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Desperate ranchers chase after wind in vain scramble for financial lifeline
PASTURA, N.M. -- Twelve dusty miles separate lucky rancher from unlucky in this state's parched northeast corner.
Lucky is Steve Tapia and his neighbors who collect $450,000 a year by leasing space on their sprawling ranches to an Australian wind developer that's planted 90 turbines there.
"It does make your life better," the 78-year-old Tapia said of the royalties. "It's a lot easier than herding sheep."
Down the road is unlucky Max Tenorio, who bet heavily on federal regulators approving a high-voltage power line to link his land to booming power markets on the West Coast.
He lost.
In renewable energy, just as in real estate, the game is "location, location, location." And Tenorio and his neighbors found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Their efforts to secure a link to the electric grid fizzled this year when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., ruled that the proposed line they needed couldn't proceed until other projects were built.
The agency was responding in part to big wind companies pushing to use the existing grid to ship power out of state.
Now Tenorio's livelihood and dreams are withering. "If we don't have any water from above, and we don't have any water on the ground, we're done," he said.
Tenorio, 62, was forced to sell a swath of ranchland outside Santa Rosa that he had been saving for retirement and reduced his herd of Angus cattle by 40 percent during the past two years. His fields are also parched and brown and watering holes almost dry.
Such misery is not uncommon across New Mexico and West Texas as desperate landowners' efforts to tap booming clean energy markets stumble on financial, political and regulatory hurdles.
"A lot of ranchers are being forced to sell off their herds early," said Paul Stout, chairman of the Coalition of Renewable Energy Landowners Association. "A wind or solar project combined with gas would provide steady, consistent income to help these operations weather out these hard times and provide dollars that they could bring back to a lender to help service debt."
Transmission developers are keenly aware of their projects' ripple effects in local economies. But they are also facing daunting market and policy shifts.
"It's a challenge," said Kathryn Patton, an attorney for the power line developer Clean Line Energy Partners LLC. "I think eventually these projects will be built, but the market has to be just right."
'It's in your blood'
Ranchers know their calling is a gamble and nature holds all the cards.
The game of late hasn't been treating Tenorio well.
Tenorio was a full-time middle and high school teacher 15 years ago, when he bought a 4,000-acre ranch. The move let Tenorio follow in the footsteps of his father, who raised cattle in Anton Chico, N.M., about 100 miles east of Albuquerque. Back then, you could buy an acre for about $200.
"It's in your blood, and when you have an opportunity, you get back into it," he said, "because you love the life."
Tenorio and his wife, Yolanda, supplemented income from the ranch with teaching jobs and had 105 head of cattle. Between teaching and ranching, the Tenorios paid off their mortgage and put four kids -- three girls and one boy -- through college.
Then came the drought.
Fuel and feed prices shot up. Tenorio was forced to sell a big chunk of his ranch, land that also serves as his retirement plan.
"When times are bad, it's throwing money in a hole," he said. "You still have to feed your cows, you have to do everything a big rancher does but it's just not enough return."
What used to be fields of knee-high blue grama grass are now yellow, shriveled ankle-high plants that fail to feed his cattle. Cows mill around dry earthen tanks that used to be filled with water.
Guadalupe County, one of the poorest counties in New Mexico, has been the site of federal drought emergency declarations for years now.
Although the land could support up to 125 cows, Tenorio said he is down to 65. He guesses that three-quarters of New Mexico's cattle have been sent to market because there is no longer enough grass and water for the animals.
But he insists he's not giving up.
Tenorio said he is not going to sell his remaining cattle now in hopes the animals will fetch a higher price after the drought. And he doesn't have the luxury at 62 years of age to breed a herd of Angus cattle again, which could take more than two decades.
Tenorio, who is also chairman of the Guadalupe County Livestock Producers Organization, is also banding together with neighboring landowners like Don Thompson, 77, to try to recharge the water table. Thompson has worked his ranch for almost 50 years and has no other source of income.
Together, the ranchers are enlisting their neighbors to dig up juniper bushes and place felled trees in dry stream beds or "arroyos" to slow erosion during downpours. In some spots, tufts of blue grama grass have grown back along the dirt ditches that crosscut their land.
"I will hold on as long as I can," Tenorio said.
What went wrong?
Tenorio thought he had found a lifeline for his ailing ranch when the state began pursuing a power line that promised to attract wind developers.
He began to learn the jargon of transmission policy. He familiarized himself with wind developers, quickly learning which proposals are solid and which are more likely "speculators" trying to lease his land for later sale.
But Tenorio quickly learned that the power business can be as fickle as the weather.
Tenorio had pinned his hopes on a proposed 345-kilovolt power line that would stretch 200 miles from Guadalupe County to a switching station near Albuquerque.
The $400 million line would eventually move 1,200 megawatts to the Four Corners -- which comprises the southwestern corner of Colorado, northwestern corner of New Mexico, northeastern corner of Arizona and southeastern corner of Utah -- and into Arizona, Nevada and California.
Tenorio and his neighbors thought it promising that the project was being championed by the New Mexico Renewable Energy Transmission Authority (RETA). The state created the board in 2007 to bolster in-state renewable power generation. RETA entered into a partnership with Goldman Sachs Global Infrastructure Partners II, a $3.1 billion fund, to build the line.
Then came political reality. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, denied the state's request to fast-track the power line.
RETA was one of many projects trying to move power from Guadalupe County to the Four Corners, an area seen by many as the "Holy Grail" for peddling clean power to the West Coast. Federal regulators said the project had to wait its turn at the bottom of a long list of applicants seeking approval for transmission lines.
The decision disappointed the ranchers, who had assumed they had it made. They had, after all, secured the backing of Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, and Gov. Susana Martinez (R).
Now, they are worried their project will spend a decade at the back of the line as entities with deeper pockets can buy and sell their place in line and tie up the process without intending to build transmission projects, they say.
Others blame the utility, PNM Resources Inc., which oversees the process.
The power trading arm of the agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. sits near the top of the transmission project queue and has been waiting for years to secure capacity on the transmission system to ship clean power to the West Coast, said Robert Walker, a power trader with Cargill. But the utility has moved slowly because of ongoing debates stemming from ownership issues and queue positions, he said.
"It's taking PNM forever to process their queue," Walker said. "We're not sitting in the queue blocking anyone. We've been sitting, waiting for years."
Tenorio and his neighbors are still struggling to understand what went wrong.
They blame Patrick Lyons, the Republican chairman of the New Mexico Public Regulatory Commission -- whose district includes Guadalupe County -- for not backing their project. Lyons wrote FERC directly to warn that RETA would give Goldman Sachs a "virtual monopoly" over power exports from New Mexico.
The Wall Street giant is an easy target, Tenorio said, given distrust of big banks in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. But what's the alternative, he asked, given the amount of cash needed for such massive projects?
Thompson said, "When they denied our request, they denied an increased tax base -- not just for Max and me, for the entire county."
'New frontier'
There are no easy answers for ranchers searching for a financial boost from clean power projects.
It's unclear what other power lines will benefit Tenorio and his neighbors. It would be extremely expensive -- up to $1 million per mile -- for developers on Tenorio's land to connect to the Tres Amigas LLC interconnect being built near Clovis, N.M.
And there's still no route for the proposed Centennial West Clean Line that could link Guadalupe County to the West Coast.
"Our project will have a converter station where wind farms will tie in. If you're next to our convertor station, then your cost to connect is low," said Michael Skelly, Clean Line's president. "If you're 20 miles away, it's higher but manageable. If you're 100 miles away, that's an issue."
The most pressing issue for the region is the potential phaseout of RETA, which has supported power line construction in New Mexico and could draw up to $6 billion and thousands of jobs into the state. Jeremy Turner, RETA's executive director, said the board is asking the Legislature for $393,200 in the coming year.
"If we don't get that, then RETA will be closing its doors," Turner said. "If RETA goes away, if we don't get our funding, that will take away another entity that's trying to help the landowners."
It's also unclear just how many wind turbines will be built in the years to come. The biggest question mark is whether Congress will extend the federal production tax credit for wind energy, which the industry says has helped spur record growth. If Congress fails to act, the credit expires Dec. 31.
What's a rancher supposed to do?
Tenorio admits he's not sure, acknowledging ranchers' relationships with environmental groups are far from friendly and focus mainly on controversial protections for endangered species.
Robert Martin, a Nature Conservancy ecologist who owns a ranch near Tenorio, said the region is sparsely populated and most conservation groups are located in bigger cities like Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
"It's kind of new frontier out there in a lot of ways," he said.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is poised to pass a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill Monday that would expand government subsidies for crop insurance, rice and peanuts while making small cuts in the food stamp program.
The bill, which costs almost $100 billion annually, also would eliminate subsidies that are paid to farmers whether they farm or not. All told, it would save about $2.4 billion a year on the farm and nutrition programs, including across-the-board cuts that took effect earlier this year.
Pointing to those cuts, Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., says the legislation is the "most reform-minded farm bill in decades." But it would still generously subsidize corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, sugar and other major crops grown by U.S. farmers. It would also set policy for programs to protect environmentally sensitive land, international food aid and other projects to help rural communities.
The Senate passed a similar farm bill last year on a bipartisan 64-35 vote.
The House is expected to take up its own version of the farm bill as early as this month, in what could be a contentious and much more partisan floor fight over domestic food aid, which makes up almost 80 percent of the bill's cost. Last year, the House declined to take up the legislation during an election year and amid disagreements over how much should be cut from the food stamp program, which now serves one in seven Americans and cost almost $80 billion last year. That cost has more than doubled since 2008.
The bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee last month would make much larger cuts to food stamps than the Senate version, in a bid to gain support from those House conservatives who have opposed the measure. The Senate bill would cut the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by about $400 million a year, or half a percent. The House bill would cut the program by $2 billion a year, or a little more than 3 percent, and make it more difficult for some people to qualify.
The Senate rejected amendments on food stamp cuts, preserving the $400 million annual decrease. The bill's farm-state supporters also fended off efforts to cut sugar, tobacco and other farm supports.
Senators looking to pare back subsidies did win one victory on the Senate, an amendment to reduce the government's share of crop insurance premiums for farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $750,000. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said their amendment would affect about 20,000 farmers.
Stabenow argued the amendment would result in fewer people buying insurance and undercut a separate provision in the bill that would require farmers buying crop insurance to comply with certain environmental standards on their land.
Currently the government pays for an average 62 percent of crop insurance premiums and also subsidizes the companies that sell the insurance. The overall bill expands crop insurance for many crops and also creates a program to compensate farmers for smaller, or "shallow," revenue losses before the paid insurance kicks in.
The crop insurance expansion is likely to benefit Midwestern corn and soybean farmers, who use crop insurance more than other farmers. The bill would also boost subsidies for Southern rice and peanut farmers, lowering the threshold for those farms to receive government help.
The help for rice and peanuts was not in last year's bill but was added this year after the agriculture panel gained a new top Republican, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran. Critics, including the former top Republican on the committee, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, said the new policy could guarantee that the rice and peanut farmers' profits are average or above average.
The bill also would:
— Overhaul dairy policy by creating a new insurance program for dairy producers, eliminating other dairy subsidies and price supports. The new policy includes a market stabilization program that could dictate production cuts when oversupply drives down prices. The program faced little opposition in the Senate but a similar overhaul in the House bill is expected to face resistance in that chamber, where House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has called the new stabilization program "Soviet-style."
— Make modest changes to the way international food aid is delivered, a much scaled-back version of an overhaul proposed by President Barack Obama earlier this year. Senators adopted an amendment that would slightly boost dollars to buy locally-grown food close to needy areas abroad. Currently, most food aid is grown in the United States and shipped to developing countries, an approach the Obama administration says is inefficient but that has support among farm-state members in Congress.
— Consolidate programs to protect environmentally-sensitive land and reduce spending on those programs.
— Expand Agriculture Department efforts to prevent illegal trafficking of food stamp benefits.

subset: commoncrawl


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Salzburg Climate & Weather
Salzburg has a continental climate with Alpine influences because of its proximity to the mountains. Summers are warm and pleasant, although rainy days are common. Winters are cold, with temperatures hovering just above or below freezing, with plentiful snow.
Salzburg experiences a long, beautiful summer lasting from Easter through to mid-October. But the most popular months for a holiday in Salzburg are July and August, when the main festivals take place and tourists crowd the streets. Winter brings winter sports enthusiasts into the city on their way to or from the ski slopes.
Become our Salzburg Travel Expert
We are looking for contributors for our Salzburg travel guide. If you are a local, a regular traveller to Salzburg or a travel professional with time to contribute and answer occasional forum questions, please contact us.


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Master of Science in delft
MS courses in delft will internationalize the CV of a candidate for better placements. It is important to get the appropriate Visa to study MS in delft. The visa application to study MS courses in delft should be appropriate with correct details. Also, the applicant should be free of any criminal records to apply to MS universities in delft. The top universities in delft for Master of Science require candidates to submit their financial stand statement. Also, in some institutes of delft, there is a competitive fee structure. Candidates from across the world try to take admission in MS university of delft.


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The head of one of the world's biggest tech companies believes Eskom is suffering problems endured by power generators around the world that it can help over with more training for its staff. Steve Tzikakis, President of south Europe the Middle East and Africa for tech company SAP says he is also an Afro-optimist who sees change for the better on the continent.
Partner Content
Disruptive digital solutions is rewiring the DNA of Banking
By Kennedy Mubita, Africa Head, SC Ventures. Imagine a bank whose customers can tap on a wearable device to...
The future of banking; digitization and collaboration as growth accelerants
By Kariuki Ngari, CEO & Managing Director, Standard Chartered, Kenya & East Africa COVID-19 has upended the social and...
Star Quality Speaker Line-Up at Africa Tech Festival 2020
Acknowledged as the world's largest Africa-focused digital infrastructure and emerging tech event, the Africa Tech Festival has always attracted a stellar line-up of critical thinkers, analysts, futurists, keynote and inspirational speakers. 2020 will more than deliver on that reputation, with a stimulating array of visionary industry presenters, raconteurs and even some sporting greats.
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The government announced last month that it's spending $67 million on staff known as "navigators" to help people enroll in health insurance for next year. But at the same time, it has handed off the enrollment baton to insurance sales agents and brokers, whom insurance companies pay for signing people up for their plans.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reached agreements with at least five online health insurance brokers,making it possible for people to get their health plans there instead of on the government exchanges—similar to the way consumers can shop for airfare on Expedia or Orbitz rather than buying tickets directly from the airlines.
Among the brokers, which primarily sell individual health plans, are eHealth
"The government is essentially deputizing us to help them enroll more people, which is really important," says Bryce Williams, managing director of Towers Watson's exchange solutions and founder of ExtendHealth. "It's really not the government's bailiwick."
Also see: The Amazon of health insurance
There are a few reasons the government will need help—mainly that their support staff, the Navigators, might not provide the same level of customer support as the private brokerages, some insurance professionals say. While the Department of Health and Human Services expanded the reach of the Navigators—federal funding increased $13 million from the $54 million originally planned—it also tied their hands from performing the key role that brokers have always played in insurance enrollment: Navigators are not allowed to advise consumers on which plan to choose.
In prohibiting Navigators from making recommendations or directing consumers to health plans, the government intended to rid the new health exchange marketplace of the biased influence of the insurance industry—namely, agents and brokers who earn commissions for enrolling people in certain plans. The Navigators are not allowed to have any ties to health insurers or carriers, and have to undergo about 30 hours of online training, which teaches them to remain neutral and avoid bias, says Tracey Keiser, president and CEO of The Keiser Group, a health care benefits strategy and consulting firm. But the rule reduces Navigators to little more than hand-holders, some argue. "They're there to help the people enroll and that's it — they're not really there to give them advice," says Keiser. "The only assistance they can provide is how to choose the coverage, not which coverage to choose."
And that might not be enough for the 25 million to 30 million additional consumers expected to enroll in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Consumers will be hungrier for personalized advice and recommendations than ever, Keiser predicts: "Without a doubt, the average person is going to say, What should I do? And they're going to expect someone to give them answers."
After all, in order to find an appropriate plan, consumers will have to not only consider the upfront cost of the insurance policy, but also their specific health conditions and how the plan will cover their needs. "Matching them to the right plan is big," Williams says. "It's going to be more akin to having to do your taxes, and less like buying a scarf on Amazon."
Of course, unlike the government, brokers earn commissions for enrolling people in certain insurance plans, which a fact that surely informs their advice, consumer advocates say. They might try to influence the consumer by presenting plans that don't pay them commissions after the ones that do, or not at all if they aren't required by law, says Caroline Pearson, vice president of Avalere, a health care research and consulting firm. "It is not a level playing field in that sense," she says.
Consumers should be wary of sales pitches for additional products they don't necessarily need to comply with the ACA mandate, says Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst for InsuranceQuotes.com, part of Bankrate.
That said, the commissions, which amount to about 4% to 7% of monthly premiums, are always built into the price of health plans, so people will pay the same amount no matter where they enroll, Williams says. If consumers don't use a broker, the insurance carrier just keeps the commission.
CMS, for its part, has acknowledged that brokers and agents will play a part in the new insurance exchanges. "We anticipate that many consumers will want to obtain professional advice from agents and brokers when applying for and selecting a qualified health plan," it writes on its website about the consumer assistance available in the marketplaces.


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The best 2013 Oscars After Party Outfits Gallery
2013 Oscars Parties: Who Wore What
2013 Oscars Parties: Who Wore What
The stars were out (in full fashion force) at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards viewing party and the Vanity Fair party, proving that the red carpet action wasn't just at the show. Heidi Klum stepped out in a very revealing Julien Macdonald number, Nina Dobrev stunned in elegant Naeem Khan, and Emma Roberts shined in a floral-embellished Oscar de la Renta to start. Keep clicking for all of the Oscars glamour beyond the Dolby Theatre. — Additional reporting by Mandi Villa


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To create a responsive and efficient live chat system so that website visitors have a pleasant experience with no delays in responses
Chat experiences are generally good when site traffic is low. However, in times of heavy load, such as heightened demand or during a crisis, user experiences tend to degrade considerably, making the company seem unresponsive and incompetent. In the case of paid-for support, it could mean loss of business opportunity for monetization. It is difficult to build a chat system with polling, because it involves writing and managing a significant amount of code using traditional HTTP requests to build for consistent performance under a heavy load. It also requires substantial tweaking or hacking to prevent an adverse chat experience caused by network latency.
The Solution
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides easy-to-use messaging APIs on top of websockets to facilitate building an efficient chat system with little effort and quickly by writing fewer lines of code. ColdFusion websockets also help reduce network latency manifold thereby significantly improving the chat experience even under heavy load.
HTML5 websockets
Ideal for
Large online portals that need to offer customers prompt pre-sales and after-sales support, speedy resolution of queries and convenient access to expert or emergency services, such as healthcare, insurance companies, online retail, and education.
To let developers access and use multiple versions of web services that are consumed by a number of applications
Web services keep changing per business needs, but the client applications that consume these services might not necessarily want to or be able to change in sync. It is imperative to let multiple versions of web services co-exist. In the absence of effective version management of web services updates, keeping applications updated in sync with the web services they use is extremely difficult. And because older versions of the web service might no longer be supported, applications that use them are likely to fail.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 supports REST and SOAP-based web services that help client applications invoke the required version of a chosen web service by just passing few parameters as a query or header. You can expose server-side components as a web service by adding a few attributes or keywords.
REST and SOAP–based web services
Ideal for
Organizations operating in a distributed computing environment with disparate systems, especially those that need to customize their site for a variety of audiences, maintain different user interfaces for audiences accessing via different devices, or localize their site for multiple geographies.
To display a consistent online video experience across browsers and devices
Today, it is imperative for organizations to provide videos on their portals as well as on sites like YouTube and Vimeo. However, consistency—or the lack of it—impacts the corporate image. Given the proliferation of devices, browsers, and media players however, delivering such a uniform experience is both tedious and time consuming.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 offers built-in support for an HTML5 video player and a video control based on Adobe Flash® Player, with bi-directional fallback to provide a consistent look and feel across multiple browsers and devices.
Ideal for
Organizations that want to make information more impactful and experiential by offering videos such as training webinars, product sales and support demos, or client and employee testimonials. For example, Information Technology (IT), Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), e-commerce, knowledge base vendors.
To create enterprise management dashboards that offer myriad interactive representations of data, reflect data changes in real time, and allow modifications to be made in the backend or underlying database
Most dashboards available today are static, need to be refreshed frequently, and cannot be used as control centers. Interactive and dynamic dashboards are difficult to build because they require constant polling of the server and use up a lot of bandwidth. It takes significant development effort to represent data meaningfully. Solutions are complex to build and delivering scalability is not easy.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides built-in support for HTML5 websockets making it simple to build dashboards that are updated in real-time and run significantly faster than those created using traditional polling. Interactive HTML5 charting allows end-users to quickly switch between data representations. Out-of-the-box message-handling and server communication helps you deliver this power and sophistication using fewer lines of code.
HTML5 websockets, HTML5 charting
Ideal for
Users who need to make frequent decisions based on large-scale data analysis. For example, executives, department heads, and sales and marketing teams.
To create interactive collaboration platforms where participants can conduct live meetings across geographies
Given the global nature of business today, it is vital for organizations to have tools that let their stakeholders engage with each other virtually as they would in the real world. Creating a whiteboard is extremely difficult with the conventional method of long polling. Allowing real-time updates and inputs such as handwriting and graphical annotations poses serious challenges, and delivering performance and scalability is considerably difficult.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides built-in support for HTML5 websockets making it simple to build whiteboards that are updated in real-time, facilitate efficient broadcast of graphic information and run significantly faster than those created using traditional polling. This offers more control in an online collaboration session through authentication, rights management and publishing of data in various views or formats for different clients. Out-of-the-box message-handling and server communication helps deliver this power and sophistication using fewer lines of code.
HTML5 websockets
Ideal for
Global organizations with geographically distributed resources, including vendors, customers, employees and experts, who need to interact to share ideas, conduct training and reviews, offer feedback, and work collaboratively. For example, Information Technology (IT), Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), automobile, telecommunication, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI).
To offer customers the same web applications, as well as the same user experience, on their mobile devices as they get on their desktops or notebooks
As consumers become increasingly more mobile, it is critical for companies to deliver fully loaded web applications on smartphones and tablets so that the brand experience remains rich and consistent. In the absence of an easy way to interact with the services exposed on the server, it is time consuming and tedious to build dynamic applications with live updates and instant notifications. Performance imperatives in the face of bandwidth limitations and the overhead imposed by HTTP requests mean that mobile applications often end up becoming stripped down versions of desktop applications.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides built-in support for REST and HTML5 websockets and charting, making it easier to develop mobile applications that dynamically reflect changes to data in a rich and interactive way without increasing the overhead. Using minimal code changes, you can expose server-side components that contain business logic as a REST-based service.
REST, HTML5 websockets, HTML5 charting
Ideal for
Organizations that need to let employees use their mobile devices for official work, and those who are facing increased customer traffic via mobile devices, such as gaming, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), entertainment, hospitality, telecommunication, social media, or e-commerce
To build and maintain robust online stores that offer a comprehensive range of products and services and handle peak traffic without delays
Because online stores offer a much larger range of goods compared to their physical counterparts, it is important that these be displayed for easy discoverability and that performance remains good even in times of peak traffic. It is time consuming and error prone to provide scaling through clustering of servers, which requires caching data. A lot of time and effort—including identifying, testing and working with Ajax libraries—is possibly wasted building an interface that delivers a positive, personalized user experience and contextual recognition of the user's visit.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides a built-in solution to easily maintain server performance in a clustered environment by offering distributed caching powered by EHCACHE. A wide variety of customizable user interface components including the grid, accordion, tabbed layout, trees, menus and many more, help you quickly build applications with minimal coding.
UI components, caching, REST, enterprise infrastructure
Ideal for
Organizations in the retail and e-commerce space across lifestyle, fashion, electronic, telecommunication, and consumer durable brands.
To make the paperless office a reality by providing internal and external users a more secured environment for document storage and retrieval, and efficient workflows for information access, transaction and generation of PDF documents programmatically
In the absence of an integrated solution for automating the flow of paper from generation, storage and retrieval, to reporting, users need to learn multiple applications, resulting in wastage of time and duplication of effort. A workflow with PDF at the core is an obvious solution, but generating and manipulating PDF documents on the fly is a complex task dependant on external libraries that need to be thoroughly tested and verified for performance, scale, and reliability.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides the built-in functionality to create PDF documents dynamically and manipulate them by merging multiple PDFs, adding watermarks, and creating thumbnails. Extraction of data from PDF forms and pre-population of forms help facilitate processing with minimal coding. Encryption and password protection help keep information more secure.
CFDocument, CFPDF, CFPDFForm
Ideal for
Organizations that process a lot of forms or are mandated to maintain records for a long period. For example, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), government departments, insurance, education, defense, travel, healthcare.
To create dynamic documents enabling frequent updates, real-time processing, more secured distribution and easy searching
As organizations increasingly generate and share information electronically, automate workflows and carry out bulk processing of documents, they need a server-side solution to keep their files more secure, dynamically updated, and synchronized with the back-end database. The more complex that spreadsheets become, the more time-consuming it is to analyze and process the data contained in them. Integrating information across multiple products from multiple vendors is challenging and often results in poor performance or a sub-optimal user experience.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides a comprehensive, out-of-the-box solution to convert office documents to PDF, with easy-to-use tags and spreadsheet functions that make it easy to create, manipulate, extract, search, and query spreadsheets.
Working with PDF documents: CFDocument, CFSpreadsheet, CFPresentation, Microsoft Office file interoperability
Ideal for
All organizations that work with large databases and need to do significant volumes of form processing.
To manage the supply-chain workflow efficiently, addressing scalability issues, accurate forecasting, and timely delivery
Providing a consolidated update to all stakeholders is difficult, made more so by the lack of standardization across systems and platforms within organizations and across suppliers. Integration of data coming from various backends and opening up systems through well-defined interfaces is complex and fraught with security risks.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides built-in capabilities for interacting with Java™, .NET, portlets, SharePoint, and Microsoft Exchange to act as the enterprise "glue" connecting different environments. For other environments ColdFusion makes it easy to consume web services exposed by other systems, and it provides one of the easiest ways to publish web services to allow other systems to talk to ColdFusion applications. A sophisticated built-in scheduler helps automate process flows by managing trigger notifications as well as trigger responses.
Java integration, .NET integration, web services support, Microsoft Exchange integration, Microsoft SharePoint integration, portlets, REST, event gateway, scheduler
Ideal for
Large organizations working with multiple suppliers across geographies seeking to streamline their supply chain without adversely impacting services to customers. For example, automobile, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), online retail, furniture companies, electronics, consumer Durables.
To help protect websites against various forms of security threats that can result in the disclosure of confidential user information, compromise protected company data, or disrupt service
Businesses usually come to know about the kind of attacks possible on their websites only after the damage is done. The nature of security threats keeps changing, and it is very difficult to predict them all and to safeguard against those that might happen in future. Protecting against breaches at the application layer is nearly impossible when the platform itself has holes.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 is Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)-compliant, provides easy-to-use APIs for strong encryption, includes Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support for network protocols, and has built-in functions to help prevent against cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, session hijacking, clickjacking, and denial-of-service attacks. Selecting the secure profile option during installation helps maintain high security by default for all server settings.
Security enhancements, Hotfix installer
Ideal for
Organizations with high-profile, public-facing websites, as well as those offering online transactional capabilities, such as government, defense, pharmaceutical, e-commerce, and banks.
To treat the website as a core customer touchpoint and not merely a peripheral activity—to build dynamic, fully-featured, interactive websites that give customers as fulfilling an experience as other organizational touchpoints
Building engaging content for web applications is challenging and expensive because the solutions available today are not comprehensive and operate in silos. In the absence of an integrated solution, considerable developer effort is wasted in trying to understand these siloed systems and make them work in sync.
Adobe® ColdFusion® 10 provides an integrated platform to create rich web applications with support for a built-in video player, image manipulation functionality, processing and manipulation of PDF documents, and interactive charts and maps. Native support for multiple platforms and browsers allows for fall-back for features that might not be supported natively on a particular browser.
Websockets, web services, charting, media player, images, map, PDF
Ideal for
Organizations in various industries but particularly those that need to drive community conversations and encourage user-generated content by providing maps, images, videos, audio, PDF brochures, real-time graphs, reviews, blog discussions, user forums, and feeds from social networks, as well as letting users engage with company-provided content.


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New information regarding to the music of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. How the area and time affects to the music? Who will be composing Lightning related music?
The song was decent, but I'm sick of hearing that battle theme melody for the third game in a row.
I hope Lighting returns soundtrack is good. I was very satisfied with the Special edition of XIII-2 that had the OST with it.


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Kite construction at museum
April vacation week is Kite Week at Owls Head Transportation Museum. Beginning Monday, two kite building workshops will be held each day during the week, one at 10 a.m. and one at 11:30 a.m., with a new kite design offered each day.
A variety of skill levels and ages are accommodated. Younger children wishing to participate in kite building activities should be accompanied by an adult.
Seating and materials are limited, and advance registration is encouraged.
Admission for visitors who would like to view the museum is $15 for adults, $8 for seniors and free for children.
For more details or to register for a workshop, call Ethan Yankura at 594-4418.
Laser shows at planetarium
The full dome Sky Laser System returns to the Southworth Planetarium, at 70 Falmouth St..
Monday shows will include "Laser Orion" at noon, "Laser Beatles" at 2 p.m., "Laser Perseus and Andromeda" at 3 p.m., "Electrolaze," a new techno/dance laser show at 7 p.m. and "Laser Hypnotica" at 8 p.m.
Tuesday shows will include "Laser Perseus and Andromeda" at noon, "Electrolaze" at 2 p.m., "Laser Orion" at 3 p.m., "Laser Vinyl" at 7 p.m. and "Laser Music Show: Fright Night" at 8 p.m.
Wednesday shows to be featured include "Laser Orion" at noon, "Laser Beatles" at 2 p.m., "Laser Perseus and Andromeda" at 3 p.m., "Laser Beatles" at 7 p.m. and "Laser Mania" at 8 p.m.
Friday shows will include "Laser Orion" at noon, "Laser Beatles" at 2 p.m., "Laser Perseus and Andromeda" at 3 p.m., "Laser Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon" at 7 p.m. and "Laser Vinyl" at 8 p.m.
Saturday's show will include "Laser Perseus and Andromeda" at 1 p.m., "Laser Orion" at 3 p.m. "Laser Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon" at 7 p.m. and "Laser Led Zeppelin" at 8 p.m.
The shows end Sunday with two viewings: "Laser Orion" at 1 p.m. and "Laser Perseus and Andromeda" at 3 p.m.
Admission is $5.50 per person and $1 for 3-D glass rentals.
For more details, call 780-4249 or go to www.usm.maine.edu/planet.
Volunteer for Autism Speaks
Autism Speaks is looking for volunteers from Northern New England to help with the annual Northern New England Walk for Autism. A few committee leader positions are open and no experience is necessary as the organization will coach and train volunteers.
An information night, advancing the walk, will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Marion Garrish Community Center, 39 W Broadway, Derry, N.H.
Join USM's Day of Service
The University of Southern Maine's Fourth Annual Day of Service will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday.
The campuswide initiative is expected to engage 150-200 students, faculty, staff and alumni in giving back to our community.
Volunteers can sign up for one-time projects at locations such as Partners for World Health, Portland Trails, Rippling Waters Organic Farms, and the Maine Veterans' Home.
There will also be projects to clean up trash in the Back Bay, on Peaks Island and at Longfellow Park.
Registration begins at 9:30 a.m. in the Sullivan Recreation and Fitness Complex, followed by an event kick-off at 10:15 a.m.
Breakfast and lunch will be provided to participants along with a custom-designed Day of Service T-shirt.
Transportation to service sites will also be available.
Pre-registration is available online at: http://www.usm.maine.edu/community/sign-usm-day-service.
Program on animal care
The Animal Welfare Society of West Kennebunk will offer a hands-on program about animal care and handling from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine on Free Street.
A few shelter pets will be on site to meet with visitors.
For more details, call 985-3244 Ext. 117 or go to www.animalwelfaresociety.org.
Free health fair Saturday
University of New England, Portland campus, will hold an Inaugural Spring Community Health Fair from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Finley Recreation Center.
Multiple organizations will be on hand to offer screening and educational services.
This event is free to all community members and snacks will be provided.
For more details, call Sharon Achu at (208) 794-7039 or Jeby Mathew at (201) 218-2942.
Oral cancer screenings
The Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute and the Portland Community Free Clinic will offer a free oral cancer screening from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the clinic, located at 103 India St.
To schedule an appointment, call 874-8982.
Enter a Chowder Challenge
Registrations are being accepted for the Sixth Annual Blue Point Chowder Challenge, set for 4:30 tp 6:30 p.m. April 27 at the Blue Point Congregational Church, 236 Pine Point Road.
A panel of guest chefs will sample chowder submissions, including but not limited to corn, fish and seafood chowder, awarding prizes to top winners.
Sign-up deadline is Friday; call Sara Salisbury at 883-3773 or Anne and Shawn Brennan at 883-3159.
Entry fee is $8.
A portion of proceeds will go to Project G.RA.C.E.
Garden wisdom offered
Scarborough Garden Club will meet for a program titled "What's New In The Garden For 2013" at 12:30 p.m. Thursday at the Hillcrest Community Recreation Center, 108 Hillcrest Ave.
Guests and new members are welcome.
All meetings are free unless otherwise stated.
For more details, call 510-1514.
Democratic panel to meet
The York County Democratic Committee will meet at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 60 School St.
The evening will begin with a social time followed by a talk by guest speaker Attorney General Janet Mills.
For more details, call Diane Denk at 604-0838 or email [email protected]
School art display ends soon
The Celebrate Student Art: RSU 23 Art Show, on display at the Saco Museum as part of the National Youth Art Month, will end Saturday.
The exhibition features the art works of students from Dayton Consolidated School in Dayton; Jameson Elementary School, Loranger Middle School, and Old Orchard Beach High School in Old Orchard Beach; and C. K. Burns School, Young School, Governor John Fairfield School and Saco Middle School.
More than 2,000 artworks are on display, including paintings, pastels and sculptures.
The exhibit is organized and curated by local art teachers Piper Bolduc, Debra DiGregorio, Martha Gagne, Joanne Matusko, Diane Noble, Judy Puiia and Dawn Strandburg.
The display can be viewed from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, from noon to 8 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at 372 Main St.
Both the museum and Dyer Library will be closed Monday in observance of Patriots Day.
For more details, call 283-3861 or go to www.dyerlibrarysacomuseum.org.
Cancer-related fatigue is topic
St. Mary's Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders will offer a talk on reducing symptoms and finding relief for cancer-related fatigue at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Lepage Large Conference Room, 99 Campus Ave.
Guest speakers will include hematologist and oncologist Dr. Gregory Emmons, oncology certified nurse Chris Gervais and physical therapist Rebecca Harrington, who each will share in their area of expertise.
Seating is limited. To register, call 777-8458.
Library offers four events
Camden Public Library will offer four community events this week at 55 Main St.
Maine State Archaeologist and Author Bruce Bourque will talk about his book, "The Swordfish Hunters," which details the history of Maine's paleo-Indians, at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
The program "Avian Haven," presented by the Midcoast Audubon Society and Diane Winn and Marc Payne, will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday about work at the year-round wild bird rehabilitation center in Freedom.
A Spring Clean-up Day in Camden Park and Amphitheatre will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday. Clean-up volunteers will meet Dave Jackson in the park. They are encouraged to bring gloves and rakes for the work.
Also on Saturday, there will be a Star Gazing Party from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. atop Beech Hill in Rockport. The event is co-sponsored by Coastal Mountains Land Trust.
For more details, call Ken Gross at 236-3440.
Three programs at library
York Public Library, at 15 Long Sands Road, will offer three community programs this week.
A Poetry Evening, in roundtable format, will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. Priscilla Cookson will head the session and participants should bring along prose that includes April or spring themes.
Also on Tuesday, Maine Audubon biologist Traczie Bellinger will head a program about piping plovers, an endangered shorebird, at 7 p.m.
On Sunday, from 3:30 to 5:30, there will be a Muslim Journeys Reception to unveil that library's new collection of books, films and resources that are intended to introduce readers to the beliefs, practices and cultures of Islam and Muslims in the United States and around the world.
The reception is being held in collaboration with the York Diversity Forum.
For more details, call 363-2818 or go to www.york.lib.me.us.
Finnish heritage group to meet
The Finnish-American Heritage Society of Maine will meet at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Finnish-American Heritage Center at 8 Maple St.
The meeting will begin with a membership potluck dinner, followed by the annual meeting and election of officers for the coming year.
For more details, call Barbara Payne at 743-5677.
Pride Day, road cleanup on tap
The Lebanon Rescue Department will oversee its third annual Lebanon Pride Day and Roadside Clean-up event from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday.
Lebanon Rescue will offer trash bags, safety vests and gloves to those who need them.
Volunteers will meet at the Lebanon Town Offices, at 15 Upper Guinea Road, to register so that road crews will know what areas to collect trash from.
To register in advance, go to www.facebook.com/lebanonrescue and click on the Lebanon Pride Day event to log the area you are cleaning.
For more details, call Assistant Chief Jason Cole at 608-5615 or email [email protected]
The Rescue will offer a free barbecue meal from noon to 1 p.m. for all volunteers.
Rain date is April 27 and will be posted on line at www.lebanonrescue.com.
Spring luncheon planned
Reservations are being accepted through April 29 for the Coastal Senior College's annual spring luncheon on May 3 at the Samoset Resort, featuring guest speaker Colin Woodard, an award-winning journalist and author.
Tickets are $25 and must be paid for with a credit card when a reservation is made.
The choice of entrees is either oven-roasted Atlantic salmon or vegetarian lasagna.
The doors open at 11:30 for the noon serving and the public is welcome.
To reserve a spot, call (800) 286-1594.
Amnesty on library fines
Vose Library, at 392 Common Road, is offering an amnesty period through April 27 in celebration of National Library Week.
During that period all fees will be waived for individuals who return overdue books or materials.
For more details, call 784-4733.
Vacation-week fun at Walker
Walker Memorial Library, 800 Main St., is offering the following youth activities for students during school vacation: Tuesday,"Board Games Galore!"; Wednesday, "Wii Freeplay!"; Thursday, "Fingerpainting!"; Friday, "Wii Freeplay!"; and Saturday, "Crafty Kids Bird Seed Ornament!"
For more details, email [email protected] or call 854-0630.
Coyote presentation at library
Conservation biologist Geri Vistein will provide the visual and interactive presentation "Coyote – America's Song Dog" at 6:30 pm. Wedneday at Falmouth Memorial Library, 5 Lunt Road.
The event is free and open to the public; seating is limited.
For more details, call 781-2351.
Memory Network workshops
Maine Historical Society, in partnership with the Maine State Library and Maine Archives & Museums Maine Memory Network, is accepting enrollment for its 21st Century Skills Workshops.
The free, half-day workshops introduce attendees to the opportunities that local history, technology and Maine Memory Network provide to develop professional skills, increase the capacity of institutions, engage communities and deepen collaboration with historical societies, libraries, schools and other community organizations.
Library and historical society/museum professionals, educators, volunteers and members of the general public are invited to sign-up.
The workshops include an in-depth, interactive demonstration of Maine Memory Network and its many search tools and content offerings.
Current dates and locations include: April 29, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Cherryfield Free Public Library; 1 to 4 p.m. May 2 at Skidompha Public Library, Damariscotta; and from 1 to 4 p.m. May 21 at the Bangor Public Library.
Registration deadline is three business days prior to the workshop date.
For more details, call Larissa Vigue Picard, Community Partnership Coordinator, at [email protected] or 774-1822 Ext. 215.
Dinner to honor senior citizens
Maine School Administrative District 6 is accepting reservations for its Senior Citizen's Annual Appreciation Night and Dinner, set for 5 to 7 p.m. May 23 at Bonny Eagle High School.
Senior residents from the towns of Buxton, Hollis, Limington, Standish and Frye Island are invited to attend the meal, which is offered free of charge.
Reservation deadline is by May 15 by calling Deb Tarbox at 929-3831 or 642-2480.
Meet up to clean up Saturday
The 14th Annual South Portland Land Trust Earth Day Cleanup will be held from 8:30 to 11 a.m. Saturday, with trash collections being held along roadsides, trails and shorelines and at beaches and parks.
Volunteers will meet at the northeast corner of Mill Creek Park, at Hinckley Drive and Cottage Road, to register and receive bags, gloves and instructions.
For more details, email Jon Dore at [email protected]
'Keep Bath Beautiful' Sunday
The Bath City Council's second annual "Keep Bath Beautiful" Cleanup Day will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday.
A meeting area will be set up at Bath City Hall, at 55 Front St.
Families and volunteer organizations are encouraged to get a group together to participate.
City councilors will provide maps, trash bags, recycling bins, gloves, hand sanitizer and refreshments to those who are willing to help clean up refuse along streets and roadsides.
For more more details, call David Sinclair at 807-1610.
Workshops for kids at AWS
Animal Care Vacation Workshops for Children will be offered Monday through Thursday at the Animal Welfare Society on Holland Road.
Meeting from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, the hands-on workshops focus on animal care and handling, as well as animal welfare-related issues.
The students will have the opportunity to interact with a variety of pets, play games and create crafts.
Snacks are provided but attendees should bring a lunch.
The cost is $30 per day or $100 for all four workshops.
Space is limited.
For more details, call Garret at 985-3244, ext. 109, or email [email protected]
Club to hear horticulturist
The Freeport Woman's Club will meet at 1 p.m. Friday at the Freeport Community Library.
Dr. Ed Corbitt, horticulture professor at Senior College, University of Maine, will speak on "Plant Explorations in India and South Korea."
Refreshments will be served.
Visitors are welcome.
For more details, call Clarabel Marstaller 865-1017.
Open house, pie sale at library
North Gorham Public Library will hold an open house and pie sale from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at 2 Standish Neck Road.
Everyone is invited to visit the library and enjoy a slice of pie. Whole pies will also be available for sale.
For more details, call 892-2575 or go to www.north-gorham.lib.me.us.
Ex-intelligence officers gather
The Maine Chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers will meet at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Brick Store Museum Program Center, at 2 Dane St., for the program " The Chinese Intelligence Threat to America: How it Operates and Why It Succeeds."
A member of the nation's Intelligence Community and an expert on Chinese counterintelligence and operational planning will be on hand to discuss the organization of the intelligence services of the People's Republic of China and explain why their methods of collection pose such a serious threat to the United States.
The meeting is open to the public.
For more details, call 967-4298.
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Obituary: Linda-Lee Johnson
Obituary: Mark Lee Ingraham
Times Record Obituaries
Obituary: Barbara "Penny" Barabe
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text: It has been a remarkable and exciting year for commercial spaceflight companies. Private asteroid mining! Commercial trips to the moon! Mars settlements! We barely had time to catch our breath from the last secret organization announcement when suddenly some other team was cropping up and declaring a bold new adventure in space. "You had the unveiling of these really audacious business plans that at first blush you would dismiss as impossible," said journalist and aerospace analyst Jeff Foust, editor and publisher of the space-industry-watching The Space Review. "But when you look at both the technical and financial pedigree of the people backing these systems, you step back and say, 'Well, maybe there's something here.'" Many of these new companies have experts at their helms, founded or run by former NASA engineers and veterans of the spaceflight community. Others showed off their deep entrepreneurial pockets and touted the potential profits to be made in space. So how did 2012 turn into the year of private space? Perhaps the most important factor was the trailblazing success of SpaceX, a commercial rocket business started by entrepreneur and PayPal founder Elon Musk. This year, the company conducted two launches to the International Space Station using their Falcon 9 vehicle, with the second mission bringing supplies and helping prove that SpaceX was on the path to ferrying astronauts. The company is already planning their next rocket, the enormous Falcon Heavy, for launch in 2013 and recently won important contracts with the U.S. military to deliver hardware to space. With all these notches on his space belt, Musk is no doubt already eyeing the perfect ridge for his retirement home on Mars. Contributing influences to 2012's commercial space focus include an aimless NASA. Though it saw spectacular successes such as the Mars Curiosity rover landing, the agency is still wrestling with frozen budgets and a deeply divided Congress that disagrees on its overarching mission. Alongside NASA's existential crisis was the aftermath of the second dot-com boom, which created a crop of young, sci-fi-crazy tycoons. "When you give these Silicon Valley guys a billion dollars," said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of Harvard, who tracks rocket launches, "Their first thought is 'Cool, now I can have my own space program.'" Just in case you are having trouble telling the Planetary Resources apart from the Golden Spikes, Wired presents a gallery of the year's most impressive, daring, and wild business plans from commercial companies. We also talked to a small handful of spaceflight experts to get their take on which of the big dreams will pan out and which will burn out. "I don't expect them all to succeed, but I don't expect them all to fail," said space lawyer Michael Listner, founder of Space Law & Policy Solutions. Taken together, the companies' ambitions underscore just how much times have changed. "About 10 years ago, if you presented one of these plans, people would have looked at you like you're crazy. Now people can say, well it's a little crazy, but considering what's been done, it might be possible." Image: NASAGolden Spike Company The most recently unveiled audacious space venture is the Golden Spike Company, which wants to take people back to the moon by 2020. For the low, low price of $1.5 billion, Golden Spike will land a two-person crew on the lunar surface and safely return them. Given the expense, the company is targeting governments without large space programs that may be looking for a little international prestige. Golden Spike has a team with technical chops, including planetary scientist and former NASA science administrator Alan Stern and former NASA flight director Gerry Griffin. The business hopes to make use of low-cost existing rockets as much as possible to cut down on their expenses and estimates the entire scheme could cost as little as $7 billion. All of the experts we asked praised the company's mission architecture as fairly plausible. "The technology is there but they still need spacecraft, spacesuits, and to train people," said space lawyer Michael Listner. "I'd say by the end of the decade is pretty aggressive. During Apollo, we had the resources of a nation behind us and it took years to get our guys there." Golden Spike's largest obstacle will be securing the funding they need to get off the ground. "They need to really size how big this market is and figure out how to raise the several billion dollars to develop things like a lunar lander," said journalist Jeff Foust. Currently, much smaller private companies involved in the Google Lunar X-Prize are struggling to raise several million dollars for space missions. Furthermore, Golden Spike needs at least five or six customers signed on in order to turn a profit. But a still-weak international economy puts this funding model on unsteady ground for the time being. Using national status as the underpinning for such a mission might also not be the best business practice. "Maybe you can sell a government on being the second country to the moon, but being the sixth, I'm not so sure," said astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. "If I were that country I might not feel my ego sufficiently boosted." Bottom line: Golden Spike has certainly thought their mission architecture through but might want to work a bit more on their business plan. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: Golden Spike CompanyPlanetary Resources, Inc. Asteroid mining is a staple of science-fiction, transplanting a familiar Earth-based activity to the new frontier of space. Many of the resources we dig up from underground on our planet were in fact laid down during an asteroid impact billions of years ago. So let's cut out the middleman and simply mine riches from the skies. Such is the thinking behind Planetary Resources, Inc., which revealed their asteroid mining plans in April. The company hopes to extract water and precious metals, such as platinum, in order to get a return on their investment. Shortly after the unveiling, the internet reached a fever pitch about Planetary Resources, with Jon Stewart even calling in astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson just as a sanity check on the whole endeavor. Planetary Resources' biggest strength comes from its financial backing, with founders Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis veterans of both Silicon Valley and space technology. Other rich luminaries behind the company include Google CEO Larry Page, Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi, and even filmmaker James Cameron. The company's goals are very long term, with simple plans to launch telescopes to identify and catalog near-Earth asteroids in the next few years, and the actual mining and resource extraction as much as 20 years away. "Currently, the biggest hurdle in actually mining these asteroids is that the law hasn't been settled yet," said space lawyer Michael Listner. If Planetary Resources is to succeed, the international community will have to decide that the venture is legal. Currently, space lawyers are split into two camps on whether or not a company can extract and keep resources from celestial objects, and no one yet knows what sort of regulation governments may impose. All this adds some risk to the business plan. But Listner says that at least the company has put the idea out into the public consciousness, and some outcome will be settled in the next decades. The only other barrier at this point is their telescope design, said astronomer Jonathan McDowell. The initial plan called for small telescopes in Earth orbit to search for the best nearby asteroids but such an instrument can't look inside Earth's orbit because it would be staring at the glaring sun. A much better architecture would place the telescope in the orbit of Venus to get a full census. "I think they also need a slightly bigger telescope in order to do spectroscopic surveys and find the mineralogically valuable asteroids," said McDowell. As Planetary Resources gets up and running, they will no doubt run into more problems. Having a plan is one thing, but doing anything in space always turns out to be harder than initially thought. Bottom line: Planetary Resources has deep pockets and given itself ample time but needs to work on its technical and legal plans. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: Planetary Resources, Inc.B612 Foundation Nearly overshadowed by that other private asteroid business, the B612 Foundation's announcement in June was nonetheless important. The nonprofit company hopes to raise money to launch an infrared telescope that will be ever vigilant for dangerous asteroids hurtling toward Earth. Though NASA is already watching for these potentially civilization destroying rocks, B612 said they would be able to more than double the near-Earth object catalog in their first month of observation. The company has some good technical backers, including former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart and former shuttle astronaut Ed Lu. As a nonprofit, B612's approach most closely resembles a philanthropic foundation looking to build a new wing for a hospital. While donors are used to the idea of such charity on Earth, can B612 convince people that the same model works for a space telescope? "It's going to be tricky, because they need to find an income or donation source to keep it funded," said space lawyer Michael Listner. "But I will say if they can get the funding and license to use the technology, they have a fairly good shot." Listner added that, should B612 have trouble raising money for their multi-million-dollar telescope, a potential path could be to partner with the U.S. government, which would provide more funding. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell suggested that B612 and Planetary Resources pool missions, considering that one has a good technical team but a dearth of money, and the other has funding coming out of its ears but a mission architecture that leaves something to be desired. "There's nice things in each of those approaches, and maybe some combination will emerge and end up being useful," he said. Bottom line: B612 has got a plan to save the world, now all they need is someone to fund them. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: B612 FoundationMars One Getting people to Mars has long been a goal of the spaceflight community. While many thought it was the next logical step after the Apollo program, the United States has never been able to commit to the necessary funding for such a mission. But now a private company named Mars One has stepped in with their own audacious plan. Announced in May, Mars One has an extremely aggressive goal: land a crew of four on the Red Planet by 2023. The company hopes to cut costs with a radical mission. They intend to send people on a one-way trip to set up a colony, with a new set of four settlers arriving every two years after the initial touchdown. Mars One said it intends to pay for the plan by creating "the biggest media spectacle in history" with a reality TV show that will follow the astronauts. While mentioning that the goal of expanding human civilization is worthy, our experts were not entirely convinced that Mars One's business model is fully thought through. "It doesn't strike me as as plausible as the others," said astronomer Jonathan McDowell. "I'm not sure there's enough money out there to fund something as complex and expensive as a human mission to Mars," said journalist Jeff Foust. "The best I can say is good luck." "Going to Mars is 100 times difficult than going to the moon," said space lawyer Michael Listner. Besides the fact that we don't currently have the technology to put enough mass for a human mission on the Martian surface, there are many unknowns, including radiation and corrosive dust on Mars and the debilitating effects of long-term space travel, which could deteriorate the astronauts' bones and eyes. Regulation from Earth governments looking to introduce safety measures could also delay or alter the mission. Though Mars One estimates their first mission would cost only $6 billion, Listner said the entire plan, including future resupplies and crew, could be on the order of $1 trillion. Funding such a mission through ad sales sounds about as plausible as a Pinky and the Brain plan to take over the world. "I suspect it wouldn't be that good for TV," said Foust. "NASA televises their space activities, and I'm sure almost nobody watches it. It's mostly tinkering with experiments, replacing an air filter." Sustaining interest once the novelty wears off could be a major challenge, he added. Mars One recently converted itself into a nonprofit company, so it will likely have many of the same challenges at something like B612. Though they may be the least likely of the recent private space companies to achieve their goals, "you've got to dream big," said Listner. "And they will certainly inspire a lot of people." Bottom line: Mars One has sky-high plans that will most likely struggle to get off the ground. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: SpaceXFalcon Heavy Though not announced this year, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy has been a hot topic as the company prepares to launch this new rocket in 2013. Once operational, the vehicle would be the most capable existing rocket, able to bring 120,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit for as little as $1,000 per pound. The closest current spacecraft is United Launch Alliance's Delta rocket, which can take 50,000 pounds up at a cost of $6,000 per pound. Falcon Heavy has a number of other companies hoping to ride on its success. Both Golden Spike and Mars One plan to use the vehicle in their operation while NASA and the military are also looking forward to its capabilities. The question for SpaceX is just how soon they can get the new rocket ready. "It's possible to do a test launch in the second half of 2013, though that date could slip depending on technical issues," said journalist Jeff Foust. Falcon Heavy will have three times the rocket engines of the current Falcon 9, which add many complications to the technology. But based on their recent successes, things are looking good for SpaceX. "They're pretty confident that they'll go next year," said space lawyer Michael Listner, "And everything is pointing in that direction." Bottom line: If SpaceX can build on their current achievements, they have a decent shot of launching Falcon Heavy in 2013. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: SpaceXThe Google Lunar X-Prize Intended to stimulate new ideas for exploring the moon, the Google Lunar X-Prize was announced in 2007. The goal is for a small private team to land an autonomous rover on the lunar surface, travel about 1,000 feet, and beam back high-definition images and video. The first team to do so will win $20 million, and constellation prizes are offered for other tasks. The prize's deadline was originally meant to expire this year but after insufficient progress was made, the foundation extended their target date to the end of 2015. While more than 20 teams are still technically in the running, very few are where they need to be right now to claim the reward and accolades. Though 2015 seems a while away, this year and next are "really a make or break period for the teams left in the competition," said journalist Jeff Foust. That's because rocket launches are planned at least two years in advance. So anyone without a launch manifest by the end of 2013 is out of luck. Only two teams, the Barcelona Moon Team and Astrobotic, have secured a launcher. Furthermore, the technical readiness of most teams doesn't seem quite up to snuff. "They need to start building hardware now," said Foust. "A lunar rover isn't something you put together over a couple weekends. It needs years to make sure it works properly and get it there in the first place." Most teams have struggled to get the millions of dollars in funding necessary for this expensive mission. Furthermore, in 2013 China plans to land a probe on the moon, which automatically drops down the prize money offered to $15 million. If by the end of next year, these problems remain, it's possible that no one will win the competition. "I haven't really seen any entrants for that that fill me with a lot of confidence," said astronomer Jonathan McDowell. "Maybe it's a step too far, and the prize money relative to the investment needed is just not enough." Bottom line: The Google Lunar X-Prize is struggling and may simply prove to be too ambitious. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: Edward O'Conner/FlickrPrivate Space Tourism We live in the future! You may not have a personal jet pack but, if certain schemes pan out, you could one day afford a few minutes of spaceflight. That at least is the goal of companies like Virgin Galactic, which has allied with Scaled Composites to build SpaceShipTwo, a passenger spaceplane that will take tourists 70 miles above the Earth for short flights. Initially affordable only for the very rich, such a jaunt will set you back about $200,000 — that is, once Virgin Galactic actually gets their machine flying and ready. Though the business hoped to get off the ground years ago, they have constantly pushed back the date of their first flights. Virgin Galactic now hopes to be ready to carry passengers by the end of 2013. "I think even [Virgin Galactic's CEO] Richard Branson is frustrated that things haven't been flying by now," said space lawyer Michael Listner. "And I think they're probably going to get pushed back again. They want to keep that risk level as low as possible." The main thing that private space companies fear is some sort of catastrophic accident that results in a death. Such an occurrence would dry up their customer base and swiftly bring increased government regulation. Further delays could put the company in bad relations with Spaceport America, which the state of New Mexico spent nearly $200 million on in hopes of attracting tourist revenue. Most spaceflight experts are still counting on Virgin Galactic. "Hopefully in the next few months we'll see powered flight tests by SpaceShipTwo," said journalist Jeff Foust. "And then gradually they'll work on getting closer to space." Though Virgin Galactic recently flew SpaceShipTwo in its first "powered flight configuration" test, reaching the end-of-2013 mark may not be in the cards. "I'd be mildly surprised if they got it off in 2013, but totally not shocked if it was 2014," said astronomer Jonathan McDowell. Should Virgin Galactic somehow fail in its venture, there are plenty of other space tourism companies waiting in the wings. While somewhat behind Virgin, XCOR's Lynx spaceplane could begin testing in 2013. The company hopes to offer tourist flights to the edge of space for the bargain price of $95,000. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' secretive Blue Origin could also stun everyone by unveiling a new rocket plane in the near future, though this seems less likely. But all the private space companies are worth keeping an eye on. "People for a long time accepted as a given that SpaceShipTwo would be the first to fly," said Foust. "That may or may not be a case." Bottom line: Virgin Galactic may fly next year, or not. With other companies, we'll have to wait and see. Wired Science Private Space Company Plausibility Score: Image: Virgin Galactic


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Discussions about the people that shaped the 70's, 80's and 90's. Tell us who you remember and what you remember about them. Warning: Insulting or defamatory posts will not be tolerated
Time stands still for no one. This is the place to reflect on those who have passed on.
1 Day Ago


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Rody x Suicidal Tendencies
- Written by Pauly
Rody Venice Black. RODY is the Italian born toy for child. During getting the popularity in Japan, with "fashion" and "Art" essence, RODY is getting recognized as Art Toy for grown-ups. This VENICE BLACK RODY is the collaboration between Tokyo based toy store, ZacPac and Street clothing label for child, FLAKE.
Combined with their common essence, SK8, punk rock, west coast culture etc, this VENICE BLACK, inspired by Suicidal Tendencies, is born! This RODY comes with real bandana, so you can wear it like Suicidal Tendencies. Release date was summer 2009 limited to 500 pieces worldwide.


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A few weeks ago, a boutique asset manager called the iShares capital markets desk with a request to take a $248 million position in the iShares Barclays US Treasury Bond Fund (GOVT) exchange-traded fund. Because the boutique firm had never executed such a trade before, the cap markets desk helped the manager walk through the steps necessary to make the trade.
It was the first time the asset manager took such a large position in the fixed-income ETF, but it won't be the last, according to iShares officials. Indeed, a recent Greenwich Associates study of institutions' use of ETFs suggests that more and more institutional-size asset managers are making monster trades, without disrupting the bond markets, because ETFs trade on indexes rather than on the underlying securities.
"The ETF is an effective tool for institutions. Institutional investors are looking for liquid beta in a fast-moving market," said iShares managing director Loc Vukhac at a media breakfast in New York on Tuesday at the BlackRock headquarters. "You're seeing the democratization of the fixed-income world as trades move from the phone to an exchange."
Vukhac, head of the iShares Asset Management and Hedge Fund Group, pointed to a recent record trading day of $780 million of institutional trades involving the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (HYG). He remarked that if such large trades had disrupted the fixed-income markets when made, the roomful of financial journalists at the New York briefing would have known about it.
Many institutional investors using ETFs in innovative ways are registered investment advisors, noted Sue Thompson, head of the iShares Registered Investment Advisor Group. The RIA Group has seen phenomenal growth, to 100 boutique managers totaling $46 billion in ETF assets this year versus only a few managers with $5.8 billion in assets in 2009, Thompson said.
"It's exciting to see this new space growing before our very eyes," she said, adding that this week a group of boutique managers are meeting to exchange ETF trading ideas at an iShares-sponsored event. "These people may compete with each other, but we expect to see a lot of networking."
This is the third year that independent research firm Greenwich Associates has conducted the ETF study for iShares. Findings from this year's study include:
- Corporate and public pension funds, foundations and endowments use ETFs for "manager transitions" after an active manager has been fired and before a new manager comes on board. Sixty-one percent of asset managers and 55% of institutional funds use ETFs for manager transitions.
- Thirty-one percent of institutional funds and one-third of asset managers now use ETFs as part of an ETF overlay to add liquidity to a portfolio or to reduce implementation and trading costs. That usage rate has skyrocketed from just one in 10 among both groups in 2011.
- As institutional investors use ETFs more strategically, they also apply ETFs to portfolio completion. This year, 28% of asset managers and 42% of institutional investors use ETFs for portfolio completion. Last year, approximately one in five used ETFs for portfolio completion.
Read Advisors Reject Buy and Hold, 60/40 Stock-Bond Allocations at AdvisorOne.


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Grounded Mode Difficulty and New Multiplayer DLC.
Ready for a real challenge? Grounded Difficulty ups the aggressiveness of the enemy AI throughout the story to deliver a mode custom-made for the hardest of the hardcore. Along with this brutal single-player challenge, new multiplayer add-ons await, including eight survival perks (sold separately or in bundles) four new weapons (sold separately or in a bundle) and four new maps in the Reclaimed Territories Map Pack.
These new additions are only a fraction of the extras available as part of The Last of Us Season Pass, which includes access to free exclusives, the Abandoned Territories Map Pack and Naughty Dog's first single-player DLC, Left Behind.


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Posts tagged consumers
9+ tips to improve your e-commerce conversion rate0
Econsultancy has conducted a small study of the factors that influence a customer's purchase decision on e-commerce sites. The obtained results correspond to other studies as well as my personal experience and can lead to significant improvements of your conversion rate.
1) Delivery Costs
Which kind of delivery is preferred and how much it should cost was different for each person. There was, however, unanimity that the delivery costs should be displayed and transparent from the start of the purchase process. There is nothing more unpleasant for a consumer – and I'm speaking from personal experience – than discovering delivery costs at the end of the checkout. Indeed it makes little sense to put in place a last obstacle (i.e. additional costs) just before successfully closing a transaction. Common sense alone dictates not to do so. The only reason I can think of that would warrant withholding these extra costs is the intention to increase one's margin a bit, but if higher delivery costs are necessary for that, one should, perhaps, reflect on one's business model.
Ein Plus konnten auch die Sites verbuchen, die ab einem bestimmten Betrag Lieferung frei Haus anbieten. Alle Teilnehmer merkten an, dass sie dies sicherlich motivieren würde mehr auszugeben.


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Just to confirm - I'm seeing the same problem with the iPad 2, and Apple HDMI adaptor. This happens with Goat Up, Minotron, Minotaur Rescue and Deflex.
To add a little more detail - for Goat Up, Minotron and Deflex the game bombs a fraction after touching the screen, and until then will run ok. For Minotaur Rescue the game game bombs just as the Ataurus logo animates.
For Minotron I can leave the HDMI unplugged, start a game, and then re-attach the HDMI cable, to get video out but then there is no audio.
My guess is that the problem is audio related - it seems that they crash a split second after each title starts generating sound.
*edit* oh, and while I'm here - any chance of adding full screen 720p (iPhone4 and iPad1) / 1080p (iPad2) using the HDMI adaptor? Minotron would look amazing
Thanks for the great games.
iPad 2 HDML problem
Technical support forum for Minotaur Rescue users.
- GilesGoat
- Site Admin
- Posts: 377
- Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:44 am
- Location: Wales, with the sheepies.
Re: iPad 2 HDML problem
I still have to work on that but at some point we'll try to add that support for that adaptor.
Return to "Minotaur Rescue support"
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Address: 3352 Steiner Street (Chestnut), San Francisco 94123
Neighborhood: Marina
Phone:�(415) 931-2777
Hours: Mon-Fri: 7:30am-11pm; Sat & Sun: 8am-11pm
Category: Restaurant/Food Vendor (Vegan Friendly)
Average cost:
Vegan Dessert: Yes
Accepts credit card: Yes
Notes: During week, vegan items include salads, sandwiches, entrees. For brunch, vegan options limited. Vegan items clearly marked. Formally called Lettus Cafe.
|Added by chris on 2006-01-22, Last update: 2009-06-18, Viewed 6402 times
Last 5 Reviews (Show All Reviews)
Show All Reviews
Average rating: 0 / 5.0 Based on 8 reviews. (Add/Edit your own review)
|This place seems to have lost its luster. The food and service has definitely declined in quality and the prices are not cheap. They seemed to have cut back on some items, such as the hummus plate which used to have three different types of hummus with a delicious salad, which now only has two types of hummus with a lackluster salad. The vegan desserts are amazing, so I would recommend those.
Reviews: 15
|Great place where beautiful people hang out. All the customers that eat here seems like a billboard for healthy people. There's usually a line to order food. After you order, THEN you sit at your table. Great salad (but not enough as a meal), 8 types of vegan desserts including raw vegan cheesecake which I like. (my friend doesn't like it though) Overall, it's a popular place with goodfood
Reviews: 81
|Ack is all I can say. The time I went, they had a hard time with the pancakes, and the service staff seemed stressed. I won't go out of my way to go bck.
Reviews: 39
|Nice atmosphere and decor, but still casual. Food was really good, fresh and made with health and taste in mind. Nice variety of vegan options (from Asian dishes to more American style), and also vegan breakfast options too. Both soy based (tofu, tempeh) and non-soy vegan food. They make their own vegan veggie burgers. I will definitely come back here many times!
Reviews: 16
|I really liked this place. Tons of vegan and raw options. A little on the pricey side, but the food was very good. The raw cheescake was delicious! I liked the decor too.
Reviews: 7
The intent of the Ultimate Guide is to make it easier for folks new to the Bay Area or new to vegetarianism to find businesses that support their vegetarian lifestyle. We welcome your reviews and feedback on businesses and services listed within. For any public reviews, please keep your comments constructive so that the business may learn from them -- no slander or mean-spirited comments.. You are responsible for what you post as a 3rd party contributor to the Ultimate Guide web site. Bay Area Vegetarians and the editors of the Ultimate Guide reserve the right to edit or delete submissions that are deemed inappropriate.


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16 May, 2014 | (01 hr)
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Neb. school officials avoid charges in abuse case
Three western Nebraska school officials accused of failing to report allegations that high school wrestlers sexually assaulted a young teammate at a summer wrestling camp will not face charges, an attorney for two of the officials said Friday.
Bob Lindemeier, a North Platte attorney who represents Maxwell Public Schools Superintendent Danny Twarling and high school principal Aubrey Boucher, said that the school board and Lincoln County Attorney Rebecca Harling agreed Monday that the officials wouldn't be charged and that district staff would undergo training to better understand the laws regarding student abuse and neglect.
Twarling, Boucher and wrestling coach Ryan Jones were cited by the Nebraska State Patrol in September on suspicion of failure to report child abuse or neglect, a misdemeanor.
None of the teens who were alleged to have taken part in the assault have been charged. Nebraska State Patrol investigators have turned over their findings about the alleged abuse at the Kearney wrestling camp to the Buffalo County prosecutor, who will determine whether charges should be filed, patrol spokeswoman Deb Collins said.
Buffalo County Attorney Shawn Eatherton did not immediately respond to a phone message Friday enquiring whether he plans to bring charges in the case.
Neither the alleged victim nor his parents are named in court documents, and authorities did not respond to requests for their identities to give them an opportunity to react to the agreement between prosecutors and school administrators. There was no answer at Maxwell Public Schools on Friday afternoon.
Patrol investigators have said the three school officials were told that members of the wrestling team held down a team member and sodomized him with a bottle while at camp in the summer of 2011. An investigator said the mother of a friend of the alleged victim said she asked the boy whether he had reported the incident to his coach, and the boy said he had but that the coach told him, "What happens in wrestling, stays in wrestling." The teen also told a State Patrol investigator that Boucher called him a liar and "a rumor spreader" after learning of the reported assault.
School officials told investigators that they conducted their own investigation and determined that the accusations were unfounded.
State law requires teachers, administrators, medical professionals and others in positions of authority to report cases of suspected child abuse or neglect to law enforcement.
"In retrospect, perhaps the school should have forwarded all information and allegations to law enforcement and/or the Department of Health and Human Services," Lindemeier and Harling said in a joint written statement. "In the future, the school is committed to revising necessary policies and/or procedures to aid school officials in understanding when and where to report."
The school's staff will undergo training by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services and the Lincoln County Attorney's Office, among other entities. The school board also will implement more strict policies regarding the reporting of suspected student abuse or neglect, the statement said.
"It's really an overall effort to educate the teachers and administrators and other staff members about the reporting requirements so people understand what needs to be done," Lindemeier said Friday.
Lindemeier said he wasn't aware of any lawsuits that may have been filed about the alleged attack, and he said none of the students involved have transferred to other schools. One student graduated.
"It's our hope that this is the end of it," Lindemeier said. "Maxwell is a small community, and it's really been upset by what's been going on. There's been some division, and so our hope is that we can get people back to ... supporting the school and its staff and get this behind everyone."
Follow Margery Beck at https://twitter.com/Margery3


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|Photo Details
Father and Son Team
Registered: December 2007
Posts: 56
This was a last chance deer hunt for me and my son john. Due to work demands we had a very limited season. We snuck out early thanksgiving morning to try to get one more 1/2 day hunt in. John killed a nice 6 pointer out of our buddy stand about 0830 and I had resigned my self to eating my buck tag this year when on our way to the truck we jumped this dude up. .270 winchester black tip droped him at 70 yards. This deer is wider than my big 10 pointer. very close to the house and nobody had seen this deer all season... luck over skill every day I say... Another father son memory...
| · Date: December 4, 2007 · Views: 16980
· Filesize: 37.1kb, 190.2kb · Dimensions: 770 x 1268 ·
|Additional Info
|Rating: 10.00
|Keywords: Kentucky 8 pointer


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eLecture 2.0
eLecture is a webinar / virtual classroom software product for conducting live interactive seminars / lectures over Internet/LAN, where participants attend sessions online via web browser.
Online press conferences, corporate seminars and training, live university lectures broadcasting, live webinars - if your organization needs these, eLecture is worth to try!
This is not a hosted service but a software that you install on your own server Live near real-time lecture broadcast, including screen capture Students/attendees post questions and receive answers in text chat mode in real time All live feeds and textual conversations are recorded on the server Multiple languages are supported, new languages are easy to add by yourself Students/attendees don't need to install anything: everything is web-based with Flash video
All eLecture users including students and lecturers, use web-based interface to register, subscribe, start and and participate in lectures. This is achieved via WebELecture web application that needs to be installed on the server side along with eLecture Server. eLecture Server running as Windows service, can run multiple lectures concurrently and supports thousands of concurrent users on standard server hardware. eLecture Server comes with Administration Console allowing lecturer or administrator managing lectures, lecturers and students. The eLecture Server also includes Unreal Media and Archival servers for broadcasting and recording purposes.
eLecture comes with built-in support for English, Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, German, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese languages; other languages can be easily added via language files that come with the software. eLecture is a truly Unicode system.
The lectures can be scheduled at a particular time or periodically; limits on number of participants and number of questions each participant can ask are supported. Up to 3 audio/video feeds can be configured with each lecture; Unicast and Multicast delivery methods are supported to serve LAN and Internet students. Any RTSP IP camera / encoder, MPEG2-TS live stream, or Unreal Live Server based live source can be configured as a live feed for a lecture. Lectures can be configured to allow or prohibit students from self-subscribing online. All the communication between eLecture Console and eLecture Server is encrypted with industry standard symmetric protocol, ensuring secure data transmission.