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"It's funny in a way", says Bill Gates, relaxing in an armchair in his office. "When I was young, I didn't know any old people. When we did the microprocessor revolution, there was nobody old, nobody. It's weird how old this industry has become." The Microsoft cofounder and I, a couple of fiftysomething codgers, are following up on an interview I had with a tousle-headed Gates more than a quarter century ago. I was trying to capture what I thought was the red-hot core of the then-burgeoning computer revolution — the scarily obsessive, absurdly brainy, and endlessly inventive people known as hackers. Back then, Gates had just pulled off a deal to supply his DOS operating system to IBM. His name was not yet a household word; even Word was not yet a household word. I would interview Gates many times over the years, but that first conversation was special. I saw his passion for computers as a matter of historic import. Gates himself saw my reverence as an intriguing novelty. But by then I was convinced that I was documenting a movement that would affect everybody.
The book I was writing, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, came out just over 25 years ago, in the waning days of 1984. My editor had urged me to be ambitious, and so I shot high, crafting a 450-page narrative in three parts, making the case that hackers — brilliant programmers who discovered worlds of possibility within the coded confines of a computer — were the key players in a sweeping digital transformation.
I hadn't expected to reach that conclusion. When I embarked on my project, I thought of hackers as little more than an interesting subculture. But as I researched them, I found that their playfulness, as well as their blithe disregard for what others said was impossible, led to the breakthroughs that would define the computing experience for millions of people. Early MIT hackers realized it was possible to use computers for what we now call word processing. (Their initial program was called Expensive Typewriter, appropriate since the one machine it ran on cost $120,000.) They also invented the digital videogame. The rebel engineers of the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley were the first to take advantage of new low-cost chips to build personal computers. They may have begun as a fringe cohort, but hackers alchemized the hard math of Moore's law into a relentless series of technological advances that changed the world and touched all of our lives. And most of them did it simply for the joy of pulling off an awesome trick.
But behind the inventiveness was something even more marvelous — all real hackers shared a set of values that has turned out to be a credo for the information age. I attempted to codify this unspoken ethos into a series of principles called the hacker ethic. Some of the notions now seem forehead-smackingly obvious but at the time were far from accepted ("You can create art and beauty on a computer"). Others spoke to the meritocratic possibilities of a digital age ("Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position"). Another axiom identified computers as instruments of insurrection, granting power to any individual with a keyboard and sufficient brainpower ("Mistrust authority — promote decentralization"). But the precept I perceived as most central to hacker culture turned out to be the most controversial: "All information should be free."
Stewart Brand, hacker godfather and Whole Earth Catalog founder, hacked even that statement. It happened at the first Hackers' Conference, the week my book was published, during a session I moderated on the future of the hacker ethic. "On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable," he said. "On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." His words neatly encapsulate the tension that has since defined the hacker movement — a sometimes pitched battle between geeky idealism and icy-hearted commerce.
Though Hackers initially landed with a bit of a thud (The New York Times called it "a monstrously overblown magazine article"), it eventually found an audience greater than even my overheated expectations. Through chance encounters, email, and tweets, people are constantly telling me that reading the book inspired them in their careers. Thumbing through David Kushner's Masters of Doom, I learned that reading Hackers as a geeky teenager reassured Doom creator John Carmack that he was not alone in the world. When I recently interviewed Ben Fried, Google's chief information officer, he showed up with a dog-eared copy of the book for me to sign. "I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't read this," he told me.
Video: hackersvideo.com
But it was the hackers themselves who inspired a generation of programmers, thinkers, and entrepreneurs — and not just fellow techies. Everyone who has ever used a computer has benefited. The Internet itself exists thanks to hacker ideals — its expansion was lubricated by a design that enabled free access. The word hacker entered the popular lexicon, although its meaning has changed: In the mid-'80s, following a rash of computer break-ins by teenagers with personal computers, true hackers stood by in horror as the general public began to equate the word — their word — with people who used computers not as instruments of innovation and creation but as tools of thievery and surveillance. The kind of hacker I wrote about was motivated by the desire to learn and build, not steal and destroy. On the positive side of the ledger, this friendly hacker type has also become a cultural icon — the fuzzy, genial whiz kid who wields a keyboard to get Jack Bauer out of a jam, or the brainy billionaire in a T-shirt — even if today he's more likely to be called a geek.
In the last chapters of Hackers, I focused on the threat of commercialism, which I feared would corrupt the hacker ethic. I didn't anticipate that those ideals would remake the very nature of commerce. Yet the fact that the hacker ethic spread so widely — and mingled with mammon in so many ways — guaranteed that the movement, like any subculture that breaks into the mainstream, would change dramatically. So as Hackers was about to appear in a new edition (this spring, O'Reilly Media is releasing a reprint, including the first digital version), I set out to revisit both the individuals and the culture. Like the movie Broken Flowers, in which Bill Murray embarks on a road trip to search out his former girlfriends, I wanted to extract some meaning from seeing what had happened to my subjects over the years, hoping their experiences would provide new insights as to how hacking has changed the world — and vice versa.
I could visit only a small sample, but in their examples I found a reflection of how the tech world has developed over the past 25 years. While the hacker movement may have triumphed, not all of the people who created it enjoyed the same fate. Like Gates, some of my original subjects are now rich, famous, and powerful. They thrived in the movement's transition from insular subculture to multibillion-dollar industry, even if it meant rejecting some of the core hacker tenets. Others, unwilling or unable to adapt to a world that had discovered and exploited their passion — or else just unlucky — toiled in obscurity and fought to stave off bitterness. I also found a third group: the present-day heirs to the hacker legacy, who grew up in a world where commerce and hacking were never seen as opposing values. They are bringing their worldview into fertile new territories and, in doing so, are molding the future of the movement.
The Titans
Real hackers don't take vacations. And by that standard, Bill Gates is no longer a real hacker.
Gates himself admits as much. "I believe in intensity, and I have to agree totally; by objective measures my intensity in my teens and twenties was more extreme," he says. "In my twenties, I just worked. Now I go home for dinner. When you choose to get married and have kids, if you're going to do it well you are going to give up some of the fanaticism."
Indeed, looking back, Gates says that the key period of his hackerhood came even earlier. "The hardcore years, the most fanatical years, are 13 to 16," he says.
"So you were over the hill by the time you got to Harvard?" I ask.
"In terms of programming 24 hours a day? Oh yeah," he says. "Certainly by the time I was 17 my software mind had been shaped."
He still seemed plenty intense when I met him as a 27-year-old, brash but not given to making direct eye contact. For half of the interview, he stared at a computer screen, testing software with one of those newfangled mouses. But he engaged fully with my questions, rattling off his highly opinionated take on some of the people he worked with — and against — in the early days of the PC. That intensity would inform his work and his company, helping him turn Microsoft into a software behemoth and himself into the richest human being on the planet (for quite a while, anyway). Gates' faith in hacking underscored everything he did, right down to his staffing decisions. "If you want to hire an engineer," he says, "look at the guy's code. That's all. If he hasn't written a lot of code, don't hire him."
Gates occupies a special place in the history of hacking. Most consider him one of the best coders ever. His first version of Basic, written so efficiently that it could run in the 4-KB memory space of the Altair, was a marvel. (Yes, that's 4 kilobytes, not mega, giga, or today's darling, tera.) When people picture a computer geek, they typically think of someone like the young Gates. And yet Gates, along with several other subjects of my book, went on to transcend his hacker roots. This group helped turn hacking from an obscure vocation into a global economic and cultural force and then reaped the rewards of that transition: money, influence, and even fame.
This wouldn't have happened if Gates had been just another hacker. Indeed, it was only by discarding key aspects of the hacker ethic that he was able to embrace computing's commercial potential and bring it to the masses. Pure hackers encouraged anyone to copy, examine, and improve any piece of code. But Gates insisted that software was no different from other intellectual property and that copying a digital product was just as illegal as swiping a shirt from Kmart. In 1976, he wrote an open letter to computer hobbyists who copied his software, accusing them of theft. His missive was considered blasphemous by some hackers, who believed that Gates was polluting their avocation by introducing commercial restrictions that would stifle knowledge and creativity. Gates found these arguments ludicrous — this was a business, after all. "I raised the issue in the sense of, jeez, if people paid more for software, I'd be able to hire more people," he says more than 30 years later.
That conflict continues to rage. Gates puts the argument in perspective by pointing out that centuries ago, European publishers printed American writers' works without compensation. "Benjamin Franklin was so ripped off — he could have written exactly what I wrote in that letter," he says. Today, journalists are trying to figure out how to sustain their business when their product can be copied and distributed so easily — it's the same dynamic. Gates seems to take some satisfaction in this turn of events. "Maybe magazine writers will still get paid 20 years from now," he says to me. "Or maybe you'll have to cut hair during the day and just write articles at night. Who knows?"
Gates had to stray from the hackers' rigid moral code to become a mainstream success. All Steve Wozniak had to do was don a pair of dancing shoes: While Woz is a hacker legend, best known for designing the original Apple computer, he has become an unlikely pop culture icon, turning up last year on Dancing With the Stars. When I met up with him, he had just reunited with the other contestants for the season finale. "I was dancing against Jerry Springer and Cloris Leachman," he says over chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant in Fremont, California. His early elimination in no way dampened his spirits. Very little dampens Woz's spirits, even the fact that reality TV celebrity is overshadowing his genuine accomplishments in technology: "People come up to me and say, 'Omigod, I saw you on Dancing With the Stars!' I have to say, 'Well, I did computers, too.'"
Casual fans can be forgiven for overlooking Woz's tech cred. These days, he's more likely to get attention for his unique hobbies (Segway polo, anyone?) or love life (he had a sign-of-the-apocalypse romance with comedian Kathy Griffin, although he has since married a woman he met on a geek cruise) than for any new innovation. Snarky Web sites have mercilessly mocked Woz's celebrity-mag turns and frequent appearances in an Apple store's first-day lines as indications of sad irrelevance. But Woz shrugs off the ribbing. He recalls the instruction he gave to Griffin a few years ago: "Hey, you can embarrass me, you can abuse me, you can ridicule me as much as you want — if it makes people laugh it's worth it." When I profiled Woz in my book, he was a socially awkward and insecure millionaire. Now he is a confident and widely loved mascot for hacking culture at large.
From time to time, Woz still appears in the news as a force behind a startup with potentially groundbreaking technology. CL 9 was going to devise superpowerful remote controls. Wheels of Zeus promised to let users track their possessions through wireless technology. But the first never lived up to expectations, and the second never released a product. Now he works as chief scientist for a storage company called Fusion-io. "I'm doing a lot of sales-marketing work," he says. "But I'm also looking at technologies that might be competitive in the future."
But even Woz doesn't expect to create another Apple II. In 2010, his greatest contribution is as a role model. His universal renown is a continuing reminder that brains and creativity can trump traditional notions of coolness. He's the nerd in the computer room whose stature — and happiness — far eclipses that of aging prom kings. And that's an inspiration for nerds everywhere.
Indeed, one of his protégé, Andy Hertzfeld, remains inspired by hacking. Hertzfeld wasn't a major figure in my book, but as one of Apple's early employees and a designer of the Macintosh operating system, he could have been. Today he's at Google, where his most visible contribution thus far is a feature that creates chronologies for Google News queries, so users can see how a story has developed over time. But hacking in your fifties isn't as easy as it is in your twenties. "When I was hacking on the Mac, I'd be working away and think an hour had passed; then I'd look up, and it had been four hours," Hertzfeld says. "Now when I think an hour has gone by, I look up and it's an hour."
It's not just the passage of years that has changed Hertzfeld's experience. He has also had to adapt his individualistic approach to serve the geek-industrial complex that is Google. On one hand, Google is a hacker mecca. It values engineers as its most important assets. "You are expected to work out of your passion," Hertzfeld says — definitely a hacker-friendly value. And the company supports open source software. But Hertzfeld can't duck the fact that Google is also a big company with rigid standards and processes for designing products, which makes the experience more formal and less fun. "My relationship to my work is that of an artist to his work," he says. And at Google, he adds, "I can't exercise my creativity in a way that gives me joy, which is my basic approach."
But while he has lost some personal control, he has gained an unprecedented ability to make a mark on the world. Someone at Google can affect the lives of millions with a few lines of code. And that makes for a different kind of thrill than Hertzfeld experienced during Apple's early days, when the potential of every product was unknown and limitless. "There's so much more leverage now to make a big impact," he says. "This stuff is as mainstream as can be. Google, the iPhone — these move the culture more than the Beatles did in the '60s. It's shaping the human race."
The Idealists
Richard Greenblatt tells me he has a rant to deliver. Uh-oh. Greenblatt was the canonical hacker of MIT's Project MAC — the forerunner to the school's legendary AI Lab — in the early '60s. In my book, I described how his fellow MIT hackers, appalled at his hygiene, used the term milliblatts to gauge olfactory unpleasantness. It wasn't exactly flattering. Was he finally going to unload on me after all these years?
To my relief, Greenblatt is more concerned with what he views as the decrepit state of computing. He hates how the dominant coding languages, like HTML and C++, are being implemented. He misses LISP, the beloved language that he worked with back at MIT. "The world is screwed up," he says before launching into a technical analysis of the current condition of programming that I can't even hope to follow.
But coding is just the beginning. The real problem, Greenblatt says, is that business interests have intruded on a culture that was founded on the ideals of openness and creativity. In Greenblatt's heyday, he and his friends shared code freely, devoting themselves purely to the goal of building better products. "There's a dynamic now that says, let's format our Web page so people have to push the button a lot so that they'll see lots of ads," Greenblatt says. "Basically, the people who win are those who manage to make things the most inconvenient for you."
Greenblatt is not one of those people. He belongs in a different group: the true believers, who still cling to their original motivations — the joy of discovery, the free exchange of ideas — even as their passion has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. Despite their brilliance and importance, they never launched million-dollar products or became icons. They just kept hacking.
I am surrounded by similar idealists here at the 25th Hackers' Conference, an annual gathering that celebrates the thrill of building something really cool. It has been a few years since I last attended, but it's just as I remember it: 48 hours of hackers meeting deep into the night at a Northern California resort, discussing everything from economic theory to data storage. The crowd is somewhat long in the tooth, despite an overdue effort to bring in more attendees under age 30. The tech industry may be filled with young geniuses, but the old guys are still going at it, even if most of their efforts remain blithely obscure.
Greenblatt is a regular here, a link to the Mesopotamia of hacker culture: MIT. He arrived at the school just after the members of its Tech Model Railroad Club gained access to a rare interactive computer. Greenblatt became one of the best, a brilliant coder whose accomplishments include a sophisticated LISP compiler and one of the first autonomous computer chess programs. At MIT, he was known as a hacker's hacker.
But unlike Gates, Wozniak, or Hertzfeld, Greenblatt's work never went mainstream. In the 1980s, he started a company to build LISP machines. It didn't pan out. He wasn't much of a businessperson. These days, he describes himself as an independent researcher. He moved into his mother's house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take care of her and has lived there alone since she died in 2005. "The main project I've been working on for 15 years is called thread memory, and it has something to do with English-language comprehension stuff," he says. "It's basic research. It's not something that works today, but it's something."
When Greenblatt looks at the current state of hacking, he sees a fallen world. Even the word itself has lost its meaning. "They stole our word," he says, "and it's irretrievably gone."
Greenblatt is far from alone in his wistful invocation of the past. I first met Richard Stallman, a denizen of MIT's AI Lab, in 1983. Even then he was bemoaning the sad decline of hacker culture and felt that the commercialization of software was a crime. When I spoke to him that year, as the computer industry was soaring, he looked me in the eye and said, "I don't believe that software can be owned." I called him "the last of the true hackers" and assumed the world would soon squash him.
Was I ever wrong. Stallman's crusade for free software has continued to inform the ongoing struggles over intellectual property and won him a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." He founded the Free Software Foundation and wrote the GNU operating system, which garnered widespread adoption after Linus Torvalds wrote Linux to run with it; the combination is used in millions of devices. More important, perhaps, is that Stallman provided the intellectual framework that led to the open source movement, a critical element of modern software and the Internet itself. If the software world had saints, Stallman would have been beatified long ago.
Yet he is almost as famous for his unyielding personality. In 2002, Creative Commons evangelist Lawrence Lessig wrote, "I don't know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man to like." (And that was in the preface to Stallman's own book.) Time has not softened him. In our original interview, Stallman said, "I'm the last survivor of a dead culture. And I don't really belong in the world anymore. And in some ways I feel I ought to be dead." Now, meeting over Chinese food, he reaffirms this. "I have certainly wished I had killed myself when I was born," he says. "In terms of effect on the world, it's very good that I've lived. And so I guess, if I could go back in time and prevent my birth, I wouldn't do it. But I sure wish I hadn't had so much pain."
That pain came in part from loneliness, once a common complaint among the tiny and obsessive cadre of computer fans. (A 1980 commentary by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo implied that hackers were antisocial losers who turned to computers to avoid human contact.) But as hacker culture has spread, so has its social acceptability. Today, computer geeks are seen not as losers but as moguls in the making. They tend not to suffer the intense isolation that once plagued Stallman — thanks, ironically, to the commercialization he so bemoans.
As much now as 25 years ago, Stallman is a fundamentalist, a Hutterite of hackerism. His personal Web site is a grab bag of appeals for people to boycott various enemies of the cause, from Blu-ray to J. K. Rowling. He even feuds with his former allies, including Torvalds. ("He doesn't want to defend users' freedom," Stallman says.) He has particular contempt for Apple, with its closed systems and digital rights software. He refers to their products using Mad-magazine-style puns. The music player is an iScrod. Its mobile device is an iGroan. The new tablet computer is the iBad. And he is an equal-opportunity kvetcher. When I tell him that Hackers will soon be available for the Kindle — which Stallman, predictably, calls a Swindle — his dour demeanor evaporates as he energetically encourages me to resist the e-reader's onerous DRM. "You have to believe that freedom is important and you deserve it," he says. Despite his disillusionment, the fire still burns within him.
Lee Felsenstein is keeping the flame alive as well. Felsenstein was the subversive moderator of the Homebrew Computer Club, the PC industry launchpad whose members — including Woz — were the target of Gates' letter. A veteran of the Berkeley free speech protests, Felsenstein thought that putting cheap computers in the hands of "the people" would allow everyone to take information, manipulate it to better reflect the truth, and distribute it widely. He was right about the rise of the PC, but he says he's still waiting for its democratizing effect. "Lincoln Steffens once commented, 'I have seen the future, and it works,'" Felsenstein says. "But I'm with the guy who changed that to 'I have seen the future, and it needs work.'" On a personal level, Felsenstein's career has been checkered. He was celebrated for the Osborne 1 computer, but the company went bust. So did Interval Research, where Felsenstein worked for eight years. "If I wanted to, I could be bitter about it," he says. "But I don't want to."
Instead, Felsenstein is putting the next generation of geeks on the path of the righteous. He recently helped establish a workspace in Mountain View, California, called the Hacker Dojo, which charges each of its 80 members $100 a month for access to a fully stocked, 9,500-square-foot DIY shop with an in-house network. It's one of several "hacker spaces" across the country — outposts devoted to empowering formerly isolated and underequipped gearheads. "I am a sensei of the dojo," he says, a wide grin on his face. "Felsenstein sensei."
The Next Generation
Greenblatt, Stallman, and Felsenstein see hacking as a set of ideals. But Paul Graham sees it as a humming economic engine. The 45-year-old Internet guru, himself a fanatic engineer in his day, is a cofounder of Y Combinator, an incubator for Internet startups. Twice a year, his company runs American Idol-style contests to select 20 to 30 budding companies for seed funding and attendance at a 10-week boot camp, culminating in a Demo Day packed with angel investors, VCs, and acquisition-hungry corporations like Google and Yahoo.
How does Graham pick the most promising candidates? Easy. He looks for the hackers. "We're pretty hackerly, so it's easy to recognize a kindred spirit," says Graham, who in 1995 cocreated Viaweb, the first Web-based application. "Hackers understand a system well enough to be in charge of it and make it do their bidding — and maybe make it do things that weren't intended." The best prospects, he says, are "world hackers," people "who understand not only how to mess with computers but how to mess with everything." Indeed, Graham says that today, every business is looking to hire or invest in firms run by hackers. "We tell founders presenting at Demo Day, 'If you dress up too much, you will read to the investors as a stupid person.' They're coming to see the next Larry and Sergey, not some junior MBA type."
Stallman would recoil in horror at Graham's equating hacking with entrepreneurial effectiveness. But Graham has found that hacking's values aren't threatened by business — they have conquered business. Seat-of-the-pants problem-solving. Decentralized decisionmaking. Emphasizing quality of work over quality of wardrobe. These are all hacker ideals, and they have all infiltrated the working world.
A new generation of hackers has emerged, techies who see business not as an enemy but as the means for their ideas and innovations to find the broadest audience possible. Take Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has lured 400 million users to share their personal lives online. At 25, he has proven to be a master of the art of business development — unabashedly opening his site to advertisers and marketers. Yet he clearly thinks of himself as a hacker: Last year he told the audience at an event for would-be Internet entrepreneurs, "We've got this whole ethos that we want to build a hacker culture."
To find out what he meant by that, I visit him at Facebook headquarters, a large building on California Avenue in Palo Alto — the same street where in 1983 I rented a room to use as a base while researching Hackers. Surprisingly, Zuckerberg, best known for wearing North Face fleece, is sporting a tie. He explains that he is nearing the end of a year in which he promised his team that he would show up for work in neckwear every day. It turned out to be a good year for Facebook — despite the recession, the site more than doubled its user base and finally turned a profit. "Maybe it's a charm," he says of the tie. "But I think it mostly just chokes me."
Zuckerberg's adopted style may not come from the golden age of hacking, but his work ethic does. "We didn't start with some grand theory but with a project hacked together in a couple of weeks," Zuckerberg says. "Our whole culture is, we want to build something quickly." Every six to eight weeks, Facebook conducts "hackathons," where people have one night to dream up and complete a project. "The idea is that you can build something really good in a night," Zuckerberg says. "And that's part of the personality of Facebook now. We have a big belief in moving fast, pushing boundaries, saying that it's OK to break things. It's definitely very core to my personality."
In the ongoing competition for talent, Zuckerberg believes that the company with the best hackers wins. "One good hacker can be as good as 10 or 20 engineers, and we try to embrace that. We want to be the place where the best hackers want to work, because our culture is set up so they can build stuff quickly and do crazy stuff and be recognized for standout brilliance."
Unlike the original hackers, Zuckerberg's generation didn't have to start from scratch to get control of their machines. "I never wanted to take apart my computer," he says. As a budding hacker in the late '90s, Zuckerberg tinkered with the higher-level languages, allowing him to concentrate on systems rather than machines.
For instance, when he played with his beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zuckerberg wouldn't act out wars with them, like most other kids. He would build societies and pretend the Turtles were interacting with one another. "I was just interested in how systems work," he says. Similarly, when he began playing with computers, he didn't hack motherboards or telephones but entire communities — manipulating system bugs to kick his friends off AOL Instant Messenger, for instance.
Like Gates, Zuckerberg is often accused of turning his back on hacker ideals, because he refuses to allow other sites to access the information that Facebook users contribute. But Zuckerberg says that the truth is just the opposite; his company piggybacks — and builds — on the free flow of information. "I never wanted to have information that other people didn't have," he says. "I just thought it should all be more available. From everything I read, that's a very core part of hacker culture. Like 'information wants to be free' and all that."
A previous generation of hackers — and I — worried that the world of commerce would choke innovation and stymie a burgeoning cultural movement. But hackerism has survived and thrived, a testament to its flexibility. According to computer-book publisher Tim O'Reilly — who fosters hackerism through his Foo Camp "unconferences" — hacking culture will always find new outlets. Big business may stumble upon and commodify their breakthroughs, but hackers will simply move on to unexplored frontiers. "It's like that line in Last Tango in Paris," O'Reilly says, "where Marlon Brando says, 'It's over, and then it begins again.'"
The current frontier for hackers, O'Reilly says, is not the purely mathematical realm of 1s and 0s but actual stuff — taking the same tear-it-down-and-build-it-anew attitude that programmers once took to compilers and applying it to body parts and wind-energy-harnessing kites. (O'Reilly Media publishes Make magazine and runs the Maker Faire festivals, celebrations of the DIY spirit.) But even this area, he says, has begun the shift toward entrepreneurship. The pure hackers — the ones who do things for the sheer pleasure of it and are turned off by investors and spreadsheets — are looking elsewhere. O'Reilly says most of the action is in DIY biology — manipulating genetic code the way a previous generation of hackers manipulated computer code. "It's still in the fun stage," he says.
Just ask Bill Gates. If he were a teenager today, he says, he'd be hacking biology. "Creating artificial life with DNA synthesis. That's sort of the equivalent of machine-language programming," says Gates, whose work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has led him to develop his own expertise in disease and immunology. "If you want to change the world in some big way, that's where you should start — biological molecules." Which is why the hacker spirit will endure, he says, even in an era when computers are so ubiquitous and easy to control. "There are more opportunities now," he says. "But they're different opportunities. They need the same type of crazy fanaticism of youthful genius and naèFvetè9 that drove the PC industry — and can have the same impact on the human condition."
In other words, hackers will be the heroes of the next revolution, too.
Senior writer Steven Levy (firstname.lastname@example.com) wrote about tablet computing in issue 18.04.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.


text: Issue #4073 has been updated by Yui NARUSE. Status changed from Open to Closed % Done changed from 0 to 100 This issue was solved with changeset r29922. oCameLo, thank you for reporting this issue. Your contribution to Ruby is greatly appreciated. May Ruby be with you. ---------------------------------------- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/4073 ---------------------------------------- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org

subset: commoncrawl


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Met Costume Gala Madness: Best Dressed, Highest Slits, Hottest Couples, and More!
Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady led the pack of hot couples at the 2010 Costume Institute Gala along with JT and Jessica Biel, Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson, and, perhaps most exciting, Jude Law and Sienna Miller. Kristen Stewart is edgier than Robert Pattinson's other onscreen love, and Katy Perry shows a lot of skin in a revealing dress. Watch tons of highlights from fashion's biggest night with our editors' commentary on the night's best looks!


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"I thought the ball was going in and I was ready to run off and celebrate. But he's a tall keeper, he went full-stretch and pulled off a fantastic save." These were the words of Chelsea's Nigeria international Victor Moses, describing his dart into the box from the left-hand side and subsequent deft curling shot, which was headed for the corner of the net before the intervention of Corinthians' custodian Cassio.
"I couldn't believe it. He had a really great day and made some good saves," added the Blues' attacker to FIFA.com. And that was indeed the case. In pulling off a string of important stops, O Timão's man between the sticks put in an unforgettable performance, a 'thou shalt not pass' display that played a significant role in his club's second FIFA Club World Cup title.
"I think that yes, it was the best game I've played," said Cassio, also awarded the adidas Golden Ball as the competition's best player, when interviewed by FIFA.com. "I managed to do my bit for my club in a very important game, to help us win a very valuable trophy. That makes me very happy."
For the player, who hails from Veranopolis in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, his save from Moses on 35 minutes was the most difficult of the many he had to make during the game, particularly as he was unsighted as the shot came in. "There were players blocking my line of sight and I didn't see him get the shot away," revealed Cassio.
"It's always hard for a keeper when that happens, because you can end up diving too late. But I was able to use my height and reach to make the save. I managed to tip the ball away at the very last second, which was when I knew I'd averted the danger," added Corinthian's No12.
Nor was Moses' effort the first time a Chelsea player thought they had beaten the imposing shotstopper, only to be denied by a matter of inches. After 11 minutes, centre-back Gary Cahill fired in a firm, low shot that Cassio somehow gathered almost on the line. "I thought the ball had gone in then," said the Blues' Brazilian midfielder Ramires to FIFA.com. "But the keeper dived right on top of it."
Me, really?
Curiously, however, even after a display that also included denying Fernando Torres twice in one-on-one situations, Cassio claimed to have been taken by surprise by being chosen as the player of the tournament. "I was so pumped up and focused on the game, that I couldn't even think about being chosen as the best player or anything like that," he explained.
"You don't think about it at the time. I wasn't expecting it, but it was a very nice surprise. It's really difficult for a keeper to be voted as the best player. It's almost always the striker who scores the winner, or a midfielder, that's more common. It's always harder for a goalkeeper to win the award for the competition's best player."
Yet despite being subject to a busy game, the final of Japan 2012 was certainly not all one-way traffic, with Corinthians attempting to go toe-to-toe with the UEFA Champions League holders.
"Today we proved what Corinthians are about, didn't we?" said Cassio, as the conversation concluded. "We came here to show our football, and we managed to play our own way. I think that we put our stamp on the game throughout. We never stopped trying to score, we didn't just sit back. We showed our true colours."


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I am Murphy and I live in WI. Just tryin to figure out what the afterlife is etc etc. I have never had a paranormal experience, so I must be in the wrong area at the wrong time all the time.
When trying to encounter spirits you must also factor in the right conditions for a haunting and a lot of patience, since activity doesn't happen all the time and seldom does the same thing occur, but if you're at an area that you believe does have spirits lingering, then having something like em pump or a jacobs ladder is quite useful to heighten the activity since spirits need energy to manifest.


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Model: FP62320
M-Pact Includes bulk pack Posi-Temp® 1/2" CC connection pressure balancing
Changing the look of your bathroom has never been faster and easier. The M-PACT® Common Valve System allows you to upgrade the trim style or swap out finishes on your fixtures without replacing the valves. So once the system is in place, you can change your decor as often as you want at any point in time -- during construction process or years down the road. All it takes is a few minutes. Best of all, the M-PACT Common Valve System is as easy to install as a standard valve.
Adjustable Temp Limit Stop
Connection Size
Connection Type
Test Plug
Case Quantity
- install with Posi-Temp® pressure balancing control valve to maintain water temperature control in the shower
- built on the Moen M-PACT common valve system, allowing you to update the faucet style in the future without replacing any plumbing
- connection size: 1/2"
- connection type: CC
- no of ports: four
- valve meets ASSE performance requirements
Easily change your style. With M•PACT®, you can change your faucet style without replacing any plumbing. It's as easy as changing a light bulb.
The M-Pact Collection
The M-PACT Common Valve System allows you to upgrade the trim style or swap out finishes on your fixtures without replacing the valves.View Collection
Magnetix Handheld Showers
Docking allows for easy release and securely snaps the handshower back into place, even with your eyes closed. Easy to use and attractive, the Magnetix Hand shower is perfect for your bathroom. This innovation offers easy release and return. With 3 quick steps, installation is easy, requiring only a wrench.
Flo by Moen
This Smart Home system is the first water security system that monitors and protects your home from leaks and water damage with a single smart water valve, no additional sensors needed. Flo by Moen is installed on the main water supply line of the home. Through the Flo by Moen mobile app or your web browser, you can see if the smart water valve detects an issue and be alerted so you can fix it before that issue causes damage. If there's a catastrophic failure, you'll be alerted in the app allowing you to shut the water off - no matter where you are.


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Molly Webb, Head of Smart Technologies, The Climate Group, blogs about how ICT is being used to drive behavior change and efficiency towards a low carbon economy. Here she focuses on the growing role of citizens in accelerating the transition to smart cities.
Molly writes:
Tomorrow the Barcelona Smart City Expo will be in full swing. Companies, experts, city governments and journalists will declare the smart city a place capable of changing our relationship with the planet, people and the future. Exactly where that place is depends on how you define it.
Today the Smart City Council launches a 'Readiness Guide' for cities, which paints a vision of the smart city 'solution' and guidance for how cities can make informed decisions about technology. I like the pithy language. A smart city, "Collects, communicates and 'crunches' data"; data provides the capability to 'Present' information, 'Perfect' operations and 'Predict' what will happen next. This is arguably the most transformative capability among the promises of smart cities.
What I'm less convinced by is the vision of a centrally planned and coordinated technology-driven city. The Readiness Guide puts in eloquent terms the received wisdom in companies on what a smart city is (and is not). But as Adam Freed of NYC told us back in 2011: "We have so many service providers coming to us with a 'smart city' offer, but they don't seem to understand that it's not just a matter of finding the newest, most complex system available. They know they have the product to sell and cities know they would like to be smarter, but there are a number of competing factors that go into making a match." (See the Information Marketplaces report).
I'm glad to see the articulation of another vision that instinctively feels more realistic, in Anthony Townsend's book Smart Cities (published October 2013). This city is a more decentralized, messy place that will evolve around the mobile-device-centric world that is rapidly becoming the norm. With 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions and most people accessing the internet via mobile networks, this is a very different world than the one that Ford launched his Model T into more than a century ago.
It is unclear exactly how the self-organized 'smart' city will evolve, and the results will be more unpredictable. But given the global push by mayors to innovate to solve climate change and other urban challenges (see our recent report, Faster, Smarter, Greener in partnership with LLGA), it may indeed achieve some of the same environmental outcomes that a centralized smart city promises to.
The case studies in the readiness guide are useful, and it is exciting to see the industry pushing for innovation that will improve the livability of cities. The vision of the smart city as a place we all want to live will continually evolve, and will ultimately be driven by citizens.
Useful links:


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Yum– turkey vulture and dressing. Have a delicious Thanksgiving
Charlee: "We have company this week so we thought we would dust off Dennis's classic Thanksgiving adventure."
Chaplin: "This was way before our time so we're not in it."
Charlee: "No, we're not, but still, it's sort of a Thanksgiving tradition now that it gets posted any year. Just like Dennis's classic battle of the North Pole around Christmas."
Chaplin: "Have you noticed that holidays with Dennis were never really like holidays with other dogs?"
Charlee: "Yes, yes I have."
Tucker: (snoring)
Turkey (offscreen): "Gobble gobble gobble!"
Tucker: "ZzzzZZzz … Sure, I'd love to gobble something … Zzzz … what have you got?"
Turkey: "Gobble gobble gurgle cluck?"
Tucker: "You need a place to hide? Sure, you can hide here." (beat) "Wait … you're not from outer space, are you?"
Turkey: "Gobble?"
Tucker: "Okay, good."
Turkey: "Gobble gobble chatter?"
Tucker: "Sure, invite your friends. The more the merrier!"
Tucker (thinking): "This is going to be the best Thanksgiving ever!"
Television Reporter: "… and in other news, a turkey shortage continues to baffle local shoppers, but a famous big-game hunter thinks he can solve the mystery."
Elmer Fudd: "I am vewwy confident that I wiww be abew to find out whewe that cwazy wabbit has gone."
Television Reporter: "I think you mean turkeys, don't you?"
Elmer Fudd: "Oh yes, of couwse. Heh heh heh heh heh."
Trixie: "This is your fault somehow, isn't it, Tucker?"
Tucker: "I have no idea what you're talking about. By the way, do you know where Mama keeps the stuffing?"
Turkey Vulture: "I notice you dogs haven't moved for a while. Do you think you might be expiring soon?"
Trixie: "You can't possibly think those turkeys are stupid enough to fall for –"
Trixie: "I stand corrected."
Elmer Fudd: "Candygram."
Dennis (thinking): "I wasn't expecting a candygram."
Turkey Vulture: "Are you sure you're not a rabbit? Because you kind of look like a rabbit to me."
Trouble: "Don't make me Tase you, bro."
Elmer Fudd: "They didn't fall fow the old candygwam twick, which tells me they aw unusually smawt fow dogs."
Cameraman: "Or they've seen 'Blazing Saddles'."
Elmer Fudd: "What?"
Cameraman: "Nothing."
Elmer Fudd: "Anyway, this is just a tempowawy setback. I will wetuwn to Fudd HQ to develop a new plan of attack."
Turkey Vulture (thinking): "Hmm …"
Turkey: "There are twenty turkeys, three dogs, and a rabbit with an attitude problem in there."
Elmer Fudd: "I knew that wascally wabbit was involved in this!"
Turkey Vulture: "I don't care what you do with them as long as I get the leftovers."
Elmer Fudd: "You've got youwself a deal Mr. Vultuwe!"
Trouble (thinking): "!!!!"
Trouble: "What are you big clumsy dogs up to in here?"
Tucker: "We're, um, helping the turkeys hide, but there are so many that we can't get the door closed."
Trouble: "Well that's fascinating but you should know there's a crazy hunter outside plotting against all of us."
Trixie: "It must be that guy from TV. And why are you warning us instead of letting us hang out to dry like you usually do?"
Trouble: "Because he's working with a vulture who thinks I'm a rabbit. I am NOT a rabbit."
Trixie: "Okay, I am taking us to DOGCON 2. That means we have to be extra vigilant against intruders."
Trouble: "Speaking of intruders, where is the other big clumsy dog?"
Dennis: "Hmm, Tucker didn't mention that he was getting married today, but he never tells me anything and I know he likes cake …"
Tucker: "What if we stuff them in there with the bathroom plunger?"
Trixie: "That's been in the toilet!"
Tucker: "You're right, that's more of a dessert item."
Trouble: "You know, for being at 'DOGCON 2', you big clumsy dogs seem to still be mostly thinking with your stomachs."
Dennis: "Tucker, why didn't you tell us you were getting married today?"
Tucker: "I'm not getting marr — is that a cake?"
Trouble (thinking): For some reason this doesn't surprise me."
Elmer Fudd: "Now I've got you dogs and wabbits and tuwkeys wight whewe I want you! Heh heh heh heh!"
Turkeys: (gibbering in fear)
Turkey Vulture (thinking): "Mwa-ha-ha-ha!"
Trixie: "Nice going, Dennis."
Dennis: "My bad."
Tucker: "Does this mean we're not getting cake?"
Trouble (thinking): "How do these dogs keep managing to foil MY evil plots when they are clearly incompetent?"
Bob the Mad Bomber Pyromaniac Builder: "Ha ha! I bet you thought you would never see ME again!"
Trouble: "Oh no, it's Bob the Mad Bomber Pyromaniac Builder!"
Dennis: "I thought he got eaten by a hawk."
Tucker: "We never did see a body."
Trixie (thinking): "It sure is getting crowded in here."
Turkey Vulture (thinking): "I had no idea turkeys could move that fast!"
Trouble (thinking): "You have GOT to be kidding."
Elmer Fudd: "I will call him … Mini-Fudd."
Turkey Vulture: "Hey! Fudd! Come back here! We had a deal! I was supposed to get the leftovers!"
Trouble: "Are you big clumsy dogs thinking what I'm thinking?"
Dogs: "Yep."
Trixie: "Who would like to carve the turkey vulture?"
Yum– turkey vulture and dressing. Have a delicious Thanksgiving
We bet Tucker, Trixie, and Dennis will enjoy a fantastic turkey dinner this year, and just maybe, they will invite Trouble to join them:)
Woos – Lightning, Misty, and Timber
Charlee and Chaplin, while it is true that holidays with Dennis and Company are not like normal holidays, they are definitely more exciting than our holidays. We rarely have anything explode, no mysterious weddings, and definitely no one threatening to taze anyone (well, not often at least…). Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
*kissey face*
-Saint Fiona the Patient, Crazy Daisy, and Lucy-Fur
Oh, MY!!
That was quite the turkeyed adventure! First time we got to see it:)


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On March 29, 2009, the Australian Human Rights Commission released version 3.3.1 of the World Wide Web Access: Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes. These notes are an easy-to-read guide to the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) as it relates to World Wide Web content.
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Maybe there's something in the water.
On Thursday, Jason Mills became the second Bowling Green resident to win a Corvette through recent National Corvette Museum raffles.
Mills' lucky ticket No. 82, which was drawn at 2 p.m. Thursday, proved to be the winner for a 2013 60th Anniversary 427 Convertible Corvette.
Since he lives so close, he didn't let any grass grow under his feet, getting to the Museum that same day to see his new car and start the paperwork to take it home. The next day, he took part in the Museum's R8C Delivery Program getting the VIP treatment as he took official delivery of his new Corvette.
Mills was inspired to enter the raffle after another Bowling Green resident, Barry Cummings, won a Corvette in a Museum raffle.
"When I heard that Barry had won a Corvette several months ago, I thought that maybe I could win, too. I called him on the morning that I bought my ticket to ask him how he did it," Mills explained. "Barry told me that he got his tickets online and got them early when the numbers were low. I bought one $250 ticket, one $500 ticket, and several $10 tickets. It worked!"
While some people might be tempted to sell the car and pocket the money, Mills won't hear of that. "I've already got two offers to buy it," he says, "but it's a keeper. I'm building a house right now, and so tonight I'll have to call the contractor about adding a garage."
After all, he wouldn't want anything to happen to such a nice Corvette.
You could be a winner, too, by taking part in one of the many Corvette raffles that the Museum holds each year, thanks to its 501 (c) (3) status. You can buy tickets in several ways, including at the museum, by phone at 270-781-7973 or 800-538-3883, on line at www.corvettemuseum.org/raffle, or at select Corvette and other car shows held across the U.S.
Corvette Museum's April Bash to Showcase 2014 Corvette Stingray Models
Corvette Museum Sets Groundbreaking for Motorsports Park in June
National Corvette Museum Announces 2013 Hall of Fame Inductees


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Hospitals, gun makers look forward to four more years under Obama
In the wake of President Obama's re-election, equities experts see an economy more friendly to health-care companies and gun makers than defense contractors like Sikorsky parent United Technologies Corp. or luxury retailer Ethan Allen Interiors Inc.
A precipitous drop in the market didn't help matters Wednesday the day after American voters left the U.S. political landscape largely unchanged, sending Obama back to the White House, leaving the Senate's leadership to the Democrats and keeping the Republicans in charge of the U.S. House. The S&P 500 finished down 2.34 percent to 1,395.
But investment advisors in the area said the market's drop was driven by a mixture of forces, including concerns over Europe's economy, fears that Congress will remain gridlocked and some profit taking after what has so far been a good year. Looking down the road at another four years under Obama, economists and investment advisors see a mix of trouble and opportunity in a struggling economy and a congressional environment where partisanship has paralyzed advancement. For Connecticut, these expectations and trends could impact a number of major employers in the region.
Paul Schatz, president and chief investment officer of Woodbridge-based investment advisory Heritage Capital, said he sees certain health-care related companies and consumer staples businesses profiting.
"Hospitals are one," Schatz said.
Although in Connecticut, the major hospitals are nonprofits like Yale-New Haven, Obama's re-election means that health-care providers can get on with the business of planning for the 2014 enactment of the overhaul of the health-care system, which may result in hiring and increased revenue. Obama's Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, had vowed to repeal Obamacare if elected.
Consumer staples also are poised for growth as this economy focuses on household spending on basics, Schatz said.
More InformationChange in share value during Obama's presidencey Jan. 20, 2009 to Nov. 7, 2012 General Electric Co. $12.93 to $21.13 United Technologies Corp. $43.99 to $77.68 Xerox Corp. $5.52 to $6.36 Pitney Bowes Inc. $20.58 to $12.20 Hexcel Corp. $6.31 to $24.52 Praxair Inc. $59.21 to $109.06 Terex Inc. $8.18 to $22.43 Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. $12.76 to $28.72 Harman International Industries Inc. $17.36 to $40.66 WWE Inc. $9.97 to $8.03 People's United Financial Inc. $16.07 to $11.90 Webster Financial Corp. $6.49 to $21.16 Sturm Ruger & Company $6.02 to $47.68
In Connecticut, Sun Products in Wilton is a private company that makes laundry detergent and other consumer staples, while European-based Unilever NV, traded on both the New York and London stock exchanges, has a large research and development center in Trumbull.
Connecticut is also home to a number of companies with high exposure to defense spending, including United Technologies, with its Sikorsky helicopter division in Stratford and Pratt & Whitney jet engine unit in East Hartford.
Hexcel Corp., a composite materials maker provides high performance engineered products to many defense contractors and smaller, private companies like Lex Products in Shelton also have concerns about projections that would trim $500 billion in Pentagon spending over the next 10 years.
"Defense is not good," Schatz said, but not because of Obama specifically. "So far, Obama hasn't been for cutting defense. But ultimately, we are going to cut defense."
Fairfield-based General Electric Co., which also has some defense exposure, could be a safety play for many investors, Schatz said, as the largest corporations have solid balance sheets in a rough economy.
Another concern of Schatz's is if Congress and Obama fail to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and the government falls off the so-called $600 billion fiscal cliff, consumer spending would slow down, which might hamper sales at high-end retailers including Danbury-based Ethan Allen Interiors.
Many analysts are expecting a rough patch ahead, financially.
"Obviously, this January, whoever gets elected, when they realize the magnitude of the problems, are going to become very sober, very quickly, because the problems are still enormous," Peter Gioia, vice president and economist for the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said before the election results.
Gioia predicted four years ago that the recession, coupled with the housing crash, would doom any president to one term. Today, even if the problems are not as big, they are still massive, he said, with little help available from the Federal Reserve.
"Here we are having enormous problems in a low interest-rate environment. ... Just imagine what happens if we get a small uptick" in rates, he said.
Today, the effective discount rate, or the rate that the Fed charges banks to borrow, is zero and the prime rate, charged by banks to its best customers, has been locked at 3.25 percent since 2009.
Under past administrations, the discount rate could be counted on to help spark economic activity or keep inflation under control, but that's not the case today. The Federal Reserve's annual discount rate during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, between 1981 and 1988, slid to 6.23 percent from as high as 13.42 percent, while the prime rate was cut in half to 9.32 percent. During former President Bill Clinton's term, from 1993 to 2000, the discount rate rose to 5.75 percent from 3 percent and the prime rate ran to 9.23 percent from 6 percent.
Gioia said what's needed from the president after the election is to reintroduce confidence and certainty into the economy. He said he's heard from business owners and consultants, many of whom are sitting on their hands with two different budget scenarios for 2013: One in which the taxes go up and the economy falters, and another in which it doesn't.
Companies that continue to hold off on making businesses investments could hurt sales at office equipment and services providers like Stamford-based Pitney Bowes Inc and Xerox Corp. of Norwalk.
Joe Matthews, first vice president and Fairfield branch manager for Morgan Stanley, agreed the federal government's balance sheet is a big problem going forward, and said that because the status quo was kept in place in Washington, we'll continue to some level of gridlock.
Some expect that means there will be no deal to slow tax increases or stop spending cuts before the year is out.
That aside, Matthews said he likes hospitals and medical device makers, which will benefit from another four years under an Obama adminstration.
Matthews would not talk about specific companies or stocks, but there are medical device makers in the region, including Cooper Surgical, based in Trumbull. That company is owned by California-based Cooper Companies, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares in Cooper slipped 1.34 percent to $96.49 in Wednesday trading.
If there has been one industry that's continued to enjoy huge sales under Obama, it's the gun industry, which the market rewarded in the wake of Obama's win. Gun makers have performed well under the Obama administration amid speculation that the president, a supporter of gun control, would make it harder to obtain one.
Sturm Ruger & Company of Southport saw its shares surge Wednesday gaining 6.81 percent to close at $47.68, while the rest of the market got hammered.
Matthews said people think it's going to be harder to buy guns.
Another possible winner in this election could be homebuilders, Matthews said. They could see a lift under Obama's second term as more housing support programs are rolled out and companies that provide construction equipment could also benefit if plans to improve the nation's infrastructure get moving, he said.
That could aid a company like Westport-based Terex Corp., which makes excavation and other construction machinery.
email@example.com; twitter.com/financialmines


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Not all people with congenital heart defects require treatment. Some may only need to be observed and visit their cardiologist. In other cases, surgery or a cardiac catheterization may be needed to reduce the effects of and/or repair the defect. Even when a defect is treated as a child, further conditions may develop that would benefit from additional medical treatment.
Many medical treatments are available to help the heart perform at its best. Sometimes multiple conditions occur in the same child and each may require medication for treatment. Here is a list of common conditions that can develop in children and/or adults with congenital heart defects and may need medical treatment:
- Congestive Heart Failure
- Heart Rhythm Problems
- Pulmonary Hypertension
- Interventional Cardiac Catheterizations
In this care and treatment section, you can also learn about:
- Surgical procedures
- Cardiac catheterizations
- Heart transplants
- Preparing children for surgery
- Physical activity for those with congenital heart defects
- Recommendations for heart health
If you are a parent caring for a child with a congenital heart defect, you may also want to visit the caregiver section of this website. The American Heart Association thanks you and supports you in your pursuit of heart health.


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Albion Amplification Guitar Amplifiers
Albion Amplification aren't like everyone else. Doing things their own way, by making their guitar amplifiers affordable and of the highest quality possible, they've made a name for themselves by giving more musicians access to better gear. That's because "affordable" doesn't mean cheap to Albion, it just means they aren't over-charging you. Whether you're a headline artist taking to the stage night after night, or you're weekend warrior, playing gigs all over town, there is an Albion guitar amp with your name on it. Because Albion amps are priced so well, there really is no entry-level, it purely comes down to what you need as a guitarist. The selection here features cabinets, amp heads, and combo amplifiers allowing you to choose from pre-combined options or building your own stack. If you're here for combo amps, allowing you to just plug in and play, check out the AG Series AG80R 80W Guitar Combo Amp or the TCT Series TCT35C 35W Tube Guitar Combo Amp. Made to rock and with a high-end construction inside and out, these amps set the bar at Albion Amplifiers.
If you're looking for amp heads and cabinets, you have an equally large selection to choose from. Cabinets like the GLS Series GLS212 Guitar Speaker Cabinet 140W, and the upgraded GLS Series GLS412 Guitar Speaker Cabinet 280W are high-performers, giving you huge sound in a very handsome package. And if you're looking for an amp head to pair them with, you'll definitely love the TCT Series TCT50H 50W Tube Guitar Amp Head with its two separate channels, its proprietary circuit that combines a preamp tube and a high-voltage FET, and its unparalleled control options. Shape your tone the way you want with these dynamic heads and cabinets.
From artists to producers to engineers, people in every role in the music industry are turning to Albion Amplification when looking to upgrade their current setup. Your sound is important to you, and that means having gear that can keep up. If you want to get the most out of your play, Albion guitar amps will definitely get you there.


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Book Direct with the Owner at Whale Watching Australia with Lismore Accommodation Agent , for all your adventures and things to do.
Address: PO Box 175, Salamander Bay NSW 2317
Address: Head of Bight Eyre Highway, Nullarbor SA 5690
Address: Hervey Bay, Hervey Bay QLD 4655
copyright © 2020 Lismore Accommodation. All rights reserved.


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Weekend of 17th & 18th March
This weekend we chose to forget the Bak kut Tehs, Chow Kuey Teows and Seafood for something that is more foreign and distinctive: Mexican food!!!! The decision was made by V and joined by SL, LE & A to dine at Nikko Hotel's promo for Mexican cuisine prepared by very talented cooks that can even sing for their customers!!! Not only that, they even took the liberty to dress up in big bad hats and serenaded their Mexican songs complemented by their adorable guitars!!! Talk about value for money!!! The food was okay, but in the end it was fun and was something unique to spend the weekend away….
Just so you know, I've moved… - … to a new blog persona: http://majidah.wordpress.com Let's meet there:)
10 years ago


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Welcome to Project Car Hell, where you choose the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! We took it easy on you last time, but we're getting into some serious Hell Projects today.
Taking on the Citroën CX Pallas that won the last Choose Your Eternity poll would be akin to dragging a washing machine through a 100-yard gauntlet of meth-crazed chimps armed with tire irons... in other words, a walk in the park compared to the projects we'll be contemplating today. Adopting either one of today's exquisite machines would feel much like donning a wetsuit stuffed with Asian Giant Hornets and climbing into a Drum Debarker filled with burning creosote-soaked railroad ties and radioactive dioxin bottles packed with selenium tetra-azide. But, dammit, they're totally worth the pain!
Much as we love the Fieroborghini, bolting some Italian-looking plastic body panels on a Fiero isn't all that heroic a project (though installing a Cadillac 500 engine and front-drive transaxle out of an Eldorado does get our respect). No, your Fauxborghini needs more sweat, more blood, and a Nile's worth of tears. We're talking about a quasi-scratch-built backyard Countach here, based on a Detroit family car from the 1960s. That means something along the lines of this 1967 Ford-based Lamborghini project (go here if the listing disappears), which could
obliterate drop into your life with megaton force for $795 or "an interesting trade option." Why, that price is down in 24 Hours Of LeMons territory (and I can guarantee a great deal of judicial slack when examining the budget of any team with the guts to bring this vehicle to a LeMons race), but we think it would be even more fun on the street. Now, this Fauxborghini- which appears to be have some '67 Fairlane DNA- lacks a few of the features you'd find on the real deal. We're pretty sure that Ferrucio Lamborghini never installed front drum brakes on any of his cars, and the same goes for the leaf-spring rear suspension. As for the drivetrain, it appears to be a Ford Windsor V8 mounted backwards and driving... well, we're not sure. Maybe a V-drive of some kind? A shaft coming off the front of the crank and driving a flipped-over Porsche 944 transaxle? Or maybe this project is meant to be a mid-engined front-wheel-drive car, which would be so completely wrong that it's just perfect! Thanks to Josef for the tip!
You'd be a Project Car Hell God or Goddess for sure, were you to get that Fairlaneborghini into daily-driver condition, but we understand that sometimes you need a generous helping of classic British luxury in your project. No, we don't mean yet another Jaguar, or even a Bentley or Rolls. We're talking Lagonda here! That's right, an Aston Martin-built updated version of the W. O. Bentley-designed prewar Lagondas, a car you have no hope in hell of ever obtaining. But wait! A miracle has occurred, and it has become possible to buy this 1956 Lagonda 3 Litre Saloon in a no-reserve eBay auction. Even better, the current top bid is only $1,000. Really! We're forced to admit that a few flies have found their way into the ointment here; in fact, the ointment is pretty much entirely flies. First of all, the incredible Lagonda Straight Six engine that propelled Aston Martin to glory in the 1950s... well, it's as gone as D.B. Cooper, and probably just as difficult to find today. The seller himself states that this project is "Broken down, incomplete and a restoration project only for the relentlessly ambitious or deranged." But come on, how hard could it be? Just start by getting yourself an appropriately powerful inline-six engine- say, this 2JZGTE/6-speed combo deal, for example- and then start casting and/or machining all the missing trim pieces from scratch. As for the interior, you'd be amazed what $500 will buy you at a Tijuana upholstery shop. No problem!


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The Airlie Estates
The Airlie Estates are situated in the Angus Glens and cover a wide variety of landscape from moorland to arable farm land. The Estate has been in the Ogilvy family for at least 700 years, though its boundaries have inevitably altered over time. At the present time it consists of over 17,000 acres, largely in Glens Clova, Prosen and Moy. The family home, Cortachy Castle, which dates back from the 16th century, lies at the heart of the Estate.
The main activities consist of organic and conventional farming, forestry, property and agricultural rents, sporting lets and access management, all these activities are inter-linked and the estate makes every effort to ensure that a balance is maintained between them.
The 2021 Open Golf competition is being held in St Andrews and we have Downiepark House (sleeps 18), Airlie Castle (sleeps 18) and Wellbank Cottage (sleeps 8) available for let during the week 11th - 19th July. Please contact the estate office for more details.
Conservation is a very important aspect of the estate, buildings are maintained using traditional materials, controlled heather burning is carried out, deer numbers are kept to a sustainable level and a fly only policy is adopted on the rivers South Esk and Prosen.
The Rural Stewardship Schemes are adopted wherever possible together with an increase in land farmed under organic methods. The Estate is also involved in commercial and amenity woodland management.
The Estate is located in the Angus region of Scotland near the town of Kirriemuir. Route B955 connects Cortachy Castle to Kirriemuir (5 miles).
To reach Kirriemuir by road
From Dundee take the A90 northward for around 12 miles, then turn off at the A926 (signposted for Kirriemuir - 5 miles).
From Perth take the A93 to Blairgowrie, then the A926 to Kirriemuir.
From Edinburgh take the A90/M90 over the Forth Bridge to the outskirts of Perth, then take the A93/A926 route as above.
From Glasgow take the A/M80 and M9/A9 to the outskirts of Perth, then take the A93/A926 as above.
Click here for further information about Road travel from the Angus & Dundee Tourist board's website.
By coach
Coach services link Dundee with most major towns and cities in the UK and there is a regular bus service from Dundee to Kirriemuir.
By rail
Take the train to Dundee, then coach or car as above. Regular services run to dundee from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, glasgow and the south.
By air
Dundee airport provides scheduled air service connections worldwide.


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Openly Gay Marine Wins State House Seat in Ala.
Congrats to openly gay Marine Neil Rafferty, who won the race for Alabama's House seat in District 54, AL.com reports. The seat was made empty by Patricia Todd, who was Alabama's first openly gay lawmaker.
The newspaper writes Rafferty, a Democrat, won by "handily beating Independent Joseph Casper Baker III" with "90% to 10 percent."
He thanked supporters on Facebook early Wednesday morning.
In July, he won a primary runoff against his rival, Jacqueline Gary Miller, an environmentalist and marketer.
Back in February, Rafferty took to Facebook to announce his bid for the seat. At the time, he said that he decided to run after a friend asked him to consider it.
Also in News


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HUNTRESS: New Video Interview
SpaceKev of BlackWindMetal.com conducted an interview with Los Angeles-based female-fronted metallers HUNTRESS when the band played at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota on April 28 as the support act for DRAGONFORCE. You can now watch the chat below.
HUNTRESS's debut album, "Spell Eater", was released on April 27 via Napalm Records.
"Spell Eater" track listing:
01. Spell Eater
02. Senecide
03. Sleep and Death
04. Snow Witch
05. Eight of Swords
06. Aradia
07. Night Rape
08. Children
09. Terror
10. The Tower
11. The Dark
HUNTRESS vocalist Jill Janus told AOL's Noisecreep about the "Spell Eater" artwork, "The album cover captures the beauty and brutality of HUNTRESS. Vance Kelly is a warlock and he took our vision and created a magical illustration that breathes glory into the old crone. We contemplated having either a sultry sorceress or decrepit forest witch as our cover babe. Ultimately, the crone won because she is the true Huntress."
According to a press release, "Janus is an operatic banshee with an unparalleled four-octave range and lust for the occult. Born and raised in the Catskill Mountains of New York, she toured Europe as a teenage opera starlet. Upon her return to the States, Janus embraced Manhattan nightlife, creating Felliniesque cabarets and parties in a nihilistic club scene. Years later, Janus moved to Los Angeles and began the gestation period of HUNTRESS. In 2009 she met underground metal band PROFESSOR. The universe spread her legs and delivered HUNTRESS to Janus, combining former members of PROFESSOR, DARK BLACK and SKELETONWITCH."
HUNTRESS is currently supporting DRAGONFORCE on a North American tour.
HUNTRESS is:
Vocals: Jill Janus
Lead Guitar: Blake Meahl
Rhythm Guitar: Ian Alden
Drums: Carl Wierzbicky
Bass: Eric Harris
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/huntresskills.


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e-CFR Navigation Aids
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e-CFR data is current as of October 28, 2020
Title 43 → Subtitle A → Part 3
Title 43: Public Lands: Interior
Authority: Secs. 3, 4, 34 Stat. 225, as amended; 16 U.S.C. 432.
Source: 19 FR 8838, Dec. 23, 1954, unless otherwise noted.
Jurisdiction over ruins, archeological sites, historic and prehistoric monuments and structures, objects of antiquity, historic landmarks, and other objects of historic and scientific interest, shall be exercised under the act by the respective Departments as follows:
(a) By the Secretary of Agriculture over lands within the exterior limits of forest reserves;
(b) By the Secretary of the Army over lands within the exterior limits of military reservations;
(c) By the Secretary of the Interior over all other lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States, Provided, The Secretaries of the Army and Agriculture may by agreement cooperate with the Secretary of the Interior in the supervision of such monuments and objects covered by the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225; 16 U.S.C. 431-433), as may be located on lands near or adjacent to forest reserves and military reservations, respectively.
No permit for the removal of any ancient monument or structure which can be permanently preserved under the control of the United States in situ, and remain an object of interest, shall be granted.
Permits for the examination of ruins, the excavation of archeological sites, and the gathering of objects of antiquity will be granted, by the respective Secretaries having jurisdiction, to reputable museums, universities, colleges, or other recognized scientific or educational institutions, or to their duly authorized agents.
No exclusive permits shall be granted for a larger area than the applicant can reasonably be expected to explore fully and systematically within the time limit named in the permit.
Each application for a permit should be filed with the Secretary having jurisdiction, and must be accompanied by a definite outline of the proposed work, indicating the name of the institution making the request, the date proposed for beginning the field work, the length of time proposed to be devoted to it, and the person who will have immediate charge of the work. The application must also contain an exact statement of the character of the work, whether examination, excavation, or gathering, and the public museum in which the collections made under the permit are to be permanently preserved. The application must be accompanied by a sketch plan or description of the particular site or area to be examined, excavated, or searched, so definite that it can be located on the map with reasonable accuracy.
No permit will be granted for a period of more than 3 years, but if the work has been diligently prosecuted under the permit, the time may be extended for proper cause upon application.
Failure to begin work under a permit within 6 months after it is granted, or failure to diligently prosecute such work after it has been begun, shall make the permit void without any order or proceeding by the Secretary having jurisdiction.
Applications for permits shall be referred to the Smithsonian Institution for recommendation.
Every permit shall be in writing and copies shall be transmitted to the Smithsonian Institution and the field officer in charge of the land involved. The permitee will be furnished with a copy of the regulations in this part.
At the close of each season's field work the permitee shall report in duplicate to the Smithsonian Institution, in such form as its secretary may prescribe, and shall prepare in duplicate a catalogue of the collections and of the photographs made during the season, indicating therein such material, if any, as may be available for exchange.
Institutions and persons receiving permits for excavation shall, after the completion of the work, restore the lands upon which they have worked to their customary condition, to the satisfaction of the field officer in charge.
All permits shall be terminable at the discretion of the Secretary having jurisdiction.
The field officer in charge of land owned or controlled by the Government of the United States shall, from time to time, inquire and report as to the existence, on or near such lands, of ruins and archaeological sites, historic or prehistoric ruins or monuments, objects of antiquity, historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.
The field officer in charge may at all times examine the permit of any person or institution claiming privileges granted in accordance with the act and this part, and may fully examine all work done under such permit.
All persons duly authorized by the Secretaries of Agriculture, Army and Interior may apprehend or cause to be arrested, as provided in the Act of February 6, 1905 (33 Stat. 700) any person or persons who appropriate, excavate, injure, or destroy any historic or prehistoric ruin or monument, or any object of antiquity on lands under the supervision of the Secretaries of Agriculture, Army, and Interior, respectively.
Any object of antiquity taken, or collection made, on lands owned or controlled by the United States, without a permit, as prescribed by the act and this part, or there taken or made, contrary to the terms of the permit, or contrary to the act and this part, may be seized wherever found and at any time, by the proper field officer or by any person duly authorized by the Secretary having jurisdiction, and disposed of as the Secretary shall determine, by deposit in the proper national depository or otherwise.
Every collection made under the authority of the act and of this part shall be preserved in the public museum designated in the permit and shall be accessible to the public. No such collection shall be removed from such public museum without the written authority of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and then only to another public museum, where it shall be accessible to the public; and when any public museum, which is a depository of any collection made under the provisions of the act and this part, shall cease to exist, every such collection in such public museum shall thereupon revert to the national collections and be placed in the proper national depository.


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CHICAGO — Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn's administration is allowing an additional year's extension for existing health insurance plans that fall short of coverage requirements in the nation's health care law.
The Illinois Department of Insurance announced the change last week, following a similar announcement March 5 from President Barack Obama's administration.
Insurers will have the option of canceling or extending the plans for 2015 coverage. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois spokeswoman Lauren Perlstein says the insurer is reviewing the announcement and determining its next steps. Blue Cross has the most customers in Illinois' individual market.
Extending the insurance policies may avoid a wave of election-year cancellations and damper reminders of the president's frequent promise that Americans who liked their plans could keep them.


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Glasvegan wrote:got accosted by an older man when I was doing the food shopping, he planted him self squarely in front of me: "Oh my God, that's a lot of vegetables!" Me: "I like vegetables..." Him (looking me up and down): "You're going to end up weighing like 5 stone!" Haha.
haha its funny how many of us vegans get "accosted" when were shopping, i always get a loads of questions from the people at the checkouts, usually ends up with them saying......"but too much fruit is bad for you"
training looks good liking all the weights!


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How many triangles can you make on the 3 by 3 pegboard?
Investigate all the different squares you can make on this 5 by 5 grid by making your starting side go from the bottom left hand point. Can you find out the areas of all these squares?
How many DIFFERENT quadrilaterals can be made by joining the dots on the 8-point circle?
Can you find all the different triangles on these peg boards, and find their angles?
Use the interactivity to investigate what kinds of triangles can be drawn on peg boards with different numbers of pegs.
Use the interactivity to find all the different right-angled triangles you can make by just moving one corner of the starting triangle.
Can you work out what kind of rotation produced this pattern of pegs in our pegboard?


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Bottle Card Abstract Leaf Flower
Our unique Patented and Australian Design Registered Bottle Card featuring original artwork 'Leaf Flower' by Alison Archbold.
When Folded Cards Measure 85mm wide x 150mm long
Australian made using Forestry approved paper stock.
Image 1 - fully open card showing front and rear of card (to be cut out around lines)
Image 2 - folded card as will display over bottle neck
Image 3 - Inside colour of card - blank for your message
Archbold Design Bottle Cards
Australian Registered Design AU201810836
Patent 2018101789
Be The First To Review This Product!
Help other archbolddesign users shop smarter by writing reviews for products you have purchased.


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- Inside Athletics
- Tickets
- Fan Zone
- Media Zone
- Social
- Shop
- Donate Now
Mitchell lands all-tournament team honors
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Dec. 29, 2010) - Destiny Mitchell (Bluffton, Ga.) scored 15 points and pulled down 12 rebounds, but it wasn't enough to lift the Lady Bucs past Virginia as the Cavaliers captured the Marriott Classic Championship with an 83-66 victory Wednesday night inside John Paul Jones Arena.
Mitchell's third career double-double landed her on the all-tournament team after averaging 17.5 points and nine rebounds in the two games. Meanwhile, senior Tara Davis (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) scored 18 of her team-high 21 points in the second half and also dished out five assists.
The Lady Bucs, who wrapped up non-conference play Wednesday night, dropped to 4-7 on the year; while the Cavaliers improved to 9-5 with the victory.
Virginia hit on its first five shot attempts to start the game - and despite trailing by as many as eight - ETSU battled back to tie things up at 14 after Mitchell laid one in, forcing the Cavaliers to burn a timeout at the 13:06 mark.
Unfortunately, foul trouble and shooting woes haunted the Lady Bucs for the remainder of the half.
Latisha Belcher (Martinsville, Va.) and Davis each picked up two fouls before the ten minute mark, while Mitchell was the third starter to go out with 7:50 remaining before intermission. With the game knotted at 16, ETSU went over four minutes without registering a point and the Cavaliers scored ten unanswered to grab a 26-16 lead with 8:28 left to play in the half. However, just after Mitchell stopped the scoring drought at the 7:56 mark, she was charged with her second foul six seconds later, and the Cavaliers controlled the remainder of the stanza. Virginia outscored the Lady Bucs 19-8 in the final eight minutes and led 45-26 at the break, thanks to Chelsea Shine sinking her first career three-pointer as the clock struck zero.
After shooting nearly 60-percent from the field last night, the Lady Bucs struggled as ETSU shot 33.3 percent (11-33) in the first 20 minutes. The Cavaliers posted a 46.9 shooting percentage (15-32), while also outscoring ETSU by 12 at the free throw line. Virginia went 14-for-18 at the charity and the Lady Bucs were 2-of-2.
The Cavaliers used the first 4 minutes, 4 seconds of the second half to extend their 19-point halftime lead to 26, 56-30. Despite not giving up an ETSU comeback wasn't in the cards for the Blue and Gold tonight.
The Lady Bucs were able to chip the 26-point deficit in half, 71-58, when Mitchell scored two of her 15 points on a lay-up with less than seven minutes to play; however, Virginia wasn't going to let ETSU spoil its post-holiday tournament fun. From there, the Cavaliers regained control and pushed their advantage to 20, and came away with the 17-point win.
For the game, ETSU shot 35.4 percent (23-65) and out-rebounded the Cavaliers 41 to 39. Virginia shot 49.2 percent (30-61) and turned 23 Lady Buccaneer turnovers into 24 points on the offensive end. After only going to the free throw line twice in the first half, the Lady Bucs made 21 trips to the charity stripe in the second, but the Blue and Gold finished 16-of-23 (69.6 percent) for the contest. The Cavaliers went to the line six times in the final 20 minutes and ended 19-for-24 (79.2 percent).
Virginia had three players score in double figures with Shine leading the way with 22 points.
The Lady Bucs return to action on Monday, Jan. 3 when ETSU travels to Macon, Ga. to face Mercer. Tip is set for 5 p.m. inside the University Center.
For more information on Lady Buccaneer hoops, visit www.ETSUBucs.com.


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Doc Johnson Platinum The Tru Ride SLIM 9 inch - Caramel
This 9" realistic dildo has a firm silicone core with a tapered phallic tip.
This realistic cock utilizes a dual density technique to combine a firm, flexible inner core with the feel of real skin to create the ultimate in lifelike fulfillment. Made from TRUSKYN™ this dildo will feel real inside and out. TRUSKYN™ is pure, hygienic, health grade silicone that emulates actual skin, right down to warming to your own body temperature. It is great for couples or solo play.
- Dildo Material:
- Pure Silicone
- Material Safety:
- Phthalate free,Latex free,Non-porous
- Dildo Special Features:
- Harness Compatible,Dishwasher Safe
- Insertable Length:
- 8.8"
- Circumference:
- 1.9"
- Texture:
- Textured


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Car trouble: Parker can't park without parts
What does a guy have to do to keep his downtown office going? Apparently, make sure its engine runs.
Office? Engine? Huh?
It all makes sense if you're Anson Parker, subject of a story in last week's Hook and founder of Treebay, a new organization that takes donations of people's stuff, sells it on Ebay, and uses a portion of the proceeds to promote energy alternatives in Charlottesville. His office: an aging purple and yellow cab parked in the Design Center parking lot on Second and Garrett streets.
But although his business goals may be admirable, some neighboring businesses have objected to his methods– which include storing his work-related belongings in the cab and pedaling an adjacent stationary bike to power his laptop and cell phone. Now the city has given him an ultimatum: Get the cab running or watch it be towed.
In fact, the city has already towed the cab once– on Thursday, July 8 because it lacked license plates. But after Parker made a last minute dash to the DMV, the city returned his cab to its spot and covered the towing expense.
Parker thought the issue was settled, particularly since he and his cab have the blessing of Alana Woerpel, owner of Alana's fabric store and the parking lot. But the city's chief building inspector, Jerry Tomlin, says there was one important fact he didn't know when Parker's office was returned.
"We didn't know it didn't run," he says of the cab, "or we wouldn't have sent it back."
Tomlin says keeping an inoperable vehicle anywhere in the city– even on private property– is a violation of city code, section 5-150.
The ordinance, which makes such a violation a class-one misdemeanor with a possible $2,500 fine, is designed to keep the city free of auto-eyesores, says Tomlin. "A lot of cities have cars jacked up in the street," he says, so since 1978 Charlottesville's ordinance has required that such cars be stored in a garage or other covered shelter.
Fortunately for violators, the city generally does not press charges. Instead, Tomlin says, the city impounds the vehicle and charges the owner storage fees until necessary repairs are scheduled to be performed.
Parker's hoping to avoid having his office impounded again.
The city notified him by letter that he had until July 23 to get his cab streetworthy– a challenge, since he allowed the former owner to "chop shop" the engine, picking out parts he needed for his other cars.
"I didn't think I was going to need those parts," says Parker.
Now, like his last minute DMV dash, Parker is scrambling to find the missing pieces.
"My whole purpose is to get that thing to turn on," he says.
Some of his neighbors may not be rooting for him.
A receptionist at Moxie declined comment when asked about their colorful, pedaling neighbor, and several other area store owners did not return calls.
But Pamela Peterson, owner of Sammy Snacks, a dog food biz across Garrett Street, offered a clue about why Parker's neighbors are upset.
"We work so hard to keep a nice looking space, to be attractive to customers," she explains. "A big rock in the middle of [the cab's] hood doesn't give quite the right message."
That said, Peterson calls Parker "a very, very nice person," and says his "goals are commendable." But to her, it's all in the execution.
"I don't know that he's taking the right approach," she says.
*Epilogue: At presstime, Parker called to report he'd discovered a loophole in the law. If he covers the cab with a tarp, he says, the cab will be legal. The city's Jerry Tomlin says the cab must be "fully screened." That means if even an inch of tire is peeking out, the cab can still be towed.
Parker also reports relations with his neighbors have improved.
Anson Parker must get his cab/office running, or the city will impound it.