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Ryan Braun among players set to participate in 'Brewers On Deck'
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Good for him, I'm glad to hear it. It's a step in the right direction.Hide replies
Do you think he had a choice...?
Everybody has a choice. Like he did when he "chose" to use the roids.
I guess its the same choice you have when a skunk crosses your trail, you can act defiant and harass the skunk, or you can try and maintain the freshness from the morning shower.
People are so strange about this Braun thing. He took drugs to get over a nagging injury playing a kids game as a grown up. Too many people act like he impregnated their own daughter - its just not that personal
It is personal when he lies and denies reality. Who do you think is paying Mr Braun if not the fans buying tickets and beer?
Kareem, you do speak the truth. He did take it to help him with the constant injuries he had in 2011, without it the fans wouldn't have had that run in 2011 to enjoy so in some respects he did do it for the fans.
He should have to stand by the door and shake everybody's hand with an appology as they walk in.Hide replies
Oh geesch, maybe they could hand out cute little paddles with 'braunie' burned in the blade, and then he will be instructed to bend over and pronounce, 'thank you, may I have another.'
Q: Let's say I am looking to get an edge on the competition, what and who would you recommend for me to get that edge?
No Tony Bosch on the list. That's a positive.Hide replies
There were no positives in Mr Brausn's tests. Well, only that one that was thrown out because of procedural problems.
well here is the opportunity for all those that are still soar about it to go chew Braun out, and it is free. So after that Sunday... no excuses... you have your chance.
Top ten things heard at the ryan braun event
10. Mr. Braun do you take your coffee black or with crème?
9. Mr. Braun will you please sign this steroid gummy lozenge for my kids?
8. Hey if you ever need a clean urine sample I am so your dude
7. Say ryan how's the restaurant business going?
6. Did you ever stop to think what would Bob Uecker do?
5. I will stick by you through this but if you send a picture of your stuff over the internet I am out
4. Is that ryan out there washing Anttanasio's Mercedes?
3. Arod eh? What a tool
2. Ryan who I am here to see Mark Reynolds
1. I believe in forgiveness, I am a Christian, but you sir are a $%*&(*
missing the event. Rickie weeks, Carlos Gomez,Jean Segura, Aramis Ramirez, the chubby pitcher and his chubby catcher. that so-called first baseman..Francisco . Way to support the community and YOUR team boys...I guess they can't afford the airfare.Hide replies
Don't know about Weeks, but did you ever stop and consider that when you live in a foreign country and need a visa to travel for work, you can't always just hop a plane to the US without a lot of effort?
I'm with David. Those guys have to go through paperwork nightmare just to make it to spring training.
Doesn't speak to Rickie though.
Heard Weeks is getting or recently got married. The guy has given plenty of his time to Milwaukee and its fans that he can take some of his own time in the offseason. Ridiculous to question a guy for not showing up when he always has in the past.
If you request Braun to sign your jersey will he sigh it"" Ryan
Fraud'' instead of Braun.
Oh, The Cheating Liar is making an appearance, To Bad!!Hide replies
Where is Bad?
I am disappointed that none of the Latin contingent is going to be there. Last year it was nice to see Carlos Gomez, Wily Peralta, and I received Martin Maldonado's autograph, so I know it's possible they all could have came. Yes, I understand the Visa issue, but at least someone could have came. Maybe the cold weather is keeping them away. I'm still coming to visit family and to attend the event with my daughter - should be fun.
Latest Brewers Blog Posts
- Having to shut down Domingo Santana again 'a big setback'
- Jean Segura, Rickie Weeks return to Miller Park
- Will Middlebrooks placed on DL; Keon Broxton recalled
- Brewers try for series victory against Cubs
- Zach Davies tries to continue his hot streak
- Brewers GM David Stearns is active in trade talks
- Brewers open series vs. Cubs with Jimmy Nelson on mound
- Joe Adcock to be inducted into Miller Park Walk of Fame next Friday
- Jake Elmore gets a start in center field for series finale
- Adrian Houser undergoes Tommy John surgery
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We stayed here the other night and I had the best night sleep I have had in a LONG TIME. The beds are so comfortable and the walls are perfectly insulated to where you can't hear your neighbors. According to other reviews it was suggested asking for a room facing the back parking lot to avoid street noise. We did just that and we received the last room on the first floor (#111) right next to the door to the parking garage. Other than hearing the door to the garage shutting a few times during the day, our room was amazingly quiet! Our friends had a room close to the lobby and on the street side but they didn't seem to have any complaints. I was in there for a while and heard a couple trucks pass but other than that it seemed fine.
One thing I want to point out is the woman at the front desk who checked us in was incredibly sweet and went above and beyond to help my friends and I get our rooms and get situated. She was so nice and helpful it made our stay so much better.
I would have given this hotel 5 stars except our friends' room wasn't available until 5pm (we got there at 3pm) and we found out it was because of a lack of blankets. My friends literally had to wait for the blankets in that room to be washed and dried before they could get their room! That is CRAZY. The owner really needs to consider investing in a few more blankets because that is just ridiculous. That said, the wonderful housekeeping staff was always seen working diligently at cleaning every room. They were so pleasant every time we would see them in the hall. They are truly the most pleasant staff here!! We made sure to tip them well. (They deserve it!)
The food area was very decent and had everything we needed to grab a bite to eat and start our day. Bonus points to the staff for keeping it clean and stocked with fresh food!
There is a CVS right next door (and not "too close" if that makes any sense) for anything you might want to pick up that you forgot to pack. It has a Chase ATM inside too. So nice!
For awesome Mexican food close by, we grabbed a bite at Mexico Lindo (1060 S Garey Ave) just down the street and every one of us thought it was delicious! (My favs were the crispy tacos and their salsa - SO GOOD!!)
This was my first trip to Pomona and I will definitely be coming back! The town is super cute around 2nd street with lots of antique stores, records stores and amazing food. We will for sure be staying at the Comfort Inn when we come back!!
- Official Description (provided by the hotel):
- The hotel is located close to all of the nearby Pomona attractions, shops, businesses and restaurants. This hotel features large guest rooms equipped with micro-fridges, 32-inch Plasma TVs, irons and ironing boards, coffee makers and hair dryers. Daily continental breakfast is offered to all of our guests. ... more less
- Reservation Options:
- TripAdvisor is proud to partner with Booking.com, Choice Hotels, Expedia, Priceline, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Orbitz, Travelocity and Odigeo so you can book your Comfort Inn Pomona reservations with confidence. We help millions of travelers each month to find the perfect hotel for both vacation and business trips, always with the best discounts and special offers.
- Also Known As:
- Comfort Inn Pomona Hotel Pomona

subset: commoncrawl


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This historic flag is on display at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin. It was carried by the first Texas Infantry/Hood's Texas Brigade in the War Between the States. Tradition maintains that it was made by Mrs. Louis Wigfall out of her wedding dress. This is one of 29 flags in the exhibit, "Texas Flags: 1836-1945," starting Saturday. The exhibit runs through Aug. 22.
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How to know a HTTPS connection in use is TLS-based or SSL-based?
If I want to use TLS instead of SSL in Apache2, is there anything special to config?
Does it matter? TLS can be considered just a newer version of SSL, and SSLv3 is still secure and used.
"HTTPS" doesn't imply any version. By default, Apache's
(It would be helpful if you updated your question with why do you want TLS in particular.)


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ODT Online
ODT /directory
In typical superhero fashion he arrived in the city under the
cloak of darkness on Wednesday night and was busy until 3am
yesterday packaging up food parcels for flatters in the
student area.
He hit the streets yesterday morning to deliver packages
containing ''the essentials'', such as toilet paper and
spaghetti, and ''treats'' such as chocolate biscuits and
He was greeted by cheers and applause at a flat in Cumberland
One of the flatters, Ollie Nislord, said it was ''a good day
to be a second-year [student]''.
Flatman was pleased with the reception he received.
''It's been an awesome morning,'' he said.
''The students just love it.''
His work in his hometown of Christchurch mostly involved
families now, so he was happy to be ''coming back down here
... and getting back into what I started it [helping
students] for,'' he said.
He aimed to make two trips to Dunedin a year and Orientation
Week was a highlight.
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publication, Property
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text:
This was George Harrison's third night performing with Delaney & Bonnie, the husband and wife act then on a brief tour of the UK.
Harrison was there for five of the tour's six dates, playing two shows each night. He appeared in Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool and Croydon. He didn't perform at the Newcastle shows on 5 December, instead briefly leaving the tour to visit his unwell mother.
Several of the shows were also recorded for possible album release - the result was 1970's Delaney & Bonnie & Friends On Tour With Eric Clapton. Harrison was credited as "Mysterioso".
Harrison had previously performed at Sheffield's City Hall with The Beatles on five occasions: 2 March 1963, 16 March 1963, 25 May 1963, 2 November 1963 and 9 November 1964.


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Cuomo Agrees to Taxi Bill That Adds $1 Billion to NYC Revenue
Governor Andrew Cuomo struck a deal with lawmakers that will let New York City sell an additional 2,000 taxi medallions and permit so-called car services to pick up passengers who hail them outside Manhattan.
The bill will generate $1 billion in revenue for the city and help reduce a $4.6 billion budget gap for the fiscal year that starts July 1, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday in a press briefing in Albany, the capital, to announce the deal.
"The new law will make getting around town easier, safer and less costly for millions of New Yorkers," Bloomberg said in a statement.
The agreement caps Cuomo's first year as governor, during which the Legislature passed a property-tax limit, a bill legalizing same-sex marriage and a tax-code overhaul that raised rates for those earning $2 million or more and cut them for the middle class.
"This is probably for 30 or 40 years a situation that defied solution and in that way it's fitting that we end this year on this piece of business," the 54-year-old Democrat said.
The Legislature, which approved the taxi measure proposed by Bloomberg in June, sent it to Cuomo Dec. 9, starting a 10-day clock for him to either veto it or sign it.
Cuomo said the process was "truly peculiar" because it was approved by lawmakers as a "placeholder bill, and everybody was going to get together to work out the plan."
The agreement requires all 2,000 of the new cabs to be wheelchair-accessible. Cuomo had threatened to veto the legislation unless the new cabs could accommodate the disabled.
Street Pickups
Car services, also known as livery cabs, will also be permitted to pick up passengers who hail them on the street in northern Manhattan and the other boroughs -- areas of "nearly non-existent taxi availability," according to an Assembly memorandum. Previously, only yellow cabs were permitted to pick up fares on the street, while car services were legally limited to calls dispatched by radio.
In each of the next three years, the city will sell 6,000 livery-cab licenses, 20 percent of which will be for vehicles that are accessible to disabled passengers, Cuomo said. Buyers of the accessible licenses will receive grants of as much as $15,000 to retrofit vehicles or buy new ones, he said.
"The governor and I are going to have big smiles on our faces tonight," Bloomberg said late yesterday. "This is something that was three decades in the making, but tonight it is getting done."
Diluting Value
Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said last week that new medallion sales would dilute the value of his members' investments. The medallions sell for as much as $1 million at auction. The city has about 13,200 medallions.
Allowing "hailing privileges" to extend beyond yellow cabs will hurt drivers who now have exclusive rights to that business, Mateo said before the agreement was reached.
"Once you take away the exclusive right to pick up street hails, the medallion is no longer going to be worth as much as it is now, and that will make it more difficult to obtain financing, as it won't retain its value," Mateo said.
The sale of additional taxi licenses may drive down shares of Medallion Financial Corp., which owns medallions and lends money to buyers. The governor's announcement came the same day Medallion Financial filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to sell as much as $100 million in securities. The shelf filing permits the company to register the securities in advance and sell them when financing needs arise or market conditions are favorable.
Medallion Financial gained 11 cents, or about 1 percent, to $11.53 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading yesterday. The shares have gained 41 percent this year, compared with a 7.21 percent drop in the Russell 2000 Financial Services Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.


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January 1, 2012
How would you like to win a brand new trolling motor from MinnKota? What about a new GPS unit from Lowrance? Or how about a $250 gift certificate from Power Pole, a $100 gift certificate from Ranger Boats or a $25 gift card from Evinrude? Interested? What about an autographed CD cover from country music star George Strait? Or a free bait and tackle package? Or autographed apparel from an FLW Tour pro?
If the aforementioned prize packages have piqued your interest, and you're a member of FLW, you're in luck. Because starting Jan. 1, all FLW members will be able to participate in the "Member Giveaway" promotion - a free monthly drawing which will award thousands of dollars in valuable sponsor prizes exclusively to FLW members throughout the 2012 season.
Taking advantage of the new FLW "Member Giveaway" program is easy. Simply go to the "Member Giveaway" page during each month's promotion, type in your FLW membership number and voila, you're entered to win. FLW members will be permitted to enter the monthly giveaway one time each and every day throughout the duration of the promotion. Then, at the end of the month, multiple FLW members will be randomly selected and awarded one of the promoted prize packages.
For more information, click here.
January `Member Giveaway' highlights
The following FLW sponsor prizes will be awarded during the January promotion:
• MinnKota Talon Shallow Water Anchor
• Lowrance Out&Back waterproof GPS unit
• George Strait autographed CD cover (three prizes)
• FLW hat with Walmart FLW Tour pro autograph (17 prizes)
If you're already an FLW member and would like to sign up for this month's promotion, click here.
If you're not an FLW member but would like to join and gain immediate access to the promotion, click here. For more information on the benefits that come with an FLW membership, click here.


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Kodak Zx5 128MB Camcorder
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User ReviewRead All Reviews »
Quality from built in
bynhtruong Jul 22, 2010
Helpful? 1 Helpfuls Was this review helpful?
Pros Easy to Use, Great Design, Compact, Lightweight
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Good For: Travel, Everyday Use
It's cheap, it's waterproof, has decent video performance, is compact and uses SD memory cards with a rechargeable battery and you can add a microphone. Kodak hits a home run. Some pros is: Excellent performance at closer distances, waterproof, ability to add a separate microphone. Good price.
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I have a question, is it possible to get the url from the history.go(-2)? Assuming i don't know that url.
I need the url, because I want to check where the visitor was redirected from. there are two cases: 1 facebook, 2 directly on the website. the second step is an automatic user check. the third step is miscoded, but if I go back to step 1. I can bypass the error. with everything working fine. the problem is that I don't know where to redirect (being two forwarders).


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Focus On FinanceBrian Jackson's blog, focused on applying Microsoft technology within the financial services industry, especially banking.http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/atom.aspxTelligent Evolution Platform Developer Build (Build: 5.6.50428.7875)2006-07-20T14:42:00Z中国工商银行很大!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2007/07/30/4125678.aspx2007-07-30T07:49:00Z2007-07-30T07:49:00Z
Wow, according to Banking Business Review, ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, aka, 中国工商银行 [zhong guo gong shang yin hang]) is now the world's largest bank, as measured by value, displacing Citigroup. Another report suggests that ICBC is considering overseas expansion, including Russia and the US.

It is really quite interesting to witness the rise of China, and of Chinese banks, to world prominence. I had the pleasure of visiting ICBC about 6 months ago, and was very impressed with the people I met. However, they face a lot of challenges moving forward. As the BBR article, above, suggests, there are concerns about their compliance standards that may hamper their expansion overseas. I also think that the big 4 Chinese banks face less favorable customer demographics than some of the newer entrants (such as Citi, which can now conduct local RMB business) who can cater to the more affluent (and more profitable) urban segments.

However, stiff foreign competition is putting pressure on the Big 4 to improve compliance and to sharpen their focus on global measures of competitiveness (case in point). Some observers are thoroughly unconvinced. I don't claim to know how this will all play out, and lacking significant disposable income, I don't have any skin in the game. Given the uncertainty, I'm happy to be an interested observer.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxInnovation Lives!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/09/08/746377.aspx2006-09-08T17:34:17Z2006-09-08T17:34:17Z
After reading so much press lately about how banking is becoming increasingly commoditized, it's great to see a story like this over at Finextra: "Wachovia releases online retail imaging tool." By combining image-capture with on online exception handling tool Wachovia has reduced exception-related payment delays by as much as 75%.

Very recently, I read a story about how lockbox processing, in particular, was a commodity service that banks would be wise to outsource. Kudos to Wachovia for proving that innovation is alive and well. I guess the question now is, how long will it take for everyone else to copy this capability?
bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxScope of the Firmhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/09/07/744460.aspx2006-09-07T17:27:34Z2006-09-07T17:27:34Z
There are a couple of interesting tidbits in the news today that illustrate the choices that banks currently face in deciding how to scope their activities.

Reduce scope: Right here in my hometown of Cleveland, OH, KeyCorp has agreed to sell McDonald Investments to UBS for around $280 million. As the article points out, Key will continue to provide a number of investment services, and will retain some of the operational capabilities that it acquired with McDonald. However, KeyCorp's move clearly indicates their belief that retail advisory and brokerage services should not be a core component of their value chain. UBS, however, is cited as a better "strategic fit" for a strong regional player like McDonald, as UBS "is dedicated to providing the necessary capital, technology and management resources required to expand this organization," according to Key Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Henry Meyer.

Increase scope: On the other side of the planet, Kiwibank's New Zealand customers can now take advantage of a wide range of international accounts and services, such as cross border funds transfers, trade services, foreign currency accounts, and forward contracts. Did Kiwibank invest massive capital to build these offerings organically? No, Kiwibank used the concept of open architecture by partnering with Citigroup to offer these services thru Citi's "Cross-Border Payment Solutions for Banks." Technology's role is paramount in an offering like this. CitiDirect(R) Online Banking is the underlying, web-based delivery platform for these types of services, providing Citi with an excellent channel for getting more value out of their global financial network, while allowing regional institutions to "look small but act big" by providing a range of services that would be infeasible to build organically.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxThe End is Nearhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/09/05/741299.aspx2006-09-05T19:55:47Z2006-09-05T19:55:47Z
I spent most of week-before last in Mexico City, speaking at the CL@B conference. At one of the side events, a reception hosted by Getronics, one of our major partners, I had the chance to speak with James Gardner, who asked me if I intended to speak about anything "interesting or controversial." Considering that this was my first speaking engagement since taking my new role on the world-wide team, I said that I hoped for an interesting talk, but controversial certainly wasn't on the agenda.

"I see," he said. "I opened my talk by telling them they'd all be out of business in 10 years." ZOINKS!

Combine this with American Banker's 3 part series on the "end-game" for U.S. Banking, and the overall industry mood seems somewhat fatalistic, indeed. What are the trends driving these radical predictions for the future of the industry, and what is technology's role in aiding (or resisting) them?

Disintermediation, the quintessential b-school dotcom buzzword, is alive and well. Gardner's forecast of doom rests primarily on several classic disintermediation plays. First, peer-to-peer lending schemes like Prosper and Zopa, which seek to match lenders with borrowers directly, while still allowing the lender to manage risk thru diversification. Second, increased competition in core banking activities from unlikely sources, to wit, PayPal. Over $8 billion US worth of payments were processed thru PayPal in Q1 2006, and the service boasts over 100 million user accounts. Is this a possible threat to a bank's payment processing business? Absolutely.

Considering that the core function of a bank is to act as an intermediary between borrowers and lenders, the emergence of viable disintermediaries is a source of concern. I think it remains to be seen whether these new disintermediaries are merely a threat or a clear and present danger, as these new institutions' ability to manage risk over the long term is still unknown. Nonetheless, complacency would not be a good approach for the incumbents.

Commoditization. Increasingly, innovations pioneered by one financial institution are quickly copied by all competitors. Commoditization increases the threat of substitutes and eliminates the "imperfect imitability" of innovation-based inputs. In the short run, the largest banks will benefit from this phenomena, as the truly scarce input becomes the scale at which they can make investments. As Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis pointed out in a recent American Banker interview, "Look at what size allows you to do when you want to make an investment. We made a $675 million investment last year [in the global investment bank] and never asked for forbearance from analysts." In addition to sheer scale, brand power leans in favor of the largest players.

Open Architecture. Some large universal banks, offering a range of products and services, have come to the conclusion that they do not wish to organically provide all of these financial products. Everything from major products like retirement accounts all the way down to gift cards at the teller counter can be offered thru "open architecture," another catch-phrase that essentially means acting as a distribution channel for other firms' financial products.

Taken together, commoditization and open architecture are causing the industry to re-think the horizontal and vertical integration decisions of the past several years, resulting in a slew of both M&A and divestiture activity. Why not outsource a commodity line-of-business? Why broaden our investment product portfolios thru open architecture? What product or service do we provide better than anyone else? Questions like these are sure to be debated as banks try to find the optimal mix of organic growth and open architecture offerings to maximize profits moving forward.

So where does technology fit? In short, I think it all comes back to two things: SOA and composite applications.

SOA is an absolute good. The ability to integrate systems based upon open XML standards will allow big banks to tailor their value-chain more optimally. One of the classic arguments in favor of vertical integration is the elimination of transaction costs, because it is simply too costly to contract and coordinate activities across firm boundaries. However, service-oriented architectures hold the promise of greatly reducing the friction of crossing firm boundaries, especially in a areas like financial services where the transaction involves pure information (as opposed to physical transfer of "real world" boxes, steel coils, or hog bellies).

Smaller institutions likewise benefit from SOA, as it enables them to build diverse product portfolios thru the use of open architecture. In this regard, community banks can look small, providing the local expertise and personal touch of a small-town bank, but act big by providing an array of products and services that rivals their massive competitors.

Composite applications provide a user-friendly, integrated front-end that looks like one application but is actually talking to many back-end systems. A composite app is "composed" of many autonomous pieces. Here, "autonomous" means "not sharing programmatic type information", but if that's too geeky for you, consider the benefits: multiple application teams concurrently developing sub-pieces of the composite application, which can then be brought together in different combinations to meet different business needs. For example, a teller may need to see a common customer module, a cash deposit module, and a bill-payment module. A call center agent, however, may need the same customer module along with an escalation management module and sales module. Because the composed pieces are loosely-coupled from one another and communicate across defined boundaries using XML messages, composite applications are like an SOA-based desktop application.

The type of flexibility provided by composite applications is valuable to organizations of all sizes. For large banks, the ability to allow geographically and organizationally dispersed development teams to create and deploy (and fix) their applications independently, without affecting other UI components is a huge benefit. Citigroup's Citivision application (case study here) is a great example of this benefit in action.

For small banks that build their value chains thru open architecture, the desktop can become an unusable mess of internal and business partner systems--unless you build a composite application that smoothly integrates all of these applications into a single UI.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxMicrosoft FSG Organization Announcementshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/08/30/731815.aspx2006-08-30T17:35:00Z2006-08-30T17:35:00Z
CNET has the low-down on our current organization here. We have a great set of people in key leadership roles, so I'm very excited about this year.

I'm part of David Vander's worldwide banking org, as an Industry Technology Strategist focused on Channel Renewal. This essentially means helping customers understand how to apply our technology to banking channel distribution issues, things like Windows ATMs, branch infrastructure, and call center.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxEvents & Announcementshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/07/31/684689.aspx2006-08-01T04:00:00Z2006-08-01T04:00:00Z
I'd like to pass along these announcements (regarding case studies, events, and tools), courtesy of Mike Wons, another member of our team.

Financial Services Firm Supports Growth Through Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization

HSBC acquired a large local bank in Mexico with more than 1,400 branch locations and wanted to take control of its decentralized IT environment. Manual deployment of software applications and security updates could take months, and the company lacked tools to monitor its IT resources effectively. To improve system management, HSBC Mexico implemented a centralized solution based on the Windows Server 2003 operating system and the Active Directory service, Systems Management Server 2003, and Operations Manager 2005. Now the company can automatically install updates, get new financial service software to market quickly, and cut IT travel costs. It can also monitor systems in real time and plan for change and business growth. HSBC Mexico estimates that effective management of IT resources will help it support up to 30 percent growth with its existing infrastructure. Full case study and one page PPT slide on the effort is posted at: http://members.microsoft.com/CustomerEvidence/Search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=14540&LanguageID=1

Unwrapped for Financial Services III - September 6-12, 2006

Now in its third year, the Unwrapped for Financial Services webcast series is back! Sessions will be both technical and strategic in nature, covering the newest Microsoft solutions for Capital Markets, Retail Banks, Corporate and Investment Banking and Insurance firms. All the sessions will be presented live. Join us for this new webcast series starting September 6, 2006, where we will highlight common concerns, case studies and best practices within financial services. View available sessions and registration information at the following location: http://www.financialdevelopers.com/registration.aspx

Regulatory Compliance Planning Guide

The Regulatory Compliance Planning Guide is intended to help IT professionals and others understand steps that can be taken to help address regulatory mandates. The Planning Guide: Shows IT professionals how they can use an IT controls framework to help address IT compliance requirements; Includes a mapping of several significant regulations and standards, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to a sample control framework and Directs customers to Microsoft resources that can help them address their compliance requirements. The 71 page Regulatory Compliance Planning Guide is available for download at the following location: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/topics/complianceandpolicies/compliance/rcguide/default.mspx?mfr=true

MSDN Architecture Center Channel Launched for Financial Services

New MSDN Solution Architecture Center has been launched to provide customers and partners with guidance around architecture challenges in Financial Services. This portion of MSDN is targeted toward the architects focused on solutions and compliments the Financial Developers site (www.financialdevelopers.com) to provide several great resources to help support our Industry story in Financial Services. The site is accessible at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/industry/finservs/

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxA Few Branch Items from Tech Readyhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/07/31/684527.aspx2006-08-01T00:42:00Z2006-08-01T00:42:00Z
I'm finally recovering from Tech Ready. Last week was incredibly busy, and I learned a lot about recently-released and upcoming products, especially those that have the potential to help our customers improve their branch banking infrastructure.

All of these products and features share a common goal: reducing the "branch tax", which is a more concise way of saying "the inherent overhead involved with setting up and managing information systems at a remote branch location."

In the category of general guidance around planning for branch deployments, the Branch Office Infrastructure Solution for R2 has been updated. One of the key improvements to BOIS is the inclusion of modular System Design References (SDRs) that walk you thru the Design Considerations, Design Stages, and Design Options for a variety of subject areas (e.g., Directory Services, File Services, etc.). This approach makes it easier to tailor our guidance to fit more easily with the heterogeneous environments that actually exist in the real world of bank branches.

Other interesting tidbits, in no particular order:

Longhorn Server Core will be incredibly useful within the branch. Server Core allows you to install a minimal set of Windows features onto a machine, and supports the following roles: DHCP server, File Server, DNS Server, Active Directory. There isn't even a GUI installed on a Server Core box, so admins can either use a local command prompt or remotely attach via MMC. The net result is simplified maintenance, reduced hardware requirements, and a much smaller surface area for attackers to target. Since most Windows Updates address client products like Office or Internet Explorer, which won't even be installed on Server Core, there will be less need to patch these machines over time. The Server Core team has a blog, here.

Improvements to DFS replication and GPO storage formats should greatly reduce the bandwidth required for AD synchronization, as described here. There's also a ton of DFS info here, including a branch demo.

SMB 2.0 in Vista should go a long way toward making UNC pathnames in email less irritating to those of us who work in remote locations. Remote file copy, networking browsing, etc. consumes less bandwidth and the branch user experience is a lot better. The CFS Team Blog has more detail, here.

Data Protection Manager (DPM), which is shipping, and supports platforms back to Windows 2000, is another valuable addition to the management stack. I think the key benefit in the branch scenario is the ability for users to recover their own data, without requiring intervention from an administrator. DPM and DFS have similar roles, but this datasheet explains the differences.

There are more features, and I'll keep blogging them as I run across them, but this is a good start. By addressing manageability and bandwidth consumption, we're helping to reduce the branch tax and make life in the branch more productive.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxWorkflow In Financial Institutionshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/07/25/677628.aspx2006-07-25T08:18:00Z2006-07-25T08:18:00Z
Tech-Ready (Microsoft's internal technical conference) opened today, and I spent most of the day digging into our workflow stack, in addition to getting some hands-on experience with System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006. I'll discuss DPM in another post, though. For now, I'd like to take a look at what's coming in our workflow stack and how it applies to the banking industry.

Just to get some context on the state of workflow within the industry today, consider these recent articles.

"Automated workflow is the holy grail of back office efficiency for financial services providers" according to research conducted by EasyLink Services and released to Finextra. Based upon interviews with 50 CIOs, 63% identified workflow as the greatest opportunity, while 32% cited improved document management capabilities as the primary concern. In the context of how Microsoft envisions workflow, I think these two priorities have some interesting linkage that I'll discuss shortly.

Bill McFarland, in an article on GonzoBanker, observes that "the procedures and processes involved in the creation and maintenance of borrower, note and collateral files" are still "stuck in the '50s" in terms of automation. He then goes on to describe a host of well-automated deposit-side business process workflows, which stand in stark contrast to the largely manual, paper-based processes associated with commercial lending.

The type of automation that Bill describes when he asks the reader to imagine a better workflow process consists of two basic categories of activities:

Document-centric activities, like gathering appraisals and other supporting documents into the loan file and making this material electronically available to all the parties at the bank who need it (such as credit analysts).

System-centric activities, like automatic updates between the lending system, the core system, and other information systems within the bank to ensure that all enterprise systems reflect current information about the borrower.

Revisiting the CIO survey, I think the people who cited workflow and those who cited document management share a common set of concerns in many cases. Perhaps the document management crowd simply hoped for improvements in areas like version control and records management, but even these types of document-centric features are valuable only within the context of a business process--aka, a workflow--that requires this type of functionality. Other document management features, like routing and approval of forms, are really just a specialized case of workflow.

We call workflows that combine both document-centric and system-centric activities within a unified framework "People Ready Processes" (a not-so-surprising tag line, if you watch enough TV to have seen our ads lately). Traditionally, SharePoint has been our delivery vehicle for document-centric processes, while BizTalk handles the system-centric side of things. This dichotomy has been a source of confusion in many cases, and throwing Windows Workflow Foundation into the mix has added to the confusion.

Moving foward, WF will be the underlying workflow infrastructure across our products, which will help to reduce confusion, and also provide a bridge between the system-centric and document-centric approaches to workflow. For example, consider a lending scenario that starts with an online application. The processing logic for this loan application includes a set of BizTalk rules and orchestrations that pull in data from credit agencies and other internal systems.

Assuming that (for some reason) our rules indicate that the application requires manual review and the collection of additional documentation, we could then "drop out" of the BizTalk workflow and into a SharePoint workflow that users interact with via Office. When we've collected all of the required documents and completed the SharePoint workflow, we could then smoothly return control to the BizTalk workflow. Because the underlying workflow engine is the same across products, our process can span a variety of server and client products, allowing us to choose the right tool for the job at each step of our workflow.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxSQL Injection Attacks on the Rise at Bankshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/07/20/673076.aspx2006-07-20T22:10:00Z2006-07-20T22:10:00Z
Finextra reports that SQL injection attacks against banks are skyrocketing.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen various data-driven sites fall over when I (innocently enough, I swear) enter text containing quotation marks. I wince every time I see something like:

Invalid syntax near '''.

This generally indicates that the code behind the site is concatenating strings in order to form SQL queries, and that the developer didn't properly safeguard against malformed input. Not only does this cause non-malicious queries like mine to blow up, it also indicates that the site is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, which allow a malicious user to run arbitrary SQL statements against the database. This could be used for malicious DML, like:

SELECT CreditCardNumber FROM Customers

Or even for malicious DDL, like:

DROP TABLE Customers

The severity of what is possible really depends upon the account that is being used for database access. This account should be a least-privileged user account, but often it is a high-powered admin account, so a lot of bad things can happen.

We provide extensive guidance on how to avoid SQL injection attacks in this "How To" article from Microsoft Patterns & Practices. The classic Writing Secure Code by Howard and LeBlanc also covers this topic very well. In short, developers need to take a "defense in depth" approach to this problem, beginning at the UI, repeated in the middle tier, and finally safe-guarded at the database level thru the use of a low-privileged account.

Bottom line, there's no magic bullet, but approaches for protecting against SQL injection attacks are well-known and well-documented.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxHello World!http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bjacks/archive/2006/07/20/673018.aspx2006-07-20T21:42:00Z2006-07-20T21:42:00Z
For the inaugural entry of my new blog, I'd like to introduce myself and let you know what I'll be blogging about here.

My name is Brian Jackson, and I am an Industry Technology Strategist on the Worldwide Financial Services team at Microsoft. This is a new role for me, and I'm really excited about working with our banking customers to help them make the most of their investment in Microsoft technology.

Some of you may know me from my previous role as "CCF guy." In my new role, I'll still be talking about CCF when it makes sense for our FSG customers, but my technical scope will be broader, so I'll also cover many other interesting technologies, such as BizTalk, HIS, and our branch infrastructure offerings. Initially, I'll be very focused on our Channel Renewal suite of offerings, described here.

My CCF responsibilities for non-FSG customers will be cleanly transitioned to other folks here at Microsoft who can continue to work with these customers.

This blog will be focused on Microsoft technology within the financial enterprise. I'll track new developments in our technology stack, industry news, and try whenever possible to show the connections between the two. I also have a poorly-maintained personal blog here, so I won't be posting pictures of my dog or any non-professional material here on my MSDN blog.

So.... let's get on with it.

bjackshttp://blogs.msdn.com/bjacks/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashx


text:
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Kenneth Starr's investigators alleged for the first time Thursday that a fraudulent loan to Susan McDougal in the 1980s was used to retire a $27,600 debt in President Clinton's name that was taken out for their Whitewater land venture.
In opening testimony at McDougal's obstruction of justice and contempt trial, FBI agent Mike Patkus told jurors he would have liked to ask her "whether Bill Clinton had any knowledge" about the link between the two loans but she refused to answer questions before a grand jury.
Prosecutors have used the early stages of Mrs. McDougal's trial to air evidence they say calls into question the president's sworn testimony during a 1996 criminal trial.
In the face of Patkus' testimony, McDougal lawyer Mark Geragos attacked Starr's tactics. He said prosecutors had let McDougal "languish in jail" and did not even try to question her about the Clinton loan while they attended to the needs of her ex-husband, who was cooperating with the investigation.
Under questioning from Geragos, Patkus told how Jim McDougal had been moved from a Kentucky prison he did not like to one in Texas he favored.
The prison move is "personally offensive," said Geragos, who suggested that Starr had interceded with the federal Bureau of Prisons to arrange it.
In the 1996 trial, Clinton testified he never received any loans from the failed savings and loan owned by James and Susan McDougal and also knew nothing about the fraudulent $300,000 loan she received in 1986.
Patkus testified that using microfilm records he discovered that the McDougals' S&L had made out a loan and cashier's check totaling $27,600 to then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton in 1982.
The check - which does not bear Clinton's endorsement - paid off an earlier debt in the Whitewater real estate venture started by the Clintons, McDougal and her ex-husband, James, who died last year.
Patkus then traced for the jury a series of complex transactions that he said showed how the 1982 Clinton loan came to be reimbursed through the $300,000 loan McDougal took out from a Small Business Administration-backed lender four years later.
The agent said that McDougal paid off part of the Clinton loan and that Whitewater real estate salesman Chris Wade paid off the rest, using money he borrowed from Madison Guaranty.
The FBI agent testified that the Wade loan was eventually paid off with a check from Whitewater, which was replenished with money from a bank loan to the McDougals, who then used money from the $300,000 loan to McDougal to pay off the bank.
Patkus testified that he discovered the microfilmed copy of the Clinton check in early December 1996 after James McDougal tipped off Starr's office about it. Starr's office got the original check in 1997 from the trunk of an abandoned car hit by a tornado south of Little Rock.
Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, has suggested in the past that James McDougal simply made out the check and that Clinton didn't know about it.
Outside the courthouse, however, Starr deputy Hickman Ewing said that "the question remains whether Bill Clinton knew about it or not."
Of McDougal, who listened intently to Patkus' testimony, Ewing said, "She smiled in the courtroom like maybe she knows the answers." Patkus revealed that he and another FBI agent had discovered a handwritten document from Madison Guaranty identifying apparent borrowers. "B Clinton" is among the names on the paper, Patkus said.
McDougal has repeatedly refused to testify about the loans, despite being granted limited immunity from prosecution after being convicted in May 1996 on four felony counts regarding the $300,000 loan which was deposited in her and her husband's personal checking account.
She says she knows of no crimes involving the Clintons and that Starr's office is trying to get her to lie about the first family.
After the Whitewater prosecutors made their comments Thursday about linking the $300,000 loan to Clinton, a House Judiciary Committee official asked the local federal court to supply it with key documents from the case. Majority Republican officials said they did not make the request. Democratic officials could not immediately be reached.
The committee, which is the one that voted to impeach Clinton, called the district court clerk's office seeking a copy of McDougal's indictment, her request to have the indictment dismissed, the government's response to the request and the judge's order turning down McDougal.
The clerk's office was carrying out the request.
McDougal was charged with two counts of criminal contempt and one count of obstruction of justice after refusing to testify before the grand jury in September 1996 and April 1998.
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text:
On the isolated, windswept island of Hopeless, Maine, a young witch finds an abandoned girl named Salamandra in a gothic house. Salamandra doesnât want to talk about what happened to her parents. She doesnât want to live in the orphanage either, but there isnât much choice. Growing up with ghosts, strange creatures and horrible children would be hard enough work for anyone, but there are also the demons to contend with. And Salamandra isnât sure if she really is an orphan. She hopes so. The alternative would be far worse!
Marvel Assembles an Official Title for Third "Avengers" Movie
Comic Books, Film


text:
Note: The Times Union is not responsible for posts and comments written by non-staff members.
Posts filtered on Tag
Tag: news and events
confused. angry. sad. shock.
By Steph Snyder on July 24, 2012 at 2:00 PM
It was raining and my vacation in WV was winding down, but I still managed to crawl out of bed in a peppy mood this past Friday morning. I sleepily padded to the living room where my step-dad, Dannie, …
Categories: In the News, Social Networking
Tags: facebook | news and events | social media


text: On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 15:44 -0600, Hong Zheng wrote: > > > Hi, all > > > > My configuration is as follows: two directors configured as LVS-NAT or > LVS-DR, 4 GFS nodes as application servers which serve telnet and HTTP > services, 1 GNBD node which has iSCSI connection to our shared storage > server and 1 lock_gulm server. And before we ordered GFS we just used > nfs mount to a file server which is currently a GNBD, but the > performance is so slow for a certain application, since this > application has multiple loops to access large number of data. We > thought GFS is much more powerful than NFS, but not now. Do you have > any idea to tune GFS performance or better configuration for such a > situation? Why are you using GNBD between the GFS nodes and the storage? If your storage is an iSCSI target, run iSCSI initiator on the GFS nodes and get rid of the intermediate step. Kevin


text:
By Kevin Rutherford
Open up your eager eyes: Mr. Brightside is coming back with his second solo release.
Brandon Flowers, frontman of the Killers, announced today (Aug. 27) he'll release his sophomore solo album in 2015, NME reports.
Little is known about the album so far, but Flowers did reveal that he's working withproducer Ariel Rechtshaid (Vampire Weekend's Modern Vampires of the City, Sky Ferreira's Night Time, My Time) for it, as well as the band HAIM. The latter's Danielle Haim sat in with the band on drums during a recent show.
Related: The Killers Turn Iggy Azalea's 'Fancy' into a Piano Ballad: Watch
"He's taking me out of my comfort zone," Flowers said of Rechtshaid. "Normally I make demos and they're pretty similar to how the song ends up. but he'll take a song and be like, 'I hear this'. It's incredible — his palette and his range, what he's able to say. At first we were butting our heads together, but now we're hitting it off."
Flowers also noted that the album won't be bereft of any Las Vegas references, but it will not be the Sin City-inspired record that his first solo release, Flamingo, was.
"People are going to interpret it how they will, but there's only a little bit of Vegas in there," he said.
Flamingo was released in 2010. Meanwhile, the Killers' last album, Battle Born, hit in 2012.
More Killers on Radio.com
- Killers' Ontario Show Features New Song, Interpol Cover
- Kanye West, The Strokes, The Killers Set to Play Governors Ball 2016
- Watch The Killers' New Christmas Video 'Dirt Sledding'
- Brandon Flowers: The Killers Don't Get Their Due, Are One of the Best Recent Bands
- Stream Brandon Flowers of the Killers' New Solo Album 'The Desired Effect'


text:
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- Location: Anywhere in the UK
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Never miss another 'Freeman Street' show
Freeman Street
A Cardiff-based funk and soul band.
Freeman Street tour dates
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Venue Facts
Venue: The Moon Club (Above The Full Moon)
Website: themoonclub.net
Enquiries: 02920 373 022
Disabled Bookings: 02920 373 022
→ Cardiff Central 7 min walk


text:
Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.
The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of "Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states" as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it.
The Republican voter fraud hoax
Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.
Response to 9/11 was 'huge overreaction' - ex-MI5 chief
A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.
Rimington mentions Guantánamo Bay, the practice of extraordinary rendition, and the invasion of Iraq - three issues which the majority in Britain's security and intelligence establishment opposed privately at the time.
She challenges claims, notably made by Tony Blair, that the war in Iraq was not related to the radicalisation of Muslim youth in Britain.
When Greed is Rewarded - Government of Thieves
Just as the Bush regime's wars have been used to pour billions of dollars into the pockets of its military-security donor base, the Paulson bailout looks like a Bush regime scheme to incur $700 billion in new public debt in order to transfer the money into the coffers of its financial donor base. The US taxpayers will be left with the interest payments in perpetuity (or inflation if the Fed monetizes the debt), and the number of Wall Street billionaires will grow. As for the US and European governments' purchases of bank shares, that is just a cover for funneling public money into private hands.
Jewish settlers disrupt Palestinian olive harvest
Jewish settlers punched and kicked two news photographers and a British woman helping Palestinians pick olives in a West Bank town on Saturday and Israeli police responded by stopping the harvest. The scuffle in the town of Hebron was the latest of a series of efforts by settlers living in the occupied land to disrupt an annual harvest critical to many Palestinians' livelihoods.
Witnesses and Reuters television footage showed four Jewish settlers headed into a grove next to a Jewish enclave where a few dozen Israeli, Palestinian and foreign peace activists were helping to pick olives.
In Iraq, The Doctors Are Out
The medical profession in particular has been hollowed out. Iraq's health-care system used to be the envy of the Arab world. Even in the 1990s, when sanctions and Saddam Hussein's worsening misrule crippled much of the country, people came from all over the region to study medicine or seek treatment. But after the U.S. invasion, doctors became targets for ransom kidnappings and assassination. Upwards of 120 physicians were killed.
Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes
Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.
When she tried to vote for candidates running for two open seats on the Supreme Court, the electronic machine canceled her second vote twice.
"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude. When I went to Karen Facemyer [the incumbent Republican state senator], I pushed the Democrat, but it jumped again.
British bombers killed 500,000 in Dresden. Wrong, it was more like 18,000, say German historians
For more than 60 years Britain's Bomber Command led by Arthur 'Bomber' Harris has been vilified for causing up to 500,000 deaths in the carpet bombing of Dresden during World War II.
But now, after a four-year investigation, a panel of German historians has said that the true number of dead from the Allied air raids in January 1945 was between 18,000 and 25,000.
It suited the Nazi propaganda machine to claim that half-a-million women and children had been incinerated in the firestorm. It helped persuade a struggling population that this was awaited them all unless they fought for Nazism with their last breath.
Then the Communist East Germans perpetuated the myth, mindful that it served their purposes by showing the destructiveness of capitalism and fascism combined.
Perino Confirms White House Won't Extend Jobless Benefits, Says People Should Just Find A Job
During today's press briefing, White House press secretary Dana Perino suggested the Bush administration would oppose any effort to extend jobless benefits — a stance the White House has taken before. She explained their position by saying, "we want people to be able to return to the workplace as soon as possible." The suggestion was that extending benefits somehow prevents people from returning to work.
She concluded by saying that "the best way to help" the economy and unemployed people is for unemployed people to simply "get back to work."
New Solar Energy Material Captures Every Color Of The Rainbow
Researchers have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it absorbs all the energy contained in sunlight, and generates electrons in a way that makes them easier to capture.
At this point, the material is years from commercial development, but he added that this experiment provides a proof of concept -- that hybrid solar cell materials such as this one can offer unusual properties.
Page 933 of 1029


text:
by Scott Hawkins
Published by Crown
on June 16, 2015
Genres: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 388
Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss
"Neil Gaiman meets Joe Hill in this astonishingly original, terrifying, and darkly funny contemporary fantasy."
Carolyn's not so different from the other human beings around her. She's sure of it. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. She even remembers what clothes are for.
After all, she was a normal American herself, once.
That was a long time ago, of course--before the time she calls "adoption day," when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.
Father could do strange things. He could call light from darkness. Sometimes he raised the dead. And when he was disobeyed, the consequences were terrible.
In the years since Father took her in, Carolyn hasn't gotten out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient Pelapi customs. They've studied the books in his library and learned some of the secrets behind his equally ancient power.
Sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.
Now, Father is missing. And if God truly is dead, the only thing that matters is who will inherit his library--and with it, power over all of creation.
As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her.
But Carolyn can win. She's sure of it. What she doesn't realize is that her victory may come at an unacceptable price--because in becoming a God, she's forgotten a great deal about being human.
I received this book for free from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
There are (quite) a few things that make me pick up a book immediately. Things I am helpless against. First, putting a book or books on the cover. It appeals to my bookish nature. Second, compare it to a favorite author. I know I shouldn't let this work on me, because more often than not, it doesn't actually work out that way, but I can't help it. Marketing works, sometimes. Lastly, Let me read it for free for a review. I'm a sucker.
The Library at Mount Char has a burnt book on it's cover, with comparisons to Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill, and the publisher let me read it for free FOR MY HONEST OPINION. So I'm going to give it to you: I loved it. So there you go.
I don't know much about Joe Hill. I've only read his comics. So, I'm mainly coming at this as a Neil Gaiman/Fantasy fan. And I felt so many shades of American Gods, in the best possible way, and I also felt shades of something new. Something unique. Something undeniably Scott Hawkins. The world he has created here, the characters, the story; all remarkable. He's created a whole new world, a world where people can become gods, where a Library can hold all the power in the universe, where a person can be brought back to life again and again, and where a person can learn incredible things, like reincarnation, terrible savagery, and startling humanity. And behind it all is the sly, deadpan, quirky voice of a new talent. Surprising at every turn, The Library at Mount Char is not to be missed.
Favorite Bits:
"The librarians I know are into, like, I dunno, tea and cozy mysteries, not breaking and entering."
"Yeah, well. This is a different kind of library."
"It's about the Library," Carolyn said. "Right now the only thing that matters is who takes control of Father's Library."
"Library? Who gives a damn about a library?"
Carolyn rolled her eyes. "Americans."
"With this particular species of crazy, you stop trying to make things better. You start trying to maximize the bad. You pretend to like it. Eventually you start working to make everything as bad as possible. It's an avoidance mechanism." Jennifer looked Carolyn directly in the eyes. "It can't actually work. That's why they call it crazy."
Steve walked over and squatted down. There, almost invisible in the shadows, he found it. "It's a book?"
She smiled. "Of course it's a book."


text:
20 biggest movies at the 2013 box office
Superheroes, comedies and family films rule
11. Thor: The Dark World
U.S.: $202.5 million
Overseas: $427 million
Worldwide: $629.5 million
Lowdown: Messier than its predecessor, the second "Thor" film still managed to shatter the original's domestic and overseas totals. The "Avengers" effect has not waned yet.
Photo Credit: Marvel Studios


text:
Most innovative cars
The car market is fast-moving and extremely competitive, so any manufacturer that isn't constantly innovating will soon get left behind. This is good news for you, the car buyer, as whether it's technology, practicality or even value for money, the boundaries of what you can expect from a car are being pushed forward at a phenomenal rate. Here are 10 new cars that we reckon are amongst the most innovative you can buy today.
Ford B-MAX mini MPV
At first glance, the Ford B-MAX seems to be a pretty ordinary mini-MPV. However, take a closer look and you'll notice there's no central 'B-pillar' between the two doors. When combined with sliding rear doors, this makes it much easier to get in and out of the back and fit child seats. The fact Ford didn't compromise the B-MAX's safety rating by doing this (only one car has a higher Euro NCAP crash-test score) makes it an even more remarkable achievement. Read more.
Key points
£13,295 - £19,545
Toyota Mirai saloon
Almost every car manufacturer has some sort of electric or hybrid model on the market these days, but having already explored that territory with the Prius, Toyota is branching out to another potential future power source: hydrogen. The Mirai generates power for its electric motors by mixing hydrogen with oxygen and emits only harmless water vapour. It's extremely expensive and there are only a handful of refuelling locations in the UK for now, but it's still a fascinating look at the possible future of personal transport. Read more.
Key points
Dacia Duster compact SUV
The Dacia Duster isn't innovative in the traditional hi-tech sense, but it does have one major ace up its sleeve: it's a rough-and-ready SUV available for supermini money. Granted, some corners have been cut to ensure that budget price – for instance, interior quality isn't very good, it's not particularly refined, there's a fair bit of body lean in the bends and some similarly priced superminis have better crash-test ratings. As far as 'bang for your buck' goes, though, the Dacia Duster is almost unchallenged. Read more.
Key points
£9,495 - £16,495
Mercedes S-Class saloon
Flagship models usually come loaded with the most advanced gadgets in a car company's arsenal and the Mercedes S-Class is no exception. Whether it's hybrid drive, built-in Wi-Fi, a 24-speaker stereo, reclining rear seats or suspension that automatically sets the car up for the road ahead, you'll find it here. Put simply, the Mercedes S-Class is as much a luxury limousine as it is a demonstration of how complex and advanced today's cars have become. Read more.
Key points
£68,870 - £183,560
Toyota Prius+ mini MPV
Big MPVs seem to be a dying breed nowadays, making the Toyota Prius+ hybrid even more of a curiosity than it already is. But it's worth your attention, especially if you're in the market for a new seven-seater. If you predominantly drive in more built-up areas or in stop-start traffic, it's nigh-on impossible to find a more efficient seven-seater on sale today. The Toyota Prius+ is also quite practical, not too expensive to buy and, thanks to low CO2 emissions, exempt from road tax. Read more.
Key points
£26,995 - £31,245
Renault ZOE hatchback
You might wonder why the Nissan LEAF isn't in this list. It might be the world's best-selling electric car, but it's still rather pricy. Step forward Renault ZOE – a car that is just as useable on a daily basis as the LEAF, but is an awful lot cheaper. There are three versions of the ZOE available; two of which are capable of nearly 150 miles, according to official figures. Renault has taken the unusual step of providing 'real-world' ranges, depending on the weather. As electric vehicles work better in the summer, the ZOE is capable of travelling up to 106 miles on a charge. When the temperature drops, so does the range – in this case down to 71 miles. It's transparency like this that gives would-be buyers confidence. Read more.
Key points
£18,445 - £25,545
Volvo XC90 SUV
Volvo has always been a car safety pioneer, so it's not surprising to hear the firms flagship, the Volvo XC90 SUV is crammed full of safety equipment. So much in fact, that no model has achieved a better result in the Euro NCAP crash test programme. With airbags galore, and electronic safety systems that can brake the car automatically to avoid a crash fitted as standard, there's simply no safer car available. Inside there's a huge touchscreen, like a large iPad, that controls most of the car's functions. Spend some time with it, and you'll wonder how you managed without it. Read more.
Key points
£46,850 - £64,555
Toyota GT 86 coupe
Most companies innovate by throwing everything they have into their cars. For the Toyota GT86 sports car, Toyota took a different approach: just give customers what they need, rather than what they think they want. As a result, the Toyota GT86 is surprisingly bare-bones for a modern sports coupe – the most exciting optional extra, for instance, is a JBL stereo. However, when a car is this much fun to drive and this affordable, does a relative lack of creature comforts matter? For the record, the GT86's sister car, the Subaru BRZ is just as good and even more exclusive. But the Toyota gets the nod here, purely for the wider availability of dealerships in the UK. Read more.
Key points
£22,700 - £28,650
Skoda Octavia Estate
Skoda's Octavia has long been renowned for being a spacious car – and the latest model doesn't buck that trend. This is especially the case for the Skoda Octavia Estate, which is comfortably one of the most practical cars in its class. On top of a huge boot (610 litres with the rear seats up, 1,740 litres with the seats down), the Octavia is full of usefully sized storage cubbies and offers plenty of leg and headroom in the front and back seats. It's also very efficient and terrific value for money. Read more.
Key points
£17,880 - £29,410
Nissan Note mini MPV
When it comes to practicality, few small cars on sale today are as impressive as the Nissan Note. Not only do those boxy proportions ensure it's quite a spacious car (there's plenty of legroom in the back, for instance), but it also means the boot is huge with the rear seats folded down – at 1,465 litres, it puts most estate cars to shame. If the boot capacity was equally as impressive with the rear seats in place, the Nissan Note might have placed even higher up this list. Read more.
Key points
£10,995 - £17,895


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Hotels in Venice
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Hotel Ambasciatori Venice4 star hotel
San Clemente Palace Kempinski Hotel Venice5 star hotel
Starhotels Splendid Venice4 star hotel
Bauer Il Palazzo Hotel Venice5 star hotel
Bauer Hotel Venice5 star hotel
Hilton Molino Stucky Venice Hotel5 star hotel
Bauer Palladio Hotel & Spa Venice5 star hotel
Centrale Hotel3 star hotel
Jw Marriott Venice Resort & Spa5 star hotel
Marconi Hotel Venice3 star hotel
Palazzina G Hotel Venice5 star hotel
Sina Centurion Palace Hotel Venice5 star hotel
Metropole Hotel Venice5 star hotel
Best Western Hotel Bologna Venice4 star hotel
Palace Bonvecchiati Hotel Venice4 star hotel
Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort5 star hotel
Belmond Hotel Cipriani Venice5 star hotel
Hotel Cipriani Palazzo Vendramin, a five-star hotel, is located in the most romantic place in the world – Venice. It is easily accessible from the airport and the railway station, as public transportation is well developed, otherwise you can order private transfer. More detailsFromUS$1 753per nightBook Now
Nh Collection Venezia Palazzo Barocci Hotel4 star hotel
Ca Dei Conti Hotel Venice4 star hotel
Locanda Vivaldi Hotel Venice4 star hotel
Panorama Hotel Venice4 star hotel
Monaco And Grand Canal Hotel Venice4 star hotel
Carnival Palace Hotel Venice4 star hotel
Luna Hotel Baglioni Venice5 star hotel
Hotels near Venice
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City Guide: Venice
Romantic, charming, but swarming with visitors, Venice is a city where tourists outnumber residents.
Venice's character has barely changed from the way it was 600 years ago. It is still that lagoon city with light Renaissance touches and gondolas running down the Grand Canal as when it was first established in 421.Read more
City Guide: Venice
Romantic, charming, but swarming with visitors, Venice is a city where tourists outnumber residents.
Venice's character has barely changed from the way it was 600 years ago. It is still that lagoon city with light Renaissance touches and gondolas running down the Grand Canal as when it was first established in 421.
The one and only pedestrian city in the world, the center and historic heart of Venice can be crossed from one end to another in an hour thus Venice can be navigated on foot with ease.
Book a hotel at Booked.net to experience the stunning beauty that is Venice fully.
Our listings include photos, detailed descriptions and secure forms to complete your booking. Be it a room in cheap hotel in Venice or top-end accommodation abundant with all possible comforts we have them all at prices below the rack rates.
From its birth Venice became a center for trade and commerce, especially in silk, grain and spice as well as a centre for art. That tradition continues today as glassblowers create amazing the amazing works associated with Murano glass, please note it to be really expensive to buy.
Small and compact at first sight, Venice developed into huge city comprising of several areas and districts as well. For instance, more than 220,000 people live in Mestre area – industrial part of Venice linked to mainland by 5 kilometer bridge.
The heart of Venice still makes up a group of Sestieri districts teeming with attractions, like
– Basilica di San Marco, a must-see located right at the Piazza San Marco; for a 10-minute experience inside famous church tourists are ready to stay hours in lines just to enter
– San Giovanni e Paolo is a Dominican church with Renaissance facade
– Correr Museum has a collection of globes from 16th century, library hall and art cafe to relax if you get tired
– Galleria dell'Accademia di Venezia – the best in Italy and the most significant one in the Italian cultural scene
– Venice's Clock Tower can be visited only on private tour, but it is worth a look being a unique astrological mechanism
You can book a hotel in Venice stones' throw from any of these attractions with interactive map of Venice hotels.
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- Danieli Hotel Venice
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- Hotel Excelsior Venice Lido Resort
- Hilton Molino Stucky Venice Hotel
- Jw Marriott Venice Resort & Spa
- Metropole Hotel Venice
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- The St. Regis Venice San Clemente Palace Hotel
- Boscolo Bellini Hotel Venice
- Hotel Giorgione Venice
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- Saturnia Hotel & International Venice
- Palace Bonvecchiati Hotel Venice
- Kette Hotel Venice
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- Best Western Premier Hotel Sant' Elena Venice
- Starhotels Splendid Venice
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You can get more appointments from your cold calls — if you follow this advice. Make these techniques work for you and I promise you'll see a marked difference in your sales figures.
There are a number of so-called experts out there saying that cold calling doesn't work but they're wrong. Cold calling is still one of the best and quickest ways to get new business and it is far from dead — it has changed, yes, but it is growing and is an area that continues to evolve. You need to be on top of what's changing in order to stay ahead of the game and your competition.
This is one of the things that loses you credibility, rapport and respect straightaway. But what do I mean by stupid questions? Questions such as: "How much do you currently pay?" and, my personal favourite, "What will it take to get your business?"
This is another thing the average salesperson fails to do. The prize for worst ever call reason goes to someone who I once heard say: "the reason for the call is to find out when your contract is up for renewal". Brilliant. Abject failure to understand tip number two! You have to grab your prospect's attention and an important part of that is having a strong call reason — something that will engage them.
This part is often missing — particularly if the salespeople concerned are making lots of calls. Prospects can hear confidence and belief in your voice and they notice when it's missing. You need to persuade people to buy into you and what you offer. They need to have faith in you and trust that you know what you're talking about.
It often astounds me how little preparation your average salesperson does. The minimum preparation you should be doing prior to a call is to get the name of the decision maker, direct phone number and email where appropriate, an idea of your call reason and what you're going to say, likely objections and how you're going to handle them, plus access to your diary to book those appointments in. You also need to know the date and time that you're trying to make the appointment for before you start to close — otherwise you're less likely to get a date set up.
If you're starting any sort of calling session, whether it's cold or warm calling, make sure you're focused before you start. This means getting away from any distractions such as colleagues chatting, incoming phone calls, emails, people putting the kettle on and so on. If you're going to start a calling session, make sure you're focused on it. As well as the end result you want to achieve.
Another big mistake the average salesperson makes is sounding bored and tired. Your voice is all you have to persuade people, so make sure you give it your best shot. You need to have energy and enthusiasm in your voice in order to persuade others.
The longer the calling session goes on, the more you have to be careful of your energy levels. Sometimes short breaks between focused calling sessions actually produce better results. Remember, If you're going to make a call, make it sound like a good one!
Andy Preston is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and a leading expert on sales. His website is at www.andypreston.com.
One of the major advantages of an economic downturn (even a landslide like the current one is shaping up to be) is that there are great deals to be had. The challenge is that many of us are very bad at negotiating.
There is clearly an element of nature vs. nurture here; some of us are clearly genetically more inclined to haggle, while for others the process is more unpleasant and degrading than having teeth pulled.
This is especially true for salespeople who are typically outgoing and persistent, with a hide as thick as a rhinoceros. But when it comes to negotiating the detail of a deal, many experienced sales people crumble, especially under pressure from a well-trained negotiator or purchasing director.
Negotiation is a basic skill we use every day of our lives, whether it is making sure we get a cup of tea in the morning at home or in buying a car, when we are up against an expertly trained and highly motivated individual. Negotiation is not a black art: it can be studied and learned, and I have had advice from a true expert: Derek Arden.
Arden started his working career in a bank, in training and development; but soon found himself in major account management, negotiating with hard-nosed senior buyers at a large supermarket chain. He says he often left meetings with a strong feeling that he had come a distant second in the negotiation, if only because he was operating solo against a team of four people who were clearly expert in identifying and exploiting any of his personal or business weaknesses.
He resolved to read all the books available and go on courses to develop his own best practice for negotiation. He has since spent more than eight years passing on this knowledge to everyone from teams of salespeople to a high-profile individual in the Middle East who needed one-on-one coaching for family as well as business negotiations.
Arden explains that developing negotiation skills is a constant process; you always learn new techniques. Where most people fall down is in understanding the timing of a deal. This is aptly illustrated in his first major personal negotiating challenge, which was to arrange a favourable exit from the bank where he was working.
Arden's advice is that the secret to making a graceful departure from your current employer is to understand the timing: there will be a perfect time to leave, and forcing your own schedule on their internal processes is likely to be very counter-productive.
This leads us naturally into the key element of negotiation: preparation. Arden believes strongly that the most important work is done well in advance. The better prepared you are, the more likely you are to secure a good deal for yourself and for the other party. Successful deal-makers always ensure a win for both sides as they are always looking for a long-term relationship with the buyer.
The hardest part of negotiation is always the price, especially if the buyer gives no clue about what they want to pay. Arden suggests having three prices always to hand. First you should always have a high-value dream price, which buyers will accept more often than you might suspect, for example if they need your products or services in a hurry or are looking to empty a budget before the end of the financial year or risk losing it for the following year.
Then you should have a target price which represents what you feel the customer should pay, based on both value for money for them and a sensible profit for you. Finally, you have a walk away price, below which you cannot go, based on hard evidence developed internally from your delivery and finance people.
In a friendly negotiation you can even share this information, and a fair buyer should appreciate your openness and respond favourably. It is important to remember that very rarely do people buy the cheapest offer; what is more important, especially in these hard times, is your providing proof of value for money and return on investment.
Arden also trains people in advanced techniques including influencing and body language, all based around asking good questions, prepared in advance. As Rudyard Kipling aptly put it, "I keep six honest serving-men; they taught me all I knew. Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who."
Copyright ©Mike Southon 2012. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without permission in writing. Mike Southon is the co-author of The Beermat Entrepreneur and a business speaker.
Most salespeople will get the majority of the specification down, but some have to call back a second time to get things they forgot, or that their colleagues tell them will be needed in order to produce an accurate quotation or proposal. You can imagine the impact this has on the prospect. If you're in a competitive market with other people pitching for the work, you've put yourself on the back foot before you've even started.
These two areas are essential areas to investigate in every sales opportunity — you need to establish early on in your sales conversation how serious they are, and how serious the project is. Even more important however is getting the "why you" bit answered. The aim here is to uncover both the buying motivation, and also what chance you have of picking up this business. Remember, the fluffier the answers to the questions you ask here, the less likely you are to win the work!
Failure to establish the decision makers involved will mean that you could go all the way through the process, and then fall at the final hurdle as someone else comes in to influence the buying decision that you weren't aware of. Once you've identified the decision makers, you can then decide your approach for engaging them. You also need to identify the process they're going through in order to make the decision. If they're cagey about the process this time, it might be that the person you're talking to is low-level in the organisation. In which case, simply asking about a previous process for similar projects will uncover most of what you need to know.
Asking about the other options they're considering will usually set the platform for you to get information about other potential suppliers/vendors. It will also get you vital information about alternative competition — either them finding another way to achieve the results they want, doing it themselves in-house, or not doing it at all.
Another area you need to know about is their timescales. Most salespeople make the mistake of only finding out when the clients want to implement the project or when they need to take delivery of the product. If you only get this timescale then you're missing out on something that's potentially more important. Make sure you understand their buying timescales to give yourself the best understanding of how to handle the proposal and give yourself the best chance of winning it.
It's vital in any sales opportunity, let alone a proposal situation, that you identify budget or funding as early as possible. As most decent-sized projects require money from someone's budget, or the company to have thought about how they're going to pay for it, failure to identify this can mean the project stalling at the last minute — when you've put lots of time and effort into it.
Make sure that you've got the budget area covered and you'll reduce the risk of the project being put on hold, or shelved, plus it may also highlight other people involved in the buying process that you weren't aware of.
This is the final and most important part of any sales situation, and even more vital at proposal stage. Now for those of you with a short sales cycle, you could also think of the word closing here. For those of you on longer sales cycles, usually with higher-value items or projects at stake, think about gaining commitment to the next stage and to yourself and your company. Failure to get commitment to the project and/or next stage and also to you and your company will mean that you're likely to be disappointed when it comes to announcing who won the business and who lost it. So gain commitment to ensure you end up in the winner's enclosure.
So, make sure you take action on the above and the best of luck with your sales!
Andy Preston is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and a leading expert on sales. His website is at www.andypreston.com.
Most sales and marketing processes work like this: the marketing department generates sales leads that are passed to a sales person; the sales person does an initial qualification, probably discarding half of them; during the sales process, further qualification may happen, either by the prospect or the sales person, and finally about one qualified lead in four gets converted into a sale.
These numbers may change depending on the business but on average, I would assume around ten leads from marketing are needed for one sale.
So what happens to the leads that have been discarded? At worst, they may have been deleted from the marketing database and now aren't on any system at all. At best, they will remain in the marketing database but not flagged as being special.
And why should they be special? Surely they are have been qualified out or lost? In fact, failed sales could be your most valuable future leads. They are the potential rebounders — hot leads that could be easy wins if they come back.
In our business, we get a steady stream of leads — people looking at our offering. Some get qualified out early because they don't have the budget, or don't want our delivery model. Later on they might be lost because they have specialised requirements or simply prefer another vendor and go with them.
Six months later, however, some come back. They have decided that they now have the budget, or maybe our delivery model wasn't so bad, or they looked for a specialised system and gave up, or the competitor they initially chose disappointed them.
Converting "fails" into customers
Even though the initial attempt at converting these leads failed, compared to the rest of the marketing database they are statistically more likely to convert than the others that we know nothing about.
Actually, these "failed" leads had decided they wanted a system like ours and had some idea of what their requirements and budget were. They fell at the last hurdle, but at least they started the race. So whatever tripped them up the first time, they might get over if they started the race again.
So, don't throw away so-called failed sales leads. Keep them in the database and segment them into a special campaign. This may require a CRM system that integrates the sales and marketing processes together, so prospects can be moved back and forth between marketing and sales with their history intact.
However it is managed, businesses need to get those failed leads back out of the bin.
John Paterson is CEO of Really Simple Systems.
If out-selling your competitors in 2013 is your goal, then here are seven simple tips to get you started.
1. Ring-fence your existing accounts
If you want to get ahead, and stay ahead, of your competitors in 2013, the very first thing you need to do is ring-fence all your existing customers. What are your relationships like with your existing accounts? The ones you don't get on as well with? Would they tell you if a competitor had been in? And if they did, would you retain the business at the same price, or would you have to price match to keep it?
2. Focus your prospecting
The quality of your prospecting will be one of the biggest factors in how successful you are in 2013. There will be certain specific criteria that make certain prospects more ideal for you than others. If you don't know what they are, you need to find them out — and fast! If you're really not sure, take a look at your existing client base. What was it that made them purchase at the moment they did?
3. Become a "valued resource"
In order to be seen as a valued resource, you have to earn it. Get updated on industry trends, technological advancements and understand the impact that these could have on your client's business. You have to be able to hold a business conversation with the level of decision-makers you're meeting. Invest the time to do things like this, and it will pay you back tenfold!
4. Have a plan for your attack
One of the best ways to get ahead of the competition is to win some of their customers from them! Why not map out competitors' accounts in your territory, then create a call plan for getting in to see them, and focus on winning their business. Experience shows that focused approaches like these have a far better chance of success — and also put a big dent in your competitor's motivation at the same time.
5. Increase your activity
Now, once you've targeted your prospecting, the next thing you need to do is crank up the volume. I'm a big fan of a high level of activity and the reason for this, is that the more deals you have in your pipeline, the more you can afford to lose! Purely by increasing your activity, you increase your chances of success — and therefore increase the amount of money you can earn. Who wouldn't want to do that?
6. Keep motivated
We all know that motivation is important for a salesperson. But it's the salesperson's ability to be consistently motivated that will help them stand out from the rest.
7. Sharpen your sales skills
If you want to stay ahead of your competition in 2013, you'll need to sharpen your sales skills. This means getting up-to-date, relevant sales tips and advice from trusted sources. If you get some internal training at your company, great! If your company invests in bringing an external trainer to help you improve, even better! If you're one of those people that believes in investing in yourself (even if your company doesn't), I take my hat off to you.
However, you don't have to spend money to keep your sales skills updated — there are lots of free or low-cost podcasts you can listen to and plenty of seminars you can attend without spending a fortune. Just make sure you put into practice what you learn.
Andy Preston is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and a leading expert on sales. His website is at www.andypreston.com.
We were told that Monday 3rd December 2012 was Mega Monday (or Cyber Monday as others call it). Apparently, on this single day, up to £10,000 per second was being spent online.
There are always forecasts like this, and always on the first Monday of December. I've never seen a retrospective analysis to determine if it's true or not, but what I do know is that once Cyber Monday (or mega Monday) has been and gone the focus of Christmas shoppers begins to move away from online and toward physical shop-based retailers.
With two peak shopping weekends to go before Christmas, retailers need to stock up, spruce up, get festive and bring in extra staff.
The next two weekends are likely to have the highest footfall (especially since few online retailers will be guaranteeing delivery by Christmas on orders placed after 15th due to the overload on couriers and postal services) so you need to be ready to make the most of it.
Here are a few top tips:
So, lots of ideas and I am sure you have plenty more too. The key is to make the most of those two big weekends when footfall should be noticeably increased. And make it a very merry, Indie, Christmas!
Clare Rayner is the author of The Retail Champion: 10 steps to retail success.