text:
That was fun, but true.
I began, and are slowly trying to move, from sats/sub to sigma monitors/2xsub, the thing is my "A/V" room is small, but I would love to be able to use the more refined equipment, but it would be overkill.
Anyway, I just love to read about the equipment. I guess no matter what tribe you belon to or identify with, the passion for the hobby is a common element.
Can you tell us a bit Mark about how was your evolution through these tribes?


text:
Exterior Painting – Minneapolis Painting Company
Exterior House Paint Average Cost,exterior house paint average cost,Exterior Painting – Minneapolis Painting Company
exterior house paint average cost - In beginning agronomical home exoteric colors: 5 Accomplish for accepting the absolute blush schemes for your home we allotment our latest access for allotment exoteric colors in 5 simple steps.
Here, we will appearance you our step-by-step adjustment of alive from the "top down" to accomplish a absolute blush palettes for your home exterior.
For example, actuality are the accomplish we took to get the absolute blush arrangement for your agronomical appearance home. You can attending some examples of the blush schemes for your home exterior.
image exterior house paint average cost description :post title : Exterior House Paint Average Cost post date : February 21, 2018 author : Valentine Rocher image source : www.minneapolispaintingcompany.com/tag/exterior-painting/
Changing the blush arrangement of your home's exoteric is one of the quickest means to accord your abode a face-lift, whether you're advancing to account it for auction or just wish to access barrier address (or both!). You ability be afraid at the amount of alfresco elements at play that you should accede afore you accept a blush scheme. Things like the hue of your brick chase (is your brick added orange or brown?), the blush your acquaintance chose for their house, and your breadth of the country can all access a blush scheme. Plus, you'll apparently accept to alike at atomic three colors — for the siding, trim, and accents. And this is a big investment, so it's not actual simple to change if you don't adulation the end result, authoritative what seems like a simple accommodation trickier than you ability accept expected.
The simplest way to transform your home's barrier address is by sprucing up your exoteric with color. Today's trends accomplish it simple to baddest a acrylic blush that gives a around-the-clock and fresh-looking appearance. Your home will be the allocution of the adjacency if you administer these four abundant exoteric acrylic colors.
When acrimonious exoteric colors, we accept appear beyond that homeowners oftentimes accept an acuteness in their academician for what the abode will attending like already it is completed. All they absence is the ability that will accomplish them accept acceptance in authoritative the decisions all-important to change their acuteness into their dream house.
This is the capital acumen we accept taken our years of acquaintance selecting colors for hundreds of agronomical homes and absorb it into easy-to-follow steps.
The acknowledged exoteric blush may be the one that enhances your home's barrier address after authoritative it attending like it should be sitting in a altered neighborhood. There are abounding factors to accede if allotment an exoteric acrylic color, abnormally if resale is your goal. An commodity appear by "Exterior Abode Acrylic Colors" stresses the accent of compassionate bounded and adjacency standards as able-bodied as your home's style, size, architecture abstracts and even the blush of the roofing.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Description of the illustration bpmdg_jd_012.gif
The image shows a diagram of what happens when one request results in multiple responses. The following actions take place:
The client BPEL process has an invoke activity to send a request to the service BPEL process, and a sequence activity that manages the multiple responses that will return. The sequence activity contains three receive activities.
This invoke activity sends its request, by way of a WSDL client partner link, to the service BPEL process.
The service BPEL process has a receive activity to receive the client's response, and a sequence activity to manage the responses it will send.
The service BPEL process's receive activity sends its data to the sequence activity. In turn, the sequence activity's three invoke activities send responses back to their corresponding receive activities in the client BPEL process, by way of the WSDL client partner link.


text:
Contribute to ReadWriteThink / RSS / FAQs / Site Demonstrations / Contact Us / About Us
Whats Happening This Week
There is much more to explore in our calendar. Find other important events in literary history, authors' birthdays, and a variety of holidays, each with related lessons and resources.
Looking for age-appropriate book recommendations, author interviews, and fun activity ideas? Check out our podcasts.
Home › Classroom Resources › Calendar Activities
July 04
It's Independence Day! Or is it?
|3 – 12
|Calendar Activity Type
|Historical Figure & Event
Many people celebrate the Fourth of July as the birthday of the United States, but the actual events on that day involved only a half dozen people. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved and signed by the officers of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Most of the other members signed during a ceremony on August 2.
Is the Fourth of July the day the U.S. declared its independence? Explore all the dates during the summer of 1776 that are associated with the Declaration of Independence:
- July 2: Declaration of Independence Resolution adopted by the Continental Congress
- July 4: Declaration of Independence signed by the officers of the Continental Congress
- July 8: First public reading of the Declaration of Independence
- August 2: Declaration of Independence signed by 50 of the 56 men who signed the document
Explore texts that include the stories surrounding the Declaration of Independence. Possibilities include reference books, encyclopedias, and specific texts, examples of which appear in the Independence Day Book List. With your students, consider why there are so many different dates and why we celebrate the nation's birthday on July 4.
- The Charters of Freedom: The Declaration of Independence
This page features the Declaration of Independence along with information about its writing and preservation, a timeline of its creation, and information on the signers.
- Liberty: Independence!
As on online companion to the television series Liberty! The American Revolution, originally broadcast on PBS, this webpage focuses on the events of July 4, 1776. Be sure to explore the site for lesser-known facts. For instance, did you know that Congress designated a woman as the first official printer of the Declaration?
- The Liberty Bell
On July 8, 1776, the Liberty Bell was rung in Philadelphia to announce the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. This National Park Service site includes facts about the Liberty Bell and its historic significance during the American Revolution.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Myth and Truth: Independence Day
By exploring myths and truths surrounding Independence Day, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the Independence Day holiday.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Learning About Research and Writing Using the American Revolution
Students across the board will get a kick out of researching a historical figure from the American Revolution to create an acrostic poem.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Freedom of Speech and Automatic Language: Examining the Pledge of Allegiance
This lesson has students explore freedom of speech by examining the Pledge of Allegiance from a historical and personal perspective and in relationship to fictional situations in novels.
Grades 6 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
What Did George Post Today? Learning About People of the American Revolution Through Facebook
After researching famous people of the American Revolution, students create Facebook-like PowerPoint presentations to share their knowledge with classmates.
Grades 5 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
What Would Ben, Tom, and George Think? Blogging about the American Revolution
After researching famous people of the American Revolution, students take on the identities of these Patriots and Loyalists. Students then participate in a blog, writing responses about events leading up to and during the American Revolutionary War.


text:
Moderator: 2ffat
rajesh wrote:I had Simply C++ Builder 6 Form Project , Even it is not loading in the version 10,3
denville wrote:Beware the t-str() - apparently it alters the underlying string!
denville wrote:
- Code: Select all
static char* C_STR( AnsiString s ) { return s.c_str(); }
static char* C_STR( AnsiString &s ) { return s.c_str(); }
denville wrote:
- Code: Select all
static char* C_STR( String s ) { return AnsiString(s).c_str(); }
denville wrote:One other thing to remember - unfortunately it is not possible to share the same form unit between CPB6 and later versions as the later ones add properties to the form that CPB does not then understand. Bit of a pity that.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 29 guests


text:
02 September 2009 08:00
Comment améliorer Un Prophète, par Luc Bessonby nhoizey
Hilarant !
1 (1 marks)
Founded in late 2003 and heartquartered in France, we are non-profit and independant.
We believe in the open web, think internet services should be sustainable, build for the long term.
While we are re-launching the service, we only accept new members through invitation.
last mark : 02/09/2009 08:03


text:
Date: 09-01-2013
Source: Businessweek
An Amazon.com fulfillment center in Ridgmont, U.K.
January in retail is a little bit like the off-season of a professional sports league. Teams dust themselves off from the grueling holiday season playoffs, evaluate their coaching staffs, and assess the balance of power in their divisions. In this month's period of exhausted self-reflection, one of the industry's broad conclusions is clear: Amazon.com is on its way to establishing a dangerous dynasty.
Amazon recently said it had its best holiday season ever in 2012, selling 26.5 million products around the world at a record-breaking pace of 306 items per second. Earlier this week, Amazon stock hit an all-time high, buoyed by a Morgan Stanley report that predicted the global e-commerce market will hit $1 trillion by 2016, with Amazon poised to capture nearly a quarter of that. The company is madly adding such customer freebies as new movies and television shows to its Netflix -slaying Prime Instant Video program, and its commitment to having the lowest price anywhere is increasingly exerting a gravitational effect on the strategies of rivals.
On Tuesday, Target announced a new policy of matching competitors' prices year-round—a tactic geared toward slowing the emergence of "showrooming," the practice by which shoppers browse in a store and then buy online, often from Amazon. Target, whose stock is also near an all-time high, is the second-largest retailer in the country, behind Wal-Mart. But if current growth rates continue, it will soon lose that title to the upstart from Seattle.
Amazon scares everyone. There are multiple reasons, but a big one was summarized by Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos in a Harvard Business Review interview posted lasted week, which ranked Bezos as one of the top executives in the world. "Percentage margins are not one of the things we are seeking to optimize," Bezos said, employing some Wall Street jargon to make the counter-intuitive point that he does not particularly care about making money. "It's the absolute dollar free cash flow per share that you want to maximize. If you can do that by lowering margins, we would do that. Free cash flow, that's something investors can spend."
Bezos has been reliably saying this sort of thing for years, so let's untangle it. Free cash flow is cash from operations minus capital expenditures, or what's left over after spending on warehouses, conveyor belts, robots, and data centers for its cloud computing business. Bezos is more concerned with driving cash flow than making money because he believes the opportunity offered by the Internet, and by e-commerce, is massive and still largely untapped. To him, it's still a land grab. So he's prepared to cut prices to the bone and add all those freebies to cultivate customer loyalty and drive sales growth. Then he reinvests it all in more low prices and further expansion, driving additional customer loyalty.
If you're an Amazon customer, it's a virtuous cycle. If you're a competitor, it's the Bermuda triangle of business. Investors, comforted by Bezos's consistency with this strategy over the years, have so much faith in him that they're willing to tolerate razor-thin or nonexistent profits in exchange for continued market share gains and a promise of windfall profits someday. And by the way, low margins to Bezos are a competitive advantage. If you're eking out sub-2 percent profits, which Amazon is doing, your market isn't very enticing to rivals. When margins are nice and fat, your business is a delectable target.
The strategy manifests itself in Amazon's constant flood of news announcements. The company just announced plans to build a million-square-foot fulfillment center in New Jersey. It just extended its Prime two-day shipping service to Canada. It acquired shows from A&E Television Networks. We expect that Amazon will soon roll out its Amazon Fresh grocery business beyond Seattle, where it's been quietly testing and expanding the service for five years. The new fulfillment centers, operating outside such major American cities as New York and Los Angeles, could serve as the centers of a hub-and-spoke logistics network that will allow Amazon to store perishables like fresh fruit. And when Amazon owns a network of vans humming around most major urban centers to deliver groceries, it will be able to pack items such as the most popular DVDs and books and deliver them to customers within 24 hours after they are ordered, just as it does now in Seattle.
That will be hugely expensive for Amazon. Is it a good business? Here's where the Bezos Doctrine proves powerful. It doesn't have to be good. It just has to appeal to customers. As long as consumers are consuming and shareholders are buying what Bezos is selling, Amazon looks fairly unbeatable.
Stone is a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. Follow him on Twitter @BradStone. Aley is an editor for Bloomberg Businessweek. Follow him on twitter @jimaley.


text:
Look at any crowd in any city, and it seems every other person has white wires dangling from their ears. Who ever heard of an iPod just five years ago? TiVo, youTube, Slingbox, and a hundred other new technologies are, as Jeff Jarvis says, "exploding TV."
The Personal Media Revolution — a phrase coined by J.D. Lasica in his book Darknet — flooded the internet with new forms of expression in 2006. On youTube alone, Funtwo's rocking rendition of Pachelbel's Canon in D has been viewed more than 12 million times, an obscure band, OkGo, found fame with geeky dance videos shot with one camera, and two guys in white lab coats turned us all on to what can be done with Mentos and Diet Coke. These videos reached "mass," but the real strength of youTube is the enormous social network built around all of the lesser-viewed personal videos.
The number of people blogging doubled and then doubled again in 2006. Bloggers added video clout, and now we have a new genre, vloggers. Rocketboom made news twice, first when they auctioned off advertising on eBay and then when Amanda Congden left for greener pastures. The hilarious, albeit obscene social commentator ZeFrank is the new darling of vloggers, and he's likely to end up in Hollywood.
And while all of this was going on, local media companies watched their stock prices plummet and scrambled to create plans to offset the audience erosion left in the wake of the very real business disruption caused by all these new innovations. When the networks began exploring different distribution vehicles for their content, it sent an unmistakable message to local media companies that their value would never again be what it was. And this has set the stage for what I believe will be the big media story of 2007 — a rediscovery of what is meant by the word "community," and especially as it relates to more than just geography. This story is one of three trends I see for the coming year, and it will unfold in a hundred different places. It might not get the publicity that network-level strategies and tactics get, but the salvation of local media lies in its ability to meet the information needs of the people it serves, and those people — the people formerly known as the audience, as Jay Rosen calls them — are increasingly an online community.
In his 1999 book Weaving the Web, Tim Berners-Lee — the man who invented the World Wide Web — stated that the web "is more a social creation than a technical one." This simple truth forms the core of Media 2.0, but it continues to baffle local media companies, because we tend to view the business disruption as purely technological — a way to extend our core competency. In so doing, we haven't been able to see that limiting ourselves to our "brand" online hands the keys to the local internet community over to smart outside players, who are doing a better job of meeting the information needs of the community than we will ever do trying to be a Media 1.0 company in a Media 2.0 world.
2007 will be THE turning point year in the struggle for local supremacy, and those who do not address it immediately will find themselves being nothing more than content creators feeding the same companies that have descended upon us to pull money from our local markets. Not everyone will survive a shift in media power from content companies to those who aggregate content, and while I suspect we might see attempts by mainstream media companies to fight it, the two need each other.
And make no mistake, this is all about money, serious money.
Nobody understands online ad spending like Gordon Borrell. His company is at the forefront of gathering and tracking data about who's spending what where. A lot of people look at his numbers with skepticism, because the dollars seem so high, but this is contempt prior to investigation and guarantees inaction. In recent years, Borrell has been pointing to a shift in online ad spending that will bring local more in line with national. In order for that to happen, local online spending will have to explode, and the reality is that local media companies just aren't equipped — from either a knowledge or technology standpoint — to compete with the Googles and Yahoos of the world for those ad dollars.
According to Borrell, the local-national split for all advertising in all media is 53% local, 47% national. Online, that split is 30% local and 70% national. Online parity will likely not come soon, but in some key online local advertising sectors, it's gone way past the 50-50 mark. Automotive, a key category for broadcasters, is one of them. Here's Borrell:
The Internet has provided dealers the ability to reach other markets efficiently. For instance, car dealers are realizing that buyers can expand their online search options to "100 miles from ZIP Code 12345" and find them, so they're willing to spend more on "local" online advertising programs like Cars.com that has the potential to reach car buyers well outside their traditional market boundaries. We've heard many stories of people driving hundreds of miles to buy the exact car they want at the best price they can find. By year-end 2006, the split for auto advertising in terms of online spending was 68-32 local vs. national.
This ability of local advertisers to reach customers outside their typical market is a significant factor that is completely overlooked by local media companies who are busy trying to do the same old thing with the internet that they do with their legacy platforms.
We know of a tiny company in North Carolina that made lightbulbs to supply regional businesses, suddenly picking up contracts for Las Vegas hotels (which have a boatload of lights!) via his Internet advertising, and a small diner in Virginia that has a small shop that sells peanuts and hams, suddenly picking up orders from Asia because of their online marketing (www.virginiadiner.com).
Borrell also sees a war erupting next year between local broadcasters and newspapers, because without political ad money, it's going to be a tough year.
Both face no-growth years for their core products but exciting growth prospects from online ad sales. TV wants a piece of classifieds, newspapers want a piece of TV advertising, especially automotive. Nearly one-third of newspaper sites feature streaming video, and many have begun selling preroll. I also expect a lot of raiding. The demand for online managers, especially in sales, will have TV stations raiding newspapers, a fertile ground of pre-trained and competitor savvy web workers.
The prize in the local online ad revenue war will go to the company that takes a Media 2.0 approach to information online. This company may or may not use their brand in the effort, for the internet is simply bigger than media companies think, and I agree with Gordon that there will be an enormous demand for people with new skills and new talents in the coming year, not only in sales, but also in production and technology. We simply cannot expect people from within the incumbency to drive our response to the disruption, and this is a fact for all businesses, not just local TV. More and more local media companies are beginning to realize that we can't plan our own way out of the conundrum.
And when we finally get serious about all this, we're going to be surprised at what we find — that a new community has grown up around us, one that Doc Searls and David Weinberger say resembles the old "commons" concept, a place owned by no one, where people could come and go as they pleased, play, gather, and do business. This is a word we never use in contemporary culture, because its roots are very old. The understanding, however, is key to our online future success, and the most important discovery is that this is a very real community.
It's hard for us in media to see this, because our view of the world is one of danger at every turn, a bad guy behind every bush, corruption in high places, death and destruction, and man's inhumanity to man. When we examine the web, we report only the dark side, because, well, that's our niche.
I've been writing for years about the postmodern concept of tribes, and how technology has enabled us to pick and choose our own tribes beyond geographic limitations. But human beings need to connect on a physical level, so the joining of people with similar interests — though these "connections" have been made in a world of seeming anonymity — is a very powerful thing. I've witnessed this in every place where I've been fortunate enough to be a part of first-time blogger meet-ups. People from all walks of life that "know" each other only by reputation or online interaction form immediate and lasting bonds when they actually meet in person.
This discovery (or rediscovery) of community is an eye-opening experience for local media executives, because we've grown to believe that the internet is technology used by people and not a place where a new kind of community has gathered. Once you have this revelation, you will not approach people online in the same way, and I believe we're going to see more and more of this in 2007 as media companies — driven by business economics — push further into the world of the commons.
The online community doesn't drive the "real-life" community, not yet anyway. But it is occurring here and there, and the phenomenon will continue to gather strength in 2007. We can sit by and let others create the platforms for this, or we can drive its growth ourselves.
A key to any local media company's online efforts is increasingly its ability to adapt and be flexible, and that brings me to the second major trend that I see coming in 2007 — internal and external pressures to bring creation, control and maintenance of a local media company's website into the operation of the local media company instead of farming out the responsibility to third-party providers.
Third-party television website companies — and the ad networks that come with them — have served the industry well. Ten years ago, it was cost-prohibitive and too complex for everybody to build and run their own high quality website, so we wouldn't be nearly as far along the internet content road as we are without the efforts of of these companies.
Yet, everywhere I go, I encounter a troubling issue with television stations: "They're unresponsive to our needs," is something I hear all the time, especially from the people actually doing the local online legwork. This may or may not be true, but the perception certainly exists, and it makes for a significant inertia barrier, because it can become a built-in excuse for news not to do news and sales not to do sales.
But third-party sites are also increasingly bad strategy in the same way that farming out the presentation and distribution of our on-air content would be. They work well when plans are static, but we're in a competitive world now that cannot abide static plans. As Rishad Tobaccowala says, we need to be "flexible, adaptive, fleet-of-foot, and open-minded." This requires control of our own destiny, and we just don't have that if somebody else is leading our efforts.
It's unfair to paint all third-party web providers with the same brush, because they are not all created equal. And I've found a great willingness on their part to explore flexibility with their clients. They have to do this, or they risk irrelevance themselves. However it happens, 2007 will be a year when television stations assume greater and greater control of their own online futures, and that will mean running their own websites to one extent or the other.
Finally, the most visible and obvious online media story of 2007 will be the shift of the internet's center away from text and towards video. The Web is extremely efficient at delivering text, so it will always be a core component. But it will increasingly be sharing the stage with video, and I think this will become even moreso in 2007. A lot of seemingly disparate events are coming together to provide genuine video convergence, and this will greatly impact local broadcasters. Again, we will have a choice: bury ourselves in the value of high definition or explore the reality that the quality play has limited potential.
YouTube is offering a new service now that allows people to upload directly from a web camera. This seems insignificant to those of us who value production and presentation, but the concept will be a new driver of the Personal Media Revolution. The company has to work out a lot of kinks in the system, but when they do (and they will), youTube's value as the conduit for unbundled video items will skyrocket. The applications for local news and information aggregation are staggering, and once again, we find an internet pure play company out-thinking and out-maneuvering the mainstream.
There are and will always be bandwidth issues when it comes to streaming audio or video, but those are technical limitations only. I've heard engineers dismiss new thinking based on the belief that the video compression of today will be the same tomorrow, and it keeps us from exploring possibilities. 2006 saw a dramatic rise in the use of Flash for video, and that will continue.
A more video-centric web ought to help us, because that's our medium. However, we need to shift our language on the web to that which is also video-centric. We don't make "pages;" we make channels. YouTube has figured this out. Why can't we?
2007 is likely to be a very bad year for local media companies financially, and this is most unfortunate, because it's a time when we really need to be investing, not cutting expenses. We'll see more bankruptcies next year, more efforts to take companies private, more lay-offs, and more churning in the rank and file. While nothing is certain, the one thing we can count on is change. We're in a season of change, and it's going to be that way for a very long time.
As executives and employees in the volatile world of local media, we can't control the events that are rocking our world, but we do have control over our reaction. We can knee-jerk what's happening, or we can rise above it and look to an absolutely amazing future in serving our communities in ways we never thought possible. Our success clearly lies in embracing the word "local" more than the word "media," for this is our lifeboat in the storm of change.
We must not give it up, regardless of the cost.


text:
Nearly 1 of 3 American adults has prehypertension???blood pressure numbers that are higher than normal, but not yet in the high blood pressure range. . LearnMore
Your fantasy Into Reality!
I just came across this incredible animation software which you should
It's a really easy but an effective software to create 3d animations, models, games, graphics and much more.
>>This exclusive offer for IllusionMage will NEVER be repeated again<<
>> Find out all about it here
P.S: Take a look at the videos on the site to see how YOU can create powerful 3d animations like Pixar and Dreamworks:
Read more...
1 in 4 Will have Diabetes, Click To Avoid The Risks
Spend 3 minutes a day and dramatically lower your blood pressure.
Blood pressure??is the force of blood pushing against the walls of the arteries that carry blood from your heart to other parts of your body. Blood pressure normally rises and falls throughout the day, but it can damage your heart and cause health problems if it stays high for a long time. High blood pressure is also called hypertension.
1-day erection correction cure
|hello darlingNaughty Night Season
|Have the most amazing sex of your life
|It was the most intense feeling ever
We have done it twice a night this month
|Just give your man this >>
Read more...
Imagine and end to your insomnia. You fall asleep quickly and stay asleep throughout the night.
1 Weird Trick FORCES You To Lose Weight Overnight?
Read more...
Start learning chords today
|Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson, June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962) was an American actress and model. Famous for playing "dumb blonde" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s, emblematic of the eras attitudes towards sexuality. Although she was a top-billed actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million by the time of her unexpected death in 1962.[1] She continues to be considered a major popular culture icon.[2] Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage and married for the first time at the age of sixteen. While working in a factory as part of the war effort in 1944, she met a photographer and began a successful pin-up modeling career. The work led to short-lived film contracts with Twentieth Century-Fox (1946–47) and Columbia Pictures (1948). After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in 1951. Over the next two years, she became a popular actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, and in the dramas Clash by Night and Dont Bother to Knock. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photos before becoming a star, but rather than damaging her career, the story increased interest in her films.
The Hidden Most Powerful Survival Muscle
Boosting Your Energy Levels
The Hidden Most Powerful Survival Muscle
When This Muscle Is Healthy We Are Healthy
The hip joint is reinforced by four ligaments, of which three are extracapsular ev and one intracapsular.The extracapsular ligaments are the iliofemoral, ischiofemoral, and pubofemoral ligaments attached to the bones of t vhe pelvis (the ilium, oev ischium, and pubis respectively). All three strengthen the capsule and prevent an excessive r ioev ange of movement in the joint. Of these, the Y-shaped and twisted iliofemoral ligament is the strongest ligament in the human body. In the upright position, coral /[m5]plano /ensino /Royal /account /tuan /Obituaries /ggf /TI /Benjaminshuttled /alpha /folders /ties synthetic /Colette /directv /may /footerlink /subtitulo /cosas /wankel /modelsHTTPS /anschauen /off /wick /martin /daddy /que /potshots excess /functon /jsp /advertising /thessaloniki /lates /bottom /amountpotshots /Have /iadb /produce /vio /phoenix /notables /rain /smash /textures /jag silence /www /scrolls /sas /au /buy /antworte /adoring /emailcoat /8 uioev 00 /ending /suffers /leibenluft /ices /disbanded /Presente /enfant /cover vende /trash /abook /prochainreceived /documentarys /directv /paddingsecretaris /theoretically /borromeo /digitalguidelands /Maru /ralph /Entrepreneurs /short /2009 /regarding /headphone /buzzsavvier /au /tougher /inflatable /GRANTED /bouncers /malas /hurdlespictos /pancrase /position /astonishing /deposits /disbanded /Achat /webblthem /manufacturedit prevents the trunk from falling v backward without the need for muscular activity. In the sitting position, it becomes relaxed, thus permitting the pelvis to tilt backw oev ard into its sitting position. The iliofemoral ligament prevents excessive adduction and internal rotation of the hip. The ischiofemoral liga ioev ment pre[m5]vents medial (internal) rotation wh evile the pubofemoral ligament restricts abduction and internal rotation of the hip joint. The zona orbicularis, which lies like va collar around the most narrow part of the femoral neck, is covered by the other ligaments which partly radiate into ioev it. The zona orbicularis acts like a buttonhole on the femoral head and assists in maintaining the contact in the joint. All three ligaments become taut when the joint i oev s extended - this stabilises the joint, and reduces the e evnergy demand of muscles when standin
It's The Next Best Thing To Being Up There...
Nasty Toenail FUNGUS Cured In 10 MInutes * Works Fantastic
|Try the #1 Home Treatment For Nail Fungus
|Cure Any Nail Fungus Instantly
|Laser treatment is considered a cosmetic procedure. That is why it is not covered by most health insurance plans. The cost of laser treatment can vary greatly. If you've tried various remedies to treat your toe nail fungus infection you've probably discovered that they just don't work.The reason is because most treatments which are applied topically to the toenail simply stay on top of the toenail for a few minutes, then evaporate and do not penetrate the nail bed where the fungus lives and grows.Our Toenail Fungus Treatment Gently Removes the Fungus from your Toenails using Safe, Natural, Anti Fungus Ingredients and a Unique Process.You Can Begin Treating Your Toenail Fungus TODAY!"How to Get Rid of Toenail Fungus" reveals everything you need to know to get rid of your Toenail Fungus Quickly and Naturally.
Build Any Wood Working Project this Spring
|The Ultimate Collection of 12,000 Shed Plans!
| Now with hundreds of shed designs, plans, blueprints for the hobbyist and professional alike
Packed with new ideas for everything from small clock housings up to an entire stable
Over 12000 design projects and woodwork plans included for the avid woodworking fan.
Tons of great shed plans projects to complete over the holiday / weekend with your family
Materials lists provided so you'll know exactly what to buy. No more wasting money buying the wrong materials
Comprehensive "How-To" woodworking guide and course. ( worth $147 alone )
How-to information on home improvement, detailed plans and instructions for woodworking projects
All the planning done for you... so you never have to worry when you start building your first shed.
P.S: These are some great sheds. Do let me know which of these is your favorite.
I personally love
Ben's Desert Oasis design!
See Great Sheds Here
|Click here for learn more
Cure to memory loss - CNN Health


text:
Last time I posted one of these Exploriment asked why I hadn't listed the gear I was to use, so here's the kit list for woodland stalking when you're the 'sport' or client. You're not likely to need a Survival Kit in the woodlands of southern England, but a first aid kit is never a bad idea, and if you do actually contact with deer, those latex disposable gloves are a must.
Annoyingly the weather has warmed up a bit in the last couple of days, but so its not really a cold-weather kit or a summer's-morn kit but somewhere in-between.
Boots: While Muckboots are ideal I've hurt my ankle so I've opted for Lundhags Ranger boots as I want a bit more support and, optimistically believe we'll be packing big beast out of the woods.
Gaiters: keep muck and water out of your boot tops. Essential.
Hat: this one has a light in it and came from a bargain supermarket. As well as its camouflaging effect a hat is essential for keeping your rounds together when emptying the rifle. You wouldn't want to drop one from the highseat.
WestWinds Arctic Smock: Windproof, amazingly breathable, waterproof enough, and as quiet as the grave.
Plus Fours: 'old's cool' I know but once you get over looking a complete dweeb [the deer dont care] these are fantastic. Get a pair you'll be surprised how utilitarian they are.
Glue: we'll come to that in a future post
Chorizio: Fatty and Spicy, just what you need to keep you going towards the end of the outing.
Double-Bastard sharp knife: I'm using my 'posh stalking knife' the Falknieven TK6
Head Torch: ZebraLight
Bushnell GPS: borrowed from HunterX
Ear Defenders: for sighting in unmoderated rifles
Binoculars: I'm loving my Eden's and warmly recommend a chest harness over a neck strap. Less than £15/$20 buys you a whole lot of comfort. Or you could make your own in an hour.
Buddhist superstitious string: cant hurt
Base layer: wicking plastic with sent suppression (actually seems to work-who knew?)
Merino wool layer X2
Neck Gaiters AKA Buffs X2: after Rifle, Glass and Knife these are pretty vital, a lot of warmth and comfort in a very small package for very little cost.
Stalking report to follow
Your pal


text:
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (5 November 1850 - 30 October 1919 / Johnstown Center / Rock County / Wisconsin)
» Click to list general statistics » OR, select a date :
The Old Wooden Cradle
Good-bye to the cradle, the dear wooden cradle
The rude hand of Progress has thrust it aside.
No more to its motion o'er sleep's fairy ocean,
Our play-weary wayfarers peacefully glide.
read more >>
- Hits: Number of visitors who read the poem on the given date.
- Posts: Number of visitors who posted the poem to a friend (via e-mail) on the given date.
- Dates that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list.
- Dates, poems and poets that have "0" hits may not be shown on the list. Statistics are generated daily.


text:
Leg$ is an album released by R&B singer Rochell'le in 1991.
Album review
The most interesting thing about this album is the obvious departure from the "good girl" image on her debut. A more confident and revealing Rochell'le appears, not afraid to flaunt her fair-skinned sexuality to the urban market. The music world was stunned by this reverse cross-over move, and while the street flocked to this release, her suburban fanbase vanished.
- "Street Queen"
- "Vanilla Na Na"
- "A Dogg's Bitch" (duet with Madd Dogg)
- "Blastin' Bitch"
- The album can be seen by the TV in Niko Bellic's Middle Park East Safehouse in Grand Theft Auto IV.
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.


text: Old topic, I know, but I just listened to Colt Cabana's latest podcast and he has a quick 5 minute sitdown with Nigel, whose Kickstarter-funded bio documentary just came out. During the podcast, he and Colt both talk about the fact that he finally discloses the reason for his retirement in the documentary. Has anyone here heard what it was yet?


text:
ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – It was back to school Monday in St. Johns County, and the new year brought some new additions to many campuses in the district: law enforcement officers.
Schools are increasing officers' presence on campuses after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn.
"I was glad to see a cop here this morning because I thought that coming back they might have forgotten about the kids. So I'm glad they're there," parent Laura Page said.
Page said the officer makes her feel a little better leaving her kindergartner at Ketterlinus Elementary in St. Augustine.
The St. Augustine Police Department and St. Johns County Sheriff's Office are both stepping up their presence at schools across the district.
"I think it gives them a peace of mind at the school that things are safer, that the officer isn't far away," Police Department spokesman Mark Samson said.
The St. Johns County School District has 23 school resource officers, one at every high school, and others that rotate now between middle and elementary schools. There are also other officers that are dropping by schools throughout the day.
"I would love it if it was a cop here all the time at the school," Page said. "I mean, that would definitely make me feel better."
The School District says it is reviewing safety plans to see if a change like that, or any changes at all, are necessary.
"We have heightened our awareness, we are conscious of our schools' emergency operations plans school administrative teams as well as school safety teams continue to meet," said Paul Abbatinozzi, director for school services in St. Johns County.
School districts across northeast Florida are doing the same thing. In Baker County, officials met Monday to discuss adding more school resource officers, but opted against it because of budget cuts. The two current resource officers will rotate between the county's six schools.
In Duval County, resource officers assigned to middle and high schools will now visit elementary schools as well.
Clay County officials say they are working with local law enforcement.
And in Alachua County there is a law enforcement officer assigned to every public elementary school.
Even with safety on the forefront in St. Johns County, there's also a desire for normalcy.
"Our goal is to get back, continue to focus on business as usual, balanced with the focus on safety and security for our students," Abbatinozzi said.
School officials there say there's no timeline or meeting date set for when they will discuss making changes to their safety plan. They say it's something that's done on a continual basis.
And while they believe their plans are strong right now, it's always a work in progress.


text:
Sports: NHL Hockey: For both cellar dwellers the outlook is grim
Grim outlook, but one of these teams has to win, correct?
— Sportikos, refWrite Backpage sports newspotter, analyst, columnist
Leafs on the road in Buffalo tonite
MAPLE LEAFS Toronto (2-3-0) at SABRES Buffalo (2-3-0)
Big story: With both Toronto and Buffalo coming off tough road losses, the game Tuesday night is a big opportunity to build some positive momentum and climb out of the place both teams are currently sitting -- the Northeast Division cellar.
Team Scope:
Maple Leafs: In their last game the Maple Leafs appeared headed to a second impressive win in three games after taking a 2-0 first-period lead against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. After the opening 20 minutes, however, things stalled out significantly for Toronto. The Leafs managed just 17 shots on goal over the course of the entire game while giving up 42 shots on net and they were eventually victims of a Rangers comeback that was punctuated by a four-goal third period. That the loss came on the heels of 7-4 loss at home against the New York Islanders made the blown lead a tough pill to swallow, particularly considering that just three nights before their loss to the Rangers, the Maple Leafs had spoiled the Pittsburgh Penguins' home opener with a stunning 5-2 victory.
The loss to the Rangers was a particularly rough night for netminder James Reimer, who had an opportunity to grab the reins of Toronto's unsettled goalie situation after Ben Scrivens was pulled from the loss to the Islanders two nights earlier. If the Maple Leafs can manage to get solid play on the back end, however, they could wind up surprisingly opponents. With 11 goals in the last three games, it would appear the offense is not the problem.
Sabres: Buffalo might have been among the most impressive teams in the League in its season opener. On the strength of Thomas Vanek's five-point outburst, the Sabres trounced the Flyers 5-2 for a statement victory and knocked off the Maple Leafs in Toronto a day later to open 2012-13 at 2-0-0. Since then, however, the Sabres have hit the skids. Not only has Vanek missed time due to a muscle strain, but the team is now mired in a three-game losing streak after getting swept in a home-and-home against the Carolina Hurricanes and suffering a 3-2 loss to the previously-winless Washington Capitals this past Sunday.
Perhaps more forboding is the Sabres' lackluster offense of late. Since its season-opening win over Philadelphia, Buffalo has averaged just two goals per game while surrendering an average of 2.50 goals per game over the same stretch. If the Sabres' don't turn it around soon, things could be get out of hand very quickly. Buffalo doesn't have more than one day off at a time until Feb. 13 and 14, meaning there is little time for the players to catch their breath if the team starts to slide.
Who's hot: The Sabres' loss to the Capitals Sunday was the first time this season Jason Pominville failed to register a point, but he is still off to a strong start with three goals and five assists through five games this season. ...Mikhail Grabovski has scored a goal in each of the last three games for Toronto and added two assists over that span for good measure, while Nazem Kadri has quietly put up five points in five games this season.
Injury report: Thomas Vanek (lower-body injury) is considered probable for Buffalo Tuesday. The Maple Leafs, who recently lost Joffrey Lupul for six weeks with a broken forearm, may also be without Clarke MacArthur (lacerated finger), who is considered questionable.


text:
Emerging Markets Free index(redirected from emf)
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Acronyms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Emerging Markets Free index (EMF)
A Morgan Stanley Capital International index created to track stock markets in selected emerging markets that are open to foreign investment like Argentina, Chile, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, and Thailand.
Emerging Markets Free Index
An index published by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) that tracks stocks in developing countries with a great deal of foreign direct investment. Example countries with stocks tracked by the index include Argentina, Jordan, and Mexico. As with all MSCI indices, it is weighted for market capitalization.


text:
In recounting the power play that led to Sikkim's absorption into India, the author's bias towards the deposed king is straightforward
Sikkim: Requiem for a Himalayan Kingdom
by Andrew Duff
Publisher: Random House India, 2015
Pages: 389
Price: Rs 599
Much of the western media and numerous authors in the 1960s and 1970s portrayed Sikkim as an exotic Himalayan Shangri-La. Interest in Sikkim was especially piqued after Hope Cooke, an attractive, young American woman, romanced and married Palden Thondup Namgyal, who quickly became Chogyal (hereditary ruler) of Sikkim. American readers, long fascinated with royalty, found in Hope Cooke echoes of the alluring Grace Kelly, who had, in the previous decade, married the wealthy Prince Rainier of Monaco. But while Kelly made headlines with her high-rolling European lifestyle, Gyalmo (queen) Hope Cooke and her Chogyal husband were caught up in the Himalayan power play that ended with the 1975 absorption of Sikkim into the Indian union.
There have always been two versions of this Sikkim story. The first, an idealistic and morally loaded interpretation, is about the benevolent monarch of an idyllic mountain kingdom who was cynically undermined and deposed by a large and powerful neighbour, India, which was actually treaty-bound to protect his dominions. A second version, grounded in political realism, tells of the ouster of an out-of-touch ruling elite from a privileged Lepcha-Bhutia minority that was lording it over the ethnic-Nepali majority. Both versions are variations of the truth.
Unquestionably, New Delhi acted opportunistically in absorbing Sikkim. Indian leaders of that period were guided less by considerations of morality than by the conviction that militarily blocking a looming China required full control of Sikkim, which controlled strategic parts of the Sino-Indian border, especially the Chumbi Valley. Given Nepal's reluctance, already evident during that period and even more so now, to allow India freedom of action on the Himalayan border, India's absorption of Sikkim was a pragmatic act of realpolitik.
In 1984, the journalist, Sunanda Datta-Ray, recounted the moral version of the story in his book, Smash and Grab: the Annexation of Sikkim. As the name suggests this book, which the Indian government duly banned, portrays an unscrupulous and heavy-handed New Delhi. Andrew Duff's version borrows heavily from Datta-Ray, drawing extensively on the Chogyal's own account of events. But while Datta-Ray had a single-minded thesis --- New Delhi's perfidy --- Duff's account is rather more nuanced. It draws from wider sources, including the personal correspondence of two Scottish women, both palace intimates, who provide revealing glimpses into palace gossip, albeit coloured by the prejudices of the British elite of that day. Duff has gone to some length to access diplomatic accounts of that time, including correspondence put out by Wikileaks. But his interpretation is naive, especially of American and Chinese conversations about India, which, during the Nixon-Kissinger-Mao-Zhou period, reflected deep hostility towards India on every subject, not just Sikkim.
Duff's bias towards the Chogyal and his palace coterie is as straightforward as his antipathy towards the democrats who eventually took power. Scotswoman, Martha Hamilton, who describes the Chogyal as "a dear old man, dressed in a beautiful silk brocade", is portrayed as "a tall, spirited, single, 28-year-old Scottish missionary". In contrast, another Scotswoman, Elisa-Maria Langford-Rae --- the activist wife of the democratic leader, Kazi Llendup Dorji, who became Sikkim's first chief minister in 1975 --- is described as "a shadowy Scottish woman who orchestrated events on behalf of her husband, the leading politician in Sikkim who harboured a lifelong grudge against the king".
Even so, the intelligent reader who keeps in mind these biases will find this book a highly readable and fast-paced account of that crucial period when independent India consolidated its Himalayan borders. After extending administration to the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) in the 1950s, the development and management of the Nepalese, Bhutanese and Sikkimese borders was an important concern in New Delhi, especially after the debacle of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. The author presents not just the story of Sikkim, but usefully connects it with developments in the other two countries, illustrating why Sikkim joined India while Nepal and Bhutan remain independent countries.
In telling this story, the author overcomes the disadvantage of not having been present in Sikkim during those days, bringing to life a wide range of characters: the autocratic, out-of-touch, yet fundamentally decent Chogyal; his plotting sister, Coocoola, who German explorer Heinrich Harrer considered "the most beautiful woman in the world"; the young, confused Gyalmo Hope Cooke; and an array of Indian officials, many still alive, who played key roles in Gangtok during that time. Notwithstanding his sympathy for the Chogyal, Duff acknowledges his alcoholism and many political blunders.
An Indian diplomat who was a key protagonist in Gangtok through that period points out that, notwithstanding Duff's conviction that India did not play fair by Sikkim, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: Sikkim is today one of India's most developed, progressive and integrated states and its people far happier than they were under the Chogyal. He wonders: "Did India, the world's biggest democracy, have any choice but to back democratic forces in Sikkim? And 'smash and grab' is certainly not an accurate description of New Delhi's actions in Sikkim. Our moves during that time would be far better described as 'dither and fumble'."


text:
As you'd know if you were reading Fine Art last week, Dishonored was originally intended to be a game set in 17th century London, rather than the whalepunk fictional universe it ended up creating for itself.
The decision to switch settings wasn't made instantly; there had been time for some art to be drawn up imagining a stealthy 1666 London, and the fact the period's garb makes hero Corvo so much like the star of the Thief series might explain why things moved on.
That said, there's a Brotherhood of the Wolf vibe coming from those sketches that would have been nice to see in the final version.
These pieces are the work of Wes Burt, a super-talented artist we've featured a few times here before. You can, and should, check out more of his stuff on his CGHub page.
To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they're big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".
Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!


text:
While everyone was buzzing about big releases from Frank Ocean, Fiona Apple, Mumford & Sons and Taylor Swift, you might have missed some must-listens. Heres what you should know about, and why
Grizzly Bear, Shields (Warp)
Yes, iTunes named Grizzly Bears Shields the best album of 2012. Yes, the critics adored it. And yes, it debuted in the Top 10.
But did it earn any Grammy nominations? No. Is it selling well? No. Have you heard it? Probably not.
And that needs to change.
Shields is a semimasterpiece that feels both old and new and in the best ways possible. Anchored by the voices of Edward Droste and Daniel Rossen, this Brooklyn, N.Y.-based foursome has created a disc that is genre-defying and consistent throughout.
The 10 tracks that make up Shields are drum-filled and smoky, and half the songs are more than five minutes long. Thats a bit unusual, but its also a break from mainstream pop music, and a needed one.
Mesfin Fekadu, AP Music Writer (twitter.com/musicmesfin)
Aaron Freeman, Marvelous Clouds (Partisan Records)
Middle age and sobriety caused Aaron Freeman to split this year from Ween, the deliriously genre-defying cult duo he co-founded 25 years ago. To find his footing as a solo artist, the former Gene Weens first tentative step was to release Marvelous Clouds, a covers album featuring 13 songs by Rod McKuen, the 1960s poet and composer.
McKuens a crooner often dismissed as schlocky, but Freeman finds the earnest heart and crushing heartbreak in gentle ballads like A Man Alone, which could be the records theme song. The production on Jean and the title track are by turns lush and spare. Every track is suffused with a melancholy that draws comparisons to some of the best of Weens softer material, including the aching Birthday Boy and I Dont Want It.
Ween devotees felt betrayed when Freeman broke up the band, and they were confused that such an accomplished songwriter opted to record someone elses tunes. But Marvelous Clouds rewards multiple listens, and provides plenty of hints that Freeman will continue to surprise.
Christopher Weber, AP Writer
I/O, Isolation (Self-released)
Oh, progressive R&B, how I enjoy your sound.
That trend in music a movement that includes Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, Miguel and Dawn Richard will continue to blow up in 2013, and New York-based singer-songwriter-producer I/O should be among those to look out for.
His second mixtape, Isolation, is an impeccable adventure of R&B and eerie sounds that heal your ears.
Hes singing about heartache and heartbreak on this 12-track staple, but he doesnt come off as annoying. The epic Id Be Lying is the best example, where I/O is motivated and looking for more in life. Piece of Mind is nicely jelled with electronic sounds, and his soft voice shines on Strangers and Well Always Be, with its addictive hook full of hand claps.
I/O, whose real name is Ayo Olatunji, is a newcomer on the rise. Were onboard.
Mesfin Fekadu, AP Music Writer (twitter.com/musicmesfin)
Various Artists, The Return of the Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Yazoo Records)
Too often we reflexively think that music is born when it is recorded, that it simply comes into existence fully formed. But every riff, every melody, every harmony has its own rich history. When it comes to the American songbook, taking rides through the deeper parts of that history can be as thrilling and immediate as seeing a live concert.
This is the wonderful calculus of The Return of the Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, a two-disc set with great documentation that travels back to the 1920s and unearths some of the earliest recordings of homegrown American music. Heres the Fruit Jar Guzzlers (best band name ever?) doing a prehistoric version of the Stack-O-Lee ballad. Heres blues legend Charley Patton going deep into the Delta. Heres a fiddler named Elder Golden P. Harris sounding like something coming through the open windows of a 19th-century Southern church as he twangs out Ill Lead a Christian Life.
Other traditions are represented, too: Two Eastern European tracks are welcome additions to the mix, jarring in the most evocative way amid all the country and blues. A great American musical lesson that puts the best of emerging legends alongside the long-forgotten just as record collectors might dream of.
Ted Anthony, AP National Writer (twitter.com/anthonyted)
Ty Segall, Twins (Drag City)
Ty Segall may have been the busiest man in music this year, releasing three albums under different band alignments while producing and contributing to several more.
His solo record, Twins, is the best of the lot and shows why everyone is so excited about the 25-year-old garage rocker from San Francisco. He plays most of the instruments here on 12 tracks full of fuzzy goodness.
Segall sets the mood with album opener, Thank God for Sinners, an anthemic fist to the face that shows you right where his heart is. Other highlights include the shambolic Ghost, the relentless They Told Me Too and Love Fuzz, which has a self-explanatory title.
Chris Talbott, AP Music Writer (twitter.com/christalbott)
Anat Cohen, Claroscuro (Anzic)
Israeli-born Anat Cohen is doing her utmost to ensure that the clarinet no longer remains an overlooked instrument in modern jazz. On Claroscuro, Cohen offers a variety of tonal shades ranging from light buoyant tunes to dark intense multilayered pieces as she takes her listeners on a multicultural journey with stops in West Africa, New Orleans, Brazil and her present home, New York.
Cohen engages in intricate dialogues with another jazz clarinet virtuoso, Cuban-born Paquito DRivera, on four of the 11 tracks ranging from the twisting, minor key Nightmare, Swing Era clarinetist Artie Shaws haunting theme, to the playful, danceable Um A Zero by the Brazilian choro master Pixinguinha. On La Vie En Rose, Cohen pays homage to Louis Armstrongs New Orleans take on the Edith Piaf chanson, slowing the tempo and contrasting her smooth clarinet lines with Wycliffe Gordons growling trombone and gravelly vocals.
Charles J. Gans, AP Writer (twitter.com/chjgans)
THEESatisfaction, awE naturalE (Sub Pop)
For some reason, year-end lists often carry a taint with them, but around here, we love them because of all the leads they give you on new music. THEESatisfaction came to our attention after its appearance on one list or another, and were excited to discover awE naturalE.
Rapper Stasia Irons and singer Catherine Harris-Whites thoroughly modern mash-up of hip-hop and soul is intoxicating they call their songs funk-psychedelic feminista sci-fi epics and the music weaves back and forth between fierce and fearless.
The folks at Sub Pop, who had a stellar 2012, discovered Irons and Harris-White after hearing a Shabazz Palaces song they contributed to. Already a veteran of several mixtapes, the self-produced awE naturalE is ridiculously self-assured and constantly interesting.
Looking for a little ear candy? Check out QueenS, which serves as something of a theme song, the jazzy Existinct and the fractured jam of naturalE.
Chris Talbott, AP Music Writer (twitter.com/christalbott)
Kitty Pryde, Haha, Im Sorry (Self-released)
In between retail store shifts in Daytona Beach, Fla., and navel-gazing about drunken boys, Kitty Pryde found something valuable in 2012. She delivers dream-pop rap that resonates with a restless sliver of hip-hop fans craving something smarter to savor.
Prydes EP, Haha, Im Sorry, was welcomed by the few that noticed its free-via-Bandcamp release.
The complex, exploratory beats by producer Beautiful Lou are crucial to the polish of the five-track effort by Pryde, whose youthful banality oozes out of each savvy curse-free verse. Prydes easy flow on Ay Shawty has nothing to do with the hip-hop you hear on the radio and everything to do with a snapshot of hip-hop fandom, growing in numbers, who seek something beyond the guns-and-drugs drill that often dominates the genre.
This is real downtime talk, not saddled with rough urban fantasies.
Ron Harris, AP Writer (twitter.com/journorati)
Ana Tijoux, La Bala (Nacional Records)
Sometimes the most powerful sound is not a shout, but a whisper.
Chilean-French rapper Ana Tijoux proves the power of that phrase. This year she brought new life to hip-hop en espanol with her rich, intelligent and original album La Bala.
Tijoux captures attention with a complex delivery that is both soft and harsh, warm in tone, yet chilling. Her lyrics reflect the politics that have shaped her world: She grew up exiled in France, where her family fled to escape the Pinochet regime.
Musically, La Bala is a gorgeous, potent and smoothly produced mix of bass, orchestration, rock and soul with delicious use of G-funk styling. The rhythms are unexpected and enticing.
On the title track, Tijoux details the shooting of a man, rapping over a militaristic march: That body without life was her son, stunned Maria falls to the floor, her deformed face turned into a cry that leaves only a hum meaning assassin.
Michelle Morgante, AP Writer (twitter.com/mmorgante)


text:
Sign In
Forgot password?
By continuing, I agree to Caviar's Terms & Conditions.
No items
Ready to eat? Let us suggest a place to try out.
I'm Feeling Hungry!
North Jersey Restaurants > Showing Restaurants for "mexican"
The best Mexican restaurants in North Jersey now come direct to your door. From street tacos to traditional dinner fare—we deliver it all. Order Mexican food for lunch or dinner delivery and get your mouth ready for a trip to the border.


text:
MADRID (Reuters) - Thousands of health workers, on strike since last month, marched on Sunday in Madrid to protest against budget cuts and plans from the Spanish capital's regional government to privatize the management of public hospitals and medical centers.
It was the third time doctors, nurses and health workers have rallied since the local authorities put forward a plan in October to place six hospitals and dozens of medical practices under private management. The plan also calls for patients to be charged a fee of 1 euro for prescriptions.
Workers launched an indefinite strike last month against the plan, which has not been endorsed by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Health workers in the capital are striking Monday-Thursday each week and seeing patients only on Fridays, while also responding to emergencies.
Spain's 17 autonomous regions control health and education policies and spending. They have all had to implement steep cuts this year as the country struggles to meet tough European Union-agreed deficit targets.
Dressed in white scrubs, the protesters shouted slogans such as "Health is not for sale" and "Health 100 percent public, no to privatizations".
"Of course, privatization can be reversed. Actually the question is not if it can be reversed, because privatization should never have a future," said Luis Alvarez, an unemployed man from Madrid attending the demonstration.
Belen Padilla, a doctor at Madrid's hospital Gregorio Maranon, said one million citizens had already signed a petition rejecting the plan.
Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Peter Graff


text:
Medical center
We provide a full range of services, from therapist's appointment to inpatient surgery
Plastic, maxillofacial surgery, medical cosmetology, dentistry
Review. Dr. Lapukhova made a perfectly circular facelift, blepharoplasty, abdominoplasty and liposuction. Transformed me dramatically. Very grateful to her!More
Review. A huge thanks to Dr. Wacker for professionalism, friendly attitude. Sincerely, Leonid.More
Review. I would like to express my gratitude to the doctor Terekhovich Maria Anatolyevna, midwife Shutko Elena Anatolyevna, as well as two young interns (the boy and the girl, unfortunately, I did not remember their names). Thanks to your professionalism, you helped my daughter to be born. They are not only good specialists, but also people from God, who supported me all the time of delivery and put me in a positive frame of mind. I also express deep gratitude to all the specialists (pediatric and postnatal departments), thanks to whom the stay in the maternity hospital was very comfortable and favorable! I wish prosperity to your maternity hospital!More
Medical center
Phlebology, plastic surgery, gynecology, urology, cosmetology, ultrasound
Review. I want to say a huge thanks to Sergey Mechkovsky. This man, with his golden hands, makes us even more beautiful. He listened all my questions, my experiences, but he always supported with a kind word and humor. It means that he is not only an excellent surgeon, but also a kind, sympathetic person! I did an operation on the chest. Almost a month has passed, and I can not get enough. At the first consultation I immediately realized that he was my surgeon. I have never had any doubts and I have never regretted it! So, I want to say to all those who still doubt to trust your doctor, because he knows what is right for you. I recommend him to anyone who wants to be even more beautiful!More
Plastic surgery center
Review. I did a breast augmentation surgery at this center. I am very pleased and very pleased. Dr. Mechikovsky super.More
Center for aesthetic medicine
Review. I express my gratitude to all Clinic Khinevich!More


text:
Equinox p2 now produces a small SWT-based installer that can be used to install the Eclipse SDK. This article gives details on how to use the installer.
Why should I use the installer?
Traditionally Eclipse software is obtained in the form of a zip or tar.gz file that is simply extracted onto disk and run. While this simplicity has its advantages, there are also some disadvantages for users:
- Downloading a 100+ MB zip file over HTTP can be painful on a slow connection
- If you already have some or all of the plug-ins on your local disk, you are downloading content unnecessarily
- More advanced compression techniques can't be used, because there is no opportunity to add the decompression code at the other end
- You must pick a single mirror at the start, and can't switch mirrors in case of failure
- There is no opportunity to check code certificates to ensure the software you are downloading was created by a trusted source
The installer leverages p2's inherent support for multi-threading, pack200 compression, dynamic mirror balancing, and certificate validation to address these problems.
How do I use the installer?
- Get the installer for your platform from the equinox download page.
- Unzip the installer anywhere on your local disk, eg.,
- Run the p2 installer executable, eg.,
- In the install wizard, select where you want to install the software, eg.,
- Select whether to do a Stand-alone or Shared install:
- If doing a Stand-alone install, you can delete the installer directory (
/opt/eclipse) when done, as your target directory (
~/eclipse) will contain a full Eclipse install.
- If doing a Shared install, you must keep the installer directory (
/opt/eclipse) as it will contain all the shared Eclipse SDK plugins; your target directory (
~/eclipse) will only contain the minimum required to start Eclipse.
- If doing a Stand-alone install, you can delete the installer directory (
How does the installer work?
While the installer by default will install the Eclipse SDK, the installer itself is entirely generic. The installer knows what to install by reading an install description specified in p2installer.ini:
-vmargs -Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.installDescription=http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/testUpdates/sdk-installer.properties
If you look at sdk-installer.properties in a Web browser, you will see:
eclipse.p2.rootId=org.eclipse.sdk.ide eclipse.p2.metadata=http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.4milestones/ eclipse.p2.artifacts=http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/3.4milestones/ ... and other properties ...
The 'rootId' attribute describes what to install, and the next two attributes describe where to get the metadata and artifacts to be installed. By changing those attributes, you can make the installer install a different piece of software, or install from a different repository.
While installing (eg., from
/opt/eclipse/p2installer), plugins, features, and metadata will be downloaded and stored in
Non-working Example
You can use an installer.properties file to fetch plugins into the p2.touchpoint.eclipse folder, but you cannot then install those plugins unless they contain a Product (that is, they include a eclipse executable).
The following will work to download the EMF SDK plugins, but will NOT work to install an EMF-enabled Eclipse install, as the sdk.feature.group does not include the Eclipse SDK itself.
eclipse.p2.metadata=http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/updates/releases/ eclipse.p2.artifacts=http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/updates/releases/ eclipse.p2.flavor= eclipse.p2.profileName=EMF SDK eclipse.p2.launcherName=eclipse eclipse.p2.rootId=org.eclipse.emf.sdk.feature.group eclipse.p2.autoStart=true
Supported installer properties
The following properties are currently supported in the install description file:
- eclipse.p2.rootId
- The root Installable Unit to be installed
- eclipse.p2.rootVersion
- The version of the root installable unit to install. If this property is omitted, the installer will select the newest available IU that matches the rootId property.
- eclipse.p2.metadata
- The URL of the metadata repository to install from
- eclipse.p2.artifacts
- The URL of the artifact repository to install from
- eclipse.p2.launcherName
- The name of the application launcher (e.g., eclipse.exe). This is used in conjunction with the autoStart property to launch the installed application
- eclipse.p2.autoStart
- A boolean property specifying if the installed application should be launched immediately after install.
- eclipse.p2.profileName
- The id of the p2 profile to install the application into
- eclipse.p2.installLocation
- The application instal location. If ommitted, the user is prompted for a location
- eclipse.p2.agentLocation
- The p2 agent data location directory
- eclipse.p2.bundleLocation
- The application bundle pool directory


text:
Category : Annotated Bibliography.
Topic : Dissertation printing cardiff. Author : Cohen.
Posted : Sat, Feb 15th 2020 00:58 AM.
Format : jpg/jpeg.
So why do students need to do them? Because of their nature, annotated bibliography can be used to get students to review available literature on a particular subject, demonstrate their breadth of knowledge in the field, discover the variety of research materials available, single out sources relevant to a specific topic and organize these sources for further research.


text:
La Bottega slashes prices March 4-10 in 3 locations
Giuseppe and Marisa Ruta, owners of the original La Bottega in Garden City South, will celebrate their restaurant's 10th anniversary with a 50 percent discount that runs from March 4 to 10. The same deal prevails at the La Bottega restaurants in both Franklin Square and Roslyn but not at any of the 17 other La Bottegas dotting the Long Island landscape.
The discount will be taken off the entire check — both food and drink — but the deal doesn't hold when purchasing a gift card, nor can it be combined with the restaurant's reward card.
During the discount period, there will be a no reservations policy at participating restaurants. The La Bottega restaurants specialize in panini — Italian grill-pressed sandwiches — as well as salads and pastas.
You can also get the discount at Caffe Barocco, a tapas and wine bar next door to La Bottega in Garden City South.
La Bottega is at 147 Nassau Blvd. Garden City South 516-486-0935, 1424 Old Northern Blvd., Roslyn, 516-621-2685 and 700 Franklin Ave., Franklin Square, 516-837-3060. Caffe Barocco is at 143 Nassau Blvd., Garden City South, 516-292-0144.


text:
ADOPT(redirected from adoptable)
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Legal, Idioms.
Accupril Decision On PharmacoTherapy. A clinical trial that was planned at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, the purpose of which was to compare efficacy and safety of quinapril, enalapril, atenolol and verapamil in controlling blood pressure in patients with uncomplicated mild to moderate hypertension when used as single-agent therapy in a structured titration program.
A Diabetes Outcome Progression Trial. A 4-year Phase-4 trial comparing early treatment of type-2 diabetics with rosiglitazone (Avandia), metformin or glyburide (a sulfonylurea in glucose control) for delay or prevention of diabetes complications—e.g., kidney disease, etc.
Lower failure rate at 5 years: 15% with rosiglitazone vs. 21% with metformin and 34% with glyburide; a highly significant risk reduction of 32% for rosiglitazone compared with metformin, and 63% compared with glyburide. Positive results notwithstanding, rosiglitazone has been pulled from various markets due to possible increased risk of heart attacks.


text:
Eva Longoria doesn't need a baby of her own — she's got Victoria Beckham's daughter Harper Seven to keep her company!
The 36-year-old "Desperate Housewives" star cradled the nearly 4-month-old baby girl while cheering David Beckham onto victory at the L.A. Galaxy vs. New York Red Bulls soccer game in Carson, Calif., Thursday.
As Longoria bonded with Harper, mom Victoria, 37, watched over sons Brooklyn, 12, Romeo, 9, and Cruz, 6. Also in Beckham's private suite?Zac Efron, 24, who kept a low-profile in a read beanie.
Before Harper's birth, Longoria threw Victoria a baby shower at at West Hollywood's Petit L'Ermitage Hotel in May. Guests included Demi Moore, Nicole Richie, Rachel Zoe, Tana Ramsay and Selma Blair.


text:
Note: All in-person campus events have been canceled or postponed until further notice. COVID-19 Information
Tuesday, October 1, 201911:44AM - Tuesday, October 1, 201911:44AM
At Jarman Auditorium
Organized by Center for Cyber Security
Four leading cyber security experts will convene on the campus of Longwood University next week to discuss the biggest challenges facing the global IT community and what citizens can do to secure their private data from being harvested by cybercriminals.
"Cyber Security in the Internet of Things Era" is the theme of the Oct. 1 Cyber Security Summit, sponsored by Longwood's College of Business and Economics and the department of computer science.
The panel will be moderated Carpenter and Dr. Robert Marmorstein, associate professor of computer science. The summit will begin at 3:30 p.m. in Jarman Auditorium on the campus of Longwood University. The panel is free and open to the public.


text:
Luckily we were able to track down some great video from someone who posted four at-bats of Cespedes playing for Granma, his team in Cuba. In the video, Cespedes is the hitter in the first three at-bats, after which a double from Leslie Anderson (Rays) of Camaguey and Yoelvis Fiss of Ciego de Avila are spliced in between one final at-bat from Cespedes. I'm not much for spoilers (I always like to go in fresh), but I don't think anyone should be surprised that these aren't clips of him rolling over grounders to the shortstop.
The YouTube feed has some other great clips of Cubans, including Leonys Martin facing Aroldis Chapman, at-bats from Yulieski Gourriel and Alfredo Despaigne, an 18-year-old Kendrys Morales homering and the Cuban team facing Rangers righthander Yu Darvish in the 2008 Olympics, among other highlights. I would definitely recommend perusing when you have the time.
UPDATE: Cespedes established residency in the Dominican Republic.


text:
We still have spots open in the FSSD Pre-K Program! Apply Now!
What is the Franklin Special School District/State of Tennessee Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten Program? Voluntary Pre-K provides a high quality educational program through an active learning approach. Young children learn skills at their own level in ways meaningful to them. A holistic approach to Kindergarten readiness prepares children socially, mentally, emotionally, and physically. If you walk into a Pre-K classroom you may see children playing house, putting on a puppet show, or building a miniature town with blocks and little people. Experienced, knowledgeable, understanding teachers and staff guide students through music, stories, songs, and play. All of these fun activities help children develop academic and social skills as they play.
To be eligible, children must have been born on or between August 16, 2013 and August 15, 2014, live in the Franklin Special School District, and qualify in one of several ways.
The Tennessee Department of Education Office of Early Learning requires school districts first serve students who are economically disadvantaged. Space permitting, students may be served who have disabilities, are identified as English Language Learners, are in state custody, or are identified as educationally at-risk for failure due to circumstances of abuse or neglect.
Children attend Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten Monday through Friday for a six hour day. Each class is limited to 16 children working with a teacher and paraprofessional. The program is free of charge although parents are required to provide transportation.
For more information call any FSSD Elementary School or Lee Kirkpatrick at (615) 591-2802 and ask to receive application materials.
Voluntary Pre-K has proven to be a valuable element in Franklin Special School District's commitment to provide excellence in teaching and learning for all. We welcome your questions related to Voluntary Pre K. If you have questions please contact:
Lee Kirkpatrick, Ed.D.
Student Support Services Supervisor
Franklin Special School District
1406 Cannon Street
Franklin, TN 37064
(615) 591-2802


text:
Main Page
The Open-Transactions project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, fully-featured, free-software toolkit implementing the OTX protocol as well as a full-strength financial cryptography library, API, CLI, and prototype server. The project is managed by a worldwide community of volunteers that use the Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the Open-Transactions toolkit and its related documentation.
- About Open-Transactions
- Installation
- Using the command-line tool
- Using the client API
- Using the server
- otapiJ (with test GUI in Java)
Open-Transactions democratizes financial and monetary actions. You can use it for issuing currencies/stock, paying dividends, creating asset accounts, sending/receiving digital cash, writing/depositing cheques, cashier's cheques, creating basket currencies, trading on markets, scripting custom agreements, recurring payments, escrow, etc.
Open-Transactions uses strong crypto. The balances are unchangeable (even by a malicious server.) The receipts are destructible and redundant. The transactions are unforgeable. The cash is untraceable. The cheques are non-repudiable. Etc.
This product includes software developed by Ben Laurie for use in the Lucre project.


text:
Last month we told you about Wichita's tenth birthday celebrations and extended our congratulations on this landmark. There were a few special birthday performances announced around the country back then, but details about celebratory happenings in the nation's capital weren't then confirmed. They are now. There will be a four-night run of gigs in the middle of July at London's Garage (if you haven't been since the renovation it's not bad, though the colour scheme is slightly odd) featuring these artists:
12 - Lissy Trullie, Those Dancing Days, Young Legionnaire
13 - First Aid Kit, Peggy Sue, Meg Baird
14 - The Cribs, Sky Larkin, Lovvers
15 - Headliners TBA, Frankie & The Heartstrings, Johnny Foreigner
We genuinely have no idea who the final day's headliners will be, but it'll be something monumental, no doubt. Tickets are priced at £12 for the first two nights and £15 for the final two. They go on sale from tomorrow (Thursday 22) at 9AM from here and here.
As well as these newly confirmed shows, the old ones are still worth going to see. Look below for them:
14 - Brighton: The Great Escape @ Life with Peggy Sue, Sky Larkin, Gold Panda and Dam Mantle
21 - London, Stag And Dagger: Sky Larkin, Frankie & The Heartstrings, Cold Pumas and Dam Mantle
26 - Barcelona, Primavera @ The Apolo: Los Campesinos!, First Aid Kit and Peggy Sue
There has also been a few special releases by Wichita recently, notably on Saturday's Record Store Day. For more information on those visit the official website.


text:
(Pocket-lint) - Over the past decade-and-a-bit, Renault's performance division, RenaultSport, has given us a string of hotted-up Clios and Meganes, providing those of us with petrol in our veins an accessible way into fast, front-wheel drive cars - ones that seemed to have been invented specifically to make driving quickly on the average (badly surfaced) British back road great fun.
According to Renault, this new Raider model is a special-edition final hurrah for the RenaultSport Clio 200 – a car that's been on sale since 2009. There's a brand new Clio due in September, so this limited run of just 50 cars is the pinnacle of the current fast Clio's development.
And if you're looking for affordable fun on four wheels, this is as close to Nirvana as it gets. In many ways, the Clio 200 Raider is the antithesis of a Pocket-Lint car, but it's proof that sometimes cars are better when they're simpler and stripped back.
It has a naturally aspirated two litre engine, - there are no turbos, plugs or battery packs here - a manual six-speed gearbox and no "flappy paddles:, to quote a certain loudmouthed BBC motoring journalist. And while it does come with Bluetooth, hands-free keyless entry and the ability to play mp3s, we can't really tell you how well any of these things work. That's because we were so busy having fun on deserted back roads in North Wales that we forgot to try them. Sorry about that, but if you get to have a go in one of these, you'll understand why - it's a car that makes you just want to get in and, well, drive.
So given all this apparent simplicity, why does it feel so special? The Recaro race seats for a start, which grip you like a vice and make you feel like you and the car are a whole. Then there's the engine. It might only have 200 horsepower and the lack of turbo(s) means you'll wonder what all the fuss is about below 4500 rpm, but get it spinning beyond 5000 rpm and it lunges for the redline like it's possessed. In fact, it goes so hard up at the top end of the rev range that Renault equip the car with not only a change up dash light but a "beep" system – one beep means you're at 7000 rpm, two beeps meaning "change up now, you're nearly at the limiter".
Best bit though is the grip and handling of this car. The Raider has uprated wheels and tyres compared to the standard 200, and at one point we almost got out to check the car wasn't leaving a trail of glue behind it, so sticky is it on a twisty road. Turn the wheel and it just grips and grips and grips – until you're pitching it into corners at frankly crazy speeds and chuckling like a madman as you do it.
Of course, you can have nearly as much fun and save yourself nearly £4000 by buying a regular Clio 200. But you'll be missing out on those special wheels and tyres of the Raider, plus those epic Recaro seats (an option in other Clio 200s) and the choice of free inbuilt TomTom SatNav or the RenaultSport monitor - basically a computer game type read out of telemetry showing you how many Gs you're pulling round corners.
Buy a regular Clio 200 and you won't get the choice of the Diavalo Red of this test car or a Stealth Grey paint finish either - both "true" matte paint finishes applied in the factory (rather than a wrap), which we suspect accounts for much of the price hike over the standard car.
Of course, the ride is hard, the interior plastics are lousy and on a motorway slog it'll be far from the most comfortable or refined place to while away a few hours. But if you're after something for those tasks, you're unlikely to be in a market for a car like this anyway.
But if you are after something that's fun, fast and relatively affordable and are into spirited driving on the average British back road, the RenaultSport Clio 200 Raider comes highly recommended. Given that the next fast Clio will almost certainly be powered by a turbo engine and weigh more than this car, the whole focus and attitude of the next generation looks likely to be quite different. So, if you truly enjoy driving in the old fashioned sense of the word - working hard in order to drive quickly, changing your own gears and wringing the engine out to extract every last drop of power - the Clio 200 Raider could just be the last, and greatest, hot hatch of a generation. Analogue thrills for the digital age? They cost just £21,820.
Will you be one of the 50? Let us know below:


text:
Now that's a valid question?
But what's la Maison Chaumont anyway?
Another valid question.
This is la Maison Chaumont…
I took this picture last year when I did a little sightseeing in my hometown of Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines.
You see this house is an historic place as recognized as such by the Quebec government.
Once a small museum, the former town administration emptied it of its furniture and leased it for $200 a month to le Cercle des Fermières.
The reason given was that it was unoccupied… Go figure.
So what's the reason to talk about this house anyway?
One of the relatives of the man who built this house sent me a comment.
He said he was related to the man who built this house.
Which brings us back to our first question… Who built la Maison Chaumont?
If you want to know, then come back next Wednesday.


text:
About the book
A playful journey through the Panama Canal
Original French Canal Bonds from 1888 used to "rewrite" history through the eyes of several contemporary artists. Carlos Weil, the author says that anyone in history that did something important had to cross the Panama Canal …..it does not matter if it is invented or not…. that's part of creativity and of playing with history and art…..
Se puede conseguir el libro en la Galería o por internet (hacer click en la foto del libro)


text:
Whitman Christian Fellowship
Section Navigation
Whitman Christian Fellowship is a group of Whitman students of diverse spiritual backgrounds seeking to learn about and act on the teachings and example of Jesus on campus at Whitman and in every area of our lives.
We seek to integrate faith in Jesus into our daily lives, and our goal is to know God and love God with our minds, hearts, and lives. We invite students from a variety of different spiritual backgrounds to explore the teachings of Jesus and the Christian faith with us. We sponsor student-led small groups, a weekly worship gathering, and various other opportunities such as service and mission, conferences, leadership development, and prayer. We are a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an interdenominational national college ministry.
Contact Person: Kristen Wanke (firstname.lastname@example.com)
Adviser: Nathan Boland (email@example.com)


text:
Enough with bickering cell phone technologies, messaging systems that won't talk, incompatible file formats, and TV remotes that spread like kudzu across your coffee table. We've been dealing with some of these problems for more than a decade, and it's time for things to improve.
Here are ten technologies that cry out for standardization--tomorrow if possible, though yesterday would be even better.
What tech do you want to see standardized? Post your thoughts in the comments below.
1. One World, One Plug
Over the years I've used hundreds of chargers, plugs, AC/DC adapters, power bricks, and wall warts for my laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, GPS units, and other gadgets. No two were interchangeable. It's not merely stupid, it's a landfill nightmare.
USB-based AC adapters are a step forward, but you still have to deal with six kinds of USB connectors. If your camera uses a Mini-A USB charger and your smart phone is Micro-B, you're just as stranded as if they used completely unrelated chargers. You may be able to buy a "universal" charger that lets you plug in a laptop and other devices, but only if the vendor supplies adapters designed for your particular gadgets. What a pain.
What the world needs now isn't love sweet love--it's a power adapter that works with every portable device. Last year, most of the big handset makers agreed to standardize on Micro-USB chargers by 2012. (The most prominent exception? Apple, of course.) For the past three years, groups like Green Plug have been lobbying consumer electronics companies to adopt a single plug standard, but so far they have little to show for their efforts. You can add your voice to the chorus at the I Want My Green Plug site.
2. A Real Universal Remote
Like everyone I know, I have a basket crowded with remotes (including several not-so-universal "universal" ones) on my coffee table. All of them do more or less the same thing, but each one is slightly different. Does every TV, DVD, DVR, set-top box, and stereo manufacturer really need to redesign the wheel?
We need one remote that controls everything and doesn't require a 45-minute video tutorial, tedious trial-and-error experimentation, memory-hogging software, constant updating, or the services of a Home A/V specialist. That, or maybe Project Natal-like gesture recognition, so we can just wave our hands to control our A/V gear. Even better: brain implants. That way my wife and I can fight over what to watch without having to speak to each other.
3. Virtual Instruments That Rock Around the Clock
When I'm down for a virtual gig--whether I'm due to play Rock Band on the Xbox 360 or Guitar Hero III on the PS3--I want to be able to strap on my ax and go. Sadly, only a handful of guitars and drum kits work across multiple rhythm-game titles on a single console system (see this confusing chart for details--or this one, or this one). The good news? The situation is steadily improving, as Harmonix and Activision belatedly recognize the folly of playing battle of the band instruments.
Looking for virtual instruments that span not only the games but all the consoles? Shine on, you crazy diamond. You might as well wait for the Beatles to reunite.
4. A Single Data-File Format
Cross-platform compatibility? Feh. Mac and Windows PCs have coexisted for a quarter of a century, and yet people still have problems moving files between them--and that's without the commplications presented by Linux and other computing platforms. Want to move data between different types of applications or open a file stored in an older format? You'll have better luck printing it out and retyping it.
Most of the 1000+ file formats that now exist are native to a single application. We need a single editable format that all platforms can display accurately (and with full formatting) and that the user can move easily between applications. No tedious file conversions, no mystery fonts, no deciding which arcane ASCII character set to use. Just save it, send it, and open it--and no surprises inside the box.
For the past four years, the OpenDocument Format Alliance has been promoting an XML-based format that makes Office Suite documents accessible across platforms and applications. ODF enjoys endorsements from international governments and support in products like Google Docs and Open Office. But until Microsoft beefs up its support for ODF, that movement isn't going anywhere.
5. Smarter Smartphone Batteries (and Keyboards)
If your flashlight runs out of juice, you can pop down to the local Kwik-E-Mart and get some C batteries. If your TV remote conks out, Apu will happily sell you some AAs. But when your cell phone battery expires, you have to contact your handset manufacturer or carrier to get a replacement. Worse, you can't swap batteries between different handsets. Are individual cell phone models really so special that each requires its own battery technology?
The IEEE's Cell Phone Battery Working Group is set to hold its first meeting this month, primarily to improve battery life and to devise standardized packaging for smartphones, but maybe they'll seize the opportunity to address interoperability, too. Unfortunayely, considering the pace at which the IEEE usually ratifies standards, cell phone brain implants are likely to come sooner than a single-battery standard.
While we're on the topic of redesigning cell phones, let's talk keyboards. On computers, symbol keys don't wander willy-nilly around the QWERTY layout (not in the United States, anyway). But every cell phone keyboard I've ever used has been unique. Is there some law requiring handset makers to put the @ sign and other symbols on a different key from one model to the next? It sure seems that way.


text:
Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.
A 21-year-old college student was fed up with her protective parents who sometimes insisted that she leave Skype on through the night to ensure she was sleeping in her dorm room. Aubrey Ireland went to court to request a civil stalking order against her parents and won, according to ABC News. Now David and Judy Ireland must remain at least 500 feet away from their only child.
Aubrey is studying theater at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, and her parents have been paying for the tuition, which costs over $60,000 a year. She says her parents were always overly involved in her life and the unhealthy attachment continued even when she went away to college.
"They basically thought that they were paying for my college tuition and living expenses that they could tell me what to do who to hang out with … basically control all of my daily life," Aubrey told ABC News.
Aubrey's parents live 600 miles away in Kansas yet often showed up in Cincinnati unannounced. Her mom insisted on regularly Skypeing and sometimes demanded that her daughter leave the program on all night so she could watch Aubrey sleep. The parents accused their daughter of doing drugs and being promiscuous and when they installed monitoring software on her phone and computer, she complained to the school Dean.
Of course David and Julie have their own side of the story and claim that their daughter is lying and used her acting skills to convince the judge.
"We're not bothering her," Julie told ABC News. "We're not a problem."
No matter, Ireland's parents have refused to pay further tuition and they're demanding a refund from the University of Cincinnati for this year. Aubrey has already obtained a scholarship for her senior year.
When I was in college I talked to my parents about once a month. My mom occasionally sent care packages, my dad letters. They visited on the annual parents weekend. I went home over the holidays, though by my sophomore year I was even spending my summers at school.
Today's college kids have far more contact with their parents as a result of email, cell phones and texting.
Barbara Hofer, a psychology professor at Vermont's Middlebury College and co-author of The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up, told NPR that college students communicate with their parents on average 13.4 times a week. Research in the 2012 book Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today's College Student by Arthur Levine and Diane Dean reveals that 40 percent of college students call, email, text or visit their parents at least once a day.
While parents might offer helpful encouragement and advice to their students, they're also never allowing their kids to stumble, fall, grow, and gain independence. College is a time when children can choose their classes, their friends, their clothes, their boyfriends and girlfriends, and they can learn from their choices, both good and bad.
David and Julie Ireland are obviously an extreme example of overprotective parents but if Aubrey is telling the truth and her parents are really installing monitoring software on their 21-year-old daughter's phone, then it's a signal to our society that things have gotten out of hand. Parents need to step back and let their kids make mistakes and find their own successes.