All kidding aside, you should be careful when working with VMs(VMWare, AWS, any other cloud-based MySQL Instances) or commodity hardware. However, with that much firepower in bare metal, by all means, you should exploit those settings because any version of MySQL before MySQL 5.5 works with single threaded InnoDB. If you have MySQL 5.1, the InnoDB plugin (starting from MySQL 5.1.38) would have to be installed and then set. All Percona Server 5.1 binaries already have these in place. Since you have MySQL 5.5, these settings are natively installed and have been tested in many respects. You just have to take responsibility for tuning the new InnoDB Settings.
Please see my other posts on setting InnoDB's new settings:
UPDATE 2013-01-18 21:52 EDT
You need to take the bull by the horns and setup some benchmarks. Let's go back historically. innodb_read_io_threads and innodb_writes_io_threads did not come with MySQL 5.0 or 5.1. Someone created a plugin and made it available in MySQL 5.1.38. The defaults were 4. I also notice that Percona Server implemented these things early in MySQL 5.1 with defaults of 8. Most people who use Percona Server out-of-the-box swear by it and often say that it is better than MySQL. However, this comparison is usually done with tweeking InnoDB. So, of course, Percona Server, with double the number of threads, would be better.
Given this conservative way to get better performance (upgrading to Percona), you will never really know how good, bad, or ugly InnoDB will go unless you tune for it. Keep in mind my post from Nov 24, 2011. Multiple versions of MySQL were benchmarked and, in some cases, InnoDB under MySQL 4.1 outperformed 5.x in a single-threaded environment. That's given the same level playing field.
To tip the scales in your favor, you must tune InnoDB. Rather than give you any single definitive Pick-This-Pick-That guide, you need to read about the settings InnoDB ghas been given to make multiple cores come alive. Not every environment is like my client's dual hexacore servers or your dual hexadecacore.
If I had to give you a good starting point, it would have the be mysqlperformanceblog.com. Everything performance-centric about mysql is there for you to read, select, and benchmark.
share|improve this answer
Thanks some good info there. So how do I know whether I should use write_io_threads of 4 or 32 or 64 ? What determines (hardware wise I would guess?)this variable besides the obvious benchmarking trial and error? Could I totally bog down the production DB server with an incorrect setting? – Tom Geee Jan 19 '13 at 2:00
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New Giz Feature: Threaded CommentsSWelcome to the future, my friends. As of today, Gizmodo (and all the other Gawker sites) now have threaded comments. What's this mean for you? Well, it means that comment threads will no longer be one long list of chronological comments. Instead, when you reply to a specific comment, your comment will go right underneath it. Let's look at it a bit more in depth, shall we? The ladies at Jezebel laid it out pretty nicely, so we'll crib a bit from their explanation:
So, what do you think? Exciting, no? And yes, I know change is scary. I saw how many people flipped out when Facebook changed its layout. But hey, change is fun. Give it a shot in the comments below, fiddle around with it, and let us know what you think. As long as what you think is positive, because after how much work our illustrious tech crew put into making this possible, we ain't changing it back. Enjoy! | [] |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
How do I invoke a Service Operation in WCF from iOS?
I have a Service Operation defined in my WCF Data Service (tied to a stored procedure in my DB schema) that I need to invoke from iOS. Say I've got the following declaration in my .svc.cs file:
[WebInvoke(RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json, BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedRequest)]
public IQueryable<Foo> GetFoos(int param1, DateTime param2, string param3)
return CurrentDataSource.GetFoos(param1, param2, param3).AsQueryable();
And I've got it set up with the proper rights in InitializeService:
config.SetServiceOperationAccessRule("GetFoos", ServiceOperationRights.AllRead);
When I try to invoke this via HTTP POST from iOS, I get back an error wrapped in JSON:
Bad Request - Error in query syntax.
It seems like it doesn't like how I'm passing my parameters. I'm passing them JSON-encoded (using NSJSONSerialization to turn an NSDictionary into a JSON string) in the request body of a POST request. The same method works on another web service (.svc) not connected to WCF that has operations annotated the same way.
An answer to another question of mine in a similar vein suggests that data formats can be negotiated between client and server, and I've read that dates are a pain to format, so maybe it's my DateTime parameter that's a problem. But I've tried both the JSON format (\/Date(836438400000)\/ and /Date(836438400000)/) and the JSON Light format (1996-07-16T00:00:00) to no avail.
So my question is this: what is the proper way to invoke this operation? If I need to have my app tell the server what format to expect, how do I do that?
Update: I tried using the format datetime'1996-07-16T00:00:00' as mentioned in this question. Same error.
Update 2: The MSDN page for Service Operations seems to suggest that nothing besides Method = "POST" is supported when annotating the WebInvoke for a Service Operation. I tried removing everything from what is quoted in the above code and setting the method to POST. Same error.
Update 3: On Pawel's suggestion, I made a new Service Operation on my Data Service just like this:
[WebInvoke(Method = "POST")]
public IQueryable<string> GetFoos()
List<string> foos = new List<string>();
return foos.AsQueryable();
I was able to make it work in Fiddler's Composer pane by setting the method to POST, adding accept:application/json;charset=utf-8 and Content-Length:0 to the headers. Then I added a single int parameter to the operation (called param1). I set the body of my request in Fiddler to {"param1":"1"} and ran it (and Fiddler automatically updated my content-length header), and got the same error. I changed the type of my parameter to string and ran my request again and it worked. So my problem seems to be non-string types.
share|improve this question
I would try invoking an operation that does not take any parameters to isolate whether this is a general problem or a problem caused by DateTime parameters... – Pawel Sep 27 '12 at 21:37
@Pawel - I'll try that. Should WCF Service Operations work the same way as operations on vanilla WCF services would in general? – Mr. Jefferson Sep 27 '12 at 21:55
@Pawel - See update 3. – Mr. Jefferson Sep 27 '12 at 22:08
It's been a couple years since I looked at it but you are using POST and parameters will be sent in the request body. Therefore I suspect Content-Length cannot be 0 but has to be the actual length of the request. – Pawel Sep 27 '12 at 22:26
@Pawel - When you put something in Fiddler's request body, it automatically changes the content-length parameter for you. No worries there. – Mr. Jefferson Sep 27 '12 at 22:27
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1 Answer
up vote 0 down vote accepted
You need to send parameters in the Url and not in the request body.
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Because they are already funded, the exchanges are not affected by the government shutdown that began at midnight when Congress failed to produced a new spending plan.
The Republican-run House wants a plan that would delay other major parts of the new health care law, including the requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance. Obama and the Democratic-run Senate say that is unacceptable and that Republicans are using the budget to try and gut the health care law.
Meanwhile, other administration officials will be busy promoting the new health care exchanges, which are the key to financing the law.
Vice President Biden will give an interview to air on some 450 college radio stations, explaining to "young Americans the health care benefits that will kick in for themselves and their families," says the White House.
First lady Michelle Obama has an op-ed running on Yahoo! Shine, a women's lifestyle website.
And, throughout the day, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and other administration officials will be interviewed on African-American radio shows. The White House list includes the Tom Joyner Morning Show, the Al Sharpton Show, the Yolanda Adams Morning Show, Sway on Sirius HM, the Russ Parr Morning Show, Rickey Smiley Morning Show, and the Joe Madison Show.
Also during the day, Obama and aides will be monitoring events on Capitol Hill, as Republicans and Democrats wrestle over the budget and the government shutdown. | [] |
Frontpage News 2011 Building inside a ceasefire line: The Home for Cooperation in divided Cyprus
Building inside a ceasefire line.JPG
Our guest writer, Yiannis Papadakis from the University of Cyprus, presents the situation in Cyprus and how initiatives such as the Home for Cooperation are needed to overcome distrust and help towards creating a dialogue among opposing historical narratives between the two communities in Cyprus.
The party was warming up, despite the presence of two secret policemen sitting alone at one of the tables. Music, conversation and the smell of grilled meat transformed the UN-controlled Buffer Zone dividing Cyprus, a place usually eerily quiet, into a joyful setting. By the end of the party, the role of the two secret policemen would also be transformed.
This party took place more than a year ago (video blog), on 6th February 2010, to celebrate the commencement of renovation work (video blog) on a building situated in the Buffer Zone dividing Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. The renovation is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants. The building has become the Home for Cooperation, a project initiated by a local NGO, the Association of Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR). As Chara Makriyianni, President of AHDR explained: ‘We came up with an idea of looking for a house in the buffer zone, somewhere neutral. This will be the first inter-communal building that promotes research and dialogue and issues regarding history education.’ What makes the AHDR stand out in Cyprus is that it is one of a few NGO’s where Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots closely work together.
Fifteen months later, on Friday 6th May 2011, the official opening of the Home for Cooperation took place in the presence of the Greek Cypriot leader, Demetris Christofias, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Derviþ Eroðlu. The hope is that this will also be a home for many other organisations who share the aims of fostering dialogue, promoting tolerance and understanding in Cyprus and beyond. Despite the renovation, bullet holes are still visible on the building. Rusting barbed wire is still lying on the ground behind the building. The blue-white barrel from the sentry post of the UN soldier is still there on the roof. These were left there on purpose to remind visitors of the history of the building and the area. This is appropriate for a project led by an association whose focus is history education. ‘The Association’s mission is to defend and promote productive dialogue and research on issues regarding history and history teaching, to develop historical thinking and strengthen peace, stability and, democracy and critical thinking.’ The visible presence of the building’s wounds due to past conflict in Cyprus reflects the Association’s view that education towards a peaceful future does not mean whitewashing past conflicts away, but learning from them and learning to live with them.
The conflict that has scarred Cyprus as well as the Home for Cooperation is known as the Cyprus Problem. But views are divided on what the problem is. One of the few things that both sides agree upon is that Cyprus emerged as an independent state, the Republic of Cyprus, in 1960 with a total population of almost 600,000 of which 78% were Greek Cypriots, 18% Turkish Cypriots and 4% smaller minorities of Armenians, Maronites and Latins. The official Greek Cypriot position is that the Cyprus Problem begun in 1974 with the ‘barbaric Turkish invasion’; the official Turkish Cypriot position is that it started in Christmas 1963 with the ‘barbaric attacks’ of Greek Cypriots against Turkish Cypriots. For Greek Cypriots, 20th July is the ‘dark anniversary of the barbaric Turkish invasion in 1974’ when the Problem begun. For Turkish Cypriots, 20th July is the ‘Happy Peace Operation by Motherland Turkey in 1974’ when the Problem finished, and Turkish Cypriots soon moved to the north of the island where they established their own state in 1983. Greek Cypriots (and the rest of the international community except Turkey) does not recognize any such state, arguing that Turkish Cypriots live in an illegal pseudo-state. The current negotiations between Demetris Christofias, the Greek Cypriot leader, and Derviþ Eroðlu, the Turkish Cypriot leader, to reach a solution that will reunify Cyprus as a federal state once again appear to be in a stalemate.
As with any such conflict, history is one of the major victims. Given such deeply divided official historical perspectives, it is not surprising that a solution has not been found. It is also difficult to see how any kind of solution could be sustainable if people in the two sides are socialised through education into such opposed viewpoints. This is not to deny the presence of competing historical narratives within each community; yet, these too are as deeply divided as those between the two communities. The common ground necessary for a meaningful discussion on issues related to history is missing. This is where the AHDR tries to contribute by providing the physical and mental space for such a dialogue to begin, inside this home that is located neither in one nor in the other side.
The Home for Cooperation is now located between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots; between a Muslim and a Christian society; some argue that it also lies between Greeks and Turks, given that Cyprus is such a divisive issue for these two countries; and it currently lies in the EU’s de facto border with the East. The potential is there for this to become a space for an enlarged dialogue reaching beyond Cyprus, an island ideally suited to host this located as it is between Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
But in order to do this, it first has to overcome certain local mistrust. Even though the events and conferences of the AHDR are always oversubscribed; even though it has the best record of cooperation in Cyprus with the Council of Europe on issues of history education; it has won awards like the Cyprus Civil Society Special Award for exceptional contribution to island-wide cooperation in 2010; and it has been successful in being awarded large grants not only from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, but also Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and UN organisations like UNDP-ACT, it is also sometimes treated with suspicion, by the authorities and certain groups in both sides as attempting to ‘distort history’.
These are the local challenges to be overcome. The presence of the two secret policemen at the party last year was an indication of this mistrust. That these were supposed to be ‘secret policemen’ while almost everyone knew what they were reflects the local culture of ‘open secrets’ that also affects history; most know of past atrocities committed by their own side, yet would publicly deny they ever happened. By the end of the party the two ‘secret’ policemen were no longer alone. They were eating, drinking and socialising with the others. This could be an indication of an emerging trust towards the activities of NGOs like the AHDR that the Home for Cooperation will provide the space for. | [] |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I don't understand why the array t1 is empty. As I know, memcpy shouldn't care about the underlying types of the objects. What do you think? %)
cout << sizeof(float) << sizeof(int) << endl;
float *t1= (float *)malloc(20*sizeof(float));
int *t2= (int *)malloc(20*sizeof(int));
printf("%f\t", (float)t1[i]);
I know what type casting means. Ok I did a little mistakes. It was carelessness!
P.S. It was sample for understanding how memcpy works!!
share|improve this question
You've tagged this as "C", yet you're using cout? – Damien_The_Unbeliever Aug 24 '12 at 8:04
sorry, it is mix code )) – Myosotis Aug 24 '12 at 8:05
What do you mean by "empty"? – Kerrek SB Aug 24 '12 at 8:05
The final (float) cast is completely pointless: variable function arguments are default-promoted. (And t1[i] is already of type float!) Are you copy/pasting bits of code from somewhere else? – Kerrek SB Aug 24 '12 at 8:06
there is zero in every cell – Myosotis Aug 24 '12 at 8:06
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6 Answers
up vote 3 down vote accepted
Your array is not "empty", despite your protestations. It just holds a very, very small value: Your machine uses the IEEE754 standard for representing floating points. In that standard, the word with all zeros represents the value 0.0. The next bigger word (i.e. the one obtained by adding 1 to the underlying bits) represents the next biggest floating point value, which is an extremely tiny, denormal value. When you printf this value to standard precision (6 decimal places?), it's just rounded to zero.
Here's a tangentially related answer of mine on a similar question.
share|improve this answer
I see that you are right. I can see these small values with cout << t1[i]; – Myosotis Aug 24 '12 at 8:33
Totally nitpicky point: the latest revision of IEEE 754 (2008) changed "denormal" to "subnormal". – Pete Becker Aug 24 '12 at 12:13
@PeteBecker: Haha, interesting :-) – Kerrek SB Aug 24 '12 at 12:14
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The function memcpy copies bits, verbatim. So you're copying bits from an integer array to a float array: there's very little chance the contents will match the floating point representation. So you get an array filled with stuff that makes little sense to your floating point format.
In a nutshell, at the lowest level, 1 and 1.0f look wildly different.
The cast (float)t1[i]) doesn't really do anything since t1[i] is already float.
share|improve this answer
What should he use instead? – Default Aug 24 '12 at 8:09
Ok. So memcpy is useful function – Myosotis Aug 24 '12 at 8:09
@Default, std::vector<float>, std::vector<int>, std::copy()... – Nim Aug 24 '12 at 8:09
@Leila if it was useless, I don't think it would exist. – Default Aug 24 '12 at 8:10
@Leila It's not useless, it's made for other uses :-) – cnicutar Aug 24 '12 at 8:10
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You are forcing the integer values 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 .. 20 into floats. Floats and ints use different underlying representations, and offhand, I think those values are just very very small and will print as 0 unless you change the format to include a lot of precision.
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Bit arrangement is different in an int and a float.Even if things get copied well you wont be able to understand it.
Change to
printf("%d\t", (int)t1[i]);
and you will see things copied.
share|improve this answer
But I see only zeros – Myosotis Aug 24 '12 at 8:30
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memcpy copies memory as bytes and doesn't care what underlying types have been stored at the memory location. Integers in memory are stored in a different format than floats so what basically ends up in t1 could be but must not necessarily be valid floating point values.
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Since you are using C++ you can use the C++ features instead, like std::vector
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>
using namespace std;
int main(){
std::vector<float> floatVector;
std::vector<int> intVector;
std::copy(intVector.begin(), intVector.end(), floatVector.begin());
cout << "element[" << i << "]: " << floatVector[i] << std::endl;
share|improve this answer
It is good. But I use Memory_alloc from c6accel library (sharing memory with DSP). I can't represent this data with vector object. – Myosotis Aug 24 '12 at 8:35
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I'm currently working on replacing a legacy system with JAXB and I'm running into problem with parsing the XML. The number one requirement of the system is that it must be a drop-in replacement so I cannot modify the format of the XML. Below is the XML section that is giving me trouble.
The issue with the XML is that all of the s# objects are the exact same and there can be up to 256 of them. Is there a way in JAXB to annotate such a tag or do I have to create 256 separate annotations? Any help would be most appreciated.
Here is the java code for the xx object. Note: the object was originally programmed with the understanding that there would only be 2 s# objects, but that since has changed.
public class XMLXx implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 4064597372833234503L;
private XMLSite siteOne;
private XMLSite siteTwo;
public XMLSite getSiteOne() {
return siteOne;
public void setSiteOne(XMLSite s1) {
this.siteOne = s1;
public XMLSite getSiteTwo() {
return siteTwo;
public void setSiteTwo(XMLSite s2) {
this.siteTwo = s2;
And here is the XMLSite object:
public class XMLSite implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = -4374405403222014476L;
private Integer x;
private Integer y;
public Integer getX() {
return x;
public void setX(Integer x) {
this.x = x;
public Integer getY() {
return y;
public void setY(Integer y) {
this.y = y;
share|improve this question
256 of what? Please be specific. – skaffman Jul 7 '11 at 19:56
of the <s#> tags. So there could be <s3> <s4> <s5> etc each with the <X> and <Y> tags as children – Chris Flynn Jul 7 '11 at 19:57
What does your target object model look like? I lead a JAXB impl and might know a couple tricks that could help. – Blaise Doughan Jul 7 '11 at 20:28
I'm not entirely sure of what you are asking for Blaise (I am very new to using JAXB and am a junior developer). Do you want to see the Java object I am trying to parse the XML into? – Chris Flynn Jul 7 '11 at 20:42
Yes, that is exactly what I'm asking for. – Blaise Doughan Jul 7 '11 at 20:44
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4 Answers
up vote 5 down vote accepted
If you want to handle at the s# items as a collection:
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.List;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;
public class XMLXx implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 4064597372833234503L;
private List<XMLSite> sites;
public List<XMLSite> getSites() {
return sites;
public void setSites(List<XMLSite> sites) {
this.sites = sites;
Then you could do something like to fool JAXB into thinking all the elements (s1, s2, etc) are actually called s:
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.Unmarshaller;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLInputFactory;
import javax.xml.stream.XMLStreamReader;
import javax.xml.stream.util.StreamReaderDelegate;
public class Demo {
JAXBContext jc = JAXBContext.newInstance(XMLXx.class);
XMLInputFactory xif = XMLInputFactory.newInstance();
XMLStreamReader xsr = xif.createXMLStreamReader(new FileInputStream("input.xml"));
xsr = new SiteStreamReaderDelegate(xsr);
Unmarshaller unmarshaller = jc.createUnmarshaller();
XMLXx object = (XMLXx) unmarshaller.unmarshal(xsr);
private static class SiteStreamReaderDelegate extends StreamReaderDelegate {
public SiteStreamReaderDelegate(XMLStreamReader xsr) {
public String getLocalName() {
String localName = super.getLocalName();
if(localName.startsWith("s")) {
return "s";
return localName;
For a similar example see:
share|improve this answer
Thank you so much this is exactly what I needed. – Chris Flynn Jul 7 '11 at 21:21
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Write a meta-XSD in freemarker/velocity or the like. It can define the 256 types as subtypes of some parent type using a for loop. If you want to fully automate, you can write a maven plugin to generate the XSD from the freemarker and the run generate-sources on the result.
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No, I don't think so, not with standard JAXB. You could, in principle use @XmlMixed, but you'd still end up with a bunch of DOM Element objects, not bound classes. Some proprietary JAXB extension such as MOXy might be able to handle it, though.
This isn't really a good use case for JAXB. As you say, the XML is poorly designed. You'd be better off parsing this by hand (using e.g. STAX or DOM), and building the desired object model yourself.
share|improve this answer
Thank for the information, I'll have to look into parsing it by hand. – Chris Flynn Jul 7 '11 at 20:10
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JaxB does not support "dynamic" tags. Since can only be 256 of these, use a script to generate source.
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Burmese Activist Charged After Visit By "Wretched American"
Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was charged today with violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man snuck into her house uninvited.
Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, a revolutionary who helped Burma win its independence from Britain ("Burma" is the name used by opposition groups to refer to the country now officially known as Myanmar). She has spent 13 of the last 19 years in some form of custody, due to her pro-democracy activism and helped found the National League for Democracy, which won in a landslide in Burma's 1990 general election (the ruling military junta nullified the results). Suu Kyi, who was voted Prime Minister, was already under house arrest at the time, for giving speeches and campaigning for democracy after a ban on political gatherings. Her continued nonviolent campaigning won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.
The latest change in Suu Kyi's status comes as a result of the American John William Yettaw, who reportedly swam across a lake, snuck into Suu Kyi's home, and stayed there for two days. He had tried to visit her once before, in 2008; both times, she told him to leave, but this time he refused. Yettaw's stepson says he "is harmless and not politically motivated in any way." No one knows what does motivate him, but Suu Kyi's lawyer Kyi Win doesn't much care. "Everyone is very angry with this wretched American. He is the cause of all these problems," he said. "He's a fool."
Burma's junta, which took power in 1988 after a bloody uprising, says that by allowing Yettaw's visit Suu Kyi violated Article 22 of the Law Safeguarding the State from the Danger of Subversionists (aka Scary Totalitarian Rule No. 1). The National League for Democracy, however, says she has violated no law. Many speculate that Yettaw's intrusion is merely an excuse for the junta to extend this particular round of detention for Suu Kyi, which began in 2003. Sein Win, Prime Minister of Burma's opposition government-in-exile, said, "It is nothing more than a political ploy to hoodwink the international community so that it can keep (Suu Kyi) under lock and key while the military maneuvers its way to election victory on 2010."
Aung San Suu Kyi To Be Put On Trial [Guardian]
3RD: Myanmar's Suu Kyi Charged Over Detained American's Visit [Breitbart]
Suu Kyi To Stand Trial Again Over US Visitor [Independent]
Suu Kyi Charged With Violating House Arrest [Independent] | [] |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am using the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word library to automatically fill text into a Word template form (.dotx).
When i am filling the form with text i use MS Word bookmarks like this:
object oBookMark = "Bookmark-To-Find";
doc.FormFields.get_Item(ref oBookMark).Result = Value-To-Insert;
The reference is there so i don't need to fill out same information 100 times in the same document.
The MS Word Reference needs to be manually updated when the document is created. Is there anyway to fix this?
Questions: Can i update all references with c# code? Is there any better way to make this?
share|improve this question
Well i dont have any code for the cross reference, the question was: Is there any way to update references when document is created. – Stefan Karlsson Jan 13 '13 at 11:57
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1 Answer
You need to update all fields in the document:
You can also update particular fields only by calling the Update() method of the respective fields within the doc.Fields collection.
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Your Answer
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Join this community!
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My daughter has asked my why she gets tears in her eyes when she pees sometimes.
Posted by Shar D. Facebook
We tried looking this up together but cant find an answer. Loads of others on forums asking the same Q. There is no pain associated.
Post an answer
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1. #1
Weird Display name when Linking accounts
MMO-Champs, I request your aid.
When I linked my GW1 account to my GW2 account, my display name changed to a lot of digits!
I don't know what it means, but I'm not comfortable linking it here, cause I don't know what it is. (Maybe it's a serial key, but it's so long... I don't know)
Has it happened to others? What did you do?
Can I do anything about it?
Should I contact GW2 support?
2. #2
Those numbers are always attached to your account. If you look into the main page of your account page, it says in big red bold "What's up with the four digits at the end of the display name?" Hover over/click it, and it will tell you.
If you mean your entire screen name such as: RandomGuy24.1234 was changed to 1234567890.1234, than I do not know.
It might be an unexpected error after ANet tried to fix the problem from before and should just call their support line if no one else knows what it is about.
Last edited by Allanon the Mystic; 2012-08-24 at 08:45 AM.
- Guild Wars 2 Characters -
Senari of the Woad | Riven Lightsbane | Cain the Mystic
3. #3
It's just to ensure that your ID is unique, as multiple people can have the same account names, but the numbers will always be different to distinguish it from other accounts.
IIRC :Your in-game friends should just see the username you originally chose, whether this is true on launch or afterwards I cannot remember.
You don't need to do anything about it, you will never need to remember that string of numbers after your name, just email and password.
4. #4
Okay, I will write an example of the digits, since it's not the four security ones;
This is an example of how long it is, and that it contains both letters and numbers. Reminds me of a serial key.
5. #5
Is it in place of your username?
Because the majority of people have something like:
Thunderbeard-1234 or similar.
If it's totally replaced it, then I'd send them a little email.
6. #6
Yes, I had a "Name.1234" too, before linking the accounts.
7. #7
I'd get in touch with them then.
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• You may not post replies
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• You may not edit your posts | [] |
Meta Battle Subway PokeBase - Pokemon Q&A
Is it possible to make any use of a Shedinja?
0 votes
Shedinja, it has an awesome ability.
Moveset could be better.
But what I want to know is: Can you make anything out of a Shedinja?
Any strategies?
Any good movesets?
Anything at all?
asked Nov 25, 2012 by Artist KS
1 Answer
0 votes
Lets see what smogan says:
Shedinja is at once the most blessed and the most cursed Pokemon to
ever exist, thanks to its access to the best ability in the game,
Wonder Guard. Despite being blessed with immunities to any type that
cannot hit Shedinja super effectively, it is cursed with wielding only
a single hit point, and it is around this hit point that any strategy
regarding Shedinja revolves. For Shedinja to even hit the playing
field, extreme team support is needed, as any form of passive damage
will immediately KO it. Furthermore, Shedinja's stats are
exceptionally mediocre, its meager Attack stat is the only stat that
crosses base 50. Fortunately, it does have Shadow Sneak to alleviate
its speed. That said, Shedinja carries weaknesses to only Dark-,
Ghost-, Rock-, Fire-, and Flying-type attacks, and is thus able to
wall many of the metagame's deadly attackers, including dangerous
threats such as Gorebyss. Additionally, Shedinja carries a nice
immunity to every priority attack bar Shadow Sneak and the predictable
Sucker Punch, which ensures that it can't be picked off at will.
Although Shedinja is devilishly difficult to use successfully, and
nigh impossible to bring in safely, when played to its strengths it
can be an unstoppable force, slicing through helpless opposition.
Good moveset:
Item:Lum berry
EVS:252 hp/252 atk/4 spe
Adament nature
~ Swords Dance
~ X-Scissor
~ Shadow Sneak / Sucker Punch
~ Protect / Will-O-Wisp
With great immunities set you can viably use. Shedinja
makes the most out of the little it has available to it, with Swords
Dance giving Shedinja a way of actually threatening the opponent.
X-Scissor is the requisite STAB option, and hits a large number of
Pokemon for neutral damage. Shadow Sneak is one of the key factors
that make Shedinja viable, the STAB priority being crucial in
outspeeding opposing Pokemon that can hit Shedinja super effectively.
Sucker Punch is also a viable option due to its higher base power, but
it also suffers from failing against any non-damaging attack—quite
costly given that many status moves OHKO Shedinja. Protect is another
crucial move, allowing Shedinja to scout an opponent's moveset for
surprise Toxics that would kill it, as well as random Hidden Powers
from the opponent. Will-O-Wisp is also usable to support the team, but
Shedinja will rarely find an occasion to use it to great effect.
answered Nov 25, 2012 by Exca le roi
lol why would you ev train it on HP | [] |
I tried Ektar 120 recently when I bought a Bronica and the 1st roll was dreadful. I processed it for the normal time at the normal temperature but it looked to way over developed with hellish contrast. There was as you describe very blue shadow areas - not dense shadows that could not be dialed out using filtration, because then it became overall yellow.
I think it was a problem of some degree of over development, despite processing it as per normal which gave rise to 'crossed curves' (where the three colours develop at different rates, not what they are designed to) What was also of note was the base colour of the film was a darkish brown, not orange as I normally get on other films. The later films were a little better but not perfect in that respect. Even scanning it was little better and the roll will stay with me as a reminder what a failure looks like
The 2nd roll was better when exposed on a dull day and the third roll also exposed on a day with subdued sunlight wasn't bad either. I have yet to make any 'proper' prints but when I do I will scan and upload them. I will not be using Ektar again. | [] |
Date/Time 14 Mar 2014 6:04:08pm
The story was an editorial Simon. Editorials are distinct from journalism - they are essentially comment.
If you don't agree with the Daily Tele's stances and don't follow Rugby League do not buy their newspaper. If enough people agree wiuth you they will either change their stance or go broke. Easy.
Don't kid yourself you want unbiased newspapers Simon. You simply want newspapers that reflect your own biases. Nothing wrong with that, it is part of the human condition. Just be aware of it. And try not to be afraid of other people holding alternative points of view and publishing them.
| [] |
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in Data Studio
DCLM used in MoCa Pre-training
🏠 Homepage | 🤖 MoCa-Qwen25VL-7B | 🤖 MoCa-Qwen25VL-3B | 💻 Code | 📄 Arxiv | 📕 PDF
Introduction
This is a text pre-training dataset used in the modality-aware continual pre-training of MoCa models. It is adapted from DCLM and randomly downsampled to ~20B tokens.
The dataset consists of text examples. text is a string containing text while images are left blank intentionally since there is no image available.
Citation
MoCa
DCLM
@misc{li2024datacomplm,
title={DataComp-LM: In search of the next generation of training sets for language models},
author={Jeffrey Li and Alex Fang and Georgios Smyrnis and Maor Ivgi and Matt Jordan and Samir Gadre and Hritik Bansal and Etash Guha and Sedrick Keh and Kushal Arora and Saurabh Garg and Rui Xin and Niklas Muennighoff and Reinhard Heckel and Jean Mercat and Mayee Chen and Suchin Gururangan and Mitchell Wortsman and Alon Albalak and Yonatan Bitton and Marianna Nezhurina and Amro Abbas and Cheng-Yu Hsieh and Dhruba Ghosh and Josh Gardner and Maciej Kilian and Hanlin Zhang and Rulin Shao and Sarah Pratt and Sunny Sanyal and Gabriel Ilharco and Giannis Daras and Kalyani Marathe and Aaron Gokaslan and Jieyu Zhang and Khyathi Chandu and Thao Nguyen and Igor Vasiljevic and Sham Kakade and Shuran Song and Sujay Sanghavi and Fartash Faghri and Sewoong Oh and Luke Zettlemoyer and Kyle Lo and Alaaeldin El-Nouby and Hadi Pouransari and Alexander Toshev and Stephanie Wang and Dirk Groeneveld and Luca Soldaini and Pang Wei Koh and Jenia Jitsev and Thomas Kollar and Alexandros G. Dimakis and Yair Carmon and Achal Dave and Ludwig Schmidt and Vaishaal Shankar},
year={2024},
eprint={2406.11794},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={id='cs.LG' full_name='Machine Learning' is_active=True alt_name=None in_archive='cs' is_general=False description='Papers on all aspects of machine learning research (supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement learning, bandit problems, and so on) including also robustness, explanation, fairness, and methodology. cs.LG is also an appropriate primary category for applications of machine learning methods.'}
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