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Inbox: What happens when Myers returns?
Beat reporter Jordan Bastian answers fans' questions about the Tribe
A couple times each season, when I am not scheduled to work a home game, I will still make the trip to the ballpark to take in a game from the stands. In the past, it was to keep my love of the game fresh. These days, it is to build the same love of baseball in my son.
Last week, I headed to preschool with Hayden for "Donuts with Daddy." He had filled out a brief questionnaire about me. One of those "My daddy likes to..." assignments that always makes you laugh, and also reveals the things that your kids deem most important.
My son's project included: "I love my dad because..."
"... He takes me to the baseball stadium," he wrote.
So for the second game of Monday's doubleheader earlier this week, Hayden grabbed his glove, put on his Indians cap and I brought him to the baseball stadium. After he high-fived Slider and got his picture with Ketchup in the Kid's Club, we found our seats behind home plate.
"Daddy," he said, "I want to go on the field and play, too."
"Sorry, Hay," I replied with a laugh. "We've got to stay here and watch."
"Can I have a ball?" he asked, searching for a compromise.
"Sorry, buddy..."
A baseball soared over the infield and tailed behind the plate and over our seats. It ricocheted off a railing on the second deck and dropped from the sky, right into my outstretched bare hand. I didn't even have to move out of my seat. There were cheers and a man came over and shook my hand, which only stung a little. Most importantly, my son beamed.
"Here you go," I said as I placed the ball in his glove.
Just like that, the love of baseball was in both of us.
Here is the latest Indians Inbox ...
The team obviously has some great mojo working right now. The Indians' "suspect" starting rotation has been great. When Brett Myers comes back from the disabled list, does he just barge right back in with the way Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer have been performing?
-- Rex H., Cedar Rapids, Iowa
As alarming as Myers' opening act (a 9.00 ERA in Spring Training and 8.02 ERA this season) has been for the Indians, Cleveland still views the veteran as a capable innings eater in the middle of the rotation. The right-hander's early performance also took on a slightly different look once it was clear that he had been dealing with elbow soreness between outings.
The recent run of success for the rotation has allowed the Indians to give Myers ample recovery time, along with an appropriate amount of rehab time to build his workload up again. When Myers shows no lingering effects from his elbow injury and declares himself ready, he will take his assigned place within the starting staff for the Tribe.
Right now, there is still no specific timetable for Myers' return.
Kluber has done an admirable job, but he has battled inconsistency as well. Bauer, while boasting a promising future, still has plenty of development left and Cleveland does not want to rush him into a full-time rotation job. Both pitchers are young and gaining experience, but if the Tribe plans on contending deep into the summer, an experienced starter such as Myers can be beneficial.
Consider that Myers went 21-22 with a 3.79 ERA over 439 2/3 innings during the 2010-11 seasons for the Astros, who lost 192 games in that span. If the right-hander can show that kind of form -- and do it for a team with a much better offense and better chances of contending -- then the Indians will have what they wanted when they inked Myers to a one-year contract.
You're right, though, Rex. The Tribe's starters have been on quite a run of late, posting a Major League-best 12 wins with the third-best ERA (3.17) in the American League, dating back to Game 2 of a doubleheader against the Royals on April 28. If Myers rejoins the staff and shows little progress, Cleveland now has more confidence in its depth.
Can we attribute the rotation's recent success to the fact that the Indians have a better lineup behind them this year? Or are we just enjoying a streak of pitching, offense and defense firing at the same time?
-- Chris K., Collie, Western Australia
Simply put: Yes.
The rotation and offense have both been firing on all cylinders over the past few weeks, helping create one of the better stretches for the Tribe in the past few years. Coming into this year, we knew the lineup would be improved and likely offer sufficient run support over a six-month season. The team's chances were going to rest on the starting staff. Well, there is something to be said for pitching with a lead, and the rotation has pitched with a lead consistently of late.
Considering Yan Gomes is doing a good job and is producing better numbers than backup Lou Marson, what's going to happen when Marson gets back from the disabled list? Do you see any possibility of keeping Yan in the big leagues and sending Lou down?
-- Thiago T., Sao Paulo, Brazil
The Indians love Gomes' ability to handle a pitching staff, control a running game and provide some power off the bench. The young catcher has impressed in every facet of his game, reinforcing the club's view that he can develop into an everyday catcher. Under the circumstances, Cleveland will likely take its time with Marson's right shoulder injury, making sure he is at full strength before being activated. It is worth noting that Marson does have one Minor League option remaining, so he could be sent to Triple-A without being exposed to waivers.
It didn't take long for me (and many Indians fans) to become enamored with Mark Reynolds' bat. Any talk of the Tribe trying to extend him during the season or will he likely hit the open market in the offseason?
-- Andy L., Littleton, Colo.
If this strong start turns into a strong season for Reynolds, his agent would probably advise him to test free agency next winter. That is usually part of the reasoning for accepting a one-year contract following a down year. This could wind up being a big platform season for Reynolds. That said, there is no denying what he has brought both to the lineup and clubhouse. Cleveland doesn't have a blanket policy on in-season negotiations, but there haven't been any rumblings yet of extension talks.
I heard that highly-touted Draft pick Dillon Howard had his struggles in his first year last season. Do you have an update on how the right-hander's doing this year?
-- Michael L., Hudson, Ohio
Howard (second-round pick in the 2011 Draft) went 1-7 with a 7.90 ERA in 12 games in the rookie-level Arizona League last season. The pitcher is still in extended spring camp right now, but reports are that he is in better shape this year and taking positive strides forward. When Howard is assigned to an affiliate, it will likely be either Class A (short-season) Mahoning Valley or low Class A Lake County.
Any word on trade rumors with Asdrubal Cabrera so the Tribe can call up Francisco Lindor?
-- Don R., Dayton, Ohio
Lindor has been on a tear, hitting .331 (.871 OPS) through 38 games, but keep in mind this has been with high Class A Carolina. The next step for Lindor -- Cleveland's top pick in the 2011 Draft -- is Double-A Akron, and that step could be coming in the near future. As strong as Lindor is playing, the jump to the big leagues is unlikely to happen until some time next season, at the very earliest.


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Perranzabuloe Museum
PERRANZABULOE, meaning 'Perran in the sands', is one of the largest parishes in Cornwall. The biggest centre of population is PERRANPORTH where the Museum is located. The Museum's exhibits form an interesting insight into the life and history of Perranzabuloe parish - from its earliest beginnings; the arrival of St Piran; the growth of fishing, farming and mining; the development and closure of the railway; to the tourist resort it has become today.
The villages and hamlets in the parish include Bolingey, Callestick, Goonhavern, Rejerrah, Penwartha, Perranwell, Rose and Ventongimps, also the areas of Lambriggan, Lambourne, Penhallow, Reen, Rejerrah and Silverwell.
There are many farms, small-holdings and light industries based in the parish.
The Museum is run by local volunteers who are responsible for its upkeep, stewarding and fund-raising.
A Friends scheme is an important source of help and support.
Venue Type:
Museum, Archive
Please check before visiting.
Donations welcome
The Museum is located above the Library, near the Ponsmere Hotel and Perranporth Methodist Church, on Ponsmere Road, off the main street in Perranporth.
Additional info
Children's trolley including jigsaws, word searches and quizzes always available.
Disabled access via stairlift and wheelchair available in the gallery with disabled access to toilet facilities.
Well behaved dogs on a lead are welcome at our discretion.
If researching family or house history it is advisable to ring first to give our volunteers time to research for the relevant information.
Local outlets have a museum leaflet with map to help you find us.
In 2013 Perranzabuloe Museum will open on Thursday 28th March at 10.30 and close at 13.00 on Saturday 2nd November.
Collection details
Archaeology, Archives, Natural Sciences, Science and Technology, Social History
Edwards Collection
Mike Edwards was a potter at Bolingey Pottery. (There is a large collection of Bolingey Pottery in Perranzabuloe Museum) Image shows Callestick Chapel, near Perranporth, now a private residence.
Jim Easton Collection
Jim Easton was brought up in Perranporth in the 20th century and worked in Riley Garage as a mechanic, following in the footsteps of his father who was the mechanic for Donald Healey of Healey cars. The collection contains photos of land yacht races on Perranporth beach organised by Donald Healey, Wheal Ramoth capping scheme, the Gorseth at Perran Round and wartime aerial photos around the coast, including Perranporth. Image shows wartime defences on beach with Jim in foreground.
Joyce Kinrade Collection
Views of Callestock in the snow, the local hunt, beach views, St Piran's Church and the changing face of buildings in Perranporth in the late 1900s
Kent Collection
A vast collection of images of events, people, buildings (and their demolition) and beach views spanning life in the 20th century in Perranporth. It also includes programmes for a ploughing match in 1928, a 1950s guide to Perranporth, brochures for Perran Sands Holiday Camp, the Poplars, Droskyn Castle Hotel and scenic flights from Perranporth Aerodrome. Of particular interest are images of men skating on the Boating Lake in the 1930s, Tregonning's horse bus, a ewe with 4 lambs (see image) and the interior of Polgreen's chemist in the early 1900s.
Rosewarne Collection
Miss Rosewarne came from a well-connected Truro family and lived in Perranporth. She and her friends loved to surf bathe on wooden surfboards in the 1920s and 30s. As well as photographs of those times, the collection has photos of the Miracle Play held at Perran Round in 1969 (see image), a hang gliding festival and trampolines where Percy Davey Close houses are now.
Trevor Miners Collection
The collection includes views of Perranporth in the early 1900s and the interior of Bolingey Chapel.
Webb Postcard Collection
Two albums of old postcards of the Perranporth area collected by Ian Webb, a member of a local family, and donated in memory of his father-in-law Will Tamblyn. As well as a significant proportion of scenic views of the beach and town, there are views of hamlets in Perranzabuloe parish and sites connected with St Piran. The collection also includes humorous cards. Copies of all the collection are available to view in our Browsing Area.
Browsing Area
A seated area for browsing our collection of photographs, maps and videos on computer. Also a series of folders on various subjects connected with Perranzabuloe parish. Some photographs with copyright verification are for sale.
How to obtain
Free and available during opening times.
Kernocopia Box of Surfing
A box with various INDOOR! surfing activities and surfing STORIES. Originally created as part of the Cornish (Kernow) cultural events for the London Olympics.
- Kernocopia
How to obtain
Available during opening hours and free.
Getting there
The Museum is located above the Library, near the Ponsmere Hotel and Perranporth Methodist Church, on Ponsmere Road, off the main street in Perranporth.
Perranzabuloe Museum
Oddfellows Hall
Ponsmere Road
- About
- | Collections
- | Resources
- | Map

subset: commoncrawl


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See the Devils River Feature article written by Expedition Outfitters guide Kevin
Stubbs in Southwest Fly Fishing Magazine! Go to: www.matchthehatch.com to subscribe!
Expedition Outfitters provides Guided Fly Fishing Raft Trips on Texas
Hill Country Rivers near Austin, San Antonio and New Braunfels Texas. We float and fish the upper and lower Guadalupe River, San Marcos River, Devils River, Llano River, Canyon Lake, Texas Coast, and other spring fed lakes and streams. Our trips target Guadalupe
River Rainbow Trout, Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass, Striped Bass, Rio Grande Cichlids, Carp, Sunfish and Long Nose Gar.
We also offer Fly Fishing Classes, Lessons and Instruction. Our expert Fly Fishing Guides are full time professionals
with many years of experience leading expeditions in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and British Columbia, Canada.
We utilize 14 foot "Aire" and "Outcast" brand whitewater rafts that are customized for
fly fishing. They are comfortable boats with swivel seats and backrests. They have stable, hard, casting platforms
for the clients to stand on; and the guide sits in the center and rows the boat. The anchor system allows us to position
and hold the boat, so the fisherman gets the best shot at trophy waters. We provide all equipment and instruction. We
welcome beginners and experts alike! Please note: All of our fishing trips are catch and release only with flies
and artificial lures only.
Expedition Outfitters has teamed up with Finlay River Outfitters
to offer the "Premier Bull Trout Fly Fishing Destination in the Northern Rockies of British Columbia." Please
see picture below and click the "Fly Fishing for Trophy Bull Trout in BC" button on the navigation bar for more
Do you want to go to the Devils River, but
hate the long drive from Austin or San Antonio? It's only 1.5 hours when you hire a bush plane. The expert charter
pilots will deliver you and guests, to one of our ranches. See the Devils River Canyon along the way. Even if
you drive here, you can still book a fixed wing or helicopter tour of the Devils, or Pecos River Canyons.
Copyright 2001-2020, All Rights Reserved All trips catch and release only


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Brake pads are situated in brackets that hold the brake calipers in place. There are two pads per corner on the vehicle, and pads are commonly sold in sets per axle (front pad sets contain four individual pads).
Despite being less visually obvious than calipers or rotors, brake pads and the tires to most of the work to slow the car. As the brake pad lining is pressed onto the rotor face (with pressure provided by the caliper pistons), friction against the rotor provides a "brake torque" to slow the spinning of the wheel. As the wheel slows, traction (friction, again), between the tire and the ground cause the vehicle to slow. The ultimate limit of vehicle braking comes from the tire traction, so the pads are expected to create enough friction to exceed the traction limit of the tires.
New brake pads must be "bedded-in." Bedding is a process of breaking in the new pads, where a layer of pad material is transferred to the rotor face. This transfer layer provides an ideal rotor surface for the pads to interface with, and thereby provide the best braking ability. It is not always necessary to replaced or resurface the rotors when installing new pads, if the new pads are of a similar or more aggressive grade.
Because heat is the primary byproduct of friction, brake pads must endure enough heat to serve the demand placed on them. The more work a brake pad is asked to do, the more heat it will generate. For normal driving, not much heat is generated and a lower grade pad is required. For more sporting or performance driving, braking demands are increased and pads which withstand more heat are required. The main difference in pads of varying capability is how much heat they can withstand before breaking down and "fading."
If pads of too low a grade are used in a performance application, repeated braking will result in fade and, in many cases, violent vibration. Often mis-stated as "warping" of the rotors, this shaking comes though the steering wheel and the brake pedal. It is the result of brake pads over-heating and coating the rotors with an excess of transfer material. If the user experiences this shaking, it is first recommended to attempt installing more aggressive brake pads and bedding them in, as this often clears the old, irregular transfer layer.
Common concerns with brake pads are with the degree of noise and dust they generate. The ability to cope with higher performance demands will often require more aggressive materials in the pads, which can, but don't always, cause more noise and dust. Rotor wear can be a concern as well. Therefore it is recommended to only choose the brake pad which has enough capability for the performance needed, and not to install pads which have a greater capability than necessary.
How does one know what pads will perform the best for them for their daily or occasional use? It can be very hard to know. Finding a pad suggested for one's normal driving needs is the best place to start. To find the pad that works best for any given situation may involve trial and error across different brands.
Brake pad sizing is recorded and cataloged by the Friction Materials Standards Institute (FMSI). FMSI records OE brake pad sizing and gives unique pad dimensions a number (FMSI number). While some manufacturers will note that applications will vary from one part number to the next, the FMSI number is the common thread across all manufacturers. For this reason, Heeltoeauto.com will strive to not only present manufacturer part number and catalog data, but FMSI codes as well.


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Nonpartisan Americans Elect runs TV ads on behalf of King
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) � A nonpartisan group that tried unsuccessfully to draft a candidate to run for president is giving support to independent Angus King in the U.S. Senate race in Maine.
The Americans Elect super PAC is spending $500,000 on TV ads praising King's political independence. The narrator says, "Here in Maine, people aren't looking for Democratic jobs or Republican jobs, we just need jobs."
King has been the target of more than $2 billion in spending by conservative and GOP-aligned super PACs.
Also in the race are Republican Charlie Summers, Democrat Cynthia Dill and three additional independents, Steve Woods, Danny Dalton and Andrew Ian Dodge.


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4.0112 Appointive powers and confirmation procedures.
(a) Appointive powers of the Governor and the legislative confirmation procedures are as follows: directors of cabinet departments (those under 4.0301), and the heads of bureaus or offices who do not report either to the head of a cabinet department or to the head of a bureau or office whose appointment is subject to confirmation by the Legislature, shall be appointed by the Governor, and confirmed by a majority vote of the entire membership of each house of the Legislature. All other appointments shall be by the Governor unless by law that particular position is subject to confirmation by the Senate or by the Legislature.
(b) Nominations of appointments made during an adjournment of the Legislature or less than 5 legislative days from the end of a legislative session shall be acted upon at the next regular session convened.
(c) Appropriated funds shall not be used to pay employees for service in positions requiring confirmation if their names are not submitted for confirmation prior to the end of the next regular session after they begin service in those positions, and no person shall serve as an acting director of a department, office, or bureau for more than 90 days whether consecutive or not, without confirmation by the Legislature.
(d) If a nomination of appointment is rejected, the authority to serve in office ceases immediately. Failure to confirm a nominee at a session at which his confirmation is considered does not preclude the Governor from resubmitting that name for the same position, at the next succeeding session.
(e) The head of each executive department, bureau, or office subject to confirmation may hold office during the continuance in office of the Governor by whom he is appointed and until his successor is appointed and qualified unless sooner removed by the Governor.
(f) It is the specific intent of this chapter to empower the newly elected Governor to select his own team of department, bureau, and office heads, subject to confirmation.
(g) All department heads incumbent upon the first day of the administration of the newly elected Governor, 3 January 1978, shall automatically tender their resignations effective that day. This resignation procedure shall be followed by incumbent department, bureau, and office heads, subject to confirmation, by tendering their resignations effective on the first day of a new Governor's administration.History: 1977, PL 15-23 § 1; 1978, PL 15-80; amd 1986, PL19-36 § 1.
Amendments: 1978 Section amended generally to add provisions relating to legislative confirmation procedures.
1986 Subsection (b): deleted "or special". Subsection (C): replaced 'may" with "shall"; deleted "or special"; and added provisions for length of term.


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Some months ago, when #dayofarch came up, I was wondering why this experience was happening a friday in July. Then, I realized that my life is not 'normal' and the FBA and summer field seasons where enough to have a good view.
Madrid (Spain) 29th July 2011 – The private life of Jaime…
Today I woke up as usual, around 7:30. Had a quick breakfast, drove my mom to work and went to the gym a bit. With this temperature it is impossible to run outside even in the morning. Shower, second breakfast and time to go to the office.
I am supposed to work in the commercial field. Created my own company last year as a kind of economical suicide, but I'm still alive. Said this, I haven't been in the field since 2009. I miss it, but getting a contract nowadays is becoming impossible with the climate of crisis and savage competence with prices. It was much more easier when I worked for others. Instead I try to promote and practice Public Archaeology and that is probably the hardest challenge I have taken. A lot of project planning and 'selling' in the private sector (that should be managed publicly), and more comforts in Ethiopia than at home.
As a good friday, today I only had 3 hours to do stuff and I am having a lot of stuff to do. I lack time, although I waste a lot…
My list for this week still said 'ArchPP' (an article for Archaeologies I have to rewrite in a couple of weeks), 'Docs Etiopía' (preparing all documents I have to take to Ethiopia next week), 'Correo ChC' (sending emails to the contributors of a book I'm coordinating), 'Web HCIII' (continue preparing a web site I'm working with), 'Enviar libros' (mailing a couple of parcels with books I sold). 3 out of 5 remain there…
I run to the post office (5 minutes from the office) and spent around 30 minutes reading and answering emails. The pity is that people ask for lots of things, but never offering paid stuff… I should start having fees for 'consultancy'. The problem of having the Internet is that while/after emailing, Facebook, Twitter and today, this page took a good time from these hours. So, right before lunch time, I decided to collect all the papers for Ethiopia, write a couple of mails more and take some work for the weekend in the village.
I am flying to Ethiopia next week to try end a project I started last year in Melka Kunture (Public Archaeology related about the evaluation and awareness on the site), participate in the EAAPP meeting with it and start new ideas while money comes. I'm in love with the country and highly recommend it (btw).
So, with the briefcase full of stuff, the laptop and a couple of books was time to go shopping for lunch. Today's menu: Green peas with onion and jamón serrano. Delicious and really easy to cook.
During lunch I watched a couple of chapters of 'Entourage'. I am a compulsive consumer of series and as the summer season is a bit boring and I'm to date with all I like, I started yesterday to watch this one.
And after lunch and a short nap, I went to pick my mom before going to the village.
My village is El Cabaco, 3 hours from Madrid in Salamanca province. I have a strong relation with it and was also where I started working in Archaeology. There are some Roman gold mines and a site. It was excavated in 2000-2001 and I was lucky to take part of it when I was just 16. I think that was determinant for me to end up working in Public Archaeology.
Anyway, midway we stopped for shopping and dinner. There was a terrible traffic jam to get out of Madrid… and my day ended in one of the bars in my village, having a drink with some friends before going to another village for party (summertime local parties!).
It looks like there has been very few archaeology around, but I it was in my head all the time 😉 Hope this shows that the life of an archaeologist is not always digging up things or doing cool (or boring) stuff. We have normal lives like normal people. We eat, run, drink, chat, have holidays, friends… Archaeology is just our job.
BUT – Having a look at the context…
Today it has been a normal day… a bit weird, but normal. The routine of my life is pretty stable. Maybe doing it next friday would have been better… I will be in a foreign country, kind of exotic, having meetings, visiting sites, doing surveys or who knows what (I still didn't close the schedule). Or maybe last thursday, when I stayed till 4 am preparing the layout of a book I'm publishing in a couple of months and emailing contributors, while managing a wave of proposals for the journal I edit, 'AP: Online Journal in Public Archaeology' (www.arqueologiapublica.es). Or I could have talked about the worries of a PhD student that has to work and manage his company while trying to keep his 'academic-research-life' with no resources or time. There are even days when I don't do any archaeology at all!
For Spanish \'understanders\' this is what I do in the company… + PhD = My life


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MDA: Nice idea, shame about the ...
The OMG's aim with MDA is to allow businesses developing bespoke applications to concentrate on determining their business requirements for the application, but not be concerned with what particular technology platform will realize those requirements. In other words, the application is specified and implemented in a platform-independent fashion. The OMG's claim is that systems built this way should have a much longer lifespan than any given technology platform; 20 years is suggested by the OMG as typical.
MDA in a Nutshell
The OMG's aim with MDA is to allow businesses developing bespoke applications to concentrate on determining their business requirements for the application, but not be concerned with what particular technology platform will realize those requirements. In other words, the application is specified and implemented in a platform-independent fashion. The OMG's claim is that systems built this way should have a much longer lifespan than any given technology platform; 20 years is suggested by the OMG as typical.
The centerpiece of MDA is the Platform Independent Model (PIM), modelled in UML. Many of the changes introduced in UML 2.0 are directly to support MDA; notable among them is the Precise Action Semantics which can be used to describe behavior.
While the PIM is independent of technology, the platform specific model (PSM) is where the "rubber hits the road". Vendors are expected to use mapping and transformations to convert any given PIM into a PSM or indeed PSMs. MDA does not prescribe how this should be performed, but indicates that typically the transformation will be model to model, or meta-model to meta-model. In concrete terms, many vendors use tags or other metadata to annotate the PIM such that the different PSMs may be generated.
A PIM may give rise to multiple PSMs for two distinct reasons. First, there may be multiple PSMs if the application in its entirety (e.g. a word processor) needs to run on different operating system platforms. More to the point of PIMs and PSMs: if a new platform emerges during the lifetime of the application, then a mapping can be defined to that platform and the application moved across. Second, and as a consequence of supporting the first, MDA is suitable for developing distributed systems that are made up of components running on different platforms/tiers. For example, there may be web tier implemented on ASP.Net, but which talks to a middle-tier using EJBs, with a back-end being a Sybase RDBMS. MDA can generate the software for the tiers, plus the code to glue it all together.
The OMG vision also has its Meta Object Facility (MOF) playing a central part in MDA. Because the PIM and PSM are expected to be written in UML, itself a MOF language, it should be possible to define transformations written in a MOF language. Currently OMG is working on the QVT (Query, Views, Transformations) specification to support this idea. In other words, QVT allows the transformations performed by vendors between PIM, PSM and code to be standardized.
Two Flavours of MDA
The various tool vendors endorsing MDA have been looking to reposition and enhance their existing tools in the context of MDA terminology. However, this has led to two different interpretations of the MDA vision.
The first flavour, termed elaborationist, is very much in keeping with how OMG's normally describe viewpoint. There are separate PIMs, PSMs and code, and the PSM is usually annotated in some fashion. Here the claim is for 50-80% code generation, with behaviour typically specified in a 3GL language. Vendors who fall into this category include Compuware OptimalJ and io-Software's ArcStyler.
The second flavour, termed translationist, says that the complete system must be specified entirely within the PIM. This approach is also sometimes called Executable UML and builds on Shlaer- Mellor's work. From the PIM both the PSM and code are 100% generated completely. Indeed in practice the PSM can be substantially ignored. Behaviour is specified using an action semantic language compliant with Precise Action Semantics. Vendors who fall into this category include Kennedy Carter and Bridgepoint.
So What's Right About MDA?
MDA has at its heart some laudable objectives. Most of us would agree with the fundamental idea of MDA that business requirements ought to be considered more important than a particular technology platform. This is not to ignore the fact that sometimes technology can create a business need, as evidenced by the web, 3G or Wi-fi. But once a business requirement has been established, it is possible that it could continue to be realized by a different technology in the future. As already noted, the OMG suggest that an MDA-devleoped system would have a lifespan of something like 20 years.
The MDA's use of UML, PIMs and PSMs means that the OMG can also claim a number of other benefits for MDA in addition to this primary goal. Notable among these are its support for rapid development and delivery, primarily through its use of transformations and code generation. Depending on the flavour they advocate, MDA vendors claim code generation of between 50%, 80% or even 100% of the system, using code generation templates that encapsulate design patterns, automatically capturing best practice.
Another benefit claimed of MDA is that, because of its use of UML as the basis for PIMs and PSMs, it puts a proper emphasis back on modelling and on design.
This is my analysis of MDA's claimed benefits, of course; yours might be different. Compuware for example state that the advantages of MDA are productivity, interoperability and quality: these emphasise the second benefit I listed. Still, I need something to structure the rest of this article by, so that's my list.
But let me now ask you:
- are models important to you?
- are your platforms that unstable?
- would your business buy it?
- isn't having two different flavours of MDA somewhat worrying?
- could your development process cope?
- down at the coal-face, could you - honestly - make it work?
Because depending on how you answer these questions determines whether MDA is achievable for you and your organization. Let me tackle each of these points in turn.
Are Models Important?
What a bizarre question: "of course models are important to me!" you say. Well, perhaps, but does your business care about models too? The best analogy to PIMs and PSMs in current use that I know of are logical data models (LDMs; you might also call them entity/relationship diagrams) and physical data models (PDMs). If you value models then I'm sure you have plenty of LDMs and PDMs around, all nicely kept in sync. with a tool such as Embarcadero ErWin or Sybase PowerDesigner. So you have models, but do your business stakeholders take any interest in them? An LDM which describes the data that an organization owns is one of the most valuable technical documents an organization might create. The information in a PIM must at least include the information held in an LDM, and that information will be among the most valuable within that PIM. If your business have never taken an interest in LDMs, then it's seems unlikely they will take an interest in PIMs either.
Let's tackle this another way. We can make the representatives of the business interested in models if we get the incentives right. So, are your business managers rewarded and incentivised for efficiencies that we know will accrue only in the longer-term? Because that is how they must be rewarded to commission a system that will cost more to build if one considers only short-term costs. And even if your incentives are there today, are you certain they will remain in place in the future. When a new platform comes along in 10 years, will the appropriate investments be made to create a new set of transformations from the PIM to its new PSM? To be blunt: is your organization fickle or is it good at staying the course?
But even if you have incentivised business managers who understand and nurture the PIMs developed for them: is your business stable? Are you delivering the same set of customer propositions as you did 20 years ago? A rule of layered architecture is that the less stable depends upon the more stable. If the way you do business with the majority of your customers has radically changed, then your business may be moving as fast or faster than the technology platforms that support it. Certainly many organizations I know use technology churn as an opportunity to revitalize business processes that are tiring. If the business changes as rapidly as technology, then there's no need in it being independent of its supporting technology.
Are your platforms that unstable?
We all know that the IT industry is forever innovating. But the point is not how often are new platforms defined, but how long do they last before they are not supported. In a response to an earlier article of mine [1.], the OMG asserted that it was a "succession of short-lived middleware platforms ... keeping companies from realising the long-term return ... needed from their investment in software and integration". But it's worth considering what short-lived might mean:
- The Java platform, still regarded as quite new, has been around since 1995. Today's JVMs can still execute code written for JDK 1.0.2, 9 years on.
- COM still sits at the heart of Microsoft's Office applications; it's getting on for 20 years old
- Microsoft has extended (yet again) the lifetime for Win16 platform, and provides 5 years notice after the end-of-life announcement before discontinuing support for a product.
- The TCP/IP network protocols are over 40 years old, but it'll be a while before the Internet is switched off in favour of Internet 2 running IPv6 (which in any case is backward compatible)
- Even CORBA, which never became the de-facto distributed platform for network interoperability, sits at the heart of EJBs. And a CORBA Orb lurks in every Java 1.4 desktop.
- Admittedly, ICL's venerable VME operating system is to be phased out ... in 2012.
Of course I have cherry-picked my examples. There are many other platforms which have been introduced by vendors and then discontinued shortly afterwards. But for enterprise systems at least the dominance of .Net, Java and web services for the network means that the underlying technology platforms landscape looks remarkably stable for the time being. Java is 9 years old and in that time it has grown up and attracted wide-spread acclaim. Though Sun still owns the platform, it is hard to imagine IBM and Oracle letting Sun lose interest in it. And in any case, Java is much bigger than Sun. There are several open source implementations of JVMs (such as Blackdown), while at GNU the Classpath project is a clean-room implementation of the Java APIs up to JDK 1.4.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been playing catch up (and arguably overtake) with .Net. Clearly derivative from the Java architecture, it represents at least five years' development effort on Microsoft's part. Just as Sun is likely to remain wedded to Java for the foreseeable, it is hard to imagine Microsoft letting .Net loose for a couple of decades either. Even if they wanted to, it would take at least 5 years to develop something to replace it, and another 5 years to end-of-life the .Net architecture. In the meantime, the Mono project is porting .Net to Linux, and Microsoft themselves have ported .Net to BSD. If Microsoft were to quit .Net in the future, then - just like the Java platform - there would most likely be a substantial body of open sourcerers to look after it.
In terms of networking these platforms together, it boils down to a single "platform": web services. Everyone but everyone is committed to this: Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Oracle, BEA, the list goes on. Coupled with XML Schema, we even have a neutral standard for representing semantic content. Whether initiatives such as ebXML are able to standardize these semantics to enable seamless B2B and B2C actually doesn't matter; the point is we already have a platform independent way for systems to communicate with each other, so we are already at least as far as MDA intends to go. Even while web services continues to mature, vendors such as Borland are offering products such as Janeva that allow interoperability between the native network protocols of .Net and J2EE.
So in Java and .Net we have two mainstream business platforms that are going to be around for a very long while. Their virtual machine architecture extends that lifetime further still. And in web services we have a common way for them to interact.
In any case, the growing popularity of open source rather undermines the platform risk argument. If I choose to adopt a proprietary web framework to build my web apps, then obviously I have created a dependency. But if I choose an open source framework (e.g. Struts, WebWorks, Tapestry, Spring, Cocoon etc.) then I make my choice based upon the liveliness of that framework's community - and at worst I can support the software myself.
It's not as if MDA removes platform risk. Consider this fragment of a generated application as produced by Compuware's OptimalJ:
//GEN-GUARD:REMOTEVIEW$pidfb3196086219373fb package breakfast.application.ejb.breakfastorder; ... import com.compuware.alturadev.application.*; import com.compuware.log4j.LoggerCategory;
These dependencies on the OptimalJ libraries mean that the generated code must run in some sort of container that provides those services. In order to move a PIM over to a competing product requires at least a definition of those services, never mind the difficulty of exporting and importing the information in the PIM.
Consider also what it means to model in an environment where there is no platform. For example, how would you send an email? The programmer will need to define an abstraction of this email sending service first, then write a set of transformers to generate a realization of that service in the PSM and code. This seems to me a somewhat pointless reinvention.
Would your business buy it?
Adopting MDA has some major implications that the business needs to realize. This is assuming you can get the business to understand MDA well enough to want to adopt it in the first case. Any technology that deals in meta-meta-models is going to be a hard sell, no matter how many analyst's reports have been written.
But the business should realize that in the project lifecycle, using MDA requires that the business be prepared to invest early on in the cycle to fund the development and debugging of transformations. Since the cost of development is front-loaded, that increases exposure if the project is cancelled.
While you are at it, you ought also to come clean that adopting MDA (in its fullest expression) dramatically reduces the need for Java, C# and VB programmers. Instead, the majority become application modellers, while a smaller number being transformations specialists (in the same way that one might meet a compiler specialist today). That is a massive change of emphasis, representing a major write-off in current training investment.
... isn't having two different flavours of MDA somewhat worrying?
As was described in the introduction, the various tool vendors endorsing MDA have been looking to reposition their existing tools in the context of MDA terminology. This has led to the translationist (or executable UML) flavour and the elaborationist flavour.
In the translationist approach, behaviour is specified using state charts coupled with an implemenation of the Precise Action Semantics, that is, with an action semantic language. In effect, this is an extension of the Shlaer-Mellor method. While the translationists can point to many successes, they have predominantly been for real-time or embedded systems, almost always using C++ as the target language. Moreover, the syntax of any given action semantic language is vendor-specific. It would be possible to port them between vendors, but they do nevertheless represent a dependency on a particular vendor.
In the elaborationist approach, behaviour is typically added as a refinement in the PSM or in the code, meaning that there is no need to use an action semantic language. On the other hand, since the PSM and code are refined, there is a need to keep the different representations in sync.
There is a good degree of antipathy between the two camps. The translationists do not allow elaboration of the PSM or generated code "because elaboration is stupid". Leon Starr writes [2.]: "Elaboration destroys the original specification. In fact, the process of mucking up the specification with implementation details usually starts long before the specification itself is complete. So the boundary [between the two] is always fuzzy."
Meanwhile, the elaborationists point to the limited applicability of the translationist approach to date. Warmer, Kleppe & Bast state [3.]: "[it is] only useful in ... embedded software development". They also state: "[the] action semantic language is not high level ... [and] has no standardized syntax".
At a minimum what this means to MDA adopters is that they should not expect PIMs developed with a tool from one camp to be usable in any form in a tool of the other camp. And the fact that two camps exist at all is disconcerting, to say the least. There ain't ever gonna be such a thing as a standard MDA tool.
Would your development process cope?
Adopting MDA has some major implications on the development process too. Whichever flavour of MDA you choose, you will need to put robust procedures and processes in place to make sure that changes (features/enhancements or bug fixes) are made at the right place. In the elaborationist view of MDA, there are four places where a change could be made: the PIM, the PSM, the code, or the transformations. In the translationist view, there are still two: the PIM, and the transformation. And whenever it is a transformation that has been modified, it also raises the issue of versioning. A new version of a transformation must be able to preserve a PSM or code originally created by a previous version.
If these robust procedures and processes are missing, changes will start being applied in the wrong place. In other words, maintainers will just start to hack the generated code. And remember: these procedures must also remain good for the next 20 years so will need to be deeply ingrained into the culture ... a single advocate for MDA in the company wouldn't be enough for them to survive.
Adopting MDA also requires a move towards agile development practices. While like many I'm an advocate of agile processes, it's still foreign to many organizations. The need for agile development follows from the fact that MDA requires models to be treated as software, hence they are the "as-is" view. Those organizations that used UML only for blueprints or sketches (Fowler's analysis [4.]) will find that MDA does not permit the use of UML in that way.
Would it - honestly - work?
At the coal-face there remain some pretty substantial issues. One of the most significant is the difficulty of expressing behaviour in UML. Interaction diagrams are not suitable for this since that shows a single interaction for a single scenario between object instances. The trouble with interaction diagrams is that they are instance- rather than type-based.
Using a declarative approach for defining behaviour means using OCL to specify pre- and post-conditions for class operations. While OCL is great for formally defining the semantics published interfaces between components, it's overkill to attempt to do this for the unpublished interfaces of objects within components. It just adds too much rigour at the wrong points in the development process, and in turn impedes agility. Put it this way: I can't see your average Perl programmer taking kindly to defining the behaviour of their programs in this way. In any case, the approach of turning OCL into a platform-specific language such as Java is largely unproven: toolkits such as Dresden-OCL by necessity use reflection extensively making the generated code hard to debug.
The translationists solve the behaviour problem using Precise Action Semantics. However, as I've already indicated, in practice this means using a particular tool vendor's own action semantic language. This means abandoning investments in languages such as Java and .NET in favour of a tool vendor's proprietary syntax for an action semantics language. The platform comes back to haunt us.
For the elaborationists, such behaviour is added as a "refinement" (their term) to the generated code. In ArcStyler, one adds the behaviour in between commented placeholders: "insert your code here...". But this isn't refinement at all; it gets to the very heart of responsibility assignment, and thus the very heart of modelling. Omitting it from the PIM means that the PIM is missing significant information. All that such tools are doing is automating the generation of the scaffolding for static structures of the domain objects.
Another issue is the continuing immaturity of tools, even 3 years on from MDA's launch. Tool support for generic MOF capabilities, as required by a strict interpretation of the elaborationist approach, is still very patchy. While many UML tools allow PIMs and PSMs to be defined, they are not in themselves MOF-aware. They can be used to import/export MOF XMI format because they understand the UML namespaces, but they cannot be used for arbitrary MOF models. None of the leading UML tools (including Rational Rose, Borland Together and Embarcadero Describe) yet have generic MOF support.
For the OMG's view of elaborationist MDA to succeed, vendors must not only make their UML tools MOF-aware, they must also support QVT (once it is defined). Although I should be careful not to prejudge this, these are the same sort of vendors who have not implemented the OMG's earlier CWM for their various data modelling tools, a much easier proposition.
All things considered
Let me recap on the objectives of MDA as I see them. The primary objective is to separate business requirements and analysis from technology. A secondary objectives is to provide rapid development; a third is to put a focus back on modelling.
If your business doesn't care about models, and/or you adopt a Java or .Net platform using open source technologies, and/or your business changes as rapidly as the technologies, then that first objective would seem to be moot.
Let's look at the second point: rapid development. Clearly code generation can produce benefits and productivity gains. However, the initial cost of creating the model transformers/code generators will always outweigh the cost of just writing an application. The transformers provided out of the box by the vendor mitigates this cost, but if the business wants a highly custom application (and they probably do, otherwise they would have bought a 3rd party COTS product), then those transformers provided will act only as a starter for ten.
The third objective I listed for MDA was its emphasis on modelling. However, that emphasis is at best superficial at least for the elaborationists, mostly because of the problem I identified of expressing behaviour of objects, and hence their responsibilities. If a designer cannot easily experiment with assigning different responsibilities to objects; that is, it's hard for them to create a decent design. Putting all the above together, I really can't see MDA working as the OMG defined it. But let's not be too gloomy; it's not a total write-off:
- For a start, MDA seems to have galvanized an interest in code-generation. Tools like AndroMDA are powerful code generators, and happen to use an XMI import as their input. It's a long way from what the OMG was trying to accomplish, but it's not to say that it isn't useful.
- More substantially, the use of metadata annotations in a PIM is remarkably similar to a couple of technologies that will become much more important, namely Java 1.5 metadata coupled with aspect-oriented programming (AOP). When AspectJ is enhanced to define pointcuts based on Java 1.5 metadata tags, these will start to act very much in the same way as PSMs.
- Aspects too may solve the behaviour problem. OMG didn't want to use Java as a syntax for the Precise Action Semantics because as a language it is not constrained enough. It allows things to be said that are not rightly part of the PIM. However, in much the same way that one might define a UML profile to be a set of constraints for a UML model, so aspects can be used to define (what I suppose one might call) a code profile. These could constrain the behaviour expressed in such code to be a strict subset of what is possible in Java itself. (Indeed, one sees this to a limited extent in the EJB specification where multi-threading and calls to java.awt are not allowed).
What MDA has contributed then is the definition of a problem which AOP is ideally placed to solve. I can envisage writing software in a year or two where we use Java (or .Net) to write domain objects, and use annotations and aspects to represent various system-level concerns. The prevalence of open source frameworks that use POJOs (plain old java objects) is just the beginning of this trend.
And as a Naked Objects advocate (see [5.] articles on the Server Side), I can see a future version of the Naked Objects framework that is really just a view aspect of some POJOs. When we have that then we truly will have a technology that puts the emphasis back on modelling.
Join the doubters
I hope I've at least triggered some sceptism about whether MDA can work as described by the OMG. But I'm not the only sceptic. The OMG are very vocal about vendor buy in from the likes of IBM, HP, Sun and Borland, claiming at the same time that, yes, MDA is the end of programming as we know it. But those vendors are clearly hedging their bets. For example, witness IBM's huge investment in "traditional" IDEs like Eclipse, not to mention its investments in aspect oriented programming. Indeed, in March 2004 at the AOSD conference IBM's CTO Daniel Sabbah stated "AOP is vital for our survival". That's a very bold statement). And consider the millions of VB programmers that Sun is after with its Project Rave: Sun isn't trying to get them to move to Java by offering them an MDA solution. As for Microsoft? Noticeable by its absence.
But even though I'm sceptical of MDA as described, I do think the problem that the OMG set itself when it came up with the MDA ideas is one worth solving. And that may be its biggest contribution, providing a focus for the use of powerful new technologies such as AOP. But the OMG's own solution to that problem: not for me, thanks.
About the Author
Dan Haywood has worked on large and small software development projects for 15 years having worked previously at Accenture and Sybase UK and for the last 6 years as an independent consultant, trainer and technical writer. Dan is an expert on Together Control Center having co-authored "Better Software Faster", a book addressing the effective use and customization of Together Control Center. Dan is also an active member of the Naked Objects community, http://www.nakedobjects.org, and has developed a set of customisations for Naked Objects and Together downloadable from his website, http://www.haywood-associates.co.uk.
[1.] Evaluating the Model Driven Architecture - Dan Haywood www.appdevadvisor.co.uk, Jan 2003
[2.] Executable UML: How to Build Class Models Leon Starr Prentice Hall PTR ASIN 0130674796
[3.] MDA Explained: Model Driven Architecture - Practice & Promise Warmer, Kleppe & Bast Addison-Wesley ISBN 032119442X
[4.] UML as Sketch, UML as Blueprint Martin Fowler's Bliki www.martinfowler.com
[5.] Naked Objects Architecture Series Richard Pawson, Robert Matthews & Dan Haywood www.theserverside.com, Mar - Apr 2004


text:
Haha, yeah
How y'all doing out there? (Alright, alright)
Thank you for joining me this evening
How y'all feel?
Like I feel so awesome
How you feel? Awesome, I guess that's awesome
Shawty you fine and your body is awesome
Wanna roll? Awesome, well let's go, awesome
Hands in the sky like…
[Verse 1: XV]
I'm A-W-E, some call me awesome
Some call me Vizzy, hunnies call me often
Gator on my shirt, what did it Lacoste him?
Jesus Christ I'm good, please don't cross him
How rude, Stephanie Tanner
You don't gotta watch me but please watch your manners
And I be getting green, so mean, Bruce Banner
Gifted flow and presence, man I'm the new Santa
And uh, I'm saying Kansas where I'm staying
Where niggas be bang-bangin' like Pops on the Wayans
And even through the hating in walls they thought I stay in
Psh, who you playing? I done went Super Saiyan
This that off the glass, off the floor, off the board jam
We in the building, you wishing you had the floor plans
You just a door, man, door man, damn, I wish I had more hands
Now tell me what got two thumbs and knows how to spit rhymes?
Two thumbs up, you gon point 'em at this guy
Al Hedison couldn't be this fly so ask how I feel and you know I reply…
Like I feel so awesome
How you feel? Awesome, I guess that's awesome
Shawty you fine and your body is awesome
Wanna roll? Awesome, well let's go, awesome
Hands in the sky like…
[Verse 2: Pusha T]
This is history in the making, ain't you feeling it?
Thief flow, they say I'm on some show stealing shit
My solo discography, I'm building it
Now every time you hit the space bar, I'm killing it
Yeah, I'm so fucking awesome, 200,000 was paid to out-floss 'em
They don't wanna follow my lead, I gotta force 'em
To keep the competition in line, you gotta sort them
Fire engine red in that drop head
Haters drop dead when I'm in that bobsled
Cover girl on my side and she bobs head
Saying yes to my denim as she nods head
XV from the middle of the map
I'm coming to you live from the middle of the trap
Colors in the chain likes Skittles out the pack
The hustler, teaming with the gentleman of rap
Let's go
[Verse 3: XV]
Ay, I'm awesome, every time I lay it down
I think that I kill 'em, play possum
Death proof, ride around with Rosario Dawson
Tell 'em open wide when they see how I'm flossing (ching)
Cooler than a peppermint, Wayne's World excellent Party on Garth (shwing)
Work ethic harder than a Mexican
That's why I can walk up into any restaurant and close the whole thing
See? Even G couldn't F with it
Semi-colon, dash, parenthese, text message it
That's a side smiley face 'cause I'mma make the best of it
I assume you should make room for the elephant
Boom, where I come from is irrelevant 'cause my glory is all that I revel in
And my story begins where most others end
So all I really got to tell 'em is…
[Hook] (x2)
A little more than a year and a half since the original song's official release on the Everybody's Nobody mixtape, Pusha T decides to add his own verse to Awesome.
XV also makes little changes to his two verses from the original.
The song was produced by Seven.


text:
Steam King Seafood Restaurant, Kota Damansara
>> Thursday, April 29, 2010
Venue: Steam King, Kota Damansara
Occasion: Dinner with parents
Overall comment: Steamed fish was no doubt a "must-have" at this restaurant. I know on weekends, this place is packed during dinner time, so do come early to avoid having to wait a longer time for your food to be served.
Halal: No
Total bill amount (inclusive of rice & tea) = RM84.20 for 3 persons
Looking at the bill was sure a surprise. We were expecting the price to come up to around RM60 max, but it came up to RM80+. Yeah, for 3 persons, we didn't expect paying so much for dinner. It's just fish! Hahaha...but yeah, it's no doubt fresh & meaty fish!
My dad came across an advertisement/write-up of this restaurant in The Star newspaper a few Sundays ago. I guess the few points that struck him were the attractive photos (yes, talk about the power of pictures), the interesting write-up, & certainly, the location of the place (it's not too far from where we live).
So yeah, there we were on a Sunday evening, just the 3 of us. We had to wait for quite a while for our food to be served as they were short-handed. Nevertheless, the dining experience there was not too bad, despite the long wait, since the warmth & friendliness of the staff there made us "feel good".
Here's what we had:
The fish was SO meaty! The 3 of us had a challenging time finishing the fish...my dad thinks that the fish is slightly "seng"/fishy-smell, while my mum & I found it alright. It's certainly good stuff, but oh, is catfish THAT expensive? It's been awhile since we had this fish, so we lost track of the market price :) Once in a while, it's lovely to just enjoy such fresh fish :)
This photo below shows how the small portion looks like. They gave us the wrong plate of pork ribs! Thankfully we haven't touched it, so the waitress took it away & gave us our plate of pork ribs (in the 2nd photo). Somehow the 1st photo looks nicer...hahaha...the pork ribs was a recommended dish & it sure tastes pretty good. It's slightly crispy on the outside & is coated with the salted egg & the fragrance of the curry leaves. Somehow, I feel that the pork ribs aren't well-marinated or marinated for a longer period of time. If it were, it would have tasted even better! :)
View PerutBesi in a larger map
If you're around the area & you're looking for some good Chinese meal (especially fresh steamed fish), this place is worth trying out :) Just make sure you're there earlier or much later, or it'll be best to make a reservation before hand.
We will surely return to this place someday to try out their other dishes (yes, I did say that it's a tad pricey, but oh well, the food is good, so we don't mind going back there again!).
Steam King Seafood Restaurant
7, Jalan PJU 5/10
Dataran Sunway
Kota Damansara
47810 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan.
Tel: (+603) 6140 7460
H/p: (+6014) 633 2110
Business Hours: 11:00a.m. - 3:00p.m., 5:00p.m. - 11:00p.m.
Website: Steam King
Presentation: * * *
Price: * * *
Environment: * * *
Taste: * * *
Service: * * *
- Ruth


text:
LAKE FOREST – City leaders took the first step Tuesday night toward allowing registered sex offenders back into city parks.
In front of a packed chamber, the City Council voted 4-0 in favor of repealing a law passed in December 2011 prohibiting sex offenders from entering its parks.
The action came over the objections of Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who squared off with Mayor Kathryn McCullough over the ban he has spent the last year pressing Orange County cities to adopt. A second approval is needed before the change becomes effective.
In April 2011, the county Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance barring registered sex offenders from entering county parks, beaches and harbors. Banning sex offenders from parks was originally included in California's Chelsea's Law, but the provision was removed by state lawmakers during negotiations.
The county ordinance added back that additional layer of protection for county parks, Rackauckas said at the time. Since the county law passed, Rackauckas and his staff have been urging cities to pass similar laws. To date, 15 have done so, though questions of enforceability, constitutionality, legal challenges and cities' liability have arisen.
Outgoing Councilman Mark Tettemer abstained from voting Tuesday after his request to table the item – to allow the two recently elected council members to rule on the issue – failed to receive backing.
In arguing for the repeal, McCullough said the city's coffers should not fund the defense of Rackauckas' initiative.
"Are you willing tonight to be able to say publicly on record that you will indemnify us for damages, attorney fees and any other costs connected with this?" McCullough asked Rackauckus.
The city is facing a federal lawsuit filed in September by an anonymous registered sex offender who has alleged the bans in Lake Forest and three other Orange County cities violate his constitutional rights. The lawsuit could cost up to $250,000 to defend, according to City Attorney Scott Smith.
"Mayor, you know very well … that the District Attorney does not indemnify cities in carrying out the law, and that is merely a grandstand question, a grandstand play that you are doing to try to get yourself on some kind of an upper level here," Rackauckas said.
He called the federal lawsuit "not a major legal problem," and urged the council to see how it plays out.
"Look, if you lose in federal court, then go ahead and turn tail," Rackauckas said. "But I think it's really a mistake to walk out now just because a complaint has been filed … and because you've been listening to some threats from the sex offenders."
Several sex offenders who live in Orange County spoke at the meeting in favor of the repeal.
Jeffrey McBride, a registered sex offender who lives in Laguna Hills, said he has no personal interest in visiting Lake Forest parks, but that passing the ordinance without considering the legal ramifications seriously was foolish.
"You've been listening to the District Attorney's Office, who told you that this would pass constitutional muster," McBride said. "It didn't."
Now the council is in a no-win situation, he said.
"If you don't repeal the ordinance, then as your city attorney has explained to you, you have to defend the lawsuit and it will cost a lot of money and there are potential other lawsuits to follow. You'll have to explain that to your constituency, why you spent money to defend something that judges have already said is void and unconstitutional," he said. "If you do repeal it, then some people may consider that or characterize that as being soft on child predators."
Lake Forest resident Kelly Hagins, who has supported the ban since she saw a registered sex offender videotaping children, including her son, in a Lake Forest park in May 2011, said the city should defend the ordinance, even if it proves costly.
"Lawsuits like this are what we are here to fight for," she said. "I pay taxes. That's what's going to go toward these lawsuits. I want to fight these lawsuits. I want to fight these people."
The repeal requires a second approval by the council to take effect. The issue is expected to return before council members Dec. 18. There will be two new faces behind the dais at that meeting, Dwight Robinson and Adam Nick, who were elected in November.
Contact the writer: email@example.com or 949-454-7307


text:
113th CONGRESS
1st Session
January 23 (legislative day, January 3), 2013
Mr. Vitter introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance
To provide tax relief with respect to the Hurricane Isaac disaster area.
Short title
This Act may be cited as the
Investment Savings Access After
Catastrophes Act of 2013
Hurricane Isaac disaster area
For purposes of this Act, the term Hurricane Isaac disaster area means any parish or county of Louisiana or Mississippi which is (in whole or in part) in the area with respect to which a major disaster has been declared by the President before September 10, 2012, under section 401 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act by reason of Hurricane Isaac.
Suspension of personal casualty loss limitations
Paragraphs (1) and (2) of section 165(h) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 shall not apply to losses described in section 165(c)(3) of such Code which arise in the Hurricane Isaac disaster area during the 2-year period beginning on August 26, 2012, and which are attributable to Hurricane Isaac. In the case of any other losses, section 165(h)(2)(A) of such Code shall be applied without regard to the losses referred to in the preceding sentence.
Treatment of net operating losses attributable to Hurricane Isaac
Extension of carryback period
During the 2-year period beginning on August 26, 2012, if a portion of any net operating loss of the taxpayer for any taxable year is a Hurricane Isaac loss, section 172(b)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 shall be applied with respect to such portion—
by substituting
5 taxable years for
2 taxable years in
subparagraph (A)(i) thereof, and
by not taking such portion into account in determining any eligible loss of the taxpayer under subparagraph (F) thereof for the taxable year.
Suspension of 90 percent AMT limitation
Section 56(d)(1) of such Code shall be applied by increasing the amount determined under subparagraph (A)(ii)(I) thereof by the sum of the carrybacks and carryovers of any net operating loss attributable to the portion described in subsection (a).
Hurricane Isaac loss
For purposes of this section—
In general
The term Hurricane Isaac loss means the lesser of—
the excess of—
the net operating loss for such taxable year, over
the specified liability loss for such taxable year to which a 10-year carryback applies under section 172(b)(1)(C) of such Code, or
the amount of any deduction for any qualified Hurricane Isaac casualty loss to the extent taken into account in computing the net operating loss for such taxable year.
Qualified Hurricane Isaac casualty loss
In general
The term qualified Hurricane Isaac casualty loss means any uncompensated section 1231 loss (as defined in section 1231(a)(3)(B) of such Code) of property located in the Hurricane Isaac disaster area if—
such loss is allowed as a deduction under section 165 of such Code for the taxable year, and
such loss is by reason of Hurricane Isaac.
Applicable rules
For purposes of subparagraph (A), rules similar to the rules of subparagraphs (B) and (C) of paragraph (3), and paragraph (4), of section 1400N(k) of such Code and shall apply.
Tax-favored withdrawals from retirement plans
In general
A qualified Hurricane Isaac distribution shall be treated as a qualified hurricane distribution for purposes of section 1400Q(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.
Qualified Hurricane Isaac distribution
For purposes of subsection (a), the term qualified Hurricane Isaac distribution means any distribution from an eligible retirement plan made on or after August 26, 2012, and before September 11, 2014, to an individual whose principal place of abode on August 26, 2012, is located in the Hurricane Isaac disaster area and who has sustained an economic loss by reason of Hurricane Isaac.
Applicable rules
For purposes of this section, rules similar to the rules of section 1400Q(a) of such Code (other than paragraph (4)(A) thereof) shall apply.
Rescission of unspent and uncommitted Federal funds
In general
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, of all available unobligated Federal funds, an amount in appropriated discretionary unexpired funds determined by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to be equal to the reduction in Federal revenues by reason of the enactment of this Act is rescinded.
Not later than 60 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall—
identify the accounts and amounts rescinded to implement subsection (a); and
submit a report to the Secretary of the Treasury and Congress of the accounts and amounts identified under paragraph (1) for rescission.
This section shall not apply to the unobligated Federal funds of the Department of Defense or the Department of Veterans Affairs.


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Madonna Joins Twitter for One Day Only
To kick off the release of her new album, Madonna is joining Twitter for one day to answer questions from fans.
The pop legend will be turning to Twitter on Monday night to promote her 12th studio album, MDNA, and interact with fans on the popular social network. She will be answering questions starting at 10:00 p.m. EST/7:00 p.m. PST.
The Twitter handle @MadonnaMDNAday sent out its first tweet on Sunday to get the word out about the Q&A. Fans can submit questions to Madonna by tweeting @MadonnaMDNAday and using the hashtag #askmadonna. The account already has more than 10,000 followers.
The news was also announced on Madonna.com/AskMadonna, with the following message:
"Madonna joins Twitter for one day only to answer fan questions and celebrate the release of her MDNA album. Got a question? #AskMadonna," the site says.
It's uncertain if the account will still send tweets about the album or if it will be shut down after the online event. The Twitter account has not yet responded to questions from Mashable.
Madonna's dip into Twitter isn't just to promote her album, but also to increase her social media presence. She recently granted a Facebook Live-exclusive interview with late-night host Jimmy Fallon on Saturday. Fans — who had to "Like" her Facebook page in order to watch the interview — were also encouraged to submit questions for the pop queen. Her interview with Fallon was the only talk show appearance planned to promote the album.
Madonna has nearly 9 million subscribers on Facebook.
This is her first album since the release Hard Candy featuring "4 Minutes" in April 2008.
Thumbnail via Madonna.com.


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If you're excited about "[REC] 3 Genesis", which I think you are because people seem to like those movies, then I've got good news for you. The film has finally been given a US release date of August 3rd for VOD and a limited theater run on September 7th. I mean I guess that's good news if you're in the US. Canadians probably don't give a crap. But hey, maple syrup is pretty awesome.
A.J. Cook, who may or may not be a regular cast member of "Criminal Minds" might just be taking on the lead role in a new flick called "Wer". I say "may" because it hasn't been confirmed yet but all signs point to her being the main lady in the flick which is a new found footage romp focusing on werewolves. Or not focusing on maybe. Ya know cause sometimes those movies have a lot of out of focus shots. It's a thinking joke. You'll get it.
I'm not going to bother explaining to you the plot of "Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark". Just know it's coming and there's a 95% chance some sort of former teen star is going to be in it. Possibly two of them. Some things are better left unspoken.
Am I the only one who has Elizabeth Olsen fever? I can't be. I just can't be! Oscar Isaac has got it. It's confirmed! He's just joined the cast of "Therese Raquin", a new film about a woman who plots to kill her husband after she finds herself in a steamy affair. I think this might be the first time I've used the word "steamy" in a news post. Let's agree to never let it happen again.


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Employment Opportunities
Thank you for your interest in East Maine School District 63. We offer a supportive work environment that gives employees the chance to make a difference, change lives, and grow in their careers.
With six schools serving 3,400 PreK-8 grade students, a District Office, summer programs, and more than 400 staff members, District 63 offers a wide range of full-time, part-time, and temporary positions. We promote professional development, recognize excellent performance, and offer a competitive benefits package that includes health and dental insurance, TRS or IMRF pension participation, and more.
We offer dental at an expense to the employee but cover part of all of health (depends on the election).Completed online applications and application materials are retained in active status for one school year. If your qualifications meet our needs, we'll contact you for more information and a possible interview.Interested in becoming a Substitute Teacher?
Substitute applications are periodically screened and candidates are then invited in for short interviews. Feel free to fill out an application.
Questions? Contact Dr. Shawn Schleizer, Associate Superintendent, at 847.299.1900. Fax: 847.299.9963.


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Update: 81 per cent of TELUS shareholders vote to approve 1:1 share exchange proposal
Oct 17, 2012, 21:29 ET
93 per cent excluding Mason Capital vote for 1:1 exchange
VANCOUVER, Oct. 17, 2012 /CNW/ - Once final votes were tallied at the meeting of TELUS shareholders today, 81.1 per cent of total shares voted were in favour of TELUS' share exchange proposal. 62.9 per cent of the 128.8 million common shares voted were in favour, and 99.5 per cent of the 127.7 million non-voting shares voted were in favour. Excluding Mason's most recently reported voting block, 84.4 per cent of common shares voted were in favour of the exchange. As such, the voting results easily exceeded the approval thresholds for the proposal to pass, namely a simple majority of common shares voted and two-thirds of non-voting shares voted. Notably, excluding Mason's most recently reported voting block, 93.0 per cent of total shares voted were in favour of the exchange.
Voting participation was quite high at 73.6 per cent of the common shares outstanding and 84.6 per cent of the non-voting shares outstanding. By comparison, the voting turn-out at TELUS' 2012 and 2011 annual general meetings was 67.25 per cent and 45.4 per cent, respectively.
The following was distributed at 3:50 p.m. PST:
TELUS shareholders decisively approve 1:1 share exchange proposal
Ratification of share exchange proposal scheduled for final court approval in early November
Vancouver, B.C. - TELUS shareholders have voted strongly in favour of a proposal to exchange the company's non-voting shares for common shares on a one-for-one basis.
None of Mason's Capital's four resolutions received the support from common shareholders required to pass.
TELUS will release detailed voting results later today.
"The outcome of today's shareholder vote is distinctly positive for TELUS shareholders. Moreover, the result realized exemplifies the principles of good corporate governance and the fairness of shareholder democracy in Canada," said Darren Entwistle, TELUS President and CEO. "We would like to express our gratitude to our shareholders for such strong support of our proposal. Shareholders made clear their desire to enhance shareholder value through improved trading liquidity and augment TELUS' already excellent corporate governance by adopting a single class of widely held voting shares. Fundamental TELUS investor views dominated, prevailing over a self-serving hedge fund engaging in a troubling empty voting trading strategy, negative publicity campaign and multiple court challenges to try to defeat this proposal for their own profit."
The final hearing before the B.C. Supreme Court to approve the share exchange is set for the week of November 5.
Forward looking statement:
This news release contains statements about expected future events of TELUS that are forward-looking. By their nature, forward-looking statements require the Company to make assumptions and predictions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. The market price of non-voting shares and/or common shares may decline given that share prices in both classes increased on the announcement of the February proposal. In addition, there can be no assurance TELUS will win the appeals commenced by Mason Capital of the two October 15 B.C. Supreme Court decisions, that there will not be further court challenges, that the final court order in respect of the Arrangement will be granted, and that the associated benefits for TELUS shareholders will be realized. There is significant risk that the forward-looking statements will not prove to be accurate. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a number of factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from that expressed in the forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, TELUS disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements.
About TELUS
TELUS (TSX: T, T.A; NYSE: TU) is a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, with $10.6 billion of annual revenue and 12.8 million customer connections including 7.4 million wireless subscribers, 3.5 million wireline network access lines, 1.3 million Internet subscribers and 595,000 TELUS TV customers. Led since 2000 by President and CEO, Darren Entwistle, TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video.
In support of our philosophy to give where we live, TELUS, our team members and retirees have contributed more than $260 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered 4.2 million hours of service to local communities since 2000. Fourteen TELUS Community Boards lead TELUS' local philanthropic initiatives. TELUS was honoured to be named the most outstanding philanthropic corporation globally for 2010 by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, becoming the first Canadian company to receive this prestigious international recognition.
For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com.
SOURCE: TELUS Corporation
For further information:
For media inquiries, please contact:
Shawn Hall
TELUS Social and Media Relations
[email protected]
For investor inquiries, please contact:
Darrell Rae
TELUS Investor Relations
[email protected]


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Remember when trust actually meant something?
The company that I would like to start — or at least patronize — sells trust.
That's its product. It gives you a good feeling. It reassures. It lets you rely on it. It overcompensates for your anxiety. It leaves little room for doubt.
Trust was, at a certain point in consumer history, what most successful brands were selling. Trust was the ultimate scalable asset — once you established it, you could keep producing it at no further cost. Some brands could even extend their own trust levels to other products. Famously, the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval, a marketing brainstorm if there ever was one, let you feel good about anything with its imprimatur.
Now, most major brands have implicit trust problems, to say the least. Most are on a terrible treadmill, having to grow ever faster to make up for their constant loss of public trust.
The other day, The New York Times ran a story about Amazon's efforts to purge its user reviews of untrustworthy reviewers — members of an author's family, for instance. This naturally gave way to a larger issue of trust: How does Amazon know who's related to whom?
Would you trust Amazon? Do you trust any company whose main mission is to collect your data? You might acquiesce to it, but do you trust it — or anyone whose central activity is to keep tabs on you? Google, founded on a do-gooder credo, is now the leviathan of data collection and opacity.
And the entire financial industry? That trust, once the very essence of its business, is certainly gone.
Politicians? A reasonable definition of partisanship may be that for anything you do trust, there is an equal and countervailing force that you distrust more.
The very concept of a brand used to be something that grew up over many years on the basis of dependability, or at least habit, which is a form of trust. But then there evolved a branding industry, whose skill was to create fake trustworthiness — or anyway the illusion of it.
Possibly that indicates unrealized value in old brands. Oh, but the private-equity industry figured that out already, bought the brands, and fired the people who had previously created the trust (which, by the way, added to Mitt Romney's personal trust deficit).
Twitter and other forms of social media have grown up in part as an antidote to the lack of trust — a constant populist monitoring of public life. But then social media itself became suspect, a feeder of rumor and inaccuracies, not least of all in the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. And recently Instagram, part of the increasingly suspect Facebook leviathan, announced it was selling the pictures people had entrusted it with.
The only thing it seems that we do really trust are bubbles, which, naturally, explode, further reducing our trust and demonstrating that trust is, as often as not, a form of stupidity.
Now, this could suggest a bottomless existential hole, a profound crisis for capitalism and democracy. Or it could indicate an obvious moment for a cyclical turnaround. Since there is so little trust in the marketplace, its value grows ever greater. How can anyone miss the signs? Trust should be the next big thing.
I wonder if there is a grand old man play. A company formed of the eminent and reliable, assuming there are such people, who command a vast team of researchers monitoring the actions, values, methods, measures, principles and expectations of every public person and entity.
Possibly there is a 1-to-100 scale, wherein, like a health code rating, you can strive for improvement. The business model here is critical mass. Companies, politicians and media pay to be rated, because to be unrated is to be outside the circle of trust and because, as in therapy, paying indicates a willingness to help yourself.
And yet, I feel an inevitable heavy hand here, a new notion of conformity, a chill of sanctimony. Also, old men (old white men continue to overshadow the others) have among the lowest trust quotients these days.
So instead, make this a social platform. Everybody rates everything. Data itself is put in service to trust. There is a constant tabulation of everybody's experience. Trust is expressed as concisely as the stock market expresses value. Trust is an algorithm. Of course, that begins to sound like polling and the overflow of data that leads to mistrust. Indeed, it may be information itself that leads to mistrust.
After so many millennia of not knowing anything, perhaps human beings can't handle knowing so much. Alas, the more we know, the more we shudder.
This could be then an opening for traditional media. We don't need more information — we need more context. This, to me, seems like it ought to be CNN's comeback opportunity. CNN already has a brand that people want to trust. After all, when something bad happens in the world, people go to CNN.
But then that trust wilts. CNN is now lost in the slipstream of partisan cable television, insisting that because it does not identify itself as right or left it should be trusted more by everyone. Large corporate entities tend to equate trust with the wishy-washy, instead of with consistency and rectitude. But, come to think of it, audiences tend to equate consistency and rectitude with an off-putting remoteness.
Are there any true models of trust anywhere anymore? It may be that nobody quite knows what trust is anymore. Hence, even people who think they are selling trust are so often selling phoniness or duplicity.
On the other hand, people know it when they trust something.
Or do they?
Trust itself may have to be redefined and rebranded. And its business model would need to be refined: Who pays whom for trust?
Still, is there a bigger opportunity for brands, politicians and financial institutions? Is there a bigger challenge for technology to help restore ease of mind?
Trust, that wasted and neglected asset, has got to be an incredible gold mine.
Michael Wolff can be reached at email@example.com, and on Twitter @MichaelWolffNYC.


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Physcial Sciences Division
Research Highlights
January 2009
International Team Uncovers Unusual Shapes Formed by Boron Clusters
New shapes have implications for hydrogen fuels
Results: Scientists from Tsinghua University in China, Washington State University, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory discovered two never-before-seen boron atom arrangements. The arrangements are a rippling bowl shape, called a convex quasiplanar structure, and battered three-dimensional puzzle, called a distorted heptagonal bipyramid
Why It Matters: Understanding the structures and energy involved in building and breaking boron clusters could help design hydrogen storage devices. These devices are critical in developing cars and trucks that run on hydrogen, an alternative fuel that produces few pollutants. However, before hydrogen-powered vehicles can exist, materials that can store hydrogen and release it are needed. Boron could be a vital part of such a material.
Methods: This work began more than 5 years ago when Dr. Lai-Sheng Wang at Washington State University and collaborators were working on the structures of boron clusters. The team led by Dr. Wang determined that the nine boron atoms form a flat wheel structure. But, the experimental data hinted subtly that there might be more structures. Calculations indicated the other structures were not feasible.
Flash forward a few years.
Dr. Jun Li from EMSL along with Ms. Li-Li Pan of Tsinghua University and Dr. Lai-Sheng Wang, an Affiliate Senior Chief Scientist at PNNL and a professor at Washington State University, decided to see if there were other structures. The team began with the 2003 data. The data was from the photoelectron spectroscopy capabilities at the Department of Energy's EMSL, a national scientific user facility at PNNL. This data provided insights into the overall energy of the structure and how the electrons interact with each other.
Then, the team performed complex molecular dynamics calculations, or Car-Parrinello calculations, on the 9-atom boron cluster. They ran the calculations on the supercomputer in EMSL. With the results of these calculations and advanced chemical theories, they found two new isomers: a convex quasiplanar structure and a distorted heptagonal bipyramid.
Acknowledgments: China's National Key Basic Research Special Funds and National Natural Science Foundation of China and the U.S. National Science Foundation funded this research. The work was done by Li-Li Pan of Tsinghua University, Jun Li of Washington State University, and Lai-Sheng Wang of Washington State University and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Photoelectron spectroscopy instrumentation and the MPP2 supercomputer in the Department of Energy's EMSL were vital to conducting this work.
The work supports the Laboratory's mission to strengthen U.S. scientific foundations for innovation by developing tools and understanding required to control chemical and physical processes in complex multiphase environments.
Reference: Pan LL, J Li, and LS Wang. 2008. "Low-Lying Isomers of the B9 - Boron Cluster: The Planar Molecular Wheel Versus Three-Dimensional Structures." Journal of Chemical Physics 129(2):024302.


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Biography Cees Place
Albums | Singles | Compilations | Other | Guestperformance
In the discography you will find all recordings that have been released listed chronologically. We restrict ourselves to the title, the type of audio, year of publication or recording, label, list of guest musicians, plus any comments on the issue.
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Department of Surgery faculty members, both physicians and scientists, are world-renown in their subspecialties. Faculty members are passionate in their clinical care and research practices, as well as being mentors for medical students and trainees. The department also invests significant funds to provide protected time and lab space for junior faculty to perform research.
Adrian Dobrowolsky
Safety and efficacy of robotic-assisted groin hernia repair J Robot Surg. 2020 Aug 10. . View in PubMed
Effects of smoking on bariatric surgery postoperative weight loss and patient satisfaction Surg Endosc. 2020 Jul 22. . View in PubMed
Comment on "Objective Evidence of Reflux Control After Magnetic Sphincter Augmentation: 1 Year Results From a Post Approval Study" Ann Surg. 2020 Mar 27. . View in PubMed
Routine esophageal manometry is not useful in patients with normal videoesophagram Surg Endosc. 2019 05; 33(5):1650-1653. . View in PubMed
Hiatal hernia recurrence following magnetic sphincter augmentation and posterior cruroplasty: intermediate-term outcomes Surg Endosc. 2018 07; 32(7):3374-3379. . View in PubMed
Achalasia and epiphrenic diverticulum World J Surg. 2015 Jul; 39(7):1614-9. . View in PubMed
The management of esophageal achalasia: from diagnosis to surgical treatment Updates Surg. 2014 Mar; 66(1):23-9. . View in PubMed
Predicting acute kidney injury among burn patients in the 21st century: a classification and regression tree analysis J Burn Care Res. 2012 Mar-Apr; 33(2):242-51. . View in PubMed
[ON THE ACTION OF THE ESSENTIAL PHOSPHOLIPID SUBSTANCE AND COBALT ON THE PREDISPOSITION TO RECURRENCES IN PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS] Rev Med Moyen Orient. 1964 May-Jun; 21:270-3. . View in PubMed


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A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people, including many hurt by broken glass.
Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement.
Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said 102 people had called for medical assistance following the incident, mostly for treatment of injuries from glass broken by the explosions.
Kolsenikov also said about 600 square meters (6000 square feet) of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed.
Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite.
Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.
Source: hosted.ap.org 15 Feb 2013


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There is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly: The Internet is running out of IPv4 addresses—not at some point in the future, but right now. But the only solution to the problem, IPv6, is just now really starting to be deployed. That's why we're all in for some tough times ahead.
The Ars System Guide: September 2010 Edition: After a very long hiatus, the Ars Technica System Guide is back in action. A lot has happened since our last edition, so big changes are in store for the Budget Box, Hot Rod, and God Box.
The "legal blackmail" business: inside a P2P settlement factory: ACS Law specializes in file-sharing "settlement letters," requesting cash for online infringement but never quite getting around to filing lawsuits. What's it like on the inside? A huge leak of private e-mails lights up a dark corner of the legal world. Our 6,000 word investigation inside.
Intel's next must-have upgrade: a look at Sandy Bridge: Intel's forthcoming Sandy Bridge architecture is the first major new-from-the-ground-up x86 design from Intel since Atom. Here's why next year's batch of Sandy Bridge-based chips will be so much faster than their predecessors, and why it pays to wait on an upgrade if you can.
Yavin IV: Exploring space on the cheap with an iPhone, Droid, and Flip: A group of "self-admitted nerds" collaborate to send a weather balloon into the stratosphere, capturing photos, videos and GPS coordinates with a trio of popular mobile devices. Ars was on hand for their second official launch, which reached nearly 100,000 feet into the wild blue yonder.
Marvell's tri-core ARM chip has near-PS3-level graphics: The fact that Marvell's new ARMADA 628 has three ARM cores on it is cool, but even crazier is the fact that its GPU gets within spitting distance of the PlayStation 3's graphical capabilities. With this part, you could squeeze near-PS3-caliber graphics into a tablet.
US busts Google, Apple, Intel over secret employee poaching pact: The government has filed a lawsuit against six high tech companies—Apple, Adobe, Intuit, Intel, Google, and Pixar—charging them with creating cozy deals not to cold call each other's employees. A settlement has already been drawn up.
Monsters defies sci-fi, horror conventions to tell invasion story: Monsters takes the well-trodden alien invasion story and turns it on its ear by having characters live in a world where the creatures have been among us for some time. The story happens around the aliens, not because of them.
RIM unveils PlayBook tablet with dual-core CPU, 1080p support: RIM took the wraps off its long-rumored BlackBerry tablet, called the BlackBerry PlayBook. Running a dual-core ARM processor and powered by a QNX-based OS, the device is slated for release early next year.
Some Android apps caught covertly sending GPS data to advertisers: Researchers have found that a significant number of Android applications are sharing sensitive user data with third parties without providing sufficient notification. The study raises questions about the privacy implications of mobile data collection.


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Auto Publishers Price Starting at
*Based on model year EPA mileage ratings. Use for comparison purposes only. Your atual mileage will vary, depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle, driving conditions, battery pack age/condition (hybrid only) and other factors.VIEW OUR INVENTORY
Good handling for a small SUV, seating for up to seven, available all-wheel drive, powerful V6 engine
The Dodge Journey continues on into 2014 without any notable changes.