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PHOTOSHOP MADNESS is where you practically go mad trying to find the most useful stuff for Photoshop when you need real color advice. This month we've found some very-cool resources, and tutorials -- and -- unfortunately we discovered another rip-off site that will take your money for other people's content! Here we go :
* Basic to Advanced Flesh Tone Color Theory and Illustration Techniques for Photoshop
* Differences between RAW vs JPEG in Digital Photography (VIDEO)
* Creating Color Mockups in Photoshop CS4
* BEWARE :: Steer Clear of "DocStoc.com"
* How to color correct skin in Photoshop
* Freebie :: Color Palette Template
* Prepping Graphics for Print
... and MORE
As always, we caution you -- be careful what you click, and where you click. We always attempt to refer you to good, clean stuff -- but malware, phishing, stalker and predator links are abundant in many sites these days. Whatch those little popups in the text. Just stay on the tutorial / content paths and you'll be okay.
BEWARE :: Steer Clear of "DocStoc.com"
As you can see from the screen above, you cannot download the "FREE" tutorial until you've filled in all that personal information, including your charge card !!!! Yikes! This is Photoshop Madness!
While looking for this month's Photoshop Madness we REALLY had a fit of madness. Seems "Doc Stoc dot com" offers "free" downloadable tutorials, and then captures your private information . . .
I ran across this cool looking tutorial, and decided to share it with you. But I was taken through a series of screens to access the documentation which had been offered "FREE" and as I walked through the process the site even sent me a confirmation. But guess what : No FREE LUNCH from www.docstoc. com
BEWARE: in the screen capture linked below, you can see they're even lifting tutorials you can get FREE from from other sites. Then we get an email saying we need to "complete" the registration to download the file . . . doc_stoc_email.jpg. Well, anyway, see the next article
Full story : Second attempt to get my charge card! Madness . . . pure madness!
See this screen capture!!! Now, you can go to that web site and pull up the exact same tutorial for FREE. Hmmmmmmm.
But that's okay . . . our Photoshop slewths chased down the original, and here, you can have it for free:
Prepping Graphics for Print
This is an article from the CS2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies -- just like the previous reference, except this one is for free. In fact, you can DOWNLOAD several articles all in PDF format FREE.
Photoshop madness or not, you really got'to be careful who your friends are!!!
Full story : books.google.com
See for screen capture or video
Differences between RAW vs JPEG in Digital Photography (VIDEO)
Photography expert Quana Parker talks about the differences between shooting your photos in RAW and JPEG formats. When using JPEGs you refuse to have a full control and access over your photos in post processing process. With RAW format you make sure that if your current camera settings are not ideal, you can always adjust and tweak them in your post processing software later on without loosing the quality of the photograph.
Full story : Get Connected Show : Mike Agerbo talks to Photography Expert Quana Parker
See for screen capture or video
NEXT : Even more Madness with Color Theory and Techniques
... continues on the next page!


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PHOENIX — The trade of Chris Carter to the Astros in early February may be ready to pay the A's another dividend.
The A's claimed first baseman Nate Freiman from Houston Saturday morning, potentially filling the club's need for a right-handed power-hitting option at first behind left-handed starter Brandon Moss.
The deal was set up, at least in part, because in acquiring Carter along with signing Carlos Pena, the Astros had no room for a Rule 5 player who under baseball rules would have to be kept on the roster all season or be offered back to his old club, the San Diego Padres.
Houston plans on starting the season with three first basemen in the lineup — Carter in left field, Pena as the DH and Brett Wallace at first. With that glut, they had no room for Freiman, so they put him on waivers and the A's claimed him.
"Once we traded Chris Carter there, we knew they might have an abundance there once they got him," A's assistant general manager David Forst said, "so we made sure we got a good look at him."
Oakland sent pro scout Mike Ziegler to Florida to watch the 26-year-old Freiman, and his positive recommendation led to the club putting in a claim. They have seven games in which to form a final opinion of whether or not to keep the 6-foot-8, 250-pound Zeigler on the opening day roster.
"He had a great year in Double-A last year," Forst said. "Obviously he has a ton of power. And his splits against left-handed pitching are off the charts."
That's one way to look at it. Freiman hit .348 against lefties last year and had eight homers in just 112 at-bats. His numbers against right-handers weren't bad — .285 with 16 homers in 404 at-bats — but the left-handed numbers fit an A's need.
And to be fair, the Astros liked what they saw of Freiman while he was with them.
"He proved to us that he is what we thought he was," Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow told the Houston Chronicle. "Whether or not he's ready for the big leagues after being in Double-A, that's anybody's guess. But he did everything that we hoped he would. It's really not a reflection on him. It's a reflection on the fact that we stayed healthy and we have a lot of options."
Manager Bob Melvin said that he'd get Freiman as many at-bats as possible in the next week to better make a good evaluation of the newest A's player.
"I can feel it, but it's not too bad," Reddick said. "If it had been a game in July, we would have tapped it up and I would have stayed in there. It was one of those things where the wind moved the ball more than I thought it would and I had to reach back for it."
As the A's have it planned, Reddick will go through a full workout Sunday then get back in the lineup Monday.
"I knew this might be my last start (in Arizona) before the season, and I wanted to be season-ready," Milone said after taking the victory in the A's 12-5 win over San Francisco. "I can confidently say that I am, although you know there are always things you can improve on.
Milone is down to start against the Giants his next time, too, although it will be in AT&T Park as both teams head north for three games.

subset: commoncrawl


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|View Poll Results: Psycho-Pass - Episode 13 Rating
|Perfect 10
|9 out of 10 : Excellent
|8 out of 10 : Very Good
|7 out of 10 : Good
|6 out of 10 : Average
|5 out of 10 : Below Average
|4 out of 10 : Poor
|3 out of 10 : Bad
|2 out of 10 : Very Bad
|1 out of 10 : Painful
|Voters: 60. You may not vote on this poll
|Thread Tools
|2013-01-17, 19:10
|Link #21
U mad?
Join Date: Apr 2012
In fact, I suspect that each of those files represent information of one individual with that mental condition, indicating that their 'perfect' society is far less perfect than we all thought (well, worse than what we already know, it's Urobuchi writing the story).
About them being related due to same hair colour, while Makishima's hair is probably natural, her hair may simply have that colour because of old age.
|2013-01-17, 22:00
|Link #26
Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2013
Those who are convinced that the Sybil system is broken should take the following fact into account: in the U.S., it is estimated that the criminal justice system wrongfully convicts between 5000 to 10,000 defendants annually. Since there are less than 3 million criminal prosecutions concluded in the entire country each year, the Sybil error rate of 1 out of every million is an order of magnitude more accurate than the system currently in place in the U.S., and I wager, any other system in the world.
Furthermore, a criminal prosecution presumes a crime. The harm has already been done. The Sybil system is preventative. It identifies the would-be perpetrator before he or she commits any crime.
And if we take the director's statements at face value, then Sybil is in fact doing a heck of a job. The general public willingly surrenders to the system only because of the widespread perception that it actually works. And by all accounts, it does. If it screws up just once out of a million chances, it would not do to have societal consensus shaken by such a relatively infinitesimal error rate.
This is not to say that the Sybil system is perfect. But if Sybil were obviously broken then PsychoPass would fail to raise any kind of moral dillema for the audience to ponder, which would diminish the value of the series as a work of art. On the contrary, I think Urobuchi intends to present us with a closer question so that we may think more deeply about the balance between individual freedoms and choices on one hand and the general good and orderly functioning of society on the other.
|2013-01-17, 22:46
|Link #29
User of the "Fast Draw"
In the end what is really being gained here? I suppose this proves that every system has its pros and cons and that's something to consider. But really not much to praise here either. Like in the factory scenario loopholes are always going to be found and while it looks like society is working well under this system the fractures are already popping up.
|2013-01-17, 23:11
|Link #31
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Also I am beginning to wonder if the sylib is framing people who begin to doubt the current system.
Last edited by prototype_sky; 2013-01-17 at 23:27.
|2013-01-17, 23:20
|Link #32
Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2013
But they have to get Mikishima's photo right?
Dominator only has the record of scanning.
|2013-01-17, 23:35
|Link #34
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
Ginzo and old man badass are father and son. Honestly, to me this was seeming VERY likely after the minor beatdown papa gave to his misbehaving boy, but this pretty much just confirms it. Ginzo must be feeling rather awkward right about now. He's been lecturing Akane so much about the dangers of rising Crime coefficient...yet this is really more about his own insecurities about his mental health.
I'll be perfectly honest. Akane is rather coming off as the most Menschy character in this show, despite what happened with her in episode 11. And that's even accounting for the possibility that she's a criminally asymptomatic person like Shogo. Even if you throw out the possibly not accurate psycho pass reading, it's pretty damn obvious that while Akane is clearly a very empathetic individual, she has some pretty goddamned tough mental and emotional resilience. I'm wondering if Shogo is going to change his appraisal of Akane once he realizes how quickly she recovered from the BSOD he sent her into. Shogo had Kougami's friend killed, and he reacted to it by going quite significantly unhinged. I'm not sure Shogo can fairly say Akane isn't unique in that regard.
Rather a design flaw though...
|2013-01-17, 23:39
|Link #35
Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2013
In the first place, the monitoring is never random. That is what I gathered from the director's "human-in-the-loop" explanation. Dominators are not attached to drones to constantly screen the populace. You will know well ahead of time whenever you will have an encounter with Sybil, and can prepare yourself for it. You can even plan your life to minimize or avoid contact with Sybil. That is, unless an enforcer suddenly points a dominator at you, and even then you were probably already up to no good.
Last edited by Mandarake; 2013-01-18 at 00:22. Reason: For clarity
|2013-01-17, 23:52
|Link #36
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2007
So in the future GIFs will be used in funerals, huh? Well, they could've at least gone with a looped one then.
Anyway, I had a feeling that old lady was going to become an important figure back when she first appeared in episode 6 and I'm glad it happened because the show could certainly use at least one Sybil higher-up with an actual presence in the story. And she did a good job of making them seem even shadier than before in that they're well aware of the flaws in the system and simply cover them up as they come through likely questionable methods. I suspect more unwanted truths about the society they've created will be revealed in the future as we get closer to the beginning of its almost inevitable entropy.
Also, it seems that the key to have an "uncloudable" Hue like Makishima and Akane is something along the lines of acting on your own will and sticking to your beliefs without being alienated by society but rather accepting that it is what it is. Masaoka couldn't manage to do that and denied the system, so he became a latent criminal, while Akane - despite the incident with the Dominator not allowing her to shoot Makishima, which someone else might easily interpret as a betrayal by the system and be angry about - accepts the system's mistakes and merely seeks to make up for them through her own ideas, whose fundamentally good nature she continues to believe in, just as Makishima said was the case for him in episode 11. Which makes me we wonder if he will eventually develop an interest in her as well in spite of her disappointing first performance.
Still, that was only the first in what will likely be a series of potentially scarring incidents for Akane, so it's probably still a little too soon to claim that she's got the world all figured out to the point of being wholly unbreakable and incorruptible. Besides, now that the countdown is on 'till Ginoza descends into the realm of Enforcer-dom, she will soon be left as the only Inspector in the team, which in turn will make her unstoppable once Urobuchi finally dishes out that true despair and breaks her into becoming a full-fledged psychopath.
|2013-01-18, 00:47
|Link #38
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: I'm right behind you
Age: 38
In the comments of stories about the 787 airliners being grounded, some people have said they can't trust an airplane that relies more on computers and electronics than on mechanics and human judgement. YMMV with planes of course, but I certainly think it applies to society and law enforcement. Would you install a computer in place of a police chief, let alone in place of your president/prime minister? I think enough of us have seen "2001" to know the answer to that question.
|2013-01-18, 00:54
|Link #39
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: I'm right behind you
Age: 38
|2013-01-18, 01:15
|Link #40
Art Block Specialist
Join Date: Jun 2007
Don't forget another topic that was discussed in this episode.
The machine is not perfect, which is why you have the enforcers and the inspectors to guide them. You can place a lot of trust into this 99.9999% accurate system, but you can still use your own judgement when the extreme outliers happened. As much as it can also be used as an assurance for the public, the system does work like that.
|Thread Tools


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In Brief
For many decades, America's global leadership success has been attributed to its robust and rigorous public higher education system. Yet today, only 34 percent of young American adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are enrolled in college, making the U.S. seventh in that ranking among industrialized countries. (Korea is first, with 53 percent.) The business model upon which U.S. public higher education is built has rendered it unaffordable to students, and it is in fragile fiscal health. There is little accountability.
The status quo is untenable—and the system cannot be fixed one institution at a time. An integrated and transformative approach is required to once again provide an affordable, accessible, and accountable higher education to mainstream America.
This article discusses that transition and offers a solution: an online education environment that capitalizes on the power of digital technologies, rich content, open learning systems, and the sharing of capabilities across campus boundaries to engage students already comfortable with online interactivity.
This paper proposes that the federal government create a grant program for the education of students. Such a program would provide a fertile, grant-based competition for diagnostics, remediation, curriculum design, learning management, assessment, and integration. Teams of faculty, technology professionals, and assessment professionals in consortia would develop the material. Different systems would emerge; research on their effectiveness would be published; and systems would improve over time in response to the research. Home institutions would still grant degrees and approve curriculum. The transition could be modeled on the one made by public universities beginning in 1950, when federal money began to fuel science research.
Key Concepts
Public higher education is not serving the public good. Right now, only 39 percent of American adults have two- or four-year degrees, making the U.S. twelfth among industrial countries. Only 30 percent of those who enroll in four-year institutions finish in four years. Trends are in the wrong direction.
The reinvention that is needed must be affordable, accessible, and accountable. It cannot emerge from within an existing university because the norms, reward systems, policies, promotion criteria, and business models of existing universities all work to reinforce the current paradigm.
The solution is an online education system.
Remediation and the general education requirements provide the best avenue to increasing the college enrollment and graduation rates in the U.S. This is where we should begin, with an integrated online system.
Research results demonstrate that integrated, online learning management systems produce better results than traditional classroom learning. These systems combine technology with learning science to personalize learning experiences, putting students at the center of their own education. But to achieve all three goals—affordability, accessibility, and accountability—the system must be integrated.
A federal grant program should spur and support these innovations.
The American Graduation Initiative proposed by President Obama calls for the U.S. to have the highest percentage of college graduates per capita in the world by 2025. This would require that we produce 16 million more college graduates than we would at current rates.1 We do not believe this is possible without transforming the way America structures public higher education and the way individual public institutions function.
Many agree that U.S. graduate education is the very best in the world. The quality of undergraduate education relative to other industrial countries is more variable, but it is good—for those who can attend and graduate. And nearly all institutions are well managed fiscally. But the fact is that vast numbers of people cannot attend our public higher education institutions because of rigid frameworks that drive up costs and limit accessibility.
Calls for fundamental change, even transformation, in higher education began in 1991 with Ernest Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate2 and were accelerated in 1993 by the Pew Foundation's initiative, "Seeing Straight Through the Muddle."3 Since then, scores of excellent books and hundreds of papers on transformation and change have been published by highly experienced and accomplished people, many of them university presidents.4-6 Every new U.S. secretary of education has had a reform initiative—yet not much has happened over this nearly 20-year period.
Public higher education cannot be improved by retooling the current system, nor by fixing it one institution at a time. The norms, reward systems, policies, promotion criteria, cultures, and business models of existing institutions all work to reinforce the existing paradigm. And if one university were to break through the conventional wisdom and implement changes, the national accreditation organizations and the external ranking systems imposed on universities would force the changes to wither before they could take root. Einstein's insight is apropos: "The specific problems we face cannot be solved using the same patterns of thought that were used to create them."
Affordability, Accessibility, and Accountability Today
There are currently about 2,000 public universities and 1,000 public community colleges in the United States. Nearly all U.S. public universities state their mission as teaching, research, and service. These goals are rooted in the Morrill Act of 1862, which delineated this tripartite mission as a requirement for obtaining a land grant to build a college. With the arrival of the baby boomers in the 1960s, the number of community colleges exploded. Their purpose was laid out in 1947 in the report of the President's Commission on Higher Education, which suggested a network of public community colleges that would provide education to a diverse group of students at little or no cost and serve community needs through a comprehensive mission. Their public funding comes largely from the counties they serve rather than from the states. They are charged with providing workforce development, remedial work so that adults with poor K-12 outcomes can prepare themselves for college, and associate's degrees that replace the first two years of a traditional four-year bachelor's degree program. A few now offer bachelor's degrees.
The Morrill Act charged public universities with educating the mainstream population of the states in which they were located, enhancing the economic development of that state and advancing its social progress. That is exactly what the universities did for their first 50 years. But following World War II, as the Cold War mounted, public universities began to disengage from their states and focus on federal needs in response to the large and growing sums of money available from the federal government for research in science and technology. Without a doubt, this research enterprise has proven to be spectacularly successful. However, the stress on federal research, and the significant resources it provided, caused a major change in the cultures, reward systems, productivity, policies, organizational structures, and business models of universities. They started to focus on obtaining federally funded research dollars rather than on educating the mainstream students in their states or addressing state economic and social issues. Some would argue that, while the change was good for research, it was bad for undergraduate teaching and undergraduate student learning—and perhaps played a role in the declining college attainment rate.
The Challenges
Affordability is the first challenge. Although they were conceived to educate the middle class, public universities and community colleges have become more expensive for students each year. Since 1980, state support for public universities (as measured in dollars per full-time student) has been declining. The announcement in November 2009 by the California Board of Regents that tuition for the University of California system would increase by 32 percent is a stark reminder that costs, too, are headed in the wrong direction.7
A blame game has been playing out on this issue for 25 years, with universities blaming state legislatures and politicians accusing universities of runaway costs and lax, unaccountable professors. Parents, meanwhile, wonder what they are scrimping and saving for. But blaming simply won't solve the problem: affordability can only be achieved through the transformation of higher education.
Accessibility is also a major obstacle. While the working class and women have broken down the barriers to higher education, minority enrollment still lags.
Lastly, there is a lack of accountability in higher education. This issue has three dimensions: (1) inadequate attention to assessing learning outcomes and adjusting teaching in response to assessment, (2) the "siloing" of disciplines, and (3) the fragmented general education curriculum. Professors assume responsibility for teaching, but little for linking their teaching to student learning. Many do not know such tools exist. Institutions often ask students to evaluate their professors' teaching, but that does not correlate well with student learning. For example, Bloom's Taxonomy for learning objectives, along with teaching approaches for realizing those objectives, was introduced in 1956.8 We have known for a long time that learning is superior when the students are highly engaged in experiential and collaborative settings. A recent survey published in Nature indicates that faculty believe the quality of undergraduate science education is poor, but that their own teaching is good.9 The survey suggests that faculty do not know about the pedagogies and tools available to change the quality of science education—nor do university administrators, who could provide incentives to faculty to learn about them.
In addition, learning is currently measured through testing individuals in individual classes in thousands of institutions. For example, an institution does not expect two of its professors teaching different sections of the same course to produce consistent outcomes. And there is no expectation of consistency across the thousands of higher education institutions.
We now have tools for assessing learning that provide feedback to both professors and students. One of the learning evaluation tools that is emerging is formative assessment. Black and Wiliam consider an assessment "formative" when the feedback from learning activities is used to adapt teaching to meet learners' needs.10 Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick have shown how this process can help students take control of their own learning.11 The knowledge level of a person who completes a chemistry, English, or political science course at Harvard can be compared to that of an individual taking a comparable course at a small urban college or a university in another country. The Collegiate Learning Assessment project (www.cae.org) has shown that the ability of individuals to analyze complex materials is measurable. Students' written responses to tasks are evaluated to assess their abilities to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems, and communicate clearly and cogently. The curriculum and culture of the new Rochester campus of the University of Minnesota are focused on the strong and reliable measurement of student learning.12 Assessment tools can level the playing field among institutions. It has never been accurate to assume that students graduating from elite universities have more knowledge or better skills than those graduating from mainstream universities or colleges. With these new assessment tools, institutions can identify the learning systems that produce the best outcomes and learn from each other in order to continuously improve student learning. The tools can also introduce accountability across institutions.
The compartmentalizing of disciplines presents another challenge. Research and teaching are typically carried out in subfields within subfields of disciplines. The journals that publish the research fuel this disaggregation of knowledge so that many, perhaps the majority, of publications are read by only a handful of people. For example, at the extreme, a political science department could have 10 subfields; each subfield evolves a set of journals that publish research in that subfield. These journals publish increasingly fragmented research, and they do so at high cost. They are the respected journals in the academy. Faculty members must publish and, therefore, must work in subfields. While significant exceptions exist at the graduate level, where interdisciplinary activity is common when it is funded externally, the undergraduate curriculum at large universities is often delivered in subfields.
Finally, the general education curriculum for the freshman and sophomore years in public universities, and for an associate's degree at community colleges, has the aim of broadly educating students in the liberal arts. The curriculum is generally understood to include analytical and communication capacities, problem-solving abilities, scientific and mathematical competence, historical and aesthetic knowledge, and ethical responsibility.
While there are exceptions, both the amount and the coherence of the general education required by universities have declined over the last 40 years. In public universities, faculty members are usually not rewarded for teaching general education curriculum. College graduates in history or English, for example, may be ignorant about the natural sciences, and vice versa. The National Endowment for the Humanities conducted a survey that showed it was possible to graduate from 78 percent of U.S. colleges and universities without studying the history of western civilization; 37 percent without studying any history at all; 45 percent without studying American or English literature; 41 percent without studying mathematics; 77 percent without studying a foreign language; and 33 percent without studying natural sciences.13
Can we create a system that delivers higher education that is affordable, accessible, and accountable? How would we create it and transition toward it?
The Solution: Integrated Online Education
The solution is online education that is integrated into the curriculum across existing institutions and uses technologically based learning management systems.
In order to encourage the development of online curriculum that takes advantage of the potential of technology to improve learning, the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, created a national grant competition to redesign large-enrollment courses, using technology with the goal of improving learning. The Center identified the following best practices.14
- Whole course redesign. In each case, the target was the whole course, rather than a single class or a single section of the course.
- Active learning. The redesigned course included more active, learner-centered activities, moving away from note-taking and passive student roles.
- Computer-based learning resources. Web-based and instructional software played an important role in engaging students with course content.
- Mastery learning. Rather than depending on classroom meetings, the pacing was driven by the need to master specific learning objectives.
- On-demand help. Students became part of a learning community. Lecture time was replaced by individual and small-group activities that took place in labs or online, allowing students to have more one-on-one help from faculty, teaching assistants, or peers.
- Alternative staffing. Various kinds of instructional staff provided support to help students with problem solving.
Twenty-five of the 30 course redesign projects showed significant increases in student learning; the other five showed learning equivalent to that produced by traditional formats. Of the 24 projects that measured retention, 18 reported a noticeable decrease in drop-failure-withdrawal rates, as well as higher course-completion rates. Most dramatically, all 30 institutions reduced their costs by an average of 37 percent. Positive student attitudes and increased student and faculty satisfaction were reported.
A Lumina Foundation study15 highlighted how course redesign can change learning outcomes. At the University of Southern Maine, the majority of students enrolled in the online program of study, and they had scores averaging 10 percent higher than their counterparts in the traditional lecture classroom. At the University of Tennessee, students in a redesigned Spanish course received higher grades and incurred lower costs. They were required to be physically present in class only once a week, but received personalized e-mail feedback from faculty and had 24-hour access to materials. At the University of Missouri—St. Louis, 55 percent of first-year algebra students, on average, fail the traditional course. After redesign, 75 percent complete and pass the course, according to the study.15 Finally, The U.S. Department of Education,16 analyzing 12 years' worth of studies, concluded that online education not only has advantages but that, on average, students performed better in these redesigned online courses than in face-to-face courses.
Today, enrollment in online education outpaces enrollment in traditional higher education. The Sloan Foundation reports enrollment growth of 9.7 percent in online education and 1.5 percent in higher education overall.17 Parry reports that online education in the U.S. is growing by 13 percent per year and that 25 percent of students will take an online class this year.18
This growth is occurring despite these facts: most of the standard online education offerings are inside one institution at a time; costs are high; learning outcomes are about the same as they are in a traditional setting; the curriculum fragmentation has not changed; and the technology delivery systems are not integrated, but consist of traditional lectures, readings, problems, and assessments—conducted online. The rapid growth is driven by the convenience of 24/7 availability. Most universities do not know the cost of these traditional online offerings. The Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications found that 7 percent of institutions said that online courses cost the same as traditional teaching; 45 percent reported that online teaching costs less than traditional; and 45 percent reported that they had no data on cost comparisons.19
These examples, and the data on cost and enrollment trends, relate only to offerings inside one institution at a time. The solution proposed here crosses institutional boundaries. Its goal is access to a quality college education at an affordable cost, with accountability for learning outcomes, for millions more Americans. It aims to move the U.S. to the top among industrialized countries in college attainment rate, with no sacrifice in the quality of learning—and perhaps even enhanced learning.
Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative20 has begun to pave the way for integration across institutions. It provides classes that combine online and in-person instruction. Students at any university that has approved the coursework as part of its curriculum may register for it. The students can "go to class" on their computers at whatever time of day suits them, although at certain times they are required to be in a classroom with a professor from their home campus. That professor receives information in advance about what portions of the online curriculum are causing the students the most problems. Students and teachers receive continuous feedback because an assessment component is embedded in each instructional activity. With money from the Gates, Lumina, and Hewlett Foundations, the Open Learning Initiative is turning its focus to community colleges.21 Learning with peers across institutional lines is already the accepted way of learning among young people who have grown up with Internet access.
It is only one step from the Open Learning Initiative to an alliance of member institutions offering high-quality education in the traditional courses and degree programs. Such an alliance would allow hundreds, even thousands, of students to take the same course by accessing the same online materials, problems, and discussions. Weekly or biweekly sessions at the students' own campus with professors, professional staff, and peers in the alliance keep progress on track. The initial cost of developing these types of online materials is high: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) estimates the cost for its Open Courseware is $10,000 per course,22 and this is not an integrated design. Integrated designs are more expensive. However, that cost, spread over thousands of students over several years, would shrink. More students could be taught with less faculty time and fewer facility needs. Learning could be assessed and improvement could be continuous.
Content would be fully accessible to the public, but certification that the course has been completed would require registration at the home university. Content could be grouped at a variety of scales, ranging from a full course syllabus to smaller modules. Any course taken for credit at the home university would have to be approved by the home university. Currently, the Creative Commons software protects intellectual property in a system such as this. And moodle (moodle.org) provides a virtual learning environment and is easy for professors and students to use. A student pays tuition to his or her home university or college, which pays a portion to the university in the alliance where the course originates.
There are indications that students are ready for such a system. The millennial generation is a connected population, interacting with each other and with a vast amount of information in a 24/7 environment. Students say they cannot imagine life without the daily use of various technologies such as cell phones, laptop computers, and gaming devices.23 Because of the new mobile capabilities of technology, students are constantly in touch—texting, creating, uploading, viewing, reviewing, interacting, listening, and watching.
Become Part of the Solution
If you are a professor:
- Educate yourself about the research on the quality of online education and its various forms. Talk to your colleagues about the facts.
- Educate yourself about learning technologies, such as moodle, and offer to develop a course with colleagues in universities in your state.
- Press your administrators to offer incentives for course and curriculum development.
If you are a dean:
- Educate yourself about what makes good pedagogy, and create a culture for your faculty that values learning about it and using it.
If you are a student:
- Continue to pressure professors and administrators to keep up with your technology capacity, your vision of what is possible, and your energy to try it.
If you are a university president:
- Assume the mantle of leadership for your state by convening the presidents of all public community colleges and universities and delineating a vision and business plan to provide education to your state students.
- "Sell" that vision to the leadership in your state, from the private-sector CEOs to the politicians.
- Demonstrate some results with your own resources.
If you are a governor:
- Be a national leader with a state initiative modeled after the one outlined here for the nation. Provide the state structure, the policies, and the money for the state universities and community colleges to collaborate to educate the mainstream though online opportunities.
If you are a member of the legislative or executive branch of the federal government:
- Design a bill with appropriate funds that is, for education, as visionary as the National Science Foundation was for research. Implement it through a national lab with a peer review for integrated online education as rigorous as the current peer review for research.
The NCAT program identified five distinct course redesign models. The supplemental model retains the basic structure of the traditional course, but adds technology-based activities outside the classroom to increase student engagement with the content of the course. The replacement model reduces the number of class meetings, replacing face-to-face time with online, interactive activities for students. The emporium model eliminates all class meetings and replaces them with a learning resource center. In this model, students choose when to access course materials, what types of materials to use depending on their needs, and how quickly to work through the materials with the support of on-site staff and instructional software. In the fully online model, an instructional system (e.g., Academic Systems software) is used to deliver the content of the course, with student assignments, test feedback, and tracking done within the context of the software. The buffet model departs from a fixed view of the way content is delivered; it offers students an assortment of interchangeable paths that match their learning styles, abilities, and preferences at each stage of the course.
At the heart of these models is a focus on learning rather than teaching. The National Educational Technology Plan from the U.S. Department of Education describes the challenge in this way: "We put students at the center and empower them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on several dimensions."24
The barriers to an integrated approach are significant. First, resistance from faculty is powerful. Faculty members have to expend the time and mental energy to learn a new pedagogy, become facile with Web-based learning management systems, be comfortable with a combination of lecture and interactive dialogue, and accept the fact that a faculty member from another institution might provide the lectures and online materials to their students. And many believe it is impossible to foster critical thinking or encourage original ideas in an online setting.
An even more serious barrier is the change in the university business model required by an integrated online system across institutions. Online education, in which students from many universities are enrolled in the same course, dramatically changes the facility requirements and faculty and staff time and roles. This business model cannot be implemented by any one university acting alone, and it is likely to blur the identity of one university relative to another. The competition between community colleges and state universities for students with certain needs causes the cost to the state to rise, but can make business sense for the state university. For example, some state research universities offer remedial courses in order to access the state dollars that flow for those courses, even though a community college down the street has that mission and fulfills it well.
These significant obstacles might make any solution appear to be a pipe dream. But we believe a previous transformation in public universities provides a model for how to accomplish this transition.
The Transition
The transformation made by public universities after World War II, from a teaching and state focus to a research and federal focus, provides a model. From the vantage point of 1950, most would have said that the progress made in research between 1950 and 1970 was impossible. Yet it happened—and it unfolded in four steps:
1. Public support. At the end of World War II, the public understood the role of science research. They knew that science and engineering had produced technology to win the war and was producing medicines to cure diseases.
2. Leadership from the president. In 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt commissioned a study about how to convert the wartime science and engineering enterprise into one focused on peacetime issues. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development under Roosevelt, proposed the creation of a national research foundation.25 After five years and the introduction of many different bills, President Harry Truman signed a bill establishing the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950.
3. A federal program with money. The National Science Foundation established the criteria for obtaining research dollars competitively and developed a system, which is rigorous and promotes quality, to review research proposals. In the first year (1951), appropriations to the National Science Foundation were $225,000. By 2009, the NSF appropriations were $6.5 billion.26 Twelve other federal agencies now also have enormous research divisions, so that federal appropriations for research and development in 2009 were just under $150 billion, with the Department of Defense representing the highest fraction. Appropriations for research and development received a big boost following Sputnik in 1957, another following President Kennedy's vision to "send a man to the moon and bring him home safely by the end of the decade," and yet another when Congress committed to doubling the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget for medical research between 1998 and 2003.
4. Universities following the money. Over a 15-year period after 1950, the universities' business models, promotion criteria, reward systems, policies, and very organizational structures changed dramatically to create incentives and support for access to federal money. Teaching by full-time regular faculty does not focus on undergraduate students, especially not on freshmen and sophomores, but on graduate students who help the faculty with their research. Faculty are rewarded or promoted not for teaching or conducting applied research aimed at helping their states, but for conducting research funded by federal dollars and published in established disciplinary journals. A robust system of conferences and journals has evolved to publish the findings of this research. Faculty members are judged by the number of their publications and the number of times their publications are cited by others. Teaching is evaluated, but is marginally important in promotion. Student learning is not evaluated. University administrators and faculty are perplexed when asked by the state, which already pays most of their salaries, to work on a state issue without extra resources. The salaries of many science and engineering faculty are paid for by federal grants, but rarely is this true of faculty members in the social sciences, fine arts, or humanities, even though they spend roughly half of their time doing research. A combination of state and tuition dollars pays for this faculty time. Buildings are funded and libraries stocked through the indirect use of grants. Large numbers of professionals, from accountants to hazardous waste specialists, are employed to operate this research enterprise. And faculty who perform well at research are promoted, tenured, and rewarded financially.
Over the years, federal policy has only put more weight on the value of research. For example, the Bayh-Dole Act (1980) allows universities to retain title to inventions made under federally funded research programs. In other words, universities can make money by commercializing inventions made by their faculty with federal research dollars.
The results of this transformation have been spectacular. Science and engineering research fueled the growth era of the last 60 years and is the primary source of innovation. Research in the social sciences and humanities has greatly deepened our understanding of the world in which we live.
Yet we argue that by some vital measures, public higher education is not serving the public. Only 34 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. are enrolled in college.27 Too many students who matriculate never finish: In public four-year institutions, only 30 percent of those who begin complete in four years and only 54 percent complete in six years. Completion rates in public community colleges are worse—19 percent complete on a normal schedule (two years for most programs) and 37 percent in twice the normal time.28 By applying the model from 1950, we can shift our institutions again without losing what is great now. The same four steps can make the next shift successful; the first two are already underway.
1. General public awareness, understanding, and support. Just as it did in 1944, the American public today knows a problem exists with its public higher education system, and it knows there is a very significant opportunity to address the problem. Public perception is well summarized by an article in the New York Times by Paul Fain, "Less for More."29
2. Leadership from the president. In 2005, President Bush asked Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to provide him with a report making recommendations on accessibility, affordability, and accountability in higher education. That report30 suggested improvements in what we have today. It did not paint a picture of a different system or call for a federal program or agency analogous to the National Science Foundation. No bills in Congress have been introduced to implement its recommendations. But it helped enhance the understanding of the public and Congress about the seriousness of the current situation. Today, a bill and federal program, possibly even an agency, are taking shape: the American Graduation Initiative introduced by President Obama.31 It is a $12 billion program aimed at moving the U.S. from 12th to first in the percentage of the population with a college education. It includes components for remediation, certification, and associate's degrees.
3. A federal program. The Obama plan is a good start. It must be deployed in a manner that produces the best college education in the world for people in the U.S.—at a low cost. It must create a coherent general education curriculum, incorporating learning assessment. Just as the NSF did for research, this program must establish criteria and quality standards for higher education. And it must have money. The $12 billion proposed is a good start. For perspective, the NSF budget for research is $6.5 billion, and the total federal allocation for research for all of the federal agencies is $150 billion. We believe that providing a college education to all Americans is at least as important as scientific research.
A federal grant program, similar to the NSF program for research but for the purpose of curriculum design and delivery, can request proposals for learning management systems. A learning management system can be defined as an integrated package of diagnostics, content, student learning activities, delivery modes, and assessment tools. In the early years of this federal grant program, the requests for proposals (RFPs) can focus on remediation and the general education requirements at the college level. Teams of faculty, technology professionals, and assessment professionals in consortia will develop the material. Different systems will emerge; research on the effectiveness of these will be published; and systems will improve over time in response to the research.
4. Follow the money. Mainstream universities have not yet engaged with this possibility. They still discount the quality of online education, and no one institution can overcome the financial barriers. But they will engage when the vision is communicated, the federal structure exists, and the federal money is accessible competitively. This will cause the walls between universities and community colleges to become porous, the walls between disciplines to shrink, the faculty reward systems to change, the power of the current accrediting agencies to decline as more reliable quality control systems emerge, and the departmental and university ranking systems to be modified. But much more importantly, it will educate the public.
We thank Ida Kubiszewski and Robert Costanza of the University of Vermont for sharing their white paper, Global University Metacourse Alliance, with us. It sparked us to "get to work" and develop the solution we had been talking about.


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Joel Page / AP
Gay-marriage supporters gather Sept. 10, 2012, at a rally outside of City Hall in Portland, Maine.
Updated at 1:45 p.m. ET -- After losing some 30 ballots on same-sex marriage across the country over the past decade, advocates of lesbian and gay couples are encouraged by polls showing they have a good chance of finally logging their first victory in a statewide popular vote.
Polls show majorities back same-sex marriage in Maryland, Washington and Maine, and they indicate a tight battle in Minnesota – the four states holding votes on the issue in November.
"We're feeling positive. The reality is, we haven't won a ballot measure on marriage yet," said Sarah Warbelow, state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. "I think it's very reasonable and realistic to expect that we'll win one or more of these ballot measures; certainly the polling suggests that all four are … a possibility."
Polling ahead of such ballots has not always accurately captured voters' sentiment: In California in 2008, the same-sex marriage camp had a majority, though the ban on gay and lesbian marriage ultimately prevailed. In North Carolina, polls had predicted a closer race in the May ballot on the constitutional amendment (a 16-point difference, according to Public Policy Polling at the time), but the anti-gay marriage camp won by more than 20 points.
"They're doing what they've always done, taking their victory lap before their first victory," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which on Thursday gave $250,000 to each of the four state campaigns opposed to same-sex marriage.
"The poll numbers that they're interpreting as good for them are actually not good for them," he said Friday, though noting that Washington could be tough for his side.
So far, the polls show support in the low-to-mid 50s for same-sex marriage:
-- In Maine, 53 percent said they will vote to back the initiative to institute gay marriage, compared to 44 percent who are opposed, according to Public Policy Polling (PPP), a firm that works for Democratic candidates and progressive causes. The mid-September poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percent.
-- In Maryland, 54 percent said they'll back the state law that was passed by the legislature earlier this year, compared to 40 percent who are opposed, according to Hart Research Associates, which conducted the July 24-28 poll for Marylanders for Marriage Equality. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.5 percent.
-- In Minnesota, the vote was a virtual tie, according to Public Policy Polling's Sept. 10-11 poll, which had 48 percent supporting the amendment to ban gay marriage, 47 percent opposed and 5 percent undecided. The poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. The margin of error for the overall survey was plus or minus 3.4 percent.
-- In Washington, 56 percent of voters think the law legalizing same-sex marriage should be upheld, while 38 percent think it should be overturned, and 6 percent are not sure, according to a Sept. 7-9 SurveyUSA poll for KING-5 News in Seattle. The margin of error was plus or minor 4.3 percent.
Though the numbers appear to bode well for the same-sex marriage camp, they shouldn't count on victory, Public Policy Polling said in its analysis of its Maine survey.
Did Supreme Court justice tip hand on gay marriage?
"Our experience in polling gay marriage is that if people say they're undecided it usually means they're opposed to it," said Dean Debnam, the firm's president. "Despite the 8 point lead for passage this should be seen as a very close race."
Gregory B. Lewis, a professor at Georgia State University who has researched public opinion on gay rights for nearly two decades, believes the same-sex marriage side could prevail in Maine and Washington, with Maryland and Minnesota too close to call.
"Since 2004, we're seeing a strong upward trend, about 2 percentage points a year -- more people are saying that they favor same-sex marriage than said so the year before" nationwide, said Lewis, who is chair of the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University.
Part of the uptick has been due to young people who support same-sex marriage hitting vote age, but primarily it has been a matter of voters changing their minds, he said.
Warbelow, of the HRC, said that even if people told pollsters one thing and voted another way, victory was within reach for her side.
"The polling is much higher than it's ever been," she said. "We were not seeing these kinds of numbers in prior years."
"We're hoping for all four, but even one will really change the conversation in the United States," she added.
Six states have same-sex marriage, led by Massachusetts in 2004, and followed by Connecticut, New York, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont plus the District of Columbia. A total of 38 states have either a state law or constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Appeals court: Denying federal benefits to same-sex couples is unconstitutional
Despite marriage progress, gay couples face big hurdles to parenthood
Conservatives target Republicans who back gay marriage
Same-sex couple fights to stop deportation, gay marriage ban
Obama: 'I think same-sex couples should be able to get married'
Prop 8 backers ask Supreme Court to review gay marriage ban


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text:
Jaime Pressly is engaged to entertainment lawyer Simran Singh, a rep for the star confirmed to Access Hollywood.
A wedding date for the couple is to be decided, the rep added.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hollywood's Hottest Moms & Their Loveable Little Ones
The news came at a festive time for the former "My Name is Earl" star. According to E! Online, Jaime is celebrating her 32nd birthday with a party tonight at Float at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, where she'll reportedly be joined by 50 friends at the rooftop bar. Her actual birthday was Thursday.
In November 2008, the actress announced her split from former fiance Eric Cubiche, the father of her son, Dezi, now 2.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hollywood's Hottest Couples!
"We are taking a break from our relationship but we are together everyday with Dezi and still love each other very much," Jaime said told Access' Nancy O'Dell at the time.
Related Content from AccessHollywood.com:
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hollywood Blondes
PLAY IT NOW: Access Extended: Jaime Pressly's Bulimia Battle
PLAY IT NOW: Jaime Pressly Goes Green!
MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Engagements - Couples - Parenthood - TV - Celebrities


text:
A group of three Hope College geology students will have a unique opportunity to participate in a research project in Sweden later this month.
The students, junior Nate Erber of Rockford, junior Dean Hazle of East Grand Rapids, and sophomore Leah LaBarge of Hudsonville, will spend three weeks as interns with the Geological Survey of Sweden, making detailed maps of rocks along the coast of the province of Halland, the only team from abroad to do so.
"The survey is mapping this area on a very large scale," said the students' Hope faculty mentor, Dr. Edward Hansen, professor of geological and environmental science, who will be accompanying the group. "We'll go into a few places and map it in a detail that the survey can't."
"What makes us unusual is that we are an American group," Hansen said. "Most of their other detailed work will be done by Swedish groups. In fact, I've never heard of another foreign group working with the survey in this way."
Halland is located in the southwest of Sweden, along the Kattegat Sea between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.
It is the second year in a row that a team of Hope students has participated in the national Swedish project, and the third year that Hansen has taken a group to Sweden (a team in 2009 did similar mapping work through a research project of his own). LaBarge had also participated in the project last year along with Wyatt Curry of Ontario, Canada, who is graduating this spring. (Pictured above with Professor Hansen are LaBarge and Curry.)
The Geological Survey of Sweden, Hansen noted, is working to produce an overview of the geology of the country as a whole, and given the scale of the project maps areas with a "broad stroke." He explained that the interns complement the effort by concentrating for a more extended period on specific areas, providing detail that the general survey can't.
Last year, the team spent its three weeks mapping the features of a coastal area approximately two miles long and a quarter mile wide. The Geological Survey, Hansen said, had finished with the same section in about a day.
The Hope team is doing its work in May not only because the time frame fits well with the college's academic calendar - final exams will have finished the day before the group's May 7 departure - but also because the popular coastal resort area won't yet be in its tourist season.
"May's the perfect time to do field work," Hansen said. "It's still too cool to have the area filled with summer people."
While the research project itself ends with the students' time in Sweden, the activity does carry with it the potential for further work. LaBarge, for example, made a presentation about the project during the national annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colo., last October, and is also working with Hansen on an article that he plans to submit for publication.
The students' opportunity to participate as interns stems from Hansen's connections with researchers in the country, who helped him get involved in the project. Early in his career, Hansen studied deformed and metamorphic rocks in Southern India. In the latter 1990s, he began charting sand dunes along the Lake Michigan coast. While in Europe in 2006 through a Fulbright Award connected with the sand dune project, he connected with Swedish geologists studying rocks similar to those with which he had worked in India.


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The following words when used in this article have the meaning hereinafter ascribed to them, unless the context clearly indicates a different meaning:
(a) "Board" or "governing board" means the university of West Virginia board of trustees or the board of directors of the state college system, whichever is applicable within the context referred to in this article, unless the context clearly indicates a different meaning.
(b) "Eligible lending institution" or "institution" means a financial institution that is eligible to make commercial loans, is a public depository of state funds and agrees to participate in the West Virginia higher education student assistance loan program.
(c) "Eligible student" means any individual who:
(1) Is a citizen or eligible noncitizen of the United States;
(2) Has been a resident of the state for at least one year immediately preceding the date of application for a West Virginia higher education student assistance loan;
(3) Is currently enrolled in good standing or accepted for enrollment at the approved institution of higher education in this state of the student's choice; and
(4) Is certified by such institution in accordance with section three of this article.
(d) "Linked deposit" means a certificate of deposit placed by the state Board of Investments with an eligible lending institution at three percent below current market rates, as determined and calculated by the state Board of Investments, provided the institution agrees to lend the value of such deposit, according to the deposit agreement provided for by this article, to eligible students at three percent below the present borrowing rate applicable to each such student at the time of the deposit of state funds in the institution.
(e) "Approved institution of higher education in this state" means nonprofit, degree-granting two-year and four-year colleges and universities located in West Virginia.


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C++ has some language constructs that are rarely seen in actual use. These constructs have their own valid use cases, but they should be used sparingly. As the now adage-status quote from The Old New Thing puts it: "Code is read much more often than it is written, so plan accordingly."
For unusual constructs, this advice holds true more than for any other code: If you use an unusual construct, make sure that the usage is justified and commented accordingly so the next person reading your code (which could even be you) will not need to spend too long to find out your original intentions.
In this article, I look at function try blocks, which have their own unique mechanics (hence, their own special gotchas), but are exactly the right solution for certain, occasional problems.
Use Case
The intended use case for function try blocks is to catch exceptions in constructor initialization lists, in base class constructors, and in destructors.
Function try blocks are the only way to handle exceptions thrown in member initializer lists in the context of the constructor. This is probably the most important use case for this construct, and we will take a look at an example where this is relevant. Function try blocks are also syntactically valid on regular functions, but of little use.
The most important form of function try blocks is for constructors with initializer lists:
struct A : public B { A() try : B(), foo(1), bar(2) { // constructor body } catch (...) { // exceptions from the initializer list are caught here // but also rethrown after this block (unless the program is aborted) } private: Foo foo; Bar bar; };
Any exceptions that match the exception specification of the catch block(s) will be caught during the execution of the constructor (that is, not further up on the call stack).
For destructors (and it is the same for normal functions):
struct A { ~A() try { // destructor body } catch (...) { // exceptions from the destructor are caught here // but also rethrown after this block (unless the program is aborted) } };
An important property of function try blocks is mentioned in the code comments: Any exceptions caught will be rethrown implicitly unless the program is aborted during the catch block.
When Is the Use of Function Try Blocks Justified?
Even though the most relevant information can be gathered in the context where the exception is thrown, this fact in itself probably would not justify the usage of this construct. Catching an exception in the constructor vs. somewhere further up the call stack is not substantially different, especially considering that the exception will be rethrown.
For thread-safe and performant copy construction, using a function try block is the best way to go (and most likely the motivating use case for the existence of this language feature). Consider the following example:
struct ExpensiveFoo { ExpensiveFoo(); ExpensiveFoo(ExpensiveFoo const& other); char data[10000]; }; struct Bar { Bar() {} Bar(Bar const&); private: ExpensiveFoo expensive; mutable std::mutex m; };
Now, for purposes of example, let us make the following assumptions:
- The constructor of
ExpensiveFootakes a long time to execute (say, it uses a Web service to fill the data array with true random numbers from cosmic noise)
- The copy constructor of
ExpensiveFoois very cheap since it only copies the data, but it might throw an exception.
How can we implement the copy constructor of
Bar? Note that we need a thread-safe implementation. A possible (naive) approach would be to use
Bar::Bar(Bar const& other) { std::lock_guard(other.m); expensive = other.expensive; }
This is not a bad implementation per se (it is thread safe and exception safe), but it comes at a huge cost. Since
Bar::expensive is not initialized in the initializer list of the copy constructor, it will already be default-constructed when control reaches the beginning of the copy constructor. The default construction of this object, according to our assumption, is extremely expensive. So, how can we avoid this cost while still maintaining thread safety and exception safety? This is where the function try block is really useful.
Bar::Bar(Bar const& other) try : expensive((other.m.lock(), other.expensive)) { other.m.unlock(); } catch(...) { other.m.unlock(); }
You might have noticed that the initializer value of
Bar::expensive looks unusual. We are taking advantage of the comma operator here. It will evaluate each subexpression from left to right and make the value of the right-most subexpression (
other.expensive) the value of the whole expression, which then initializes
Bar::expensive. This way, we can lock the mutex during the evaluation of this initializer value.
When the control flow reaches the beginning of the function try block, the mutex is in locked state and
Bar::expensive is cheaply initialized (see the above assumptions: Copying
ExpensiveFoo is cheap). No unnecessary
ExpensiveFoo objects were created and destroyed. In the event that there are no exceptions during the construction, the try block will simply unlock the mutex.
If during the initialization of
Bar::expensive an exception is thrown, the mutex would also be unlocked because the catch block would be executed. For reference, you can look at a compilable example of the source.
Without a function try block, both of these two requirements (performance and exception safety) could not be met easily. At least, not without refactoring the initialization of
ExpensiveFoo into a separate
init() function, thus sacrificing solid RAII semantics. However widespread such implementations are, they come at a cost. There is no guarantee that the object is fully initialized when it is in use; in other words, the class relies on the client code to perform the initialization. Either the implementation of the class has to be littered with checking a zombie flag during each operation (so it is able to meaningfully signal errors), or the client code is obliged to check the same flag. Neither way is idiomatic, modern C++. Function try blocks make it possible to remain in "RAII-land," making this a very justified use of an unusual construct.
Function Try Blocks for Regular Functions
For the sake of completeness, I should mention that function try blocks are occasionally seen with regular functions:
void function_with_try_block() try { // try block body } catch (...) { // catch block body }
is equivalent to:
void function_without_try_block() { try { // try block body } catch (...) { // catch block body } }
However, they are of little use. The only advantage might be saving one level of indentation, but at the cost of using very unusual syntax. With the display resolutions today, that is not a good trade-off, so using function try blocks on regular functions is hardly justified.
Function try blocks do come with surprising behavior.
- Any exceptions caught in constructors or destructors are rethrown implicitly: "The currently handled exception is rethrown if control reaches the end of a handler of the function-try-block of a constructor or destructor" (15.3.15 C++ International Standard (Draft)/n3337). Hence, the most you can do when catching an exception in such context is to log it and possibly run some clean-up code. This is a good thing. If the construction of an object fails for whatever reason, you should not attempt to "save" that instance.
- A return statement in the catch block of a function acts as if it were a return statement in the function.
- The function returns when the control flow reaches the end of the catch block. If there is no return statement there and the function return type is non-void, the behavior is undefined.
- Be aware that the function try block of
main()has some non-intuitive behavior: Exceptions from constructors of objects defined on the namespace scope are not caught, and exceptions from destructors of objects with static duration are not caught.
Function try blocks should at least raise an eyebrow during code-review, especially if they are used for anything but the previously discussed use cases. On the other hand, they serve those needs well, so careful usage is indeed recommended.
Tamás Szelei works as a software developer in Budapest, Hungary, and frequently writes about the intricacies of C++.


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"Disney's Phineas and Ferb: The Best Live Tour Ever!" has not just the stepbrothers coming to town for three performances at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts today and Friday, but also controlling sister Candace, Perry the Platypus, and evil scientist Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz. And let's not forget Oxford native Nicholas Ryan Bouthillette.
In the musical theater adaptation of the Disney animated television comedy series, Phineas and Ferb's summer vacation is going to be full of hijinks and high-energy dancing. Bouthillette will be one of the cast members getting a workout under the costumes. He first got involved with shows at Holy Name Summer Theater in Worcester and as a student at St. John's High School in Shrewsbury. After graduating from Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla., he auditioned for Disney. Bouthillette toured with "Playhouse Disney" and then joined "Disney's Phineas and Ferb."
Performances are 7 tonight and 4 and 7 p.m. tomorrow. Tickets are $27, $52 and $67. (877) 571-7469; www.thehanovertheatre.org. (Richard Duckett)


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Refined Palate's Roving Reporter spent the week in St. Louis…Niche Restaurant on Sidney Street was recommended by Christopher Hoel, sommelier at French Laundry who worked at Niche previous to TFL. He was kind enough to contact Chef Gerard Craft the owner/chef so they were well prepared for us.
Christopher Kelling, the GM, was also more than ready for us. We were assigned an excellent table and a very special server Abbie who has been with them for 6 years and is a God parent to one of the Chef Craft's kids. Nothing like being welcomed in style.
The meal definitely lived up to the recommendation. My friends are going back in 3 weeks for their 16th anniversary. That's a win!
Spicy Nuts with our martinis
Egg shell with maple lemon custard, roasted shitaki mushrooms and bonito caviar…a new "egg" dish to enjoy although just the shell was used, no real egg involved.
Sancerre chosen because of really solid flavors on menu.
Lobster-pullman, celery, green apple, togarashi, brown butter hollandaise
Trout gravlax — rye, watercress, crème fraiche, smoked egg yolk, meyer lemon
Carrots Three Ways—orange-cumin, yogurt, espelette
The above photo is a combination of the above 3 appetizers. We decided to share as the appetizer portions were quite large and was a perfect way to have just a taste of each dish. I am definitely of the Thomas Keller school of thought – the law of diminishing returns or as he says – "I want you to say "God, I wish I had just one more bite of that."
Louisiana Crayfish—strawberry, radish, tapioca, cilantro—delicious bonus from the kitchen.
Lemon sorbet—delicious served in a shallow dish with a red center, we thought there was a sauce.
Red-chose young Burgundy from a good producer and a good value.
Fillet of Beef—potato, leeks, rosemary, whey
Pork Shoulder—popcorn polenta, verjus, coriander, daikon, walnuts, redgrapes—this sounds like a lot of "stuff" but it all worked.
Gruet New Mexico sparkler—a good choice with both dessert and cheese.
Cheese plate—local and creative. Bloomsdale, Camebert, Tombe all very nice
Vacherin—lemon, meringue, thyme, hickory, lavender
Carrot—custard, cream cheese ice cream, mint, white chocolate
All in all a terrific meal and a restaurant I strongly recommend if you are in St. Louis.


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There are many people love the luxurious interior designs and ask me how to create luxurious interior decor so i provide top 10 decor element to create luxurious interior decor 2014 with luxury furniture and luxury accessories
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Curtains in luxurious interior decor
Luxury curtains give your interior a chic elegance. For the hall and bedroom curtains, you can choose the volume of slightly shiny material, or mother of pearl. To cope with the challenge of creating a chic help maroon, turquoise, brown and, of course, golden hues.
|luxury curtain designs, curtains ideas for luxurious interior
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Valance on the bed is able to transform any room into a fabulous space in the eastern style of "1000 and 1 night." It will create the appearance of your bed closed for privacy and add comfort. The canopy can be transparent or a rich dark fabric.
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|valance and canopy bed for luxurious interior designs
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Chandelier - volume, gold or silver plated, decorated with interesting shades and expensive decorative elements - is important not only as a device for lighting: Also, it will make your interior incredible, magnificent! It is quite possible to make room accent, but it certainly should be in harmony with the general concept of the latter.
|luxury chandelier for luxurious interior designs elements
|luxury chandelier, decor elements to create luxurious interior
Paintings, tapestries, photos for luxurious interior
Paintings, tapestries, photo - a great way to transform the interior design. Perfectly suited paintings in the spirit of the Renaissance reproductions of famous works of famous artists and black-and-white photographs in the "retro" with the image of urban landscapes or portraits of famous film stars.
|luxury paintings, decor element to create luxurious interior
|luxury paintings, decor element to create luxurious interior
High windows in luxurious interiors designs
High windows, ideally - from the ceiling to the floor - the best solution for the hall or living room, which adds premises of French elegance.
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This required (especially for us women) object like a mirror - an essential element of luxury. Oval mirrors in gilt frames fishnet will be a great addition hallway, living room and even the bathroom.
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Comfortable chairs and armchairs in luxurious interior
When choosing a chair and seat, if you are pursuing a goal to create a luxurious and stylish interior, it is necessary to give preference to expensive wood, gold leaf, the soft tissues of pure tones and exquisite pens.
|luxury chairs, armchairs for luxurious interior decor
|luxury furniture, dining room for luxurious interior decor
luxury Cushions for luxurious interior decor
A set of decorative pillows - it's cozy, soft and elegant. For each room you can find a unique stylistic decision. For example, a child will fit cushions with pictures of animals (rabbit, squirrel, etc.), and for the bedroom and living room will be the way rich silks, velvet, interesting patterns and fringe.
|luxury cushions for luxurious interior decor
|luxury cushions for luxurious interior decor
stairs and staircase for luxurious interior decor element
If you live in a private home or apartment bunk, it can turn into a real staircase element of decor. It may be semi-circular, spiral, wooden, with unusual patterned railings. The original version - light staircase and stairs: it will refresh the interior.
|iron stairs and staircase for luxurious interior decor
|wooden stairs and staircase for luxurious interior decor
Fireplace in luxurious interior decor
Fireplace - is not only a symbol of warmth and comfort, but also a great element of luxury. Depending on the overall design of the interior, you can choose the appropriate option: for example, it may be a stone fireplace, giving the "medieval", or classic, with bars, moldings and columns or beautiful figures on the sides. Even when the window starts to rage blizzard, you have at home will be a luxurious comfort!
|fireplace ideas for luxurious interior decor
|fireplace ideas for luxurious interior decor


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|Dennis Sprung, AKC President & CEO
From: Dennis Sprung [mailto:email@example.com]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 5:26 PM
Subject: Fw: Any advice for Bulldog Club of America (BCA) and the other targeted breeds??
my response to staff is below and I am sending to you for PCs to know what is going on as emails and texts are flying (Unfortunately tonight BOB was also taken away from the Clumber Spaniel)..
From: Dennis Sprung
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 08:44 AM
To: Robin Stansell; Sheila Goffe; Margaret Poindexter; John Lyons
Cc: Gina DiNardo
Subject: Re: Any advice for Bulldog Club of America (BCA) and the other targeted breeds??
We should prepare a statement after all facts are in. However you can assure and share with everyone that AKC will NEVER allow any such practice to occur. Our Parent Clubs own their respective standard and we support them 100 percent. Furthermore a Judges' decision is final and we respect that as well. The situation is a very disappointing one here from the point of view of breeders, exhibitors and judges and fanciers from around the world. In summary while our PCs have a right to be upset and concerned I will never allow this wrongful practice in America. Never!!! Dennis
We are very please that AKC has taken such a strong position, but we caution all our readers not to let AKC face this alone. You need to fight this on every front. Our way of life depends upon your participation.


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With over 125 years of experience in the industry, Westinghouse ceiling fans are respected for their performance and durability. Westinghouse fans are designed for indoor, outdoor or industrial use. These ceiling fans are available in an array of sizes, styles and finishes to coordinate with virtually any home decor. Select Westinghouse light bulbs to brighten up your favorite room.
Westinghouse Ceiling Fans - Innovative and Cost-Effective
In 1884, George Westinghouse founded the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The prolific engineer is credited with ushering the age of modern electricity by introducing the transformer and promoting the use of alternating currents, or AC, which allowed for electrical power to be distributed over greater distances. The spirit of ingenuity continued as the first Westinghouse ceiling fans were introduced shortly thereafter, many of which are still operational. Today, the company's motto, "Ingenuity that you can count on to make your life easier," still resonates in their construction and affordable price range.
Featured Video - Westinghouse Ceiling Fan Light Kits
Count On Westinghouse Ceiling Fans To Make Your Life Easier
Westinghouse ceiling fans offers a variety of cost-effective fans for residential and commercial function, including the following:
- Indoor - These ceiling fans are crafted to ventilate your bedroom, kitchen or office without compromising your home's overall décor. They are available in an array of styles, from antique to nautical, and finishes, from copper to traditional white.
- Outdoor - Exterior fans are specially created to withstand the harsh weather elements on your porch, patio or pool area without corroding or sacrificing performance. Look for Westinghouse outdoor fans with a UL rating of damp or wet for outdoor conditions. Coincidentally, these fans are also suitable for use in the bathroom, where they can prevent mold from forming.
- Commercial - These fans are intended to circulate air over large, open areas such as a warehouse. A Westinghouse industrial fan keeps workers comfortable and as well as helps in the prevention of mold damage by providing proper ventilation and air circulation.
If you are still unsure of which ceiling fan is best suited for your room, please refer to the helpful tips on our fan sizing guide. Despite which room in your home you choose to install the fan in, all Westinghouse ceiling fans are constructed with durable materials and are available in a wide selection of designs, styles and finishes to compliment any room in your home or office and meet any budget. Allow Westinghouse fans to make your home a little cooler and your life a little easier.


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sandeep kapalawai
Mozilla Rep| Reps resources
O členu
A Computer Science Graduate, an Open Source Evangelist speaks on FOSS(Free and Open Source Softwares), Mozilla's Projects and Products, specifically Localization, Common Voice, SUMO Project, L10n and QA. I am a Rep,Webmaker Mentor, Passionate Blogger and interested in learning new technologies.
Access Groupsnda
Tagscoding, people, support, systems administration, web development, addon-builder, affiliate, aoa, army of awesome, bugzilla, mozilla community warangal, fossasia, l10n:localization, localization, localization telugu
Dovednosti.net, adv java, c, cms wordpress, java, php
JazykyAngličtina, Hindština, Telugština
Webové stránky
Anil Kumar Kurmilla
Sandeep is an active and passionate mozillian. He is contributing alot to SUMO web maker projects and FSA India.
Active and dedicated person and a good speaker.. Keep going.
Alejandro Gomez aka Alex Fuser
WebMaker Mentor and FSA for India
Luigui Delyer
WebMaker Mentor and FSA for India
Cliff Argwings
Sandeep is a Passionate Mozillian from India. He's currently involved in Webmaker projects and he's even a mentor in his community.
Robert Sayles
Sandeep has done a great job with SUMO and think he is a huge asset to the Mozilla project.
Stefan Costen
Sonu Sandeep is a WebMaker Mentor out there to TeachTheWeb including organising sessions For MozFest 2014
Keep Rocking The Open Web


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Apple keeps making news this week -- this time for about-facing on racy content.
Playboy and, notably, its entire archive will be made available on the iPad, starting in March, according to Engadget. Uncensored in every way, allowing users to really examine those articles.
And in keeping with his hip-to-the-scene persona, Hugh Hefner -- who created the first Playboy edition in 1953 -- tweeted the breaking news on Tuesday night.
U.S. & World
Allowing nude photography seems to go against the standard that the App Store has long touted -- and the comments Steve Jobs has made -- about keeping adult material off their mobile devices.
Of course, the iPad is not a mobile advice (at least to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg), so maybe that's the caveat?
The folks at macrumor.com ponder: "We suspect the magazine delivery may be related to Apple's recent plans to open up subscription billing for magazine and newspaper content which has been rumored to debut in the coming weeks."


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Select An Industry:
No company knows refinery hydrogen like Air Products, nor has any company spent as much time developing hydrogen as a fuel.
With over 80 plants and over 700 miles of pipeline, Air Products is the world's largest producer of outsourced hydrogen to oil refineries, which use hydrogen to get the most out of every barrel of oil in making cleaner burning transportation fuels. And with involvement in over 150 hydrogen fueling projects worldwide, we are leveraging our vast hydrogen experience and resources to advance hydrogen fuel cell technology to make the hydrogen economy a reality.
While our hydrogen is used in the production of numerous consumer and industrial products, the largest volume application is "refinery hydrogen," and we are the leading global supplier. Oil refineries use hydrogen to make lower sulfur, cleaner burning transportation fuels.
The average barrel of processed crude oil has become heavier (a higher carbon-to-hydrogen ratio) and more sour (more sulfur). Through a chemical reaction, hydrogen lightens heavier crude and enables the removal of sulfur. This allows oil refineries to produce higher value product mixes, such as gasoline, and meet increasingly tighter low-sulfur fuel specifications globally. Air Products' refinery hydrogen is playing a key role in producing transportation fuel that's easier on the environment.
Air Products & Technip Hydrogen Alliance →
Air Products operates hydrogen pipeline networks around the world. Examples include pipelines in Sarnia, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta in Canada; in Rotterdam in The Netherlands; and in the U.S. in Southern California and the Texas/Louisiana Gulf Coast. We continue to grow and expand these franchises.
Before 2012 Air Products operated two separate hydrogen pipeline systems in Texas and Louisiana. To deliver additional value to customers, Air Products joined the two pipelines with a new 180-mile segment. This expansion makes it the world's largest hydrogen plant and pipeline supply network. Air Products' Gulf Coast Pipeline Network is now able to provide hydrogen to customers along the 600-mile pipeline span from over 20 hydrogen production facilities with a system capacity of 1.4 billion SCFD (standard cubic feet per day). Louisiana.
Air Products has safely operated hydrogen pipelines for over 40 years, incorporating a design philosophy based on 100 years of continuous safe operation. Our pipeline design and operations meet or exceed government requirements.
The use of hydrogen as a commercial energy source may be in its early stages, however, great strides are being made every day. Challenges to the hydrogen economy include integrating systems, creating a fueling infrastructure, and gaining consumer acceptance. Air Products is working to address these challenges:
If you would prefer to contact us by phone, you can call any of our Air Products locations worldwide by visiting Worldwide Locations & Phone Numbers.
Put our hydrogen expertise to work for you (PDF 3.14 MB)
Marking 20 successful years in providing tonnage hydrogen facilities to the refining industry
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