For several years I have been comparing the price of a one terabyte (TB) hard disk drive with the price of two 500GB drives. After four years this is no longer a meaningful comparison, as the 1TB drive became more cost-effective two years ago. It makes little sense to continue my series. Maybe I'll do it again when the 1PB drive arrives, comparing it to two 500TBs.
Recently a friend claimed that solid state storage (SSD) was the wave of the future and would replace rotating mass memory in five years. I agree with him as to the future but I thought his timing was very aggressive. I've decided to compare the 1TB drive with other forms of storage in order to expose the solid state trend and see if my friend is on target.
The last column, "HD Advantage," shows how much less a conventional hard drive costs compared to the least expensive other form of solid-state memory (excluding the hybrid drive). At the moment, rotating memory still holds a commanding lead by a factor of 10.
What about my friend's theory? The oft-quoted Moore's Law, interpreted loosely, says that the price of a given piece of technology 18 months from now should be half. If this rule is applied equally across all four memory types shown here, the ratios would be exactly the same in 18 months and hard drives would still have a 10x advantage.
The only way my friend can be right is if there is a different rate of advance in the various technologies. In other words, the cost per GB of hard drives would have to stagnate while the cost per GB of solid state drives would have to drop dramatically. So let's pretend that the cost of hard drives stays at 14 cents per GB while the cost of SS drives follows Moore's law. How many years would it take the SS drives to match rotating memory in cost?
The answer is 4.5 years. My friend's theory might have some legs.
But only if rotating memory stagnates and other considerations are ignored. The truth is that the hard drive manufacturers have consistently beaten Moore's Law. Based on a 500MB drive costing $500 in 1992, the Law predicts that the cost per GB in 2011 would be $4.23. As shown in the table, the price is actually 30 times better than that. If inflation is factored in, the advantage is even greater.
In all fairness, solid state memory offers some advantages. Electricity is one; with no motors and no moving parts, SSD uses much less power (less than 25% as much) and as a result requires less cooling. Over five years, this could save about $100 per drive. That's not enough to counter the much higher purchase price right now but it is green. Note that while hard drives can increase capacity while using approximately the same amount of power, more SSD capacity requires additional electricity. Lower power consumption is great for laptops on battery, a key advantage.
Other advantages include faster performance, almost instant start-up time, no latency and thus no need to worry about fragmentation, and much less likelihood of physical damage if the drive is subjected to external forces (i.e., being dropped).
One problem with SSD is that the memory technology employed has a limited number of write cycles. This is generally ignored for consumer-grade SSD devices. Enterprise-class SSDs have special algorithms that move data when a given area of the memory nears its end of life and are sometimes "over provisioned" (delivered with more capacity than specified) to compensate.
Perhaps I'll live to see the demise of the mechanical, rotating hard drive. Don't count on it.
Note: I generally check prices on 3.5" 7200 Seagate Barracuda hard drives, SanDisk SDHC Class 10 memory cards, Crucial's SSD products and Crucial's RAM products. Updated 02 Dec to include the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive.
RT vs. Pro? Which Is The Best Choice?
The end of the back-to-school computer buying period is over on Labor Day and in a few months the Christmas season will be upon us.
Got a kid headed for college? Don't skimp - make sure to buy him or her a laptop that will last for the duration!


This article is about the neighborhood. For the lake, see Green Lake (Seattle).
Green Lake is a neighborhood in north central Seattle, Washington. Its centerpiece is the lake and park after which it is named.
Its generally accepted boundaries are Interstate 5 to the east, beyond which lie Roosevelt and Maple Leaf; N 85th Street to the north, beyond which lies the neighborhood North College Park/Licton Springs; Aurora Avenue N (State Route 99) to the west, beyond which lies Phinney Ridge, and N 50th Street and Woodland Park to the south, beyond which lies Wallingford.
Its main thoroughfares are the circumferential road around the lake, known at different points as East Green Lake Way N, East Green Lake Drive N, West Green Lake Drive N, Aurora Avenue N, and West Green Lake Way N; N 65th, N 71st, and N 80th Streets (east- and westbound); Wallingford Avenue N and 1st, 5th, Latona, and Woodlawn Avenues NE (generally north- and southbound but following the contours of the shoreline at some points); Green Lake Drive N and NE Ravenna Boulevard (northwest- and southeast-bound); and Winona Avenue N (northeast- and southwest-bound).
David Phillips surveyed the Green Lake area in September 1855 for the United States Surveyor General. The first settler was Erhart Seifried with a 132-acre (0.53 km2) homestead on the northeast shore of the lake in 1869. In 1891 a trolley line was extended from Fremont along the eastern shore and around the northern end of Green Lake. Also in 1891, Green Lake was annexed to Seattle.
There is an extensive variety of housing types in Green Lake. Since 1995, the neighborhood has undergone significant redevelopment. Many houses have been completely remodeled and enlarged, often with the addition of another floor. This is a consequence of Green Lake's easy access to Downtown via both Interstate 5 and Aurora Avenue N.
The Green Lake Library, a Carnegie library that occupies 5,000 square feet (460 m2) and cost $35,000 to build, was opened in 1910. In 1999 the library held 54,000 catalogued items. The library was closed during 2003 for remodeling and reopened in March 2004. It is part of the Seattle Public Library system.
Prior to the 1991 redistricting, Green Lake formed the center of Washington's 32nd Legislative District. The well-organized and rather left-leaning Democratic Party organization of that district was widely known both to friend and foe alike as "the Soviet of Green Lake", possibly an allusion to James Farley's legendary (though possibly apocryphal) 1930s remark "there are 47 States in the Union, and the Soviet of Washington".
Green Lake is home to Green Lake Elementary School, Bishop Blanchet High School, and Seattle Parks and Recreation Department's Green Lake Small Craft Center (GLSCC). GLSCC is the site of both Green Lake Crew, a public rowing program, and the Seattle Canoe and Kayak Club.
There is also a 2.8-mile path around the lake for runners, bikers, skaters and walkers. Many others use the athletic fields or visit the park for boating, picnics and swimming.
This page was last modified on 16 September 2015, at 20:50.


Biomes are groups of ecosystem that have the same climate and dominant communities. They are complex terrestrial (mostly earth's surface) systems of abiotic and biotic factors that cover a large area and are characterized by certain soil & climate characteristics and by certain groupings of plants and animals. Living organisms prefer certain climatic conditions. This means that animal and plants are usually found only in regions that suit them. A polar bear, for example, will be found in a region of low temperature and low humidity. Such a region of the biosphere is called the arctic.
Climate determines the type of biome in a given area, although individual ecosystems may vary due to many local abiotic and biotic factors.
Ecosystem stability, succession and biodiversity are intrinsically linked.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of models of succession and zonation?
How could the R/R ration be used to estimate whether the harvesting of a natural capital, such as trees , is sustainable or not?
2.4.U1 Biomes are collections of ecosystems sharing similar climatic conditions that can be grouped into five major classes: aquatic, forest, grassland, desert and tundra. Each of these classes has characteristic limiting factors, productivity and biodiversity.
Terrestrial Biomes: tundra, grassland, desert, taiga, temperate forest, tropical forest.
A biome has distinctive abiotic factors and species which distinguish it from other biomes. Water, insolation and temperature are the climate controls important when understanding how biomes are structured, how they function and where they are found round the world. Biomes usually cross national boundaries (biomes do not stop at a border; for example, the Sahara, tundra, tropical rainforests).
example, temperate grassland or a local example. Limit climate to temperature, precipitation and insolation. It is required that you need to be able to explain the distribution, structure and relative productivity of tropical rainforests, deserts, tundra and one other biome. Climate should only be explained in terms of temperature, precipitation and insolation only.
You should study at least four contrasting pairs of biomes. Examples of contrasting biomes include; temperate forests and tropical seasonal forests; tundra and deserts; tropical coral reefs and hydrothermal vents; temperate bogs and tropical mangrove forests.
2.4.U2 Insolation, precipitation and temperature are the main factors governing the distribution of biomes.
The distribution of biomes results from insolation, precipitation and temperature. Climate, terrain (or geography) and ocean and wind currents also play important roles.
Insolation is measured by the amount of solar energy received per square centimeter per minute. As the sun rotates around the sun, the position of the land masses will change resulting in various concentrations of solar radiation over the land masses.
The atmosphere and its circulation systems determines where moisture-carrying air masses do and do not go. The energy source of those circulatory systems are the sun. The sun's energy drives atmospheric movements, sustains photosynthesis, and propels the seasons.
the topography of the continents.
Plant biomes are based primarily on the distribution of the dominant vegetation.
Animal biomes are usually named after regions because their distribution is more difficult to define.
2.4.U3 The tricellular model of atmospheric circulation explains the distribution of precipitation and temperature and how they influence structure and relative productivity of different terrestrial biomes.
The tricellular model explains the distribution of precipitation and temperature and how they influence structure and relative productivity of different terrestrial biomes. The tricellular model is made up of three different air masses, these control atmospheric movements and the redistribution of heat energy. The three air masses, starting from the equator, are called the Hadley cell, Ferrel cell and the polar cell.
The tricellular model also contains the ITCZ (Inter-tropical convergence zone), this is the meeting place of the trade winds from both the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. The ITCZ is a low pressure area where the trade winds, which have picked up latent heat as they crossed oceans, are now forced to rise by convection currents. These rising convection currents are then cooled adiabatically to form massive cumulonimbus clouds.
As you go up in altitude air cools, becomes more dense and falls back towards earth’s surface.
These convection currents drive the Earth’s wind patterns and affect the biomes.
2.4.U4 Climate change is altering the distribution of biomes and causing biome shifts.
A changing global climate threatens species and ecosystems. The distribution of species is largely determined by climate, as is the distribution of ecosystems and plant vegetation zones (biomes). Climate change may simply shift these distributions, but often, barriers and human presence will provide no opportunity for distributional shifts. For these reasons, some species and ecosystems are likely to be eliminated by climate change.
Zonation refers to changes in community along an environmental gradient due to factors such as changes in altitude, latitude, tidal level or distance from shore (coverage by water).
The distinct vertical layers experience particular abiotic conditions. This is particularly clear in the distribution of plants and animals on a rocky seashore, where different species inhabit a series of horizontal strips or belts of the shore, approximately parallel to the water's edge. In many places the strips (zones) are sharply bounded by the differently coloured seaweeds that populate them.
The division of vegetation in relation to a successional sequence (e.g. in sand-dunes), implying that spatial zonation may correspond to temporal processes.
Kite diagrams are a chart that shows the number of animals (or percentage cover for plants) against distance along a transect. The distribution of organisms in a habitat is affected by the presence of other living organisms, such as herbivores or predators that might eat them. It is also affected by abiotic factors (physical factors) such as availability of light or water. The width of the “kite” represents the number of species.
The kite diagram is frequently used to show zonation along a transect. A gradual change in the distribution of species across a habitat is called zonation. It can happen because of a gradual change in an abiotic factor. A transect is line across a habitat or part of a habitat. It can be as simple as a string or rope placed in a line on the ground. The number of organisms of each species can be observed and recorded at regular intervals along the transect.
Succession is a directional non-seasonal cumulative change in the types of plant species that occupy a given area through time. It involves the processes of colonization, establishment, and extinction which act on the participating plant species. Most successions contain a number of stages that can be recognized by the collection of species that dominate at that point in the succession. Succession begin when an area is made partially or completely devoid of vegetation because of a disturbance. Some common mechanisms of disturbance are fires, wind storms, volcanic eruptions, logging, climate change, severe flooding, disease, and pest infestation. Succession stops when species composition changes no longer occur with time, and this community is said to be a climax community.
Succession- change in the community structure of a particular area over time.
Primary succession-colonization of newly created land by organisms (rock).
Secondary succession-occurs in places where a previous community has been destroyed. (forest/fire) It is faster than primary succession because of the presence of soil and a seed bank.
Pioneer-earliest community of the succession.
Climax community-the last and final community.
Zonation- The arrangement or patterning of plant communities or ecosystems into bands in response to change, over a distance, in some environmental factor.
The species living in a particular place gradually change over time as does the physical and chemical environment within that area.
Succession takes place because through the processes of living, growing and reproducing, organisms interact with and affect the environment within an area, gradually changing it.
Each species is adapted to thrive and compete best against other species under a very specific set of environmental conditions. If these conditions change, then the existing species will be outcompeted by a different set of species which are better adapted to the new conditions.
The most often quoted examples of succession deal with plant succession. It is worth remembering that as plant communities change, so will the associated micro-organism, fungus and animal species. Succession involves the whole community, not just the plants.
Change in the plant species present in an area is one of the driving forces behind changes in animal species. This is because each plant species will have associated animal species which feed on it. The presence of these herbivore species will then dictate which particular carnivores are present.
The structure or 'architecture' of the plant communities will also influence the animal species which can live in the microhabitats provided by the plants.
Changes in plant species also alter the fungal species present because many fungi are associated with particular plants.
Succession is directional. Different stages in a particular habitat succession can usually be accurately predicted.
These stages, characterised by the presence of different communities, are known as 'seres'.
Communities change gradually from one sere to another. The seres are not totally distinct from each other and one will tend to merge gradually into another, finally ending up with a 'climax' community.
Succession will not go any further than the climax community. This is the final stage.
This does not however, imply that there will be no further change. When large organisms in the climax community, such as trees, die and fall down, then new openings are created in which secondary succession will occur.
Many thousands of different species might be involved in the community changes taking place over the course of a succession. For example, in the succession from freshwater to climax woodland.
The actual species involved in a succession in a particular area are controlled by such factors as the geology and history of the area, the climate, microclimate, weather, soil type and other environmental factors.
In early stages, gross productivity is low due to the initial conditions and low density of producers. The proportion of energy lost through community respiration is relatively low too, so net productivity is high, that is, the system is growing and biomass is accumulating. In later stages, with an increased consumer community, gross productivity may be high in a climax community. However, this is balanced by respiration, so net productivity approaches zero and the production:respiration (P:R) ratio approaches one.
A disturbance is any event, either natural or human-induced that changes the existing condition of an ecosystem. Disturbances in forest ecosystems affect resource levels, such as soil organic matter, water and nutrient availability, and interception of solar radiation. Changes in resource levels, in turn, affect plants and animals over time, leading to succession. All of these have an effect of making gaps available that can be colonised by pioneer species within the surrounding community. This adds to both the productivity and diversity of the community.
Biological diversity, often shortened to biodiversity, is the variation of life at all levels of biological organization, referring not only to the sum total of life forms across an area, but also to the range of differences between those forms. Biodiversity runs the gamut from the genetic diversity in a single population to the variety of ecosystems across the globe.
2.4.U9 r- and K-strategist species have reproductive strategies that are better adapted to pioneer and climax communities, respectively.
The terms r-selection and K-selection have also been used by ecologists to describe the growth and reproductive strategies of various organisms. Those organisms described as r-strategists typically live in unstable, unpredictable environments. Here the ability to reproduce rapidly (exponentially) is important. K-strategists, on the other hand occupy more stable environments. They are larger in size and have longer life expectancies. They are stronger or are better protected and generally are more energy efficient.
In general, communities in early succession will be dominated by fast-growing, well-dispersed species (opportunist, fugitive, or r-selected life-histories).
During succession Gross Primary Productivity tends to increase through the pioneer and early wooded stages and then decreases as climax community reaches maturity. This increase in productivity is linked to growth and biomass.
Early seral stages are usually marked by rapid growth and biomass biomass accumulation - grasses, herbs and small shrubs. Gross Primary Productivity is low but Net Primary Productivity tends to be be a large proportion of GPP as with little biomass in the early seral stages respiration is low. As the community develops towards woodland and biomass increases so does productivity. But NPP as a percentage of GPP can fall as respiration rates increase with more biomass.
Succession is the process of ecosystem recovery after some disturbance. Biomass is at maximum in the undisturbed ecosystem; it increases up to this maximum during succession. Plant productivity also grows, especially if the plant cover was destroyed substantially by the disturbance. Productivity of the ecosystem as a whole (i.e. the difference between net primary productivity and its consumption by ecosystem's heterotrophs) in the process of succession tends to zero. Biodiversity measured as the total number of species in the ecosystem does not change. However, biodiversity measured as the number of species having a substantial population density is lower in the undisturbed ecosystem than in the disturbed one.
2.4.U12 In a complex ecosystem, the variety of nutrient and energy pathways contributes to its stability.
Redundancy in ecosystem structure and function often infers stability on a system. For instance, if there is more than one (redundant) population of microbes that convert ammonium to nitrate and a disturbance wipes out one population, that function (nitrification) will continue to be performed by the remaining populations.
Resistance - the ability of the ecosystem to continue to function without change when stressed by disturbance.
Resilience - the ability of the ecosystem to recover after disturbance.
Climatic and edaphic (soil) factors determine the nature of a climax community. Variations in climatic conditions and soil structure greatly effect which plant species can thrive. Human factors frequently affect this process through fire, agriculture, grazing and/or habitat destruction.
The more complex the ecosystem, the more stable they are due to the variety of nutrient and energy pathways.
If one collapses its overall effect is low as there are many others to takes its place.
2.4.U14 Human activity is one factor that can divert the progression of succession to an alternative stable state by modifying the ecosystem; for example, the use of fire in an ecosystem, the use of agriculture, grazing pressure, or resource use (such as deforestation). This diversion may be more or less permanent depending upon the resilience of the ecosystem.
Human activity is one factor which can divert the progression of succession to an alternative stable state, by modifying the ecosystem, for agriculture, grazing pressure, or resource use such as deforestation. This diversion may be more or less permanent depending upon the resilience of the ecosystem.
2.4.U15 An ecosystem's capacity to survive change may depend on its diversity and resilience.
an ecosystem can tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. Resilience is not about a single ideal ecological state, but an ever changing system of disturbance and recovery.
2.4.A1 Explain the distributions, structure, biodiversity and relative productivity of contrasting biomes.
Many places on Earth share similar climatic conditions despite being found in geographically different areas. As a result of natural selection, comparable ecosystems have developed in these separated areas. Scientists call these major ecosystem types biomes. The geographical distribution (and productivity) of the various biomes is controlled primarily by the climatic variables precipitation and temperature..
Most of the classified biomes are identified by the dominant plants found in their communities. For example, grasslands are dominated by a variety of annual and perennial species of grass, while deserts are occupied by plant species that require very little water for survival or by plants that have specific adaptations to conserve or acquire water.
The diversity of animal life and subdominant plant forms characteristic of each biome is generally controlled by abiotic environmental conditions and the productivity of the dominant vegetation. In general, species diversity becomes higher with increases in net primary productivity, moisture availability, and temperature.
Adaptation and niche specialization are nicely demonstrated in the biome concept. Organisms that fill similar niches in geographically separated but similar ecosystems usually are different species that have undergone similar adaptation independently, in response to similar environmental pressures. The vegetation of California, Chile, South Africa, South Australia, Southern Italy and Greece display similar morphological and physiological characteristics because of convergent evolution. In these areas, the vegetation consists of drought-resistant, hard-leaved, low growing woody shrubs and trees like eucalyptus, olive, juniper, and mimosa.
2.4.A2 Discuss the impact of climate change on biomes.
2.4.A3 Describe the process of succession in a given example..
The characteristic plants which define each of the biomes constitute part of what is known as the climax community. The types of plants that characterize each biome have evolved to the unique climatic conditions in that part of the world. If such a community is destroyed (by fire, logging, plowing, etc.) - and then left alone - the biome will regenerate itself over a period of time. It will go through a number of intermediate stages until it reached the climax stage again. This process is called succession.
In a Early seral stages are highly productive but require large inputs of nutrients and also tend to lose nutrients. Biomass increases, but there is low productivity and fluctuations in biomass are common. These seral stages are dominated by "weedy" or "r-adapted" species which reproduce quickly, but often die young. Most of their energy goes into reproduction. There are relatively few species in early seral stages.
Climax seral stages are much more complex, with many species. They create a favorable environment for many species. Biomass does not fluctuate, and decomposition rates are roughly equivalent to new production. Nutrients are cycled efficiently, and rarely leave the ecosystem. Individual organisms are longer-lived, since they invest more resources in themselves and less in producing offspring.
Locally, a recently cleared field is an example of an early seral stage. It is colonized by grasses and other plants that produce many seeds, such as many annuals. These plants may live only one year, set seed, then die. The organisms in the field will not be able to cycle all of the nutrients, and many nutrients will run off with rainfall. On the other hand, the climax forest is characterized by trees, which are long-lived. There are many species, and each provides living space and food resources for other plants and a host of animals. Decomposing materials are recycled; few escape though the waters of the forest streams.
If one farms in a rain forest, the community is moved from a climax community to an artificial community which resembles an early seral stage. The farm field will lose a lot of nutrients, something that tropical soils do not have in abundance. The land will be useless for farming in a few years.
The size of the organisms increases with trees, creating a more hospitable environment.
Energy flow becomes more complex as simple food chains become complex food webs.
Soil depth, humus, water-holding capacity, mineral content, and cycling all increase.
Biodiversity increases because more niches (lifestyle opportunities) appear and then falls as the climax community is reached.
NPP and GPP rise and then fall.
2.4.A5 Discuss the factors that could lead to alternative stable states in an ecosystem.
You need to be able to discuss the factors which could lead to alternative stable states in an ecosystem, and discuss the link between ecosystem stability, succession, diversity, and human activity.
A 2.4.6 Distinguish the roles of r and K selected species in succession.
Industrial air pollution from the developed world is carried on the dominant wind currents up to the arctic. After settling onto the tundra, snow and ice it is absorbed into the food chain. The people and creatures there have some of the highest concentrations of toxins in their bodies of anywhere on earth.
Biodiversity is the variety of life found at all levels of biological organization, ranging from individuals and populations to species, communities and ecosystems. A population is a group of individuals of the same species in a given location - a group that is genetically different from other such groups. Species are made up of one or more populations. There were an estimated 2.2 billion populations on Earth. populations are going extinct at a rate of 32,000 per day. The loss of populations is occurring three to eight times faster than species loss. If all of a species' populations but one are destroyed the species technically still exists. However, all of the beneficial interrelations flowing from those populations and their biodiversity will have been lost.
2.4.S2 Interpret models or graphs related to succession and zonation.
Correct use of terminology is a key skill in ESS. It is essential to use key terms correctly when communicating your understanding, particularly in assessments. Use the quizlet flashcards or other tools such as learn, scatter, space race, speller and test to help you master the vocabulary.
This activity, prepared by TES, will help you better understand the relationship between temperatures, precipitation and specific biomes.
Climate plays an important role in the development of biomes. Robert Whittaker, an American ecologist, plotted rainfall vs. temperature for points all over the globe on a single graph (see below). He then looked at what biomes had developed at those sites, and was able to group the different biomes according to mean annual temperature and precipitation, as the shaded areas in the graph below indicate.
Note that in Whittaker's diagram the temperature axis is reversed; that is temperature goes DOWN as you move to the right. Theoretically, if you know the average temperature and precipitation for a site, you should be able to predict what biome will develop there.
Ecosystems are studied by measuring biotic and abiotic factors—how can you know in advance which of these factors are significant to the study?
Ride the rapids with Bill Nye in the "Rivers and Streams" episode. Most rivers start high in mountains or hills. Rain, snow, fog and melting glaciers make little trickles or "rills" of water.
Bill's heating up and chilling out in the "Deserts" episode. About 20% of the Earth is a desert. Deserts are places that get very little precipitation (rain or snow) each year, and that makes them extremely dry.
Satellite-based passive microwave images of the sea ice have provided a reliable tool for continuously monitoring changes in the Arctic ice since 1979. Every summer the Arctic ice cap melts down to what scientists call its "minimum" before colder weather begins to cause ice cover to increase. The ice parameters derived from satellite ice concentration data that are most relevant to climate change studies are sea ice extent and sea ice area. This graph displays the area of the minimum sea ice coverage each year from 1979 through 2013. In 2013, the Arctic minimum sea ice covered an area of 4.704 million square kilometers.
Paul Andersen explains the differences between an r and a K selected species. He starts with a brief description of population growth noting the importance of; r or growth rate, N or number of individuals in the population, and K the carrying capacity. He describes three different survivorship curves found in organisms. He lists the characteristics of r-selected species like bacteria and K-selected species like humans.
In the world of ecology, the only constant is change - but change can be good. Today Hank explains ecological succession and how ecological communities change over time to become beautiful, biodiverse mosaics.
Paul Andersen describes the process of ecological succession. During this process life reestablished itself after a disturbance. During primary success all of the material is removed including the soil. For example during a volcanic eruption all traces of life are removed. However during secondary success the soil remains intact. An example of secondary success is wildfires.
Succession, disturbances and the difference between man-made and natural disturbances and how land owners can use disturbance practices to mimic nature.


Here is a simple explanation of Bitcoin: Bitcoin is digital money on the internet. It works like online banking without a bank.
You can use Bitcoin for anything money is used for as long as the other entity accepts Bitcoin. In other words, Bitcoin is a way to transfer value between any two entities for any reason.
Any one can run the software and contribute to the Bitcoin network.
The software and transactions use a lot of encryption. This is why Bitcoin is called a “crypto” “currency”… get it?
Get a digital wallet to store bitcoin.
Create a “bitcoin address” to receive bitcoins.
Transfer funds in or out of your wallet using bitcoin addresses.
That said, Coinbase is an all-in-one platform that lets you do all 3 steps above in one place.
Coinbase aside, there are a number of different wallets you can use, exchanges you can trade on, and other cryptocurrencies you can buy with Bitcoin.
Check out TREZOR for a wallet, Ethereum and Ripple for alternatives to Bitcoin (altcoins), and Bittrex, Kraken, and Binance for other exchanges.
It is useful to understand that Bitcoin is distributed and decentralized. In other words, it isn’t controlled by a central entity like a bank or government, it is controlled by computer algorithms running on computers across the world (everyone who hosts the blockchain hosts the program).
Because Bitcoin is based on code and is distributed and decentralized it creates a “trustless” system (where any two people can do a secure financial transaction without having to trust each other or a intermediary).
Bitcoin and blockchain were created by Satoshi Nakamoto (an anonymous group/person) in 2008. It was officially released in 2009.
Bitcoin began trading in 2010.
In the early days Bitcoin traded for as little as a penny, but it was very hard to access.
Over time Bitcoin has become more and more popular, and the price has gradually risen over time in a volatile pattern full of quick rises and big falls.
Some people hold Bitcoin as an investment, but the market is VERY volatile and quick paced.
If we think of Bitcoin as the Amazon of cryptocurrency, then we can say Bitcoin has gone through at least 5 tech bubbles since 2010 when Bitcoin trading began.
There is no need to take on much risk if you use Bitcoin as a currency and covert it back to dollars regularly (via Coinbase for example), but if you invest in Bitcoin… make sure to familiarize yourself with the risks and invest responsibly.
Bottomline: Bitcoin is a distributed, decentralized, and trustless blockchain-based financial system that you can use as digital money on the internet. You can run a copy of the software and play round with apps, or you can make your life easy by using Coinbase. But remember, if you invest in it, be careful and consider the risks.
That is all, feel free to ask follow up questions below or to thumb through our site for more information.


In C/C++, why are globals and static variables initialized to default values?
Why not leave it with just garbage values? Are there any special reasons for this?
Security: leaving memory alone would leak information from other processes or the kernel.
Efficiency: the values are useless until initialized to something, and it's more efficient to zero them in a block with unrolled loops. The OS can even zero freelist pages when the system is otherwise idle, rather than when some client or user is waiting for the program to start.
Reproducibility: leaving the values alone would make program behavior non-repeatable, making bugs really hard to find.
Elegance: it's cleaner if programs can start from 0 without having to clutter the code with default initializers.
It doesn't, in a sense. The very first stack frame page at each level (i.e., every new page added to the stack) does receive zero values. The "garbage", or "uninitialized" values that subsequent function instances at the same stack level see are really the previous values left by other method instances of your own program and its library.
There might be a quadratic (or whatever) runtime performance penalty associated with initializing auto (function locals) to anything. A function might not use any or all of a large array, say, on any given call, and it could be invoked thousands or millions of times. The initialization of statics and globals, OTOH, only needs to happen once.
Because with the proper cooperation of the OS, 0 initializing statics and globals can be implemented with no runtime overhead.
Think about it, in the static realm you can't tell always for sure something is indeed initialized, or that main has started. There's also a static init and a dynamic init phase, the static one first right after the dynamic one where order matters.
If you didn't have zeroing out of statics then you would be completely unable to tell in this phase for sure if anything was initialized AT ALL and in short the C++ world would fly apart and basic things like singletons (or any sort of dynamic static init) would simple cease to work.
The answer with the bulletpoints is enthusiastic but a bit silly. Those could all apply to nonstatic allocation but that isn't done (well, sometimes but not usually).
In C, statically-allocated objects without an explicit initializer are initialized to zero (for arithmetic types) or a null pointer (for pointer types). Implementations of C typically represent zero values and null pointer values using a bit pattern consisting solely of zero-valued bits (though this is not required by the C standard). Hence, the bss section typically includes all uninitialized variables declared at file scope (i.e., outside of any function) as well as uninitialized local variables declared with the static keyword.
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Why are global variables always initialized to '0', but not local variables?
Why are static variables auto-initialized to zero?
Are global variables always initialized to zero in C?
Why global variables in C are initialized to zero while local ones are not?
Default initialization of C++ Member arrays?
Should constructor initialize all the data members of the class?


Lately, I've been perusing Plauger's "The Standard C Library" again with interest.
Well, it occurred to me that I'd like to examine the design of other language's standard libraries that might be particularly noteworthy for any variety of reasons: how the library might make interesting use of language (including module) features, what the libraries might include or exclude in a noteworthy manner, how the library chops up the world in terms of what is abstract and what is concrete, what is built-in to the language and what is relegated to a library routine, etc.
Needless to say, almost every programming language has a some library or another, far too many to profitably examine. So I'm looking for some particular exemplary samples, and samples of standard libraries, not samples of just nifty languages.
I'll throw in that due to the nature of the exercise, fairly stellar library documentation ranks pretty highly, if not an absolute prerequisite.
For influence, it would be hard to beat Stepanov and Musser's STL.
The Haskell 98 prelude and standard libraries are a good example of idiomatic Squiggol-like and monadic coding.
Is there any interesting, quality expository treatment of the design of the Haskell prelude?
I'd exercise some caution regarding the standard Haskell 98 Prelude. At small scales it is, if memory serves, written for idiomatic clarity and simplicity rather than performance, and differs from the (more efficient) code you get by default when using Prelude functions in a program compiled by GHC.
At larger scales it has some less-than-ideal design choices, sometimes as poorly-considered simplifications, sometimes from retaining decisions made for older versions of Haskell or ancestor languages, etc.
In other words, it's nice to read as Haskell, but not as much as a library.
Scala's standard library is very intertwined with its language. Not just the standard library, most libraries designed specifically for Scala will often heavily leverage even its most advanced features.
How to find the std Scala library docs?
I have the slightly outdated 2.8.0.RC1. Under doc, there is a "manual" in .pdf and .html form, but it appears to tell me nothing I want to know. Is there an official Scala standard library and a central, organized repository for the library?
Most of the documentation that a library user would need to know is under Scala doc (as in Java, embedded in the code, extracted to HTML with a tool). Otherwise, there are smatterings of documentation in the form of articles, e.g., the architecture of the Scala collection API is over on Artima.
as "fairly stellar library documentation"
Any documentation system written in 2010 that doesn't have some mechanism for allowing people to post examples of how to use the library is passe'. The Scala documentation is typical programmer documentation: reams of what something does, not how to use it. At least Microsoft put effort into LINQ and provided documentation on how to use the DSEL.
Also, Alex Buckley ripped one of the Scaladoc developers on their IDE support at PLATEAU 2010, and said he filed two bugs before the poor guy's presentation. The gist of Alex's complaint was Scala was calling their system "modern" yet it still had the same IDE integration issues as Javadoc. From the perspective of most real world developers, basing a design on how people actually check and read documentation (e.g., in the IDE and not in a browser) is important. Scala does allow some documentation to be viewed in the IDE, but it does not gaurantee the version of the documentation matches the version of the library being used.
I don't think documentation is not included in the library zip, maybe it should be (otherwise another solution is needed to avoid version drift).
I always thought that the IDE is the place to view documentation, it just doesn't make sense to view it anywhere else. Not only that, but you should be able to easily access examples, find stuff, and ask questions, all from your IDE. Also, your users are the best source of documentation for your library, adding and editing docs should be as easy as wiki.
Any documentation system written in 2010 that doesn't have some mechanism for allowing people to post examples of how to use the library is passe'.
About IDE-based vs. browser-based views of API documentation. That's actually two different (albeit related) topics.
From what I've read, the browser-based paradigm is not the main theme of the paper  presented at PLATEAU (rather, cognitive aspects, ie. how developers benefit from precise, navigable type info displayed in a readable manner).
The author who presented at PLATEAU had a more broad goal of simply making developer's lives better. Part of his goal in attending the PLATEAU workshop was to get feedback and ideas to improve Scala's documentation and make jumping into Scala easier - he was proud of the design of Scala and wanted more people to use the language and enjoy a development environment as good as the language. While the paper was indeed very focused, he did cover a lot of ground in the Q&A session afterward in terms of fielding ideas from the audience and also discussing stuff he'd been looking at.
Buckley's comments were not some ad-hoc attack at the author's work, by the way. They only came after somebody asked why the presentation only showed documentation in a web browser.
I have to say, though, that islands of documentation systems is the biggest problem today. CMU has developed dozens of good ideas for documentation systems but there is no systematic, modular way to glue these things together (both from the library writer's perspective of the documentation, and the reader's perspective of peeling away layers of detail and creating a lightweight doc that fits their reading/browsing style). These islands develop primarily because you need novelty to get published, and nobody funds "integration of concerns" as a genuine human factors concern. It's B.S., but that is how things are.
Because it's designed as a fresh start by die-hard C++er's. E.g. std.algorithm, std.range.
D is another "systems programming" language, so IIRC from casual inspection, it doesn't attempt to just absorb the entire computing universe in a "standard" library like JVM and CLR based languages (not to mention "scripting" languages).
I recall reading a paper on range-based vs. iterator-based collection and algorithm libraries. I don't recall if this paper directly referenced D, but D may present an interesting comparison with C++'s STL, not to mention comparing D's take on other "typical" standard libraries with ANSI C's.
In this day and age of huge so-called "standard" libraries (we need a new name for these Stone Henge scale monoliths), I'm as interested in what is left out of the language and its library standard as in what is included.
Iterators Must Go, by Andrei Alexandrescu, who's one of the designers of D's stdlib.
Anecdotally, I've used ranges modelled after D's in one of my hobby languages - with nice results. As long as you stick to forward ranges, they're basically equivalent to plain old iterators, so there are no surprises, and the code for library functions like map is the same. Then you can add bidirectional ranges and other stuff on a per-collection basis as desired.
I'll give a broad overview and go into detail as I feel necessary.
Database management, ranging from a superset of "migrations" API to "query management" API (aka ORM). Examples include Ruby on Rails Migrations and SQL Server Management Objects (SMO), ApexSQL's API, Entity Framework (ORM), Hibernate/NHibernate (ORM).
State machine definition and generation, in particular for embedded systems; example include Boost::FSM, Boost::StateChart, Ragel State Machine Compiler, Samek's Quantum Framework, etc.
There are more I am interested in, but that's a good starter. Scott, if you have any feedback, it would be appreciated.
The perennial example of a strong standard library would be Smalltalk 80. The library is covered in depth in Goldberg et al's Smalltalk 80 manual.
Good old "Smalltalk the Language" by Goldberg. I'll certainly take another peak. IIRC, over the years when I've peaked at Squeak and a few commercial ST's in the early '90s, the class browsers seemed to indicate some kind of additional package-style scheme that I don't recall in the original ST-80.
In particular, the System.Editor namespace (or whatever it is that governs atomic edits) and the Monticello package for handling versioning. This approach to versioning is fairly unique to Squeak, and there are good discussions on the Squeak mailing list about this feature. It is one of those libraries that as an outsider you probably couldn't understand, or simply discount, just by looking at it at first glance.
I just saw that the Pharo By Example 2 book home page has a draft chapter about Monticello that you might like reading.
I recall eagerly reading the EuLisp standard a few decades ago. Will definitely look at Goo. A concise 19-pages is just too enticing to pass up.
If only reflection APIs where as useful as this one.
Mirrors: Design Principles for Meta-level Facilities of Object-Oriented Programming Languages. Phil Wadler wrote on his blog about the design: "One of the best OO design papers I have read. I'm convinced, mirrors are the way to reflect; I'm particularly struck by their importance for capability-based security."
In addition, purely declarative logic reflection has been baked directly into programming languages, such as Maude and Archon, that have a more mathematically rigorous definition for how they work.
1) ad-hoc set of primitives; how will we ever know when we have defined the perfect metaobject protocol for intercession, introspection, etc. concepts? Having used the CLOS, I can tell you that there are times when it just doesn't quite do what you want or have the right features, and so you have to bend your model to CLOS rather than use CLOS to naturally describe your model. The essential point captured by Clavel is, How will we know when it is time to stop?
2) different software needs different constraints on reflection; how will we gaurantee correctness when something like CLOS allows us to do whatever we want? In a pure logic environment, we can reason statically about the equations and say definitively that we're abusing such and such. CLOS doesn't even gaurantee portability across Common Lisp implementations.
Finally, you might want to look at Marcus Denker and Eric Tanter's work on Squeak and Pharo.
I'm not sure the CL MOP is a "standard library"
In general, I'd readily classify Common Lisp as a "negative example" of a "standard library" well endowed language. Not that I don't have much familiarity with and affection for CL!
I'm seeking language definitions with a some notion of a minimal "core language" (this may be highly variable) and then relegation of a high degree of "required, pragmatic functionality" to one or more "standard libraries."
Admittedly, I have not looked at it in several years, but when I started using O'Caml, the standard library was rather thin, and often implemented very naively. For example, map over lists (or something similar) was not written tail-recursively. As a result, it would blow the stack on lists of a few thousand elements.
That's at least one way how I define "interesting".
For example, I think SMO (SQL Server Management Objects) API is awful. It really only supports a limited set of use cases, due to the fact that cloning breaks invariants. A more functional, stateless API would make more sense for manipulating SQL Server configuration.
Similarly, ApexSQL isn't very modular and it uses very poor control partitioning. Furthermore, there is no hook in the API into using the front-end GUI to visualize the differences in the diff'ing API.
And when I mentioned object-oriented finite element method libraries, I was suggesting something one could Google and read about to learn about the problem domain and solutions proposed.
After a negative example has been given, how about a nought example?
J does not seem to have any need for a standard library, because the language itself abounds in operators. They do have the so called â€œphrasesâ€, written in J, but this is rather a collection of (supposedly) good solutions to a random set of problems than a standard library, and is not a part of the language definition (which only consists of a Dictionary).
So, if there is anything in this example related to your question, it is perhaps asking another one, such as â€œWhen and why a standard library is not needed in a language?â€.
What is a standard library?
I think it's important to ask ourselves what should be a language's "standard library"? For example, imho, to include some "stdxml" among a language's "standard" library will usually display (not always) some weakness in the language definition (compared to "C" or Java, just to be prosaic).
By comparison, to use a hypothetical Lisp as an example, I can imagine a library into which "with-open-file" and "format" might be stuffed. Or some ML'ish language might have a "vector" library into which "vec-map" and "vec-foldr" might be stuffed. Or perhaps there would be some higher order abstraction - who knows? That's the fun part!
I suppose one obvious and major question is: what language features _can_ be expressed and implemented in a library as opposed to the "core" language? And does it ultimately matter to programmers, aside from language mavens. And if so, then why?
The primitives themselves will control how much composition we can perform to build new concepts; consider Lisp as a great example of primitives with unlimited potential for expansion. Yes, you have to learn to "think in lists" to do it, but it's there; and the uniformity of the primitives (everything's a list already) makes this incredibly powerful. C is in a similar boat with pointers; you can construct all manner of data structures and algorithms using pointers and primitive types, albeit without much of a safety net in many cases.
C is also obviously a little bit different from Lisp in that it doesn't have uniformity across its primitives; there are values, and then pointers to values; this touches on orthogonality. The more orthogonal your primitives are, generally speaking, the fewer you need; and the fewer you have, the more powerful they tend to be. Tcl is another great example of this philosophy in action, in my opinion. Again, orthogonality helps immensely in terms of what type of composition we can do with the built-in language concepts.
I think these three elements comprise the key factors that affect the library/core-language distinction in most cases. If you can compose the core elements of the language richly, why add the composed concepts directly to the core? The library is the sensible spot to put them. If you can't, on the other hand, you have little choice; if you can't express a concept in the language itself using a composition of its primitive concepts, you're stuck building it into the core language itself.
Of course there may be corner cases where a standard-library concept becomes ubiquitous (or has unique requirements) such that it makes sense for optimization reasons to stuff it into the language core. I think that's something that historically happened for strings a long time ago, for instance (languages without true string primitives notwithstanding).
A standard library, as I understand it, is a library intended to be common and ubiquitous enough that language implementors might as well place it in the language standard - possibly in order to offer dedicated optimizations or integrate syntactic sugar for it. For example, natural numbers are modeled in the standard library for some languages (Maude, Charity), via Peano logic - but receive syntactic sugar (you can use '3' rather than 's s s z') and in source may be represented via decimal numbers... and, under the hood, they are represented using machine integers. Lists and list-comprehensions and monads have received such dedicated attentions in Haskell. We can use [1, 2, 3] instead of 1:2:3:. Strings similarly receive dedicated attention in many languages that model them in libraries.
In my own designs, I've given some thought towards representing the standard list under-the-hood in terms of finger-tree ropes, despite modeling it in terms of the common recursive structure (head:tail | nil). This would force developers to use standard foldl, foldr, sort, and map functions for ideal performance, but would also allow the list to serve as the data structure for linear data - as a deque, for large strings, et cetera.
For example, imho, to include some "stdxml" among a language's "standard" library will usually display (not always) some weakness in the language definition (compared to "C" or Java, just to be prosaic).
I don't understand why including an XML processing API shows a weakness in the language definition. Many Lisp shops I know of have custom, hand-rolled XML processing APIs not written by library authors but simply hackers... and they suffer for it. Reams of code, and you can't just hire a random J. Lisp Hacker off the street who knows your XML API or whatever.
XML should be a standard API. Interestingly, half of the Scala design team was split on whether Scala should support XML. The dude who did the API as a grad student got ripped by half the team, kind of made fun of (direct comments from him, made publicly [edit: see, for example, the Acknowledgements section of Burak Emir's scala xml manual). But he was dead on accurate in the need for the feature and API.
There are also a lot of different ways to process XML, some more cumbersome than others.
Moreover, you're missing a very basic idea. Communication benefits from a standard encoding, so that every language can speak a common encoding and then just work from there with the actual spec. Sure, that encoding might not be ideal (e.g., compressibility) in all circumstances, but it doesn't have to be. Human time is more important. And you really only need one default standard encoding, and if you really have a bottleneck (e.g., inflation or deflation) , you can develop custom ones.
Scala's XML support was rare as it went straight into the language with its compiler module, so it needed to be in the core library otherwise the compiler would break.
You might have misunderstood what I meant by "standard."
I haven't chimed in too much on the philosophical stuff, but by "standard library" I roughly mean a group of modules (packages, compilation units, etc.) that formally accompany the language definition.
My own interests do tend a) toward the plural, hence my above critique of CL's "the library" approach; b) toward the minimal, relying on both language expressive power and compiler prowess to author high performing and highly functional 3rd party libraries (these may enjoy status for some time in some communities as de facto standards) for oodles of unanticipated future problem domains; and c) toward the separable and optional, for example not having to include "stdio.h" in some embedded application.
Of course, I imagine there are classes of programming languages where these criteria don't apply well.
And I realize some systems dont have "standard out" and "standard in", and even fewer might have "console in" and "console out".
I just think there are standard semantics, standard syntax, and standard pragmatics, and the ideal language does all three.
I think if you're interested in this approach, then you should dive deep into Maude and Scheme. I know you seem familiar with Scheme already. Maude is especially interesting, since it is designed in layers. e.g. OO-Maude builds on Core-Maude. David's comments are also an example of how interesting Maude can be.


There is lot of unsettling information when it comes to the Church of Scientology, all of which is explored in Alex Gibney's latest documentary, "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief." But there's one story that was left out of Gibney's film, which premiered this past Sunday on HBO: Where is Michele "Shelly" Miscavige?
Miscavige is the wife of the Church's current leader, David Miscavige, and member of the Church's Sea Organization (Sea Org). According to Lawrence Wright's book on which Gibney's film is based, she disappeared in June 2006 and has not been seen publicly since August 2007.
Per Wright and journalist Tony Ortega, while David Miscavige was away in 2006, Shelly Miscavige appointed positions in the Chuch's Org Board. It was a task her husband had been struggling with and had reportedly thrown "maddening and relentless" tirades about. In Going Clear, Wright revealed that when David Miscavige returned home, Shelly's mood had noticeably changed, according to her brother-in-law, John Brousseau. Soon after she disappeared from public view.
After defecting from the Church in June of 2013, Remini filed a missing person report on the leader's wife. Hours after filing the report, the Los Angeles Police Department ruled it "unfounded."
"This is just harassment," the Church said in a statement at the time. "It is a publicity stunt cooked up by a small band of unemployed fanatics who live on the fringe of the Internet."
The LAPD did not comment to Wright about Miscavige's whereabouts.
While Wright reported on Shelly Miscavige's disappearance in his book, it is not mentioned in Gibney's documentary. At a press screening of the film last week, the director addressed the omission saying, "The Shelly Miscavige story, had we profiled different kinds of people, might have made it into the final film." Although Gibney had hours of extra footage that he ended up cutting -- which he said he would ideally like to release with HBO in the future -- the director told Business Insider that none of the filmed material involved the Church leader's wife.
Ortega echoed this to The Huffington Post over email on Monday, writing that he believes Shelly Miscavige was left out of the film so viewers could walk away with two important questions: "Why does Scientology still have tax exempt status, and how can Tom Cruise remain silent?"
The journalist, whose reporting has broken news and revealed details about Miscavige's possible location, added that even if she were found, he doesn't believe she'd willingly leave the Church. "Her story would take a considerable amount of time to tell, and ultimately, does she really want to be rescued? I'm doubtful about that."
While Miscavige's whereabouts are still a public mystery, Brousseau had told Ortega that she's been at the secretive Church of Spiritual Technology headquarters in Hemet, California. Sources have told Ortega that she is working there, archiving Hubbard's printed words on steel plates.
In an email to The Huffington Post on Tuesday, a representative for the Church of Scientology said that claims about Shelly Miscavige's disappearance are false and that "the notion that Mrs. Miscavige is being held against her will is a conspiracy theory."
The Church's statement continued saying, "Mrs. Miscavige’s whereabouts and well-being were confirmed, despite the calculated harassment she suffered by those who knowingly made false reports to law enforcement to the contrary. The attempt to malign Mr. and Mrs. Miscavige is ill intended and the reason this false allegation isn’t in the film is because the story is entirely false, defamatory and without merit." The email directed readers to a Reuters story about the missing person report.
"The only reason the claims about her are not in the film is because we communicated to Alex Gibney that these claims were provably false," the statement concluded.
"Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison on Belief" is available on HBO Go.
This piece has been updated to included comment from the Church of Scientology.


How Will Oracle Handle Sun's Open-Source Commitments?
An open-source community expert isn't convinced that Oracle, the prospective new owner of MySQL, Java and a host of other open-source development projects, will put the same kind of commitment into the community that Sun Microsystems does.
With the April 20 acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle, there is an impending change of guard involving the open-source community and its largest enterprise supporter.
Sun has harbored more open-source projects and developers-and had developed a larger outside community-than any other mainstream IT company. Thus, there is a great deal of trepidation about what changes the new boss will make in innovative IT enterprises.
Most people contacted by eWEEK on this topic said they believe that wholesale changes are in the cards, no matter what. A number of MySQL database administrators revealed a mixed bag of opinions on this topic April 23 to eWEEK.
High-visibility open-source projects such as MySQL, Java, OpenSolaris, GlassFish and NetBeans have been written about often in the week following the announcement of the acquisition, which is due to close in the summer of 2009. But not much has been said about a dozen or so smaller open-source projects (see list on the next page) being hatched at Sun Labs-projects that could very well one day grow up to be a Java or MySQL.
Click here to read more about Oracle's acquisition of Sun.
So what's going to happen to all this R&D?
"So far, Oracle has been fairly quiet about their intentions regarding Sun's open-source projects," OpenSUSE Community Manager and former Linux Foundation evangelist Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier of Novell wrote eWEEK via e-mail. "Given Oracle's history in open source, I'm skeptical that the company would continue the same level of involvement in promoting open source that Sun has pursued.
"In the next few months, I don't think much is going to change. However, I don't see Oracle continuing OpenSolaris as actively as Sun has, and I'm not sure how this would affect Java. I would like to think that Oracle would continue moving Java forward as an open-source project, but for the most part, Oracle has largely been a participant in FOSS [free and open-source software] projects where it suits the company's interests and not so much a leader in FOSS."
Where it's strategic for Oracle to continue a project as open source, or simply too controversial to discontinue, Oracle will continue to participate, Brockmeier said.
"In the end, though, I think this will be a net loss for the community in terms of contributions. My gut feeling is that involvement in projects like GNOME will decline," Brockmeier said.
How trusted, in general, is Oracle by the community? Its biggest connections have been through Java, OpenSolaris and Red Hat.
"Generally, I think Oracle is viewed fairly neutrally," Brockmeier said. "They contribute to some projects and haven't been actively hostile to open source, but Oracle is pretty quiet most of the time. It's certainly not the first company you think of, or even the 10th, when you hear 'open source.'"
Oracle's "Unbreakable Linux" strategy is not encouraging for the prospect of the company maintaining Sun's existing levels of FOSS contributions, Brockmeier said.
"It seems the company is willing to contribute where it's absolutely necessary, but it's also not interested in doing some of the long-range heavy lifting that many FOSS vendors do to move open-source forward," Brockmeier said. "Maybe an infusion of Sun DNA will encourage Oracle to step up and be a more active player in FOSS. If not, it's a net loss for the community."
There's a lot of watching and waiting going on.
"IBM buying Sun seemed like a mixed bag, but likely a net positive for the community. I think there's some skepticism that Oracle will step up and become a more active FOSS contributor, but one hopes that Sun's FOSS commitments will live on after the deal," Brockmeier said.


It can be difficult to measure the cost of IT failures. For example, how do you measure outages such as those that recently hit Amazon Web Services or Sony's Playstation Network?
CA Technologies is the latest to attempt to calculate IT downtime, with a survey of 200 companies across North America and Europe intended to calculate the losses incurred from an IT outage. What it found was more than $26.5 billion in revenue is lost each year from IT downtime, which translates to roughly $150,000 is lost annually for each business.
The survey also found that IT outages are frequent and lengthy, and they cause substantial damage to a company's reputation, staff morale, and customer loyalty. And they can rattle the confidence in new technologies such as cloud computing.
On average, the businesses surveyed said they suffered 14 hours of IT downtime per year. Half of those said IT outages damage their reputation and 18 percent described the impact on their reputation as "very damaging."
Headlines about IT failures certainly don't help. Northrop Grumman, for example, experienced a public relations nightmare when it had to pay nearly $5 million to the Commonwealth of Virginia for a network outage last summer that lasted a week and affected multiple state agencies.
Despite those costs and risks, it is still surprising that 56 percent of enterprises in North America and 30 percent in Europe don't have a formal and comprehensive disaster recovery policy. Yet 87 percent of businesses indicated that failure to recover data would be damaging to the business and 23 percent said it would be "disastrous."
One of the primary obstacles that are preventing organizations from investing in a disaster recovery policy is cost, Steve Fairbanks, vice president of product management at CA Technologies, said in an interview. The other issue is the daunting complexity of implementing a comprehensive IT preparedness and recovery plan, which CA Technology provides.
"A lot of times companies don't fully understand the cost of not preparing, so as a result they are not willing to spend dollars to ensure disaster doesn't occur or they can recover quickly from a disaster," he said. "Some smaller companies traditionally don't fully understand the breadth of technology and how to implement it to the spectrum of data loss issues that may come across their organization, because of cost and complexity."
Of the 200 companies surveyed, small enterprises lost, on average, more than $55,000 in revenue due to IT failures each year, while midsize companies lost more than $91,000 and large companies lost more than $1,000,000. A data centre outage by itself can cost an average of $5,600 per minute.
Businesses should diversify their data and IT for better security, much like a diversified personal financial portfolio, Fairbanks suggested. A recent example is Amazon's cloud failure, where companies that relied solely on the cloud for their IT infrastructure were hurt the most. Instead, companies should utilize a hybrid solution that uses a combination of local and remote components of their IT infrastructure, such as in-house storage and cloud-based services.
"It speaks to a hybrid data protection need, and at CA we strongly believe our customers should consider not only local protection for fast granular recovery with Exchange SQL and other applications, but also protecting data offsite in the cloud or even tape to ensure that in the event of complete site disaster they can recover," Fairbanks said.


How to use the cube? The cube formula,cube method,cube functiones,cube guide here: The Horadric Cube is a quest item obtained in Act II which can be used to complete several quests. In addition to that task, it can be also used as a permanent backpack to store additional items and create new ones.
Place the Horadric Cube in your inventory. Notice it only takes up 2x2 slots.
Place items into the Horadric Cube by picking them up, dragging them over the Horadric Cube, and left click on the Horadric Cube. You will hear a sound when the item is placed into the Cube. You can also pick the Horadric Cube, drag it over a large item you want to pick up, and left click on that item to place it into the Cube. You can also open up the Cube by right clicking on it like a Tome. Drag items from your inventory into the Cube.
Items will be Identified by Cain while inside the Horadric Cube.
Store resistance Jewelry in your Cube. When facing a problem Lightning, Cold, Fire or Poison monster, open the Cube and get out your resistance jewelry.
You can use the Horadric Cube's magical powers to Transmute items into a new item. Place the items into the Cube and hit the Transmute Button.
The Horadric Cube can be used to create Crafted Items.
Listed below are the current recipes for the Horadric Cube. Simply place the items in the first half of the equation into the Cube and hit the Transmute Button to produce the item in the second half of the equation.
Rare Items can only have one socket. You cannot add sockets to items that don't normally have sockets. You can not use this on a Rare with one socket. You can only add one socket to a zero socket Rare Item.
This formula has the possibility of creating a higher quality Rare Item than the following formula. ilvl = int(.66 * clvl) + int(.66 * ilvl) That is, the ilvl will be equal to .66 times your clvl (rounded down) plus .66 times the input item's ilvl (also rounded down).
You can use this formula to get another chance at a Rare Item of the same type. ilvl = int(.4 * clvl) + int(.4 * ilvl) Player level matters. This formula will not work on items larger than 3x2.
You can use this formula to get a Life Stealing sword. ilvl = 30. The sword will always have the "of the Leech" suffix (4-5% Life Stolen Per Hit) and has a chance at getting a prefix as well. The type of sword is retained. For example, a champion sword as input will give a champion sword as output.
Save any unwanted rings for the chance of getting a high quality amulet. ilvl = int(.75 * clvl). This means at Character Level 65, ilvl = 48. So any Magical Prefix or Suffix with a level of 48 and below might be available. Since +2 to Skills amulets have a level of 90, it's not possible to create a +2 to skills Amulet with this formula.
Save any unwanted amulets for the chance of getting a high quality ring. ilvl = int(.75 * clvl). This means at Character Level 65, ilvl = 48. So any Magical Prefix or Suffix with a level of 48 and below might be available.
Use this formula to upgrade your growing masses of low quality Gems into something more useful.
For users of Bows that are in need of ammunition. Random quantity of Arrows produced.
For users of Crossbows that are in need of ammunition. Random quantity of Bolts produced.
Mainly for Amazons that are in need of Javelins to use with skills. Any class/type of Spear can be used.
Any class/type of Axe can be used (i.e. magic/socketed/non magical axe/etc). Random quantity of throwing axes produced.
You can use this formula to get another chance at a Magic Item of the same type. The ilvl = ilvl. This means to use 100% of the ilvl of the input item. It's important to note the difference between "the ilvl is set to a fixed number" like what happens in some recipes and "the ilvl of the output is exactly the same as the ilvl of the input" as is the case here. So if you're cubing for +skills Grand Charms, for example, you want to use Charms starting from late Nightmare, not ones that dropped in the Normal Blood Moor. You can use this formula (with an Amulet) to create a +2 Skills Amulet. And you cannot Gamble one before Character Level 84. Be warned however, that the chances of getting that on an Amulet might be very low (considering everything is available) and it might take a lot of tries. Rare Items cannot be used with this formula to create new Rare Items. You can also use this on Charms and Jewels.
Use this formula to create a Poison Resistance Ring. The Jade Ring has a random percentage (21-30%) of Poison Resistance. You may also receive an additional Magic Suffix. ilvl=30.
Use this formula to create a Fire Resistance Ring. The Garnet Ring has a random percentage (21-30%) of Fire Resistance. You may also receive an additional Magic Suffix. ilvl=30.
ilvl=30. The shield will always have the "of Spikes" suffix (Attacker Takes Damage of 4-6) and has a chance at getting a prefix as well. The type of shield is retained, and any type of shield (including paladin shields and necromancer shrunken heads) works as input.
The following Rune upgrade formulae will only work for Single-Player, Open, or Ladder Characters. They will not work for Normal Characters on the Realms.
Use this formula if you are in need of instant healing and/or mana. Any grade of Health/Mana Potion can be used. You can also use chipped skulls.
Use this formula if you are in need of instant full healing and/or mana. Any grade of Health/Mana Potion can be used. You can also use skulls in the place of Gems.
This takes a socketed weapon and makes it a magic socketed weapon with a random number of sockets. This allows you to get new magic bonuses on an otherwise non magical weapon. The original weapon properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created. ilvl = 30. It gets 1-2 sockets.
This adds sockets to a magic weapon. The original magic weapon properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created. If you use this formula with a weapon that is not normally socketed such as a Javelin, this recipe will create a new magical weapon without any sockets. ilvl=25 magic weapon with 1-2 sockets.
This adds sockets to a magic weapon. The original magic weapon properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created. If you use this formula with a weapon that is not normally socketed such as a Javelin, this recipe will create a new magical weapon without any sockets. ilvl=30 magic weapon with 1-2 sockets.
The number of sockets created will vary. The item must be normal and unsocketed. Low-quality items and superior items do not work. The item gets 1-4 sockets, randomly. However, the number of sockets is then restricted by the maximum number of sockets that base item with that ilvl can have. The chance to get X sockets in most armor is 1/4 (I.E: Mage plate has a max of 3 sockets, so it has a 2/4 [1/2] chance to get 3 sockets). The base of 6 was used in the ratios for all the above mentioned areas.
The number of sockets created will vary. The item must be normal and unsocketed. Low-quality items and superior items do not work. The item gets 1-6 sockets, randomly. However, the number of sockets is then restricted by the maximum number of sockets that base item with that ilvl can have. For example, if you have an item that can only have 2 sockets, there's a 5/6 chance of getting 2 sockets and a 1/6 chance of getting 1 socket.
The number of sockets created will vary. The item must be normal and unsocketed. Low-quality items and superior items do not work. The item gets 1-3 sockets, randomly. However, the number of sockets is then restricted by the maximum number of sockets that base item with that ilvl can have. For example, if you have an item that can only have 2 sockets, there's a 2/3 chance of getting 2 sockets and a 1/3 chance of getting 1 socket.
The number of sockets created will vary. The item must be normal and unsocketed. Low-quality items and superior items do not work. The item gets 1-4 sockets, randomly. However, the number of sockets is then restricted by the maximum number of sockets that base item with that ilvl can have. For example, if you have an item that can only have 2 sockets, there's a 3/4 chance of getting 2 sockets and a 1/4 chance of getting 1 socket.
ilvl = 1. That is, regardless of what the ilvl was beforehand, it will be set to 1.
This formula changes the base item type from the normal to exceptional version. For example an Axe is turned into a Cleaver. This does NOT convert the item to the Exceptional Unique version of the Unique Item. Unique item bonuses remain the same; only the item it's based on is upgraded. This can be used to upgrade Ethereal Items also. They will continue to be Ethereal after they are upgraded. Also if the item is socketed, then jewels or runes and their mods will also remain.
This formula changes the base item type from the normal to exceptional version. For example Quilted Armor is turned into Ghost Armor. This does NOT convert the item to the Exceptional Unique version of the Unique Item. Unique item bonuses remain the same; only the item it's based on is upgraded. This can be used to upgrade Ethereal Items also. They will continue to be Ethereal after they are upgraded. Also if the item is socketed, then jewels or runes and their mods will also remain. Armor refers to any sort of armor, including helms, boots, belts, gloves and shields, not just body armor.
This formula changes the base item type from the exceptional to elite version. For example a Cleaver is turned into a Small Crescent. This does NOT convert the item to the Elite Unique version of the Exceptional Unique Item. Unique item bonuses remain the same; only the item it's based on is upgraded. This can be used to upgrade Ethereal Items also. They will continue to be Ethereal after they are upgraded. Also if the item is socketed, then jewels or runes and their mods will also remain.
This formula changes the base item type from the exceptional to elite version. For example Ghost Armor is turned into a Dusk Shroud. This does NOT convert the item to the Elite Unique version of the Unique Item. Unique item bonuses remain the same; only the item it's based on is upgraded. This can be used to upgrade Ethereal Items also. They will continue to be Ethereal after they are upgraded. Also if the item is socketed, then jewels or runes and their mods will also remain. Armor refers to any sort of armor, including helms, boots, belts, gloves and shields, not just body armor.
The item type is upgraded.
Use this Rune + Your Horadric Cube to repair your weapon. You cannot repair Ethereal items.
Use this Rune + Your Horadric Cube to repair your armor. You cannot repair ethereal armor.
Warning: This will destroy any gems, runes, or jewels you have socketed. This is useful if you are not happy with the gems you have socketed and you want to socket the item in another way.
You cannot repair ethereal weapons.
You cannot repair ethereal armor. Armor refers to any sort of armor, including helms, boots, belts, gloves and shields, not just body armor.


Big rigs making u-turns can cause serious, even fatal semi truck accidents. Many of these semi accidents occur on smaller highways where tractor trailers block the entire road as they turn. The possibility of a dangerous crash while making a u-turn has created questions as to whether there should be a ban on trucks making these turns.
It is a topic that has many truck accident lawyers undecided as to whether a ban would actually solve any problems or if there are other ways to look at this issue.
Why Ban Semi Truck U-Turns?
Big rigs making u-turns on smaller, often rural roadways creates a safety hazard for other vehicles traveling on the same roads. Semi truck accidents occur when other drivers unexpectedly encounter a tractor trailer blocking the road and cannot avoid hitting it. The situation is even more hazardous and semi accidents even more likely when truckers attempt their u-turns at night on roads that are either unlit or poorly lit.
There is no doubt that a big rig making a u-turn creates a dangerous situation. Some commercial carrier companies already have rules stating that their drivers cannot make u-turns. Yet many safety advocates feel that an actual law banning these turns is necessary. Still, as effective as outlawing semi truck u-turns may sound, there are others including truck accident lawyers who question if a ban would solve the issue.
Would A U-Turn Ban Prevent U-Turns?
Those who are opposed to banning semi truck u-turns to eliminate semi truck accidents caused by them have valid objections. Laws against obstructing the highways already exist, so a separate u-turn law would be repetitive and wasteful. Instead they feel the current law should be more strictly enforced to send a message that these turns can and will be penalized under obstruction statutes.
A second valid point suggests that even though drivers know these turns are dangerous and could cause semi accidents, many risk making them anyway. Given the choice of having to drive a long distance simply to turn around or making an illegal u-turn, many drivers will make the turn.
A new law threatening the same basic penalty as the existing law is not likely to discourage these drivers. Time and mileage costs money to drivers working under Hours of Service rules. An extra hour that can be avoided by making a u-turn will still be a draw to many if not most operators.
What Can Be Done About U-Turn Safety?
In the meantime, considering the fact that it is unlikely such a ban will reduce illegal u-turns, many truck accident lawyers who deal with these accident cases propose finding ways to make necessary u-turns safer. Increased trailer illumination is one proposal that would at least make trucks blocking the road easier to see.
Some industry experts argue that it would be costly to equip trucks this way. Yet doing so may save some lives if drivers are going to make the turns anyway.
Like many other long-debated issues concerning truck safety and how to reduce semi truck accidents, the argument over semi truck u-turns continues. Both sides of the debate on banning these turns make very valid points. In the end, the question asked by lawmakers, industry experts, and truck accident lawyers still remains: "What is the best solution for reducing semi accidents that occur when semi trucks make u-turns?"


Javale mcgee or tyson chandler?
Chandler shot for a way higher FG% than McGee, though McGee takes more shots per game. Also, Chandler is a terrible FT shooter at 52%, but McGee is just plain atrocious at 42%.
Despite McGee being the superior athlete, Chandler was more active on the boards, both offensively and defensively and at 24, Chandler averaged 12.4 rebounds/game. 9.3 for McGee--not bad, but for a guy with his skill set, it could be higher.
Neither big men would be confused for Marc Gasol-like playmakers, but at least Chandler can brag how he averaged 0.9assists/game. McGee does have an advantage in the steals department at 1.0/game as his long reach and wingspan must be a nightmare to deal with.
McGee is averaging 3.2 blocks/game compared to the 1.8 Chandler mustered as a 24 year-old. The turnover battle is a wash.
Points per game is where McGee gets the final edge over a younger Chandler at 11.4 vs 9.5.
So McGee is progressing better than Chandler did when he was 24 years-old. Chandler who at that time was playing with Chris Paul, might have played his best overall season then. McGee can not only match Chandler's production, but surpass and is miles away a better athlete than Chandler. Chandler ended up having to battle chronic back pain for the remainder of his NBA career. Literally, the sky is the limit for McGee (have you seen him dunk? Should've won a dunk contest already).
However, McGee, at times, has shown to be an idiot on the floor as he takes bad shots, is sloppy with the ball, plays bad defense, and just makes overall bad decisions on the court. Again, his defensive numbers are a product of his athleticism. So McGee is just another project big man for any other NBA team that is not the Wizards. The Sacramento Kings are loaded with players just like McGee. Not as athletically gifted though.
The final verdict: If I'm an NBA club that needs to win now, then Tyson Chandler is the clear choice. He's not flashy like McGee, but at least he knows how to play with an elite point guard (i.e. Chris Paul, Jason Kidd), doesn't exceed his talent like McGee who sometimes wants to play point guard (he shouldn't, by the way) and what he lacks in blocked shots, he makes up in knowing how to play defense.
Source(s): What's the deal with Tyreke Evans?
in certainty McGee is an exceedingly gifted youthful athletic midsection, in basic terms he made truly some performs that have been rather stupid and pointless. Like, showboating on a fastbreak dunk whilst his group substitute into dropping via 30, or whilst a participant shot a layup and because it substitute right into a bout to bypass interior the ring he swatted it into the third row for an obtrusive goaltend. My own well-liked substitute into whilst he substitute into attempting a hundred and twenty% to get a triple double and he could no longer even positioned up up the 5'9" Isaiah Thomas. performs likes those in basic terms stay in a single's techniques, which began this thought.
Whos better Tyson Chandler or Javale McGee?
Tyson chandler or javale mcgee?
You can't even call Javale McGee stupid anymore?
Should I pick up Marcin Gortat and drop Javale McGee?
Would you rather have LeBron and Tyson Chandler or Kevin Durant and Russ Westbrook?
More Damian Lillard Achievements After His 2019 NBA Playoffs Game-Winner? Sure!?
Damian Lillard. First Player In NBA History To Dropped 50 Points And Hit A Game-Winner In The Same NBA Playoffs Game?
BREAKING NEWS: Damian Lillard Dropped 50 Points (Portland Trailblazers Franchise Record) And A Game-Winner In The 2019 NBA Playoffs?
How did we handle the intense heat of summer before air conditioning was invented?


1. Which African mammal was once thought to have sweated blood because its skin secretes a pink fluid which protects against the sun and infections?
2. Coatis, Civets and Pottos are all examples of what?
3. What name did Sir Francis Drake give the land now known as California in 1579 ?
4. Plus or minus 50, how many confirmed kills does Rambo have in all four Rambo films?
5. In film, what is Sir Charles Lytton's nickname ?
6. To pierce, and a colour.
8. Which fictional bad guy's name means 'flight of death' or 'theft of death' ?
10. In 1945 , Hans van Meegeren was going to be charged with collaboration for selling a Vermeer painting to the Nazis. How did he avoid the heavy penalty ?
2. Mammals Coatis: The name coati is applied to any of three species of small neotropical mammals in the genus Nasua, family Procyonidae, ranging from southern Arizona to north of Argentina. They are largely insectivorous, but also eat fruit. A fourth animal, the dwarf Mountain Coati, is not a true coati, and belongs to the genus Nasuella. Genetic studies have shown that the closest relatives of the coatis are the olingos.
Civets: Civets are mammals, most of which are species in the family Viverridae. They are small, lithe-bodied, mostly arboreal members of the order Carnivora. General appearance is broadly cat-like, but the muzzle is extended and often pointed, rather like an otter or a mongoose. Civets range in length, excluding its long tail, from about 17 to 28 in (400 to 700 mm) and in weight from about 3 to 10 lb (1 to 5 kg).
Pottos: The Potto (Perodicticus potto) is a strepsirrhine primate from the Lorisidae family. It is the only species in genus Perodicticus. The name "Potto" possibly comes from the African word "pata", which means tailless ape. The Potto is also known as Bosman's Potto, after its supposed discoverer, and in some English-speaking parts of Africa it is called a Softly-softly.
3. a. New Albion New Albion was the name of the region of the Pacific Coast of North America explored by Sir Francis Drake and claimed by him for England in 1579. The name is also applied to the settlement Drake founded on the coast. The extent of New Albion and the location of Drake's landing has long been debated by historians, with the most prevailing theory that he landed on coast of northern California. Albion is an archaic name for the islands of Great Britain.
8. Voldemort Lord Voldemort is a fictional character and the primary antagonist in the Harry Potter novel series written by British author J. K. Rowling. Voldemort first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was released in 1997. Voldemort appeared either in person or in flashbacks in each book in the series, except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Voldemort has also appeared in all the corresponding film adaptations as of present date, except the third. In the series, Voldemort is the main enemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has the power to defeat him. He aims to conquer the wizarding world. The wizarding community fears him so much that they refuse to refer to him by his name, instead saying "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." Even his followers only refer to him as "The Dark Lord". He was born as Tom Marvolo Riddle, and is the last descendant of the wizard named Salazar Slytherin, one of the founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
10. He proved he had painted it himself (and 14 other Dutch masterpieces) and it was therefore a fake. Han van Meegeren (1889 ? 1947), born Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, was a Dutch painter and portraitist, and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. During World War II, wealthy Dutchmen, wanting to prevent a sellout of Dutch art to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, avidly bought Van Meegeren's forgeries. Nevertheless a falsified "Vermeer" ended up in the possession of Reichsmarschall Hermann G?ring. Following the war, the forgery was discovered in G?ring's possession, and Han van Meegeren was arrested 29 May 1945 as a Collaborator, as the officials believed that he had sold Dutch cultural property to the Nazis. These crimes threatened extensive prison time and so Van Meegeren fearfully confessed to the forgery. On 12 November 1947 Van Meegeren was convicted of falsification and fraud charges, and was sentenced to a modest punishment of one year in prison. He never served his sentence, however; before he could be incarcerated Van Meegeren suffered a heart attack and died on 30 December 1947. It is estimated that Van Meegeren duped buyers out of several million dollars.