text:
Search for hidden monsters from all over the world through your Camera!
AR Monsterby Hudson Entertainment
AR Monster is a Role Playing Game using the Augmented Reality technology.
"AR Monster" is compatible with;
- iPhone 3GS or later
*Since its gameplay requires GPS and a built-in-compass, AR Monster is not available for iPod touch series.
A monster will appear in the world taken through the camera. Search for it by pointing
the view finder in various directions!
Different monsters will appear due to the use of the GPS function, so change of location means completely new monsters. There maybe monsters that appear only in certain areas!?
Tap the appeared monster to start up the battle!
Attack their weak points by using the 6 types of weapons wisely.
Once the monster is defeated, they are registered in the "Book of Sealing".
Thus creating your own collection of Monsters!
Will you be the one to gather all 600 monsters to complete the Book of Sealing!?
AR Monster uses your current location as reference.
The monsters will not properly appear if the GPS Usage is turned off.
Be sure to turn on the GPS function.
- Free roaming Role-playing game with over 600 various Monsters and over 140 equipments!
A simple but deep battle system of assessing what weapons work best against the monsters' weak points!
- In the "Book of Sealing", you can check not just the defeated monsters' image, parameters, and # of wins,
but also other collecables as the location where it was defeated or a photo of the memorable location!
- Purchase weapons and equipments via shop in the game to gain the upper hand.
There are also Prize that gives you random equipmentsor weapons depending on its feeling and your luck.
*The contents in SHOP menu needs to be purchased except for the Once-per-day Free vending machine.
- AR Monster is compatible with OpenFeint, allowing various achievements, leaderboard containing players from around the globe, and conversing with friends via
text messages.
- The location where the monster was defeated can be confirmed on the map within the "Book of Sealing", but the placed pin maybe different from the actual location of the battle since the area is detected by the GPS function.
- When searching for monsters, be cautious of your surroundings. Please avoid use in potentially dangerous places such as stairs, roads, station platforms and
- This application uses the camera during play which may result in 3D sickness. Please stop playing the game immediately if you are feeling any such symptoms.
Avoid playing for an extensive amount of time, and take frequent rests between plays.
- Please note that facing the camera directly into the sun may result in Retinal injury.
Your saved data is stored in your device running application.
If you delete the application, you will reset all your items and data. (*Except certain purchased items.) Please remind it before you delete the application.
*You can ONLY restore the weapons and armors that have bought at the "SHOP" > "BUY".
This content uses "Dynafont" of Dyna Comwere Inc.
DynaFont isa trademark of DynaComware Taiwan Inc.
Recent changes:
- Fixed for iOS 5
Package name
Rating: 3
406 ratings


text:
A collection of scholarly works about individual liberty and free markets. A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.
The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker with an Account of His Life and Death by Isaac Walton. Arranged by the Rev. John Keble MA. 7th edition revised by the Very Rev. R.W. Church and the Rev. F. Paget (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888). 3 vols. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1731,
A three volume collection of the works of Richard Hooker.
The text is in the public domain.
This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|Version 31 (modified by 8 years ago) (diff),
Using YAM
- User Interface
- Why does the "Colored text" gadget in the Read configuration looks …
- Menu shortcuts don't work while context sensitive menus are enabled, why?
- The gauge in the mail transfer window looks wrong, why?
- Why is keyboard selection of multiple mails not working?
- I use AmigaOS 3.9 and activated the AISS theme. Unfortunately some of …
- The graphical attachment list is displayed truncated and does not …
- Why is the mail preselection/transfer window sometimes active by …
- The menu of the write window contains strange "ramiga X", "ramiga C" …
- I changed the shortcut definition of TextEditor.mcc to use a …
- The attachment icon sometimes suddenly disappears in main mail …
- When I use the up/down arrows keys, the scrollbar of the main mail …
- Redrawing of the folder listtree is so slow that I can see every …
- Can I permanently save the position and size of a window?
- Why are some columns of the mail listview always resizing automatically?
- The toolbar buttons and other graphics are displayed in wrong colors. Why?
- The toolbar buttons don't fit in the window, the rightmost buttons …
- The layout of the prefs window doesn't adapt properly when reducing …
- Printing doesn't seem to work. What's wrong?
- Printing seems to work, but I always get a warning requester right …
- Why is YAM taking braces as in "http://www.example.com" as part of URLs?
- Why does YAM crash or hang when I enter the 'Mixed/Misc' section in …
- Why there are Enforcer hits when flushing memory after uniconifying …
- I cannot change the sender address (From) in the write window since …
- Language Support
- Reading Mails
- Why are some mails displayed without any text content which got …
- When displaying an email with embedded soft-styles such as …
- Doubleclicking an URL doesn't seem to popup my favourite webbrowser?
- YAM shows the default icon for attachments rather than the one I …
- Why do certain mails I receive show up with lines quoted like ">From " …
- Replying/Forwarding Mails
- Composing Mails
- Is it possible to send an email to a group of recipients in one go?
- When writing an email I get an error message like "+++ Host …
- Why isn't YAM able to mark whole sentences as bold/italic/underline …
- Why is the TAB key not advancing to the internal text editor gadget …
- Why doesn't YAM let me choose an address from the popup list when …
- My system hangs when deleting a block of text in the editor while …
- Filtering Mails
- Network Setup
- How to properly set up SMTP-AUTH authentication?
- When sending mail via smtp.gmail.com, YAM returns an error upon …
- When I use Genesis, Yam always uses the Genesis user to choose the …
- I am not able to abort a POP3 transfer and the whole application seems …
- I have automatic mail download/send on startup enabled, but YAM 2.6 …
User Interface
Why does the "Colored text" gadget in the Read configuration looks wrong the first time I open this sheet?
This is a bug in MUI 3.8 and can't unfortunately be worked around in any form. However, it is already fixed in MUI versions ≥ 3.9. So please update your MUI installation, if possible.
Menu shortcuts don't work while context sensitive menus are enabled, why?
Unfortunatly, the context menus for the folder & message lists may get in your way and prevent you from using the usual menu item shortcuts unless you move the pointer outside the list. Unfortunately this is a bug in MUI ⇐3.8, which can only worked around by disabling the context menus themselves or upgrading MUI to at least 3.9.
The gauge in the mail transfer window looks wrong, why?
Due to a bug in MUI 3.8, the gauge in the mail transfer window may "overflow" its container when representing very high values, typically around 8 MB and beyond. This bug is harmless, but an updated MUI (3.9 or better) is necessary to properly address this problem. No such update are available for m68k Amigas at the time of writing this article.
Why is keyboard selection of multiple mails not working?
According to the documentation and the configuration GUI of the NList.mcc class (which is used in YAM for displaying the mail list) one should be able to select multiple entries in a Listview by using the CTRL+Up/Down keys. However, when I use these keys the listview scrolls to the beginning or end rather than allowing to select multiple entries. The reason for this problem is, that the default keybindings of NList.mcc and the default keybindings of MUI itself clash. So when you use CTRL+Up/Down the default MUI keybindings will have preference over the NList settings and thus won't trigger the correct functions in NList itself. The solution is to either upgrade to NList release 0.108 or later as the default keybinding have been changed to use ALT+Up/Down rather than CTRL. Just make sure that you reset the keybinding settings in the MUI configuration pane of the NList classes after you have installed 0.108+ of the NList classes. Another solution (for older NList versions) would be to manually change the keybinding settings in the MUI configuration to use the ALT key rather than CTRL key (see all the "Select XXX" entries in the example screenshot below).
I use AmigaOS 3.9 and activated the AISS theme. Unfortunately some of the icons display an ugly black background. Why?
The AISS icons are PNG icons which use alpha channels. With AmigaOS 3.9 the transparency can not be displayed correctly because of some incompatibilities between the datatypes.library.
The graphical attachment list is displayed truncated and does not reflect all available attachments. Anything to prevent that?
For mails with lots of single attachments, the graphical display of attachments in a read window might be displayed truncated. This happens in case the attachment list object cannot enlarge itself to the required size (e.g. because the window is to small). Unfortunately it is even not possible to display/use a scrollbar for those cases due to technical reasons.
But as the attachment list is virtual group object you should be able to use the virtual scrolling capabilities of MUI for that case. Please consult the MUI configuration for setting the scroll action hotkey/mouse button. But per default, MUI should allow you to hold down the middle mouse button while moving your mouse. This should then allow you to scroll the attachment list and view the other attachments that are normally hided. Another way for displaying all attachments of a mail is, of course to use the respective toolbar buttons (Display, Print, etc.) which will present you a full list of the attachments.
Why is the mail preselection/transfer window sometimes active by default and sometimes not?
YAM can be configured to show the preselection/transfer window for downloading new mails only if certain conditions are met, for example always, never or only if very large mails are to be downloaded. Since mails can be fetched in the background while you continue your work with YAM it would be very inconvenient if the preselection window would steal the focus from the currently active window (i.e. a write window to compose a new mail). Just imagine that you press "C" in that very moment the preselection window opens. This would immediately cancel the transfer, even if you were just going to type in the word "Commodore"…
To avoid such unwanted abortions YAM will open the preselection/transfer window in inactive state for automatically initiated mail transfers (i.e. timed mail fetch or mail transfers initiated by an ARexx script). For all user initiated transfers (import, export, get/send mail) the window will be activated, because this is an action that was explicitly triggered by the user and not some automechanism triggered by YAM itself.
The menu of the write window contains strange "ramiga X", "ramiga C" shortcut definitions. Why is the typical Amiga image not used instead?
The reason for this shortage has already been adressed in version 2.5 of YAM. However, please find explainations for earlier versions and why there the menuitems couldn't use the typical 'Amiga' images to signal the shortcut: The point is, that the configuration of these shortcuts was up to the user. In fact, TextEditor.mcc provided a configuration management where a user could specify himself which key shortcuts he want to use. The "ramiga X" display was just a placeholder for that - it even was't a real shortcut definition. It should have only pointed out which default key combinations are normally used for these operations. So it was more cosmetical. But as said, in YAM 2.5 the behaviour changed and now the typical Amiga image should be used as expected.
I changed the shortcut definition of TextEditor.mcc to use a non-default shortcut for the Cut&Paste operations. However, YAM still shows e.g. "Amiga+C" in the window.
Since YAM 2.5, the behaviour for the shortcuts of the default Edit actions like Copy&Paste have been changed. This means, that like explained in the previous FAQ item, YAM now always uses the standard shortcuts according to common StlyeGuides. E.g. a Copy operation will always be mapped to "Amiga+C" whereas the Paste operation will be mapped to "Amiga+V" no matter what you have configured in the TextEditor.mcc configuration itself.
For YAM versions prior to 2.5, the situation is slightly different. There, the shortcut which is configured in TextEditor.mcc will always be used and the shown e.g. "ramiga X" placeholder in a window menu is just to show the default if you have TextEditor.mcc set to the default.
The attachment icon sometimes suddenly disappears in main mail listview, why?
In the main mail listview where all your mails in a folder are listed, the Attachment status icon (normally a paper-clip icon) is sometimes shown, but suddenly disappears as soon as you click on that mail for viewing its content. Even if that may look a bit strange and may lead to the impression that attachments are being lost when viewing the mail, this behaviour is normal and correct.
The reason why this is happening is that unfortunately some broken (old) mail clients tend to send out emails where the main content-type is set to "multipart/mixed" or "multipart/related" even if that email just contains one main mail text part without a real attachment. This is clearly incorrect according to the RFC s and can be considered a bug in those email programs. However, the reason why YAM is first showing the attachment status icon is that it just analyzes the main mail header due to performance reasons and as soon as you click on the message a depper (more time consuming) analyze is performed where it automatically recognizes that the mail doesn't really contain any binary or text attachment, but just the main normal mail text.
So the behaviour of YAM is fully correct and in line what the RFC s suggests.
When I use the up/down arrows keys, the scrollbar of the main mail list moves instead of the highlighted mail to be changed. Why?
The cause for this behaviour might be, that you have selected the main mail list via the "Tab" key gadget activation feature of MUI. MUI has a so-called CycleChain feature which allows to cycle through all existing gadgets in a window via the Tab key. In such a case, the main mail list of YAM can be activated via a numerous amount of Tab-key uses.
And as the NList-based main mail list changes it behaviour when it is directly activated via the CycleChain, this is the reason why the scrollbar scrolls when you use the up/down arrows. If an NList class is activated in such a way it will scroll down instead of changing the selection.
However, there is an easy way of solving such a situation. You just have to press "Ctrl+Tab" to signal MUI to unselect all currently active gadget and as such you will find yourself back being able to change the selection in the mail list via the Up/Down arrow keys.
Redrawing of the folder listtree is so slow that I can see every single folder getting redrawn separately. Why?
The reason for the problem you are facing in YAM is, that YAM uses the NListtree.mcc class for rendering the folder list. This class is a subclass of the NList classes and highly depends on the internals of the NList.mcc class itself.
As a matter of fact, the NListtree class is known to be somewhat unoptimized in the fields of redrawing entries. Somehow it seems to massivly redraw items if there is any other window in front of the list it wants to redraw. So, this is a known issue of the NListtree class and will hopefully be adressed in one of the future versions of NListtree.mcc itself.
However, you can perfectly try to avoid that slow redrawing situation by making sure that no other window is in front of the folder listtree in YAM as soon as it requires redrawing.
Can I permanently save the position and size of a window?
Yes, via the normal MUI 'snapshot' feature….
…start the MUI settings interface by selecting 'Settings/MUI'. Select the 'Windows' section and make sure the third of the little system gadget buttons there is activated. After saving the settings every window will have an additional system gadget in the upper right corner. One click on this gadget will snapshot the actual size and position of the window for future sessions. This is a general MUI feature and if you use it on the YAM window you should be able to "snapshot" the window size of YAM permanently.
Why are some columns of the mail listview always resizing automatically?
In fact, this behaviour is very common for NList-based listviews. The 'problem' is, that NList is per default automatically adjusting the size of each column depending on their content width. So if you have a mail with e.g. very long subject lines or if the status column contains a changing amount of status icons, it may happen that NList automatically decided to resize the columns automatically.
While this can be very annoying during normal work, it can also proof quite usefull in some cases. However, there is also the possibility to force NList not to automatically resize a column. For this to happen, you have to drag the vertical separator to the desired size (you actually have to drag it at all) and use the MUI 'snapshot' feature you can normally access via one of the top-right border buttons in the YAM main window.
The toolbar buttons and other graphics are displayed in wrong colors. Why?
This usually happens due to a bug in the 'ilbm.datatype' and only happens if YAM is running on a hicolor or truecolor screen. An update of the ILBM.datatype can be found on Aminet.
The toolbar buttons don't fit in the window, the rightmost buttons can't be accessed. How can I fix this?
Some users think that the graphics are too large, but in fact the button labels are eating so much space. If you're using topaz/8 as the label font, then some of the buttons become invisible on a 640 pixel wide screen. Solution: select 'Settings/MUI' and go to the 'Toolbar' section. Now you can either choose a thinner font (helvetica/9 works well) or switch off the labels completely ('image only' mode).
The layout of the prefs window doesn't adapt properly when reducing its size, any solution available to it?
Yes, we know about it and have already fixed the issues in newer YAM versions. In fact, it was a bug in the layouting of the prefs window of YAM versions ⇐ 2.4p1. Any newer version shouldn't contain that issue anymore.
Printing doesn't seem to work. What's wrong?
The printing engine in YAM is directly using the PRT: device of the operating system you are using. Please make sure you have that device properly configured and verified that you are able to print via PRT:. Besides that, YAM isn't doing anything special on printing.
Printing seems to work, but I always get a warning requester right before the document is printed?!?
Under certain circumstances it may happen that when you try to print an email, you will get a warning requester about either your printer being offline and/or your printer reporting it is out of paper. However, when you press Okay/Ignore the document is perfectly printed without any problem.
The reason for that strange behaviour is, that YAM has a printer check routine which tries to identify if your printer is online and/or out of paper. However, this routine may not work on some situations or if your printer and/or the printer.device reports a wrong status.
To workaround the issue you can setup YAM to suppress the warning completly and directly send the data to the printer regardless of the acquired and perhaps incorrect printer status. All you have to do is to open your YAM:.config file in a text editor and search for the configuration item "PrinterCheck". All you have to do is to set this item to "N" and saving the configu file back. Then YAM shouldn't bother you with those error requesters anymore as soon as you have restarted it.
Why is YAM taking braces as in "http://www.example.com" as part of URLs?
Despite the recommendation in RFC 1738 to encode such characters when they are supposed to be part of URLs, a number of Internet resources, entities and users keep using the "[]" braces in unencoded form, and this used to make YAM stop parsing an URL as soon as such characters were found, as in "<http://www.example.com/files[7]/myfile>". As a workaround for this problem, YAM 2.4 takes these characters as part of the URL. Parenthesis are allowed in URLs in unencoded form, which again negates the use of () to delimit URLs. You are advised to use "<" and ">" for this purpose.
Why does YAM crash or hang when I enter the 'Mixed/Misc' section in the configuration window or while starting up?
This may be because of bugs in the XPK system (a collection of libraries used to compress and encrypt files) itself. It is known that XPK Release 4.31 contains a bug in the xpkQuery() function, so you should upgrade to at least version 4.32 or newer. In addition, in release 4.33 there's a buggy version of xpkNONE.library which can be found in the LIBS:compressors directory. We suggest to delete this file (who's using it at all?). Recent versions of XPK can be found at http://www.dstoecker.eu/xpkmaster.html.
And last but not least, other third party compressor libraries stored in the LIBS:compressors directory may cause the same issues. So if you run into the above mentioned proble, we suggest that you use tools like 'SnoopDOS' to track the library open sequence while switching to the 'Mixed/Misc' configuration page of YAM. As soon as YAM crashes because of a broken compressor library, you should notice that in the output of SnoopDOS. Delete this broken library from LIBS:compressors and try to start YAM again.
Why there are Enforcer hits when flushing memory after uniconifying YAM and its MUI prefs?
If you iconify YAM while its MUI prefs window is opened, then you do an AVAIL FLUSH and then uniconify YAM, you get Enforcer hits. Unfortunately, this is a bug in MUI ⇐3.8. The same problem can be reproduced with any other MUI application.
I cannot change the sender address (From) in the write window since YAM 2.8. Why?
This is not correct. Correct is, that the write window does not have a freetext string gadget for changing the sender address (From) anymore. But there is now a completly new and more powerful way of changing the sender address than just entering it in a freetext string gadget. Since YAM 2.8 you can setup an unlimited number of 'identities' in the global YAM configuration. There, identities can be setup to have different sender addresses and as soon as you have configured more than two identities the write window will show a 'From:' cycle gadget that will allow you to easily change the identity and thus the sender address for the mail you are currently composing.
So you simply have to setup as many identities as you use different email addresses and then use the cycle gadget in the write window instead. In addition, if properly setup, this identity support also allows you to chose different SMTP servers, sent mail folders, default signatures and other options per identity which is way more powerful than just manually entering different sender addresses each time in a freetext string gadget.
Language Support
There seems to be no translation available for my language?
Well, as you might know. YAM is open source and as such is highly dependent on on the users (community) - especially when it comes to locale translation. Even if there are organisations like the ATO who are trying to organize a global and free translation service for Amiga applications, we are trying to give individual the chance to contribute their translation.
So if you find that YAM isn't yet fully translated for your language, please have a look at Localization document. There you should find information on how to generate your own translation file and also contribute to us.
We are looking forward to receive your translations.
Reading Mails
Why are some mails displayed without any text content which got displayed properly some weeks ago?
Mails may contain several "streams", like the normal text and attachments. The text however may also exist in more than just one variant. The standard allows plain text and HTML text to coexist within one mail, but in this case both parts must contain the same text, even if they are displayed differently.
Now some very smart companies, but this also applies for spam mails, decide to fill only the HTML part with their message and leave the alternative text part empty. Most mail clients on other systems prefer to display HTML text this goes unnoticed by the masses and nobody complains. Since YAM still prefers plain text over other alternatives and hence will display a mail with no body at all.
However, this can be worked around. Open the config window, go to the "Read" page and activate the options "Display all texts" and "Show alternative parts". This will let YAM display the alternative HTML part as an attachment and additionally will show this HTML part converted to text.
When displaying an email with embedded soft-styles such as bold/italic, etc. the mail will be displayed with the style markers '*' as well, why?
In versions previous to YAM 2.5+, email messages were displayed with the soft style markers in a mail. However, this cause severe trouble in case a style marker was incorrectly recognized so that text was mixed up. Especially for formatted text like stylished ASCII-art signatures or documentations this ended up in a completly mixed up display of the email. In addition, other mainstream email programs also didn't strip the soft-style markers for the very same reasons.
Example: Considering that an author of an email wrote a short ASCII-art documentation in an email to e.g. explain a bit mask that he used and where he wanted to highlight the first bit as important in bold:
0 1 0 1 1 | | | | | | | | | bit5 *bit1* | | bit4 | bit3 bit2
Due to the used '*' bold-style characters this may have ended up looking like the following in YAM < 2.5 because the '*' chars were completly replaced by the bold style only:
0 1 0 1 1 | | | | | | | | | bit5 bit1 | | bit4 | bit3 bit2
As can be seen in that example, the ASCII-art here is completly mixed up due to the removed "*" bold-style characters.
However, now with YAM 2.5+ these kind of problems were fixed by keeping those soft-style characters in the showed mail text so that the above example now perfectly ends up being display correctly with the bold style and its markers:
0 1 0 1 1 | | | | | | | | | bit5 *bit1* | | bit4 | bit3 bit2
In addition to that fix, it is now more easily possible to spot which character can be used to start writing a word in bold style rather than having to always use the corresponding toolbar button.
Doubleclicking an URL doesn't seem to popup my favourite webbrowser?
For automatically popping up your webbrowser upon clicking on an URL in a mail you are view ing in YAM, you require to configure either an external Arexx script to popup the web browser or to install and configure openurl.library and its corresponding tools. Here we are going to discuss both possibilities. However, OpenURL should be considered the default preferred way.
via OpenURL: Before we are going to discuss how to configure OpenURL correctly, please make sure you have the very latest version correctly installed and reachable for YAM. As of writing, the latest version of OpenURL is version 7.2. Please make sure that the following command outputs similar values on you shell:
1> version LIBS:openurl.library full openurl.library 7.2 (01.12.2005)
In addition, you should have a preferences program 'OpenURL' in you SYS:Prefs drawer. This is the main configuration tool for OpenURL. On a freshly installed OpenURL setup, it contains default settings. However, please note that these defauls do most likely NOT work out-of-the-box. You have to actually change them to your own iternet applications environment. As we are currently only interested in setting up a web browser in OpenURL, we take IBrowse as an example.
So, if you have the preferences application open, you will see different registers for web browsers, mailers and FTP programs you can configure. In 'Browsers' you should find an 'IBrowse' entry with some default settings. Doubleclick on it and make sure the following window shows the similar information:
Please note, that especially the "Path" setting definitly requires a change, as you are supposed to put in the correct directory/file path to the IBrowse executable. However, make sure that the "%u" part at the very end of the string remains.
Next, make sure that in the main configuration window, the 'Misc' register contains the following settings:
Now, if you have everything correctly configured and setup according to the above explainations, you should be able to open an URL even from the command line via the C:OpenURL executable that was also supplied with the default OpenURL installation:
1> openurl http://www.yam.ch/
This should, if correctly configured, fire up IBrowse in case it was configured to be the web browser with the highest priority in OpenURL. So please check your OpenURL configuration that e.g. IBrowse is at the top of your configured web browser list. In addition, if the above openurl command didn't succeed with automatically launching your web browser, try to use tools like SnoopDOS or Snoopy for tracking what OpenURL is trying to do when you execute the C:OpenURL command.
If this worked as expected, you can now try to doubleclick on an URL in a mail mesage in YAM (after having restarted YAM). If this still doesn't fire up IBrowse as the C:OpenURL did, then please have a look at the "Scripts" configuration tab in YAM. There, you have to make sure that you have NOT configured any arexx script for handling the doubleclicks on URLs. ("When double-clicking a URL" have to be empty)
via Arexx: If, for whatever reason it might be, you want to use a plain Arexx script for firing up the correct web browser, all you have to do is - go to the 'Scripts' configuration tab in YAM. There, make sure that you have the 'GotoURL.yam' script configured for the doubleclick actions on URLs. In addition, you have to make sure that - if you have YAM 2.5+ running - the script command string contains an %p qualifier at the end, like:
For YAM 2.5+:
YAM:Rexx/GotoURL.yam %p
For older YAM versions:
However, please note again, that the preferred way of configuring a doublick action on URLs is, to use OpenURL instead of the limited Arexx script possibility.
YAM shows the default icon for attachments rather than the one I configured in DefIcons. Why?
YAM 2.5+ introduced a new so-called AttachmentGroup which shows all attachments of a mail in an icon/image bar at the bottom of the mail read window. For each attachment, it will show a seperate icon/image depending on the file type of the attachment. For archieving this, it uses the DefIcon system of the operating system it is runing on. This system allows (through SYS:Prefs/DefIcons) to configure seperate icons for various types of files. Unfortunately, it is limited and especially the way third-party applications like YAM can query the icon/image for a certain file isn't perfect at all. In addition, the way DefIcon identifies a file type is based on certain rules a user can configure in SYS:Prefs/DefIcons where some rules do actually try to analyze the binary content of the file in question and therefore require the actual file to exist.
Now, when YAM is going to show the user the AttachmentGroup, it hasn't decoded all different MIME parts due to performance reasons. This means, that at the time YAM tries to show the user the icon/image for an attachment, it just knows the filename, description and size of the attachment, but it hasn't actually written the binary data of it to disk. So, at the time YAM is going to ask the DefIcons system for the actual icon/image of the file it can't supply the decoded binary and therefore will only show/query for the default type based on the MIME type of the attachment.
However, as soon as the attachment was decoded either because it was viewed/printed/saved from within YAM, the AttachmentGroup will show the correct icon/image based on what DefIcons supplies.
Why do certain mails I receive show up with lines quoted like ">From " even if the author of that mail hasn't written that From line quoted?
Well, the answer is, the badly defined MBOX format is the reason.
Certain mail delivery agents (MDA) and POP3 server implementations do have different interpretations of the MBOX format. In fact there are numerous MDAs (even procmail) out there which do not correctly escape those "From " line appearing in a message body and for that reasons most POP3 servers just plainly delivers the messages out of a MBOX format 'as is' instead of removing the ">" escaping. And unfortunately that missinterpretation is so widely spread over the various MDA implementations that a proper fix for it is really hard - if not impossible.
So, the answer is that this quoting is already done during initial mail delivery and that most likely your ISP is to blame for it. The only sensible approach to finally fix these common ">From " quoting issues is to force your provider to switch to the better defined and well accepted maildir format which doesn't depend on that '>' escaping…
Replying/Forwarding Mails
I can't put my initials into or change the quoting string used on reply! Why?
In YAM 2.5 we removed the possibility to add your own initials to the quoting string '>' that is normally put in front of every line when you reply to a mail. This was done to conform to common netiquettes and the so-called Son-Of-RFC 1036 and its successors.
The point is, that there are some kind of common rules when creating an email. And one of those rules is the way a text/mail should be quoted. Borrowed from the way quoting was common in Usenet, emails use the same '>' quotation character that is put in front of every replied line in a mail. Previous versions of YAM allowed to put your own initials in that quoting string so that a string like 'JD>' was added on all mails that were quoted by the user John Doe. While this seemed to be a nice and neat way of getting more order into the quoting history, it more or less ends up in more obfuscation of mails, especially in large threads. Another point why such initial quotation strings shouldn't be used is, that there is only a very few amount of mail clients that are able to identify these strings as actual quotations and strip or highlight them accordingly on a reply.
Therefore, we generally removed the possibility to add your own initials to the quote string as well as the graphical elements to change the quotation string in the YAM configuration window. We really believe that compatibility to common rules and RFC s is most important.
For further readings on the pros and cons and how a mail should be properly quoted please have a look at http://learn.to/quote. Keep especially an eye on the 'Quotationsmarks' section that pretty much sums the issue up.
When replying to a mail, a wrong To: address is put in the write window, why?
Well, there seems to be a common misunderstanding of the folder based "mailing list" feature in YAM. Normally YAM allows to configure a folder as a so-called "mailing list folder" where you can set a "To: pattern" and "To: address", so that certain mail actions like reply, forward or new mail react differently when the configured pattern matches the To: address of a mail. For example, if you are suscbribed to the YAM user mailing list your ought to have a seperate folder for the posts arriving from the YAM mailing list and eventually your folder configuration will have a configuration similar to:
'To' pattern: #?firstname.lastname@example.com#? 'To' address: firstname.lastname@example.com
So in case you are pressing reply to a mail where the To: matches the configured pattern, the preconfigured "To: address" of the folder will be inserted instead.
However, it seems that some people mix up the "To: pattern" and set it to "#?" or their own mail address only. This is clearly not what this 'To' pattern is all about and definitly ends up in not being able to correctly reply to a mail - especially when you are in the Incoming folder.
So, please go through all your folder configurations (doubleclicking on each folder) and check that you have the "To: pattern" correctly set or the mailing list feature disabled for the folder. Best practice would be, if you want the mailing list feature enabled, to use the "Auto" button in the folder configuration window. This will automatically try to find out the correct pattern and mail address in case you already have some mails in the folder.
In addition, please also keep in mind that when replying to a mail that is stored in the incoming folder, YAM will check all mailing list configurations of all folders. That means, if you press "reply" on a mail in the incoming folder, YAM will walk through all your folders and if a "To: pattern" matches the mail, the write window will get the specified "To: address" instead of the mail's original sender address. So here the incoming folder is somewhat special and therefore it is absolutely necessary to have all 'To' patterns of all folders setup correctly.
What's the purpose of the 'Bounce' option in YAM and can I use it to e.g. bounce SPAM mail back?
Since early versions (2.3), YAM has a 'bounce' (remail) option which allows to send a mail to an alternative recipient as it would have been sent to that recipient originally. This functionality is also often called a 'remail' operation. What YAM does is, to take the mail as you have received it and directly remail it to an alternative recipient. The new recipient will receive that mail with more or less not noticing that it was send to an another person previously.
In fact, 'more or less' in this term means, that YAM will add some special header entries (e.g. 'Resent-From:' header) to signal that the mail in question was not really comming from the original author directly, but 'resent' instead. This is to conform to RFC s and to give the new recipient at least a minor hint that the mail in question may have been altered on the way.
So if you once received a mail on accident which normally should have gone to someone else you can use the bounce functionality to do that. Another use case could be to forward the mail as is to another account of your own.
However, this functionality is not meant to be used to bounce the mail back to the original author. This includes that e.g. if you received a SPAM message you want to bounce it back to the original author (the spammer) to give him the impression that something went wrong and that the user didn't exist. That's not only producing unnecessary email traffic but also isn't the scope of the bounce functionality in YAM. In addition, since 95% of the junk mail have bogus sender addresses this would result in error messages or that you have sent SPAM yourself to someone innocent. Spammers themself don't care about whether the mail makes it or not (hence the bogus address). All they are after is the small percent that fall for whatever they are spamming for. If the address is simply bad then it is going to bounce back or more commonly it is someone else's address that is going to get bombarded with bounced messages.
Composing Mails
Is it possible to send an email to a group of recipients in one go?
Yes it is. You just have to create a new list with a suitable name in YAM's address book and add all the desired recipients. Then add this list as a regular recipient when writing a mail.
When writing an email I get an error message like "+++ Host environment not found"?
If you are about to write an email in the internal texteditor of YAM and you automatically get an error message similar to this one:
+++ Error 13 in line 1: Host environment not found
This points out that the internal TextEditor.mcc tries to perform spell checking via its internal functionality. So this is no error message from YAM, but an error message comming from TextEditor.mcc. To get rid of the warning, please go to the MUI preferences (SYS:MUI/MUI) and make sure you disable the spell checking of TextEditor.mcc within its MUI preferences there. Afterwards the above error message should vanish.
But if you prefer to get the spell checking running, please consult additional documentation about the AlphaSpell support of TextEditor.mcc and how to properly set it up.
Why isn't YAM able to mark whole sentences as bold/italic/underline and just highlights single words? Wasn't that possible already?
Since YAM 2.5 the text highlighting functionality in YAM was changed according to more or less established standard when writing/displaying email on different email programs.
Previously, the internal TextEditor allowed to mark whole sentences as bold/underline/italic/colored whereas this operation ended up in showing those sentences in the corresponding style. When having sent the mail it would then end up as e.g. the following example in the final email message:
*This sentence in bold*
However, this scheme was completly incompatible to the given established standards in the email client community. Mailers such as Thunderbird never displayed those sentences in the correct style. In addition, it wasn't quite intuitive to notice the bold state when reading through such emails in the first place especially if they are wrapped to the next line.
Therefore, the highlighting practices were changed in YAM 2.5 so that each single word in a sentence will now be selected and set to the corresponding style separatly. So now the above sentence will end up looking like the following in YAM 2.5:
*This* *sentence* *in* *bold*
Even if that seems to be very ugly on a first thought, it is the only logical approach to the problem of having such mail interchangeable between different mailers. In addition, in most cases only single words need to get or should be highlighted in an email so that you will hardly set a whole sentence in bold/underline or such.
Why is the TAB key not advancing to the internal text editor gadget when I finished writing the subject line of a mail?
This "problem" should only be visible with YAM versions equal or higher than 2.5+ In fact, it isn't really a problem, but a changed behaviour. The point is, that due to the change to TheBar.mcc the toolbar is now also within the normal MUI "CycleChain" for allowing an application to get fully manageable via keyboard. So, if you are now editing the subject line of a mail and you press the TAB (Tabulator) key, the next activated MUI gadget will be the first toolbar button instead of the TextEditor gadget like it was in versions prior to 2.5.
However, to still being able to switch to the text editor immediately you can use the Return/Enter key instead. That means, if you are finished with editing/writing the subject line and you want to change to the text editor for writing the actual content of the mail, just press the "Return" key instead.
Why doesn't YAM let me choose an address from the popup list when writing a mail?
When completing a yet known address YAM needs to be able to distinguish one address from another. That means that both, alias and realname, should be "relatively" unique. Example: First address book entry Name: foobar Alias: Address: test1@… Second address book entry Name: blafasel Alias: foobar Address: test2@… As soon as you enter "foobar" in the "To:" field the address match list will pop up to let you choose a recipient. But selecting either of these two entries will fail, because YAM cannot tell these two entries apart if "foobar" is the only matching criteria. "foobar" can be resolved to the first entry's name AND to the second entry's alias, but not to one single entry. That is why the resolve will fail. The only soltion for this problem is to use unique names and aliases. That means NO real name must exactly match any other alias, and vice versa.
My system hangs when deleting a block of text in the editor while using a key qualifier, why?
Unfortunately, this is a bug in the Texteditor.mcc ⇐ v15.9 MUI custom class you are using. Please upgrade to the very latest version available at http://www.sf.net/projects/texteditor-mcc
Filtering Mails
If I search for "[SPAM]" in a filter, mails not containing this string will get hit by the filter as well, why?
Well the reason is, that you seem to have missed that the string gadget for entering the search string accepts AmigaDOS wildcards. Therefore, the [ is a special reserved character and have to be escaped to match the literal character itself. So if you want to search for a [ character with an AmigaDOS pattern aware method you have to use:
where the ' character escapes the reserved state of the [ and ] chars. However, even more precisly would be to use:
instead and turn off the "Substring" option. That would then match only subjects that actually start with [SPAM] as there might even be non-SPAM messages contain that string somewhere.
NOTE on searching for [SPAM]:
Matching SPAM messages on the literal [SPAM] marker in a subject line is more or less a bad idea as it would cause (even if correctly escaped) many non-SPAM messages to get filtered incorrectly. Normally SPAM filter add an additional header line like 'X-Spam-Status:' to each checked email. So to reduce the amount of incorrectly matched mails you would be better off searching for that optional header line and search if it starts with "Yes".
How to train YAM's SPAM filter properly?
YAM's spam filter is an adaptive filter - a so-called Bayesian spam-filter - which was ported from the well-known mail client Thunderbird and behaves exactly the same.
Background: The nature of this kind of spam filtering is an iterative learning process where the content of a mail will be evaluated according to a calculated spam probability. That means, that right from the beginning it is absolutely "stupid" and doesn't know which mails are actually spam or no spam. Hence the filter needs to be trained manually to be able to distinguish between spam and no spam.
Usage: After enabling the spam filter all newly received mails will most likely be classified as spam and automatically moved to the spam folder. This is absolutely normal and intended! Again, keep in mind that the spam engine is "stupid" and only relies on your user input.
Now you have to tell YAM which mails are really spam and which are not spam (so-called Ham). Just mark all regular (no spam) mails which were moved to the spam folder as "Not Spam" and move them to another folder (i.e. the incoming folder). This will train the spam engine about how "no spam" mails look like. Such mails are called false negatives because they were automatically flagged as spam but they aren't spam. Continue to do so as more "no spam" mail arrives which will be automatically flagged as spam on accident.
Of course, the spam procedure applies to spam mail that was not recognized as spam. If new mail arrives and it wasn't properly recognized as spam flag it as spam manually. Continue to do so as new mail arrives. After some time YAM will gradually become better in correctly recognizing spam mails itself and you will have to classify false positive and not recognized spam mails yourself very seldom - However, there will always remain a small probability of false positives and not recognized spam mail, no matter what.
WARNING: You should NOT "enforce" the learning process by classifying all your previously collected spam mails manually after enabling the spam filter. YAM will learn best by itself with a little help by the user, as described above. Only newly received emails should be manually flagged as spam or no spam. Usually about 100 mails (good as well as bad) are enough to let YAM recognize spam mails correctly with a probability of 90% and more. However, if for some reason the spam filter "stops" to work for you no matter how to train it, go to the YAM configuration and reset the SPAM training data and restart flagging spam and no spam manually as new mail arrives.
Network Setup
How to properly set up SMTP-AUTH authentication?
Some mail providers (ISP) recently changed their requirements regarding to how incoming mail is handled and who is allowed to send mail through their servers via the SMTP protocol. This mainly was necessary to reduce the amount of SPAM, thus letting only authorized users send mails. This protocol is called SMTP-AUTH and fully supported by YAM 2.5+.
Often providers even require the users to connect to their SMTP servers via an encrypted connection only. This is what the SSL/TLS feature in YAM is for. Together with the required AmiSSL library, it fully encrypts every transfer through YAM and the mail server. To use such a secure connection you must install AmiSSL V3.5. While AmigaOS4.0 already comes with AmiSSL V3.5 installed, for OS3.x or MorphOS you have to download AmiSSL 3.6 from the AmiSSL homepage and install it on your system.
To properly configure a SMTP-AUTH connection in YAM, you can go to the TCP/IP page of the configuration window. There you have to make sure that you have configured SMTP accordingly:
secure connection type: SSLv3 (if it is required) use SMTP-AUTH: yes User name: <your user name> Password: <your password> Method: Auto
Usually 'Auto' as the authentication method should be suffice. If your mail provider still doesn't accept your mails then you should select a specific authentication method (DIGEST-MD5, CRAM-MD5, LOGIN or PLAIN).
And if you are still unable to send mails even via one predefined method, then you can run YAM with the DEBUG command-line option. This option will enable the internal TCP/IP debugging and output any raw output of the connection on the shell you just started YAM from. See FAQ item for more information on how to debug YAM.
When sending mail via smtp.gmail.com, YAM returns an error upon terminating the connection. However, the mail will be correctly send to its recipient.
It seems that this is a problem/bug in the SMTP server implementation of the googlemail mail servers (smtp.gmail.com, smtp.googlemail.com, …). When sending an email over one of the SMTP servers of googlemail, the server immediately drops the connection when the client (YAM) signalled the server that it wants to quit the connection. However, the standard (RFC 2821) clearly defines that if a server receives such a QUIT command, it have to reply with a status code and afterwards drop the connection. Unfortunatley, the googlemail servers seems to not send this status code anymore if a mail was already successfully transfered. This of course, clearly violates the standard and causes YAM to drop an error/warning message about an unexpected connection drop.
Unfortunately, there doesn't exist any way of avoiding/supressing those warnings with YAM 2.4. However, recent versions (2.5) have an added workaround for the problem and doesn't automatically popup those warnings anymore.
Still, we highly suggest to send an email to the support of googlemail and let them know about the problem. Of course, feel free to cite this FAQ item in the hope that at one day googlemail developers will read it and fix their SMTP server implementation.
In addition to the above violation to the RFC s, the gmail servers seem to have a rather long timeout phase when communicating to SMTP clients like YAM. This means that upon sending an email it might happen that right at the end of the communication to the SMTP server of google, YAM returns an error because the gmail server didn't correctly response within the internally specified time interval within YAM. On the other hand it might be that this time interval was simply incorrectly set to a too short value. So please make sure (if you have YAM 2.5+ running) that your ".config" file has the "SocketTimeout" value right at the end of the file set to at least 30 or even higher which means that YAM will wait 30 seconds for a response from the mail server before considering the connection being broken/dropped.
When I use Genesis, Yam always uses the Genesis user to choose the account. How can I change that?
YAM has special built in support for the Genesis TCP/IP stack by being able to query the currently active username. So it supports to automatically start YAM with the user that your Genesis TCP/IP stack is currently running. E.g. If you have Genesis configured for a user "john doe" and you have the very same username in YAM configured, it will startup automatically with that user enabled and doesn't query for any user selection or password.
However, if for some reasons you are not able to sync the user names of Genesis≠YAM, you can start YAM either from the command line with the option "USER <USERNAME>" or by adding the 'USER' tooltype to the YAM icon. In that case, YAM will then automatically select the specified user and just query for the password.
I am not able to abort a POP3 transfer and the whole application seems to hang, why?
YAM has been a single-threaded application until version 2.7 which uses so-called blocking socket I/O. This means, that until version 2.7 it could only process one job at a time and a single TCP/IP transfer like a POP3 or SMTP connection or transfer might lock up the whole application (even GUI operations) in case the server doesn't response. This, for example can happen if the POP3/SMTP server you are trying to connect to isn't responding properly or your connection is suddenly interrupted.
The reason for the GUI lockup is, that as soon as YAM is trying to connect to other server, it is fully relying on the functionality of the TCP/IP stack you are running on your operating system (e.g. Roadshow on AmigaOS4). And as YAM is still using blocking socket I/O and that the TCP/IP stack might have a large timeout for retrying a certain TCP/IP operation it suddenly can cause your YAM application to block until the TCP/IP stack decides to return from the blocking socket call.
Even if for most connection types and users this might not be a big issue, we know that it can become very annoying and disturbing. Especially if you are having a dail-up connection. However, we have already planned to address the issue in a future version by introducing full multi-threading together with the use of non-blocking socket I/O in YAM. Until that happens, you can also try to lower the timeout of your TCP/IP stack and/or try to shutdown the TCP/IP stack if a connection suddenly locks up YAM.
As mentioned earlier, since version 2.7 YAM is fully multithreaded and should not block any GUI elements during a network transfer.
I have automatic mail download/send on startup enabled, but YAM 2.6 doesn't perform the mail exchange. Why?
YAM supports multiple users. Each of these users must have a real name to enable YAM to distinguish between these users. This name must be set in YAM's user management.
The problem with the automatic mail exchange on startup arises if a user doesn't have a real name. In this case YAM 2.6 cannot detect that upon a (re)start the user has changed and hence it will skip the automatic mail exchange completely. However this can only happen if you never ever opened YAM's user management to give the user a real name.
The solution is very simple: open YAM's user management window, check all user names to be correct and close the window again. After that the automatic mail exchange upon start will work again.
Attachments (3)
nlist-cfg.png (60.8 KB) - added by 8 years ago.
Example of NList keyboard config
OpenURL1.jpg (26.8 KB) - added by 8 years ago.
Example screenshot of OpenURL
OpenURL2.jpg (33.2 KB) - added by 8 years ago.
Example screenshot of OpenURL
Download all attachments as: .zip


text:
June to December, 1944. After years of dedication and sacrifice, an Allied victory seems tantalizingly close. The Liberators accompanies Canadian soldiers from their D-Day landings on the shores of Normandy, up along the coast of northern France and into Belgium and Holland. The film also visits the homefront in Canada, where the war effort was transforming the country into a formidable industrial nation--the fourth largest producer of armaments among the Allied countries. In achieving this, women played a leading role, with almost one million in the work force by 1944.
The Second World War changed the way Canadian women saw themselves and, indeed, the way the country as a whole saw itself--a young nation that had now become much more mature and self-confident. Interspersed with archival footage are the vivid memories of men and women who recall life during the war years. Part two of the series.
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The Clavier Trio will perform "Café Music" by American composer Paul Schoenfield, as well as works by Joseph Haydn and Johannes Brahms, in a concert Friday, Oct. 14, at 8 p.m. in the Jonsson Performance Hall.
The Clavier Trio is the ensemble in residence at UT Dallas.
The Clavier Trio is the current ensemble in residence at the University.
Its members include cellist Jesús Castro-Balbi, pianist David Korevaar and Dallas Symphony Orchestra violinist Arkady Fomin.
The Clavier Trio formed at the Music in the Mountains Festival in Durango, Colo., in 1997 and performed in the inaugural Dallas Symphony Orchestra Chamber Music Series at the Nasher Sculpture Center.
Fomin is currently an artist in residence and orchestra director at UT Dallas and is a recipient of the Cowlishaw Award for artistic achievement.
The Trio has performed annually at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall since 2002, and has appeared at the celebrated Bargemusic in New York.
Full story available from the UT Dallas News Center.


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Piano and keyboard variations inspired by the new wave of synth-driven pop predominant in the '80s.
While stemming from the post-punk era of the late 70s but eventually becoming more and more synonymous with the budding synth-pop scene of the early 80s, the catch-all use of the term "new wave" has been subject to debate and stylistic confusion. However, monumental success of acts like Alphaville, Eurythmics, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and a host of others in many ways claimed the genre, making their synth-driven pop the predominant soundtrack in the 80s and well into the '90s.
Inspired by the greats of the era, this collection of EZkeys MIDI picks up on the edge, the attitude and the over-the-top approach to songwriting and melody often attributed to the genre. This is the perfect collection of EZkeys MIDI for anyone looking to write '80s-inspired pop songs that have a different melodic flair. Ideal for use with EZkeys String Machine, EZkeys Mellotoon, EZkeys Electric Grand or any timeless acoustic piano, for that matter. Start experimenting!


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AgileLoad allows to define goals or service level agreements (SLAs) for the performance metrics.
The SLA statuses are determined by comparing the SLAs configuration parameters to:
The SLA configuration parameters can be defined before, during and after a load test execution. A different SLA criteria can be assigned to each transaction (timer) for each load level (number of virtual users).
If you have configured a load test with multiple load levels (number of virtual users), the SLA status can be determined for each load level.
The SLA results can be displayed in AgileLoad Test Center. They can also be integrated in reports.
The entry point for the AgileLoad SLA module are the timers (not the page timers). The SLA module will analyze the timers response times and the number of errors which occurred between the Start timer and the End Timer statements.
Defined your timer in your script
START TIMER "Bookstore";
START TIMER "Bookstore";
Statements (http requests, page timer, wait, etc.)
END TIMER "Bookstore";
END TIMER "Bookstore";
All scripts generated after a record have a default timer insert.
Next Configure your SLA's


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One of the best parts of working for the National Recreation and Park Association is visiting our members and seeing all of the terrific work that is being done in communities across the country. Our recent visit to Knoxville Parks and Recreation Department in Tennessee, one of 50 agencies that recently received a grant through NRPA and the Walmart Foundation to provide better access to healthy meals, was no exception. My colleague Kellie May and I were blown away by what is happening with parks and recreation in this city next to the Great Smoky Mountains. The impressive greenway system connecting citizens across Knoxville to trails and parks, the Urban Wilderness, which has 42 miles of trails, and a comprehensive approach of reaching out and providing opportunities for seniors, is changing how Knoxvillians think about park and recreation while creating a healthier community.
Of the many stellar facilities and programs we saw during our time in Knoxville, I'd like to highlight the Outdoor Knoxville Adventure Center, the Healthy Snacks Program and the Senior Outdoors! event.
Knoxville Outdoors
We visited the Outdoor Knoxville Adventure Center, which opened in 2012 thanks to the Legacy Parks Foundation and the City of Knoxville. The Adventure Center and the Knoxville Urban Wilderness introduce and connect people to the great outdoors of Knoxville. The Urban Wilderness has 1,000-forested acres along Knoxville's downtown waterfront that includes 10 parks, more than 40 miles of recreational trails, four civil war sites, incredible views and unparalleled natural features. From the Outdoor Knoxville Adventure Center we took a kayak trip down the Tennessee River, a scenic and fun way to see the beauty of the city. Our guide was very patient with us as we took in the view and slowly paddled down the river.
Residents of Knoxville, TN can visit the Outdoor Knoxville Adventure Center and Urban Wilderness to get connected to nature and the great outdoors
Healthy Snacks, Happy Kids
It was a pleasure to see the kids at the community centers enjoying some healthy snacks as they poured in after school. I can only imagine the energy it takes from the dedicated staff to keep up with these youngsters. The Knoxville Parks and Recreation hosts the free After School Program in the City of Knoxville's community centers during the school year and a Summer Playground Program during the summer months. In partnership with the Knoxville Community Action Committee they provide fresh snacks to the kids participating in the After School Program and Summer Playground Program. This week (June 2 – 6) is the kick-off to the annual Summer Food Service Program, which is designed to make sure children have access to and receive healthy meals and food during the summer months. It was exciting to see a feeding program in action in Knoxville. Likewise, it is exciting to know that park and recreation agencies across the country are ready to kick-off similar programs to ensure children get the healthy and nutritious meals they need this summer.
Seniors Getting Active
Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero has made seniors a priority and was appointed to a Task Force on Aging that was created by the Tennessee Governor. With a growing aging population, Knoxville Parks and Recreation is working on finding new ways to get seniors active. We joined Joe Walsh, Director of Knoxville Parks and Recreation for their Seniors Outdoors! event, a half-day event aimed at introducing adults over the age of 50 to outdoor activities, such as organized hikes along the river, paddle kayaks, paddle boards and bicycling on the trails. Despite an unusually rainy and cool day, a crowd of seniors packed Mead's Quarry at Ijams for the lunchtime event. It was inspiring to see so many of the 50+ community out celebrating the outdoors and physical activity. A senior boom is on the horizon. How is your agency preparing to serve more seniors?
These stories and images will be an invaluable asset to use on Capitol Hill as I advocate the importance of supporting and funding parks and recreation with our political leaders.
Thank you to everyone at the Knoxville Parks and Recreation Department, it was a treat to meet with so many of their committed and inspirational team! A special thank you to Kathleen Gibi, our gracious host, who facilitated the visit and showed us some of what Knoxville has to offer; Kathleen almost inspired a move to the South. For more about Knoxville, look for my article featuring Knoxville's Mayor Madeline Rogero in the June issue of Parks & Recreation Magazine.
Sage Learn is NRPA's Government Affairs Manager.


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This is not a love story. But, if you want to find...
Out of his shell467300
- by TFALokiwriter
- Rating:
- Published: 24 Aug 2016
- Updated: 22 Oct 2016
- Status: Complete
What if they never served on the same ship and never became the legendary crew Star Fleet regarded? What if they all met at a nursing home? What if it Spock was in a shell of his own? Much like Jim would be. And all it took was McCoy to be there to tow them both out as much as he will regret it.
Inspired by Jim Carrey's second parody of Star Trek in living color.
Inspired by Jim Carrey's second parody of Star Trek in living color.
Join MovellasFind out what all the buzz is about. Join now to start sharing your creativity and passion
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text:
7 Mar 2011, 2:21 PM
Pretty new to ExtJS 4 (not very good with 3.3 for that matter). I have a small app that is using a PropertyGrid. I'm trying to convert to 4, but noticed the PropertyGrid is no longer included. I assume there is a new way to make the grid do what I want it to do, but I can't seem to find the appropriate settings or mixins to make it work. Any thoughts?


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In its simplest form, ROI is a mechanism used to choose projects. For example, assume you have $1000 in assets to allocate to one of three projects, all of which have the same time period and risk.
- Invest $1000. Project yields $900 (-10% ROI)
- Invest $1000. Project yields $1000 (0% ROI)
- Invest $1000. Project yields $1100 (10% ROI)
Clearly, the business should pursue project 3.
Businesspeople make decisions using this sort of mindset. I am no stranger to this world. Consider this example from my consulting past, where I have to choose which engagement to accept for the next week.
- Spend $1000 on travel, meals, and other expenses. Project pays $900 (-10% ROI)
- Spend $1000 on travel, meals, and other expenses. Project pays $1000 (0% ROI)
- Spend $1000 on travel, meals, and other expenses. Project pays $1100 (10% ROI)
Obviously this is the same example as before, but using a real-world scenario.
The problem the "return on security investment" (ROSI) crowd has is they equate savings with return. The key principle to understand is that wealth preservation (saving) is not the same as wealth creation (return).
Assume I am required to obtain a license to perform consulting. If I buy the license before 1 January it costs $500. If I don't meet that deadline the license costs $1000. Therefore, if I buy the license before 1 January, I have avoided a $500 loss. I have not earned $500 as a result of this "project." I am not $500 richer. I essentially bought the license "on sale" compared to the post-1 January price.
Does this mean buying the license before 1 January is a dumb idea because I am not any richer? Of course not! It's a smart idea to avoid losses when the cost of avoiding that loss is equal to or less than the value of the asset being protected.
For example, what if I had to pay $600 to get a plane ticket from a far-away location to appear in person in my county to buy the license before 1 January? In that case, I should just pay the $1000 license fee later. For a $500 plane ticket, the outcome doesn't matter either way. For a $400 plane ticket, I should fly and appear in person. Again, in none of these situations am I actually richer. No wealth is being created, only preserved. There is no ROI, only potential savings.
What if I chose to avoid paying for a license altogether, hoping no one catches me? I've saved even more money -- $500 compared to the pre-1 January price, and $1000 compared to the post-1 January price. This is where the situation becomes more interesting, and this is where subjectivity usually enters the picture concerning expected outcomes.
Let's get back to ROI. The major problem the ROSI crowd has is they are trying to speak the language of their managers who select projects based on ROI. There is no problem with selecting projects based on ROI, if the project is a wealth creation project and not a wealth preservation project.
Security managers should be unafraid to avoid using the term ROI, and instead say "My project will cost $1,000 but save the company $10,000." Saving money / wealth preservation / loss avoidance is good.
Another problem most security managers will encounter is their inability to definitively say that their project will indeed save a certain amount of money. This is not the case for licensing deals, e.g., "Switching from Vendor X's SSL VPN to Vendor Y's SSL VPN will save $10,000" because the outcome is certain, breach of contract nonwithstanding. Certainty or even approximate probability is a huge hurdle for many security projects because of several factors:
- Asset value is often undetermined; in some cases, assets themselves are not even inventoried
- Vulnerabilities in assets are unknown, because new flaws are discovered every day
- The threat cannot be properly assessed, because they are unpredictable and creative
As a result, risk assessment is largely guesswork. Guesswork means the savings can be just about anything the security manager chooses to report.
If you look at my older posts on return on security investment you'll see some more advice on how to make your case for security spending without using the term "ROI".
It should be clear by now that ROSI or security ROI is nothing more than warping a defined business term to get attention during budget meetings. I saw the exact same problem in the Air Force. At one point those who flew combat missions were called "operators." Once Information Operations came into vogue, that community wanted to be called "operators" too. At one point a directive came down that intel folks like me were now "operators," just like combat pilots. That lasted about 10 minutes, because suddenly the combat pilots started using the term "trigger-pullers." "Fine," they thought. "Call yourselves operators. We pull triggers." Back to square one.
The bottom line is that security saves money; it does not create money.


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You would think that by now prestige cable dramas would have exhausted every variation on the "…but the protagonist has a secret!" theme. A suburban waste management businessman is actually a mob boss. A chemistry teacher is actually a drug dealer. A successful ad executive actually stole the identity of a dead man. A war hero is actually a terrorist.
At first blush, FX's The Americans, about two Soviet spies undercover as a Virginia couple in 1981, seems to share elements of each of these antihero shows, along with less celebrated series like The Riches. But maybe the greatest success of the show so far is that, after three increasingly strong episodes, it has a voice and a (secret) identity of its own.
One thing that distinguishes this Cold War story from its predecessors is that there are two protagonists perpetuating a fiction, against another country, against their neighbors, against their own children–even, to an extent, against each other. So as much as The Americans is the thriller you'd expect–tense, well-paced and laced with well-curated period detail–it's also an intriguing study of marriage as partnership. Reversing the common order of things, The Americans asks whether marital routine can develop into actual love.
Certainly the relationship of Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) is more complicated than that of the average husband and wife who happen to be co-workers. The two were paired as young KGB agents in the 1960s, taught immaculate English (and hand-to-hand combat) and sent to the U.S. to live as husband and wife. They've put down roots, blended in to the suburbs and are raising two very American children. (When their son describes a school project about the moon landing, Elizabeth answers defensively, "You know, the moon isn't everything. Just getting into space is a remarkable accomplishment.")
Their cover story is that they run a travel agency. Their actual work involves the occasional night of violence or seducing strategically placed government employees. (In a gesture of egalitarianism, both Philip and Elizabeth get a chance to play Mata Hari here.) The opening minutes of the pilot show us both parts of the job: first, Elizabeth in a blonde wig plying a Justice Department suit for information on new President Reagan ("He just… doesn't know everything that's going on"), then, Philip hunting down a Russian defector in a kinetic nighttime chase sequence that finally puts Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" to its proper soundtrack use.
The opening quickly establishes that this is not a frothy spy-couple romp a la NBC's short-lived Undercovers. The sex is not teasing or romanticized. (In an unsettling scene, Philip listens to a tape of Elizabeth's assignation, straining to keep professional detachment.) And it's not clear-cut, as the two decide what to do with the traitor to the Motherland, who if anyone are the good guys here. Philip and Elizabeth have, to some extent, been made into machines by their training; at one point, they get into an argument and their martial-arts training kicks in reflexively. But they're not amoral or unconflicted about the things their work sometimes demands of them.
They're also, in an encouraging sign of sophistication, not equally conflicted. Elizabeth, The Americans suggests, is the more ideologically committed to the Marxist cause, not just politically but personally; it pains her to see her children growing into materialist American teens, her son worshipping astronauts, her daughter reading teen magazines. Philip is loyal, but also wondering whether his country's interests and his family's are still the same; he has, perhaps, more fully bought into the play-acting of their marriage. And it's possible that, if their marriage proves genuine, it might compromise their mission more.
So the Jennings' problems are that of many a domestic drama–are our kids drifting away from us? are we equally committed to each other?–but spiced up by the occasional knife fight. Add to that troubles with the neighbors, in this case their new friend Stan (Noah Emmerich), an FBI counterintelligence officer who may have suspicions about them.
The first episode uses all this suburban intrigue deftly, finding humor out of the situational irony while making clear The Americans is no farce. Elizabeth and Philip are sympathetic in many ways–but we also soon realize that they are ruthless operatives who will do terrible things, even to innocent people, for their cause. It helps immensely that Russell and Rhys are instantly believable in the roles; Russell slips into the role of action star as surprisingly but easily as did her fellow Felicity alum Jennifer Garner on Alias.
The few problems come in the flashback scenes, in which her Russian accent is distracting and neither Elizabeth nor Philip looks a day younger than they do two decades later; but the second and third episodes dispense with those. And while the pilot is a strong calling card, establishing both character and excitement, it also–at 90 minutes–feels like a movie with multiple false endings in the third act; it might have been better off expanded to two hours, or with some later material excised for the second episode. There are also some issues with the fact that Elizabeth might be starting to fall in love with Philip now, after so many years, and–though I won't spoil anything here–that she would do so for the reasons that she does.
But overall it's a promising personal and political thriller that uses its '80s setting for much more than easy nostalgia. In any story about agents hidden among us, it's hard not to see overtones of the modern terrorism era–24 and Homeland and moles and all that. But the historical distance of the setting changes the perspective. However Evil an Empire the Soviets were, they're over; they lost, and we know that, at the beginning of the 80s, they are entering the endgame.
That lends a kind of tragedy to Philip and Elizabeth, who've gone all in on a losing cause, one that, for them is not just about country but family. Philip wonders whether their kids are not better off as Americans than as Soviets. ("America isn't so bad. The electricity works all the time. The food's pretty great.") Elizabeth never wants the kids to learn the truth about them, for fear of losing them–yet also hopes against hope that she can quietly instill her ideals in them. ("They could be socialists," she says. "They're not going to be socialists," Philip answers. "This place doesn't turn out socialists.")
Beyond the cat-and-mouse international intrigue, which deepens after the pilot, The Americans has an absorbing personal story to tell–one as familiar yet unusual as its aliens-among-us protagonists. It's a very different American dream the Jennings are pursuing. Yet the fears behind it–have we made the right choices? is our relationship real?–are not so foreign at all.


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By the time his police cruiser tumbled to a halt in the underbrush beside the interstate in August, the young police officer had been flung clear of the car to his death, the same fate that had been suffered by 139 other officers nationwide who were ejected from their vehicles when not using a seat belt.
Although most state's laws require police to use seat belts, federal data show that only about half of them do, and over the past three decades, 19 percent of the officers killed in accidents were ejected from their vehicles.
"We've been told it's 'I want to be able to get out of the car quickly, it interferes with my gun or it interferes with my belt, it interferes with my driving.' All the wrong reasons," said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor who has studied high-risk police activities for more than 25 years. "I can understand if you're pulling up to a scene and you undo your seat belt because you want to be able to get out quickly, but not when you're going 100 miles an hour on the freeway."
Prince George's County, Md., Police Officer Adrian Morris died of head injuries Aug. 20 after being thrown from his cruiser when it left Interstate 95 during the high-speed chase of a stolen car. His partner, Mike Risher, was buckled in the passenger seat. He was treated at and released from a hospital that day.
That incident came a week after a Fairfax County, Va., police officer whose name has not been released was involved in a fatal accident. A car swerved in front of his cruiser, striking it head-on. The car burst into flames, and its driver died. The officer was trapped, but he was pulled free and survived.
"Thank God he had his seat belt on," said Capt. Susan Culin, who heads the county's traffic division. "He's very adamant that his seat belt saved his life."
Seat belts and air bags have made the high-risk pursuit of criminal suspects less deadly than it once was, but for more than a dozen years, traffic fatalities killed more police officers than bullets did. The trend was reversed last year, when the number killed by gunfire - 68 - was four more than the number who died in traffic incidents.
The question of when police should chase a fleeing suspect has been debated in public and law enforcement circles for years, leading most police departments to delineate their rules. Research has shown that 1 percent of chases end in a fatality and that an officer dies as the result of a pursuit every 11 weeks.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration determined that 139 officers died when ejected from their vehicles in crashes between 1980 and 2008 and that only 45 percent of the 733 officers who died in crashes during the period had their seat belts fastened.
By contrast, 84 percent of all American drivers use their seat belts, the NHTSA estimates.
In Prince George's County, the importance of officers using seat belts is stressed in the annual in-service training, a portion of which is devoted to safe driving, police said.
Kevin Davis, the county's assistant police chief, says the educational effort is essential to changing the way officers think about using their seat belts.
"You can change any policy and procedure that you want to change, reduce it to writing and stick it in your 400-500 page general order manual, but you're not making any headway unless you change the culture," Davis said.
He calls the three reasons most officers give for eschewing the seat belt - it gets tangled with their gun belt, it delays their exit from the car and it hampers their ability to dodge a bullet - "absolutely absurd."
"It's a bunch of garbage, and I just don't buy it," he said.
When officers get older, gain more experience and, particularly, when they start a family, they begin to see the wisdom of seat belt use, Davis said.
In addition to culture change, more training and new policies, Davis said the department plans to hold district commanders responsible for ensuring that their officers get the message.
"As long as it remains on their daily radar screen, we think that that will be half the battle in changing the culture about wearing seat belts in a police car," Davis said, adding that punishment for officers should be greater than the current written reprimand. "That, arguably, doesn't go far enough to modify someone's behavior."
Alpert said he has seen the influence of the Prince George's efforts.
"I was at the Prince George's County [police department] the other day, and there's a sign as you leave the parking lot, 'put on your seat belt on,' something to that effect," Alpert said. "They do have a policy. They're very concerned about it. But I've seen officers elsewhere wear their seat belt off the lot, then take if off and click it behind because they think they can do their jobs better" if they don't wear a seat belt.
Culin said Fairfax County police parking lots have similar signs. She said the department launched a buckle-up campaign after a visual survey found that 25 percent of officers were not wearing seat belts.
Even after an effort that included reminders at every shift roll call, she said 21 percent "It's changing human behavior, and that's very difficult to do," she said. "It's something we have to keep harping about with the officers. It's a real issue. It's an issue here, and it's a pressing issue nationwide."
The roll call of officers who weren't wearing seat belts when they died in crashes includes Louisiana Deputy Sheriff Randall Benoit, 41, who was hit from behind this year on a state highway. Another local Louisiana officer, John Kendall, 64, was ejected from his cruiser four months earlier after he hit a pickup truck.
The last officer to die in the line of duty in Prince George's before Morris, Thomas Jenson, was not wearing a seat belt in 2010 when his cruiser skidded on a patch of ice and hit a pole.
"A seat belt absolutely would have saved his life," Davis said.
That year, Houston officer Eydelman Mani, 30, was responding to a call at 60 mph when his patrol car hit a guardrail. A New Jersey officer, John Abraham, 37, died when his cruiser hit a utility pole in Teaneck.
An officer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Joshua Yazzie, 33, was hurled from his St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom mandated strict enforcement of the department's seat belt requirement after two officers who weren't wearing them - Julius Moore, 23, and David Haynes, 27 - died in crashes within five months.
The events leading to Morris's death in Prince George's unfolded as things often do in routine police work. He and Risher were investigating a car break-in at a Laurel gas station when a silver Acura linked to the break-in passed by.
With overhead lights flashing, they pursued the car onto I-95. Chasing at high speed, Morris lost control of the cruiser and it tumbled into a ravine. He was thrown from the car and suffered fatal head injuries.
"I think he wasn't wearing his seat belt because of the excitement of the moment, of seeing a bad guy from a parking lot," Davis said. "He just forgot. From what I understand, he was a religious seat belt wearer."


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– World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio and Ricardo Rodriguez have been playing up their SmackDown suspension on Twitter. They're teasing that they will have a surprise for Big Show on Friday despite being suspended from the show.
– Booker T will be speaking to young adults at the Quad County Urban League in Aurora, Illinois and students at Paul Robeson High School in Chicago this weekend, as well as inmates at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago. Booker is promoting his book "From Prison to Promise" and talking to the people about directing their focus away from negative influences.
– Former WWE NXT Diva Skyler Moon (Buggy Nova) says she will be getting back into wrestling soon. She tweeted:
"Not doing anything wrestling related right now……………until MARCH!!!! Hope ur in Tampa to see what I'm up to"


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Certified Agile Leadership I (CAL1) training
Nov. 17, 2020
A remote training with agile42 coaches Giuseppe De Simone and Roberto Bettazzoni. The course will lead to a Scrum Alliance CAL1 certification. This course is in Italian.
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|Type of Training
|Certified Agile Leadership I (CAL1) training
|From Nov. 17, 2020 to Nov. 19, 2020 (3 days)
|Virtual classroom (Italia)
9:00 am - 15:00 pm
Timezone: Europe/Rome (check here for your local timezone)
|Giuseppe De Simone and Roberto Bettazzoni
Early Bird until
Oct. 17, 2020:
Standard Price: € 2.200 + IVA
|Still places available
|In collaboration with
Being a manager in an agile environment is a challenging job. You know on one hand, that self-organizing teams are essential in order to succeed but on the other hand, at the same time it feels a little uncomfortable not to be totally in control about what is going on. Maybe you have also questioned your own position and relevance now that the agile train has started rolling. You are met by expectations from your peers and employer to be on top of things, and you are told by your team members to back off and get out of their way. Life is not that easy for you, is it?
The Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) is the Scrum Alliance educational program for people like you. It aims at providing you the best possible frameworks and tools in order to foster an agile culture for high performance in your organization. It will help you and your company to BE agile in stead of just DO Scrum.
The Certified Agile Leadership has been developed by coaches who are affiliated with the Scrum Alliance as a two-level certification program. It has learning objectives in five areas, which are: The Context for Agile, Agile Overview, Leadership in an Agile Context, The Agile Organization and Agile Approaches to Change.
Only the Scrum Trainers with the highest expertise can be approved to deliver the CAL program. The requirements for those highly-qualified Trainers are a combination of being a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), having a certification or accreditation in a recognized leadership development program, as well as having proven leadership development skills.
At agile42 we are among the first who have been approved to deliver the CAL program. We have taken the framework of the program, mixed it with our unique concept for accelerated learning, our years of experience in delivering leadership trainings and developed a sustainable program.
The structure of the program is a mixture of participant preparation, a 2,5-day workshop (the CAL1 course) and a post training program. The latter part includes peer discussion groups, coaching and personal development plan to grow into an agile leader. The post training program has two objectives: first of all to help you on your ongoing journey as a leader, and secondly to sketch out a possible path for you towards the CAL 2 credential level.
The agenda of our CAL1 course is as follows:
INDIVIDUAL PREPARATIONSThe purpose of this preparation is to provide you with a path for the Agile Overview learning objective. You must expect three to four hours of preparation for the training. We will provide you with some homework in preparation for the workshop, by means of an invitation letter containing 3 different assignments.
We will invite you to learn about the practice of the Gemba Walk and we will explain to you the concept of Leadership in an Agile Context which encourages you as a leader to be present, aware, and engaged. We expect you to share your preparation work and results with the other workshop participants.
The course will be covering the predefined learning objectives by means of multiple self-contained training modules. All of the learning objectives will be covered by multiple modules, rather than one by one. Through the whole training, the trainer will make use of a specific Case Study that will be used to present examples, reflections and exercises. For the training you will be provided with a little empty booklet for taking notes about your own journey. This will be used in journaling activities and self-reflections.
Following the two-day CAL1 course we will present you with a transfer document, which describes the activities in the post training program, the requirements for the CAL2 credential and our framework for the CAL2 credential pathway.
The CAL2 is an individual pathway for each participant. Therefore, we are not providing a specific program. We are instead providing a framework for the CAL2 credential, which is visualized in the figure.
As an Approved Education Provider we will offer support to several activities during your journey towards the CAL2 credential. First of all we will offer one-day trainings which focus deeper on the three learning objectives: Leadership in an Agile Context, The Agile Organization and Agile Approaches to Change. Secondly we will offer facilitation of Agile Leadership Circles, where you can meet with peers, share experiences and deepen your knowledge around relevant topics. Finally we will also offer support regarding your preparation of submitting experience reports to the Scrum Alliance. This includes one-on-one coaching, review of experience reports and facilitation of one-day peer workshops. The latter will be aligned with dates and locations for Scrum Gatherings.
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NEW YORK - As robots march into operating rooms across the nation, some doctors are getting worried that patients might not be better off with the costly machines.
In the latest study to cast doubt on the technology, researchers found similar complication rates among women treated for endometrial cancer whether or not surgeons got help from a robot.
Yet robotic surgery costs about $1,300 (S$1,600) more than the low-tech approach, called laparoscopy, in addition to the upfront cost to the hospital of the machine itself.
"Robotic surgery is clearly associated with higher costs, without any clear advantages," Dr. Jason Wright, a gynecologic surgeon at Columbia University in New York, told Reuters Health.
In a report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, he and his colleagues say millions of dollars could be saved by switching from robotic surgery to traditional laparoscopy, adding that official regulation might be needed.
"Surgeons need to keep in mind all of the modalities that are available to them," said Wright. "The newer, more technologically advanced ones aren't always better."
The results fuel concerns that robotic surgery has been hyped unduly by manufacturers and hospitals wishing to justify purchasing the expensive machines, which cost between $1 million and $2.25 million each.
Earlier this year, a study showed men who had their prostate removed due to cancer complained just as frequently about sexual problems and urinary leakage after robotic surgery as when they'd had the traditional surgery.
Other researchers have found that hospitals that invest in robots see spikes in the number of surgeries they do, raising concerns that the technology could lead to unnecessary treatments.
Robot surgery no safer
Wright's team tapped into data from hospitals across the US, including nearly 2,500 women who had had their uterus removed due to endometrial cancer.
More than 40,000 women are diagnosed with endometrial cancer in the US every year. The standard treatment is removal of the uterus, or hysterectomy.
Nearly 60 per cent of the women in the new study had robotic surgery, during which the surgeon sits at a console, operating robotic "arms" that use fine tools to extract the uterus through small cuts in the abdomen.
The remainder had a similar procedure, laparoscopic surgery, without assistance from robots.
Overall, 9.8 per cent of the patients who had laparoscopic surgery suffered complications, such as bladder injuries, wound infections or kidney failure. For patients who got robotic surgery, that number was 8.1 per cent.
Wright called the gap "pretty small," and noted that it disappeared after accounting for differences in race, insurance status and hospital location.
The robotic operation racked up hospital costs of some $10,600 on average, compared to about $9,000 for laparoscopic surgery. Taking other factors into account, the difference came out to about $1,300 per procedure.
"The bottom line is that there is really no difference in the complication rate between robotic and laparoscopic surgery, but robotic is much more expensive," said Wright.
Hype and regulation
Intuitive Surgical Inc, which sells a robot system called da Vinci, said patients don't bear the extra cost of robot surgery.
"Over the past 6 years the number of women receiving a less invasive approach to treating endometrial cancer has risen from approximately 14% to 65%," Intuitive Surgical's Chris Simmonds told Reuters Health by email.
"This has been achieved at no extra cost to the patient as reimbursement codes for robotic and standard laparoscopy are the same, yet numerous peer reviewed articles have documented clear improvements in many quality of life measures associated with surgery."
In an editorial on the new findings, Dr. Mario Leitao criticizes the new study, noting that robotic surgery means more patients have access to minimally invasive surgery since relatively few doctors are skilled enough to do laparoscopies.
Leitao, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and a consultant to Intuitive Surgical, adds that doctors shouldn't give up on robots.
"How will we ever advance innovative technology in surgery if we cannot understand and accept the associated start-up costs?" he writes.
So far, there are no randomized controlled trials -- the gold-standard test in medicine -- comparing robotic hysterectomy to alternative procedures. The same goes for prostate cancer surgery, which is now mainly done robotically.
As a result, Wright's team writes, "there is increasing recognition that more formal regulation is needed."
"Given our findings, systems to monitor the trends in utilization of robotic surgery would help to further define patterns of use," Dr. Dawn Hershman, who also worked on the study, added in an email to Reuters Health.
Dr. Herbert Gretz, who heads the Gynecologic Minimally Invasive Surgery Division at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, said the new results might not be representative of other women in the US
Still, he said, most experts agree there is little difference between robotic surgery and laparoscopic.
Although Gretz is a proctor for Intuitive Surgical and trains surgeons to use the company's system, he nonetheless prefers laparoscopy, which is a faster procedure for him and his colleagues.
"What has happened over time to physicians is, once they go down the path of robotic surgery they lose some of the traditional laparoscopy skills," he told Reuters Health.
Gretz said patients might have unrealistic expectations of robotic surgery, and should focus less on technology and more on surgeon skill and experience.
"A lot of that hype is coming out of the company," he said. "For the majority of patients, it could be done either way."


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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given approval for the sale of hundreds of new settler homes still to be built occupied East Jerusalem, lifting a freeze on their construction in place since 2013.
Israeli officials told AFP on Monday that Netanyahu had authorised putting 436 housing units in the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo in northern East Jerusalem and 18 homes in nearby settlement Ramot. The homes in the ultra orthodox Jewish neighbourhood, Ramat Shlomo, were among 1,500 homes first announced in 2010 during a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden to Israel.
The announcement caused a diplomatic rift between the US and Israel, and Netanyahu later froze the housing project in a bid to lower tensions. However, in May this year 900 units were re-approved after a new intersection providing access to the neighbourhood was opened.
The number of Israeli settlers West Bank and East Jerusalem now exceeds 500,000. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, and have been condemned by the United Nations, the European Union and the US.
According to Israeli rights group B'Tselem, the settlements have resulted "in the violation of the rights of Palestinians as enshrined in international human rights law." B'Tselem added: "Among other violations, the settlements infringe the right to self-determination, equality, property, an adequate standard of living, and freedom of movement."
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