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Sepia (Squid Ink)
Sepia is the ink from a squid.
The squid usually lives alone, it is an independent individual. In case of fear or danger they surround themselves with a hiding cloud of dark ink.
When we project this image on human beings we find that the homoeopathic Sepia suits people who need (more) personal space around them, who cherish their independence, and who surround themselves with a dark emotional cloud of negative temper in case they don't get it.
Sepia especially turns out to be a remedy for women. There are two types of Sepia women: one is the independent and ambitious career minded woman, and the other one is the mother who feels that the responsibilities for her family ask so much that there is no time left for herself. Women who need Sepia can also be a combination of both types.
The best known Sepia picture is that of the overworked housewife.
She fights an inner battle between the duties and responsibilities of being a good mother and housewife on one hand, and living her own private life on the other hand. Sepia's are responsible persons who find that having a family is a hard and time-consuming job that hardly leaves time for anything else. And that's difficult since Sepia's like to do things on their own.
This conflict is the psychological reason for their exhaustion. The physical reason for their exhaustion is a slow blood circulation, especially in the belly.
This results in a weak sex-drive, weakness of the sexual organs, prolaps of the vagina and womb, all kinds of menstruation problems, PMS, morning sickness during pregnancy, postnatal depression, miscarriages, vaginal infections and an irregular bloodcirculation in menopause (flushes of heat). So Sepia is a great remedy in women's complaints.
Other symptoms are a slow digestion, urinary problems, constipation, back-pain, headaches and allergies. It is understandable that a slow and irregular bloodcirculation leads to easily fainting, haemorrhoids and varicose veins.
Knowing this you understand what makes Sepia characters feel better: strong physical exertion, like gardening or dancing, because that speeds up the body functions.
Mentally they are irritable, dull and forgetful. Their tired mind can be completely empty, unable to think anylonger.
Emotionally their temper matches the dark ink-clouds of the squid: they can be very negative, complaining, grumbling, scolding, argueing, cold and indifferent, jealous or depressed. They love their children and partner, but their exhaustion makes them disagreeable. There are also quiet and reserved Sepia's hiding in a meaningful speechless dark cloud.
The second type Sepia woman is that of the career woman, business woman.
She leads her own life and enjoys that. She may have a LAT-relationship because that leaves time enough to be alone. Or she is happy without a partner. It can be a woman who chooses not to have children.
She is ambitious and needs intellectual challenges. She is organized, efficient, strong, powerful, and she likes sporting. Physically she can have the same problems as the first type Sepia woman.
Both types Sepia women - or a combination of them - may look hard or uninterested, but inside they are vulnerable.
They prefer to do things their way and dislike opposition. When they feel bad or hurt they want to be alone; consolation is out of the question.
They are often too tired for company. Sepia's fear poverty and can be quite avaricious.
They look yellowish due to a slow working liver and they sweat easily.
Milk and fat food cause indigestion. They can constantly feel hungry; in some cases eating ameliorates. In other cases seeing or smelling food causes nausea. Sepia's like stimulating food, like spicy, sour or bitter food.
Sepia children and Sepia men have a yellow skin. They are dissatisfied, critical, sarcastic, reserved, closed, indifferent, negative, possessive, avaricious, lazy, tired and constipated. They change in a positive way when physical action is required.
Sepia's love thunderstorms!
They feel worse by change of weather, pregnancy and menstruation, warm rooms, company, coldness, milk and starting movements.
They feel better by dancing, strong exertion, being outdoors, warmth, cold drinks.
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- Squid fans are sustainable seafood lovers
- Spaniards pair the ink with white rice, garlic, green peppers and squid or its close relation cuttlefish for the paella-like specialty arròs negre.
- Clever Cuttlefish 'Freeze' Bioelectric Fields to Avoid Predators
- Cuttlefish are known for their ability to change colors, but these clever cephalopods have a problem: Sharks, rays and other predators hunt not only by sight, but by sensing the bioelectric fields emanating from their prey.
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- LaBan revisits Zeppoli: Passion in every dish
- Baldino's spaghetti con sepia, meanwhile, is a stunning pasta blackout, with tender squid tangled in spaghetti whose garlicky oil sauce thickens with squid ink that darkens to a midnight glaze as it heats, adding both sweetness and a faint marine umami ...
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Hot Bike Magazine
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When New Zealand gave two young Chinese refugees citizenship in the 1940's they found an unlikely way to return the gift - by saving the almighty kumara. Director: Felicity Morgan-Rhind, Producer: Arani Cuthbert
Established in 1992 as an artist management company for New Zealand's well-loved entertainers, the Topp Twins. Diva has since expanded into a diverse entertainment company presenting live stage shows, booking talent Diva the Agency and making award-winning film and television shows.
Diva Productions produces, and helps sell, original character-driven content that entertains but also has something life-affirming to say.
The company has developed a slate of film and TV projects, including Hilda with assistance from the NZ Film Commission, and UK's Spring Films (The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence) attached as a co-producer. A factual reality series with heart, Topp Country, is in production of its third series for TVNZ and a series of short films about Refugees has been made as part of a marketing campaign for the NZ Red Cross.
"We believe in the power of stories, music and laughter to inspire people and create change." Arani Cuthbert
Arani established Diva Productions in 1992 as an artist management company for the Topp Twins - New Zealand's well-loved entertainers and national icons. The company has now developed into a boutique production company producing high quality original entertainment for stage and screen.
Production Manager
Michelle is a graduate of the South Seas Film and TV school, and has worked for Diva for 7 years. Michelle is Diva's 'Production Manager', our behind the scenes super-hero who always stays calm no matter what. She enjoys sinking her teeth into some juicy research and a satisfying Call Sheet. She has also been known to liberate her inner westie chick.
Elizabeth (Lizie) is a graduate from the New Zealand Broadcasting School and hails from Fiji. She is interested in all aspects of the creative industry but her passion lies in TV/Film productions. She is so multi-talented we cannot let her go: as well as working on our recent TV show Topp Country as production co-ordinator and assistant camera, she looks after all our social media. She likes her whisky neat and cooks a mean curry.
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Hotel Santa Lucia Capoterra - Capoterra
The Santa Lucia Capoterra Hotel is situated in the south of the beautiful Island Sardinia adjacent to the fabulous area of the Natural Park of Santa Gilla and the La Maddalena Beach. Surrounded by one hectare of Mediterranean park, Hotel Santa Lucia Capoterra offer a relaxing ambiance close to the little town of Capoterra and the Capitol Cagliari.
In addition to an outdoor pool, Hotel Santa Lucia Capoterra provides a fitness center. The hotel also offers a restaurant, as well as a snack bar/deli, a poolside bar, and a bar/lounge. Free WiFi is available in public areas, and free parking is available on site.
Hotel Santa Lucia Capoterra - Capoterra
Hotel Info: 1-877-214-4288from $86
- Standard Double Room Single Use
- Standard Triple Room
- Family Room
- Superior Double Room Single Use
- Single Room
- Standard Double Room
- Superior Double Room
- Junior Suite
Also popular with travelers from the USA
At a glance
Key facts
Hotel size
- This hotel has 71 rooms
- This hotel is arranged over 2 floors
- Check-in time 2 PM-midnight
- Check-out time is 11 AM
- Express check-in
Required at check in
- Credit card or cash deposit required
- Government-issued photo ID required
Travelling with others
- Babysitting/childcare *
- Pets allowed
- Free WiFi and wired Internet access in public areas
- Free WiFi and wired Internet access in rooms
- Airport shuttle *
- Free self parking
- Area shuttle *
In the hotel
- Breakfast (surcharge)
- Restaurant
- Bar/lounge
- Snack bar/deli
- Poolside bar
- Room service (during limited hours)
- Outdoor seasonal pool
- Outdoor pool
- Fitness facilities
- Spa treatment room(s)
- One meeting room
- Computer station
- 24-hour front desk
- Concierge services
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Laundry facilities
- Hair salon
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Luggage storage
- Multilingual staff
- Elevator/lift
- Garden
- Terrace
- Fireplace in lobby
- Television in common areas
- Accessible bathroom
- In-room accessibility
- Roll-in shower
In the room
- In-room climate control (air conditioning)
- Air conditioning
- Minibar
- Bathrobes
- Hypo-allergenic bedding available
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- In-room massage available
- Individually decorated
- Private bathroom
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- Cable TV channels
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- Free WiFi
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- Daily housekeeping
- In-room safe
Special features
On Site
- Fitness facilities
- Bicycle rentals on site
- Windsurfing on site
- Golfing nearby
- Hiking/biking trails nearby
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- Scooter/moped rentals nearby
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Hotel Santa Lucia Capoterra - Capoterra's small print
Also known as
- Hotel Santa Lucia Capoterra
- Santa Lucia Capoterra
- Hotel Santa Lucia Capoterra Sardinia
- Santa Lucia Capoterra Hotel Capoterra
All guests, including children, must be present at check-in and show their government-issued photo ID card or passport.
Cash transactions at this property cannot exceed EUR 2999.99, due to national regulations. For further details, please contact the property using information in the booking confirmation.
Optional extras
Babysitting/childcare is available for an extra charge
Airport shuttle service is offered for an extra charge
Area shuttle service is offered for an extra charge
We have included all charges provided to us by this hotel. However, charges can vary, for example, based on length of stay or the room you book.


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Gunflint Chert
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I am looking for a Game Engine that is suited to create a card game. I prefer to use 2d and any engine that uses any language. I have basic knowledge in C++ and a little bit in Python. Still I am willing to learn any language that is best suitable to create a card game
Game Engine for card game
#1 Members - Reputation: 112
Posted 21 January 2014 - 11:04 PM
#2 Members - Reputation: 1807
Posted 22 January 2014 - 02:43 AM
The problem with a game card is the AI, something that you cannot achieve without coding I suppose. A tool like GameMaker would be perfect for the graphical part, but not for the AI.
I suggest to take a good API like SFML2 or SDL2 and code your game, at least you'll end learn something AND get your game done.
#3 Members - Reputation: 1187
Posted 22 January 2014 - 08:20 AM
For a card game, I'd recommend Construct 2 or a different engine that can create browser-based games. Or you could do the HTML and other coding yourself if you really wanted.
I'm not sure if Construct 2 is great for coding enemy AI or not, but I'd strongly recommend not having an enemy AI for a card game unless you know how hard programming a good AI is. Interesting card interactions are insanely complicated to handle in AI code since you basically won't know how effective each combination is. Focus on a game that is fun for humans to play against humans at first, then use profits to add AI if your game succeeds.
#4 Members - Reputation: 1807
Posted 23 January 2014 - 03:48 AM
Even if you do a two-player only game you have to have the program knows the rules of the game. Again, you have to code some kind of basic AI. You can do it by learning some proprietary scripting dialect like GameMaker's gml or with a standard, good old c++ ;)
Anyway, take my suggest like the one of a programmer, more interested in the technology than the game itself.
#5 Members - Reputation: 417
Posted 23 January 2014 - 03:55 AM
Java's 2D API should require no maintenance for future operating systems if you don't mind that Java won't let you use global functions.
My open source DirectX 10/11 graphics engine. https://sites.google.com/site/dawoodoz
"My design pattern is the simplest to understand. Everyone else is just too stupid to understand it."
#6 Members - Reputation: 271
Posted 23 January 2014 - 04:21 AM
when you can't see well like me, you can't test your applications and you can't read something
#7 Members - Reputation: 112
Posted 24 January 2014 - 01:28 AM
Thanks for the helpful answers, I'll look into it.. SFML2 and SDL seems a little bit complicated at first glance but I'll try and also i'll look at Construct to
EDIT: I saw what was Construct 2 but I really like to code it myself ) Anyway i'll try to decide later which to use )
Edited by PandaBerg, 24 January 2014 - 01:29 AM.
#8 Members - Reputation: 134
Posted 24 January 2014 - 04:29 AM
Use Unity3D , get accustomed to game dev (It supports 2D now) and then move to Cocos2d
#9 Members - Reputation: 271
Posted 24 January 2014 - 12:27 PM
when you can't see well like me, you can't test your applications and you can't read something
#10 Crossbones+ - Reputation: 4157
Posted 25 January 2014 - 12:14 PM
I'd use a higher level context to develop a card game, be it a blackjack PC implementation or, say, some of these trading card video games.
Something like Löve2D, Haxe or PyGame would be more than enough. Game building tools would also suffice, ones such as Game Editor.
By nature, this type of game doesn't have a lot of real-time simulations to do, so try not to worry about the performance, as it won't be that much of an issue.


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Tag Archives: Gun Control
Watch What Happens When 5 Anti-Gun Liberals Are Brought to the Gun Range
Read more at Mad World News …
Exposing the Media's Assault Weapon Myth
Via Breitbart: NRA News "ASSAULT WEAPONS" Dom Raso and his friend Jerry, a S.W.A.T. officer from New Jersey, dispel the myth that so-called "assault weapons" are the preferred firearms of criminals. Related: The 'Fully-Auto, Military-Style, Assault Weapon' Meme
Fireworks Display—Ted Cruz and Dianne Feinstein
Senators Ted Cruz and Dianne Feinstein clashed over the Second Amendment at a Senate Judiciary Hearing on guns earlier today, as reported by The Weekly Standard. Sen. Cruz asked Feinstein, "Would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights … Continue reading →
The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights
The Polemicist The Fundamental Political Principle "That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." —George Orwell Let's start with this: … Continue reading →
Gun Control—What College Doesn't Teach You [Video]
Anti-Constitutionalists (Democrats) Move to Ban Ammunition in Wisconsin
Gateway Pundit reported: Democrats in Wisconsin are circulating legislation to ban civilian possession of hollow point or frangible ammunition. Ah yes, the old controversy surrounding "cop-killer hollow-point bullets" and "dum dum bullets" (i.e. frangible) demonstrates a classic example of how … Continue reading →
Major US Gun Manufacturers Boycott NY Law Enforcement in Protest to Recent Gun Control Laws
Via Gateway Pundit: Olympic Arms, a top American gun manufacturer known for its AR15s, recently announced that, because of the political climate in New York state, the company would not sell its firearms to state law enforcement until the new … Continue reading →
Who Is the LAPD Murderer?
Gun-Control Advocate, Obama Fan, Piers Morgan Lover LA 02-07-13 Police in Los Angeles are conducting a massive manhunt for one of their own – an LAPD officer suspected of killing a three people and injuring two others. The search is … Continue reading →
Obama EO Quietly Removes 1995 Ban On Using Federal Funds To Advocate for Gun Control
Via Washington Times: The directives on gun violence President Obama signed Wednesday were meant to seem harmless. A closer look at the president's first memorandum reveals it to be a sneaky assault on congressional authority in order to fund gun-control propaganda. … Continue reading →
Actor Danny Glover: 2nd Amendment Was Created to Protect Slavery
Via CampusReform.org: The Constitution's Second Amendment was created to bolster slavery and capture land from Native Americans, award winning actor Danny Glover told a group of students at a Texas A&M sponsored event on Thursday. "I don't know if you … Continue reading →


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As part of the 2016 edition of Euromonitor International's Consumer Foodservice data, analysts in 54 countries were asked to submit the most interesting and most relevant new foodservice concepts in ...
There was a surge in interest in upmarket street food in the United Arab Emirates towards the end of the review period, with a focus on innovative and authentic cuisine. There were major street food festivals ...
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The LSU coaching staff is wasting no time in identifying the top wide receiver talent from the Class of 2010, and recently have shown a lot of interest in several prospects at the position. Orlando...
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Sorry, this item is not available anymore for purchase online. Please see our recommended replacement product.
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For completists, the return of these two fan favorites to the home video fold is a genuine treat, but the extensive featurettes are equally valuable in terms of presenting a glimpse of the series as a whole. The genre documentary company Ballyhoo Motion Pictures does a typically stellar job with the three-part Return to Eden Prairie, which traces the history of MST3K from Hodgson's early concepts through its early execution on Minneapolis-St. Paul's KTMA and transition to the Comedy Channel and later Comedy Central. Most of the main writer-performers, including Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, and Kevin Murphy, as well as producer Jim Mallon and prop designers Jef Maynard, Patrick Brantseg, and Beez McKeever, provide their own perspective, which is buttressed by extensive on-camera and behind-the-scenes footage from the KTMA era. Ballyhoo is also behind the short but sweet Last Ride of Joel Robinson, which details the various ideas behind and final execution of Hodgson's last episode, and the Ninth Wonder of the World, a fairly lengthy and laugh-free look at the making of Gorgo that details, among other facts, director Eugene Lourie's work on Chaplin's Limelight and the fast-and-loose careers of the King Brothers, who produced the film. Writer Mary Jo Pehl--the once-and-future Pearl Forrester--is profiled in a new Life After MST3K interview, while historian Constantine Nasr does his best to explain the curious, genre-bending Moon Zero Two and the influence of Stanley Kubrick upon the final product. Mike Nelson's wrap-arounds for The MST Hour's broadcast of Day the Earth Froze, a brief but amusing tribute from Leonard Maltin, and a high-camp interview with Brain actress Marilyn Neilson round out the major featurettes, which are accompanied by theatrical trailers for four of the six pictures. --Paul Gaita
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Travel Nursing Jobs in Maryland
If you're looking for a great job opportunity, check out travel nurse jobs in Maryland. You'll have the chance to enjoy hiking the Allegheny Mountains, strolling at Chesapeake Bay, discovering all the excitement of Main Street and the history in the state capital while travel nursing in Maryland. Noted for its fantastic seafood and landscapes, Maryland has everything from quaint country towns to sophisticated cities that you can enjoy during your assignment.
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Doctor insights on:
Choking Sensation In Throat
What are the causes of chronic laryngitis and choking sensation in throat.?
Most likely reflux: Most likely cause is acid reflux even if there is no heartburn. Only 1/3 of people with reflux have heartburn. Consider avoiding caffeine, alcohol, acidic or spicy foods, smoking, eating less than 4 hrs before sleep, sleeping with the the head higher than the heart, and antacids. Could also be throat tumor so consider ENT evaluation if symptoms present longer then 2-3 weeks. ...Read more
Choking (Definition)
Chocking is when something is obstructing the airway often the trachea. This is an emergency. Someone chocking with complete obstruction cannot speak. They will often grab at their throats. The heimlich maneuver is the famous technique taught in bls courses to try ...Read more
What can cause chronic laryngitis and choking sensation in the throat?
Reflux: Stomach juice coming up into the throat. ...Read moreSee 1 more doctor answer
Is there a difference between stress-related chest/ arm discomfort and exercise-related chest heaviness and a choking sensation in the throat?
Hard to tell: Stress can mimic cardiac symptoms. If your experiencing them related to exertion i would be more concerned about heart related issues. Either way chest pain needs to be taken seriously. Please get it checked asap. ...Read more
After 22hrs of not eating, i keep feeling this choking sensation in my throat and my ears feel heavy. What is this?
Time to see Dr: It 'might' be tonsil or uvula enlargement, but cannot say via internet, and is a serious issue, so should be seen, likely at an urgent care as is holiday weekend, to be sure do not need sent to er or inpatient for care. ...Read more
started taking nexium today. still having a choking sensation around my throat and burn in the middle of my chest any sug? can I use pepcid 2 with it
Antacids: It takes a while for this to work. Take an antacid, a liquid antacid my help coat your esophagus. Do not take any pill within 30 minutes of taking a dose or for an hour after a dose of it. Generic liquid antacids can taste truly hideous. This is one time when Brand Names are definitely better. ...Read more
My mother has ben suffering with a choking sensation in her throat and a very stuffy nose. What can you advise her to do?
Treat sinusitis!: She is draining viscous mucous down her throat. She may need antibiotics. Warm moist air will help (netty pot, hot shower, etc). Avoid antihistimines. If continues, see your doctor. Don't want to develop pneumonia! ...Read more
Extreme pain and choking sensation on left side of throat. What should I do? Swallowing is painful and next to impossible. Feels like a classic sore throat but x100 and only on the left side of throat. It feels swollen and like someone is choking me with
Hello. : Hello. I can't diagnose your condition. But your description makes me wonder about a possible peritonsilar abcess. I know you are concerned by the cost of an emergency room. However, if this is a peritonsilar abcess it could be life threatening. ...Read more
What causes throat tightness/swollen choking sensation?
See below: Many things, none of them good. You need to see your doctor today to sort these symptoms out. ...Read more
Does a peg tube cause a choking sensation or a lump in the throat? I have redness around my peg tube, is this normal?
No, but...: A PEG tube is down in the stomach, so doesn't affect the throat (presuming there wasn't an upper endoscopy procedure in the past few days). However, normal healthy people don't have PEG tubes, which means there could be some illness or disorder that relates to the throat and to the reason why a person has a PEG tube. ...Read more
Had mono 3-4mnths ago, seen dr and ent, theyre not worried, had ultrasound on neck, negative, but throat still gets tight choking sensation, thyroid?
Choking after mono: If your tonsils are swollen or touching each other , a taped short course of steroids might help, please ask your doctor, if this problem persisted you may need to go back to ENT for possible nasolaryngosopy if it was not done yet. Good luck. ...Read more
Choking Feeling (Definition)
A choking feeling may happen for a number of reasons that aren't actually choking. For example, if food travels slowly down the esophagus, a person may feel like he is choking. People having anxiety attacks may similarly feel like they are ...Read more
Pharynx (Definition)
It is the connection between the mouth and the throat. The 3 parts are the oropharynx, nasopharynx, and hypo-pharynx. The pharynx leads into the ...Read more
- Talk to a doctor live online for free
- Causes of a choking sensation in the throat
- Sensation of hair in throat
- What causes choking feeling in throat?
- Ask a doctor a question free online
- Food stuck in throat but not choking
- Burning sensation in throat when breathing
- Burning sensation in throat and ears
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- Talk to an otolaryngologist online


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Novotel Paris Centre Tour Eiffel - Paris
- Swimming pool
During renovations, the hotel will make every effort to minimize noise and disturbance.
You will be spoilt for choice in terms of dining at this hotel as there are 2 restaurants serving breakfast, lunch and dinner where you will find great menu choices and a nice spot to eat during the day. Go for a dip in the indoor pool during your stay. Guests wishing to enjoy a drink will surely want to visit the bar/lounge.
The leisure facilities include a fitness center. Guests can make use of the free WiFi.
Novotel Paris Centre Tour Eiffel - Paris
Hotel Info: 1-877-214-4288from $147
- Superior Room, 1 Double Bed, View (Queensize Bed)
- Standard Room, 1 Double Bed (Queen Size)
- Family Room, 2 Bedrooms ((side by side))
- Junior Suite, 1 Double Bed, View
- Executive Suite, 1 Double Bed, View
- Superior Room, 1 Double Bed, View (Queensize bed + Single Sofa bed)
- Family Room, 2 Bedrooms ((side by side))
- Superior Room, 1 Double Bed, View (Queensize bed + Sofa bed double)
- Standard Double Room
- Standard Room, 2 Single Beds
- Superior
- Standard Room, 1 Double Bed (Queensize bed + single sofa bed)
Also popular with travelers from the USA
At a glance
Key facts
Hotel size
- This hotel has 764 rooms
- This hotel is arranged over 31 floors
- Check-in time 2 PM-2 AM
- Check-out time is noon
Required at check in
- Credit card or cash deposit required
- Government-issued photo ID required
Travelling with others
- Children (16 years old and younger) stay free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding
- No cribs (infant beds)
- Babysitting/childcare *
- Pets allowed *
- Free WiFi in public areas
- Free WiFi in rooms
- Valet parking *
Other information
- Smoke-free property
In the hotel
- Buffet breakfast daily (surcharge)
- 2 restaurants
- Bar/lounge
- Coffee shop/café
- Snack bar/deli
- Room service (during limited hours)
- Indoor pool
- Fitness facilities
- Fitness classes on site
- Pilates classes on site
- Playground on site
- Business center
- Number of meeting rooms - 30
- Conference space
- Meeting rooms 30
- Conference space size (feet) - 23681
- Conference space size (meters) - 2200
- Conference center
- 24-hour front desk
- Concierge services
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Laundry facilities
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Luggage storage
- Multilingual staff
- Porter/bellhop
- Year Built 1976
- Elevator/lift
- Garden
- Terrace
- Accessible bathroom
- In-room accessibility
- Roll-in shower
In the room
- In-room climate control (air conditioning)
- Air conditioning
- Coffee/tea maker
- Iron/ironing board (on request)
- Premium bedding
- Private bathroom
- Shower/tub combination
- Free toiletries
- Hair dryer
- Pay movies
- Premium TV channels
- Desk
- Free WiFi
- Phone
- Refrigerator
- Free bottled water
- Daily housekeeping
- In-room safe (laptop compatible)
Special features
DiningNovotel Cafe - This café specializes in French cuisine and serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A children's menu is available.
Benkay - This fine-dining restaurant specializes in Japanese cuisine and serves lunch and dinner.
Novotel Paris Centre Tour Eiffel - Paris's small print
Also known as
- Novotel Eiffel Tour
- Tour Eiffel Novotel
- Novotel Eiffel Tower Paris
- Novotel Paris Tour Eiffel Hotel Paris
- Novotel Paris Centre Tour Eiffel Hotel
- Novotel Paris Centre Tour Eiffel
- Novotel Paris Eiffel Tour
- Novotel Paris Tour Eiffel
- Novotel Tour Eiffel
- Novotel Tour Eiffel Hotel
- Novotel Tour Eiffel Hotel Paris
- Novotel Tour Paris
- Paris Novotel Eiffel
- Paris Novotel Tour Eiffel
Surf and board shorts are not permitted in the swimming pool. Guests must wear swimming trunks or boxers. For more details, please contact the office using the information on the reservation confirmation received after booking.
The name on the credit card used at check-in to pay for incidentals must be the primary name on the guestroom reservation.
Mandatory fees
You'll be asked to pay the following charges at check in or check out:
- A tax is imposed by the city: EUR 2.48 per person, per night
Optional extras
Self parking costs EUR 29 per day
Valet parking costs EUR 29 per day
Buffet breakfast is offered for an extra charge of EUR 19.9 per person (approximately)
Babysitting/childcare is available for an extra charge
Pets are allowed for an extra charge of EUR 15 per pet, per night
We have included all charges provided to us by this hotel. However, charges can vary, for example, based on length of stay or the room you book.
Recent reviews
Good 3.9 /5 from 1335 reviews
Room view was beautiful. Staff was amazing!!!!!!!! Something to do for every type of traveller within the hotel. Attached movie theatre mall nearby Eiffel tower walking distance separate counter for help separatefor check in and check out... SSO SO so much to say about this hotel.
This is an excellent hotel with excellent service and location!
One of the hotel staff is tricky and no manner at all, making the experience and impression of the hotel quite bad actually.
We enjoyed our trip and the hotel was really good.
I was surprised not to have replacement coffee and teas each day. Is this a French thing? Also wash cloths were unavailable in our room. We were too tired to deal with asking so made due without.


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Contact us 24/7: +1 877 678 9627
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- Depth 4cm
- Height 16cm
- Width 21cm
With a compartmentalized wallet-style front pocket, Mulberry's papaya leather clutch is the ideal jet-set accessory. Use it to keep your travel documents organized in the height of luxury. Shown here with a Philippe Audibert cuff, Burberry Prorsum cuff, Christian Louboutin shoes, Sonia by Sonia Rykiel top, Burberry coat and J Brand jeans.
- Papaya leather clutch with a compartmentalized suede-lined front flap pocket with a designer-stamped gold turn-lock fastening and buckled strap details. Mulberry clutch has zip fastening along top, stitch detail and is fully lined in designer-stamped fabric. Designer color: Watermelon.
Product Code: 98366
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Product Code: 98366


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Fifteen Consumer Electronics Design Mistakes
You saved and you saved until you could finally buy that shiny new $1000 gadget that promised you everything under the stars. When it came time to plug it in, you found your joy being subsumed by abject horror. Your stomach plunged deep into your gut and you (yes, mortal non-designer you) recognized a fundamental flaw in your flashy gizmo so obvious that it made you want to pick up the device and smash it over the designer's head.
Even the best designers make mistakes...but this article isn't about them. We're about to, ahem, celebrate the worst consumer electronics designers through the lens of their faulty creations. Since I'm far from an all-knowing technology god, I've limited our survey to fifteen design problems that have not only bugged me through the years, but that are widespread enough to have bugged many of you too. These problems aren't limited to current technology, but they all fall into the nebulous realm known as "consumer electronics." You know: TVs, telephones, VCRs, DVD players, MP3 players, and more.
TV/Video Design Mistakes
Mistake #1: The Red Off Light
Device(s): TVs, DVRs, Receivers, Game Consoles, and more
Sing it with me:
TVs do it, Wiis do it
Even silly PS3s do it
Let's do it. Let's never turn off
The little red "off light," common in most modern entertainment center equipment, serves as a constant reminder that your electronic gear never stops doing its job. It's always sippin' on outlet juice, even if you don't want it to. If said equipment happens to be located in your bedroom, the off light also provides a laserlike beam of photons to tickle your eyeballs into unnecessary alertness.
It seems that most TVs, cable boxes, and even video game systems made after 2003 or so provide some sort of active glowing indicator that they're "not running" - that is to say that they're not actively doing what you want them to be doing. By definition, then, the indicator is completely redundant and pointless. (In the case of video game consoles, your electronic gadgets could be doing what you don't want them to be doing: downloading random updates from the Internet.)
Remember when LED power indicators only glowed when a unit was turned on? It was helpful in cases when the device wasn't behaving properly; the little power light let you know that the unit was receiving power. Then you could commence troubleshooting - perhaps you plugged the video connector into the audio connector?- and so on.
That was handy. But an off light?
What Were They Thinking? (Benj's Theory)
It's 2002 and you're designing a new TV set. When it comes time to pick the power LED, you notice these nifty new bicolor or tricolor LEDs that combine two or three different colors into a single component. They're cheap and plentiful, so why not use them? Then you can show everyone that your device works properly-even when it's not working.
There is one small functional purpose for some "off lights," albeit one that I still believe is completely unnecessary: in some devices, the power LED doubles as a diagnostic light for software problems. (For the last decade or more, people have been building software-controlled microcontrollers into everything, so if the programming is off, things don't work. It's not just an hardware design problem anymore.)
Sometimes power LEDs blink when the unit is "warming up" (booting, initializing, etc.) to let you know that, yes, something's happening - you're not just sitting there staring at a blank TV for 10 seconds right after you turned it on. If there's an error, the LED can blink a certain pattern as well, letting a phone technician in India know that you just wasted $600.
There's still no good excuse to have a light shine when your unit is powered off. I'm sure some will challenge that assertion, but TVs worked fine for 50 years without red LED off lights, so I know they're useless.
Mistake #2: The Blinking VCR Clock
Device(s): Video Cassette Recorders
Who hasn't owned a VCR that blinks? (OK, people under 20: put your hands down.) Almost every VCR ever manufactured shipped with an electronic digital numeric display somewhere on the unit. Its primary purpose was to show running time while playing a tape to assist in viewing, fast-forwarding, or rewinding a recorded program.
That display also had another important reason for being there. When electronics companies introduced VCRs in the 1970s, they marketed the devices as a way to record and time-shift broadcast TV shows, and let owners program them to begin recording at a certain date and time as guided by an internal clock. So it only made sense that the VCR displayed the current time on the front of the unit (even when it was off-you know, just in case you didn't already have a timepiece).
So what's the problem? When the VCR lost power, either through being unplugged from the wall, or when your house would experience a momentary power dropout, the unit would lose its internal memory settings. That's because the VCR's clock information was stored in a chip that required constant power to keep the clock active and running. Many digital clocks work around power outages by allowing you to install a separate backup battery to retain power to the clock memory while the main power is off. And most didn't have battery backups.
And here's the second problem: VCRs were notoriously difficult to program or set to the correct time. It usually involved weird buttons and hard to navigate on-screen menus (on later models). Even if you figured out how to program it, what's the point of doing it if it's just going to reset again?
That's why VCR designers got away with the blinking clock syndrome: people were too lazy to program, so they didn't care that their VCR could be programmed, so they didn't demand VCRs with clock batteries. VCRs ended up being mostly used to play pre-recorded bought or rented movies, rendering the time-shifting functionality mostly an afterthought.
Ultimately, many VCRs did ship with auto-setting internal clocks that set themselves based on a broadcast time signature. Unfortunately, by the time this feature became widespread, VCRs were quickly being supplanted by DVD players and the "difficult VCR" stereotype was already firmly entrenched in the public consciousness.
What Were They Thinking?
The display flashes to indicate that the internal clock's settings have been lost. It's supposed to be helpful. It's also cheaper to build VCRs that don't require clock backup batteries.
Mistake #3: DVD Encryption
Device(s): DVDs, DVD Players
Today, it's easy to forget that DVDs were designed to have undefeatable copy protection. After all, it was already a decade ago that a group of intrepid tinkerers defeated the DVD format's "Content Scramble System" (CSS) and released what they'd learned onto the Internet.
Today, DVD encryption is such a joke that legitimate commercial applications openly integrate DVD ripping tools into their feature sets (although major software vendors shy away from it for fear of legal repercussions).
By extension, this design mistake goes for other forms of video copy protection as well: HDCP in HDMI connections causes hassles when it shouldn't, and Bl-Ray's DRM has already been cracked. Silly rabbits, DRM is for kids.
What Were They Thinking?
Adding a form of DRM to DVD media not only prevented the casual copy of DVD movie discs, but perhaps more importantly ensured that manufacturers of DVD players had to legally acquire a license to incorporate DVD decoding electronics into their designs.
In that second regard, CSS is not a design mistake. But it's a mistake with regard to the legal and technical hassle it causes to DVD customers who have a legitimate fair use reason to copy their movies onto another medium.
In some ways, it's also a mistake that people broke the encryption so easily- although that's the best mistake on this list.
Remote Controls
Mistake #4: Too Many Buttons
Device(s): TV, DVR Remote Controls
Call it Benj's Law: The number of buttons on the average TV remote control doubles every 15 years. Let's take a look at the button forecast:
1950: four buttons
1965: eight buttons
1980: 16 buttons
1995: 32 buttons
2010: 64 buttons
2025: 128 buttons
2040: 256 buttons
2055: 512 buttons
The current Time Warner Cable DVR remote control (circa 2009) already sports 62 buttons (yes, really), most of which no one ever uses. As silly as the above forecasts seem, they might be a bit too relaxed: with the way things are going, TWC might upend Benj's Law and release a remote with a button for every single channel next year.
There's simply no need for so many buttons, be it 62, 128, or 1000; many modern remote functions could be simplified through clever use of on-screen menus. My favorite TV remote of all time, for a Daewoo TV set, boasts a mere 22 buttons. You could add four for DVR functionality: record, start/stop, fast-forward, and rewind. There you go: the perfect remote has only 26 buttons.
What Were They Thinking?
There's a common design fallacy in consumer electronics which posits that things have to get more complicated to get better. The need to generate constant revenue for manufacturers results in intentionally short product lifespans. Each new generation of products must add features (that aren't always necessary) to entice consumers to ditch the product they have and trade up for a shiny new model. We tech fans call that "feature creep."
Before long, you end up with a 20-headed monster-of-a-thing that nobody wants to touch. Then Apple comes in, simplifies it, and becomes the hero. I can see it now: Steve Jobs and the one-button TV remote that senses everything you could possibly want to do with it.
Mistake #5: Inconvenient and Confusing Buttons
Device(s): TV, DVR Remote Controls
Similar to the keys on terrible PC keyboards, remote control buttons somehow end up in the least effective and most confusing places. I'll just give you one example of many hundreds:
It's a mess, but still not as bad as some remotes. It hosts a large grid of uniformly shaped and sized buttons. There are two power buttons (guess which one actually turns on the device?). And you'll (rarely) find the two buttons you want to use the most - volume up and down - in the lower right corner. I know first hand because this is the remote for my father's hi-fi receiver, and it has maddened me on many an occasion.
My father also owns a CD player remote that one has to power on by pushing the remote's "on" button while pointing it at the CD player. You must power up the remote before you can use it for anything else. So to turn on the CD player remotely, you have to push the "on" button twice: once to turn on the remote, and once to turn on the CD player.
As a subset of this mistake (and mistake #4), many remotes try to cram too many functions onto a single button, making the task of figuring out what each button does quite confusing.
What Were They Thinking?
This is just a case of plain ol' bad design, with no evidence of design foresight or decent usability testing on the manufacturer's part.
Mistake #6: The Chin Disconnection
Device(s): Cordless Telephones
Have you ever hung up on someone with your chin? How about your cheek? How about your hand while you were repositioning the phone? Your intrepid author has experienced every one of these scenarios as he braved 25 years of bad cordless phone design. (In retrospect, I consider it training for this article.)
If you're a member of the mobile phone generation, you might not understand: many cordless telephone designers placed "talk," "flash," or "hook" buttons or switches in inconvenient or ill-conceived places. The "talk" or "hook" button usually turned the phone on and off, while the "flash" button quickly switched over to another line to answer call waiting.
The worst scenario is when there's a flash button right next to your chin. Before phones were microscopically small and easy to inhale accidentally like they are now, people used to hold phone handsets between their shoulder and their head for hands-free operation. That left your chin or cheek perfectly positioned to press against flash or talk buttons and hang up on your friends. I can't even begin to count how many times I've done that. A friend whom I had not yet met in person even accused me of having a "Dudley Do-Right chin," which I swear is not the case.
What Were They Thinking?
They had to put all those buttons somewhere, didn't they? Some designers just put them in bad places, or used buttons that weren't recessed and were too easy to press by accident.
Mistake #7: The Ultra-Tiny Cordless Phone
Device(s): Cordless Telephones
In Mistake #6, I mentioned cordless telephones small enough to accidentally inhale, and I meant it. Since the early 1990s, cordless phone manufacturers have been in a heated-yet-pointless race to miniaturize their phone handsets to levels beyond human usability.
These aren't mobile/cell phones I'm talking about, mind you, but traditional landline phones with a wireless handset. While we consumers were perfectly happy with human-sized phone handsets that we could easily operate with human-sized fingers and comfortably cradle between our neck and shoulders, cordless phone makers were continuously shrinking and slimming the size of the handsets down to Lilliputian levels. We can sum up the futility and needlessness of this design choice with one sentence:
Cordless phones aren't cell phones, so there is no need to shrink them.
Let me repeat that for you consumer electronics companies out there who weren't listening. This is very important.
Cordless phones aren't cell phones, so there is no need to shrink them.
Do these companies expect me to carry around my house-bound cordless phone in my pants pocket throughout the day just in case I get a call? Do they expect women to carry them in their purses around the house while they're at home? If that were the case, then super-tiny cell phone-sized cordless handsets would be nice. But I'm guessing that 99% of cordless phone users don't treat their cordless phones like a cell phone.
While it's handy that modern cordless handsets are relatively small and portable, they've been as small as they need to be since 1990. Please, cordless phone designers, I beg, you: make your cordless phones human-sized again.
What Were They Thinking? (Benj's Theory)
This seems to be a case of unnecessary feature creep in the name of product differentiation. I also suspect that tiny, ultra-modern looking cordless phones look more attractive from a marketing standpoint - especially in a world dominated by super small cell phones. But I fear that almost everyone who has purchased such small cordless phones has regretted it.
Mistake #8: Flimsy Proprietary Connectors
Device(s): Cell Phones
There was a time when every single mobile phone manufacturer used a different proprietary connector for its adapter. Sometimes different phones by the same manufacturer used different connectors. That's annoying enough: it forces users to buy the vendor's official accessories to use with the device-at least for a couple years before the cloners catch on.
Even worse, in the quest to make the most unique, newfangled proprietary connector possible, phone designers (cough Motorola) began to pack in too many flimsy little pins that rarely stay springy and resilient, then mold it into an overall shape that tended to break with minimal use.
One your charger connector is broken, you have to buy a new one. Not so fast - it has to be a charger designed for one specific phone model only produced for six months in 2006. What? It's no longer in production? Tough luck-you can either buy a refurbished adapter from the vendor's back stock for $100, buy an even crappier built 3rd party charger that will break in three days, or buy a completely new phone and be their contract slave for another two years.
While there are movements to push phone charger connectors to a unified, industry-wide standard, we aren't there quite yet. Today's cell phones are generally more compatible, charger-wise, than those of the 1990s - especially thanks to the use of USB on smartphones. But there's still variability in USB connector size and the issue of whether a particular USB connection or adapter will provide enough juice to charge the phone properly.
What Were They Thinking?
Customer lock-in, poor design, planned obsolescence. It's hard to design a connector that's tiny, durable, and does everything you want (not just charge, but carry data and audio). That's why some companies (like Nokia) use two separate connectors for charging and data synchronization on some of their models, with the simpler connector being the one for charging, as it should.
Mistake #9: Poor Battery Life
Device(s): Cell Phones
Modern mobile phones are the Swiss Army Knives of the digital age: every year, they gain another feature that has nothing to do with talking on the phone. First it was fancy ringtones, then keyboards, then color backlit screens, then cameras, then full-blown computers with email and Internet access. All that functionality uses up a lot of juice, leaving little battery life left for talk or standby time.
What Were They Thinking?
There's feature creep, of course, which adds new features to phones that continue to push the limits of what current battery technology can handle. Then there's the bedazzled consumer: Who cares if you can only talk for one hour if your phone lets your browse the web from anywhere for 30 minutes?
So the even bigger problem might be on my end: believing that cell phones are still designed primarily with speech-based communication in mind.
Mistake #10: What Time Did They Call?
Device(s): Digital Answering Machines
In the brief age before ubiquitous voicemail services, digital answering machines commonly drove their owners to the brink of insanity by forgetting their date settings every time the power briefly dropped out. The result? The machine tells you (in that sultry, husky voice) that your old college buddy called Sunday, 4 AM, when in fact he called Tuesday at 6 PM. There's a big difference.
I owned such a machine; it shared a kitchen outlet with a microwave. Every month, the microwave would pop the local outlet circuit breaker, taking my answering machine's date/time data with it. Thankfully, it at least remembered the messages without power. At least.
After a power loss, you fall into a similar situation as that with the VCR: the time/date is too cumbersome to set quickly - who has the time for that these days? - so you leave it alone, and the date is always wrong.
What Were They Thinking?
It's cheaper to make answering machines that don't use clock battery backups. I guess the designers also assume that either (a) your power doesn't drop out very often, or (b) even if it does, you aren't lazy enough to not re-set the time.
Mistake #11: Alarm Difficult to Set
Device(s): Clock Radios
"Difficult to set" seems to be a theme in this list, doesn't it? Well, it's quite a design sin. Companies make some alarm clock-radios so complicated that hotels have to post 8-step instructions telling its guests how to set them. Upon seeing that, most guests probably just pick up the phone and request a wake up call, hoping in their heart that the wake-up-caller does not rely on the same alarm clock model stationed in your room.
The complexity and confusion of alarm clock setting doesn't just stem from weirdly shaped, sized, or placed buttons. It comes from embarrassingly simpler things that leave you wondering, "Why can't I tell if the alarm is active and operational or not? Will it actually go off tomorrow morning?" and "Is this thing set for 7 AM or 7 PM?"
Ah yes, the famous AM/PM issue - the subject of entertaining conjecture in a Seinfeld episode about alarm clock problems. Some clocks have a dot to indicate that the time you see is in the AM range of the day, and some clocks use the dot to denote the PM hours. Some don't have a dot at all. This inconsistency has caused many an alarm clock to ring either 12 hours ahead of or behind schedule.
A number of other people hate hotel alarm clocks as much as I do.
What Were They Thinking?
This is a result ill-conceived design, feature creep, and/or the fallacy that more design complexity looks commercially impressive to the buyers of alarm clocks. In fact, it only makes customers smash them with a hammer.
Mistake #12: Clogged Inkjet Nozzles
Device(s): Inkjet Printers
How many times have you tried to use your inkjet printer and discovered that it produced streaky or half-invisible printouts? I once owned a printer that wouldn't print at all if you didn't use it for a week. That's because the inkjet print heads that sprayed ink onto the paper always clogged up with dry ink.
To get my printer working again, I had to run four or five head cleaning cycles in a row, then print out ink-intensive test sheets. Every time I ran the cleaning cycle, of course, it used up lots of ink, which is very expensive. (Expensive ink is another problem, of course, but it's a marketing mistake, not a design mistake.)
After years of printers with this problem (most made by Epson - I'm callin' you out!), I believe that the issue isn't as prevalent as it was some years ago. But while it lasted, it felt like I was flushing money down the toilet every time I used my printer. In fact, my toilet didn't even use water to flush; it used Epson Brand (TM) printer ink.
What Were They Thinking?
I doubt that printer engineers purposely made their inkjet print nozzles prone to clogging up. That problem is somewhat inherent in how inkjet technology works. But with ink prices what they were (and are), certain companies might not have bent over backwards to prevent it from happening because ink sales made/make much more money for printer companies than sales of the printers themselves.
Mistake #13: PC LOAD LETTER
Device(s): HP LaserJet Printers
Any fan of the movie Office Space is familiar with this problem, and in some ways it extends to devices beyond printers. It happens when a gadget's error messages are needlessly brief and cryptic.
Picture this scenario: The HP LaserJet printer you're using stops working. Its one-line status display reads, "PC LOAD LETTER." You think to yourself:
Hmm... PC. Personal computer? Load. Load what? Load a program? Letter. I'm not writing a letter. Maybe I should load a letter into the printer from the PC? Does it need an envelope? Or is the PC I'm using not sending letters (ABC) properly to the printer? Should I check the printer cable?
As it turns out, the printer is simply out of paper. The display could have said, "OUT OF PAPER," or "RELOAD PAPER," or "PAPER TRAY EMPTY." But no, clever HP engineers devised a needlessly complex coding scheme for error messages that almost always require a flip through the manual to figure out.
So let's decode this error for real. "PC" is for "paper cassette" - the plastic cassette the printer pulls paper from. The "load" is telling the user that the printer is out of paper (so load some up, duh). And the "letter" represents letter size paper. Since the printer supported multiple paper sizes, it was possible to get a "PC LOAD LEGAL" as well, which would tell the user to reload legal size paper into the cassette.
A simple "out of paper" would have worked, and here's why. I'll walk you through this, even if only for the sake of printer engineers everywhere.
If the user knew the printer was out of paper, the user would look in the most obvious places - either the paper cassette, or another paper feeder tray. Suspecting the cassette, they'd pull it from the printer to see if it's really empty. In our scenario, that would be true. Now what kind of paper should the user put in the paper cassette? Hint: what size do 99% of users print on? Standard 8.5?x11? letter size paper is the answer. If he were trying to print on legal size paper (and if the paper cassette accepted both sizes at once), he would easily see that the cassette held no more legal size paper and refill accordingly. So the entire message is useless and needlessly confusing.
What Were They Thinking?
We find here a classic case of over-engineering and being too specific when a more general (and less confusing) error message would do. The engineers knew exactly what "PC LOAD LETTER" meant (and every other combination of error words), so they found absolutely no problem in the design. The printer's error readout was accurate to a fault; so accurate, in fact, that no one understood it without a reference.
Audio Devices
Mistake #14: The Entombed Battery
Device(s): iPods, iPhone
In some ways, one could hail Apple's decision to permanently build batteries into iPods as a stroke of genius. This allowed iPods to be smaller, sleeker, and more stylishly metal-cased than would be possible with a removable, user-serviceable battery. And with batteries out of reach of the consumer, no one would ever eat them accidentally.
But fast forward a few years to a time when you want to use your previously $400 iPod to play music. Oops! The battery's dead. If you were one of the early adopters that bought an iPod that isn't as thin as a piece of paper (and which cost $400), you might just be able to pry it open with specialized tools (trying not to scratch, dent, and bend the thing up in the process) and replace the battery with an aftermarket model. But if you're a more recent iPod customer, you might have trouble getting it open without completely destroying the unit. If that's the case, you have two choices: pay Apple $49-$79 dollars to replace the battery, or buy a new iPod.
Then there's the other problem. To date, Apple has sold over 240,000,000 members of the iPod series, all of which are designed with limited shelf life in mind. Who cares if the battery wears out, Apple presumably thinks, when the whole device is going to be obsolete in six months
Somebody cares. Last year's iPods have to end up somewhere - probably in the trash. In that way, iPods serve as expensive disposable media players. And as environmentalists have been trying to tell us for years, "disposable" usually means wasteful, which usually means that monumental mountains of discarded iPods could be detrimental to the environment.
Due to criticism of this very issue, Apple stepped up efforts in 2007 to both promote recycling of their old products and to build less toxic materials in their new ones. That effort should be commended, but sadly, Apple devices with sealed batteries are still creating premature obsolescence and needless waste. The problem has extended further than iPods now, with both iPhones and (somewhat more disturbingly) Mac laptops also adopting the sealed-battery design.
What Were They Thinking?
Keeping the battery out of the reach of users makes iPods sleeker, simpler, and more aesthetically pleasing all around. It means there are less opportunities for the consumer to accidentally screw up the product (insert the battery backwards, etc.), which results in cheaper technical support costs. It also means that Apple has fewer less-profitable products (think separate battery sales) to distribute and maintain.
Most importantly for Apple, the entombed battery builds planned obsolescence into the products, which encourages iPod users to buy the latest model when their old one craps out. These factors are all win-win for Apple, with very little advantage for the consumer.
But I'll admit, the consumer does see one very good upside to the built-in battery design decision: in the case of the iPhone and iPod touch, it allows Apple's products to be incredibly thin and lightweight properties that would likely suffer if the devices incorporated removable batteries.
In the case of the iPhone, consumers would probably rather have a sleeker, smaller device than a clunky one with a removable battery. This effect is no doubt partially responsible for the iPhone's incredible sales verses competing products with removable batteries. But I still think it's a worthy goal for Apple to figure out how to integrate a removable battery into such a small and sleek form factor. Think of it as a challenge, Apple. I'm sure your world-class industrial designers are up to it.
Mistake #15: DRM
Device(s): MP3 Players, Pseudo-Compact Discs
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is quite possibly the worst thing that's happened to consumers in the history of electronic media. In the quest to protect artistic works from illegal exploitation, content makers and distributors have severely inconvenienced the consumer. While not as much of a problem as it used to be (with most online music vendors now abandoning it), when DRM commonly straitjacketed our media, it was quite a headache.
The irony of DRM is that it never prevents true piracy. Determined pirates - the ones who actually steal from content companies and sell the goods on the black market - always get around any copy protection scheme humans can devise (unsurprisingly, they often acquire movies/music before it is DRM'd to begin with). There is no 100% hack proof version of copy protection short of locking the only copy of an artistic work in a sealed lead vault.
And so - as many critics of DRM argue - the type of piracy that DRM most often prevents is not actually a form piracy at all, but "fair use" rights of a casual consumer who wants to copy a work to another form of media for their own personal, private use.
Sometimes DRM even prevents a user from enjoying the media they bought in the first place. In a prominent example, there was a time when you could only play your purchased iTunes Music Store tracks on an iPod or in iTunes, and you'd need to log in with an official Apple iTunes account to make it happen.
Although Apple abandoned DRM for all songs it sells in early 2009, if you have a vast library of DRM'd music from before the switch, you'll still be locked in to Apple-authorized players unless you pay 30 cents a track to upgrade to DRM-free versions. That means if Apple's not around in 20 years and you don't upgrade, you wont be able to play that music on any new devices, computers, or installations of iTunes. That's a design mistake.
Apple DRM is bad enough. But what's even worse is when music companies try to apply DRM to the traditionally open CD audio format. In the case of Sony, their XCP copy protection scheme ended up consisting of a rootkit that installed itself on the listener's computer without permission. Malicious hackers realized this and exploited XCP's built-in subterfuge to hide malware on a user's system. Now that's what I call a design mistake. A huge one.
Meanwhile, every attempt at tighter DRM controls could very well be driving more and more users to illegal file sharing sites, where users can get the music and use it how they see fit-no strings attached.
What Were They Thinking?
Content providers are trying to protect their business. If your business is to sell access to music and someone else regularly distributes the same product for free, then it's a scary situation. It's so scary that content providers will try anything, and I mean anything, to prevent it from happening - even if it means suing their own customers, crippling a standardized format, or restricting fair use rights traditionally enjoyed by entertainment consumers.
And in the End...
Obviously this list only touches the tip of the iceberg when it comes to consumer electronics design mistakes. I'm sure that, given enough time, I could squeeze in a lot more design mistakes and make this list go on forever (Microsoft Zune, anyone?). But an infinitely long article isn't any fun. So please feel free to share your least favorite consumer electronics design mistakes in the comments below. I'd especially love to hear of mistakes pertaining to pre-1990s products.
More Design Mistakes stories by Benj Edwards:
Fifteen Classic Game Console Design Mistakes


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Medal of Honor
If it moves, kill it. That's the briefing for the latest demo of EA's shiny and modern Medal of Honor revamp, and truer words have rarely been spoken. Our player character certainly takes them to heart; he spends the next fifteen minutes lugging around a chunky, weighty-looking machine gun and viciously perforating everyone he comes across.
This is the self-titled 'sledgehammer' component to Medal of Honor, a rock-em sock-em shower of bullets and explosions pitched as the intentional antithesis to the beard-sporting sneaky bits from the 'scalpel' Tier One operatives - which I previewed a couple of months ago.
The killing spree seems somewhat at odds with the general tone of the game, though, with the game's accompanying trailer featuring a narrator's heartfelt recital of a letter to his wife and kid. Keep up with the homework, I love you, I'll be home soon etc. Then it's all bam-bam-boom as an American Chinook is on the receiving end of a rocket and explodes all over the place. There's no time for romanticising (read: sending sissy messages) anymore. This is war.
War, in this instance, opens in the middle of a campaign to take out a machine gun emplacement pinning down American forces in the rough terrain of Afghanistan's Shah-i-Kot Valley. Two of the redshirts in your squad are already dead as they weren't nearly important enough to have recharging health and unlimited respawns. You, on the other hand, are an unstoppable killing machine.
The valleys of Afghanistan are understandably hostile environments; scorching sunlight ensures the land is dry and barren. It looks grim, but war is supposed to be pretty grim. I think, anyway. Like most people, I have no idea what an actual war looks or sounds like, but in the deepest annals of my imagination I would imagine this is it. Sort of.
At one point your squad comes across some high ground, giving you the option to look across at Afghanistan's rolling wilderness and beautiful landscape. EA deserve credit for their considerable effort in rendering the environment, although there's something quite eerie about such a detailed representation of a current conflict.
Still - back to the killing. The shooting is a bit action hero, but a more realistic approach of lying terrified in the grass until you get shot from miles away would be either a pretty duff game, real war or the excellent ArmA II - though the last two are fairly interchangeable. Still, the weapons seem suitably weighty and the bullets suitably dangerous, with slick and responsive aiming making the game handle like Call of Duty and not Killzone 2.
Despite the game's attempt at a realistic and gritty tone, your enemies also drop to the ground like typical FPS meat puppets: killing shots turning them into quintessential videogame ragdolls.
On the other hand you've got your squad of trusty, all-American allies. There is a friendly amount of banter - they use words like "woah" and "awesome", so you know they're definitely from the States - and they trundle around with a believable urgency. They're not too shabby in a firefight, either.
The level on show is very nicely presented but consists of fairly standard stuff, like kicking down doors, flushing packs of baddies out of cover and sorting out rapscallions attacking you with rocket launchers. We've seen it all before, but I have a certain amount of respect for a game that doesn't feel a constant need to drown its players in constant spectacle and bravado.
But there's a palatable sense that EA are keeping the single-player campaign's biggest tricks firmly out of sight before the game's release. Medal of Honor alludes to drama and tension but doesn't really display it, instead showing a functional but slightly unexciting filler level that ticks all the boxes but doesn't do enough to stand head and shoulders above the considerable amount of competition. There's definitely some more to be had, I reckon.
Still, there are certainly a few show-stopping moments shuffled into the current pack. One of your allies kicks a corpse off a cliff, for instance, which looks fancy and also wholly implausible. The piece de resistance, however, is experiencing an allied airstrike up close and personal. The ensuing carnage couldn't be further away from a typical videogame explosion, with the devastating ordinance covering the environment in thick dust with visible burning embers wafting through the air. It's a beautiful and understated moment.
There's also a very flashy finale. Your squad closes in on a pack of buildings that aren't completely dilapidated, which should be a sign that something dodgy is going on. As your team prepares to breach and enter the sound of a mobile phone can be heard. The realisation comes much too late.
The IED explodes and the screen fades to black and the Medal of Honor logo. Despite all the bravado, gun toting and machismo over the last few minutes I'm not entirely convinced the team have survived the blast. This is war, and sometimes even recharging health isn't enough.
Latest News
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- Adr1ft is coming to PC and consoles at the end of the summer
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- ZombiU PS4 and Xbox One port reportedly in the works
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one night only
Elton John Pulls Off Moroccan Music Festival Without Extremists Rioting in the Streets
Despite outcries from Islamic extremists over Elton John performing at the Mawazine International Music Festival in Morocco's capital Rabat, there appears to have been no actual violence or threats or bombings during his set.
This should not be interpreted as the Muslim world's sudden acceptance of homosexuality, just laziness.
1 Comment


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FORT WORTH, Tex. -- Danica Patrick will compete in 10 Sprint Cup races next season, including the season-opening Daytona 500.
Eight of those races were announced Friday at Texas Motor Speedway.
The Cup car, which she will drive for Stewart Haas Racing, was unveiled Friday with the No. 10. Go-Daddy.com is sponsoring the car for Patrick's Cup races.
"Ten is my favorite number," Patrick said. "It's the number I used when I was racing go karts as a kid, but this is the first time I've gotten to pick my number as a professional. There's a lot of emotion in it for me."
After Daytona, Patrick will race Cup events at Darlington May 12, the Bristol night race on Aug. 25, Atlanta on Sept. 2 and four Chase races -- Chicagoland Speedway on Sept. 16, Dover on Sept. 30, Texas on Nov. 4 and Phoenix on Nov. 11. Two other Cup races will be chosen at a later date.
"Darlington will be a handful and I know Atlanta is pretty challenging," Patrick said. "There's a lot I'm worried for. There's going to be mistakes on the learning curve, but to get that out of the way before going to Cup full time is about making the best future possible."
Team owner Tony Stewart said they wanted to make Patrick's Cup schedule as challenging as possible.
"It was about the best opportunity to get her the most experience at some places where she hasn't raced," Stewart said. "A few races into this, she may hate me. But next year is all about learning these places where she will need to run well in the future."
Patrick will race a full Nationwide schedule next year in the No. 7 Chevy for JR Motorsports (Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team) before moving full time to Cup in 2013 with SHR.
Stewart would like to race the No. 10 Chevy full time next year in the 26 races Patrick doesn't run, if he can find additional sponsorship.
"We're hoping days like today will spark interest in doing that," Stewart said. "We haven't given up on that. It's our goal to run this car full-time next year."
Patrick will have to qualify on speed for the Daytona 500 unless SHR makes a swap with another team for top-35 owner points, which guarantees a spot in each race.
She said they don't have plans to do that at this point. The Daytona 500 has a unique qualifying format. Only the two front row spots make the race on Pole Day. The other spots are determined by two qualifying races.
"She has two teammates (Stewart and Ryan Newman) that will help get her in if that happens," Stewart said.
Her teammates could be drafting partners, but there's no guarantee either of them will be in her qualifying race.
Patrick said she believes her learning curve in Cup will be accelerated by having Stewart to help her.
"I think the real benefit will come in driving for him, being able to ask a lot of questions, get answers and get help," she said. "I think Tony is the best guy possible to do it."
Patrick also thinks it will help her that the 2012 Cup schedule is back-loaded toward the end of the season after she has raced most of the Nationwide season.
"We'll have time to go testing and also do things like that," Patrick said. "I think it's good. Any time you are trying to lead into the next year (2013) with something, you try to do as much as you can at the end of the (2012) year to get ready.
"I think it's a nice schedule that will have plenty of variety. I have a lot of faith in this team and that's why I chose them."
Stewart said they have just started the process of selecting a crew chief for Patrick's Cup races.
"We're trying to find the right fit," Stewart said. "It's still a work in progress."
Terry Blount is a senior writer for ESPN.com.


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The current drought is ten times worse. LNN could retest the old highs. All farmers next year are going to consider irrigation.
I'm told the Lindsay dealer phones in the corn belt are ringing off the hook.
Lindsay will probably earn $20-25 a share next year.
Ican see an increase but $20 earnings? They are under $4 now.They are not AAPL.


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Cynthia KadohataI assume that you are asking about the characters from Cynthia Kadohata's book "Weedflower." Sumiko is the main protagonist of the story. The story is about her and her family's displacement from...
Cynthia Kadohatasumikio (main character) descibes her life on a flower farm with her uncle, auntie, brother, and cousins
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