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Noveske styles themselves as "the greatest gun manufacturer ever," which is quite the bold title to say the least. However, one thing is for sure. Novekse rifle works, founded by firearm designer John Noveske, is a without a doubt a premier rifle and firearm accessories manufacturer, and now you can pick up many of their great products at a steal from Webyshops. We stock great accessories like Noveske handguard models as well as rails and rail accessories, and many Noveske accessories utilize the versatile KeyMod Modular Direct Attachment System so you can mount a wealth of accessories with ease. We also stock Noveske flash suppressors so you can hunt and shoot with increased stealth should the situation call for it. Get the right Noveske product for the job right here at Webyshops, and don't forget in addition to our stellar prices, we also offer free ground shipping on all qualified orders. Give your rifle a new look today with Noveske. Receive FREE Ground Shipping on all orders over $39.99.
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text: Delfino says: "I don't want to stay in Detroit because I want to develop as a player. I want a team where I can play." He says this in an article published by El Litoral. We need to get a translation. Saw it here, about 40 items down: http://www.hoopshype.com/rumors.htm Joe should trade him then. If he doesn't want to be in Detroit. I feel bad for the guy but I think he should have played more, but if he doesn't want to be here, send him out.

subset: commoncrawl


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As a boy, my sister and I got to spend a week or two in Fulton at Grandma's every summer - just down the street. We spent a lot of time in this park, it was pretty neat to be able to come back this morning. Fulton has grown quite a bit in the ensuing fifty-some years, as has this park. Grandma's house and my great aunt's house (also just down the street) are still in the family. Each since the early 1930's, we're talking long-time Fulton ties that date back even earlier than the homes.
I found this one today after a short search. Thanks for adding to my trip down memory lane!
TNLNSL; TFTC! cYa, Grandpa from central Wisconsin
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Newphici.com is a 1 year old domain, situated in United States. The domain is linked to the IP address 22.214.171.124 which is provided by the hosting company WestHost, Inc..
It was registered by DOMAINSECRECY.NET ... , who can be reached at . Registration details show that it was registered on 08 Jan 2016 through eNom and will expire on 08 Jan 2017.
The site is being served through Microsoft-IIS/8.5.


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|Property type
Property details
1-room studio. Simple and practical furnishings: living/dining room with 1 double sofabed, 1 french bed and TV. Exit to the terrace. Kitchenette (2 hot plates, microwave, freezer). Bath/WC. Terrace. Terrace furniture. Side, of the sea. Facilities: washing machine.
building and outdoor:
Cosy, comfortable apartment block Benal Beach 01. In the centre of Benalmadena Costa, in a central, sunny position, 100 m from the sea, 100 m from the beach, road to cross. For shared use: garden with lawn 5'000 m2, pond, 4 swimming pools angular (01.04.-30.09.). Shower/WC in the pool area, children's pool, slide, table tennis, garden furniture. In the house: reception, restaurant, internet café, fitness room, billiard table, playroom, table football, shopping facilities, lift. Shop, restaurant, café 20 m, sandy beach 100 m, indoor swimming pool 1 km. Sports harbour 2 km, golf course 2 km, riding stable 2 km, cable car 2 km, ice field 1 km. Nearby attractions: Tivoli Wold 2 km, Mariposario 3 km, Castillo Bil Bil 100m.
*Plus compulsory or optional charges based on actual occupancy or consumption. The payment has to be made in the currency offered by the property manager, before use of conversion tool. Payments in other currencies have to be negotiated beforehand with the property manager. The currency conversion tool is provided for your convenience only and is non-binding.


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News Release Article from
Archived - Statement from Jean-Pierre Blais, Chairman and CEO of the CRTC, on maximizing choice and affordability for Canadians
Archived Content
Information identified as archived is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been altered or updated since it was archived. Please contact us to request a format other than those available.
March 19, 2015 – Ottawa-Gatineau – Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
Good afternoon.
In 2013, we launched Let's Talk TV to ensure the television system adapts to technological change and to viewers' changing habits and preferences. We received more than 13,000 comments from Canadians during the various phases of the conversation. Today's decision reflects what that we have heard from Canadians.
More and more Canadians are watching the content they want, when they want, and on multiple devices. They are enjoying the freedom and benefits that come from living in a World of Choice.
They told us that the bundles offered by the cable and satellite companies were large, unwieldy and expensive. They expressed frustration that, in order to access a particular channel, they had to buy others that they didn't want.
Today's decision is all about choice and affordability.
By March 2016, Canadians will have access to an entry-level television service that costs no more than $25 per month. This service will prioritize the local and regional news and information programming that so vitally connects viewers with their cities, their provinces, their territories, their country and their world.
Canadians will be able to build on the entry-level service by buying the individual channels they want either on a pick-and-pay basis or through small, reasonably priced bundles. By the same token, they can also keep the offerings they currently have.
By December 2016, Canadians will be able to subscribe to channels on a pick-and-pay basis, as well as in small packages.
The CRTC is not making choices for Canadians. It is setting out a roadmap to give all Canadians the freedom to choose the television content that meets their unique needs, budgets and realities.
Here are some examples of how this might play out for various groups of television viewers:
- A college or university student may supplement free over-the-air television with online video services.
- A young urban professional may decide to only pay for one or two channels on top of the entry-level service.
- A family of four with varied interests might supplement its entry-level television service by building their own packages—educational programs for the children; news, sports, information and lifestyle content for the parents.
- Their neighbour may decide that the channels they currently receive meet their needs and make no changes to their television services.
- And the retired couple down the street may decide to augment their entry-level service with a bundle of national news services.
In short, Canadians will be able to find the right value proposition for their household.
Today's announcement, combined with the other changes we recently announced, will lead to an even more dynamic marketplace.
One in which there are incentives: for television service providers to offer reasonably priced services that meet the diverse needs and interests of Canadians; for creators to produce high-quality, original content that is compelling to audiences; for Canadians to switch service providers if they are not satisfied, without having to give 30-days notice; and for Canadians to choose over-the-air television as a free, competitive alternative.
Before I conclude, let me add that a fundamental pillar in today's decision is a wholesale code of conduct that will come into force in September 2015. This code will clarify the terms of wholesale agreements negotiated by broadcasters and television service providers. For example, it ensures that service providers offer independently-owned channels in at least one theme package and assures that channels cannot be taken away from subscribers during a wholesale commercial dispute.
Such a framework is critical to ensuring that viewers continue to discover and enjoy access to a diversity of programming.
Ladies and gentlemen, today's decision is another important step forward for Canada's television system. It will give Canadian viewers even more control over the choice in, and affordability of, their services.
If you have any questions, I would be pleased to answer them now. Thank you.
- 30 -
Follow us on Twitter: @CRTCeng
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/crtceng
Media relations:
Tel.: 819-997-9403; Fax: 819-997-4245
General inquiries:
Tel.: 819-997-0313, TDD: 819-994-0423; Fax: 819-994-0218
Toll-free No.: 1-877-249-CRTC (2782)
TDD – Toll-free No.: 1-877-909-CRTC (2782)
Ask a question or make a complaint
These documents are available in alternative format upon request.
Search for related information by keyword
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Economics and Industry
- Date modified:


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Shimano Crucial Casting Fishing Rod is ideal for bass fishing with buzzbaits, small spinnerbaits and light jigs in tight quarters, around docks and brush or whenever presentation and accuracy is key. It's a nice stream rod when smaller baits are essential. Technique specific actions are what you will see in the newly designed Crucial rods. This series is where you will find the perfect action rods for just about every bass technique known. From Worm and Jig rods to Spinnerbait and Crankbaits rods this series has been designed around the lure and will give you the best performance for each fishing style. These rods come with an IM-10 blank, Fuji Alconite Guides, and new reel seats that will change the way reel seats are designed. Total performance and comfort is what is to be expected with Crucial.
NOTE: Images depict the style of the rod handle and may not fully represent the actual length.
Shimano Crucial Casting Fishing Rod Features:
Mack's Prairie Wings is not responsible for typographical errors in pricing or product specification inaccuracies in our web site. Prices are subject to change without notice.
Copyright © 2017 - Mack's Sport Shop LLLP - All rights reserved. Site Developed and Maintained by Ability Commerce
Copyright © 2004-2017 - Mack's Prairie Wings, Inc. - All rights reserved. Site Developed and Maintained by Ability Commerce


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US Music Corp to Distribute Phonic In the U.S.A
Chicago, IL — US Music Corp announced today that as of January 1, 2010 they began distributing the Phonic line of high quality professional audio equipment products.
In commenting on the addition of Phonic to their existing line-up of products, Barry Ryan, President of US Music Corp said, "We are very excited to have the opportunity to add Phonic to our family of brands. Phonic has been producing high quality pro audio equipment for more than 30 years. Their price points and feature sets provide a great value proposition for the consumer and with the addition of technologically advanced equipment, such as the incredible new Summit Digital Mixer, we look forward to taking our business to the next level through the addition of Phonic product line." Mr. Ryan added, "With our existing broad base of dealers, many of whom who are not currently Phonic dealers, we anticipate significant growth of the Phonic brand in the U.S."
US Music Corp, located in Mundelein, Illinois is an international musical instrument company that manufactures and distributes products worldwide under the Washburn, Parker, Randall, Eden, Oscar Schmidt and Phonic brand names. US Music is a subsidiary of Jam Industries, Ltd.
For more information on Phonic, visit www.phonic.com
For more information on US Music Corp, visit www.usmusiccorp.com
For more information on Jam Industries, Ltd., visit www.jamindustries.com


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Gloria Palace Royal Hotel & Spa, Mogan
- Spa tub
- Free buffet breakfast, free WiFi, and free parking
Main amenities
- 226 guestrooms
- Near the beach
- 2 restaurants and 2 poolside bars
- Full-service spa
- 2 outdoor pools
- Rooftop terrace
- Free children's club
- Fitness center
- 2 meeting rooms
- 24-hour front desk
- Air conditioning
- Daily housekeeping
For families
- Free cribs/infant beds
- Babysitting or childcare
- Supervised childcare/activities
- Children's pool
- Children's club
- Playground on site
What's around
- In Amadores
- Amadores Beach (0.2 mi / 0.4 km)
- Angry Birds Activity Park (2.1 mi / 3.3 km)
- Puerto Rico Beach (2.2 mi / 3.5 km)
- Puerto Rico Shopping Center (2.5 mi / 4 km)
- Puerto Rico Marina (2.5 mi / 4 km)
Gloria Palace Royal Hotel & Spa, Mogan
Hotel Info: 866-539-8117from $167
- Junior Suite (Free Spa Access)
- Junior Suite (2 adults and 1 child)
- Double Room (3 adults)
- Double Room Single Use (Free Spa Access)
- Junior Suite (2 adults )
- Junior Suite (3 adults)
- Double Room (1 adult + 1 child. Free Spa Access)
- Double Room (3 adults)
- Double Room (1 adult and 1 child)
- Double Room (2 adults)
- Double Room Single Use
- Twin Room, Sea View (Free Spa Access)
- Junior Suite (2 adults and 2 children)
- Double Room (2 adults and 1 child)
More great choices
At a glance
Key facts
Hotel size
- This hotel has 226 rooms
- 24-hour check-in
- Check-out time is noon
Required at check in
- Credit card or cash deposit required
- Government-issued photo ID required
Travelling with others
- Babysitting/childcare *
- Free children's club
- Pets not allowed
- Free WiFi in public areas
- Free WiFi in rooms
- Free self parking
Other information
- All-inclusive rates available
- Resort fee included
In the hotel
- Children's club (free)
- Supervised childcare/activities (surcharge)
- Free buffet breakfast
- 2 restaurants
- 4 bars/lounges
- 2 poolside bars
- 24-hour room service
- Number of outdoor pools - 2
- Children's pool
- Fitness facilities
- Full-service spa
- Spa tub
- Playground on site
- Golfing nearby
- Hiking/biking trails nearby
- Sailing nearby
- Scuba diving nearby
- Water skiing nearby
- Sauna
- Billiards or pool table
- Number of meeting rooms - 2
- Meeting rooms 2
- 24-hour front desk
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Hair salon
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Luggage storage
- Elevator/lift
- ATM/banking
- Rooftop terrace
- Library
- Accessible bathroom
- In-room accessibility
- Roll-in shower
In the room
- Air conditioning
- Minibar
- Coffee/tea maker
- Bathrobes
- Slippers
- Turndown service
- Furnished balcony
- Private bathroom
- Separate bathtub and shower
- Free toiletries
- Hair dryer
- Satellite TV channels
- Desk
- Free WiFi
- Phone
- Microwave
- Kitchenette
- Free bottled water
- Daily housekeeping
Also popular with travelers from the USA
Special features
All inclusive
All-inclusive room rates at Gloria Palace Royal Hotel & Spa are available. These rates are higher because they include onsite food and beverages in the room rate (some restrictions may apply).
Guests can indulge in a pampering treatment at the hotel's full-service spa, Wellness Spa Gloria Pal. Services include hot stone massages, sports massages, massages, and facials. The spa is equipped with a sauna, a spa tub, and a steam room.
The spa is open daily. Children under 16 years old are not allowed in the spa without adult supervision. Guests under 16 years old are not allowed in the spa.
DiningRestaurante Kaia - Overlooking the ocean, this fine-dining restaurant serves dinner only. Reservations are required.
Restaurante Principal - Overlooking the ocean, this buffet restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Gloria Palace Royal Hotel & Spa, Mogan's small print
Also known as
- Gloria Palace
- Palace Gloria
- Gloria Palace Royal Hotel Puerto Rico
- Gloria Palace Royal Hotel And Spa
- Dunas Amadores
- Hotel Dunas Amadores
- Gloria Palace Royal Hotel & Spa Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria
- Gloria Palace Royal
- Gloria Palace Royal Hotel
- Gloria Palace Royal Hotel Mogan
- Gloria Palace Royal Mogan
- Gloria Royal Hotel
- Gloria Royal Palace
- Hotel Gloria Royal
- Hotel Gloria Royal Palace
Guests traveling with a service animal must contact the property prior to arrival. Contact the office using the information on the reservation confirmation received after booking.
Cash transactions at this property cannot exceed EUR 2500, due to national regulations. For further details, please contact the property using information in the booking confirmation.
Only registered guests are allowed in the guestrooms.
Children under 16 years old are not allowed in the spa without adult supervision.
Guests under 16 years old are not allowed in the spa.
Reservations are required for massage services and spa treatments and can be made by contacting the property before arrival at the number on the booking confirmation.
Mandatory fees
The charges below are included in the total price displayed:
- Christmas Eve gala dinner fee for stays on 24 December
- Christmas Day gala dinner fee for stays on 25 December
- New Year's Eve gala dinner fee for stays on 31 December
- Resort fee
Optional extras
Safes in guestrooms can be used for EUR 2.50 per day
Babysitting/childcare is available 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.
Recent reviews
Outstanding 4.6 /5 from 178 reviews
Superb short stay, with fantastic facilities including infinity pool and spa. The food was Excellent including a great vegetarian options. The staff made our stay especially special with complimentary sparkling wine and cake to celebrate my husbands birthday. My only grumble was that you couldn't have a quiet siesta in your room without being disturbed by the cleaning team & banging doors! Can't grumble at being forced into having a few more hours sunbathing in the peace and tranquility around the Infinity pool...as long as there were no larger than life loud Italians around! But I'm being harsh...we will definitely be booking another stay, really worth every penny and the staff were exceptional! Thank you for a great stay and giving my husband the birthday he will never forget!
Brilliant place to stay rooms great food fantastic ideal spot.cant be beat
We really enjoyed our time here.Lovely breakfast each morning and very pleasant staff. Everyone says that the views are great and yes the last time we stayed we had a great balcony, but the balcony we had this time on the second floor you had to be standing to have a good view.All the balconies on the second floor appear to be like this due to the way the wall is curved.
We stayed in block 1 - if I was booking again I would not stay in this block road noise, and noise from the restaurant on the beach a little to much. entertainment is not the best in the evening, we just got up and left after 2 nights shows didn't bother after that. had a problem in the restaurant and the next day a survey was done on the hotel and as soon as we went to the restaurant we were spoken to by the manager who apologized to us. Reception staff and bar staff all excellent and very helpful. great getting the pool towels.
Absolutely love this hotel cannot fault it at all its so relaxing and staff are lovely perfect location for a nice quiet holiday the views are amazing can't wait to go back for a third time
Is the description of this hotel not correct? Tell us


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Hard as it may be to believe, a California-based research group, Electronic Entertainment Design (EEDAR), has somehow discerned that only four per cent of games make a profit. The research, carried out for Forbes, took account of some data relating to around 6,000 games, catalogued since 2006.
Forbes intention in commissioning the research was to determine whether it was possible to create a game, using 'ingredients' that made other games successful, to make one 'super-game' which would be guaranteed commercial guess. EEDAR's conclusion was, simply put: no.
Apparently 60 per cent of the average game's budget goes towards it being redesigned or reworked. Statistically, adding features such as co-op and competitive multiplayer almost universally lead to an increase in sales - the better these modes being the better the boost to sales they provide.
Given companies such as EA and Ubisoft, which publish an almost ridiculous number of titles throughout the year, still manage to stay in business, one has to assume that a small proportion of games that do make a profit do so to enough of an extent that they compensate for the failures.
It turns out I was right to be puzzled about that four per cent figure. EEDAR was misquoted by Forbes; the four per cent is games that enter production. Of those that actually make it to market 20 per cent turn a "significant profit" - not quite such bad going then, games industry.


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Elbow Braces
Articulated Elbow Brace – $595
*Note: When purchasing and choosing overnight shipping, the casting kit will be shipped overnight and not the brace. The brace takes time to make once we receive the mold.
Custom elbow braces can be used for several diagnosis including elbow dysplasia, joint degeneration, varus/valgus deformities, subluxation, post operative protection, fracture management, elbow tendonitis, prevention of self-mutilation, long term splinting and/or contracture management.
- "Ultraflex" joints can be used to assist the elbow in minor brachial plexus injuries or to increase range of motion where a contracture is present.
- "Tamarack" joints can be used to reduce range of motion or assist motion of the elbow joint.
A range of motion joint can also be used to set a desired range or to statically progressively aid in contracture management. This style brace can also be made from carbon composite, a lighter weight material.
Click here to choose your brace color.
Contact Animal Orthocare to discuss the best options for your pet.


text:
Audio geeks and songwriters have another tool at their disposal: FourTrack, a well-designed app for the iPhone or iPod Touch that records, mixes and plays up to four tracks like a shrunken version of Pro Tools. There's no way it'll replace your main recording setup, but then again, you can't put your main recording setup in your pocket.
This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com to report an issue.
FourTrack (iTunes link) is the work of Sonoma Wire Works, makers of the desktop recording software RiffWorks, and The Retronyms, makers of Recorder, the top-selling (single-track) recording software in the App Store. After a few days of pre-release testing, we can safely say that this is asolid, functional app that justifies its $10 price formusicians and anyone else who messes around with audio despite — or perhaps because of — its rudimentary, four-track-like functionality.
Legend has it that Michael Jackson devised the ridiculously catchybassline for "Billie Jean" while sitting in a tree. Maybe, if he'd had this, he could have written thewhole song up there.
The screenshot to the right represents the bulk of the application, where you can arm tracks to record, set playback levels and pans, activate the recording process or skip to any point in the song by tapping the progress bar or rolling the jog wheel.
Recording and mixing are a snap thanks to intuitivecontrols and a record switch that requires a sliding motion toprevent you from accidentally recording over a previous track. While there's no way to see waveforms, the app'slive monitoring function lets you listen along to the one-to-three tracksyou've already laid down, which gives enough of an indication of whereyou need to be within a given song. There's no gain control either,
but at least you can monitor recording levels to check for clipping.
Each track can be as long as your device's memory can handle, andthe program can contain an unlimited number ofprojects. We like that you never have to save — everything you record gets storedautomatically.
However, the iPhone/iPod Touch hardware is an occasional issue when it comes to recording. TheiPhone's built-in speaker is too soft to allow the program to be usedin any meaningful way without headphones, and not every pair ofheadphones has a skinny enough jack to fit into the first-generationiPhone. Plus, there's currently no way to use a high-quality mic, and the software doesn't work on the first-generation iPod Touch — just second-generation models that can be used with a third-party microphone).
Each track gets stored as a separate, mono, 44.1 kHzWAV file that can be easily transferred to any computer on your WiFi network, another one of our favorite features.
With your iPhone or iPod Touch connected to your wireless network, activatethe WiFi Sync option to generate a URL to enter into your computer'sbrowser. Then you can download the four recorded tracks directly to your computerand into the audio editing software of yourchoice.
Another nice touch: FourTrack adds blank space to the beginning ormiddle of each WAV file, so that all you need to do is line them up inyour audio software with each track starting at the same time to put allof the tracks in sync with each other. However, anypanning or mixing done on the phone gets lost during the transfer. No big deal — this is a sketch pad, not a canvas.
Here's a screenshot of the recording process:
Then it's time to mix the levels and pan tracks left and right:
The song list displays your projects, lets you create new ones, and handles syncing over WiFi:
Songs can be relabeled at any time:
When you activate WiFi sync, the iPhone seeks permission to connect, and then it does — no muss, no fuss. You can transfer the files onto your computer through a browser:
See Also:
- Eno and Chilvers Release Sweet Music App for iPhone
- Nine Inch Nails' iPhone App Lets You Tap Along to 13 Songs
- Sweet: Pandora's Streaming Radio App for iPhone
- iPhone Apps Are a Trojan Horse for Music Pricing


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From what we can understand, [ompuco] has built a 2D audio output on top of the Unity game engine, enabling him to output X and Y values from his stereo soundcard straight to an oscilloscope in XY mode. His code simply scans through all the vertexes in the scene and outputs the right voltages into the left and right audio streams. He's using this to create some pretty incredible animations. Check out the video "additives" below for an example. (See if you can figure out what's being "added".)
32C3: Vector Video Games
There are a few classic video games that rely on vector graphics and special monitors. Asteroids is incomplete if you're not playing it in its original arcade format. The same goes with Tempest, Lunar Lander, and the 1983 Star Wars arcade game. Emulation of these games is possible, even with MAME, but the display – like every display you can buy today – is still rasterized. The solution to this problem is to create a vector display output for MAME that works in conjunction with adapter boards and DACs connected to a monitor.
For this year's Chaos Computer Congress, that's exactly what [Trammell Hudson] and [Adelle Lin] did. They've created an open source vector gaming system that connects MAME to XY monitors and oscilloscopes.
The build uses a custom board equipped with a Teensy 3.1 microcontroller and a 12-bit DAC to convert XY coordinates sent by MAME to vectors that can be displayed on any XY monitor. This, of course, requires a patch to MAME, which the maintainers rejected as being an, "unacceptably hacky way to achieve the intended result." It does achieve the intended result, though: allowing dozens of vector games playable on whatever monitor supports vector graphics.
So far, [Trammell] and [Adelle] have gotten their system working on Vectrex consoles, analog oscilloscopes set to XY mode, and vectorscopes that litter every broadcast station and surplus shop. Check out [Trammell] and [Adelle]'s talk, and if you want to build the V.st vector display driver, the board is available from OSHPark.
Paper Topo Models with Vector Cutter
If there's a science fair coming up, this trumps just about any 2D poster. It's a 3D topographical map of an inactive Slovakian volcano, Poľana. [Peter Vojtek] came up an easy way to generate SVG topo patterns using Ruby.
Topographical data is available through the MapQuest API. You should be able to model just about any part of the world, but areas with the greatest elevation difference are going to yield the most interesting results. The work starts by defining a rectangular area using map coordinates and deciding the number of steps (sheets of paper representing this rectangle). The data are then chopped up into tables for each slice, converted to SVG points, and a file is spit out for the blade cutting machine. Of course you could up the game and laser cut these from more substantial stock. If you have tips for laser-cutting paper without singing the edges let us know. We've mostly seen failure when trying that.
The red model explained in [Peter's] writeup uses small cross-pieces to hold the slices. We like the look of the Blue model which incorporates those crosses in the elevation representation. He doesn't explain that specifically but it should be easy to figure out — rotate the rectangle and perform the slicing a second time, right?
If you're looking for more fun with topography we've always been fond of [Caroline's] bathymetric book.
Making vector arcade games with an FPGA
While we're sure most Hackaday readers were raised by arcade games featuring sprites, pixels, and other shiny brightly colored squares, this was not always so. Many classic arcade games – Lunar Lander, Gravitar, and Asteroids in particular – used vector displays. Instead of drawing individual pixels, these games functioned more like an oscilloscope, drawing lines. When [Todd] and [Andrew] got their hands on a monitor from an old Asteroids cabinet, they knew what they had to do: build their own vector arcade game.
The guys made their own DAC and Amplifier board that plugs right in to a Nexys2 FPGA dev board. This was after they tested out some 3D drawing code with a gnarly handmade R2R DAC they used to draw and rotate a cube on an oscilloscope screen.
Not only did the guys build a vector video card, they also connected the FPGA's VGA out to a monochrome monitor for an in-game HUD. Awesome work that blows away anything available in the golden days of vector arcade games. It's a beautiful piece of engineering that certainly deserves its own cabinet.
Video of the game available below.
Simulating CRT or Vector displays for more realistic emulation
Scaled down it's not as obvious that this image isn't a crystal clear rendering of Mortal Kombat gameplay. But we've linked it to the full size version (just click on the image) so that you can get a better look. Notice the scan lines? This is the result of an effort to more accurately mimic the original hardware displays used in classic games. [Jason Scott] takes a look at the initiative by describing what he thinks is missing with the picture perfect quality of modern emulators.
One such effort is being mounted for MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). There is a series of filters available — each with their own collection of settings — that will make your modern LCD display look like it's a run-of-the-mill CRT. This is a novelty if you're a casual gamer who dusts off the coin-op favorites twice a year. But if you're building a standalone game cabinet this may be a suitable alternative to sourcing a working display that's already decades old.
An introduction to vector displays
Unlike the CRTs found in big old televisions, vector displays are a bit of a historical oddity. Instead of sweeping an electron beam across the screen from left to right and top to bottom, a vector display draws lines between two points on a screen. Once used in arcade games such as Asteroids, Tempest, and old FAA displays, vector monitors have fallen out of favor due to either the complexity or difficulty in acquiring the needed CRT. The folks over at NYC Resistor put up a great tutorial for getting a vector display up and running, and even managed to put a clock on an oscilloscope.
The key component of getting a vector display to work is the digital to analog converter. This DAC takes voltages from eight pins on a Teensy 2.0 dev board and converts them to a voltage anywhere in between 0 and 5 Volts. After connecting the output of this DAC to an input on an oscilloscope, the microcontroller can draw a line between any two points on an axis.
In the video after the break, you can see two of these DACs connected to an oscilloscope displaying a clock. It's a very cool piece of work, and something that finally gives a purpose to the ancient CRT oscilloscope you might have lying around.
CRT vector graphics arcade game built from an FPGA board
[Sprite_TM] wanted to challenge his VHDL skills, and there's no more satisfying way of doing this than making something that will be playable when you're done. He decided to try his hand at creating a vector-based CRT arcade. The distinction here is that vector-based games take control of the magnetic ring that guides the electron path toward the screen. This technique allows point-to-point graphic generation rather than the pixel-based scanning that CRT televisions use.
He had a small color CRT on hand and decided to grab a VHDL version of asteroids from the Internet to see if he could get it to work. But upon further inspection of the source he found that it had a chunk of code which rasterized the vectors for use with a scanning monitor. After removing that chunk, and giving it a spin he had enough confidence that he knew what he was doing to start implementing his own game. The choice of what title really came down to the hardware the original arcade cabinets used. He was not interested in implementing a soft-process for the math chips used in games like Star Wars and Tempest. In the end he got a version of Black Widow up and running, and even built a miniature cabinet for the thing. Check out some of the gameplay in the clip after the break.
Continue reading "CRT vector graphics arcade game built from an FPGA board"


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Social Science
Elementary School/Middle School/High School
Difficulty of Project
Safety Issues
Material Availability
Easily available from your local drugstore.
Approximate Time Required to Complete the Project
About a day, or else 5 minutes.
To understand how time perception changes between the ages of 6 and ___ (an ending age to be determined).
- A room without a clock and with nothing in it (no pictures, wall hangings, etc)
- A stop watch
Being a child is like starting a book.In the first five pages of a new book, you are trying to understand what world you have entered, how the characters relate to one another, and what the writing style is.When you are a child, you encounter similar challenges, trying to understand the world around you and how to judge the people in it.This might cause time to move slower.How does time perception differ in children and adults?
Research Questions
- How does time perception differ between children and adults?
- Is it true that the younger the child, the more time he/she will believe has passed (in other words, is the perception a linear change based on age)?
- Is there an age at which time perception begins to more accurately match reality?
Terms, Concepts and Questions to Start Background Research
- How do children perceive time?
- How do adults perceive time?
- How do these compare?
Experimental Procedure
- Gather a group of subjects, ages 6 to ___ (determine an ending age).Make sure all ages in this range are represented.If you are lucky, you will have more than one person to represent every age.
- While you cannot control the number of people who show up to your experiment, you should make sure to note the turnout in your writeup.
- DO NOT TELL THESE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WILL BE DOING!!!Simply tell them you are conducting an experiment about the differences in time perception between children of different ages and adults, and tell them when and where to show up.
- When the participants show up, take them one at a time into a room with no distractions and no clock.Keep them there for 5 minutes.
- After five minutes, enter the room and ask how much time has passed.
Droit-Volet, Sylvie.Alerting Attention and Time Perception in Children.July 15, 2003.ScienceDirect. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJ9-492VR10-1&_user=10&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1194259573&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=35b4b7757ed03937d21c26a3824ee050
Krulwich, Robert."Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?"Feb 1, 2010.All Things Considered: NPR. http://www.wbur.org/npr/122322542


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We have seen a few malicious PowerPoint documents come through the labs in the past few days. These malicious documents exploit the MS06-028 vulnerability, for which a patch has been available since June 21… 2006. Yes, that's right — a patch has been available for more than 3 years.
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Mobile Users Unfazed by Web Threats
Users are under the impression that mobile phones are more secure than PCs, according to the latest Trend Micro survey. A number of users are found not practicing safe browsing when using their mobile phones.
The survey shows that 44% of over 1,000 respondents are lax when it comes to surfing using their mobile phones. The respondents are actually more concerned of losing data such as contact numbers via physical phone loss rather than information loss due to Web threats and phishing or spam attacks. In fact, only 23% utilize security software already installed in their phones. Some even believe there is no use for such software as mobile phones are not as prone to security risks.
Quite unfortunate is the fact that users' assumption that mobile phones are spared of attacks by cybercriminals is very much incorrect, as mobile threats have been around for the past four years now.
Developer denies software to beat Chinese censors is malicious
UltraSurf programmer says the software acts suspiciously, but it's just trying to put one over on the Great Firewall of China.
Software designed to beat Chinese censorship may behave in ways that seem suspect, but it is all part of the application's strategy to fool the Great Firewall of China, according to one programmer of the software.
"There are many built-in tricks that do all kinds of things to confuse the firewall," says David Tian, a scientist for NASA who works spare-time on UltraSurf, the free software designed to promote unrestricted Internet access for citizens of China persecuted for being members of Falun Gang, the religious group the Chinese government is trying to suppress.
Some of those tricks were pointed out last month at the Black Hat security conference by researchers who interpreted the odd behaviors as counterproductive to the anti-censorship goal and as perhaps malicious. After about a month, Tian recently responded to a request made during the conference for reaction to the research.
UltraSurf is a proxy network that masks where traffic is being sent to and received from in an effort to keep the Chinese government's Internet filters from detecting forbidden communication. It calls for users to download an UltraSurf client, which sends and receives traffic via a network of proxies set up and maintained by UltraReach, a subgroup under the Global Internet Freedom Consortium.
More in http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/082809-chinese-anticensorship.html
Firefox Add-on Spies on Google Search Results
Trend Micro threat analysts were alerted to the discovery of a spyware (detected as TSPY_EBOD.A) purporting to be an Adobe Flash Player update. Upon execution, the spyware creates a Firefox add-on called "Adobe Flash Player 0.2," the installer of which uses JavaScript (detected as JS_EBOD.A) and appears to spread via forum posts.
The said add-on injects ads into the user's Google search results pages. More disturbing, however, is its capability to monitor the user's browsing activities, particularly his/her Google search queries using the Firefox browser. It then sends the information it gathers to http://{BLOCKED}jupdate.com.
If a free scanner says you have infection but it does not say which file….
is infected… dump that free scanner. Use alternative scanners (online or on-demand scanner)
Webroot Spy Sweeper is offering free scan but if it found infection, there is no information on which file is infected. People who come across on such like this one in CNET Forums cannot even quarantine the file, leaving the end-user curious whether the detection of Spy Sweeper's free scan is correct or a false positive. You have to pay before you can quarantine without information on what it will quarantine or heal? Webroot must be kidding.
AVG false positive on legitimate applications causes trouble
Many AVG users are now asking help in forum on why they could not run legitimate applications such as Firefox, Microsoft Word, CCleaner, Malwarebytes' Anti-malware etc. Other users has reported to receive a dialog box that the executable of the program that they are trying to open is is not a valid Win32 application. While some are getting that a .dll file is missing.
Sample reports yesterday and the other day is here, here and here. Moderator of CNET, Carol has provided also some links on similar reports mentioned at DSLReports.com
All of the above reports started to happen to end-users that has AVG and allowed AVG to delete/quarantine the infection Sheur2 and PSW.Agent.ABTK.
Looking at the sample AVG activity logs by AVG user at BleepingComputers.com shows that AVG has deleted a lot of legitimate files by legitimate applications including Windows Update file wuauclt.exe by Microsoft and even the AVG executables avgcmgr8.exe!
Running the system file checker utility will help but it will not solve the problem because AVG did not only detect system files but executable of third party applications that SFC will not restore.
If you are seeing the said problem, make sure to read the activity log of AVG. Restore the files from AVG vault. Update your AVG definitions soon.
AVG Moderator confirmed on August 28 in a forum post the false alarm and that they have release a new virus detection update.
Compromised: Spywaresignatures.com
Spywaresignatures.com seems to compromised and currently pushing a Fakealert trojan.
Hackers scalp Apache
The website of Apache was taken offline for several hours on Friday after the SSH remote administration key on one of its servers was compromised.
It's unclear at present whether any code on the Apache website was actually modified. Nor do we know how the attack was carried out or who was behind it.
Apache's web site was restored after DNS records were changed so that servers based in Europe rather than at the main US site were carrying the load.
Apple's Snow Leopard Brings Compatibility, Security Concerns
Adobe CS3 users are expressing dismay that Snow Leopard compatibility hasn't been tested while hackers tempt Mac users with malware in Snow Leopard clothing.
Apple's Snow Leopard update for Mac OS X ships later this week, but compatibility and security worries have already arrived.
Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) on Tuesday confirmed that its Creative Suite 4 (CS4) line of products is compatible with Snow Leopard, except for Adobe Drive/Version Cue. It also acknowledged that its older CS3 software has not been tested with Apple's forthcoming operating system.
In an effort to dispel worries that CS3 users would be unable to use their software if they upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6, Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack subsequently clarified in a blog post that "No one said anything about CS3 being 'not supported' on Snow Leopard."
He stopped short however of declaring that CS3 will be fully functional under Snow Leopard, leaving Adobe users who haven't upgraded to CS4 wondering, like Microsoft Office 2004 users, whether any show-stopping glitches await.
An unofficial, community-compiled Snow Leopard application compatibility list was briefly available at http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/, but the hosting site appears to have been overwhelmed by the visitor traffic and was returning a blank page at the time this article was filed.
With regard to security, Trend Micro said that one its researchers had discovered several Web sites advertising free copies of Snow Leopard. What's actually offered is malware, specifically, a DNS changing Trojan known as OSX_JAHLAV.K.
"Once executed, OSX_JAHLAV.K decrypts codes, which include a script that downloads other malicious scripts," said Trend Micro's Bernadette Irinco in a blog post. "The said script then alters the DNS configuration and includes two additional IP addresses in its DNS server. Users are thus possibly redirected to phishing sites and other fraudulent sites. In fact, some of these bogus sites are reportedly hosting FAKEAV (rogue antivirus) variants and components."
According to Trend Micro, OSX_JAHLAV.K may be downloaded without the user's knowledge following a visit to a malicious Web site. The Trojan, however, has a "low" overall risk rating.
Foxit Corporation, which makes the PDF reading program Foxit for Windows, Linux and various mobile platforms, on Tuesday warned that hackers are distributing software that purports to be Foxit Reader for Mac, a product that hasn't been released yet.
FBI fears free laptops could be malware scam
Beware geeks offering gifts.
Malware authors may have found a new way to skirt firewalls – send some pre-infected laptops in the post.
That's the fear of the FBI which is investigating the despatch of laptops to US state governors. Five HP laptops were sent to West Virginia Governor Joe Mahchin a few weeks ago. According to sources familiar with the investigation, other states have been targeted too, with HP laptops mysteriously ordered for officials in 10 states. Four of the orders were delivered, while the remaining six were intercepted.
The West Virginia laptops were delivered to the governor's office several weeks ago, prompting state officials to contact police, according to Kyle Schafer, the state's chief technology officer. "We were notified by the governor's office that they had received the laptops and they had not ordered them," he said. "We checked our records and we had not ordered them."


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Hmm... I think I'd be the kind of people that enjoys being able to actually experience content without being hardcore. I've been lucky enough to run Naxx 1 or 2 times fairly early after getting to 80, and appreciated the chance to actually see what it's like, since I wasn't there for the vanilla version.A thing that I like in raids is that some, if not most, bosses require more than just good gear: it requires knowing what to do and when to do it. And I think that's the factor that really makes me prefer raids over PvP. There's this very precise strategy factor that makes all the difference between a successful encounter and a wipe. Welfare epics allow me to actually try my hand at this without putting hours in the game just to get there.
I'm sad to say, I originally was anti-WoW and all for FF XI.Then I played both of them.I love WoW.FF XI blows. Hard.Seriously. It took me 11 hours to hit level 7. And that was with some kind of experience buff (I think it was +30%).I feel bad about hating FF XI though. My friend bought me the game, the required harddrive, and the required RAM to be able to play it with him. And I've been a Final Fantasy veteran for ages (with the exception of IV and XII. They both make me want to shoot myself.)In contrast, the person who hooked me on WoW has since ceased to play.*sighs*
I have to say WoW isn't the only MMO I play...I mainly play for the PvP BG and wintergrasp (these days)...I'd like to give raiding a go but need to gear up more for my guild to be happy to take me along.I play Anarchy Online...it has the best social scene of any MMO I have ever played but the system for getting your character to be good (nevermind awesome) involves lots of working of numbers to get specific items on to get other items to get other items on probably to get the weapon on you want then you keep going through this to get different bits of armour on and implants putting the easiest to equip items on last. I love it but I love just getting something in wow going yep I'm the right class and my level is high enough lets chuck it on. Basically the upside of AO's system is if someone is good you know they have the items and have spent the time to make there character good. The downside is if you don't spent the time to do this your only ever going to be mediocre.I also play eve but thats a whole different kettle of fish that I am staying away on this one.
At 70, i was in an awful spot. I desperately wanted to raid, but i hadnt become attuned to any heroic instances, and thus, could not get any gear. So, i got epics the only other way i knew how: PvP. I utterly hated pvping for epic armor, which, despite being epic, wasn't all that good. So i resolved that, when Wrath of the Lich King came out, i'd do better in the end. I was happy to hear that blizzard had not instigated reputation requirements for heroic mode instances and quickly got to grinding. As soon as i hit 80, i started getting in instance groups. To be frank, the 5 man heroics at 80 aren't that hard, but give great rewards. Even better are the actual raids, which have been brought to a level so that you don't have to be in a hardcore raid guild and have incredible epic gear to even scratch the first boss. No, now it's possible for everyone to enjoy the game without having to waste the entire day, or the entire week, or even the entire month grinding for that one epic, or trying to get the required reputation for such and such instance. So i'd have to say i play WoW not only because i love it, but also because it lets me get to a point where i can be proud of what i've accomplished, even if it wasn't very hard.
I play WoW because in my opinion it is the best one out there. There aren't any other MMORPG's where you can play for an hour or two hours and feel like you've done something. I think a lot of the people complaining about the relatively "easy" end-game is really their own doing. Blizzard listens to the players, and really, watching the game grow since my first day in 2005 I've been watching the game get better. I can't wait to see what Blizzard decides to do next!
I was hardcore, I enjoyed being in the upper middle of progression, seeing people with better gear then me, but having better then most felt good, having the items that looked cool and few others had was great.With Wotlk, I dont raid anymore, it took me exactly 14 days to get full t7.5 and the rest of my epics filled out. I used to play because of the sense of adventure it gave me, so much to do, so many things to see! so many battles to fight in!. But when actual bad players at an easy game began getting the same items as me, PvE lost all of its excitement, bosses no longer seemed a challenge, but just another easy scripted peice of colored code.So I thought "hey ill try PvP again". nope. I am a boomkin in end game gear, I was one shotting people for 17-18k starfire crits left and right. I thought "oh sweet im unstoppable". then a Death knight in blues and the crafted 2h mace comes up to me and 2 shots me.nope. PvP has lost what made it intense Survivability. So what do I do on WoW now? I log in out of pure habit, I talk with a few friends, that I realized arent really friends at all, just people I played with. Yea I still maintained a real life while I played, but we are all in college now, and in Canada, you dont live on campus or in frats at colleges. So theres still 5 hours a day in my life that has a big gap in it, I log into WoW for an hour and do nothing, theres no glory in sitting in org in my endgame gear, hell almost everybody has some t7. Hell I only come on WoWhead out of habit.this is my third year playing WoW. I played it because it was, and still is the best game out there as far as mmo and rpg games go. It is the best game, but its not the best game for me anymore. I wish I could get the same amount of joy, excitment and thrill out of it, but its no longer there and I know why but theres nothing I know that I can do. Iv played/owned an endgame character of every class there is.Im a lost and confused gamer that used to be hardcore, the only thing left is to slowly leave WoW.Because no other game can fully replace what WoW is (was) and always will be
Personally I have got totally hooked on wow for itself, but also because I have read about others and tried one, I think because of the culture shock after trying EVE for a year that truly caught me.With EVE I didn't like always looking over my shoulder, npc "guards" were there more to punish the attacker than to protect the victim. (They'd arrive after you got blown up etc.) I'm not actually complaining about it. EVE is a good game with some nice features and options, it just wasn't for me.As you may of guessed after that I settled on PvE servers on Wow, originally I rolled on PvP ones with the friends who got me into it, however I'm very much a casual player and I've only really discovered battlegrounds/wintergrasp can be fun in the last few weeks.What I'm trying to say is I like the fairly stress free style of PvE play, I like that I can craft some "nice" epics now for my Paladin and Death Knight. Honestly I haven't even looked up if they are the "best", I'm having fun with what I can do, sometimes with the support of my quite small guild.I can kind of sympathise with the hard core gamers if they feel things are too easy, but at the same time, even 10 mans look possible in the near future for my guild. There is no way I will complain about that!I hope Blizzard carry on the way they are going, but I also think with them adding more raids they should be able to step up the difficulty. So yes everyone can do some raids, but if you want the "top" ones you have to put more effort in to organise, learn etc. I don't see an issue with that and would think it could keep most people happy.
My first experience in MMO gaming was Guild Wars. I still keep my downloads current, because it's free and can be a fun waste of time. GW was like a primer for WoW though. Not as much content, not as much character development, only 20 levels, but free (after the initial purchase). But now I play WoW, and I dragged my Guildies, kicking and screaming, away from GW and into WoW with me. I love it, they love it, and we all have a good time playing together. Their wives hate me by the way! *grin*None of us are hardcore. I play WoW as a social outlet, a time waster, and a convenient escape from the mundane.
WoW is getting waaaaay too easy :<I was sitting out in Zul'drak with my level 80 Shaman (enhancement /sigh), thinking to myself:- Are they ever gonna buff up this tree, because if you look at dk's... its just a ridicoulous class with all that #$%^ they can pull off. (Sure hero class, but there's no reason for em to rape the games pvp for it.)So I QQ'd some and rerolled, no I cant even say rerolled. Since you dont lvl those 55 levels for it but, anyway. So I made a Death Knight, and holy @#$%ing %^&*. This is the easiest %^&* I've done in my life, damn Lemmings was harder then this, no even the first gomba in Super Mario Bros. 1 was harder then playing a DK.Otherwise then my normal DK-whine, I've disliked Blizzards way to hand out purples a bit too easy, but I cant say that I havent used the privilidge myself to get an extra wep or so, but sometimes I just miss the time when full epic was signition of you've farmed this game until oblivion and that you could now master anything and anyone in the game.
Hey no offence to the hardcore raiders, but as a new player to wow like 8months ago, I am pretty happy with the current naxxramas. Cause of timezone issues, have not been able to get into a hardcore PVE guild which is what I really want. But with this level of difficulty at least I got to experience raiding naxxramas at level 80 which is a big win for me!Also didn't blizz already say that Ulduar would be much harder in the next patch? I think that's where the skill& gear will really filter the casual and the hardcores... and you guys can get all the "satisfaction" you want.In the meantime... Ill keep trying to get into a hardcore guild =)Peace <3 raiding.
Yep. Facerolled my DK through the starting area in under 2 hours. After the initial "Woah! That was AWESOME!" reaction to some ability that did something cool, it got a bit boring. Bind keys, put cat on keyboard, watch Batman. I took so little notice of the class I couldn't now tell you 4 DK abilities without looking them up. I enjoyed the backstory that came with the class, and I found the area itself interesting, and now I have a lvl 58 storage alt, yay me.I have mixed feelings about current 'end game' content. Overall I'm /cheering it - our guild is pretty small and very casual. Kara was a struggle before the nerf, but we enjoyed getting in there and having a go. It was just annoying that it was the only raid we could feasibly take a shot at, everything else being too far beyond us. Now we're starting to get more toons geared up through heroics (like I said, very casual) it's looking like we're going to be able to get a shot at everything. That's pretty awesome because frankly, I wants the story, and with BC I never got to really experience the culmination of all the questing I'd done. Why did I bother with all those quest chains? To grind primals, apparently. /sighBut...On the other hand, I can see why the 'hardcore' are getting so riled up about it. If I'd spent months working as part of a large team toward the goal of fowarding the guild as a whole, only to find that some guy who logs on twice a week did a couple of runs with his mostly-casual guild and ended up with the same gear it took me all that time to get? Yeah, I'd be deflated.But, Wrath is still pretty much in the baby stage. I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some sort of compromise in the works at Blizz HQ...something to keep the casuals in the end game, while giving the hardcore something they can be proud of. Although, in all honesty, anyone who finds themselves thinking of WoW as 'work', should log and go outside for a while. Sorry, wall of text :)
I have been playing WoW ever since the closed beta times, and started with my first real character in February 2005, when the game hit the streets.At first the game was exciting and I spent hours for exploring the world (just spent a month ~ level 30 to explore every single zone I could get to), and then raiding and progress hit me. Suddenly, the game was a bit more exciting and the rewards looked sexy. This feeling stayed with me, but not for long. I'd say it was two or three weeks that I enjoyed MC and BWL until it felt like being forced to progress. By then I did not notice it, and assumed my choice of a dwarf rogue probably was just plain wrong, and I should become a troll shaman.So I switched and continued till I hit level 60, and again I raided. This time I did until Ahn'Qiraj was there and available to raid. But it did not change the feeling that something was wrong. Progress was there, epics dropped a lot. This time, I only stayed with my troll shaman for one reason... the Horde definitely had more and better quests in WoW than Alliance (the only exception being the Onyxia attunement where both Alliance and Horde quest chains are on par).Today I do play without raiding. I only play with people I know from real life, I do not play with progress sitting behind me like the devil who wants my soul as loot :-)I never enjoyed the game as much, but it took my long to realize that progress was actually what made the game bad for me. Now, I only quest, explore and run dungeons for quests, and associated lore, and totally skip raids.Today I once again love playing WoW. Raids and progress are the problem in this game for me.
I started with Anarchy Online...it was the first MMO I got seriously into. At the time I thought it was just the best damn MMO out there, people would mention something about WoW and I'd be like hah, never played it, never will, AO is the game for me. Then one day I got bored and for the hell of it downloaded the free trial of WoW and I was hooked.AO grabs you, but wow grabs you more. It's been touched on before, in how Wow wants to make >you< the hero. Never mind that everyone else has the quest to kill Illidan, or how odd it seems that even though you're the shattered sun's chosen one Kael'thas seems to have sprung extra heads so everyone else in your party can loot it and be the chosen one also... we overlook that, but in essence, wow wants >you< to be the hero. AO tries to make this happen, but they just don't pull it off so well, and the game (imho) quickly becomes more of a grinding session than anything else.Take for example. levelling up in AO versus levelling in wow... In wow, at a certain point, quests are pretty much the only way to level. You will sooner die of old age and/or psychosis grinding your way from 70 to 71 killing monsters. However...in AO, where the max level was 220 when I left...grinding is not only the most feasible way, but the only way pretty much...however it's a cheap form of grinding. Wow forces you to quest, because quests are superior in exp than anything else... this means you learn your character (generally speaking). You know what it can do and what your main role is or should be in a given situation. Now, in AO...the preferred method of levelling is getting into a team of 5 folks, sitting up on a mountain with 3 of the other folks, while the 5th person, a nanotechnician (wow's equivalent would be a mage) gathers up hundreds of enemies known as hecklers and AoE nukes them all into oblivion at once, giving the entire team buttloads of experience for sitting there. i.e. the 'kite team'. Nanotechs make a lot of ingame money doing this, it's rare to see a poor nanotechnician, but the downside is it leads to people having >zero< idea of how their class works in pvp or pve, and oftentimes being the downfall of raid content when you've got a lvl 190+ player who has no idea how to work functionally in a team...and this happens >a lot<.That's one long-winded example, but is the best way I can illustrate what draws me to wow and makes me love it. It makes you learn, but it makes learning fun. Questing is fun. And going up against other folks who've gotten their gear the same way you've gotten yours, just makes it better.
From my point of view, WoW still doesn't quite get to the level of "casual" player. Why? Cause I'm a VERY casual player, yet I'm still sitting in blues. I go to work early, get home around 5pm. Log into WoW only if my sister isn't using the computer. Guild message of the day: Naxx at 6ST. Ok... 6st=10pm in my country ---> dinner time.This means that I offtenly don't get to raid cause either my sister is in the computer, or the raid is exactly when my partents are screaming at me cause I'm still in the computer while they eat. When I come after dinner time I see a guild achievement spam: "Naxxarmas: The plague quarter!". And I'm like "-.-!" I missed it again?With playing around an average of 3 hours a day during the week and maybe 5 or 8 hours during the weekend, I still have blues and no freaking raid content except the casual off-set drops for healer. Call it bad luck, but wow doesn't help casual players as you all claim to say. From my point of view, it's that there is such a big amount of players nowadays, that there are lots of hardcores, this getting to the point that since all hardcores are sitting in org doing nothing they look at each other and think "wow, everyone has t7.5", while actually that's just 20% of wow population. Casual players are there doing just maybe dailies, PvP, or sitting at LFG trying to do UP h to get some loot after all... Whe I come back from vacations, I hope that I can get a freaking t7 for a change... I'm getting tired of never getting the phat lewtz.
Well hello there. I've been playing all kinds of games, Diablo and Diablo II, the sim city series, civilization series, Elder Scrolls and more. Really getting into it. My first view of "MMO" was Blizzards Diablo Battle Net thing and it didn't appeal to me whatsoever, so I kind of rejected that. I met a guy online who played Eve though and fell inlove with him, so I tried that game and kind of enjoyed it. It got very boring after a while though.The guy, who eventually moved to sweden from the uk to be with me, suggested we should try some other games. We tried EQ2, City of Heroes/City of Villains, Star Wars, and I kind of stuck with Lineage 2 for a long good while cause I thought it was so beautiful and epic. WOW came up in discussion with friends who loved it and played it, but after viewing the graphics we both dismissed it as a childish cartoony game (I was so used to Oblivion and Lineage that I just couldn't see a tree that wasn't perfect without cringing).Oh well, during the boring summer of 2008, when we were both fed up with every game in the book, a friend gave us trial wow passes. He got instantly obsessed. I (a self professed altoholic) created 9 characters on the server where all our friends played (Azjol, normal) and played them all up to lvl 20 before just hating the game because it was soooo boring. All my friends were raiding and grouping and doing all kinds of cool stuff and they were all so high level. Since I was such an avid soloplayer, I couldn't even think of grouping with people I didn't know, so I just gave it all up and went back to Oblivion for a long while.Then, this october, one of my wow-friends gave me a 60-day gamecard for my birthday, so I thought what the heck, and gave it another chance. This time I created characters on RP realms (Moonglade, Sha'Tar, Darkmoon), where I didn't know anyone at all, and played and played and loved every second of it. I levelled, quested in every zone in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, really got into the lore, read wiki articles on everything I encountered, etc. At Christmas, one of my Azjol friends gave me WOTLK, so I created a DK on that server so I could take part in all the raiding and grouping with them, and see that side of the game aswell. I also created DKs on the other realms, mostly to be able to raise money for my own guilds and for my own mounts a little bit easier and quicker. My highest level character atm is lvl 64, and fighting her way through Terokkar Forest. I enjoy the game immensly and since I feel I am not dependant on other people anymore I don't feel any pressure to get epics and do this and that in a short amount of time and so on. I haven't even touched battlegrounds yet, and I have yet to try a PUG, but that may come when I feel ready. With 40 characters I have all kinds of classes, races and levelranges. :)I know that there is so much in this game that I have missed and that I have yet to discover, and I just plain love it. I can even deal with the trees. :)As for time, I have a fulltime job but since both me and the bf are full-on gamers, basically every spare moment is spent infront of the screen.PS: also, I am kind of dumbstruck about how some people (among them my friends) play the game! They are being boosted through levels, never read the quests, the only thing that matters is level level level. And raiding. Some of them have no idea where on the map they are when they are in an instance, cause they got ported there, and they have no idea of the history of the place or anything. My friends who have played for 4 years and have lvl 80 characters in all purple don't know anything about half the places or quests I talk about ingame! They haven't even been to half the zones! (OBSERVE that this is not critisism against anyone, it just baffles me how different people experience the game so diversly different!)Oh and not having to GRIND anymore, like in Lineage2...there is always a quest to do. :D
I really have nothing to compare WoW to; it's my first MMO game. Other than computer strategy games (the Civ series) I really didn't play computer games; my early experiences with the first attempts at computer role-playing games left me frustrated and bored. (Wizardry, anyone?)I continue to play because my friends do, and because I enjoy it. Despite my pathetic computer gaming skills, I can actually make gains everytime I log on (sometimes very incremental gains, but I'm moving forward.) It's that positive reinforcement that keeps me paying the monthly fee.
Raiding is difficult, the encounter itself isn't the challenging part, the monitoring and teaching the other minimum-IQ members of the raid while doing the encounter is the challenging part.If I would raid with people that were somehow creative and smart like me, then raiding would be easy.I don't want to flatter myself, what I want to do is insult the other people out there.It just makes me angry that I have to tell them things that I think are obvious.


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Rating: 0 stars
Featuring free WiFi and a balcony, Apartamento Avenida Litoranea 2809 2A is a holiday home, located in Genipabu. Guests benefit from patio and an outdoor pool. There is a seating area, a dining area and a kitchen equipped with an oven. A flat-screen TV is available. Other facilities at Apartamento Avenida Litoranea 2809 2A include a year-round outdoor pool. Natal is 7 km from Apartamento Avenida Litoranea 2809 2A , while Parnamirim is 23 km away. The nearest airport is São Gonçalo do Amarante International Airport, 20 km from the property. Més informació
Avg.Rate: 150,00 BRL - 304,00
Rating: 0 stars
Sitting just 50 metres from the beach and offering a restaurant and free daily brakfast, Pousada Aconchego de Genipabu is located in Jenipabu. Free WiFi access is available. Each air-conditioned room here will provide guests with a TV, a minibar and a balcony. Guests can enjoy garden view from the room. At Pousada Aconchego de Genipabu , guests will find a 24-hour front desk and a garden. The property offers free parking. Genipabu Dune is 500 metres from the property, while Natal's City Centre is 15 km. São Gonçalo do Amarante International Airport is 20 km away. Més informació
Avg.Rate: 119,00 BRL - 210,00
Rating: 0 stars
Offering an outdoor pool, Pousada Rosa dos Ventos is located in Jenipabu and offers free WiFi and free breakfast. Each room at Rosa dos Ventos Guest House offers a TV, air conditioning and a minibar, as well as a terrace. Featuring a shower, private bathrooms also come with free toiletries. At Pousada Rosa dos Ventos you will find a garden. Other facilities offered at the property include a tour desk. The property offers free parking. São Gonçalo do Amarante International Airport is 20 km away. Més informació
Avg.Rate: 180,00 BRL - 396,00
Rating: 0 stars
This hotel is right by Genipabu Beach, close to environmentally protected areas, featuring rooms with sea view, a pool and free Wi-Fi. It offers camel rides, diving and other activities. Guests can explore nearby beaches, Maracajaú Coral Reef and the white dunes of Água das Dunas Park. The air-conditioned rooms at Pousada Villa do Sol are bright and airy, providing TV, minibar and telephone. For guests´ convenience, there is also a 24-hour front desk. On a large porch by the beach, guests enjoy buffet breakfast with tropical fruits and regional cakes. The restaurant also serves Brazilian cuisine, with highlights to seafood dishes. Pousada Villa do Sol is located 15 km from Natal and 28 km from São Gonçalo do Amarante Airport. On-site parking is free, and transfers from the airport and bus station can be arranged. Més informació


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|Yukio MAEDA <email@example.com>
|st: question regarding the past practice of survey data analysis
|Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:01:47 +0900
Hello, Statalisters; Partly out of curiosity (and partly out of necessity), I would like to ask a question regarding how people analyzed survey data with weight (unequal selection probability) in the past. I tried several internet search engines but never came up with any. When I was a graduate student in the last century, I received a piece of advice concerning how to use weight variable in survey data analysis. The advice was "when the data set comes with an weight variable, you should use it for descriptive purpose. But for regression analysis, you don't have to use weight as long as your model is correctly specified." Personally I do not subscribe to this idea (for practical purpose) but can understand why some people said so. And I found a few articles in my field (well, in political science) that ignored weight while analyzing survey data. Then, my question is whether ignoring weight (for regression) is a common practice in some part of the discipline in the past or not. And if so, I would like to know if there is any paper or reference that explains why one can ignore weight for regression but cannot for descriptive inference. I apologize in case such advice or practice has never been endorsed. It can be my false recollection of passing conversations. Yours, Yukio * * For searches and help try: * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
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|No.B1903, Baianzhongxin, Nancheng District, Dongguan,China
|Contact person
|jack li
JEIYIP is a recognized leader in connectivity cable development,Website:http://www.connectioncables.de, design andmanufacturing. Our professional production capacity and modern equipment give us a versatility that is unsurpassed. In addition, our highly skilled engineering and manufacturing staff are fully committed to zero defect quality program and an unparalleled culture of customer service. Since 1996, Jeiyip have been engaged in designing and manufacturing industrial control cables and assemblies. Cables such as: Servo System Cables with or without connectors; Custom Automation Cables and Assemblies. With 30 electrical engineers and over 500 experienced staff, our biggest advantage is that we have the experience on designing and making custom industrial cables and assembles. Meeting the most harsh needs in industrial application of the automatic production line, such as machine tools, robotic automation, conveyors, servo motion control, automotive tooling, automation, resistance welding, food and beverage production and more. Over the years Jeiyip have developed many other cables. One we are very proud of is our series of connection cables and assembles for vehicle rear view camera systems. From a coiled suzi leads, camera extension/adapter cables and slim mini pin din leads we offer complete solutions to wire up your rear view camera. If you need any special cables, we would be glad to come up with a solution. All can come equipped with or without waterproof rugged screw plastic or metal connector and plug, connectors can come with 2 to 22 pins. Over the last few years we have put a lot of effort in developing these cables. We believe that these are the best yet! Basically If you have a camera we have the cable.


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South Bend sweeps Wisconsin with 12-3 decision
Silver Hawks collect 17 hits on the way to three-game series sweep
By Chris Mehring / Wisconsin Timber Rattlers | April 30, 2013 1:12 PM ET
GRAND CHUTE, WI - Brandon Drury went 5-for-6 to lead the South Bend Silver Hawks to a 12-3 rout of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers on Tuesday afternoon at Time Warner Cable Field at Fox Cities Stadium. The 17-hit attack gave South Bend a win and their first ever sweep at Wisconsin.
South Bend (16-6) scored first for the third straight game in the series. Socrates Brito scored from third on a wild pitch.
The Silver Hawks added to their lead in the top of the fourth. Fidel Pena singled to drive in two runs for a 3-0 advantage.
Wisconsin (5-13) had South Bend starter Jesse Darrah on the ropes in the bottom of the fifth inning. Adam Giacalone singled and Orlando Arcia walked to start the inning and the top of the order was due to hit. Tyrone Taylor bunted the runners over to scoring position for Michael Reed, who had extended his hitting streak to seven games with a first inning double. Reed sent a smash down the third base line that looked like a two-run double. However, Drury made a diving back-handed stab and clean stop of the ball. Then, Drury threw home to get Giacalone for the second out. Darrah got a strikeout - his sixth of the game - to end the Rattlers threat.
Wisconsin reliever Eric Semmelhackwas not as lucky as Darrah. In the top of the sixth, the leadoff batter reached on an error. Semmelhack would get a grounder, but the Rattlers defense could only get the lead runner and were unable to turn the double play. Drury was next and he had two consecutive wind-blown pop-ups drop in foul territory behind Wisconsin defenders. Drury made the Rattlers pay with an RBI double. He would score later in the inning on a single by Brito for a 5-0 South Bend lead.
Darrah pitched six shutout innings and struck out eight while walking four, hitting one, and allowing three hits for the Silver Hawks. The Rattlers staged a rally once Darrah left the game.
It was the bottom of the order that got the Rattlers going again in the bottom of the seventh. Both Giacalone and Arcia were hit by Will Locante to start the inning. Taylor singled to center to drive in Giacalone and an errant throw to third allowed Arcia to score and Taylor to take third base. An error on a grounder off the bat of Reed allowed Taylor to score and Wisconsin was within 5-3. But, they could not push another run across the plate.
Meanwhile, South Bend pushed a lot more runs over the plate. Drury homered over the batter's eye in center with two outs in the top of the eighth inning to make it 6-3. Then, the Silver Hawks sent eleven men to the plate in the top of the ninth. The scored six runs on two walks, five hits, and another Wisconsin error. The outburst in the eighth put the Hawks up by the final score of 12-3.
Taylor was the only Timber Rattlers batter to have a multi-hit game as he had two.
The Timber Rattlers are off on Wednesday. They begin a six-game road trip with a doubleheader on Thursday at Lansing. Game time for the first game of the twinbill is 4:05pm CDT.
Brandon Drury (3rd, 0 on in 8th inning off Eric Semmelhack, 2 out)
WP: Jesse Darrah (2-1)
LP: Preston Gainey (0-3)
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.View More


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The A.A. with Emphasis in Music program provides a foundation in the creative, technical and academic aspects of music. This pathway is a great choice for students interested in a career in music, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music or completing their transfer curriculum.
Fall enrollment is recommended, but students are accepted into this program anytime. Courses are taught on MCTC's main campus.
Please select the award below to view the degree options and requirements in the college catalog.
Associate in Arts with an emphasis in Music––60 credits
While much emphasis has recently been placed on career and technical paths that guarantee a job immediately after graduation, employers want and need individuals who can think creatively, who are great communicators and who are adaptable–all skills that are developed with a major in music.
The music industry is highly competitive, but opportunities abound for those individuals with drive, focus, tenacity and discipline. A major in music will give you a head start in this exciting and creative field.
The MCTC Music Department offers a variety of musical ensembles for you to choose from including our Jazz Ensemble, Chamber Ensemble, College Choir and Vocal Ensemble. All ensembles are available with or without college credit. Performances and service-learning opportunities provide students will real-world experiences in music.
This program is part of the Academy of Liberal Arts and Transfer.
Articulation agreements
Common Course Outlines
MCTC's Liberal Arts and General Education courses and programs are ideal for satisfying requirements and for transferring to other four-year institutions.
Follow a defined pathway to earn your two-year associate degree from Minneapolis Community and Technical College then seamlessly transfer to Augsburg College to finish your bachelor's degree.
Find out why nearly 14,000 students choose Minneapolis Community and Technical College each year!
1501 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55403
612-659-6000Minnesota Relay Service: 711 or firstname.lastname@example.com
Copyright © 2011 - 2017 Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Privacy EEO
MCTC is an equal opportunity employer and educator.


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Pack less. Be more.
Greetings all. I have a bad habit like many of you of buying too much gear. One of my goals in 2013 is to sell off a lot of the stuff I don't use often or never had a chance to try. All of the prices below include shipping in the CONUS. Payment preference is via Paypal personal/gift or add 3%.
Osprey Exos 46L, Size Large, Brand New with Tags, $115 shipped
Mountain Laurel Designs Burn is SOLD.
Six Moon Designs Swift is SOLD.
Gossamer Gear Murmur is SOLD.
Thanks for looking,
@mak52580Locale: Washington, DC Area
PM Sent with some questions. Otherwise I'll take it.
SMD Swift SOLD to Marc.
@el_canyonLocale: USA
I will take the burn. Can send PayPal tonight.
MLD Burn is SOLD to James.
@janosmLocale: phinney ridge
I would love to take the murmur off your hands… let me know paypal info and i can send first thing in the morning (off to a movie!).
The Murmur is still available as Janos changed his mind.
Murmur still available for $80 shipped.
Osprey Exos still available for $125 shipped.
Murmur is SOLD to Tony.
@el_canyonLocale: USA
Hey everybody, just wanted to say that Chris shipped the Burn to me immediately and emailed the tracking info. The pack is in perfect condition. A superb transaction, buy with confidence from Chris.
Thanks James!
Also, lowered price on Osprey Exos to $115 shipped.
@dcarson87354Locale: Gulf Coast
Hey Chris, would you entertain $100 shipped for the Exos?
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.


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A cyclist has been struck and killed by a truck near Taupo.
Police said the woman was part of a group of cyclists who were riding on Poihipi Rd in a rural area north of the town yesterday morning.
The woman suffered fatal injuries when she was struck by the passing truck shortly before 10am.
Police said they were working with witnesses to identify the causes of the crash.


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Re: TGIF resub
Better colors and a better comp. Please vote again.
By date:
By rank:
If you wanna vote, you need to Sign in first. Be sure to Sign in using an account with at least one purchase, otherwise you won't be able to participate. Sorry we called you buckaroo.


text: Bugs item #745398, was opened at 2003-05-29 02:54 Message generated for change (Comment added) made by jdhildeb You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=104866&aid=745398&group_id=4866 Category: PSP Group: None >Status: Closed Resolution: None Priority: 5 Submitted By: Christian Muirhead (wilberforce) Assigned to: Jason Hildebrand (jdhildeb) Summary: PSP compilation produces syntax error Initial Comment: When the .psp file is compiled to a .py servlet, the __orig_file__ value is inserted, but no quoting is done on the file path. On Windows, this can mean that the \s in the file path are interpreted as escape sequences, which could potentially be invalid, leading to a ValueError when the servlet is imported. Example: PSP file c:\xtian\webware\PSP\Examples\index.psp results in a .py servlet with the line __orig_file__ = 'c:\xtian\webware\PSP\Examples\index.psp' Since \x expects a two-digit hex number, \xti triggers a ValueError. A related problem can occur if the file has single-quotes in its path - the generated line would be __orig_file__ = 'c:\xtian's\webware\PSP\Examples\index.psp' which is a syntax error. Fix: In Webware/PSP/ParseEventHandler.py at line 277, change: self._writer.println("__orig_file__ = '%s'" % self._ctxt.getFullPspFileName()) to self._writer.println("__orig_file__ = %r" % self._ctxt.getFullPspFileName()) so that the %r format specifier correctly handles \ and ' quoting. Cheers! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >Comment By: Jason Hildebrand (jdhildeb) Date: 2003-06-10 03:54 Message: Logged In: YES user_id=173690 Thanks for the report. I've applied the fix to CVS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=104866&aid=745398&group_id=4866


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What to expect from the US NFP?
FXBAZOOKA.com - Exhausted by the yesterday's ECB-related move, currency traders await the US labor market data on Friday (12:30 GMT). Consensus forecasts are upbeat for all the 3 releases:
Key US releases (Sept. 5)
The ECB easing announcement made it very clear that monetary policy divergence between the euro zone and the United States is increasing. The Federal Reserve has a clear intention to finish the QE in October and to proceed to raising interest rates afterwards. Of course, the terms are important, but in this case it is the direction that matters: the Fed is hawkish, while Yellen is dovish. In our view, US NFP above 200K will be enough to confirm: US economic recovery remains on track and the Fed's tightening strategy is adequate to the market conditions.
Chart. NFP dynamics in 2013-2014
NFP above the 226K consensus will clearly push the US dollar a little higher. but the upside seems to be limited today. However, the figure below forecast will likely trigger a short-lived, but potentially deep USD correction. The greenback is clearly overbought after the yesterday's rally.
Chart. US dollar index (Bloomberg)


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- Home
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- Vertical Rabbit Corkscrew - Metallic Red
Product Description
The Vertical Rabbit Corkscrew in Metallic Red is a Metrokane Rabbit corkscrew that stands in a vertical fashion on a wine bottle. The Vertical Rabbit Corkscrew has a lever that you push down that drives the corkscrew into the cork, and then you pull up to remove the cork. Another down and up of the lever and the cork pops off the corkscrew. Beginning to end, the process takes three seconds. The Vertical Rabbit Corkscrew is in a stunning candy apple red color with a chrome plated die cast metal lever. It includes an extra worm and foil cutter. This corkscrew is synthetic cork friendly. With a 10 year manufacturer warranty and the handsome permanent lucite storage case, the Metrokane Vertical Rabbit Corkscrew is ideal for gift giving.
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Carbon Offsets Take Flight
For as little as $2, an eco-conscious passenger flying on Continental Airlines (CAL) can cancel out the damage they may be doing to the ozone layer. That's how much it costs to purchase a "carbon offset" to pay for planting trees. Or, they can contribute $50 or more toward a renewable-energy project such as solar or wind power. Both options are provided to passengers when they book through the airline's Web site. "Our customers tell us they want to minimize their impact on the environment, and we want to give them the tools," says Leah Raney, managing director of global environmental affairs for Continental.
A whole host of airlines, including Continental and Delta Air Lines (DAL) in the U.S. and Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, and Qantas internationally, are offering customers ways to offset their contribution to carbon dioxide emissions when they fly. And why not? Reducing one's carbon footprint seems to be de rigueur these days.
Last year, Vatican City accepted an offer to plant trees in a Hungarian national park, making it the only "carbon-neutral" state. "In the last eight months Delta passengers have bought offsets that paid for us to plant 102,000 trees," says Jena Thompson, director for the Go Zero program at the Conservation Fund, an Arlington (Va.) nonprofit whose primary objective is land protection. The group manages Delta's carbon offsets program. "Those trees will suck up 64,000 tons of carbon dioxide in their lifetime, which equals what would be produced by 2,900 Americans in a year."
Sounds simple and high-minded. But these programs are actually quite complex, and the payoff is being questioned by a growing number of people.
Codes of Standards
As the demand to reduce carbon footprints grows, many largely unregulated companies have sprung up to offer carbon offsets. These companies in turn plant trees in forests or algae in oceans, or invest in wind and solar power plants. Critics point out it is difficult to tell exactly the quality of work these companies perform. "The quality and standards of voluntary offset companies vary widely," wrote Anja Kollmuss and Benjamin Bowell in a report about offsets for the Tufts [University] Climate Initiative. The authors also noted some of the companies that sell offsets might see it as a way to promote their own environmental or humanitarian missions, and as "a financial opportunity."
No wonder, then, that several codes of standards have emerged. One of them is the Voluntary Carbon Standard, launched in November. It offers quality assurance checks from the Climate Group, the International Emissions Trading Assn., and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. There are at least three other international standards including the Gold Standard, a Swiss nonprofit backed by several environmental groups that offers a quality label to offset projects such as renewable energy.
"Whim of Nature"
It is also difficult to judge the actual benefit produced by carbon offset companies. Take tree planting, for instance. It works in theory because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—including, presumably, that which is spewed from jet engines. However, environmental experts point out that trees absorb carbon at different rates depending on whether they are planted in temperate or tropical climate zones. Besides, they are susceptible to disease and natural disasters, and if they don't last their lifetime they aren't offsetting the carbon people pay for.
"With trees, your offsets are at the whim of nature and that's pretty questionable since we're having this conversation because of climate change," says Bill Burtis, manager of communications and special projects at Portsmouth (N.H.)-based Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit that advises corporations, communities, and campuses on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Burtis and other critics also wonder about the point of offsets. They say offsets are like buying environmental indulgences for someone's supposed eco-damaging sins. Doing so doesn't lead to any change in behavior, which is what environmentalists would prefer to see. "We want to see people try to reduce energy first in how they live and then think about offsets," says Burtis. He says the same people who are concerned about the environment and buy an offset for a plane ticket would affect far more change by reducing the size of their houses, refrigerators, or cars.
At Home vs. Away
Of course, the point of many of these offset programs is one of convenience—it is, after all, much easier to click a mouse button and donate some money than to go without that SUV or recreation room. In a world that has become increasingly globalized, travel is hardly likely to decrease, no matter how guilty travelers feel about it. The World Travel & Tourism Council has seen international travel grow in recent years at a 6% annual clip, which is a faster pace than the 4% pace of growth in the 1990s.
Typically, the airline offset programs provide a Web calculator that estimates a traveler's carbon dioxide emissions from the flights they book. They use a formula that takes into account the distance traveled and how much fuel is burned during that flight, which determines the amount of carbon emitted. (Of course, different airlines have aircraft fleets that are old or new, so different airlines emit varying amounts of carbon for the same route.) The airlines offer passengers the option to buy offsets from environmental groups the airlines have signed as partners. At Continental, that's the nonprofit Sustainable Travel International.
Continental says it conducted a third-party review before deciding to partner with Sustainable Travel. "We were also attracted by the variety of projects we could offer our customers—since our European customers preferred to fund projects in developing countries while our American passengers wanted to contribute to projects in their own backyard," says Continental's Raney.


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National Novel Writing Month @ DCPL
National Novel Writing Month @ DCPL
30 Days. 50,000 Words. 1 Novel.
November is National Novel Writing Month!
Have you ever dreamed of writing the Great American Novel? Do you have a torrid romance burning inside you? Do you know why the aliens are coming to get you, and you have to share the secret of their extra-dimensional technology with the world? Then you, my friend, are a prime candidate for NaNoWriMo!
Each year, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) encourages people to take on the challenge of writing a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in only 30 days. Each year over 300,000 people participate in Nanowrimo activities around the world. The DC Public Library is making a commitment to support our local NaNo Writers, from providing space and some friendly competition to fantastic incentives for registered participants who meet their wordcount goal.
When you sign up to write you are eligible for a NaNo Startup Kit which includes a Finish-It Toolkit designed to help writers take the next step after that first draft, and includes a voucher for workshops on creating cover art and typesetting a book, as well as one free print-out of the book from our print-on-demand Book Machine.
Come Write In
While you can always come and write in all of our neighborhood libraries, eight DC Public Library locations will serve as host sites for local NaNoWriMo Writers as part of the "Come Write In" program. Each of these participating libraries will have specific dates and times set aside just for NaNo writers to come in and work on their masterpieces. Bring your favorite notepad or laptop, or use one of the library's public computers to work on your project.
Check the calendar of events for our Come Write In days.
This year's locations are:
- Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library
- Juanita E. Thornton/Shepherd Park Neighborhood Library
- Southeast Neighborhood Library
- Southwest Neighborhood Library
- Tenley-Friendship Neighborhood Library
- Takoma Park Neighborhood Library
- West End Interim Neighborhood Library
- Woodridge Neighborhood Library
But Wait! There's MORE!
As if writing your big novel wasn't incentive enough, the DC Public Library is throwing in some extra fun stuff!
Share Your Word Count @ DC Public Library
If you're participating in NaNo at the DC Public Library, we want to share how awesome you are, and how well you're doing on your book! When you register for NaNo at DC Public Library, you can opt-in to share your NaNo word count widget with us for our NaNoWriMo Leaderboard (below).
Tweet Your Progress
You can also opt-in to share your Twitter handle so we can tweet when you make substantial progress on your book, or if you take the lead among the local writers.
And we've got prizes too! Just for registering as a participant you will receive:
- A DC Public Library Tote Bag
- A Special Edition DC Public Library bound journal
- The Finish-It Toolkit - which is a punch card to the Digital Commons for:
- A class in creating book cover art
- A class in typesetting & preparing your book for production
- One free printed copy of your book from our print-on-demand Book Machine
This year the first 25 DCPL Come Write In writers who complete the 50,000 word goal will be provided with an invitation to a luncheon with local published authors where you can learn, network and chat with other writers who have broken into the business.
How to Register
Registration is a two-step process.
- First, you need to register through the official website for NaNoWriMo.
- Second, you need to register for the DCPL Come Write In program.
That's it! When you're finished registering, come in to one of the library branches listed above to receive your NaNo Startup Kit.
How to Win
Use your NaNoWriMo wordcounter throughout the program to keep everyone updated on your progress.
When you complete your 50,000 word draft of your novel, you win an invitation to a luncheon with published authors!
In order to win prizes, you have to register both on NaNo and at DC Public Library.
2016 Winners