text:
Arizona Wildcats
Arizona football coach Rodriguez addresses QB competition, defense
TUCSON, Ariz. -- In the first press conference of the season, Arizona head coach Rich Rodriguez once again refrained from announcing who will be the starting quarterback against NAU this Friday.
He did, however, hint that senior B.J. Denker was ahead in the battle for the starting position.
"B.J. Denker was a frontrunner coming in," Rodriguez said. "In the beginning of camp it was a mix, and in the last week or so B.J. has gotten better. He's still the frontrunner but we've got a few more practices before the week is over."
Rodriguez also noted that four players have been getting reps in the QB spot, including true freshman Anu Solomon.
"With the inexperience we have, it's an ongoing competition," Rodriguez said. "We treat this position like the rest of them; rolling guys in and getting them a lot of reps. Whoever the best one is at game time gets the start."
The quarterback contenders may not live up to last year's quarterback, Matt Scott, but they have shown improvement and that they are capable at the position, Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez also announced during the press conference that the squad has remained relatively healthy as a result of less hitting during practices.
This adds depth because fewer players are injured, however, practicing without hitting has proved difficult for the defense, according to senior defensive lineman Tevin Hood.
Hood said he knew the offense was happy about less hitting, but personally, he was upset.
"You go full speed but you have to tone it down because you don't want to hurt people," Hood said. "With no contact, you can't really play defensive or offensive line, so that was just something we had to get used to."
The Wildcats will open the season this Friday against NAU at Arizona Stadium. Kick-off will be at 7 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on the Pac-12 Network.
UA football also released its first depth chart of the season, with starters for positions such as quarterback, kicker, linebacker and slot still to be determined. This competition results in better performances from the players, Rodriguez said.
"If you want to elevate the performance of the guys, bring in competition," he said.
This story was courtesy of the Arizona Daily Wildcat.
Most Popular
Wildcats Audio
- Bearing Down with Adam and Jarrett - May 6, 2015Adam and Jarrett talk about zero Wildcats being drafted by an NFL team.
- Bearing Down with Adam and Jarrett - April 24, 2015Adam and Jarrett talk about what Arizona basketball has lost and what it moves forward with.
- Glenn Parker, Pac-12 Networks football analystGlenn talks about the upcoming Pac-12 spring football games and shares his thought on the NFL draft.
- Rich Rodriguez, Head Coach UA FootballWhat is Coach Rodriguez doing to get his team ready for the upcoming football season?
- Doug Haller- ASU beat writer for azcentral sportsDoug Haller previews the college basketball national championship game.


text:
An improved data compression method and apparatus is provided, particularly with regard to the compression of data in tabular form such as database records. The present invention achieves improved compression ratios by utilizing metadata to transform the data in a manner that optimizes known compression techniques. In one embodiment of the invention, a schema is generated which is utilized to reorder and partition the data into low entropy and high entropy portions which are separately compressed by conventional compression methods. The high entropy portion is further reordered and partitioned to take advantage of row and column dependencies in the data. The present invention enables not only much greater compression ratios but increased speed than is achieved by compressing the untransformed data.
1. A method for improving compression of a stream of data comprising:
transforming the data in accordance with a schema; and
compressing the transformed data;
wherein the transformation step further comprises the step of reordering the data into column major order.
2. The method of
3. An apparatus for improved compression of a stream of data comprising:
means for transforming the data in accordance with a schema; and
means for compressing the transformed data;
wherein the transforming means further comprises means for reordering the data into column major order.
4. The apparatus of
This application claims priority to Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/111,781, filed on Dec. 10, 1998, the content of which is incorporated by reference herein.
The present invention relates to data compression systems and methods.
Data compression systems, which encode a digital data stream into compressed digital code signals and which decode the compressed digital code signals back into the original data, are known in the prior art. The methods utilized in data compression systems serve to reduce the amount of storage space required to hold the digital information and/or result in a savings in the amount of time required to transmit a given amount of information. For example, the extensive transactional records accounted for by companies such as banks and telephone companies are often stored for archival purposes in massive computer databases. This storage space is conserved, resulting in a significant monetary savings, if the data is compressed prior to storage and decompressed from the stored compressed files for later use.
Various methods and systems are known in the art for compressing and subsequently reconstituting data. For example, a compression scheme used pervasively on the Internet today is "gzip," designed by Jean-Loup Gailly. See "DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification version 1.3", RFC 1951, Network Working Group May 1996; "GZIP file format specification version 4.3," RFC 1952, Network Working Group, May 1996. Gzip utilizes a variation of the well-known LZ77 (Lempel-Ziv 1977) compression technique which replaces duplicated strings of bytes within a frame of a pre-defined distance with a pointer to the original string. Gzip also uses Huffman coding on the block of bytes and stores the Huffman code tree with the compressed data block. Gzip normally achieves a compression ratio of about 2:1 or 3:1, the compression ratio being the size of the clear text relative to the size of the compressed text.
Gzip is a popular but suboptimal compression scheme. Nevertheless, the inventors, while conducting experiments on compressing massive data sets of telephone call detail records, managed to achieve compression ratios of around 15:1 when using gzip. The substantial reduction in size effected by merely using a conventional compression technique such as gzip suggested to the inventors that additional improvements to the compression ratio could be devised by a careful analysis of the structure of the data itself.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved data compression method and apparatus, particularly with regard to the compression of data in tabular form such as database records. The present invention achieves improved compression ratios by utilizing metadata to transform the data in a manner that optimizes known compression techniques. The metadata not only leads to better compression results, it can be maintained by an automatic procedure. In one embodiment of the invention, a schema is generated which is utilized to reorder and partition the data into low entropy and high entropy portions which are separately compressed by conventional compression methods. The high entropy portion is further reordered and partitioned to take advantage of row and column dependencies in the data. The present invention takes advantage of the fact that some fields have more information than others, and some interactions among fields are important, but most are not. Parsimony dictates that unless the interactions are important, it is generally better to model the first order effects and ignore the higher order interactions. Through the proper analysis of such interactions, the present invention enables improvements in both space and time over conventional compression techniques.
With reference to
The particular compression method used at 130 (and the corresponding decompression method at 150) does not matter for purposes of the present invention, although the particular method utilized will affect the nature of the schema used to optimize the compression results. The inventors have performed experiments with the gzip compression method, described above, although a richer set of compression methods may also be used, such as vdelta, Huffman coding, run-length encoding, etc.
The results will depend on the schema chosen for transforming the data prior to compression. The present invention emanates from the recognition that data prior to compression is often presented in a form that is suboptimal for conventional compression techniques. Transforming the data prior to compression is a method not unsimilar to that of taking a log before performing linear regression. Data compression, like linear regression, is a practical—but imperfect—modeling tool. Transforms make it easier to capture the generalizations of interest, while making it less likely that the tool will be misled by irrelevant noise, outliers, higher order interactions, and so on. The entropy of a data set, which Shannon demonstrated was the space required by the best possible encoding scheme, does not depend on the enumeration order or any other invertible transform. Nevertheless, in accordance with the present invention, such transforms can make a significant difference for most practical coders/predictors.
The invention has the advantage that existing data interfaces can be preserved by embedding data transformations within the compressor. Applications can deal with the schema unchanged, while the compressor can deal with transformed data that better suits its algorithms. With improved compression rates a good implementation can trade the extra time spent transforming data against the IO time saved by moving less data.
A schema transform that is especially useful for most tabular data files is transposing data originally in row major order into columns of fields that are compressed separately. Data files containing tables of records, such as the following simple example from The Awk Programming Language, Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, Peter J. Weinberger, Addison Wesley, 1988, are often stored in row major order.
Row major order, however, is often suboptimal for compression purposes. In fact, the inventors have determined that, as a general rule of thumb, it is better to compress two columns of fields separately when the columns contain data that is independent. Consider the following example. Let X be a sequence of a million bits, N=220, generated by a binomial process with a probability of PX. Let Y be another sequence of N bits, generated by the same process, but with a parameter PY. The question is whether X and Y should be compressed separately or whether they should be combined, for example by interleaving the data into row major order and compressing the columns together. Using PX=0.5 and PY=0 in a monte carlo experiment with the gzip compressor, the inventors found that gzip required approximately 1.0003 bits per symbol to store X and 0.0012 bits per symbol to store Y. The combined space required by gzip of 1.0015 bits per symbol is close to the true entropy of the sets, namely
In order to create an optimal schema, a given space of possible schemas must be searched for the one that leads to the best compression; i.e. it is a matter of deciding which interactions in the data are important—and which are not. Compression results can be improved by searching a larger space of possible schemas. For example, different column permutations may be tried in order to take advantage of dependencies among non-adjacent columns. Transforms can be used that remove redundancies in columns by replacing values in one column with default values (nulls) if they are the same as the values in another column.
The generation of an optimal schema can be relegated to a machine learning task. Dynamic programming can be utilized to determine the schema that leads to the best compression, given a data sample and the space of possible schemas. In one embodiment of the present invention, an optimal schema can be generated by the method set forth in
The high information content data, on the other hand, can be further transformed to take advantage of both row and column dependencies. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the high entropy data is fed to a dynamic programming module that searches for combinations of columns which minimizes the compressed size of the data. This can be made more feasible by a preprocessing step that prunes the initial search space. An optimal ordering of the columns, for example, can be generated in a bottom-up fashion by an initial transformation Π. This Π-transformed training data is used to build a matrix containing the sizes of the compressed subintervals of the training data. This matrix is used to dynamically generate the optimal partition of the schema.
Accordingly, let the number of high entropy columns chosen be n. Let P be a sequence of intervals, denoted as a set of endpoints P=(i1, i2 . . . ip) such that i1<i2< . . . <ip=n. Each ij is the end of one interval, i.e. interval 1 is columns 1 through i1, interval 2 is columns i1+1 through i2, etc. Let {tilde over (H)}G be a n�n matrix where each cell contains the size after compressing the interval from i to j of the Π-transformed data after compression. That is, for 1≦i≦j≦n, let {tilde over (H)}G [i,j] be the size of columns i through j after compression. The task is to find the schema such that compression of the fields minimizes space. Consider any j and the two subpartitions
The first implementation of a partition inducer by the inventors was terribly slow. It was originally assumed that the compression routine gzip would eventually see all of the uncompressed data, only in a different order. The presence of fixed byte values in some sample data opened up other possibilities. Using run length encoding, fixed values trivially compress to a byte value and repetition count. With many fixed columns, they could be moved out of the inner program loop and noticeably improve run times. Experiments were done to determine how run length encoding performs with column values that change at a low rate from record to record. Data samples from a few AT&T systems show that the number of low frequency columns tends to increase with record size (define the "frequency" of a column to be the percentage of record to record value changes for the column with respect to the total number of records sampled: a frequency of 0 means the common value is fixed; a frequency of 100 means the column value changes with each record). This is because many long record schemas are typed, with each type populating a different set of fields. If the typed records cluster in any way than the number of low frequency columns naturally increases. Run length encoding can be inefficient, though, if there is correlation between two low frequency columns. For example, if two column values always change at the same time, then run length encoding ends up duplicating the run length count. A difference encoding (DIFE) was found by the inventors to do much better when there are correlated columns. DIFE maintains a pattern record of current low frequency column values and emits a count for the number of records the pattern repeats. It then emits a sequence of <column-number+1, byte-value> pairs, terminated by <0>, that modify the pattern record. This is followed by more repeat count and byte-value groups, and continues until a 0 repeat count is emitted after the last record. For example, the DIFE encoding for the 5 byte fixed record data set forth in
The PZIP data layout is illustrated in
As for decompression, the most decompression time is spent in the submatrix inner loop. The loop can be sped up by combining the low frequency DIFE decoding with the high frequency partition matrix reassembly. The high frequency submatrices for a single window are laid out end to end in a contiguous buffer buf. The inner loop selects column values from buf to reassemble records and write them to the output stream. Conditionals slow down tight inner loops. Tables computed before the inner loop can eliminate some conditionals. PZIP uses two tables to eliminate all but the loop termination conditional. These are the pointer array mix [i] that points to the first value for column i in buf, and the integer array inc [i], that when added to mix [i], points to the next value for column i. In the following inner loop code, pat is the current low frequency pattern buffer, the same size as the record size. High frequency columns in the pattern buffer are initialized to a default value. This allows each reassembled output record to be initialized by a single memcpy ( ), which would be much more efficient than separate memcpy ( ) calls for each contiguous low frequency column range, especially considering that 90% of the columns are usually low frequency. A final data optimization separates the DIFE repetition counts and column offsets from the changed column values so they can be gzip compressed with different tables. The low frequency column values are placed in the buffer val. See
PZIP induces partitions using a separate program which the inventors have named "PIN." PIN takes as input a 4 Mb window of training data (a sample of the actual data) and the fixed record size n. It implements a dynamic program, as described above, and, using gzip as a compressor to test compression rates, produces an optimal partition and corresponding compression rate for the training data. The partition is written to a file with the following syntax: the first line is the fixed record size; each remaining line describes one class in the induced schema partition. A class description is a space-separated list of the column positions in the class counting from 0, where i-j is shorthand for the column positions i through j inclusive. The partition file is simply a list of record byte position groups that, for the purposes of PZIP, correspond to the byte columns that should be compressed separately. See
To handle data of all sizes, PZIP must operate on one section, or window, at a time. Window size affects both compression and decompression performance. At some point the PZIP compressor must perform submatrix transformations to prepare the partitions for gzip, and a similar operation does the inverse for decompression. This means a buffer to buffer copy, with linear access to one and random access to the other. Random buffer access can be expensive on some systems. Most virtual memory computers provide levels of increasingly slower memory access: local cache, ˜10–100 Kb, local memory, ˜1–4 Mb, and shared memory, >4 Mb. The access time difference between levels can be up to an order of magnitude on some systems. Timing experiments show that 4 Mb is a reasonable compromise for the inventor's local machines (SGI, Sun, Alpha, and Intel). There are valid concerns for basing the calculations on such a small, localized amount of data, especially since many systems using PZIP could deal with multiple gigabytes of new data each day. Some form of sampling over a large span of records might be preferable. But localized record correlations are exactly what PZIP exploits. A partition group with the same value from record to record is the best possible situation for PZIP.
The implementation of PIN is divided into four steps. The first step reads the training data window, computes the column frequencies, and generates a submatrix from the high frequency columns. The next step determines a permutation of the column positions from which an optimal partition will be determined. An optimal solution to this step is NP-complete, so a suboptimal heuristic search is done. Let the matrix
PIN benefits from the removal of low frequency columns since they can be ignored when inducing an optimal partition. For example, a project with 781 byte records had only 81 columns with frequency greater than 10%. This reduces the 4 Mb window PIN run times form 8 hours on an SGI Challenge to under 10 minutes on an Intel Pentium II personal computer. Moreover, an unexpected discovery came out of the timing analysis. The gzip command provides levels of compression ranging from 0 (best time, worst space) to 9 (worst time, best space), the default level being 9. It turns out that the zlib default level is 6. When this was discovered PZIP was immediately run with level 9, and the result was little or no compression improvement, and much worse run time. So data partitioning has the added benefit of being able to run gzip at a lower compression level, saving time at little cost to space.
This subtle reshuffling of the data can have a dramatic effect on the results of even a suboptimal compression scheme such as gzip. Experiments conducted by the inventors on telephone call detail have yielded compression ratios of 30:1, in comparison to compression ratios of 14–15:1 when the data is left in row major order (and 16–18:1 when the data is merely transformed into column major order). Significant improvement can be had with other applications, although the worst case for the present invention would be a random table, i.e. a table whose shortest description is itself. In that case, no improvement is possible.
One might think that reordering the data into columns might cost extra time since the output clear text is in row major order. In fact, the inventors have found that rearranging the data into columns can result in faster compression times. It is believed that the time to rearrange the columns is relatively small compared with the times for encoding/decoding and disk input/output. Accordingly, the present invention results in an improvement in both these bottlenecks to quick compression, an improvement which can more than offset the time for rearranging the columns. It is notable that if one often poses queries to the database that require only a few fields containing high entropy columns, the decoding time can be further dramatically improved by decompressing only the columns of interest.
Moreover, although the techniques could be utilized for variable length record data, the present invention highlights certain advantages fixed length record data may have over variable length record data. Fixed length record data is often viewed as a waste of space, too sparse for production use. Much effort is then put into optimizing the data schema, and in the process complicating the data interface. PZIP shows that in many cases this view of fixed length data is wrong. In fact, variable length data may become more compressible when converted to a sparse, fixed length format. Intense semantic schema analysis can be replaced by an automated record partition, resulting in compression space improvements of 2 to 10 times and decompression speed improvements of 2 to 3 times over gzip for a large class of data.
The foregoing Detailed Description is to be understood as being in every respect illustrative and exemplary, but not restrictive, and the scope of the invention disclosed herein is not to be determined from the Detailed Description, but rather from the claims as interpreted according to the full breadth permitted by the patent laws. It is to be understood that the embodiments shown and described herein are only illustrative of the principles of the present invention and that various modifications may be implemented by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
Patent Citations
Non-Patent Citations
Referenced by
Legal Events
Original Image

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Alec Hamilton, Assistant Producer, WNYC News
Alec Hamilton is an Assistant Producer in the WNYC newsroom. She produces Morning Edition and starts her work day very, very early.
As officials investigate whether a gas leak caused the fiery explosion in Harlem Wednesday, a new report raises concerns about the city's aging infrastructure.
The explosion and collapse of the two buildings came just one day after a report from the Center for an Urban Future found many items such as water mains, subways, roads and public buildings, in need of serious repair.
Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the center said it's rare that aging infrastructure leads to disaster on this scale but some parts of the city's gas system aren't in good shape.
"There's a ton of cast iron gas mains all over the city, and they're not leading to these kind of disasters every day or every week" he said, "But there are a lot of leaks."
The report found that more than half of the city's gas lines are made up of cast iron or unprotected steel—the most leak-prone material. At a replacement cost of $2 million to $8 million per mile and more than a thousand miles under ConEd's portfolio, replacing the old pipes would be very expensive.
"It's probably not realistic to expect all that to be done," said Bowles, "but we do think there could be an acceleration of the replacement of these gas mains."
Comments above are accurate. I live in a Harlem built HPD building. Our Developer BFC has left our building with millions of dollars of repairs. Community Board 10 is a failure and local elected officials don't respond at all to these conditions. Good luck trying to reach Senator Perkins office and his chief of staff at many calls and emails doesn't respond. Then you have Council Member Dickens who has no understanding of coop & condo ownership problems and new building construction problems when she can't even taken care of her own buildings that she owns.
Many red flags....Buildings Dept. doesn't inspect buildings properly. My experience has been since purchasing my unit. Developer self certifies and there is nobody looking at the building from the top to the bottom. Developer who got ton of HUD $, HPD $, donated to the elected officials in the neighborhood, $ #1 donor the REBNY and sits on their board makes a nice website and says they built affordable housing. Well, well, your roof leaks, you got mold, the building has millions of dollars of construction defect repairs and so what do you do? Developer blames it on the roofer, roofer says he did by city spec and HPD ignores all letters. By the time you have navigated this all the warrantees no longer exist. So, again, what do you do? You reach out to your elected officials, public advocates office (yup deblasio) and they don't respond because staff is not familiar with coop or condo ownership. Coop Board is a bunch of volunteers and this is way over there heads navigating city bureaucracy. HPD goes thru every two years a new commissioner and it's the same old same old. Scaffolding all around the boros and developers are not responsible since there are no lemon laws. All could of been prevented with good oversight by the Buildings Dept.
Email addresses are required but never displayed.


text:
News from WTOP
News from the AP
Mike Causey
Shows & Panels
Shows & Panels
- Agency of the Month
- Business of Government Hour
- The CFO Agenda: Delivering value from financial transparency and audit efforts in the public and private sector
- Cloud-Driven Data Insights in Government
- CXO Surveys
- Disaster Resilience for America
- Federal News Countdown
- Government Perspectives on Mobility and the Cloud
- Reducing Risk in the Cloud
- Reimagining the Next Generation of Government
Shows & Panels
- AFCEA Answers
- American Readiness: Renewable Power and Efficiency Technologies
- Ask the CIO
- The Business Case for Cloud Computing in Government
- Cloud-Driven Data Insights in Government
- Connecting the Dots: Digital Authentication in Government
- Cybersecurity Game Changer: Real-Time Event Processing in Government
- Data-Centric Approaches to Government in the Cloud
- Delivering the Digital Government Mission
- Federal Executive Forum
- Federal News Radio's National Cyber Security Awareness Month Special Panel Discussion
- Federal Tech Talk
- The Future of Government Data Centers
- Government Perspectives on Mobility and the Cloud
- Industrialized, Interoperable and Insight-driven Federal Health Panel
- Innovation and Tech Superiority through Acquisition Reform
- Mitigating Insider Threats in Virtual & Cloud Environments
- Moving Agency Applications to the Cloud with PaaS
- Reducing Risk in the Cloud
- Security in the Age of Targeted Attacks
- Air Traffic Management Transformation Report
- The Business of Cloud
- Cloud First Report
- Data Driven Cloud Series
- Disaster Resilience for America
- General Dynamics IT Enterprise Center
- Gov Cloud Minute
- Government in Technology Series
- Homeland Security Cybersecurity Market Report
- The Intersection: Where Technology Meets Transformation
- Modern Mission Critical Series
- National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
- The New IP for Federal IT
- The Social Platform Solution for the Department of Veterans Affairs
- Technology Insights
- The Cyber Security Report
- The Next Generation Cyber Security Experts
Shows & Panels
- Cloud-Driven Data Insights in Government
- Disaster Resilience for America
- F-35 Lightning II Program
- Government Perspectives on Mobility and the Cloud
- On DoD
- Pentagon Solutions
- Reducing Risk in the Cloud
- Reimagining the Next Generation of Government
- Transforming Business Operations at the Defense Department
BLM postpones oil, gas lease auctions in Calif.
Wednesday - 5/8/2013, 4:50am EDT
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Federal land managers have cited the toll of environmental litigation -- as well as budget problems and low staffing -- in postponing all oil and gas lease auctions in California until October.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management recently announced it would put off an auction planned for later this month for leases to drill almost 1,300 acres of prime public lands near the Monterey Shale, home to one of the largest deposits of shale oil in the nation.
Another auction for about 2,000 acres that had been in the works in Colusa County, about 75 miles northwest of Sacramento, also was put on hold until the end of the fiscal year.
"Our priority is processing permits to drill that are already in flight" rather than work on new applications, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told reporters Tuesday after a Senate budget hearing in Washington.
The decision came after a federal judge ruled last month that BLM had violated a key environmental law when the agency auctioned the drilling rights for other parcels near the lush Salinas River Valley before performing a sweeping review of the impacts on water, wildlife and air quality. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit by environmentalists who said the bureau had not properly reviewed the environmental risks associated with hydraulic fracturing and other types of oil and gas development.
"BLM's decision to cancel planned lease sales in California for 2013 is a welcome sign that the agency finally recognizes that its rubber-stamp approach to oil leasing is no longer viable," said Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, which sued over the previous auction.
The decision to postpone leasing doesn't mean that drilling on existing leases will stop, said BLM spokesman David Christy. The agency is concentrating its limited resources on enforcement on existing leases and other priorities, such as granting renewable energy permits, he said.
"For all the legal processes that take place, it takes a lot of staff time to gather information for litigation," Christy said. "So obviously there's some effect, but it wasn't like all by itself it shut us down."
Jim Kenna, the agency's state director, said BLM's California office had been talking about the possibility of a suspension since at least March and made the decision to postpone auctions late Friday as a result of the automatic budget cuts that took place March 1.
"California is a little different from other states because we have so many established fields, so a lot of our state work is already geared to enforcement," Kenna said. "We're trying to understand how we can address those workloads with the reduced capacity."
Amy Krause, a spokeswoman for the BLM in Washington, said she believed other states would hold their lease sales as planned.
Industry officials said they were waiting to see what action BLM would take in the fall, and whether the decision would have a broader impact on oil and gas production.
"It's always a concern when domestic energy resources get taken out of the inventory and can't be brought to the marketplace," said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, whose members produce 80 percent of California's oil. "Hopefully BLM will work through these issues and be able to resume oil and gas leasing in short order."
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been quietly occurring for decades in several oil-rich California counties, including Los Angeles, Kern, Monterey and Sacramento. The technique involves injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel, and chemicals into rock to extract oil. The technique is also used in other states to recover natural gas.
Environmentalists often worry that fracking can contaminate groundwater and pollute the air. The industry, however, has said the practice has been safely used for decades.
Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Garance Burke at http://twitter.com/garanceburke .
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
Xinerama & SLI
Hello All:
I would like to know: do the nvidia linux drivers support 4-monitor output when they are run on two cards in an SLI motherboard, under xinerama, not twinview? I don't care about 3d acceleration, I just want a xinerama desktop spanning over 4 monitors. I ask this because with the current version of the drivers, I can only get one head working on my second nvidia card in a PCI slot, but both heads work fine on the first nvidia card in an AGP slot. I currently run a five-monitor xinerama desktop using four different graphics cards (1 AGP 3 PCI) and am trying to find out how best to set that up in a new, PCIexpress type mobo.
Re: Xinerama & SLI
Just to clarify, using twinview for this configuration is very undesireable. I really hate twinview, it integrates badly with every window manager known to man.
Also, the second nvidia card IS dual-head, I could just never get the second head on it to work no matter what I tried. (the "nv" driver, the "nvidia" driver, all the different AGP modules, int10 initilization, specifying the screen in the "device" section, NOT specifying the screen in the device section, using the "connecteddisplays" directive, etc etc)
Anyway, this is why I'm wondering whether 4 monitor output from an sli-type monitor would work WITHOUT twinview, which I hate.
(for the record, I couldn't even get twinview working on the PCI nvidia card)
Anyway, thanks very much.
Re: Xinerama & SLI
1 Attachment(s)
Concerning twinview: you can easily avoid it by introducing
two screens per GPU. Please check the readme at
"Appendix P. Configuring Multiple X Screens on One Card":
Find attached a number of xorg multihead configuration files.
The configuration you are probably interessted in is:
BTW.: 3D acceleration will also work as long as you the window
size is smaler than 4096 pixels.
|All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:49 PM.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2015, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©1998 - 2014, nV News.


text:
14.9°c Hayes
Bairstow Eves - Tottenham
543 High Road, Tottenham, London, Greater London. N17 6SB
02088 083221
We want you to enjoy your visit to our website. That's why we use cookies to enhance your experience. By staying on our website you agree to our use of cookies. Find out more about the cookies we use.


text:
Why not utilize those rays while soaking them in? This bikini does double duty by charging small electronics and serves as an eye-catching piece of swim wear. You'll never have to worry about running out of juice in your iPod at the beach again.
Brooklyn-based designer Andrew Schneider has designed this solar PV cell-studded two-piece that can charge smart phones, MP3 players and other small electronic devices through a USB connector. Each suit takes him about 80 hours to make, as he stitches them all by hand.
And I know what you're all asking yourselves: "Can you wear this in the water?" And the answer is 'yes.' One would obviously want to unplug their electronics before taking a dip, but it is completely safe to wear in the water.
Schneider is currently taking custom orders for the Solar Bikini on his website, Solar Coterie.
Information via Huffington Post and Inhabitat; photo via Solar Coterie.


text:
Santa's Guide to Easy Christmas Crafts for Kids
Bonus: Get our newsletter & special offers for free. We will not share or sell your email address. View our Privacy Policy
Quick Glitter Pine Cones
By: Mandy Court for MaKC Creations
We are adding the craft to your Craft Projects.
The project was added to your Craft Projects.
Click here to view your Craft Projects.
This kids Christmas craft is a creative way to use the pine cones from your front lawn for a pretty decoration. The kids will love playing with glitter, and your Christmas decor will sparkle.
- Pine cones in various shapes and sizes
- Spray adhesive
- Glitter in assorted colors
- Ziploc bags
- Ribbons or pipe cleaners
- Hot Glue gun
Cover working area with newspaper.
Put a couple of tablespoons of glitter in a ziplock bag. The bigger the pine cone the more glitter you will need.
Spray adhesive all over pine cone, being sure to get in between the cracks.
Place pine cone in the ziplock bag with the glitter and seal. Make sure it is sealed tightly.
Let your little one shake to their hearts content or until the pine cone is covered in glitter.
Remove pine cone and set aside to dry completely.
Repeat as many times as desired.
When dry, attach a ribbon with the glue gun to hang on the Christmas tree or fold a pipe cleaner in half and glue the center of the pipe cleaner to the bottom of the pine cone.
- Use the pipe cleaner to fasten to the tree branch. (see picture)
If you like this project, we also suggest:
Tiered Christmas Tree Ornament
Easy Icicle Ornament for Kids
Tags / Related Topics
Your Recently Viewed Projects
Images from other crafters
Love these projects? Get MORE delivered to your Inbox – FREE Click Here!
Report Inappropriate Comment
Are you sure you would like to report this comment? It will be flagged for our moderators to take action.
Thank you for taking the time to improve the content on our site.
What's Hot
- Festive Ice Skate Ornaments
- Easy Icicle Ornaments for Kids
- Quick Glitter Pine Cones
- 11 Easy Homemade Christmas Ornaments for Kids
- Four Sided Christmas Ball Ornament
- 12 Kids Christmas Crafts: Ornaments, Gifts and Decor + 3 New Projects
- "Hand" Made Ornaments
- Free "Santa's Guide to Easy Christmas Crafts for Kids" eBook
- Special Holiday Pocketbook
- Tiered Christmas Tree Ornament
Something worth saving?
- SAVE all your favorite crafts
- ADD personal notes
- QUICKLY reference your crafts
Free eBooks
- 12 Fabulous Picnic Craft Ideas + Restaurant Copycat Recipes
- 14 Toilet Paper Roll Craft Ideas
- 17 Flower Craft Ideas: How To Make Paper Flowers, Easy Fabric Flowers and More
- 18 Tie Dye Patterns for Shirts, Decor, & More
- 26 Spring Crafts for Kids
- Crafts for Mom: 30 Free Craft Projects for Mother's Day
- Easter Eggs: Easter Egg Designs, Tips for Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs, Egg Recipes
- Garden Crafts
- Graduation Crafts
- Hop into Spring: Easter Crafting and Recipe
Our Newest Projects & Articles
- 14 Beginner Crochet Patterns For Your Kitchen
- Craft-a-Day: 365 Simple Handmade Projects
- Jessica Potasz
- Full of Love Crochet Mason Jar Cozy Pattern
- Colorful DIY Agenda Planner
- Blinged Out DIY Cell Phone Case
- Egg Carton Flower Fairies
- Spring Flower DIY Wreath
- Ric Rac Rose Earrings
- Toilet Paper Roll Paint Stamps


text:
Christmas Shop
10 - 50 downloadsAdd this app to your lists
Tweets por @Appszoom
+ By Mobivei
By downloading the Christmas Shop on Main app, you're contributing to a local charity. When we reach target downloads, we'll be donating Christmas gifts, such as a fully decorated Christmas tree, to local charity groups. Within the app, we'd like you to take pictures of your Christmas decorations and share them in the app to give others some great ideas. You'll also receive special VIP discounts and offers just for having the app on your phone.
Tags: www.appszoom.com, dlvr.it.
Tags: www.appszoom.com, dlvr.it.
Recently changed in this version
- Share Christmas decoration photos
- Receive VIP coupons
- Loyalty program for free stuff
- GPS directions to our store
- Photo gallery of Christmas decoration ideas
Comments and ratings for Christmas Shop
- There aren't any comments yet, be the first to comment!


text:
Katy Perry isn't one to shy away from flashing flesh, at Coachella festival she happily walked around with her underwear on show, but last night her dressing reached new heights when she almost showed a tad too much skin.
At the ASCAP Pop Music awards, Katy Perry wore a sheer white floor-length frock with intricate embellishment of sequins and stitching that had a tendency to slip at the straps!
[Related story: Katy Perry flashes underwear at Coachella festival]
[Related story: Rihanna shares love for her BFF, Katy Perry]
We've all been there when you're wearing spaghetti straps and annoyingly it starts slipping down your arm and if you're bra free it can end in tears if you don't have a quick hand.
And that's almost what happened to the blue-haired songstress!
Katy Perry stole the style show at the awards last night /WENN
Her top half appeared to be naked under the delicate dress and as the strap began to creep down Katie's arm she almost exposed more than she's like to.
But the quick-thinking girl tested her reflexes as she quickly grabbed the unruly strap and moved in back into place.
Katie Perry's face was a classic as she pulled her best omg! face.
Katy matched her white dress with hot red lips /WENN
Following the near wardrobe malfunction, she continued to pose like a pro and show off just how gorgeous her gown was.
And she wore it well, with a floral headband (no doubt an accessory she kept from the weekend's festival antics) an arm full of beaded bracelets and hot red lips.
She wore new newly-dyed navy hair long and loose — if she added a few longer extensions she could have recovered from a nipple slip hiding her modesty with her locks #justsayin.


text:
Join the 'Photofrin' group to help and get support from people like you.
Photofrin Support Group
Latest Blog Post
Too Few Prostate Cancer Patients Get Bone-Strengthening Meds: Study
TUESDAY, Dec. 2, 2014 – Many men on hormone therapy for prostate cancer aren't getting bone-strengthening drugs they may need, new Canadian research contends. Hormone therapy, which suppresses male ...
Further Information
Related Condition Support Groups
Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, Esophageal Carcinoma


text:
ALOHA, Ore. -- Tim Curns had been a faithful customer of Frontier Communications since the early 90s. Not anymore.
I pulled the plug , Curns said after trying to get Frontier to help remove an unauthorized charge from his land line phone bill.
Started looking at the bill in detail and there was one charge for 14.95 from a company called Payment One, he told KGW.
When Curns called Frontier Communications they couldn't even tell me what the service was.
Curns said he asked Frontier for something in writing noting where he or his 91-year-old mother who lives with him, had signed up Payment One. He told Frontier they would not find anything, because they never signed up for anything.
Curns contacted Payment One and learned they had his address as in Beaverton, not Aloha which is his real address. After calling Frontier back, he was told they may be able to reverse one month of the $14.95 a month charge that he learned was on a two year contract.
In other words he would be billed a total of more than $300 for something he never ordered, in fact had no idea what Payment One was.
My question to the phone company was, okay, if you make an adjustment on this bill for 14.95 what are you going to do to stop this from being a recurring charge, Curns said, and they said there s nothing they can do, you have to call these people.
So Curns called and said Payment One told him the name of that company is My Global 4-1-1, which is a front company for a firm called Doink Media LLC, which the Federal Trade Commission been chasing all over the country.
Kyle Kavas, Spokesperson for The Better Business Bureau said, most of the time it's just companies that are randomly picking out phone numbers and charging them. Those cramming charges are very dangerous because they come from companies that are usually scammers.
KGW Unit 8 contacted Frontier Communications, which issued a statement:
Frontier takes customer concerns very seriously and always tries to make things right. Our normal policy on a cramming issue, which is an unauthorized charge on a customer s account, is to assist the customer in contacting the 3rd party company who added the charge. These 3rd party companies get a customer authorization from the customer although in some cases the customer doesn t realize they ve authorized the charge. An easy way to avoid these is to have a 3rd party block put on your account by calling Frontier Customer Service.
Those blocks can be free, but Curns said no one at Frontier would guarantee him he wouldn t be charged in the future for the block.
A few hours after Unit 8 contacted Frontier, Curns says he got a call on his cell phone from Frontier apologizing and promising to remove the monthly charge and retroactively pay him for part of his last phone bill.
That s right Curns was so frustrated with not getting the help he wanted from his phone company he had his land line phone disconnected for good.
Curns has this advice to all phone customers that get the same what he calls run around with their phone company and unauthorized phone charges.


text:
WAE Summary
50 - 100 downloadsAdd this app to your listsTweets por @Appszoom
A simple application for collecting and displaying posted score rumors from participants of the WAE contests sponsored by the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC). The WAE is a Amateur (Ham) Radio contest. This app supports the SSB, CW and RTTY editions.
Recently changed in this version
V2.01 Initial Version
Comments and ratings for WAE Summary
- There aren't any comments yet, be the first to comment!


text:
Woof Double-Lock Brushing Boots are lightweight, comfortable leg protection for all conditions and all terrain. These neoprene horse boots have breathable linings and wide, double lock straps for security. Large. Pair.
Professional's Choice Quick Wrap™ Bell Boots offer complete hoof and soft tissue protection. Easy to put on and remove, these ballistic nylon bell boots feature the UltraShock™ lining for shock-absorption. Pair.
The Equine Slipper® Horse Boot is handy to have on hand in the event of hoof injury or ailment. This hoof boot protects the hoof, keeps dirt out and holds medications in place. Each.
The Eskadron® FlexiSoft® Air Front Boot offers maximum protection. Mesh-protected air channels in the tough TPE outer shell ensure cooling airflow. Rear is reinforced for added protection. Bordered neoprene supports optimal knock absorption. This easy-care front horse boot has a specially molded ergot area and Flexisoft zone.
Made in Germany, Eskadron® Ankle Boots combine hard, protective outer shells with soft, slip-resistant neoprene linings. Pair.
Back On Track® Exercise Boots are made of durable and protective neoprene lined with cotton/polyester fabric that's infused with ceramic powder. These exercise boots form a close contact fit and reflect back body warmth as far infrared wave to stimulate blood circulation and keep muscles loose. Pair.
Back On Track® Ceramic Hock Boots feature state-of-the art fabric that's embedded with ceramic powder to reflect the horse's body warmth. Used as an aid to pain management or to help increase mobility, these hock boots have achieved good results in treating boggy hocks and arthritic joints. Pair.
Devon-Aire brings you neoprene boots with leather tear-drop pad, nickel hardware and heavy-duty, military grade VELCRO brand closures. These are durable and affordable front splint boots that won't slip or rub. Protective boots that are perfect for any discipline and available in great colors!
EquiFit T-Boot Originals® VELCRO® Open-Front Boots feature lightweight, kick-resistant outers, water-resistant T-Foam™ for a precise fit and top-quality closures to keep boots secure. These shock-absorbing front horse boots are designed to allow freedom of movement and a comfortable fit.
The Eskadron® Climatex Polo Wrap combines 4 1/2' of Climatex liner fabric with 5' of elastic bandage fabric for your horse's leg protection during exercise. Pair.
Made in the USA, the EquiFit T-Sport Wrap™ features a unique combination of open-celled, no-latex foam and high-quality fabrics. These innovative leg wraps provide maximum compression and slip-free support while transferring heat out and away.
Cavallo Sport Boots are easy to put on and take off and they stay securely in place. These hoof boots have a streamlined design and are slightly narrower than the Cavallo Simple Boot. Keep a pair on hand for lost shoes or cross training. Outsole is made of durable thermo-plastic-urethane (TPU); boots secure with VELCRO® brand closures.
ICE-VIBE Hock Boots help prepare hocks for exercise and reduce inflammation, discomfort and bruising after exercise. These hock boots are also helpful for horses on stall rest. Includes two ICE-VIBE Hock Boots, two cold packs, two batteries and one battery charger.
The Valena Tall Hind Boot is specially sized to offer protection to your horse's back legs. This horse boot has a tough vinyl exterior, a lofty, moisture-wicking Woolback lining and VELCRO® brand straps.
Back on Track® Polo Wraps are made of fleece material with incredible elasticity. Infused with ceramic fiber, these polo wraps reflect the body's warmth in the form of FAR infrared wave to help improve mobility and performance.
Centaur® PVC Jelly Glitter Bell Boots are fun and functional! These translucent bell boots in trendy, glittery pastels are made of strong, molded PVC with double closures for security and long wear.
Eskadron® Memo Front Boots contour to your horse's legs and offer double protection. These horses boots have viscoelastic MemoFoam linings that distribute pressure and absorb shock while allowing free movement. An open-pore memory layer in the lining increases breathability. Easy-to-use fastening system protects against dirt.


text:
Anne Gray Harvey was born in Newton, Massachusetts. Her father, a lawyer and woolen manufacturer, was an alcoholic. Her mother suffered from unfilled literary aspirations. Anne was not comfortable with school, but she attended a finishing school and was briefly a fashion model.
She eloped at nineteen with Alfred Sexton. Upon the birth of their first daughter, Linda, she suffered postpartum depression and was hospitalized. The birth of Joyce, their second daughter, in 1955 led to increased depression. Her therapist encouraged her to write, and Sexton's first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back, was published in 1960. Extramarital affairs did not prevent her further attempts at suicide, but she was strengthened by participation in a Boston University seminar with Robert Lowell and students Sylvia Plath, George Starbuck, and an increasingly close friend, Maxine Kumin, with whom she later authored four children's books.
In 1959 both of Sexton's parents died. All My Pretty Ones (1962) expresses her grief, guilt and loss. Live or Die was a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1966. Love Poems was issued in 1968, and she was the Phi Beta Kappa poet at Harvard. Her last writings expressed her strange hunger for death: The Death Notebooks and The Awful Rowing Toward God. Here we confront a weird view of God which she dramatizes. This makes evident to us the indispensable human need for a logical vision of God.
Anne Sexton killed herself with carbon monoxide in her garage at age 46.
Her daughter Linda edited the posthumous poems 45 Mercy Street and Words for Dr. Y: Uncollected Poems with Three Stories (1978). Collected Poems appeared in 1981. Her authorized biography is Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook (1991).